“Willing?” Ellery supplied dryly.

  “Yes! Of course. And easy-going and open and supportive. But she’s not any of those things. She’s…pretty awful, to be perfectly honest, and I wish I’d never gotten involved with her.”

  “Then why the hell are you sending me over there? She’s just going to take it all out on me.”

  Dylan’s eyes seemed to grow darker, even haunted. “What if she’s planning to kill herself?”

  “What? Why would she?”

  “She’s threatened it before when she wasn’t getting her way. What if she’s relying on me showing up to save her? And then I don’t show up!”

  “But me showing up isn’t you showing up.”

  “It’s me calling her bluff. But also making sure that if she’s not bluffing, she doesn’t ruin both our lives by doing something incredibly stupid. I’m sorry to ask it of you. Believe me, I know this is beyond the pale—”

  “All right. All right!” Ellery cut him off. “I’ll go.”

  “Will you?” Dylan seemed surprised.

  Ellery sighed. “Yes.”

  “Thank you. Truly.” Dylan seemed so relieved and grateful, Ellery wondered what he knew that Ellery didn’t. Especially when Dylan added candidly, “I wish I could promise you won’t regret it, but…you probably will.”

  “Oh, I know,” Ellery said grimly. “Of that, I have zero doubt.”

  Chapter Nine

  Luckily, he was in good shape because, even so, Ellery was out of breath and sweating by the time he jogged back to the Crow’s Nest to grab his car. He quietly cursed both September and Dylan as he started the VW’s engine.

  The VW zipped through the narrow streets of the village, winding up the hillside as street lamps winked on.

  September was renting a place two streets over from Jack’s, which Ellery hadn’t realized until that evening. When he pulled up in front of the yellow and white bungalow, all the lights were off and the curtains were closed. September’s golf cart sat in the front drive, but she did not appear to be home.

  Unless she’d gone to bed early?

  Maybe the entire point of this exercise was to enjoy dragging Dylan away from the festival for nothing more than the pleasure of making him jump through hoops. That scenario made more sense to Ellery than one where September knowingly risked her life.

  But Dylan seemed sincerely worried, and he knew September better than Ellery.

  It was not the kind of thing he wanted to be wrong about, so Ellery turned off the engine and got out of the car. Cozy lights shone in the windows of the neighboring houses. It was a quiet street. Down the hill, he could see the deep blue of the harbor and the distant glow of the lamp at North Point lighthouse.

  And, very faintly, he could hear what sounded like a dog’s shrill bark carried on the sea breeze.

  “Yikes,” he murmured. “Surely not.”

  He strode briskly up the brick walkway to the front door and rang the bell.

  He was not surprised when nothing happened.

  He rang the bell again, but he couldn’t hear it ring, so maybe it wasn’t working. He tried knocking on the door.

  Again, there was no response.

  He sighed, took a step back to study the front of the cottage. On the roof, a whale weather vane spun aimlessly in the wind. The shutters creaked.

  It was tempting to wash his hands of the situation and phone the police. Maybe the embarrassment of having Pirate Cove’s finest darkening her doorstep would put an end to September’s games. The problem was, that solution would be equally embarrassing for Dylan, which was why he hadn’t gone that route in the first place. Ellery understood only too well. It was no fun being the object of village gossip.

  Well, no fun being the object of any gossip, really.

  He checked his phone. It was now nearly eight o’clock. Hard to believe September would go to bed this early, even to make a point. It was equally hard to believe she’d be sitting in the dark, waiting for Dylan to show up. Unless she really was a sociopath, which…maybe.

  He returned to the front door and knocked so hard the wreath of shell and twigs bounced. “September? Are you in there? It’s Ellery.”

  The stubborn silence persisted.

  As much as he didn’t want to be any more involved than he already was, what if something had happened to her? What if she had done something stupid?

  Ellery walked around the side of the bungalow to a small cement courtyard with a variety of potted plants and an iron bench. He knocked on the back door.

  Nobody home.

  The curtains to what was likely the bedroom were not pulled tight. He climbed onto the bench—hoping none of September’s neighbors chose that moment to look out their windows—and tried to peer through the opening. As he searched for recognizable shapes within the dimness, he hoped with all his heart that September was not taking a nap and about to wake to the sight of him looming outside her window.

  The interior was even darker than the surrounding night.

  He hopped down and went back to the door, trying to see beneath the scalloped bottom of the curtain.

  In the gloom, he could just make out the outline of table and chairs—and maybe a tiny flickering light? A candle on the table?

  Tentatively, he tried the doorknob. To his surprise, the knob turned. He opened the door, but then caution—instinct?—held him motionless.

  “Hello?” Ellery called from the doorstep. “September?”

  He did not like the feel of the silence on the other side of the door.

  “Please don’t let this be…” He didn’t finish the thought. Using his forearm, he pushed the door wide. The string of patio lights from the neighboring yard cast a baleful sheen across the scene. Ellery’s uneasy gaze moved from table to sink to floor—he could hear a soft, but steady drip onto the tile. He swallowed, turned on his phone’s flashlight, and directed it into the kitchen.

