Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW

I saw cars backed up to Lumina Station.
    I acknowledged to myself that I had changed in the two years since I'd first met Jon, about the same time I had fallen in love with Nick. A girl changes a lot between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-six.
    I knew that from personal experience. I was more comfortable in my own skin these days. Melanie, who had always seemed so out of reach when I was growing up, I now met on equal terms. I had matured since my graduate school days. I owned a successful business, and my mirror told me that I was better looking, the angularity of youth having been softened by womanliness.
    Perhaps that meant I was now ready for a mature kind of love. The kind of love Jon could offer me that Nick could not.
    Maybe it was time for Nick and me to move away from each other and move on to other partners. Surely, he had needs that were not being fulfilled by me, otherwise he would not have gotten involved with this "Carol" person. At the thought of Nick being with another woman, anger raged inside me like an out of control fire. The cheating made me mad! Especially since I had denied Jon and myself the closeness we both craved.
    Well, all that was about to be rectified, I told myself with determination. I reached for the cell phone on the passenger seat to call Jon but it chirped just as soon as I touched it, as if my touch had set it off.
    "Jon! Hi!" I said. "I was just thinking about you."
    I felt my face flush. If only he knew how I'd been thinking of him.
    "Ashley, where are you?"
    Jon sounded frantic.
    "Why, what's wrong?"
    "I've been calling your cell but you must have been in one of those dead zones. Where are you?"
    "I'm stuck in traffic on the bridge. I was just driving to your house, but now I'm stuck on the bridge and it's going to be a while before we get across."
    "That's what I'm calling you about. There's been . . ." Static and lost words. ". . . so Melanie . . ."
    "What? Jon I'm losing you! What about Melanie?"
    I held the phone out and shook it. As if that would help.
    "Jon! Jon!"
    Gone. Dead phone. Melanie what? I wondered. What did Melanie have to do with this traffic snarl? Good Lord, no! Not an accident. I always knew her speeding would cause an accident.
    I called her cell phone and got voicemail.
    I had made it to the center of the bridge. The Intracoastal Waterway stretched to the north and the south as far as they eye could see. Sunshine sparkled on the ripples. The sky was cloudless, and white sails billowed on blue water.
    Mother Nature mocked me with her beauty.
    I pushed the send button and tried Melanie again. The traffic ahead surged forward. I was glad to be in the right lane so I could exit the Causeway when I reached land.
    "Ashley!" Melanie screamed, identifying me by my number. "I've been calling you and calling you."
    So that's why I couldn’t get through.
    "Where are you?" she shouted. In the background I could hear loud voices, a lot of people. A restaurant? She had not been in an accident after all?
    "Melanie? Are you all right?" I asked.
    "Oh, Ashley, you don't know what's happened. Where are you? You've got to get here."
    I told her I was driving off the bridge onto Harbor Island.
    "Thank God!" she exclaimed. "I'm here. At the Bitterman house. Come straight . . .”
    I lost her.
    The Bitterman house? On Harbor Island? "Where?" I asked. I was yelling, which we tend to do when we cannot hear.
    Static buzzed in my ear.
    "Oh for God's sake!" she cried. "The Bitterman house. My listing on Point Place. You're almost . . . " Her voice faded in and out.
    " . . . listened to me you'd know."
    With Melanie, everything was always my fault.
    "Okay, I know the house you mean," I said. "I'm almost there."
    "Well, hurry! You can't imagine what these idiots . . . "
    Again I lost her.
    "Melanie, you're breaking up."
    "Hurry, Ashley, . . . make the police let you . . ."
    Then she was gone.
    Police? What was going on?
    Right before the bridge over Banks Channel, I cut a sharp right onto Channel Drive and immediately hit a police barricade. A uniformed officer motioned for me to turn around but instead I pulled over, got out of my car and approached him.
    "Officer, I'm Ashley Wilkes. I just got a call from my sister, Melanie Wilkes, who is somehow involved in this . . . whatever is going on -- what is going on? I've got to get through."
    "No one's allowed in here, Miss. You have to leave. This is police business," the officer told me curtly.
    "Oh, wait, there's Officer