She handed me the sheet. “This was on your windshield.”
I unfolded it and turned on the Jeep’s dome light. In my hands was a crudely executed threat—like a comical ransom note—fashioned with letters cut from a newspaper. “Let it go or your next,” I read aloud. “They spelled ‘your’ wrong.”
Emily heaved a sigh. “That’s what you have to say? Lunatics aren’t concerned with grammar.”
“Yeah, but that’s a basic error,” I said, pointing at the paper. “Elementary school stuff.”
“Kate, for crying out loud.”
“Maybe they couldn’t find an apostrophe.”
“Kate.”
I held up the note. “Look at it, Emily. Who does something like this?”
“A stupid killer?”
Okay, she had a point. It wasn’t a random note stuck to my windshield by a random passerby. Only Patti’s killer was interested in scaring us off. “I’ll take it to Rancourt tomorrow.”
“Imagine the killer cutting out those letters, one by one. It’s obsessive.”
Minette piped up from the back seat. “Obsessive and egotistical.”
“Exactly right,” I said, peering at her over my shoulder.
“We need to find an egotistical bad speller?” Emily said.
“The odds are the misspelling was deliberate,” I replied.
“You think so?”
I nodded. “And I’ll tell you something else. Whoever made this did it before this evening. They didn’t grab a newspaper from the mansion and start hacking away at it on a whim. That means it has nothing to do with anything that was said or done tonight, including us finding the headstones in the spare bedroom.” I leaned sideways and stuck the note in my glove compartment.
“I don’t know about that,” Emily said. “It looks to me like it was made quickly.”
“Rancourt will know.”
Bright headlights raked the Jeep as a car neared but then took a sharp right toward the street. I watched the dark sedan until it drove west and was swallowed up in the night.
Emily too had kept watch on the car, and when it disappeared from sight, her eyes shot to mine. “So let’s say the killer was ready with that note and already angry with us before tonight. What did we do? We poked the hornet’s nest. If Charlotte is the killer, she knows we’re watching her. Same with Olivia and Jonathan. And then you talked to Brodie, so he knows.”
“My questions weren’t subtle,” I admitted. I started the car, and as I drove for Birch Street, I told Emily what Brodie had said, and that he’d given Patti’s murder a lot of thought. “He was straightforward and open,” I added. “But that may have been calculation on his part.”
Emily leaned back on the headrest. “All of a sudden I’m tired.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think we’re in danger?”
It was foolish to brush aside the threat contained in that note, despite its cartoonish appearance, but I still judged it to be a bluff. “You can stay in my guest bedroom if you want.”
Emily thought a moment before answering. “Nah. But if I hear noises—”
“You’ll call the police and then me.”
Before I heard or saw the flutter of her pink and ivory wings, Minette was on my shoulder. “Kate, you must find out why someone put the dead woman in Emily’s yard. Then you’ll know if someone wants to hurt her.”
“We’re trying, Minette,” I said. “And right now, we haven’t got a clue.”
She lowered herself, crossed her knees, and leaned into my coat collar. “Brodie said the killer had to get rid of the body fast.”
“Yes, because they were going to be caught with it. It’s an intriguing theory, and it makes sense. If it’s true, it may also mean the killer wasn’t trying to frame Emily but just happened to know where she lived and found the location convenient. But then what about the hammer? That looks like a setup.”
“A sloppy one, Kate.”
I chuckled. “You’re right. So why go to the trouble to do it?”
“We must think. We will talk about it.”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Emily staring with rapt attention at Minette. “Wow,” she said. “You’re a miniature detective. You really are.”
“Thank you, Emily.” I saw Minette lower her head, and I knew she was beaming with pleasure. Her soft voice, offbeat phrasing, and general pale pinkness aside, she was a surprisingly intelligent little creature. Was she alone among her kind in that? Or were all fairies clever? Minette refused to speak about other fairies, except to hint that they existed and lived in the woods across Birch Street. I sometimes wondered if she was in exile. But for what? And who had driven her there?
I pulled into my drive and parked the Jeep in my garage.
“Well, Kate, now I know why you’ve been acting so weird since October,” Emily said, hopping down from her seat. “Trying to keep Minette a secret.”
“You must not tell Laurence,” Minette said.
“Not a word. Utter secrecy, I promise.”
“I’m walking you to your house,” I said.
“Me too,” Minette said.
“In my pocket, please, before I get out. You never know who may drive by.”
I hit the remote on my garage door and we headed around the front of my house and down the wet flagstones to Emily’s. Once inside, the two of us flicked on half a dozen lights and the three of us made a cursory search of the place.
“Have you heard from Laurence again?” I asked, looking inside a freestanding oak closet in her mud room.
“It’s the middle of the night there,” Emily answered. “And you can’t tell him about any of this.”
I almost laughed. When did I ever see the enigmatic, world-traveling Laurence MacKenzie? Okay, well, I had seen him often enough and over a long enough period of time to know he wasn’t a figment of Emily’s imagination, but the man was always on the go, always working in some exotic location.
At Emily’s front door, I paused. “Do you think Laurence will ever slow down and travel less?”
