Page 38 of The Vineyard Bride

Chapter Fifteen

“Amanda.I got yourchicken avocado salad.”Bruce Holland appeared at the doorway of Amanda’s office, lifting the brown paper bag of Amanda’s Tuesday lunch through the air.Amanda’s morning and early afternoon were heavy with meetings, so much so that her traditional Tuesday walk and lunch with Sam had been canceled.Lucky for her, their colleague, Bruce, had slipped out for salads, sandwiches, and Diet Cokes— the trifecta of fuel they required to get through the end of the day.

“Bruce, you’re a Godsend.”Amanda leaped up and walked shoeless to the door to collect the salad.“How is it out there?”

“Just another beautiful day in June on the island of Martha’s Vineyard,” Bruce teased, his smile crooked.“While we’re locked away inside, doing our best to represent the criminals of the eastern seaboard.”

“Well said.”Amanda grinned, then stepped back as she assessed the contents of the bag.

“Oh.Amanda.”Bruce snapped his fingers.“I almost forgot.I was curious if you could head over to the police station this afternoon to collect some police records for your mom and I.Susan mentioned it this morning, but I forgot to pass along the request.I’d do it myself, but I have a three-hour meeting from one-thirty to four-thirty.”

“You mean, walk from the office to the police station in the sunshine?”

“I do indeed.”

“It’s a deal,” Amanda affirmed.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Bruce returned, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe.“Having you and Susan around is like having two of the most organized and whip-smart individuals in your corner.I’ve even started eating more salads since I got here, which has shocked my girlfriend to the core.”

Bruce adored namedropping his girlfriend, Elsa Remington, who was head of PR over at the Katama Lodge and Wellness Spa.They’d gotten together the summer before and had a blissful romance, one that Amanda practically watched play out across Bruce’s joyous face.

“I told Elsa that we can’t eat too many salads at home, though,” Bruce continued.“Because if I eat too much greenery, I’ll turn into a rabbit.”

“You’re funny.”Amanda waved just before Bruce disappeared into his office, then stepped back toward her desk.There, she tore through her chicken and avocado salad and finished up the notes from her previous meeting, grateful for nourishment and the organizational stylings of three different colors of pens.

At two-forty-five, Amanda managed to slip out of the office and head over to the Oak Bluffs Police Station.An eggshell blue sky belled over her, cloudless, and tourists burst in front of her on the sidewalk, forcing her to dally in the warm sunshine.Amanda couldn’t have cared less.She even half-considered calling Sam to see if he had time to grab an ice cream cone but then remembered that he’d agreed to pick up a shift at the Sunrise Cove Inn that afternoon.Natalie had a doctor’s appointment.

This was just Sam’s way.He loved helping people out when they needed it.

Connie worked the front desk of the police station, clacking her gum and rolling the telephone cord around and around her finger.It took her a full minute to realize Amanda had stepped through the door, which eventually led her to jump up from her chair and bustle around as though she suddenly wanted to look busy.

“I just need some files for clients of the Sheridan Law Office,” Amanda finally explained.“I’ll need to make copies if your copy machine is working again?”

The last time Amanda had been at the police station for this very task, the copy machine had been broken.Luckily, Connie reported that they’d recently purchased a new one.

“I have no idea how to work it, though,” Connie said, throwing her hands in the air.“So that’s up to you.”

Amanda had never met a technology device that she couldn’t manage to figure out.As she read through her mother and Bruce’s clients’ paperwork, she slipped each page into the machine, which eventually, after several failed attempts, spit out page after page of copies.In the next room, Connie listened to talk radio and filed her nails, uninterested in how long Amanda took to copy everything.

Which eventually led Amanda to do something she wasn’t entirely sure she should.

Amanda flicked through the files, on the hunt for the hit-and-run case from the previous month.As Martha’s Vineyard was a teensy place, with few accidents and few crimes, it didn’t take long to stumble into it.The file itself was thin, with testimonies from Amanda, Sam, and Beatrice, along with a description of the accident site.Amanda’s heart pumped strangely as she read about the “Chevy Cavalier” that had ripped out of sight.Another page listed the original owners of the Chevy Cavalier, who’d reported their vehicle as stolen more than a week before the crash.

Recently, Amanda had told Sam, “It just bothers me that people can get away with something like that.I thought we lived in a better world.I thought we lived in a place of justice and rules.”

To this, Sam had hugged her gently and whispered, “We live in a world of cruelty and jealousy, which is why I thank God every day that we found one another.”

Across everything Amanda read in that file that afternoon, she found no new information.She predicted that the police wanted to give up the case.After all, nobody had died.Nothing terribly dramatic had happened.Still, whoever did this was still on the loose.It bothered Amanda to no end.

**

AMANDA RETURNED TOthe Sheridan House at five-thirty.There, she changed into a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt and sat out on the back porch swing, which creaked beneath her as she swung.An unopened book sat in her lap expectantly, even as her eyes danced across the Vineyard Sound horizon.

“Wes!Did you see that?”An older woman’s voice rose out from the tree line.

Amanda lifted herself up from the swing to catch a glimpse of an older woman with a cane, a pair of binoculars lifted toward the sky.After a moment, Grandpa Wes shuffled out from the trees excitedly, his own binoculars pressed against his eyes.Amanda followed their gaze toward a glorious Osprey, which lifted up from the water and eased toward the clouds.

It truly was spectacular.

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