Cold River - Carla Neggers [78]
She shifted to Sean. “What time do you need Toby and Devin to be ready?”
Sean decided just to answer her. “I’ll pick them up at seven.”
“They’ll be waiting for you on the front steps.” She turned back to Jo. “I have nothing to hide. I was curious about the cabin’s stonework and checked it out. Maybe we’ll never know how Drew found that cellar hole, or how he managed to build the cabin on his own.”
“Or how those two killers found out about it,” Jo said quietly. “Do you have a theory of your own, Hannah?”
“I imagine everyone in Black Falls has a theory.”
Jo gritted her teeth visibly. “That’s not an answer.”
“I told you what I know,” Hannah said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
No one stopped her as she walked back to the entrance. Once the door shut firmly behind her, Elijah fastened his gaze on Sean. “Go,” he said to his younger brother. “Talk to her.”
Jo looked more exasperated. “Try to get past that stubborn pride of hers and make her understand we’re on the same side.”
“Maybe we’re not,” Sean said. “Just now, Jo. What do you know?”
Her eyes were distant. “Ask Hannah about her father,” she said, and turned, shutting out even Elijah as she gazed at the fire.
Twenty
Sean parked in the driveway of the house he owned in Black Falls, not on the street this time. When he got out of Elijah’s truck, the wind was even worse than up on the ridge, howling down from the summit of Cameron Mountain as if their father himself were steering it, trying to tell his third-born something—something he’d been trying to get through to him for a long time, but Sean kept missing it.
Too many ghosts in Black Falls, he thought, heading in through the mudroom.
The cellar door was open. He heard a scraping sound and went down the dusty stairs.
Hannah was moving an old oak desk near the trunk and shelves of canning jars. “Hello, Sean,” she said, pointing vaguely at the floor. “I’m clearing space so Bowie can start work on the leak.”
“When does he start?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “After you all head out to California. I first noticed the leak this fall. I’d open up the bulkhead periodically to get some air in here and let things dry out. There wasn’t much damage.”
“Why didn’t you have Bowie look at it then?”
She stood up from the desk, her front smeared with thick dust. “He wasn’t living in town at the time. He hadn’t started work on the culvert up at the cemetery yet. By then…” Her shrug was anything but casual. “It was right after Thanksgiving. I had enough to think about.”
“If he’d noticed the bulkhead open and stopped by out of curiosity, would you have noticed?”
“I noticed yesterday, didn’t I?” She drew a fingertip across the layer of dust on top of the desk. “I know what you’re getting at, Sean. I’ve had the same thought. It’s hard to believe Kyle Rigby or Melanie Kendall would risk stealing money from the café to set Devin up. Why not find an easier way? Whoever was paying them didn’t want his and Nora’s deaths seen as murders by a stranger. Two teenagers overwhelmed by their own problems get lost on Cameron Mountain…” She trailed off and gave the desk a shove with her slim hips.
“We can talk about this later,” Sean said. “Would you like some help with that desk?”
“No, I think there’s enough room for Bowie to get back here. He can move whatever else he needs out of the way himself. I’m just looking for distractions.” She glanced around the dank cellar. “Tourists who stop at the café love that it’s in an old house. They’re drawn to the sense of history here. Is that why you bought it?”
“I didn’t think much about it.”
“Then it was just a good investment opportunity?”
He smiled. “It’s not that good an investment. From what you’ve told me about your to-do list—”
“Oh, my to-do list doesn’t even scratch the surface of what this place needs.”
Sean settled his gaze on her and noted she was paler than usual, but she looked away, ducking behind the desk, squeezing between it and the old trunk as she stepped back under the dim lightbulb. She was closer to