I nodded. It practically did, but even so, I had more. "There's a bag of yarn in your closet, but not a single hook or needle."

"How do you know that?" she cut me off to ask.

Oops.

I waved my hands in the air. "That's not important. Where are your knitting needles, Larken?"

She admitted to not having time to craft, so why wouldn't she have the needles with the yarn? All the supplies I'd purchased from the store and never used were still in the bag right where they belonged, yet hers were gone. Why?

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. Her cheeks turned red as she stood with one fist against her chest and her other hand at her side. "A friend bought me a case to put them in. I keep it in my top dresser drawer."

Damn it. We didn't look inside her dresser, only under it. There hadn't been enough time to do a full inspection of the home even without furniture.

Larken's voice shook as she said, "I would never hurt Melissa."

"Maybe you didn't mean to. It was an accident." I doubted she met her here with a pair of knitting needles to accidentally kill her, but I liked to give suspects a way out, if possible. Sometimes it helped them confess.

I tipped my head at her and waited for the confession.

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. "You don't believe me? Fine, let's go see them."

"See what?" I asked. The distraction let Broadrick put half his body in front of me. I appreciated the support, but I doubted Larken had a pair of knitting needles on her to stab me with right then.

"My knitting needles. I'll prove to you they're in my top drawer. Come on." She turned around on a single heel and marched toward the condo door. Broadrick headed after her, but I hesitated.

"You should never let a killer take you to a secondary location," I whispered to him when I caught up to him halfway through the kitchen.

He shook his head and rubbed at that spot above his eye. "I think we're beyond that point now, babe."

"We'll be right back," I yelled out and hoped the men conducting the inspection heard me. If we never returned, they could call the cops.

Larken led us past Barbie's apartment and out into the main walkway that ran around the island, connecting each building.

"You really don't have to do this, Larken," Broadrick said.

She didn't slow, and I slapped him in the arm. "Yes, she does."

How else would we prove she killed Melissa? Without something to push her toward that confession, we were out of luck. The cops weren't even looking for a murderer.

Larken marched to her building without a word. She opened the door for herself and almost let it close before we got there. I didn't blame her. The elevator was already waiting, but we spent an awkward thirty-second ride to her floor.

It took her two times to put in the code to her place, but once she had the door unlocked, she stormed in. Broadrick and I followed her. His pace slowed as we passed the living room with nothing but a futon and a floor television. I'd already processed the lack of stuff. Larken led us right into her bedroom. There she yanked open the top dresser drawer and pulled out a long case made from white fabric with big bright red roses on it. She tossed it to me, and I unzipped it to find four knitting needles. Two sets in different sizes. My thumb turned them over in the case. They looked brand new.

She sniffled, and I jerked my head upward. Oh, no. Tears fell from Larken's eyes as she wiped away at them, smearing her black eyeliner. "I would never kill Melissa."

"I'm sorry," I said, handing her back the case. The knitting needles used to kill Melissa had marks on the barrels like they'd been well-used. She'd been telling the truth when she said she didn't have time to knit. "I heard the stories of your feud."

"Not everyone on the island knows everything, even if they think they do," she said, sounding angry but still crying. "Melissa actually bought me this knitting case."

"Melissa bought it for you?" I couldn't have heard that correctly.

She nodded and tucked the case back into her top drawer like it was worth a million dollars. "She thought the gag about out-spending each other at Stitchin' Stories was so funny that she got us matching ones."

What? "Why would she do that? Did you check it for bugs? Poison?"

If the women were enemies, I wouldn't keep a gift from her. It might try to kill her while she slept.

Larken sniffled and chuckled at the same time, sounding like a dying duck. "We weren't enemies. We're cousins."

"What?" My teeth snapped together in confusion.

She shrugged. "Melissa loved real estate. After being here a few years, she said everyone on the island loved drama and gossip. I came to work for her and help with her listing load. One night after Thanksgiving at our grandma's, we had a few glasses of wine and hatched this plan for me to open a competing office."

"So..." I tried to wrap my head around her unexpected confession. "You were family but working against each other."

"No." She shook her head hard and dropped to the edge of her bed. "She paid for me to get my real-estate license, found me the office space, and worked as my broker. She was practically my boss. We did everything behind the scenes and played up the rival pieces in public. No one dug too deep because they liked the story."

"Wow," Broadrick said.

I had to agree with him. "I don't know what to say."

