Pumpkin Ridge (Rose Hill Mystery Series Book 10) Read online

  Ava walked quickly down the alley behind Fitzpatrick’s Service Station. She turned right at Pine Mountain Road and crossed Rose Hill Avenue, her head down, the hood of her coat up, trying not to run. Ava’s heart rate sped up as she crossed the street, every second expecting someone to call out for her to stop. When she passed the diner, outside their line of vision, she ran. At the entrance to the alley, she stopped and threw the rag and gloves in the trash dumpster behind the antique store.

  She ran the rest of the way down to the river and made her way along the rail trail to the dock. When she reached the boat, she stepped in, untied it, and started the motor. She aimed at the red light of their dock on the other shore.

  She was halfway across when there was a jolt of impact, and the boat went up and over what she quickly realized was a mostly submerged tree floating down the river, hidden by the dense fog hovering over the water’s surface. The blades of the outboard motor foundered in wet wood, and the engine whined to a crescendo before it sputtered and died in a noxious cloud of oily smoke.

  Ava was now floating down the river with the tree, headed for the dam below town. She pushed with all her strength but could not separate the boat from where it was lodged in the top limbs. Ava watched helplessly as she floated past the red light of her home dock. She didn’t know if the boat and tree would get hung up on the dam or go right over it.

  She only had moments to decide what to do.

  She unzipped her coat and shrugged out of it. She took the man’s car keys, wallet, and phone out of her coat pocket, and tucked them into her bra under her sweater. She slung the camera by the strap across her body. She eased over the side of the boat just as the top of the tree met the edge of the dam.

  The plunge into icy water took her breath away. She clung to the upstream side of the tree as the trunk with its widespread roots swung toward the western river bank. As soon as the tree stopped moving, and was lodged solidly against the dam, she made her way, using the branches, knot holes, and then the roots as handholds, and pulled herself through the water until she was close enough to the shore to let go.

  She pushed off the tree roots and lunged toward some Rhododendron branches that hung out over the water. The brittle stems snapped, but she was able to grab onto a sturdier branch behind them. The smaller, prickly stems tore at the soft skin of her hands and arms as she pulled herself up through the bush toward the muddy shore.

  The current pulled at her sodden sweater, dragging her backward. She couldn’t free even one hand to take off the sweater, for fear she would lose her grip, but it was keeping her from pulling herself to safety. She felt her strength flag, but the fear of drowning made her adrenalin surge. She kicked her feet and immediately felt mud beneath them. She almost laughed, realizing how close she had come to drowning in a few feet of water.

  She stood up, and by using the branches of the bush to assist her, she crawled up onto the bank. She looked back and saw the tree was still foundered against the dam, the boat along with it, water pouring over and around it. She wrung the water out of her sweater as best she could, and then made her way through the dense brush toward the red light of the boat dock. She had just reached it when, with a mighty crash, both the tree and the boat went over the dam.

  She turned away and started the climb back up the muddy path to her house. Without her small flashlight, she could only feel her way. She fell a few times, tearing her leggings. There was a stabbing pain in her knee, but she ignored it.

  Soaked to the skin, racked with chills, covered in mud, and gasping, she reached the side veranda, where she was startled to see headlights shining from the front driveway and courtyard. She ducked down low and followed the stacked stone wall to the drive, where she could see Will’s white Range Rover. The engine was on, the driver’s side door was open, and the light was on in the cab, where the seatbelt warning was dinging insistently.

  Ava stood up and approached the SUV. The driver’s side headlight was broken, the front grill was bent, and from the front panel to the back end, there was a long, deep dent blackened by whatever it had sideswiped. Will was still inside, passed out across the front seats. He was barefoot, in his pajamas.

  “Will,” she said.

  He moaned.

  “Will, you’re sleepwalking,” she said. “Wake up.”

  He moved, and then pushed himself into an upright position. He turned to look at her but seemed to have difficulty focusing his eyes.