“He’s fifty now.” She grinned. “You know how that is. Your muscles start to ache, you sleep more, you—”
“Not true, not funny, and you forget you’re only two years younger than me.”
“Maybe in another five years he’ll slow down or even retire. He enjoys his work.”
“Whatever that is.”
“I’ve told you. It’s hotels and—”
“Construction,” I finished. As if the walls had ears—and for all I knew they did—I whispered, “Would you tell me if he’s a spy?”
“We’ve been through this before.”
“No, I take that back. The question is, would he tell you?”
She stretched out her arms and gave me an exaggerated yawn. “Well, I’m really beat.”
“Minette!” I called. In less than two seconds she was back in my pocket.
Emily’s blue eyes popped wide. “All I saw was a blur.”
“Fairies fly at jet speed.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Now what about your—”
“Goodnight, goodnight,” she said, literally pushing me outside.
“That just makes me think he is,” I yelled at her closed door.
Back in my house, I also turned on half a dozen lights, and I searched the first floor while Minette searched the second.
“Safe, safe,” she announced half a minute later. She floated in a circular pattern about my living room, like a bird skimming a wind current. “Kate, Kate.”
“What, what?”
She flew within two inches of my face, darted to the far side of the room, then shot back at me. “Brodie was right. We must talk.”
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
“After I get ready for bed. We’ll talk upstairs.”
“Kate, Kate.”
I let loose with a sigh and let my hands fall to my sides. “Do fairies ever sleep?”
“Fai
ries sleep.” She flew to an armchair, went vertical, and dropped to the top of the chair. “Not as much as people. People sleep all the time. I sleep in trees sometimes, and once I slept in an orchid I took to my tree.”
“Really?”
“A slipper orchid.”
“Like the orchid I bought in October?”
“Yes, and I put my feet inside the pouch.” She cooed, making an oval shape with her lips. “It was so smooth.”
“I’ll find you another orchid, and I’ll put it in your teacup one night as a surprise.”
A smile spread across her face, her shoulders rose and bunched about her neck, and as her hands curled into tiny fists, she brought them under her chin as if she could hardly contain her glee. The simplest things delighted her, I’d learned. Listening to me read a book aloud at night, sleeping on the cotton balls in her teacup—which she thought the highest form of luxury—sipping maple syrup from a spoon, eating thawed blueberries from my freezer. Had anything in her world thrilled her? What was she missing out on, living with me?
Later there would be time to ask those questions, but now we had a killer on the loose in Smithwell, and neither Emily nor I would sleep well at night until he or she was caught.
I fetched an old notepad and pen from the kitchen, mounted the stairs, and changed into my pajamas. The only thing missing for the night was my cup of herbal tea, but I was too exhausted to get the kettle going. As I slid under the covers and propped a pillow behind my back, Minette sped through my open bedroom door and plummeted like a stone to the end of my bed.
“Kate, Kate, Brodie was right,” she said.
“All right, stop.” I held up my hand, palm out. “Slowly. How is Brodie right?”
“They had to bury Patti because she was killed in the cemetery and had to be hidden.”
I nodded my assent. “That’s what I was thinking. It makes total sense. She was killed just before a tour started, and a dirt mound under a headstone made the perfect hiding place.”
“With her arms stuck out.”
“Because they didn’t have time to properly bury her. Instead, they made her look like part of the haunted tour. How else was Brodie right?”
“The killer had to get rid of Patti’s body fast.”
“But why?” I leaned back against my headboard, exhaustion settling into my bones. “We’ll leave that aside. Let’s say the killer is driving around with Patti in his car trunk. Why does he stop on Birch Street? And even in the middle of the night, why would you carry a body from the street to the yard behind Emily’s house? She’s got a long, sloping driveway like I do. It’s an insane trek, especially lugging a body, and there was a good chance he’d be caught with her.”
Minette walked toward me, nimbly traversing the folds and billows of my quilted comforter, and sat on my knee. “The woods.”
“That’s an even longer trek.”
“Not the woods on Birch Street.”
“Of course!” Why hadn’t I worked that out? Had Rancourt considered the possibility? “I think you’re right, Minette. The killer parked on Elm Street and carried Patti’s body through the woods behind our houses. It’s a short distance, there’s no slope, and—”
“And it was dark,” Minette said. “Very dark.”
CHAPTER 13
The next morning, as soon as it was light, I set out for the woods behind Emily’s house, Minette in one coat pocket and a flashlight in the other. First I walked through the woods to Elm Street, an easy task given that our backyard “woods” were only half a block wide. On Elm, I surveyed the land, looking for disturbed ground or leaves or anything out of the ordinary.
“I don’t think Rancourt or his cops were ever back here,” I whispered.
When I came up empty-handed on Elm, I moved slowly into the woods, casting my eyes on the ground and the lower branches of the maples and balsam firs, two trees that populated the wooded areas of Smithwell. Clusters of fallen, damp maple leaves carpeted the forest floor, making my search more difficult. Every two steps forward I paused, searched the ground, stepped to one side, then came back and stepped to the other.
“I know the woods,” Minette said, fidgeting within the constraints of my pocket. “Out now.”