  To his relief, he saw that water was dripping from the sink counter.

  That was much better than the grisly explanation his imagination had supplied, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

  “September?” he asked doubtfully.

  He held his phone out as though trying to get a better signal. His effort to expand the range of his cell’s flashlight was rewarded, if you could call it that, by the sight of something bundled in the doorway leading from the kitchen into the room beyond: a pile of filmy draperies which gradually resolved itself into a white huddled…

  Pile of laundry, he told himself, and did not believe it for an instant.

  His heart bounced around his chest like radar pinging off incoming trouble as his horrified gaze slowly, reluctantly picked out the shape of an outstretched hand.

  “Oh God.”

  She wasn’t bluffing. She did it.

  He retreated hastily to call for help, and the slide of light briefly illuminated the gleam of something silver on the table. Not a utensil. Not a knife. Nothing that belonged on a kitchen table.

  Was that—? What was that?

  A hammer.

  He blinked, trying to get his shocked brain to compute.

  The hammer was out of place in that scene. Nobody used a hammer to…

  “Oh no.”

  Ellery stumbled away from the door and collapsed onto the iron bench. He took a couple of deep, trembly breaths. The damp night smelled of geranium, scented candle, and the relentless creep of something coppery and sinister. He pressed Jack’s number.

  Jack’s cell rang once and then Jack, sounding blessedly normal, said, “How goes it?”

  “It’s gone better,” Ellery said shakily. “I’m over at September’s. I think she’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s dead, anyway. I think it must be her.”

  “You’re not making sense. Are you sure she’s dead?”

  Ellery closed his eyes considering the stillness, the silence, the scent of that which made your scalp prickle and your blood turn cold.

  “Yes. That is, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t go inside. Which, I don’t know, maybe I should make sure she’s not…”

  Jack said sharply, “No. Don’t go inside. Did you drive over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait in your car. I’m on my way.”

  It seemed a lifetime before Ellery heard the sirens, saw the red and blue flash of LED bar lights speeding up the street toward where he sat shivering in his car.

  Three police SUVs parked along the street. Jack got out and directed the other officers toward the house. The people in the surrounding cottages, came outside, standing on their porches, hugging themselves, watching.

  Jack crossed to Ellery, who had climbed out of the VW.

  “Are you okay?”

  Ellery nodded, reached for Jack, who wrapped his arms around him. “I don’t think she killed herself.”

  Jack drew back, trying to read Ellery’s face. “Why would she kill herself? What are you even doing here?”

  “She was threatening to kill herself. But…I don’t think that’s what happened.” Ellery dropped his forehead on Jack’s shoulder. “You’d think I’d be used to this by now.”

  He felt Jack shake his head. “This isn’t something you get used to. It isn’t something you should get used to.” His arms tightened around Ellery for a moment, then he said briskly, “Wait in your car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Ellery nodded, folded back in the VW, watching as Jack disappeared around the back of the bungalow. He resumed his internal debate on whether to phone Dylan.

  If their positions were reversed, he’d want to know as soon as possible. But this was not the first time he’d stumbled onto a crime scene. He knew how this worked. How it was supposed to work, anyway, and he knew Jack would not approve, might even interpret a phone call to Dylan the wrong way. So he sat still and silent, watching the beam of flashlights poking around the exterior of the house and then retreating inside to move with ominous deliberation behind the curtains and blinds.

  Eventually, a black Infiniti Q60 pulled up behind Ellery’s car and the tall, well-built figure of Dr. Robert Mane got out. Rob, Medical Director and CEO of the Buck Island Med Center, operated as the island’s ME pro tempore when the official medical examiner in Providence couldn’t make it to an island crime scene in a timely manner.

  Rob walked up to Ellery’s car, tapped on the VW’s window. Ellery rolled the window down.

  “I don’t want to say this is starting to look suspicious…” Rob said.

  “Yeah, please don’t say that.”

  Rob made a sound of amusement, but said, “I thought you were going to give me a call this week?”

  “Sorry. The past few days have been crazy.”

  “Sure. I know. Sherlock Holmes had the same problem.” Robert’s fingers tapped out a fleeting toodeloo on the window, and he continued on his way, disappearing around the back of the bungalow.

  The minutes ticked slowly by.

  Eventually Jack came around the back of the cottage, ducked beneath the crime scene tape stretched across the driveway, and climbed into the VW.

  Ellery said, “Is she—?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack gazed at Ellery in the gloom, and then asked the inevitable question, the question Ellery had been dreading. “What exactly were you doing here, Ell?”

  “Dylan got a weird phone message from September. He was afraid she might harm herself, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to come himself.”

  “So he sent you over here.” Jack’s tone was without inflection.

  “Yes.”

  Jack watched a Med Center ambulance back into the driveway. “Did you hear the message from September?”

  Ellery’s, “Yes,” was more tentative than he’d intended.

  “Yes?”

  Ellery nodded.

  Jack said quietly, “Ellery.”