  “Ava?” he said.

  “Come on, sweetie,” Ava said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

  He turned so that his legs were dangling out of the car.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Why are you so wet?”

  “Out for a walk in the rain,” she said. “You’re still asleep. Let’s go back in the house.”

  He slid out of the car, attempted to stand, and immediately lost his balance. Ava struggled to support his body. She considered waking Karl to help her, but decided against it; the fewer complications, the better.

  With her help, Will slid down and sat against the back tire while she turned off the headlights and removed the keys from the ignition. She shut the door and locked it.

  “What’s happening?” Will asked. “Are we outside?”

  “You’re dreaming,” Ava said.

  “Well, it’s a weird one,” he said.

  “Help me,” Ava said. “You have to get up and walk. I’ll steady you.”

  Once she got him to stand, he leaned on her, and they walked, or rather, lurched toward the house. Ava took him around to the northern veranda entrance, hoping they wouldn’t wake anyone in the opposite wing.

  It took a long time and much coaxing, but Ava eventually got Will inside the house. She decided there was no way she could get him up to their bedroom, so she took him to his office, pulled off his now wet and muddy pajamas, and got him to lay down on the leather chesterfield.

  “Don’t go,” he said. “Please don’t leave me.”

  She wrapped him up in a woolen throw and murmured soft words to soothe him until he relaxed. He had been gripping her hand so hard it hurt, but he finally let go.

  Ava stood up and crept to the door.

  “Ava,” Will said.

  Ava jumped, startled, and turned around.

  His eyes were still closed.

  “You’re asleep,” Ava said softly. “You’re dreaming.”

  “Is the driver okay?” he asked.

  “What driver?”

  “The truck driver,” he said. “Is he okay?”

  Ava’s heart raced. Had he actually driven to Rose Hill and back?

  “You’re dreaming,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She waited until his breathing became shallow and steady before she turned off the light and closed the door.

  Ava unslung the camera strap from around her, kicked off her muddy boots, and then peeled off the wet sweater and leggings, leaving them in a heap on the tile kitchen floor. It was then that she realized that she did not have on panties. In her haste to dress, she must have left them in the attic of the Rose and Thorn.

  She removed the man’s possessions from her bra, retrieved the camera, and ran upstairs to the master bedroom wing. In her dressing room, she assessed her injuries. Her knee was cut and bleeding, and her hands and arms were scraped and scratched, but nothing required stitches.

  She concealed the camera, wallet, keys, and phone in a handbag in the back of her closet, covering the contents with a silk scarf. It was then that she realized she had left the garage and apartment keys in the other pocket of her coat, which went with the boat over the dam.

  She took a hot shower, scrubbed herself raw, dried off, treated her knee, and bandaged it. Her hands and arms, with their multiple superficial cuts, scrapes and developing bruises, she could cover with long sleeves and gloves.

  She dressed and went back downstairs. She put her leggings, muddy boots, wet sweater, and Will’s pajamas in a garbage bag and placed it underneat
h the other garbage bags in one of the cans outside the garage. She put Will’s Land Rover in the garage next to her matching one.

  Back inside, she retraced her steps, cleaning up the water, mud, and debris she’d left in a trail from the side door to Will’s office to the kitchen and then up the stairs to her bathroom.

  She reset the house alarm.

  She checked on Will and found him sound asleep, but noticed his skin was muddy everywhere she had earlier touched him. She took some baby wipes from the hallway powder room and cleaned his hands, face, and feet. He didn’t wake up.

  No one would be surprised in the morning to find Will naked in a different room than the one in which he went to sleep. Everyone associated with the household knew his sleep medication sometimes had disturbing side effects, such as sleepwalking.

  He had once called his mother and had an entire conversation with her that he didn’t remember the next day. Another time he ate a whole pie and then left the refrigerator door open, thereby spoiling the entire contents.

