The Spring at Moss Hill

by Carla Neggers

  “I won’t disturb you?”

  She smiled. “Oh, you’ll disturb me, but I won’t mind.”

  “I’m going to take a look around the place.”

  “I won’t call 911 if I see you, then. If you see anything suspicious, by the way, there’s decent cell service here. You should be able to call 911.”

  He stared at her a moment, then broke into a slow, thoroughly sexy grin. “I’ll keep that in mind, Kylie. Working the rest of the day? Should I worry if I see the lights on at 3:00 a.m.?”

  “If you do, it’ll be because I got up early, not because I stayed up late.”

  His gaze held her for longer than she found comfortable. “I might take a walk later, or settle in and have a beer on the balcony—assuming it’s warm enough.”

  “Evenings still can get cool this time of year, but that can be nice, too. I had wine on my balcony during a snowstorm after I first moved in here in March. It was magical.”

  Russ raised his eyebrows. “We need to work on your idea of magical.”

  Kylie felt heat rise in her face. “Well, enjoy the rest of the day.”

  “I will, thanks. Knock on my door if you think of anything else that could help unravel what’s going on with these rumors.” He reached into his jacket and withdrew a card, handing it to her. “Or call or text.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Kylie took the card and slipped it into her pocket, eager to get back to her worktable.

  Time to disappear.

  She waited for Russ to go into the main building before she headed inside, her pace picking up the closer she got to her apartment and a locked door between her and her temporary neighbor. She wasn’t afraid of him. She just didn’t want him prying into her life.

  And it was tough to be neutral about him. He was physical, intelligent and always on alert. No question about that.

  Also, sexy.

  No question about that, either.

  Kylie dove into her apartment, breathing deeply as the door shut behind her. Her reaction to him wasn’t going to get her anywhere but into deep trouble.

  Time to calm down and get to work.

  * * *

  She made tea. She sharpened pencils. She cleaned erasers. She sorted crayons, dusted her scanner, changed the batteries in her wireless keyboard and checked three times to see if the ducks had returned to the river, but they hadn’t.

  Finally, Kylie approached her worktable as if it held classified information.

  Imagine the field day Russ Colton would have if he knew about Morwenna Mills.

  She frowned at Sherlock Badger. “Where were you today at lunch when I needed you?”

  A little stuffed badger wouldn’t have helped her case with a real investigator.

  She didn’t sit. She stared out at the river, concentrating on the shadows and the green of the fields rising up across from Moss Hill. But her mind didn’t clear. It was cluttered with images of lunch, Ruby’s fears, Mark’s firm denials of problems at Moss Hill, Jess’s quiet concern and Russ—questioning, suspicious and thoroughly confident.

  And so damn sexy. The dark blue eyes, the tawny hair, the broad shoulders, the easy smile.

  None of that was helping, either.

  Kylie had to adjust her thinking, since she’d expected Julius Hartley, the investigator who’d escorted Daphne Stewart to Knights Bridge last summer. He was a good-looking man, but in his fifties and clearly out of his element in the small, rural town. Russ was closer to her age and struck her as a man who made a point of not being out of his element anywhere.

  She picked a random blue crayon out of a basket on her worktable. Some days she thought she should have a studio separate from her home. She could go to work like “normal people,” as her sister would say, then insist she’d been joking. But ever since Kylie had entered art school, friends, family, professors and strangers had cautioned her about the chronic uncertainties of being a freelance illustrator, especially of children’s books. Even working illustrators with longtime careers had cautioned her.

  By and large, people meant well. They didn’t want to see her broke or hurt by rejection and the unpredictable nature of her chosen profession.

  That was fine. She didn’t want to see herself broke or hurt either.

  From the time she was a little girl scribbling on her bedroom walls, she’d envisioned herself taking a pseudonym, but she’d started her career working under her own name. Now Morwenna Mills was her public face—the author and illustrator who had created the Badger family, newcomers to a little town not unlike Knights Bridge.

  Kylie had never written her own children’s book. She’d recognized that being both writer and illustrator might not work out and hadn’t shown her project to anyone until it was finished. It could have gone right into the trash heap, but it hadn’t. Her agent had loved the writing and the illustrations, and so had publishers.

  Taking a pseudonym hadn’t been required, but it had made sense. At first, she’d continued to take on work as Kylie Shaw. Now she only worked as Morwenna.

  For better or worse, she thought, picturing the California investigator across the hall. Had he already guessed she was hiding something?

  She could swear him to secrecy and tell him about Morwenna.

  But why tell him if she hadn’t told her parents and sister and her closest friends? Why open that can of worms? Why take the chance? She was deep into her series of fairy tales. It didn’t have the same pressures as her recent Badger deadlines, but she was absorbed in the work.

  Always her excuses for keeping Morwenna to herself.

  She didn’t intend to keep her secret forever, but right now Ava and Ruby O’Dunn, two popular young local women, were excited about having a Hollywood costume designer come to town. They didn’t need the distraction of her alter ego this week.

  Kylie sat at her worktable and opened her sketch pad to her maple tree.

