“Who do you think did it?” Another voice bubbled up from the scrum.

  “Did it?” I repeated.

  “Yeah,” a male voice chimed in, “who killed her?”

  I sighed. “I think I made it quite clear that we have no idea who or what caused Miss Morgann’s death. As far as we are aware, neither do the police. I’m sure they are still in the early stages of figuring that out.”

  “Her manager, Jason Bálachet, believes she was murdered,” the male voice continued, “by someone on this island.”

  I hesitated for a moment. “I realize that is what Mr. Bálachet said in his statement, but I’m sure we can all agree that he must be going through a challenging time right now.”

  “Are you saying he’s lying?” A young woman with a camera and a raised microphone asked from the front of the crowd.

  “We are not accusing anyone of anything. Like Jason, we are struggling to understand what happened yesterday.”

  “So when he said,” the young woman continued, reading from her phone, “Many islanders were jealous of Rosalie’s success. They attempted to thwart her desire to recapture the peace and joy of her childhood by trying to scare us off from moving back here. This saddened us, but we hoped that with time, things might change. Perhaps these hard feelings would pass once we lived on Wynter Island for a while. We never imagined this deep-seated hatred might lead to Rosalie’s murder.”

  “What piffle,” Gwen murmured under her breath.

  “As I said, Jason is going through a difficult time. He has just lost a woman who meant a great deal to him. That can affect anyone’s perspective on a situation. Perhaps it would be best if he took some time to grieve and leave any suppositions to the police.”

  “What, like you did, Kate?”

  I glanced up sharply, scanning the crowd to try and pinpoint the male questioner. Whomever it was, he had ducked back into the thick of the group.

  “I’m afraid that’s it for us,” I said abruptly, scooping Jupiter into my arms and waving Gwen back to the kitchen door. “Thank you for your time.”

  “But wait,” the young news reporter closest to the porch moved up onto the first step. Jupiter growled and snapped his jaws with a loud click in the direction of her microphone. She staggered back, pulling the microphone into her chest.

  “Jupiter, no,” I said loud enough for the crowd to hear, and then bent my head to his ear and whispered, “but thanks for the help, boy.”

  “Wait, we’re not done. We’ve got more questions….” The hubbub of voices built to a roar behind me as I gestured Gwen back into the house.

  I paused and turned back to the crowd. There was someone out there. Someone who knew me but wasn’t willing to be seen. Someone who knew what had happened on Wynter Island in the past six months and wasn’t afraid to throw it back in my face.

  I shivered with a sudden chill and followed Gwen into the house.

  Chapter Eight

  “I forgot that she bought the old Wintford Place, " Gwen said as we drove down the narrow seaside road toward the area known as ‘Millionaires Row.’

  Although unhappy about our destination, Gwen had jumped at the chance to get away from her home and the scrum of media, still stuck in the mud pit of her front lawn. “They named it Wynterhaven, but everyone just calls it the Glass House. You’ll see why. It’s very modern in style and has huge windows.”

  After a quick stop to drop Jupiter back at the cottage, we headed north toward W’en’e’win Provincial Park. Was part of the allure of this area that the road dead-ended at an unmarked entry to the large provincial park? No through traffic to bother them and their own private entry to the hiking trails scattered along the shoreline.

  I turned in the second from the last driveway and headed toward a two-story modernist-style cement block. The cement had been painted white, giving it a clean, crisp feel. And then there was the glass. Acres and acres of it, not a speck concealed by conventional curtains.

  I could see where the nickname came from. It was definitely a house of glass. The best house, I suppose, for an exhibitionist, or perhaps, an actress….

  “I don’t know why we had to come here today, Kate. After that press release last night, it’s not like we can expect a warm welcome.”

  I braked the truck to a stop on the driveway behind a moss-green Range Rover. “We’re not here for a warm welcome. We’re here to see how Jason is doing.”

  “You mean the man who just labeled us all spiteful murderers?”

  “Yep, that’s who I mean.”

  “I didn’t take you for the Mother Theresa type.”

  I pointed to the top of my unadorned head. “You’ve never noticed my halo?”

  With a snort of derision, Gwen jumped out of the truck and followed me down the long cement path across the golf course-like lawn. A checkerboard pattern had been mowed into its damp surface, reminding me of Fenway before a Red Sox game. Who on earth was doing that? I couldn’t see either Jason or Scott riding around the sizable lawn on a John Deere lawnmower.

  Dougie. It must be Dougie. But then, how come he never told us he was working for them?

  My mind flashed back to Dougie’s flustered meeting with Rosalie in the studio. I could have sworn they were strangers. How odd.

  “It also won’t hurt if we can find out why he said what he did. And see if it’s possible to get him to tone it down a bit,” I added.

  “Good luck with that.”

  We arrived at a pair of massive front doors, the top of their frames towering ten feet above ground level. Who needed doors that big, other than the Jolly Green Giant?

  “Well,” I raised my hand to knock on the dark, smooth wood, “here goes nothing.”

  The knock echoed back at us, bouncing off the glass windows and thick cement walls. “Should I knock again?”

  “No.” Gwen grabbed my elbow. “Listen. I think I hear someone coming.”

