I made myself look at the bed once more, where my mother lay.

  Ghaliya gripped my hand and squeezed painfully. I barely noticed.

  Thamina Crackstone nee Williams was in her seventies, I think. She had never told me her actual birthdate. She had found the reminders of age annoying and refused to acknowledge them. We had never celebrated her birthday when I was a child.

  But simple mathematics and the passing of years told me she had to be seventy, at least. The woman lying on the bed did not look seventy. Was that a trick of death? I’d never seen a dead body before and didn’t know. And it felt wrong to ask the question aloud.

  I made myself move closer to the bed, my heart thudding. Mom was wearing a white nightgown. At least I supposed it was, although it was longer than most I’d ever seen, and pooled around her ankles. Her feet were bare. They were long and narrow, for she had been a tall woman, too.

  Her hair had been arranged to either side of her and stretched down to her hips. The thick brown locks showed plenty of grey, but there was still an amazing amount of color there. It matched my own experience with fading color. I still did not color my hair, and only had a few fine grey hairs at the front. And it had always been thick and grew long quickly. But mine was to my waist, not my hips.

  I made myself look at her face. Her eyes were closed, and her jaw jutted up into the air. Her face was smooth, the flesh rising over the high cheekbones, looking almost stretched the way Ghaliya’s looked right now, with her hollow cheeks.

  “She looks like you, Mom,” Ghaliya whispered.

  “As do you, Miss Ghaliya,” Benedict replied softly, from my other side.

  Ghaliya blinked at that and returned her gaze to my mother’s still body.

  So did I. Details began to register. The thick plastic sheet my mother had been laid upon. And the rips and tears in the nightgown or robe or whatever it was she was wearing. The long chain and the pendant that hung from it, now resting on her chest below her breasts. The pendant was pewter or perhaps even iron, dark with age, and worn, but it was clearly the head of a deer, with large antlers.

  I studied the tears in my mother’s gown. They were tinged pink on the edges.

  “Is that…blood?” I asked, my throat strained.

  “Yes,” Benedict Marcus replied.

  I raised my hand to my throat.

  “She was stabbed?” Ghaliya asked, her voice high.

  “Yes,” Marcus repeated.

  “She was murdered…” I breathed.

  Chapter Six

  I turned away from the bed and moved blindly across the room. There was a chair beside a narrow door and I perched on the edge of it and let my head hang, while my breathing shortened and my heart slammed against my chest with sickly speed.

  “Mom?” Ghaliya asked, her voice thick with concern.

  “Ms…Anna?” Benedict Marcus added.

  I could hear them both moving toward me, and held up my hand. Grey flecks were clouding my vision. I had to get my breathing back under control and I couldn’t do that while I was talking.

  A hand, warm and large, rested on my shoulder. “I think your mother is having a panic attack,” Marcus told my daughter.

  “Why? What is scaring her?” Ghaliya voice was high, but strident and demanding.

  “She’s never had one before?” Marcus asked, his tone more concerned.

  “I…wouldn’t know,” Ghaliya said hesitantly. “We’ve lived apart for a few years….”

  I put my hands over my mouth and nose, to help with the breathing.

  “I think this is not the first time,” Benedict Marcus said, his hand squeezing my shoulder gently. “Your mother knows how to calm herself. Watch.”

  I hated that Ghaliya got to see me in this state. I didn’t give a damn about the doctor. He’d seen worse in his time, I was sure. But Ghaliya was watching her mother buckling under pressure and that was not an impression I wanted her to have, not of me.

  But worrying about it would not help me climb on top of this attack. I pushed the worry aside. I was very good at pushing worry aside, these days. And I focused on my breathing, on getting more oxygen into my lungs so the dizziness would pass and I could relax enough to take deeper breaths….

  Finally I could draw a deep, deep breath of cool, delicious air. I blew it out and straightened.

  Ghaliya stood with her arms crossed, a hand to her mouth, while she chewed on the ball of her thumb. Her eyes were wide.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. I looked at Marcus. “I’m good,” I added.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “How often?”

  “Too often,” I said crisply and got cautiously to my feet. “My mother didn’t die in this room, did she?”

  Benedict Marcus glanced at the bed. “No.”

  “She was moved, then. That’s…not standard procedure.” I moved back to the bed and steeled myself to study my mother once more. “Why wasn’t she left where she was found, so the police could examine the site?”

  “Because she was found in the middle of the intersection, out there,” Benedict Marcus said, behind me. “The one you drove through to get here.”

  I shivered. “I see.”

  “We took a lot of photos,” Marcus added. “Of everything.”

  I turned to him. “Let me see them.”

  He reached without hesitation into his trouser pocket and withdrew a phone. It was an older model, tiny compared to the monster phones we all had these days, but it could display images. He swiped a few times, then held it out to me. “They’re graphic,” he warned.

  But I was braced, now. I took the phone and turned it around. The first image showed my mother lying on asphalt, wearing the gown she wore now. Her hair was splayed around her, exactly the way it would if she had fallen backward onto the roadway.

  Her eyes were open in the photo. Someone had closed them since.

  The tears in her gown were the same as in the photo.

