Death Comes Silently by Carolyn Hart

you suggesting?”
     
    “Maybe the card in Everett’s pocket did matter.” Annie tried to sound reasonable, sensible. “Even for Gretchen, scandal was a strong word. What if the card contained information someone couldn’t afford for anyone to know? Maybe someone at the Hathaway house found the message Gretchen left and came to Better Tomorrow and made sure that Gretchen would never tell anyone what she’d seen.”
     
    “Lots of maybes there.” He was dismissive. “There’s no maybe about Jeremiah’s fingerprints on the axe that killed her.”
     
    Annie pictured Better Tomorrow and the woodpile near the shed, clearly visible from the oyster shell parking lot. “The woodpile is easily seen. Maybe Jeremiah left the axe by that unfinished pile of wood. The killer—”
     
    Billy interrupted. “Someone from the Hathaway house?” He was clearly skeptical.
     
    So much for Annie’s effort to build her case. But she continued determinedly, “Someone from the Hathaway house.”
     
    “What could be such a big deal about a card in a dead man’s jacket?”
     
    “Gretchen said the card explained why he took the kayak out that night. Kayaking alone at night in December wasn’t usual for him, was it?” Annie hoped that Billy would let her finish, allow her to lay out the chilling scene that now seemed absolutely obvious to her. “I understand the family was surprised. No one offered an explanation as to why he might have gone out. He knew how to kayak, but he wasn’t an expert. Had he ever taken a kayak out on a winter night?”
     
    “Not so far as is known.” His tone suggested there might have been instances, they simply weren’t aware of them.
     
    Annie took a deep breath. “What if someone wrote a note on a card that was guaranteed to entice Everett Hathaway to slip out of his house on a winter night and take a kayak to a cove that has only a few homes?”
     
    “What possible difference does it make why he went out?” Billy was impatient. “We know he was in a kayak and capsized.”
     
    Annie spoke as if she were slapping an ace on a king. “If someoneknew what time he was going out and where he was going, it would be easy to intercept him.”
     
    “Granted.” He sounded wary.
     
    “Let’s say someone in a boat hailed him, came close, and tipped over the kayak. The water was cold. All the boater had to do was keep the kayak just out of his reach. It wouldn’t take long to commit a murder that left no trace. It was too far to swim to shore, and as soon as Everett lost consciousness from hypothermia, his face smacked into the water and he drowned.” She kept talking over a grumbling dissent. “Maybe that’s what someone is trying to hide. Maybe the card would open up lots of questions about who wrote it and what it said. Maybe the card would make everybody question whether his death was an accident.”
     
    “That seems as likely to me as the craters on Mars being man-made. You’ve built a case out of nothing. Maybe you need a crash course in reality. That’s a pretty big leap, from a card in a man’s pocket to the idea he was murdered and somebody slipped into Better Tomorrow from the Hathaway house. I can tell you for sure”—Billy was emphatic—“Everett Hathaway’s death was an accident and no one will ever prove otherwise.”
     
    “It could have happened that way.” Annie felt eerily confident that the dark December night had unfolded just as she imagined, a boat coming up out of the darkness, a call, the kayak pulling near as the boat idled in the water, then a hand reaching out to push and the kayak tumbling to one side, Everett struggling, submerging in the water, the shocking cold strangling the shout in his throat, the kayak caught by a gaff, the boat pulled away from the flailing victim.
     
    “Oh, sure, and unicorns play canasta with my dog every Saturday night. Come on, Annie”—his tone was irritated—“why would anybody kill Everett Hathaway? He was an