Cold River - Carla Neggers [32]
“Some. I think he’s finished up work on the culvert. He’d start early and seemed to work hard.”
“By himself?”
“He’d hire help when he needed it. I’d walk over and talk to him when it wasn’t too cold. He’s very knowledgeable about stonework.” The old minister shuddered in the dropping temperature but made no move to head back inside. “There are those of us who do things in the moment that we later regret. We have a conscience. We suffer the consequences of our mistakes, but we learn from them.”
“That’s what you think Bowie is—a guy who made a mistake he regrets?”
“What do you think he is?”
“He’s a bad-tempered ex-con with a grudge against half the town. I’ve seen him in enough fights to know I don’t want to get into it with him, but it doesn’t matter what I think.” He thought of Hannah and started to say more. “Never mind. You should go back in where it’s warm.”
McBane studied Sean a moment. “You’re worried about Hannah. She has a blind spot when it comes to Bowie. Everyone knows that, but she’s always been levelheaded.”
“She hiked up to my father’s cabin alone today. How levelheaded is that?”
“She could have known you’d go after her.” The old man paused, then added, “She could have hoped you would.”
“Don’t count on it,” Sean muttered.
McBane barely reacted to a gust of wind that seemed to blow straight across from the cemetery. “Your father and I would sometimes walk among the old graves together. It’s a peaceful spot.”
Sean almost smiled. “There are a lot of peaceful spots around here where people aren’t buried.”
“You live, you make mistakes, you see your friends die. You don’t worry so much about taking an afternoon walk in a cemetery.” The old man grinned suddenly. “Or being in the ground yourself.”
“Did my father say anything that in retrospect suggests why he was targeted by those two killers?”
“No. He was introspective. Thoughtful. He knew he had fewer days ahead of him than behind him. He said he was looking forward to being a burden to his children.”
Sean smiled. “That sounds like him.”
“He was proud of all of you, Sean. Rightly so.”
“Did you talk to him about Bowie?”
McBane shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I don’t think we had one of our walks after Bowie’s arrest.”
“What about Hannah?”
“Ah. She’s another story. Drew was like the rest of us in that he wanted to see her happy. There isn’t anyone in Black Falls who doesn’t wish Hannah well, but she doesn’t know it.”
“She thinks she’s on her own and we’re all out to judge her.” Sean noticed car headlights far down Ridge Road. That would be Jo and Elijah. “You should go back inside, Reverend. Lock your doors just in case.”
“Just in case what, Sean?”
“That it wasn’t a ghost or the wind that knocked over that rock onto Bowie and Hannah.”
“Hannah’s good to us. So are you.”
Sean smiled in spite of his uneasiness. “Well, don’t tell anyone and ruin my reputation.”
McBane shuffled back up the sanded walk. Sean was aware that, by his own design, very few people knew he had bought the former tavern a year ago and made the McBanes life tenants. They paid for utilities and basic upkeep and were entitled to live there rent-free the rest of their days. He’d run and biked past the tavern as a kid and pictured it fixed up, with vegetable gardens and fruit trees and a clothesline, with a tire swing tied to the sugar maple near its old stone wall. Wanderlust hadn’t gripped him yet, and he’d yet to even hear about the people who parachuted into wildland fires out west—or to experience January in Southern California versus January in Vermont.
When he’d heard the McBanes were struggling to stay in their home—after decades in parsonages—he’d knocked on their door and made them an offer.
He’d told them he liked the idea of owning a haunted house.
He headed back across the road and took the shortcut through