Chapter 8
Rowan did not look at the photograph first.
He looked at Clara.
That was the problem with him. Any other detective would have reached for the evidence, scolded her for touching it without gloves, and started arranging facts into a report.
Rowan Hale stood halfway down the basement stairs, breathing harder than usual from chasing Miles Bellamy through Magnolia Cove, and looked at Clara as though he needed to know whether the photograph had wounded her before he decided what to do with it.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“But I am useful,” Clara said. “Which seems more important.”
Behind him, Miles shifted. The handcuff linking his wrist to the railing clinked sharply.
June still held the pruning shears.
No one asked her to put them down.
Clara laid the loose photograph carefully on the album. Rowan pulled gloves from his pocket, leaned over it, and read the words on the back.
They argued after the speeches. Ask Evelyn.
For one second his face revealed nothing.
Then his breathing changed.
“Is that Claire Hale?” Miles asked.
Rowan turned his head. “You are done asking questions.”
Miles swallowed.
He looked younger than Clara expected, all restless bones and fear. Damp sand-colored hair. Twitchy hands. Eyes that moved too often. He had the look of a man who had once been charming and had recently discovered charm did not work on locked doors, dead women, or detectives.
Clara stepped closer. “What did my grandmother hire you to do?”
“Inspection. Repairs. General assessment.”
“When?”
“About a month ago. Before she died.”
Rowan came down the last step. “What did you find?”
Miles hesitated.
June lifted the shears one inch.
“We are listening,” she said.
“Fresh patching,” Miles said. “East wing storage room. Back side of the library wall. Service corridor. Someone had opened walls and tried to hide it.”
“Recently?” Rowan asked.
“Six months, maybe less. One patch changed while I was working. I marked it with pencil, came back the next day, and the mark was gone. Fresh paint.”
Clara thought of Evelyn changing locks. Carrying the recipe box. Hiding files behind the wall.
Someone had searched Magnolia Inn before Evelyn died.
“What did Evelyn ask you to open?” Clara said.
Miles stared at the basement floor. “A wall in the east wing storage room. She said she wanted it done clean. Quiet. No gossip.”
“That sounds like Evelyn.”
“She told me not to open it yet. Said she needed to confirm something first.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Rowan’s voice lowered. “Who else knew you were working at the inn?”
Miles’s mouth tightened.
“Miles,” Rowan said.
“Celeste Ashford asked about the east wing.”
Clara felt June go still beside her.
“When?” Clara asked.
“Two weeks ago. She saw my truck parked near the service entrance and asked whether Mrs. Whitaker had structural problems.”
“And what did you say?”
“That I was paid to fix boards, not discuss them.”
June made an approving noise. “A rare moment of wisdom.”
Miles ignored her. “Graham Ashford came by too.”
Rowan’s expression sharpened. “Graham?”
“He argued with Mrs. Whitaker near the garden. I was outside by the service path.”
“What did he say?” Clara asked.
“Something about making things harder than they needed to be. About old women and old grudges. Then Mrs. Whitaker told him his father had made the same mistake.”
“Edward Ashford,” Clara said.
Miles nodded.
The name seemed to settle in the basement like damp.
Miles licked his lips. “I went to Magnolia Inn this morning.”
Rowan took one step closer. “Why?”
“To get my tools.”
“You ran because of tools?”
“No.” Miles looked at Clara. “Because someone was near the old magnolia grove.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see their face. Hood up. Kneeling by the tree like they were digging. When they heard my truck, they ran toward the marsh path.”
Clara remembered the garden map.
The south garden circled in red.
The garden remembers.
Miles swallowed again. “When I got back to my truck, there was a note under the windshield wiper.”
Rowan held out his hand. “Where is it?”
Miles reached into his jacket with two fingers and produced a folded paper.
Rowan unfolded it with gloved hands.
Black block letters filled the page.
WALLS TALK. MEN DON’T.
Beneath the words was a hand-drawn magnolia blossom.
June lowered the shears. “That is extremely unfriendly stationery.”
Miles’s bravado drained out of him. “Mrs. Whitaker was decent to me. Hired me when other folks wouldn’t. Said people deserved to be measured by their current invoice, not their worst headline.”
Clara’s throat tightened.
That was Evelyn exactly. Severe enough to judge the invoice. Fair enough to ignore the headline.
“You said she left you a voicemail,” Rowan said.
Miles looked miserable. “I deleted it.”
Rowan stared at him.
“I panicked. I got the note, and I thought if anyone searched my phone—”
“You deleted evidence in an active investigation.”
“I did not know it was an active investigation yet.”
Clara said, “What did the voicemail say?”
Miles rubbed his cuffed wrist against his sleeve. “She said if Clara came home, I was to show her what was in the wall.”
The basement went silent.
Rowan took out his phone and called Danner.
Miles did not object this time.
While they waited for officers, Clara asked one last question. “Did my grandmother ever mention my mother?”
Miles nodded.
“What did she say?”
“That Marianne found something she wasn’t supposed to find.” He looked at Clara then, really looked. “And that everybody thought Marianne ran because that made her easier to forgive.”
Easier to forgive.
For twenty years, Clara had been angry at a woman the town had shaped into a coward. Now Evelyn’s files, Claire’s photograph, and Miles’s fear all suggested Marianne had been something else.
A woman who knew too much.
Officers arrived through the back door, their boots heavy on June’s stairs. Rowan uncuffed Miles from the railing and guided him toward them.
Halfway up, Miles stopped.
“I was going to open it today,” he said.
Clara looked up. “The hollow space?”
He nodded. “Mrs. Whitaker said if you came home, show her what was in the wall.”
“What was there?”
Miles looked back, pale and ashamed.
“I don’t know. I never opened it.”
Then he added, so softly she almost missed it, “I’m sorry.”
Clara did not answer.
She watched the officers take him up the stairs and had the terrible feeling someone would make sure Miles stopped talking before he could be useful.