“Well, most of them had been trained while they were in prison,” Josie continued to explain. “But Dottie had been a carpenter before she was arrested, and, frankly, I thought I was lucky to get her.”

“And I thought I was lucky to be here… until that snotty bitch was murdered.”

“Why?” Annette asked.

“Look, I’m on probation. And one of the many terms of my probation is that I’m not supposed to be fraternizing with the criminal element-and I think you could probably call the person who killed Courtney Castle a criminal-so I just hope it wasn’t one of you.”

The words were spoken casually, but Josie knew the situation and knew Dottie was dead serious. “And that’s why Dottie believes we shouldn’t tell the police about Courtney’s body.”

“Yes. Not only am I the most likely suspect, but I think you could say that being a suspect in a murder investigation violates the terms of my parole.”

Annette nodded. “You’d end up back in prison.”

“Got it in one.”

“I go along with Dottie.” Jill spoke up. “I don’t think we should tell them either. What do you think, Josie?”

Josie took a deep breath. “I tend to agree with you two. The police on the island are… well, they’re not exactly competent. But we all have to agree to keep silent. If one of us doesn’t go along, we’re all in trouble.”

“She’s talking about you,” Dottie said, pointing to Annette.

The young woman nodded seriously. “But it is illegal to withhold evidence in a murder investigation. I’ve seen it on TV.”

“Yes, but, in fact, we’ve already done that.”

Annette looked up at Dottie, her eyes opening wider. “You’re right. I didn’t think.”

“Look, the truth is, you either believe I did it and then you should call the cops and we’ll all be questioned and I’ll be arrested. Or you believe I didn’t do it and we shut up until the real murderer is found.”

“Oh, I’d never think that you killed anybody!”

“Until a few minutes ago, you probably never would have thought that I’d been convicted of assault and spent three years in prison.” Dottie’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

“I guess that’s true. But it’s different. You were angry at someone for insulting you and you just hit him. You didn’t murder him. And, besides, you have no reason to be angry at Courtney Castle. She didn’t do anything to you.”

“As far as you know,” Dottie said.

“You were in prison for the last three years, what could she do?”

“Listen”-Dottie reached out and put a hand on Annette’s arm-“you’re a sweet kid. But you haven’t been around much and I gotta tell you: You really don’t know me. I mean, I appreciate that you believe in me, but, honey, what you’ve heard about prison is true. Everyone’s got a sob story to tell and most of ’em are lies.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Then I agree with you all. We shouldn’t tell the police anything!”

Josie sighed, relieved. “Fine. We will keep the information to ourselves. But there’s one other question. What are we going to do with the body?”

“We could just leave it up there and, when it starts to smell, climb on up and claim to have discovered it then. Of course, that doesn’t really help us, does it? I mean, the police would investigate and Dottie would be arrested, et cetera, et cetera,” Jill said, looking worried.

“We could hide the body, find out who the murderer is, and then turn both the body and the murderer over to the police,” Annette suggested. “Just like Chad’s mother does.”

“Oh, yeah, and we could rent us a big barn and put on a show and raise money for the orphans.” Dottie’s sarcasm couldn’t be missed.

“I’m just trying to help,” Annette protested.

“And you are,” Josie said firmly. “If you think about it, Annette has come up with the only solution that will keep Dottie out of prison. Anything else will mean calling in the police and they’ll arrest Dottie, for parole violation if not murder.”

“So what are we going to do with Courtney? Dump her in the ocean?” Jill asked.

“We can’t do that!” Annette cried. “Someone might see us!”

“We can’t do that because, on the off chance that this scheme to find the murderer actually works, we’re going to have to provide the police with Courtney’s corpse.” Dottie was blunt.

“So we need to store her somewhere.” Josie couldn’t imagine where. “What we need is some sort of large refrigerator or a freezer. Can you tell if a body’s been frozen after it thaws out?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Dottie answered.

“Well, if it got freezer burn…” Jill seemed about to giggle and Annette snorted.

Josie realized they were all tired and very close to hysteria. “Sam has a large refrigerator at the back of the store. I don’t know how we could sneak her in there-”

“No way.” Dottie was adamant.

“What’s wrong with that? We can trust Sam.”

“I’m not trusting anyone who was a prosecutor, I can tell you that right now.”

“If it weren’t for Sam, you wouldn’t be here. You might not even have a job. You might not have gotten parole,” Josie protested.

“You think he’s going to break the law just to keep me out of prison?”

It didn’t sound all that likely to Josie either. Maybe they could hide the body in his refrigerator without him knowing.

Jill seemed to read her mind. “How big is this refrigerator? Maybe we could sort of shove her in a place where she won’t be found.”

“I’ve got it!” Excited, Josie jumped up. “We can put it… her down in one of the freezers behind the Fish Wish.”

“That’s a restaurant?”

“It’s the bait shop. And they have a freezer in the back of the store just filled with boxes and boxes of frozen moss bunker. We could put Courtney underneath. She’ll be safe there for months-they don’t get down to the bottom of that freezer until late August.”

“And what are you going to do? Just walk in and ask if you can use their freezer to store a famous television personality?”

“No, I thought maybe we could sneak in there in the middle of the night and put her away. I have the key to their back door. We’re going to be adding a deck out back as soon as we finish this job.”

“Then I guess we know what we have to do,” Dottie said, getting up and stretching.

“What?” Annette asked.

“Go get Courtney and take her to the… what did you call it? The Fish Wish.”

NINETEEN

THEY SPLIT UP and drove back to the work site in two cars. Josie made sure that Dottie traveled with her.

“It was good of you to talk about your past.” She started the conversation as she steered her truck away from the curb. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

“Didn’t have a choice, did I?”

“You could have lied.”

“But you knew the truth.”

“When you came to work for me, I told you I’d keep your secret.”

“And you would, wouldn’t you? You know, you’re a good person. I haven’t run into a whole lot of good people in the past few years.” Dottie was silent for a moment. “You didn’t sleep with that Noel person to get him to leave you his business, did you?”

Josie was shocked. “I… No, is that what you thought?” “I didn’t know. It did strike me as a possibility. I mean, most men don’t just leave a business to a good friend.”

“Noel wasn’t most men.”

“Look, I’m offending you and I sure didn’t mean to. What I’m trying to say is thank you and that Noel Roberts left his business to the right person.”

“I shouldn’t get upset. You aren’t the first person to wonder about my relationship with Noel and you won’t be the last. It’s been a difficult day for us all.” She stopped the truck for a group of giggling teenage girls, their blankets dragging on the road as they crossed to get to the beach. “They look like they’re about to have a good time, don’t they? Not a care in the world, as my mother would say.”

“They’re young. Wait until they get older. They’ll do less giggling then,” Dottie predicted.