A vineyard spring, p.10
A Vineyard Spring, page 10
“What happened?” Steve asked kindly.
Rina sputtered into a sigh and stepped away from him. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so needy.”
Steve was at a loss. “Why don’t you come back to my place? We can make dinner together, sit, and talk.”
Rina’s cheek twitched. “Are you sure?”
Steve was suddenly very sure. He had nothing to hide, not from Isabella, nor from his mother, nor from himself. Friendship was a necessity, and he’d already learned more about himself and his own happiness since he’d begun to spend time with Rina.
Rina sat in Steve’s truck and allowed herself to be driven back to his house. Isabella wasn’t home yet, and Steve breathed a sigh of relief as he set ingredients for cheesy pasta across the counter.
“I’m not the world’s greatest cook,” he explained. “But I know my way around a few things.”
“Like pasta?” Rina smiled endearingly.
“I know you think it’s simple teenage food,” Steve said. “But my wife’s family was part-Italian, and she taught me a thing or two about making my own pasta sauce.”
With a flourish, Steve walked toward the window to remove several leaves from a real basil plant. Rina looked impressed. At the kitchen sink, she scrubbed her hands with soap and water and watched as he began to slice an onion and a few cloves of garlic.
“It’s been a very long time since someone cooked for me,” she confessed.
Steve smiled. “There’s a bottle of wine in the cabinet. I think it’s supposed to be pretty good. From one Italian region or another.”
Rina laughed and fetched the bottle. “I’m impressed,” she said as she uncorked it and used it to fill two glasses. “But I guess I shouldn’t be. You’re a mechanic who knows how to make his own pasta sauce.”
“I’m a man of mystery,” Steve quipped as he poured a layer of olive oil into the skillet.
Rina then sat at the kitchen table for a moment and sipped her wine. Her eyes looked very lost.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Steve asked tenderly as he sautéed the onions.
“Hmm.” Rina thought for a moment. “It’s sort of embarrassing.”
“Try me.”
Rina took a long sip of wine. “Okay. Well, it’s looking like the police are going to release Rhett Barley.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “That’s surprising.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Rina looked defeated. “But to be honest with you, I figured it was too good to be true. Nobody is stupid enough to drive the vehicle of a missing person like that, not even someone as young and naive as Rhett Barley.
“On top of that, Rhett came up with several alibis,” Rina continued. “He was off the island during the time Mandy probably disappeared. There’s record of him visiting his brother in prison.”
“Goodness.” Steve frowned.
“Yeah.” Rina shook her head. “I had to call Mandy’s parents today and explain we probably had the wrong guy.”
“That must have been really difficult.”
Rina nodded and sipped too much of her wine again. She’d nearly cleared her glass. “I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have taken this job.”
Steve reached for the bottle of wine and refilled Rina’s glass, then grabbed her a glass of water, just in case. Rina thanked him.
“How has working with the police on Martha’s Vineyard gone?” Steve asked.
Rina cocked her head. “It’s been fine. Why do you ask?”
Steve shrugged as an ancient memory returned to his mind. “My wife and I had a hunch they were corrupt in the past. But that was ages ago. The nineties.”
“Huh.” Rina frowned and sipped her wine, clearly at a loss. “Why did you think that?”
“I had the privilege of marrying someone a lot smarter than me,” Steve said with a smile. “She could see things better than I could.” He shook his head, not sure he wanted to go too deep into the past. “Anyway, I’m sure they’ve cleared any corruption out by now. As I mentioned before, crime on this island is very rare. We’re lucky here. It was the perfect place to raise children, and it’ll be the perfect place to grow old. I already imagine myself as a little old man with birding binoculars. I’ll know all about the local flora and fauna and let all technological advancements pass me by. Like I said before, I don’t even have a Facebook account. Maybe that means I’m already old.”
Rina’s face opened with joy at the thought. “Do you often think about how you’ll be when you get older?”
Steve dribbled minced garlic into the skillet. “Well, I’m almost fifty, which seems like a milestone. In some ways, I feel older than dirt, and in other ways, I feel youthful and prepared to live another fifty years.”