  Ellery said earnestly, “Jack, listen. Remember when I got that message from Brandon asking for help? But everyone else who heard it couldn’t make out what he was saying—”

  Jack interjected, “You mean the message Brandon didn’t actually send?”

  Funny how he still remembered that call as coming from Brandon. It took Ellery a moment to recover his thoughts. “But there was a message. That’s my point.”

  As usual Jack went straight to the heart of the matter. “Are you sure it was September you heard leaving that message? Could you—would you swear to it in court?”

  “Swear to it in court?” Ellery echoed.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sure it was September. But I’m not—it was difficult to understand what she was saying.”

  “I see.”

  Ellery tried to read Jack’s expression in the gloom. “If you’re thinking Dylan had any part of this, you’re wrong.”

  Instead of answering, Jack pulled out his cell phone. “I’m going to tape your statement now. I want you to tell me everything that happened after you left the Salty Dog up to when you phoned me.”

  Tersely, matching Jack’s tone, Ellery went through his steps after paying for their meal at the pub.

  Jack only interrupted twice. Once to ask about Dylan’s demeanor when he’d approached Ellery. Once to ask why Ellery hadn’t phoned the police when September didn’t answer the doorbell.

  The first question was easy enough to answer.

  “Dylan seemed honestly worried. Which is why I agreed to come over here. His reasons for not coming himself made sense to me.”

  Jack reserved comment on that one.

  The second question was trickier.

  “I didn’t phone the police because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure September’s threat was authentic.”

  “In fact, you weren’t sure there was a threat because you couldn’t make out most of the message purportedly left by her.”

  Ellery did not like Jack’s tone and the use of the word purported felt hostile. “If it was just emotional blackmail, then phoning the police would teach her a lesson, but it would also be humiliating for Dylan. And it would be a waste of police resources when your team was already stretched thin.”

  Jack snorted. “Come off it.”

  “I’m just telling you what ran through my mind. If a police report got filed, how long before a story popped up in the Scuttlebutt Weekly about a police incident occurring at Dylan Carter’s girlfriend’s house?”

  That time, Jack said nothing.

  “I didn’t think September was the self-harming type. I figured she was trying to manipulate Dylan. She’s been badmouthing him all over the village. I didn’t want to help her smear his reputation. But I couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure it wasn’t a-a cry for help. Which is why I didn’t leave.”

  “You went around to the back of the cottage,” prompted Jack.

  Ellery finished recounting his discovery of September’s body.

  “Did you step inside the cottage?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “You didn’t touch anything but the bench, the window, and the door handle?”

  “Correct.”

  “Okay.” Jack clicked his phone, reached for the car door. “You’re still heading over to my place? I won’t be home until late.”

  “Jack, you haven’t even said what happened. Was she murdered?”

  Jack glanced back; his expression indecipherable. “Yes. She was murdered.”

  He had been expecting it, so why was it such a shock?

  “How?”

  “The back of her head was bashed in with a hammer she’d been using to break up a block of ice.” He added bleakly, “She was in the process of mixing cocktails.”

  For a shocked moment, Ellery couldn’t think past the unlikelihood of September being murdered.

  No, she was not a very nice person. But to kill her?

  She’s the most unlikeable woman I’ve ever known.

  He gathered his wits, said quickly, “Jack, Dylan didn’t do this.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning.”

  “Jack—”

  Jack swung the car door shut, cutting off the rest of Ellery’s words.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” In disbelief, Ellery watched Jack stride up the drive, duck under the crime scene tape, and disappear around the back of the bungalow.

  For a few seconds, Ellery fumed. Then, once again, he debated phoning Dylan, this time to warn him.

  But there was no question that, at this juncture, Jack would view that as disloyalty—if not high treason. As dismayed as Ellery was by Jack’s suspicions, and as outraged as he was by Jack’s highhanded behavior, he couldn’t betray Jack’s trust.

  He started the Volkswagen, drew carefully past the additional emergency vehicles pulling up at the bungalow, and made the short drive back to Jack’s cottage.

  There, Watson was ready and waiting to share his own views on the topics of trust, loyalty, and high treason.

  “I know,” Ellery told him. “I know. But I can’t take you everywhere.”

  Watson disagreed, and offered many loud if not logical reasons to support his argument.

  Ellery did his best to soothe his little pal’s injured feelings with cuddles, and eventually Watson allowed him to make up for his transgressions by throwing the raggedy remnants of what had once been a squeaky lamb toy, until Ellery’s arm was ready to fall off.

  After Watson had worked out his frustrations with the world in general and Ellery in particular, they retreated to the kitchen where Ellery fixed himself a cup of tea and troubledly studied his silent phone.

  He understood why Jack had to consider Dylan a suspect. Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, romantic and domestic partners of any and all stripes were always the initial suspect in the violent death of a significant other. Until Jack could clear Dylan, he had to consider him a person of interest.

  Ellery also understood why Jack wasn’t going to discuss the case with him before he’d even finished his preliminary investigation.

  He understood, but it was still worrying.

  Nearly as worrying as the fact that Dylan hadn’t bothered to phone him once to learn what had happened after Ellery got to September’s bungalow.