A Death on the Island Read online

  “Still,” I said, hoping my voice sounded relaxed, casual. “It’s probably best not to be away too long. You know, with a murderer on the loose and everything.”

  Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and a hint of amusement. “Yes, it’s probably much safer inside.”

  He said the words as if they were a joke only he understood, and I felt the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end.

  “Of course,” he continued, taking a step towards me. “We’re both safe out here because, as I already said, I’m innocent. I didn’t do anything wrong. This is just one big understanding.”

  I took another step back and stumbled, my foot catching on a small tree root. Quickly, I caught myself and stood upright, hoping I didn’t look as scared as I felt.

  “But you don’t believe me, do you?” he asked, his head tilting to the side.

  I didn’t say anything, partly because I didn’t know what to say, and partly because, even if I’d had all the right words, my body was frozen in fear.

  “It’s okay,” Jimmy said, setting the boxes on the ground, mud and rain soaking into the cardboard, turning it to useless mush. “Holly didn’t believe me, either.”

  At those words, my body unfroze and I ran.

  Chapter 17

  Jimmy was the killer.

  I’d never suspected him. Not once.

  Even coming out to the recycling bin, I’d been looking to gather evidence to use against Samuel. Though, I still wasn’t certain Samuel hadn’t been at least partially involved in the murders. At the very least, Samuel wasn’t a real caterer and he had helped Jimmy deceive Robert Baines into serving food from Jimmy’s Daily Catch to his guests.

  Even after overhearing Jimmy complain to Tillie about Robert blackmailing him, I hadn’t suspected him. His face was too kind, too open. As ridiculous as I’d made Daniel feel about his claim that the islanders suspected the murderer was someone from off the island, he had been right. I’d never suspected someone from Sunrise Island could have been the murderer. It hadn’t seemed possible. Sunrise Island was my new home, and I supposed I’d been unwilling to believe it could be home to a murderer.

  As I slipped and slid in the mud on my way around the house, desperately looking for an entrance, I was grateful I’d left my heels in the bathroom. They would have slowed me down considerably, and even in my bare feet, I could feel Jimmy gaining on me.

  With each rasping breath, I was inhaling rain and flecks of mud, but still I pushed on, knowing that if I stopped, I’d be dead. I couldn’t overpower Jimmy. Though he had always seemed remarkably unthreatening, he was actually quite broad-shouldered, and definitely stronger than I was. Sure, I’d killed Martin Little when he’d attacked me, but I’d had a shovel. Now, I had nothing but my own two hands, and they were practically numb from the rain and the sudden cold front that had accompanied the storm.

  I screamed and yelled as I ran, hoping someone inside would hear me, but ultimately knowing it was useless. Though the rain had slowed down considerably, the wind was still lashing against the side of the house, and if any of the other party guests heard my screams, they would very likely mistake them for the wind whistling through the cracks in the newly built house. Mason might even make a passing comment to someone about how shoddy the modern construction was.

  My only chance was to reach the bathroom window I’d crawled through and crawl back in. However, I could hear Jimmy’s breathing behind me growing louder and louder, and though I was amped up on adrenalin, I could feel my legs becoming heavier with each step, my feet harder to lift out of the thick mud.

  The bathroom was further along the back of the house, closer to the back corner where the sitting room was, but the glass hallway where I’d run into Jimmy just before he’d led me to Holly’s body was approaching. The house was so large, there was no guarantee that making it through the door and inside the hallway would save me. After all, no one had heard Robert Baines’ large body tumble down an entire flight of stairs. However, with Jimmy practically breathing down my neck, I knew I wouldn’t make it to the bathroom window before he grabbed me, so I veered sharply to the right and set off for the entrance to the hallway, my arms and legs pumping as hard as they could.

  I was nearly there, maybe only twenty paces away, when I felt a pull at my back. Jimmy had wrapped his hand around the strap of my dress, and yanked me backwards. I screamed and fell on my back, my body landing with a wet smack in the mud. I scrambled, trying to roll over, to push myself up on my hands and knees and take off running again, but Jimmy was already on top of me, his knees straddling my hips, his hands holding my arms down by the wrist. I thrashed and pulled, but it was useless. Like quicksand, I sunk in deeper and deeper into the mud, becoming more and more stuck as I struggled.

  Jimmy was out of breath, but there was a bright light behind his eyes. An exhilaration, almost. It was frightening.

  “You fought valiantly,” he said, as if we were two knights at the end of a duel. “You definitely fought harder than the other two.”

  I spit at him, a glob of bubbly white phlegm hitting him in the eye and rolling down his cheek. He glared at me and turned his head, wiping his face on his shoulder, already soaking wet from the rain. “Do whatever makes you feel better. It won’t change the outcome, though.”

  I felt in my heart that he was right. I was going to die. My body was weak, and even on a good day, I couldn’t have fought him off. He was going to murder me just like he’d murdered Robert and Holly.

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked, hoping I could appeal to his ego. Every killer wanted someone to know their story. Having Jimmy tell me his could buy me some time, if only he’d take the bait.

  “You know why,” Jimmy said, his mouth shifting into a snarl, though I had the distinct impression that his anger was not directed at me.

