Page 80 of The Sunken Truth

Chapter Thirty-Four

Unable to focus,Lily doled out ice cream almost on autopilot for the rest of the afternoon. When they’d closed the shop and she’d sent Jessica home, she moved into the back room and set to work making new batches of ice cream.

By now, she could pretty much do that on autopilot too, but she still enjoyed the steady rhythm of blending the cream, milk and sugar for the base, and then stirring in her carefully selected ingredients to create her unique flavours. Keeping the temperature right felt like an art that she’d mastered, and there was something about the waiting time with ice cream that made it extra special. You couldn’t rush the process. The magic was in the length of time it took.

The phone rang, and she was all set to ignore it until she saw it was Flynn. After wiping her hands on her apron, she lifted the phone from the counter and swiped the screen.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hey.” His voice was warm and affectionate, bringing an instant smile to Lily’s lips.

“Are you still at work?”

“Justwalked out,” he said. “That was quite an interesting afternoon.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I was definitely not expecting things to turn out the way they did.”

“Me neither. I just spoke to Ryan again. Now that he’s calmed down, he’s very sympathetic. It seems he genuinely was scared of taking anyone out diving after what happened. Now that he knows the full story, he seems to be dealing with it better.”

“What’s going to happen to Benji?”

“I don’t know. He’ll have to go to court and a judge will decide.”

“And Kurt?”

“He’s admitted to blackmailing Benji, and says he was desperate for cash to get back to his mum, but given his lack of remorse, I’m not sure how much sympathy he’ll get from a judge.”

“What a mess,” Lily said.

Flynn’s voice turned sorrowful. “I’m about to go and speak to Jago Treneary. I figured I’d fill him in first and he can talk to the rest of the family. Or I will if he prefers.”

Lily nodded. “That won’t be an easy conversation.”

“No.”

“You figured everything out, though. We should celebrate later.”

He laughed. “That’s very generous of you, because I’m fairly sure it was you who figured it out.”

“Team effort,” she said. “Was the superintendent suitably impressed?”

“He was quiet, which is unusual for him. Maybe it means he’s impressed. I don’t know.”

“When does he leave?”

“Tomorrow. So either tonight or tomorrow morning, I need to talk to him about the possibility of me staying here.”

“Do it tomorrow,” Lily suggested. If he didn’t speak to him until then, she could live in hope for one more evening. “Let’s just have a chilled-out night in the pub tonight.”

“Okay.” He sighed heavily. “It would be nice if we could celebrate cracking the case, but it doesn’t feel like something to celebrate. What with the stuff with Terry Treneary, and the fact that I feel kind of sorry for Benji.”

“Me too. I still can’t believe Kurt was blackmailing him. Is Benji going to be in a lot of trouble?”

“I honestly don’t know how it will go. My opinion is that he’s a good guy who made a stupid mistake, but my opinion doesn’t count. It’ll be up to a judge to decide.”

“It should be Kurt who’s punished.”

“I guess he will be.” He paused for a moment, but sounded as though he was moving around. She assumed he was walking home. “By the way, did you hear the news about the shipwreck?”