Chapter Twenty

Twenty

"I'll go look for the sheriff," said Todd's more helpful brother. The instant Father Barry was out of sight, Charlotte and Todd started making eyes at each other. Sherry watched, fascinated. She'd always found it remarkable to see how attractive people seemed to have a sort of secret password that let them pass directly through the parts of socializing that involved trying to convince people that you were worth speaking to and move directly on to the fun parts. It reminded her of how very young children made friends by asking another child if they'd like to be friends. In the past few minutes, it seemed that Charlotte and Todd had become very good friends indeed, based on how close together they were standing.

"So," Todd said. "Your husband was murdered, huh?"

"Yeah," Charlotte said. "His mistress stabbed him to death in his studio."

Todd made a sound like, " Eurgh ," before he recovered himself and cleared his throat. "That's awful. I'm so sorry."

Charlotte shrugged. "It's complicated," she said. "So…what do you do for a living?"

The two of them made uncomfortably flirtatious small talk for the duration of Father Barry's absence, until he reappeared with Sheriff Brown in tow. The sheriff took one look at Sherry and stopped dead. "Sherry? What the—what are you doing in there?"

"Not much," Sherry said. "You didn't leave me any magazines to read." It seemed pointless to bring up her visitation from Beelzebub. Then she added, helpfully, "You locked me up. I've been here for hours."

Sheriff Brown went pale, then shook his head. "No, I didn't ."

"It must have been someone else, then," Father Barry said, in the tone of voice that someone might use to soothe a child who'd just woken up out of a nightmare. Maybe that was fair: maybe it was exactly how Sheriff Brown felt right now. Like a child caught in a terrible dream. Sherry couldn't blame him, if he did. She'd felt like that for days. "She really is locked up in there, though. We checked the door. Do you think that you could let her out?"

Sheriff Brown nodded and pulled a key from his pocket. Sherry couldn't see his hand from where she was standing, but she could hear the key rattling against the lock when it shook. "I can't," he said. He looked ghostly. "I can't do it." He lifted his hands up so that she could see them. The skin looked almost blue. " I can't feel my hands. "

Sherry had heard of skin crawling, but right now she felt like her skin wanted to sprint right out of the cell without the rest of her. She knew that she shouldn't, but she reached through the bars to grip his wrist. He looked so lost . "It's all right," she said. "It's not your fault."

He flushed, blotchily and unattractively, all over his face. He didn't jerk away, though. He let her hold his wrist, just for a moment, until she released him. Then his hand shot out to lock onto her wrist. "Nothing like this ever used to happen around here," he said. He was looking her right in the eyes, as if he was trying to really make her listen, to force someone to understand him. "This all started after you came to town. There's something wrong here."

"I know," she said. "I know. It might be my fault. I'm trying to stop it. I promise I am. Do you think there might be another way to get me out of here?"

"Not until you've thought about why you feel the need to be so insolent," said a snake's voice coming out of Sheriff Brown's mouth. "We'll be holding you here for twenty-four hours. You'll be released in the morning." Then—" Oh ," he said, in his own, miserable voice. " Ugh. That felt like puking backward."

Everyone in the room gave a kind of instinctive writhe of sympathy. Then Sheriff Brown locked eyes with Sherry again. "Sherry," he said, suddenly urgent. " What happened to the internet? "

Reality sneezed.

"What?" Sherry said.

"What?" Sheriff Brown said, looking just as confused as she felt. Then he wandered out of the room without saying another word, like a man who'd gotten as far as the refrigerator before remembering that he was running late for an appointment and needed to be on his way.

Todd waited until the sheriff had left the room for about half a second before he said, "I'm going to go look for a hacksaw. Does anyone need anything else?"

"If we're going to break her out of jail, you might as well steal me an expensive car or something," Charlotte said. "Since we're doing serious time when we get caught either way."

"I need someone to break into the antiques shop," Sherry said.

"I'll do it," Todd said. "Do you need me to pick a lock? Did someone open an evil box that I have to get back so Barry can exorcise it?"

"Oh, wow, is there an evil box?" Charlotte asked.

Sherry considered that for a second. "Maybe," she said finally. "It's as likely as anything else. Keep your eyes out for anything with a mysterious glow, I suppose. But I really just want to know if the account books are in there. There's an outside chance that Alan could have run them back to the shop before he died, and I want to see them." Really, the specific contents of the shop's books mattered less to her than the thought that someone else might have gone out of their way to try to hide them.

Todd visibly deflated. "Oh. Yeah, okay. I guess I could find those. Would they be in a safe? Do you have a key or a code or something?"

"Todd," Barry said. "I don't know if you getting involved is a good idea. Aren't you still on probation?"

