Chapter Forty
Willow stood in the rain, wind whipping around her, and gaped in shock at Mrs. Patricia MacFarlane Ramsey.
Patricia looked shocked too at first, then irritated, and at last confused, to see Willow standing by the back porch of a house where neither of them belonged, in the middle of the night. “Willow Stone?” Patricia asked. “What are you doing here?”
Willow was all but gasping, the adrenaline surging through her as her abortive run for safety ran into this unexpected obstacle.
“Mrs. Ramsey, you have to get out of here. It isn’t safe.
” She threw one desperate look back to the house.
“Come with me, please, hurry—it’s been Audra DuBois all along; she killed Geralt, and Hank and Naomi too, and I’m guessing she’s the one who cut your brake lines. Please, we have to get out of here!”
But Patricia held the hood of her raincoat over her head as the wind tore at them both, looking even more confused. “Hank? Audra?”
Willow stepped closer to her, having little option since Patricia was still standing in her way. “Mrs. Ramsey, we have to go—and I hate to ask, but may I borrow your phone? I need to call—”
Patricia’s face cleared; she shook her head, not an iota of doubt on her face.
“I’m sorry, I never loan anyone my phone under any circumstances.
And besides, this is completely illogical; you sound unhinged.
Please, Miss Stone, I’m sure you’re very much mistaken.
” She grasped Willow by the arm. “Let’s get inside and out of this weather, and we can talk about it. ”
“But—you don’t understand! There’s so much more going on than you realize,” Willow pleaded.
Now the other woman smiled—and Willow’s blood ran cold. The smile was … wrong. Lightning flashed again as Willow glanced down at the hand that had come out of Patricia’s raincoat pocket and the small handgun the woman had pressed against Willow’s midsection.
“No, Willow my dear, you are the one who doesn’t understand.
And I find that to be a great comfort. You have been a little too diligent in your research—but if you were this far off base, I think I can trust that the rest of the town is unlikely to do better.
” She gestured to Willow with her free hand.
“Now. Back inside, please. I have been waiting a long time, and I don’t want to catch my death of cold when we are this close. Inside.”
Willow went.
The little gun, Willow noticed, was lavender. Of course it was lavender.
“You. That way.” Patricia slammed the door shut and gestured with the gun for Willow to move out into the hallway to the grand foyer.
Audra’s voice called out, “Patty? Patty, is that you?” It grew closer as it continued, “I’ve been through drawer after drawer and shelf after shelf in that stupid library and the Davis woman’s desk, and I still haven’t found—”
Audra DuBois stopped abruptly in the kitchen doorway, and her eyes went wide to see Willow there, held at gunpoint by Patricia Ramsey.
Patricia favored the younger woman with a cutting glare.
“You had one job. One. Make sure the unfortunate little busybody tied up in the sitting room stays tied up in the sitting room. How could you possibly have screwed it up so thoroughly?” She turned to Willow.
“All right—move. The library. Now. We need to have a conversation, about what your aunt told you before you got here, and what Talbot told you once you arrived.”
Willow’s voice was distant as she said, “Sue wasn’t my aunt.
” She walked slowly in the direction Patricia had nudged her, down the hall to the grand foyer, past the wall sconces whose golden light shone warm against the fury of the storm outside.
This is not good, she thought. I should have stayed at the inn, listened to Nick—or at least told someone where I was going.
No one will even think to look for me till morning, and by then, it will be too late.
A voice whispered gently in Willow’s mind—Peter Talbot’s voice, repeating his words from earlier: Stay strong. Fight. And quiet Dellie, with her bonnet and knitting needles: You don’t know what you’re made of yet, but you will. They all will.
In that moment, Willow’s awareness clicked into high gear, shifting into the mental space she needed when performing a particularly thorny fugue or navigating a new organ’s registration on the fly.
This was neither fight nor flight; it was clarity, as though a new compartment of her brain had opened, ready for use—not, this time, for following the threads of music but rather for finding a way to stay alive.
Had she not been in this state of hyperalertness, she might not have noticed the umbrella stand to the left of the front door, empty earlier, which now held a familiar wooden cane with a glass-topped handle. Unbroken and whole.
Interesting, she thought.
Once inside the library, Patricia gestured Willow to a chair. “You. Sit. And talk. Who is it?”
Willow stared back at her, puzzled. “Who is what?”
Patricia’s lip was starting to twitch in frustration. “Tell me about Annabel Cameron’s grandson,” she demanded. “What did Susan tell you?”
“Aunt Sue didn’t get to tell me anything,” Willow said evenly.
“She died before I got here. Someone pushed her off the roof walk.” She glanced sideways at Audra before continuing, “I’m guessing she was injected with something, like I was, some drug that made it possible to get her up there without a struggle—probably the same person who slipped a steady stream of lithium carbonate into Geralt Talbot over weeks or months, slapped him with one big dose at the memorial, and then found a way to give him even more under the noses of the hospital staff. ”
Audra smiled. “Patient care isn’t what it used to be,” she said smugly. “Neither is law enforcement. They were so busy investigating how he was poisoned before he got there that it never occurred to them to suspect he was getting more right there in his hospital room.”
“Let alone that you were the one doing it.”
Audra looked pleased with herself. “Keeping a low profile was part of my job. I knew they would figure out it wasn’t the Montalto woman eventually, but also that once they did, everyone would look to Naomi.”
