Myrtle is looking at Ed. His mouth hangs open. “Is it just me, or do you recognize that firepit?”
“Looks like the one at Beth Ann’s place. She keeps an old tractor tire rim in the stones just like that,” he confirms.
My chest clenches. Beth Ann—turnips and raccoons and sunshine smiles—the friend I always wanted but never had. She dropped in that first day after I arrived.
Myrtle’s face falls. “I was afraid of this. I told her she should stay with her brother in Vermont, just until this Strangler business passes.”
“This is the same Beth Ann I met?” I ask, setting a bowl and spoon in the sink behind the counter, hoping I’m wrong.
Myrtle frowns. “Yes. She worked as a freelance writer and had the benefit of being able to live anywhere, which is why I wanted her to leave. No point taking unnecessary chances. But once mountain life gets ahold of you, it’s hard to let go. Even for a few weeks.”
“She was doing so good,” Ed mentions, hanging his head. “Even you said it had been a long time since you’d seen a woman on her own take to these parts so well.”
Myrtle drops a dish towel to the counter. “No husband, no kids, no one to look out for her. I tried to convince her to pack up and go someplace else. Come back when she’s happily married. A woman like that gets lonely up here with nothing but trees for company. How’s she going to meet anyone? Huh?”
“You seemed to make it work,” I point out, but Myrtle only huffs.
“That’s different,” she insists.
I don’t see how, but there’s no arguing with her. I’ve already figured that much out. Ed, for all his extra years of experience, still has not.
Myrtle turns to him. “He’s close. He’s been dancing around us this whole time, but Beth Ann was one of ours. That means the Strangler is in Crow Lake.” Her eyes fall on me.
I turn my attention back to the news report as I push in chairs at the table I just bussed. The reporter is sharing a forensics profile of the killer, hoping it might spark some leads.
“The Saranac Strangler is believed to be a man in his thirties or forties. Known for the meticulousness of his previous crime scenes, he is thought to have an overarching need for order and control. His victims suggest a history of difficult relationships with women and a preoccupation with power and dominance. Though he leaves no DNA trace to corroborate the theory, it is believed his sexual fantasies are entangled with his need to kill, and it is suspected that these murders may be his only course for relief.”
Myrtle walks up behind me as I let out a choked laugh.
“Something funny to you?” she asks, her voice low.
My teeth clench and I busy myself wiping at imaginary spots on the salt and pepper shakers. “I know the type, is all,” I tell her.
“Homicidal maniac is atype?” she asks, incredulous.
I turn to face her, my eyes cold. Somehow, this news makes it feel like Henry is winning. “It is for me.”
Her lips flatten against one another. “Come with me,” she says.
I follow her to the back of the café and slowly up the winding staircase—careful of my boot—to the second-story room. She unlocks the door and turns on the light. I recognize what must be the pantry, storage for all the food and equipment she uses in the café and guest cabins. Shelves line three walls stocked with canned tomatoes and powdered coffee creamer and large plastic jars filled with spices. Clean towels and tubs of laundry detergent fill another whole unit. “It can get hard to make it in or out of this town in the winter. It’s good to keep stores, just in case.”
I nod, knowing that once my foot fully heals, I’ll probably have to come up here and haul things down for her. The front wall by the door has built-in cabinets made of knotty pine. I glide myhand down them, running my fingers over the smooth tiles of the counter, feeling an odd pull to the last cabinet on the top. There’s an extra sink up here, I notice. And some kitchen supplies—a mortar and pestle, a coffee grinder, a food dehydrator. Nestled amid the stock of food and supplies is an upright futon with two pillows and a throw blanket on top.
“For the occasional straggler,” she tells me, nodding toward the futon. “It’s smart to keep an extra bed around here.”
She starts to reach for a large bag of salt. “I’ve got to get this down. Help me by opening that bin.”
With my cracked ribs, I can’t really muscle the bag, so I take the lid off the waiting plastic bin and pull out the old bag to throw away.
“This man,” she asks as we work, “the one you say is dangerous, that thinks you’re dead—he chokes you?”
I swallow. “Sometimes,” I admit.
When she looks at me, her eyes burn. “He ever kill anyone?”
“Not yet,” I tell her, moving to lean against the counter. I fold my arms and look away. These are hard things to admit to myself, much less someone else. I can’t imagine a woman like Aunt Myrtle being hurt by a man like Henry. But she doesn’t judge me. In fact, she’s remarkably placid.
She sighs. “But he’s been working up to it? Practicing on you?”