  “Why isn’t there more blood?” I asked. “She was stabbed. She must have bled a lot before…before she died.”

  “I believe she died very quickly,” Benedict Marcus said, his tone cool and businesslike. “Also, it snowed last night. The snow settled on…your mother, and rinsed the blood that was on the edges of the rips in the gown. Also…”

  I glanced at him, but he was checking Ghaliya. Ghaliya’s face was white.

  “Bathroom?” I said urgently.

  Benedict Marcus pointed to the narrow door beside the chair I had used.

  Ghaliya hurried to the door, pushed it open and closed it behind her.

  Benedict Marcus raised his brow at me. “I don’t think that was her version of a panic attack….” His tone was speculative.

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said unhelpfully. “The blood…?” I prompted him.

  He nodded and looked back at the bed. “The gown was raised from her flesh by her knee, so the blood ran freely beneath it, and pooled beneath her. The gown at the back is…very stained.”

  I glanced at the phone in my hand once more. My mother’s knees were drawn up and canted to one side, which had raised the gown from resting against her flesh.

  Now I understood the reason for the plastic sheet beneath her.

  I swallowed and drew in a few deep breaths, counting out my exhales. “Still, she shouldn’t have been moved,” I insisted pedantically. “The police, the coroner, they will be upset about it, when they get here. And why aren’t they here already?”

  “Things move a little differently in the Crossing,” Benedict Marcus said.

  “They have been called, haven’t they?” I asked sharply.

  “Yes. But it might take them a while to get here.”

  “For a murder?”

  “That will hurry them a little for certain,” Benedict Marcus said grimly. “But they’re usually not in a rush to come here.”

  No one goes to Haigton Crossing, the man at the gas station had said.

  It seemed that “no one” included the authorities, too.

  I shook my head in disbelief. No wonder they had moved the body.

  A toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened. Ghaliya dropped into the chair next to it with a heavy sigh.

  “When was my mother found?” I asked.

  Marcus nodded. “Six a.m., yesterday morning. She was last seen alive at eleven, the night before.”

  “But you didn’t phone me until late yesterday afternoon,” I pointed out.

  Marcus looked uncomfortable. “I couldn’t find your mother’s address book. Not for a long time. It wasn’t where I thought to look, at first.”

  Mom had refused to use a cell phone. She had used the landline here at the inn. I’d always had to ask for her, when I phoned, and wait for her to come to the phone.

  I swiped at the photo on Marcus’ phone, to look at the next one, which had been taken from further away, and showed more of the road around my mother. It was clearly the intersection I had just driven through. I couldn’t imagine leaving her lying there for a day and a half, either. But surely the police would arrive soon? In L.A., they would have been there within minutes. Surely, even in upstate New York, the police responded faster than this?

  Yet, they were still not here.

  I studied the photo. “Where is the knife that is in the photo?” I said sharply, only just now noticing the long, slim blade that lay about twenty inches from my mother’s side.

  “We don’t know,” Marcus said, his tone flat.

  “Do you recognize it?” I asked him. “Do you know who it belongs to?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “It’s mine.”

  My lips parted. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s my knife,” Benedict Marcus said calmly.

  “Holy shit…!” Ghaliya breathed, from behind us.

  I took a step back from him. It was purely involuntary.

  Marcus raised his hand, palm out. “Someone took it from my kitchen,” he said quickly. “My house is close to the crossing. It was convenient for whoever it was.”

  “They broke into your house and stole the knife?” I asked, disbelief making my voice rise.

  “They didn’t break in,” Benedict Marcus said with near-maddening calmness. “I don’t lock my doors.”

  “Really.” I didn’t bother hiding my incredulity.

  “Really.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a grim smile. “No one does, here. As you’ll find out, Ms… Anna, Haigton Crossing is different.”

  Chapter Seven

  I was aware of Benedict Marcus trailing me as I stalked into my mother’s sitting room. “Where is the damn phone?” I demanded.

  “It really won’t do you any good at all,” Benedict repeated.

  “Mom, listen to him!” Ghaliya called after me.

  “I am listening. He’s telling me the police have waited over thirty hours to tend to a homicide! I’m damn well phoning them and putting a cracker under their ass!” I whirled to face Marcus. “Phone!” I demanded.

  “It’s in the bar,” he said, with the tiniest of shrugs.

  I rolled my eyes and moved to the door out of the apartment, then down the stairs, around the newel post and down the main staircase to the ground floor. I could hear the two of them thudding down the stairs behind me.

  I strode into the bar, aware that proverbial steam was rising from me.

  The three men who had been sitting about the table by the fire were still there, and all three of them turned to examine me as I moved toward the bar. They’d clearly been filled in on who I was. Right then, I didn’t give a damn. I faced the barman, Hirom. “Where is the phone?” I demanded.

  He pointed to the corner of the bar closest to the front of the room. I turned and spotted an old-fashioned black phone with a rotary dial and the receiver resting on top of it.

  I stalked around the bar to the corner. A tall stool with arms and a back was tucked into the corner, clearly there for the convenience of whoever was using it.

  I pushed the stool out of the way and lifted the receiver. “What is the phone number for the police?” I said to Hirom.