  I stared up at him, heart pounding in my chest, praying that wasn’t as much of an answer as he was going to provide. I needed more time. For what, I didn’t know, considering no one at the party knew I was missing, and even if they did, it was too dark for them to be able to see me from the sitting room. I was going to die. I just wasn’t ready to do it that very minute.

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “You mean to tell me Robert Baines wasn’t blackmailing you?”

  I shook my head. Though I’d found the folder with information about me and the bed and breakfast in his study, Robert Baines hadn’t yet made any moves to use it against me.

  “Then that makes you the only one at this party,” he said with a scoff. “Baines was blackmailing everyone, myself included. He was going to have my restaurant closed down unless I promised him 10% of my profits.”

  “Wow,” I said, trying to sympathize with him, trying to talk with him as if he weren’t pinning me to the ground and threatening my life.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “There is only one place I give 10% of my earnings to, and that is the church. I tithe every month, and I wasn’t about to let Robert Baines think he was as important to me as God.”

  So he killed him. Right. Because that made sense. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have laughed.

  “I hired Samuel to pose as a caterer so I could smuggle my food into the house and serve it to the guests for the party. Robert Baines would love the food, and when I revealed that it was my food, he’d forget about closing down my restaurant and blackmailing me and we’d each go on with our lives. However, he was irate. He said I’d made him look like a fool. He had been talking up a caterer who didn’t even exist, and he said I had very likely given the entire party food poisoning. I’m not normally an angry person, but I snapped.”

  I’d say. From what Shanda and Ward had said, slitting someone’s throat is a tough, grizzly job. It requires a lot of strength and a lot of effort.

  He said no more about the actual killing of Robert Baines, for which I was grateful. I wasn’t particularly keen on hearing the details of how the man pinning me to the ground had gruesomely killed s
omeone only hours before.

  “And Holly?” I asked. Again, I wanted to know, but there was also a part of me that didn’t. I’d brought Holly to the party. Sure, she’d blackmailed me into coming, but I’d allowed her to stay at the bed and breakfast, which was why she had the opportunity to attend the party in the first place. If I’d sent her away, it was very unlikely she would have encountered another person with an invite willing to bring along a complete stranger. If it hadn’t been for me and my desire to make some extra cash while Page and Blaire were away, Holly would very likely still be alive.

  Jimmy shook his head, eyes heavy. “Now that was a shame. I didn’t want to do that, you have to believe me.”

  “I do,” I said. Because honestly, I did believe him. He didn’t want to kill her. The problem was that I was more bothered by his choice than his desires. He may not have wanted to kill her, but he’d done it anyway. And in a way, that was almost worse. If Jimmy had been killing for sport, I could call him a psychopath and move on. But as it was, he was simply selfish enough to waste away someone else’s life to preserve his own comfort.

  “Samuel confronted me right away about whether or not I murdered Robert Baines and I was able to convince him I hadn’t—he, apparently, is much more gullible than you or Ms. Belden. However, I did tell him that it would be best if we didn’t reveal our deception to anyone at the party. It would look suspicious. He told me he’d thrown out all of the takeaway boxes, so that wouldn’t be a problem. He’d said it as if he were proud of himself. As if having takeaway boxes from my restaurant at Robert Baines’ house wouldn’t look fishy. I maintained my cool, however, and thanked him. Then, as soon as I was alone, I snuck around the house and went to where I knew the recycling bins were to grab the boxes and place them in my car, but Holly was there and she’d already found them.”

  Had Holly come to the truth faster than I had? Even if I’d seen the boxes in the recycling bin, I wasn’t certain I would have suspected Jimmy was capable of murder. Holly’s judgment was probably less clouded than mine, though. She didn’t live on the island and she hadn’t been into Jimmy’s Daily Catch once a week for dinner for the last two months.

  While telling me the story, Jimmy had grown more confident, and his hands had loosened around my wrists. Not a lot, but enough that I could twist my hands, and perhaps, with the element of surprise, push my hands into the mud and slip them out of his grasp.

  “I came up with a lie, albeit a flimsy one—I was on the spot, and feeling a bit flustered—but I could tell Ms. Belden wasn’t convinced. So, still having the knife I’d used on Robert Baines in my back pocket, I pulled it out and…you know the rest. She barely saw it coming, if that can be a consolation to you. It was quick.”

  That, in fact, was not a consolation to me. Despite the fact that Holly had blackmailed me, I had a grudging respect for her. She took risks and had a palpable love for life. It was sad and shocking that her flame could be snuffed out so quickly and easily by such a selfish man.

  I ignored his attempt at comfort, as I was distracted by a glaring issue with his story. “Wait, so why didn’t you take the boxes after you killed her? Why put her on top of them?”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes. “I was going to just leave her on the ground and grab the boxes like I’d planned, however, I heard someone coming down the side of the house. It was only later that I realized the person I’d heard was your crazy elderly friend. Had I known that at the time, I may very well have gone on with my plan. The old woman isn’t sane enough to have been a reliable witness. Not knowing that, though, I shoved Holly into the recycling bin and took off running, thinking I’d come back for the boxes before anyone found the body. But then I ran into you.”

