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 little woof under 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 are you doing 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 the memorial. 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, why weren’t you 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 poisoning and 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.
“Nope. Just black.” He took a swallow. “Quit stalling. I want the truth.”
Oh, piss off, she said mentally, but managed to keep the words from escaping her lips as she got the carton of half-and-half from the fridge and splashed a little into her own cup. She turned back to him.
“Okay. Truth. One, I learned she died literally through a well-timed internet search, and I came as quickly as I could so I could attend the service. Two, I never wanted the estrangement; I thought it had been Sue’s choice, so I didn’t know about the wedding.
Three, I don’t know what to say about your homicide investigation except to point out you’ve miscounted by a couple—Effie Cameron’s and Sue Davis’s deaths ought to be investigated as homicides too, especially now.
That’s three bodies on one little island, and I wasn’t here for the first two.
You can’t blame any of this on me. And frankly, trying to pin it all on Rina of all people is ridiculous. ”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, great; now you’re trying to do my job for me.
” He took a swig of coffee. “Look, Rina is being held on suspicion of the murder of Geralt Talbot. She has not yet been formally charged. Within forty-eight hours of taking her in, she will either be charged or released. Which means I have about twenty-eight hours left to gather what I need and make a recommendation. Okay?”
“Nick,” she persisted, “don’t you see? This is about way more than some ongoing feud between Rina and Geralt.
It’s about Cameron House; it’s about every single heir to the property dying within months of each other.
” Nick shook his head, but she went on. “Naomi told me Geralt had been sick for weeks, with tremors and stomach upset and all of it. Have the doctors been able to pin down whether he died from acute poisoning from one big dose, or could it have been ongoing?”
Nick looked at her sideways. “Someone’s been doing their research.”
She tilted her head at him. “Diana’s a lawyer, Catherine’s a librarian, and I’m literally a research scholar. What did you expect?” She paused. “Well?”
His eyes met hers levelly as though he were deciding how to respond. Finally, he said, “I’m afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Willow threw up her hands. “It’s a valid question. If he was being poisoned gradually, it couldn’t have been Rina, so—”
“Willow, I’ll say it again, even though you completely ignored me yesterday: Let us do our jobs. Do you think we sit around eating doughnuts and issuing golf-cart-driving citations all day? Breaking up fights at the bars on Saturday nights?”
Willow set down her mug and faced him. “Nick, Sue died the night before her wedding, literally less than a day before the line of succession to the Cameron fortune would irrevocably pass to Rina and take away anyone else’s maneuvers to get hold of it.
Doesn’t that sound suspicious to you? And then the only other known heir dies weeks later?
Is that less believable than Rina Montalto crafting some elaborate plan to poison him with pottery supplies?
Come on, Nick,” she pleaded, “you know Rina. Do you believe she could have done this?”
He shook his head in frustration. “Willow, I’m a cop.
It’s not my job to follow my beliefs about what someone would or wouldn’t do; I need to follow evidence.
And the fact that I do know her—that everyone on the force here knows her—makes it twice as important.
If we dismiss or overlook evidence, if we fail to follow a lead because the suspect is our neighbor, it will make it almost impossible to prosecute anyone for this or any related crime, ever. So kindly back off.”
He set down his cup and took a step closer to her, close enough that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “That was, by the way, an excellent attempt at distraction. Now you can tell me the part you aren’t telling me. About what you’re doing here.”
She couldn’t breathe; he was too close, and she could smell the laundry detergent he’d used to wash his shirt and count the few reddish strands in his mostly blond beard. “I want the truth,” he said softly. “No BS. What are you up to?”
Exhale, she thought. Take a step back. She forced her lungs and feet into action so she could get a little distance and begin to think again. Mercifully, he did not follow but gave her space.
She took a sip of coffee and then a deep breath, hoping both might steady her.
“I can’t tell you all of it, Nick. But Sue wrote me a letter.
I didn’t get it until after she died, but she needs me to take care of something, and I owe her that.
After disappearing from her life—no, I know it wasn’t technically my fault,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face to stop Nick’s automatic protest, “but I did go, and I had plenty of time to try to reconnect, and I never did. So I need to do this. For her.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is it illegal? Or dangerous?”
She thought of her visits to Cameron House—did it count as trespassing if it had been Sue’s home? Sue had invited her, after all—and about her near miss with the nighttime intruder. “It shouldn’t be.” Far from fully truthful, but what could she do? “But I promise I’ll be careful.”
He gritted his teeth. “Listen to me, Stone. I’d put you under house arrest if I had the slightest legal excuse, but I can’t, and you’re going to do what you’re going to do, anyway.
But the second you give me a reason, be assured I’ll take it.
” She wasn’t listening; she had processed his comment from earlier, and—“Wait … you said a poisoning and an attempted murder. So Patricia Ramsey’s brake lines were cut, weren’t they? ”
Nick cursed under his breath, then grimaced and said blandly, “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.” Then he relented.
“Look. I don’t know what’s going on around here.
But if someone is playing a long game, they won’t welcome your interference; trust me, I’m not the only one wondering what you’re up to.
For God’s sake, if you find yourself in over your head, call me. Deal?”
She nodded. “Deal.”
“Good,” he said decisively, draining his cup and heading for the door. “You’re enough of a pain in my tail alive; if you wind up dead, you’ll still be a pain in my tail because of the crap ton of paperwork you’d cause me.”
“God forbid,” she said dryly as the door slammed shut behind him.