“Notice that, did you?” Patty turned her back on Izzy, her attention on the board. “We might make a proper detective out of you yet.”

Izzy kept her jacket unzipped on the way home despite the temperature outside. She didn’t feel the eyes on her neck like she had in the woods, but after getting shot at and asking too many questions of too many people, it didn’t seem paranoid to be cautious.

The snow had stopped, leaving behind a fresh blanket, her boot prints from the trek down the hill just a faint echo of what they had been. The way back up was tough, but the residual fire in her blood from the Eagle Rare made it slightly more bearable this time.

The quiet let her think, too. Since they’d arrived, there hadn’t really been time to regain her footing. The eerie silence gave her time to run through the list of players they’d been gathering.

Sammy Bowdoin. The doc had rubbed Izzy the wrong way, and though he hadn’t done anything that raised big red flags, his behavior certainly leaned more toward suspicious than not. Plus, he was in the perfect position to clean up any evidence he’d left behind. The only hesitation she had about him was motive. Why would he have killed Twist? Jealousy seemed a stretch since he’d been pulling away from Ellen for months.

But . . . he might have been an accomplice. That fit with the phone call Brandon Sonder had told them about. She’d have to sit with that one for a bit.

Cash Bishop. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Izzy didn’t have a read on him yet, apart from watching Mia react to him that first night. Mia had been tense, but that could be chalked up to him being an ex. He had dodged out on their questioning and had been asking about the Bells, but it seemed plausible that he was trying to keep his girlfriend from finding out he was digging into her father just in case she didn’t want him to.

Which brought Izzy to Lacey. She was an interesting one. She’d found Mia that night, which sent up alarm bells. Had she seen something she shouldn’t have? And was the bruise on her arm and the nervousness in her eyes related to the case? Or was she just haunted by demons they had no business uncovering?

For that matter, where did Bix and Charles fit in? They hadn’t been on the island in years; no one had even seen them in that long. Were they even worth pursuing now, when the Robert Twist case was their main focus?

And what about Jimmy Roarke and Earl? They kept being brought up, but was that just because it was such a small town that it was inevitable they’d be included in conversations?