She nodded. He took a seat, stretching out his legs and spreading them wide.
“Did you figure it all out yet?” he asked, indicating the kitchen, Merryweather, the mystery, and life in general. Stevie shook her head no.
“What’s that for?” she asked, nodding toward the computer. “Are you writing?”
“Yep,” he said a little too quickly.
“This is a whole new you,” Stevie said. “You used to avoid writing, and now that’s all you seem to be doing.”
“I just couldn’t sleep,” he said, setting his computer down. “We’re living in a Clue board right now. I heard someone moving around and saw it was you. Probably a good move to be in here. Lots of knives.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. It was definitely something. He had his hands resting on his closed laptop, like it might spring open and reveal all his secrets. But Stevie had bigger fish to fry at the moment. Nate’s squirrely writing activity would have to be examined another time.
“I’ve been reading over all the stuff Angela got,” Stevie said. “It just . . . it doesn’t point at anything. Nothing I can see.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Maybe it was a robbery, now that we know what was in the shed.”
“Someone came to steal the weed?”
Now that she said it out loud, the idea had a bit of shape to it. Had she been too quick to dismiss it? Was it worth at least looking around outside with that in mind?
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked.
“Are you being serious right now?”
“I just asked if you wanted to go for a walk.”
“Nighttime walk at axe murder manor? For sure. Especially if you heard a noise and want to investigate.”
“It’s almost dawn,” she said.
“It’s dark.”
“Murders don’t keep happening at the same place,” she said. “They’re like lightning. Never strikes twice.”
“We literally come from a school where murders kept happening.”
“Well, we can’t keep going to places where more than one murder happens,” Stevie said. “So now we’re definitely safe.”
“Seriously, no. Just wait until the sun comes up.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “Anything I’m going to find out, I’m going to find out today. Soon people will be awake, and that’s when I’ll be able to talk to them. Now’s the best time to finish looking at the grounds. Besides, they don’t have guns here.”
“They have axes.”
“Much slower. Harder to use.”
She turned off the kettle that she had set on to boil and was now rumbling on its base. She went through to the boot room and looked for the pair of Wellington boots she had worn earlier. She took a coat as well. There were flashlights on a shelf by the door. She grabbed one for herself, and one for Nate, who came into the mudroom a moment later.
“You know one of these times I’m not going to follow you,” he said.
“Really?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He sighed and grabbed the nearest Barbour coat, pulling it on over his hoodie, and accepted the flashlight she held out to him.
“Do you think we should bring something?” he said. “Seriously. For safety.”
Stevie glanced around and saw a hammer sitting on top of a pile of garden implements and tools under one of the benches. She took it and shoved it into the deep pocket of the coat, as far as it would go.
“There,” she said.
“Hammer,” Nate said, nodding. “Great. Let’s take our hammer to the woods.”
The door was locked from the inside, so she turned the key and stepped out into the cold.
The air was thick was moisture and the smell of leaves and vegetation. The moon was heavy and bright, spilling milky light over the land. They almost didn’t need their flashlights. Also, they had experience with being in the woods at night. Ellingham Academy was in the woods on a Vermont mountaintop, much more remote than Merryweather. And they’d spent the summer in the woods looking into a murder. This wasn’t all woods anyway—this was countryside. The tree line broke at points, revealing sprawling fields and lawns and bits of wall.
These were all points Stevie ran through her mind as she gripped the handle of the hammer. It was fine, though. She was pretty sure of it.
They walked down the gravel-and-dirt drive, which was maybe a quarter of a mile long, until they reached the very sturdy wooden entrance gate, which was at least six feet high. She consulted the photos on her tablet. It looked to be the same one, or very similar.
“This gate closes automatically,” she said. “It’s electric. When the power went out at two thirty that morning, the gate would stop working. It would have to have been pried open, which it wasn’t. The road just beyond this gate was blocked off from three thirty to seven thirty in the morning to fix the power. There’s basically no way anyone came here with a car or van. So what do these burglars do? Walk all night in a torrential rainstorm to get here?”
“Maybe?” Nate said.
“And no one sees them? Not any of the many people running around the grounds? Just Rosie and Noel, and only at the woodshed? But there’s a problem with that as well. Let’s just say you’re Rosie and I’m a burglar. You discover me or I discover you. I could just run away, but okay, I freak out. I grab an axe. I kill you.”
Stevie mimed this with the hammer, perhaps a little too closely for Nate’s liking.
“I’ve killed you. Oh shit. My bad. What do I do? I should run now. I don’t run. I bury you in wood. I break the glass lightbulb sometime around here, so I guess I’m still waving the axe around? Why? Whatever. I take so long that someone else shows up. Again. I don’t run. I kill them.”
She mimed with the hammer from farther away this time, making token gestures.
“I bury the second person. Why am I waiting around?”
“Rain?” Nate offered. “I mean, it’s not a great reason . . .”
Stevie shook her head.
“And these geniuses who walked in the rain to steal a few weed plants and end up committing double murder manage to avoid being seen by anyone else. Except, Sooz says she saw a flashlight go past the window of the sitting room, but the police just disregard her because she was drunk and because it doesn’t fit what they clearly wanted it to fit. And all of it ignores the hard facts that Rosie knew something was wrong and must have seen this article about Samantha Gravis, which appeared in the paper that very morning. No.”
She shook her head. Now she was more certain than ever.
“This has an order to it. Samantha Gravis. Rosie. Noel. One leads to the other. Problem leads to problem.”
“I know an old woman who swallowed a fly,” Nate said.
“What?”
“You know that song? We sang it in kindergarten. It’s about the old woman who swallowed a fly. And then she swallows a spider to catch the fly and keeps swallowing progressively bigger crap to deal with the last thing she swallowed.”
Stevie turned and started walking back. On their right was woods, and on the left, trees and low wall and the opening of the great lawn. As they got nearer to the house, Stevie turned in that direction, climbing over the short bit of stone wall and walking on the grass toward the small pond and the folly. To get there, they had to cross the slender stream that went through the property, but it was only about two feet wide and a few inches deep where they were and could be managed with a single stride.