  Yes, Gwen was right. Steps were slowly shuffling across a tile floor. Their path seemed labored, almost as if the owner had lost their way. The door finally opened, and we found ourselves face to face with Jason Bálachet, an older, sadder version of the man I had seen yesterday morning. His face was unshaven, his eyes swollen, big violet-black circles dragging his pallid face downward.

  “What do you want?” he spat out, his jaw clenching in a spasm of irritation.

  “Hi Jason,” I said, striving for pleasant but instead sounding fake with my overly bright, chipper tone. “We wanted to see how you’re doing. You know, after yesterday.”

  His eyes shifted from me to Gwen before his mouth erupted in a harsh, unfunny rasp. “How do you think I’m doing? Fucking awful.”

  “That’s what we assumed,” Gwen replied with an edge to her voice sharp enough to cut through glass. “We thought it might be good to check in on you.”

  “Fine,” Jason stepped back and made an overly dramatic sweep of his arm, gesturing us inside. “Come in if you want to. I don’t care. I need another drink.”

  He turned, leaving the door wide open, and headed back down the wide hallway.

  “C’mon,” I hustled inside, “let’s follow him.”

  We scuttled in after him. The corridor, glassed on both sides, connected two separate wings of the house. Through the glass, I could see the backyard stretching down to a rocky beach and then the ocean. We followed Jason as the hallway opened up into a massive kitchen/great room. The interior was clean, spare, and starkly chilling, an immense white cube. The ceilings, easily fifteen feet high, stretched back to panoramic windows, which showcased the waterfront in a single, unbroken image.

  The furniture was sparse, like a composed gallery installation. Here, a minimalist sofa and chair are angled toward the water view. There, a huge statement piece of a dining table separates the great room from the high-end European kitchen. It was an ode to minimalism: black, white, and a thousand muted shades of grey.

  For Christ’s sake, couldn’t they find a single piece of art with some color in it?

  Jason stopped at the immense marble island, his hand reaching toward a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. He poured a hefty shot of bourbon into a glass and lifted the cut crystal to his lips. He gestured vaguely towards the bottle. “Help yourselves if you want to.”

  Gwen glanced at her wristwatch and snorted her disapproval. “It’s barely past noon.”

  “Jason,” I stepped toward him, “how are you doing?”

  His eyes, red and swollen, momentarily met mine. Yes, there was grief there, but also fury. A red-hot rage arced across the narrow space between us like an electrical spark.

  “My initial answer still stands. Fucking awful.”

  “I’m sorry, we’re both so sorry,” I glanced back at Gwen, whose stiff facial muscles belied her agreement, “about what happened yesterday. It was a tragedy for everyone.”

  “For everyone? Huh.” He coughed out his disbelief. “Not for the islanders, that’s for sure.”

  “Yes, we got that impression from your statement to the press last night.” Gwen paused as brackets of irritation settled deeper into the skin around her mouth. “For some crazy reason, you seem to feel that Wynter Island is to blame for Rosalie’s death.”

  “Yes, I do.” He didn’t attempt to hide his defiance, his eyes blazing. “It took me a while to process everything yesterday, but I figured out who was at fault.”

  “Who?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “All of you!” His finger stabbed in the direction of Gwen and me.

  “So all 2,492 residents of Wynter Island got together and conspired to kill your girlfriend?” Gwen responded dryly. “That’s a surprising amount of cohesion. Especially when you consider we can’t even get everyone to agree on the days the library should be open.”

  “Gwen,” I muttered, “this is not helping.”

  “Neither is throwing around blame for an unfortunate accident, Kate! Especially saying something as stupid as it was ‘all islanders’.” Her pupils had opened up, dark and dilated, against her light green irises.

  “Okay, just try to calm down, Gwen. Deep breaths.” I turned my attention back to Jason. “Why did you write your own press release? We agreed yesterday that we would release a joint statement this morning.”

  “Because I realized who had killed Rosalie, and I wanted the world to know about it. I wasn’t going to wait around to be muzzled by you two.”

  Gwen snorted. “Muzzled. Huh, more like—”

  “Gwen, that’s enough. Why would the islanders want to kill Rosalie? C’mon, Jason, think about it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  I paused as Selesia’s words resurfaced in my memory. What had she said? Rose had better watch out that there were a lot of islanders who had an axe to grind with her.

  “How much time do you have?” he snorted. “This island has always had it in for Rosalie. If only we hadn’t moved to this god-damned place, she might still be alive!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, what a load of cow pies!” Gwen muttered.

  He turned his rather wild, swollen eyes towards her. “Do you know how we’ve been treated? Like scum. Like a disgusting odor in a small room. One old bat stormed up and told us to go back to Hollywood, where we belonged.”

  “Which old bat?” I asked. After all, there were quite a few to choose from.

  “The woman who runs the convenience store in the hotel.”

  “Doreen,” both Gwen and I murmured together.

  “Yes, her. Every time I go in that damn shop of hers, she looks like she’s going to pull a rifle out from underneath the counter. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we started getting crap left at the house.” He marched over to the monolithic dining table. He rummaged around in numerous paper piles before brandishing a square of crumpled brown paper that appeared to have been cut out of a paper bag.

