“We need to talk to Lacey,” Mia finally said. Did you kill them? “And Earl Bishop. Jimmy Roarke, too.”

Listing them helped. It grounded her in the investigation that she still didn’t feel like she had a grip on.

Did you kill them?

“He was the one who took me home that night,” Mia said, quietly.

Izzy cocked her head. “Who?”

“Earl,” Mia said.

“What exactly was Cash’s father doing at the lighthouse?”

“It wasn’t strange,” Mia said. It wasn’t. Not if you understood what life on St. Lucy’s was like. “He was the mayor. We don’t have cops. Someone had to handle the scene.”

“Right,” Izzy said, the word drawn out enough so that it was obvious that she still found it strange. Or at least noteworthy. Mia wouldn’t argue with the latter. “And he didn’t call your mother to come out and get you?”

“No, he took me home, then went back to the lighthouse, I think,” Mia said. “Everything is a little piecemeal. Like, I remember drinking hot chocolate at the table at home in the kitchen. The marshmallows were those giant kind that barely fit into a mug.” Mia paused. “Weird, right? Hot chocolate in the summer. But I know I drank it.”

A beat of heavy silence followed, and Mia knew Izzy understood.

Then Izzy shifted. “So the only things you know about that night, then, were filled in by your mama?”

“For the most part,” Mia said.

“And those details were given to her by Earl Bishop?” Izzy asked, slowly.

“Yes,” Mia said.

“So the only details we have about that night were provided by the man who was the last person our new victim talked to before he died?”

It hadn’t quite occurred to Mia to put it that way. But once Izzy said it, she couldn’t believe she’d missed that fact. “By the time I was in a position to request the incident report, I had stopped wanting to even think about St. Lucy’s.”

“But the police did come out?”

“From Rockport, yes.” Mia said. “They were gone a day later. Ruled it all suicide.”

Izzy muttered something under her breath, but Mia shrugged.

“Quacks like a duck, right?” Mia said. “There was no reason to investigate further.” She paused. “There’s no real reason to now, either.”

There was mutiny in Izzy’s expression. She so obviously was building a theory, one that linked the suicide pact with Robert Twist’s death. But Mia wasn’t sure they had enough information to do that yet. There could be a million and one reasons why someone on the island would want to kill a nosy reporter.

However, one thing they both probably now agreed on?