I sag.
“Or you can stay with me and Horace. He has a tricked-out RV. The walls are thin, though, so bring headphones!”
“I’ll figure something out,” I grumble. “And I’ll take that down. I have it organized,” I tell her as she starts to deconstruct my crime-scene wall. “After the funeral.”
“I knewI should have rented an office space,” I mumble against my turned-up collar as I head down the sidewalk. I also should have worn my coat.
It might be early to show up at Willow’s house to pick her up for the funeral, but I didn’t want her and Josie to run off without me.
There’s a sign on the front door when I walk up onto the porch and stomp off the snow: Tinsel & Tea B&B.
The door flings open.
“Oh, good, there you are,” a woman with a Manhattan accent says. “The coffee maker isn’t working.”
“I told you, it just needs a filter change,” a man calls from within the house.
“The coffee machine doesn’t have a filter, Artie!”
Several children—the couple’s grandkids, probably—race around.
“Now, young man, what time do the carriage rides start, and where exactly are we supposed to go to get one?”
“Agnes, I have a map!” Artie calls.
“Um, in front of the town hall. They should start in an hour or so, I think.”
“He thinks?”
The pack of tourists brushes past me. I step into the house.
“Willow!” I call. “Willow?”
I step back outside, unsure what I’m supposed to do about the house.
“Hey there, sonny!”
I bite back a yelp as Beryl pops her head out of the window of a parked car.
“Jeez! The, uh, coffee maker’s broken?” I peer at her. “Are you living in your car?”
“Damn right! Got the whole place rented out. I let Willow have the garden shed just in case she wanted some male company to keep her warm at night.” She winks at me.
“Is this even legal?”
“Now that Jonah Merriweather’s dead, it is. Going to toast his murderer at the funeral!” She cranks the window back up.
I make my way to the backyard, where there’s a quaint carriage house. “Willow?” I call up at the window. My voice sounds muffled in the snowy backyard.
There’s another B-and-B sign on the front door. That can’t be it.
I spin around in the yard. A tiny shed with a slanted roof stands in one corner of the yard, like a potting shed.
“She can’t seriously be in here.” I stomp through the snow, the white powder muffling my footfalls. “That can’t be what her granny means, can it?” I press my face to the foggy square window on the side of the shed and almost choke on my tongue.
Willow’s in nothing but a black bra and black panties, her back toward me as she rolls dark tights up her legs.
Don’t look. Don’t look.
