Page 45 of Murder Will Out
“Annabel? This was—is—your room, isn’t it?”
For a split second, Willow thought she saw a girl—no, it was a woman, no longer young, a sea of silver-white hair flowing loose around her face and shoulders—sitting on the window seat, wearing an old-fashioned nightdress. She hugged her knees to her chest, gazing out at the bay as Willow had minutes before. Turning her face to Willow, she smiled, a smile full of tears and years and joy and pain… and then there was only the wavy glass of the window and the sun shining into the little room.
Willow swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you, Annabel. You might have saved my life tonight. And… thank you for showing me your room. It’s beautiful.”
All was quiet; Annabel did not respond. Maybe she had gone, Willow thought; maybe she had never even been there, was just a figment of Willow’s exhausted imagination.
Willow stood, replacing the books and doll in the little cedar chest. She hesitated, photo album in one hand and locket in the other. Not knowing if there was anyone there to listen, Willow said awkwardly, “I hope it’s okay; I’d like to take these with me. It will help me—help us—find a solution, and follow the quest…”
A faint giggle from the window seat; then a rush of dizziness came over Willow. When her head cleared, she was sitting on the bed again. The locket was no longer in her hand but around her neck.
Annabel’s sense of humor was a little unsettling.
Willow swallowed hard. “Okay then… thank you. I’ll bringthem back, I promise.” She tucked the pendant inside her hoodie and turned to leave, but paused in the doorway and looked back. “I’m sorry for your loss. For all your losses. If there is anything in my power I can do to help you, I promise I will do it.”
The air in the room shimmered, as though in approval, and went quiet again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Later that morning, Finn lay sprawled in a sunny rectangle on the rug in the cabin. He was unperturbed when Nick tapped lightly on the screen door; this was Nick, after all, and Finn was considered a deputy on the village police force, at least in his own mind.
When Nick’s quiet knock got no response beyond a measuring look from the cabin’s half-hearted watchdog, the police officer looked deeper into the cabin and saw Willow sound asleep on the couch beneath an old granny-square afghan, an open photo album balanced precariously in her hands. He realized he had never seen Willow’s face at rest before; even as a teenager, she had seemed to move through life with an aura of perpetual discomfort—the kind he remembered from Easter Mass as a child, wedged into a pew wishing he could scratch or fidget or loosen his tie but knowing his older sister’s elbow in the ribs, or worse, a reproachful glare from his mother, would be his reward if he did. Willow Stone wore that look all the time: desperately uncomfortable, desperately determined not to let it show. But now,in sleep, she looked… different. Younger. Uncertain, and a little vulnerable.
He tapped the door again, slightly louder. This time, Finn assisted with a littlewoofunder his breath. Willow shifted on the couch; the photo album slid from her fingers and landed with a thump on the floor, jarring her awake. At first, she looked sleepy and confused; then she saw Nick on the other side of the screen door, and her face clicked back into its old defensive expression. “Oh, it’s you,” she said irritably.
Nick didn’t mind. He was more comfortable with antagonistic, pain-in-the-butt Willow than vulnerable, sad Willow, anyway.
“Yeah, happy to see you too. Who were you expecting?”
She dragged herself off the couch and opened the door for him. “I hold out hope that someday one of the Hemsworth brothers will knock on my door, but I’m not holding my breath.” She made a face. “I suppose I should offer you coffee or something?” she said somewhat ungraciously.
“Only if you’re getting some for yourself. And frankly, you look like you could use it,” he said, eyeing her sleep-fuddled expression and drooping face.
“Charming,” she muttered, though she knew he was right. The clock over the stove said it was a little after ten. She did not know how long her inadvertent catnap on the couch had been, but it couldn’t begin to compensate for the nearly sleepless night before. She headed into the kitchen to put the kettle on, setting the photo album on the counter, and Nick followed, taking a seat on one of the stools by the kitchen island. She got out the battered but serviceable French press, spooned ground coffee into it, and turned back to him. “Well? Why are you here?”
He had picked up the photo album from where she’d set it down. “Where did you get this?” he asked, curiously paging through it.
Willow tensed. “I think it’s from Cameron House; Sue must have found it and brought it over.” The lie slid out with surprising ease.
Nick paused on a page with two young men standing side by side, arms around each other. He looked closer. “Wait, is this—this is Geralt Talbot, isn’t it? When he was, what, in his twenties? Wow.”
Willow came around and looked down at the photo. “Yup. That’s Geralt.”
“Who’s the other guy?” he asked curiously, gazing down at the young man in the gray pin-striped suit standing next to Geralt.
Willow had been staring at exactly this photo when she had dozed off; it had caught her, gripped her. The sadness had not yet caught the young man; in this moment of being photographed, he looked vibrant and happy and ready to live forever. “It’s Peter Talbot, Geralt’s brother,” she said. “He died young; I texted Catherine earlier to see if she can find a record of what happened to him.” She deftly slipped the album away from him, closed it, and set it on the counter behind her. “So, again, what are you doing here?”
With the bluntness she was coming to expect from him, Nick asked, “What areyoudoing here?”
Willow froze. “Um… making you coffee? You’ll need to be more specific,” she said, feigning lightness.
He was not fooled. “You know that’s not what I mean,” he said, a tinge of exasperation in his voice. “After fifteen years, you show up on Little North one day. Not only that, you show up exactly on the day of Sue’s memorial service. Not for the wedding, which Sue herself could have reasonably invited you to, but thememorial. And I have questions.”
He started ticking them off on his fingers, his voice rising a little between each item. “One, if you were completely estranged, how did you know she’d died and when her service would be? Two, if you both wanted to rebuild the relationship, whyweren’tyou invited to the wedding? Three, on this safe little island where there are essentially no murders ever—why, within a couple of days of your showing up, do I now have a homicide by poisoningand an attempted murder to deal with, and how did you happen to be on the scene for both?” He crossed his arms and glowered at her. “So I’ll ask again. What exactly are you up to, Willow Stone?”
What am I supposed to tell him?Willow thought.“Well, you see, Nick, it turns out Cameron House is haunted, and I’m on a mission from a ghostly historical society.”She could imagine how that would be received.
To buy herself a little more time, she turned back to the counter and pushed the plunger on the coffee press. She poured a cup for each of them. “Take anything in it?” she asked.
