Minerva washed her hands in the kitchen sink and dried them quickly. She pulled down the sleeves of her sweater, hiding thescar on her arm, and grabbed the pumpkin. Then she walked towardthe entrance of the dorm and opened the front door at the same time that Noah Yates was stepping out of his Jeep.
“The dorm looks good,” he said, pointing at the scarecrow that sat in a chair by the door. Hideo had also helped her make that. They’d spent an ungodly amount of time stuffing its body with hay.
Hideo knew something had happened to her but not exactly what. He probably thought she’d cut herself on purpose, the stress of her research getting to her, no matter that she’d made up a story about stumbling onto a jagged piece of metal while looking for something in the basement and having to get a tetanus shot. He’d been around often all through the end of the summer and into the fall but had relaxed recently, apparently convinced the incident had been a one-off occurrence. She couldn’t explain what had really taken place and instead accepted his attention in silence.
“Maybe you can beat Hancock Hall for best decorations this year,” Noah said.
The wind ruffled the trees, sending a cascade of brown and yellow leaves spilling across the ground. She set the pumpkin down by the scarecrow’s feet.
“I haven’t seen you around,” she said. Then again, she hadn’t looked for him. She’d phoned him for the sake of appearances when his grandmother went missing, but they’d talked for only a few minutes. She’d left it at that.
“I’ve dropped out.”
“Really?”
“College is a waste of time for me. Plus, I’m moving to Boston. The Willows is too big and lonely with only me there.”
“Have they found anything?” she asked.
Carolyn Yates’s disappearance had been big news for a few weeks, but the furor had died down. There had not been a speck of bone left after she cut off Carolyn’s head. She’d scattered the tools that had been in the room around the building, tossing them into dark and musty corners. She’d left the car exactly where Carolyn had parked it. They had fingerprinted it, which tied Minervato the vehicle, but she’d been conducting research at the Willows and had ridden in the car before. Her fingerprints were not terribly unexpected, neither in the vehicle nor in the factory, which she’d toured with Noah.
Fingerprints or not, the police had not asked her any deep questions. A detective had phoned her, and another dropped by one day. Minerva told him about her research, explained that she had met Carolyn and Noah while gathering material for her thesis, and enumerated the times she had visited the Willows. He seemed interested in information about Noah rather than herself and she had answered his questions honestly. The detective took notes, thanked her, and never returned. It was not surprising. She didn’t know Noah well and couldn’t provide any interesting material. She hoped they would not contact her again.
“No, they don’t have anything. She’s gone. Eerie, isn’t it? Like in Betty’s horror stories,” Noah said. His face was inscrutable. She couldn’t draw any conclusions based on his expression.
“And not a clue, is there?”
“Not one. She was sick. I didn’t know, she never told any of the family about it. Apparently it was more than arthritis, so there’s the thought she might have killed herself. She’d given the staff the day off and I was in New York for some last-minute business she wanted me to take care of, so it makes sense that she drove herself and attempted something. But nobody can figure out why she would have parked at the factory and walked away, if she did walk away from there. The cops are baffled.”
Minerva hid her relief by rearranging the scarecrow’s cowboy hat and nodding. “No theories, then.”
He knelt to look at the jack-o’-lantern, running his fingers around its jagged smile. “There are a few message boards where they say I chopped her body into pieces and threw them into the sea. Can you believe it?”
He glanced up at Minerva. His tone was casual; she couldn’t determine how much he knew. She hadn’t been able to figure it out. Her wards were intact. She’d sensed no magical dangers.Carolyn had said he didn’t have any abilities. But did he retain a rudimentary appreciation of spells? Might he guess what Minerva had done? Did he even care one way or another?
“Why would I kill her?” Noah continued. “I have my trust fund, always did. My uncles can bicker over the rest of the money, I don’t mind. Although I suppose some people might say she kept me on a leash. That I’m free now.”
“I suppose you are,” she told him.
He stood up and smiled wryly. The expression reminded her of Carolyn. Minerva lowered her eyes, looking at a leaf that was stuck to her shoe.
“How’s your research going?” he asked.
“I have an outline and a few good pages.”
She had more than a few good pages. She’d been feverishly at work, the piles of notes multiplying. Her meetings with her adviser had gone well and she was already looking at fellowship applications. With some luck, it wouldn’t be only Betty who would be rescued from the jaws of oblivion; Ginny’s art might also gain recognition. It was, at any rate, the beginning of something.
“Excellent. I can’t say I understand the desire to spend your life sinking into the pit of academia, but then again, we’re different. And yet alike, I suspect.”
“In what way?” she asked, leaning against the house’s wall, arms crossed.
“Our basic building blocks,” he said as he took out a cigarette and lit it with nimble fingers. “Our foundations, if you want to put it that way. If you twist it a bit, you could be me and I could be you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
A slight bemusement tinged his face, but he remained opaque. As she’d told the police, she didn’t really know him, probably never would.
“Anyway, I’m hoping we can remain friendly even if I’m moving away.”
