Simon and I went into the hallway. “Room two-oh-two,” I said. “He didn’t change rooms after his wife died.”

  “He’s kept the same room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a mite . . . weird to you, Lily?”

  “Weird, yes. I get the feeling he’s not exactly in deep mourning. Then again, we all grieve in our own way.”

  “Or not at all. He’s been mighty fast to put the moves on you, Lily.”

  When we reached the top of the stairs, Simon stopped. He took my right hand and cradled it in his. “You’re too kindhearted. That’s usually a good thing, except when you can’t recognize trouble in other people.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. Simon’s hands were large, rough, and heavily calloused, as befitted a man who made his living working with trees and plants and stone and earth. His eyes were a deep blue, the color of Cape Cod Bay on a warm summer’s day.

  Farther down the hallway a door opened, and Simon and I moved apart.

  “Good morning,” the guests said as they passed.

  “Good morning,” we replied.

  I waited until they’d disappeared and then knocked firmly on the door of room 202.

  The door opened almost immediately. Wesley was freshly shaven, his hair damp from the shower, dressed for a day of meetings in pressed slacks and a golf shirt. His face broke into an enormous grin when he saw me. Then he caught sight of Simon, standing silently behind me, and the expression turned wary. “What’s up?”

  “I’m sorry, Wesley,” I said, “but I’m going to have to ask you to check out early.”

  “How early?”

  “Today,” Simon said. “Like now.”

  “Any particular reason?” Wesley spoke to Simon.

  “As you’re well aware, sir, there was some trouble here last night.”

  “Nothing to do with me.” Over his shoulder, I could see that someone—unlikely to have been Wesley—had made an attempt to tidy up after the intruder. The pictures had been straightened and the furniture returned to its place.

  “Maybe not,” Simon said, “but your behavior toward Lily can be considered threatening, and we think it’s best you were on your way.”

  “You do, do you? What are you again, the gardener? Isn’t there a rose or a weed out there in need of your attention?”

  “Having you here, Wesley, is not working out,” I said. “I’m truly sorry about Kimberly’s death, but . . .” My voice trailed off. Maybe Simon was right. I was too tenderhearted. I should have kicked Wesley to the curb the moment he told the police I had a reason to kill his wife.

  “I have meetings this morning,” he said. “Important meetings. I haven’t got time to pack.”

  “Make time,” Simon said. “You don’t have much. This is a hotel room, not your house.”

  “You’re trying to impress Lily by acting the tough guy, are you?” A vein began to pulse in Wesley’s forehead.

  “Not trying to impress anyone, mate,” Simon replied calmly. “Just making a simple request.”

  Wesley turned to me. His eyes were dark with anger, and I tensed. “You’re kicking me out.”

  “Yes, Wesley, I guess I am.”

  “I offered you a job. I offered you the chance to get your life back.”

  “I have a life, and I don’t want your job.”

  His eyes flicked to Simon. “What do you want, Lily? A gardener?”

  “That’s enough,” Simon said. “We’re not here to argue about it. Lily has to get back to the kitchen; guests are arriving for breakfast. I’ll wait for you at the bottom of the stairs. I assume you gave Mrs. Campbell your credit card info when you checked in. No need to disturb her. She’ll send you the receipt.”

  Kimberly had checked in before Wesley arrived. She would have paid with her credit card, and it might not be valid anymore. I’d worry about that when the time came, but right now I wasn’t going to get into the details of payment for a six-night stay in one of our best suites.

  Wesley looked at Simon for a long time. Next to me, Simon’s body was tense, braced to move suddenly if he had to. Wesley gave him a final sneer and turned to me. “Okay, Lily. You win. For now. You will come to regret this.” He took one step backward and slammed the door with such force the walls trembled.

  I let out a long breath. Simon circled his shoulders to release some of the tension.

  “He doesn’t like to lose, that one,” Simon said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll wait at the reception desk. If he isn’t down and gone in half an hour, I’d like your permission to call the police.”

