A noise behind me, by the half-open garage door, then the bright white beam of a powerful flashlight hit my eyes and I threw an arm up to block the blinding light.
“Gemma? What are you doing here?”
“Mrs. Watkins, is that you? Turn that light away, please,” I said.
The beam moved off my face to the floor. In the gloom, I saw the tall, older woman standing by the front of Ellen’s black SUV.
“Uh, hi. I know this looks bad but I can explain. I knocked on your door a few minutes ago and didn’t get an answer, so I came around back, thinking someone might be home. I thought I heard a cat, crying, coming from the garage,” I stammered.
I felt the ridiculousness of the lie in the silent space between us.
I felt Mrs. Watkins’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t see her features.
She was quiet a moment then said, “Well, come inside the house. You’ll catch your death out here.”
“Oh, no, really, I should just be going home.”
“Then why knock on the door?” Mrs. Watkins replied. She turned and ducked out of the garage. I sighed and followed her, caught in my own web of deceit.
We moved in silence through the covered walkway, from the garage and into the house. I pulled the hood back from my head and removed my rain jacket, careful to bundle it up so that it didn’t drip all over the polished marble floors.
In darkness, Mrs. Watkins led me to the kitchen.
There she had set up a trio of thick white pillar candles, and she set a kettle of water to boil on the stove by the light of the flickering flames. She directed me to take a seat on one of the two stools that stood next to an island in the middle of the kitchen.
“We lost power an hour ago. If you’re looking for Terry or Ellen, you’re out of luck. They’re in town, attending a fund-raiser. The show must go on, I suppose. Dad’s barely in the ground; Annika’s missing; and they just buried their only son for the second time,” Mrs. Watkins said. “I’ll never understand it.”
She went to a cupboard and opened it and stood, looking at contents I could not see. “Herbal tea? I have chamomile, lemon, or mint. Or I can get you black, decaf or regular.”
The candles cast strange shadows in the large kitchen and I began to feel drowsy in the dim, warm room, out of the cold rain. I struggled to concentrate on Mrs. Watkins’s words.
“I don’t know, some people cope with grief by staying busy, I suppose. If you’ve got sugar or milk, the decaf black tea would be just fine, thank you.”
Mrs. Watkins looked back at me over her shoulder. “The Bellingtons are not ‘copers,’ Gemma. That implies making do with situations. We tackle our problems head-on.”
She pulled two mugs from another cupboard and began opening the tea bags. She whistled as she worked, a funny little smile on her face.
“Speaking of head-on, is that your Toyota in the garage? You’ve got a busted headlight.”
Mrs. Watkins looked up at me. “Why do you think I’ve been using Annika’s car? She took mine out at some point in the last few weeks, God knows why, and returned it in worse condition than she found it. She hit a parking pole, apparently. Until I get it fixed, she said I could use her Honda. I wouldn’t want to get a ticket for the headlight.”
“Ah, I see. Hannah, forgive my bluntness, but you seem rather in a good mood. Have there been any further updates about Annika? Any more word from her kidnappers?” I asked.
On the stove, the kettle began to whistle. Mrs. Watkins turned away without answering me and went and removed the kettle from the burner. When she turned back, she’d stopped smiling.
“No, no word from the kidnappers. Let’s just say I have a feeling Annika is going to be okay. She and I are alike that way. We’re survivors. We do what has to be done,” Mrs. Watkins answered.
She poured the boiling water carefully and then dropped a tea bag into each mug. Something behind me caught her eye and she looked up and then away, quickly, but it was too late. I’d noticed her movement and in the space before I heard anything, I sensed a presence behind me, in the darkness.
“Gemma,” a voice called.
Slowly, I turned around.
Chapter Forty-eight
Annika laughed, that musical laugh of hers that sounded like wind chimes. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
She was just a few feet from me, in jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a scarlet red.
It’s odd what we notice.
“Annika, go back upstairs,” Mrs. Watkins said. “Finish packing.”
Annika paced the edge of the room, shaking her head. She moved in and out of the candlelight, there one minute, gone the next. Maybe she was a kind of a ghost, after all. Maybe I’d been living in a horror story all these long days and nights.
“Gemma’s here. I need to know why.”
I said the first thing that came to mind. “I talked to Pete this morning. He wants his claw back.”
Annika stopped pacing on the other side of the island and gave another laugh. “He’s such a child. You wouldn’t believe the things I let him do, and now he wants his little prop back?”
“He sounds like a nice guy, you should give him another chance. Although I don’t think he’d take you back.”
“I broke up with him,” she shouted, and resumed pacing.
Mrs. Watkins sipped her tea, watching the two of us. “What claw, Annie? What is Gemma talking about?”
Annika stopped pacing and stared at me with pleading eyes. I looked at the older woman, confused.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
Annika said, “Gemma, don’t… Pete doesn’t have anything to do with this. I just want my money; money that I would have gotten anyway, so I can leave. This family, this town… I need to get away!”
“And you will, my love, you will,” Mrs. Watkins said.
She moved toward Annika, her arms outstretched, pleading. “But you must hurry. You need to be packed and gone before your parents get home. That’s the only way this plan works.”
Understanding bloomed in my head.
“You don’t know, do you?” I asked Mrs. Watkins.
Behind her, Annika was frantically shaking her head and making shushing motions. Unbelievable.
The older woman stared at me. She glanced back at Annika, then at me again.
“Know what?”
“Annika killed Nicky. And she tried to kill my partner, Sam Birdshead, with your car.”
The mug fell from Mrs. Watkins’s hands and shattered on the kitchen tile with a sound as sharp as a shotgun’s blast. She staggered forward, her hand on her heart.
“You’re lying,” she gasped. She reached the edge of the island and gripped it as though holding on for dear life. “Tell me she’s lying, Annika.”
Annika was silent, chewing on a fingernail.
“Annika!” Mrs. Watkins shouted. “Answer me this minute.”
Annika sighed and said, “You know I can’t lie to you, Aunt Hannah. I never could.” She kneeled down and began picking up the shards of the broken mug. She worked quickly and carelessly and when she stood up, bright spots of blood bloomed on her fingertips.
Mrs. Watkins stared at her in shock. “I don’t… I don’t understand. You killed your brother? And ran that police officer off the road? Why?”
“Sit down, Aunt Hannah, before you stroke out. You thought we didn’t know about your heart pills, but we do. You don’t have to hide them, you know,” Annika said.
She stood there, bleeding, until her aunt obeyed and took a seat on the other stool, next to me. Only then did Annika move to the trash can, dump the broken mug, and yank a bunch of paper towels off the paper towel holder. She held them to her bleeding hands.
“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Watkins said. She trembled and I took a good look at her face. Her skin was pale, with sweat beginning to bead at her temple. I thought back to my first aid classes and remembered sudden news-good or bad-could cause shock in a person. The adrenaline rush could be fatal to someone with heart problems.