In the peace of the early evening, she forced aside her thoughts of Gregory and reviewed her list of piano assignments. Pulling out a book, she studied her newest piece of music, but she was unable to process the notes she read—she couldn’t hear them in her head or hum them aloud. Despite her afternoon nap, she felt exceptionally drowsy. The colors of the summer evening faded.
A May storm was brewing. Ivy was driving, and the first raindrops pelted her windshield as she searched for a certain street address. Lightning flashed and the storm broke. She left her car and ran up a flight of steps toward a house with a picture window. She tried to peer through it, but all she could see were the reflections of the clouds and thrashing trees.
A feeling of dread grew in the pit of Ivy’s stomach. She had done this before and knew that something in the house had the power to kill her. She turned away, but the need to see who or what was there drew her back. Peering through the window again, she saw a tall stone statue, an angel with an upraised arm and hand pointing to heaven. It tipped toward her. Glass exploded in Ivy’s face.
She screamed and screamed.
“Ivy! Ivy, wake up!”
She opened her eyes and saw the kind face of Father John peering down at her. Keys and a ball of green twine lay on the grass next to him. The breeze felt warm and dry against her cheek, soft with the ginger and citrus smells of his roses.
“You were dreaming,” the priest said.
Ivy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“A bad dream,” he added sympathetically.
She nodded and glanced about. “Did—did you see anyone here?”
“In my garden?” The priest sounded surprised.
“Or the parking lot?”
He shook his head, frowning. “No.”
It was her old nightmare, Ivy thought, but with a new twist. Last year it was the deer that crashed through glass, then the train. Why an angel? she wondered. The statue, while familiar, didn’t look like any that Ivy had owned.
“In your church,” Ivy said, “are there any depictions of angels with an arm raised and hand pointing upward?”
Father John looked at her curiously. “No. But that is a stance commonly found in cemetery statues.”
Ivy shut her eyes for a moment. Gregory had finally succeeded in breaking into her mind, she thought, seeding the old dream and adding an ominous detail to scare her.
“Is everything all right?” the priest asked, sounding concerned. “Ivy, are you in some kind of trouble? Is something or someone frightening you?”
“No. No, it was just a dream.”
He looked at her closely, the small vertical line in his brow deepening, then said, “You’ve come to practice piano. But sit here and finish your sandwich while I do a little work. I like the company.”
She knew what Father John was doing—making sure she was all right, giving her time to talk if she wanted. She nibbled on her sandwich and watched as he carefully tied up his bounty of fruit and flowers.
“This is my favorite time of day in the garden,” he told her. “You know what they say: One’s nearer to God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.”
Ivy did her best to smile and nod. No garden, no corner of the earth, she thought, was safe from a serpent like Gregory.
Sixteen
PLAYING THE PIANO DID LITTLE TO CALM IVY THAT night. She left the church at eight fifteen and drove directly to Tristan’s. Standing outside the Steadmans’ house, she whistled a song from Carousel.
Tristan opened the door, then opened his arms. Ivy rushed into them. Leaving the door ajar, he held her tightly.
“Tristan.”
He kissed her, then laid her head against his shoulder, pressing his cheek against hers, as if he guessed she wanted comforting most of all.
When he released her, Ivy touched his forehead. “Hey! What happened to you?”
Tristan rubbed his temple ruefully, and she saw a cut on his knuckles.
“I ran into an unfriendly piece of furniture. You’d think I’d know my way around this house by now.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Only my pride,” he replied lightly. “Let’s go for a walk, okay?”
“It’s still early. A lot of people are out,” she said.
He took her hands in his. “Ivy, I feel less than human, creeping around like some nocturnal animal in the middle of the night. I need to be outside. I need to do the things normal people do.”
Wrapping her arms around him, Ivy could feel the tension in his muscles. “Okay.”
