Maribel had never been there.
By sunset, she was standing in Evelyn Pierce’s bedroom.
Drawers had been emptied.
Dresses scattered across the floor.
A jewelry box smashed.
Mattress slashed.
Grace slept downstairs with Nolan’s housekeeper, Mrs. Talley.
Sheriff Reed crouched beside the broken window.
“Whoever did this knew what they wanted.”
“What?” Nolan asked.
“If I knew, I’d be earning my salary.”
Maribel studied the room.
A framed photograph lay facedown near the bed.
She picked it up.
Evelyn Pierce stared back at her.
Beautiful.
Fair-haired.
Serious.
And strangely familiar.
Maribel frowned.
“What?”
Nolan stood behind her.
“Your wife.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve seen her before.”
“Of course. In town.”
“No.”
Maribel looked more closely.
“I mean somewhere else.”
Her stomach tightened.
Something about Evelyn’s eyes.
The shape of her mouth.
Then memory struck.
Maribel nearly dropped the photograph.
Nolan caught it.
“What is it?”
She stared at him.
“Two months before Matthew was born, a woman came to Honey Lantern after closing.”
Nolan’s expression changed.
“Evelyn?”
“I didn’t know her name.”
“What did she want?”
“She asked about Elias.”
Nolan stepped closer.
“Why?”
Maribel searched the memory.
It had been summer.
Warm rain.
Elias had gone to fetch flour.
The woman had entered wet and nervous.
“She asked whether my husband kept financial ledgers for freight deliveries.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Why would Evelyn care?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else did she say?”
Maribel’s heartbeat quickened.
“She asked if Elias had ever done business with Dr. Venn.”
Nolan’s face emptied.
“Had he?”
Maribel whispered:
“Yes.”
Elias Quinn had not been only a baker’s husband.
Before marrying Maribel, he had worked for a freight company hauling medical supplies from Denver to isolated towns.
Even after settling in Widow Creek, he occasionally helped merchants audit shipments.
Maribel unlocked an old trunk beneath her bed that evening.
Nolan stood beside her.
She removed folded shirts.
A wedding blanket.
Matthew’s tiny knitted cap.
Her hands faltered on it.
Nolan looked away, giving her privacy without moving.
Beneath everything lay Elias’s ledgers.
Maribel opened one.
Pages of flour.
Sugar.
Coffee.
Lamp oil.
Then medical goods.
Laudanum.
Quinine.
Chloroform.
Ergot.
Morphine.
Nolan leaned closer.
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Hours passed.
Then Maribel found a symbol.
A small black cross marked beside certain shipments.
She frowned.
“I’ve seen that.”
“Where?”
“Elias used it when a payment didn’t match the delivery.”
They traced the marked entries.
All connected to one recipient.
H. Venn.
Nolan’s face hardened.
“Dr. Venn.”
“Some of these amounts are enormous.”
“Medicine?”
“Maybe.”
Maribel turned another page.
Then stopped.
A note had been written in Elias’s hand.
Three words.
INFANTS — ASK EVELYN.
Neither spoke.
Nolan took the ledger.
His fingers began trembling.
“My wife knew.”
“Yes.”
“Knew what?”
“I don’t know.”
His grief turned to fury.
“She was trying to tell me.”
“We don’t know that.”
“She came to you asking about Elias.”
“She came because Elias had records.”
“And now they’re both dead.”
Maribel looked at him.
The sentence landed between them like a gunshot.
Elias.
Evelyn.
Matthew.
Perhaps nothing connected them.
Perhaps everything did.
Then someone knocked.
