“Something’s not right,” Candy said.
It was near midnight, and they were back at Maggie’s place, where they’d gone after spending hours at the Cape Willington Police Department. They were exhausted.
They sat on Maggie’s sofa with their boots off and stocking feet up on the coffee table. Foregoing wine at such a late hour, they’d opted for hot cocoa to warm themselves, and Maggie had lit a fire. They were sharing a flannel blanket Candy had made for Maggie a few years back as a Christmas present.
Maggie had been staring into the fire, her eyelids growing heavy, but at the comment from Candy, she blinked several times, took a sip of her cocoa, and looked over at her friend with a vaguely interested expression on her face. “What do you mean?”
Candy pulled the blanket up to her chin and settled further back into the sofa as she thought. “Well, there are just too many missing pieces—the most glaring being the issue with the hatchet.”
Maggie yawned. She looked bleary-eyed. “And what issue is that again?”
“Felicia and Gina wrapped Victor’s body up in a blanket and dumped it in the woods using the toboggan. But when Solomon found it, it had a hatchet in its back, and Solomon didn’t mention anything about a blanket. So where did the blanket go? And how did the hatchet get there? Did someone put it there after Victor died? If so, why? Then there’s the issue of their tracks—why didn’t the police find any when they searched the woods?”
“Easy,” Maggie said tiredly. “Someone erased them using a tree branch or something like that.”
“Right, but who? Solomon said he erased his own tracks but not the tracks around the body. So who did?”
“Maybe the wind,” Maggie said, stifling another yawn. “You know, snowdrifts, that sort of thing.”
“And what about Gina?”
“What about her?”
“Well, she said someone texted her and told her where Victor and Felicia were shacked up. Who did that?”
Maggie sighed and dropped sideways, her head falling to a pillow at the end of the sofa. “I’m too tired to worry about it tonight. Can we talk about this in the morning? You want to stay over?”
Candy seriously thought about it, but in the end decided her own bed would be best. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your car one more time—that is, unless you want to drive me home?
Yawning again, Maggie handed her the keys. “I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, honey. Just drop it off whenever you get a chance.”
Doc was asleep when she got home, so she locked up the house, turned out all the lights downstairs except for a night light, made sure the fire had burned down far enough, and went upstairs to her room.
The house was cold, since they kept the thermostat turned down at night to save on heating fuel. So Candy changed quickly into her flannel pajamas, turned out the light, and crawled into bed.
But a few minutes later she turned the light back on, put on her slippers and bathrobe, and padded downstairs to her desk in a corner of the living room.
She powered up her laptop, waited until it booted up, and logged on to Wanda Boyle’s site.
She couldn’t get all the unanswered mysteries out of her head, and one in particular bothered her. Preston Smith. What had become of him? Why had he been acting so strange lately? And what was his role in everything that had happened this weekend?
Some of the answers, she thought, might be online.
She’d intended to search back through Whitefield’s postings to see if Preston had left any other clues there. But she was surprised to find a new posting from him, dated only minutes earlier.
To Town Crier, it read. Well done. Whitefield at 10. Ben will know the way.
She read over the message several times. Again, it seemed obvious that it was meant for her. But what did it mean?
Whitefield at 10. Ben will know the way.
She thought of calling Ben but decided against it when she checked the clock on the fireplace mantel behind her. It was quarter to one. So, instead of calling him, she sent him an e-mail, explaining everything and telling him that she’d call him in the morning to discuss.
By the time she’d logged off, shut down the computer, and climbed back up the stairs to her bedroom, her cell phone was buzzing. She’d set it down on the top of her dresser and forgotten to turn it off or charge it.
It was a text message from Ben:
Meet me for breakfast at the diner at nine. Urgent. Dress warmly. I know what Whitefield is.