I opened the door and squinted in the morning light, haloing his head. “Hi, Nick. If you’re looking for Jayce, she’s not here. Sorry.”
“I know. I just spoke with her. And I was looking for you. She told me you’d be here.”
Looking for me? My heart skipped a beat, and I grimaced. I needed to get a grip.
“I tried calling first, but your phone’s off.” A lightning smile flickered across his chiseled face. “Or you’re ignoring my calls.”
Crapola. The battery must have run down on my cell again. Even if it hadn’t, I was notorious for not hearing it ring. Like my sisters, I was never one for gabbing on the phone.
I edged onto the porch, shutting the door behind me. Lenore was with Ellen, and I didn’t want to disturb our aunt’s fitful rest. “Did Jayce tell you what Brayden discovered?” I asked in a low voice.
His dark brows slashed downward. “Brayden? No, she didn’t. Don’t tell me you talked to him again?”
I tugged the cuffs of my white blouse. “I can’t help it if I run into him on the street. He told me Alicia had been researching corruption on the city council. Vote buying.”
“Interesting. Did he give you any names?”
“No. He hadn’t been in any condition to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he was drunk.”
Nick’s face darkened. “I’ll speak with him. Alone, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine by me.” Thanks a lot, Mr. Bossy McBossy-Pants. I folded my arms over my chest. “If you aren’t here about Brayden, why are you here?”
“First, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am to learn about your aunt. This is her house?”
I nodded, my throat closing. “We grew up in it.”
“What can I do to help?”
Everyone asked that, but I thought he meant it. “Thanks, but if you can keep my sister out of jail… Well, you’re already doing that. But you said, first. Was there anything else?”
“I want to return to the forest, retrace our steps.”
“You don’t need my permission for that.”
“I’d like you to come too.”
“Okaaay.”
Unmoving, he watched me.
“You mean, now?” I asked.
“Why not? Our homeless friend might have left something behind at the spring.”
Again, I sensed that whisper of dishonesty, of information withheld. “Do all the lawyers in your firm track down witnesses on their own?”
“No. We usually hire a PI firm for that. But a walk in the woods is a nice break for me.”
And billable. How on earth was Jayce going to pay this man? “And you need me to scout the way?”
One corner of his lips curled upward. He leaned closer, and I felt the heat rising off him, smelled his woodsy cologne.
My blood pulsed faster.
“I didn’t do as well on my own last night as I’d hoped,” he said. “Would you mind being my guide?”
A man, asking a woman to play pathfinder? I didn’t believe it for a minute. But he didn’t seem like a guy looking to score with me either. His expectant smile didn’t quite touch his gray-blue eyes, darkened to the color of a Texas storm. “All right. I’ve been here all night and could use a break too. Let me change. I’ll be right back.”
I left him on the porch and returned to my aunt’s bedroom.
Ellen’s eyes opened. “I heard someone on the porch.”
“It’s Nick Heathcoat, Jayce’s lawyer.”
Lenore rose from her wingback chair and laid her paperback on the wooden dresser.
“Oh?” Ellen’s brow arched. Her hands crumpled the light, blue blanket. “And he wants to see you?”
My cheeks warmed. “He wants me to show him something in the woods.” Oh yeah, that sounded realistic. Maybe he’d show me some etchings while we were at it. “Mind if I borrow a t-shirt?”
“Go ahead.” Ellen motioned toward the unvarnished, wooden dresser.
“Thanks.” I walked to the bureau and opened a drawer, pulling out an orange, Harvest Festival t-shirt.
“Not your color,” Ellen said.
Lenore smirked and opened the book, hiding behind its cover.
“I’m not wearing it to impress anyone.” But I returned the shirt to its place and drew out a blue t-shirt promoting a local blood drive.
“That’ll do,” Ellen said.
Whipping off my blouse, I slithered into the t-shirt, tugging it over my low-rider jeans.
“And be sure to get the maps,” Ellen said.
“Maps?” I asked.
