Chapter 12
By dusk, Magnolia Inn looked less like a house than an accusation.
The medical examiner took Miles away under a gray sheet. Officers moved in and out of the east wing carrying cases, cameras, sealed bags, and the solemn efficiency of people who knew a bad scene could always become worse if handled carelessly.
Clara stood beside June near the drive, wrapped in a borrowed raincoat that smelled faintly of florist wire and lavender sachets.
June kept one hand around Clara’s elbow. “I am not letting go because you look like you might either faint or attack a shrub.”
“I’m not going to faint.”
“Good. The shrub remains my concern.”
Across the drive, Danner questioned Graham Ashford beside his black sedan.
Graham looked offended rather than frightened. He was handsome in the Ashford way: careful hair, expensive coat, irritation polished until it resembled dignity. Clara had seen men like him in Atlanta boardrooms. They believed consequences were scheduling errors.
“I told you,” Graham said, voice carrying through the damp air. “Miles Bellamy was unreliable. Evelyn knew that. Everyone knew that.”
Danner wrote something in her notebook. “You spoke with him recently.”
“I speak with contractors all the time.”
“Did you threaten him?”
Graham gave a short laugh. “That is absurd.”
“Did you tell him men who open the wrong walls end up inside them?”
His smile vanished.
June murmured, “Well, that landed.”
Graham recovered quickly. “If Miles claimed that, he was lying.”
“Miles is dead,” Danner said.
Graham’s gaze flicked to the east wing, then away. “Then I suppose he is beyond correcting.”
Clara felt June’s fingers tighten on her sleeve.
Danner’s voice remained calm. “You came to Magnolia Inn the night before Evelyn Whitaker died.”
“I came to discuss a private matter.”
“What private matter?”
“Evelyn’s tendency to involve herself in defamatory rumors.”
“About what?”
“Her private records.”
Danner stopped writing.
Only for half a second.
Clara saw it.
So did Rowan, who stood near the porch steps with Officer Pe?a.
Danner looked up. “What records?”
Graham’s face closed.
“The town knows Evelyn kept files.”
“On Ashford Property Trust?”
His eyes moved.
Not to the library.
Not to the east wing storage room.
To the second-floor windows.
Clara followed the glance and felt the small click of a fact sliding into place.
If Graham had killed Miles in the downstairs storage room, he should have known where to look.
Unless he was pretending not to.
Or unless someone else had told him enough to worry and not enough to navigate the house.
Bea arrived in a crookedly parked car and nearly hit a deputy’s traffic cone. She brushed past Officer Pe?a with the authority of a grieving Southern woman who had lost patience with procedure.
“Clara.”
She hugged her hard enough to hold both of them upright.
For a moment, Clara let herself be held.
Then Bea looked toward the east wing. Her eyes filled.
“Miles was a fool,” she said. “But he did not deserve that.”
“No,” Clara said. “He did not.”
Rowan approached while Danner ended Graham’s questioning with a promise that sounded more like a threat. Graham returned to his sedan, called someone before the door closed, and drove down the shell drive too fast for a man who wanted to seem innocent.
“Celeste?” Clara asked.
“At the station,” Rowan said. “With counsel.”
“Of course she is.”
“She says she knows nothing about the records clause beyond what her attorney drafted.”
June snorted. “I know nothing about floral foam beyond what my hands arrange daily.”
Rowan almost smiled.
Almost.
By the time Danner released Clara from the scene, the sky had gone purple over the marsh. Rowan drove her and June back toward town. Bea followed behind in her own car, though not before promising three separate officers she would not return to the inn alone and lying to at least two of them.
Clara watched Magnolia Inn disappear in the side mirror.
“Everyone had a reason,” she said.
Rowan kept his eyes on the road. “That is how cases work.”
“No. That is how Magnolia Cove works. Graham. Celeste. Thomas. Lillian. Bea, maybe. Evelyn. Miles. Even June’s mother with her albums.”
June leaned forward from the back seat. “I object to being included by maternal association.”
“You kept the albums.”
“My mother kept the albums. I merely preserved evidence in a moisture-controlled basement like a civic hero.”
Rowan said, “Helen Porter’s notes may end up mattering more than most official records.”
June sat back. “Fine. I accept my hereditary importance.”
At Porter Blooms, June unlocked the rear door while holding Harold, the cast-iron rooster doorstop, against her hip like a weapon.
Rowan waited until they were inside before speaking again.
“Ellis compared the photographs from the hidden room.”
Clara turned.
“The first ones,” he said. “From when we found it.”
“What about them?”
“A folder was visible on Evelyn’s desk in the initial photo. Thin. Labeled Ashford Property Trust.”
Clara’s skin prickled.
“It was not there when the room was fully processed,” Rowan said.
June lowered Harold to the floor with a dull iron thud.
“Someone took it,” Clara said.
Rowan nodded.
“Before Danner sealed the room?”
“Before full processing. After we found it.”
That narrowed the window.
Clara looked toward the dark street outside June’s kitchen window. Somewhere beyond it stood Magnolia Inn, its library wall opened, its east wing marked by death, its garden hiding her mother’s locket in the mud.
The missing folder had mattered.
Enough to steal.
Enough to kill for.
And someone had taken it while Clara was still inside the house.