by Kate White
“Bonnie nearby?” I ask Jake.
He plucks out his wireless earbuds. “Hmm, I think she’s at the carriage house. She said she wanted to tidy up over there.”
“Okay.”
“No, wait,” he adds. “I saw her out the window so she’s already back. She must be in the woods now.”
“The woods?”
“Yeah, she said that after she was finished, she was going to walk down to the spot where they’re going to do the burial. For, you know, for Mrs. Keaton. Bonnie wanted to check it out before it rained.”
That would be just like Bonnie, wanting to see where Claire will be laid to rest and make sure everything is in order.
I feel a slight pinch of worry, though. There’s a coyote roaming around. Would it ever come out in daytime? Gabe was supposed to mention my sighting to his father, but the news might not have made its way to Bonnie.
I press a finger to my lips, wondering if I should head to the stream myself and alert her. As I stand staring into space, something Jake said works its way back through my mind. Bonnie tidied up at the carriage house this morning. Though Marcus told her to skip the guest suite, she’s been taking care of the rest of us—swapping in fresh towels, emptying wastebaskets, stocking the fridges.
If Hannah used the kitchen in the carriage house to dry foxglove leaves for a tea, Bonnie might have noticed something without being aware of its significance. Maybe this is my opportunity to ask her without others around.
“If anyone’s looking for me, tell them I’ll be back shortly,” I call to Jake as I’m halfway out the back door. Once I’m off the patio, I break into a jog across the lawn. The sky’s even darker now, like it’s been smeared with soot, and the air feels damp. Rain’s coming at some point.
I reach the trellis-lined pathway, and cover it, still moving at a clip. Vines have threaded through the rustic slats at the top, shrouding the path in near darkness today, and I’m relieved when I finally emerge into the wildflower meadow. There’s only one easy route to the stream from here—through the two meadows—so surely I’ll run into Bonnie on her way back. I don’t spot her in this meadow, however, or the next one, either. A stitch has started in my side, and I slow my pace, grabbing a few extra breaths.
And then finally I hear footsteps. And someone panting, even gasping for air. I burst from the grass meadow to find Bonnie standing off to the left near the start of the woods, her eyes wide with what looks like fear.
“What’s wrong?” I call out as I race to her side. “Is it the coywolf?”
“No, no,” she says, shaking her head. She jabs her free arm in the direction of the stream. “There . . . near the water . . . omigod . . .”
“Show me what you mean,” I urge.
Grasping her arm, I pull her cautiously along the edge of the woods in the direction of the stream, less than a minute away.
Before long I see what’s scared her. Vultures. There’s a cluster of them parked on the peaked roof of the old, weathered bird blind. They’re huge, the size of toddlers, though they look primordial—brownish black-feathered bodies with wrinkly, blood-red heads.
“There must be a dead animal around—”
But then my gaze is drawn to the ground about fifteen or so yards ahead of me. There are three more vultures in the weeds along the stream—and a body lying stretched out beside them, facedown. The vultures are pecking at the base of the skull with their beaks, one with a claw clasped around the skull.
Bile surges up into my throat.
It’s a woman wearing one of the tan slickers that hang in the side corridor of the house. And jeans. Jeans that have been yanked down to her ankles, revealing the flesh of her calves.
My gaze flies back to the woman’s head. Her hair’s dark brown, and though the face isn’t visible, I can see a hand, poking out from the sleeve of the slicker. The fingernails are painted a glossy pink.
It’s Hannah, I realize. Lying dead by the stream.
21
I gasp, rooted in place.
Is she really dead? Maybe she’s only injured, but it looks like a devastating injury. And why else would the vultures have come? I drop Bonnie’s arm and force myself forward a few steps. The vultures stop pecking, but barely deterred, they hop back less than a foot.
It’s enough for me to have a better view, though, and the sight makes me recoil. Hannah’s hair is matted and wet with blood, especially near the base of her skull. There’s a hole there, and pieces of flesh stuck in the ooze surrounding it.
