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  Shaking her head, Elise made her way across the top edge of the parking lot. Thanks to the mayor and the chief, she had the official quotes she needed for her article, but official didn’t always translate to human. Those aspects could only truly come from people who knew Susie well.

  Like the young woman sitting on the steps of the church as the pallbearers placed her best friend’s casket into the waiting hearse . . .

  With tentative steps, she approached the grief-stricken woman. “Maureen, right?” Elise smiled gently as the young woman lifted her tear-streaked face. “My name is Elise Jenkins, and I just started work as a reporter for the Ocean Point Weekly.”

  The girl nodded without uttering a word.

  “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am at your loss. My best friend, Celia, died when we were in high school and it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through. It still hurts four years later.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died of cancer,” Elise said quietly, her voice breaking as she spoke. “I know that the circumstances are like night and day, but I get the loss and the senselessness of it all.”

  Maureen covered her face with her hands for a moment, only to let them slide back down to her lap with a tired exhale. “I just can’t wrap my head around this. I mean, how did that woman know this was going to happen?”

  Susie’s friend wiped at the fresh crop of tears that spilled over her cheeks. “How?”

  “Wait. What woman?” She stared at Maureen, waiting. Seconds turned to minutes as the silence between them held, the young woman’s eyes glazing over in the process.

  Realizing an answer wasn’t forthcoming, Elise opted for a different tactic—space.

  “Look, I can see that you have been through enough today so I won’t keep you. But I really want to do a story about Susie that’ll give our readers a true glimpse at the daughter her parents lost, the sister her siblings loved, and the friend you treasured.” She reached inside her purse and pulled out a business card. “If you want to talk, please call.” Flipping the card over, she scrawled her home number on the back and then handed it to Maureen. “Maybe you can help me put a face with the name everyone is talking about right now.”

  “I’d like that, Elise, thanks.” The girl rose to her feet and tilted her head in the direction of the hearse. “It looks as if they’re ready to head on out to the cemetery now. So I better go.”

  One by one, Maureen descended the steps of the church, the exhaustion and grief she harbored in the wake of Susie’s death palpable. But it was the image of the young woman, stopping beside the hearse and dissolving into tears, that Elise knew would stay with her forever.

  Chapter Four

  Sunday, June 13

  3:30 p.m.

  Beads of perspiration covered Elise’s arms as she stepped off the beach and onto the road. Three hours of sunbathing had left her in dire need of a shower and a cool drink, neither of which could come fast enough.

  Tucking her beach mat under one arm and her straw bag over the other, she made her way down Dunes Road, the sun’s bright afternoon rays forcing her to look north or south in order to see. Either choice yielded the same result—two-bedroom cottages that played host to a different family each week from late June through the Labor Day weekend. Which meant one thing: in a little over two weeks, each and every cottage on Dunes Road and all its surrounding counterparts would be rented, their occupants all intent on a week of fun in the sun.

  Even now, a handful of cottages were occupied by families with preschoolers or college-aged kids, both of whom had more flexibility when it came to making vacation plans.

  Two cottages ahead on her right, Elise spied a minivan with boogie boards strapped to the roof. The whimsical cartoons featured on the boards told her all she needed to know about the ages inside. The bag of assorted sand pails and shovels just outside the front door merely proved her guess accurate.

  In town less than two weeks, Elise had already scoped out her favorite cottages, with the preschool set’s temporary abode near the top of her list. For unlike the rental units on either side, the owners of this particular cottage were fastidious about its exterior. Flowering bushes bordered the brick walkway, a freshly painted wooden swing hung from the porch ceiling, and a mailbox shaped like a sand pail all came together to create the kind of vacation haven kids would remember long into their adulthood.

  A screen door just beyond the porch swing banged against the front of the house as a little girl came running out of the house and over to the minivan, where her dad was rounding up the last of the family’s suitcases. The child’s voice was so high-pitched, Elise couldn’t make out her words, but the happiness behind them was impossible to miss.

  At the next block, Elise turned south, the lack of sun in her face making it easier to concentrate on her destination rather than everyone else’s. When she reached her building, she stopped to hose the sand off her feet, the coolness of the water a welcome reprieve against her hot skin.

  Slowly, she made the climb up to her second-floor apartment and stopped outside her door. Locating her key was going to be a nightmare. The straw bag she had grabbed on the way to the beach was way too small for all of the paraphernalia she had shoved into it. A bigger beach bag was in order for her first paycheck.

  She reached in her bag and felt around. Book . . . towel . . . cassette player . . . suntan lotion . . . slimy key.

  She grasped the small metal object at the bottom of the bag and pulled it out, the key’s jagged teeth dripping in pink suntan lotion.

  “Great,” she mumbled as she grabbed the towel from around her neck and used it to clean both her hand and the key. “So much for making that bottle last . . .”

  When it was clean enough to use, Elise slipped the key into the lock and turned, the sound of a ringing phone greeting her on the other side. She tossed her beach bag and sunglasses onto the floor and ran into the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Elise?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Maureen O’Reilly. We spoke the other day at Susie’s funeral.”

