Karen’s hands went up in the air. Chet, still bleeding from the forehead, crossed his arms and turned on her. “Are you kidding me?” he asked.
“I’m not trying to blame you,” Jenn replied. “I’m only saying I didn’t stay up all night watching you. Do I think you could’ve done it? No. Do I think anybody on this boat could’ve done it? No. And for that matter, neither one of you can say that I didn’t get up and leave the room because both of you were snoring like foghorns. Okay? Okay?”
“She’s got a point,” Alex said, though unintentionally planting that seed of doubt about her whereabouts wasn’t the best idea. “Nobody knows where anybody was. Nobody has an alibi except for Wade.”
The others whipped their heads around to face him, skin swishing against nylon windbreakers.
“How’s that?” Mark asked.
Wade eyed Alex, annoyed, but he shook his head and lifted his hands in resignation. “I cheated. I was on the phone until about four in the morning.”
“You’re not supposed to get service out here,” Laura said. “That’s why we came this far out.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I had a bar. It worked.”
“Well, let’s use your phone, call the cops,” Chet said.
“It…it died. I know that sounds awfully convenient—”
“Damn straight it does.”
“Hey, look, you guys. I brought the phone, I cheated on Jenn’s rules, and it died on me because I wasn’t even sure there’d be a way to charge it on the boat. That’s it, end of story. I should’ve known better, but listen, I have proof I was talking to somebody all night and they’ll confirm it, so stop wasting your time pointing fingers at me.”
Jenn asked, “Were you talking to Cheryl?”
“I, uh… No, not exactly.”
“And what does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“We’re, uh, we’re…” He took his wide-brimmed hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. Nervous hands crumpled the hat’s flimsy material. “We’re not doing well. She knows it, I know it, and we’ve both been—we’re seeing other people, trying to see how things play out. I was up talking to Linda until my cell bonked on me.”
“Who’s Linda?” Mark asked.
“It doesn’t matter who Linda is,” Terri said, twisting the woman’s name around in disgust. “What does that prove? You could’ve done it any time after that. And what’s to say you weren’t in the main cabin pretending like you were just all hunky dory in love with your cell phone in one hand and a knife in the other? It only takes one hand to hold a knife, Wade.”
Wade’s cheeks flushed red. He shoved his finger in Terri’s face, and for a moment, Alex thought that Mark was going to push it away, but her fed-up husband let it be. Good for him. Wade said, “You were in there. You saw the body. She was on her stomach, across the bed.”
“Get your finger out of my face. That doesn’t prove anything.” Terri swatted his hand. Wade put it back, index finger an inch from her nose.
He asked Alex, “You went down with her last night. How was she in bed?”
The question caught Alex by surprise. He flashed a look at Jenn. “Oh, we didn’t, you know, there wasn’t anything going—”
Wade rolled his eyes. “I meant how’d you leave her?”
“Right, oh. Right. Yeah, she was under the covers, still wearing my jacket. Passed totally out after I bandaged her head so…normal, I guess, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And how’d she look when you saw her, Terri?”
“I don’t remember. I was freaking out and—”
“How’d she look, Terri?” Wade interrupted, raising his voice.
“Sideways,” she admitted. “Sideways. Naked. On top of the sheets.”
“Right. Which says to me that she was up and about, she’d been awake at some point, or there had been a struggle. Something.”
“Meaning what?” Laura asked.
“If she was awake, and I was on the phone, Linda would’ve heard.”
“Too bad we can’t call her and ask,” Terri said, not without a thick layer of sarcasm.
Mark grabbed her arm, shushed her, harshly, and said, “You do not get to be an asshole to anyone else. Not anymore. You hear me? That could go against us, total character assassination.”
“I’m just trying to prove—”
“Enough, Terri.”
She jerked her arm and turned her back to him, hugging herself. “It still doesn’t prove he wasn’t in the main cabin after he got off the phone.”
Wade said, “Then if we ever get to the point where a medical examiner can look at the crime scene, I’ll be cleared, because from what I could see, she’d been dead a lot longer than that. Coagulated blood. She’d already bled out a long time before four in the morning.”
“And how do you know that?” Sharon asked.
She was standing beside Laura, not shy now about hugging her close. Alex knew that Jenn suspected they were having an affair, she’d told him months ago, and whenever the two were around, it had been hard not to imagine them in various stages of undress, giggling that their husbands had no idea what was going on.
He wondered if either of them had been jealous of the other last night, watching Erica and Jenn dancing on full display in front of everyone. From what he remembered, they were cheering and appeared to enjoy it.
Wade interrupted Alex’s train of thought by saying, “Jesus. The more secrets I have, the worse this is going to look. Okay, listen, I was a cop, a homicide detective, for about five years. I never brought it up because it was something I wanted to get far, far away from, and I was worried that if I talked about it around you guys, you’d want to ask questions, know details, and I knew I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t risk the PTSD coming back, so to you guys, I’m Wade the contractor, and that’s all I ever wanted to be. Not Wade the former detective, not anymore. And Wade the former detective can stand right here and tell you that he’s seen enough dead girls to know Erica’s been a corpse a lot longer than a few hours. If I had to guess, I’d say it happened sometime between one and three, but not after.”
Chet said, “No shit? So now what do we do, Mr. Cop?”
He exchanged a glance with Alex. “We wait on the Coast Guard, like Alex suggested,” he replied, their mutual nods a silent agreement that the Coast Guard wouldn’t be arriving any time soon. “We wait, and maybe we try to figure out who did this.”
“Why can’t we just go back?” Jenn asked, nearly pleading. “Let’s go back and call the police, Alex. Why bother with the Coast Guard? What’re they gonna do, huh? They’ll just escort us in, and more than likely, the cops will question why we waited. Won’t it look even more suspicious? We’re all friends, right? Maybe they’ll think we’re trying to cover for each other. Maybe they’ll think we know who did it, and we’re trying to protect him.”
“Whoa, hang on there,” Chet said, pointing at her. “Easy with your accusations.”
“What?”
“You said him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t, but come on now. That’s not being fair, right, Wade?”
Wade lifted a corner of his mouth, shook his head. “Statistically…”
“We’re not talking about statistics here.”
“Hey,” Karen interjected, “there’s a real simple fact that we all seem to be ignoring. One of you is a murderer—”
Terri scoffed. “One of you, she says.”
“—and we’re standing around chatting like we’re trying to decide where to go for lunch. I know one goddamn thing, I don’t want to stay another minute longer than I have to on this boat, and I don’t want to look at you people for another second. I’m with Jenn. Get us back on land, and call the cops.” She stomped away, shoving Mark out of her way, then headed over the railing and stared out toward the horizon, her back to the group.