Blackthorn Winter (31 page)

Now it was gone. That fact had triggered my memories. But why did it also set an alarm bell ringing in my head?

What else had been here but was now gone?

My school photo ...

Had Celia taken both?

I set the box down gently on the window ledge. I laid the necklace Duncan had made me next to it. I felt the prickle along the back of my neck again.

Liza had stood right here in this sunroom and told me about Nora's necklace.

And Liza had also been up here again—the night she died.

Liza must have come into our cottage the night of the party with someone else. And that person had conked her on the head. And taken Nora's necklace.

But
why?

I stood leaning against the window ledge, looking around the sunroom, trying to think it through.

The police believed that Simon Jukes must have come upon Liza by surprise—and attacked her. But no one could figure out what Liza and Simon had been doing in
our
cottage that night. Had Simon seen her and followed, bent on revenge? But would he also have wanted to steal a necklace made of flowers?

It didn't make sense to me. So ... what if it hadn't been Simon following Liza that night?

I turned back to the window ledge and stared down at the necklace Duncan had made for me, and at Nora's empty box. I felt the answer was bobbing at the edge of my understanding, just out of reach. I stared blankly out at the cold, gray afternoon. I was so close to figuring something out—I knew it. There were connections to be made here, and my mind just wasn't working fast enough. The five questions pounded into us by my journalism teacher fired in my head:
Who? What? Where? When? Why?
And I knew that if I could answer them, I would know what had happened to Liza that night.

Who?
Someone had come here with Liza. Someone who hated her.

It could have been Celia. Or Veronica.

What?
Someone had stolen Nora's necklace. That fact didn't seem to fit Veronica—or anyone else but Celia.

Celia had come sneaking in last night and hidden herself in the bathroom. Celia had stolen my school picture. Celia had mentioned she'd wanted a necklace but Nora had died before she could make one for her.

Where?
The bloodstain proved the attack had happened right here in this sunroom. And at the restaurant Celia
had dropped her menu when she'd heard we'd found the bloodstain....

When?
Celia had quarreled with Liza the night of the party....

Why?
This was the hard one.

What could the necklace mean to Celia? Why would she have attacked Liza for it? Why would she have taken it? That part didn't make sense. But why would Celia take my school photo? That didn't make sense, either.

I was still standing there in the sunroom, looking out the window, when I heard a faint noise downstairs. Mom must be home now. Maybe she could help me figure this out.

I turned to the door. "Mom?"

No answer. Just a queasy feeling leaping in my gut. Not Mom? Then ... who?

Celia?

I listened hard—heard nothing—then turned back to stare out through the window, down at the green garden in the waning light. Beyond the well-kept lawn and dripping shrubs loomed the Old Mill House. I pictured Celia inside the Old Mill House the night of the party, quarreling with Liza, telling her she was a terrible painter, how she'd need a magic charm to stay in business. I remembered Liza muttering drunkenly in the kitchen, later. "I have my own strength," Liza had declared. "Not like Nora. She would never do
anything
without consulting her tea leaves or wearing that lucky necklace—" I remembered how Liza's voice had broken off suddenly, how she stared into space as if she had remembered something.

I sucked in my breath sharply. Had Liza remembered just then that Nora's lucky necklace was up in a box in our
sunroom? It hadn't seemed important when she'd first seen it there, but at the party she suddenly made a connection between Nora's necklace and—what? My mind couldn't stretch that far.

But whatever she'd realized, Liza must have slipped out of the house soon after and gone to the cottage, using her copy of our key to enter. Someone must have followed her.

Celia?

But wait—it wasn't Celia who had been in the kitchen when Liza was talking about Nora's special necklace. Celia had not been there....

There was another sound from downstairs: a quiet click. Then—were those slow footsteps?

My ears strained to listen. I heard measured footsteps coming up the stairs.

My mind raced, and I was seeing again that scene from the party with vivid clarity: Duncan and I watching from the doorway. The look on Liza's face as she realized that Nora's special necklace meant
something.
And Liza had not been alone, there in the kitchen....

