“I mean…I would assume so? Unless old dad was in there with you.”
I held my hand up. “Please don’t say it like that.” I scanned the room. The man was accepting Hyacinth’s purse from Dorothy on his way out. “Who is that?” I asked, tapping the arm of a man standing next to us. I pointed to him.
“That’s Robert McClintock.”
That was Hyacinth’s ex-husband?
I was a little stunned.
But then I wasn't sure why I was stunned. He exuded charm and confidence and apparently was loaded. It seemed on brand for Hyacinth.
“Then Hyacinth must be in good hands,” I said weakly. “I’m sure he’ll take care of her.”
The man looked like he couldn’t care less if Hyacinth was cared for or not. “Wonder how his adult kids will feel about that.”
I blinked. “Oh. I see.”
On that note, I decided that I was seeing attempted homicide where there was none and went to say goodbye to Dorothy and some of the other Society members. Maggie had managed to make her way out the front door after the stretcher.
Three of my four guests were a stone’s throw from yet another incident and honestly, I couldn’t even remember who had been in the room and who hadn’t.
The fourth had been home with a fake migraine and a cup of chamomile tea, which meant that for the first time all weekend, I had one person I could cross off a list instead of adding to it.
Which was why it shocked me to no end when we got back to Midnight House and Allison was bent over a ouija board in the parlor, candles all around her.
Fourteen
The last thing I expected when we got back to the house was to see Allison bent over a ouija board in the parlor. I was astonished.
"Allison."
She startled so hard the planchette skittered clean off the board and landed in her lap. She looked like a woman who'd been caught doing something she really, really shouldn't have been doing.
"Harper! Maggie!" She pressed a hand to her chest. "You scared the life out of me."
"That makes two of us," Maggie said, eyeing the candles ringing the parlor rug like she expected one of them to shoot ten foot flames at any second. "Is this a séance? Did we miss the good part?"
"It's not a séance." Allison scrambled to gather the board and slide it under a throw pillow, which was somehow worse than if she'd just left it out. "It's research. For a book I’d like to write now that the current one may be DOA. I needed to get the details right, the way it would feel, the language, all of it, so I thought I'd just experience it. Firsthand. Method writing, sort of."
"Method writing," I repeated.
"Like an actor."
"Sure," I said, in the exact tone Hollis used on me approximately four times a day.
I looked at the candles again. Nine of them, in a rough circle, burned down to different heights, which meant she'd been at this for a while. Longer than the time it would've taken us to say our goodbyes to Dorothy and drive home. She'd started this before we'd even walked out the door.
"Can we blow those candles out?” I asked. “Being that close to the rug is stressing me out.”
“Oh, sorry! Of course, of course.” Allison dropped to her knees and industriously blew them out one by one.
“I thought you had a migraine," I said. We both knew that wasn’t true. But I didn’t know if she knew that I knew it wasn’t true.
The words came out light, conversational, but Allison's face did something complicated in response, a little flicker of guilt crossing it before she smoothed it back into placid concern. I really didn’t care. I didn’t blame her one iota for skipping Evelyn’s Celebration of Life.
Now I wished I had faked a headache too.
"I did. I do. Had. It's better now." She rubbed her temple for good measure, a beat too late to be convincing. "I rested for a bit, and then I just couldn't sleep, and I thought, well, might as well be productive."
