For at least a full minute, Judith stood in the hallway, thinking hard. She had been certain that the person wearing high heels at Norway General was Winifred, coming to see Angela. She had ruled out Eugenia, who always wore sensible shoes, and Ellie, who preferred sandals and sneakers. The idea that Winifred had wanted to ensure Angela’s silence concerning the source of Bruno’s cocaine addiction was out the window.

  She considered going upstairs to see what was happening on the guest floor. But she didn’t really want to know. Besides, she was leery of overdoing it with her hip. The first order of business was almost as painful as the fire itself: She had to call Ingrid Heffelman to change the current set of reservations.

  With a heavy sigh, Judith looked at the calendar on the wall above the computer. She hadn’t flipped the page to November. Saying good-bye to Sculptor’s Studio, she stared at the new painting. It was Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Born 1892 in Anamosa, Iowa, the tag line read, he taught in the Cedar Rapids public schools and later was an artist in residence at the University of Iowa. Wood was strongly influenced by German and Flemish painters of the…

  Judith’s brain was going into overdrive, but was short-circuited by the voice of Battalion Chief Ramirez, who was calling from the entry hall.

  “Everything’s under control,” he said, pulling off his heavy gloves. “We’ll come by later today to check things out and see what help we can offer once your husband has finished talking to your insurance agent.”

  Judith thanked the firefighter, then waited on the porch until the hoses were rolled up and the fire truck drove away. A small white sedan was pulled up to the curb by the Rankerses’ driveway. Something about the vehicle chafed at her memory, but she shrugged it away. Small white cars were as common as the autumn fog. My brain’s in a fog, she thought. Rarely had she felt so low in her mind.

  As the firefighters disappeared out of the cul-de-sac, Judith heard a sound just off the porch on the other side of the Weigela bush. Walking down the steps, she turned the corner and peered through the fog.

  A gray-clad figure appeared like a wraith out of the mists. Judith stood very still, her heart in her mouth. Then, as the figure came closer, recognition dawned.

  “Mrs. Izard!” Judith exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  Meg Izard clutched at her imitation-leather purse with one hand and held the felt picture-frame hat in place with the other. “Just passing by on our way out of town,” she said, her usually cold gaze showing a spark of life. “I didn’t think anybody was home. Walt and I saw somebody leave the house. We thought it was you. What’s going on with the firemen?”

  “A small fire,” Judith replied. “Guests are sometimes heedless.”

  “I’ll bet,” Meg said, looking away toward the Weigela.

  Judith retreated to the bottom of the porch steps. “Despite the problems we had with your reservation, do you plan on staying at Hillside Manor when you visit again?”

  “We’ll see about that,” Meg replied with a scowl. “The weather here’s dismal.”

  “September is lovely,” Judith said. “So is early October.”

  “September’s no good,” Meg said, adjusting the round felt hat before her hands tightened again on her purse. “We never miss the state fair.” She started to move past Judith on the walk.

  “Where’s Mr. Izard?” Judith asked, a hand on Meg’s arm.

  “He’s wandering around, having a smoke,” Meg replied. “You can’t smoke in these rental cars, you know.”

  “We permit smoking,” Judith said. “Why don’t you come in for a few minutes? The fog’s supposed to lift soon. Then driving will be safer, especially in an unfamiliar city.”

  “Well…” Meg flexed her fingers on the black purse. “I’ll come in for a bit. Never mind Walt. He’s happy just moseying around outside.”

  Judith led the way into the house. “Have a seat at the dining-room table,” she offered.

  But Meg went straight into the kitchen, where she fumbled with her purse.

  “Would you prefer sitting in here?” Judith inquired.

  “No. Just give me a minute to catch my breath.” She stood by the sink, looking down. After almost a full minute, she turned and followed Judith into the dining room. Meg sat down with her purse in her lap and her shabby gray coat unbuttoned. “I take cream,” she announced.

  “Fine,” Judith said, going back into the kitchen. She fixed Meg’s coffee and poured a glass of orange juice for herself. “Are you headed for the airport?” she inquired when she was seated at the big oak table.

