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

“That’s interesting.”

“Isn’t it? She got a speeding ticket in Duck three years ago. Five years ago her purse was stolen from a restaurant in Manteo, and the theft was reported to the police. When people lie to me, Lucy, I have to ask why they would do that.”

“Have you asked her?”

“I did. She bluffed, badly, and said she thought I meant had she ever been to Nags Head specifically, not the general area. She then admitted she’s come to the Outer Banks on occasion. For short, spontaneous getaways, in her words. Always on her own. Would you say she’s the sort of woman to vacation alone?”

“No, I wouldn’t. My mom needs what she calls her ‘me time.’ She’ll check into a spa for a weekend or even go to New York City on her own for shopping and to see a play, but Evangeline’s the sort of woman who’s not comfortable in her own company. I could be wrong, Detective, but that’s my impression.”

“It’s because I trust your impressions that I’m asking you, Lucy. I’ve got people going through records with a fine-toothed comb. I intend to find evidence she’s been to Nags Head itself. And if I do, when I do, I want to know why she’s lying.”

“Do you know a man named Leon Lions?”

“Never heard of him, and that’s not an easy name to forget. Why?”

“He lives in Kill Devil Hills, and he and Evangeline are old friends. Apparently they met years ago when he lived in Boston. He’s been to the hotel to see her. They had lunch together yesterday and breakfast today and are meeting for lunch later.”

“What are you saying, Lucy? How much of a friend of hers is this guy?” Watson’s face rarely showed any emotion or reaction, and it didn’t now. But his voice lifted slightly, and I knew I was telling him something he didn’t know. I was strangely pleased. “On his part, he wants to be very friendly, and that’s quite obvious. On hers, I can’t say if she regards him as an old acquaintance or if there’s something more. She called him this morning, immediately after you left her, to invite him to join her for breakfast, and he walked through the door so soon he had to have been circling the block. So soon that you passed him on your way out. You held the door for him.”

“What’s he look like?”

I tried to describe Leon Lions, but the words I used were mostly “average” and “normal.” Not particularly helpful. I finished with “bald.”

“I’ll see if I can find anything out about him.”

“Has Evangeline ever been to England?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“She had a strange reaction when meeting one of Charlene’s visiting researchers from Oxford University. Like she recognized him and was surprised to see him. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to know her. I thought it was odd, that’s all. I wasn’t going to mention it to you, except …”

“Except that ‘it has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important’?”

“Sherlock Holmes?” I asked.

“A suitable quote for every occasion. What’s this researcher’s name?”

“James Dalrymple. He’s in his midthirties, so highly unlikely to be a former lover of hers.”

“Never assume, Lucy.”

“Stranger things have happened. He told me he was born in Nags Head but his mother took him to the UK, where she’s from, when his father died, and he hasn’t been back since his American grandparents died when he was a child. If that’s true—and you should be able to find out easily enough—if Evangeline knows him, she has to have gone to the UK. Then again, a heck of a lot of Americans go to England, so I don’t suppose that means much.”

We hadn’t reached the water’s edge yet, but Watson said, “Shall we turn back?” and we did so. “You asked me earlier if we found Rich Lewiston’s passport on him or in his car. That was a good question, Lucy, and as I said, we did not. Evangeline told me they keep their passports in a safe in the house, and I had Boston police look for it. They found both his and hers. The suitcase in his car contained clothes for a day, maybe two. He hadn’t cleared out his bank accounts, made any transfers to overseas accounts, or even had an excess of cash on him.”

“So he wasn’t planning to skip the country, with or without his wife and son.”

“Without going into details, I’ll tell you we have forensic accountants going through his personal accounts as well as those of his firm’s financial records which he had control over, and what you told me about his monetary situation seems to have been correct.”

“Meaning he had debts.”

“More than he could reasonably pay while still maintaining his lifestyle, not to mention his personal and professional reputation. Those debts, by the way, at least the ones I’ve been told about so far, are to banks, credit card companies, and reputable credit agencies. Not organized crime.”

“Too bad.”

“Why’s that too bad?”

“Because if the mob offed him, then Ricky and Evangeline didn’t, and I don’t have reason to be involved and I can go back to planning my wedding, which I haven’t even started doing yet, and finding a house to buy, which I have started and isn’t going well.”

“Things aren’t easy for a young couple starting out today.”

“No, and Connor and I are in a better position than many.”

“I want to show you something we did find in Rich Lewiston’s possession.” Watson took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “This is a good-quality photocopy. Tell me if it means anything to you.”

He handed it to me. I studied it carefully, trying to think like Sherlock Holmes. The paper was white and plain, with a crease in the middle, indicating it had been folded in half. It contained nothing but a single line of text. The print appeared to be from a computer, the typeface Times New