The Perfect Couple(22)

“I’m sorry I caused you to worry,” Shooter says. “I was up at the Wauwinet.”

“The Wauwinet Inn?” the Chief says.

“The restaurant, actually. Topper’s? I’m friendly with the bartender there.”

“And what’s the bartender’s name?”

“Name?” Shooter says. “Oh. Gina.”

“The bartender at Topper’s is named Gina. And you spent last night with Gina?”

“Yes,” Shooter says.

“She lives up there?” the Chief asks. “At the Wauwinet?”

“Yes,” Shooter says. “Staff housing.”

“Had you planned to spend the night with Gina?” the Chief asks. “Because the groom seemed to think you’d spent the night in the cottage.”

“I hadn’t planned on it, no,” Shooter says. “It was just a booty call. It was late, she texted, I went up there.”

A booty call. The Chief thinks protectively of Chloe. He feels a hundred years old. “What time was that?”

“I’m really not sure,” Shooter says.

“You can check your phone,” the Chief says.

Shooter slips his phone out of the pocket of his Nantucket Reds shorts. He pushes some buttons and says, “I must have deleted the text.”

“You must have deleted the text,” the Chief says. “Tell me why you took your luggage. All of your luggage, from the looks of it.”

“Right,” Shooter says. His tone is cautious, and the Chief can practically see the shadowy interior of his mind where he’s groping around for something solid to hold on to. “I took my luggage because I thought I might just stay up at the Wauwinet with Gina.”

“But then this morning, quite early, I’d say, you showed back up here. So what happened?”

“I changed my mind,” Shooter says.

“You changed your mind,” the Chief says. He looks at Shooter Uxley. The kid is sweating, but then again, it’s hot, even in the shade. “Would you mind giving me this Gina’s cell phone number, please?”

“Her number?” Shooter says. “I’d rather not. I don’t want her to get involved in this if we can help it.”

“We can’t help it,” the Chief says. “Because Gina is your alibi.”

“My alibi?” Shooter says. “Why do I need an alibi?”

“We have an unattended death,” the Chief says. “And you were missing, then you showed back up. Now, maybe your story holds water. Maybe you did go up to the Wauwinet to hook up with Gina the bartender with all your luggage and maybe you did then decide you didn’t like Gina that much or that the staff housing wasn’t as nice as the Winburys’ guest cottage. That’s all feasible. But we have a twenty-nine-year-old woman dead, so I’m going to proceed with due diligence and check out your story. You can either give me the girl’s cell phone—which I know you have because you said she texted you late last night—or I’ll call the front desk of the Wauwinet and contact her that way.”

Shooter gets to his feet. “Call the Wauwinet,” he says. “I need to use the bathroom right now. My stomach is funny. I think it was the raw bar from last night.”

“Go ahead,” the Chief says. He’s not stupid. He knows that Shooter will go into the cottage to “use the bathroom,” but really he’ll text Gina the bartender and ask her to corroborate his story.

The Chief waits until Shooter disappears into the cottage, then he takes out his phone and calls Bob from Old Salt Taxi. Bob, who dropped Shooter off here this morning, has been a friend of the Chief’s for twenty-five years.

“Hey, Bob,” the Chief says. “It’s Ed Kapenash.”

“Ed,” Bob says. “Sorry I didn’t stop to chat this morning. You looked like you were busy. What’s going on? Word on the street is there was a murder.”

Word on the street. Already? Well, it is a small island. “I can’t get into it,” the Chief says. “But you remember the kid you dropped off? I need to know where you picked him up. Did you pick him up at the Wauwinet?”

“The Wauwinet?” Bob says. “No. That real handsome kid in the red shorts and the blazer? I picked him up down at the Steamship. He had a ticket for the six-thirty slow boat this morning but I guess he missed it. And so he asked me to take him back to Monomoy. He said he was staying there.”

“You’re sure you picked him up at the Steamship dock?” the Chief says. “And not at the Wauwinet?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Bob says. “I may not be getting any younger but I have yet to make a twelve-mile mistake. I picked that kid up on Steamboat Wharf. He told me he’d missed the six-thirty.”

“Okay, Bob, wonderful, thanks. I’ll talk to you.” The Chief hangs up and takes a second to think. Shooter had a ticket for the early boat? With the wedding scheduled for this afternoon? Something is going on. And he flat-out lied about the Wauwinet.

Why?

A text comes in on the Chief’s phone. It’s from the funeral director, Bostic, saying he’s on his way to collect the body—which is good news, considering the heat and the fragile state of everyone’s nerves. Bostic will get the body ready for transfer to the medical examiner on Cape Cod. The Chief checks the time. If everything goes perfectly, they may have a report on the cause of death by early afternoon.