Kate chuckled. “Any new developments on the case since we talked yesterday?” she asked.
“Not that I can say,” Nick hedged, not telling her about the DNA results they’d received late yesterday afternoon.
She stopped. “So, there is something.”
“There might be, but I’m not in the habit of blurting out details of a murder case to a random dog walker-slash-suspect in said case.”
Kate caught the note of teasing in his voice, but his words made her stomach flip. “I’m still a suspect?”
“Until we solve this case, everyone is a suspect,” he said, tilting his head toward an elderly woman making her way down the street with a walker. “Her, for example.”
Kate muffled a laugh. “I thought of something, actually, about that ninety-year-old nightgown,” she said.
“Did you, now?”
“I did,” Kate said. “It’s got to be vintage. I was thinking—since Anderson Mills was based here in Wharton, the thrift shop on Front Street might have carried the nightgown. Our woman might have bought it there. Somebody might remember her.”
“Not bad sleuthing, Miss Marple.” He grinned. “But unfortunately, no. They have carried some items from Anderson, but not for a long time. And nobody there recognized the woman in the photo or the nightgown she was wearing.”
Kate felt her spirits drop. “So you’ve been there already. I was going to stop in after breakfast.”
“Beat you to the punch, I’m afraid,” Nick said. “It’s good when the detectives are one or two steps ahead of the suspects, as a rule.”
Kate stopped. “You don’t really believe I had anything to do with this, do you?”
Nick gave her a sidelong glance. “In my gut, no,” he said. “And neither does Queenie, in case you were wondering about that. But, like I said—”
“I know, I know, everyone is a suspect until you solve the case,” Kate said.
“And now, I’ve got to get back to it,” he said. “Nice to see you again, Kate Granger.”
He set off, Queenie at his heels, but he turned back toward Kate. Walking backward a few steps, he said, “Maybe I’ll see you out here walking your dog again sometime soon.”
Kate could feel the heat rising to her cheeks. “Maybe!” she called, holding up a hand to wave. And then she turned back toward the inn, walking with a buoyancy in her step that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She found Simon sitting at a table by the window in the dining room with a breakfast of goat cheese frittata, sausage, and steaming coffee, along with two mimosas.
“You are a very bad man,” Kate laughed, taking one of the flutes.
“Thought you could use a little hair of the dog,” Simon said. “I know I could. Head. Ache. I should know better. Red-wine hangovers will kill you.”
“Last night was fun.” Kate smiled and sat down. They squeezed each other’s hands. Kate was impossibly glad to be in Wharton with Simon. It had been much too long since they had really spent time together. Five years too long.
“Listen, I’ve had an idea,” Simon said. “You know we’re planning to tackle that third-floor restoration project this winter. A ton of old boxes are up there that I just haven’t had a chance to get to. I want to sift through them and find any suitable photographs or artwork or other things to display. You know I like to use original things from the house to decorate.”
“And?”
“And I’d love your help with that. Since you’re planning on staying in town awhile, I thought maybe I could steal you for the rest of the day. Maybe two.”
“I’d love that!” Kate cried. She could think of no better way to spend time than combing through old family heirlooms and artifacts of the past. Just the thing to take her mind off the present. “I haven’t been up to that third floor since we were kids.”
The cousins shared a grimace. When visiting their grandparents, young Kate and Simon had feared the third floor. The house had been inhabited by elderly people for so many years that the third floor, with the steep staircase leading up to it, had long since fallen into disrepair. It was dark, dusty, and filled with the ghosts of the past—more so than either child realized—and as such, was a perfect haven for goose-bumped childhood exploration.
One of their favorite games was a variation of “chicken.” Hand in hand, Kate and Simon would creep up the dark staircase, knowing that a ghastly portrait, propped haphazardly against a trunk, awaited them when they reached the top. It was the image of a particularly stern woman wearing a black dress and veil, like some sort of haunted bride of the dead. Neither child knew that it was a portrait of Celeste’s mother, who was hanging on to a peculiar dislike of the Connor children and their presence in a house she still regarded as her daughter’s and her daughter’s alone.
The game was to see who could endure the gaze of the “lady in black” the longest. Usually it ended seconds after it began, with Simon and Kate flying—shrieking, breathless, hearts pumping—down the stairs, back to the normalcy and safety of their grandmother’s welcoming home. One day, however, the game went differently.
As Simon beat the well-worn path down the stairs, Kate remained in the room, unable to move, transfixed by the portrait’s gaze. Mysterious and threatening as it was to a nine-year-old girl, the woman’s flat image on the canvas—her dark, hollow eyes penetrating the veil; her stern countenance; her black dress; all of it—seemed to animate, there, before Kate’s wide eyes.
Kate heard the words, clear and forbidding.
“Get out. Get out of this house.”
Frozen to the spot, Kate gasped but could not take in any air. She felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Kate tried to take a breath, and then another, then another, but nothing entered her lungs.
She found her feet and flew down the stairs in an instant, screaming in the high-pitched way that only young girls can manage, knocking Simon down when, it seemed, a full lifetime later, she finally reached the bottom.
“You win,” Simon said, simply.
“I don’t want to go up there again.” Kate was gasping, finally able to take a breath, feeling as though she had been nearly suffocated.
And that was the end of their third-floor games.
Now, with decades of sense and reason between her and that otherworldly experience, she was anxious to see what secrets the third floor held.
Kate took a bite of her breakfast. “I had intended to start trying to find more information about my mystery woman today, but, hey, Addie can wait.”
Simon looked at her for a long while. “What did you say?”
“When?” Kate was confused.
“Just now. What did you say?”
“I said that I was going to delve into this mystery today, but it can wait,” Kate said.
“No, you didn’t say that.” Simon’s eyes were wide. “I think you said, ‘Addie can wait.’ Who’s Addie?”
Kate was silent, searching her brain. “I have no idea,” she said, finally. “I wasn’t thinking. I just said it.”
Simon finished his mimosa in a gulp and set the flute down on the table. “Okay, that’s really weird.” He was excited. The two sat staring at each other. “Katie, do you think that’s her name? Your woman’s name?”