Deadly Ever After by Eva Gates (distant reading .txt) 📗

“I don’t believe you’ve met my husband. Detective Sam Watson, Millar Richardson.”

Dad got to his feet, and the two men shook hands as they eyed each other warily.

My mom was “acquainted,” as she put it, with Detective Watson. Not long after I arrived, Mom came down to the Outer Banks to try to talk me into going home to Boston and found herself accused of killing a high school rival.

Officer Butch Greenblatt had come in with Detective Watson. He didn’t say anything but gave us all nods of greeting. Butch is Jake’s brother as well as the boyfriend of Uncle Amos’s law partner, Stephanie Stanton.

“Connor,” Watson said as my dad sat down. “I see the gang’s all here.”

In answer to Aunt Ellen’s call, the ambulance had soon arrived, sirens screaming and lights flashing, along with several police cars. We’d been bundled into the restaurant and ordered to wait for the detective. I hadn’t heard the ambulance tearing out of the parking lot, which told me they’d been in no hurry to leave. Richard Lewiston Junior, Dad’s business partner, Evangeline’s husband, and Ricky’s father, was dead.

Jake had closed the kitchen and hustled the remaining patrons out the door, many of them clutching hastily assembled takeout containers in confusion. Jake and Josie and the staff now huddled around the bar, waiting their turn to be questioned.

“Who found the body?” Watson asked.

I exchanged glances with Connor. So, as I suspected, it was now a body.

Ruth lifted a quivering hand. Her makeup had carved black rivers through her cheeks. “I … I did. I took my break and went out for a smoke.”

“What door did you leave by?”

“The kitchen door. I stepped outside and started to light my cigarette. I … I …” She shuddered.

“Take your time,” Mom said.

She gave my mother a grateful, although weak, smile. “I kicked something. I knew it wasn’t a rock because it wasn’t hard. I don’t know what I thought it was. I looked down and saw … him. He was just lying there, staring up at me. Not moving.”

“What did you do then?” Watson would have been anxious for her to spit it out so he could get to questioning the potential witnesses, maybe even the killer, but he spoke patiently, applied no pressure, and let the hostess compose herself. If she collapsed into a weeping puddle, it would do no one any good.

Aggression, as I well know, isn’t Detective Watson’s style. It wouldn’t help him in this case anyway. Mom and Aunt Ellen formed a solid wall of matriarchal support around Ruth.

“I … I kicked him, and he didn’t react. I thought, at first, he was a drunk who’d passed out on his way home. I gave him a nudge with my foot. He didn’t move, so I leaned over to shake him. Then I saw the … the blood. And the knife. I guess I screamed, and then all these nice people were with me.”

“Did you touch him?” Watson asked. “Did you try to help?”

“I … I don’t remember. I think so.”

“You were crouched beside him when I arrived,” Connor said.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Did you touch the knife?” Watson asked.

“No. I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Have you ever seen that man before?”

“No. He didn’t come in tonight or any other time when I was here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t be positive about other nights. We get a lot of people in here. But definitely not tonight. It’s Monday. We’re never that busy on Mondays, even in the summer, so I’d remember if he’d been in. He couldn’t have come in when I wasn’t at the door. I only left my post a minute or two before. I walked through the kitchen to tell Jake I’d be outside. It was almost closing time anyway.”

Watson glanced at Jake, still dressed in his chef’s uniform of white jacket and gray checked pants. He’d left the group of his employees to stand protectively behind Ruth. “I’ve never seen him before, but you should ask the bartenders and the waitstaff. I don’t come out front much. Some nights not at all.”

“You have no idea who he might be and what might have brought him here tonight?” Watson asked them.

Jake and Ruth shook their heads.

“About that,” my dad said. “I know him.”

“You do?”

“He’s my law partner of more than forty years—Richard Lewiston Junior, normally called Rich. Our fathers were partners before us. We’re from Boston, and I’m here with my wife to congratulate my daughter and Dr. McNeil on their engagement. I had no idea Rich was anywhere in the vicinity, and I have absolutely no idea what would have brought him not only to the Outer Banks but to this restaurant.”

Like a pair of ghosts, ever present but unacknowledged, the names Evangeline and Ricky hung over the table. Mom cleared her throat. “Someone has to say it.”

“Say what?” Watson asked.

Dad sighed, but he gave Mom an almost unnoticeable nod.

“Rich must have decided at the last minute to join his wife and son,” she said. “They were part of our dinner party earlier this evening.”

“Is that so? Where are this wife and son now?”

“Evangeline—Mrs. Lewiston—wasn’t feeling well, so she excused herself before we finished dinner, saying she’d drive herself back to their hotel. They’re at the Ocean Side. As for her son, Richard the Third …”

“He’s not actually called that, is he?” Connor whispered to me.

“’Fraid so,” I said. “As I recall, he was suspended from school for fighting when his English class was studying Shakespeare’s historical plays.” Richard’s a perfectly normal, modern American name, but teenage boys can make fun of anything. Never mind when we started going together and some people thought Lucy and Ricky dreadfully funny. I didn’t even know why until someone told me about I Love Lucy, the old Lucille Ball TV show.

“Lucy,” my dad warned.

“Sorry. Off topic. You might want to ask the bartender if she knows where Ricky got to. He was talking to her earlier.”

All heads swiveled to the young woman perched on a barstool among her colleagues. She saw us staring and blinked in