Waterford Point. Alana Matthews
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stairs. “I’ve had a long trip and I’m tired. Are you going to give me a room or not?”
Maddie studied her a moment. “You’re a stubborn one, I’ll give you that. You sure you aren’t worried about the ghost?”
This threw Rachel for a loop. “Ghost?”
Her utter perplexity must have shown, because Maddie softened and said, “Child, you really don’t know anything, do you?”
“Haven’t I been saying that all along?”
RACHEL WASN’T SURE when exactly she’d made the breakthrough, but Maddie started searching again and brought out a key.
Relieved, Rachel reached for her suitcase, but the woman quickly came around the counter and grabbed it.
“Someone in your condition shouldn’t be lifting,” she said.
Rachel was only four months pregnant and while she’d certainly grown thicker around the middle, she had no idea she was showing. “Is it that obvious?”
“To the trained eye, it is. I used to work for an obstetrician over in Rockland. Only came back here to Waterford after my folks passed away.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Did they own this place?”
“They did, indeed. In fact, the room you’ll be sleeping in used to be theirs.”
They climbed the stairs. Maddie struggled slightly with the suitcase, and Rachel felt a twinge of guilt. She was perfectly capable of carrying the thing herself, but she knew Maddie was not the kind of woman to be trifled with, and let her have her way.
“Breakfast every morning at 8:00 a.m.,” Maddie said. “No stragglers. Nothing I hate worse than serving cold eggs.”
“Okay. No straggling.”
“Nick’s the only other guest we have right now, and you’ll have to share a bathroom with him. He’s a man, and men are messy, but he does his best and I do what I can to clean up after him.”
Rachel’s own bathroom back home had clothes piled on the floor and a counter that looked like a beauty salon after a hurricane. Messy wasn’t something she was particularly concerned with.
When they reached the top of the stairs, Maddie turned to her.
“You sure you want go through with this? What with the murders and all, Waterford Point isn’t exactly the world’s number one vacation spot. You might be better off in Rockland or Searsport.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rachel told her.
Maddie shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just be thankful I’m not putting you up down the hall.” She pointed toward a closed door some distance from the stairs.
“Why?”
“Because that was Caroline’s room.”
“Caroline?”
Maddie nodded. “Came here from out of town, just like you. Little less than a month ago. Wasn’t here two days when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“They found her in the woods out back,” Maddie said. “She was Weeping Willow’s first victim.”
This was the second reference Maddie had made to Weeping Willow and Rachel once again stifled the urge to ask for details. She could see that Maddie was deeply affected by this death, her eyes filled with the kind of fear usually reserved for very late, very dark nights.
This woman Caroline’s murder had obviously been the start of something horrible here in Waterford Point and the fact that the victim had been staying in this very house—had been found in the woods nearby—was a surprising coincidence.
It would also explain Sheriff Chavaree’s sensitivity.
Had he been living here when Caroline was killed?
That would certainly raise some concerns—un-fairly or not—about his ability to do his job, and she didn’t doubt he had been struggling with those questions ever since.
But Rachel resisted the urge to dig deeper. Had to keep reminding herself that she was not here for a story.
Throw in Maddie’s mention of a ghost, however, and she had to admit she saw a compelling mystery developing.
“I’ll tell you,” Maddie said. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to go into that room. Haven’t even made the bed. So consider yourself lucky, dear. Although, I suppose it’s bad enough you’ll even be this close. Thank goodness I’m staying downstairs.”
Unlike Maddie, Rachel wasn’t bothered that she’d be sleeping down the hall from the victim’s room. She’d gone face-to-face with serial killers and socio-paths, so sharing the house with the specter of a dead girl didn’t really concern her.
She could plainly see that Maddie was dying to keep talking about this, so she remained silent, doing her best not to prompt the woman.
This wasn’t her affair.
Maddie seemed to get the message and five minutes later, Rachel was in her room with the door locked, her suitcase unpacked and a king-size bed waiting for her to crawl into it. Her flight and the trip across the bay had taken their toll, and all she wanted to do right now was nap.
Barring those last few minutes on the ferry, her bouts with morning sickness had passed, but she found herself tiring more easily these days.
There was a time she wouldn’t have dreamed of napping.
But things change, don’t they?
Things always change.
RACHEL WAS ABOUT TO PUT her head on the pillow when her cell phone rang.
She sighed. What now?
Scooping the phone off the nightstand, she checked the screen but didn’t recognize the number. She clicked it on and put it to her ear. “This had better be good.”
“Rachel?” It was Janet Matlin, an assistant D.A. out of Los Angeles.
“Sorry, Janet, I’m a little out of sorts right now.”
“Who wouldn’t be, considering what you’ve been through. I just wanted to give you the heads-up.”
“About what?”
“Lattimore made bail.”
Rachel’s chest tightened.
Emit Lattimore was a stone-cold, unrepentant sociopath, and the subject of Rachel’s book in progress, Ladykiller—the book she had put on hold after Lattimore tried to strangle her during a contentious interview.
Lattimore’s third wife went missing over six months ago, a disappearance that became a media sensation. The more the police looked into the disappearance, the more convinced they were that he was the likely perpetrator, especially since his two previous wives had died under suspicious circumstances.
One had taken a fall down some stairs, and the other had been shot by an intruder while Lattimore was reportedly away on a hunting trip. Lattimore had been a suspect in both deaths, but there had never been enough evidence for an arrest, let alone a trial and conviction.
And it didn’t help that he was a former L.A. County medical examiner. Even Rachel’s father had worked with him once or twice.
But Rachel was convinced his luck was running out and had begun writing the book in anticipation of that inevitability. She had pressed him hard during the interview, pushing a lot of buttons, but he’d been arrogant enough to think he could outmaneuver her. She caught him in a glaring contradiction and apparently his oversize ego couldn’t take it. He suddenly snapped, leaping across the table, his face full of fury.
The memory was fresh in her mind, and she’d never forget those black, malevolent eyes boring into her, or those rough, oversize