by Raven Snow
“Then can you go wait in the car?” asked Rowen.
“No,” snapped Rose.
“All right, well, get to it, Peony. Willow, you follow me.”
“Got it,” said Willow.
Rowen started walking deeper into the hospital, betting that, as much as she disagreed with what they were doing, Rose wouldn’t double cross them. She was still a Greensmith after all. Sure enough, when Rowen glanced back, a very unhappy Rose was standing beside Peony at reception.
“So what now?” asked Willow.
“Now we walk back this way like we’re supposed to be here.” Rowen strolled right into the hallway, further into the ER. Everything was sectioned off with curtains. Most of the beds were full. People either sat or laid back on them, looking ill or simply bored. The number of patients clearly outnumbered doctors and nurses. Rowen watched as a male nurse wheeled a laptop computer to a teenager moaning over a hand that clearly needed stitches. “That guy is the one we want,” said Rowen.
“For what?” asked Willow.
“You just need to distract him.”
“Sure.”
Rowen caught Willow by the arm as she started heading for the guy. “Not yet,” she said, firmly. “Wait until he’s done with that kid then get him away from his computer. Are you getting a read on him?”
Willow didn’t say anything at first. She stared at the guy, frowning thoughtfully. “Well his name is Billy Mills, but I can read that from his name tag. He’s kind of a ditz. He’s a soft touch and likes blondes.”
Rowen nodded. That all sounded right to her. “Do you think you can work with that?”
“Duh.” Willow waited until Billy was starting to wheel his laptop away before swooping in. Rowen couldn’t hear her from across the room, but she saw her cousin lay her hand on his arm. As if on cue, Willow burst into tears. Bless that girl, she was good at manipulating people.
Billy stared wide-eyed at Willow for what felt like an agonizingly long time. Rowen was beginning to get pessimistic about this whole thing working out when Billy led Willow away. The two started the arduous process of looking in rooms and between curtains. It seemed Willow had convinced Billy that there was someone in the ER she wanted to find.
Rowen marched right up to the laptop as soon as Billy was out of sight. She pushed it into a nearby corner, between a sheet and a guy who looked to be high as a kite on something or another. He blinked at her blearily while she tried to navigate her way into what she needed to find.
The laptop demanded a password. Of course it did. Rowen had planned on that. She took a deep breath and looked at the keyboard. She opened her mind’s eye, attempting to visualize the buttons Billy must type in many times a day. The beginnings of an image were beginning to reveal themselves when she noticed the sticky note.
USER NAME: BMills220 PASSWORD: 011583bday
Rowen bit her bottom lip in an effort not to laugh. Bless this man. She typed in the info and, sure enough, it let her right in. She had to use her intuition from there. Glancing over her shoulder every so often to make sure no one but the drugged guy was watching, she managed to get into the medical records. ‘Lucas, Edith’ she typed. She didn’t know much more info than that but, fortunately, Lainswich was small enough that that did the trick. Edith was the only one with that name in the files. Rowen clicked on it.
There wasn’t much to look at. Edith had only been to the hospital twice. Once was for pneumonia when she was a girl. The second time was for a broken arm… nearly two years ago. “Bingo,” Rowen murmured to herself. There it was right in front of her. She took her phone from her pocket and took a picture of the screen. It seemed Eric had been right after all. She wanted to show this to him ASAP. Quickly, Rowen closed out of everything on the laptop and went to retrieve Willow.
“Oh, hey, there she is,” Willow blurted when she spotted Rowen. “Thanks for your help.” She said all that very quickly, leaving behind a very confused nurse as the both of them hurried away. The last Rowen saw of poor Billy, he was spinning in circles, looking completely baffled as to where his computer had gone.
“Did you get what you needed?” asked Willow.
“Sure did,” said Rowen with a self-satisfied smile.
***
Back in the waiting room, Peony and Rose were sitting near the door. Peony was flipping through a magazine while Rose sat with her arms crossed. She was wearing an intense frown. Peony spotted Rowen first and gave her cousin a nudge. Rose got up and headed for the door ahead of them. Hopefully, she wouldn’t continue holding a grudge after Rowen got a chance to tell her what she had learned.
