Luckily for us, Marcela Waite—like most gossips and lovers of gold lamé leggings—had a finely tuned sense of melodrama. I was fairly certain she’d enjoyed Lia’s performance even more than talking to her dead husband.
“It must have been Anna Kyle,” Marcela told us, tapping red fingernails against the side of her teacup. “I was nineteen when she and her husband were murdered. That poor woman.”
“What happened?” I asked. We’d put on our show. Now it was time for the town gossip to put on hers.
“Anna Kyle was stabbed to death in her own kitchen. The husband, too,” Marcela said in a hushed voice. “And Anna’s daddy barely made it out alive.”
“And her son?” I asked. “She said she couldn’t find her son.”
“He was there,” Marcela told us. “Saw the whole thing.” That echoed the sentiment we’d heard at the diner, but contradicted the official report that Agent Sterling had dug up. “You ask me, there was something not quite right with that boy. He was a rowdy one, always running around with the children of those people.”
I filed the reference to those people away for future consideration.
“How awful,” Lia murmured. “It’s a miracle the killer left the boy alive.”
Marcela pursed her lips. Even without Michael present to read her, I recognized the look of a woman on the verge of saying something that she knew she shouldn’t.
“I don’t hold with gossip, mind you,” Marcela hedged, “but some folks say that little Mason knew the killer. Some folks think he didn’t just witness the murders.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They think he watched.”
Sloane frowned. “Why would anyone think that?”
Marcela didn’t even try to resist answering. “I told you about Anna’s daddy? He was stabbed over and over, had to have surgery, and when he woke up, he told the police he never saw the attacker.”
“But?” Lia prompted.
“But after that, Malcolm Lowell refused to have anything to do with his grandson. He wouldn’t take custody of his own flesh and blood, couldn’t even look at him. Old Malcolm never spoke a word to the boy again.”
I could see how this would play out in a small town, how it had played out for Nightshade. At first, people felt sorry for you. But after your grandfather woke up, after he insisted to the police that he hadn’t seen his attacker, people started asking questions. What if he was lying? What if he was protecting someone?
What if that someone was you?
“What happened to Mason?” Sloane asked, her hands worrying at each other in her lap. “His parents died. His family didn’t want him. Where did he go?”
The question struck close to home for Sloane.
“A local couple took the Kyle boy in,” Marcela said, taking another sip of her tea. “Hannah and Walter Thanes.”
“Do they still live in Gaither?” Lia asked casually.
Marcela set her teacup down on the tray. “Hannah passed away several years ago, but Walter is still local. He runs the apothecary museum down on Main Street.”
YOU
You know better than to enjoy the quiet moments. You know better than to watch Laurel sleeping and think, even for a moment, that she’s just a child.
“She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?” Five’s voice is like oil on your skin. He’s holding the knife.
“What are you doing here?” It pays sometimes to be haughty, to remind the sadists that you may be at their mercy, but they’re at your mercy, too.
“I had some interesting news from an old friend.” You don’t take the bait.
Five smiles at your silence. “It appears the FBI has made an appearance in Gaither.” He drags one finger over the edge of his knife blade. Lightly.
Carefully.
You give him a dead-eyed stare. “What the FBI is or is not doing is none of my concern.”
“It is,” Five replied, pressing the knife blade into the tip of his own finger and drawing blood, “when it involves your daughter.”
