Page 74 of Trick of Light
“This boat is my castle,” he screeched. “No one’s taking my boat.”
Barnaby was starting to wonder if Angus was a little “slow,” the way he kept repeating that same phrase. “A castle built on lies and secrets. And murder. If you saw something, you should have gone to the police. Now you’re an accessory to murder.”
“It wasn’t murder! She deserved it! She stole someone else’s husband, that ni?—”
“Okay!” Barnaby barked. Maybe Gabby didn’t want him to run interference, but he was not going to stand there and listen to that kind of shit. “We’re done here. I don’t need to hear any more from you.”
“It should have been you, too.” Angus spat those words with pure venom. “Almost was. I saw her there in her vomit and all that blood, so much blood, like she was stabbed. You were right there next to her, in her arms. I thought, best if I finish the job. Don’t know how she did it, cuz she was half-dead, but she made a sound and folks came running. I backed away and didn’t touch you. You’re only alive because of me.”
Barnaby’s throat was so tight he couldn’t get a word out.
“Because of her,” Gabby said softly. “Not you, her.”
Angus shrugged sullenly. “Still owes me. I never said a word and he got to grow up thinking he was God’s gift instead of?—”
“Okay.” This time it was Gabby’s turn to cut him. “We get it. Do you know how she was killed? Or who did it?”
He refused to look her way or answer.
“You don’t know anything else, do you?” said Barnaby. “You got your boat and that was the end of it.”
“My boat is my castle.”
They left after that, walking in tense silence. Barnaby’s back prickled with awareness, as if Angus was hurling death glares and secret curses at him.
“Apparently,” Barnaby said once they were halfway across the parking lot and his tension had eased, “His boat is his castle.”
“So I hear.” Their shared laughter landed somewhere between relieved and traumatized. “We did learn something. Sophie was more visibly Black than Tamara or you. Do you think that’s important?”
“I don’t know. I wish he knew more about the murder weapon, whatever it was. Didn’t he say she was stabbed? Or that’s what he thought?”
“If she was stabbed, I doubt Annabeth did it.”
“Why not?” He was still stuck on the visuals Angus had evoked. That pool of blood, Sophie’s eyes. He might never get those images out of his head.
“It actually takes a lot of strength to knife someone. Not to sound morbid, but I’ve researched it for another story for the podcast. You have to know where to aim the knife for it to be immediately effective, which this killer would have wanted, given that people were coming in and out all the time. The way Angus described it, it took a superhuman effort for her to make a sound. That was probably because of where the knife struck. I think it’s more likely to be someone familiar with anatomy.”
“So someone who worked at the hospital.”
“Maybe. They would also have an easier time getting a knife through the door than a visitor would have.”
Some of what she said made sense, but not all of it. “Wouldn’t a medical professional know easier ways to kill her than stabbing her with a knife?”
“Maybe they were making a point.”
“What point?”
Gabby touched his arm. “This is going to sound harsh, but I think they wanted to…obliterate her. They wanted her to know what was happening. It was personal.”
“Racist, like Angus?”
“I don’t know. I really wish we could talk to Jill Garner, that obstetrics nurse.”
That would be hard to do, since she’d died in a plane crash. “Got a Ouija board we can work with?”
She smiled ruefully. “Now that would be a great podcast, if I could do that. I wonder…”
“What?”