Rowen explained everything as they drove back to the Lainswich Inquirer office— the office being the best place for them to reconvene. It wasn’t like they could go to Rowen’s house. The Greensmith house had a couple of wedding crazed and potentially jilted aunts in it. Likewise, Rose didn’t want them in the house she shared with Ben lest he get in trouble for their antics. Willow’s apartment was just plain cramped. No one liked Willow’s apartment.
At least Rose had mellowed a little. She still didn’t like how Rowen was going about things, but she could see her reasons for it. She grudgingly went along with things, stating loudly and often that there were better ways to go about it. She didn’t have any suggestions, but she kept insisting that that was the case anyway.
Rowen excused herself once they were all at the office. She stood around outside the building as everyone else filed in. The first person she called was Ben. “What is it, Rowen?” he answered.
“Well, hello to you too,” Rowen grumbled at him.
“What are you calling about?” It seemed that Ben had had enough of her for one day.
“Has bail been set?” she asked.
As it turned out, bail had been set for both men. Eric’s was expensive. Orville’s was too. Orville’s bail was suspiciously high, in fact. Rose would kill her if she knew Rowen had been willing that to happen since the idea had come to her while they were riding in the tow truck.
Ben seemed none the wiser to the fact that this was odd. If all went as planned, no one but Rowen would recognize the number as peculiar. Still, the price of Eric’s bail was problematic. She would have done something about that as well, but it would have been pushing her luck. Getting Orville’s bail raised without anyone being the wiser was tough enough.
“Thanks, Ben.” Rowen hung up and stared at her phone. The rest of her plan needed to be carried out tonight, before Orville was out of jail. If her suspicions were correct, him being there could ruin everything. Rowen sighed and made another call. She wasn’t sure how much good it would do, but there weren’t a whole lot of other options open to her. It was now or never. Even if her next call proved fruitless, she would have to go for it anyway. Her window of opportunity would be closing all too soon.
Chapter Seventeen
It was dark at the old pier. Rowen wondered if she should have come earlier. She had really waited until the last minute for this. It had been too tempting to wait and see if she could bail out Eric before setting up this meeting. Rowen wasn’t ashamed to admit that she was afraid. It would have been foolish not to be at least a little nervous. She shivered and pulled her windbreaker closer around herself as the wind whipped across the lake. Maybe she should just go home before anyone got there. The longer she stood waiting, the more tempting that idea got.
Rowen was just about ready to turn back and leave the way she came when she saw someone at the other end of the pier. Not just someone either. There were several someones. As they walked closer, Rowen recognized Sadie and Brenna among them. There were some other men and women with them too. Rowen recognized a couple of them as people who had trashed her car. One heavyset fellow stood close to Sadie like he might be her husband. All in all, there were seven people from Lichen Hallow blocking her way back to dry land, including… Orville.
A cold feeling of dread expanded rapidly in Rowen’s chest. What was Orville doing here? She had set this up expr
essly so he wouldn’t be here. This was a disaster.
Rowen must have been gaping because Orville laughed. “What? Surprised to see me after you had that cop friend of yours set my bail so high?”
“He didn’t have anything to do with setting your bail,” Rowen said quickly. “That’s not how it works.”
“Whatever,” said Orville. He motioned to the people gathered around him. “We take care of our own. Coming up with that much money between so many people ain’t no problem at all.”
Of course. The dread in Rowen’s heart was replaced by the crushing realization of how stupid she had been. Of course they’d all chipped in. How stupid could she be? Rowen tried not to let how nervous she was show. She put on a smile. “Well it’s a good thing you’re here, I guess. I mean, this involves you too.”
“Sure.” The unimpressed look on Orville’s face said he knew better. “How’s your nose doing?”
“Great, thanks for asking.” Rowen didn’t hate many people but she, at the very least, found herself intensely disliking Orville.
“Kind of rude of you to invite me out here when your own husband is still locked up, isn’t it?”
