“Who killed her?”
“I think the most likely suspect was a man named George Edward Kingston. He was one of Harriet’s regulars, a wealthy, self-made man who planned to marry into a socially prominent family.”
“Why do you think he murdered her?”
“She became inconvenient, as they say. I got hold of some letters that Harriet wrote to a friend. She was pregnant and she was sure Kingston was the father. She was furious with him because he was going to end their affair. She threatened to expose the relationship.”
“So he killed her.”
“I think so, yes. Kingston was worried that his wealthy fiancée might drop him if she and her family learned that he had had a long-standing connection with a known prostitute. There’s no way to be absolutely certain at this late date.” He paused, searching for the words to explain the silent click of certainty and the rush of satisfaction he felt when he saw the pattern and discovered the answers. “But it feels right.”
She watched him closely. “It feels right?”
“Kingston as the killer ties up all the loose ends, at least as far as I’m concerned.” He came away from the door frame and walked to the desk. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Everyone involved has been dead and gone for a long time.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
He lounged against the desk. “Investigate old murders? Yeah. Something to do in the evenings besides watch TV.”
“Talk about cold cases.” She surveyed the contents of the room. “All of these books and journals and pamphlets and newspapers, they’re part of your research library?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Probably because I’m good at it.” He paused. “And there’s no harm done if I’m wrong.”
“Because there’s no one left to care about getting the answers?”
“Right. Just an academic exercise.” He angled his chin toward the computer. “I’m not the only one who does this. There are others. We write up our investigation reports and post them for people to read and examine.”
“Who looks up the results online?”
“We attract a lot of genealogists and people who are interested in their family histories. The site also pulls in a fair number of historians and academics who study the psychological and social issues involved in murder.”
“And probably a few weirdos, too.”
“Sure. The world is full of weirdos.”
She glanced over her shoulder, down the hall toward the theater, and then she looked at him. “I assume you’re investigating the death of Camelia Foote?”
“Be hard to ignore it, given that I’m living here at Nightwinds.”
“The official story is that she fell to her death in the canyon, right?”
He nodded. “There were rumors at the time that her husband might have pushed her, but nothing was ever proven and the authorities did not go out of their way to pursue the investigation.”
“Do you think she was the victim of domestic violence?”
“It’s very possible.” He picked up the Foote journal. “This is her husband’s journal. According to what I’ve read, he feared that she was having an affair with a man named Jeremy Hill. He was outraged because she invited Hill to a large weekend house party here at Nightwinds. The place was filled with guests. Camelia died sometime during the first night. Her body was found in the morning.”
“Who found it?”
He was impressed. “Good question.”
“I’ve heard that the police always take a close look at whoever discovers the body. I know they certainly asked me a lot of questions that day when I found Preston.”
“It’s very often the killer who reports the murder. And it could well be that is what happened here.” He opened the journal to one of the last entries. “Foote found Camelia that morning. Here’s what he wrote a few weeks later.
“. . . I still cannot believe that she is lost to me, all of her beauty, charm, and spirit extinguished forever. I walk through the house and see her lovely, laughing ghost everywhere I turn, mocking me. . . .”
“Sounds like an inconsolable husband,” Zoe said softly.
“I think he was distraught, all right.” He closed the journal. “But the part about the lovely, laughing ghost mocking him is interesting.”
“Do you think Foote was suffering pangs of guilt and that he believed Camelia was haunting him?”
“Maybe. I haven’t finished the journal yet.”
“You’ve got some doubts?”
“A few, yes.” He put the journal down on the desk and scooped up the notebook in which he had written his observations concerning the Foote case. “There is some confusion with the time line. Camelia was very visible off and on throughout the evening until sometime around midnight. No one recalls seeing her after that. But earlier Camelia and Hill had disappeared together for a while. Foote notes in his journal that he saw them returning to the house. He was sure they had made love.”
“Did Foote confront them?”
“According to his journal, he was so depressed by the knowledge that he could not compete with Hill for his wife’s affections that he went to his bedroom and finished off a bottle of scotch. He remembers nothing more until he awoke the next morning, went for a walk to clear his head, and found Camelia’s body.”
“His claim that he had passed out in a drunken stupor and slept until the next day does sound like a convenient excuse.”
“Could be. Or it could be the truth. None of the servants saw him after he went into his bedroom. No one recalls seeing Camelia after midnight.”
“If Foote didn’t come out of his bedroom until the following morning, that leaves you with all the house guests as suspects.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “I think it leaves Jeremy Hill as a definite possibility. The problem is that although Camelia vanished from the party, Hill was seen by many people throughout the course of the evening until the household finally went to bed around three. But he must have gone out a second time because one of the servants saw him return to the house through the gardens shortly before dawn. Hill was alone. Said he’d gone for a walk.”
“The lover. Why would he murder her?”
