“What time do you think you saw this incident?”
Wincing, Tom looked at Amelia, who gave an apologetic shrug. She’d been quiet all morning, though if her head was pounding as badly as his… And if they had indeed witnessed a murder… What a mad night—the parts he could remember. And he suspected that the parts he couldn’t remember were even more bonkers.
He did recall thinking with absolute conviction sometime in the night, as he’d run a fingertip around the contours of Amelia’s collarbone, that she was the one and only woman for him. But he couldn’t remember exactly why, beyond the fact she was fun to hang out with, and the obvious physical attraction. There was something more, he was sure of it. Not love at first sight, because that wasn’t a thing, but more than a simple case of boy meets girl. He’d been convinced that fate had at last delivered him something that might actually have a future—a future that was booked to fly back across the Atlantic in a matter of days.
More likely, he was just desperate to see intoanyfuture.
It was strange. He’d spent the last year alone in the house, and suddenly the thought of her leaving him to it made him feel like he was shrinking and the house was growing. In fact, that exact thing was happening, right now—the table began to expand, the ceiling rose, the walls moved away… He slammed his palms on the tabletop, and everything reverted to regular proportions.
“Tom?” the sergeant said, eyeing him curiously. “Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“What time did you witness this incident?”
“Uh, sometime after midnight? We came downstairs for…”
“Something to eat!” Amelia finished.
The sergeant looked around the kitchen. Dirty pots and pans were stacked up by the sink, a broken plate lay on the floor beside several smashed eggs, wine bottles were strewn across every surface—though most had been undrinkable—and there was a distinct smell of bacon and stale wine, with a chaser of citrus. “If the lights were on down here, how’d you manage to see outside, pet?”
Tom tipped his head to one side. His neck crackled. “Uh, good question?”
Amelia screwed up her face. Her warm brown eyes were rimmed with red. He recalled staring into them yesterday as the two of them sat by the fireplace in the music room, transfixed by the way her irises took on the amber glow of the flames. “We decided to eat in the light of the moon fog,” she said.
The sergeant pointed the stylus at her. “The what now?”
“The fog. It was glowing, from the moon. We turned off the lights and just sat here, ‘moon-bathing.’”
Tom idly flicked at a piece of dried bacon that had settled in a groove in the table. That sounded familiar. It was like trying to piece together a shifting dream. A dream from which he hadn’t completely awoken.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.” Amelia grimaced, glancing at Tom. “Hours?”
Tom shrugged. “It was a full moon last night, so it would have been bright.”
“It was one of them spooky glowing fogs we get, for sure, so you’re not off the mark there, pet. Can you describe these two people you saw carrying the rug?”
“Uh…” Again, Amelia looked at Tom. “Dark coats? Like the one Tom’s wearing—thick winter overcoats.”
The sergeant wrote a few words on her tablet and paused, expectantly.
“And a…” Tom touched his fingers to his forehead, trying to pin down the memory. Dark clothing sounded right, but what else was tugging at him?
Suddenly, Amelia stood. “Yes, a…” Her eyes widened, and she sat down hard. “No, that’s not right.”
As Tom stared at her bewildered expression, a crazy image rose from the fog in his brain, an odd crossover between a memory and a dream. That obviously wasn’t right, either. He rubbed his eyes, as if that would wipe away the mind picture, like clearing a whiteboard.
The sergeant put down her stylus. “That’s all you have? Did you see their faces?”
Tom couldn’t see anything except the ridiculous image in his head. He shook his head, and immediately regretted it. It felt like his brain had detached from his skull and was freely knocking about in there.
“Wait! I heard an argument last night!” Amelia said, holding up her index finger.
“You did?” Tom said.
The sergeant readied the stylus, perking up. “Well, that’s something. Who, what, where? What did they say?”