  She swallowed—once, twice. “Oh, sure, hi, Maureen. How are you feeling?”

  “Not too good. I-I miss Susie so much. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from some sort of bad dream and realize she’s still here. But I’m not waking up . . .” The young woman’s voice trailed off, only to strengthen again after an audible breath. “I-I want to help you tell people about her. About the kind of person she was.”

  Tightening her grip on the phone, Elise willed her voice to sound professional despite the urge to let out a yelp of conquest. “That’d be great, Maureen. Do you want to come by the office tomorrow? We could do lunch if you’d like.”

  “I was kind of hoping that maybe we could talk today.”

  Elise looked quickly at her reflection in the mirror over the couch. Her skin was red and blotchy from spending a few too many hours in the sun and her hair was matted with sweat. Topping it off, she looked anything but professional in a bikini top and ratty workout shorts.

  Yet even as her visual inventory yielded countless reasons to say no, Elise knew in her heart it was now or never. Maureen wanted to talk. Tomorrow, that urge could be gone.

  “I’ve been at the beach all day and I’m not terribly presentable at the moment,” Elise said honestly. “But if you can give me about thirty minutes, I’d love to have you join me for a light dinner. I made a pasta salad this morning and there’s more than enough for the both of us.”

  Elise could almost hear Maureen’s smile over the phone. “I could use a little company, so that sounds great. Thanks, Elise.”

  After giving the woman directions, Elise hung up the phone and headed for the shower. The tiny granules of sand that seemed to cover every inch of her body were starting to make her itch.

  Fortunately, the cool shower did wonders for removing leftover sand, but did little to dispel the tension in her shoulders. Would sh
e uncover something today that might help shed some light on the case?

  “Not if you don’t relax,” Elise chided herself. In the brief conversation she’d had with Maureen on Friday, she’d learned one thing for sure. The young woman was in a bad place. Shove too much and tears would be the only response Elise could be sure of getting.

  Once every granule of sand was gone from her body, Elise turned off the water and stepped onto the fuzzy bath mat, her hand instinctively reaching for her towel and wrapping it around her body. She knew she had to appear calm if she was going to have any hope of unearthing what the victim’s friend had meant by the cryptic statement made on the steps of the church two days earlier.

  Padding on bare feet into her room, she stopped in front of her closet and surveyed her limited options, opting to go casual in the hopes it would keep Maureen relaxed. A pair of tan shorts with a turquoise crewneck top certainly fit the bill.

  Once she was dressed, Elise studied her face in the mirror. A quick dab of mascara to accentuate her blue eyes and some clear lip gloss went far in improving the image she’d seen looking back at her twenty minutes earlier. She pulled her wavy, shoulder-length hair up into a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie. It would have to do.

  She still had a few minutes to make a pitcher of lemonade before picking up the beach bag and sunglasses she had tossed on the floor when she came home.

  A soft knock at the door changed that plan.

  “So much for the lemonade,” she whispered as she grabbed the bag and sunglasses and shoved them into the coat closet. Once they were safely inside, she opened the door. “Maureen . . . I’m glad you’re here. Come in.”

  Bowing her head slightly, the young woman stepped inside, her trepidation over being there every bit as noticeable as the vacant look of her eyes and the black shadows that encircled them.

  “I was just about to make a pitcher of lemonade. Would you like some?” Elise offered.

  “Um . . . yeah. I guess. Sounds-sounds good.”

  For a moment, Elise simply stood there, watching, as Maureen turned to study the framed photo collage just inside the vestibule. When Maureen’s gaze narrowed in on the picture dead center, Elise spoke. “That was my best friend, Celia. The one I told you about.”

  Maureen looked from the picture to Elise and back again. “She died of cancer, right?” Then, without waiting for a response, Susie’s friend continued. “She was very pretty.”

  “She was even more beautiful on the inside,” Elise said. “It’s been four years since Celia died and I still miss her every single day.”

  Maureen nodded but not before a lone tear escaped down her cheek.

  “I’ll go make that lemonade now. Make yourself comfortable and I’ll be right back.”

  There was no doubt that she had made a connection with Maureen. They had both lost a dear friend. That loss, alone, put them on a level field. Like friends. She only hoped that Maureen felt the same.

  “Here you go,” Elise said as she returned with a glass of lemonade for Maureen and one for herself. “Why don’t you take a seat here, next to me, so we can talk. You’ll be more comfortable and it’ll make it easier for me to take notes.”

  Maureen had barely finished nodding when the words began to spill from her mouth, her need to talk about her friend stronger than any reservation she may have had. “It is so hard for me to think that my best friend isn’t here anymore. We spent virtually every day together since we were six years old. We played dolls, rode our bikes, teased our brothers, shared our diaries with each other, went to college together, and even double-dated from time to time.

  “And lately, she’d been even happier than normal on account of her new job at that accounting place and being able to move into her very own apartment.”

  Elise’s pen fairly flew across the page of her notebook as she worked to keep up with everything she was hearing.

