that woman of committing worse crimes against his son while the boy was underage.
Oren picked up the paper bag, opened it and looked inside. “And I saw Isabelle Winston, too. So she still comes back every summer?” He closed the bag and set it down on the stump.
“This time she came in April.” The judge squinted and strained his eyes to read the receipt stapled to the paper sack, but this only told him the price. “I think the Winston girl moved back to the lodge so she could look after her mother.”
And the flimsy paper bag that did not contain the judge’s heart medication was gaining more weight with every passing second. It had to be Hannah’s own prescription. What ailed his housekeeper? Was it something serious?
“So Mrs. Winston’s not well?”
“Sarah? Oh, she drinks a bit,” said the judge. “When I was still on the bench, I had to revoke her driver’s license.”
Could the bag contain heart medication for Hannah?
Endgame.
The judge picked up the bag, ripped it open and stared at the label on a bottle of tiny white pills prescribed for his housekeeper. “Lorazepam?”
Oren smiled—no, call it gloating—as he dangled the car keys in one hand. “I wonder why Hannah keeps these in a tea tin at the top of the cupboard.”
So that’s where they were.
“Well, age takes a toll, and she’s getting up in years,” said the judge, who was fifteen years older than his housekeeper. “Did the pharmacist mention what these pills were for?”
“He didn’t have to. I already knew.”
Beaten again, the judge looked down at the mystifying label.
“It’s for her anxiety,” said Oren, a gracious and charitable winner.
Hannah anxious? Never.
Henry Hobbs regarded the pill bottle as if it might be filled with little white bombs. “That can’t be right. She’s so calm, she’s downright sluggish. She goes to bed early, takes naps in the afternoon.” He addressed the object in his hand. “There’s got to be another use for this medication. You know, over the past six weeks or so, I think she’s gotten a little paranoid. Hiding the car keys—that fits. And you’ve seen all the locks on the front door? Kitchen door, too. That’s Hannah’s doing.”
“Well, sir, you’ve got human bones dropping on the front porch like clockwork. That might account for the locks.”
The sash was raised on the window in Josh’s bedroom, and both men looked up to see the sheriff leaning over the sill and calling out in a neighborly fashion, “Oren? A word?”
Hannah came down the stairs as Oren climbed upward.
“I plan to throw a quick lunch together. You fancy a chicken sandwich?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She paused on the step beside him. “I told Cable everything.” In passing, she whispered, “I don’t think he’ll need to question the judge today.”
“Good job.”
Reaching the second-floor landing, he saw a stranger standing idle in the hallway. Printing on the back of his jacket identified him as the county coroner’s man—still waiting for the bones. That was odd. Hannah’s small store of information would have filled ten minutes at the outside. What had Cable Babitt been doing with all this time?
Oren hovered on the threshold of his brother’s bedroom. He stared at the open closet, the rod packed tight with smashed-together clothes, a shelf piled high with junk—and he wondered if the sheriff had noticed the single anomaly in that chaos.
Henry Hobbs was surprised—and wary.
No revved-up Porsche had announced the arrival of Addison Winston, who so loved a noisy entrance. The lawyer came strolling across the meadow—quietly, and that alone was cause for suspicion. Though technically neighbors, the Winstons owned a great deal of acreage, and it was a good hike from the lodge—for an attorney in wildly expensive dress shoes. All decked out in a superbly tailored suit of gray silk, Addison hardly looked the part of a man in early retirement. But then, he had never fit
Heidi Hunter, Bad Boy Team