“Wow…!” Ghaliya murmured, turning on her heel to take in the whole room. “Old houses are so cool. Guess you found her will, huh?”

  “I think it’s in one of these folders.” I waved my hand over the top of the knee-high pile.

  “What’s in the notebooks?”

  I looked down at the book open on my knees. “A diary. Journal. A daybook. There’re all sorts of things in the books I’ve flipped through.”

  Ghaliya sat on the edge of the other wingchair, balanced the crackers on one knee and blew on the mug of tea. “Like what?”

  I read aloud the section of the journal I had been reading when Ghaliya came in.

  Ghaliya screwed her face up in a comical expression, then sipped the tea. She hissed at the heat, then said, “Nanna thought she was a witch, or something?”

  “I’m not sure. The bits I’ve read are full of talk about spells and stuff, but she often calls them ‘recipes,’ like she was experimenting in the kitchen.”

  “But magic isn’t real. Cooking is.”

  “And that’s the way Nanna was dealing with this stuff. She was trying out recipes, to see which one worked.” I looked down at the diary again, at the smear of ink on the corner, and on the left page, a darker spot where the wood the paper was made out of hadn’t been properly pulped, leaving a sliver of actual wood buried in the page. It was a prosaic container for the strange world my mother had inhabited. But was that strangeness only in my mother’s mind?

  “Did she ever talk to you about spells when you spoke to her on the phone?” Ghaliya asked, almost as though she had been following my train of thought.

  “She talked about the inn, sometimes. About it being busy, or quiet, or the weather, or funny stories about the guests, but never a hint about any of this.” I touched the diary.

  “Nothing about the people here?”

  “No one we’ve met, so far, has a name I remember her speaking about. But she wrote about them in the notebooks.”

  “That’s strange, isn’t it?” Ghaliya bit into a cracker. “Most people talk about their friends.”

  “It never occurred to me that it was strange. The impression I always got from her was that she was busy and happy. And that was good enough for me.”

  “Happy…” Ghaliya grimaced. “Not everyone can say that about their life.”

  “Or just the period they’re living through,” I amended quickly. “Things change. They always change.” I did not want Ghaliya sinking into a mental trough just because her life looked bleak right now.

  I shifted the direction of the conversation. “Nanna seems to feel that she needed to protect the whole town, that it would be very bad if she didn’t.” I tapped the notebook.

  “When was that?”

  “The nineteenth of this month.”

  Ghaliya lowered the mug. “Two days before she died? What else did she say?”

  “This is the last entry.” I fanned through the pages left in the notebook. They were all blank.

  Ghaliya clutched the mug in both hands. “Do you think…maybe someone killed her because of this?”

  “Because she believed in magic and thought she must cast a spell to ward off evil spirits?” I had trouble even saying it aloud. My highly practical, relentlessly self-disciplined mother had never once during my childhood even hinted that she thought the fairy tales she told me were more than just stories. It just didn’t compute in my mind. It was as though she had come here and caught a disease that had permanently changed her. “It was just what Nanna believed,” I continued. “Why would anyone want to kill her for believing that? It’s harmless.”

  “Terrorists kill Americans for believing in democracy,” Ghaliya replied. “Maybe someone in this town feels like magic is a bad thing, enough to think of Nanna as an enemy.”

  I opened my mouth to dispute that harsh comparison. Then closed it, because in this narrow sense, she was right. I shut the notebook. “As there’s only nine other people in this town beside you and me, it shouldn’t take too much effort to figure out if that’s true.”

  “Nine people? But…all the houses…”

  “They’re empty, most of them. Hirom lives in a shack in the woods, Frida lives in a room on the second floor, and Doctor Marcus and the mayor live in the two houses directly across the road from here. I’m still figuring out who everyone else is. There’s a Juda who built the network the town uses. Which reminds me. Give me your phone.”

  She fished her phone out of her back pocket and tossed it to me. I added the phone to the network and tossed it back.