  “Madame Mariah had told her all these wonderful things were going to happen and she was right. Susie was living her dream.”

  She paused her pen-holding hand atop the next page and glanced up at Maureen for clarification. “Who’s Madame Mariah?”

  “She’s one of the fortune-tellers on the boardwalk. Susie adored her.”

  “How many times did she go?” Elise asked, her interest piquing.

  “I would say probably a couple of times a summer for the past few years. The reading she had done before the boardwalk closed for the winter was the one where Madame Mariah told her she’d find a well-paying job and start out on her own path.”

  “Like getting her own place?”

  “Exactly. And finding a boyfriend.” Maureen hooked her leg upward and brought it onto the couch beneath her body. “Susie had been asked out several times by a fellow accountant in her office and she seemed to think he was a pretty nice guy. They went out a few times but it never really amounted to much. Which is why we had to go back to the boardwalk Monday night . . . so she could have another reading.”

  Elise stopped writing again. “Susie had a palm reading on the night she was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “That’s the wild part. Madame Mariah told her to be careful, that tragedy was about to occur.” Maureen lifted her head from its resting place against the back of Elise’s secondhand sofa. “I’d been waiting for her outside the fortune-teller’s booth and she was as white as a ghost when she came out.”

  Elise leaned forward. “So then what happened?”

  “Susie dropped me off at my parents’ house before going to her own place. And-and that’s the last time I-I ever saw her.” Maureen’s shoulders shook softly as she began to sob.

  “Did you tell the police about this?” Elise demanded as Maureen’s words took root in her thoughts.

  “Yeah. I told both Detective Burns and Chief Maynard,” Maureen said as she tried to regain her composure. “Detective Burns seemed to listen to me, but the chief called it ridiculous and basically wrote everything I said off as coincidence.”

  “But—”

  “Detective Burns pulled me aside afterward and at least asked me if we’d seen anyone we knew on the boardwalk that night. I think he asked just so I’d feel less stupid bringing up Madame Mariah in the first place, but who knows. Either way, with Monday night being the night the locals hit the boardwalk, the list of who wasn’t there would have taken less time to go through.”

  She returned to her notebook as the questions began lining up in her head, one behind the other. “What did you tell the detective? In terms of who you saw that night?”

  “We saw people from St. Theresa’s, old classmates from high school, Chief Maynard and his wife, the new mayor and his kids, and some goof I dated for about two weeks one summer. It was fun.”

  Elise wrote as quickly as she could to keep up with everything Maureen was saying. The girl seemed to be reliving Monday evening in her mind and spouting it out through her mouth.

  “Elise?”

  At the pitch change in the young woman’s voice, Elise looked up to find Maureen staring off into the distance. “Yes?”

  “Do . . . do you think Madame Mariah was really able to see Susie’s fate?”

  Chapter Five

  Monday, June 14

  9:30 a.m.

  Elise stepped into the windowless conference room and flipped the switch to the left of the door, the answering brightness from the fluorescent overhead light necessitating a few rapid blinks in return.

  In a few short minutes, the empty chairs surrounding the long table would be filled with her coworkers and their ideas for making the upcoming week’s issue even better than the previous one. At the last meeting she’d been uneasy, her novice standing making her unsure of what she could and couldn’t contribute to the story ideas being batted around. But today was different. The interview with Maureen the day before had given her some very unique angles to explore in the Carlson murder investigation. Those angles were sure to make her a contri
buting player at that morning’s brainstorming session.

  She dropped her open notebook in front of the chair she’d claimed the previous week and sat down, the bullet-pointed items she wanted to discuss leaping off the page at her as she did. When Susie’s murder first happened, Elise couldn’t help but feel she was at a disadvantage being an out-of-towner. Fewer contacts and less familiarity with the way things worked in Ocean Point certainly made the notion of a starting point harder to nail down. But now that she’d had more time to think, the fact that she wasn’t a native could actually play in her favor. She didn’t have to take everything and everyone as a given.

  “Hey, ’Lise.”

  She looked up from her list to find Dean Waters eyeing her curiously from the doorway. Pushing her notebook to the side, she smiled at the photographer and patted the tabletop across from where she sat.

  “Hey, Dean. I didn’t see you there. How was your weekend?”

  “Hotter than Hades if you ask me, but that’s pretty much a foregone conclusion as we hurtle toward summer. I just wasn’t expecting it so soon. Neither was that old hag who lives below me. Apparently cranking my tunes and opening my windows wasn’t a combination she was all too excited about.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nah, she threatened to call the cops if I didn’t turn it down. So I, in turn, threatened to call an exterminator. An old hag exterminator.”

  She clamped a hand over her mouth in an effort to stifle her laugh. But it was no use. Dean was Dean. He lacked any sort of verbal filter.

  “Wow. We must rate. The queen herself has arrived . . .” Elise followed Dean’s gaze to the conference room door and saw Karen Smith, the society reporter, approaching. Next to Sam, Karen was the most seasoned staff member at the paper and was quick to point that fact out to Elise when they’d met. “Shall we stand in respect? Curtsey? Toss rose petals in the air?”