Page 43 of Murder Will Out
Mac nodded. “Yeah. Risking that kind of inheritance, not to mention prison, for a guy? He’d have to have, well, one hell of a pepperoni.” Mac looked over the array of notes covering the walls of the café. “My brain hurts.”
Diana nodded. “There are pieces missing, and without them, this is going to stay a tangled mess. Let’s get some rest and try again tomorrow.”
It was nearlymidnight when Willow and Catherine finally left the shelter of the café to brave the chill winds, each clutching a box of end-of-day pastries—and Willow, some dog biscuits—to take with them, in exchange for a promise to text the rest of the group when they arrived home safely.
Willow was thinking about Patricia’s near miss after leaving the Raven. That night, the police and ambulance had come from inland, but so had Nick—out of uniform and on a motorcycle. What had he been doing that night?
Not really your business, an ugly little part of her brain whispered spitefully,but all the same, I wonder how wellheknows Naomi Talbot? And if he likes pepperoni pizza?
Willow unlocked the cabin door and went inside. Finn, after peeing on a stair post, followed quickly; he shivered, gave himself a thorough shake that started with his ears and rippled back to his tail, and trotted upstairs to the loft.
A few minutes later, Willow was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a mug of tea and a lemon bar, which Finn eyed hopefully. Exhausted but not ready to sleep, Willow pulled from her bag the typewritten page that had floated down as she’d left Cameron House earlier in the day. She examined the enigmatic messages, this time with helpful initials to identify the source material.ATwas Alfred Tennyson, and the quote’s instruction to “followthe quest despite of day or night,” was drawn from a poem unfamiliar to Willow. The second quote, familiar to anyone who’d studied it in high school, was from Geoffrey Chaucer’sThe Canterbury Tales: translated into modern English, it proclaimed that “murder will out”—that no secret can stay hidden forever, and the guilty will come to justice. Together the quotes left Willow fairly clear about what she was supposed to do: find out who has been killing the Cameron House heirs; bring the truth out into the light.
Rereading the words gave Willow a feeling of satisfaction. Joel might have thought she was useless, but there was someone in the house who clearly did not agree. Even if the task seemed impossible at the moment.
TheWidow’s Walknovel was still in her backpack, all but forgotten; still too wired to rest, Willow pulled it out and opened it. She wrapped Sue’s old granny-square afghan around her shoulders and began to read. Between sips of tea and bites of lemon bar, grudgingly shared with Finn, she let herself be drawn into the tale of a young woman whose German family had immigrated to England when she was a child, now struggling to hide her ancestry as the Second World War swept through Europe…
Willow woke witha start, still fully dressed and tangled in the afghan. Finn was sound asleep. The overhead light was still on, but even so, she could see that the blackness outside was beginning to yield to the first hints of gray; evidently, she had slept for several hours. She checked her watch; 3:56AM—still dark out, but a little less impenetrable than the deepest middle-night of the island; she’d forgotten how early dawn came here, especially in spring and summer. Willow sat up and shook herself off. Still groggy, she picked up the book from where it had dropped onto the floor and set it next to the half-drunk mug of tea and empty plate; she gave the still-sleeping Finn a suspicious look, fairly surethere had been at least a couple of bites of lemon bar left the last time she’d been awake.
Oh well. To the victor the spoils, she supposed. She dragged herself out of bed and crossed the room to turn off the light.
As soon as the room was in darkness, she saw it again, across the field by Cameron House: the bobbing and shifting illumination of a flashlight, outside the house this time, approaching the back door. The door opened; the person with the flashlight slipped inside.
Willow’s teeth set. This was no ghost—this was alivingperson trespassing on Cameron property, not for the first time. Was it a common thief, hoping to make off with small, valuable family heirlooms and antiques? Or were they searching for something else?
Finn was awake now too. He was still curled up in his habitual doughnut shape, but his ears were pricked up on full alert, and his eyes were fixed on her.
She should call the police, she thought, but abandoned the idea almost immediately. It wasn’t that she seriously believed Nick was Naomi’s affair partner, but now that the thought had entered her brain, she couldn’t seem to shake it. Besides, Nick was furious with her; most likely, he would suspect her of making it up, and maybe even accuse her of being the intruder herself. In any case, walking over to the house herself was absolutely the last thing she should do.
She was still thinking this as she pulled her maroon university hoodie over her head, put on her shoes, grabbed a pocket flashlight, and slipped quietly out of the cabin. Finn, of course, followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The wind gusted even harder now; Willow’s sweatshirt was far from sufficient to keep the cold at bay, and she was shivering within minutes. She didn’t need her flashlight, after all; the gentle lightening of the eastern sky provided enough illumination to find her way. Willow and Finn cut quietly across the Cameron House lawn and around to the back door, where Willow had seen the intruder enter. It was open—not wide but propped ajar, with a junk mail postcard covering the latch, in the usual method of a someone who wants to keep a door from locking behind them. In this instance, were they waiting for another intruder to come in after them? Or ensuring they would be able to get out?
The door gave a little creak as she and Finn slipped inside, sounding gunshot-loud to her ears. Willow froze, Finn motionless and alert by her side; God, she was horrible at this, she thought. Would they be caught before they even got inside?
But nothing happened.
After a few minutes of stillness, Willow’s eyes became accustomed to the dark of the big old kitchen, and she was able to make out the shapes of the hulking appliances around the wallsand the heavy island in the center.Keep calm, she told herself.Take it slowly.She carefully made her way through the kitchen, then cautiously stepped through the doorway into the gaping darkness of the entry hall.
After a moment, she realized she could see better here; a dim glow shone down from the second floor. Someone was in one of the rooms upstairs.
After a hair’s breadth of hesitation, Willow grasped the banister and put her foot gently onto the first step, and the second, miraculously avoiding noisy creaks or groans from the wood.What are you doing?she asked herself.You’ve seen this movie; you’ve scoffed at the nitwit heroine who dives headfirst into situations she is completely ill prepared for. You’ve always said, “That would never be me”—and yet, here you are…
With agonizing slowness, she carefully ascended, a reluctant Finn one step behind.
The faint light emanated from a partially closed door to the left of the staircase; by the time she was nearly to the top, Willow could hear movement on the other side of the door, footsteps on the floor and drawers opening and closing.
She was at the top step; she was on the landing, the soft rubber soles of her shoes soundless as she quietly moved closer to the door, hoping to catch a glimpse inside. She took two more steps, about to peek through the two-inch crack in the doorway; one more, and…
With her last step, her foot landed sharply on exactly the wrong floorboard, emitting a sharp creak the person in the room could not have missed.
She froze; so did the unknown intruder in the room, now still and silent except for quiet breathing. How many seconds did Willow have before she was caught? Two, maybe three? It was the middle of the night, no one knew she was here, and her odds of making it out of the house unharmed or possibly even alive were in a rapid nosedive. She whipped her head around in desperation,quickly calculating her options. Down the stairs and out? Even if she could make it to the first floor without being caught, she had already encountered the sticky front door bolt. The back door through which she’d entered? She cursed inwardly when she realized she’d forgotten to replace the postcard in the door latch; maybe it would open, but she wasn’t about to bet her life on it. Upstairs was out of the question; she’d never make it to the next floor unseen, or even down the hallway.
One second gone…
Run down the hall or upstairs, try to hide, and risk being trapped? Or dash downstairs, relying on speed and praying the doors would open to let her out before she was captured?
