“Thoughts and feelings and the passionate expressing of same were big in my house.”
“Who’d have guessed?”
That teased out a wisp of a smile. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I must have used up my quota of restraint today when I didn’t knock Heather on her butt.”
“Tough girl.”
“I know tai chi.” She deliberately rose up on one leg in the Crane.
“I thought that was kung fu.”
“Both are martial arts, so watch it. I’m not so mad anymore.”
“Me, either.”
She walked to him, linked her arms around his neck. “Let’s make a deal.”
“All right.”
“Thoughts and feelings on the table, whenever necessary. And if a dinosaur walks into the room, we won’t ignore it.”
“Like cooking, you’re going to be better at it than I am, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“Good enough. We should go back in so I can watch you cook.”
“Okay. Now that we’ve . . . set the table, there are some things I should say.”
He led the way back in. At the island, he picked up a pepper, studied it as he tried to figure out how to cut it.
“I’ll demonstrate again.”
While she topped, cored, sliced, he picked up his wine. “Corbett knows I didn’t kill Lindsay.”
“What?” Her head shot up, her hand stilled on the knife. “Did he say that to you?”
“Yeah. I’ve got no reason to think he’s bullshitting me. He said he read the files, looked at everything, and he knows I didn’t kill her.”
“I’ve just completely changed my mind about him.” She reached across to take Eli’s hand for a moment. “No wonder you weren’t as mad as I was.”
“It lifted something. There’s still plenty there, but it lifted some of it.”
He tried his hand at slicing as he told her what Corbett had said.
“So he thinks it’s possible, too, that whoever was in the house that night was in the house when Hester fell. And also possible that person shot Duncan.”
“I think it’s an angle he’ll work. My lawyer would kick my ass, and rightfully, if he knew how I’d talked to Corbett, what I told him. But—”
“Sometimes you have to trust.”
“I don’t know about trust, but he’s in the best position to find Duncan’s killer, and if and when, we’re going to get some answers.”
He set the green pepper aside, picked up the red. “Meanwhile, there’s someone out there who wants in this house, someone who’s already attacked you, and may have hurt my grandmother. There’s someone out there who’s killed a man. Maybe it’s the same person. Maybe it’s a partner, or a competitor.”
“Competitor?”
“A lot of people believe Esmeralda’s Dowry exists. When treasure hunters found the wreck of the Calypso some thirty years ago, they didn’t find the dowry. Haven’t found it yet, and more have looked. Then again, there’s no solid, corroborated evidence the dowry was on the ship when it wrecked on Whiskey Beach, or was ever on it. For all we know, it went down with the family’s trusted liaison when the Calypso attacked the Santa Caterina. Or the liaison absconded with the dowry and lived fat and rich in the West Indies.”
“Absconded. That sounds so classy.”
“I’m a classy guy,” he said, and finished the pepper. “Most of it’s rumor, and a lot of rumors conflict. But anyone who’d go to the trouble this guy has, who’d kill, is a true believer.”
“You think he’ll try to get back in, while you’re in the house?”
“I think he’s taking some time, waiting for everything to settle down some. Then yeah, he’s got to get back to it. That’s one thing. The other is there are people in the village, people you know, you work for, you give classes to, who—like what’s her name—are going to believe I did it, or at least wonder. That puts you in the middle—of possible harm, of certain gossip. I don’t want you there.”
“You can’t control what other people say and do. And I think I’ve already proven I can defend myself in the possible-harm category.”
“He didn’t have a gun—or didn’t think he needed to use it. Then.”
She nodded. She couldn’t deny the idea unnerved her, but she’d decided long before not to live her life in fear. “Killing me, or both of us, for that matter, in our sleep, or when I’m scrubbing the floor, only brings the cops in, again. I’d think that would be the last thing he wants. He needs to avoid attention, not only to himself but to Bluff House.”