“WAIT A MINUTE. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT SUE ANN and the woman I work with are the same person?” I asked my mother once I’d digested the possible connection between the face in the drawing and the name of the flower Marlette had glued to the bottom of the page.
Althea gave a nonchalant shrug. “It’s what I do, remember? I just feel my way around these things.” Without taking her eyes from the road, she reached over and touched the book on my lap. “The second I saw that peony, I got electric tingles from my fingertips to my toes. I don’t get those every day, I’ll have you know.”
Though the connection she’d voiced rang true, echoing my own thoughts, I still felt the need to play devil’s advocate. The only way I could process this shocking turn of events was to look at it from all angles.
If Sue Ann really was Luella Ardor, then Marlette had been visiting the workplace of the very woman who’d cost him his reputation and livelihood so many years ago. Surely, she must have recognized him. And he undoubtedly realized that the sexy and sophisticated literary agent who routinely ignored his presence was the girl who’d forever changed his life. Otherwise, why would he have pasted the peony on his sketch of her?
I shook my head. “Too many assumptions. I’m assuming Marlette was falsely accused. I’m assuming that Sue Ann is Luella Ardor. And now I’m jumping to the conclusion that she knew Marlette, was possibly threatened by him, and therefore was motivated to kill him.” I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes, hoping the rhythmic sound of the road passing beneath the tires would help clear my mind.
“You’ve gotta chase after these wild thoughts, honey,” my mother said softly. “They’re leadin’ you somewhere, even if it’s not where you wanna go. They’re like wily little foxes and you’re the hound. The trail is gonna zig and it’s gonna zag, but in the end, you’ll catch your fox.”
I prayed that she was right, because the significance of what I was doing suddenly hit home.
In the beginning, I’d gotten involved to make sure that Marlette’s death wouldn’t go unnoticed, but I never realized how deeply it would affect me. Since he had collapsed in our reception area, his story had permeated every day of my life. And even though I’d been viewing my coworkers as possible suspects from the beginning, the strength of the connection between Luella and Marlette now lent my investigation more weight. Accusing a coworker of murder was a far cry from running around town and discussing theories with Makayla. And to be honest, I was frightened of what I’d gotten myself into. If Luella could commit such a cold-blooded act once, then what was to stop her from doing it again?
My dreams that night were colored in shades of black and red. Sue Ann’s dark eyes stared at me from Marlette’s drawing until they transformed into sinister birds with pointed beaks and daggerlike black feathers. The two oversized crows multiplied into a flock and chased me through the woods near Marlette’s cabin. Their crazed caws and the roar of their wings were terrifying. They were hunting me.
When I burst into the cabin in search of shelter, I found only a dirty sleeping bag on the floor. There was fresh blood on the fabric, and a person was zipped up inside. With trembling fingers, I touched the zipper pull and then hastily drew back in revulsion. I was kneeling in a slick puddle of crimson. My dream self, though sickened by the sight of so much blood, had just reached for the zipper again when one of the giant crows crashed through the cabin’s window. It slammed against the wall, hard enough to break a real bird’s neck, but this one merely shook out his knife-sharp feathers and began to caw triumphantly. In a stream of black, the rest of the flock started to pour in through the window, their hungry, malicious eyes locked on me. I screamed myself awake.
Lying there, damp with sweat, I wished I’d taken my mother’s advice and tossed back a shot of warm whiskey before bed.
“You need a solid eight hours if you’re gonna figure out if that Luella woman hurt Marlette,” she’d told me, offering her bottle of Jim Beam. “If what I saw in those eyes in the picture he drew of her is a reflection of the real girl, then she’s got a soul as twisted as a pretzel. You’d best mind your step.”
I’d declined the whiskey, changed into my pajamas, and wished that Trey were down the hall playing a game on his computer. I felt adrift, as though my family and my career anchored me to reality and now, the rope tethering me to them both had been abruptly severed. My son was gone, my mother’s psychic abilities weren’t adept enough to assuage my fear, and one of my coworkers might be a murderer.
Then again, she might not. How on earth was I going to incriminate Luella Ardor without losing my job?