by Mara Webb
“Yeah, yeah,” he said in mock-dismissal. “The cabin’s this way.”
We were now far enough away from the town square that I couldn’t hear the music anymore. Miller and I felt like the last two people on the earth, but I was soon reminded that we weren’t alone. Miller stopped when he got to the small bridge.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“The dirt near this bridge is wet, the stream must have overflowed recently,” he explained. He looked at the ‘and?’ expression on my face. “There are footprints in the mud. The rest of the path has been dry, but here…”
“Someone’s been this way recently,” I surmised.
We continued over the small wooden footbridge and into the woods beyond. The cabin wasn’t much further, and as we approached, I was able to see the pond behind it. Water was trickling out of a rocky spring into the pond, and the stream we had just crossed led here too. The movement of that water was the only sound.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” Miller sighed, walking closer to the cabin and trying to peer through the windows. He moved all the way around the cabin. “Every darn window is covered; the drapes are closed.”
“So, we have to go inside?” I asked, hesitantly. I didn’t want to, but we had no choice. Miller wriggled the door handle to no avail, then threw his bodyweight at it, cracking the wood in several places. With another shoulder throw, the door opened. I saw the look on his face as he inspected what was inside. I already knew what he’d found. The few flies buzzing about the place were a bad sign.
I walked to his side, braced myself, then stepped into the cabin. There was a woman lying still on the ground, her skin pale and mottled. She had a resemblance to Fleur. This had to be Holly.
There was a dark line around her throat as if she had been strangled with something, but the line was so incredibly thin. They weren’t the marks from hands, but rather a rope.
I crouched to get a better look at the injury, it looked like whatever had been wrapped around her neck had broken the skin.
What could have caused a mark like this? And who had done it?
13
“What now?” I asked. Miller was looking around the room we were standing in, and had his brow furrowed as he wiped an index finger along various pieces of furniture.
“Well, this is clearly a murder, no doubt in my mind about that,” he replied. “The mark around her neck, the fact that she was left in here and look…” he stepped closer to me and held out his finger.
“What am I supposed to see?”
“There’s no dust in here,” he said. “I don’t know much about dust science, if there is such a thing, but I know that she’s been missing for a few days and this place is spotless. Someone has cleaned up in here and I think they did that after Holly was dead.”
“Right,” I sighed. “Okay, so what do we tell Fleur? What do we do with Holly’s body? Who do we tell?”
“Whoa, slow down.” Miller pinched the bridge of his nose and took in a deep breath. “All right, what we have here is a problem.”
“I figured that much out on my own,” I smirked.
“Yeah, well the thing is I don’t know who to tell. You’re the peacekeeper and I’m the sheriff, on any other island in Hallow Haven I’d know exactly what we are supposed to do, but here,” he shrugged. “I feel like I don’t want to ruffle any more feathers. I know that’s not the right thing to do, but it feels like it might be the safest.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but we can’t ignore this,” I exclaimed, looking back down at Holly’s body and struggling to formulate a plan. “There is a killer on this island.”
“I hear you, Sadie, but there is also a group of crazy witches that are planning to sacrifice you to the witch gods, or whatever, so I don’t know if they really view murder in the same way that we do,” he huffed.
“We should tell Fleur,” I said. “At the very least.”
Miller was focused on Holly too, stepping closer and crouching down beside her body. The absence of a forensics team on the islands meant that there was no need to preserve the crime scene in the same way you would have to elsewhere. Miller lifted her hand and was looking carefully at her fingernails.
“I think she fought back,” he said.
I crouched beside him and looked at her fingers. There was a small amount of blood under a few of the nails, whoever she had attacked when fighting for her life would have marks on their body. That could be a way for us to figure out who did this.
“How do we go about finding scratch marks on the killer? There are so many people on this island,” I lamented.
“Right, but I’d put money on the culprit being someone we’ve already spoken to,” he replied, standing up straight and heading over to the window that faced back toward town. “It’s either the husband, the lover or the sister. That’s my guess anyway.”
“When someone fights back, they usually scratch at the face, neck or the arms, right?” I said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, if someone was strangling me, I’d be trying to claw their hands off my throat, wouldn’t you? I’m pretty sure I saw it in a documentary, too,” I admitted.
“Do any of the current suspects have those sorts of injuries?” he asked.
“I wasn’t looking, were you?”
Miller shook his head. Somewhere in the distance the clock chimed again, letting us know that it was now one o’clock in the afternoon. Time seemed to be rushing by, and the constant reminder that we were approaching sunset was chilling. We were running out of time.
I felt so certain that there was a great importance in finding Holly’s killer, not simply because there needed to be justice, but I felt as if finding the answers might twist fate in my favor. Maybe that good luck spell hadn’t failed after all. If you ignore the part where I drowned on the way to the island and was chosen as a sacrifice by a group of witches that had arranged a marriage between my boyfriend and a random woman, things had the potential to turn around.
