Something Buried, Something Blue Read online

  Suddenly, she’s wide-awake. Calculating predators roam her mind’s eye, lurking behind innocuous faces. No one here seems capable of murder, but she’d been fooled once before into trusting the wrong person. Any second now, her closet door might creak open and someone might creep into this room to . . .

  What? To kill Bella?

  No, of course not. If there really is a predator, and Johneen was the target, then the danger is past.

  Except . . .

  Her phone. If an intruder erased her photos, is it because they showed something he didn’t want anyone to see?

  Does he think she saw it, too?

  On high alert, she’s too cold, too rattled, too frightened to let down her guard enough to get the rest her body desperately craves.

  Yet eventually, sleep does claim her, if only in fitful spurts.

  The house is eerily quiet without the background hum of electrical appliances. Every time she dozes, she’s soon jolted by the earsplitting crash of another tree snapped by a windowpane-rattling gale.

  At last, she opens her eyes to a tiny gray kitten purring and kneading her shoulder and a room bathed in golden light and the scent of summer gardens.

  For a wonderful, mistaken moment, she assumes the whole thing was a nightmare. This is Saturday morning, the wedding day. The air is balmy, the sun is shining, and the bride and groom are safely asleep down the hall.

  Then she sees that the kitten isn’t gray at all. He’s blue. The early dawn beyond the windows is gray, swirling with snowflakes. The floral scent is as pervasive as it had been last night, but it isn’t wafting in the windows. They’re closed. And the room isn’t bathed in sunlight. It’s the lamp she’d left on earlier.

  That, at least, is a good sign. The electricity is back, though the house is still frigid. Extracting herself from the kitten, Bella creeps across the chilly room. She opens the door and peers into the hall. Lights are on there, too, but the house is quiet.

  Squinting and yawning, she makes her way down the stairs to adjust the thermostat in the brightly lit front hall.

  The furnace kicks on with a house-rattling shudder. She crosses the chilly threshold into the parlor, heading toward the study to look for her missing photos at last. Then depending on what she—

  “Bella?”

  She whirls to spot Virginia, still curled up on the easy chair. Somehow, despite a traumatic, sleepless night, she’s just as lovely as she was yesterday morning. A crocheted white blanket is draped around her slender shoulders, and her phone is poised in her hand as if she’s expecting a call.

  “Are you still waiting for Parker?”

  “Yes. He texted that he left the hospital twenty minutes ago. He should be here soon. The roads are icy but passable.”

  “Any news?”

  “She’s still hanging on. The nurses told him to go while he had a chance.”

  “How is he holding up?”

  “Sad. In shock. He shouldn’t be alone at a time like this. If she doesn’t make it . . .” Virginia shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been there.”

  Yes, but it was worse for me. I’d been married for years, not hours. Sam and I had a child. I loved him more than Parker could possibly have loved Johneen.

  She hates herself for thinking that, for qualifying and quantifying grief.

  Maybe Parker and Johneen aren’t the most down-to-earth couple in the world, but he loves her. Of course he does.

  Pain is pain. Loss is loss.

  “I’ll go make some coffee,” she tells Virginia.

  “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  In the kitchen, Bella measures grounds into a filter and sets the coffee to brew, jittery as if she’d already ingested a potful. She’s eager to get to the computer, but the place is a disaster.

  Every surface is sticky with champagne. Empty glasses fill the sink, along with plates and utensils from someone’s midnight snack. The dish rack is filled with the salad plates Virginia had washed. They need to be put away before anything else can be done, yet productivity is elusive.

  I just need to go take a quick look, Bella decides, heading into the study. And if I can retrieve the shots and see something unusual in one of them, I can show Virginia before Parker gets here.

  Beyond the French door, Pandora’s keyboard is leaning against the wall, just as they’d left it before Virginia interrupted the conversation about whether someone might have reason to harm Johneen.

