The Last Word (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

been, he’d simply registered the need in her voice and had been there, waiting for her.
    She remembered seeing his figure in the shadow of the lighthouse and feeling such a burning impatience to reach him, to be held by him, that her longing felt like pain. In fact, when the shoreline was close enough, she’d swung her leg over the side of the boat and leapt into the sea. Rawlings had rushed toward her at the same time, and their bodies met, knee-deep in cold water. Wet and shaking, they’d grabbed hold of each other and kissed hungrily, tasting salt on each other’s lips.
    They’d ignored Haviland’s barks and the shouts of the boat captain, pressing ever closer together, their melded bodies illuminated by a swath of moonlight. In that moment, the police chief who wore tacky Hawaiian shirts, drank chocolate milk, took up oil painting as a hobby, and lost his wife of over twenty years to cancer had filled up the emptiness in Olivia’s heart.
    Now, standing near the spot where he’d waited for her that night, Olivia knelt down and scooped up a handful of warm sand. She watched it flow from her palm, the warmth as fleeting as those hours she’d shared with Rawlings.
    Wrapped in blankets, they’d curled up on her living room sofa. As the fire in her stone hearth crackled, she’d told him everything that had happened on Okracoke. She described her father’s death, the pain he’d caused her when she was a child, and her discovery that she had a half brother.
    Rawlings had listened silently, stroking her hair as she spoke. She found comfort in his scent of soap and sandalwood and paint thinner, in his broad, solid chest and the tenderness of his fingers.
    The next morning, she’d sent him on his way with a thermos of hot coffee and her thanks.
    And she hadn’t let the chief get close to her since.
    “I miss him,” Olivia confessed to Haviland, who had retrieved the stick and brought it back for another round of fetch. Standing up, she shouldered the canvas bag again and tossed the stick for the last time. She then increased her pace and traversed a series of dunes obscuring the path leading to Nick Plumley’s rental property.
    If the author had been in search of both privacy and luxury, he’d chosen the perfect house. Olivia had been inside when it had first been built and thought it magnificent, but too pretentious for her tastes. Of contemporary design, the house had been constructed with one thing in mind: the view. One could see the ocean from three of four sides. Instead of walls, the exterior was composed of floor-to-ceiling windows. The interior floor plan was also exaggeratingly open. The entire first floor was a single room interrupted by only support beams.
    Olivia rang the doorbell and waited. When she heard no movement from within, she peeked in through the clear panes, but Nick Plumley didn’t appear. She could easily see into the kitchen and noted the evidence of the author’s breakfast—half a bagel, an apple core, and a coffee cup.
    “We hardly want to start banging away if he’s in the shower,” Olivia said to Haviland and decided to wait for Plumley on the back patio.
    After placing the canvas bag containing the painting on a wooden dining table, she settled onto a cushioned chaise lounge, crossed her legs, and sighed.
    “Maybe I can come up with ideas for the rest of my chapter,” she told Haviland, who had begun a round of investigative sniffing.
    Ten minutes later, Olivia became too impatient to remain seated. When the doorbell went unanswered once again, she decided to peer in the windows on the side of the house, allowing her a glimpse of nearly every square foot of the lower level.
    With her inquisitive poodle at her heels, Olivia followed a flagstone path around a group of low bushes, walked over a bed of raked gravel, and blatantly stared into the house.
    Her eyes were immediately drawn to a splash of blue in the middle of the bleached pine wood floor. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing, but when it became clear, she sucked in her breath and jumped away from the window.
    Fumbling in her pocket, she withdrew her cell phone, cast a frightened glance over her shoulder, and dialed Rawlings’ direct line.
    “Good morning, Ms. Limoges,” he said cordially.
    “Chief, you need to get down to Nick Plumley’s rental house. I think he’s dead.”
    She took a step closer to the window and then hastily stuck the phone back in her pocket, cutting off