“So, we have to go back to speak to them all again, look at their hands, arms and faces,” Miller summarized. “We have to speed things along, Sadie. I want you off this island before dark.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Who should we speak to first?”
“Fleur, probably. We can tell her what we’ve found out here and check her out for injuries,” Miller explained.
“You really think she could have done this to her sister?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but if she’d found out that Holly was hooking up with the guy she had her eye on, then she might have. People can do some very unreasonable things in the name of love,” he sighed. I suppose that was a veiled reference to him coming here to have witches deal with the werewolf in him, he had done that for me.
We left the cabin, pulling the door closed despite it now being split from Miller’s break in, and walked back along the dirt track over the wooden bridge.
“Would there be any use looking for muddy boots or shoes?” I asked.
“Maybe, but if you were trying to get away with murder you might have cleaned away as much evidence as you could. You saw the inside of the cabin, the place was dust-free,” he said. The trees on either side of the field seemed to act as a sound barrier, blocking out the noises from the rest of the island and covering it all with bird song.
The only sound we’d heard in the cabin was that of the bell tower ringing out the time. The closer we got to the cobble road, the more of the May Day festivities we could hear. Music was still playing and there were people cheering in the streets.
I’d like to think that most of them were oblivious to the fact that there was a sacrifice planned for later that day, and that they were just cheering because they were enjoying the atmosphere. It would be pretty dark if they knew exactly what was going on.
Miller had been holding my hand as we walked away from the cabin but had dropped it once we were back within view of other people. In order to get back to Fleur
’s house we would have to pass through the town square, and as we approached, I could feel eyes on us.
The whisperings began again.
“They shouldn’t have been alone out there, he’s engaged!” one woman muttered.
“The audacity of that man,” another hissed. Clearly, they assumed our excursion had involved a passionate encounter in the woods, when in reality it had been far from romantic. I mean, there had been some romantic moments, but after we had found a dead body the mood had shifted.
We passed the bakery and I looked through the glass, Len wasn’t behind the counter. Where had he gone? His teenage son was serving a customer and didn’t seem to notice us as we walked by. It was more crowded now than it had been even an hour ago, and the smell of pork in the air made me think that a hog roast had begun.
“Dang, that smells good,” Miller muttered.
“Why don’t you go get some?” I suggested.
“We have more pressing matters, but maybe later,” he smiled. It took time to weave between the people that were standing around with drinks in their hands. I could see a large pole that towered above the revelers, with long flowing ribbons winding their way around it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Maypole,” Miller replied. “I don’t really know what that means, exactly. They usually have some kids hold the end of the ribbons that are attached to the top. The kids skip around it and it wraps the pole, I don’t know why.”
“It’s cute, I guess.” I shrugged. I got a glance at the hog roast as we shuffled through the rows of people, a roaring fire licking the pig that was tied above. “Hmm, I think I just became vegetarian.” They used to kill witches by burning them at the stake, right? I had a little more sympathy for the pig now that the threat of flames might be used against me.
I had no clue what the sacrifice ritual would involve, and obviously I had no plans to find out, but if they were going old-school with it then I might find myself being surrounded by fire just like the hog. Yeah, if I survived the day then I would be vegetarian for sure.
I wasn’t entirely sure I would recognize Fleur’s house from the outside, but she was waiting in the window and staring out into the street, so it made her easy to find. When she saw us approach, she ran to open the door and frantically beckoned us inside.
“Well?” she shrieked expectantly. Her dress was short-sleeved, the neckline low enough that I could see that she had no scratches on her throat. Her arms, hands and face were equally untouched. I exchanged a look with Miller, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing. Fleur was no longer a suspect for her sister’s murder.
Now we just had the small matter of telling Fleur about what we’d found.
“You might want to sit down,” Miller began.
“You’ve not come to tell me that you’ve found her, have you?” Fleur sighed. “Where can she be? I don’t understand. Do you think she left the island? She wouldn’t leave without telling me.” Fleur slumped down onto the sofa and Miller took up a seat in the armchair facing her. There weren’t all that many seating options in the living room, so I sat down beside her, turning so that I could offer a sympathetic smile when necessary.
“I’m so sorry, but Holly is dead. We found her in a cabin out by the fishing pond and—” Miller began. I could see from the look on Fleur’s face that everything Miller had said after ‘dead’ was falling on deaf ears.
Miller paused, knowing that Fleur was no longer listening, and waited for her to respond.
“What happened to her?” she finally asked. Did she really want to know?
“It looks as though she was strangled,” I said, not knowing if there was a way to sugar-coat that fact.
“No one listened to me when I said she was missing, they just want everyone to play along with this stupid idea that things happen for a reason,” she sniffed. “They said if Holly wanted to be found, then I would find her. No one wanted to help me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I offered.
“You are the only people that have taken the time to look for her.” She was sobbing now, and I didn’t know what else to say.
“We didn’t know who to tell, I don’t know how this island works,” Miller said.
