Chapter 29 Willow Morrow
Willow Morrow
“Willow house-sat for me when we were in Toronto for the summer. She did a good job with the house. She definitely isn’t the cleanest person in the world. I don’t think she cleaned the ceiling fans or a baseboard the whole three months.”
The new wife wasn’t handling this well. Willow watched her carefully and wondered whether she should call someone for help.
The woman was still lying stiff-straight on the couch, her hands laced together on her stomach, eyes pinched shut, in a very similar pose to when Willow used to brace for Botox.
“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” Willow asked, finishing off her cocktail and rattling the ice in the glass. “I make a mean Irish coffee if you prefer something that falls into the breakfast category.”
“No, thank you,” Katie said tightly. “I just . . . I just want Mark to get home.”
“Well, traffic’s a bitch on the 101 this morning. Can you believe it took me an hour to get from East Palo to Redwood?”
Katie didn’t respond. If she thought things would be better with Mark here, she was in for an awkward surprise. This entire situation was going to be bad before it got good, at least as far as Willow was concerned. For her, this wasn’t about making the situation easier.
This was about making sure no one found out the truth.
“So . . . I heard they found a dead body.” Willow broached the subject, curious at Katie’s thoughts. “Who do you think it is?”
“I have no idea,” Katie said weakly and pressed a hand to the top of her forehead as if she were checking her own temperature.
“Did you think it was me?” Willow dug into her glass and pulled out a chunk of ice pellets, transferring them to her mouth and crunching on them.
“No, of course not.” Katie said it too quickly and too emphatically, like she was trying to convince herself of the fact. Willow didn’t blame her. No one, if given the choice, would pick a murderer as their husband.
Willow hunched forward in the chair. “But you were told about me, right? You knew that Mark had a runaway wife?”
Katie knotted her hands together, and the tendons in her forearms flexed. “No one ever called you that—at least not to me.”
Interesting. Willow sat back in the chair. “So what did they say? Did Sophia call me a bitch? You know, she’s had a wet spot for Mark for years.”
“Who’s Sophia?”
“John Kincaid’s wife. The redhead with the Southern accent.”
“I haven’t met her. I only saw John once, at the annual awards night.”
“Oh.” This piece of information stunned Willow, and she took a moment to chew over the fact that Mark’s best friend was no longer in his life, at least not in a social sense.
She and Sophia had been friends by forced approximation, and she hadn’t even considered staying in touch with the former beauty queen.
Willow had assumed, all this time, that Sophia had taken full advantage of their prior association and centered herself in any and all gossip concerning Willow.
Or maybe she and John had gotten a divorce. That possibility filled Willow with a jolt of glee, and she made a note to ask Mark about it. She rose from the chair. “So, if they don’t think I was a runaway wife, what was the general assumption?”
“I don’t know,” Katie snapped.
“Oh, come on.” Willow wandered around the coffee table, which she and Mark had picked up at an Amish festival.
There used to be a bunch of junk littering the surface, but now it was bare, save for a giant crystal on top of a few large books.
It looked like the top had been refinished, and she considered setting her glass on it, just to see Katie’s reaction, but didn’t.
“People don’t talk to me about you. They probably think it’d be rude.”
Meh, since when did that ever stop anyone in Crestmore?
“The house looks beautiful,” Willow said, moving toward the small fireplace that divided this area from the second sitting area that opened up onto the porch.
On the mantel was a collection of frames, and she picked up one of the photos and studied it.
It was Mark and Katie on a ship, a glacier in the background. “Is this Alaska?”
Katie grunted in response.
“We loved Alaska,” Willow cooed. “Did he take you to that romantic bed-and-breakfast with the private Jacuzzis?” She pretended to swoon.
“So romantic, especially in the middle of a blizzard.” She laughed.
“Though, I gotta say, sex in a Jacuzzi . . . not as great as I had imagined, you know?” She glanced over her shoulder at Katie to see if the arrow had hit its mark.
It had. The woman’s face had warmed from its shell-shocked white to a more appropriate shade of red. Willow and Mark had never been to Alaska, and Mark would die before staying in a bed-and-breakfast, so she could only imagine what was currently running through Katie Morrow’s sweet little head.
Any anger or hurt was good. Cruel, yes. But necessary. Willow had only one job here.
Misdirection.