Maybe Jeff had seen whoever did this.
Kate stalked on around the corner, around the back. No sign of Jeff. He wasn't on the roof. No tracks through the wet grass into the woods, and he wouldn't need to go out behind a tree to take a piss, anyway. He would go inside, use the bathroom. He knew where she'd left the spare key.
"Jeff?" No answer. She raised her voice, facing the woods. "JEFF?"
Silence. She checked the back door, locked, and then the front door. Also locked. Unlocked it, opened it, went inside, searched the house. No Jeff. No wet footprints, either his Red Wings or any other feet.
Outside. Around back, she climbed up the ladder, hip thinking about filing a complaint, and peered over the eave. Stack of loose shingles ready, couple of unopened bundles, halfway up the roof and halfway along one course a shingle hanging at an angle with one nail in place. Jeff wouldn't leave it that way, even if he had the trots. He'd nail it down and then run for the john.
And his hammer was lying there. And the chalk line, and the cat's claw to pull old sheathing nails that he couldn't set true, and his tool belt. Kate muscled herself up onto the roof, jaw clenched against the wakening aches in shoulder and hip. Jeff wouldn't leave his tools lying around like that, 'specially in the damp. Boy had enough of the craftsman in his blood.
The layer of black roofing felt looked rumpled, right next to where he would have been squatting. Right where he'd left his tool belt. She climbed to it, weary, wary, her hand clutching at her shirt pocket and the brooch hidden there. She felt something stirring under the cloth, not movement but emotion, almost anger. This was wrong.
Squatting on the shingles, hip catching fire again, looking at the felt, she picked out lines and curves pressed into the heavy asphalt surface. Letters, scratched with the claw of the hammer, she saw traces of the black goop on one corner.
A single word. "Jackie."
Kate's head spun, and she pitched forward onto hands and knees to stay on the roof. Black filled her sight. She couldn't tell if it was the roofing felt, or inside her brain. Jeff was practically her son.
She saw the House, the Haskell House, against the darkness, the lamp glowing in that kitchen window. Alice. She's a witch. She can help. Time to swallow your pig-headed pride and go hat in hand to Alice. Forgive her. If there ever was anything to forgive.
She squatted, ignoring the flames in her hip and shoulder. She picked up Jeff's hammer and a couple of roofing nails from his belt pouch, set the dangling shingle straight, and nailed it down. She gathered his tools, rigged the tarp back over the stripped roof and anchored it, and climbed down. Set the ladder down on the lawn, safe from wind, safe from curious kids. Stowed his tools and bike inside the house.
Straight ahead, automatic pilot, just do what you have to do. Think about it later.
Jeff was her son.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Daniel Morgan fiddled with his telescope, making fine adjustments that panned his field of view across the Pratts' guesthouse — a rambling half-timbered Tudor "cottage" with third-floor dormer windows poking out of the weathered gray cedar shingle roof. No lights showing, no smoke or steam or even heat shimmer from the three chimneys, no oil deliveries for the boiler, nada.
They had a plan — Daniel, Ben, maybe Alice and maybe not, depending on the phase of the moon and other things. Having Gary show up this morning was a plus. Having Gary show up with Jane attached was . . . interesting. As in that ancient Chinese curse.
He sat back, away from the scope, and studied the broader scene, with both bare eyes and binoculars, and still saw no sign that anyone had lived on that whole compound since the fire last June. Nothing moved in the view from his perch half a mile away, high in a scrubby overlooking pasture and tucked in behind rocks and brush where he hoped nobody could be watching him. Nothing but a couple of crows, poking at their crow-curiosity in the middle of the guest-house lawn. Probably a crab or urchin dropped by a careless gull, or a fish lost by an osprey victim to the noble and freedom-loving bald eagles. Or maybe just something glittery.
Black beams and soot-stained chimneys and ragged tatters of walls poking out of the ash and charcoal of the big-house cellar hole, he could still smell the wet char from here. Rusting skeletons of Tom Pratt's antique car collection in the ruins of the carriage house. Brown-needled spruce and pines killed by the heat, centuries-old trees left standing to rot and fall through the years.
Drifted un-raked leaves on the ragged matted grass, not mowed for over three months. Leaves on the two driveways unmarked by tire tracks, leaves tangled in weeds growing unchecked in the Zen-garden woods and walkways. The place radiated "nobody home" vibrations.
So why hadn't the electric bills shown a big drop from last year? That empty guesthouse was drawing more power than it had before the fire, separate feed and account from the main house. And the bills were getting paid from somewhere. At least, that's what Ben's computer snooping showed.
Ben. Daniel didn't bother to suppress his chuckle, no touchy older brother to hear it and ask him what he found so friggin' funny. Ol' Ben Morgan, terror of the seven seas. Gary and that pistol-packin' mama of his had marched right into the lion's den and spat in the damnfool's eye. Put the fear of God into the old boy.
Well, Daniel had warned him that Alice had an interest. And that he was flying straight in the face of generations of parenting lore with his tactics.
Daniel snuggled up against the scope and panned