"Oh, no, you're a criminal?" Charlotte asked. The look on her face suggested that their blooming jailhouse romance might be about to come to an abrupt end.

"It was just weed," Todd said, looking as if he was making some rapid calculations in his head. He gave Charlotte an admittedly beautiful smile. Sherry could see how a man with a smile like that could get away with all sorts of things. "I promise that I've grown out of my rebellious phase. I'm a nice boy who takes the train upstate to visit his priest big brother every month now."

"I'm only twenty minutes older ," Barry mumbled.

Everyone was ignoring him. Charlotte and Todd were back to smiling at each other. "I'll come with you," Charlotte said. "Sherry, is there a key?"

"Alice had one, I think, but the police might have taken it," Sherry said. "She might be at the library right now, if she isn't at home. You could run over and check. And ask her about the safe."

The two of them took off, looking like two middle school best friends who'd convinced the teacher to give both of them a hall pass. Sherry had to call after them to secure a promise from them to meet at the diner at noon the next day. If she hadn't been released by then, she would really start to worry.

Father Barry stayed behind. "I'm sorry you're stuck in here, Sherry," he said. "Can I bring you anything?"

"Some books and snacks would be nice, if you don't mind," she said. She looked him in the eye. "Was it just weed, Father?"

He grimaced and gave his head a quick, tight shake. "Fraud," he said. "But I know what you're thinking, and I don't think he'd ever be involved with a murder. I don't think he'd see anything wrong with trying to catch a wealthy widow, but he's not a monster. He can be a really nice guy."

"Or widower," she said, purely to make herself difficult. Then she felt a little ashamed of herself. It must be hard to be a kind, well-meaning priest with a criminal playboy for a twin. It wasn't as if priests didn't have enough public relations difficulties on their own. "Thank you for telling me. I don't think that Todd seems like a monster at all."

He nodded, then cleared his throat. "I'll get you those books and snacks," he said. Then he pushed a small bottle between the bars. "Holy water. Just in case."

"Thank you," she said again. Then he left, and she was alone.

For a while, she felt stuck in a horrible psychic waiting room, constantly alert for her name to be called and the next awful thing to happen. Nothing awful happened. Time dragged on. Eventually, Father Barry reappeared with a collection of books. "I wasn't sure whether you'd want something to fit the theme or something completely different, so I got you The Count of Monte Cristo , Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption , Bridget Jones's Diary , and a travel guide for Barbados and Saint Lucia. And some drinks and snacks."

"How thoughtful," Sherry said, really meaning it, and spent a strangely pleasant few hours planning her imaginary vacation to the Caribbean. Maybe she would go on vacation, once she made it out of all this.

Eventually she fell asleep on the thin mattress on the narrow metal bed, and somehow slept harder and longer than she had for a long time, even though that made no sense for the early hour and the uncomfortable place. She didn't even dream. She woke up to the sound of keys jangling and the metal door creaking open, and sat up. She was thinking vaguely that maybe she ought to buy a metal bunk for her own home, just for the sleep quality, before it occurred to her that there might be a supernatural component to her unusually heavy rest, and she gave an uncontrollable little shiver.

"Are you cold?" Sheriff Brown asked as he pulled the door open. He couldn't even look her in the eye.

"I'm fine," she said with dignity, even though she didn't feel dignified at all. She knew that she stunk. "Thank you for letting me out."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again and nodded. His expression was closed and wary. "You're still a suspect," he said.

"I know," she said. "I'm going to find whoever actually did it, though."

He just nodded again at that, and she collected her personal items and left. Everything outside the cell felt suddenly brighter and more vibrant than it had been before. Her mind felt clearer. It was seven in the morning. She hurried back home, fed Lord Thomas, showered, and made herself a big, elaborate breakfast, with eggs and toast and bacon and sliced fruit. Then she sat in her favorite armchair, closed her eyes, and had a good, long, sleep-fortified think.

Sex, revenge, or money. Those were the three main reasons for someone to commit murder. She needed to narrow the possible motives down to one.

In this case, Sherry thought that sex could be eliminated. She'd already found the other woman, and the other woman was currently sitting in her living room racking her brain over who might have killed Alan. She'd also met the wife, and whatever Mrs. Thompson's faults, Sherry found it hard to envision her bashing someone over the head with a brass lamp in a fit of mad jealousy. If she had killed Alan, it wouldn't have been for that reason.

Next up. Revenge. This was where Jason came in. Sheriff Brown had said that he was also looking into him, which meant that she and Charlotte weren't alone in thinking that he had a substantial motive. She needed to check up on his alibi, which would mean doing a bit of old-fashioned detective-ing. She would have to talk to his neighbors to see if anyone could confirm that he'd been at home with his wife all night.

