by Raven Snow
Rowen looked over at him, surprised to hear him doubting her. “Pretty sure,” she said. “As sure as I can be under the circumstances. I mean, I got a second opinion on it. That they were murdered was Uncle Norman’s first guess too.”
“You still don’t know for sure,” Eric said. “You just have a couple of educated guesses. You can’t really base much on that. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Rowen. “Don’t be sorry. You have a point.” The more she thought about it, the less Rowen was sure of anything about this anymore. Maybe Eric was right. There wasn’t enough to go on. She needed to wait for more information, if more information ever came. Maybe she was looking too much into all of this. Maybe she had just gotten used to having a mystery to solve. Maybe there was no mystery here at all.
Chapter Nine
Things were going well. In the next few days that followed, a lot of good happened. For starters, the shop was doing reasonably well. It was something of a curiosity in town at first. Customers began as mainly teenagers coming in on a dare or because of word of mouth.
After that, some older customers started coming in. They bought candles or incense, innocent stuff. Some gradually worked their way up to asking for a tarot card reading. Once a few people had asked for a reading, it really took off. Getting the Greensmiths to tell your future became the next hot thing. Rowen hoped it lasted. Her aunts seemed awfully pleased with themselves. Tiffany was having fun, and even Uncle Norman had gotten in on it. He was already discussing some advertising plans he had with her.
This could really be a new beginning for the Greensmith family. They had been talked poorly about for a long time now. It was nice to finally be the center of some positive gossip for a change. It could still turn on its head, but Rowen had long since decided to just let her family enjoy it while they could.
Back at home, Rowen was putting the finishing touches on the house. She was shocked she had gotten everything in order so fast. She had really thrown a lot of time and effort into it when she decided to put that nonexistent mystery of hers on the back burner for a while. She needed to keep herself distracted, and work at the paper was too slow to be terribly time consuming ever since Margo and Willow had given up on training for the marathon.
All of the boxes were unpacked. There was still a lot of empty room in the house, but that could be remedied. Eric had been offering to go shopping for furniture with her for a while now. As things stood now, Rowen had a plan for every room. There was even an office they could turn into a nursery if they decided to have kids someday. Rowen still hadn’t brought that one up with Eric beyond mentioning it as a possibility in passing. It made both of them far too nervous for any serious conversation.
The house was good. The only thing she hadn’t managed to get in order was a garden. It wasn’t that there wasn’t room—the backyard had a great spot for it. Rowen just couldn’t bring herself to be too close to that shed. She didn’t even like looking at it for extended periods of time. She kept any drapes on that side of the house pulled shut.
“We could just tear down the shed, you know,” Eric suggested when he caught her looking out the sliding back door and giving a shudder.
“That seems like cheating,” Rowen said, sitting down at the bar with a mug of coffee. “I can’t tear that thing down until I know what happened in there.”
“What if you never find out?” asked Eric.
“Then I can never tear it down,” Rowen said, expecting that much should be obvious. “We’ll just have to learn to live with an evil shed in the backyard.”
Eric gave a sigh, but didn’t argue with her. “Do you think you’ll be fine if I leave for the weekend?” he asked instead.
Rowen looked up with a frown. “Where are you going?” she asked, even though she was sure she already knew.
“My parents have been bugging me to come down for a meet and greet with some of our oldest investors,” Eric said, sounding less than thrilled about it. “Telling them no again and again is sort of taking its toll on me. I figured I’d meet them in the middle, and head up there for a weekend.”
“Just the weekend?” Rowen asked. She knew that when Eric normally left, it was for weeks at a time. Sometimes, it even took months. She really wished he would just quit the family business like his brother had. That seemed unfair to ask of him. Rowen kept her wishes to herself, even though she was sure Eric probably knew. She really shouldn’t complain. The money he made was unreal. Most couples their age were barely scraping by. Still, she couldn’t help but get a bit lonely.
“Just the weekend,” Eric promised her. He reached across the bar and took her hand in his own. “That all right?”