“One-hundred-year-old Steve,” Rina quipped.
“Surrounded by birds and books,” Steve agreed.
Suddenly, the front door of the house screamed open. “Dad?” Isabella’s voice bounced down the hallway.
Steve froze and eyed Rina nervously. With Rina in such an emotional state and Isabella’s moods unpredictable, he felt caught between a rock and a hard place. Quickly, he poured a can of tomatoes into the skillet and called, “I’m in the kitchen, honey! Just cooking.”
Isabella appeared in the kitchen a moment later. Her face was very pale, and it looked as though she’d been crying. With one fell swoop, she eyed her father, then the tomato sauce, and then Rina. She looked unsurprised and unpleased.
“Hi.” Rina stood, smiling nervously.
“Isabella, this is my friend, Rina,” Steve said. “Rina, this is my daughter, Isabella.”
Isabella’s voice was very stiff. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.” Rina looked at Isabella was frightened eyes, which was a surprise. Steve had expected Rina to be brave in every way.
He wondered if this was proof that Rina had feelings for him. Perhaps meeting his child was a milestone for her. Quickly, he shook this thought from his head.
“I’m making my famous tomato sauce,” Steve said. “Would you like to sit for a while? We just opened a nice bottle of red.”
Rina nodded encouragingly, but Isabella seemed too distracted to engage in niceties.
“In California, everyone’s too afraid of pasta to eat it,” Rina added as a way to fill the space. “I haven’t had it in years.”
Isabella’s eyes caught the light in the kitchen. “You’re from California?”
Rina nodded, as though she’d sensed a young woman like Isabella was interested in faraway places. “I’ve lived there for years.”
Isabella, being young, answered the only way she could think to. “I was supposed to move to New York City.”
“Wow. That’s a great place,” Rina said.
Steve needed to save his daughter. As he stirred the tomato sauce, he turned halfway around to say, “Rina has a pretty cool job. Rina, will you tell her what you do?”
Isabella watched Rina like a hawk.
“I’m a private detective,” Rina answered. “I’m here investigating the disappearance of Mandy Dolores.”
At this, Isabella’s jaw fell to the floor. Steve was panicked, suddenly worried that any talk of Mandy Dolores would frighten his daughter.
“You’re really here for Mandy?” Isabella whispered as she removed her backpack.
“Her parents sent me,” Rina answered. “I’m sure you heard that the cops arrested someone.”
“But he didn’t do it,” Isabella breathed.
Rina furrowed her brow. At the stovetop, Steve was so shocked by Isabella’s knowledge that he dropped his spatula to the ground.
As Rina sputtered with questions, Isabella zipped open her backpack and removed an old book. Steve recognized it immediately as Laura’s, and he snapped off the stovetop and shoved the skillet to the side, feeling volatile. Hadn’t he asked Isabella not to go through Laura’s things? Hadn’t he said he wasn’t ready?
Then again, here he was in his kitchen with another woman. Was he really in the position to point fingers?
“Let me explain.” Isabella interrupted Rina’s words and pulled several pieces of what looked like trash from the diary— receipts and a couple of notecards. She spread them across the table, and Steve and Rina hovered above them. “I pulled these out of a second-hand dress at my cousin Lexi’s boutique. We’re sure they’re Mandy’s.”
“My gosh,” Rina breathed. “Alvin. That’s the name of…”
“Mandy’s agent,” Isabella finished. She then eyed Steve nervously as she added, “I’ve been reading my mother’s diary from 1995 and 1996. During that time, she was working for a very rich man on the island named Mr. Butler.”
Steve’s eyes widened with surprise. Only moments before, he’d thought about Felicity Rodgers and about Laura’s suspicions of Mr. Butler’s involvement. He hadn’t thought about that in years.
“Mr. Butler. Yes. I read about him,” Rina said. “He’s quite the philanthropist here on the island. He gives money to every organization. He’s well-respected.”
Isabella scoffed. “Well, according to what my mom wrote back in the nineties, he definitely had something to do with Felicity Rodgers’ disappearance.”
