Page 89 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
Detective Poll pursed his lips. “You’re trying to convince me youhappenedto be on a midnight countryside stroll at approximately the same time Miss Van Hilton was being attacked by the Cornfield Ripper?”
“Wasit the Cornfield Ripper? Oh, I read his letter in the paper!” Mrs. Hannity gasped, clutching at her throat.
“We don’t know yet,” Mr. Bridgers added, almost seeming irked that he wasn’t being paid attention to.
“By tomorrow morning, I will be the talk of the town if you continue to accuse me of doing this to Perliett.” George gritted his teeth. “My reputation as a physician is at stake here.”
“Was it Dr. Wasziak who did this to you, Miss Van Hilton?” Detective Poll asked the question that would have solved the entire mystery.
Perliett winced. She couldn’t remember what had happened between the time she was on the road and when she awakened in the cornfield to the leering face of the little girl. “I don’t know,” she whispered, which did nothing to exonerate George, who shot her a desperate look.
“Perliett—”
She looked beyond him to the detective. “But I don’t believe it was Dr. Wasziak.” Did she? Was she certain her word bore truth? Could it be that George Wasziak in his blustering, aggravating person was responsible not just for her assaultbut for the murders of the Withers sisters? It seemed ludicrous. “It couldn’t have been. There was a little girl.”
“You said this before.” Detective Poll took the opportunity to press for more information before Mrs. Hannity interrupted again. “A little girl? Who was she? Did you recognize her?”
“No.” Perliett needed brandy. She could sense it. A swig from her brandy bottle in her apothecary chest would do wonders to calm her nerves.
“How old was she?” the detective asked.
“I don’t know.” Perliett closed her eyes against a wave of throbbing pain that streaked across the top of her head. “Ten, eleven years old maybe? At most.”
“There’s no one in the neighborhood with a child that young,” Mrs. Hannity provided.
Perliett wanted them all to leave. To go. To allow her to bathe herself, cleanse her wounds, take medicine powders for her horrific headache, and to wallow in the nagging premonition that all of this was far from over. That chaos was just beginning. That Eunice Withers, in her dead spirit state, trulyhadtried to warn them.
Hewas not finished yet.
Because Perliett was still alive.
30
Molly
Gladys poured Molly a cup of coffee and set a plate of cookies on the table.
“There,” she said. “Drink up. It’ll warm your insides.”
That it was already ninety degrees at ten o’clock in the morning on this late August morning apparently didn’t affect the old woman.
Molly reached for a cookie and eyed it. It looked like a sugar cookie with a date or prune smashed in the middle. She took a tentative nibble of it, even as her eyes strayed toward the south. She could see, just beyond the hayfield, over the tops of a line of maple trees, the peak of her and Trent’s barn.
Gladys had seen the smoke from the fire a few days ago, and she’d checked in on them the following day, when Molly and Trent stood side by side in the yard, staring at the remaining half of their farmhouse. They were planning on staying with Sid—until Sid had called in a panic, saying the stomach flu was running rampant through her children. Stomach flu in August? Leave it to Sid’s kids to catch it. The call came through when Gladys was chatting with them. Nosing her way into their business, Molly felt, but Trent found her, whatwas the word he’d used,sugar-sweet? In the space of a few minutes, Trent had accepted Gladys’s invitation to stay in her farmhouse. She had four guest rooms, she’d said, and she was old, living alone on her family’s farm when she should be either in assisted living—or dead. She’d added that last part with a chuckle.
Molly felt bad she didn’t share the sense of humor. Trent needed humor to snap out of the fog of trauma that came with a house fire and the beyond-blaring reality that someone had tried to kill Molly. Molly, on the other hand, was pretty convinced she’d never—never—sleep again. It was bad enough to be haunted by the dead and never know when you’d hear them singing nursery rhymes in your head. But to know some flesh-and-blood person was vicious enough to lock her in a basement and set it ablaze?
“You don’t like dates?” Gladys was staring at her from across the table.
Molly snapped out of her thoughts. “Oh!” She looked at the cookie. She’d been nibbling the edges, leaving the date in the middle. “I-I do.” She didn’t.
“You’re lying.” Gladys tapped the table with her index finger and offered an understanding smile. “And you don’t need to eat the date. My mother used to make date cookies, so I’ve always had a partiality for them.”
Grateful, Molly set the cookie on a napkin in front of her. She was fine. Really. She had to convince herself of that after spending hours with the police recalling the events of the fire, having fire investigators confirm evidence of accelerant in the living room area, and being told that if Trent had arrived much later, she would have been trapped in the crawl space and probably died of smoke inhalation.
Trent hadn’t wanted to leave Molly with Gladys and return to work, fearing for their safety. Gladys insisted they would be fine. Trent’s expression this morning when he left the house to resume his duties at Clapton Bros. Farms, athermos of coffee made by Gladys in hand, told Molly he was anything but convinced. The police assured them they would do frequent drive-bys. It’d been four days since the fire and Molly was as edgy as in the moments following in the hospital.
What was worse, Gemma had been calling. Leaving messages. Texting. Molly ignored them. She shouldn’t, but she had to. Her mind was still reeling from the trauma. She could barely close the bathroom door to do her business without panicking because she was closed in. The thought of Gemma’s persistence, partnered with her sense of justice, made Molly cringe.
