By The Howling (11 page)

Authors: Olivia Stowe

BOOK: By The Howling

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“All so complicated and yet so simple,” Brenda said, with a sigh.

“In the end, I’d say that Rachel probably did herself in. She was possibly being just a bit too clever. If there hadn’t been two murders in the same spot, there’s little chance we would have backed into solving this by connecting it with your mother’s murder. She no doubt lured Pamela Smith into the woods somehow, but why she picked that exact spot seems risky vanity to me. Perhaps knowing you had returned—and thus were yet another danger to her—she wanted to cast suspicion on you. But we probably won’t know for some time.”

“Do you think they will catch her?”

“Yes, I’m confident they will. She’s running out of room and luck. We’ll find her, I’m sure. The damaged blue sedan was found in Baltimore. She’s on the FBI’s scope now. They’ll find her.”

Brenda turned her eyes to the developing sunset for a few minutes and sighed her contentment.

“And this Edith Smith? A red herring?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so—but yet a confirmation that I haven’t let my skills atrophy totally. She does strongly resemble a serial killer in an open case I dealt with for years. And the Edith Smith of the Clagetts’ farm is a cousin of the woman we’re looking for in that case. Thank God for the new face recognition database the FBI is building. I’m glad I put that bothersome worry to rest. Just a strong resemblance one bears to the other. Still, it points to what a small world we live in.”

“Yes, it does,” Brenda said.

“And it gives me something to do while I’m wasting away here,” Charlotte said, with a laugh. “If I watch Edith Smith closely enough, perhaps her cousin will come to me at last—I certainly spent enough years trying to track her down on her own turf.”

“I thank God it’s such a small world,” Brenda said, her voice ground softer. “It made it easier for me to find you. And I certainly hope that we can not just waste away here after having found each other.”

Charlotte turned her eyes toward Brenda and saw that there were tears on Brenda’s cheek. She felt she was tearing up herself.

And at the moment Sam raised his muzzle and began to howl at the sinking sun, sending it tendrils of orange and yellow and purple and blue rays up into the scudding clouds.

“I think you need to do something about your dog,” Brenda said with a rich laugh. “He’ll raise the neighborhood. I would have said he’d raise the dead, but I think we’ve had enough of that on River Street for a while.”

“Oh, let him howl,” Charlotte responded. “He deserves having the pleasure of that. Let’s leave him and go into the house and do some howling of our own.”

“I’m game, of course. But I thought we’d planned to get out on the river in the twilight. But then perhaps we have blathered out here too long. The sun has almost left us now.”

“I think we need to buy a new, larger sailboat before we go out on the river again,” Charlotte responded. “Putting your Laser and my Penguin together, we still only have two one-woman sailboats. It’s not only that I fear I really will drown you if we get out on the water at the same time in those two boats, but I also fancy the thought of the two of us in one boat together.”

Brenda turned and smiled her radiant smile and said, “Yes, I rather fancy that too.”

As she struggled out of the garden chair, Charlotte was struck with two thoughts. Brenda had said Sam was her dog and she hadn’t demurred. Until now, she hadn’t given it a thought—but at least for the moment Sam
was
her dog—and that made her feel less alone, more content. But not just that. No, not just that by a long shot. Now there was Brenda as well.

O
livia Stowe

Olivia Stowe is a published author under different names and in other dimensions of fiction and nonfiction and lives quietly in a university town with an indulgent spouse.