Rina’s eyes widened at this new revelation. “Felicity Rodgers! I was just reading about her, too. They never learned what happened to her. Her parents and her husband eventually stopped looking.”
“Your mother had a hunch Mr. Butler was involved,” Steve remembered. “But the police didn’t think so.”
Isabella smacked the table. “Mr. Butler came to our house, Dad. He threatened Mom and told her to stop calling journalists and giving anonymous tips.”
It was Steve’s turn to be shocked. For a long time, he stared at his daughter, out of his mind. “That’s impossible.”
Isabella opened the diary to March 1996 and pointed to the relevant entry. Steve had to sit down to read it, and as he did, his toes curled in his shoes.
Mr. Butler had come to Steve’s house to threaten his pregnant wife. Her fear had been so extraordinary that she hadn’t even told Steve about it.
Rage didn’t even cover it. Steve wanted to destroy this man.
“The address on Mandy’s notecard is Franklin Butler’s address,” Isabella finished, her eyes hardening. “It’s obvious she had some kind of contact with him. And if the police had just listened to my mother all those years ago, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Rina nodded, clearly at a loss. “Do you mind if I take your mother’s diary and these papers as evidence?”
Isabella bristled. Clearly, she did not want to give her mother’s diary to the woman who had some sort of relationship with her father.
“Please, Isabella,” Rina said softly. “I believe what you’re telling me, and I believe your mother was treated terribly. Let’s do what we can to put this guy behind bars and find out what happened to both Mandy and Felicity. Okay?”
Isabella looked resolute. “Okay. But please. Be careful with the diary.”
Rina promised she would. She then leaped from the kitchen table, gathered Isabella’s evidence, and placed her hand on Steve’s arm tenderly. “I don’t know what I would have done without the both of you. You’ve been an incredible help.”
With that, she was gone.
Chapter Sixteen
For a little while after Rina left, Steve and Isabella sat at the kitchen table without saying a word. Isabella felt damaged and dehydrated from all the crying. Now, Rina had taken the diary with her, and with it, Isabella felt she’d chopped off Isabella’s arm or leg. There was no end to the horrors of this day.
Across from her, Isabella’s father looked defeated and aghast. The pasta sauce on the stovetop was now cold and unfinished, and the box of pasta on the counter hadn’t even been opened. It was, of course, a slap to Isabella that Steve had decided to show off Laura’s pasta sauce recipe. Then again, there were bigger fish to fry.
Out of nowhere, Isabella’s stomach cried out with hunger. Steve, worried as any father would have been, snapped up and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Isabella watched him move around the kitchen. He shoved his keys in his pocket and ruffled his hair. As he headed for the garage door, she snapped into action as well, running after him. She didn’t want to be in the house alone.
In the front seat of his truck, Steve found his voice. “Call your brother. He needs to know about this.”
Isabella did as she was told. In just a few seconds, she had Jonathon on the phone.
“This is a surprise!” Jonathon sounded bright and cheery, as though he spoke to his children rather than his little sister. Maybe his voice had gotten stuck that way.
“Hey.” Isabella couldn’t match his enthusiasm. “Dad and I are going out. You want to join us?”
“Like, out-out?” Jonathon asked.
“The dive bar with the burgers,” Steve quipped beside her.
“You hear that?” Isabella said.
“Yeah.” Jonathon’s voice dimmed. “Is everything all right?”
“We need to talk to you!” Steve called.
“Isabella, what is going on?” Jonathon demanded.
“Just meet us there, okay?” Isabella felt disgruntled. In the background, one of Jonathon’s children had begun to sob, and Carrie consoled them.
Steve parked the truck beside the dive bar and smashed his fist against the steering wheel. Isabella hadn’t seen him so enraged in her entire life. Maybe she should have been more delicate about her mother’s diary entry. Then again, she’d needed to prove Mr. Butler’s guilt.
At that moment, she cursed Mr. Butler— not only for the evils he’d done in the world, but because he’d drudged up such sorrow in her father. When she’d first gotten home, he’d looked so passionate and alive, standing there at the stovetop with a spatula in his hand. Rina had allowed him that freedom, just before memories from the past had ripped him in two.
