Chapter Twenty-Four
Willow stood alone in the now-vacant house. She wandered out to the foyer and sat on the stairs, miserable and wrung out.
A few minutes later, her phone dinged with an incoming text message. It was from Naomi.
Geralt’s gone, the message read. A few minutes ago. We thought he was improving, but then …
A moment passed, then another text: I thought you’d want to know. Thank you for being kind, to him and to me.
Now she understood. Our time has run out, Joel had said.
Geralt was dead. Murdered. The last of the Cameron heirs.
Even if Sue had been onto something, she had died before she could share it, and now there were no Camerons left.
Good job, Rina, Willow thought. Your spiteful little gesture really screwed everything up.
Not long after Naomi’s message, Willow’s phone dinged again. This time, the text was from Diana, sent to Willow, Mac, and Catherine.
Come to the dock; Geralt has died, and now the police are arresting Rina for his murder. She needs us. Hurry.
Then another text.
You too, Willow. Please come.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, Willow considered ignoring the texts, turning off her phone, and going back to the cabin. But only a fraction.
As she swung the heavy front door open, a whoosh of wind swept the foyer. Willow heard the almost soundless sound of something floating down to the floor behind her.
Another sheet of paper, dusty and a little rough around the edges like the first. A new set of words, in the same irregular typeface:
follow up the quest
despite of day and night
and death
and hell
--AT
And at the bottom:
Mordre wol out
--GC
Willow stared at the page, then looked up, scanning the hall from the foyer up to the second-floor landing. A quick movement at the top of the staircase caught her eye, but by the time she turned her head, there was nothing to see but the quick flash of a bare foot disappearing out of sight.
Willow smiled. Just a little. It seemed Cameron House was not completely empty, after all.
Diana and Mac were already at the dock when Willow and Catherine approached from opposite directions. “The police found a bag of lithium carbonate in the dumpster outside Rina’s shop,” Diana said. Mac stood behind her, looking ready to burst into tears.
“So?” Catherine asked. “Why would that automatically implicate Rina?”
“Because the bag was from a ceramic supply company,” Diana replied. “Apparently, it’s also a common glazing agent.”
Mac nodded and said in a quavery voice, “It stabilizes the glazes and helps you fire the ceramic at a lower temperature so you can get brighter colors.” The tears started coming again. “But she didn’t do it. There’s no way she did this…”
A uniformed and official-looking Nick Tyler stood by the Pottery Shop, scanning the gathering crowd.
Willow was unimpressed; compared to the Cameron House ghosts, Nick’s patented Intimidating Cop look was less than terrifying.
She strode over to him. “What exactly is happening here?” she asked crisply.
He gave her one cold look, then turned away, refusing to speak.
Nice try, she thought, shifting until she was back in his line of sight. “For God’s sake, Nick Tyler, when has ignoring me ever worked for you? What exactly is going on?”
Another officer appeared in the shop doorway, escorting a handcuffed Rina.
Rina looked on the verge of hysteria; her head darted around, taking in the crowds, strangers and islanders alike, friends of twelve years who suddenly refused to meet her eyes.
Her gaze landed on Willow, and her face crumpled.
“Willow!” she called as the policewoman quietly guided her toward the boat.
“Willow—oh my God, Willow, I’m so sorry.
Please, I need to talk to you, and now I—”
Diana moved next to Willow and interrupted sharply. “Rina, best not. Don’t say anything. Not now.”
With a last desperate glance at Willow, Rina nodded and let herself be led away.
“Rina—Rina, wait!” Willow impulsively called out. A tiny crack was forming in her righteous anger; she didn’t want to forgive Rina, but seeing her arrested for murder?
Whatever Rina was guilty of, it wasn’t this. It couldn’t be this.
Willow took an automatic step forward to follow, but Nick’s hard arm caught her in her tracks. “Not now, Willow. Let us do our job.”
She whirled on him. “For God’s sake, Nick, you know she couldn’t have done this, you know—Rina!” Willow tried to pull away again.
This time, his hand on her forearm was sharp and almost painful. He hissed into her ear, “Stop it. Stop it now. You’re not helping her. Let us do our job.”
His face was resolute, but beneath the Stone-Faced Cop expression she assumed he’d practiced in front of the mirror since he was twelve, Willow thought she detected a flicker of uncertainty. “Nick. Tell me honestly: Do you think she killed him?”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “We have to follow the evidence.”