  Right tree. Wrong location.

  It was progress, enough to get her back to work.

  Seven

  “Ruby shouldn’t have said anything,” Christopher Sloan said as he, Mark Flanagan and Russ stood on the balcony outside the meeting room, above the Moss Hill dam. “Her mother hears all the town gossip. It’s the nature of her job, and she likes it—likes being in the know. Ruby should be used to it by now. It’s easy for idle talk to get turned into something it shouldn’t.”

  Mark didn’t look convinced. He and Christopher had finished their look at the renovated mill and hadn’t found anything amiss. It was midafternoon, cooler by the river. Russ had settled into his apartment after he’d had his own look around the property. Not a peep from Kylie Shaw. She was hiding something, no question, but he doubted whatever it was had anything to do with fire codes or corners cut during the refurbishment of the old hat factory.

  Russ sensed that he and the two local men were on the same wavelength. He hadn’t expected to feel comfortable with the two New Englanders right from the start, but he could see they, too, weren’t concerned about actual problems with the mill but instead with the potential effect of the nebulous rumors.

  “Why would there be idle talk about this place?” Mark asked. “And why now?”

  “Because a Hollywood type is on her way to town. Doesn’t matter that she lived here forty years ago. She’s dressed movie stars.” Christopher nodded to Russ. “And there’s our PI here. Ruby told everyone you were on the way, Russ. That had to stoke the fires.”

  “Drama,” Mark said tightly, clearly disgusted.

  Christopher shrugged. “Sometimes people talk out of their hats and don’t realize they’re stirring up trouble.”

  “They should be more careful.” Mark stared down at the water flowing steadily over the dam, as it had since the mid-nineteenth century. “I don’t need rumors goin
g around that I did anything but a damn good job on this place. If I find out who said anything...”

  “You’ll tell Eric or me,” Christopher Sloan said, then turned to Russ. “Eric is my oldest brother. He’s a police officer in town.”

  Russ said nothing. He could see how frustrated and disturbed Mark was by this development.

  “This will die down once Saturday’s event passes without a hitch,” Christopher added.

  Mark continued to stare at the water. “I hope so.”

  Russ leaned against the rail. If the two men were lying and the place was riddled with safety issues, then the rail could give way and land him in the river. But he didn’t believe the rail was anything but solid. “Mark, is there anyone with a grudge against you—anyone who’d want to make your life miserable?”

  “I’ve fired people, if that’s what you’re asking. So have the Sloans and other contractors who worked on renovating this place. I can’t think of anyone who’s been a real problem.”

  “No one you had to have escorted from the premises by police? Lawsuits? Angry letters? Threats?”

  Mark shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  “My brothers and my sister have had a few problems with employees they had to let go,” Christopher said. “Nothing recently that I know of.”

  “What’s recently?” Russ asked.

  “Past six months. Probably the past year.”

  Russ stood straight. “What about the O’Dunns?”

  “I don’t see how rumors about this place not being safe would hurt the O’Dunns,” Mark said. “Everyone in town loves Elly and her daughters. Phoebe’s engaged to Noah Kendrick, of course, and he’s a high-profile billionaire, but it’s a stretch to connect him with this nonsense.”

  And nonsense it did seem to be, Russ thought.

  “Ava and Ruby have stars in their eyes,” Christopher said. “They’re getting carried away with this notion of opening a children’s theater here, with Daphne Stewart’s help. They’d put on plays, offer classes and workshops—Ruby can go on forever about the possibilities. I gather Ava’s just as bad. Heads in the clouds.”

  “Let’s get past the class on Saturday first,” Mark muttered.

  Christopher nodded thoughtfully. “Exactly what I told Ruby.”

  Russ had asked Daphne how serious she was about this theater venture, but she’d changed the subject and he hadn’t pursued it. He decided to make no comment about the idea of Moss Hill as a children’s theater.

  Christopher had to get back to the firehouse. Mark needed to get home.

  Enough of ambiguous rumors for one day.

  Russ walked with the two Knights Bridge men to the front of the building. He had no firm plans for the rest of the day. Since he didn’t have a packed agenda and there was zero urgency, even with someone spreading rumors about safety at Moss Hill, he figured he could relax, take a nap, go for a run and maybe see if he could find out more about Kylie Shaw, children’s book illustrator.

  * * *

  Kylie Shaw had a bare-bones website that hadn’t been updated in months.

  Russ found himself peering at her photo on his laptop. Since her hair was chin-length, the photo wasn’t that recent. She was standing on a stone bridge but otherwise he couldn’t pinpoint the location. He doubted it was Knights Bridge.

  Never mind Knights Bridge—he wasn’t sure it was in the US.

  The site was geared to people who might hire her as an illustrator, not to readers, children in general or other illustrators. Her bio was professional but hinted at a certain artistic quirkiness. She’d grown up in small-town New England with a younger sister. Her father was a veterinarian, and her mother trained and groomed dogs—the perfect background for an illustrator of children’s books.

