04 Lowcountry Bordello(21)

Raylan shrugged. “Twenty minutes. It was a short, ugly conversation.”

I felt my face squinch up in confusion.

“And when you left, you didn’t see Olivia’s car out front, with her in it?”

“Her car was there when I arrived. I thought that was odd. It crossed my mind she might’ve gone to see Seth. Maybe she was trying to handle him on her own. That scared me. I hurried on back to the guesthouse. Thankfully, Olivia wasn’t there. I figured she was visiting Aunt Dean, maybe trying to talk to her about Seth. When I came out, her car was still there. I didn’t see Olivia, but it was dark.”

“Other than last night, have you ever been inside that house?” I asked.

“Naturally. Like you said, it’s been in our family for generations. It only became…what it is now over the last fifteen to twenty years.”

“Have you tried to talk to Seth before last night about blackmailing your sister?”

“No.”

I nodded, mulled. “Blake, if a Stella Maris citizen is being blackmailed by a Charlestonian, you could arrest him, right?”

“Sure. I’d ask a Charleston PD officer to accompany me to make the arrest.”

“But if the suspect was in Stella Maris, you could just arrest him, right?”

“Of course. But I thought Olivia didn’t want to file a complaint.”

“She may change her mind. Listen, Nate’s upstairs. We have the house under surveillance. There are extenuating circumstances.”

Blake said, “There always are with you. Do they involve the body over in White Point Gardens?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

He nodded rapidly, managing to look both satisfied and seriously pissed off. “You need to give whatever you have to Sonny and step away. Olivia is going to have to put on her big girl…shoes…and face this. She hasn’t broken any laws.” He looked away. “That I know of.”

Raylan’s voice held a plea. “Blake, that’s my baby sister. You have two of those. You understand. If there’s anything we can do to protect her…”

Blake hitched up one side of his mouth. “Therein lies the problem, Raylan. That,” he jabbed a finger at me, “is my little sister. And I can’t have her breaking the law, maybe going to jail, to save Olivia a little embarrassment.”



 “Hold on, both of y’all,” I said. “I have a plan. Blake, I’m not breaking any laws. Just give me until the end of the day tomorrow, then I’ll turn everything over to Sonny. I promise.” I neglected to mention the wiretapping thing. If we planned to listen to Olivia’s calls, we were covered by her request form. Aunt Dean’s calls were another matter.

He looked at me skeptically.

“In the meantime,” I said, “y’all please go back to Stella Maris. I’ll keep you updated.”

Blake sighed. “Nate’s here?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re working this together?”

“Yes,” I said. “And we may need your help, so if I call, please do not send me straight to voicemail.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

He gave me that mulish look one more time for good measure. “Come on, Raylan. We don’t need to be in the middle of this.”

They headed towards the car and I climbed the steps to the bed and breakfast. With a quick, “Hey y’all, Merry Christmas,” to whoever was in the living room, I dashed up the stairs.

“They’re leaving.” Nate’s eyes were on the screen.

“That’s the good news,” I said.

“There’s bad?”

“Unfortunately, Raylan just gave our number one suspect an alibi. Though I doubt he’d’ve done it if he’d known that’s what he was doing.” I filled Nate in.

“That’s an awfully tight timeline.”

“Tell me about it.” I typed it into a spreadsheet. “If everyone is telling the truth, someone was killed in the parlor between seven thirty and seven forty. It still could’ve been Seth. Barely.”

“And if everyone is not telling us the truth, it could’ve been Raylan, Robert, or Olivia.”

Something soured in my stomach and crept toward the back of my throat. “Or all three of them could’ve been a party to it.”

I dug into public records and subscription databases for background on Thurston Middleton. Nate watched out the window, sometimes through the binoculars, sometimes through the camera screen.

Occasionally he went into the bathroom for a different vantage point. We were preparing for battle.

“Yes, you are.” Colleen popped in. She sat cross-legged on thin air right in front of me, her back to the window.