Promise Not To Tell(55)

Cabot took the stairs two at a time, his gun in his hand. When he disappeared on the landing above, she heard the muffled sound of his footsteps. After a moment he knocked on a door. She assumed he was standing at the entrance to Rose’s private quarters.

Cabot called from the top of the stairs. “No answer at her door. I’m going in.”

“Not alone.” Virginia went swiftly up the stairs. “Something has happened. Let me try talking to her before you do anything else. You’ll scare the living daylights out of her if you open that door with a gun in your hand.”

Cabot did not argue.

She joined him at the top of the stairs. Cabot motioned her to move to one side of the door before he flattened his back to the wall and reached out to grab the knob. Then he signaled her to speak.

“Rose, it’s me, Virginia. I’ve got Cabot Sutter with me. We just want to be sure you’re okay.”

No answer.

Cabot turned the knob. The door was unlocked. It swung open with a few squeaks of the hinges. A cold draft of air carrying an all-too-familiar odor floated out into the hallway. Virginia got a little sick to her stomach.

“No,” she whispered. “Not again.”

But she was speaking to an empty hallway. Cabot was inside the room. She forced herself to follow him.

Rose’s body was crumpled on the floor just outside the entrance to her private bath. Her robe and nightgown were stained with a lot of blood. There was more blood on the floor under her head.

Cabot crouched beside the still form and touched the throat. “Two shots. One in the chest. One in the head.”

Virginia’s stomach clenched. She hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.

“Just like Sandra Porter,” she whispered.

“Gilbert’s been dead for a few hours. Looks like she was killed this morning. Hard to be certain because the room is so cold. I’m going to take a quick look around before we report this.”

“I’m not even sure who we should report it to,” Virginia said. “There’s no police station on the island. There’s a volunteer fire department. The man who runs the general store is in charge of handling emergencies. I suppose we should contact him.”

Cabot stood, crossed to the dressing table and took some tissues out of a box. He went into the bathroom and started opening drawers.

Virginia pulled herself together, opened her handbag and removed some tissues. “I’ll take a look through her bureau and closet. Any idea what we’re searching for?”

“No,” Cabot said. “But anything that connects Rose Gilbert to Quinton Zane or someone at Night Watch would certainly be useful.”

“What do we do if we find something? There are rules about disturbing crime scenes.”

“We’re not going to steal anything. We’re going to use our cameras to take pictures of whatever we find.”

“Right.”

Virginia went quickly through the bureau. The top two drawers contained an assortment of nightgowns, sweaters, socks and underwear. All of the garments looked as if they were about the right size for Rose’s chunky frame.

There was more clothing in the lower drawers but the items were not folded. Instead, they looked as if they had been scooped up in a hurry and dumped into the drawers. They also looked much older and faded from years of washing.

Curious, she unfolded one of the nightgowns and held it up to take a closer look.

“It’s the wrong size,” she said, baffled.

Cabot came to the door of the bathroom. “What?”

“The clothes in the top drawers look like they would have fit Rose, but the things in the bottom drawers are much too small for her. They probably belonged to Abigail Watkins. It looks like Rose never bothered to get rid of them after she moved in here.”

“So?” Cabot went back into the bathroom and opened the cabinet.

“So, a woman might keep a dead woman’s sweaters, but only if they fit. She certainly would not wear a dead woman’s underwear or her nightgowns.”

Cabot came back to the doorway, intrigued.

“Maybe it was just too much trouble to get rid of Watkins’s things,” he suggested.

“Maybe. But it feels creepy to keep a dead woman’s underwear. At the very least I would have thought that Rose would have packed up the stuff and stored it in the basement.”

“I think what this tells us is that, initially, at least, Rose wasn’t planning to hang around for long,” Cabot said. “But something made her change her mind.”

Virginia finished the search of the bureau and went to the nightstand. There were some old needlework magazines inside. She picked them up, not expecting to find anything useful.

Underneath the magazines was a large, unsealed envelope. There was no address. She raised the flap and looked inside. There were several sheets of paper and another, smaller envelope.

“Cabot?”

“Find something?”

“I don’t know.” Virginia tipped the envelope over the bed and looked at the pages that cascaded out onto the quilt. “Photocopies,” Virginia said.

Cabot moved toward her. “Of what?”

“I’m not sure. Letters, maybe. Looks like Abigail Watkins’s handwriting. She had amazing handwriting. Very neat, very precise – just like her needlework.”