Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

with my husband."
    "Yeah, sure. That's why you and Jon are as thick as blood. And where is the great detective? Melanie said you've been eating your heart out because he's not calling you."
    Oh Melanie, I thought, disappointed, why do you have to tell my secrets?
    Mickey picked up the cue stick and turning to the table shot the cue ball so hard it bounced. "Anyways, Devin didn't mean no harm by flirting with you. He was a good guy. Too good for his own good."
    "And what is that supposed to mean, pray tell?" I asked sarcastically.
    "Just what I said. Too good for his own good. Always wanting to go his own way, not like the rest of the family. Joined the Army right out of high school. My old man went ballistic."
    "But Devin told me he worked his way through college," I said remembering our conversation of one week ago, when he'd behaved like a decent sort of guy, before he started acting like Junior Jerkman .
    "He did. But that came later. He was the only one in the family to get a college degree. See what I mean, Ashley. I tried to get him to go in with me on the nightclub and my other business interests here but he had to do things his way. I made him a good offer too."
    He looked at me for my reaction but I took a long swallow of iced tea, thinking. Meriweather had said that Mickey and some of his friends had been convicted of armed robbery. I wondered if Devin had been in on that. Then later Mickey had tried to get Devin to join him in his nefarious underworld activities here in Wilmington. But Devin wanted to do his own thing. And what was that? I wondered. If Mickey trafficked in stolen paintings, was that Devin's line of work as well?
    When Melanie, Kelly, Jon, and I had returned to the house after finding Valentine's body, Mickey and Devin were already here. Their luggage had been piled up against the wall.
    I looked at the blank white wall where the luggage had stood, seeing it again.
    But what time had they arrived on the island? Had they been here all morning? Time enough to kill Valentine, take J.C.'s painting and all the others, hide them somewhere, maybe in Mickey's Ford Bronco, and act innocent when we showed up.
    Then when they discovered the other paintings were worthless, they set fire to them out on the beach and fled. Not being from around here, they wouldn't have known about our ordinance prohibiting open fires on the island. I recalled how Devin had disappeared from the bonfire site before Meriweather arrived.
    Had Mickey and Devin argued over the painting, quarreled over how to split the money they would get when they sold it to a private collector? Thinking back, I had been working all that day and so had Melanie. I didn't know what Mickey and Devin had been doing. They could have been fencing the painting on any one of those days. Perhaps their quarrel over money had taken a nasty turn, so that Mickey clubbed Devin and threw him off the pier.
    Devin had been in my bedroom on Wednesday night, the night he died. Then he'd chased someone down the beach. Or that's the way I assumed it had happened. Maybe he wasn't the one doing the chasing, but the one being chased.
    I couldn't help thinking again that I should have called the police that night. But I had been desperate for sleep. Still, I thought guiltily, if I had involved the police, Devin might be alive now.
    "Whether you believe me or not," I said earnestly, "I'm sorry for what happened to Devin. No one deserves that."
    I was shocked when Mickey grinned. "Oh, quite a few do, little girl. Quite a few."
    He leaned over the table and sent the cue ball caroming into the 4-ball which went rolling straight for Spunky. The cat lunged for the ball, digging his claws into the green felt.
    "Damned cat. Get out of here," Mickey yelled, raising the cue stick threateningly. "Made me miss my shot."
    I darted forward and was about to yell at him to stop when I saw that Spunky was not at all afraid. He just gave Mickey a level, unblinking stare . His gleaming eyes seemed to say: You wouldn't dare hit me with that stick because you know if you do Melanie will throw you out of her bed, and out of her house.
    Mickey seemed to have second thoughts about taking on Melanie's cat. For now anyway, and with me there as a witness. He lifted Spunky off the table with one hand and set him gingerly on the floor. "Go away, kitty. Go find a mouse to torture."
    Tail raised high to show that his dignity had been impugned, Spunky skulked off, a black creature in a sea of