Don't Go Home by Carolyn Hart Page A

film stopped.
    Hyla’s eyes scoured the image. She committed every detail to memory.
    A young man faced the counter. Approximately five foot ten. An oversized straw hat with a brim shadowed his face, hid his hair except for a fringe of thick blond curls on either side. Large aviator sunglasses, puffy cheeks, a bushy black mustache, smooth unlined skin. A Hawaiian shirt hung outside worn jeans, a bulge near the waistline. Lean, muscular arms extended below the short sleeves of the shirt. The arms looked fit, no stranger to weight bands at the gym, belying the soft rounding beneath the shirt. Worn Adidas running shoes. The left shoe had a tear along one side. Weight? A beer belly would add ten, fifteen pounds, make it one eighty-five. Was the belly authentic or artfully managed by a strapped-on pillow? Subtract the bulge, likely one seventy.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    B illy Cameron declined a mug of coffee and a Danish. He looked fit and fresh in a short-sleeved white shirt, tan trousers, and brown leather loafers. His blond hair, flecked with white, was bleached a light gold by the summer sun. His face was tanned by the unrelenting sun of the late-summer afternoons that he and Mavis spent watching their son, Kevin, play baseball. The tan emphasized the deep blue of his eyes. He remained standing by the coffee bar, big and impressive, and those startlingly blue eyes studied Annie.
    â€œMidmorning yesterday you alerted the inn that Death on Demand was no longer associated with the Griffith book event.” It was a statement.
    Annie had expected this moment to come. Of course he had spoken to Rita White. “Yes.”
    For an instant, Billy’s broad mouth quirked in a slight grin. “Can’t you do a little better than that? For starters, had you told Alex Griffith that you were withdrawing?”
    â€œYes.”
    Billy folded his arms, waited.
    Annie took a quick breath. “The whole thing came without warning. I mean, when I came to work Monday morning I didn’t know much about Alex Griffith except that he was a huge author and he’d grown up here. I didn’t see the Sunday paper because I was gone this weekend. Max—”
    Billy nodded. “Fishing.”
    A small town at work. Billy knew them, knew charter captains, loved to fish; likely he and Max had talked about the old-friends-on-a-boat outing.
    â€œRight. So I went to Savannah for the weekend.” She was filling in more than he wanted but she had to make the point about the
Gazette
story. “I drove straight to the store when I got off the ferry Monday morning. Rae Griffith came to see me. That’s when I realized I knew some of his family.” Billy was an island boy born and bred. She looked at him curiously. “Did you know Alex Griffith grew up here?”
    He nodded. “He’s years younger than I am. Alex was in the same class as my brother Ben.”
    At her blank look, another slight smile. “Ben went to West Point, career military, stationed at Wiesbaden in Germany right now.”
    Annie once again realized the gulf between native islanders and outsiders like her and Max. They were part of the community but . . .there would always be a
but
. “Anyway, I knew he was from here and famous and I was thrilled that his wife wanted Death on Demand to host a talk. I didn’t know about the article in the
Gazette
”—she looked inquiringly at Billy and he nodded—“until Monday afternoon and by then I was committed. At least that’s how I felt. But I read the article several times and then I reread
Don’t Go Home.
When I looked at those questions in the
Gazette
and thought about the characters in the book, I didn’t like the idea he was going to name names last night.”
    â€œBut you didn’t do anything about it until Wednesday morning?”
    Here’s where the ice thinned. How long would it take Billy to decide something in