Money. This was where the Thompsons entered her calculations. Based on how they'd all been dressed when they came into the library, the bunch of them were accustomed to a certain standard of living. She knew for a fact that Corey had been in the habit of asking his father for loans to fund his Manhattan lifestyle, and that his intermittent work for his father was probably his steadiest source of income. Eli, with his wife and children, was the more successful and reliable brother, but she doubted that his income as an architect could provide the sort of life that he'd grown up with. Susan cared enough about money to have spent years fighting over it in their divorce proceedings. If Sheriff Brown had been right about the amounts of money that they'd each be about to inherit, they would all have a very good reason to want to kill Alan. There were also three of them, so they'd be, in theory, capable of either providing alibis for each other or of potentially ratting each other out, if it came to that. She'd never gotten the impression from Alan that his sons were particularly close, so it might be possible to play them against each other. She would need to look into them all, though she wasn't sure where she would start. None of them lived in Winesap, and Sherry now knew from unpleasant experience that she wasn't able to leave. She'd be restricted to what she could glean from talking to them, and possibly to Todd. She would have to work quickly, starting with seeing if she could attend the reading of the will.

Money was at the crux of another question, too, one that Sherry found a bit more difficult to untangle. The problem of the antiques store's account books. Alan had said very clearly that he'd planned on continuing to work on the accounts after he'd dropped off Sherry that evening, but when she'd gone through his house after his death, they hadn't been anywhere in sight. True, there could be some alternate explanation. The most likely one was that the police had taken them as evidence. It was also possible that he'd simply decided against working on them at all, or finished with them quickly, and tidied them away somewhere where Sherry wouldn't have spotted them on a brief nose through the house. The other option was more troubling: that whoever killed him had taken the accounts with them.

Who would care about the financial state of the store? His heirs, most likely. Corey, with his part-time work for his father, which might give him access to the shop's accounts, was particularly suspicious. He could easily have used the job to take money from his father when the loans weren't enough to cover his expenses. Alan had also sometimes worked with an accountant and a financial adviser: if one of them had been skimming off the top, then they'd have a vested interest in keeping Alan from finding out. Then, of course, there was Alice.

Alice was a strong suspect, in some ways. She'd seemed genuinely distraught over losing her job after Alan died, but she was in dire financial straits, and if she had been stealing from her employer, it was possible that she could have done something stupid in a moment of panic. Alice had an alibi, though, and one that Sherry had provided personally: there was no way that she could have made it to Alan's house and back on foot in the narrow possible time frame unless she had either a secret car that Sherry didn't know about—in which case, where would she have parked it so that it would have escaped Sherry's notice? She would certainly have noticed tire tracks leading through the snow around to the back of Alice's house—or outside help. Someone driving a getaway car. This struck Sherry as, if within the realm of possibility, definitely in one of the most distant and heavily wooded counties of the realm. Alice was practically a hermit: as far as Sherry knew, she didn't have any friends in Winesap outside of Sherry, let alone anyone who'd be willing to be her accomplice in a murder plot.

If there was such a person, Sherry didn't feel at all guilty thinking that it would be a man. She'd been working under the assumption from the day that she'd first met Alice that she'd arrived in Winesap after fleeing from a violent husband or boyfriend. The bruises and poor Alice's general demeanor made the case for her. Sherry wouldn't be incredibly surprised to learn that there was currently a man in Alice's life encouraging or causing her to make very poor decisions. It could be the same man, or it could be a new one of a similar disposition: in Sherry's experience, there were women with an almost uncanny ability to escape one terrible relationship only in order to run headlong into a new, nearly identical one. The sort of man who'd give fragile little Alice a black eye was, statistically speaking, exactly the sort of man who might get involved with a homicide. In any case, though, that was all speculation: Sherry didn't have a shred of actual evidence that there was a man with little regard for the law in Alice's life who might have provided transportation for Alice to and from a murder scene—or, possibly, taken on the task of killing Alice's boss on her behalf. Finding out if there was such a person in her life might be difficult. Alice hadn't mentioned a man: therefore, if there was one, she didn't want Sherry to know about him. If Sherry wanted to rule out the possibility, she would have to snoop.

Sherry opened her eyes, got up, and found a notepad to write down her to-do list. Then she checked the clock. It was still early: just before ten. Plenty of time before lunch to go to the library, she thought. Then she frowned. She wasn't sure why she'd thought that. She had to go around town and talk to people: this was one occasion when the library probably wasn't going to be much help. Then she thought of something else, something that Sheriff Brown had said to her the day before and that she had somehow almost immediately forgotten. What was it? She could remember his face when he said it, now, how desperate he'd looked to make her listen. What had he said, though? She tried to put herself back in the moment: the chill of the jail cell, the squeeze of his hand on her wrist. Something like terror in his eyes.

What happened to the internet, Sherry?