“Thank you, Mrs. Hammond. And thank you for the lovely card you sent. My sister and brother and I all appreciated your kind words.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Rob hadn’t bothered to read any of the cards, but why get into that?

Mrs. Hammond nodded again, acknowledging Lorna’s thanks. “How long will you be staying? And what are you planning to do with the old place? And please tell me what you were thinking when you offered to post bail for Billie Eagan.”

Lorna almost laughed out loud. Mrs. Hammond definitely had her priorities.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. We have pretty much agreed to sell off the property, as much as we all hate the idea. None of us can afford to buy out the others right now, and we’ve all established ourselves elsewhere. So selling makes the most sense. I don’t know what else to do with it. It hasn’t been an easy decision, I assure you. That farm has been Palmer land since the eighteen hundreds, as I’m sure you know. We just don’t have many options.”

“Have you contacted a Realtor yet?”

“No. I was putting that off. I’ve only been here since Sunday, and I think I’d like a little time to unwind. Between my mother’s illness and getting my business off the ground, it’s been a tough few years for me. I want to take my time, and make sure that whatever decisions I make now are the right ones.”

“That’s smart of you.” Mrs. Hammond was nodding that head of white hair, and once again patting Lorna’s hand. “Don’t rush into anything you’ll regret. Once the farm is sold, it will be gone forever. You’re wise to take your time.”

“Well, I don’t have all that much time. I do want to get back to Woodboro. My business is there, my friends…” Lorna was getting tired of the same old explanation. “In any event, I’ll need to go through the house, see who wants what, that sort of thing.”

“It’ll take you forever,” Mrs. Hammond said bluntly. “Your grandmother was a collector. You’re going to have to get people in who know what they’re looking at, or you’ll get robbed.”

“I promise, I’ll check out the reputation of every dealer who passes through the front door.”

“Your grandmother would appreciate that, I’m sure. She did have some lovely things.”

Lorna was about to respond, when Mrs. Hammond leaned forward and tapped her on the left arm. “Now, about Billie Eagan’s bail. Not that it’s any of my business, of course…”

“I did offer to put up her bail, and I spoke with the attorney who was appointed to defend her. He didn’t seem to be too interested, frankly, so I-”

“Overworked, they all are. Too many cases, too little time to prepare. I watch all those law shows on TV, I know what’s going on.”

“I’m sure overwork has something to do with it. But it seems to me that everyone has basically decided that Billie’s guilty.”

“Pretty much everyone has,” Mrs. Hammond agreed, as if Billie’s guilt was a given. Lorna decided to let it slide. She wasn’t about to go toe-to-toe with an eighty-something-year-old woman.

“Mrs. Hammond, did you see my mother very often before she got sick and came to live with me?”

“Oh, yes. At least once a week. She stopped by on her way to the supermarket, to see if I needed anything, bless her heart. And she always checked to see if I had my heart medication, or if I needed a ride someplace. She was very thoughtful that way, you know. She looked out for everyone, it seems.”

“Do you know if she had much of a relationship with Billie Eagan?”

“Well, I can tell you that after Billie was evicted from that house she’d been living in, and rambled about for a while, Mary Beth moved her into the cottage out there on the farm. So I guess she was her landlord. Not that Billie paid much in rent, but that was between her and Mary Beth.” She shook her head and said, “You know, once your mother got something into her head, that was that. And she never asked me for my opinion, but if she had, I would have told her-”

“Do you know if they were friends?” Lorna interrupted, trying to steer the conversation back on track. She had a feeling she knew what Mrs. Hammond would have told Mary Beth.

“Friends?” Mrs. Hammond appeared to consider it. “I don’t know that you couldn’t call them friends, as unlikely as it was, Mary Beth being as sweet as she was, and Billie being the ornery little piece of work that she was. I do know that Mary Beth shopped for Billie’s groceries and took Billie to her doctors when she had no other transportation. She did a lot for Billie, but Billie wasn’t the only one she helped.”

“She wasn’t?”

“Well, like I said, she picked up things at the store for me, mailed packages if I needed it. Even went to the library to get books for me. She did the same for two others I know of.” Mrs. Hammond tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “But friends? I don’t know if I want to call it friendship. I can’t imagine why your mother would even want to be her friend. Though I do know Mary Beth was defensive where Billie was concerned.”

“In what way?”

“Always reminding people how hard Billie had had things, how her husband up and left her for that young girl who worked in the flower shop. How Billie had two small kids to raise by the time she was twenty.” Mrs. Hammond’s head bobbed up and down. “I even asked her, ‘Why would you want to be friends with a woman who treated her kids so bad, Mary Beth? How can you overlook all she did to those children?’ ”

“What did she say?”

“She said Billie’d spent the last twenty-odd years paying for what she’d done, that losing her kids should be punishment enough, and that she wasn’t about to judge someone else’s past.” Mrs. Hammond paused, then added, “And she said that she felt somewhat responsible for what those kids went through. Said she had wondered about bruises she’d seen on Melinda, and had been tempted to ask, but never had. She said maybe if she’d done something back when it might have mattered, things could have turned out differently for all of the Eagans.”

“Mom said that?”

“Billie did have her hands full, that’s for sure. That Jason was one nasty boy, even when he was a small child. You wouldn’t believe the things I heard come out of that mouth of his.”

Oh, yes I would. Lorna thought back to the many times Jason had hurled curses at her and Melinda. She knew firsthand how vile he could be.

“And your mother always told me how Billie was remorseful, how much she regretted that she’d been so rough with her kids. Well, sorry’s easy to say, when both kids are gone God knows where and you don’t have to deal with them anymore, isn’t it? Of course, now we know where Jason had gone. Most people think he only got what was coming to him. There are a lot of folks who still think he killed his sister.”

“There are people who think Billie killed her.”

“I don’t know about the girl, but I do think there’s a good chance Billie killed the boy.”

“Why?” Lorna asked.

“Everyone knows that Billie and Jason had a screaming match that night when he came home so late.”

“How does everyone know that?” Lorna asked.

“Well, that’s what Nancy Lafferty says, anyway.”

“Dustin’s mother?”

“Yes. He was a friend of Jason’s. He knew what was going on down there.”

There was a rumble from outside the windows, and Mrs. Hammond started out of her chair.

“You sit, I’ll see what that was.” Lorna stood and went to the window. “Must have been thunder. There are a lot of low, dark clouds up toward Route One.”

Someone dashed out the back of the house next door and ran to the black pickup in the driveway. He opened the driver’s-side door and turned on the ignition, then rolled up the windows before jumping out of the pickup and running back toward the house.

“Is that Fritz Keeler?” Lorna asked.

“Yes, he still lives in his parents’ house. You’d think a good-looking young man like Fritz would have found himself a nice girl to marry by now. I swear, I don’t know what he’s waiting for.” Mrs. Hammond shook her head. “Now, Michael-you remember Michael, his younger brother?”