Larken shrugged, giving her eyes a few more wipes even as fresh tears still flowed down her cheeks. "Now I've inherited her business, but I have no idea what to do. Everyone on the island thinks we hated one another, but she was my best friend. If I tell them the truth now, no one will believe me, and I'll lose all their trust."

"You'll be enemies forever." That's their legacy. Hurt bubbled up out of my chest as she nodded and sniffled again.

She ran her open palms down the leg of her pink pants. "No one will ever know how much I loved and admired her."

"I'll know," I said confidently. She jerked her head up at me with worry in her eyes. "I won't tell a soul, but I'll always know. Your secret is safe here." I touched my chest.

The ends of Larken's lips tipped up. "Thanks. I guess now we need to get back to your inspection. The show must go on." She raised a fist halfheartedly.

Broadrick held up his hand when she stood. "You stay here and take a break. I'll finish up with the inspectors. If they're not giving a report today, there's no worry."

Look at my man being all in charge and handling things. Damn, it made him hot.

"He's right," I said when it looked like she wanted to argue. "Broadrick is great at this kind of thing. He'll take care of it."

He peeked over at me, and I smiled. Hopefully, I didn't oversell.

Larken finally agreed to let Broadrick handle her commitment at the condo, and we started back that way so they didn't have to wait for us.

I made it halfway before I voiced my new concern. "I don't know what to do, Broadrick. If Larken didn't do it, I have no other decent suspects. There might be a case I can't solve."

"You always say that." He grabbed my hand to finish the walk, holding it.

I let our joined hands swing at our sides. "Yeah, but this time I mean it."

"You always say that, too," he said around a laugh.

His overconfidence wasn't helping. "I don't have access to the stuff I need."

Without the ability to sneak into the police station and barrow evidence, I had an enormous gap in my clues. I'd endured tons of distress-even pretending to be a girlfriend-to make my contact at the morgue's office in Maine. There was nothing like that here.

"Plus, your island rules are really cramping my style," I said when we reached the outside of our new building.

Broadrick laughed, but he did not throw those rules out the window. "I'll stay until they finish the inspection and then head into the office."

"Okay, I'm going to grab NB and head back this way to take him on our walk with Barbie before our stories."

He kissed me on the forehead. "Look at you making friends."

Yeah, and accusing others of murder. I'd had a real impact on the island, and it wasn't all good. Rather than head right to grab NB, I took a different turn and walked toward the bakery. I'd pick up a snack to make up for missing breakfast.

Peggy had the door to the bakery propped open, and the AC blasted me in the face as I walked in.

"Hey," I said and gave a small wave to Peggy behind the counter and the short blonde woman on the other side who was paying for a purchase. She turned and smiled at me. A blue and green scarf brushed against the edge of her chin, and I studied her for a second. "You're Brenna. Right? Hadria's daughter? We're buying her condo."

Her smile grew. "Nice to meet you. Mother is glad to have a friendly couple moving into her place."

"We're excited about it." I moved off to the side but kept chatting. If I planned to live on the island forever, I had to do a better job of making friends. Compliments always worked. "I love your scarf."

I swear I'd seen the design somewhere but couldn't remember where. My brain and the slight headache fought with my memory over the scarf. Did Larken have one like it? Or someone else on the island. The women here seemed to wear them like they'd created their own fashion statement.

"Thank you. It's from Italy." She ran her hands over the delicate fabric as Peggy handed her a black bag of her purchases.

My eyes narrowed. "I swear I've seen it somewhere. Where can I buy one?"

I'd need to dress like island women if I wanted to blend in.

Brenna gave me a gasp like I'd offended her or used the big bad swear word. "That's impossible. It's a custom scarf from Italy. There are only two in the entire world. My mother had them commissioned for both of us."

"Oh, wow. That's nice." Pretentious, but whatever. She left the bakery, meeting an older blonde woman on the sidewalk before they both walked toward the resort. It must have been her mother from the jawline and shape of their noses. I stepped to the edge to place my order. We'd never officially met Hadria.

Where had I seen that scarf?

Four cupcakes later, I said good-bye to Peggy and walked outside carrying a bag of deliciousness.

I had to have seen the scarf on the island because no one else really wore them. At least not the people I hung around with outside island life.

But where?

The bright sun hit me directly in the eyes, and as I squinted to save my retinas, the memory of the scarf hit me as my headache flashed into a full-blown migraine. I remembered where I saw the match to Brenna's scarf.

Clutched in Melissa's dead hand.