The next morning, I rose at seven and put on my running gear. Caroline’s door was still ajar, and I pushed it open a few inches. Her room hadn’t changed since we were girls—still stuffed with books and canvases, art supplies, every wall covered with posters of the Impressionist artists she loved so much. The canvas on the easel was now completely covered with a field of brilliant sunflowers. Caroline breathed softly, her form motionless under a faded blue patchwork quilt.
I headed down the hall. Sprinkles darted out of Buzzy’s bedroom as I passed, tripping me. She’d been lying in wait. “You beast,” I muttered.
I followed Sprinkles downstairs and she slunk into the powder room off the kitchen. I made sure the automatic coffee maker was set, then I opened the cabinet in the pantry where I remembered Buzzy kept Sprinkles’ froufrou gourmet cat food. I put out Sprinkles’ breakfast, made sure her water was fresh, and headed out the door.
I crossed the yard, drinking in the view of the farm directly across the lane. Behind their sprawling farmhouse and big red barn, Darwin and Pru’s handiwork spread in bright green rows and blocks like a well-constructed quilt of organic vegetables and herbs. I turned north up Farm Lane, following the narrow road to the crest of the hill where a gravel road, barely wide enough for a car, crossed from east to west.
If I followed the road east, it cut past the Love Nest and an old barn, through a field of sunflowers, and dead-ended by a pond. To the west the road led through more sunflowers to the apple orchards and another pond, twisting past a centuries-old family cemetery.
Continuing up Farm Lane, the road curved and narrowed as it bisected heavily wooded hills. There were just a few homes back here, shaded by centuries-old oaks and bordered by gray stone walls.
Directly across the gravel road from the Love Nest, behind a virtual screen of towering, unkempt bushes, was a two-level home so overgrown by ivy and laurel it was hard to see the yellow siding underneath. This house was owned by a man everyone called Aaron the Hermit. In true New England fashion, he kept himself to himself.
Across from Aaron the Hermit’s house and a bit up the lane was the Danforth home, a red cedar shingled one-level ranch surrounded by lush English gardens. I had no idea my sour-faced high school gym teacher had such a green thumb.
A quarter mile farther up the road I passed the Fairweather homestead. Geraldine and Flo had started life as the Fairweather sisters, born into one of Penniman’s oldest families. After the deaths of their husbands, they’d returned to the family homestead, a more than two-hundred-year-old red Cape. Their family had sold the farmland to Buzzy’s family generations ago.
The road climbed uphill here and my muscles burned as I reached the end of the lane where it intersected busy four-lane Town Road. If I turned west, I’d run into town. Turning east, I passed the Penniman Ridge winery and then, a mile past that, the dairy farm that produced the milk for Buzzy’s ice cream. I wanted a short route today, so I turned and retraced my steps back to Farm Lane and turned onto the road in front of the Love Nest. The only sounds here were birdsong and the crunch of my footsteps on gravel. Mike’s car was parked by the front door of the tiny whitewashed cottage, but Angelica’s was not. I slowed my steps.
Had she left already? I glanced at my watch: 7:30. Maybe she’d realized what a terrible person Mike was. She couldn’t have missed the tension between Mike and … well, everyone after the funeral.
Too bad. I’d especially liked the way she’d pitched in at the shop. It would’ve been easy for Angelica to beg off of helping out. Certainly it was a difficult situation, the funeral of the mother of a guy you were dating, but she’d handled it well.
Sweat pooled on my forehead and I swiped it away. A small animal darted from the underbrush at the side of the road—the kitten from last night—and I pulled up short.
“Whoa!” The kitten, all black, stopped in front of me with a yowl. I crouched and beckoned to him. “Here little guy. Here.”
He tilted his chin and regarded me with wary amber eyes. His right ear was bent and ragged—a cauliflower ear, just like a boxer. Another scar ran across his back; the fur was missing and the skin visible. No wonder he kept a cautious distance. “You poor thing! You’ve been in some fights, haven’t you?”
I scooted closer but he switched his tail and trotted across the road onto the gravel path leading to the barn. He looked back at me, then ran to the side door, which was steps from the kitchen door of the Nest. He was so thin, I could see his bones move beneath his fur.
“Hang on, I’ll take you home.” My footsteps crunched on the gravel as I followed. “We’ll get a bite to eat.”
He picked his way through the weeds at the door and went inside.
“Dumb cat, the food is this way,” I muttered, but still I followed him into the dark barn, stepping past a metal rack jammed with grimy old cans and cardboard boxes. Rusted tools, pitchforks, rakes, and shovels leaned in a corner, unused for decades.
The sweet, musty smell of hay surrounded us, and the dust made me sneeze. The kitten’s tiny sneeze answered mine. “See? This is no place for you. Let’s—”
There was another scent, one I’d experienced before. A metallic smell …
The kitten yowled, the sound making the hair on my arms rise.
I hesitated for a few moments, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light as a tendril of dread grew in me. There were two wooden stalls on either side of the barn. I pressed my hand against the rough wood as I followed the kitten’s cry to the one on the left. Steeling myself, I edged to the entrance of the stall. A pale shaft of sunlight streamed in a window, illuminating the lower half of a man’s body sprawled on the floor, his muscular legs clad in gray sweatpants.
My heart thudding, I scanned the area for threats. There was no sound, nothing moved except for the little black cat that now brushed against my ankles. I pushed down my panic as I eased into the stall.
Mike lay on his back on a pile of hay, his eyes closed, his arms splayed. A pitchfork lay just beyond reach of his outstretched left hand. He might have been sleeping but for the crimson splotches on his torso and thighs that told me he’d been stabbed more than once. I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. As I inched closer, my vision telescoped onto Mike’s ashen face. A bit of hay had fallen against his cheek. I crouched and gently removed it. I’d seen dead men before but still I held two fingers to his cold neck to check for a pulse.
The cat yowled again. My eyes traveled down to where he sat by Mike’s waist. A bit of gray silk trailed from the pocket of Mike’s jacket. My stomach lurched as I recognized the pattern of Caroline’s scarf.