  Meg nodded. “We got a flight out at two. If the fog lifts.”

  “It should,” Judith said. “So you always attend the Iowa State Fair,” she remarked in a casual tone.

  “Haven’t missed it since I was two,” Meg answered with a hint of pride. “Best fair in the Midwest.”

  “Do you and Walt own a farm?” Judith asked.

  “A small one, just outside Riceville.” The corners of Meg’s thin mouth turned down. “Walt’s dad sold out to one of those combines years ago. They cheated Mr. Izard. Now we’ve only got some chickens, a couple of cows, and a cornfield. It’s been a struggle, believe me.”

  “Farming certainly has changed,” Judith remarked. “But you must do okay. I mean, you and Walt are able to take vacations like this one.”

  “First time since our honeymoon,” Meg said, with her usual sour expression. “We wouldn’t have done it now except it’s our silver wedding anniversary. That, and with—” She stopped abruptly, her thin shoulders tensing under the worn wool coat.

  Recalling Walt Izard’s gaunt frame, Judith gently posed a question. “Is your husband ill?”

  Meg scowled at Judith. “No. Why do you ask? It’s none of your beeswax.”

  “That’s true,” Judith admitted. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m interested in people. Sometimes it gets me into awkward situations.”

  Meg’s face softened slightly. “Well…you can’t do much about serious sickness. Trouble is, the doctors can’t either. Folks like us can’t afford big-city specialists like some.”

  “Maybe not,” Judith responded, then paused before speaking again. “Shall I tell you a story?”

  “A story?” Meg wrinkled her long nose. “Why do I want to hear a story?” But a flicker of interest kindled in her eyes.

  “You’ll want to hear this story,” Judith said, placing her elbows on the table and leaning closer to her guest. “It’s about a young girl from a small town in Iowa who fell in love with a romantic young man.”

  Meg tensed, her hands tightening on the purse in her lap. But she said nothing. In Judith’s mind’s eye, she tried to picture the thin, haggard woman across the table as a young girl—the girl in the photograph that lay between the pages of The Gasman.

  “This young man had a vivid imagination,” Judith continued, “and he wooed her with all the passion of his creative nature. Unfortunately, the girl got pregnant. Her family insisted on a wedding. Since the young man had roots in the area, he gave in, and they were married. His bride made the mistake of believing he’d keep his vows. She trusted him, even if she thought his ambitions were out of reach. She couldn’t understand why farm life in Iowa didn’t suit him. But he had bigger dreams, and moved on, leaving her behind.” Judith paused, recalling the lock of hair. She looked Meg right in the eye. “What happened to that baby, Mrs. Izard?”

  Meg sat stony-faced for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her lips scarcely moved. “He was stillborn. My so-called husband had already left me. I named the poor baby Douglas, after my father. We buried him next to Pa in the family plot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Judith said softly. “Do you have other children?”

  Meg shook her head. “I couldn’t. Something went wrong at the time of the birth.”

  Now it was Judith’s turn to be silent. The fog seemed to permeate the kitchen, like a sad, gray pall. “Your first husband took something else besides your happiness, didn’t he?” she finally asked.

  Meg sat up very straight. “You mean…the book?”

  Judith nodded. “That’s what you came for earlier this morning, isn’t it? The book. Your copy of the book.”

  Meg’s jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly. “That Best woman—she was the one who all but stole it from us.”

  “Not your personal copy, though,” Judith put in. “Bruno took it with him when he left you, didn’t he?”

  “I could have killed him right then and there,” Meg declared. “Pa’s book was his monument. It was all that we had left of him, except for the manuscript he never finished. And no one would buy that one from us. Foolishly, we let the copyright on The Gasman run out in 1985. We thought, what’s the use? There was never more than the one printing. Then Bruno…” She spat out his name as if it were tainted with gall. “Then he used the book to make this big, big movie. Winifred Best had gotten hold of the rights for him. Walt and I couldn’t believe it when we saw it on a TV show about Hollywood. Millions of dollars. And we were practically on food stamps. After all those years—thirty-one, to be exact—that son of a bitch uses Pa’s book to make himself even more rich and famous.”

