Deadly Harvest (26 page)

“Ginny will be fine. I'm helping her with the details,” Eve told him, her voice cool. They might be trying to appear as if everything was copacetic in public, Rowenna thought, but Eve still wasn't happy.

And everything seemed to come back to the Harvest Festival.

Rowenna glanced at the bar. “Excuse me, will you? Brad seems to be slipping into his beer. I'm going to go back and keep him company.”

“Of course,” Eve said sympathetically.

When Rowenna returned to her stool, Brad was so deep in his thoughts that he didn't even notice her at first.

“Here you go, Ro,” Hugh said, setting a cold beer in front of her. “On the house,” he added.

She smiled her thanks and touched Brad's shoulder.

He jumped, then looked at her with anguished eyes. “Sorry. The waiting is getting to me. The not knowing.”

She nodded. “But you're a cop. You know how investigations work, and that's got to help.”

He straightened and nodded back. “Don't worry. I won't fall apart.” He turned on his stool, and watched Jeremy and the others playing. “I wish I played guitar,” he said, pointing at Jeremy with his beer bottle. “He works things out in his head when he plays, did you know that?”

“I wish I could play an instrument, too,” she told him.

“You're great the way you are, Rowenna. You don't need to be more.”

“Thank you.”

He pointed to the table where Eric, Daniel, Adam and Eve were sitting. “But,” he said, his words slurring just the tiniest bit, “you sure as hell have some really weird friends. I mean, they're nice enough, but…they're kind of scary-weird.” He turned back to the bar. “Except for Hugh, here. Hugh's normal. He likes a good beer and a football game, and he doesn't worship trees. Right, Hugh?”

Hugh looked apologetically at Rowenna. “Um, right, Brad.” He moved away, looking uncomfortable.

“Let's just listen to Jeremy,” she suggested.

“One of them could be the Devil,” Brad whispered.

“Brad, seriously, they're all just people,” she assured him.

“I'm sorry,” he told her.

He didn't say anything else, and she couldn't help but wonder, glancing over at the table where her friends were sitting, just what he'd been apologizing for.

Was he sorry that he had insulted her friends?

Sorry that her friends were weird?

Or sorry because one of her friends was the Devil?

She silently thanked God when Jeremy, to the sound of applause from the audience and thanks from the band, returned to them after the next number. When he reached the bar, he told her that he was famished and they needed to order dinner.

Brad needed to eat, she thought. He'd been drinking too fast and too long without anything to eat.

“I'm not hungry,” Brad protested

“I am,” Jeremy said. “So we're going to have dinner.”

They moved to a table, and Jeremy watched people while they ate. He waved to Ginny, and asked Rowenna to introduce him to Dr. MacElroy, which she did when the two of them stopped by their table as they were leaving. Ginny spoke encouragingly to Brad, while Dr. MacElroy seemed to study Jeremy just as Jeremy studied him.

“Did you tell him?” Ginny asked Rowenna anxiously. “Did you tell him what I saw?”

Jeremy looked at Rowenna, his expression inquiring.

“No, not yet,” Rowenna admitted.

“Lights,” Ginny told Jeremy gravely.

“Lights?”

“In the night—just like a UFO,” Ginny said. “To the northwest of our house—and Rowenna's, too. I forgot all about them until tonight.”

Dr. MacElroy looked uncomfortable, as if embarrassed for Ginny.

But Jeremy thanked her solemnly and asked, “When did you see them?”

“Well, I'm not sure. Let me think…. Oh, dear. I'm so sorry. I think I've noticed them a few times. I just don't know how I could have forgotten.”

“Don't worry about it,” Jeremy said reassuringly. “And thank you very much. If you see them again, will you let me know?”

“Of course,” Ginny promised gravely. “Of course.”

“Good night, then,” Dr. MacElroy said, and he and Ginny exited.

“UFOs?” Brad said wearily as they walked away. “Give me a break.”

“Lights to the northwest. What's out there, Rowenna?” Jeremy asked.

“Nothing. Just brush. It's not even good farmland,” she told him. “And, Jeremy…” She hesitated to say anything, but it really did sound as if maybe Ginny was losing it a bit.

“What?” he asked.

“I hate to say it, but I think maybe Ginny's getting a little senile, so you…you might not want to put too much stock in what she says.”

Jeremy didn't say anything. He just looked thoughtful as he started eating again.

Eventually they finished their meals, walked Brad back to his B and B and then went on toward the house Jeremy had rented.

“What a strange night,” Rowenna said. “I don't think I've ever seen that many locals all there at once….”

“Interesting,” Jeremy agreed.

He looked pensive, though, and he sounded distracted.

“What are you thinking?” she asked after a long silence.

“Just that…I think interviewing this guy tomorrow is going to be a waste of time.”

“But he was the last person seen with her.”

“If his alibi checked out, he'd be walking and I wouldn't even be going,” Jeremy said. “Even so, they don't have any hard evidence, and they can't hold him past tomorrow, so this is the one chance we have to talk to the guy. And who knows? I don't think he killed her, but maybe he'll remember something that points in the right direction. The thing is…”

“What?”

“I know our killer's local, and I can't help feeling that there's something I should be seeing, but I'm just not seeing it.”

“You grilled Eric today, I hear.”

“I'm not a detective,” he said, his tone dry as he gazed her way. “I don't ‘grill' anyone.”

