“Whatever you need,” Alexis added. She was the spitting image of her brother but female, her hair cropped short around her ears in a boyish style. “Whoever did this to Lana needs to pay.”
“We’ll do our utmost to make sure that they do,” Laura replied, stopping short of promising they would catch him out of the caution that came with experience. Still, she believed that they would. She had to believe it. She couldn’t leave this state with a killer still running around and continue to call herself an FBI agent.
“We need to know if your sister had any connection at all to either of the other two victims,” Nate said. “Elias Makks and Dina Grey.”
“I don’t know of one,” Andrew frowned. “I didn’t know Dina, but I knew Elias in passing. I’d been on one of his tours. I don’t think Alana has been, though, and she’s never mentioned him to me. He could have gone around the museum, I suppose.”
“The nautical museum,” Laura said, seizing on that. “Was it popular around here?”
Alexis made a face. “It’s more for tourists,” she said. “To be honest, when you have that kind of thing on your doorstep, you sort of forget about going to it. It’s just part of the scenery. Alana worked hard at getting the local schools to send their kids, and she also wanted the fishermen and tour guides to donate whenever they found something interesting or a bit of kit had to be retired, but she wasn’t very successful in raising the visitor numbers.”
“Don’t talk about her in past tense,” Andrew snapped. “She’s still alive.”
“Didn’t you listen to what they said?” Alexis asked, turning on him. “She’s not! They don’t even know if she died hours ago! They’re just doing what they have to do in order to be legally allowed to declare her dead!”
“How do you expect her to fight it if you won’t even believe in her?” Andrew retorted, Maggie’s hand closing tighter on his arm.
“Alright,” Laura said, holding up a hand quickly and exchanging a glance with Nate. “Please. I know that this is a tense time, but it’s really important that we stick to the questions and get as much information as we can.”
“It’s not going to help her,” Alexis muttered.
“But it could,” Laura began, although Alexis already had her beaten.
“It could help save someone else,” the younger sister said, looking up with fire in her eyes. “Ask your questions.”
Laura nodded, taking a moment to think. It was Nate who spoke instead, having had time himself to think it over.
“What about Theo Kelleigh or Matt Wendell?” he asked.
Andrew shook his head. “I haven’t heard of either of them,” he said.
“Yes, you have,” Maggie insisted. “Theo Kelleigh. I told you. He’s the one they all hate for buying up the little boats.”
“Oh,” Andrew said, shrugging. “Alright, I’ve heard of him, but I haven’t had any dealings with him. My business is inland. I don’t have anything to do with the harbor.”
“I’ve dealt with Kelleigh,” Alexis said. Her tone was quieter, as if she was remembering a bad time in the past. “I don’t anymore. As far as I know, he never had any connection to my sister beyond paying for a ticket to walk around the museum. No one around here has anything to do with him if they have any kind of choice.”
Laura looked at her notebook, hoping for some kind of inspiration. “What about the figurehead at the museum?” she asked. She kept her tone as careful as possible; she knew that talking about the place where they must have figured out by now their sister was hung would cause them emotional distress. But she needed to know. “Do you know why it was there, or what ship it came from?”
“That one I can answer,” Andrew said. “It’s our father’s.”
Laura blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It was the hull of our father’s ship,” Andrew repeated, looking at her as though she was simple. “He was the last one in our family to work on the water. It was old even then. It had been handed down through generations and still worked better than most of the newer ships. But in the end, the costs rose too high to keep patching it up and maintaining it, and he couldn’t bring in as big a catch as the modern boats. He retired and donated it to the museum, and I guess they couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so they stuck it on the outside of the building.”
“Did he choose the museum because Alana was working there?” Laura wondered.
“No, this was when we were children,” Andrew said. “I think it’s the other way around. She had an interest in working there because she wanted to remember him. He passed away about fifteen years ago.”
Laura nodded, but inside she was screaming. There was no connection, then, between Theo Kelleigh and the figurehead at the museum. No reason for the killer to target someone there if it was all about targeting him. If he didn’t even know this victim, either, then his whole connection to the case was gone.
There was always the possibility that they were being deliberately thrown off the scent, but…
No, it felt like a genuine attack with all the hallmarks of the others. But without a connection, without a lead, they were almost back to exactly where they had been when they landed in Maine.
The door to the waiting room opened and Laura and Nate both instinctively stepped off to the side, allowing whoever it was to come in. It turned out to be the same doctor who had told Laura to get out of the room while he was treating Alana.
“Good,” he said, seeing them there. “I won’t have to say it twice. We’ve just finished the first stage of treating Miss Garland. I’m afraid I can’t say for sure yet what the outcome will be, but there is a flash of hope. She is alive. Now that we have her core body temperature up to a normal level, it’s down to how quickly her organs and her extremities recover.”