  “You never forgave Bruno, did you?” Judith asked quietly.

  Meg shook her head decisively. “Never. How could I? He ruined my life, he destroyed my future, he stole Pa’s book. It ate at me, like a cancer.”

  “Cancer,” Judith repeated. “You have cancer, don’t you?”

  Meg’s body jerked in the chair. “How do you know?”

  “I found a piece of label from a prescription bottle in Bruno’s room the morning after he died,” Judith said. “It was for thalidomide. If it wasn’t for Bruno and it wasn’t for Walt, then it had to be for you. I’d heard that the drug was being used again, this time for cancer patients. Thalidomide has proved effective in retarding end-stage cancers. I think that scrap of label was dropped when you were exploring the upstairs. You didn’t notice because you were too busy destroying Angela’s costume and putting the rubber spider in Bruno’s bed.”

  Meg’s gaze dropped along with her shoulders. “That medicine helps. But it doesn’t cure. I’ve got blood cancer. Multiple myeloma, if you want to put a fancy name to it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Judith said, feeling as if she had to apologize for too many tragedies in Meg’s life. “When you learned Bruno was premiering his movie here in town, it must have come as a shock to discover that he and his company were registered at the same B&B you’d chosen.”

  “Not really,” Meg said on a weary sigh. “It figured. Our first trip in twenty-five years, and somehow Bruno managed to foul it up for us. I guess that was the last straw. It was right after that when I found out about the cancer.”

  The damp air seemed to seep into Judith’s skin; she felt faintly chilled. The ticking of the schoolhouse clock sounded unnaturally loud in her ears. For all she knew, Meg had a gun in her purse. It seemed heavy, judging from the way Meg held it. Judith braced herself before asking the next question. “Did you intend to kill Bruno?”

  Meg smirked before speaking. “Of course I did. I’d wished him dead every day of my life. But then I saw him again, after so many years.” She looked away and bit her lip. “I had to talk to him, to tell him what a skunk he was, to make him give me back my book. And of course money from him would have been nice. I don’t know how Walt will manage without me. He hasn’t been the same since the farming went bad.” She looked away, into the corner of the dining room, with its quaint washstand, porcelain ewer, and pitcher. Judith thought the sight must have reminded the other woman of home.

  “Bruno was so snotty to me,” Meg went on, “so mean, like he was after we were married. When I first began to show with the baby, he called me Spider Woman. He said that with the big belly and my scrawny long arms and legs, I reminded him of a spider.”

  “How cruel,” Judith said with a shake of her head. “Bruno sounds as if he was held captive by his ego, even then.”

  “He was nice only in the beginning,” Meg said, “when he was trying to seduce me. I was so green. I’d never met anyone like him.”

  Judith started to reach out to comfort Meg, but thought better of it. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “You were a farm girl from a small town. He was in search of his Iowa roots, and already had the aura of Southern California about him.” She paused, knowing that Meg had a need to talk about the confrontation with Bruno. “Night before last must have been very hard when you finally faced him again.”

  “It was and it wasn’t,” Meg responded, her sharp features hardening even more. “I was glad that when I finally saw him, he was feeling miserable. How the mighty have fallen, I thought to myself. But then he got nasty. When Bruno went to take some pills he had in his hand, he opened the cupboard by the sink to fetch a glass. Then he dropped one of the pills. When he bent down to get it, he reared up so fast that he banged his head on the cupboard door and knocked himself silly. He fell right into the sink with all that water in it. For a second I thought I should haul him out.” Her face twisted with bitterness. “Then I thought, to hell with him. He never cared about me, why should I care about him? So I held his head under the water until he stopped flailing around. Then I put the spider over the sink and left.” Meg’s pallor had a strange glow. She’d won the final battle with Bruno.

  For a long time neither woman spoke. Judith forced herself not to look in the direction of Meg’s purse.

  “Your brother, Will,” Judith said at last, recalling the information on the Internet. “You mentioned at some point that he lives here. He’s William Euclid Carp, isn’t he?” Silently, she cursed herself. She’d never thought of looking up Carp in the phone book.

