out of the room for privacy.
Ava had had it. Maybe Ian and Jacob were right. Maybe she was overreacting, making mountains out of molehills.
Seeing shadows and evil when they didn’t exist.
But she doubted it.
Cheryl Reynolds’s murder was proof enough of that.
CHAPTER 24
Snyder climbed onto his bike, adjusted the strap of his helmet, and started peddling back to his apartment. He took a lot of crap for riding his ancient ten-speed, but because of it he’d dropped nearly thirty pounds and lowered his blood pressure and cholesterol levels. So he put up with the rain, cold, and bad jokes from his coworkers.
On a whim this evening, he took a detour, riding down past the marina, smelling the brackish water and the underlying odor of diesel. He stopped to look across the whitecaps rising in the bay to Church Island, that bastion of the Church family.
Fog was rolling in, a thick mist that obscured his view, just as all the bullshit swirling around Ava Church Garrison was clouding his mind, taking him away from the evidence in the Cheryl Reynolds case. It was already dark anyway, but on a clear night, he would be able to see the smattering of lights of Monroe, pick out the ferry dock, and even view patches of light from the windows of Neptune’s Gate, that behemoth of a house. He’d noted, though, that only the first two floors were ever illuminated. Never had he seen any lights in the upper floor; although, from Anchorville, he had only one view of the home—just the front.
And it was a long ways away.
Except for the time he’d gone to Church Island after the Garrison boy’s disappearance, he’d never given the house or its inhabitants much thought. He’d heard the rumors, of course, but for the most part he’d ignored them.
Now he turned down a narrow side street and cut around an idling truck double-parked and belching exhaust as the driver tried to quickly unload beer kegs for the nearby tavern.
Riding along a street that paralleled the water, Snyder kept his eye on traffic, but his mind was spinning, just as it always did when he biked. He decided what he really needed was a motive and the murder weapon. Both the barista at The Local Buzz and Butch Johansen confirmed Ava’s story, and he just couldn’t see her as a cold-blooded, violent killer.
Then again, he’d been wrong before.
Lester Reece was a prime example of that. He’d been the lead detective on that one.
With a sigh, he looked at his watch. He was a firm believer in the “first forty-eight” theory, meaning that if the killer couldn’t be found in the first two days after the murder was committed, the chances of finding him or her and solving the homicide plummeted. Now, he felt the clock ticking; it had been twenty-four hours since someone had taken Cheryl Reynolds’s life.
Stopping at Ahab’s, a small fish market that had existed for nearly a hundred years and looked like it, Snyder picked up the last of the fresh local oysters. The place, with its glass cases, shaved ice, and array of seafood, hadn’t changed since the last time it was remodeled, about the same time refrigeration came into vogue, it seemed. Faded signs from the thirties, forties, and fifties still hung on the thick wooden walls that once had been painted white, and more often than not, butcher paper taped to the windows announced the catch of the day. Large vats of running salt water held live razor clams, Dungeness crab, and oysters in their cold shimmery depths. Outside, in a converted carport, a blackened crab pot stood ready to cook whatever sea creature a patron chose while seagulls and seals patrolled the lapping waters of the bay for castoffs.
Snyder made small talk with Lizzy, who had to be near ninety and had been a fixture at the market for as long as Snyder could remember. Her face was lined, her glasses thick, her hair wiry and snow-white beneath her ever-present net, but she was agile and sharp and knew most of what went on in town before it occurred.
Scooping six oysters and ice into a plastic bag, she said, “You cracked Cheryl Reynolds’s murder yet?”
“Still under investigation and no comment.”
“No surprise there. Odd one, Cheryl was. Always dressed as if she was goin’ to one of them love-ins or something.”
“I guess.”
“She was kinda peace, love, dove, and all the sixties or seventies crap. If you ask me, it’s what happens when you