  Still unsure of the answer to that question, Bella moves the keyboard out of the way and sits down at the computer. It seems to take an excessive amount of time to boot up after having abruptly lost power. At last, she’s clicking into her e-mail account’s sent-messages folder.

  There it is—the note to Grant with the photos attached.

  She opens the file and begins clicking through them.

  By all appearances, yesterday was a carefree celebration, she thinks, studying the guests’ smiling faces. She remembers it differently, laced with dread and uncertainty. But, of course, she’s not in any of the photos. Those who are look as though they’re having a wonderful time: the former college roommates posing arm in arm, the guys clowning with flowers on their heads, even Virginia and Parker, squinting into the sunshine without a care in the world.

  That wasn’t exactly the case, she recalls. The ring was missing, and he already knew about the letter.

  If he and Virginia managed to come across as unencumbered in a moment that was anything but carefree, then what about the others? Is one of the guests hiding a dark secret behind a happy grin?

  She flicks slowly through the pictures again, finding nothing amiss in anyone’s expression. Then she goes through them another time, zooming in to look at the backdrop of each one.

  Now it’s harder to tell whether there’s something suspicious. Shadows that appear potentially human become too grainy when she enlarges the spots. What looks like a hand in a shrub border turns out to be, most likely, a dead leaf stuck amid the boughs . . . or is it? In the photo of Parker and Virginia, there might very well be a figure behind the lace curtains of the honeymoon suite.

  Johneen?

  Someone else?

  “Bella?” Virginia calls from the next room. “Is the coffee ready?”

  “Almost,” she calls back, closing out of the photos for now, frustrated that there’s nothing incriminating or conclusive.

  Before she leaves the desk, she remembers to type a quick e-mail to Grant. He should know what happened here last night. Rather than delivering the news in writing, she simply asks him to call her as soon as possible.

  After hitting Send, she notices a floral scent wafting in the air.

  Was it there all along? Was she so used to it that she just didn’t smell it anymore?

  There’s a scientific explanation for that, of course. There’s a scientific explanation for everything.

  In this case, it’s sensory adaptation. When you become accustomed to a certain scent, odor receptors stop sending messages to the brain. The scent is still there, but you stop noticing and, in effect, stop smelling it.

  Then why am I smelling it now? she wonders as she hurries into the kitchen. And why is it everywhere, mingling with the scent of stale champagne and fresh coffee?

  The pot is missing a cup or so. Virginia must already have gotten hers. It smells so good that Bella pours some into a mug and sinks into a kitchen chair, clasping it in her icy hands as she sips.

  Her gaze falls on the stack of novels Millicent left last night. Setting down her mug and reaching for Charlotte’s Web, she imagines Sam’s chubby, little-boy hands turning the dog-eared pages.

  She opens the book. A word jumps out at her.

  Radiant . . .

  There it is again. It kept popping into her head yesterday. The first time was when she saw the light filtering across that spider web across the stairs.

  Spider web . . . radiant . . . Charlotte’s Web.

  It all comes nicely full circle, but what t
he heck does it mean? Does it have something to do with Odelia’s vision about the spider? Is Spirit trying to tell her something about . . . about what?

  Spider . . . spider web . . . radiant . . . Charlotte . . .

  She’s had enough. She tosses the book aside and leaves the room, leaving her coffee to grow cold on the table.

  “Is everything okay?” Virginia calls as she hurries toward the stairway.

  “Yes. I’ll be back down. I just want to . . . take a hot shower.”

  The bathroom, lacking a radiator, is frigid.

  Radiator . . . radiant.

  Spider web.

  Charlotte’s Web.

  What about it?

  She’s delirious. A shower will rejuvenate her. She hurriedly turns on the tap and peels off her clothes.

  Five minutes is all she needs, and she’ll be good as new.

  All right, maybe not, but somehow, she’ll get through this day. She’ll help Parker, and she’ll tend to the guests until they leave, and Millicent will fly away, and Max will come home, and Johneen will pull through . . .

  By tonight, everything will be back to normal and life will go on.

