Chapter Nineteen
I ’d been the first person out the door of Wanda’s meeting and wasted no time getting back to the library. I planned to turn off the ringer on my phone and pretend I wasn’t home until the furor over Rodney’s antics wore off.
I arrived, breathless, to find a note on the library’s kitchen door, folded and crammed into the jamb. As I pulled it out and smoothed it, my first thought was that it was some anti-cat scribe. But no, it was from Tyrone Beaudrie. He didn’t have my phone number and couldn’t have texted.
I learned something about Ian , the note read. Come see me when you get this.
I looked at my phone. It was nearly nine o’clock, and the night was as black as Rodney’s belly. Too late to see him? His note sounded urgent.
I turned around and headed back down the hill toward the Wallingford Guest House. I could at least see if his light was on.
Wilfred’s streets were rapidly quieting.
People who’d attended Wanda’s meeting were dispersing to their homes and boosting open windows to the cool night air.
Inside they would lay out coffee cups for the morning and kiss children good night.
The few trucks in the café’s parking lot showed that the tavern had its usual handful of late-night customers.
Orson—or his Tohler replacement—would soon be gently easing them toward the door.
A light was on in the Wallingford Guest House, but it was downstairs. Perhaps Tyrone waited for me in the house’s ground floor library. I mounted the steps to the wraparound porch. A figure moved behind the library’s sheer curtains. I rapped on the window.
The figure—a woman—came to the door. It was Mrs. Wallingford. “Josie? Can I help you?”
“Tyrone asked me to stop by. Is he here?” I patted my pocket to show her the note, but it wasn’t there. I could have sworn I took his note with me. I must have left it at the library.
“He asked to meet you this late?” Mrs. Wallingford cocked an eyebrow. “Candace has been around, but you, too?”
“It’s about Ian Penclosa,” I said quickly.
Mrs. Wallingford nodded, but I couldn’t miss the raised eyebrow. “Sure.” She glanced up the stairs, then back at me. “I’ll see if he’s still awake. Unless you want to go up without me?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Definitely not. Don’t bother him if he’s in bed. It’s important, or I never would have dropped by like this. Really.”
“Wait here a moment.”
I understood Mrs. Wallingford’s skepticism. It did look peculiar that I’d be coming around to see a Don Juan like Tyrone so late at night. I was certainly testing the cliché about the prim librarian.
Mrs. Wallingford returned down the stairs. “He’s not there.”
“Asleep, then,” I said.
“No. Not there at all. I knocked, and his door opened. He’s out. Plus, his key is gone.” She pointed at the keys hanging on hooks near the stairs, each with a brass tag dangling from it. The key for room three was missing.
“Thank you.” I made my way back to the street.
Tyrone wouldn’t have left a note unless it was important. A glance showed his Expedition still in the guest house’s driveway. Perhaps he’d walked to the tavern.
A few minutes later, I pushed open the tavern’s red vinyl-padded door to a waft of warm beer and onion rings.
Marty Robbins played on the sound system.
Marty Robbins was a favorite of Orson’s, and tavern patrons had long since learned the lyrics to “El Paso” and the fate of its gunslinger and Mexican maiden.
On the way to the bar at the tavern’s rear, I passed two booths with patrons.
One held Oona, who regularly advertised her insomnia around town by plucking her sweater from her chest and saying things like, “This cardigan? I made it last February when I couldn’t sleep.
” She sipped what looked like a soda and lime, and she wound a skein of wool into a ball.
She nodded as I passed. Another booth held a few of the Tohler offspring, digging into chili dogs layered with shreds of cheddar.
Betty Larsen sat at the bar, nursing a purple cocktail and making eyes at Orson.
She’d been making up to him since her husband died a few years ago. So far, Orson had not taken the bait.
“Have you seen Tyrone Beaudrie?” I asked Orson.
“‘Cowboy in the Continental Suit,’” Betty said, nodding at the speaker in the corner. “There’s no one who can sing a ballad like Marty Robbins.”
Nice try, Betty, I thought.
“You, too, huh?” Orson said. “I thought you were stuck on Sam.”
