Page 3 of Woods of the Raven

“Why?”

“I wanted to question everyone who was here last night.”

I took a breath. I didn’t like it when others did this to me, talked in circles, not getting to the point, and it wasn’t any better coming from a human. “Well, I would be everyone, so please, ask away.”

He was glaring now, and between the furrowed brows, thick dark lashes, and midnight-blue eyes, he appeared forbidding. Or, I was guessing, did to most people. But as I’d done nothing wrong for him to be trying to intimidate me, I found myself more than slightly annoyed. I had things to do this morning, and wasting my time on my porch with a man who didn’t seem at all ready to get to the point of his inquiry was not putting me in the best mood.

“A girl was murdered last night, Mr. Corey, and dumped in the bushes between your home and the Johnsons’. Have you seen or heard anything?”

I was stunned. Poor girl. I grieved for the loss of life and the fear she went through. “You have to find out who did it so she can be at rest,” I told him.

“We have to find out who did it because she was murdered,” he corrected me, sounding as irritable as usual.

She hadn’t been left on my property. I would have felt it. Or if I hadn’t, the dogs—Osko, Gwyn, and Dar—would have alerted me when they did their evening rounds. As fearsome and terrifying as they were, they would have been aggrieved over finding someone dead on my land, but they would not have seen anything beyond the boundary. Until their owner collected them for his hunt, the dogs were bound to the property, unable to step foot beyond the ley lines that framed the Corey land—or Corvus, as it had been called in my family for hundreds of years.

“Mr. Corey?”

“Sorry.” I sighed deeply. “I feel terrible for the girl, but I didn’t hear or see anything. There was a pretty serious thunderstorm last night.”

“Yes,” MacBain agreed, and I realized suddenly that I wasn’t looking at irritation from him, but instead pain. He had left the big city to move here with his brother and niece, to a town with forest on three sides and a beach on the other, where a herd of deer could stop traffic, and where everyone knew your name. To have a murder six months in had to be horrifying for him on every level. It had to make him feel as though he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Please, won’t you come in and have some tea,” I entreated, needing to comfort him.

“No,” he said softly, gently, trying for a trace of a smile. “We have to go to Westfield to meet with the medical examiner and—”

“They just took the body,” Pete reminded him. “It’s going to be thirty minutes just in transport, and we don’t know how long on the autopsy. We could have tea.”

The chief clearly didn’t want to come in, but if he let me, I could help. Not with his investigation, but certainly with the weight of whatever he was carrying.

“Come on,” I coaxed, tipping my head.

He gave me a scowl, which sealed the deal. I knew begrudging acceptance when I saw it.

Opening the front door, I stepped aside so they could go in before me, and then I followed them in, closing the door and shutting out the cold.

“Leave your shoes there,” I told them. “And then come have a seat.”

Pete, who’d been in my home many times, bent to unlace his hiking boots, but the chief just stood there looking uncomfortable.

I was nothing if not prepared. “I have felt boot socks you can put your whole foot in if you don’t want to take them off.”

“No.” He appeared uncertain. “I just… Nothing was clean this morning, so I’m not wearing socks and—”

“Got it,” I said, smiling and taking a moment to wonder if he was wearing briefs. I shouldn’t have even entertained such a thought. The man hated me, after all. I darted to a wicker basket near the hearth, pulled out a pair of socks, and returned to him, holding them out. “Here you go. Put these on. They’re even warm.”

He reached for them immediately, then stopped himself. “Oh no, I don’t want to—”

“That’s what they’re for, Chief,” Pete explained. “That’s why he knits them.”

“You knit?” MacBain sounded quite surprised and a bit judgmental, but he took the socks.

“I do.” I crossed my arms, slightly regretting my decision to ask him in.

“No, I didn’t mean it like—I’ve just never met a man who knits.”

“I knit,” Pete announced flatly.

MacBain turned to him. “You knit?”