  Yes, all she needs is a hot shower to warm her through and wash away the unpleasantness. But the water, gushing from the tap, refuses to heat.

  Fidgety from the cold, she stands naked beside the old claw-foot tub, staring out the window. Wet snow swirls in the dim morning light, and a thickening silvery layer coats the grass. Trees, still heavy with foliage, bend and buckle beneath the slushy weight.

  Bella checks the water. Cold.

  She turns back to the window. The lake is purple, churning whitecaps and awash in debris. Splintered limbs litter the yard. Chairs are toppled around the tables, and the borrowed chuppah seems to have blown away.

  Weary at the thought of the massive outdoor cleanup job ahead, Bella checks the water again. Still cold.

  The heater is probably taking longer to kick on because the power was out, just like the computer downstairs. It’ll start warming up any second now.

  Outside, she hears a car, tires crunching slowly along the slick, narrow lane. Parker is back.

  It’s okay. Virginia is down there. They probably need some time to talk privately. He might not want to see Bella at all.

  She continues waiting for hot water. Five minutes pass. Ten. Every time she sticks her hand beneath the faucet, it’s doused with an icy deluge.

  At last, she gives up and turns it off.

  It’s too early to call Grant about a plumber, but she can e-mail him again.

  First, however, she’ll have to greet Parker Langley. She isn’t looking forward to that at all. His situation hits close to home, and her emotions are dangerously close to the surface. What if she bursts into inappropriate tears when she goes to talk to him?

  She’ll ask him if there’s anything she can do. What else is there to say?

  “Is there any chance that your wife’s stalker tried to murder her? Or could it have been one of your guests?”

  At the sink, Bella brushes her teeth and splashes cold water on her bleary face, then rubs it vigorously with a towel. In the mirror, she sees that her eyes are smudged with black. So is the towel.

  Makeup. Unaccustomed to wearing it, she’d forgotten all about it. Yesterday was a lifetime ago—getting ready for the wedding, excited about the prospect of seeing Drew all dressed up, of letting Drew see her all dressed up. She remembers the rain, pouring down over her face last night when she thought it might wash away the tragedy.

  She slathers cold cream on a tissue and wipes until her face is clean, then braves another bracing splash of water. Pulling on her flannel pajamas to walk back down the hall, she hears footsteps overhead and then the clanking gush of water running in the third-floor bathroom. It must be Virginia, about to get some sleep at last.

  Maybe Parker is doing the same. Bella glances at the honeymoon suite’s closed door as she hurries down the hall, wondering if he’s behind it now. She can’t bear to think of him alone there, sick with worry over his bride.

  At the end of the hall, the door to the Rose Room is ajar.

  Did she leave it that way?

  She must have, because when she left the room, she only meant to run downstairs for a moment to turn on the heat. But it was careless of her, and not just because the kittens might have escaped.

  She pushes open the door and gasps, spotting a shadowy figure looming beside the window.

  Then she realizes it’s just the green silk dress, hanging from the curtain rod where she left it last night.

  Nerves on edge, she quickly counts ten feline heads. All present, including the little blue stray, still sleeping in the protective arc of Chance’s furry limbs.

  Standing near the warm, cast-iron radiator as she changes into jeans and a sweat shirt, Bella remembers her cell phone.

  Today it’s exactly where she remembers leaving it: charging on her nightstand, alongside the jewelry she’d taken off in the dark. She tucks it all back into the jewelry box, including the tourmaline necklace.

  On second thought, she takes that out again and clasps it around her neck, tucking the blue pendant beneath the sweat shirt.

  The necklace makes her feel close to Sam, regardless of whether it’s truly a gift from him.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t let you borrow it,” she whispers aloud to Johneen, then finds herself pausing to listen for a reply.

  She hears nothing but the rustling of a couple of kittens rooting around beneath her dresser.

  Johneen might die.

  Sam is dead.

  Dead is dead.

  It’s just hard to keep that in mind around Lily Dale.

