Chapter 9
The Magnolia Cove Police Department sat between the courthouse and the post office in a low brick building that looked more suited to issuing parking tickets than containing generations of buried sins.
Clara had been there once before.
She was fourteen then, knees pressed together in a plastic chair while Evelyn kept one hand on her shoulder and Chief Thomas Hale spoke of search areas, phone calls, and doing everything possible.
Everything possible had turned out to be very little.
Now Clara sat across from Chief Danner in a beige interview room while June placed cheese crackers on the table as a coping mechanism.
Danner eyed the crackers.
June slid the box closer. “They help.”
“They contaminate surfaces.”
“They help emotionally.”
“Emotion is not evidence.”
“It should be, in this town.”
Danner looked at Clara. “Statement.”
Clara gave it carefully: the funeral, Evelyn’s note, the key, the hidden room, the break-in, Celeste’s offer, the garden map, the Harbor Lights photographs, Miles’s warning, and the hollow space in the east wing wall.
Danner asked each question twice in slightly different ways, building a record so carefully Clara understood why she had become chief.
Rowan was not in the room.
That was both comforting and not.
“Where is he?” Clara asked after Danner finished the third variation of who first touched the photograph.
“Taking a statement from Bellamy.”
“I thought he was not supposed to handle evidence involving his family.”
“He is not handling the evidence. He is handling the witness.” Danner closed her notebook. “For now.”
“For now?”
Danner’s expression remained flat. “I do not like conflicts of interest, Ms. Whitaker. I like them less when they arrive wearing a badge and a tragic family history.”
June pointed a cracker at her. “You are my favorite public servant.”
Danner ignored that. “Miles confirmed the hollow space. He confirmed Evelyn’s voicemail. He also says Graham Ashford came to Magnolia Inn the night before Evelyn died.”
Clara sat forward. “What did Graham want?”
“Miles heard him tell Evelyn she should have let his father handle it when he had the chance.”
Edward Ashford.
Dead now, but still present in every room.
“What does that mean?” June asked.
Danner’s mouth tightened. “It means Graham Ashford is either fond of melodrama or aware of something his family should have reported decades ago.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive,” Clara said.
“No,” Danner said. “They are not.”
Miles had also admitted Graham came to his place the previous night and warned him that men who opened the wrong walls ended up inside them.
June stopped eating crackers.
Clara felt the warning move through her body slowly, like cold water.
“Is Miles safe?” she asked.
“He is in custody for questioning, which makes him safer than he was on the street.”
“That is not the same as safe.”
“No,” Danner said. “It is not.”
A knock sounded at the interview room door.
Officer Pe?a entered holding a manila envelope between gloved fingers. “Chief.”
Danner took one look at his face and stood. “Where?”
“June Porter’s car. Back lot.”
June lowered the cracker box. “I beg your pardon?”
“It was tucked under the driver’s-side wiper.”
Danner put on gloves and opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Four words stared back in thick black ink.
LET THE DEAD WOMEN REST.
The room went still.
Dead women.
Not woman.
Marianne.
Claire.
Susannah, if leaving town had been another kind of burial.
Evelyn.
The warning meant someone knew Clara was connecting them.
Someone close enough to watch the police station.
Someone bold enough to leave a threat at its back door.
June’s face had gone pale under her freckles. “I would like to revise my earlier statement.”
Danner looked at her. “Which one?”
“Emotion is absolutely evidence.”
The door opened again.
Rowan stood there, his expression controlled in a way Clara was beginning to dislike. His gaze went from Danner to the envelope to Clara.
“What happened?”
Danner held up the note.
Rowan read it.
His face changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Clara stood slowly. “You have seen that phrase before.”
Rowan did not answer.
“Rowan.”
He looked at Danner first, then at Clara.
“My mother received a note the week before she died,” he said. “My father told me it was nothing.”
Clara’s hand flattened against the table.
“What did it say?”
Rowan’s voice was quiet.
“Let the dead women rest.”