They walked the roads over to Town Cove, Ivy’s hand in Tristan’s, then returned to the narrow beach at the Steadmans’ house, where they sat. The night air was cool, but the sand held some of the day’s heat. Ivy burrowed her bare feet in the warm grains and leaned against Tristan. A single bird sang against the encroaching darkness.
“When you got here tonight, something was worrying you,” Tristan said.
She combed the sand with her fingers. “I feel better now.”
“Ivy. Tell me.”
“Promise me you won’t”—she hesitated—“overreact.” She felt Tristan shift his position and knew that he didn’t like her saying that. When she recounted her dream, he didn’t speak, but he gripped her hand so hard she had to rub the backs of his fingers to get him to loosen them.
“Stay with me tonight, Ivy! Stay with me every night from now on.”
“I can’t do that, Tristan, not without attracting attention. Where would I say I’m staying?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore! Ivy, he’s closing in on”—he caught himself—“on us.”
On you. She knew that’s what Tristan had meant to say.
He held Ivy so tightly she could feel his heart pounding against her own ribs.
“With each dream that he seeds, his power is growing,” Tristan said. “If he can do it from ninety feet away, then soon—”
Ivy pulled back slightly, puzzled. “Ninety feet? What makes you say that?”
Tristan was silent for a moment. “I saw him.”
“Tonight?”
“Last night. In the woods outside the cottage.”
“You were there? Tristan!”
“I couldn’t just hide away and do nothing!”
Ivy shut her eyes. How far would Tristan go to stop Gregory? “Did he see you?”
Tristan didn’t answer.
Ivy touched his bruised temple, then reached for his hand with the battered knuckles. “Tristan, please . . . please!” she begged. “Don’t go near him again. Don’t touch him. Promise me!”
Tristan looked away.
With gentle fingers she turned his face back to her. “I want the same thing as you do, love. To be together. But you can’t destroy Gregory without destroying yourself.”
“So I should just let him hurt you? Kill you?!”
“There’s some other way,” Ivy said. “There must be.”
Tristan shook his head, then pulled her close and buried his face in her hair.
When Ivy’s cell phone rang, neither of them moved. It stopped, then started again. Finally, Tristan let her go.
“It’s Will’s ringtone,” Ivy said, slipping her phone from her pocket. “Hey there.”
“Ivy, where are you?” Will’s excited voice was loud enough for Tristan to hear. “I have something to show you.”
“To show—?” She realized what it was. “You’ve found something on the flash drive!”
“Hit the jackpot!”
“Can you bring your laptop here? I’m with Tristan.”
“If you tell me where here is.”
Fifteen minutes later Will called to say he had parked two roads away. They left the front door ajar for him. When he stepped inside, he stopped, appearing uncomfortable, then shifted his laptop to his left hand. “Tristan.” He held out his other hand. “I owe you an apology.”
“I owe you more,” Tristan replied, shaking his hand, “more than I can ever pay back.”
They led him to the kitchen, and he opened his laptop on the island. With Ivy on one side and Tristan on the other, Will clicked on the directory tagged CORINNE and opened folders, then subfolders and files.
“Talk about finding a needle in a haystack!” Tristan remarked.
“Yeah,” Will replied, “except there’s a useful subset in here. Most of Corinne’s files are JPEGs. You’d expect that from a photographer. But when you click on Details, you also see Photoshop files. The interesting thing about Photoshop files is that they contain layers of images. Let me show you.”
He clicked on a photo of Corinne’s grandmother sitting in her sewing alcove with her spools of thread and her button jar. On the right side of the computer screen was a box that listed layers with names like “filter 1,” “filter 2,” “glow,” “shadow,” “window pane,” “wallpaper,” and “jar.”
Will pointed to the boxed list. “These layers come together to make the final picture. The artist can turn layers on and off to create different effects. But she can do more than that. She can order the layers so that some layers will hide others. And she can use color to mask things.