“For the troop movements. Move the Maryland Infantry to Culp’s Hill. It’ll be a slaughter, by Jupiter, but it has to be done.”
I blinked, the world seeming to slow. Ellen’s mind had wandered to the Battle of Gettysburg. “Okay. I’ll do that.”
“Well? Go, and report to the rose rabbit!”
My blood chilled. The rose rabbit. Dante had said the same thing. “Rose—”
“Aunt Ellen,” Lenore said, “you’re at home, in Doyle. Remember?”
She blinked. “Oh. Oh, yes.” Ellen turned her face and stared out the square window.
“Ellen, what’s the rose rabbit?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” she mumbled.
Expression tense, Lenore plucked at my sleeve. “Don’t press her,” she whispered.
“I’ll be back soon.” Brows drawing together, I walked to the kitchen.
Lenore followed me. “Don’t go,” she said quietly, brushing her blond hair behind her shoulder.
I froze, gripping the handle of the cupboard. “Is Ellen—”
“No, like I told you, Ellen’s not leaving today.”
My shoulders sagged. “Thank God. I thought you saw that she… I want to be here when it happens, to say goodbye.”
“You will. We all will.”
“What happened in there?” I asked.
“She’s been having more and more of those confused episodes.” Lenore bit her bottom lip and looked to the kitchen door. “But the doctor told us to expect that.”
“Have you ever heard her talk about a rose rabbit before?”
“No! She’s just confused.”
“The old woman in the forest, Dante Cunningham, told me to tell the rose rabbit as well. Could she and Ellen know each other?” And the new mother at the hospital had mentioned a rabbit too.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said quickly.
“Then why—?”
“Don’t go into the woods. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“I thought Jayce was the sister who got feelings.” I opened the cupboard and pulled out a metal thermos. Unscrewing it, I filled it from the tap.
“I’m serious.”
“We’re only taking the trail to the spring. We won’t get lost.” But I shifted, uneasy. We’d gotten lost last night. Still, whatever magic had been at work then, I’d gotten past it. If it returned, I’d defeat it again.
“I mean it,” Lenore said, her gray eyes intense. “I’m not thrilled about this.”
Something thunked onto the roof, and we started. Outside, a pinecone plummeted past the window over the sink.
“Are you afraid Nick can’t be trusted?” My stomach spiraled. If she said, yes…
Lenore leaned over the butcher block counter, her hair a curtain of gold. “Jayce’s lawyer? I didn’t get any bad vibes from him. If Jayce has a good feeling about the guy, I trust it. I just don’t feel you should go out today.”
“I have to go.” I screwed on the cap to the thermos. “It might help clear Jayce.”
“How?”
“It’s a long story. Her lawyer’s asked me for help, so I’m going to help. Unless you need me here?”
“I don’t need you here, but I still don’t understand—”
“Jayce may not be taking this seriously, but she’s in real trouble.”
Lenore frowned. “Why do you believe she’s not taking it seriously?”
“She’s putting too much faith in someone else getting her out of this mess.”
“Karin, you don’t have to fix everything.”
“Someone does.” Ignoring Lenore’s anxious expression, I strode from the kitchen. Lenore might have a hotline to the dead, but that didn’t make her an oracle. I looked in on our aunt — sleeping — and walked to the front porch.
Nick and Dr. Toeller stood beside the railing, smiling, their heads close together. Though Toeller was Nick’s elder by an uncertain amount of years, my heart pinched. In her ice-blue tunic and dark slacks, Dr. Toeller was glamorous, her platinum-gold hair shimmering in the morning sun. Beside Nick’s chiseled good looks and sleek dark hair, they could have been movie stars who’d stepped out of time. Toeller had “it”, whatever it was, and I did not.
Jealous much? My reaction was pointless. Nick and I weren’t involved.
Dr. Toeller looked my way. “Hello, Karin. I stopped by to check on your aunt. How is she?”
“Sleeping off and on.”
“No pain?”
“None that she’s complained of.”
