Truth or Dare
Page 31
“How come they let that professor do so much talking?” Jeff asked. “He wasn’t the one who found the manuscripts.”
Ethan helped himself to a wedge of pizza. “Glory is fleeting.”
“Who’s Glory?” Jeff demanded. “Where did she flee to?”
“Never mind.” Ethan munched pizza. “It’s complicated.”
Bonnie looked at him across the table. “Okay, I’ve just got to ask. You didn’t really leave that big discovery to chance, did you?”
“I’m a PI, not a magician,” Ethan said. “Of course I didn’t take any chances. I got the key from the mayor the night before last and went over to the hacienda with Zoe to take a look. We did a little tapping and got lucky.”
“Ethan’s very good at solving old mysteries, so it was no big surprise when he turned up the missing manuscript,” Zoe said. “It was finding the second one inside that leather box that really blew me away. Think of the impact on the literary world. Not one but two unpublished Kirwan manuscripts.”
Harry contemplated that. “You think they’re for real?”
Ethan shrugged. “We’ll have to leave that to the experts, but judging from the dust we found inside that fireplace safe, it’s safe to say no one had opened it since the night of Kirwan’s death.”
“So Kirwan did die of natural causes?” Arcadia asked.
Ethan nodded. “That’s obvious. If Maria had poisoned him, she would have done something with the manuscript. She knew it had value. At the very least she would have tried to sell it to the agent.”
“Unless Kirwan hid it before he collapsed from the effects of the poison,” Harry mused. “Obviously Maria didn’t know about his secret safe.”
Ethan shook his head. “Zoe and I took a look at the manuscript. Kirwan noted his changes in red and dated them that night. It looks like he spent several hours going through the book before he hid it. Maria Torres was a housekeeper, not a professional hit lady. Most of the common poisons that she might have had access to in those days would have been very fast-acting. Furthermore, they would also have produced some fairly obvious and messy results that would have been noticed by the authorities.”
“So Maria Torres is cleared on all charges,” Harry said.
“Yes, but something tells me Professor Cottington is going to hog all the credit for finding those manuscripts,” Zoe grumbled.
Singleton chuckled. “So what? Ethan scored a whole bunch of points with the mayor of Whispering Springs. Got a feeling that’s going to be a lot more useful to him in the long run than getting his name into the textbooks.”
“Just doing my civic duty,” Ethan said.
Zoe looked around the table. “Not to change the subject, but Treacher promised me this morning that his crew would be finished with the kitchen and the great room at Nightwinds by the end of the week. What do you say we all do Thanksgiving there this year?”
There was a chorus of cheerful agreement.
Ethan met Zoe’s eyes across the table. He smiled at her. She smiled back and he was almost certain that he could feel the positive energy of happiness in the air.
After dinner, Singleton drove Bonnie, Jeff and Theo home. Arcadia and Harry announced that they were going to spend the evening at Last Exit.
Ethan got into the SUV and looked at Zoe. “What do you say we go out to Nightwinds and see how far the painters got today?”
“Okay.”
The big house was cloaked in moonlight. Ethan parked in the drive and got out.
Together he and Zoe went inside and made their way across a sea of drop cloths to the kitchen.
“Look,” Zoe said. “They finished in here.” She turned to him, eyes alight with pleasure. “What do you think about the color now?”
Ethan stood in the doorway and studied the kitchen with its newly painted walls.
An eerie tingle of awareness stirred the hair on the back of his neck. The sensation lasted only a couple of seconds but during that brief span of time he could have sworn that a scene shimmered in the air in front of him.
He saw himself sharing breakfast with Zoe at the table near the window. Two small children, a boy and a girl, sat with them, laughing at some unheard joke. Their crayon drawings were taped to the refrigerator. An unmistakable aura of love enveloped the kitchen.
The image dissolved in the next instant, but he knew deep inside that even though he wasn’t psychic, he’d just had a tiny glimpse of the future.
“The color works just fine,” he said. “I knew it would. After all, you’re an expert.”
“Hah.” She put her arms around his neck. “You had your doubts, admit it.”
“Okay, maybe I was a little worried about the paint color for a while.” He framed her face with his hands. “But I don’t have any doubts at all about us.”
Her smile was filled with more than enough love to last a lifetime.
“Neither do I,” she said.
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