  Ghaliya put the phone on the arm of the chair and went back to sipping tea.

  “I think we’ll have to stay a few more days,” I told her.

  She sighed. “I could see that coming.”

  “As soon as I’ve got everything settled, we’ll leave, I promise. But I need to get through all this.” I waved at the piles at my feet. “And I need to talk to the Sheriff’s office, and have Nanna taken care of.” The fact that she was in the bedroom, only a couple of dozen feet away from us, made me feel itchy and uneasy. Modern society is so used to the unpleasant facts of life all happening somewhere out of sight, taken care of by someone else. Bodies are sealed up and carried away, often before they grow cold. Few people outside the health industry ever saw a body that wasn’t cleaned, prepared and cosmetically enhance to remove the frank evidence of death.

  A mere hundred years ago, adults were exposed to more of the realities of life, but I felt a little lost and a lot more uncomfortable, having a body in the room next door.

  Ghaliya made a small, soft sound. Her face drained of color. She put the mug of tea on the floor and staggered to her feet, rushed past me and up the steps into her bedroom.

  The door didn’t swing all the way closed and thirty seconds later, I heard the distinct sound of retching.

  I got to my feet, stepped through the hillocks of paper and books and went to help.

  Chapter Twelve

  As Benedict Marcus had reported, Olivia did, indeed, have a car. A helluva car. It was a 1980 baby blue Lincoln Continental with a soft top, all square corners and lines, and as big as a whale.

  I couldn’t see a dab of rust anywhere, and the engine ran as smoothly as the sewing machine engine of my rented Ford Focus, but with the deeper note that promised there was a lot more where that came from. I had a feeling that if I got bogged in the snow on the way out to the highway, she would be able to tow the car out without too much effort.

  I followed Olivia in her absolutely unmistakable car all the way to Syracuse. She seemed to know exactly where she was going when we reached the city. She turned into the rental yard and drifted regally over to the visitor parking bays, while I pulled up in front of the office.

  Turning in the Focus took only a few minutes. I felt a touch of relief, once it was done. My credit card was a holdover from when I had been earning serious money and had an enviable credit limit. I could have kept the car for a good many more days. The problem, though, would be paying the card off later. Even the three days I’d rented the car created a balance I wouldn’t be able to clear all at once.

  I walked over to Olivia’s car. When I opened the door, warmth rolled over me. The inside of the car was toasty warm, and I slid onto the wide seat with gratitude.

  “You need a better coat,” Olivia observed, watching me shiver and thrust my boots under the dash, close to the heater vent. She wore a belted wool coat with huge lapels and padded shoulders. When she had got into the car, in the parking lot next to the inn, I’d noticed the flaring and very feminine hemline of the coat, and her fur-lined, heeled ankle boots with a touch of envy for both their quaint stylishness and their warmth.

  I told myself I wouldn’t be in New York long enough to worry about acquiring a warmer coat. Then I told Olivia the same thing, using more diplomatic words.

  She got the Continental going, and we were swiftly heading north on 81.

  I eyed the radio, then noticed that it was AM only. Out here on the highway, we’d likely pick up nothing but static. With a silent sigh, I braced myself for two hours of conversation. It seemed fair enough, considering how much Olivia had put herself out for me. And she would probably have to repeat this journey again in a few days’ time, to deliver Ghaliya and I to the airport.

  “Thank you for this, by the way,” I began. “I hadn’t realized how isolated Haigton Crossing is.”

  Olivia didn’t take her eyes off the road. She did take one hand off the massive steering wheel and wave it languidly. Even the skin on the back of her hands was a soft, pure white that looked like it had never seen the sun. “You’re not the first to misunderstand the Crossing.”

  “That probably explains why you know your way around Syracuse so well. You’ve had to bail out a lot of visitors.”