  Everyone counted on the house alarm system to alert someone if he ever tried to leave the premises, but Ava had turned that off when she left.

  The alarm company would be able to produce a report showing what time the alarm was turned off, what exterior doors were opened and closed, and what time the alarm was turned back on. Ava wasn’t worried about being questioned; whatever had happened, she could blame it on her sleepwalking husband. If he could make a phone call in his sleep, he could turn off an alarm. She’d have to think up a plausible reason why she didn’t hear any of this going on, but she would worry about that later.

  Ava was relieved Will had acceded to her request that there be no video surveillance equipment installed in or around the house. She had told him it would make her feel like she was being asked to live in a prison, the subtext being that she might not live there if he insisted upon it. The compromise had been the motion sensor system that could be turned on and off, connected to a 24-hour alarm company, and a video-monitored electronic gate at the entrance to their driveway. And Karl.

  Thinking about the gate reminded Ava that she could check to see when Will had left the grounds. She went to Karl’s office, a small room off the garage, turned on the laptop kept on a desk there, and using it, backed up the digital recording to the time she had left the house.

  Sure enough, about forty-five minutes after she left, there was Will’s car, driving past the camera. Although she couldn’t see his face, who else could it be? A sensor in his Rover opened the gate automatically when his vehicle approached it, and a timer closed it again a few seconds afterward. She forwarded the video. Almost two hours later he was back. Ava brought the recording back to its end and left it the way she’d found it.

  Where did Will go, what did he see, and if he saw anything, how much would he remember? He’d asked about the truck driver, but he hadn’t been outside when Ava left the Rose and Thorn.

  Ava wanted, needed to talk to Patrick, but she didn’t dare.

  Instead, she went to the housekeeper’s small parlor behind the kitchen, where Gail kept her things and sometimes napped on a daybed. Gail also liked to listen to the police scanner, like all the old people in Rose Hill seemed to. Ava turned it on and scrolled around, looking for the correct frequency.

  Finally, she found the channel on which the paramedics and police were communicating and eventually discovered the two things she needed to know: the coal truck driver was alive, but the man he hit was dead.

  She could destroy his belongings, but there was still the matter of his car. She could ditch it out in the woods somewhere, but then she would need some way to get back. It might be a better idea to take the car to Pennsylvania to find and destroy any other evidence related to her.

  She could leave his car in the B&B garage for a day or two, but any longer would be dangerous. She would need to take it out under cover of darkness, would need an excuse for being gone several hours, and she couldn’t take her phone, would have to “forget” once again to take it with her.

  Years ago, Will had tracked Ava’s daughter, Charlotte, through her phone when she had run off with her boyfriend to New York. Ava knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do that to his wife, especially if he couldn’t find her and was worried. It was all cloaked in husbandly concern, of course, but Ava knew that what Will wanted to do was to control her. No matter how much she reassured him, he was never sure of her or of their marriage. His insecurity made him clingy and overprotective, and it sometimes felt to Ava as if he were slowly smothering her to death.

  Ava returned to Will’s office to check on him, but he was still asleep. Looking out the window through the fog and trees she could see the lights of Rose Hill gleaming dully in the darkness. Ava thought about her coat with the garage keys in the pocket, still in the boat that had gone over the dam. She couldn’t face going back out tonight, hadn’t the strength to, and by tomorrow morning the tree and boat would have been discovered. She would have to deal with that some other way.

  She wasn’t thinking about the man she killed, or the man she loved, except in an abstract way: the first as an obstacle to be removed from her path, and the second as the prize to which that path led.

  Tomorrow she could start to deal with the consequences of this night, but meanwhile, she needed to rest. She needed to look her best, could not afford to have puffy or dark-circled eyes if questioned. She must think of the children. She must keep up her strength. Ava made her way to their bedroom, got in bed, and within minutes, fell sound asleep.

