“That’s true.” She had me half convinced. “You’re not tired?”

  “Do I look tired?” She rose as swiftly from the couch as any sixty-something woman could after ten o’clock on a Sunday night. “I know you’re not tired, so no more dillydallying.”

  Royce had encouraged the nascent sleuth in her, and between her insomnia and her desire to surprise him with a discovery, my tenacious neighbor stood a fair chance of finding Pastor Ackley’s phone.

  Minutes later we were back in my Forester and out on Finch Hill Road, heading for Sophie’s cottage. I’d brought a flashlight and, optimistically, a plastic sandwich bag with me to use as an evidence bag. Two hundred feet from Sophie’s drive, I swung the car into a U-turn and stopped.

  I turned off my headlights and lowered my window, surprised by the heavy scent of lilacs on the breeze. “I didn’t know there were lilacs on this part of the property. Or is that the graveyard? They must be everywhere. What a heavenly smell. When I think of May, I think of lilacs.”

  “I didn’t notice them either,” Julia said. “I must have been distracted by all the bodies. Are we really going to talk about flowers?”

  There wasn’t another car in sight, and the only lights were dim, golden glows from the windows of Sophie’s cottage and houses across the street. Even the half moon was obscured by clouds.

  “You were right,” I said. “It’s so quiet, we might be able to hear the phone.”

  Julia rolled down her window.

  “Finding it in the dark will be another matter,” I added. I popped open my glove compartment, removed the flashlight, and then dialed Pastor Ackley’s phone number.

  We listened but heard nothing. I wasn’t surprised. We were too close to Sophie’s cottage. I drove ahead two hundred feet, dialed again, and stuck my head partway out my window, listening. All I heard was my car engine rumbling. As I continued to let the phone ring, I got out and walked away from the Forester. Still nothing. It struck me that Ackley might have put his phone on vibrate, and if he had, all attempts to find it by dialing would prove fruitless.

  Back in my car, I pulled ahead another two hundred feet. Once more I got out and dialed, straining to hear anything other than my Forester and a distant chorus of crickets. I went back to the car, reached inside the window, and turned off the ignition. This time Julia got out too. She patrolled her side of the road, back and forth, stopping now and then, walking again.

  “Not here,” I said. Beginning to feel a little foolish, I drove ahead another two hundred feet and repeated the exercise. This time I thought I heard a faint ring.

  I threw my hand in the air. “Julia, listen!”

  She froze.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said after a moment.

  “In that wooded area behind the field,” I said, drawing her attention to a grove of junipers. I trotted back to the car, retrieved my flashlight, and trudged toward the trees.

  “Are you trying to show me your superior hearing?”

  I waved for her to follow me.

  “Are there weeds?” she asked.

  I halted and wheeled back. “Julia.”

  “I’m just asking,” she said, squinting at the ground.

  I handed her my flashlight and she shone it downward.

  “Dandelions and bindweed,” I said. “You keep the flashlight.” I continued through the field, Julia trailing behind me and pointing the light in the direction of the trees.

  “This is too far from the street,” she said. “She must have gotten out of the car to throw it.”

  “That would be smart.”

  “Now I hear it.”

  As we headed into the grove, the ringing stopped. I dialed the number again, and as we continued, the rings became more distinct.

  “This is it,” I said, growing more excited with each step. “It makes sense. This is the only wooded or scrubby area we’ve seen since the driveway.”

  Twenty feet farther into the junipers, it sounded as though we were nearly on top of the phone. Julia let the flashlight beam play over the needle-covered ground.

  “I saw something!” I said. “There. Back there.”

  “This is so exciting,” Julia breathed, scanning left.

  I knelt, pivoting on my heels toward the ringing. “Got it!”

  “Don’t touch it,” she warned, shining the light over my shoulder at the phone.