  “I am quite familiar with the route, yes.” Her perfect cupid’s bow mouth curved into a smile. She was wearing pink lipstick today, that went with the brown coat and beret.

  “Your husband doesn’t drive, then?”

  “Cars and mechanical things aren’t Wim’s forte.”

  I recalled him bending over trays of seedlings. “He’s a gardener?”

  Her smile grew even warmer. “Yes.”

  A small silence lengthened while I tried to think of something else to say. “Do you come to Syracuse to shop, then?”

  “Something like that.”

  I pressed my lips together, trying to come up with a response to that. Nope. I got nothing. So I found another line, instead. This time, the weather. “Will it snow any more before Christmas, do you think?”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s already more snow than I’ve ever seen in L.A.”

  “You get snow in Los Angeles?” Oliva was startled.

  “A couple of times that I remember as a kid. An inch, which was gone by nightfall. That was when I was just out of high school. Then in 2007. And they’re saying we’ll have snow this year, too, but I’m not holding my breath. Does Haigton Crossing get a lot of snow?”

  “It depends on the year,” Olivia said unhelpfully.

  I gave another mental sigh. I’d been paid very good money to keep pleasant conversations going with reluctant clients, but Olivia was clearly going to be a challenge.

  Over the next ninety minutes, I tried to put her at ease and open up the conversation. She resisted every effort.

  She wasn’t rude about it. She didn’t refuse to speak. She responded to every question. Her replies were warm, and sometimes delivered with a little laugh, but they were all effectively dead ends.

  Was she doing it deliberately? I couldn’t tell. She didn’t seem to be thinking her answers through at all. Yet they emerged, heavy anchors that drowned the conversation.

  Finally, I tried a direct enquiry that would, hopefully, give me more to build a response upon. “Does Wim like coming to the city? Or does he love his garden too much to stir out of Haigton Crossing?”

  “Wim has never seen a city,” Olivia said, her tone distant. She was turning off one of the minor highways onto the route that would take us to Edwards, concentrating on steering the big car cleanly onto the new route. “Certainly not with me.”

  “Why not with you?”

  “It’s not permitted.” She straightened up the car, driving more slowly along the narrower route, then glanced at me. “I mean, he won’t permit it. Wim loves the Crossing too much.”

  She’s lying. The silent voice spoke with flat certainty in my mind.

  I grappled with the odd statements. Wim wasn’t permitted to see the city while in Olivia’s company? Who got to dictate that strange rule, then?

  I was still thinking it over when we reached the turnoff for Haigton Crossing.

  “You must think I’m a little strange,” Olivia said, speaking over the shushing noise the snow was making around the tires of the Continental. “I myself haven’t lived in a big city for many years. We’ve got used to our own ways.”

  She wasn’t exactly lying, but there were vast unspoken truths behind her words, casting shadows.

  Olivia spoke again. “Of course, you probably won’t be taking Ghaliya to the city, either.”

  I stared at her, utterly unnerved. “What?”

  Olivia gave me a wave of her white hand. “Never mind. I could be quite wrong. It’s early days yet.”

  I shivered, despite the warmth in the big car, and couldn’t find a single thing to say for the rest of the ride back to the town. Every question that I wanted to ask sounded insane. Besides, Olivia was too good at killing nosy questions stone dead.

  And I wasn’t sure I wanted answers, anyway.

  ●

  Olivia didn’t park in the parking lot beside the inn, this time.

  When we reached the intersection, she put on the indicator to turn left and glanced prudently left and right.

  So did I, but I was curious, not safety minded. The greenway stretched to the left and right, a narrow road covered in weeds and moss and small patches of snow, with tress growing to either side whose canopies met overhead, forming tunnels of dim light.

  Olivia turned the car onto the greenway, driving alongside her house’s side fence.

  The greenway was rough under the wheels. We bounced and jolted over corrugations that I suspected were years old.

  Olivia turned the car into a driveway at the back of the house and stopped in front of the closed door of a garage. The door was an old one that looked as though it lifted up in one flat piece.

