“I’ll bring my shotgun too.” Grant’s lopsided grin brought a touch of levity into a tense situation, relaxing Kaine even further. The idea of Grant camped out just yards from the bedroom in which she slept brought comfort. He wasn’t exactly the Navy SEAL type, but he was tougher than Joy.
Joy propped her hands on her hips. A gray curl flipped upward, like a horn on the side of her head. “I have my own pistol, and my husband was a sharpshooter. Call me Annie Oakley. So, whether you’re here or not, I’ll make sure no one lays a hand on your Kaine.”
Your Kaine?
Kaine stole a glance at Grant. A few red splotches appeared on his neck. She wasn’t sure if she was flattered, intrigued, or terrified at the thought that, in such a short period of time, she was already considered Grant’s. Actually, she wasn’t sure she was ready for a relationship with a man ever again.
“So.” Joy plopped onto the bed while Kaine and Grant lingered by the door. “What’s the game plan?” She pointed a long red fingernail at them. “Sounds like it’s time for Foster Hill House to unveil its history of mystery.” She giggled at her clever rhyme.
Kaine managed a smile.
Joy rolled her eyes and waved her hand at Kaine in dismissal. “Smile, girl. I’ve never found any sense in not seeing the humor when going through a trial. But if you’re both going to act mopey, I’ll be serious.”
Kaine went over and sank onto Megan’s bed next to Joy, gaining some distance from Grant. His presence, so close to her, was a distraction at the moment.
Grant leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “I just want to know what Ivy’s quilt has to do with Kaine’s past in San Diego.”
“You and me both,” Kaine said, and picked at a thread on the comforter. “I had the quilt at the motel for the last few days and just yesterday put it in my car.” She gave Grant a sheepish look. “I figured maybe it was time to take it to the Oakwood police. It was stolen after all.”
“So how on God’s green earth did anyone get a chance to slice off a piece of that beautiful antique?” Joy asked. Then she looked at Kaine. “How long have you been missing your motel key?”
The question sent a chill down Kaine’s spine. The motel had issued her two keys at check-in. Since they weren’t cards, and it was just a cheap motel, Kaine remembered dropping the spare key in the room’s ashtray and keeping the other one with her.
Kaine looked up at her friends. “I was given two keys,” she began. “I misplaced one of them, and the key I lost tonight was the spare. I think. I thought maybe I’d left it at the house, so I grabbed the extra key and have been using that—until it went missing tonight too.” She jumped from the bed and snatched her purse from her pile of belongings on the floor. Dumping out the contents on the bed, she rifled through them. “The police found a key at Foster Hill tonight in the entryway, on the windowsill. I remember setting it there today. That must be the spare key, which means I’m still missing one. I figured it was just lost in my mess of junk, but then I couldn’t remember which key I put where.” She tossed a handful of receipts into the wastebasket and then took stock of what remained: lip gloss, Kleenex pack, wallet, gum, a few more receipts, the charger for her phone. “Well, it’s definitely not in my purse.”
“I’m not sure I’m following,” Joy said, looking confused.
“Sorry.” Kaine swallowed and drew a deep breath. “The police found one motel key tonight at Foster Hill House, and there isn’t a second one in my purse or in the ashtray where I left it in my room at the motel. Which means—”
“The first key went missing a few days ago,” Grant supplied.
“Oh my . . .” Joy’s eyes widened.
“Which also means someone got ahold of the key somehow and broke into my motel room—I’m thinking to cut off the piece of the quilt—while I was out.” Did they search her things? Touch her pillow? Pick up her toothbrush, then set it back on the vanity? Kaine’s skin crawled. This was San Diego all over again—times one hundred!
Joy leaned back against the wall alongside the bed. “I declare, we will not be swayed by this.” Her charismatic tone wasn’t something Kaine was accustomed to, but Joy’s confidence was inspiring, if not comforting. “The Lord brought you here. To us. You’re ours now, not just Grant’s. And I declare that this freak of nature isn’t going to haunt you anymore.”
Grant cleared his throat and kicked at one of Megan’s shoes on the floor.
Kaine appreciated their protectiveness and even Joy’s reference to God. Maybe He had brought her here. But then, she had no clue what He was thinking. That had been her original intention of moving here in the first place—uncover what the Lord had for her. Find a reason to move on in life. Instead, trouble followed her. Or found her. Or smashed into her California trouble and it all got muddled.
“The police will check out your motel room. For prints, if nothing else,” Grant said.
Kaine shook her head. “They won’t find anything. They never have.” This guy is too careful, too smart.
“Still,” Grant persisted, “it’s worth a try. Anyone can make a mistake.”
“I can’t figure it out,” Kaine went on, ignoring him, though she knew he was right. “Danny was killed two years ago. Since then, it’s been subtle things. Like I knew someone was in my house, but it wasn’t overt. When I moved here, I assumed it would all go away. There are no ties between what happened in California, my husband’s suspicious death, and Foster Hill House. Zero. And yet now Danny’s killer is here. Or it’s someone else and not the killer. Or . . . I just don’t get it.” She finished with a frustrated flourish of her hands. Thank goodness, Grant and Joy were willing to let her talk it through. If left to her own devices, Kaine would probably end up on the next plane for New Zealand in the hopes her stalker didn’t care for international travel and horrible jet lag.
“Okay.” Thank goodness. Grant, the voice of reason. “We need to work our way backward. Foster Hill House. How does it connect to you, Kaine, and to your great-great-grandmother? If we can piece that together, maybe we’ll find a commonality, because whoever left the piece of quilt there wants us to connect the dots.”
Joy drummed her fingers on the yellow nightstand beside the bed. “I think you need to go even further back. To the Fosters. The original builders of the house. There’s history there that has never been resolved. Sort of like a puzzle put together without the edges.”
“The Fosters?” Kaine drew her leg up under her knee. The bed bounced with her movement.
Joy waggled her drawn-on eyebrows. “They may have nothing to do with you, or your genealogy, and I have no possible idea how it’d tie to your dear husband, but I’m still saying. Foster Hill House has been a point of mystery in this town since the history books started recording it. And, we know Patti, our jealous little librarian, hung Myrtle Foster’s picture back in the hallway upstairs across from the bedrooms after she found it in the museum’s storage room.”
“Jealous?” Grant’s eyes widened. “She is, isn’t she?”