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“They couldn’t. Ricardo Mayhew was gone. After that night, he was never seen again.”
Carter eyes me over his glass, waiting for my reaction. I respond appropriately, my jaw dropping in surprise.
“And his wife—”
“Berniece.”
The name jars my memory. Lenora mentioned her in passing. Berniece was the kitchen maid who wished her a half-hearted happy birthday.
“She never saw him again, either?”
“Nope.”
“And she had no idea where he went or what happened to him?”
“None,” Carter says. “She’s still around, though. Most folks say she never left town because she’s waiting for her husband to return. It’s more likely the poor woman has nowhere else to go.”
“So you think Ricardo Mayhew murdered the rest of the Hope family and then ran?”
“That’s my guess. Short of Lenora killing them, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“But why would the groundskeeper want to kill Winston Hope and his family?”
“I don’t know,” Carter says. “Why would Lenora?”
A fair point. One I’m still trying to understand myself. But Carter didn’t just spend the entire day helping her type. He didn’t read about the bloody nightgown. Or Lenora tossing a knife into the ocean. Or leaving the terrace to get rope that, I assume, was later tightened around her sister’s neck.
And even though I want to tell him all those things, I don’t. It seems wrong to mention anything until I learn the whole story. Only then will I spill any details. I think that’s what Lenora ultimately wants—for me to be the voice she doesn’t have. Even if what I’m saying is her long-delayed confession.
“If you’re right—and that’s a very big if—it still doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Lenora say anything? If Ricardo killed her parents and her sister, why wouldn’t she tell that to the police?”
Or to me, for that matter. So far, she hasn’t once typed the name Ricardo Mayhew. If she thought he did it, why wasn’t that the first thing she wrote? Instead, she began when, to use her phrasing, it was all but over.
“Maybe she didn’t know,” Carter suggests.
But Lenoradidknow her parents were dead. She told me so. They were dead and her nightgown was bloody and she threw the knife over the terrace railing despite knowing it was evidence of two brutal crimes. Why would she do that if she wasn’t the one who had used it?
I finish my drink, my thoughts rattling like the ice in my now-empty glass. In that tumbling mental chaos, a new theory takes shape. One I can’t share with Carter.
Not just yet.
“I need to go,” I say, standing suddenly. “Thanks for the drink.”
Carter watches in confusion as I give a quick wave goodbye, leave the cottage, and cross the damp lawn. On the terrace, I watch for shingles underfoot and steer clear of the railing. Only when I’m under Lenora’s window do I risk an upward glance. Although her room is still dark and nothing appears at the window, I can’t stop thinking ofLenora lying within, wide awake and mentally repeating a single line from the rhyme I’ve known since grade school.
“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said
Maybe that part of the rhyme is true.
But I suspect there’s more to the story than Lenora is letting on—then or now.
Inside the house, I quickly climb the service stairs. On the second floor, I begin to sway, the mansion’s tilt made worse by the whiskey. Instead of just one drink, it feels like I’ve had four, which explains why I brazenly lurch into Lenora’s room.
I switch on the bedside lamp, startling her awake.
Or maybe Lenora’s only pretending to be startled. I can’t shake the sense that she was already awake—and that she knew I’d be coming. Before she saw it was me storming into the room, her left hand made no move to press the call button. Then there’s the intrigued look in her eyes. While the rest of her face retains a shocked, questioning scrunch, they glisten with satisfaction.
“I want you to tell me about Ricardo Mayhew,” I say.