“Because he wanted her very much,” he said quietly. “And she refused to leave her rich husband for him. But like I said, there’s a problem with the time line. The only two people who are missing from the party at the same time are Camelia and Abner Foote.”
“That settles it. I’m betting it was the husband. Such a common pattern.” She studied him. “How will you ever get at the truth?”
“Jeremy Hill married a couple of years after Camelia died. Evidently he drank heavily. His wife divorced him and later remarried. Hill fell ill and died a short time after the divorce, leaving no offspring. I’m trying to find some of his ex-wife’s descendents to see if there are any letters or journals that might shed some light on her first marriage. I’m also trying to find some letters written by people who were guests here that night.”
“Good heavens, you could spend months or years tracking down the facts.”
“There’s no hurry,” he said.
“But it’s worth it, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s something to do in the evenings.”
“No.” She looked at him with deep, knowing eyes. “It’s a lot more than that. It’s a calling.” She walked to where he stood and touched his jaw with her fingertips. “When you do get the answers, you create a little justice. You balance some invisible scales somewhere. Even if no one knows or cares, you’ve done a good thing, Ethan.”
She understood, he thought. His hobby intrigued some people and repelled others. A few took an academic interest in it. But until now he had never met anyone who understood deep down why he investigated the coldest of cold cases.
She raised her mouth and kissed him. He put his arms around her.
He heard the click and felt the rush.
The screams in the walls pierced the drug-induced fog in which she had been drifting all morning. She stopped abruptly, digging in her heels. Frantically she tried to get her bearings.
There was an open door in front of her. Dr. McAlistair had a hand on her shoulder, urging her to enter the room. To her right, a burly-looking man in a uniform watched her with a grim expression. She had a vague recollection of someone having addressed him as sheriff.
“No, please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to go in there.”
“It’s all right,” Dr. McAlistair said. “You’re not alone. I’m here with you.”
“No.” She tried to escape the hand on her shoulder. Dr. McAlistair tightened her grip.
“You only have to enter the room for a couple of minutes,” Venetia McAlistair said coaxingly. “Just step inside and look around. Tell me what you sense.”
“No.”
The man in the uniform scowled. “I don’t know about this, Doc. She seems real upset. You sure you need her input?”
“I’m extremely interested in her reactions to the crime scene.”
“She looks like she’s gonna be sick. I don’t need her messing up the evidence.”
“She’ll be all right. The drugs I gave her should keep her reasonably calm.”
“She doesn’t look calm to me,” the sheriff said.
Damn right, I’m not calm. She opened her mouth and shrieked.
“Stop it,” Dr. McAlistair shook her. “Stop it. You’re losing control.”
Whatever. Anything to keep from having to enter that room.
She screamed louder.
“Get her out of here,” the sheriff snapped. “I haven’t got time for this.”
Dr. McAlistair reluctantly guided her back toward the car.
She continued to scream. It seemed to be having the desired effect. McAlistair was taking her away from the house with the shrieking walls and that was all that mattered.
“Stop it,” McAlistair said, furious now. “Stop it immediately, do you understand?”
“Zoe, stop it. Wake up. You’re dreaming.”
She came awake in the middle of a muffled sob, opened her eyes, and saw Ethan leaning over her. Perspiration was growing cold on her body. She could feel her heart racing. It took her a few frantic seconds to remember where she was. Then she saw the silhouette of a giant swan wing.
Oh, damn. Another nightmare. At this rate, he was going to conclude that she really was a basket case.
She sat up, clutching the sheet. “Sorry. I told you this might be a problem. If I’m going to stay here with you, I’d better sleep in one of the other bedrooms.”
“I don’t want you sleeping in another room.” He levered himself up against the pillows, reached out, and pulled her into his arms. “I want you in my bed. What was the dream?”
“Just another bad one from the days when I was locked up. Trust me, you don’t want to hear the details.”
“Yes, I do. Tell me about it.”
Maybe it was because it was the middle of the night and he had not turned on the lights. Maybe it was because he had made slow, passionate love to her before they fell asleep. Maybe it was because he had told her about his hobby and she had looked into some deep places inside him that she sensed he did not reveal very often.
Maybe she just needed to talk to someone about the dream.
“I told you there was a doctor who took a special interest in my case.”
“McAlistair. The one who did some consulting work for some of the small-town cops in the area and tried to find out if you could do the woo-woo thing at crime scenes.”
She winced. “You’ve got a good memory.”
“This McAlistair was in your dream?”
“Yes. The dream was about an incident that happened while I was at Xanadu. McAlistair was consulting on a murder case. She managed to sneak some meds into my food that morning and then she drove me out to the house where the crime had been committed. Tried to make me go into the room where two people had been murdered. I balked.”
“Understandable.”
“She tried to force me to go inside. Told me I had to learn to control my anxiety.”