  “Do the police know about this?” I asked.

  “Yes, we complained about it, but there wasn’t much they could do. We didn’t even bother to take this one to the station. I’m guessing the RCMP will take it as evidence. A forensics team from Victoria is going through the house this afternoon.”

  I wondered for a moment if adding my fingerprints to the evidence was dangerous, but I took the brown paper anyway.

  “Go home SLUT!” I read aloud, “We don’t want you on Wynter Island! Leave or else!”

  I turned the paper over in my hand, noticing the tiniest shred of red or perhaps orange ink on one ripped corner as I did.

  “Or else what?” Gwen asked.

  “Murder, that’s what,” Jason replied before collapsing into an armchair. “And that’s not even including the box of rotting fish left on our doorstep. If we’d managed to get the security system up and running, we’d at least have some idea who did it. But there was no one on this damn island to install it for us! Still, Rosalie refused to leave.”

  “So someone killed her. An angry islander. Case closed,” Gwen said.

  His head tilted back, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed another long slurp of bourbon. He nodded his agreement.

  “Well, the RCMP are going to need more evidence than a few scrawled notes and a box full of rotting fish to arrest someone for murder,’’ I said.

  “If it is murder,” Gwen interjected. “We won’t know that answer until the Coroner’s findings from the autopsy are released.”

  “Good afternoon.” A voice spoke from behind us. I spun around to see Rosalie’s assistant, Scott, standing there. His dark navy polo shirt and black jeans elongated his short torso, making him appear taller and more dignified. He wore them with an almost ceremonial sadness, like one of those Victorian mourners paid to follow caskets as they were carried through a town.

  But who does that anymore? Not for the funeral, but alone at home? Dresses in full black, like they’re sitting Shiva?

  “I thought I heard someone talking down here.” He walked over to me, his right hand extended. “Scott Quillimento. We met at the station.”

  I shook his hand. His fingers were long and delicate, almost malleable, as they rested in my grasp. His blood-stained eyes and mottled skin showed that he, too, had been crying. But he carried his grief with more…I don’t know, perhaps acceptance? Jason appeared like an angry child. Scott was much more of a somber adult.

  “Yes, Scott, I remember. I came—well, we came—to check in on Jason and offer our condolences. We’re both very sorry for your loss.”

  His lower lip trembled as his hazel eyes misted over with tears. He quickly wiped a hand over his face before regaining control. “Thank you. Thank you both for coming. I’ll never forgive myself for going to Victoria. If only I’d been here…”

  “Scott,” Jason said, “there’s nothing you could have done. These people weren’t going to stop until she was dead.”

  I studied Scott’s face, interested to see his reaction. Did he believe Jason’s theory that someone on Wynter had planned and executed Rosalie’s death? That this was all part of some vast island conspiracy?

  His lips tightened in irritation, like the zip closing on a snug dress, before quickly switching back to his easygoing smile. “We don’t know who did it, Jason. It could be …” His hesitation was momentary, but I still caught it, “anyone.”

  Why the hesitation? And why the sudden flash of irritation? Did he, too, realize that Jason’s rantings were more fantasy than reality? And would not help the investigation into Rosalie’s death?

  “If you don’t mind me asking, Scott, how did you meet Rosalie?” I asked.

  Jason’s head snapped up, his eyes and Scott’s connecting across the vast room. “I don’t think that’s any of your business…”

  Scott raised one hand in the air. “It’s okay, Jason. She just asked a simple question.” He gave Jason a silent nod that said very clearly, ‘Calm down and back off’, before turning his attention back to me. “Jason is feeling suspicious of everyone right now.”

  “Do tell,” Gwen murmured.

  Scott’s lips lifted in a half smile. “But I’ll answer your question. Jason and I met each other when we worked in Vegas.”

  “Vegas?” Gwen repeated. “What were you doing in Vegas?”

  “Working as magicians.”

  “Magicians?” I blurted out in surprise.

  “Well, not Penn and Teller, but it was a good living. We would cross paths occasionally. That is until Jason pulled Rosalie from the audience at one of his shows and managed to bewitch her. In all senses of the term.”

  A tremulous smile spread across Jason’s face.

  “They fell madly in love, and he followed her back to L.A. One day, when I was in town, I called him. He invited me over to the house. That’s when I met Rosalie for the first time. It was fate.”

  “Fate?”

  “Yes, fate. We were destined to meet. Rosalie said it’s called Niyati in Buddhism. We became instant best friends. I’d never felt that kind of connection with anyone else before.” His voice cracked with emotion. “She asked me if I would consider working as her assistant. Before I knew it, I had moved to L.A. and was living in their guest cottage.”

  “And then we ended up here,” Jason said morosely.

  A wave of sadness spread over Scott’s face. “Yes. I guess, perhaps, this, too, was fate. Niyati.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Staff Sergeant Singh? What a surprise!”

  The tall figure in an RCMP windbreaker swiveled away from the counter of the Lind General Store toward me. “Kate.” A broad smile spread across his narrow face. “It’s nice to see you.”