Page 87 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

Will had shifted his feet. “I think I saw your ghost last night at the B&B. He wore the same outfit you guys described. After watching him out in the courtyard from the second-floor balcony, I saw him vanish into the fog. But then again, it could’ve been the two mojitos I drank before bedtime.”

“I doubt two mojitos would cause you to see Scott. Promise Cove is his old homestead. His daughter still lives there. Word has it that he looks out for her and his wife, Jordan, who’s married to his best friend.”

Will’s forehead wrinkled in total fascination. “This just keeps getting more intriguing by the minute. And another reason to stick around. Maybe I’ll mention Scott in my book. Or better still, I could just write about this weird, little town.”

Daniel traded looks with Rowan. They both knew the real reason Will wanted to stay nearby and it had everything to do with finding Hallie. He still believed his sister lived somewhere within a fifty-mile radius.

All their speculation had come to an abrupt halt with the middle-of-the-week phone call from Brent. The phone call that changed everything.

Inside the police station, seven people crowded around the conference table. Rowan knew everyone except for the San Mateo deputy sheriff who stood next to the door. While everyone else waited for Brent to address the long-awaited results of the DNA, as the only reporter allowed in the room, Will took out his notepad and remarked, “This has a press conference feel to it.”

Rowan agreed and tried to pry information out of Eastlyn, who sat next to her. In a soft whisper, she leaned in near the other woman’s ear to nudge out an answer. “What is all this? We’ve had other meetings with Brent but nothing as elaborate. I just want to know if my DNA matches the couple in the grave. Have you ID’d them yet? Were they my parents?”

Eastlyn’s lips curved as she looked across the table at her colleagues—Colt and Theo. “The Chief will fire any of us on the spot if we so much as hint at the results. Since we love our jobs, we’re following orders and keeping our mouths shut.”

“Be patient. The wait is almost over,” Colt cautioned.

Disappointed, Rowan muttered, “I’ve heard that before. Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll be surprised along with a roomful of cops.”

Daniel slipped his hand into hers for support. “Most of these people are also our friends and neighbors.”

She was about to come back with a pithy reply when Brent entered the room. She kept her eyes on him as he stood at the head of the table and cleared his throat. He looked over at her. His face told her this was the big moment.

A current ran through the room as Brent began to speak. “I appreciate your patience. But once we cracked open that grave at Eternal Gardens, we knew we had a long road ahead of us. Thanks to the lab putting a rush on the testing, though, I can tell you with one-hundred percent certainty that we have a match for you, Rowan. Your parents were Henry Atticus Eaton and Olive Anne Avery—two twenty-three-year-olds, high school sweethearts—from Port Alberni, British Columbia. Henry’s brother, a man by the name of Holden Eaton had pretty much given up ever seeing you again. But you have aunts and uncles, you have cousins—on both sides of the family—family that can’t wait to meet you back on Vancouver Island.”

Rowan blinked at Daniel and squeezed his hand. “I have family.”

“I don’t think she was prepared for that,” Daniel commented.

“That’s okay,” Brent noted. “We have a lot more to dive into before we hold our official press conference this afternoon. We may not know the exact circumstances of how Henry and Olive met their fate, but we do know several key facts. We know who did it. Fingerprints, ballistics, and witnesses who saw a confrontation that night all point to Jim and Lynette as the perpetrators. Jim fired the Marlin rifle at Henry, shooting him twice. Standing a few feet away, Lynette took down Olive with the pistol, also shooting her twice. We know where Henry and Olive ended up—in a cemetery plot paid for by Jim Dewhurst, complete with a headstone under a false name—buried in a devious manner to hide the crime. After all these years, the lab discovered microscopic traces of Henry and Olive’s blood weaved into the old upholstery inside Jim’s Ram Prospector, probably transfer from when he and Lynette shot them and got back in the truck. I’ll get into more of the specifics of the actual crime in a few minutes.”

Rowan cleared her throat and raised her hand. “There’s no chance that it was Gwynn who wielded the handgun that killed the woman?”