  “That’s what I brought the sandwich bag for.” I hung up my phone and pulled the bag from my pocket. Turning it inside out, I used it to take hold of the pastor’s phone. Then I stood, examined the face of it in the flashlight beam, and pressed the bottom of the screen through the plastic. “It’s Ackley’s, all right,” I said. “And it’s not locked.”

  “This is unbelievable, Rachel. We found a needle in a haystack.”

  I grinned. “More like a phone in needles.” I turned the plastic right side out, pulling it over the phone and securing it inside the bag.

  Julia turned and aimed the flashlight ahead, through the black pines and toward the car.

  “I hear a car,” I said.

  “The street’s ahead, Rachel.”

  “No, I mean idling. Someone stopped.” We crept forward, staying within the dark shelter of the grove.

  At the muffled thud of car door, we froze.

  Julia grabbed my arm. “Someone got out,” she said.

  I put a finger to my lips.

  She let go of me and swung the flashlight in an arc in front of her. I seized it and flicked it off.

  I listened, my senses sharp, the sound of my own breathing in my ears.

  “She came back to find the phone,” I whispered.

  “Who?” Julia whispered back.

  I shook my head, hooked my arm in Julia’s, and continued to creep forward, suddenly aware of how the crunch of pine needles signaled our every step. I paused and peered into the semi-darkness. “There’s two of us and one of her,” I said under my breath. “We should wait for her.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  Neither did I. And by now, I thought, whoever it was should have made her way to the junipers. “Maybe she saw our light.”

  The instant the words left my mouth, a car door slammed and an engine started.

  Leaving Julia behind, I raced ahead, desperate to catch sight of the car. But by the time I made it to the street, it had vanished. I ran to my left and then swung to my right, hoping to see even the silhouette of a car dissolving into the night. It was her, I thought. It was the killer, and we almost had her. “I don’t believe it!”

  Looking back toward the field, I saw Julia was making her way toward me, the flashlight illuminating her steps. I joined her at the curb.

  “You didn’t see the car?” she asked.

  “It was gone by the time I reached the street. She sped out of here.”

  Julia ran the light up and down the pavement. “I don’t see any tire marks. We still don’t know who it was.”

  “But she knows who we are,” I said. “And she knows what we have.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Julia cradled our evidence bag on her lap while I drove to the police station on Main Street. I knew Gilroy insisted on having someone man the station until midnight, even with only three officers in the department. And when they were in the midst of an important case, Gilroy, Turner, and Underhill took turns being on call from midnight to seven in the morning. It was just after eleven when Julia and I pulled to the curb and greeted a surprised Derek Underhill behind the front desk.

  “We found Pastor Ackley’s phone,” Julia said, setting the bagged phone on the desk.

  Admittedly, I felt a twinge of pride in her announcement. We had found the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  “No way,” Underhill said. “We looked everywhere. Are you sure it’s his?”

  “He didn’t use a pass code,” I said. “Which is a little strange for someone as technologically minded as Sophie said he was. But then again, he probably got a lot of phone calls and messages and didn’t want the hassle of constantly punching in the code. I don’t have one either.”

  “You don’t use a pass code?” Julia asked.

  “They’re a nuisance.”

  Underhill was staring at the phone, angling it this way and that while keeping it in the bag. He glanced up at me. “Where’s the home button?”

  I pressed a symbol near the bottom of the phone and the home screen sprang to life. “It’s a newer model, so there’s no button. It’s pressure activated.”

  “You don’t even have to swipe it,” Underhill said.

  “Nope. He has no safeguards.” I tapped a mail icon. “Now you should be able to see his emails and text messages.”

  “Wow. It really is his. This is amazing.”

  “It will show five or six missed calls,” I said, “and you’ll see my number alongside them.”

  Underhill looked up. “That’s how you found the phone. You dialed it.”

  “It was in a small wooded area not too far from Sophie’s cottage. I can show you where tomorrow.”

  He nodded, still admiring the pastor’s sleek phone.

  “The killer came to get it while we were there,” Julia added.

