Gran said urgently. “I was running errands and saw him drive his motorcycle off the ferry. He was headed up Route 146, so he’s probably long gone. But I decided it was a good idea to tell Katie about him and to have her work late tonight. Until Lucy comes back home. And I want you to keep your eyes open, too. You’re the police, so I’m sure you can handle any trouble he makes.”
“Of course I can, Gran,” I said as I moved my fingers away from my gun belt and let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Though I hadn’t taken the job in Maryville just to protect the Underground, there were certainly advantages to my position. If I saw Hector tonight—and it seemed to me the bars on Dunn Street would be a magnet for someone like him—I’d find a way to discourage him from remaining in town. Arrest him, if need be.
“I saw the evening news,” Gran was saying. “And I’m proud of you. Finding all those people who were executed out there. Anyway, as busy as you’ve been with that, I wasn’t sure I’d even catch you at home.”
And that explained the relief in Gran’s voice, I thought. She hadn’t expected to reach me so easily. Cell-phone reception out at Camp Cadiz was nonexistent, and routing an emergency call through dispatch required an explanation—some good excuse for using official channels for personal business. Claiming a family emergency risked calling attention to the other activities taking place at the Cherokee Rose.
“So just do your job,” she said. “Oh, by the way, I moved that antique of your grandfather’s downstairs.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Knew that she’d rolled back the rug beside her bed, lifted one of the floorboards, and unwrapped the revolver from the piece of old patchwork quilt that protected it. After eight years in the darkness.
“You cleaned it up, didn’t you?”
She laughed at that.
“Don’t worry, honey. It’s nicely polished. And now it’s in the safe behind the counter, so if anyone ever tries to rob us…”
Armed robbery. That was the excuse that we always held at the ready. Just in case we were confronted by someone like Hector. It was an explanation that law enforcement would readily accept. A strategy that we’d been careful enough—and fortunate enough—never to have used.
But I’d never had any trouble imagining my Gran acting in such an extreme emergency. Now, as I continued speaking on the phone with her, I could see her taking my grandfather’s gun from the safe. I pictured her as I often had, her sinewy arms extended, pale eyes focused and intent through her thick lenses, arthritic hands unwavering. Gran would face an intruder courageously, without regard for her own welfare. Just the way her great-grandmother had faced down a posse while a group of runaway slaves had hidden just yards away.
If the need arose, Gran was more than capable of pulling the trigger.
I’d hung up the phone, pushed the answering machine button again, and was about to take the last bite of cake when I heard the third message.
My sister’s voice again. Still whispery.
Now furious.
“I saw the way everyone was smiling at you on TV. If you tell them, I swear—”
The message and the threat cut off as Katie slammed down the phone.
The answering machine beeped—3:20 p.m. Some station, I realized, had broken into their regular programming and broadcast a segment of the news conference. And I knew there was a small TV in the kitchen of the Cherokee Rose. Katie liked to leave it on as she worked.
Suddenly, I lost my appetite for the cake my sister had made especially for me. I dropped it into the garbage, wiped my fingers on my jeans. Spurred by a half-spoken threat I didn’t fully understand, my anxiety—my suspicions—returned in a rush. But now they made less sense than ever.
Katie couldn’t have been involved, I told myself. Not in all those murders. They’d taken place over decades. She’d been too young….
But what about just one murder? The one that didn’t fit the pattern?
Once more, the inhaler that I’d found—the inhaler that now shared the kitchen counter with my gun, car keys and a ripe tomato—took on significance.
I punched Chad’s number on the speed dial. Not because I wanted to hear a friendly voice or because my sister’s threats made me feel abandoned and alone. I called him because I needed a professional’s perspective. At least, that’s what I told myself.