  “It won’t come to that. He said he’d leave, so he will.”

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  Wesley left without kicking up a fuss about it. I sincerely hoped that once he was gone, he’d forget about me. He did have a short attention span and more important things on his mind these days.

  The police and the arson investigators arrived shortly after Wesley’s car roared down the driveway, kicking up gravel and spewing it in every direction. Simon phoned Matt, and the two men met the authorities at the shed, while I continued making the breakfasts.

  Simon came in as I was flipping the last of today’s sausages and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “What did they say?” Edna and I asked at the same time.

  “Much mumbling and making notes and taking pictures, followed by more mumbling. You’ll receive a copy of the report to submit to your insurance company. Essentially, there’s no doubt about it. The fire was set. Petrol was poured around the exterior of the shed and ignited. Would have gone up with a whoosh.”

  “Petrol. You mean gasoline.”

  “Yup. What you can get at any station in town to fill your lawnmower or put into a can for an extra supply for your car. Amy Redmond joined us, and she said no one reported to a nearby hospital with burns last night, the sort of thing that might happen if they misjudged the distance between themselves and the conflagration they were about to set. She and the arson investigator put their heads together, but Matt and I weren’t party to that chat.”

  “No clues as to who was on our property last night, such as the proverbial dropped driver’s license?”

  He sipped his coffee. “They took images of footprints on the ground and measured mine for comparison. But it hasn’t rained for a couple of days, and a lot of people wander around our gardens. Including near the shed. Some visitors want to talk to me about plants and growing techniques and the like, and it’s part of my job, as Rose explained to me when I started here, to engage with them.” He lifted his mug in a salute. “Speaking of my job, I’d better get to it. I’m preparing a list of what I have to replace and then I’m off to the hardware shop to get it all. Need anything in town?”

  “No, thanks.”

  * * *

  We had a full house in the tearoom, both inside and out. The arson in our shed was reported by the online paper, and a few people discussed it on Twitter, but the general agreement was that the incident had been caused by out-of-control teenage visitors making trouble. A handful of longtime residents of North Augusta complained, as they always did when anything at all unpleasant happened, that tourists were destroying the peace and safety of the area. I didn’t add my own opinion, which is that a small wooden shed at the rear of a private garden ten miles outside of town was an unlikely spot to be hit by drunken teenagers or college kids on vacation. Not to mention that the supposed out-of-control young tourists both arrived quietly and then slipped silently into the night once the deed was done.

  As I baked and filled the orders Marybeth and Cheryl brought to the kitchen, I thought. I came to no conclusions, but I was inclining toward suspecting Allegra. Yes, it was a coincidence this happened when the police investigation was still ongoing regarding the death of Kimberly Smithfield, but it wasn’t as much a coincidence as might appear. We’d run into her in town only a few hours prior to the setting of the fire. Had encountering my friends and me refocused all of Allegra’s bitterness in my direction, and she impulsively decided to act?

  Our neighbors, the owners of other businesses, the head of the North Augusta Business Bureau, even the mayor herself, called either me or Rose to express their sympathy and extend an offer of help if we needed anything.

  Not a word from Allegra, and I wouldn’t have expected to hear anything from her. Unless she’d caused the fire in the first place. If she had been responsible, she’d be quick to show up here to gloat. She’d make a big deal of how the burnt-out hulk of our garden shed ruined the view from the tearoom. Which it did, I had to admit. Simon told me he had to wait for the arson investigation to be concluded before he could start tearing down the remains of the structure and installing a new shed.

  It was coming up to three o’clock when my phone announced Rose was calling.

  “If you have a moment, love, can you come up to the house?”

  “Is it important? We’re busy here.”

  “Important. Yes, it might be. I don’t need assistance, but I have something you’ll want to see.”