  Meg nodded. “He moved out this way a couple of years ago. He couldn’t stand trying to make a living selling farm equipment anymore. The market had fallen out of that, too. I figured that this trip would be my last chance to see him. Will was real pleased. But sad. I’d asked him to scout out this place so we could find it without running around all over a strange city. By then, we’d been displaced, and knew from you that Bruno was coming here for his big shindig.”

  “Ah!” Judith exclaimed softly. She couldn’t believe she’d been such a dunce. The tall, old-fashioned figure she’d seen alongside the house wasn’t Ben Carmody; it was William Euclid Carp. “But you were the pioneer woman at the party,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. American Gothic, Judith had thought the first time she’d met the Izards. Gothic, as in grotesque. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the calendar with the Grant Wood painting.

  “What else could I be?” Meg replied. “That was Great-Grandma Carp’s dress and bonnet I found a long time ago in the attic. I brought it with me. I couldn’t afford a fancy-dress costume. I’d heard about the ball on TV, and I figured I’d confront Bruno afterward at your B&B.”

  “Did Walt dress up?” Judith inquired. “I don’t recall seeing him at the party.”

  “He never came inside,” Meg said. “He and Will put together some makeshift costumes. Walt was a scarecrow. Will was a cowboy. Those were easy to do, after all the scarecrows we’ve had on the farm. Will had herded cattle for many years. He still had his boots and his vest and his cowboy hat. They didn’t blame me for what I’d done, but they fussed. They were afraid I’d be found out. Will was especially worried, so he and Walt tried to keep tabs on what was going on here after Bruno died.”

  So the witch wasn’t a witch, but a scarecrow, thought Judith. Another mistake she’d made, though understandable. In the fog, the pointed hat, the turned-up shoes, the ragged garments, the strawlike hair, and the fact that it was Halloween had made the illusion credible.

  “Who found the missing key to Hillside Manor?” Judith asked.

  “Walt.” Meg smiled thinly. “It was in your driveway. He picked it up on a…whim, I guess. I tried to use it this morning, but before I could make it turn right, some fat old bag came to the door.”

  Judith had another query for Meg. “Why did you hit Winifred Best and start the fire?”

  Meg’s jaw jutted. “I thought she had my book. She said she didn’t—Bruno had it. But that didn’t make sense. Bruno was dead, so where did it go? She swore she didn’t know. That’s when I hit her. Then I went all through her room, but I couldn’t find the book. I got mad.” Her eyes grew cold as marble. “I struck a match and set fire to the bedclothes. That woman may not have had my book on her, but she’s had Bruno all these years. It wasn’t fair.”

  Judith tried not to gape. Could Meg still love Bruno in spite of everything he’d done? Sometimes love and hate were so hard to distinguish. Maybe it was obsession. Yet Bruno Zepf had inspired love in several women, perhaps including Winifred Best.

  “And there was this,” Meg added, releasing the grip on her purse. She fumbled a bit before she held out a black rubber spider. “I came to leave this. Sort of a…what do you call it? A calling card, maybe.”

  “An epitaph,” Judith murmured. “Why did you put the other spiders in our freezer?”

  “Walt did that,” Meg said, looking askance. “Don’t ask why Walt does things. Sometimes I think he’s a little tetched. Losing his pa’s farm, you know.”

  Judith suddenly recalled another seemingly inexplicable incident. “And the truffles that were sent here?”

  “Truffles?” Meg scowled. “I don’t know what a truffle looks like.”

  “They’re kind of…disgusting,” Judith explained, “but they taste wonderful.”

  Meg continued scowling, then suddenly let out a sharp yip of laughter. “I sent Bruno a cowpie, straight off the farm.”

  “Oh!” Gertrude had been right to flush the parcel’s contents down the toilet. “I see.”

  Meg toyed with the spider for a moment, then pushed it across the table to Judith. “Here, you keep it as a souvenir. What are you going to do now, call the cops?”

  Judith gazed at the gray, gaunt face. Meg Izard was already condemned to death.

  “I have to,” she finally said.