The doctor smiled faintly. “But she wouldn’t, would she?”
“Probably not.” My aunt didn’t believe in griping. “But she has had moments of confusion.”
“Yes, I expected that. I’ll go in and see her now, if it’s all right?”
“Of course,” I said.
Lenore came to the door and stepped aside for the doctor.
“Ready?” Nick asked.
“Yeah.”
Though it was only a mile away, we drove to the trailhead behind my house in Nick’s black SUV. He parked the car in my driveway. Belatedly, I realized I could have changed at my own place and into a nicer top.
I led him around the side of the house and into the labyrinth garden. The scent of lavender was heady, sweet, and bees buzzed around the spiky flowers.
He paused, staring at the labyrinth. “Interesting design. What is it?”
“Celtic. It’s a labyrinth walk. Jayce chose the plants.” But the labyrinth had been Lenore’s idea and a good one. Walking its path was a moving meditation. I’d always been too restless to sit still.
His brow creased. “But there’s only one path.”
“It’s not a maze. It’s for reflection.”
Tearing his gaze from the flowers, he strode to the stile. “Shall we?”
I let him help me over the fence. We climbed the hill, dried grasses brushing our legs. Soon, I’d fallen behind him, and I studied his broad shoulders. The lawyer clearly put in serious gym time. The edge of his mysterious, black tattoo drifted above the back collar of his t-shirt. In the daylight, it looked like wings.
The trail wound beneath an oak. Its branches trailed low to the ground, its trunk bent, listening.
“What do you think of Jayce’s case?” I asked. The sun warmed my shoulders, and a bead of sweat ran down my neck.
“The victim was found in Jayce’s café, and your sister had a relationship with the victim’s husband.”
“She did not!”
Nick stopped and turned, shade dappling his handsome face. “Didn’t she?”
“They’re just friends.” Breathing hard, I caught up to him.
“That’s not what the town thinks.”
“Who cares what….” Who cares what the town thinks? That was Jayce’s mantra. But we had to care, because what a jury thought might land Jayce in prison. “The town’s wrong.”
“I know.” He turned and continued up the hill.
I hurried after him. “You do?”
“I’m good at sussing out liars, and your sister’s being honest — about this, at least. But it’ll take more than my word to convince a jury.”
“You believe it’s going to trial?” I asked, aghast.
“Not if we can produce convincing evidence to keep the police and DA from taking it there.”
“What if the man we’re looking for didn’t see anything? We don’t even know what time Alicia was killed. It might have happened long before he arrived.” So much was riding on this potential witness.
“She died between two and five forty-five in the morning,” Nick said.
“That doesn’t help. It means she could have been killed while Jayce was sleeping upstairs.” I could imagine it easily. Jayce stumbling home, coming in through Ground’s kitchen and going straight up the stairs, unaware of the body in the coffee shop.
“Maybe. Jayce left to get you from the hospital about five a.m. That gave the killer a forty-five-minute window when Jayce wasn’t around.”
“And if the man we’re looking for is a dead end?” I asked. “What then?”
“Then we look elsewhere.”
“At the sheriff?”
“Does the sheriff have a key to Jayce’s café?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No,” I admitted. “We still don’t understand how Alicia got inside Ground, or even why she would sneak into the café. She had no reason to be there at that hour.”
“There was alcohol in her bloodstream. A lot. Maybe she came to the café to confront Jayce.”
“Over what? She knew there was nothing going on between Jayce and Brayden.”
“Did she?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He halted, staring at the lightning-struck oak. “This is where we got reoriented last night.”
“Yeah. What did you mean about Alicia?”
“Just what I said. She was in Antoine’s Bar on Main, drinking. She closed the place down at two.”
“And she was alone?” I asked.
“She left alone. But before that, she talked the bartender’s ear off about her cheating husband.”
My brain stumbled over that. “She complained about Jayce?”
“Alicia didn’t name names, but the bartender said she didn’t have to. Everyone knew who Brayden was stepping out with.”
