To make it appear a suicide?
Or for theatrical effect?
It would have been so much easier just to leave her strangled body in the hay, instead of rigging a noose, looping it over the rafters, and hoisting her body up.
Unless that was what got him off.
Some kind of sick torture.
But only the girl. Drew had been hit over the head and tossed through the ladder’s hole.
The microwave dinged, and he picked up the cup gingerly. Staring out the window to the storm, still raging, still dumping more snow, he thought of the information he’d gotten from the sheriff’s department and sipped the bitter blend.
Detective Baines had informed him that Nona didn’t have defensive wounds, though the coroner had found skin cells under her nails. They were waiting to see if the cells matched Andrew Prescott’s DNA—a possibility, since the two were naked and entangled. But that analysis would take some time. There was still trace evidence being studied, fingerprints to be matched, but nothing firm yet.
And meanwhile, this whole community was trapped here, trapped and scared.
He took a final swallow from his cup, then tossed the remainder down the sink. Now that he was a damned deputy, he’d better get to work and find out what really happened in the hayloft.
For once, Jules awoke from a dreamless sleep. Thankfully she’d been exhausted enough to keep the nightmares at bay, and her headache had receded, no longer pounding.
“Clean living,” she whispered to herself before taking a quick, hot shower, then changing into thermal underwear, jeans, a sweater, and a thick, insulated parka.
She was reaching for the handle of her door when she caught sight of a small piece of white paper near the threshold, a page that hadn’t been there earlier.
She picked up the single sheet and turned it over.
HELP ME!
The frantic message was scrawled at an angle in black ink.
She nearly dropped the page.
“What the devil?” Was this some kind of a joke? A prank the kids pulled on the new teacher? Or something else? Hadn’t she felt as if someone had been in her room the other night? Possibly standing over her and watching her as she slept.
Her skin crawled as she threw open the door and stepped into the outer hallway.
Empty.
The two other doors on the floor shut tight. Who had left the desperate plea?
Shay.
Of course.
But it wasn’t her sister’s style to be so coy.
Tucking the bit of notebook paper into her pocket, she hurried down the flight of stairs, looking for anyone who might have slipped the page under the door. So you got a note, so what? She tried to make light of the situation, but because of the murder, she couldn’t.
She climbed down the stairs and came across no one.
At this hour, Stanton House was quiet.
She checked the main level, where a few couches, tables, and lamps created a seating area, but again, she was alone, the only sounds in the house the soft purr of a hidden furnace forcing warm air through the building and the quiet tick of an old clock mounted on the wall.
For now, there was no telling who had left the note or whether it was a serious plea or some kind of prank.
Get over yourself!