It couldn't be. Yet—

The footsteps padded down the hall. And I knew with utter clarity who must be standing outside the sunroom door.

Not Celia, after all.

How
could
it be true? How
could
it be true? The question pounded with my pulse. Stiffening, I turned slowly from the window.

"You," I whispered. "Yes, it was
you.
"

"
For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face...
"

 

—1 C
ORINTHIANS
13:12

Quent Carrington stepped into the sunroom. Two long strides brought him across the floor to stand over me. He reached out and grabbed my shoulder, spinning me away from the window. "You know too much," he said in a low, regretful voice. "And it really is too bad, Juliana. Because I like you. But you simply won't stop snooping around."

"It was you all along," I whispered. "
You
killed Liza."

"Liza drowned in the Shreen," he said firmly. "I just helped her on her way."

I tried to twist out of his grip, but he pressed his fingers tighter. "I can't believe this," I moaned. How could the evil murderer we'd all been afraid of turn out to be
Quent?
"Why would you do such a thing?"

He shook his head. "You'll quite likely figure it out sooner or later, and that's the problem."

"What do you mean?" I asked, desperately looking past him, thinking how I must get away. "Was Liza trying to steal Nora's necklace? Is that it? Did you follow her here that night and kill her because of that?"

"Not exactly, but never mind." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "That necklace," he muttered ruefully. "Such a little insignificant thing. How could I ever imagine it would come back to haunt me?"

"What do you mean?" I cried again. "
Haunt
you?"

Quent tightened his hold on me. "You ask too many questions," he snarled. "That's been the problem all along." With both hands hard on my shoulders, he propelled me across the sunroom and out into the hallway. I stumbled and tried to kick him. "Stop that!" he hissed into my ear.

"Leave me alone!" I shouted. "Let go of me!"

He released one of my shoulders only to clap his hand across my mouth. "Shut up!"

I struggled against him and tried to bite his hand. His skin was salty, cold.

He pressed me up against the wall at the top of the stairs. "Little Yankee girls who are too nosy for their own good end up going on ... on a little journey."

I stared down the narrow steps. He held me pinned against him with one hand over my mouth. One push forward and I would fall. I could almost see how it would happen, how Mom and the Goops would arrive home to find me crumpled up on the floor at the foot of the stairs, dead of a broken neck.
What a terrible accident!
people would say.

I jabbed backward with my heel, hard and sharp, and caught his shin. When he gasped, I bit down on his hand. He swore and tried to slap me. I kicked out again, then raised my arms, elbows out like battering rams, and stabbed his stomach. He bent double, and I fled down those narrow stairs. I tore open the front door of the cottage, raced out into the drizzle, screaming my head off, howling for Mom, for Duncan, for Henry Jukes, for anyone. No one came. No one heard. I raced through the garden, toward the back wall where, maybe if I was lucky, I'd run into Henry Jukes—dear, innocent Henry Jukes—
pruning the walnut trees. My feet slipped on the rain-slick grass and I nearly fell.

Run, Toots!Run, run...

Buzzy's voice in my head?

Oh, wake up, wake up—please wake up ... oh, help me, somebody!

A message from the shadows? I stumbled again as understanding stabbed me.

I had figured out that Quent killed Liza, but the
why
of it all had eluded me—until now. I gasped for air as I ran.

Quent Carrington killed Liza because she had figured out that he had also killed Nora.

I shook my head, even as I thought it. But everything fit. Liza knew that Nora would certainly,
definitely,
have worn her special talisman necklace to the big television interview. Superstitious Nora, who believed in luck and omens and talismans and magic, would never have gone to London without it.

So if Nora had not worn the necklace, that meant she had not gone off to London, either. Just as Buzzy had not worn the special necklace I'd made for her, and had never really gone away to look for work.

The necklaces. They were the link in my mind between then and now.