Warmth flushed through my veins, and I rubbed the crescent-shaped scar on my palm. “That’s garbage.”
“I believe you.” Lightly, he placed his hands on my shoulders. “We’ll figure this out. Don’t worry.”
How could I not worry? Nick had basically told me the case against Jayce was stitched up.
We hiked further up the hill, passing a tangle of blackberry bushes. I popped a berry into my mouth. The sweetness was almost too much, but I swallowed it and took a swig from my water bottle.
The landscape changed to tall stands of redwood trees, ferns, moss-covered tree stumps. A stream trickled in the gully on our left.
Nick paused beside a redwood, and we stood, catching our breath. He ran his hand along the bark as if examining a tree for the first time, imprinting the experience on his mind. Suddenly, I wished he would touch me with that same thoughtful intensity. My chest and neck heated.
“Ready?” he asked.
“What? Oh, yeah.” I nodded, and we continued through the lush greenery, the earth soft beneath our shoes.
“Why didn’t you ask Jayce to take you into the woods?” I asked.
He didn’t speak for a few moments, his long limbs striding along the serpentine path. “She wasn’t here last night.”
Winded, I laughed, a short gasp. “And you’d rather hike with someone you got lost with?”
“With someone who’s not afraid of getting lost, and who doesn’t panic when it happens.” He slowed, his brow wrinkling. “What happened to us last night?”
A spell I couldn’t explain, not to him. I still wasn’t sure I could explain it to myself. “Somehow we got turned around in the darkness. Maybe we never really were lost, we only thought we were.” The lie burned the tips of my ears. I wanted to tell him the truth.
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
We hiked the looping trail down to the spring, and I stood at the water’s edge, beside a stand of ferns. The water was clear as cold vodka and the pool deep, the rocks at the bottom elaborate fairy castles.
Was this where
my misguided ancestress, Belle, had lured her love for three days of passion? I imagined lying in the soft bed of moss that spread beneath a nearby redwood tree. But I could not imagine frolicking in the spring. The water was snowmelt cold.
Nick climbed the rocks above the spring and dropped to the other side. He wove in and out of ferns and bushes arcing over the spring.
Not knowing what he was searching for, I returned to contemplating the spring. Delicate greenery swayed above me. Water flowed from five breaks in the dark granite, pooling, eddying, and then rushing over black stones and down the valley. The water whispered low, a soft conversation.
The earliest knot magic had been weather control, witches who created knots for sailors to ensure safe passage. I couldn’t control the weather. But during storms, I could sometimes hear words in the wind and thunder — warnings, hints, advice. Maybe the words in the stream were real too.
I bent my head, listening, trying to make sense of the stream’s babble. Find the rose rabbit.
Rose rabbit? Now I knew I was imagining things.
Something stirred at the bottom of the water — a darting fish that almost appeared human. I knelt at the pool’s edge, my knees sinking into the damp clover, and peered down. I could almost catch the words, words and… laughter. A woman sobbed, heartbroken, and I leaned closer.
The hard angles of the rocks hinted of walls, as if I was peering through the top of a castle roof into ballrooms and throne rooms and bedchambers.
Voices murmured, lulling.
My eyelids drifted downward. Beneath my gaze, a tiny man paced inside a dungeon. And through it all, the sobs, calling. My heartbeat slowed. I had to go to the woman, whoever she was, and help her.
A sob caught in my throat, and I felt my own coming loss.
Blinking, I wrenched myself from my misery.
I knelt beside a fountain in a tangled garden. A marble figure of a woman stood in the fountain’s center, water flowing from the jar on her shoulder. Four crumbling halls rose around me, forming a square. Light and music and laughter flowed from a high window in one of the castle halls. I struggled to my feet. Vision or dream, I didn’t question the garden, the castle, the crying.
Sluggish, unwilling, I drew closer to the fountain. The base was a design of celtic knots. Except for one stone, carved in the shape of a rabbit. Rust-stained tears rolled down the marble face of the statue in the fountain’s bowl.
Bound Page 11