Page 116 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
Maynard leaned into Molly, and she whimpered, pulling into herself. Then his hand reached out and slapped against the metal barrel. “How’s it going in there, Tamera?”
Molly began to shiver, realization flooding every pore in her already-stressed body. Tamera Nichols had been buried in a barrel since 1982 in the crawl space of the Withers murder house of 1910!
Settling back, Maynard laughed. His expression was almost pitiful. He shrugged. “They blamed Jacqueline’s father for the murders of the Withers sisters—and the attack on that other lady.”
“Perliett Van Hilton?” Molly said.
Maynard snarled. “It doesn’t matter. No one ever charged Alden, Jacqueline’s father, for the killings because he died. Sudden-like. He had an all-too-convenient heart attack.” A thin smile spread across his face, leering, not unlike the one Molly had seen in her exhaustion-induced dreams. “But they always underestimated my grandmother. Good ol’ Jacqueline. You know, after I put Tamera in the barrel, I realized the answer to that old question of whether murder is in aperson’s genetics. What do you think, Molly Wasziak? Is there an inherited need to kill?”
Perliett
“Stop!”
The man’s voice carried after Perliett, but she scrambled down from her carriage after racing into the front drive of her home. The carriage that had been behind her had followed, though she didn’t care who it was now. She was home. She would lock herself inside and never come out!
Perliett flew into the house, slamming the door behind her, clicking the lock into place. She ran down the hallway, toward PaPa’s study, intent on finding her mother. Together. They must be together and be safe and—
Perliett skidded to a halt, staring in outright disbelief. Her mother stood in the circle of Jasper’s arms, the affection more than apparent in her swollen lips.
“Perliett!” She leaped away from Jasper, dabbing at her mouth.
Jasper’s visage darkened. He lifted a hand to calm her. “Perliett, be reasonable.”
“Reasonable!” Perliett was anything but, and if anger could rain down in drops of fire, perhaps that would be the most effective way of proclaiming her fury. “You were supposed to get help! Now I find you here with my mother while I’m fleeing for my life?”
“Oh, Perliett!” Maribeth moved to rush to her daughter’s side, but Perliett stopped her with a glare.
“No. What is this?” She swept her arm to encompass the whole of her father’s study. “For your sake, Jasper Bridgers,you best have a good explanation as to who you are once and for all and where you went!”
Jasper cleared his throat, straightening his shoulders, and looked down his nose at her with the patronizing expression of someone who believed the other needed to find their inner calm. “I am a journalist. From Chicago.”
“A journalist?” Perliett spat. She would hog-tie the man and throw him into the cornfield with that horrible child.
Mr. Bridgers held up a hand. “This shouldn’t amaze you. I already told you, I have been researching the rise of spiritualism in the cities. Studying it in rural areas has been enlightening.”
“You’ve been studying my mother?” Perliett frowned.
Mr. Bridgers wagged his head back and forth. “In a way, yes. Or rather,withyour mother. She possesses unique talents and, coupled with what I know of elements of illusion, I wanted to register the impact of the need to connect with the afterlife from a rural small-town perspective. If people of modest incomes would invest with the same passion and need as the wealthier.”
“Illusions?” Perliett felt her throat closing in. Choking out whatever belief might have been hanging on.
Maribeth took a few steps toward her daughter. “Oh, not all of it!” she protested. “You know I’ve always been sensitive to these things—though your father was hesitant to approve—and Jasper had written to me after he heard of my abilities in that news article that was written last year, remember?”
“After your first sitting?” Perliett nodded, unimpressed. “Yes, I recall.”
Maribeth smiled, hopeful about getting things resolved. “Yes, so Jasper wrote and proposed a study. We did not know that Eunice Withers would be killed, obviously—or Millie.”
“Illusions?” Perliett repeated, the word grating on her tongue.
Now Mr. Bridgers stepped forward. “Only a few. To enhance what already comes naturally to your mother. This is why I’d yet to leave for help when you so courageously took the carriage with Mrs. Withers. I was safeguarding some of our supplies outside in the barn before people descended on the house to assist Mrs. Withers. We can’t ruin your mother’s reputation or gift on behalf of my curiosity, can we?”
“The window shattering—Eunice’s visitation—it was a ruse, wasn’t it?” Perliett was becoming wise, and the idea of Mr. Bridgers’s scam and Maribeth falling under his influence was almost equal to the horrors she had just faced.
Someone was banging on the front door. It distracted them for a moment, but Mr. Bridgers took another urgent step toward her, extending his hand. “We meant no harm, truly! I merely applied pressure to the window with carefully placed nails, and then with a tug of a transparent line, they shifted and the window shattered—right on beckoning, I might add.” A slight smile of pride touched his eyes.
“And your collapse? The night I was attacked, the writing in the book from Eunice?” Perliett leveled a look of disbelief on her mother.
Maribeth bit her lip. “Not everything I do is a ruse, honestly.”
