The entrance to the Elmhursts’ barn was roped off by bright-yellow police tape. It was raining in earnest over here, just a short walk from the graveyard. We huddled underneath my one umbrella as Harrison fiddled with the lock on the door, wiggling a paper clip around inside it until it popped open with a softclick. He let it fall into his hand and then, looking around to make sure no one had seen us, we ducked into the dark mouth of the barn.
Harrison pulled a flashlight out of the pocket of his trench coat (where he’d also pulled the paper clip from, which begged the question: whatelsedid he have in there?) and clicked it on. I put the umbrella near the door to dry out.
“What exactly are we doing here?” he asked.
“Didn’t you know? We’re solving a murder,” I said. I grabbed the flashlight from him and put it under my chin.
“And what do you expect to find here?” he asked.
I handed the flashlight back to him. “Something the police missed.”
“When you saythe policelike that, it implies more than just a sheriff and a deputy,” Harrison said. “It’s sort of false advertising.”
“Fair.”
He scanned his flashlight around the interior of the barn. “There’s an overhead light in here somewhere, isn’t there?”
I found the light switch on the wall and turned it on. The barn was washed in pale, dusty light. I half expected there to be a bird-shaped white chalk outline in the dirt marking where Annabella was found, but the ground was clear. The nest was gone. It looked like nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened here.
“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I admitted.
Harrison tossed the flashlight from hand to hand. He looked around the barn. “So far we don’t seem to be showing much promise as sleuths.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “All right. You take the loft. I’ll look around down here. Shout if you see anything.”
So Harrison climbed carefully up the wooden ladder that led to the lofted area, and I explored the ground floor,the wood underneath my feet creaking as I walked around. I had “Annabel Lee” stuck in my head now, and I kept seeing shadows moving out of the corner of my eye because the half-light made everything spookier than it was.
Then Harrison started whistling again, andthatmade everything spookier than it was, too, and so finally, my nerves shot to hell and my skin crawling with goose bumps, I climbed up the ladder to meet Harrison in the loft. Because I didn’t want to be alone. Because the phrasehigher groundwas suddenly ringing in my ears. Because outside the rain beat a torrential staccato against the roof, and I thought my heartbeat might be trying to match it.
It was brighter up here (closer to the overhead lamps), and I felt instantly more relaxed. I forced myself to breathe, breathe, breathing through the panic I could feel welling up in my chest. A sort of buzzing around my rib cage. The ever-familiar feeling of fear.
“Harrison?”
He turned around to face me, and as he did, the beam of his flashlight caught on something by his foot. A flash of gold. I bent down to pick it up and held it in my cupped hands. I felt that icy trickle of horror when you are home alone and hear a sound too loud to be just the house settling, or when you are walking at night and suddenly hear footsteps following too closely behind you.
It was my sister’s necklace.
I would know it anywhere. It was a delicate heart-shaped locket, identical to the one given to me on our sixteenth birthday. Matching lockets. Mary wore hers often; mine was tucked safely inside the top drawer of my bureau. I’d never been one for jewelry.
The Ouija board had said:with her.
And now I had proof of it: Mary was here, in the barn, the night Annabella was murdered.
I knew if I opened this locket I would find a picture of the two of us on one side—Mary and me—and a picture of my mother and father on the other.
The clasp of the necklace was broken.
I held it up to Harrison, so he could see it. “It’s my sister’s.”
“What would your sister’s locket be doing in this barn?” Harrison asked, his voice careful and measured, like he was trying to keep something out of it.
“I know she didn’t kill Annabella,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I wondered—did I really know that? It was my sister’s word against the Ouija board, against this locket. It was my sister’s word against everything piling up against it.
“But if she was here, she must know something,” Harrison said. “Have you asked her?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what she knows. She’s being... strange.”
“Strange,” Harrison repeated.