“I’ll manage,” Rowen assured him. She glanced down at the dog at her feet. “Chester here will keep me safe.”
As if on cue, Chester ran off barking. Eric leaned into the hall to see where he was off to. “Mail’s here,” he said.
“See?” said Rowen. “He’s a fantastic guard dog.”
“Just promise me you aren’t going to go off hunting murderers while I’m gone,” said Eric. His tone had grown a bit more serious. He knew from experience that she had a tendency to throw herself in harm’s way. Rowen made no apologies for it either. The most he could get from her was fair warning when she was about to put herself in some sort of jeopardy.
“I’m staying out of it,” Rowen assured him. “It’s like you said, I don’t have enough to go on. I’m waiting until something comes to me.” Rowen slid from her stool. Mug in hand, she headed for the front door. “If it ever does,” she added, grumbling. She hated waiting. Waiting was not her strong suit.
Chester followed Rowen to the end of the driveway. He was a smart boy. After years on his own, she figured he was smart enough to stay out of traffic. He waited in the grass as she retrieved the mail from the mailbox. It was junk mail mostly. Rowen never got anything interesting. She flipped through the letters anyway out of habit.
Bank statement, catalog, postcard advertisement, and…Rowen paused on one envelope. There was no return address on it—just her name handwritten in blue ink pen. Rowen flipped it in her hand a few times. When she was back inside, she tossed the rest of the mail to one side and opened it.
Inside was a folded piece of notebook paper. Unfolding it revealed the same blue scrawl from the envelope. It read, “In the attic. Under the floorboards.” Rowen nearly dropped it. Her heart beat a little faster in her chest. She gave an involuntary shiver. This was just about the creepiest message she had ever read.
“What?” Eric came into the room. He seemed puzzled to find her standing there stiff and looking visibly shaken. “What’s that?”
Rowen handed him the letter on her way past him. She hurried up the staircase. She had to see what such a cryptic letter was referring to. The attic was a place she hadn’t paid much mind to. You had to climb a pull-down ladder to get to it. The roof was a bit low, so you had to hunch over if you wanted to stand up. It could be more than a little creepy. The only light came in through a small crescent window. They had stored some boxes up there when they had moved in, but that was it.
Rowen climbed into the attic and looked around. The letter hadn’t exactly specified which floorboard she should look under. Rowen scanned the area anyway, looking for one that was loose.
“Is there a body up there?” called Eric from the bottom of the ladder. “Or two bodies? Please don’t tell me there are two bodies up there.”
“Someone would have smelled them, wouldn’t they?” Rowen wasn’t sure about the particulars of hiding a body. “I haven’t found anything yet.” She tapped the floor with her heel as she walked, looking for any boards that seemed particularly loose.
“Who sent you that?” asked Eric. He poked his head up through the door in the floor and watched Rowen walk the room with a disapproving frown. This probably wasn’t a development he wanted to see right when he was about to leave town.
“There was no return address on the envelope, and I didn
’t recognize the handwriting or anything.” A floorboard wiggled a bit beneath her heel. Rowen went down to her knees to see if she could pry it up. “It couldn’t be that many people, though. Could it?” Aside from a few members of her family, the only people who knew about this mystery of hers were the Woodwards and Samantha the realtor.
Rowen broke a nail in the process, but the floorboard came up. There wasn’t a body beneath it, thank goodness. There was just a folder and a plain wooden jewelry box. Rowen pulled out both and sat them on the attic floor.
Eric climbed the rest of the way into the attic. He took a seat across from his wife. “Well, that’s a bit anti-climactic. What’s in there?”
Rowen pulled out the box first. It seemed like the most promising. She opened it. “Jewelry,” she said, pulling out a long strand of pearls. There was a lot of old-looking jewelry inside of it. “These look like antiques. Sentimental, I think. These pearls are totally fake. They were probably put here for safekeeping.”
“What’s in the folder?” asked Eric.