I ignored that. “Tyrone wanted to see me. It seemed important. He wasn’t at the guest house, but his car is still there. I thought he might have dropped by.”
“Why don’t you text him?”
“I don’t have his number.” Orson was sure being difficult tonight.
“Seems if it was so important, he would have left it.”
“Orson, has he been in? Yes or no,” I said.
“Nope. Haven’t seen him tonight.”
“Although personally, I prefer ‘A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),’” Betty said. “So romantic.”
I waved goodbye and headed home. Perhaps Tyrone was on a walk.
Summer nights were wonderful in Western Oregon, and he might have taken a stroll through the meadow to the millpond, although wandering the woods at night was an unusual pastime for a city dweller like him.
Plus, if he’d really needed to see me tonight, he might have made himself easier to find.
Why was his note so urgent? Could that be what had drawn him away?
I supposed I’d find out soon enough. For now, I was going home.
* * *
For the second time in a week, noises in the night woke me. I jolted upright in bed, my heart pounding. Images flew through my head of Ian’s inert body on the atrium floor.
I pinched my arm. Yes, I was awake. This was not a dream. I wasn’t imagining it.
“Josie!” Sam’s voice floated up through my open window.
Sam. Had he come for me at last? I hurried to the window, but the bay window below obscured my view. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, grabbed my robe, and made for the door. In seconds I was in the library’s kitchen.
Sam stood outside the kitchen door’s window. “Josie, I need to talk to you.”
His tone of voice stopped me halfway across the room. This was no lover’s rendezvous. Something serious was up.
I unlocked the door. “Please, come in.” It felt strange to be so formal.
He stood, stone-faced, with the mere trace of a smile—a sure sign he was unhappy. “Where were you tonight?” he asked.
“What?”
“Tonight. Where have you been?”
I stepped back and pulled my robe closer. “Sleeping. You woke me up.”
“Earlier. Where were you earlier tonight?”
“I visited Lalena,” I said. Sam nodded. “Then I went to the meeting at the retreat center.” I glanced up to see if he knew about it. He nodded again. “Lots of people saw me there.”
“Then what?”
“Come in, if you’d like.” I stepped aside to let him enter the kitchen.
It gave me a moment to collect myself before relaying the rest of my evening.
I didn’t want Sam to misunderstand. “I went to look for Tyrone Beaudrie.” Sam opened his mouth to reply, but I forged ahead.
“Ian Penclosa is missing. Tyrone left me a note saying he had information about him.”
“Tyrone Beaudrie? Why would he know anything about Ian?”
“They’re both from Baltimore,” I said.
“Baltimore.”
I nodded.
“Do you have this note?”
Sam was asking me for proof? “You don’t believe me,” I said. “You think I’m lying.”
“I’d like to see the note, please.”
“Wait here.”
My face stung as I took the service staircase to my apartment. Sam’s stony expression hurt more than his flat-out ignoring of me. I checked my pants pockets, but Tyrone’s note wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my purse, either. It was as if it hadn’t existed. Slowly, I returned downstairs.
“I can’t find the note, but it was there. He stuck it in the door jamb. Ask him, if you don’t believe me.”
Sam examined my face under the kitchen’s bright lights. A stranger would have seen only its impenetrable facade, but I knew a thousand thoughts rushed through his head. He wanted to say something hard, and he didn’t know how.
“What is it, Sam?”
“You were seen a few nights ago going into the woods.”
The witch’s circle. Someone must have spotted me taking Babe Hamilton’s linens to be burned. I nodded, and my blood chilled. Something had happened. Something bad.
“You made a fire.”
“Yes, I did.” What did he want? Sam knew I was a witch. I’d shown him in terms he couldn’t deny and apparently couldn’t accept, either. Explaining about Babe and Aunt Beata wouldn’t help me. Not to mention the fact that Babe had fled town.
“You don’t deny it?” Sam asked.
“No.” Sam couldn’t accept who I was. It hurt, but I couldn’t change for him. “No, I don’t deny it. Why should I? Yes, I made a fire in the woods. Is that all?”
“We found the remains of a body in the fire pit.”
My arms fell to my side. “You found what ?”
“Josie Way, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ian Penclosa.”