“I’m afraid not. We tracked Gwynn Dewhurst’s movements on that Thanksgiving weekend. We found witnesses who corroborated that Gwynn left the party with a man named Peter Grinley right after Tamsin Southwick’s body was discovered early Saturday morning on the west side of the house at the outdoor pool.”

Rowan frowned. “Wait. Not Saturday night?”

“No, not Saturday night. We found Peter Grinley and talked to him about what he remembered. He confirmed he left the party with Gwynn sometime before ten o’clock Saturday morning. They spent the rest of the weekend in San Francisco.”

“So Gwynn wasn’t there when my parents—that sounds so strange saying my parents—were murdered?”

“No. She wasn’t. Not only that, we were able to dig deeper into Tamsin Southwick’s drowning. Eastlyn busted the myth that Tamsin drowned in the indoor pool. She did not. When law enforcement arrived on scene, they discovered Tamsin’s body lying inches away from the outdoor pool, specifically the hot tub. She was found lying on the concrete on the west side of the house. We discovered Southwick’s official autopsy report. The newspaper articles said it was always unclear when Tamsin actually drowned. That’s probably the only thing they got right. But after reading her autopsy, the medical examiner concluded she’d been in the outdoor hot tub for approximately eight hours before anyone pulled her out. The condition of her skin, the dilation of her blood vessels, proved she drowned in the hot tub and spent hours in the heated water. Drugs, alcohol, and a hot tub are a deadly mix, especially when the other guests were in no shape to help her or hear her call out for help. We’ll never know the exact circumstances. But if Tamsin’s body was left outside for that long, there’s a possibility no one noticed her until it was way too late. Her toxicology revealed she had enough Seconal in her system to kill five people. Her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. And there’s more. We contacted guests who were willing to talk to us. After drilling down during their interviews, they were almost certain that during the drug and alcohol haze of that weekend, Tamsin Southwick showed up at the party on Thursday night by herself. She never had a child with her. But several young children were spotted on the premises sometime during the wild weekend. Four of the witnesses confirmed that they remembered a little girl falling into the indoor pool and almost drowning. They believe this near drowning occurred late Saturday afternoon at the indoor pool area. The child was saved, but not by Tamsin Southwick, who had by this time already drowned, and her body had already been transported to the morgue.”

“Then who saved the little girl?” Rowan prompted.

“Witnesses identified that person as a younger Lynette.”

“That seems apt since I probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Rowan snarled.

“That’s one way to look at,” Brent replied. “Now we get into what happened that evening. According to witnesses we spoke with, a few hours after the police left the house, the confrontation took place between Henry Eaton and Jim Dewhurst in the grand entryway. This is where Olive jumps in, the angry mom who wants her daughter back. She and Lynette exchange words. Olive is screaming about not leaving without her daughter. The couple keep begging for their daughter. This goes on for several minutes until a shoving match between the men ensues. Henry lands a punch to Jim’s face, specifically his nose. That’s when Jim leaves the area and comes back pointing the Marlin rifle at Henry and Olive. But here’s the kicker. Witnesses say they heard a child screaming. The screams coming from somewhere downstairs on the first floor.”

“You think the little girl saw this confrontation?” Rowan wondered in horror.

Brent nodded. “If the witnesses are correct, yes, I do. After Jim forces the couple out the front door at gunpoint, no one knows for certain what happens after that.”

Brent held up a hand in Rowan’s direction. “Don’t go getting upset. I’m not finished. Speculation is all we have at this point, but it’s detailed speculation. We don’t think Jim and Lynette drove the couple back to the commune. Maybe the child is with them, maybe not. My guess is the kid comes running into the foyer during the confrontation when she sees or hears her mommy and daddy’s voice and causes a colossal scene.”

“It’s what tips the scale,” Rowan mumbled before tears trickled down her cheeks. “That’s the real trauma she witnessed, not the near drowning but seeing the argument escalate, seeing the gun, seeing the adults fighting. It scared the little girl.”

---