Read Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW for Free Online

sails billowed on blue water.
    Mother Nature mocked me with her beauty.
    I pushed the send button and tried Melanie again. The traffic ahead surged forward. I was glad to be in the right lane so I could exit the Causeway when I reached land.
    "Ashley!" Melanie screamed, identifying me by my number. "I've been calling you and calling you."
    So that's why I couldn’t get through.
    "Where are you?" she shouted. In the background I could hear loud voices, a lot of people. A restaurant? She had not been in an accident after all?
    "Melanie? Are you all right?" I asked.
    "Oh, Ashley, you don't know what's happened. Where are you? You've got to get here."
    I told her I was driving off the bridge onto Harbor Island.
    "Thank God!" she exclaimed. "I'm here. At the Bitterman house. Come straight . . .”
    I lost her.
    The Bitterman house? On Harbor Island? "Where?" I asked. I was yelling, which we tend to do when we cannot hear.
    Static buzzed in my ear.
    "Oh for God's sake!" she cried. "The Bitterman house. My listing on Point Place. You're almost . . . " Her voice faded in and out.
    " . . . listened to me you'd know."
    With Melanie, everything was always my fault.
    "Okay, I know the house you mean," I said. "I'm almost there."
    "Well, hurry! You can't imagine what these idiots . . . "
    Again I lost her.
    "Melanie, you're breaking up."
    "Hurry, Ashley, . . . make the police let you . . ."
    Then she was gone.
    Police? What was going on?
    Right before the bridge over Banks Channel, I cut a sharp right onto Channel Drive and immediately hit a police barricade. A uniformed officer motioned for me to turn around but instead I pulled over, got out of my car and approached him.
    "Officer, I'm Ashley Wilkes. I just got a call from my sister, Melanie Wilkes, who is somehow involved in this . . . whatever is going on -- what is going on? I've got to get through."
    "No one's allowed in here, Miss. You have to leave. This is police business," the officer told me curtly.
    "Oh, wait, there's Officer Meriweather ," I cried. "Officer Meriweather !" I called to a second man wearing the Wrightsville PD uniform.
    Meriweather turned and walked toward us.
    Officer Hank Meriweather was someone who knew my family well. He had issued speeding citations to Melanie on many occasions, but mostly he'd lectured her about the risks of driving too fast for conditions. He was a good police officer, concerned with the well being of the citizens within his jurisdiction. He had been a friend of our father, the late Judge Peter Wilkes.
    "Miss Wilkes," he greeted me soberly. "It's okay, you can let her through," he told his colleague.
    "What's going on?" I asked Meriweather . "How is Melanie involved? Is she all right?"
    "We've got a serious problem here, Miss Wilkes. Get in my car and I'll take you to her."
    I removed the keys from the ignition, picked up my purse and cell phone, and got into the PD cruiser with Hank Meriweather . We drove onto Point Place where beautiful three-story cottages faced the water. Melanie had a listing here, the Bitterman place, as she had reminded me, with its own boat dock and worth several million dollars.
    Skillfully, Meriweather maneuvered the cruiser between what seemed like every cop car in the Wrightsville PD's fleet, passed a fire truck and pulled up behind an ambulance. Melanie's red Mercedes was parked in the driveway. I was almost too scared to speak.
    "What happened here?" I gasped.
    The doors to the house were standing open; police officers searched the grounds and crime scene techs rushed in and out of the house.
    Just then the paramedics came out, wheeling a gurney between them. On the gurney lay a fully zipped body bag. I stumbled out of the car.
    "Melanie! Melanie!" I cried and ran toward the gurney.
    Meriweather caught my arm. "Miss Wilkes, take it easy. That's not her. Your sister is not the victim."
    I watched as the gurney was wheeled to the ambulance. The construction team from the house next door that was under