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AT ABOUT THREE O’CLOCK in the morning, far outside the city, four people were staring bleakly at one other across a kitchen table. It was an old-style oak table in an old-style country kitchen. The kind with tin ceiling tiles and tall glass cupboards above the sink. A single yellow nightlight glowed from the wall.
At one end of the table sat an elderly woman in a terrycloth robe and slippers. Despite the late hour, she had managed to roll her white hair into a neat little bun at the nape of her neck. She shook her head sadly. “This can’t be true.”
“It’s true. Sybil’s dead.” The abrupt comment came from a blond man in his mid-twenties at the opposite end of the table. He slouched despondently in his chair, arms crossed. “When she called me around midnight, she sounded scared. She thought somebody was trying to break into the shop. Then the line went dead. I got there as fast as I could, but the cops beat me to it.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “It’s my fault.”
“How do you figure?” The question came from a middle-aged woman with bushy red hair sitting to his left. There were distinct frown lines around her mouth. She took a long drag on an unfiltered cigarette.
The blond man glanced up. “If I’d gotten there five minutes sooner, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Did she give you a physical description of her attacker?” The question came from a young man in his early twenties seated to the right. He spoke with a British accent.
“Nope,” said the blond man succinctly. “For the past week or so, she had the feeling somebody was following her, but she never knew who it was.”
“I think we all know who was responsible.” The elderly woman rose stiffly out of her chair. She walked over to sink, filled a kettle, and put it on the stove to boil.
The other three stared at her in shock. Anger flashed in the middle-aged woman’s eyes. “Those bastards!”
“Take it easy, Maddie,” soothed the blond man. “We don’t know for sure it was them.”
The woman called Maddie snapped back at him, “Then who else?” She ground out her cigarette and immediately lit a new one. “What the hell was she working on? Didn’t she tell you anything about it, Griffin?” Her sharp eyes focused on the Brit.
“No, nothing,” the young man whispered with regret. “Perhaps if she had, I might have helped her or persuaded her to stop.”
The elderly woman shuffled toward the cupboard over the sink. “There’s still the matter of her sister,” she observed quietly. “Poor child, as if she hasn’t lost enough already. This is too cruel.”
“Does the kid know anything?” The blond man at the far end of the table asked.
The woman at the sink turned around to glance at him mildly. “Do you think you could find that out for us, Erik?”
Erik sat up straighter, alert now. “What do you want me to do, Faye?”
The kettle rumbled to a boil. The old woman rummaged around in the cupboard for cups and saucers. “I think you should follow her at a distance. Keep out of sight, but let us know immediately if anything unusual occurs.”
She went over to the stove to switch off the heat. “Griffin, it might prove useful to know what Sybil’s latest recovery was.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “I’ll look into it immediately.”
Faye was now spooning loose tea into a porcelain pot. She paused to consider. “What could they possibly want of ours? What, to them, would be worth killing for?”