Page 69 of Murder Will Out
As quickly and quietly as she could, she made her way down the hall to the ballroom. Surely there would be a way down to the kitchen from there.
She heard the slam of the door. And moved faster.
The bolt hadslid back into place, Audra realized, and it was not going to yield this time. “I’ll have to find some WD-40 when I move in,” she muttered. “This is bloody inconvenient.” After struggling for a few moments, she took a breath. Patricia wasn’t going anywhere; Audra had seen the blood pooling beneath her, heard the gasping before she lost consciousness, seen the pallor on her face. If she wasn’t dead already, she would be soon; even if she survived the next half hour, she wasn’t going to be getting up and going anywhere. Audra could finish the job as soon as she took care of the little interloper from Chicago.
She stepped back into the library. “Yoo-hoo, Willow,” she called out softly, mockingly, as though she knew she had no reason to rush or panic. “I know you’re in here. At least I hope you are, because you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Audra listened intently but heard only silence. Willow couldn’t hide forever, Audra thought, but it would be easier to draw her out than to chase her down.
“If you’d asked me yesterday,” Audra continued almost conversationally, “I would have said I didn’t believe in ghosts, but after tonight—yeah, I’d say Cameron House is most definitely, fully,abundantlyhaunted. And I think you knew that. More, I think you like the spooky little bastards, with their slamming doors and mind games and all.” She made a quick move around a bookcase to shine her light into another corner. Nothing there.
“And it makes me wonder… when a haunted house burns down, where do the ghosts go?”
She stealthily moved along the floor to the next alcove, shining her light into the little space, shifting the curtains to make sure no one was hiding. Nothing.
“No answer to that one? Unless you’d like to find out the hard way, I suggest you step out and we can have a little conversation.”
She whirled back to face the room; she’d find the little coward and—
Audra stopped. There was now a fire in the fireplace, cracklingmerrily, sending its warm light around the far end of the room. A man sat calmly on the hearthstone, silver-threaded dark hair smoothly combed back, a neat beard and old-fashioned spectacles on his face. He was calmly writing in a ledger.
Audra frowned. “What the—?” she murmured, and hesitantly walked in the direction of the firelight, the lavender pistol pointed at the man by the fire.
He looked up at her, ignoring the firearm. “Miss Audra DuBois, I believe?” he said politely.
She did not answer. The man set his book and spectacles down on the hearth and stood. “My name is Joel Drummond; I manage the affairs of the Cameron family.” He smiled politely. “I represent the North Islands Historical Society.”
Patricia’s first awarenessas she drifted back to consciousness was cold, a cold that had nothing to do with the predawn chill or the storm that had preceded it. Cold all over, except for the hot ball of pain somewhere in her midsection. And wet—from the blowing rain above and the growing sticky puddle beneath her. Every time she tried to inhale, a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest cut her short.
Unconsciousness was better. But a voice had called her name, she thought. Was someone here with her?
She managed to turn her head, just a little, but the small movement brought on a cresting wave of dizziness and more pain.
She was alone on the porch.
Everything went dark again. And she welcomed it. The dark didn’t hurt so much.
Willow had guessedright; she quickly found the subtly placed staircase on the other side of the ballroom and let herself down to the kitchen, and from there to Sue’s room.
The electricity was still out, but some helpful soul had lit a gas lamp and set it on the little table just inside Sue’s room, someone who could open and close doors but who perhaps couldn’t enter the room themselves.
Willow stepped inside, then shut the door and shoved pillows across the crack at the bottom of the door to block the light, hoping Audra would not find her here. She studied Sue’s elaborate desk, realizing Effie had been right; shedidknow where to look. She just hadn’t looked hard enough. Like Cameron House itself, with its concealed doors and covert passages, this desk all but announced a proclivity for false drawer bottoms and secret compartments. Audra, too, had been through this desk already, but had she thought to look beyond the obvious?
Willow started her search, methodically moving from drawer to cubby, feeling for sliders or levers or false bottoms. She found several, but all were empty.
As she searched, Willow could feel the house gathering itself; she could feel the now-familiar sense of breathing in the walls, of eyes on her… The house was awake.
She didn’t know how much time she had, but it wouldn’t be enough. In frustration, she sat back, glaring at the desk.
The tree in the center of the carving caught her eye, casting its long and loose branches flowing around every part of the desk, little birds nestled here and there in its branches. She started in surprise as she recognized the pattern.It’s like the pillow, she realized with a jolt.Or pretty close to it.Willow realized something else as well: The loose, draping curves of the branches belonged to one particular kind of tree, and one she knew well. “It’s a willow tree,” she breathed. She bent closer to the carving of the tree, looking between the branches… and then she saw it. Of all the birds carved on the desk, only one was singing. Only then did she remember the single brown bird that had been embroidered into Effie’s pillow.
A robin.
Willow reached forward and pressed on the little carved bird, smiling as she heard the quietsnickof a panel opening.
The little drawer the robin had revealed held a small stack of photos and an envelope—Sue’s most hidden treasures, the story she had kept secret: a story of a robin, a story held in safety until a willow could come and discover it.
Willow carefully retrieved the contents of the drawer, moving quickly, looking at each photo one at a time before setting it down on the desk in front of her in a single long row. A young Sue playing patty-cake with a toddler in dark pigtails. Sue and the girl standing by the ocean, throwing rocks into the water. A few more as the girl aged, first with a bowl haircut, then one in valiant imitation of Farrah Fawcett’s elaborate feathered style. In each photo, the pair posed in a different distinctive location: one by the Golden Gate Bridge, another by the Grand Canyon.