  “On my way.” I washed my hands at the sink and spoke to Marybeth. “I’m needed up at the house. How’s it looking out there?”

  “Patio’s full. A couple of tables free inside, but people said they’ll wait to get a place outside.”

  “Can you manage? We should be okay food-wise until closing if I don’t get back right away.”

  “We’ll be fine. No special orders in the reservation book for the rest of the day.”

  “Call me if you need anything.”

  I trotted up the driveway thinking, What now?

  Rose hadn’t sounded concerned or worried about anything. She said she had something for me to see. I couldn’t imagine she’d been poking around the arson scene, sorting through scraps of burned wood and warped garden tools with the edge of her cane in the manner of an elderly Sherlock Holmes, but with my grandmother you never knew. She might well have been doing exactly that.

  I found Rose seated behind the reception desk. Jean, our weekday housekeeper, was with her. The house was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing through the French doors of the dining room and into the foyer.

  “Jean found something she thought we’d be interested in, love,” Rose said. “I suggested we wait for you before we open it.”

  “Found what?”

  “This.” Jean pulled an envelope out of the pocket of her dress.

  I sucked in a breath. A plain white letter-size envelope, unaddressed, no stamp. “That looks a heck of a lot like the one Kimberly Smithfield found in the Peter Rabbit box.”

  “As I suspected,” Rose said.

  Jean handed me the envelope, her round face alight with curiosity.

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “Room two-oh-two. My daily instructions said the guest had checked out early, so I was giving the room the thorough going over we do when preparing for new arrivals. I’d like to say I found it because of my diligent cleaning or sharp detecting instincts, but that wasn’t it. I tripped on a scrunched-up edge of the rug and dropped the basket containing tea bags, sugar, and creamer. The little containers flew everywhere, so I had to get down on my hands and knees to gather them up. In crawling around the floor, I felt a bump beneath my knee, under the rug, close to the bed. I lifted it and found this. Do you suppose it’s what whoever searched that room the other day was looking for?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do. It must be.”

  When Kimberly found the envelope in the tea chest it had been sealed. The flap was now torn, but it felt as though something was still inside.

  “Shall I call the police?” Rose asked.

  “Let’s wait to see what we have. Might be a shopping list.”

  It wasn’t.

  I took out two pieces of paper and unfolded them. The handwriting was large, the penmanship clear, although a bit shaky. Across the top, printed in large black letters, it said: Last Will and Testament.

  While Rose called Detective Redmond, I lay the two pages side by side on the desk and snapped pictures with my phone. The edge of one lifted in the breeze, and Jean put a pen on top to keep it down. My fingerprints would be on the paper, and mine and Jean’s on the envelope, but that couldn’t be helped. We, after all, had found it. Jean had, anyway. Redmond would scold me for opening it and reading the contents, but how could I not?

  It was, as expected, the will of Rosemary Jane Ireland Morrison Smithfield. The language was simple and clear. This document was to replace all previous wills. In it she made a bequest of twenty thousand dollars to Albert Reeves, the gardener, and another twenty thousand to Helen Chambers, the housekeeper; she put two hundred thousand dollars into a trust fund for one of her children; and stipulated that the house was to be sold and the proceeds, along with the remainder of her estate, were to be divided between her other two children.

  The will was drawn up as I’d been led to believe. Except for the names attached to the bequests.

  Chapter 21

  “You shouldn’t have opened this, Lily,” Amy Redmond said.

  I gave her a sheepish grin and said nothing. After taking the pictures—for nothing but my own curiosity—I’d slipped the two pages back into the envelope, and Rose, Jean, and I waited for the police to arrive.

  We hadn’t had to wait for long.

  Redmond and Williams came together. They had serious expressions as they slipped on gloves prior to taking the will out of the envelope and reading quickly. Williams let out a low whistle, while Redmond said, “So Kimberly’s been disinherited. No wonder she wanted to get her hands on this will.”

  “Not cut out entirely,” Williams said. “She got two hundred thou.”

