The next day came early for Harley Henrickson. She rose at five, delivered Matilda to the festival grounds at six, and dropped off Tina at her bake shop at seven. By the time she headed to Patrick Middleton’s house at seven-thirty, she had only managed to take a few sips of coffee from her travel mug, hoping to clear the fogginess from her mind.
The previous night had been a restless one. The rain, beginning as a relaxing drizzle at ten, had advanced to a torrential downpour by midnight, pelting the tin roof like bullets. And as the rain beat against the roof, so too did Harley’s mind beat with unanswered questions, as she twisted and turned in her bed.
When she reached Patrick’s three-story brick mansion, she parked her truck in the driveway and sat idle before the carriage house, finding the engine’s vibrations and the cabin’s warmth comforting.
Bags of leaves were stacked in front of Patrick’s carriage house, while new leaves littered the paved driveway, waiting to be collected by Angus Pruitt, the gardener who had tended Briarwood properties for more than fifty years. Angus had recently planted a fresh bed of colorful chrysanthemums in the front yard, their colors gleaming in the bright autumn light. And above them, on the front porch, the series of jack-o’-lanterns still scowled and smiled and booed at Harley. The bags of leaves and the sagging jack-o’-lanterns were the only things detracting from the home’s magazine perfect image, a flawless image Patrick Middleton, too, had maintained during his years spent in Notchey Creek.
Harley opened the truck’s driver’s side door, shivering as a swell of crisp autumn air sent a chill up her arms.
Just then Patrick’s front door flew open, and his housekeeper, Ira Jenkins, ran from the house, nearly falling down the porch steps.
“Oh, Harley!”
“What is it, Ira?” Harley said, jumping out of her truck. “What’s happened?”
Ira threw herself into Harley’s arms, her weight nearly knocking the younger woman to the ground. “It’s Patrick!” she said. “He’s … he’s …”
Harley pulled away from Ira and cupped the housekeeper’s elbows with her hands, searching her face. “He’s what?”
But Ira stuttered so severely, shook so terribly, she couldn’t form the words. She clamped her hand to her throbbing chest and pointed to the back of the house. “The creek! Harley, the creek!”
Trying to control her own emotions, Harley guided Ira back to the truck and grabbed a quilt from the cabin, wrapping it about Ira’s shoulders. “Why don’t you just wait here,” she said. “I’ll go take a look around back and then call the police. But I need you stay here and stay calm, okay? Can you do that for me?”
A shaking Ira nodded and muttered, “Yes.” Then her terror turned to tears that ran down her face.
With Ira tucked safely and warm in the truck, Harley passed the side of Patrick’s house and entered the backyard, still engulfed by a blanket of low-hanging fog. The wet ground clung to the bottoms of her boots, bits of grass and dirt collecting in the heel. She could hear the creek babbling in the distance, and she trod down the hill in its direction, mustering more courage than she had.
She froze on the creek bank.
It was there, through veils of early morning mist, she could see Patrick Middleton lying flat on his back, his body ebbing with the currents of the creek now his tomb. He appeared a bit like the Lady of Shalott, she thought, his pale hands floating alongside him, his gray-black hair falling in waves beneath the water’s surface as his eyes stared at the heavens in horror.
There was something else.
Patrick was clutching something in his right hand. A small wooden object, flat like a coin, about the size of a silver dollar, a tree and a crescent moon carved on the surface. It appeared very old, centuries old perhaps.
Harley crouched down to inspect the object closer.
It was the coin Iris O’Shaughnessy had brought to the meeting the night before.
Samhain.