  “Wha—what?” Underhill sputtered. “Who? Which one of them?”

  “We don’t know who,” I said. “I ran after her, but I wasn’t fast enough to see.” I recounted our steps, telling Underhill what we had seen and heard, which was precious little. “It had to have been the same person who took the phone from Ackley and threw it into the trees. Only she would know the phone was there without dialing it like we did—and I know we weren’t followed.”

  “Now the killer knows we found the phone,” Julia said, her voice fretful.

  “I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Foster,” Underhill said. “She also knows you’d bring it to the police.”

  “There may be fingerprints on that phone, but I doubt it,” I said.

  Underhill tapped on the email icon through the bag. “Yeah, probably not . . .”

  “Anything in his emails?”

  “I don’t see any important stuff from Sunday.” He tapped again. “No text messages from Sunday. But I see some vacation photos.”

  “Mrs. Ackley will be relieved,” I said. “They’re probably the last photos of her husband. Can I ask you something about your cottage search?”

  Underhill laughed and set down the phone. “Seriously, Rachel? You want to ask me about a case? I’m shocked.”

  “Very funny. Did Mariette, Tyra, or Alison have laptops?”

  “They all did.”

  “Now that’s very interesting,” Julia said.

  “It’s not surprising,” Underhill said. “Everyone’s got a laptop these days. I’d better call the chief about the phone.”

  “You’re not going to wake him up, are you?” Julia said.

  “A ringing phone will do that, Mrs. Foster.”

  Julia was not smiling.

  “I have to, Mrs. Foster. He’ll want to know. This is a key piece of evidence. If I wait until morning, he will not be happy with me.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Still, the poor man never sleeps.”

  Underhill checked the station clock. “If it makes you feel better, I won’t be going home at midnight like I planned.”

  “Now why would it make me feel better to know that you won’t be getting any sleep either? I can tell by looking at you that you’re not getting enough as it is. Just look at the dark rings under your eyes. You look like a prizefighter. And I’m certain you’re not eating well and getting your vitamins.”

  “I eat just fine, Mrs. Foster.”

  To my eyes, the normally trim Underhill had put on a little weight, but not wanting to impede Julia’s progress, I said nothing.

  “Donuts for breakfast every day? I don’t call that eating right,” she said. “And what do you have for lunch? More donuts? A cold sandwich at best? You need proper meals, and that means hot meals.” She was in full grandmother mode. Disappointed in Underhill’s flirtations she may have been, but she cared about him. We both did.

  “You know it’s hard to eat right when you’re on the job,” Underhill said.

  I saw my opening. “Does Natalie ever cook for you?”

  He didn’t flinch, and he didn’t hesitate to answer.

  “Sometimes, but to tell the truth, she’s not a great cook. She’d be the first to admit that. And I’m not so hot myself. We go to Wyatt’s every once in a while, but that can get expensive.” He leaned his arms across the desk. “You’ll be happy to know she’s brought dinner to the station, Mrs. Foster. Only a few times, but she tries. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if she can’t cook.”

  “Because you care about her?” Julia asked. “Care about her more than you care for other women you run into? Women you meet, say, while you’re on the job?”

  Underhill was either confused or flustered. I couldn’t tell which. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I guess so. I gotta make that call.” He straightened, grabbed the station phone, and dialed Gilroy.

  On that awkward note, I said goodbye for both of us and dragged Julia out of the station and into my car.

  “Well, that was subtle,” I said, sticking my key in the ignition.

  “That young man doesn’t need subtlety, he needs a rolled-up magazine on the head and a good wake-up call. What is he thinking? Sophie is a married woman.”

  “He wouldn’t break up a marriage, Julia. He’s just infatuated by her green eyes.”

  “Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t, but he needs to smell the coffee. He’ll be in his forties before he knows it.”

  “And end up like me?”

  “That isn’t what I meant, Rachel. It’s not your fault that scoundrel ex-fiancé of yours left you at the altar.”

