0451416325 by Heather Blake Page B

until he finally had enough and floated down the hallway.
    “He’s lying,” I said.
    “Are you talking to me or him?” Dylan asked.
    I smiled and knelt down. “You. Haywood knows Avery but he’s denying it. Why?”
    “One more thing to figure out,” Dylan said as the flap of the satchel finally released.
    “Eulalie suspects that he and Avery might be having an affair.”
    “Who is Avery Bryan? Do I know her?” Dylan asked.
    As he took out a stack of papers, a notebook, and a folded poster from the bag, I explained what Eulalie had told me earlier.
    He sat back on his heels. “She had an invitation?”
    “That’s what Eulalie said.”
    Frowning, he said, “My mother neglected to mention that in her statement. She just said the woman was a party crasher. But if she’s somehow connected to Haywood and my mother knew it . . .”
    I didn’t finish his thought: it gave Patricia motive, which gave the sheriff even more cause to arrest her.
    “We need to talk to Avery Bryan,” he said, “and find out what happened exactly.”
    I nodded. “She’s right outside, so finding her isn’t going to be a problem.”
    Leaning up, he looked out the window. “Where?”
    Peeking out, I saw she was now gone. There went that plan. “Plan B. She’s staying with Eulalie, so we’ll head over there as soon as we’re done here.”
    Dylan looked at the pile of papers in front of him. “What is all this stuff?”
    I opened a binder and flipped through pages. “It has to do with the Ezekiel house.” There were photocopies of articles dating back to when the house was built, marriage certificates, death certificates, birth certificates. Property records. Census forms.
    Dylan showed me a tattered old piece of paper that had been folded into quarters. “Whoa.”
    “What?” I asked, setting aside the binder.
    He spread the paper on the rug. It was yellow with age, its edges worn. Deep creases, water stains, and insect holes had done a lot of damage. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. A family tree. The Ezekiel family tree.
    Dylan sat back and dragged a hand down his face. “This is definitely the evidence Haywood wanted us to find.”
    “It is?” I was still scanning the information, my gaze skipping over generations of Ezekiels, starting long before Simeon and Fleur built the Ezekiel house. The tree had been added to over the years. Different inks, different handwriting, little notes jotted alongside certain names. Poor Mathias Ezekiel had died of scarlet fever in the late eighteen hundreds. Other names had vanished completely or only partially remained, victims of the poor condition the paper was in.
    “Look, Carly.” Dylan tapped the bottom of the paper.
    Stunned, I stared at the last name at the bottom of the tree. It had been penciled in with meticulous handwriting and circled.
    Haywood Dodd.
    My jaw dropped. If this was true, Haywood was the mysterious heir of the Ezekiel mansion, the one who was set to inherit it if found within five years after Rupert’s death.
    My gaze zipped to his parentage. Retta Lee Dodd and someone Ezekiel. The first name was smudged beyond recognition. Something with a T in it perhaps. It was the branch beneath Rupert, so I assumed a son, but I never knew he had any kids at all.
    “This has to be what he was going to announce at the ball,” I said softly. What a bombshell that would have been, too. No wonder he wouldn’t breathe a word about it. “This family tree must be what Mayor Ramelle wanted.”
    Dylan looked pained. “You know what this means, Carly?”
    I held his gaze and nodded.
    It meant that Dylan’s wish for finding more suspects had just been granted.
    Now not only was his mother still a suspect in Haywood’s death . . . but all the other Harpies as well.

Chapter Eight
    T he rain had let up some by the time Dylan and I had fed the sheaf of papers that had been in Haywood’s satchel through his photocopier. I had thanked our lucky stars that