She crept closer. She read what he had written.
Then she heard a noise behind her, whipped around and threw a turning side kick at the man who loomed in the doorway.
The kick never landed.
Benedict Howard blocked her, grabbed her wrist, brought her close and said, “What are you doing here?” He looked beyond her. “And what have you done?”
*
“Come on.” Benedict unlocked the door to the carriage house. “Come in here.”
She shook her head. Her face was swollen, her eyes were red and she couldn’t breathe from crying so hard. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her hoodie.
Still she looked gorgeous to him. “You don’t want to go in the house, to your rooms. You don’t want anyone to see you now.”
His porch light illuminated her as she signed, “I can’t come in. I need locks on the door. My locks.” She looked toward her car. “I should leave, drive away, never come back.”
He couldn’t let her leave. “Will you be safe if you do that?”
She shook her head. Shook her head again.
“All right. We’ll go to your rooms. But there will be people around so don’t”—he pulled out his handkerchief and blotted her face—“don’t cry. Eyes straight ahead. Walk.” Putting his arm around her waist, he walked her through the back door.
In the kitchen, they saw Phoebe.
Benedict said hello.
Phoebe asked what was wrong.
He said Merida had fallen and cut herself.
Phoebe asked if there was anything she could do, asked if they needed a Band-Aid, advised them to go to the hospital and get stitches.
He thanked her. They walked on.
In the entry, they spotted the newlyweds heading up the stairs to their room.
Benedict gave them a hearty, encouraging, go-for-it wave and a smile.
Merida pulled up her hoodie and furtively searched her pocket.
She couldn’t have looked more guilty.
Benedict took her key and unlocked the door, then asked, “What’s the code?”
She didn’t hesitate; she told him and he took that as a sign of trust, the first he’d seen from her. After he had entered the code, she used her thumbprint to get them through the final security device.
He opened the door and held it for her.
She walked in and collapsed on the ottoman in front of the leather easy chair. “I didn’t do it,” she signed.
“I know.” When he had verified the identity of the corpse, everything had changed. They were in trouble.
“I found him … dead.” Her fingers trembled violently.
“I know,” Benedict said again. He locked the door behind them, and not just so she’d feel a sense of security. Finding that body next door had thoroughly spooked him. Add that to the murders around town and the discrepancies in his business accounts, and he suddenly felt as if he were playing the lead in a horror movie. And this room: a long dining table flanked by weapons on the wall, by rows of empty, iron-clad suits of armor … at least he hoped they were empty. He didn’t believe in coincidences, and he didn’t like the number of corpses piling up around them.
“I’m going to check the other rooms.” He walked into the next room, up the stairs, through the bedrooms and bathrooms, making sure every lock was secure, noting how she had augmented the safety measures in every room.
True, she was the widow of a wealthy man. But this was excessive, a special paranoia. And he was afraid he knew why.
As he came back into the dining room, he stomped and coughed so she wasn’t startled.
He found her with her head in her hands, silently crying, rocking back and forth. “Everything is secure,” he told her. Using his cell phone, he made a call to the police. “There’s a body in the abandoned house on Mariana Avenue.” He hung up, fast, for all the good it would do him.
*
A light knock on her office door. “Kateri.”
Kateri looked up from the paperwork, saw the expression on Bergen’s face and said, “You have got to be shitting me. Another one?”
*
Getting a bottle of water out of the little refrigerator, Benedict sat on the floor in front of Merida and offered it to her. “The police will trace the call, but that’s not going to be the first thing on their agenda. At least, I hope not, because this makes me the prime suspect.”
She pointed to herself.
“Yes, you, too.” He watched her, grim-faced. “That body was Carl Klineman, Nauplius’s bodyguard.”
She took the bottle of water. She nodded.
“Explain to me what he was doing in Virtue Falls.”
Merida was still crying, but she could sign. “He, uh … I was running one day and he pulled me through the hedge.”
Benedict ran his finger down his own face, indicating he remembered the scratch.
Merida gestured, agitated, trying to convey the words. “Yes. That. He followed me here. He had rented that place.”
“Because it was next door to the B and B?”
Merida pressed her finger to her nose. She signed, “He said … he said he always wanted to protect me, but my husband … Carl said he loved me. He said my husband…” Merida tried to open the bottle. Tried again. Couldn’t break the seal.
Benedict took it from her, opened the top. “Look. I’m not without sympathy. But damn it, you used me.”
Merida started to protest.
He pushed her hands down. “You used me to help keep you safe. Did you think I didn’t realize that? Then, although I gave you every opportunity, you never confided in me. You kept vital information from me.”
Merida took the bottle and drank.
God, the woman had a way of ignoring what she didn’t want to address. She maddened him, and he wouldn’t have it. “What did Carl say about your husband?”
She took a last sip of water. “Nauplius was abusive. Jealous. He used to tie my hands so I couldn’t speak.” Throwing back her head, she laughed without sound. “I’m actually quite good at getting out of any kind of binding.” She stopped laughing so suddenly, Benedict chilled at the transformation. With slow, careful gestures, she said, “It’s a skill set I wish I’d never had to learn.”
He repeated his question. “What did Carl tell you about your husband?”
“Carl said in that last year, he took Nauplius to the doctor for tests, he didn’t know for what. But when Nauplius came out, he was mad and he was scared, so Carl poked around in his medical records.” Her signing increased in speed.
In the last few days, Benedict had learned a lot. He kept up.
She continued, “Nauplius had received the diagnosis that he was likely to die suddenly, and soon. What scared Carl then was—Nauplius started investigating killers. Carl knew how Nauplius felt about me, that I was his creation.”
“How were you his creation? Is the story that you were a beautiful orphaned daughter of missionaries untrue?”
Merida looked at him, head cocked, eyes narrowed.
“I suspected,” he said, “when I could find no one who remembered you or your parents in Nepal, or your aunt and uncle in the south.”
“You investigated me?”
“I proved who you were not. I never discovered who you were.”