“See the letter T on this layer? It means the layer contains text, rather than an image. I found two Photoshop files with text in them, which seemed a little unusual. The text layer’s off right now, but I’m going to turn it on.” He clicked, and the symbol for a closed eye became open.
“I still don’t see anything,” said Tristan.
“Right. Because she adjusted the font color, and it’s blending in. So, now I’m going to change the font color for our layer of text.”
Ivy leaned forward. “I see letters. They look like hieroglyphics!”
“Hard to read,” Will agreed. “So, let’s change the color of the background layer, to create a better contrast, then turn all the other layers off, and simplify the font.” Will made a few clicks.
Ivy gasped. A clear list appeared on the computer screen: Typed in columns were names, dates, and numbers—amounts of money, she guessed.
“Bryan S,” Tristan read aloud, “June 10, July 10, September 12—looks like he missed August.”
“What’s ‘Seneca Hall 436’?” Ivy asked, reading along with Tristan. The words were typed next to “September 12.”
“A dorm room,” Will replied. “I googled a campus map. Corinne must have lost track of Bryan when he first moved to college, but she caught up with him again.”
“He’s resisting her pressure,” Tristan observed. “The pay dates get later and later. She doesn’t get December’s payment till New Year’s Eve.”
“And in March, the month before she dies, she doesn’t get the full amount,” Ivy noted.
Will pointed at the screen. “Look at the different amounts for the victims, not only different amounts but different schedules. From Tony M., she collected every other month.”
“Tony Millwood,” Ivy guessed. “I bet she was blackmailing the guy with the body shop.”
“Corinne was sharp,” Tristan said. “She figured out what she could get from her different victims without pushing them over the edge, guaranteeing herself a steady income. The only person she seemed to have misjudged was Bryan.”
“Several hundred a month. Even when you’re on scholarship, that’s a lot,” Ivy reasoned.
Tristan grimaced. “Especially for a guy who murders people when they become inconvenient.”
“Since a photo of Corinne’s grandmother masked the blackmail list, I searched for other photos of her, figuring they might hide something, which this one did.” He clicked on it.
“The cufflink!” Ivy said happily.
“I’ve got something else to show you. Let me switch folders. Corinne did a fabulous shoot at a body shop—the one belonging to Tony?”
Ivy nodded.
“Well, her least interesting photo has a very interesting Photoshop file. The top two layers are photos of a dark sedan.”
“Hank’s,” Ivy and Will said at the same time, recognizing the vehicle belonging to Corinne’s stepfather.
“A completely different car is photographed in the layers beneath it, a car with front-end damage.”
Ivy and Tristan exchanged glances. “Bryan’s?”
Will kept clicking on layers. “She took the trouble to snap a clear photo of its license plate.”
“ ‘HATTRIK,’ ” Tristan read. “Hat trick is a term used in hockey.”
“And this.”
Ivy leaned forward, squinting at the long number.
“It’s a VIN,” Will told her. “Vehicle identification number. Each car has its own, engraved when the car’s built.”
“So even if you claimed stolen tags, it would be proof of the car’s ownership,” Tristan said.
To Ivy it felt as if a mountain had been lifted off her shoulders. Even in the dim light created by the laptop, she could see the difference in Tristan. He seemed to stand taller, the same burden lifted from him.
“You’re going to be free, Tristan!” she said, hugging him, then Will. “Will, I’ll need you to go with me to the police and show them what you’ve found. Once we’ve convinced them, I’ll take them to the safe-deposit box where I have Corinne’s note, flash drive, and the envelope they came in.”
“If you can give me another twenty-four hours, I may be able to find more material—like photos that were used for blackmailing the others. You want to put enough pressure on the blackmail victims for them to come clean to the police, so you have a solid case that Corinne was blackmailing Bryan.”
Ivy and Tristan agreed. A few minutes later, they walked Will to the front door.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Tristan said.
“If we keep thanking and apologizing to each other,” Will replied, “we’ll never get on to just being friends. Let’s call it even and done.”
