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

the back of her collar and pulled her away. She came without resistance, and I scooped her up.

Powerful flashlights shone on Stephen and the area around him. He lay on his back, gasping for breath. His lower pant leg was covered in blood, and more blood leaked from scratches on his throat and arms. He stared up at me, his glasses hanging off one ear, his small, dark eyes full of rage. The expression disappeared, and he said, “Thank heavens you got here in time, Officer. That dog must be rabid. It attacked me out of nowhere.”

“She was defending me,” I yelled. “He tried to kill me. He killed Rich Lewiston.”

“Cuff him.” Sam Watson stepped into the circle of light. “Then have the medics check him out. He’s yelling loud enough, the bites can’t be that deep.” He turned to me. “You okay, Lucy?”

I clutched the squirming Fluffy to my chest. She wanted to get down and say hello to all these new arrivals. “The dog saved me. Don’t let them hurt her.”

“I won’t.” He held out his hand. Fluffy sniffed at it and then gave Watson a lick of approval. “Let’s go inside. You need to sit down.”

“That woman’s a lunatic,” Stephen yelled as Watson and I, still holding Fluffy, walked away. “She lured me into the marsh. She threatened to tell the cops I killed Rich if I didn’t pay her off. When I said no, she put her dog on me.”

“Save it for the judge,” Butch Greenblatt said. “I’m not interested, but I have to say, buddy, if I was going to get an attack dog, I’d go for something a bit bigger.”

Beside me, Watson chuckled. “I wouldn’t have thought this little girl had it in her.” The mist was lessening, the tendrils of fog thinning. I could see the vague shape of the lighthouse looming ahead.

“I guess we all have it in us,” I said, “if we have to. To defend ourselves and those we care about.”

“The skin on Stephen’s throat’s bitten, but I didn’t see any outright puncture wounds, although it looks like she did get a nice chomp out of his leg.” Watson rubbed between Fluffy’s ears. “She wouldn’t have been able to keep him down for much longer.”

“In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the spectral hound, nothing but an ordinary dog painted with phosphorus, kills the villain Stapleton when he runs onto the moor in confusion in the fog, and Holmes has to shoot the dog. Thanks for not doing that to Fluffy.”

Watson chuckled. Fluffy woofed.

“What brings you here?” I asked. “In such a timely fashion?”

“After you and I talked, I went around to the Ocean Side to speak to Stephen. Ricky and Evangeline said they hadn’t seen him for hours. I called his number and got no answer. So I started getting worried that he’d try and come after you. I might not have worried too much, knowing you’d be perfectly safe inside the lighthouse, but I then remembered the dog. And that dogs have to be walked. I called to tell you to stay inside but got no answer. So I decided I’d better check things out for myself and bring backup in case Livingstone was hanging around.”

“Thank you for that,” I said.

Connor sprinted across the lawn toward us, mist curling at his feet. “Lucy! What’s going on? Are you okay?” He grabbed my arms and peered into my face.

“I’m fine. Thanks to Fluffy.”

The dog wiggled happily between us.

“What happened? Butch called me to say there was an incident—another incident—at the lighthouse.”

“Let’s go inside,” Watson said. “I need Lucy to make a full statement, and she can tell you at the same time.”

I wanted to fall into Connor’s arms, but I didn’t dare put Fluffy down.

“We can’t say anything about this in front of Charles,” I said. “If he finds out that Fluffy saved the day while he was inside sleeping, there will be no living with him.”

Sam Watson and Connor McNeil laughed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sunday morning as arranged, Connor and I went to Josie’s Cozy Bakery to meet Louise Jane.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said as the lineup edged toward the counter. “Louise Jane’s enthusiasms have a way of not turning out exactly as advertised.”

“She hasn’t told you anything more about this supposed beach house?”

“No. She likes to play her cards close to her chest, as we well know. Makes her seem mysterious, she thinks. A large low-fat latte and a blueberry muffin, please.”

Connor ordered black coffee and a Danish, and we found seats at a table for two in the bustling bakery. We were supposed to be meeting Louise Jane at ten, and now it was quarter to.

Connor and I had had a long night and an early morning. In the main room of the library, I’d given Sam Watson my statement about what had happened out on the marsh, saying, “Stephen pretty much told me, step by step, how it all happened, but he covered it up by saying if he wanted to do it, this is how he’d have gone about it. That won’t stand up as a confession, will it?”

“No,” Watson said, “but it gives us a darn good place to start. And we’ll start with the attempted murder of you tonight. He’ll deny any ill intent, of course, but he didn’t sneak up on you in the dark and knock you to the ground—”

Connor growled, sounding much like Fluffy had earlier.

“—for a lark. He drove down to the Outer Banks on Monday and then drove straight back to Boston after, allegedly, killing Rich. We’ll find proof of that. A search of his phone history should show that he looked up Jake’s address Monday night. Anything your father finds in Rich’s files proving Stephen was in on whatever was going on will give us motive.”

“He told me he’s scrubbed the records where they showed any involvement on his part.”

“Something always remains,” Watson said. “These guys are never as clever as they think they are.”

“He wasn’t on