Izzy read over the short paragraph one more time to make sure and then looked up.

“I think he might have found out who Monroe’s older gentleman was.”

Mia raised her brows. “Who?”

“Jimmy Roarke.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MIA

The one thing Mia missed the most on this case was an investigation room. There was something about the stripped-down starkness of white walls and a utilitarian metal table that kept people from being able to hide behind carefully constructed masks.

Jimmy Roarke’s kitchen, on the other hand, let the man be distracted by, dodge, and dance away from any question that got too uncomfortable. He fiddled with mugs for tea, dug in the cabinet for crackers, positioned himself so that the fading sun created shadows on his face.

Mia watched him now as he flicked off the soap opera that was playing on mute on the small television mounted to the wall near the stove. It was odd to imagine him there, tinkering over dinner, indulging in melodramas. She’d pictured Hungry-Man frozen dinners and TV trays in a living room that needed to be scrubbed of decades of careless eating.

He was a burly man, like many on the island, his shoulders stretching the worn flannel of his shirt, towering over Mia by more than a foot. Silver now tangled in his red beard and the hair at his temples, but he was so familiar that her chest ached with it.

She hadn’t wanted it to be Jimmy, even as his name kept cropping up. Chasing the reporter away from the lighthouse. Ellen’s story of him talking with Cash about the Bells. The scribbled, shaky note in Earl Bishop’s bedroom.

But Jimmy had always been nice to her, nice to Mama. When Mia’s father had passed two years before that terrible summer, Jimmy had shown up to help mow the lawn in the spring, clear the snow in the winter. Sometimes he’d even bring around fish he’d caught, good ones, not just the ones he wouldn’t be able to sell at market. He’d never asked for anything in return, not money nor Mama’s attention. People whispered about how he was a little slow, didn’t always catch on, missed jokes, and turned conversations awkward. But Mia had always just thought he was kind.

He finally sat and ran his palms along the rough material of his well-worn jeans. “I don’t know what I can tell you, Mia.”

His voice softened on her name, like she was a familiar and lovely ache as well. She didn’t often think about anyone on St. Lucy’s missing her; she didn’t think about the island when she could help it. And since she’d been back, she’d encountered more antagonism than welcome. But maybe she’d been liked, maybe missed. At the end of the day, these were her people.