Page 27 of The Murder Inn
“Mark hosted a Christmas party there one year.” I nodded, remembering. “If there are too many reminders of him at the beach house, you’re welcome to come stay here.”
“No, I couldn’t possibly impose. But thank you. The Manchester house is my happy place. I chose it. I decorated it. It really has my stamp, rather than his.”
“Nice place.”
“Yes. Too nice for his salary. I’m sure he lied to me about the price.” Shauna gave a mirthless smile. I didn’t say anything. Her husband’s obvious corruption lingered between us, silently, the ghost of sins neither of us wanted to imagine. “I don’t know how to thank you for this, Bill.”
“It’s nothing.” I waved her off. “It’s a car. It’s fine. With so many people living here, we have more cars than we know what to do with. I’ll just get Susan—”
“No, don’t,” Shauna said. She put a hand on my arm and I noticed scratches and bruises on her knuckles. “Don’t bother her. Don’t bother yourself any further, either. If you just lendme one of your cars and toss the truck somewhere in a garage or—whatever you have here. I’d be so grateful.”
“What about the suitcases? Want me to give them to Goodwill for you?”
“I think I’ll need more time,” Shauna sighed. “Could you just leave them in the truck, where they are?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll move your truck to the garage around the back. Stay here. Take a load off.”
I jogged down the stairs just as Effie walked up to Shauna’s truck, her hand reaching toward the truck bed’s hatch.
“She’s not a guest,” I told Effie. “No need to unload the bags. We’re just going to park the truck in the garage. Will you give me a hand?”
Effie nodded and pulled open the door beside me. I felt something hit my boot and looked down. It was a small silver chain that had apparently been caught up in the doorjamb. I reached down, picked it up, and walked it back to where Shauna sat on the porch.
I was heading up the steps, the chain hanging from my fist, holding it out to show my old friend, when I looked into her eyes and saw an expression that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a look I’d seen a thousand times or more across my career, so familiar and so distinct that I felt my soul arrested in my body.
It was the look a person gives when they’re caught.
The shocked, vulnerable, slightly frightened gaze of a perp cornered, presented with inescapable evidence. The cage door shut. The lies exposed.
“This fell out of your truck,” I said.
Defiance flickered through Shauna, and her features fell into neutral.
I laid the silver necklace on Shauna’s outstretched palm. We both looked down at the pendant hanging from it, a single cursive letter fashioned from scratched and worn silver.
It was the letter M.
“Oh,” Shauna nodded, closing the necklace in her fist. “That’s Mark’s.”
“Is it?” I asked. My incredulity must have shown in my voice, because Shauna gave a forced laugh. We both knew the letter on the pendant was so curly and delicate, it was obviously designed for a woman. And the chain itself was so thin and small, it was ridiculous to suggest it might have gone around the neck of the great hulking man that we both knew as Shauna’s late husband. And yet Shauna sat there and lied to me, holding the necklace in her fist, her eyes locked on mine.
“Nothis,I mean. Mine, but given to me by Mark. It’s… it’s a long story,” she said. “He… he’d intended to give it to me for my birthday some years ago. He ordered it especially. Only, he didn’t look in the box before he gave it to me, and…” She swiped at her brow. “It was the funniest scene: us sitting there at the restaurant, me opening the box and finding the… the complete wrong initial.”
It was a good lie. A good recovery from Shauna, trying to pass off the pendant as Mark’s, the whole story about the dinner and the mistaken gift. I stood there, stunned, wondering how long she’d been lying to me. And why.
But like Nick’s secret, I knew Shauna’s would unfold for me in time. I just had to be patient, vigilant, and watchful. I could only hope hers wasn’t about to bring hellfire into my life, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SOMETHING WAS GOING on in the house, Clay knew. There was tension and turmoil in the air. He felt it as soon as he stepped up onto the porch late in the afternoon. Bill was pacing the beach beyond the pine trees, which was something Clay had only seen him do in the months after his wife died. His hair was windswept and his face was hard, the way it had been back in those dark days. And then there was Nick, who Clay spotted sitting at the edge of the porch farthest from the beach, slumped in a rocking chair drinking a beer. That wasn’t right, either. If someone was looking for Nick, they would search the running trails in the woods, or find him using the stairs behind the kitchen to do pushups. The tension in the household seemed to have infected everyone. Clay passed Vinny in the sitting room and found him reading a battered copy ofLittle House on the Prairie. Effie was standing in front of the refrigerator, eating ice cream from the tub. Upside-down world. Any minutenow, Clay expected to run into the reclusive Neddy Ives, who barely anyone had ever seen, since the man stayed confined to his room on the third floor at all hours of the day and night.
But when Clay noticed the new arrival, April Leeler, in the dining room, he felt that same light, calming warmth that seemed to surround her. With his fingertips tingling weirdly—as they had whenever his thoughts turned to this beautiful, mysterious woman who had arrived in his life yesterday—he went to the kitchen and poured two glasses of red wine. He brought them back to the edge of the dining room and paused to ease a long, slow, confidence-invoking breath into his big lungs. April’s back was to the door where he stood. Joe was lying on the carpet; Clay could just see the child’s legs beyond the edge of the table.
“Hello!” Clay bellowed with all the breath he had mustered. April jolted hard in her chair at the sound.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Clay swept to her side. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Here! Take this!”
Clay shoved the wineglass into April’s hand, sloshing wine on her wrist. He was sinking desperately into a chair near hers, cringing at his bungled entrance, when he heard a laugh.