“Probably the elders would need to know,” Fleur replied. “I just… I checked that cabin the day after I last saw her, I knocked and there was no answer.”
Neither of us wanted to say that Holly might have already been dead by then. We’d only managed to get in because Miller had bust through the door.
“What did Curtis think of you going there?” I asked.
“He told me he had the only key,” Fleur answered. “So, unless Holly had walked through the walls like a ghost, there was no way she was inside.” The only key? That just put Holly’s husband right back at the top of the list.
“We’ll go and speak to him. Are you going to be okay?” Miller said, leaning forward in his seat.
“I want whoever did this to pay, I’ll go and find one of the elders and explain what you’ve told me. They like to pretend everything happens for a reason, but they won’t stand for this,” she sighed. I didn’t want to point out that there was plenty of stuff happening on this island that most people wouldn’t tolerate, my impending doom at the hands of the residents here being one of them. I kept my mouth shut.
“What will happen to Holly now?” Miller asked. “Who will retrieve her?”
“I don’t know. I just know that this will mess with May Day and the elders are gonna be mad about it, hopefully that means they will help with finding my sister’s killer,” she said, determination evident in her stare. “I’m just going to need a minute.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Even as I watched Fleur process the information we’d given her, I couldn’t help but feel as though Holly was somehow our way off the island. It was a strange feeling, almost as if I’d seen it happen already and I was living through a memory. Miller nodded toward the door and, after one final offering of condolences, we left for Curtis’s house.
14
“Oh good, it’s you guys again,” Curtis grunted as he opened the door and saw us standing on his front step.
“We need to speak to you,” Miller said, keeping his expression neutral. I saw that Curtis was now wearing a sweater, the sleeves extending a little beyond his wrists which prevented me from looking for scratches. It had a rollneck, so I couldn’t see his throat either. It was a warm day, why was he wearing this if not to hide something?
“Oh, then please come in,” Curtis replied sarcastically as Miller stepped into his house without invitation. “Can I get you guys anything? Some manners, perhaps?” he scoffed.
“We have information about your wife,” Miller announced. “I would think you would want to at least pretend you are interested.”
“Of course I’m interested, you’ve both been scurrying around the island for hours like those pesky kids from Scooby Doo, I’m sure you’ve not come back to me empty handed,” he sneered. Miller indicated that Curtis should sit down, but Miller chose to remain standing. I guessed it was some power play, so I stayed on my feet also.
“Holly is dead,” Miller said bluntly. “We found her in your fishing cabin, a building that has a locked door. You have the only key.”
Curtis looked briefly shaken by the news, his jaw tensed, and he swallowed. I saw tears start to build in his eyes, but he blinked them away before they fell.
“You think I did something to my wife?” he replied.
“The door was locked, and she was inside. The only person that could have killed her, then locked the door, seems to be you,” Miller explained.
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?” he said. His voice trembled slightly, and I wondered if it was because he was in shock, or nervous. Perhaps it was both.
“You found out your wife was having an affair; you somehow find yourself in a position to start a relationship with another woman. By killing Holly, you get revenge for her cheating, and are the
n free to pursue your new girlfriend without having to sneak around,” Miller proposed. “Sound about right?”
“Can I get either of you a drink?” Curtis asked. He stood up and began to walk to the kitchen, his house was open plan for the most part, with separate rooms that were likely the bedrooms. We didn’t move as he walked away, but never lost sight of him. He could see the confusion on our faces. “I need a drink, a very stiff drink, and I thought you might like one too.”
“No thanks,” I answered. Miller shook his head, and we watched as Curtis grabbed a large bottle of scotch and began to pour it into a short glass, his hand was unsteady.
“I know you think I’m insensitive,” he said, taking a giant swig of golden liquid and grimacing at the taste. “But I loved Holly. Every relationship needs a strait-laced rule follower, and a wild card. Don’t you think? Holly was so obedient to the coven, never stepped a toe out of line.”
“So that makes you the wild card?” Miller replied.
“I suppose it does,” Curtis said, polishing off the glass and pouring himself another. “I wanted us to leave the island, go and see the world. We could be anything, we could go anywhere. She would never leave her sister and the elders would never have approved. I pointed out that we didn’t need their approval, but…”
“Sorry, you said coven?” I asked.
“It’s just what you call a group of them, like ‘a flock of sheep’, which is apt given that they all just followed along with the elder’s wishes,” he chuckled. “Look, Holly met someone else and so did I. Maybe we weren’t destined to be together forever, it’s no big deal. You know what they like to say around here don’t you, everything hap—”
“Happens for a reason,” I finished. “Maybe I will have that drink after all,” I said. Miller shot me a look, but I ignored it. Curtis collected another glass from the shelf and poured scotch into it, before handing it to me. Miller coughed to get my attention.
I motioned my eyes towards the coffee table in the living room, and then widened them when I looked at Miller. Take the hint! I saw the look on his face when he realized what I’d seen. String. There was a bundle of string on the coffee table, it could easily have been used to create the mark on Holly’s neck.