  Her list of credits included about a dozen children’s books she’d illustrated, none in the past two years. She wasn’t on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

  If she’d been on deadline, she had to have work.

  Maybe a web presence wasn’t important to getting contracts.

  Or maybe she was lying about the deadlines. She could have come to Knights Bridge after a setback in her career, used her retreat as a way to get back on track. That would mean she had solid savings or another income. Boyfriend, alimony, inheritance?

  Russ shut his laptop. Looking up a children’s illustrator on the internet was a sign he was jet-lagged, bored, taken by said illustrator’s fair hair and pretty light blue eyes—or all of the above.

  He saw no point in digging deeper. If he’d discovered a sabotaged fire extinguisher or scrawled threats on a wall in the meeting room, that’d be different.

  Kylie Shaw was probably in her apartment drawing pictures of cuddly critters.

  Not anything he needed to spend time on.

  He got to his feet and decided on a run. A good one. At least five miles.

  He changed into running clothes and set off up the river, in the opposite direction of the village. The river widened, coursing over exposed rocks and the occasional downed tree, mere driftwood now. The bank was steep, washed out in places but for the most part intact.

  He slowed as he came to a red-painted covered bridge.

  A surprise, this.

  Picturesque under the April sky, surrounded by green fields and woods, the bridge could have been the subject of a New England postcard. Russ wouldn’t be surprised if it had been.

  He listened to the sounds of the river, and of the breeze in the trees.

  “Damn, it’s quiet.”

  His flight might have been days instead of hours ago.

  He walked across the wood bridge, a single lane over a relatively narrow section of the river. A small plaque indicated the bridge had been built in 1845—more than a decade before construction of the mill downriver and generations before cars, trucks and a runner from Southern California.

  Russ exited the covered bridge and followed the road uphill to a gentle stretch that ran a bit farther back from the river, along a field plowed for spring planting. He came to a house situated amid mature shade trees, rock walls and flower gardens bursting into bloom. The house’s blue-gray shingles and dark gray shutters blended with the early spring landscape as clouds moved in from the west.

  He paused, taking in the views, the silence.

  Was this the house Kylie had rented when she’d first arrived in Knights Bridge?

  He didn’t have an artistic bone, muscle or cell in his body, but he could imagine crafting illustrations for children’s books here.

  He continued on his run, eventually coming to a cul-de-sac off his road, with three houses. School-age kids were playing softball in one of the yards. A man was working on a tractor in another yard. Laundry fluttered in the breeze on a clothesline in the third yard.

  Nothing around here was as isolated as it seemed, but he would bet Kylie had rented the house down the road. How had she chosen it? Friends, relatives, a website—a stab in the dark?

  He turned around and jogged back to Moss Hill.

  Another shower, a check of his messages and it was time for that beer on the balcony.

  The way Moss Hill was constructed, he couldn’t see onto Kylie’s balcony.

  Just as well, maybe.

  There was no furniture on his balcony, and with the waning daylight, the temperature was dropping. He had a decent cell signal and called Julius Hartley.

  “No problems so far, I take it?” Julius asked.

  “Nothing serious. Small-town talk.” Russ filled Julius in on the rumors. “Has Daphne been in touch with anyone in Knights Bridge besides Ava and Ruby O’Dunn?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “You and Loretta stay in touch with Dylan McCaffrey and Noah Kendrick. They’re more likely to draw neg
ative attention than Daphne is.”

  “But there’s been nothing,” Julius said. “Loretta has concerns about their security setup, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s threatened them or causing trouble. Dylan and Noah aren’t involved with Moss Hill.”

  “What about money for a children’s theater?” Russ asked.

  “Community support has to be there for it to work, with or without their money.”

  “Makes sense.” Russ drank some of his beer. He could hear a bird in the distance, and the ever-present flow of the river. “How’s Daphne?”

  Julius sighed. “She left me a voice mail a little while ago saying she’s getting cold feet.”

  “Is she or is this a ploy?”

  “I haven’t called her back. She said in the voice mail she’s so nervous about Saturday she could throw up. I’ve never known her to be nervous, but she’s never given a master class anywhere, never mind Knights Bridge.”

  “She’s not going to throw up,” Russ said. “Don’t indulge her. Tell her it’s too late to get cold feet.”

  “See why I turned her over to you?” Julius chuckled softly. “Loretta and the move to La Jolla were part of it, but Daphne knows what buttons to push with me. You have no buttons.”

  “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

  “A fact. What do you want me to tell her?”

  “Tell her Ava and Ruby are doing a thorough job, and everything’s set for her arrival. She has nothing to worry about. I’ll be back on Wednesday and will escort her here myself.”

  “She’ll like that. You can be her entourage.”

  Russ gritted his teeth but said nothing.

  “Daphne won’t want to disappoint anyone,” Julius said. “I’ll tell her she can start packing. She told Loretta she might bring the sequined gown she wore to her first Academy Awards ceremony thirty-odd years ago. Her design, of course.”

  “Julius...” Russ welcomed a soft, cold breeze floating across the river. “I don’t know how to say this, but—”