  Maybe she and Max should use those plane tickets Millicent purchased. Why wait around for Grant to tell her the inevitable? She should probably get a head start on making some semblance of a fresh start in Chicago, unless . . .

  What if Johneen doesn’t die? What if what happened to her really was some kind of illness or injury?

  It’s tragic for a bride to collapse on her wedding day, but Grant shouldn’t sell the inn as a result. Even if someone had targeted her, and even if she doesn’t make it . . .

  It’s a long shot that he’d keep Valley View under those circumstances, but maybe if he knew how desperately Bella wants to be here . . .

  I should tell him. Just speak up and explain my situation.

  Maybe she’s delirious with exhaustion and maybe it doesn’t make any sense to try, but there has to be a way to make this work.

  If Grant would just give her some time here, at least a year, she could prove that Valley View is a worthwhile investment, and so is she. By then, she’ll have worked her way out of debt and saved enough money to rent a cottage here. She might even find a teaching job.

  Feeling slightly better about her situation, she checks her texts, hoping there might be one from Luther. There isn’t. Nor has Grant texted or e-mailed back.

  She hears a mew and looks down to see the little blue kitten at her feet. He cries out again, kiwi eyes wide with need.

  “Aw, what’s the matter, Li’l Chap?” She plugs her phone into the charger and picks him up. “Are you hungry?”

  He informs her in no uncertain terms that he is, and she opens several cans of cat food. Predictably, the sound of popping metal tabs jars Chance and her family to consciousness.

  For a few minutes, Bella sits watching them devour their breakfast, wishing that there was only this: an ordinary morning. Cats. Max. Normalcy.

  With a sigh, she tears herself away. Stepping out into the hall, she hears someone whisper her name and looks up to see Calla wrapped in a thick white terry bathrobe. Her hair is damp.

  “Good morning,” she whispers. “Any word on Johneen?”

  “She’s stable.”

  “Is she going to pull through?”

  “I don’t know.”

  For a moment, they look at each other in somber silence. Then Calla says, “I just took a
cold shower. The water won’t heat up.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m waiting to hear back from the owner so that I can call a plumber, but it might have something to do with the power outage.”

  “That makes sense. I bet the water heater just needs a jump start or a reboot or whatever you call it.”

  “I don’t suppose you know how to do that, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, I don’t, but I bet you can find something online. Hey, look out—someone’s making a run for it!” Calla bends over and picks up a ball of fur. “Hey! Either Spidey turned blue, or there’s a new kid in town.”

  Bella smiles. “That’s Li’l Chap. I brought him in last night right before the storm.”

  “Oh, he’s precious! Where did he come from?”

  “He just kind of showed up out of the blue. He’s a stray.”

  “Out of the blue,” Calla echoes thoughtfully, “and he is a Blue.”

  Bella nods and can’t help but ask, “Do you think that . . . means something?”

  She expects Calla to say that it doesn’t or to spout some stock Spiritualist line about everything meaning something.

  But she nods solemnly. “Yes. It means something. Gammy won’t want to hear this, and you have to swear you won’t tell her. She has to hear it from me. Today when I get back home, I’m going to tell Jacy I’m moving out.”

  “Why?” Bella asks, wondering what this has to do with Li’l Chap.

  “Because I’m still in love with Blue,” Calla says simply.

  Okay. Now Bella gets it.

  She wants to tell Calla that it’s natural, in the midst of a traumatic situation, to feel bonded with the people who are going through it, too. But taking a stray kitten as a sign to go home and break up with her longtime love is extreme.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” says Calla, who probably really does, “but Jacy and I have been talking about taking a break. And Blue and I have been . . . well, we’ve been talking. That’s kind of why he’s here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hates California, and he doesn’t get along with his father. He’s been thinking about coming back here for a while, only there was nothing here for him.”

  “And now . . .”

  “And now I’m here.” Calla shrugs. “I mean, he knew I was coming back this weekend for the wedding, and he knew Jacy and I were having problems, and he knew—we knew—that we might still have feelings for each other.”