and Nate guessed she’d been photographing something when he’d busted in on her.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said easily.
“I asked first,” Riley countered.
He gazed around the high-ceilinged old room. It had been handsome once, not fancy or grand, but the island-milled cedar walls were a soft silver, and the pine floors gave it a rough sort of dignity. Exposed wiring dangled from the ceilings and walls, where light fixtures had been ripped away and stolen, and soot blackened the granite masonry of the fireplace.
“This old place has always fascinated me,” Nate admitted. “My buddies and I used to sneak over here and fish off the dock as kids. You could almost always catch a mess of flounder or the occasional big red when the tide was right, and the blue crabs that hung around those pilings were the biggest and sweetest on the island.”
“My dad used to bring me over here to visit Miss Josie when I was a little girl,” Riley said, her expression taking on a dreamy quality. “Dad said she was partial to girls because she didn’t have any of her own, just the two sons who didn’t come to the island that much.”
She pointed to a partially burnt-out skeleton of a sofa. “She always kept a cut-glass jar of sour lemon jawbreakers on a coffee table that used to be there. I thought they were the most exotic thing in the world.”
“Is that what you’re doing here?” Nate teased. “Looking for jawbreakers?”
“No,” Riley said. “I guess I wanted to see for myself what my husband bought with the money he stole from my trust fund, before somebody else buys it from the bank.”
* * *
“You’re saying Wendell took money from your trust fund? And you didn’t know about it?”
“It turns out there was a lot he was doing that I didn’t know about,” Riley said.
He was at a temporary loss for words. Should he tell her what he was planning? To what end?
“I’m so sorry,” Nate said. “Have you talked to a lawyer? Is there anything you can do about it? That’s gotta be some kind of bank fraud, right?”
Riley held up three fingers and ticked off the answers to his questions. “I’ve talked to a lawyer, but since Wendell apparently cleaned out all my savings, I can’t actually afford to pay her a retainer. And, anyway, who do I sue? Wendell? He’s dead. Besides, my father saw fit to put Wendell’s name on my trust account, so it appears he had full legal access to my inheritance.”
“Unbelievable,” Nate said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly,” Riley said. “I really did just want to take a good look at the house. Wendell intended to tear it down, you know. I wasn’t privy to many of the details, but I did know he planned to build a second marina here, with condos and apartments and all manner of marvelously hideous ‘improvements’ to the island.”
Nate pushed at one of the worn wooden floorboards with the toe of his shoe, surprised that it didn’t give way.
“At first glance, it looks like the house is in pretty rough shape, at least from the outside, but it’s not nearly as bad as I expected in here.” He pointed upward. “High ceilings, and it doesn’t look like the roof has leaked. And the floors seem solid. How old do you think it is?”
“I know my great-uncle sold the property and the house to the Holtzclaws sometime in the early thirties, so it was probably built in the twenties, by the looks of the place. My grandmother told me this was originally built as a sort of boardinghouse for all the construction workers who were brought over to clear the land and build the first homes.”
“I never knew that,” Nate said, intrigued. “So this house is old, but not as old as your parents’ house. Not anywhere near as fancy either, from what I can remember of Shutters.”
Riley cocked her head and appraised the sly grin on his face. “What do you remember about our house?”
“I remember being totally intimidated the first time I showed up to take you out,” he said.
“By the house, or my mother?”
“Both, now that you mention it. Your mother was pretty imposing. And Shutters was easily the fanciest house I’d ever been in. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and a wood-paneled library.” He whistled at the extravagance.
“That’s only because my great-granddad built the house as a sales tool to sell the rest of the