Rowen hope he missed the way she winced at that news. So Eric still hadn’t been bailed out. She had known she might not have the chance to wait for that. Still, she had been planning on Orville not being here either if that was the case.
“Stop teasing the girl,” said Brenna.
Sadie nodded. “You’re wasting time.” She looked at Rowen. “What is it you think you know?”
“I know you all pitched in to murder Timothy Lucas.” Rowen came right out with it. “You’re neighbors who stick together through thick and thin, aren’t you? I’ll admit, it took me a minute to figure it out, but the truth is pretty obvious. Killing Edith’s husband was a team effort.”
The look everyone exchanged then made Rowen feel more certain about her theory than ever. Orville was the only one who kept staring at her. “And how do you figure that?”
“You tried to chase the Lucas family out of town,” Rowen said with a shrug. “Timothy Lucas was an abusive piece of human trash, and his family was sticking up for him. They weren’t a whole lot better. You convinced the Lucas family to leave but the real problem, Timothy, stayed behind. He wasn’t going to be forced to leave his home and his wife. That’s what you wanted him to do, too. You wanted him to leave Edith behind. She wasn’t going to force him out. She was too afraid of him at that point.” Rowen met Orville’s gaze. “I don’t know who killed him. It might have been one or more of you, but you all worked together to hide the body. You tried to burn it first, but that’s a heck of a lot easier said than done. You found that out the hard way. I imagine that would have attracted the entirety of Lichen Hallow into that mess in and of itself. It must have smelled absolutely awful.”
Rowen took a step toward Orville. The more she spoke, the more confident she felt. “That’s when you brought him out here. You guys fish out here all the time. Still, it must have been a real hassle to get his body down into the trunk of a car. Which one of you is diving certified? I’m betting more than one of you are. Probably not Orville.”
“What kind of proof do you have for any of this?” asked Orville. Never mind that them all being out there was suspicious in and of itself. He did seem a little nervous about this part. They must think Rowen really did have some proof to come out here.
“My husband and I were talking to Brenna.” Rowen nodded in the old woman’s direction. “Sorry. Brenna.” Brenna just glared. Rowen continued. “She told us about Tim’s abuse. He broke her arm, she said. He broke her arm right before he went missing.”
“So?” asked Orville, but he couldn’t hide the nervousness creeping into his expression.
“So, I checked.” said Rowen. “Edith broke her arm almost two years ago. Timothy Lucas has been missing for almost two years and none of you said anything. You’ve all been talking like him missing has been a recent development.”
“You can’t prove that,” Orville said, quickly.
“They can,” said Brenna, still scowling. “They recorded me.”
Orville went at Rowen then. Rowen took a stumbling step backward, almost backing right off the end of the pier. “Where’s the recording?” he demanded.
“It’s in a safe place,” Rowen blurted. “If you kill me now, I guarantee you the right people are going to listen to it. They’ll arrest all of you. I-” She was cut off as Orville put one large hand around her throat. Rowen grabbed at his wrist as her feet nearly went right off the back of the pier again. If she fell in the water while it was this dark, there wasn’t anyone who would be able to save her.
“You didn’t come out here alone.” Orville stated that like a fact. “Whoever else is here, come out now or I kill this woman!”
No one responded at first. Rowen hoped it stayed that way. It did until Orville started counting down. “Three… Two-”
“Wait!” Rose shouted, coming out from the surrounding woods with her hands raised. “Don’t hurt her. Let her go and just listen to what she has to say. She’s here to try and make a deal with you.”
“A deal?” Orville scoffed. “She calls us all out here at night to threaten us and I’m supposed to believe she wants to make some kind of deal? You think I’m stupid or something?”
“I think you’re stupid,” Sadie snapped at her brother. “Let the girl go and listen to what she has to say.”
“How about I don’t?” asked Orville. He raised his voice so that Rose was sure to hear him. “How about I set up the terms of a deal myself, huh? How about you bring me every copy of that tape you’ve got and I don’t kill this little witch?!”