  “Police?” He looked utterly confused and glanced behind me.

  Benedict Marcus cleared his throat. “There is no police force overseeing Haigton Crossing,” he said, his tone apologetic.

  “Then who do I speak to about this?”

  “St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “And the number?” I rapped out impatiently.

  “It really won’t do you any good,” Benedict Marcus said. His tone was still apologetic.

  “He’s right, ma’am,” Hirom said. He’d moved down his plank to the end of the bar where we all stood. “No one hurries the Sheriff’s department. They get here when they get here.”

  “That’s utterly outrageous! There’s been a murder!”

  “They’ll get here faster than they would normally,” Benedict Marcus assured me.

  “Best settle in and relax, ma’am,” Hirom added.

  I stared at him. “Give me the number, or I’ll fire you right here and right now.”

  He stared back at me. His eyes narrowed. Then, silently, he reached beneath the counter and bought out an actual, honest to goodness phonebook.

  I stared at the dusty volume. I don’t think I’ve seen a phonebook in years, and even then, it was a curled up moldy stack of brown pages in the bottom of a Dumpster.

  I pulled the phonebook over to me, and opened the front cover. The last phonebook I’d ever owned had a list of emergency numbers at the front. Sure enough, this one did, too. Including the non-emergency phone number for the Sheriff’s Department.

  I dialed the number while Hirom, Marcus and Ghaliya all watched me with silent fascination. It took a couple of numbers to get used to the rotary dialer. It had been a while since I’d used one.

  With a series of clicks and buzzes, the call went through and was answered promptly by a pleasant male with a tenor voice. “St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “I want to speak to the officer in charge of the homicide investigation at Haigton Crossing.”

  “At where, ma’am?”

  “Haigton Crossing,” I repeated.

  Silence.

  “You do know where that is, don’t you?”

  “I…ah, yes, next to the forest, I think,” he answered. “It’s just…”

  “We’re talking about homicide,” I told him. “Surely someone in your department is interested in that?”

  “I…just a moment, I’ll put you through.”

  The phone went dead. There was no awful music. Just silence.

  I refused to look at everyone watching me. I had a feeling that even the three men at the table by the fire were listening hard, too. But I didn’t care. This situation would be dealt with right now. Screw the small-town pace that things normally got handled with. This was murder. This was my mother.

  Someone would pay for this.

  “Captain Glass speaking.” The tone was gruff. Not quite a baritone, but nearing it.

  “Captain Glass, my name is Anna Crackstone. I’m in Haigton Crossing.”

  “Where, ma’am?”

  “Haigton Crossing.”

  “Oh…yes. Right. Go on.”

  I shook my head a little. “My mother was murdered here, the night before last. When, exactly, do you intend to investigate this?”

  The silence held for two of my heartbeats. “We’re giving it our top priority, ma’am.”

  “What sort of priority can it be, if you haven’t yet investigated the scene?”

  The silence was a little longer this time. “It has our top priority ma’am,” he repeated heavily. “The case will be investigated with the same due process and concern as we handle all our affairs.”

  I didn’t believe that for a moment. In my gut, my heart, I knew that until I’d mentioned Haigton Crossing, the murder had completely slipped his mind.

  “Write it down, Captain,” I told him sharply.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, write it down. Pick up a pen, right now, and write a reminder to yourself to send officers and a coroner here to deal with the body and investigate the murder. Do it.”

  “Ma’am, I have better things to do than follow the orders of a hysterical woman.”

  “I am not hysterical,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Do you have a pen in front of you?”

  “Ma’am….”

  “Pick the pen up and write a reminder note. Right now, while I’m on the phone. You and I both know you forgot about Haigton Crossing until just now, so write it down. Go on. I’ll wait.”

  The silence was filled with the same steam I’d had coming out of me a moment ago. I could almost hear it. Then, a rustling sound that was, I thought, him transferring the phone to his other ear, to leave his writing hand free.

  “There,” he said, almost snarling it. “Written. Now, I have a lot of other pressing matters—”

  “Put the note where you’ll see it,” I said.

  He made a wordless sound that made me think he was choking or growling. “It is on my keyboard,” he said heavily and flatly.

  “Thank you. I look forward to seeing your department in Haigton Crossing in the next few hours.” I hung up. And marveled, because this time, I really had hung up the phone. It wasn’t just an anachronistic expression old fogies used, this time.

  I turned to look at everyone else, including the three men at the table, who were openly watching. “They’ll be here shortly.”

  “Betcha five dollars they don’t show today,” said one of the men at the table. He seemed old, although it was hard to tell. He had a thick mop of black, unruly hair, but his skin was a very dark brown, as if he’d spent too long in the sun. It was leathery and wrinkled.

  “Twenty dollars they do not show tomorrow, either,” said another at the table. This man appeared to be in his forties, perhaps, and was extremely well dressed, in trousers and a business shirt, and a sweater over the top in a fine yarn that had a dull, expensive gleam. He looked as though he would be tall when he stood, and he didn’t seem like the sort of man who would keep the company of the older one who had just spoken.

  I was taken aback. They were laying bets on the police—sorry, the Sheriff’s department—not showing?