“We have to go,” I say to Bonnie in a hoarse whisper.
“Is it—?”
“Hannah? Yeah, it must be.”
“I tried to throw a rock—to make the birds go away, but . . .”
“Bonnie, I don’t think there’s anything you could have done. She must be dead.”
As Bonnie lets out a moan, I grab her arm again and haul her away from the stream. I try to run, the two of us entwined, but the best I manage is a slow jog, hampered by my panic. Someone brutally attacked Hannah, right here on my in-laws’ property. Every few steps I twist my neck and check behind us, making sure no one is following.
We reach the first meadow, where the higher grasses block our view, and each time we approach another curve in the serpentine path, my fear balloons further, as I wonder what’s on the other side. But we don’t see anyone, and finally burst into the flower meadow. At the end of it I check behind me yet again, almost tripping as I swing back around.
We’re halfway through the trellised path when Bonnie begs me to stop.
“I’ve got to rest for a sec,” she says.
“Of course,” I tell her. We halt and both lean forward at the waist, gasping for air. At least from here, we can see the house, up the slope and far across the lawn.
“I can’t believe this,” Bonnie says, a sob caught in her throat. She’s practically dripping with sweat, and in the contained space of the path, I pick up its sour smell. “Was she raped, do you think?”
“Maybe. Or someone intended that and when she tried to fight him off, he killed her.”
“Oh god, the poor girl. But who could have done it?”
So far, I’ve been too terrified to wonder, but now a thought takes shape. “Claire said something the other day about hunters coming onto the property.”
“Yes, more than once,” Bonnie says. “Mostly in the fall, during deer season, though I think she spotted one recently. You’re allowed to shoot groundhogs in summer but not on private property like this.”
I nod, trying to piece it together. “When did you last see Hannah today?”
“When she came by the kitchen for coffee—like I told you. And then I saw her from the window going across the lawn.”
“She . . . she might have walked down here right after.”
And stumbled onto her attacker. Was it really a hunter then, one who thought nothing of assaulting and killing her?
But then, unbidden, other names force their way into my brain, no matter how hard I try to keep them out.
Nick. Who’d quarreled with Hannah last night.
Marcus. Who seems to have been livid with Hannah, though I don’t know why. Perhaps because he couldn’t have her for himself.
No, it can’t be one of Gabe’s brothers. It can’t be.
Behind us, leaves rustle in the wind, startling me, but I turn to see there’s no one there.
“Can you start again?” I ask Bonnie, desperate to be back at the house.
“Yeah, I’m okay now.”
Linking arms, we cover the rest of the passageway and then scurry up and across the lawn. There’s no one outside the house, but as soon as we enter through the side door, I hear voices coming from the living room. We follow the sound to find Ash, Marcus, and Gabe standing in a circle, hands in their pants pockets, clearly having a discussion of some kind.
“Where’s Nick?” I ask, still nearly breathless.
“I’m not sure,” Ash says. “Are you okay, Summer?”
“What?” he exclaims.
“She’s dead, I’m almost positive. Her head . . .”
Marcus’s face goes white before my eyes, and Gabe steps toward me, grasping my arm.
“Good love of god,” their father exclaims.
“We need to call 911,” I say. “And someone needs to find Nick. To tell him.”
“Tell me what?”
Nick steps into the room from the front hall, dressed in jeans and a lavender polo shirt.
I take the deepest breath I can. “Nick, I’m so sorry,” I say. “Hannah’s—Hannah’s dead. And, god, it looks like someone’s murdered her. With some kind of blow to the head.”
His face wrinkles, but in confusion instead of horror.
“What in the world are you talking about?” Nick says.
“Bonnie and I—” Before I can say another word, I hear footsteps in the hall, and a second later, Hannah enters the room.
All five foot eight of her. She’s dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved yellow turtleneck, her hair and makeup freshly done.
