Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

going in circles? Didn’t you say to me last night that you thought they were connected?”

I brushed him off, confused, still wrapped in my remembered images from the vision.

“Clara, I think you need to let this go,” said Paul. “I’m impressed at the images you’ve gotten, but it’s easy to lose perspective—think you’re acting logically when you’re not. Hetty is dead because someone has a secret to hide, and whoever it is, they’ve targeted you and Constance, too. You’re an intuitive, not an investigator. Use your gifts where they apply.” He turned back to the stove.

“My point, exactly,” Kyle chimed in.

I turned on him, furious, pent up with weeks of sleeplessness, blood-filled dreams, my mother’s silence. “What have you learned? Do you know who killed Hetty? Who killed Hugh? Do you know who’s targeting my mother and why?”

He remained unperturbed. “I can’t share anything from the investigation. There’s too much at stake. I know you wouldn’t mean to tell anyone, but it still happens.”

“Right. You won’t help me, and now even my friends are against me.” Furious, I walked out of the kitchen, put on my coat and boots, and grabbed my car keys. “I’m going home for clean clothes,” I said to whoever was listening. “I’ll be back in time for dinner. If I’m delayed, go ahead without me.” I felt childish, but if I stayed in this house, I would say something I regretted.

The snow wasn’t too heavy yet, the road crews had plowed recently, and the ride home was easy. I pulled the Land Rover up by the front door, figuring I’d only be a few minutes. The door swung open silently, and I closed it just as silently behind me. Something about the house’s emptiness was a balm to my anger. It bothered me that I’d told the chief last night that Hetty’s and Hugh’s murders connected to the campaign, but had forgotten it today. Just sleep deprivation, right? And how could a person think clearly when there were so many different threads to weave into an explicable pattern? Nothing fit. Not one thing. Hetty was so harmless. Why would anyone kill her? And how could I have known her all these years and not known she had a gift like mine?

Maybe her death had nothing to do with Hugh. Maybe some crazy client who didn’t like her intuitive readings lured her to that country road. But I didn’t believe that. This was a small town and two murders in two weeks had to be related. And what did the Winters know, and why would Mary Ellen threaten me to get Mother to do her bidding?

Paul and Kyle were right. I was thinking in circles, maybe making connections where there were none and ignoring the connections that were really there—but I couldn’t stop.

I wandered through the living and dining rooms where we’d celebrated holidays when Father was alive. I missed him. I didn’t think about him as much as I used to, which saddened me, but his voice echoed in my thoughts and his presence was strong in this house. For a moment, I even thought I smelled a bit of his aftershave. I shook my head. Olfactory hallucinations I could do without, but the scent lingered.

He’d loved the grounds, gardened them with pleasure. I still came across his books stuck in odd corners, and last week, in a little used drawer in the garage, his pipe, still redolent of the sweet tobacco he smoked. Mother even managed to keep some of his indoor plants blooming.

I turned, feeling a draft, as if he’d just opened the door and followed me in. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but perhaps my thoughts made him somehow present.

That was ridiculous.

In the kitchen, I looked out at the snow-covered kitchen garden. The gardener handled it now, though Mother didn’t bother with food crops any longer, only herbs. Maybe if I stayed, I would revive it.

Stayed?

I walked back down the hall, wondering if Father had known all Mother’s secrets, and if so, what he thought. What story did Nat think Mother should tell me before it created a monster? I shivered and pushed open the door to what used to be Father’s office, so caught up in my imagination that I half thought it would still contain his leather chair behind the big maple desk piled with gardening and landscape design books, all smelling vaguely of earth and crushed greenery. Even his scent seemed stronger in here.

Of course I knew Mother used this room now. She’d replaced the maple desk with a glass and chrome one, moved in some wooden filing cabinets, and installed a glass door leading out to the garden with stained glass panels on either side. The bookcases, though, were still crammed with his tomes, their little paper notes sticking out the tops and sides. His choices in paintings still adorned the wall space uncovered by books, and heavy leather reading chairs still flanked the fireplace.

What I should have noticed first was the person dressed all in black riffling through the top drawer of one of the cabinets.

“What are you doing?” I said it before thinking about whether or not attracting his attention was wise.

The figure spun around, startled. He had a fist full of papers, and his face was covered with a balaclava. Without saying a word, he threw the papers at me and lunged for the garden door. I ran to intercept him, but he got there first and yanked it open. Two steps behind him, I stretched out to grab his arm and dug my fingers in. He backhanded me and things went suddenly red and black. Falling across the doorsill was the last thing I remembered.

“Clara! Clara. Wake up.”

Soft fingers probed my skull. I tried to pull away, but that felt even worse.

“C’mon. We have to get you inside. Help me.”

Was the person talking to me? I cracked open an eye, but things stayed blurry.

“You’d better call Kyle and an ambulance. There’s a