“As if not wanting to enter a room where people had been murdered was just some kind of normal phobia. Something to get past.”
“Yes. Anyhow, the sheriff was afraid that I might throw up all over his crime scene. When I started screaming, he ordered Dr. McAlistair to take me away. I could tell that she was very frustrated and angry but she drove me back to the Manor.”
“The sheriff ever find the killer?”
In spite of the fact that her pulse was still trotting along at a brisk clip and her breathing had not yet returned to normal, she smiled. She should have expected that question, she thought. Ethan liked answers. More than that, he needed them.
“I saw a newspaper in the hospital library a few days later,” she said. “There was a picture of the house and a headline about an ex-husband having been picked up on suspicion of murder.”
“Did Dr. McAlistair ever try to pull that kind of stunt again?”
“One other time. With the same results. I started screaming and I kept on screaming until the cops ordered her to take me away. After that, I think she realized I wasn’t going to respond to that sort of therapy.”
“It wasn’t therapy. She was trying to use you.”
“Uh-huh.”
He settled himself more comfortably against the pillows. “I don’t like McAlistair, but I can’t see that she has a motive for killing Grady.”
She sighed. “You’ve got a one-track mind, you know that? What does my dream about McAlistair have to do with finding Grady’s killer?”
“Nothing probably. I’m just trying to make connections. My gut tells me that Grady’s murder relates to your situation.” He slid one hand down her arm to her hip. “Think you can get back to sleep or shall we go for warm milk?”
She kissed his bare chest. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“Yeah?”
She kissed him again, closer to his firm, flat belly, and moved her hand down the front of his body. He was hard and heavy.
“Yeah,” she said.
He shoved his fingers through her hair.
“Definitely a very good idea,” he said. “Best I can remember in a long time.”
She took him into her mouth.
“Excellent idea.”
His hands clenched fiercely in her hair.
She felt him go hard and tight.
And then he was hauling her up alongside him, rolling her onto her back. When he entered her, she was ready for him. She wrapped herself around him and hung on for dear life.
Chapter Twenty-eight
At eleven o’clock the following morning, Zoe put down the pencil she was using to make a sketch of a living room layout for a client and looked at Bonnie.
“You must be getting pretty bored,” she said.
Bonnie closed the romance novel that she had been reading and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not bored. Actually, it’s rather pleasant to spend some time with another adult female. I haven’t had a chance to meet too many people yet here in Whispering Springs.”
“It’s always hard moving into a new community.”
“I’m getting involved with some activities at my sons’ school and that helps. But what I’d really like to do is find an interesting part-time job. Financially, we’re okay, thanks to my husband’s insurance policy. But I need to get out of the house more.”
“Trust me, I understand. Got any ideas?”
“Before I married, I worked as a librarian,” Bonnie said. “I’ve been out of the field for a while, but I’m going to submit an application to the Whispering Springs Public Library and also to the local community college library.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Zoe said.
“How did you get into the interior design business? Were you a designer before Forrest Cleland shipped
you off to Candle Lake Manor?”
“No, I got a degree in fine arts. I was working in a small art museum when I met Preston. He had a special interest in a particular painter we both admired and asked some questions. The next thing I knew—” She stopped.
“You were in love and making plans for a wedding,” Bonnie concluded.
“Yes.”
“That’s how it was for Drew and me, too.” Bonnie sighed wistfully. “The first year after he was gone was hell. But in the past few months, I’ve noticed that I’m starting to think of my marriage as an event that happened a long time ago.”
“Another lifetime.”
“Yes. It would have been so difficult without Ethan. Especially for the boys.”
Zoe fiddled with her pencil.
Bonnie watched her doodle for a moment.
“You’re wondering why Ethan and I never moved beyond our current relationship, aren’t you?” she asked.
Zoe cleared her throat. “You do seem very close, and his affection for Jeff and Theo is obvious.”
“Ethan and I will always be good friends, but that is all we will be.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
“Some things you know from the start. I think of him almost as the big brother I never had. It works both ways. Ethan views me as a sort of sister, not a potential wife.” Bonnie glanced at the photos of Nightwinds. “Did you take those?”
“Yes. I was out walking with my camera that day.”
“Great shots. The house looks like it exists in a parallel universe. Very otherworldly. Do you do portraits?”
“Not professionally. Photography is just a hobby.”
“Much more than that, at least judging by those pictures of Nightwinds. Rather like Ethan’s interest in solving old murders.”
“He told me about that last night.”
“Is that right?” Bonnie studied her intently. “Did it strike you as a little weird?”
“No. It struck me as very Ethan-like.”
“Ethan-like.” Bonnie chuckled. “Yes. That is exactly what it is.”
“Ethan needs to pursue answers and balance the scales the way other men need to drive fast cars or search for gold. It’s part of who and what he is.”
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