Page 58 of Murder Will Out
Willow was frowning. “How many of those cars does he have?”
Nick did not hesitate. “A ’63 split-window Corvette Stingray in Daytona Blue? Only the one. But he has maybe nine of these old muscle cars—a couple of Mustangs, ’68 Firebird, a ’66 Cyclone, I think he’s even got an Olds Toronado too… The ’69 Camaro Z was totaled when Patricia went down the hill the other day, of course, so he’s down one—”
“And what’s that?” Willow interrupted, pointing to the asphalt, where a small brownish puddle had formed beneath the car in the few seconds it had stopped to pick up Naomi. Nick walked over and touched it, rubbed the slippery fluid between his fingers, smelled it. His eyes returned to Willow’s, aghast.
In the space of two heartbeats, Nick and Willow came to the horrifying realization of what was about to happen.
Before they could spring into motion, they heard the sound rush up the hill to them, the harsh slam of high-speed metal against rock, distant but clear as a bell. And seconds later, the gut-deep thud and boom of a gas tank exploding.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Things started happening quickly, too quickly for a stunned Willow to process. A roiling pillar of smoke and soot rose from the base of Boulder Hill, darker than the night sky into which it spiraled. The police found a puddle of brake fluid floating in the space where the Corvette had been parked. Notifications chirped from phone to phone as patrons gathered around in the parking lot in a combination of concern and fascination.
Willow was briefly comforted by the squeeze of Nick’s hand on her shoulder. Then Nick looked at her helplessly and said, “I have to go… I’m sorry, I have to—”
And he was gone. Her unexpected ally and almost-friend had to go be a cop.
There were more police, more questions, few of which Catherine and Willow were able to answer. Finally, they were allowed to leave. An officer they did not know escorted them back to Rina’s inn on Nick’s orders; Diana and Mac were already there. “Until we know what’s going on,” he’d said grimly, “I want all of you together, in one place, as close to the village as possible. Anotherofficer will come by when we’re done at the scene and stay overnight.”
For a change, Willow was disinclined to argue. Driving past the emergency vehicles lighting up the curve at the base of Boulder Hill, she tried not to look, but she couldn’t avoid seeing the hulk of still-smoking metal, black and charred in the circling red and blue lights.
No one could possibly have survived this. Naomi and Hank were gone.
At last, Willow was able to step into a quiet third-floor bedroom in Rina’s inn, away from people, and let herself collapse. Her mind had gone all muffled and blurry as though it had safely wrapped itself in a blanket of snow—the first overnight snow of the winter, walking to the chapel for her morning organ practice, when the sounds of footsteps and cars and voices were hushed and deadened beneath the soft layer of blinding white. Safe and alone, she let herself begin to relax into the blurry quiet, into sleep, only to feel the horror punch back into her like a fist to her center, threatening to burst her apart. She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to remember how to breathe, raggedly at first, easing her breath into a stable rhythm, then slowing it… remembering to hear music in her head, music that would ground her and keep her steady. Bach. The C minor passacaglia. Sue’s favorite, and hers. The gentle pulse of the pipe organ in her mind’s ear brought her back to earth, to the present. It quieted the terrified thing clawing at her insides, gave her space to exist, to release.
At last, she slid into sleep.
Rina was releasedfrom custody the next morning. Between the two new deaths for which she could not have been responsible, and medical confirmation that Geralt had far more lithium in his system than he could have gotten in a single dose, Rina had allbut dropped off the suspect list. She came back on the morning boat, Diana at her side.
When Rina stepped into the inn’s big farmhouse kitchen where Mac, Catherine, and Willow waited, there were hugs, warm and long; there were tears and words of encouragement. And there was worry; Rina was too quiet, too slow-moving. She was clearly exhausted; her eyes were wide and a little wild, and the circles under them were deep. No one talked about crime or death or accusations; they surrounded her with warmth and food and care, in her familiar kitchen and surrounded by the people she loved.
Before too long, though, Diana chased everyone out, proclaiming that Rina needed rest and peace. Mac had to work, Diana needed to get back to her own shop, and Catherine needed to make up for the time she’d missed at the library over the past few days. The inn’s guests had gone out on hikes and whale-watch tours, despite the threatening weather.
Willow stayed at the inn to be with Rina.
Rina’s first order of business was a long, hot shower, an attempt to scrub off every mote and memory of the past two days of her detention. She came back down to the kitchen, where Willow had prepared mugs of hot cocoa sweetened with maple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon. For several minutes, the pair sat in silence on the cushioned bench in the big kitchen’s breakfast nook, looking out at the rising wind and sea, hot mugs warming their hands.
After a time, Rina said softly, “Do you know, Sue used to sit right there, where you are sitting, in the evenings sometimes? We’d have our tea, or our cocoa, and talk about anything and everything.” She looked out the window at the ocean. “Even since she’s… gone, I sometimes come down here and sit and imagine her sitting there, and we have our little conversations—here, or down by the water, or anyplace we loved being together. Sometimes it feels so real I feel a jolt when I realize she isn’t reallythere.” She smiled sadly at Willow. “Real or not, it’s like having her back, for a little while at least. Is that unhealthy, do you think?”
Willow had gone still. But she forced herself to smile back. “I don’t think it sounds unhealthy at all. In fact, I’m a little envious.” She set down her mug on the table and leaned in a little. “If you don’t mind me asking, what does she say in those conversations? What do you talk about?”
Rina looked out the window at the sea. “We talk about everything and nothing. I tell her about my guests, I would often rant about Talbot, I—we—” She gave Willow a sad little smile. “We’ve talked about you. I guess it was my guilty conscience knowing about the letter I never sent, but the Sue in my mind kept bringing you up again and again. We’d argue, and… she’d be gone.”
Willow asked carefully, “What did she say about me?”
Rina gave a little shrug. “What you’d expect her to say, or more to the point, what I’d expect her to say. To give you a break, to help you, to remember you weren’t responsible for your parents’ bigotry. And at the jail—” She stopped, looking thoughtful. “Yes, I’d forgotten, I dreamed about her while I was there—dreamed or hallucinated, it’s hard to say; I didn’t think I’d slept at all, but if I dreamed of Sue, I must have.” Rina turned to Willow, her eyes troubled. “She reminded me to tell you the cabin is for you, if you want it. We talked about that before she died too, and the will she never got the chance to write. She always wanted you to have the cabin.” She paused. “And then… I think she said I should tell you about Robin. Which doesn’t make sense, since she hardly ever spoke of her, even to me. I think it hurt too much.”
“Who’s Robin?”
Rina said with obvious reluctance, “Robin was Sue’s daughter.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Willow’s eyes went wide. “Sue… had a daughter? Who is she? What happened?”
Rina took another swallow of cocoa and frowned into the mug. “If we’re going to have this conversation, we need something a little stronger.” She got up and fished a bottle of Jameson out of one of the kitchen cabinets, standing on tiptoe to reach it, and splashed some into each of their mugs before continuing.
When she did, Rina’s voice was bleak. “Robin died. Young—she was only a teenager, I believe. She came from Sue’s first marriage—yes, Susan was married once, and yes, to a man,” Rina said in response to Willow’s near gasp. “She was so young herself, barely out of college, and back then, it wasn’t easy to simply announce to the world that one wasn’t interested in men—getting married was what well-bred girls were expected to do. The marriage was mercifully brief—annulled, I think—with him not even knowing Sue was pregnant. She wanted nothing from him, and he took off.”