As Bonnie lets out a scream of shock, I feel the blood rush from my brain. It’s like I’m in one of those nightmares all actors have, in which you’re about to go onstage and realize you’ve never even read the play you’re performing in.
“I—We were down at the stream,” I say. “We saw her . . . the body.”
Hannah locks eyes with me. “Is this some kind of a sick joke?”
“Summer, what in the hell is going on?” Ash demands. Gabe is looking at me as if my hair’s on fire. I gesture toward Bonnie to back me up.
“Just like she said, there’s a body at the stream,” Bonnie says, her voice tremulous. “A woman with dark hair—we thought it was you.”
“Keira,” Marcus exclaims, his voice strained with panic.
“It can’t be her,” I blurt out. “She was in the house when I left.”
“No,” Ash suddenly roars, and he tears out of the room into the main hall and from there into the foyer. We follow him, watching as he flings open the front door, and charges down the steps of the house.
“Dad, what is it?” Gabe calls out, running down the driveway after him, with Nick, Marcus, and me sprinting behind.
“Where’s Henry?” I shout to Gabe.
“In the kitchen. With Jake.”
When we catch up with Ash, he’s just beyond the circular part of the driveway, in the long section that connects the house to the road, and he’s staring at a blue BMW. His hands are laced through his thick gray hair, fingers digging into his scalp. “Jesus Christ, it must be Jillian,” he says.
That makes no sense, but . . . her car is definitely sitting here. An image muscles its way to the front of my mind: the dark matted hair; the long slim fingers with painted nails. Like Hannah’s. Like Jillian’s, too.
“Jillian was here?” I say tentatively.
“She was helping me,” Ash says. His eyes bounce with agitation. “We’ve got to get down there.”
“Are you sure she’s dead?” Marcus asks, pulling me aside and keeping his voice low so his father can’t hear.
“Yes, unfortunately. The back of her head’s open, from a blow—or a shot maybe—and there were vultures around, like she’d been dead for a little while at least. It also looks like someone might have tried to sexually assault her.”
Or, it occurs to me for the first time, wanted to make it look that way.
Grimacing, Marcus turns back to Ash. “Dad, you can’t go down there. It’s a crime scene.”
“Marcus, you had one fucking year of law school,” his father snaps. “That doesn’t make you an expert.”
“Dad, he’s right,” Gabe says. “We have to all stay put and call 911.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “Since I can describe what I saw.”
We hurry together back toward the house, where Bonnie’s waiting on the front stoop, clearly doing her best not to fall apart. And Hannah? Nowhere to be seen now.
“Have you got your phone?” I ask Gabe in a rush.
“No, it’s in the cottage.”
“Mine, too. I’ll use the landline in the den.”
He nods limply, as if he’s still trying to absorb what’s unfurling. Before we take off down the hall, he asks Bonnie to check on Henry.
“Sure thing,” she says.
The landline’s on one of the small antique side tables in the room. I grab the receiver but before calling, I turn to Gabe. “I’m just—”
“Just what?”
“Worried. What if I say something that backfires?”
He presses his finger across his lips and eyes me expectantly, as if waiting for me to elaborate.
“Gabe, she was murdered,” I say. “And what if it wasn’t by a stranger, but by someone in this house?”
He flinches. “Tell them what you found. And leave it at that.”
Steeling myself, I tap 9–1–1. After giving my name, I describe the situation, my voice trembling as I speak. The dispatcher runs through some questions, calmly and efficiently, and at the end I assure her that, yes, we’ll remain in the house and await the arrival of the police.
“Did they say how long it would be?” Gabe says once I disconnect. He’s been standing next to me the whole time, his brow furrowed.
“No, only that the police are being dispatched immediately . . . . Gabe, what could Jillian have been doing down there?”
“God knows.”