Tristan smiled. “Even and done.”
After Will left, Ivy turned to Tristan. “You know I can’t stay here tonight.”
“I know I can’t make you do something you don’t want to.”
“Tristan! It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s like what you said earlier: I can’t just hide out here and do nothing. Gregory’s desire to hurt me has already hurt enough other people. I need to be at the cottage for Dhanya, Kelsey, and Beth.”
He nodded.
“I’ll come as soon as I finish work tomorrow,” she promised.
“I want to go to the cemetery where Michael Steadman’s buried.”
Ivy looked at Tristan with surprise.
“I think a lot about him. His things are still in this house, his clothes, his trophies—swimming trophies like I had. I feel a connection with him. I want to see where he’s buried and pay my respects.” Tristan looked a little self-conscious. “I sound like my father, don’t I?”
Ivy smiled. “You sound like the guy I’m in love with. We’ll go there tomorrow.” She held his face in her hands. “Tristan, we’ll be together soon. Soon there will be nothing separating us.”
He kissed her and let her go very slowly, as if, in releasing Ivy, every centimeter that he opened his arms and spread his fingers made him ache.
“Love you, Tristan.”
“Love you, Ivy.”
She slipped out the front door and through the shadows of the yard, making her way silently to her car. Fifteen minutes later, when she pulled into the inn’s parking lot, Chase’s car was pulling out. Beth waited for her.
“How’s it going?” Ivy greeted her friend.
“Okay.”
“Did you stay for dinner?” Ivy asked, remembering that Beth was supposed to have returned for an evening bike ride with Will.
“I called Will. Twice.” Beth sounded hurt. “He didn’t answer.”
“He was pretty involved with something,” Ivy replied, but she wanted Will to be the one to tell Beth what he’d discovered. They found him sitting in one of the Adirond
ack chairs, staring at the garden, lost in thought. Hearing their footsteps on the grass, he looked up.
“Hey.” His slight smile was for Ivy, not Beth.
“I tried to call you, Will.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
Ivy looked from one to the other, then sat on the swing and pulled Beth down with her.
“So, how was Chase?” Will asked.
“Okay. He didn’t want to listen to me, but he didn’t want me to leave, either. You know Chase.”
“I know Chase,” Will replied dryly.
Beth pushed the swing back and forth with one foot. “I think I can help him.”
“I’m sure you can.” The moment Beth looked away, Will grimaced.
“I just have to be patient.”
“You’ve always been good that way,” Will said. “So, I guess you’ll be spending a lot of time with him . . . ?”
Beth shrugged. “Whatever he needs.”
“That’s really nice,” Will told her. “You’re the nicest friend a guy could have, Beth.”
Beth stiffened. Ivy guessed it wasn’t what she wanted to hear from him. Poor Will, attempting to be the perfect, understanding male friend—he should have memorized one of the impassioned lines from Beth’s stories and tried that instead.
“If you don’t watch out, Beth,” Will said, “Chase will fall in love with you.” As soon as he’d spoken, he looked as if he wished he hadn’t.
Beth stared at him.
Will backpedaled quickly. “Unless of course you want Chase to. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you and Chase falling in love.”
Beth blinked.
“In fact, visually—you know, if I was looking for a pair of models—I’d have to say you’d make a really great couple.”
Hoo-boy! thought Ivy.
Beth frowned. “Just shut up, Will!”
Close to tears, she walked quickly through the garden and around the side of the inn.
“What’d I say wrong?” Will asked, throwing up his hands. “I don’t get it! It’s like all of a sudden I can’t talk to her right. It was the model part, wasn’t it,” he guessed. “I thought I was being supportive.”
“Sometimes you can support the wrong cause.”
“Ivy, I can’t be her friend and watch her fall in love with him. He could be the greatest guy in the world, and I still couldn’t!”
Everafter Page 14