  “A pittance compared to half the value of the house and the rest, which is what she’d been expecting.”

  He nodded.

  “I haven’t seen the previous wills,” I said. “So all I can tell you about them is what Rachel told me. The first will, the one Mrs. Smithfield drew up a few years ago following her husband’s death, left the bulk of the estate to Kimberly and Rachel equally. A provision was made for an income for the son, Stephen, and some minor bequests to the longtime servants, although I wasn’t told the details of that. Rosemary Smithfield called in her lawyers after she fell ill and drew up a second will. This happened while Rachel was working in Paris. In that will Rosemary left almost everything to Kimberly, cutting out not only Rachel but the aforementioned staff, although Stephen was still provided with a small amount. . . .”

  “I don’t consider two hundred thousand to be a small amount,” Jean said.

  “Neither do I,” I replied. “But compared to an equal share of the full estate, it is. He wasn’t to get the money in a lump sum, but as an allowance. When I spoke to him about it, he seemed blasé, but it has to have stung. Basically, his mother said she didn’t trust him. Rachel, however, got even more of an insult in the second will. She got nothing. Not a red cent.”

  “Yet here,” Rose said, “in the third will, Rachel gets half along with Stephen and it’s Kimberly who’s given nothing but the moderate allowance.”

  “Rachel was open and up front about that all along,” I said. “She made no secret that she was after the third will only because she would inherit from it. What I find particularly interesting is that, instead of sharing the estate with Kimberly, according to this will, Rachel will be sharing it with Stephen. The black sheep of the family. Who was only given the aforementioned two hundred thousand in the earlier will.” I thought back over all the discussions Rachel and I had about her mother’s final intentions. “I don’t think Rachel knew that. I think she assumed all along Kimberly would get a share and Stephen the allowance.”

  “You found this under a rug in a guest room?” Redmond asked Jean.

  “Yes, and only because I dropped something and had to crawl around after it. If not for that . . . I might not have found it for months. We don’t regularly lift the rugs.”

  “Someone searched that room thoroughly,” Williams said. “But they didn’t check under the rug?”

  “They were likely in a hurry,” I said. “Only had time to look in the obvious places. Kimberly wanted to keep this hidden, even from her husband. I wonder why she didn’t destroy it as soon as she had her hands on it. The envelope was sealed when she found it, and someone opened it, almost certainly her. She read the contents and realized what it all meant.” Had Wesley known where it had been hidden? Unlikely, or he would have gotten rid of it or taken it with him. If Kimberly hadn’t wanted, for whatever reason, to destroy her mother’s final will, Wesley would have had absolutely no compunctions about doing so. Had Kimberly been hiding the will from Wesley? Entirely possible, if she feared he wouldn’t stay with her once he realized she wasn’t going to come into a couple of million bucks. I felt a touch of sympathy for Kimberly. She must have been devastated when she learned that her mother had largely disinherited her, but still she held on to the will. For sentimental reasons? Torn between taking what she thought she deserved and honoring her mother’s last wishes?

  We’d probably never know.

  She probably didn’t know.

  “I think a chat with Stephen Smithfield is called for,” Williams said.

  “Did you ask him where he was at the time of his sister’s death?” I asked.

  “We did. No alibi, but that means little. He was at home all evening, alone. So he said. The housekeeper, Mrs. Chambers, left at five, which is her regular time, and she confirmed Stephen was in the house when she left. Doesn’t mean he didn’t go out later. We’ll start digging deeper into his whereabouts.”

  Redmond nodded. “You’ve been a big help, Lily.” She slipped the envelope into an evidence bag. “Thanks. Looks like we won’t need your help any longer.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

  I walked the police to the door. “You think Stephen’s responsible?”

  “I think nothing,” Redmond said. “But we will be taking a great deal more interest in his recent movements and activities than we have been. He had an enormous amount to gain from locating this will.”