She quietly turned the intricately embossed brass doorknob.
The closet was huge, but instead of the negligees, tea gowns, and whatever that Samantha had expected, there was nothing except a large antique armoire. It had an ornate lock but no key. The closet smel ed strongly of potpourri and Samantha sneezed. She reached into her jeans pocket for a tissue. She didn't have one. Yet, there was something else there. Down at the bottom was the key she'd found over two weeks ago, that sunny day when she and Mom had taken the dogs for a walk to see how the Fairchilds' new house was coming along—a sunny day that seemed to have had its start in another life.
Al of a sudden, she felt nervous. She held the key in her hand. It had been so warm, she hadn't been wearing jeans much. This was the first time since that long-ago Sunday she'd had this pair on.
It was an ornate key, like the lock.
Before she could change her mind, she put it in, turned, and heard the click as the doors opened. When she saw what was inside, she laughed in relief. A whole shelf of plastic Mickey Mouse figures, old ones. There were also some folk art carvings of animals and one of a figure that looked like someone from the Bible. On other shelves were piles of quilts. This was obviously where Valerie kept her finds.
Samantha closed one of the doors and bent down to make sure the quilts didn't get in the way. She reached under a bunch to ease them farther into the chest and immediately pul ed back, as if she'd put her hand into a blazing fire instead of a stack of linens. She closed the other door, pocketed the key, shut the closet door fast, and sat back down, looking straight out to sea. Her heart was pounding, her cheeks blazing.
There had been a neat little blue cross stitched on the binding of each of the quilts. They lined up like little soldiers. The crosses again. There had been one on Mitchel Pierce's quilt. There had been one on the quilt her mother had bought, a quilt her mother had told her was a fake. Should she tel Valerie? What should she do? She put her hands up to her cheeks to try to cool them down. They felt ice-cold against her blushes. She took a deep breath.
Valerie was coming.
“The view is real y something. I could stay here forever," she said in as normal a tone as she could.
“I hope you don't have to, dear." Valerie's tone wasn't normal at al . Samantha twisted around in the chair.
Valerie might have brought the paycheck, but she had also brought an extremely lethal-looking gun, which she was handling with ease, pointing it directly between her employee's big brown eyes.
“I have to run. I'm already a bit late picking Samantha up, but she's waiting for me at the Athertons' house, and it's certainly no punishment for her to revel in Valerie's company amid Valerie's perfect taste. If anything, she'l probably Òh, Mother' me for getting there too soon.”
Faith laughed—while she stil could. Amy, happily playing next to her adored Mommy on a water-fil ed mat, complete with floating spongy fish, would no doubt put her through this sometime in the future, as wel .
“Al right. I just wanted to check in and hear about the funeral, though this one sounds pretty tame." Faith and Pix had attended a more dramatic service on the island several summers ago—one that people were stil talking about.
“Yes, poor Addie. Poor Rebecca. But I suppose their lives have been happy ones, if not bursting with excitement.
And Adelaide real y did make a name for herself in the quilt world."
“Hmmm," Faith was ready to move on back to the living, especial y her own life. "If Tom can get away early, we'l be up Friday night. Do you think Seth wil have started the framing by then?"
“He said he would, and even though it's been cooler, we haven't had any rain, so the foundation should be dry soon."
“I can't wait to see it— and you, and Samantha.”
“Likewise, I'm sure.”
The two women hung up. Faith reached for Amy. "Your first trip of many to Sanpere Island," she told her child, who listened intently and replied with a string of appropriate nonsense syl ables. Was it just because she was a mother that Faith thought she could discern the words wanna go, wanna go? Wel , I want to go, too, Faith reflected. With the amount she was spending cal ing Pix, it might have been cheaper, and more sensible, to have shut down the company and gone up in July in the first place. Besides, although things seemed to have settled down on the island, she knew she wouldn't feel easy until she saw Pix and especial y Samantha for herself.
“You'l like it there." She continued to hold a one-sided conversation with her child, a situation she'd eventual y gotten used to with Ben. In his early days, she'd felt as if she was talking to a cat or some other domesticated pet. "It has icy cold water, lots of bugs, no place to eat, no place to shop, nothing much to do." And they were building a house in this Shangri-la.
Pix knocked loudly at the Athertons' front door and, receiving no reply, knocked again. Perhaps they were on the deck in the front of the house. She walked around, didn't see anyone, and went back to the door. She knocked yet again, then did what she normal y did in Sanpere: walked in. She could hear Valerie's voice coming from upstairs.
“It's me, Pix," she cal ed from the bottom of the spiral.
Taking the silence for an invitation, she went on up. She was curious to see more of the house. At the top of the stairs, she saw an open door and through it Valerie's back.
She entered the room. "Sorry I'm a bit late ..." Her apology was cut short first by her initial impression of the decor—it was fit for a little princess, or an aging romance writer—
then by the gun.
“What's going on! Samantha, are you al right?”
“Shut up and sit down in the other chair.”
Pix was so stunned that for a moment she couldn't move. It was simply too much to take in al at once. Valerie?
“Move!”
She moved.
Samantha had been similarly turned to stone. She had hardly moved a muscle since Valerie had entered the room; even Pix's arrival did not cause more than a flutter of an eyelash. Every thought she had directed her to keep stil and stay alive. Her mother reached for her hand and she grabbed it, but did not shift her gaze or open her mouth.
Valerie, however, was talking to herself nonstop. Tap ping her foot in annoyance yet maintaining a steady aim, she sat down on the daybed, incongruously surrounded by lace.
“Everything was perfect! Mitch was out of the way.
We'd heard Seth tel his crew that they would be pouring the foundation after they finished the work at the camp.
Perfect!" She was fuming. "Mitch, the old lush. Couldn't keep his mouth shut and he thought he should get more money. For what? I ask you." Pix correctly assumed this was a purely rhetorical question, especial y since Valerie did not even pause before continuing her tirade. "So he could make things look old. Big deal. There are plenty of people to take his place—or who could have taken his place." If looks could indeed kil , Pix would have been effectively demolished and the gun superfluous. "But you had to start playing Nancy Drew. Stil , that didn't get anywhere, and I was home free. I had even gotten rid of Duncan, so life around here could be a little more peaceful.
I thought we were al going to have a lot of fun together. You haven't been a good friend at al !" She was pouting now.
The woman must be absolutely mad, Pix thought. She was talking as if Pix had done her out of an invitation to the Magnolia Bal or some such thing at the same time as she was confessing to murder! What else could the references to Mitch being "out of the way" and "pouring the foundation"