“What’s that?” Mary Alice asked, peering at the emptiness.
“That blank space represents what we don’t know yet. We’ll get there.”
The ice cream helped settle everybody’s mood, but the wine did the heavy lifting. By the time we’d finished off two bottles of extremely bad Rioja, we were feeling much chummier.
“God, this wine is terrible,” Helen said, pouring out the last of it. She upended the bottle, looking for any stray drops.
“It’s getting the job done,” I told her.
Natalie took the bottle and looked at the label. “Monos Muertos. What does that mean?”
“Dead Monkeys,” I answered, pushing my glass away. “We’ve been drinking dead monkey wine.”
Natalie shrieked and dropped the bottle.
“It’s not made from dead monkeys,” Mary Alice said. “It’s a marketing gimmick.”
“It’s nasty,” Natalie answered.
“Not as nasty as that bathroom upstairs,” I said. “We’ll need to get that sorted out so we can at least shower without worrying about tetanus or Lyme or rabies.”
“None of which they have in the British Isles,” Helen said. She sighed. “I know the house is a shambles and it’s freezing and I’m ninety percent sure there’s a dead rat under my bed upstairs, but I am still glad we came back. I’ve missed this place.”
We looked around the kitchen. When Natalie had been looking for plates, she’d found a stash of jam jars and stuck candles in a dozen of them. She’d clustered them on the mantelpiece, next to an aggressively ugly cuckoo clock, a china shepherdess with most of her fingers broken off so she was flipping the bird, and a basket of dingy wool balls stuck with a pair of vicious-looking knitting needles. But the candlelight had softened the cracked walls and the dirty windows and the fire Mary Alice had kindled in the fireplace had warmed the room and made it seem almost cozy.
Draining the last of her wine, Helen grabbed a fresh marker from the pack—a juicy green that smelled like watermelon—and went back to the wall. problems, she lettered neatly.
We worked through the night, going over the plan and back again. Günther, blessedly, was a creature of habit. He always did a post-holiday detox at his favorite health spa. A few clicks around their website and we had all the information we needed, including a map of the property and a smiling photo of the spa staff in plain black scrubs—austere and businesslike.
By the time dawn worked its grey light through the kitchen windows, we were finished. The details had been plotted out on the murder wall, as Natalie had taken to calling it. We stepped back and surveyed it, plugging various holes and running the plan backwards and forwards until it was smooth as butter in a Texas summer.
“Holy shit,” Mary Alice said, eyes skimming the wall. “I think it’s going to work.”
“Damned straight.” I grinned at her.
“We just have to decide who’s running point,” Natalie said.
Mary Alice raised her hand. “Me.”
She had her stubborn face on and I understood why. If she could get out there and do something about the situation we were in, it would go a long way towards making her feel like she was getting her life back.
We all nodded agreement and she went on. “Helen, we’ll need a second pair of hands—”
“I’ll do it.” I cut Mary Alice off quickly.
Natalie spoke up. “I think that should be up to Helen.”
“I don’t. I said I’ll do it,” I countered.
“Jesus, what did you have for breakfast? A bowl of Honey Bunches of Bitch?” Natalie grumped.
Helen put a hand to her arm. “It’s fine. If Billie wants it, she should do it.”
“I do.” Nobody argued. I wasn’t about to rat Helen out for losing her nerve in Jackson Square, but I wasn’t willing to gamble the success of this mission either. She could take a back seat until she’d proved herself.
Our plan meant another errand run and a fair bit of preparation. I started with the jar I’d unearthed in the garden shed—an old glass carboy that somebody must have kept for brewing cider or storing wine. I scrubbed it out with a long-handled brush and snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves. I filled the carboy with water from the outside tap and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, breaking off the filters. I used a knife to slit each of the cigarettes, carefully emptying the tobacco into the jar, watching the brown flakes swirl into the water. It was oddly relaxing, disemboweling each cigarette into the carboy. A few of the hardier birds were singing and the winter sunshine was the color of a pale lemon. I might have even whistled a few bars of “American Pie” as I gave the sludge in the jar a good shake and covered it. I set it in a bright patch on the step like I was making sun tea. I would bring it in at sundown and set it on the back of the stove to keep it warm, steeping it as carefully as the best top-leaf Earl Grey.