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“Is he still here?” I asked, my words slurring together as I worked to get them out of my mouth as quickly as possible. “Is he helping to shut things down and send people over toward the park?”

“Last I knew, he was stationed over on Third Street.”

“Let’s go,” I said, breaking into an immediate run.

Nan pulled right up at my side and matched my pace. At some point, she must have given Octo-Cat to Charles, because he ran a few paces behind carrying both the cat and the dog as he puffed along.

Mr. Gable hadn’t joined us in the pursuit, probably because he didn’t want to leave E.B. on her own.

“I just can’t believe all of that,” Nan said. “I trust Mr. Gable, but I also know Harvey didn’t do this because he was with me the whole time. Do you think he knew about Bill?”

“There’s a chance,” I said between huffs. Running was still not a strong point for me, and somehow I’d managed to do it twice in one day now.

We ran another block before rounding the corner onto Third Street. And while I’d never seen Bill Randone a day in my life, I spotted him immediately because there he stood with Harvey Milton as the two carried on an animated discussion.

Suddenly they both glanced up and spotted us racing toward them. Randone immediately took off in the other direction at a sprint.

I grabbed my phone, still running, and dialed Officer Bouchard to let him know what we’d discovered and that his primary suspect was now on the run.

Nan pulled ahead, closing the rest of the distance to Mr. Milton faster than I could ever hope to move.

Then slapped him right across the face.

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t think I’d ever seen my Nan quite as angry as she was that day.

“You knew,” she spat, her normally warm and friendly eyes saturated with a shocking coldness. “This whole time you knew and were probably even feeding information back to your friend.”

Mr. Milton cleared his throat. Something I now realized he did whenever he felt nervous.“I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected.”

“Oh, yoususpected,” Nan repeated sarcastically. “So what were you? Warning him just now?”

“No!” Mr. Milton finally raised his voice to join in the fight. “I was confronting him with my suspicions.”

“And giving him a chance to run.” I jumped right into the fray as well. “Why wouldn’t you have gone straight to the police?”

Picking up on our emotions, Paisley began to bark and growl and kick out her back legs like a chicken scratching at pebbles.“Bad man! Bad, bad man! No treats for you!”

Charles and Octo-Cat watched silently as the three women—two human and one dog—ganged up on a very guilty looking Harvey Milton.

“I don’t agree with what he did, but I do agree with why he did it.” This statement drew gasps from all of us, even Charles and Octo-Cat, who had chosen to mostly stay out of the confrontation.

“What?” Nan and I exploded in unison.

Mr. Milton shook his head. This time he didn’t clear his throat, clearly feeling conviction in the words he was about to speak.“Caraway Island needs the Holiday Spectacular far more than Glendale ever did. The whole thing is a tourism goldmine, and our city is struggling. Due to the isolation, few ever manage to venture over. Each year it gets worse. Businesses are closing, and our community is becoming more and more cutoff from the rest of the area. We need something… A magic bullet, if you will.”

He winced.“Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.”

I laughed bitterly.“The fact that you would say such a thing—even accidentally—just goes to show what a horrible person you actually are. It’s like you think it’s okay that your friend killed two people to try to bring more money into your city.”

“Of course it’s not okay,” Mr. Milton responded, his gaze narrowing at me, “but we tried everything else and nothing worked.”

“Everything short of murder,” Nan mumbled and crossed her arms over her chest defensively.

Mr. Milton continued, keeping his eyes fixed on me.“When the planning started up for this year, Bill and I pushed for moving the festival to Caraway Island, but Gable and the others were quick to shoot us down. Bill said that Glendale wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping the festival once a well-respected outsider got murdered on their watch. Naturally, Caraway would come to the rescue and agree to host going forward.”

“And Bill told you all of this after the fact, I’m assuming.” I tapped my foot in irritation. “Was this before or after your friend killed two innocent people? Oh, and the cops are already after him by the way. I spoke to my good friend Officer Bouchard while my grandmother was busy beatingyou up.”

I thought I heard Charles chuckle under his breath, but it was hard to tell over the sound of Paisley’s harried barking.

“Obviously, it wasafter. I already told you I had nothing to do with the murders.”

“What about Fred Hapley?” I asked. “You mentioned shooting a well-respected outsider. But Fred wasn’t either of those things. I’m sure most people tried to avoid his insurance sales pitch whenever they saw him coming.”