She would not relent. “You’ve got Geralt, you’ve got the attempt on Patricia, and Sue’s ‘accident’—no, don’t look at me like that, of course they are related. How could they not be?”
Ignoring her, Nick said to Diana, “Since it’s a murder charge, she’ll likely stay for forty-eight hours till her first hearing.
You’ll need to find your way to the precinct for her interview.
” Diana glared at him and nodded, busily typing on her phone.
Turning to Mac, Catherine, and especially Willow, Nick said irritably, “And you three, for God’s sake, stay put and stay out of it.
” He turned and followed the officer and Rina down the gangway.
Rina sat trembling in the stern of the police boat, clutching her hands together, solitary and forlorn.
From the dock above, Willow gazed down at this woman Sue had loved, and who had loved her back, feeling the last threads of her rage disintegrate and fade away.
When Sue died, Rina’s life had shattered irreparably; the happy future she had planned had exploded into loss and emptiness, and now she had to face it on her own, without the one person she had counted on more than anyone else.
Willow didn’t want to forgive Rina; she didn’t want Rina to matter to her. But it appeared her heart was overriding both wants.
The policewoman started the boat’s engine; Nick, his back to Willow, grappled with the bowline of the police boat—he had always been incompetent with knots, she remembered.
No one was looking at her. Willow quickly and quietly moved down the ramp to the lower dock.
Under the pretense of being helpful, she moved to undo the figure eight hitch securing the stern of the boat.
“Rina,” she said quietly to the woman sitting shell-shocked in the boat, looking down at her own cuffed wrists.
“Rina, it will be okay; we’ll work through this. You need to hang on.”
The officer at the helm gave Willow a warning look but did not move to stop her. Tears poured down Rina’s face, and she begged, “Willow—Willow, can you ever forgive me for keeping you away? I’m so sorry, I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me forever. I—”
Willow stopped short. “Rina, that’s what you’re worried about? Good God—” Her own eyes started to fill. “Of course. Of course I forgive you—of course I don’t hate you.”
Nick, having finally wrestled the line free, turned and saw Willow standing at the dock. His face went dark. “Willow, I told you to stay out of this. Throw me the line. Now.”
Willow pressed her hand to her forehead, trying to keep the tears back.
“Shut up, Nick. Just shut up.” She turned back to Rina.
“Rina, look—we know you didn’t do this. I promise, we’ll put our heads together and find out what happened, find a way to prove your innocence.
I promise we won’t rest till we do.” Rina’s tears were beginning to subside, but Willow’s were by now flowing freely.
She continued hurriedly, “And we’ll get you home soon. As soon as we can.”
Nick was more furious than she’d ever seen him. “Willow, I swear to God, if you don’t step away from the suspect, if you don’t give me that line right now—”
“Back off, you useless, oversize action figure,” she spat fiercely.
“I’m saying goodbye to my aunt.” Unbelievably, he did take a step back; she saw the corner of the other cop’s mouth twitch from where she stood at the helm.
“And I was helping you unmoor the boat, because you suck at knots. You’re welcome.
” She tossed him the stern line and stalked away from the boat—but not before she had seen the surge of joy on Rina’s face, along with a new flood of tears, at the words my aunt.
The eyes of the two women locked, and through their tears they were both—almost—smiling.
Nick boarded the boat, using his foot to shove away from the dock. “You and I are going to have words when I get back, Willow Stone.”
“Name the time and place. I’ll be waiting,” she called back.
Willow stayed on the lower dock, watching them go, her gaze not leaving Rina’s until the boat cleared the first marker.
She heard the echo in her mind of an old woman’s voice: You don’t know what you’re made of yet, but you will. They all will.
She’s got that right, Willow thought. She was done being frozen, and she was done running away. She had a job to do, and apparently a murderer to track down. If the historical society couldn’t help her, she would find what she needed somewhere else.
Willow took a deep breath, reveling in the sensation of the sea wind blowing across her face and through her hair.
An old-fashioned sailing lobster dory that might once have been dark blue passed the mouth of the harbor. Its broad-shouldered captain raised a hand in salute.
She raised hers back, then turned and mounted the ramp to join the others.
“No steel, my ass,” she muttered.