Chapter 12

Twelve

T he mystery boat with the murderer had been swallowed up by the night.

King Tut hopped up on the bow, the wind ruffling his long fur. He raised his face to the wind, his claws digging into the plush leather to keep his balance.

"Do you see her?" Hattie shouted.

My gut was sinking. "No."

Lucy shook her head. "Me either."

"Son of a biscuit," Hattie shouted. "We can't lose her!"

"I have binoculars." Beau opened his glove box and pulled them out. He scanned the lake, and then pointed. "I see the boat. She's driving without lights. Moving fast. Keep back, Hattie. I got her. She's close to the shore."

Hattie eased off the engine enough that we could talk, and I took a breath. "All we need to do is follow her to wherever she's going, and then we'll decide what to do." I pulled out my phone. "I gotta call Devlin now."

Lucy raised her brows. "That's going to be a fun conversation."

"I know." I grimaced, then hit send.

He answered on the first ring. "Thanks for the drinks on the house bit."

See? He was a smart man. They'd figured it out. "We have a situation."

There was a long pause, then he swore. "What's going on?"

"First of all, you need to address all of this with the mindset that Hattie is innocent and didn't do anything wrong, other than move one body and grab the shoulder of another. So, you need to look past the obvious evidence pointing to her and look for what's really going on."

Devlin unleashed a string of curses. "Two bodies? Where are they?"

"We followed Charles Barnes into the Ugly Man about fifteen minutes ago, and we just found him on the ground behind the building. He has a corkscrew in his neck, and he looks quite dead."

Devlin swore again. "Hawk! Now!" I heard him breathing fast, and I knew he was running. "Where's the other one?"

"Hattie found Beckwith Barnes in the back of her truck when she left the Ugly Man about an hour ago."

"In her truck?"

"Yeah. She panicked and kept driving to my marina to get help from me and Lucy. We brought him back. Her truck is in the parking lot of the Ugly Man now."

"Hawk! Go check Hattie's truck out front. Mia says there's a body in there."

I heard Griselda mutter something in response, and I grimaced.

"I need to talk to you all. Now," Devlin said. "Where are you?"

"On a boat ride."

"A boat ride? Come back." His feet pounded down steps.

"Yeah, we can't do that. We saw someone sneaking around in the bushes, and then she got into a boat. So we're following her."

"Hell, Mia. If that's a murderer?—"

"We'll stay far away. We just want to see where she goes. We'll report in. If the murderer is still at the Ugly Man, it's your party. We think it has something to do with the Diamond Pie Baking Company, and both Rachel Harrison and Emmeline Williams are part of it, and they were there tonight."

He swore, and from the tone of his profanity, I knew he'd just found Charles. "I need to call this in. Get back here now."

"Right. Okay. We'll be right there." I hung up. "Devlin says we have to go back to the Ugly Man." I paused. "He sounded like he meant it."

Maybe the urgency in his voice had been because he'd found a body. Maybe because he'd been worried we'd get ourselves killed. Or maybe because we'd crossed some lines that even he couldn't protect us from. Crap. How far did we push this?

"Then we should turn around right now," Hattie said, not slowing down at all.

"No damn way are we turning around." Beau was still watching the lake with his binoculars. "I walked away from a corpse for this. I'm not giving up now."

Lucy raised her brows at me. "Do you want to turn around?"

I sighed. "Honestly, sort of. If she's a killer, she killed two big men. She could take us out easily."

"They're men. Men aren't nearly as clever as women," Hattie said. "I'm not worried."

"I'm standing right here, fully capable of hearing you insult my intelligence," Beau said. "I can revoke use of my boat at any moment."

I hooked my arm around King Tut and hugged him as we flew across the water. Right in that moment, Devlin was probably reading Hattie's name on the corkscrew in Charles's neck. Griselda was opening the back of Hattie's truck and finding a body.

She was in such trouble.

We had to keep going. If we went back, we were out of options.

But as I stared across the dark lake, unable to see the boat we were chasing, I felt the night closing in on us. Hattie had asked me how far I'd go for a friend. What were my moral codes?

I felt like I'd crossed them tonight.

If I had called Devlin immediately when Hattie had driven up to my marina, would Charles still be alive? Had my concern for Hattie made me choose an option that had resulted in a man's death?

Hattie sat down next to me, and I looked over, surprised to see she'd turned the wheel over to Beau. "You're not driving?"

She put her arm around my shoulders. "I don't know what's up ahead, but in case we do run into trouble, I wanted to thank you guys."

Lucy grinned. "No need to thank us. That's what friends do."

Hattie studied me. "You want to go back?"

I took a breath. "What if Charles is dead because we didn't call Devlin right away?"

Hattie sighed. "I thought of that, too."

Lucy nodded. "Me, too."

We looked at each other. "Charles was a mean, nasty blight on this earth," Hattie said. "If he didn't kill his brother, he's probably killed other people. And whatever caused his death, he's the one who set that in motion. Not us. At least we can take comfort in that."

I nodded. It did help. "What was he doing between when he killed Beckwith and went to clean it up? Or, if he didn't do it, whoever did kill him still left a mess to be found."

We were silent, thinking about that as the boat sped along the water.

"Maybe he didn't want the mess cleaned up," Lucy said finally. "Maybe that mess was there for a reason."

"To incriminate me?" Hattie frowned. "I didn't see anything there linking it to me. Did you guys?"

We both shook our heads. "Unless the corkscrew was there waiting for the cops, and the murderer used it on Charles because it was convenient."

Hattie nodded. "That makes more sense."

I sighed as I went over what we'd learned, trying to piece it together. "Someone went out there to clean up from Beckwith's murder and didn't finish. Either the killer went back immediately and then got interrupted, or the killer wasn't able to return for over an hour."

Hattie rubbed her jaw. "Either way, we have an interruption."

"If Charles isn't the murderer, then he interrupted the murderer just now," I said. "If he did kill his brother, then who killed Charles?"

Hattie sighed. "The only names we have right now are Rachel and Emmeline."

We looked across the dark lake. "I guess we better hope it's one of them," Lucy said.

I didn't like relying on hope.

There had to be more. But what was it? What were we missing?