  “Not exactly at the altar. Thank goodness it never got that far.”

  With a bit of a jolt I realized I hadn’t thought about Brent in weeks. The man who had deserted me on the eve of our wedding almost thirteen years ago, the man whose loss I’d mourned for years, the man whose memory had driven me to Boston for seven years in an attempt to erase him from my past. I hadn’t dreamed about him or tried not to hate him or battled his sudden and unwelcome appearance in my thoughts at the oddest moments. Hallelujah, I hadn’t thought about him at all.

  “It’s about time,” I said aloud.

  “I didn’t mean what it sounded like,” Julia said.

  She gave me a sorrowful, stricken look, quite out of proportion to what she had said to me.

  I laid my hand on her arm, anxious to reassure her. “It’s all right. If I’d married Brent or anyone else along the way, I never would have met James Gilroy.”

  “And you wouldn’t be living in Juniper Grove. That good-for-nothing would have moved you to Denver. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “So let’s not talk about him.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean ever again.”

  “Really?”

  “It is so over.”

  Julia brushed her hands together, knocking the soot of his memory from her palms, proclaiming a forever end to the topic. She understood exactly what I was saying. “Now you’re talking. Move on, shake the dust from your shoes, forget the past. The finest man in Juniper Grove loves you—what could be better? Now let’s talk about Officer Underhill and Natalie. We need to come up with a plan.”

  I laughed as I pulled from the curb. “What would I do without you, Julia?”

  i dropped julia off in front of her house before pulling into my garage. We had discussed Underhill briefly and come to the conclusion that there wasn’t much we could do but watch him ogle the gorgeous and married Sophie until Lauren’s and Ackley’s murders had been solved. We both liked Natalie, but more than that, Underhill’s previous relationships, if you could even call them that, had never lasted long, while his relationship with Natalie—lasting three months or more, we didn’t know precisely how long—had broken records. In our opinion, that made her worth pursuing.

  My plan was to go to bed immediately. That way, I could wake at a decent hour in the morning. But I was restless after the night’s excitement, my thoughts tumbling, my mind searching for answers. So although I did hop into bed, I took with me a yellow legal pad, a pen, and the notes Julia had jotted on her notepad before our phone hunt. It was time to sort out what I knew and hunt for a connection between Pastor Ackley and Lauren Hughes.

  I wrote down the victims’ and suspects’ names, and beneath them, the places where they worked and everything I knew about their jobs, their likes and dislikes, and their character traits. Personality—psychology—might hold the key to solving the case, and frankly, I hoped that it did, because the concrete facts weren’t helping.

  Julia had written a question on her yellow pad: “What do the victims have in common?” And beneath it were the words “St. John’s, St. John’s office, Sophie and other women, both work in church office, cottage sale (one hates, one likes).”

  St. John’s was the obvious link between the two victims, but what if they were connected by the killer, not the church? What if the church was incidental? Did one of the Cottage Women have reason to kill both Ackley and Lauren?

  Then again, if St. John’s was the link, why was it? Did the real estate deal play a part?

  It struck me that Lauren’s murder had been planned but Ackley’s murder was a crime of opportunity, carried out on the spur of the moment. One of the women had seen him as a threat, perhaps for the first time, or he had presented himself as a threat, showing up at the cottage, unannounced, maybe, saying he’d discovered something.

  I knew in my bones that was it. He’d walked to the cottage to tell the killer what he’d discovered, and the proof of his discovery was on his phone.

  Please turn yourself in to the police. It’s the right thing to do. It will go easier for you, and I promise to stand by you. I could see Ackley saying that. And I could see him turning his back on his murderer, walking away into the graveyard, trusting that his words had made a good impression upon a woman who was deep down in her soul a decent person.

  And then I could see her call to him. See her approach him, smiling, her knife hidden from view in the pages of a paperback book. I squeezed my eyes shut.

 

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