  I recalled Jimmy’s pale, shocked face when he’d seen me. The way he’d grabbed my arm and pulled me around the house, acting as though he were in shock. Though, perhaps he was. Only it wasn’t the kind of shock I’d thought at first. He was in shock at having just killed someone and been so nearly caught, first by Mrs. Harris and then by me.

  “I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain why I was outside, and even if I could, it would come into suspicion later when Holly’s body was found. So, I opted instead to show you her body and claim to have found her. I figured that no one in their right mind would lead people to the body of someone they’d just killed. It felt foolproof.”

  I wanted to point out that no one in their right mind kills people in the first place, but I resisted the urge.

  “It seemed to have worked. I knew that if you’d seen the boxes came from my restaurant, you would have mentioned it on the spot. However, you didn’t, so I assumed I could just come back later and dispose of the boxes. No one would know the difference, and if someone did notice that the boxes were missing, they would have no way to trace the boxes back to me. But then, of course. You again.”

  Jimmy had said the last two words in a high-pitched singsong voice, as if we were two old friends who kept bumping into one another in a big city. As if we were in a romantic comedy and not a slasher movie.

  “Me again,” I parroted back, aware that Jimmy had reached the end of his story, and that I was very quickly running out of time.

  Jimmy leaned back slightly on his knees, shifting his weight away from his hands and sitting more heavily on my hips. He shook his head. “Again, I hope you know how much I don’t want to do this. I have no desire to kill you, but you were going to foil everything. If only you’d stayed inside with the rest of the guests, this wouldn’t be happening.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said, knowing Jimmy would never believe me. “Robert Baines wasn’t blackmailing me yet, but he had a folder of information on me and the bed and breakfast. He was prepared to blackmail me into giving him part of the land the bed and breakfast is sitting on. His death benefits me. I swear I won’t say anything.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I wish it could work out like that, but you know as well as I do that the moment I let you go, you’d run straight inside and tell everyone the truth. And I can’t very well kill an entire party, can I?”

  He was already well on his way, I thought. What was nine more people when you’d already killed three?

  “I wouldn’t,” I insisted. “I swear.”

  Jimmy began to respond, but before he could get any words out, I pushed my hands into the soft dirt, giving myself enough space to slip my wrists out from under Jimmy’s grasp, and I plunged a flat hand into his throat. His eyes widened, and then he hacked, falling sideways as he struggled to reopen his windpipe and breathe.

  While he thrashed on the ground next to me, I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself onto my hands and knees. However, before I could push off into a run, a hand wrapped around my ankle and tugged. My foot slipped and I fell face first back into the mud. I kicked out at Jimmy with my other leg, and I felt my foot connect with his jaw. Hard.

  He yelped and released me, both hands moving to clutch at his face.

  I saw my opportunity and I took it, pushing myself off of the ground and running along the back side of the house. I just needed to make it inside and I’d be safe. I’d be okay.

  I turned around to be certain Jimmy was still a safe distance behind me, and I saw him very shakily rising to his feet. I took a quick moment to pride myself on my apparently powerful roundhouse kick. When I turned back around, though, still sprinting as hard as I could towards the house, rather than finding an empty expanse of yard between me and the house, I saw a hulking figure. I tried to stop myself, but the ground was slick and I was running too quickly. Before I could do anything to avoid it, I’d crashed directly into the person, both of us falling to the ground in a mess of limbs.

  Chapter 18

  “Would you stop hitting me?”

  My fists were flying indiscriminately, hitting whatever part of the person I could reach. I was too close to freedom and safety to risk losing it now. However, something about the voice rang familiar, and I stopped, fists frozen in mid-air.


  “Thank you,” the voice said, as the person disentangled themselves from me and pulled back far enough that I could see their face.

  “Shep!” I shouted, so relieved I could have cried.

  The story began spilling from me in indecipherable gibberish, my fear channeling itself into an intense excitement.

  Through my loud and incoherent rant, Shep gathered the most important detail. “Jimmy is the killer?”

  I nodded my head vigorously, and positioned myself just behind Shep’s shoulder, peeking out from behind him like a frightened child. If I’d seen someone like me in a movie, I may have called them a coward. I may even have commented to Page that the girl was perpetuating gender stereotypes, hiding behind a big strong man. However, as Shep had a gun and I was shivering and covered in mud, I didn’t mind perpetuating a gender stereotype. The only thing I really cared about was that Jimmy didn’t get away, and, more importantly, that he didn’t come after me.

  “Are you certain?” Shep asked.

  I didn’t answer, as Jimmy was moving towards us now, his hands in the air, a weak smile on his lips.

  “This is silly,” Jimmy said. “A total misunderstanding.”

  “He confessed everything to me,” I hissed, quickly recounting the long story Jimmy had just told me. Jimmy scoffed through every word, acting as though I were making the whole thing up. After I finished and Shep’s uncertain face turned from me to Jimmy and back again, I sighed. “Arrest us both if you aren’t sure which one is telling the truth. I’ll gladly spend a night in jail if it means he can’t kill anyone else.”

  This declaration seemed to finally be enough for Shep to take me seriously.