A woman stood on my carriage house doorstep as I pulled into my roundabout drive. She had a medium-length auburn shag and she wore a flowered skirt and high wedge sandals. She held some kind of covered plate in her hands.
I opened my car door and walked her way, certain she must be lost. “Hello. Were you looking for someone?”
She nodded, batting her long eyelashes. “Belinda Blake. Are you her?”
Her words dripped with a honeyed Southern accent. Why on earth was this stranger looking for me?
“Yes, I’m Belinda,” I said hesitantly. “And you are?”
She stepped down next to me, beaming a wide smile. “I’m Susan Snodgrass. Red told me about you, and I wanted to bring you a little something, by way of introduction.”
“And how do you know Red?” I asked.
“We’re dating,” she said, a blush creeping into her cheeks.
I relaxed, giving her an unabashed grin. “Come on in. Any friend of Red’s is a friend of mine.”
After unlocking my door, I led her into my living room. She started to unbuckle her sandal straps. “No need to take your shoes off,” I said. I raised the blinds on my back windows to let in more light, then motioned to my couch. “Please, have a seat.”
She sat down demurely, setting the plate on the coffee table. “I thought you might enjoy some of my homemade lemon pound cake.”
My mouth started watering. “I’m sure I will. I’m no baker, but my sister is, and fresh-baked goods are my Achilles’ heel. Do you live in Greenwich?”
“I’m in Stamford, actually. I own a bakery—that’s how I met Red. He has a serious sweet tooth.”
“He likes his bear claws,” I joked.
“Oh, honey, yes. I think he’s addicted to my éclairs.” She stretched her tan legs and smiled. “He’s mentioned you quite a bit. I think he worries about you. He said you’re working over at that wolf preserve? I saw the news about that young man’s death. I hope you’re not working directly with those wolves?”
Something about Susan’s warm hazel eyes made me want to open up. “I am, actually. But so far, I’ve never been alone in their enclosures.” I hesitated, unsure if I should break the news of Rich’s death. I decided that would only worry everyone more. “It’s stressful,” I said finally.
Susan placed a hand on my own. “Listen, if you need to decompress, Red and I would be happy to take you to the beach, out shopping…you name it. I know you’re all alone in town, and my heart goes out to single girls trying to make ends meet on their own. Why, shoot, I am one!”
We laughed together, and it was just the catharsis I needed. While I loved Ava and Adam Fenton, Susan was closer to my age, and I already felt like I’d known her for years. Red had chosen a winner.
Susan shared that she’d moved to Stamford to stay with her ailing grandmother, who’d died last year. She’d decided to take over her grandmother’s restaurant and turn it into a French bakery called The Apricot Macaron, and it had grown into a lucrative business. I smiled as she enunciated the name—she pronounced apricot with a long “a,” like “ape-ri-cot.”
Her hands, decorated with gold rings on every other finger, fluttered as she spoke. “As a matter of fact, I saw the picture in the paper of the woman who owns the wolf preserve, and I’m certain she visited my bakery not too long ago. She got into a heated discussion with some man.”
My interest was piqued. “What did he look like?”
“He had gray hair. Average height. He ate a huge croissant, I remember.”
“Did you hear what they were arguing about?”
“Something about money was all I overheard. It got busy soon after they started arguing. I almost thought I was going to have to ask them to leave.”
Did this argument play into the deaths on the preserve? Rich had gray hair, as did Dennis Arden. Was it possible she’d met with one of them to discuss financial issues, then had a serious disagreement?
Susan glanced at her monogrammed bracelet watch and gasped. “Oh, good gracious, I have to get going. I was supposed to meet up with Red ten minutes ago. But I’ve just had the best time with you. Now, you tell me what you think of that pound cake—I use extra lemon, so there’s a tangy bite to it.”
I walked her to the door. “I know I’ll love it. You two have a wonderful date. I’m sure I’ll drop by your bakery sometime.”
“You do that.”
After she waved good-bye, I headed inside to shower and change. I needed to go shopping for meal supplies, since Jonas would be over tomorrow.
I found myself singing at the top of my lungs as I conditioned my wet curls. I hated that I was feeling excited about Jonas’s visit in the face of the tragic deaths at the wolf preserve, but his presence would be like a shelter from the storm.
* * * *
After a more-than-successful shopping expedition, which I returned from with enough food to feed an army, as well as an embroidered peasant blouse I hadn’t been able to resist, I settled down to a meal of leftovers. I was thoroughly engrossed in the final chapters of The Great Gatsby when my cell phone rang.
Dahlia was on the other end. “We gave a statement, but I’m fairly certain reporters will be crawling around in the morning to get video footage. Please don’t talk to them.”
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t think of it,” I said. “How’s Carson?”
“He’s back home. Veronica brought him some Chinese food tonight, which was sweet.”
Sweet, indeed. What game was Veronica playing, first trash-talking Carson behind his back and then catering to him?
“Are you…coming in tomorrow?” Dahlia asked. “I know Rich was happy with your work—he told me you were an excellent employee. Marco is comfortable with feeding the wolves, so you wouldn’t have any new duties.”
I realized she was attempting to cajole me into it. Had Rich really told her I was doing good work? I doubted he had even talked to her much, given his clear conviction that she didn’t really care for the wolves.
It didn’t matter if she was stretching the truth, though. I had already decided to stick with my job for the duration of the contract, in hopes of uncovering something that would shine a light on what had really happened to Shaun and Rich.
“You can count on me,” I said.
* * * *
A nightmare roused me somewhere around four in the morning, and I sat straight up, gasping for breath.
In my dream, I had watched as dirt-encrusted fingers poked through the ground inside Njord’s enclosure. Instinctively, I realized they were Rich’s hands. The filthy hands grew larger and larger, grasping for me, trying to pull me back into the depths with them.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had a dream like this—one that felt like an ominous portent. A few times, my most memorable dreams had eventually played out in ways I couldn’t have seen coming. I was left wondering why on earth I’d been privy to them when I was powerless to change the natural course of events.
But this dream was no prophecy. Rich was already dead. There was nothing I could do to help him now, to free him from the grave.
Between the nightmare and my underlying excitement over Jonas’s visit, I was too wired to go back to sleep. Reluctantly, I rolled out of bed, shrugged into a sweater to ward off the chill in the house, and flipped on my game system. It was as good a time as any to get caught up on gaming—and I couldn’t think of a faster way to take my mind off one of the most dangerous pet-sitting jobs I’d ever accepted.