Page 39 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
Fabulous. Just what Shea needed. Penny to meet Shea’s husband after she just had a mini lunch date with her bachelor landlord.
“Why don’t I make you a grilled ham and cheese?” she offered quickly.
Pete’s surprise was evident. He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. Shea noticed his dark hair had gotten longer, and he needed a haircut. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Okay.” Shea took his acquiescence and ran with it. She started for the lighthouse. “I’ll just get it started then.”
“I’ll follow,” Pete stated.
Great. That wasn’t her intention, but follow he did.
“If you were going to shoot yourself, would you shoot yourself in the head?”
Pete choked on a bite of his sandwich. “Do youwantme to shoot myself?” he countered.
“No!” And Shea was stupidly relieved to realize she really, truly didn’t. “No. I was thinking about a man named Jonathan Marks. He used to live in the lighthouse about fifteen years ago, and they found him dead with a gunshot wound to the head.”
Pete considered for a moment. “It’d be a quick way to go.” He took another bite of his sandwich.
“But is that how you would do it?” Shea pressed.
“I’ve never actually considered how I’d kill myself.” He gave her a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow.
Shea knew she was being gruesome, but at least with Pete, she didn’t have to pull any punches. One plus of being married to a man who had no emotional reaction to anything. Ever.
They sat outside at a picnic table in the yard that overlooked the lake while Pete ate his lunch. The sun was warm, the breeze remarkably light considering they were lakeside. At least it was a pleasant backdrop to the darkness of her train of thought. Shea couldn’t let it drop. She peppered Pete with another question—he might as well earn his stay.
“And the gunshot wound was to his right temple. He was left-handed. Can you shoot yourself easily with your less dominant hand?”
“What have you been watching?”
“Just go with me here.” Shea brushed him off. “If I were to shoot myself, I would hold the gun to my temple like this.” She demonstrated with her finger pointing at her right temple, her hand in the shape of a gun. “The left side would feel super weird, and I don’t think I’d want to risk messing up my shot by using my less dominant hand.”
“I’m not sure it makes much difference,” Pete replied. “Unless you’re really bad at holding a gun to your head, left or right, dominant or not, the bullet goes into your brain.”
“But why use your less dominant hand? Why not do what’s easiest?”
“So people like you would still be talking about it fifteen years later,” Pete teased.
“Funny.” Shea twisted in her seat on the top of the picnic table next to Pete. Both of them rested their feet on the bench, where most people usually would have sat. “The police ruled Jonathan’s death a suicide. Some of the locals say he had a severe personality change prior to his death.”
“Consistent with suicide then,” Pete observed, then took another bite of his grilled ham and cheese.
“I suppose.” Pete had a point, and Shea didn’t like it. She liked the theory of murder—if for no other reason than it added intensity to the retelling of the ghost of Annabel’s Lighthouse. A man murdered after going crazy digging into a century-oldlegend? Her editor would eat it up. But a death by suicide? It totally killed that angle, and she was back to writing about a ghost legend like other ghost legends—more of a historical recounting with spooky elements but less of an exposé. Which, she supposed, is what she’d originally set out to do.
“What would be the motive to murder this guy?” Pete asked.
Shea glanced at him. “He was getting too close to the actual truth about Annabel’s ghost?”
“Who’s Annabel?”
Shea gave him a cursory rundown. It wasn’t lost on her, all her internal whining about Pete never sharing her interests, and now here they were, perched in front of a scenic view and discussing the topic of her next book.
“A dead man and a ghost.” Pete played devil’s advocate better than Shea expected. “Well, a ghost story isn’t a typical motive for murder, especially one over a hundred and fifty years old.”
“Unless Jonathan uncovered something.”
“Buried treasure?” Pete suggested.