“Okay, but be careful and keep your eyes open.”
She rocketed upward and flew into the trees, and I retrieved my flashlight and began to run the beam back and forth along the ground.
All I saw were leaves, twigs, and pine needles. The threads or torn fragments of clothing I’d hoped to find on the tree trunks or branches were nonexistent. Yet I still believed Patti’s body had been brought through these woods. Nothing else made sense, for one thing, and for another, Elm Street, though it ran east to west through much of Smithwell, was lightly traveled at night because it wasn’t fronted by houses. Birch was. If the killer had intended to drive unnoticed to some other location, Elm was a better choice.
Still, the question remained: Why move Patti’s body?
“Tracks, tracks,” Minette said, her voice barely audible.
I glanced up to see her hovering in place twenty feet ahead of me, as if moored to the ground by an invisible thread.
Hurrying to the spot, I directed my flashlight downward. Tracks, indeed. Two parallel drag marks, was more like it. Spaced six to eight inches apart, starting where Minette hung stationery like a hummingbird, and running ahead as far as I could see.
“These are drag marks,” I said. “Someone pulled Patti’s body through here, and her heels dug in. Look, you can see where her legs were dragged along too.” I moved to the side to avoid contaminating the tracks and continued toward Emily’s house. “And look. He rested her body here, picked her up again, but didn’t lift her up all the way for another few feet. Then the marks swerve left, more toward the center of Emily’s back yard.”
“We found evidence,” Minette said, landing on my right shoulder.
I pushed onward, keeping the drag marks in sight, until I reached the edge of the woods. There, the marks stopped. “In my pocket,” I said.
Minette dutifully complied, and I put away my flashlight.
“But where did he go?” I said, waving my hands in frustration. “The drag marks should continue, even in the grass. Maybe especially in the grass. There should be some hint of a body being hauled through Emily’s back yard.” But there wasn’t. It had rained since last night, but rain couldn’t wash away every indentations made by a dragged body, even one as slight as Patti’s. Surely her heels would have torn up some of the grass in Emily’s back yard.
A few feet past the woods, following the path I imagined the killer had, I saw shoe-sized spots of flattened wet grass. “Are those footprints?”
Minette poked her head above my pocket and looked down.
“I think those are footprints,” I said excitedly. I pivoted back to the woods then looked toward Emily’s house. “Did the killer pick her up and carry her from the woods to the house?”
Emily’s back door swung open and she trotted down her back steps and began to cut across her lawn.
“Step around,” I said, swinging my arm, steering her to the right. “There are footprints in your grass.”
She halted. “Yeah?” Frozen in place, she twisted this way and that, inspecting her lawn. “I don’t see any.”
Slowly I closed the space between us, all the while looking for more impressions in the grass. There were a few more spots, possibly footprints, but I was no longer sure what I was looking at. Yesterday’s constant rain had done a job on Emily’s lawn. But those first few marks I’d seen—the ones that had led directly from the drag marks—they had to belong to the killer.
“For a second there, you scared me to death,” Emily said. “I wasn’t sure who was in my back yard.”
“It’s only us,” Minette said.
“Stuck in a pocket again, are you?” Emily said. “Come on, inside my house.”
Before I moved, I briefly explained Minette’s breakthrough last night, abo
ut the killer taking Patti’s body from Elm Street through the woods to her back yard, and told her I’d found drag marks in the woods and footprints where the woods met her yard. This information didn’t sit well with Emily. There was some comfort in the notion that the killer had carried Patti’s body from Birch Street, though we should have known better. But Elm was less well lit, and the trees behind her house could conceal anyone lurking in them.
“It’s starting to rain again,” she said, glancing past me toward the woods. “Come on. We’ll search for footprints on the way.”
But we didn’t find anything more, and even in the general area of Patti’s body, where Rancourt surely had searched for footprints, there was nothing distinct or clearly identifiable. Just a shapeless smoosh on the ground where she had lain and perhaps been moved around a little.
Emily poured herself a cup of coffee and I, in great need of caffeine and breakfast, had one myself.
“Croissant?” she said, handing me a plate at the table. “What do you eat, Minette?”
“Honey,” she said.
“That’s a new one on me,” I said. “Though I should have known.”
Emily rummaged through her small pantry and returned triumphantly with a honey bear bottle. “How do I do this?”
“Put it in a small spoon,” I said, “then put the spoon on the table.”
“This is fascinating.” Emily squeezed a drizzle of honey into the spoon and placed it in the middle of the table.
“Thank you, Emily,” Minette said.
Emily watched Minette sip her honey and then dropped, with a kind of dazed incredulity, to the chair across from mine. “Unbelievable. I couldn’t tell anyone about this if I wanted to. They’d put me in an institution.”
“Okay, let’s talk about the case,” I said. “I don’t want to spend another night imagining every sound I hear is someone trying to break into my house.”
“Agreed,” Emily said.
“First I’ll call Rancourt and tell him what I found in the woods.”
“I’m not waiting around for him.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll mention the woods and then we’ll leave. Next I’d like to stop at the cemetery to see if those two headstones we found at the mansion are from there.”
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