Page 9 of Light of Day
As they drove off the sandbar and onto the eastern part of the island, she firmly shoved the thought from her mind. Why would Gabby be climbing on the rocks? She wasn’t here for an adventure. She was here because of some mysterious lead.
“Gabby said something shady was going on here,” she said to Luke. “She was investigating something for a story.”
“For her blog?”
“No, her blog’s about celebrity gossip. Unless maybe one of your family members is in the news? You’re the closest thing to celebrities that we have here.”
“Always a possibility,” Luke said lightly. “But as far as I know, none of my siblings are involved in any big scandals at the moment. Barnaby is back from mountain-climbing in the Himalayas, I think Carson just got engaged, and Fiona might be around. But I’m not sure about Rufus and Ruby. You never know what they’re up to.”
Heather smiled, a little envious of all his siblings. Being an only child meant she relied on her friends more. “Gabby was working on something for our podcast. We’re all about exposing bad people. Know any of those around here?”
“Oh boy.” Luke whistled. “That seems like an important detail.”
But Heather’s attention was now on the magnificent sight up ahead. The Lightkeeper Inn perched on a rolling expanse of lawn at the top of a two hundred foot granite cliff. Imposing white pillars held up a balcony that stretched the entire length of the upper floor. The Carmichael family occupied the entire third floor, and a glassed-in widow’s walk sat at the very top of the structure. The views from up there were legendary.
The hotel dated back to 1915, the days of steam engines and bathing costumes. It had a gracious, timeless feel to it, emphasized by the patriotic bunting draped near the entrance and the Adirondack chairs positioned on the terrace. Heather imagined ladies in long dresses playing lawn tennis on the green and children playing hide and seek in the blueberry bushes.
Although she couldn’t see it anywhere, she knew there was a long wooden staircase that led to a private sandy beach at the base of the cliff. Technically, the beach couldn’t be private, because that would violate state law. But since the only access to it was on private land, it was a distinction without a difference.
In more recent years, John Carmichael had installed an elevator that took guests to the beach and back up when they were adequately tired and sandy.
Flags flapped at the top of three poles installed at the very edge of the cliff—an American flag, the new State of Maine flag, and the Lightkeeper Inn’s very own “crest,” which, legend had it, had been gifted to the Carmichaels by Queen Victoria herself.
“What’s on that flag, anyway?” she asked Luke as he drove around the stately wings of the hotel to the rear entrance.
“Two eagles arrant. That means they’re facing each other in battle mode. Probably about to rip each other’s eyes out. There’s also a wolf in there, which never made sense to me because this island has never seen a wolf. We did have a coyote once, remember? It must have swum over from the mainland. It ate a bunch of chickens. We had an island-wide manhunt for that poor thing.”
She laughed at the memory. “I was rooting for the coyote, by the way.”
“I was too.”
They shared a glance of complicity before he brought the truck to a halt between a guest shuttle van and a golf cart.
“Let me do the talking, if you don’t mind,” he said as they both swung out of the truck. She breathed deep of the fresh air—was it even more pure here, at nearly five hundred feet of elevation? Or did rich people’s air just smell better?
“That’s fine. I’ll observe and take notes.”
He nodded and led the way into a nondescript back door clearly meant for the staff. She wondered if it was strange for him to use the service entrance after growing up like a prince on the family floor of the hotel. She’d heard people describe how luxurious it was—couches covered in velvet, gilded mirrors, ornate family silver, a real Rembrandt displayed in the dining room.
She wished she could ask for a tour while they were on the premises, but Luke might decide her presence was more trouble than it was worth. So she held her tongue.
Their first stop was to the room where Gabby had been staying, Room 232. Judy Griffin, the manager—cropped red hair, black-rimmed glasses, dated pantsuit—led them up the stairs to a room on the second floor.
As they stepped inside, Heather caught her breath. A king-size bed with a princess canopy faced two windows with a breathtaking view of the endless sparkling Atlantic Ocean. A thick sea-green carpet sank under her feet. She could only imagine how annoying it must be to vacuum. The nightstand was cherrywood on top of an elaborate ironwork base that reminded Heather of an old fashioned sewing machine. An opened suitcase sat on a low stand, and a purple sweater was draped over the loveseat in the small seating area in the corner.
“This is where Gabby was staying,” Judy told them. “Her things are still here, as you can see. She left a bit of a mess.”
Heather opened her mouth to protest such a callous statement, but Luke shot her a look. She bit her lip and stayed quiet.
“We’re just going to poke around for a bit,” he said. “We can close up when we’re done.”
Judy nodded, though Heather couldn’t help but notice an additional suspicious glance her way.
“Friendly,” she murmured dryly to Luke after the manager had gone. “I bet Gabby felt very welcomed here.”
That comment made him look up from the nightstand, where he was leafing through a paperback book whose title Heather couldn’t see. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. She told me…” Under his steady gaze, she forced herself to continue. “We came here in March to visit my mother. It was Gabby’s first time on Sea Smoke and we had a huge fight.”
