The heat of the burning barn pressed against my face. My lungs burned with smoke. I stumbled into the smoldering framework, the timbers still crackling and groaning.
Arthur Pendelton stood in the center, his silhouette dark against the fiery ruins. The air shimmered with heat, distorting his shape. He held nothing now, just his own menacing presence.
“Clara,” he sneered, his voice hoarse from the smoke. He waved a dismissive hand at the charred remains. “Too late. All the old maps, the boundary posts. Gone. Just like Eleanor.”
“You did this,” I accused, my voice raw. My eyes stung.
He laughed, a harsh, guttural sound that seemed to relish the destruction. “Of course I did. What did you expect? I won’t let you, a simple housekeeper, stand in my way.”
He stepped closer, his eyes gleaming with a manic satisfaction. “Eleanor was a nuisance. Stubborn old woman. Wouldn’t sell. So I simply encouraged her demise.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What are you talking about?”
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, boastful whisper, as if sharing a delicious secret. “Her shallow well. Right next to my new construction site. A bit of ‘runoff’ from the drains. Construction solvents, nothing fancy.”
He watched my face, savoring the horror. “Slow, subtle. Weakened her system. Just enough to hurry things along. That old witch would never have given up her land alive.”
My blood ran cold. Eleanor. Poisoned. Not a natural death, but a slow, calculated murder.
Arthur chuckled, turning to look at the burning timbers. He seemed entirely unmonitored, lost in his triumph.
“It all falls into place now,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “No evidence. No will. Just my new resort.”
Unknown to him, a tiny voice recorder, no bigger than my thumb, nestled deep in the pocket of my coat. Chloe had slipped it there, a silent guardian, before I had left the house.
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