Page 92 of Death of a Grill Master

The windows of the restaurant caught their reflections—tired, worn down, and not nearly as confident as they’d been at the start of all this.

Hayley looked at Earl again, really looked at him—the deep worry in his eyes, the strain around his mouth—and felt something sink inside her.

“What if I’ve already cost you your job?” she whispered.

Neither of them answered.

Because it was entirely possible she had.

Chapter 30

Hayley tugged her jacket tighter as she stepped onto the boatyard lot, the tang of diesel and salt water thick in the crisp morning air. Fog hovered just above the waterline, slowly lifting to reveal lobster boats bobbing at their moorings. The boatyard was a maze of rigging, rusting trailers, and stacked buoys. She sidestepped a coiled hose, eyes scanning for someone who looked young, a little too wiry to be a seasoned fisherman, and possibly still mooning over her daughter.

She found him crouched near a flatbed, elbow-deep in a tangle of fireworks wire and fuse cable, muttering to himself as he tried to untangle a rat’s nest of cord.

Aiden Meeks. Mid-twenties, freckles, curly brown hair under a backward Celtics cap, and a T-shirt so scorched it might have caught fire mid-show. When she said his name, he startled so hard he smacked his head on the trailer’s edge.

“Oh—uh—hi! Mrs. Powell!” He scrambled to his feet, trying to brush off his shorts and not look like he’d just tased himself.

“Hayley,” she said with a smile. “You were in Gemma’s class, weren’t you?”

His ears turned beet red. “Yeah! AP Chem. God, she was … like, brilliant. She made covalent bonds sound … sexy. And nice. And so pretty. I mean, not that you aren’t also—uh—” He flailed. “Sorry.”

“She’s engaged,” Hayley said gently, amused.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Of course.” He gave a weak shrug. “But I can still pine a little, right?”

“You and every sous chef on the Eastern Seaboard.”

“Yeah, I heard she was a really big deal at the Flavor Network these days.”

Hayley leaned against a piling. “Listen, I’m looking into something from the fireworks show on Labor Day. You were on the pyro team?”

Aiden nodded quickly. “Yeah, mostly running cue checks and backup fuses. Nothing glamorous.”

“Did you notice anything strange? During the finale?”

He paused, lips pressing into a thin line as he rocked back on his heels. “Actually … yeah. I didn’t report it or anything, because I figured it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Try me.”

Aiden glanced around like someone might be eavesdropping from behind the nearby stacks of traps. “Right near the end of the show—like, during the last big volley—I saw something in the water.”

Hayley’s heart gave a quick jolt. “Something … what?”

“A person. Or at least I think it was a person. Floating out near the barge. Maybe fifty yards off? I caught it in my peripheral—only saw it because the fireworks were backlighting the bay. Looked like a head, shoulders, maybe in a wet suit. Just hovering there.”

“Not moving?”

“No. Like they were treading water, facing the boats.”

Hayley straightened. “Did they swim away? Surface? Anything?”

“I turned to check a fuse error and when I looked back, they were gone.” He shrugged helplessly. “I just figured it was a marine bio student from COA. They do weird stuff in the water all the time, right?”

She didn’t answer. Her mind was spinning. The location—fifty yards off the barge—would’ve put the diver within clear range of Hank’s boat. The timing—right during the finale—lined up exactly with the bullet trajectory Earl had described. And Tina’s video had shown fireworks at the same moment she’d heard the shot and when the man in the wet suit reached the shore.

Whoever that figure was, they’d waited in the water, used the finale’s sensory overload as cover, and fired.