Rowen picked that up next. She opened it and pulled out a thick stack of papers. She thumbed through them. “A lot of legal stuff, looks like,” said Rowen. “I’m not sure. This is going to take me a minute to go through.”
“Here. Let me help.” Eric took half the stack from Rowen. Together, they looked through it all, one page at a time.
“They had a life insurance policy,” said Rowen, holding up a page she found interesting.
“Have a life insurance policy,” Eric corrected. “According to everyone we’ve spoke to, they’re not dead.”
“They might be dead,” Rowen said in her own defense. “I’m pretty sure they are…But point taken. What do you have over there?”
“Some medical stuff, mostly,” Eric said with a helpless shrug. “Not sure what your cryptic message was getting at. Are you sure there’s not anything else down there?”
Rowen leaned into the hole in the floorboards. She pulled her phone from her pocket and used the light from it to look around. “There are some plastic bags down here.” Rowen came back out of the hole holding a couple of black trash bags.”
“Anything in them?” asked Eric.
Rowen put her arms into the bags and felt around just to be sure. “Nope. Empty.”
“Maybe something used to be in them and our mystery letter writer just didn’t know it’s been moved since?” suggested Eric.
“Or maybe there’s something in here,” Rowen said, indicating the papers. All the same, they headed back downstairs. Rowen took the jewelry and the papers.
“Should we give that to the sons?” Eric asked.
Rowen had hoped he wouldn’t ask that question. It had occurred to her. “Not yet,” she said, sounding as conflicted as she felt to her own ears. “I mean, we shouldn’t, should we? What if one of them wrote us that letter? What if the other one is the murderer, and he doesn’t want us to know?”
“This is getting overly complicated,” Eric complained. “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “Just…give it to them once we have all of this sorted out.”
“If we ever get this all sorted out,” Rowen grumbled. She was beginning to lose hope here. “I’ll give it to the one who’s not the murderer.” With a groan, she flopped down on the sofa. “Geez. I feel like I know less now than I did before.”
“Good,” said Eric. “Hold on to that thought while I’m gone. No mystery solving until I get back, please.”
Rowen refused to agree to anything. She might not have any answers, but she did have some new questions. Who was the person who had written the letter? That seemed like a good one. If she could find the person who had written this letter, well, she might have a mystery on her hands, after all. It certainly seemed like someone out there wanted her to solve it.
Chapter Ten
Eric left early Saturday morning. Coincidentally, Rowen had her dinner with Liam planned for that night. She made sure to mention that to Eric. She even pointed out, explicitly, that she hadn’t planned it that way. Eric had announced he was leaving for a bit after she had made those plans. She hadn’t made them after her mystery letter or anything.
Rowen still had no clue who had written that thing. Well, she supposed she had a clue. It couldn’t possibly be more than a few people. That was something. Whether or not it was Liam was a good question. She was afraid to let too much slip. The message had almost certainly been private for a reason. For a while there, Rowen had wondered why they hadn’t just come to her directly. Maybe their guilt had just gotten the better of them, she decided. If it was one of the brothers, maybe they couldn’t bring themselves to turn family in. Maybe they wanted Rowen to do it. She couldn’t blame them for that. Rowen had a hand in bringing her own grandmother to justice for a crime she had committed decades beforehand, and that had felt terrible.
Peony met Rowen at her house that night. She had invited herself along, of course. She had an interest in Liam. Because of that, Rowen really hoped he wasn’t involved in anything unsavory. As it turned out, Peony had really gotten dolled up for the occasion. Rowen was taken aback to find her at the front door looking not unlike a streetwalker.
“Is it too much?” asked Peony. “I told Tina it was too much, but she insisted, so…” The outfit was fine. Peony and Willow could both pull off short, flouncy skirts better than anyone Rowen knew. The makeup was on the extreme side. Instead of playing up just one of her features, it looked like Tina had decided to draw attention to all of them.
“It might be a little much,” said Rowen, motioning her cousin inside. “We’ve got twenty minutes. I can fix this.”
