The horses and zebras theory, the one they used to keep themselves in check when tempted to spiral down some wild path on an investigation, snapped into her mind. Maybe Earl had done something all those years ago; maybe he had actually killed himself, the guilt stoked back to life by the reporter asking questions. It was the simplest explanation. But Izzy had seen his frail body beneath the sheet. It would have taken a miracle for him to have overpowered Robert Twist.

Which left them with a killer still unaccounted for, no matter what Earl’s death was ruled.

“And maybe that same someone who set up Earl’s death wanted the reporter to start looking into you,” Izzy said, trying to grab hold of all the threads. There were too many. They needed to start cutting some away. “To get attention off of themselves.”

“The reporter was already looking into me, though,” Mia said, her toe tapping against linoleum. There was a similar twitch running along Izzy’s calves, a need to expel the nervous energy that just kept building the longer they sat around in this goddamn kitchen. “Late October. After Peter left the island.”

“Yeah.”

Mia pressed her thumb into her temple, another one of those gestures that was becoming commonplace. She’d seemed to have had a headache since they’d stepped foot on St. Lucy’s. Not that Izzy blamed her. “I just. The timing? It seems odd. And I know it’s a common name, but the fact that a Peter was in the reporter’s contacts, was one of his last calls . . .”

The timing. The timing.

“What if Peter was the one who found something out about that night?” Izzy said.

Mia’s eyes focused, alert for the first time since Edie had left the kitchen. “That would make more sense than someone on the island willingly talking to a reporter.”

“Yeah, I’d imagine they would have been on guard for a reporter,” Izzy said, warming to her theory. “But an artist? You said they’re thick on the ground here.”

“Dismissed, even.” Mia pushed to her feet, started pacing. “Ignored.”

“He doesn’t know what to do with the information, so he tells his buddy, the reporter,” Izzy said. “Maybe whatever it was wasn’t enough to go to the police, or maybe Twist saw his opportunity to get a byline in something other than a regional artist magazine.”

“Twist comes and checks me out at the station.” Mia picked up the conversational ball. “Then makes up some cover about investigating suicides on Maine islands but is really coming here to dig into the night at the lighthouse.”

It wasn’t suicide. The reporter’s voice for his phone recording had taken on an eerie undercurrent for Izzy that hadn’t existed in the original message.

“The voice memo,” Izzy said. “That was Peter telling Twist, or Twist summarizing what Peter had told him. It wasn’t suicide.”