Patricia said dryly, “Too bad she and my late spouse blew up in the car about four days earlier than planned, before Hank could get the house declared in his name. We could have pinned it on them and had a solid claim on the house.”
Audra shook her head. “Nope, we had to move. I heard Naomi and Geralt talking; Hank was coming to his own conclusions about what happened to Effie, but he thought it had been Geralt. Once the old man was gone, we had to move fast before he figured out the rest. Besides, admit it—you liked seeing her get what was coming to her. She was screwing your husband, after all.”
“I didn’t care who my husband screwed, as long as I got what was coming to me. This wasn’t the plan,” Patricia said, her voice tightening into shrillness. “Remember? The plan? Where Hank inherits Cameron House? And then dies and leaves it to me?”
Oh, this is so very bad, Willow thought. They don’t have the slightest intention of letting me live, or they wouldn’t be talking like this.
The sharp, clear compartment of her mind answered, Then keep them talking. Willow said to Patricia, only partially feigning puzzlement, “But … what about your crash? If you two were behind cutting the brake lines on Hank’s car, who cut yours?”
Patricia answered primly, “Every good plan needs research and rehearsal. Causing a car accident by cutting the brake lines may work all the time on TV, but in real life, it’s much more difficult. Did you know cars are manufactured now with—”
“—dual brake lines, yes, I’m aware,” Willow broke in.
Patricia’s lips compressed in irritation. Bull’s-eye, Willow thought. Patricia MacFarlane Ramsey doesn’t like being interrupted while she’s monologuing.
Patricia continued, “Then you know the only way it could work is in an older car, and even that … needed testing.”
“So, you tested it first yourself,” Willow nodded, realizing.
“Audra cut the lines, and you drove the car out of the Raven, knowing a successful dry run would send you hurtling down that awful hill without brakes.” She remembered something else.
“That’s why you were on the phone; that’s why you were crying.
You were talking to Audra, and she had to talk you into doing it. ”
But Audra was gazing at Patricia, almost tenderly.
“No, actually. I was trying to talk her out of it,” Audra said, “trying to persuade her to find a safer way. It was still risky, even going as slow as she could manage and knowing where to safely steer the car.” She walked over to the older woman and gently touched her cheek.
“I was so afraid for you, afraid it would happen like last time—or worse, that you wouldn’t make it through. ”
Patricia’s expression softened; the hand holding the gun did not waver, but with the other she reached up and ran a tender hand over Audra’s hair. “Last time, you got me through,” she said softly. The pair leaned forward until their foreheads touched and their lips brushed together in a kiss.
Audra glanced at Willow and laughed. “Oh, sweetie, you look so confused, it’s precious,” she said. “The short version is that Patty had an accident in one of her husband’s stupid cars twelve years ago when she drove away from him in a rage. She hurt her back.”
“He gave me a watch,” Patricia said, her teeth clenched. “He asked me to forgive him and gave me a gold watch.”
Audra nodded. “I know, darling. He was the worst.” She turned back to Willow. “That’s when we met; she ran into some trouble getting the pain meds she needed, and I … helped her. Got her what she needed.”
“Got her what she needed?” Willow asked, still bewildered. “What were you, a drug dealer?”
“A pharmacy technician,” Audra said. “Okay, and drug dealer. They go together surprisingly well.” She turned back to Patricia and kissed her again.
And there it was. The missing piece. Audra had been preparing for this for her entire life; God knew what kind of pharmacopeia she had managed to slide out of her employers’ inventories over the years.
Willow felt like a fool. They had been so focused on Hank and Naomi that it had never occurred to them that the people closest to each might have as much access and motivation to claim the Cameron fortune, nor that they would have an alliance of more than convenience.
It had been Patricia and Audra all along.
Audra murmured into Patricia’s hair, “And now you’re free. We’re both free. Geralt is gone. Hank is gone. We don’t need them. It’s just us now.”
Patricia’s lips pursed again, and she pulled away. “Yes, just us. But Cameron House—”
“Hank’s claim is bull, you know,” Willow interrupted, keeping her voice even and conversational. Keep them distracted. Keep them off-balance. Piss her off a little, but try not to get shot.
Patricia snapped back, “Prove it. I’m a genealogist; I traced the family back—”
“No, you read a novel,” Willow said, allowing scorn into her voice for the first time.
“Widow’s Walk, a novel about a field nurse who married a soldier and had his baby after he died.
And you bought up every single copy of this obscure book you could find, relying on favorable odds that no one would ever make the connection.
And fed the whole romantic tale to the world as Hank’s backstory. ”
Willow paused, realization dawning. “That’s why we’re here. You think the story might be true, and you need to know whether another Cameron heir is going to come out of the woodwork.” Willow knew by the twitch of Patricia’s jaw that she had been right.
Willow turned to Audra. “But here’s what I don’t understand … why all the business with Hank and getting him into the succession? When all you need is—” She caught the quick expression of puzzlement on Patricia’s face, the narrowing of Audra’s eyes.
“Oh,” Willow said softly to Audra. “You haven’t told her, have you?”
“Told me what?” Patricia said, an edge of anxiety in her voice.
Willow waited.
Audra’s measuring gaze rested on Willow for a moment; she took a step back and smiled at Patricia. “All right then. This house should have gone to Geralt Talbot, and after his death, to his descendants. Regardless of how they got here. And that’s me. Geralt Talbot was my father.”