  Chapter Two - Tuesday

  M elissa changed her clothes for the fourth time. Later that morning, a reporter from the Pendleton paper was coming to the law office where she worked to interview her, and she couldn’t seem to get exactly the right look. She wanted her appearance to say, “I am a professional person with a career,” but not “I am a man in a business suit.”

  She finally settled on a form-fitting black sweater, a short black and gray tweed skirt, black tights, and black knee-high boots that appeared to lengthen her legs. She dithered over accessories for a few minutes before coming back to the mother-of-pearl and onyx-studded silver necklace and chunky silver hoop earrings her friend, Claire, had recommended for this particular outfit.

  Following Claire’s tutorial, she loosely braided and then wound her long blonde hair into an intricate knot at the back of her head, where she secured it with bobby pins. She applied her makeup as Claire had taught her. She reviewed the results in the bathroom mirror and was pleased with the result. Not as good as Claire’s work, but passable.

  She thought she looked like one of those girls in the photos on Pinterest that Claire had pinned for her to be inspired by. On the inside, Melissa still felt like the dirt-poor Tennessee ragamuffin she had been at twelve-years-old, but if she watched what she said and how she said it, she might fool anyone.

  In addition to helping her choose potential outfits and teaching her how to apply work-appropriate makeup, Claire had also manicured her nails the evening before; they were now a rosy taupe color that Melissa never in a million years would have chosen for herself. Melissa liked bright colors; they were more cheerful.

  She went down the hallway to the front room of her mobile home, where Patrick was snoring on the couch, wrapped in a fleece blanket, his beagle Banjo curled up in the V behind his knees. He had come home around 4:00 in the morning, even though he closed the Rose and Thorn at 1:30 am, after which he usually cleaned and walked the half a block home to arrive by 2:00 am.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d slept on the couch, which he claimed to do in order not to interrupt her beauty sleep. Lately, however, it was happening more often than not. She tried to remember the last time he had slept in the bed with her. Two weeks ago, a month?

  Earlier this morning, when she heard him come in, she had not been able to go back to sleep for a long time. She knew she should say something, but she was afraid to. There had been an uneasy tension between them for a
while now, and more and more she found him short-tempered, or not listening when she talked. Her mind raced through the possibilities, from mundane to dramatic, but she always ended up wondering if Ava had anything to do with it.

  Beautiful, perfect Ava, married to her multi-millionaire Prince Charming, who had built her a hilltop palace on the other side of the Little Bear River, from which she could look down upon the peasants of Rose Hill.

  Ava was also Patrick’s widowed sister-in-law, with whom he had been involved while his older brother, Brian, Ava’s first husband, had been missing for several years. While Brian was away, Patrick had acted like a father to her two children, Charlotte and Timmy.

  Years later, after Brian had returned to Rose Hill and then died suddenly, Patrick had broken it off with Ava due to his mother’s wishes. Bonnie Fitzpatrick adored her sons, and her apron strings were like barbed wire around Patrick’s neck. He had confided all this to Melissa, his good buddy and waitress at the Rose and Thorn, where he bartended. Although it hurt to hear how much he loved another woman, Melissa had tried her best to hide her own feelings.

  Melissa and Patrick had met when she went to work at the Rose and Thorn over 16 years ago. As far as Patrick was concerned, they had only been co-workers and friends, but Melissa had nursed a crush on him for years. She had witnessed his devotion to Ava, watched him pine for her after they split, had been a shoulder for him to cry on, and finally, happily, a soft place for him to fall. In return, when her life had fallen apart, Patrick, along with his family, had been a lifeline for Melissa to cling to.

  Melissa put on her bright red wool coat and wound a long woolen scarf around her neck. She made Banjo go outside to do his business, cleaned it up, fed him, and then watched as he jumped back up on the couch to snuggle in with his beloved Patrick. She took one last look at the sleeping giant who held her heart in the palm of his hand, and then left the trailer as quietly as she could.