Where would Annie be taking her if not to the Snow Squall for the party?

Annie was the wife of the chief of police.

She’d also been Dan Jeffrey’s lover. Diana had caught her searching for something in Dan’s room. Had she really been looking for love letters?

What if she’d been one of Cordelia’s drug customers? Annie was the wife of a busy man. She had two small children, an immaculate house, and still found time to cook almost everything from scratch, and have time-consuming hobbies. Maybe she was one of those housewives who needed a little chemical help to get her through her day.

And Tony Silva, the awkward boy who didn’t have close friends, whose dad was pushing him to excel at a sport he was failing at, baby-sat for her.

Maggie’s mind raced, as Annie’s car skidded around another corner. Annie was driving faster now, focused on the road ahead of her.

They were heading further away from downtown Winslow on roads Maggie was pretty sure she’d never seen. Or maybe it was seeing them through a canopy of wavering tree limbs and drenching rain that gave every twist and turn in the road an eerie feeling, as though whatever was ahead was unknown, and unpredictable.

Maggie tried not to focus on the road, but on what she knew about Annie Irons.

Was it possible Tony Silva hadn’t bought the OxyContin pills he’d taken? Could he have found them at Annie’s house when he’d been baby-sitting? He’d had serious asthma. His father had said that, and so had Sean and Josh. OxyContin was a depressant. It would have slowed Tony’s breathing down faster than it would have in someone without breathing problems. Slowed his breathing down enough to stop it.

And Ike Irons hadn’t found the person who’d sold the pills to Tony last spring. Could that be because no one had sold them to Tony? Because Tony’d gotten them from Ike’s wife?

How many teenagers died or overdosed from prescription medications in their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinets, or those in the homes of their friends?

Too many, Maggie knew.

Sean and Josh had told her where kids could get drugs. They didn’t say they knew for sure where Tony had.

On the campus where she worked students bought and sold their own prescription medications, especially those for anxiety or ADD. Sales like that were almost impossible to control.

Annie’s knuckles on the steering wheel had looked white in the glare of the occasional streetlight. But now there were few streetlights, and no lights from houses on Annie’s side of the car. Unless this area had lost power, they must be on the beach road. On a clear night you’d be able to see stars, and the moon, and lights from boats on Cape Cod Bay.

But tonight all boats had been brought in to dry dock, and the sky was low and dark. The tide would be high about midnight, Maggie remembered. That’s when houses near the Bay would be in most danger from a storm surge.

“Where are we going, Annie?”

“To the party, of course.”

“We left town behind a while ago,” Maggie said.

“I want to show you something,” said Annie.

The car sped through the narrow streets. Annie might know where they were going, but Maggie had no idea. She reached for her telephone.

It wasn’t in the outside pocket of her bag, where she always kept it. Damn. She must have left it on the bedside table at Six Gables.

She felt for it again, to be sure. It definitely wasn’t there.

But even if she had it, who would she call?

What would she say?

That she didn’t know where she was? That she was out for a drive with Annie Irons?

Even if Tony Silva had gotten OxyContin from Annie’s home, Maggie had no proof, and there was nothing to be done about it now. And if he’d taken it from her medicine cabinet, he’d stolen it, and she’d been guilty of nothing but trusting a baby-sitter not to invade her privacy or steal from her.

Maggie clutched the sides of her seat. Now Annie was driving through sections of flooded street. How deep was the water? The headlights reflected back rain pounding on water, not pavement.

Annie gunned the car, trying to get out of the flooded area.

If Annie knew about Cordelia’s selling drugs, maybe she knew something else.

Something that would help find Cordelia’s killer, and clear Diana.

Now the rain was coming sideways as well as vertically. Annie swore under her breath as she squinted at the windshield trying to see through sheets of water. She’d turned off the flooded street onto a narrower street, or alley, or maybe a wide driveway. Bushes and low branches of trees scraped first Maggie’s and then Annie’s side of the car.

Annie, bent over the steering wheel, stared straight ahead. She never slowed down.

At the end of the narrow passageway she turned abruptly left onto a wider street, swerving as she turned. Suddenly, through the rain, Maggie saw a high brick wall maybe thirty feet in front of them.

Instinctively, she braced herself.

Annie slammed on the brakes, but nothing happened. Then she turned the steering wheel as far as she could to the right.

The car began to skid.

Maggie watched helplessly as the car fishtailed in slow motion and the driver’s side crashed into the wall, bounced back into the road, and then the left rear end hit the wall. Hard.

Chapter 39

Panax Coloni.Outstanding copper engraving of plant now called Marsh Woundwort, from Jacob Trew (Berlin) edition of Elisabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbarium, her volume of “useful plants now used in practice of physic,” published in 1757. Also called All-Heal, Panay, or Clown’s Woundwort, as a tea it was used to stop internal bleeding and as a poultice to stop external bleeding. It was also said to aid dysentery, and as a gargle, sore throats. Artist and engraver Blackwell began working when her husband was imprisoned for starting a printing business without serving the apprenticeship required by English law. Her book was a success, and she was able to obtain his release. He was later executed for treason in Sweden. She was an artist and entrepreneur well beyond the norm for a woman of her time. 9 x 12.5 inches. Price: $250.

They’d crashed. She was alive. Her neck and shoulders ached, and pain slashed through her left ankle. Blood? None she could feel. Maggie tried to focus in the dark.

The car’s engine was running.

She looked over at Annie. “Are you all right?”

Annie didn’t answer. Blood was dripping down her forehead, into her right eye, onto her raincoat. She was breathing, but her left arm was at an odd angle. Probably broken. Getting her out of the car wouldn’t be easy. Her airbag had probably saved her life, but now she was pinned between the steering wheel and where her side of the car was crushed and pushed in. Jagged points of what had been the door and roof of the car had hit her head. Rain dripped through openings in what a few seconds ago had been the car’s two left-hand doors.

Maggie unfastened her seat belt, reached over, and turned off the car engine.

She needed to get Annie to a hospital.

She didn’t have a telephone.

Annie would have one.

She pushed aside the now-deflated airbag on her side, found her canvas bag, and foraged for the small flashlight she’d bought that afternoon.

Annie’s pocketbook wasn’t in what was left of the front seat. It must have been thrown somewhere during the accident. Maggie tried to open her own door. The latch on the handle worked, but the door was jammed. The crash had changed its alignment just enough so it wouldn’t open more than an inch or two.

She, too, was imprisoned.

She managed to turn around in her seat enough to flash her light over the back of the car. There. Annie’s pocketbook was on the floor, but its contents were strewn all over the backseat. Her phone was in back of the driver’s seat, caught beneath a piece of the caved-in back door. Despite the searing pain in her ankle, Maggie managed to crawl halfway over the console between the seats. Annie’s seat was bent backward and sideways.