Delia motioned for me to stay back as she used my footprints to get to the body. She knelt and felt for a pulse. “Dead, all right. Did you touch anything?”
“No. I was going to check for a pulse but then thought that the chances of her being alive were pretty minute.” I wanted to sit down, but even the nearby bench was covered with snow. I wiped it off anyway and gingerly sat on the edge.
Delia frowned, looking intently at Rose. Then she stared at me for a moment until I felt uncomfortably scrutinized. “You’re wearing the same coat, it looks like.”
“Right. We joked about it a week or so ago. I guess we have similar tastes.” I paused, then lowered my voice. “Had…similar tastes.”
Standing up, Delia glanced around the yard. “So, the backyard. That your driveway? I see three cars.”
“The CR-V is mine, the black Corvette belongs to Aegis, and the silver hatchback is Rose’s.” I shrugged. “That pretty much guarantees she was here all night. Look at the snow buildup on all of our cars. Aegis’s has the least amount. He was at a show. I guess he must have thought Rose stayed over.”
Delia stood, glancing at her watch. “The coroner should be here any minute.” She was still staring at Rose’s body. “You know, from this angle, she and you could be indistinguishable. She has long dark hair like you do, you’re both about the same height, and you’re wearing the same coat. She was in your yard.” She drifted off, leaving the thought unfinished, but I knew what she was getting at.
“Are you saying that you think that whoever murdered her thought she was me? That I was the intended target?” The thought hadn’t crossed my mind but now it was implanted firmly into my brain, and I pulled my coat tighter. “Who would want to murder me?” But even as I said it, I had to admit that I’d led a checkered-enough past that there were more than enough people who would be happy to see me take a nosedive.
“Who would want to murder Rose? The girl was young and well-liked in the community.” Delia’s phone beeped and she glanced at it, then texted something. “The coroner is here. I told Jif to come around through the side gate. He’s brought his team.”
Within moments, the coroner and his forensics team had taken over the backyard. I answered their questions one by one. Why had Rose been here? When did she leave? Had I noticed anything odd? When did Aegis return home? Did he come through the backyard, usually?
“He gets back late from shows and rehearsals. He might have come in by the front door, but it’s more likely that he came through his private entrance, which means he wouldn’t be crossing through the backyard.” I refrained from telling them that the entrance to his secret passage was near the garage, which was detached from the house, over by the cars. It wasn’t safe for anybody to know the location for a vampire’s private entrance.
“We’ll talk to him when he wakes up tonight. If I need him to, he can show me his private entrance at that time.” Delia understood why I was being obtuse. Werewolves and vampires really didn’t like each other—the old-wives’ tales were true—but they worked together as need be.
“Right.” As I watched, the forensics team took photographs, then slowly turned Rose over. The blood had come from her stomach, and it was frozen into a sheet of ice attached to her shirt. The team carefully broke the ice away, bagging it in case there was any evidence that might disappear if the ice melted before they got back to the hospital. As they separated the ice from her skin, a massive gash appeared in her stomach.
“Well, we know where she bled out.”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing a deep breath. The wound was ugly and vicious. “Is the knife still there?” I couldn’t see a blade anywhere, but maybe it had been lodged in the snow beneath her.
“Nope,” one of the men said. “Nothing that we can see. We’ll have to go through the yard to see if the murderer dropped anything.”
“That’s fine,” I said, staring at Rose’s astonished expression. Her death mask was heartbreaking. “I can’t believe someone murdered her in my yard. This is going to break her family’s heart. They’re already facing the disappearance of one daughter.” Rose was one of the rare people who had been born onto the island. She was still quite young—at least for a witch—at only sixty-seven. But she had been talented and quick to learn.
“What the hell?” Sandy appeared from the kitchen, coming out the sliding-glass doors. She stopped, gaping as she watched the men examining Rose. “Oh good gods. Somebody stabbed her?”
“Apparently so, but please keep this to yourself,” the sheriff said. “Let me make the official announcement. I don’t want you or Maddy talking to anybody about the death yet. We need to keep as much information private as possible so that we have a leg up on the murderer.” Delia tucked her notepad and pencil in her pocket, then nodded toward the kitchen. “How about that tea? I’d like to ask you both some more questions about Rose. The boys can finish up here just fine.”
As we tromped back into the kitchen, I realized I was shivering and it was from more than the cold. The sight of Rose’s face, and the realization that she was well and truly dead, had finally hit. As the shock wore off, my nerves were fraying.
Sandy must have noticed, because she steered me over to the kitchen table and motioned for Delia to join me. “I’ll bring the tea. You both look like you could use some food. Do you have any cookies or cake?” She poked her head in one of the cupboards.
“Yeah, there are cookies in the cookie jar over there—the one shaped like a black cat.” I slid onto the banquette below the window that looked outside. The kitchen table had four chairs around it, and the banquette provided room for two more.
Sandy brought over the tea and cookies, then cups and saucers from the cupboard. After she poured our tea, she settled down opposite me. Delia was to my right.
“I was telling Maddy here that, in the dark, with the same coat, she and Rose could be mistaken for one another.” Delia sipped the tea and, grimacing, pulled the sugar bowl over and scooped two heaping spoons into her cup.
Sandy looked from Delia to me, then back at Delia. “Are you saying you think Maddy was the actual target? That Rose somehow got in the way and was mistaken for her?”
“The thought crossed my mind, and now it’s nagging at me. I usually find that when that happens, I’m on to something. Do either of you know anything about Rose’s private life? Does she have a boyfriend? Was anybody bothering her? Stalking her, maybe?”
“Sandy knows her better than I do. I knew Rose from being in the same coven, but we usually get right to work at the meetings. We talk socially after for a while, but until I moved here a few weeks back, I didn’t have much of a chance to see her.”
Sandy nodded. “That’s true. Rose has always been private. She lives—lived—with her mother and father, and I don’t think she’s been dating anybody for a while. Her parents might know.”
“What about past boyfriends? Any of them ever show up at the coven meetings unannounced?” Delia was taking notes as she drank her tea.
I lifted my cup, breathing deeply as the steam of the peppermint filled my senses. I closed my eyes, willing it to take away the chill. I was cold to the bone, not just from being outside, but from the shock, and now the thought that I might have been the intended victim was making the cold settle in worse.
“No, not that I can remember. Most people are pretty respectful about the meetings. I think the last person Rose was seriously dating moved to the Bay Area.” Sandy squinted. Worry lines crisscrossed her forehead. “You’d have to ask her parents if she was seeing anybody new. Rose might actually have a diary somewhere. We encourage all our coven members to write down their experiences.”