Page 10 of Light of Day
“About?”
“About the fact that I didn’t warn her she might be the only non-white person here. It wasn’t quite true, but close enough. Anyway, I hadn’t really thought about it, or how it might feel to her. She said that people were looking at her funny and it made her very uncomfortable. We left two days early.”
Luke was frowning as he glanced around the room. “So why the hell did she come back two months later?”
“Like I said, she was onto some kind of story, but she was pretty cryptic about it. She wanted me to come see in person. I don’t know any details. But it must have been really big to get her back to Sea Smoke.”
“Hm.” Luke jerked his head toward the suitcase. “Want to go through her things and see if anything catches your eye? Less of an invasion of privacy,” he added. “Since you’re her friend.”
Heather knelt next to the suitcase and gingerly looked through Gabby’s clothes, still neatly folded, with various hair care accessories encased in clear plastic zippered bags. Gabby traveled a lot, and her packing experience showed in her efficient use of the space and color coordination. Her colors for this trip—she always chose three and stuck to those—were black, purple, and white, all of which would look gorgeous against her rich amber-brown skin.
“Nothing but clothes in here,” she called to Luke, who’d stepped into the bathroom. “Including a grammar nerd t-shirt I gave her for Christmas.”
“Did you check all the pockets? Hers and the suitcases?”
“No.” Feeling silly at that oversight, Heather searched through each pocket of every pair of pants. Gabby was going to be pissed that she’d messed up her perfectly ordered suitcase.
If she ever got a chance to see it.
Tears formed in Heather’s eyes as stark fear tugged at her again. This was just so unlike her, all of this…something very bad must have happened.
She tried to talk herself down. It could also be that Gabby had met someone and had been spending all her time with him. And forgotten her phone charger or lost her phone.
“Found something.” Luke strode from the bathroom, wastepaper basket in hand.
“You searched her trash?” Heather flushed with secondhand embarrassment. What if Gabby had been on her period? “What is it?”
“Come on, let’s go. I know who got her to come out here.”
5
As they hurrieddown the curving staircase that led to the ground floor, Luke handed Heather the piece of envelope he’d found in Gabby’s trash. Even though she’d torn it into pieces, he’d been able to find the three bits with the return address.
Denton Simms, 14 Church Road, Sea Smoke Island, Maine.
Maybe it was a stretch to assume that she’d come because of a letter from Simms. But it made as much sense as anything else.
“Denton Simms,” Heather exclaimed. “That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Well, we ran into him when we were here before.”
“In March?”
“Yes. He was loading traps onto his boat. He dropped one of them between the boat and the dock, and we helped him fish it out. I don’t think he said anything in particular to Gabby, other than ‘thanks.’”
Denton Simms was one of the oldest active lobstermen on the island. No one could understand why he didn’t retire and spend more time in Florida like the rest of his cohort. But Denton claimed he wanted to die on the ocean, doing what he loved best.
As they hurried through the hotel’s spacious foyer, with the reception desk center stage, a sunny lounge known as “the conservatory” to the right, a full bar and restaurant to the left, Luke heard someone call his name. Or rather, his nickname.
“Lukie! I can’t believe you’re here!”
He stopped and turned, just in time to catch the headlong flight of his sister into his arms. Fiona was two years older than him, but you’d never know it. Her skin looked like that of a twenty-year-old, and her eyes were masked by large gold-rimmed sunglasses. Fiona liked to hide behind her fashion and her flow of conversation, but he knew there was plenty of heartache under that carefree facade.
“Hi, Fiona. Official business, don’t worry.”
Her mouth turned down. “Are you here to arrest someone? I sure hope it’s not me. I only have three joints in my bag, and?—”
