Skeleton Key(103)

“Oh, yes,” Eve said. “Tea, I guess. I really wish you wouldn’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. Why don’t you turn on the TV and check around. I’ll bet at least one of the stations has more on that murder we were talking about. Except it’s two murders now.”

Grace hurried off into the back of the apartment. Eve found the television remote on the table and pushed the power button. A picture popped up on the small screen, wavered for a moment, and then settled. The set seemed to have been left at News Channel 8. Eve sat down on the couch and hunched forward to watch.

It took a moment or two to figure out what was going on. Eve hated news bulletins. She found them far too confusing. During The Monica Lewinsky Mess, as Darla had called it, Eve had taken to playing movies on the television at work. It was the only way she could make sure that whatever she was watching would not be interrupted by “late-breaking news.” Eve hated late-breaking news even more than she hated news bulletins.

Grace came back into the living room, saw what was on television, and stopped.

“What’s this?” she asked. Then she hunched forward and listened.

“There’s been another murder,” Eve said, because this was something she had managed to figure out. Another murder, of someone named Margaret Anson, in her own garage. Wasn’t Margaret Anson Kayla Anson’s mother?

Grace was looking a little green. “This is terrible,” she said. “This is really terrible.”

Ann Nyberg was manning the anchor desk for what looked like a long special report Every once in a while, a map would flash on the screen, but Eve couldn’t make head or tail of it She had never been very good at reading maps.

“We must stress,” Ann Nyberg said, “that there are a lot of unanswered questions in this case. Police still do not know who was driving the 1996 Jeep Wrangler that was seen following Kayla Anson’s car on the night of her murder, or how the Jeep became badly damaged, or who dumped it in the Fairchild Family Cemetery in Morris. Police also do not know—”

“Don’t you love Ann Nyberg?” Grace said. “I always watch her when she’s on. She’s my favorite one.”

“The Capernaum Road,” Eve said.

“What?”

Eve bit down on the knuckle of her right index finger. It was so hard for her to think. It had always been so hard for her to think. She would never have been able to put together the kind of life Grace had, with different jobs and different friends and projects that stretched years into the future. She had a hard time dealing with the crossword puzzles in the Waterbury Republican, and those were crossword puzzles for dummies, not hard ones like some people did.

“Kayla Anson was murdered on Friday night. Didn’t you say that?” Eve said.

“That’s right.”

“And this thing with the Jeep. That happened on Friday night, too? That the Jeep got messed up and was found in the Fairchild Family Cemetery?”

“I think so. But I’ve kept all the news stories. We could look at them and find out for sure. Why?”

“Somebody would have told, don’t you think? I mean, it was an official report. It came through the town of Watertown. It would have been written down somewhere and somebody would have seen it.”

Out in the kitchen, the kettle began to blow. Grace looked over her shoulder in that direction with more than a little impatience.

“I’ll get that in a minute,” she said. “Tell me what you’re talking about. What was an official report?”

“It would have been written down,” Eve said again. “They would have seen it. They’ve probably thought about it already, and decided it doesn’t mean anything. I’m probably just being stupid.”

“I’ve got to go get the kettle. But I don’t think you should just decide that you’re stupid. If you think you know something, you should tell somebody. You should tell the police.”

“It’s just that it’s so close. To the cemetery. And something must have knocked it over. They don’t fall over by themselves. And it would do a lot of damage, too. Usually it would just knock the whole thing over.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Grace said.

The kettle was whistling and whistling. It hurt Eve’s ears to listen to it. She still couldn’t make up her mind. She hated to look stupid in front of people, and this was just the kind of thing that would make her look stupid for years. Everyone in town would know. She would hear about it every time she went to Adams for the groceries or to Brooks for her hydrogen peroxide and witch hazel.