Page 37 of Light of Day
But it turned out the cat’s dish held plenty of dry food. Savannah simply wasn’t interested. She clung to Heather’s neck and refused to budge, even when Luke opened up a can of wet food.
“She must be traumatized, poor thing.” Heather stroked Savannah’s soft fur. “What’s going to happen to her now?”
“I don’t know. Jimmy’s allergic. He wears a mask when he comes here.”
“Can you adopt him? Maybe Izzy would like a cat?”
He glanced at her sharply. “How do you know about Izzy?”
“Hey, relax. I’ve known Carrie my whole life. Of course I know about her only child.”
“Sorry.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I get a little jumpy about her. A few months ago I was looking into a burglary at one of the summer houses and I actually got an anonymous threat about Izzy.”
“What?” It was hard for her to believe any of the islanders she knew would do something like that. But maybe times had changed. “Do you know who it was?”
“Nope. I found the teenagers who broke in, and they all swore they had nothing to do with it. It was the house out near Shell Beach, come to think of it.”
“That would freak me out too. I’m sorry that happened.” She shivered, happy for the warmth of the cat draped around her neck. “There’s some weird shit going on here lately, isn’t there?”
“So it seems. By the way, speaking of Shell Beach, I did give Jimmy the button we found, but I’m not going to bug him for answers about it just yet.”
“Of course not.” It didn’t seem like the most important thing at the moment anyway.
Denton didn’t have an office, per se, but in an upstairs nook they found an old-fashioned writing desk, the kind with many drawers and nooks and a cover that rolled down over the whole thing. To Heather it looked like one of those pieces handed down through generations.
Savannah the Cat curled up in the nook of Heather’s shoulder, and she didn’t have the heart to dislodge her, especially when she started purring loudly. She and Luke each pulled up a chair and sorted through the piles of bills and receipts and printed-out emails. Denton had been on the board of the Sea Smoke Water Association, which managed the communal well that serviced this particular part of the island. Many of the emails involved that work. Apparently he hadn’t trusted the cloud to keep those records secure.
“Look at this,” Luke murmured. “He had a pen pal from Japan that he kept in touch with.”
“How sweet. Check this out. A year ago he started donating money to the Portland chapter of the NAACP.” She rifled through the folder. Every month for the past year, he’d sent another check.
“That’s interesting. I’ve never known Denton to say one word about politics.”
“Neither have I. He didn’t like getting into fights. He was always the peacemaker type, as far as I can remember. He coached our soccer team one year, and he quit because two of our best players got into a fistfight. It traumatized him.”
Luke smiled sadly. “Denton was a good guy. Salt-of-the-earth type. Listen, you keep looking through this stuff. I need to search the premises for any sign of a struggle.”
“Do you think?—”
He cut her off with a quick gesture. “I don’t think anything. I’m just looking. You focus on Gabby.”
“Will do. Sorry.” She had to remember that Luke had an actual official job to do here. She was just tagging along. The last thing she wanted to do was irritate Luke so much that he’d stop including her.
To the sound of Luke moving around downstairs, she focused on the decades’ worth of paperwork stuffed into the drawers and cabinets of the writing desk. After the hundredth or so fuel receipt, her eyes began to blur. This was pointless, she decided. He’d kept every single scrap of paper, every photograph ever taken of his wife and his lobster boat, every invoice, every bill, every Christmas card. He liked to write out verses from the Bible by hand, and apparently couldn’t bring himself to throw them away.
It would take her days to go through all this, and she would probably still know nothing about why Denton had reached out to Gabby.
And then she found something—maybe.
In an envelope filled with recent photos, she found one that had been taken on the west dock in March—when she and Gabby were waiting for the ferry to arrive. It was snowing, and Gabby had taken shelter in the freight shed. Denton stood next to her; they seemed to be deep in conversation. Both were bundled in their winter coats. The only other person in the shed was a bulky young man she didn’t recognize. His beard obscured his face, but she could see he too was listening to Denton, squinting under his striped knitted hat.
Photo in hand, she ran down the stairs—did all the stairs on this island creak?—and found Luke squatting by the sliding door that opened onto a back deck.
“Do you know who that other man lurking there is?” She pointed at the man behind Gabby and Denton. Maybe lurking wasn’t correct, but it sure looked that way to her.
“I believe that’s Andy Highgrove, but it’s a little hard to tell with that winter beard. His family moved here five years ago. He’s kind of…well, he’s on the spectrum. I’ve been called to their house a few times because he used to lock himself in the attic and refuse to come out.”
“Does he have anything to do with Denton?”
