the sink, to lap at water that had puddled on the counter. Hannah shooed him off and peered out the round window.
A mint-green truck was parked in the driveway. She’d forgotten Uncle Stuart’s old utility truck. Rarely used on the road. She’d only been in it once. He’d sometimes used it to transport flowers from the greenhouse to the courtyard. The path between them was wide, and at one point it had been well traveled. It was easier, he said, than making twenty trips on foot.
Hannah tugged on Rink’s leash and let the wooden door bang behind her. The truck had rust along the front grille and running board. She opened the driver’s-side door with a creak; the inside stank like hot vinyl and sweet antifreeze. She opened the glove box and pulled out the owner’s manual. The truck was a 1989 Dodge Ram. Hannah closed her eyes, her mind reeling.
1989 Dodge.
In front of the truck, she bent down and studied the passenger-side fender.
A dent. She followed it with her fingertip all the way down to the bumper. A streak of black. She scraped it with her fingernail, and it curled up easily. New. Paint transfer.
She studied the ground. Two oil stains: one large, one small, mere inches away from each other. In a few days or weeks, the two spills might have pooled together, forming one indistinguishable puddle.
She pulled out her phone and took a picture.
“Hannah!” Wyatt loped toward her, and Hannah stood. His gait was urgent, his hand motioning her toward him. Hannah stood rooted to the ground, her legs frozen. Her mouth went dry. She could tell by the look on his face that it was something big. They’d found Julia, perhaps.
“Alice thought you may have come out this way.” Wyatt stopped when he reached the driveway, the truck between them. He’d half jogged there and was breathless. “They ID’d the skeleton. We know who it is.”
She knew it before he said it.
“We were right. It’s Ellie Turnbull.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Now
“It’s all connected, isn’t it? Aunt Fae, Ellie, probably even Julia,” Hannah repeated, a broken record, a parrot.
“Maybe, yes. You have to be careful,” he said softly. “Can you please back off the amateur investigation now?”
“I’m fine.” Hannah’s response was rote; she’d been so used to saying this for so long she wondered what it even meant anymore. She was fine. Fine could mean any number of things: she was alive, at least. Was that fine? “How did it happen?”
“Blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. She was hit with something.”
“Was it Warren?”
“We don’t know. Would he have dragged her body up the hill behind the river? Or the mile and a half from town up this trail?” Wyatt indicated the trail behind her. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s true for everyone but—” She stopped. It seemed unimaginable to her that Aunt Fae would have killed Ellie. And if she’d killed Ellie, could she have also done something to Julia? Nothing about this felt real or true. The Aunt Fae she remembered would have never killed another person, much less her own niece.
“Fae and Stuart, yes.” Wyatt’s eyes were clouded, unreadable.
“Are they your only suspects?”
Wyatt paused, rocked back on his heels. “I shouldn’t talk about an open investigation, Hannah. You know this.”
“You can tell me if they are on your list and if there are others.”
He held her gaze before saying, “Yes. And yes.”
“So everyone in town thinks my aunt Fae is a murdering lunatic, and now the police do too.”
“That’s not what I said. It’s not an unreasonable path of investigation, that’s all.” Wyatt stepped toward her, placed his hands on the hood of the truck.
“He’s been saying for twenty years that he followed Ellie up to Brackenhill that night she left,” Hannah persisted. “He could have followed her, hit her here, buried her.”
“Hannah, we know.” Wyatt was gently reminding her that they had it under control. That anything she thought of would have already occurred to the police. To Wyatt. She was being treated like a petulant child. Hannah’s impatience flared.
“We should talk—” Wyatt started to say, his neck flushed.
“This truck belongs to Warren. I have the title back at the house,” Hannah said at the same time, remembering what she’d found only moments before and cutting Wyatt off. If he wanted to “talk,” Hannah did not. “It also has black paint transfer.” She gestured behind her. “And it’s been recently moved.” She hadn’t meant to cut him off, but now that it was out there, Wyatt’s