Tiara had lied to me. There had been that awful night of shouting about money and those awful sounds of a struggle.... Maybe Tiara had killed Buzzy over a drug deal gone wrong or some other sordid thing. Maybe Buzzy had simply died of an overdose and Tiara had panicked. But Tiara had stuffed Buzzy into that closet.

Quent must have been lying to everyone, too. To all of us. Because Nora had never really gone to London, and
Liza Pethering had figured that out—if not at first when she saw the necklace in the sunroom, then later, at Quent's party, in the kitchen.

Liza had figured it out. Or at least she had wondered about the necklace enough to ask Quent about it. And when Quent knew she was on to him, he struck.

I ran faster. I was passing the old stables where Quent had his studio. In the gloom I could see the shapes of his larger sculptures wrapped in blue plastic, waiting outside to be transported to the London exhibition. Had Quent killed Nora up in our sunroom? Or out here in his studio?

Behind me I heard wet footfalls. Quent was gaining on me. I yelled at the top of my voice—"It's Quent Carrington! He's trying to kill me! He killed Liza and Nora! Help me, help me, somebody!"—and reached the back gate. My fingers fumbled at the heavy iron latch ... and although I was in Quent's green garden, with the salty sea air wrapping coldly around me and the rain in my face, I was also, somehow, fumbling at
another latch,
a latch on a locked door in
another place,
a dim, grungy place, and the salty sea air was there, too, but warm, with a touch of fog.

Would I ever break free from the shadows? I was gasping for breath from running and had to stop for a moment, leaning against the gate. Oh, yes, here was the trauma Duncan said maybe I'd need to restore my lost memory. Yes, now I remembered—in horrible detail. Oh, I remembered everything. Buzzy—in that closet. My mommy, my first mommy.

I remembered my little girl self pulling back that soiled blanket to reveal the decaying face of my birth mother, and then running, running, running—through the streets, across town, to the beach—as if by running away I could escape the nightmare vision.

For ten years now, I had.

But now I was running away from more than a terrible sight. I was running for my life. The two times—then and now—seemed superimposed, but this wasn't the wooden closet door of my memory. This was Quent's garden gate, made of solid iron. My fingers fumbled at the lock and panic welled up in me, and then I was slammed to the ground from behind. My breath whooshed out of me. Quent lay on top of me, pinning me to the wet grass. He kept his knee in my back as he dragged something over me, wrapping me tight. I recognized the blue plastic sheeting from his sculptures-in-progress. He pulled my braid hard, forcing my head back, then gagged me with his scarf. I struggled, throwing myself from side to side, grunting and straining against the woolen cloth that filled my mouth and the plastic wrapping that held me like a straitjacket.

Quent laughed roughly. "You're a fighter and you're quick, my girl. But not quick enough. Now we're going for a little ride, and I don't want any more trouble from you." He paused and held up another beach rock. "Or else."

Tears dribbled into my hair as he carried me over his shoulder to his car in the back alley. He tossed me into the backseat as if I were nothing more than a piece of sculpture and we drove off. "Of course I could kill you now," he said conversationally as we turned a corner. "But I'd rather not have any more bloodstains found on my property."

His words chilled me. Where were we going, and why? I strained against the plastic wrapping, fought to bite through the tight gag—uselessly.
Mom!
I shouted in my mind.
Dad! Help me, someone!

And in my mind I heard another shout—from another time...

Buzzy, oh Buzzy, oh, wake up, wake up—please wake up ... oh, help me, somebody!

With an effort I pushed the memories out of my head.
This
was real, this sickening gag and tight plastic sheet. This car was real as it raced through the dark and started climbing, gears grinding, up a steep road. But where was Quent taking me?

The car jerked to a stop and I fell against the seat backs. Quent hauled me out. He threw me unceremoniously over his shoulder again and started carrying me—where? I squirmed and bucked, but it was no use. I was desperate to see where we were, what he was doing, but now the blue plastic sheeting covered my face and head. A terrible sense of futility washed through me.

He stopped and slid me off his back. I hit the ground with a thud, and pain shot up my side. Where was I? What was he going to do to me?