Page 93 of The Witch's Orchard
“My—”
“Your hands. May I look at them?”
He grits his teeth and blows a huff of air out through his nose like a bull. But he does finally put his hands out over the desk.
“What’s this about?” he asks as I inspect his thick fingers and the tops of his hands, his white-haired wrists.
The skin is unmarked. Clean. His nails are clipped short, the edges neat. There are no scrapes or scratches.
“Nothing,” I say.
I get up to leave, turn toward the door, then turn back and ask, “Does Rebecca know about your mistake with the fourteen-year-old?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
I go back through the church and out to Honey and start her up. As I pull out, I see a news van from Asheville roll by. It won’t be the last. Lucy’s disappearance has resurrected a tantalizing story, and I know that before long national news teams will be flowing into town. It’s the job of the press to report the news, but it irks me that the rest of the world only ever sees towns like Quartz Creek when they’re at their worst.
I drive back toward Max’s farm but turn off early onto Lilac Overlook Lane, thinking about Deena Drake. Of everyone I’ve spoken to, she’s the one who knows the Zieglers the best. The one who would know if there were any leads I might be able to follow.
Honey putters and sputters on the climb so I take it slow, and I have plenty of time to keep an eye on the forest around me, on the near silence of the fog-laden trees, almost bare, and the carpet of scarlet and gold and plain, almost colorless brown. It’s early afternoon and not nearly time for the sun to be setting, and yet the dull dimness—not darkness but absence of sunshine—is almost palpable. No shafts of light seem to cut through the cloud cover today. No beams of illumination scatter the fog before me.
I take a huge inhalation of air as I break through the trees into the cleared mountaintop, unaware I’d been breathing so shallowly. The oppressive dimness is gone, replaced by a plain, flat autumn sun. There is no Range Rover in the drive.
I pull up, park, and get out. The property is quiet. A breeze rustles the trees and red leaves swirl around my feet. The scent of roses and mountain laurels fills my nose.
“Where is she?” I ask myself, and walk up the steps and onto the porch. I knock on the door and it swings open.
“Mrs. Drake?” I shout into the house. The large, open living room is empty, and the only sound I hear is the ticking of what must be a huge grandfather clock.
I look back at Honey, sitting alone in the driveway. I think about what I told Greg Andrews only an hour ago. How all I can do is follow every possible lead until I run out or someone makes me stop. How it has occurred to me, more than once, that Deena Drake was at every crime scene and lives alone on this mountaintop. How if I don’t take an opportunity to unravel a knot when it’s presented to me, then why am I even here, what good am I.
“Mrs. Drake? Are you in?” I shout once more.
I look around the porch again for cameras.
“Nothing,” I say to myself. I poke my head into the living room andsee expensive furniture and rugs, but, again, no cameras and no sign of Deena Drake.
“Who leaves their front door unlocked these days?” I mutter. “Anyone could just walk right in…”
And then I push the door fully open and walk over the threshold.
THIRTY-ONE
FROM THE OUTSIDE THIShouse had looked huge, and yet, once I’m standing in the great room, I realize that this is a partial illusion created by its position on a mountaintop and the two-story bank of windows on its front. The windows had reflected the sunlight, the mountain atmosphere, the rolling horizon. They had made the house seem immense but, inside, I realize the great room alone probably takes up a third of the home’s square footage.
Standing still, I feel eyes upon me and look around to find a variety of exotic animal heads mounted on the wall. Elk, ibex, some kind of toothy cat I don’t know the name of. Their glass eyes are polished to a high shine, and they watch me as I take another step into the room.
One more time, just in case, I shout, “Deena! Mrs. Drake, are you here?”
No answer. I commence to snooping.
I breathe in the scent of the house, like dewy flowers and woodsmoke, and walk past the vintage sofa and chairs, the glossy grand piano that sits on a mini stage nearest the bank of windows. I walk into the kitchen, where all the appliances are top-of-the-line. They don’t look new, but they look like they were bought to last a lifetime. There’s a plate of cookies on the counter, a jar of honey alongside antique cream and sugar containers, a bowl of fruit, half full.
Off the kitchen is a little office space with a computer and printer and old-fashioned ledger on top of an old cherry desk. I tap the computer’s space bar and the monitor comes on, prompting me to put in a password. I leave it, nudge open the ledger. Deena has been using it as a household accounting book, and I take a brief look through it to find bills for groceries, utilities, insurance. Every month, there is a cash withdrawal. Always one thousand dollars, always at the start of the month. Deena’s spending budget, I’d guess. And it probably goes back to Harvey Drake’s handing her a grand of pin money every month and, even before that, to her likely sizable allowance as a Savannah debutante.
There’s an old filing cabinet, but forensic sleuthing takes weeks or months of combing through numbers; it’s not the kind of thing one can accomplish with a quick rummage around. I leave the office and continue down the hall, where I find a guest room, made up and smelling a little stale. It looks clean but completely unused.