Peony let Rowen lead her upstairs. She sat down at the vanity, looking in the mirror with a sigh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately,” she complained. “I’m usually great with guys.”
“You’re great at flirting,” Rowen corrected. “You and Willow are both flirts. I’m not sure I’ve seen you or Willow in a relationship that lasted longer than a few weeks.” Rowen took a wipe from a box on her desk and started rubbing off some of the eyeshadow up near her eyebrows. “Not that you couldn’t land a guy,” she added quickly. “You just don’t have much practice with establishing this kind of relationship, so don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“How did you and Eric hit it off?” Peony asked, frowning at her own reflection in the mirror.
Rowen considered the question. “A crime sort of thrust us together, I guess.”
Peony gave another sigh. “I need something like that.”
“No, you don’t,” Rowen said immediately, rubbing at the lipstick on Peony’s mouth so she couldn’t argue with her. She had no idea what she was going to do if Liam had anything to do with this mystery of hers.
Before they left for dinner, Rowen had Peony looking lovely. Granted, Rowen always thought Peony looked lovely. Maybe she was biased, but Rowen liked to think she had a very good looking family. Anyone in Lainswich would be lucky to have any of them.
Dinner was at an Italian place downtown. Liam was already there when they arrived. He rose when they got to the table, pulling out a seat for both of them.
“Sorry we’re late,” said Peony.
“You’re not,” Liam assured her. “I just got here a little early. I was already in the area.”
“For work?” asked Peony.
Liam shook his head. “I wish. No, my brother got himself into some trouble. I was getting him out on bail.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Rowen when Peony just sat there looking embarrassed for asking.
Liam gave a shrug. “There’s not a whole lot I can do for him, I’m afraid. He’s always been a mess.”
“It’s good that he has you,” Peony offered.
Liam smiled at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I try. Last night, they got him on drunk and disorderly. If I was any decent kind of brother, I probably shouldn’t bail him out. I should make him deal with his mistakes.”
“I don’t think I could do that,�
�� said Peony. “And I know Rowen couldn’t. She’s bailed my sister and me out of jail before, I know.”
Liam laughed at that. “You?” he asked, giving Peony a skeptical look. “When did you have to be bailed out of jail?”
Peony blushed and looked down at the table. It really was strange how disarmed she was by Liam. “She and her sister like to party,” Rowen explained.
Liam laughed again, his eyes still on Peony. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”
“They’ve settled down a lot,” Rowen assured him, hoping to take Peony off the spot. She could tell that she was embarrassed. “They’re more focused on work these days.” Rowen pulled the tape recorder from her purse. “Speaking of which, should we get started?”
The interview was a very by the book sort of thing. It was full of mundane questions about the marathon this year and marathons Liam had helped organize in the past. They got all of the questions out of the way before the food came. It gave Rowen time to try and get him to answer some more pressing questions. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t think of how to work them into the conversation.
“I don’t suppose you want to go for a run after this?” Peony asked, pushing the last of her spaghetti around on her plate.
Liam looked over at her with a smile. “You don’t exactly look dressed for it,” he pointed out.
“You aren’t either,” said Peony. “We can both swing by home first then meet at the park?”
The longer this mystery went unsolved, the less and less comfortable Rowen was becoming with letting Peony spend time alone with this man. “Remember to actually leave your phone on this time,” she said.
“I can’t,” said Liam, which solved that. He gave Peony an apologetic look. “Danny was supposed to go down and visit our parents in Florida this weekend.”
Rowen perked up. She was shocked to hear Liam volunteering information on his parents. If the whole thing about them living in Florida was a lie, why would he bring them up like this?
“After his run-in with the police, well, he doesn’t feel like he should go,” Liam continued. “He’s normally the one who goes. I’m so busy at work. Especially around this time of the year. It’ll have to just be a quick visit, I’m afraid. I’ll go home and pack. There’s a redeye flight out that way I already booked, so I’ve got that to look forward to.”
