Cold River - Carla Neggers [25]
He immediately warmed to the topic. “Cell-phone service is spotty up here,” he said. “I suppose the killer could have found a landline to use. We didn’t see anyone out here. We were in watching television when the bomb went off.”
Mrs. McBane buttoned her sweater, baggy on her thin frame. “I remember the storm the night before. We drank brandy in front of the fire and went to bed early.” She shuddered. “I’m just glad those two killers were the only ones who ended up dead. How’s your brother?”
“He’s still working at the lodge,” Hannah said. “He had a room above the shop there, but he’s moved back with Toby and me for now.”
“A.J.’s been good to him,” Mrs. McBane said.
It was just an innocent comment by a kind woman, but Hannah automatically felt herself go on the defensive and realized how on edge she was. She pushed back any irritation. “Yes, he and Lauren have both been great. Devin works hard.” She smiled again at the older couple. “I shouldn’t keep you standing here in the cold. It’s perfect weather for tea and a few goodies.”
“You’re all good to think of us,” Reverend McBane said.
He and his wife had done the same for other people for dozens of years. Now it was their turn to need a helping hand, which they accepted graciously, without any hint of the stubborn pride or defensiveness Hannah had to fight when people offered to help her and her brothers.
She wished them good-night and headed back down the well-sanded walk to the driveway, glancing down the road again. She only saw leafless sugar maples silhouetted against the slowly darkening sky. There was no question in her mind that Sean, A.J. and Elijah had gathered in front of the lodge’s big stone fireplace to discuss what she was up to and how they could get it out of her.
She’d never been good at lying or pretending. She’d always found she did best when she looked at life straight on.
But this was different.
Sean knew she was holding back. But she wasn’t, really. She didn’t know anything the police didn’t. She’d answered all their questions fully. They and the Camerons and their friends had all crawled through Drew’s cabin after Kyle Rigby’s assault and subsequent death. Any one of them could have wondered how and if Drew had managed to reconstruct the old foundation on his own.
Just as any one of them could have wondered if Bowie O’Rourke had helped Drew with his secret project on Cameron Mountain.
If, by whatever means, for whatever reason, Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall had found the cabin because of Bowie.
As she came to her car, Hannah heard the muffled barking of a dog across the road. She peered out at the cemetery, slabs of gray headstones standing out against the white of the snow. The air was frigid and still. There were no lights or cars at the church on the corner opposite the cemetery. Four Corners Burying Ground, it was called. Its oldest grave—that of a Harper—was dated 1796.
The barking continued. The dog sounded agitated. Hannah walked out to the end of the dirt driveway, wondering if deer or wild turkeys were crossing the cemetery and driving the poor dog nuts. She noticed a van parked just down Cameron Mountain Road next to the stone wall that bordered the cemetery.
Bowie’s van. It had to be his black lab, Poe, creating the racket.
She shoved her hands into her pockets and told herself she should go back to the village and see to her brothers, the café, her studying. Instead, she crossed Ridge Road and walked along the edge of the cemetery to the corner.
She noticed snowshoe tracks and boot prints in the snow, most leading to the oldest of the headstones, simple rectangular slabs leaning crookedly in different directions. The McBanes had told her they didn’t worry about living in a haunted house with so many ghosts right across the road. People came from all over the country to research their family roots and locate the graves of ancestors. Many of the graves had metal markers identifying a veteran of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the two World Wars, Vietnam. There