But maybe I know. Or I could posit a theory. What if Jillian and Ash really were having an affair, and she came to the house today to see him, pulling her car into the lower part of the driveway so it wouldn’t be so obvious? What if the two of them had arranged to meet in secret by the stream?
And then what? Did they agree to leave separately so as not to be seen together, and then Jillian, the last to depart, was attacked by a stranger? Or, oh god, did Ash kill her? But what would his motive be? It couldn’t have been that she was threatening to tell his wife. Could she have been making demands now that Claire was out of the picture?
I realize that I have to tell Gabe about what Marcus and I witnessed. “Gabe, there’s something I need to—”
He raises a hand, palm forward. “I know what you’re going to say. Marcus told me last night on the phone—about Dad and Jillian.”
I feel a millisecond of relief, but his knowing changes nothing about the current situation.
“Should your dad be calling a lawyer?” I ask. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but shouldn’t there be someone guiding us?”
Before he can respond, Marcus appears in the doorway.
“Did someone say lawyer?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Gabe tells him. “That’s a priority.”
“Dad’s tracking one down now, a guy who does criminal cases,” he says, looking pained as he says the word criminal. “You called 911 already?”
“Summer did,” Gabe tells him, “and the police are on their way. Does anyone know what Jillian was doing by the woods?”
“According to Dad, she was checking out the area for the burial. Apparently, she needed to provide some information to the people digging the damn hole.”
I guess that makes sense, sort of. “But how would she even know her way down there?” I ask.
Marcus shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Do you think Nick’s aware if anything was going on between Dad and Jillian?” Gabe asks. “He was around them a lot more than we were.”
“Nick’s so goo-goo eyed about his own love life, I doubt he’d notice if Godzilla made landfall and came up the Delaware. But it’s worth asking him. And we’re all on the same page about the hug, right?”
“Of course,” Gabe says. “I won’t breathe a word.”
When I don’t respond immediately, they turn to me.
“Agree, absolutely,” I say, but my stomach twists. What if this means I have to deceive
the police? I can lie and make anyone believe me, but I don’t want to have to do that.
“And everything else?” Gabe asks, back to looking at Marcus. “The less said the better, right?”
Marcus nods, but before I can ask what they’re referring to, Gabe wonders aloud where Blake and Wendy are.
“Doylestown—they left around one,” Marcus says. “Wendy’s doctor arranged for her to have a sonogram there for some reason. They shouldn’t be much—”
He stops short as the distant wail of a police siren penetrates the quiet of the room.
“Okay, here we go,” Marcus says. “Brace for impact.”
How in the world are we supposed to brace for this? It feels like someone’s taken my life in their hands and is shaking it hard like a snow globe, making pieces come undone.
We hurry into the living room, where Keira’s sitting with the just-returned Blake and Wendy, all three looking stunned as Nick debriefs them. Ash must still be trying to connect with an attorney because we can hear him through the open door of the study talking on the phone, his voice low and his tone urgent.
“And you’re sure it’s Jillian,” Blake says, glancing at the three of us who’ve just entered.
“It must be,” Marcus says. “Dad tried her cell and there was no answer. And anyone else is accounted for.”
The siren cuts off abruptly and we hear a vehicle heading up the gravel driveway and lurching to a stop.
“Okay,” Blake says. “Since Dad is tied up, I’ll speak to the police first. Summer, you should come with me, to describe what you found. Everyone else should remain in the house for now, I think.”
“I want Gabe to be there, too,” I say.
“Fine.”
When Blake, Gabe, and I exit the house, we discover an ambulance, not the police. But as the ambulance doors spring open, an official-looking SUV charges up the driveway, and moments later, two male state troopers climb out, dressed in gray pants, gray shirts, and black ties, their faces wooden.
Blake does as promised, introducing us in somber tones and explaining that it was me, along with the housekeeper, who found the body near a wooded area on the property. “We believe,” he adds, “that it’s Jillian Herrera, my father’s assistant.”