Page 13 of Death of a Grill Master

She shook his shoulder. He flinched, groaned again, then slowly rolled over. His eyes fluttered open.

“Hayley?” he slurred. “What’s goin’ on?”

She took a step back, then pulled her phone from her back pocket and called Sergio. “You need to come below deck.”

Within seconds, Sergio appeared behind her. “Step back, Hayley.”

She did as she was told.

Sergio crouched by the bed. “Chase. You know where you are?”

Chase blinked at him. “We were drinkin’. Me and Hank. I don’t remember … I don’t remember anything after that.”

Hayley left Sergio to it and made her way back up the stairs, uneasy. There were sauce splatters on the deck. Overturned cups. A stained rag was strewn on top of the grill station. The deck was sticky from spilled beer. No one had bothered to clean up after dinner. Or maybe they never got the chance.

She turned toward the cooler near the prep station. Its lid sat slightly ajar.

Curious, Hayley nudged it open with her shoe.

Inside were ribs, half-submerged in melted ice, their bones poking up like fingers.

And next to them—black metal.

A gun.

She let out a sharp breath, slammed the lid shut, and turned back toward the hatch.

“Earl,” she whispered as soon as she saw him climbing aboard from a Coast Guard cruiser that had just arrived on the scene. “I found the gun. In the cooler. But be sure to tell Sergio you found it.”

Earl blinked. “What?”

“Just trust me. I think it’s better if he doesn’t think I’m sticking my nose in things.”

Earl grinned. “Happy to take the credit.”

He turned and called out, “Sergio! Got something here!”

Hayley stepped aside as Sergio rushed up from below deck. Earl flipped open the cooler, and Sergio’s eyes darkened.

Bruce appeared beside her. “What is it?”

“Most likely the murder weapon,” Sergio answered solemnly.

Hayley stared out across the water, the town lights twinkling onshore, the sounds of the crowd now replaced by the slap of waves and the creak of the boat in its moorings.

Hank Desmond had been shot.

His body dumped—or dragged—or dropped.

Someone had made a real mess out here.

Chapter 6

Rain threatened but never came.

Instead, Bar Harbor was blanketed in the kind of heavy, late-summer humidity that made your skin feel like it had been brushed with chowder steam. Hayley dabbed at her forehead with a cocktail napkin and took a long sip of her Jack & Coke as she sat with Bruce at a corner table inside Drinks Like A Fish.

They were early for their double date—Liddy was bringing Doug Marsh, a man Hayley already knew from Kelton and Betty’s wedding reception a few days ago. He’d been charming, flirty, and had definitely caught Liddy’s attention.