She hesitated, then said, “It's possible that the man you're going to talk to has just studied the area. I mean, Boston is only thirty miles away. If traffic's not bad—”

He laughed. “When is the traffic near any large city
ever
not bad?”

“Four in the morning?” she joked. “Seriously, maybe it
is
this guy.”

He mulled that over, then shook his head. “Brad is convinced it's Damien. The guy with the crystal ball. The problem is, no one has been able to find him. He never applied for a permit, so there's no paper trail. He came to town, he disappeared. Do you know what that means?”

“No, what?”

“That Damien isn't really named Damien. I'd guarantee it. I was thinking about it the whole time I was playing, going over everything we know, everything we don't know and all our dead ends. First, the guy is incredibly smart. He knows the area, knows when things will be so busy that he can put on an entire charade, complete with tent, and no one will notice. Then, he knows enough to cover his tracks. Dinah Green was sexually assaulted, but they couldn't find DNA, they couldn't get a scraping from beneath her nails, they couldn't find a single fiber that told them anything. Then Mary disappears from the only deserted place in town on a massively busy day. He didn't go underground with her—there are no secret passages to the street from the graveyard. That means he knows just how crazy Halloween is going to be, so once he gets her out of there, who's going to notice some guy in costume with a woman over his shoulder or tucked against him like she's drunk or whatever he did. The thing is…” He paused, took a deep breath and finished the thought. “I'm afraid that if we don't solve this quickly, Mary will run out of time.”

They had reached the house. He looked at her and said, “You didn't get home today, did you?”

“No—but I'll have to at some point. I bought these clothes at Adam and Eve's, and I got some extra underwear, so I'm covered for tomorrow, but after that, I'll have to go home.”

He nodded. “Do you want to drive into Boston with Joe and me tomorrow?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I know you think I'm looking for something that can't possibly exist, but I want to keep researching. There are books at the History Museum I haven't even opened yet.”

“I wish I could send Brad with you,” he said.

“You can,” she said. She did like the guy, and sober, he was fine.

“I can try. Brad is a doer, not a reader, I'm afraid.”

“Just tell him to come get me for breakfast, because you're worried about me, and that he has to walk me to the museum and keep an eye on me. That will make him feel like he's doing something,” Rowenna suggested.

“I like that,” Jeremy said. “I should be back around lunchtime, anyway. And Zach will get here at some point tomorrow, too.”

“Zach?” she said. “Here?”

He nodded. “I guess I got sidetracked. After I talked to Joe, Zach called. He's going to catch a flight up here tomorrow. Once he gets here…well, then I won't have to worry about you so much.”

“You don't have to worry about me now,” she said. “I don't really need protecting during the day in my own stomping grounds.”

“Look, being careful is…just not being stupid.”

“I am
not
stupid.”

“I didn't say—Look, forget it, okay? I think I'm just on edge. Zach will be here, and you like Zach,” he said.

She thought she heard a touch of bitterness in his voice.

“Of course I like your brother. He's a nice guy,” she said coolly, wondering about the bitterness in his tone. Had he thought she didn't like him?

He pushed the door open. She preceded him in.

As soon as they were inside, he spun her around and into his arms. At first she felt as if everything within her constricted. She was angry, and she couldn't help it. She wanted to tell him that she liked his brother, but she had fantasized about
him
. It wasn't her fault he had been so distant with her until that last night in New Orleans.

“Hey,” he said huskily when she pulled back and stared up at him. “Hey.”

It wasn't an apology, but his eyes held the words that he couldn't quite seem to manage to say.

She melted.

He closed the door, and it was as if they tacitly agreed that they were closing the door on the outside world of fear and sadness that had sucked them into its vortex all day. Her handbag hit the floor, along with his keys, and then their jackets. She forgot that she had ever been angry, forgot whatever had come between them. The natural intimacy they shared came sweeping back with a vengeance.

He picked her up and started to carry her up the stairs.

He bumped into the wall.

She cracked her head and laughed.

He apologized, and she only laughed harder.

They made it to the second floor, to the bedroom. And then, in the combination of hot, wet kisses and clothes flying every which way, he came upon the skimpy skull underwear she had bought and decided it was sexy. He kissed her through the silk that barely covered her, and the feel of his mouth on her in such intimate ways through the fabric was incredibly sensual. She wanted desperately to return the erotic favor, and she explored his skin with her hands, her fingers stroking, and with her tongue. Then he spanned her waist with his hands, lifting her above him, holding her so that she met his eyes, and he groaned, a deep, husky sound that was nearly as arousing as his touch. He brought her down on the length of his erection with an earth-shattering slowness that drove her wild, and they tangled in the bedclothes. At first she was on top, but then he rolled her beneath him and thrust with a rhythm that made the room fade away. There was nothing left but his body, his breathing, his whispers, and the pressure of him inside her, until she shrieked with the violence of her climax and lay beneath him, heart shuddering as he came seconds later, then cradled her in his arms and slid to her side.

They lay there then in a silence that was precious to her, it was so natural. Then, as their damp bodies began to cool, they teased and laughed, trying to straighten out the covers, which had been left in absolute disarray, finally managing to snuggle together beneath them.

It had been a long day, a very long day, and there was no encore.

She didn't remember trying to fall asleep, she simply
was
asleep, and at first it was deep and pleasant.

And then she was back in the cemetery, listening to a guide she couldn't see talk about the witchcraft trials. He was talking about the way the convicted had been executed on Gallows Hill, explaining that none of them were buried here, in a cemetery for those who had died in God's good graces.