  I got out of the car with a good degree of gratitude. I had too much to think about and I suddenly wanted to see Ghaliya, to make sure she had survived the morning. And I was hungry.

  I thanked Olivia again as she moved around the long square hood of the car. She paused at the nose and nodded. “You will do the same for any of us, I’m sure.”

  I shivered again and pulled the coat in around me, turned and headed for the intersection. There was no sidewalk and I walked through untouched snow, my boots making it crunch. Right at the corner of the intersection was a sign post I’d not noticed until now. Approaching it, I could see two of the signs. Main Street pointed to the west, and Route 224 pointed to the east.

  Curious, I stopped next to the post to check the other two signs. Both said Haig Way, one pointing north, the other south. This pair of signs, though, were not the same as the other two, which looked modern and normal. These signs were white, with black lettering, and the letters looked slightly uneven.

  Had someone in the Crossing made them? I didn’t think Haig Way was a gazetted, formal road, so a federal authority wouldn’t issue signs….

  Haig Way.

  I pulled out my phone. With the town network, I could get a fast answer. I plugged “Haig” into Google, and got a lot of earls and lords and people with the last name of Haig.

  I’d had a morning of non-answers, so I mentally rolled up my sleeves. I pulled up an etymological dictionary and typed in “haig” again and got another earl.

  I didn’t give up, but I became aware that I was shivering and this time, it was from the cold.

  I put my phone away, crossed over to the inn and went inside.

  There were people here, more than when I had left this morning. I could hear more than one conversation in the bar. I peered up the wide stairs and contemplated heading up to check on Ghaliya. Instead, the buzz of conversation drew me like a moth to the flame.

  I ducked under the curtain and stepped into the bar.

  The same four local men, Wim and Benedict included, sat at the table by the fireplace. They were talking quietly, and shooting glances toward the other occupants of the bar.

  Six men and two women had pulled three of the tables together, and were sitting around the table, drinking and talking. It wasn’t their first drink, for glass mugs with beer froth clinging to their sides were scattered over the tables, along with many cracked peanut shells. Their conversation was at a volume that said they’d relaxed.

  All eight of them looked perfectly normal. Excessively so. None of them were overweight. None of them was skinny or weak looking, either. They looked exceptionally fit, and their faces were tanned, telling me they spent a lot of time outdoors.

  I thought I had them pegged and went over to the bar, where Hirom was pouring another round of eight mugs of beer. The tap didn’t seem to be flowing fast, and he kept shooting glances over his shoulder toward the eight.

  “Hey, Hirom,” I said softly. “Hikers?”

  He actually looked relieved to see me. “Ms. Anna.” He put a full mug on the tray next to two others, hooked down another mug and moved back to the barrels.

  “What’s up?” I asked, moving along the counter so that we could speak quietly.

  “These folk want lunch. And I can’t break off here to get so much as a sandwich. They’re drinking too fast.”

  “Tell them the kitchen’s closed due to the death of the owner,” I said with a touch of stiffness I hadn’t intended.

  Hirom looked contrite. “Sorry. But these aren’t the type of folk you say no to. Not with Broch in the room.”

  I blinked. “Who’s Brock?”

  “Broch,” he repeated, but he made the end of the name sound like a Scotsman would say it and nodded toward the table of locals by the fire.

  I looked at the four men. Benedict, I knew. And Wim. That just left the other two. One of them was a gorgeous looking man in his thirties, with middle eastern features, glossy black hair, black eyes, and a well trimmed beard that outlined his sharp jaw and framed his face.

  He wasn’t looking at the new arrivals at all. He seemed to be staring off into the middle of nowhere, his mind far away.

  The last one at the table was the well-dressed man with broad shoulders, dark blond hair and very blue eyes. He had a tankard in front of him but he wasn’t drinking. He was, I realized, watching the visitors with a brooding wariness.