Page 5 of Trick of Light
“She’ll be okay, won’t she?” Judy asked them, worry etched on her stern face.
“We have no reason to think she won’t. What was Safiya doing when she got sick?”
“As best I can piece together, she was folding laundry. Her shift starts at eight, so she spends the first three hours taking care of laundry and getting the housekeeping carts stocked up before eleven, which is checkout time. She lives on the mainland. Her general routine is to catch the early boat, arrive here around seven, then have breakfast with the kitchen staff.”
“What did she have for breakfast?” Luke was scribbling notes on a pad. Barnaby hid a smile in his beard, proud of his younger brother. Luke had successfully broken away from the Carmichael vortex and was doing his own thing.
“We have the same breakfast buffet set out every day. Oatmeal, bagels, eggs. I don’t know exactly what she ate, but there was nothing different about today.”
“Is there anyone on the staff she was especially close to? Can we talk to them? Also, I’ll need to take some pictures of all the cleaning products she was exposed to.”
“You make them sound toxic. I promise you all the products we use are completely safe.” Judy shot Barnaby a warning glance, as if it was his job to protect the hotel from any hint of suspicion.
Come to think of it, was it? Barnaby was still feeling his way through this situation. If the hotel was responsible for Safiya’s condition, was he supposed to hide that from the world?
“It’s just routine due diligence,” Luke reassured her. “Since she works with those products all the time, it’s unlikely they’re the cause.”
“Unless she suddenly decided to ingest one of them.” Barnaby brought this up because he’d seen something similar in Nepal, when a distraught girl at the hostel had swallowed wood polish.
“What an appalling thought. Why would she do such a thing?” Judy exclaimed.
Even Luke looked startled. “Do you know something we don’t, Barnaby?”
“Just throwing things out there.” Shrugging, he wished he’d kept that thought to himself. He really wasn’t cut out for the gig, he feared. Too impatient, not guarded enough. He had to watch what he said, especially with the stakes so high for the hotel, and especially with two podcasters hanging around.
Judy brushed a bit of lint off her blazer. “Well, what do you want first, the supply closet or Safiya’s friends?”
For the next hour, Barnaby shadowed Luke while he interviewed the other staff members and took photos of each product Safiya worked with. He found his attention drifting to Gabby Ramon, for some reason.
Not that there weren’t many reasons to think about her. She was stunning, for one, with her rich brown skin that seemed to reflect the light in an especially beautiful way. She was clearly very intelligent. He could practically see her busy mind at work. Too bad she didn’t seem to like him much.
Of course, he knew why she didn’t. For one thing, he was a Carmichael. For very good reasons, she distrusted his entire family. For another, they’d clashed the first time they’d ever met.
It had taken place in the conservatory the day after everything had fallen apart, and he’d been asked to take charge of the hotel for the time being.
3
“Barnaby Carmichael,” he’d said, sliding into the chair opposite her, the leaves of a potted ficus brushing the top of his head. Judy had pointed her out—“the pretty Black girl with the laptop.” The table was littered with paperwork, a pastry basket, coffee cups. He had no idea how she managed to fit the laptop in, but clearly she was used to working in sketchy circumstances. “You’re Gabby?”
She’d looked up over the edge of her laptop, shaking herself out of her focused work mode. “You’re the second-oldest son. Younger brother to Carson, older brother to Fiona. Half-brother to Luke, Ruby and Rufus.”
“You know me so well,” he’d said drily.
“I know I didn’t invite you to join me.”
“This will be quick. I hear you’re doing a podcast about the Lightkeeper Inn.”
She’d lowered her laptop screen so they could see each other better. “Now isn’t that just typical. It’s about a lot more than the Lightkeeper Inn. You Carmichaels aren’t always the main character.”
“So we’re not in your podcast?”
“You are,” she’d admitted after a long, narrow-eyed pause.
“Villains or heroes? Don’t answer that.” He knew the answer. The Carmichaels had behaved like the greedy, ruthless developers they were. “I’m here to ask you to put your podcast on pause for now.”
“For now…” She’d lifted one eyebrow. “That’s a little vague.”
“Until we know what the legal fallout’s going to be.” With half his family on their way to the Harbortown police station, it was hard to tell who would be left standing.