Inside, Steve and Isabella sat in a booth and ordered a beer and a wine. On the table, Steve’s phone buzzed with Grandma Kerry’s name on the screen.
“Are you going to get that?” Isabella asked.
Steve shook his head and stopped the call.
“Are you mad at Grandma Kerry?”
Steve looked stiff. “The island thinks I’m dating that woman, Rina. The reality is that I finally made a new friend after a winter of loneliness and boredom. It’s lucky for the island, though. They finally have something new to gossip about. Good for them.”
Isabella’s heart dropped. At that moment, any resentment she’d had for Rina and her father fell away. It was true what her father said, that he’d been lonely and bored. Nobody deserved to live like that.
But news of Steve’s dating life wasn’t the only fresh gossip the island had. As Jonathon stormed in and sat down, bringing with him the chill of the streets, he announced, “Carrie just told me they might release that Rhett Barley guy. Apparently, he has an alibi?”
At the booth directly beside them, an older couple looked up from their chili and joined in.
“Apparently, he was visiting his brother in jail at the time Mandy disappeared,” the woman said.
“But if you ask me, that doesn’t mean anything,” the man countered. “He’s been driving her car around without a care in the world. He thought he was too clever to get caught. The imbecile!”
The server appeared at their table to weigh in on it. “If Barley didn’t do it, then who did? This island isn’t that big.”
“Yes, but you can disappear with someone anywhere in the United States,” the older woman said. “We’ve got a lot of land.”
“But there’s no footage of Mandy Dolores leaving the island on a ferry,” Jonathon chimed in.
“She could have been hiding in a car somewhere underneath,” the woman said. “Think with your brain, son.”
Jonathon’s cheeks were pink. To the server, he said, “Could I get a beer, please?” Then, he added, “And an order of onion rings.”
“And fried pickles,” Steve joined in.
“That’s Uncle Andy’s order,” Isabella remembered.
Steve nodded gravely. “I need anything to combat the stress of all this.”
After the server returned with Jonathon’s beer, the three Montgomerys sat for a little while and listened to the wild buzz around them. Everyone had a hunch about what had happened to Mandy Dolores, and some people thought they should keep Rhett Barley behind bars. They spoke over the top of one another, correcting facts about the case as though they were actors in Law and Order. It turned Isabella’s stomach.
Finally, Jonathon bent his head and said, “What’s up?” He searched Steve and Isabella’s faces. “You guys sounded really upset when you called.”
Isabella sighed and pulled her hair into a ponytail. How could they begin to explain?
“We have to keep our voices down,” Steve muttered, his eyes searching the bar.
“I don’t think anyone can hear anyone else but themselves,” Jonathon joked. “They’re certainly not waiting for anyone else to finish a thought.”
Steve laughed for the first time since he’d read Laura’s diary, then corrected his face. After a pause, he lowered his voice to say, “Isabella has done some brilliant detective work. She’s pretty sure she knows who’s responsible for Mandy Dolores’ disappearance. And I’m pretty sure I agree with her.”
Jonathon’s jaw was slack. “Not you two, too.”
“Seriously,” Isabella said, giving him a dark look.
“Against my wishes, your sister went through your mother’s things,” Steve said with a sigh. “And thank goodness she did, because she discovered a story that I’d forgotten. Back in 1995 and 1996, your mother was pregnant but decided to take a job anyway. She worked as a personal accountant for Mr. Franklin Butler.”
“That billionaire guy? The one with the epic estate?” Jonathon asked.
Isabella’s cheeks were hot with rage. “He’s the worst,” she muttered.
“Anyway, while your mother worked there, a young woman named Felicity Rodgers went missing. Nobody on the island knew where she’d gone or what to do. The police were at a loss. But some things Mr. Butler said at the estate gave your mother pause. She immediately quit the job and asked me to give an anonymous tip to the police. Unfortunately, after many different inquiries, the police continued to tell me Mr. Butler was in no way responsible— and that they were following through on other possibilities. The island had quieted down at that point, and Laura was very pregnant, so I found myself thinking about other things.