“Don’t be stupid, Boy,” hissed Brenna. “You don’t know how many copies that girl might’ve made. Heck, in this day and age, she probably has it uploaded somewhere.”
Rowen had indeed put the recording into cloud storage. At least three members of her family knew where it was. It wasn’t going away any time soon.
Orville swore, “Fine.” He gave Rowen a shove, knocking her into the water. Had Rowen been anyone else, that would have been a cruel jab or unnecessary bit of rudeness. It wouldn’t have been an attempt on Rowen’s life, but that’s what it quickly became. It was like the water grabbed hold of her the moment she broke the surface. Where another person would have bobbed to the surface with minimal effort, Rowen sank like a rock. She screamed, but that was just about the biggest mistake she could have made. Water flooded her lungs as an undercurrent snatched her up.
It would have been impossible to see in the lake on the brightest of days. At night, Rowen couldn’t tell up from down. She tumbled endlessly, flailing her arms as if that might help. Through either luck or sheer force of will, she managed to get her head above the water and screen for help. “Help me!” she choked out, the words broken up into multiple syllables by her gagging. “Help me, please!”
“Rowen!” Rose screamed. It was difficult to hear her voice over all the thrashing Rowen was doing. She knew Rose was waiting out there. Peony and Willow were waiting too. Of course, it wasn’t like either of them could dive into the water after her. Rowen almost hoped Rose didn’t try. How could she hope to drag her out of the water on her own?
Rowen began to sink again. She didn’t give up once. She kept on flailing and reaching. She even tried going very still, hopeful she might float. The curse held. Rowen was beginning to feel very foggy.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed Rowen’s arm. It wasn’t just one hand either. A second hand grabbed her from the opposite side just a handful of seconds later. Rowen’s mind swam as two people tried to pull her back to somewhere dry. There was a series of hands after that. People had begun to raise Rowen up. Rowen felt familiar, solid wood beneath her back. The pier. Is that what she was on now? The pier? Rowen opened her eyes to find Orville standing over her. He was frowning. “Geez,” he muttered. “I guess I didn’t realize how easy it would be for you to drown.”
; Rowen glared at the man standing over her. “You didn’t really give me a chance to bring it up. Believe it or not, when I came here tonight, I didn’t really expect to be pushed into the water. What are you, twelve? Do you shove everyone who disagrees with you?”
“Well, you should have seen it coming,” grumbled Orville. “You invited us out to this pier, didn’t you? You tell us you’re going to send us to jail. You’re lucky I didn’t do worse. We helped save you, didn’t we?”
“Barely,” said Rose, sounding terribly out of breath. “I didn’t see any of you actually jumping in.”
Rowen looked up to find Rose had swum back to shore and climbed onto dry land. She wasn’t alone, though. Someone else had climbed onto land with her. It looked like it was… Rowen raised her eyebrows, stunned. Was that Reginald? There wasn’t time to wonder about that now. Rowen turned back to Orville and the rest of his posse. “Are you going to throw me in the lake again?”
“He’s not,” Brenna assured Rowen automatically. She gave Orville a stern look. “He didn’t mean to do it the first time.”
Orville glared back at Brenna. Finally, he shrugged. “I give,” he said.
Rowen doubted it had been an accident. Still, she didn’t doubt him. It felt to her like he was being honest enough now. “So, what do we do about this?” asked Rowen.
Orville exchanged puzzled looks with everyone else. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You’re the one with all the evidence. Aren’t you setting the terms here?”
“I thought about that, but I don’t really feel good about it.” Rowen glanced to the shore where Rose was looking away. She had mixed feelings about all of this. Rowen knew it. They had already gone over her plan on the way here. They had decided unanimously that it was the right thing to do. Rose was just uncertain because of Ben— which was fair. If Eric was the Chief of Police, Rowen was sure she would be more worried about this as well. “I don’t know how many of you were directly involved in this,” Rowen said, carefully. “I know it must have been one person, but beyond that… Well, it’s just my theory that you were all involved. You’ll have to fill me in on the rest.”
