What Margot Knew

The folder contained a letter, three pages of notes, and a hand-drawn map of the Sutter parcel that showed something below the existing structures.

Jo read the letter at Pearl's table, with tea Pearl had made without asking and rolls Jo had brought, and the particular quiet of a library that had decided to be on her side.

Jo — if you are reading this, you are at Pearl's, which means Pearl decided to trust you, which means you have been asking the right questions. Good. I'm sorry for the manner of this. I would have told you myself if I'd had more time.

The short version: the Sutter parcel contains an underground spring system that connects to every water source on the east side of Moonvale, including the inn's well. The development project — the "Moonvale Commons" — isn't about housing. It's about water rights. Whoever owns the five parcels controls the aquifer access for a third of the county. They can sell that access, or restrict it, or use it as leverage for the larger development they're actually planning, which is a four-season resort on the mountain land behind the east side, which requires more water than the mountain's existing system can provide.

I filed three objections. After the third one, two things happened: Tom told me someone had been into his workshop, looking through his records. And I found a list.

The list has twelve names. I don't know who made it or who has it, but Tom saw a copy and wrote down what he remembered. It is a list of people in Moonvale who are, for various reasons, obstacles to the project moving forward. There are dates next to each name. Some dates have passed. The people whose names had passed dates have, without exception, had accidents or illnesses or reversals that removed them from opposition to the project.

My date was September 28. I had a heart attack on September 30.

Tom's date was October 8. He was due to present his counter-survey to the town planning board on October 9.

Jo — I don't know who is running this. Aldous is the name on the papers, but I've been tracking the LLC structure and the money behind it is layered in a way that requires a lawyer or a forensic accountant to follow. I have a lawyer, and I have given him everything I have. His name is Garrett Lund, and his office is in Burlington, and he is the only person outside this folder who knows what I know.

The photographs in the brown envelope are evidence of what is in the carriage house on Aldous's property. The carriage house is where he keeps the project documentation — not the version filed with the town, the real version. Hatcher knows about the carriage house. I believe Hatcher is involved. I cannot prove it.

Please be careful with this. Please do not do anything dramatic. And please, while you are doing none of this, make the most of the kitchen. The range is a 1962 Chambers and it is worth more than the appraisal will suggest.

With love — Margot

Jo set the letter down. She looked at the ceiling. She thought about the shortbread she'd made when she arrived, the honey rolls she'd made last night, and the brown butter cake she was probably going to make when she got back to the inn.

She thought about October 8. She had arrived on October 7.

Tom Fielding's date on the list had been October 8. He'd been found in the root cellar on October 8, and Hatcher had called it an accident before the ME had finished looking.

She looked at the hand-drawn map. The spring system below the Sutter parcel connected — Margot had drawn the lines in careful dotted notation — to the inn's well. Which meant the inn itself was on the edge of the aquifer access zone. Which possibly meant the inn was on the list too, or would be.

"Pearl," she said, "Margot's lawyer in Burlington — Garrett Lund. Do you know if she was in contact with him recently?"

Pearl had been reading at her desk with the careful inattention of someone who was absolutely listening.

"She called him the week before she died," Pearl said. "I know because she used the library phone — her cell had bad signal in here, always has. She told me she was checking that he had everything." A pause. "He came up the day of the funeral. He spoke to me very briefly. He said he was expecting to hear from the family."

"He hasn't heard from me."

"No." Pearl looked at her steadily. "You didn't know any of this was happening."

Jo thought about her father's funeral nine years ago, and Margot pressing her hands, and whatever she'd said that Jo hadn't absorbed. She thought about an aunt she barely knew who had nonetheless filed her name on the folder, addressed it, left it with the librarian, and trusted that the right person would come.

"I need to call Garrett Lund," she said. "And I need to find Gerald Finch."

"Finch lives on the Sutter parcel," Pearl said. "The property backs up to the woods on the north side. You'd have to go through the woods or down the access road, and the access road has been blocked since September — there's a chain across it, padlocked. Aldous put it up. He claimed it was a safety issue."

"Whose land is the road on?"

Pearl smiled in the way of someone who has been waiting for this question.

"The road is a shared access easement," she said. "Which means Aldous cannot legally block it." She reached into her desk drawer and produced a printed document — the county easement record, highlighted, with a note in the margin in Margot's handwriting that said this is the leverage if needed. "Your aunt prepared this two months ago."

Jo looked at the document.

She thought about Hatcher in the photograph, looking at whatever was spread on the table in the carriage house, apparently unaware of being watched. She thought about Tom Fielding's hands, perfectly arranged.

She thought about twelve names and dates that hadn't happened yet, and whether her name had been added since Margot's letter was written, and whether anyone knew she was asking these questions.

She packed up the folder carefully.

"I'm going back to the inn," she said. "I'll call Lund from there. Pearl—" She paused. "Thank you for trusting me."

Pearl had already picked up her phone.

"I'm calling my nephew," she said calmly. "He's on the planning board and has been trying to figure out why the Sutter parcel vote was delayed for six months. I think he'll want to hear what you've got." She met Jo's eyes. "Go. And lock the inn."

Jo drove the two miles back to the Moonvale Inn with the folder on the seat beside her and the particular focus of someone running mise en place in their head — not ingredients, but actions, sequenced, timed, organized against a deadline.

She unlocked the inn's front door.

She stepped inside.

The honey rolls were still on the rack, undisturbed. The kitchen was as she'd left it. The light was the same.

But the door in the kitchen floor — the one leading to the root cellar — was open.

She had closed it. She was certain she had closed it. She had closed it and latched it and put the flour bin on top of it for good measure, because she had no desire to fall through a floor she kept forgetting was there.

The flour bin was sitting beside the door, not on top of it.

Neatly beside it. Perfectly arranged.

From the open door, she heard a sound — quiet, deliberate, something shifting weight on packed dirt.

Someone was in the root cellar.