The High Tide Club

“Yes.” Brooke crossed and uncrossed her legs. “He’d already shot C. D. Gabe grabbed me and was dragging me toward the stairs, but I couldn’t leave C. D. there to bleed to death. When I resisted, grabbing for the handrail, he pointed the gun at me. I thought he would kill me. I kicked him, thinking he might drop the gun, but instead, he fell backward.”

“I see,” the sheriff said, scribbling in a stenographer’s notebook. “Could you tell me again how you came to know Gabe Wynant?”

“Again?”

“Please.” The sheriff seemed amiable and relaxed.

“He was my boss when I worked for his law firm in Savannah. As I said in our last interview, Josephine Warrick called me over a month ago and asked me to visit her on Talisa. She first said she wanted me to draft a new will for her, and then said she intended to make me and my mother, as well as three other women, her beneficiaries. I explained that I had no expertise in trusts and wills, plus, I had a conflict, since that will would potentially benefit me and my mother. That’s when I reached out to Gabe, because I knew he did a lot of estate planning work.”

“So … the relationship was strictly professional?”

Brooke felt the flush creeping up her neck. “At first, yes. But recently, Gabe let me know he wanted something more. We had a couple of dates.”

“But nothing came of it? Was that your idea or his?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Brooke asked, wishing now that she’d asked Mary Balent to accompany her to this interview.

“Just doing my job. We found your name and number several times in Mr. Wynant’s phone log. He’d tried to call you several times the morning he was killed.”

“My phone has lousy reception on Talisa.”

“Mine too,” he said with a conspiratorial smile. “That’s when the old two-way radios come in handy, right?”

“I suppose.” She looked at the sheriff. “Do you know how he figured out where we were?”

“We think so. We found a fisherman who keeps a boat at the city dock. He said Wynant flagged him down and offered him twenty bucks for a ride over to Talisa. That little Geechee kid Lionel? Hangs around that dock all the time? He said a white-haired fella asked him if he’d seen you and C. D., and Lionel obligingly said he’d seen the two of you riding a motorcycle in the opposite direction of the house.

“Now, back to my questions. Remind me why Mr. Wynant would have tried to kill C. D. Anthony? Not once but twice, according to Mr. Anthony?”

There was a rapping at the glass door.

“Come in,” Goolsby barked.

Mary Balent stepped into the office. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, nodding at Brooke. “Howard, Ms. Trappnell tells me she’s already told you everything she knows about this unfortunate matter. Now, what else do you need from my client?”

Without waiting for an invitation, she dragged a chair from the corner of the room and sat beside Brooke, who found herself momentarily speechless.

“Just tying up some loose ends,” Goolsby said. “She’s a lawyer, the dead guy’s a lawyer, I didn’t think we’d need to get any more lawyers involved.”

“Just one more,” Mary said sweetly.

“I was asking your client why Gabe Wynant seemed so intent on killing Mr. Anthony,” the sheriff repeated.

“Did you ask Mr. Anthony that question?” Mary asked.

“I did. This office has had some past dealings with Mr. Anthony, who isn’t always the most reliable witness. So now I’m asking her.”

“Gabe told me C. D. had been hounding him for money, even trying to blackmail him over some financial irregularities C. D. uncovered. C. D. thought it was just a matter of some bad checks, but I think what he’d unwittingly uncovered was something much more serious—the fact that Gabe was in such bad financial straits he’d started stealing from his clients,” Brooke said. “Gabe must have known C. D. would tell me everything and that I’d figure out the rest. That’s why Gabe tried to kill C. D. He pretended it was to protect me from C. D., but that was a lie.”

“Okay.” The sheriff scribbled some more notes. He reached into the top drawer of his desk and held out an envelope in a sealed plastic bag. “We found this in Mr. Wynant’s car, which was parked in the lot at the city marina.”

“What is it?” Brooke asked.

“Lab results on DNA testing performed on hair samples from C. D. Anthony and Josephine Warrick.”

“Which show what?” Brooke asked, not bothering to try to hide her excitement.

“No familial relation,” Goolsby said. “No big surprise there. I could have told you that old drunk was no kin to Miss Josephine.”

“Could we have a copy of that report, Howard?” Mary asked. “For my client’s peace of mind?”

He shrugged. “Don’t see why not.” He walked to the outer hallway with the envelope. They heard the mechanical whir of a photocopier, and a moment later he was back with the copy of the report, which he handed to Brooke. “Anything else?”

Mary Balent spoke up. “Yes, actually, Howard, we’d appreciate it if you could release Josephine Warrick’s body as soon as possible so her family can have a funeral.”

Goolsby tapped his pen on the edge of the desk and looked at Brooke. “I understand you’ve only recently learned that you and your mother are Mrs. Warrick’s next of kin?”

“Yes,” Brooke said. “It was … a shock, to say the least.”

He rolled the pen over and over between his fingertips. “You being next of kin, I guess I owe it to you to tell you that we now consider Josephine’s death a homicide.”

“What did you just say?” Mary Balent asked, leaning forward.

“It was set up to look like an accidental death.” Goolsby chuckled. “Hate to say it, but Kendra Younts, that hotshot new coroner we got now, she’s the one who made a believer out of me. You know she used to be a homicide detective up in Atlanta, until her granddaddy talked her into coming down here to take over the family funeral parlor business and run for coroner. I was dead-set certain when I saw that poor old soul laid out on that bathroom floor at Shellhaven that it was just an unfortunate accident. But Kendra, she had her suspicions. She took all kinds of photos and measurements of the scene and convinced me not to release the body for burial, even after Gabe Wynant called over here raisin’ all kinds of hell about it.”

“So it was Gabe who murdered her,” Brooke said quietly.

“What makes you think so?” the sheriff asked.

“He had the best motive for wanting her dead. Money. Josephine must have told Gabe that my mom was her immediate next of kin. And as far as we know, he was the last one to see her alive that night when he helped her to bed.”

“How did the coroner conclude that Mrs. Warrick’s death was a homicide and that Wynant was the murderer?” Mary Balent asked.

“Just a feeling she had. She was looking back over the death scene photos and noticed that when we arrived, Miss Josephine was wearing her eyeglasses.”

“I never saw her without her glasses,” Brooke said. “She was nearly a hundred.”

“But if she’d tripped and fallen, don’t you think those glasses would have gone flying off? Probably would have been smashed too. But hers were right there on her face. We fingerprinted those glasses, and found a partial print from Gabe Wynant. Plus, our new coroner determined that she was struck on the side of the head with an unknown object, which caused the fall that killed her. And no, we don’t have a murder weapon.”