Page 71 of Murder Will Out
“I didn’t,” Dot murmured to Dellie, shaking her head.
“I hoped,” Dellie said. “But no, we didn’t know.”
Willow glanced sideways at Joel. “I… wondered,” he said. “But I was not sure until now.”
Willow took a step closer to Audra. “Your problem is you neglected to do any actual research; all you cared about was what you convinced yourself you’re entitled to. But Cameron House needs more than Cameron blood, and it definitely needs more than you. You never bothered to learn anything about Sue Davis, did you? For example, that once long ago she was married? That she had her own child?” Willow saw Audra’s eyes widen. “Or that her child died young? And if you didn’t know that…”
Willow saw in her mind the images in those last three photographs from the hidden drawer in Sue’s elaborately carved desk: The first, Sue standing next to a young and very pregnant Robin, outside an ancient brick hospital; the second, Sue and Robin in the hospital, holding a newborn. Robin looked tired, but she was smiling; it was the only smile Willow had seen on the young woman’s face in any of the photographs.
Willow continued, working hard to keep her voice from shaking. “If you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t know Sue’s daughter had a baby too.”
Robin was not in the third picture, taken somewhere else far away from Little North, perhaps Michigan. This one showed Sue, a Sue who looked like all the joy had been sucked out of her world, standing next to a man and woman, who were holding the baby.
The man and woman were Willow’s own parents.
The final two documents in the drawer were copies of two birth certificates—both for the same child, one before and oneafter adoption—and they merely confirmed what she had already guessed. In the first, the baby, the daughter of Robin Davis, no father listed, was named Willow Cameron Davis. After adoption, she had legally become Willow Stone—with no idea of her parentage, never asking herself who the kind professor she stayed with every summer really was, or how she had come to know Willow’s parents in the first place. Because the kind professor was not only her godmother but her grandmother.
Joel’s face was a study in shocked surprise; the sisters by now were grinning at each other. Audra rolled her eyes. “What? Please, now you’re just fantasizing to stay alive.”
“I don’t need to make it up.” Willow gathered herself and took a slow step forward. “Sue Davis was my maternal grandmother by blood, which makes Peter Talbot my great-grandfather.”
The house was ready; she could feel it, feel the inhabitants gathering around her, a few more with every breath, filling the library. Audra took an unconscious step back, from Willow and from the gathering energy surrounding the young woman like a vortex.
In a soft voice, Willow said, “This is my home.”
And then, with more steel, “Get out of my house.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The voice—voices? She couldn’t tell—called Patricia’s name again, dragging her reluctantly back into a woozy consciousness. The storm was letting up, she realized; the air felt lighter, softer, gentle on her tormented and pain-racked body. From the corner of her eye, Patricia could see her right arm, her hand, covered in her own blood. Her brain told her fingers to wiggle; her eyes told her they did, though with a strange sense of dislocation, as though they weren’t really hers at all. Her brain sent another message; the fingers moved once more, this time closing into a fist and reopening.
Her mind moved sluggishly. Her fingers were obeying her brain; she was not paralyzed. She was not dead, which meant the bullet had probably not hit a major artery, or she would already be gone. But there was still blood, a lot of it, everywhere, soaking into her clothes and pooling around her. And pain—lots and lots of pain. Audra’s bullet might not have immediately killed Patricia as she intended, but it would probably do its job, anyway; Patricia had no illusions about that. And even if it didn’t, the once-alluringwoman she should never have trusted would doubtless be back shortly to finish the job.
She could tell herself as many times as she wanted that Audra had been the one to persuade her that Effie had to be eliminated, had opened her mind to the possibility of murder, something she would never have contemplated in her wildest ambitions—but Patricia had gone along with it; she couldn’t escape that truth, not here, not now. Then Audra had killed Susan and Geralt, and then Hank and Naomi, secure in the belief that her accomplice would stay in line, would never oppose her, since Patricia had killed too. When Patricia finally did attempt to resist, Audra had not hesitated to take her out of the equation.But I am still a murderer, Patricia’s mind said to her quietly, the same dispassionate voice that told her fingers to move. No emotion, no excuses, simply a statement of fact.I murdered Effie Cameron. Not Audra. I did. I set all this into motion. Maybe this is justice. My death, here, at sunrise. Beside the ocean, my ocean. On my island.
But now Audra was going to kill Willow.
No, Patricia thought with a hint of her old fierceness.No.
She could barely move. But her eyes watched her hand twitching, saw it feebly drag itself along the blood-soaked boards of the porch until it reached her side. The elbow did not want to bend at first—the hand at the end of the limb was too heavy—but with another breath, another burst of pain, it obeyed her and successfully positioned the hand at the opening to her skirt pocket. The hand found the phone inside and clumsily slipped it out.
Another wave of pain swept over her, a paroxysm of coughing seized her; the blackness crept back, threatening to swamp her again…
No.
Audra’s laugh wasa cocktail of steel and malice. “Are you serious? ‘Get out of my house,’” she mocked. “Do you honestly believeI’ll let a melodramatic story and a few jump scares stop me now?” At that moment, another bolt of lightning lit up the room.
For a split second, the warm firelight was overtaken by that cold blue flash. The cheery old women were replaced by skeletal figures whose gray skin stretched over their skulls, the black dresses torn and shifting as though uncounted tiny grave creatures swarmed beneath them. Joel, too, in that instant, was an emaciated corpse, decades longer in the grave than Effie, his long fingers little more than bones as they delicately balanced the antique pen that, Audra noticed, had a sharp metal tip.
Then the rush of thunder; it rattled Audra, which made her furious—but when it receded, she was back in the calm firelit room with the impeccably neat trio, all three staring unblinking at her.
Except now it was a quartet. Effie now sat in the tall wingback chair opposite the elderly twins, also staring at Audra.
And… there was another man leaning against the fireplace, in a gray pin-striped suit and hat, dressed like a character from an old Cary Grant movie; he was staring at her as well.
In fact, Audra realized, there were eyes all over the room, aimed at her with unsettling intensity. The dark library, growing ever lighter as the storm dissipated and the day began, had filled with people. They were of all ages, from child to elderly adult; some wore more modern dress; others looked like extras from a Gilded Age streaming series. All staring at her. And they were not happy.
Joel spoke, his voice gentle but firm. “Miss DuBois, it is time for you to leave. I suggest you depart this house and this island forever and that you do not return.”
