Read Online The Bay at Midnight by Diane Chamberlain - Free Book Online Page B

“And your little sister, Lucy, used to play that plastic violin.”
    “What?” I laughed. “I don’t remember that at all, but you’reprobably right because she does play the violin now. She’s in a band called the ZydaChicks.”
    He smiled. “There you go,” he said.
    I took a sip of my iced tea, wondering if Isabel would have shown any special talent if she’d been given the chance to grow up.
    Ethan was still smiling at me, his head cocked to one side.
    “What?” I asked.
    “You really, really look terrific,” he said.
    I felt myself blush. “Thanks,” I said.
    “I mean it,” he said, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Well, I guess we’d better talk about what we came here to talk about.” He lifted the briefcase from the floor and pulled out an envelope. “Abby told me she showed you a copy of the letter,” he said, handing it to me.
    I studied the envelope. Unlike the typed letter, the address of the police department was handwritten, printed in precise, slanted letters.
    “Why haven’t you taken it to the police?” I asked, shifting my focus from the envelope to his eyes. They were a clear, deep blue. I’d never noticed their color behind the Coke-bottle glasses he used to wear. “I mean, it’s obvious that Ned wanted them to have it.”
    “No, he obviously had second thoughts,” Ethan corrected me. His voice might have been gentle, but the words carried their own force and, although I didn’t agree with him, I liked how he stood up for himself. Glen always allowed people to steamroll right over him. “The letter was dated a couple of months before he died,” Ethan added.
    “But he didn’t throw it away,” I said.
    Ethan sighed. “Julie, if I take it to the police, they’re going to assume Ned did it. They’re going to start asking questions. Idon’t care what they ask me, but my father is elderly. I don’t want his last years to be spent thinking that his son murdered someone. I have a buddy at the police department and I ran this by him, in a hypothetical sort of way. He said they’d open the case up again. They didn’t do much with forensics back then, so they’d be looking at the evidence from a new perspective now. But they’d almost certainly want to talk with my father. I don’t want to put him through it.”
    I saw genuine concern in his face and couldn’t help but be touched by his reasoning. I hoped I could protect my mother from ever knowing anything at all about the letter, no matter what the outcome. I wasn’t sure I would be able to, though. I knew from the sort of books I wrote that Ethan’s friend at the police department was right. It didn’t matter how old the case was, the police would reopen it. Start fresh. I just prayed they could leave my mother out of it. Ross Chapman, though, would certainly be questioned, since he was the person who’d confirmed Ned’s alibi. “Is your mother also still alive?” I asked.
    The waitress arrived with our food before he could answer, and we fell into small talk with her about her sunburn. She’d fallen asleep on the beach, she said, pressing her hands to her crimson cheeks once she’d set our plates on the table.
    “I’m in agony, ” she said, with a flair for drama.
    Ethan reached into his briefcase again and pulled out a tube of lotion. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Put this on the burn. It takes the sting away instantly.”
    She looked surprised. “Thank you,” she said.
    “You can keep it,” Ethan added.
    “That’s so nice of you,” she said, slipping the tube into her apron pocket. “Don’t worry about a tip.”
    Once she’d left our table, I turned to him. “Do you always carry sunburn cream with you?” I asked. I liked that he’d talked so easily to the waitress. Glen would have looked right through her. Why did I keep comparing him to Glen?
    Ethan shrugged. “I love being outdoors,”he said, “but two minutes in the sun and I’m burned. I have to work up to