She started to go out into the living room but stopped short when she noticed the clipping tacked to the wall. It was the picture of Travis’s wife, Patricia, displaying a picnic basket filled with corn bread.#p#分页标题#e#
PATRICIA WEBSTER SHARES FAMILY CORN BREAD RECIPE AT COMMUNITY PICNIC
In response to requests, Mrs. Webster explained that it was an old family recipe with a secret ingredient . . . sour cream.
Sour cream was underlined in red pen.
Tom had always been a canned-beans-and-rice kind of cook. Why in the world had he bothered to cut out the newspaper story featuring Patricia Webster? And why underline the words sour cream?
She pulled the thumbtack out of the clipping, intending to show it to Daphne. A photo fell out from behind the newspaper article. It dropped to the floor.
For a moment she looked at it, uncomprehending. It was a picture of Ramona holding a plate of corn bread. She was smiling at the camera.
Madeline turned the photograph over, looking for a date. On the back, scrawled in Tom’s handwriting, were the words Family recipe—sour cream. Sunrise Sisters.
Madeline went cold. With the newspaper clipping and the photograph in hand, she went back out into the living room.
“Daphne, I need you to look at something I just found,” she called.
She stopped in the middle of the room and studied the framed pictures that covered the walls. Sunrise Sisters was displayed in the center. It was a photo of the hotel taken against the fiery light of a copper-and-gold sunrise. The lobby of the old hotel was silhouetted against the brilliant colors. She and Daphne were pictured standing at the cliff’s edge, looking out over the water. Two young girls excited about the future.
Tom’s dying words came back. You always liked my sunrises.
She crossed the room and took the picture off the wall. There was an envelope taped to the back of the frame. Anticipation and dread whispered through her.
“Daphne? I think I’ve found something important.”
She tore open the envelope and dumped the contents onto the desk. Photographs tumbled out. The first photo showed a man climbing out from behind the wheel of an expensive SUV. The vehicle was parked in a stall in front of a suburban condo complex. The man wore sunglasses and a peaked cap that concealed most of his face. But the SUV looked exactly like the car that Travis drove. The photographer had been careful to catch the license plate in the scene. It would be easy enough to verify that it was Travis’s car.
The second picture was taken from a different angle but it showed a woman emerging from one of the condos. She, too, was wearing dark glasses. The hood of her stylish parka was pulled up to partially conceal her profile, but her lean, long-legged build was easy to identify. Ramona.
Tom must have grown suspicious of her at some point, Madeline realized. It must have been heartbreaking for him to realize that there was no long-lost granddaughter, after all. He realized he had been played. That was when he had called and told her that he had to talk to her in person.
She picked up the third photo. Shock jolted through her. She stared at it for a few seconds, trying to make sense of the picture. Then she put it down and dove into her tote for her phone. She entered Jack’s number, even as she shouted down the hall.
“Daphne, come here. You’ve got to see what I just found—”
Daphne appeared. She was not alone. Patricia Webster was with her. Patricia had a gun in her hand and it was pointed at Daphne’s head.
“I’m sorry, Maddie,” Daphne whispered.
Patricia motioned briefly with her free hand and mouthed the words end it. She reinforced the command by pressing the barrel of the gun more tightly against Daphne’s head.
“What?” Jack asked in his inimitable style.
“Sorry,” Madeline said quietly into the phone. “I hit your number by mistake, Jack.”#p#分页标题#e#
“How’s the photo sorting going?”
“Not bad. Oh, I got the recipe for you.”
“What recipe?”
“The one pinned to the wall in the kitchen. You remember. You said you wanted to try it.”
“As I recall, what I said was that I would never use sour cream in corn bread.”
“I think I’ll try whipping up a batch. Got to go now. Lot of work left to do here.”
She ended the call.
“Good,” Patricia said, her voice brittle with tension. “You handled that well. Now just keep doing as you’re told and this will all be over soon.”
“You know,” Madeline said, “I’m a little surprised to see you here. If I were in your shoes I would have been as far away as I could get from Cooper Island.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to return, Madeline. I knew you would, you see. Sooner or later you had to do something about getting rid of the hotel. I was sure you would come back here to take care of things. What I didn’t know was that you would bring some of your friends with you.”