Chapter 91 - The Shadow on the Threshold
The rental sedan’s windshield wipers slapped rhythmically against the glass, clearing away the freezing drizzle as I turned off Route 9 and onto the gravel road leading to my property.
The woods were silent. Bare oak and birch branches arched over the road, coated in a crystalline skin of ice. The flashing blue lights of the police cruisers were gone, replaced by the yellow plastic barrier tape tied between two granite fence posts at the driveway entrance, flapping limply in the freezing wind.
I stopped the car, stepped out into the biting New Hampshire cold, and unhooked the tape. The air smelled of woodsmoke, wet pine needles, and snow. It was the scent of home, pure and unyielding.
I drove up the long, curving driveway and parked in front of the farmhouse.
The front porch was quiet. Caleb’s truck was gone, impounded by the federal marshals. The front door was shut, the brass deadbolt I had installed years ago sitting firmly in its strike plate. I walked up the wooden stairs, my boots crunching on the frozen slush, key in hand.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The house was cold, but the furnace hummed softly in the basement. Everything was exactly as I had left it: the coat rack by the entry, the ticking grandfather clock in the hallway, the kitchen table clean and bare. The red folder Tori had shoved into my hands three weeks ago was gone, taken into evidence by the authorities.
I set my suitcase down beside the stairs and walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
Then, from the dark hallway leading to the back study, came the slow, deliberate sound of a floorboard creaking under heavy weight.
I froze, my hand hovering above the stove burner.
A figure stepped out from the shadows of the parlor, leaning heavily on a carved walnut walking stick, wearing a damp woolen coat.
It wasn't Caleb. It wasn't Roland Vance.
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It was a man I hadn't seen in thirty years—a man who had supposedly drowned in a fishing accident off the coast of Maine in 1994, whose funeral I had attended alongside Arthur.
"You should have left the ledger in the Kasbah, Myrna," the man said softly, stepping into the kitchen light.
