For a second, a crazy image of them running off together flashed across my mind, but I knew that was definitely the concussion talking.
Still, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what Mark had to say much better.
He reached out and threaded his fingers with mine again. “When your mom couldn’t reach you on your cell phone this morning, she decided to go to The Sunburnt Arms. You’d left her a note saying you’d be there.”
That felt like years ago, but according to my watch, it was only two hours ago. I glanced at the dash of Mark’s truck. The clock there said it’d been closer to four hours. I held my watch up to my ear. It wasn’t ticking. Even though the water hadn’t gotten to it immediately, it must have worked its way in and killed it at last.
I forced my gaze back to Mark’s face. Hopefully this concussion resolved quickly. My concentration was shot. Anything shiny sent me chasing off in a random direction.
“Go on,” I said.
“She went around back, planning to go in the kitchen door rather than trying to convince whoever might be on the desk to let her go back. Mandy’s car was parked out of sight behind the building. Its front end was a wreck.”
He couldn’t mean what it sounded like. I shook my head. Or tried to. The ibuprofen the hospital gave me had taken the edge off my migraine-level headache, but the movement brought it rushing back.
Mark stroked his thumb over my knuckles. “Your mom thought the car had been vandalized, and insisted Mandy call the police to report it. Mandy resisted, claiming that it would make her guests feel even less safe if someone was damaging cars in her parking lot. Your mom called it in anyway.”
That sounded like my mom. Even though my parents usually defended people, they had a high regard for the legal system and proper reporting of crimes. My mom would never have allowed what she thought was a vandalism to go unreported.
But surely there had to be another explanation for it than the one that was screaming in my mind right alongside the blood pulsing in my temples. “Go on,” I whispered.
“Chief McTavish had just gotten to the office, and since everyone else available was dealing with what had happened to you and Alice, he responded to the call. He immediately made the connection. They’re rushing results from the lab to see if the paint transfer on Mandy’s car matches the make and model of Alice Benjamin’s car, but…” Mark’s gaze dropped to our intertwined hands. “They also found blood in the trunk.”
18
My body went so numb I almost couldn’t feel my headache anymore. I knew it was there, but it was like music playing in the apartment next door.
Mandy couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have. Even if I believed she killed Bruce Vilsack—and I didn’t—she never, ever would have hurt me. She was my friend.
But my jumbled mind couldn’t seem to bring that all together. All I could get out was a simple “No.”
Mark finally put the key in the ignition. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I gave him his hand back so he could drive and buckled myself in. Emotionally I couldn’t process it, but the logical part of me, the part that would always be a lawyer even if I wasn’t practicing law, said it made sense. Alice had been the target all along, and Mandy accidentally killed Bruce when he entered the room. She’d been expecting Alice.
Mandy loved The Sunburnt Arms. If Alice’s test results showed that the beaches needed to be closed because of toxic algae, Mandy might have been forced to sell after all. She’d once told me that her business didn’t operate on a big margin. The tourist season saw them through the lean times. A lean tourist season would force her to close.
“But Mandy would have known that NOAA would send someone else if she killed Alice.”
“The working theory is that Mandy was hoping to delay the investigation of the lake water until after tourist season.”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud until Mark answered. Obviously, Chief McTavish or my mom had talked to him about the same line of reasoning that I’d been following.
I held out one of my arms. No rash. “If the algae blooms are toxic, shouldn’t I be showing symptoms?”
“Not necessarily. It’s early in the year, so levels are still low.”
The soft whoosh of tires on asphalt changed to grinding as we turned onto the road to Sugarwood.
“Besides,” Mark said, “Mandy wouldn’t have wanted to risk the test results. Whether or not the algae is harmful, she still had a strong motive.”
I closed my eyes. The bright sun pounding through the windows wasn’t helping the ache inside my skull. Or the one inside my heart. “I guess I thought our friendship was stronger. If Mandy did this, she knew I’d be in that car.”
As soon as we stepped in the house, the dogs examined me from top to bottom with their noses. For the first time, I realized that I looked more bedraggled than I felt, and that was saying something.
The ache in my heart over what Mandy might have done eased a little. This was the first time in my life that I hadn’t felt self-conscious about my appearance around a man I cared about. Over the years we’d be together, Mark would see me at my best and my worst, and feeling loved by him no matter what was one of the best signs I could think of that the decision to marry him was the right one.
Still, I didn’t want to sit on my furniture with blood and lake gunk on my clothes.
I pulled my used-to-be-blue t-shirt out from my body. “I’m going to grab a shower. Are you able to stay for a bit?”
A hint of pleading sneaked into my voice before I could stop it. As much as I hated to come across as needy, right now, I was. Because there was a good possibility that Mandy, my friend, had tried to kill me.
Velma turned her attention to Mark, and he scrubbed behind both her ears. “As soon as I got the call, I logged a personal day.”
He picked up my laptop and held it out of reach of Velma’s probing nose, which only convinced her it was something she wanted. She bounced up and down.
Mark put the laptop back down. “Since your mom’s not here, maybe we could look at rings. Give me an idea of what you like.”
That was almost worth skipping the shower for. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the rust-colored stain on my shoulder. Almost.
I hurried through my cleanup. When I went back downstairs, the dogs were nowhere to be seen, and my laptop rested on the kitchen island, closed. Mark stood next to it, his cell phone in his hand.
I finished pulling my wet hair back into my ponytail. If situations could have an odor, this one smelled like more trouble. “What’s going on?”
“You want the good news first or the bad news?”
