Chapter 5

The next afternoon, Rowan walked to the community garden.

The soil was soft after the rain. Water droplets still clung to the pumpkin vines. She stood by the bean trellis for a moment, looking at the spot where the police tape had been—now taken down—and tried to picture Mr. Hale falling there that morning. The wind moved through the rows, carrying the smell of turned earth and grass. Somewhere beyond a fence, an old radio played soft music, fading in and out.

"There you are."

A deep voice came from across the rows. Carl Ostrom straightened up, his gloves caked in dirt. He was in his fifties, built like a bear, the garden's caretaker, had grown vegetables his whole life, and his temper ran as straight as the rows in his garden. He saw Rowan by the bean trellis, paused, then understood something, took off his hat and turned it in his hands.

"Heard the sheriff talked to you," Carl said, leaning his shovel on the ground and wiping sweat with his sleeve. "Hale's business was an accident. That's what they say in town."

"Do you believe that?" Rowan asked.

Carl didn't answer right away. He crouched down to straighten a cabbage that last night's rain had tilted, and was quiet for a long moment. "Rowan, I won't lie to you. Hale and I had a fight, not long ago."

"About what?"

"About the bench." Carl nodded toward the corner of the garden, where an old wooden bench sat. "He wanted to put a bench here, for his wife. Said she loved this place. I said no—this ground's for growing food, not sitting. He was stubborn, I was stubborn. We had it out in front of a few people."

Rowan thought of the bench she'd sat on. Wet, the wood gone dark, the legs sunk in the grass, like nobody'd looked at it in years.

"That's all?" she asked.

"That's all." Carl sighed. "But now I think about it, and I regret it. The man's gone. He wanted the bench? Fine. He could've had it." He leaned in, lowered his voice. "Rowan, I'll tell you something, and you don't repeat it."

Rowan looked at him.

"The morning Hale died," Carl said, "it was just getting light. I was down here tying up beans on this end. I heard him down there—where you found him—talking to someone."

"To who?"

"Couldn't see. Two rows over, and it was still dark." Carl frowned. "But his voice wasn't like usual. Hale talked slow to everybody. That morning, he sounded… like he was arguing with someone."

"What was he saying?"

"I only caught half of it." Carl thought. "He said, How do you expect me to pretend I didn't see that money?"

Rowan's breath caught. That money.

Always the money.

"And then?"

"Then it went quiet," Carl said. "I figured he was just talking to himself, same as me, so I didn't go over. Next thing I knew, Betty was screaming." He looked down, kicked at the dirt with his boot toe. "If I'd gone over, maybe…"

He didn't finish. Rowan finished it for him. Maybe Mr. Hale wouldn't be dead.

"Was anyone else in the garden that morning?" she asked.

Carl thought about it. "I didn't see nobody else. But Rowan, you listen to me—Hale's mood that morning was bad. Not the kind of bad you'd call an accident." He paused, then added, "He was holding something. Gripping it tight. By the time the coroner got here, his hand was empty. But I saw him fall, and he was holding something."

Something lurched in Rowan's chest.

She remembered his empty palm, turned upward. She remembered the sheet music fragment she'd pulled from between his fingers. She understood now—it hadn't been just a fragment. He'd been holding something else, too. Something someone had taken.

Carl crouched back down to fuss with the cabbage, as if the words had blown away with the wind. Rowan stood there, looking at the wet bench, and the voice in her head got clearer.

"Carl," she said, "whoever he was arguing with—can you think who it might have been?"

Carl didn't turn around. He made a low sound in his throat. "Not me. I was on this end before dawn." He paused. "Rowan, there's only so many people in this town. If you really want to know, don't ask me. Ask about the money."

He picked up his shovel and walked back into the rows, leaving her with his back. The autumn wind shook water off the pumpkin vines, drop by drop, into the soft earth.

Rowan stood there a long time. She thought of his hand gripping the sheet music. The empty palm. The line about the money.

A retired music teacher, before dawn, meeting someone in the garden to talk about that money—which happened to be a scholarship that had been "postponed" twenty years ago.

She walked slowly through the rows to the old bench and sat down. The wood was dark with rain. She touched the surface, thinking about how his wife must have sat here, watching the row of sunflowers he'd planted. And how Mr. Hale must have sat here too—alone, quietly, waiting.

The wind picked up and lifted a half-buried newspaper, then dropped it. Rowan glanced down. It was half of the Hollow Creek Weekly, yellowed at the edges, she couldn't tell what year. She was about to look away when a name in the corner caught her eye.

Sarah West.

She picked up the half-page. The paper was brittle. She could barely make out a line of small print, like the end of an article: …Sarah West, nominee for the Hollow Creek Community Music Scholarship. The scholarship has been postponed for reasons undisclosed.

Postponed for reasons undisclosed.

Again.

Rowan carefully folded the half-page and put it in her pocket. She sat on the bench, watching the sun slide toward the western hills, and a thought came to her: whatever Mr. Hale had gone into the garden to talk about that morning, it had never just been about money.

It got dark. She turned to walk back, and at the garden gate, she stopped.

By the blackberry bushes along the fence, a patch had been trampled—fresh, turned-over soil, not Carl's digging. A second spot, right by the bench, as if someone had crouched there for a long time.

She crouched, pulled back the blackberry leaves, and picked a small scrap from the wet mud.

It was a note, crumpled flat again. The handwriting was neat, the kind you got from practice. One line:

Stop digging through those sheet music books. Some things, when you pull them up, hurt everybody.

Rowan held the note, her fingertips cold. She stood up and looked around—the garden was empty, just the wind moving through the pines.

Did she recognize the handwriting? She wasn't sure. But the words told her one thing: whoever had written it knew she had the box.

And she'd only come to the garden a day or two ago.

Someone was watching her.

That thought made her stand in the dusk for a while. She went over the last few days in her head: Mr. Hale's death, the box of sheet music, the invoice, the newspaper clipping, the girl who never made it to music school, that money, and now this crumpled note.

These things were like thin threads, drawing together from every direction toward one point.

She wasn't afraid. Strange as it was, she felt steady—like the instinct she'd spent eleven years building in a records room had finally found its familiar place again. She wasn't a detective. She was a woman who ran a bookshop. But she knew one thing: when someone starts trying to stop you, you're getting close.

Rowan put the note away. She didn't go back to the shop. She walked to the post office at the far end of High Street. Betty was locking up, and poked her head out. "Rowan? This late, you mailing something?"

"Not mailing," Rowan said. "I want to ask you something."

"Like what?"

"In this town," Rowan said, "has there ever been a shop that opened for a couple years and then closed down, owner moved away?"

Betty thought about it. "Sure, a few. Which one?"

"A piano store," Rowan said. "Called Oak Bay."

Betty paused. "Oh, that one. Opened two years, closed. Owner was from out of town, name was something-or-other… moved away long before now." She lowered her voice. "Rowan, why are you asking about that? It's twenty years old."

"Nothing," Rowan said. "I'm buying old books, and someone mentioned a receipt from the place."

She walked out of the post office and stood on High Street under the newly lit streetlights, looking toward the dark, quiet hardware store across town. Betty was right. The piano store had been a two-year shop run by an out-of-towner.

But the five-thousand-dollar invoice it had left behind was still sitting in her drawer, like a rusty nail buried for twenty years.

And that nail was, inch by inch, prying up the clean surface of Hollow Creek.