Woody put the notepad back in his jacket. “Thanks for your time, Willa. That’s all.”

He got up to leave, and a terrible thought suddenly occurred to Willa. “Woody.”

He turned as he got to the door.

“You don’t think my grandmother had anything to do with that skeleton being buried up there, do you?”

He hesitated. “Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago. I doubt we’ll ever know the whole story.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know. Don’t worry. It probably won’t.” He opened the door, then offered her a small smile. “Thanks for the fruit baskets. I always enjoy them.”

Willa turned to Rachel, who had heard the whole thing.

“I need to …” Willa said as she stood. She couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. She didn’t know exactly what she needed to do.

Rachel nodded. “Go,” she said.

Willa went directly to the nursing home, something she rarely did this late in the day, because her grandmother had a tendency to get restless at sundown. But her protective instincts took her there.

Georgie had already had her dinner and had been sedated, so Willa sat by her bed and tried to get her mind around what was going on. Willa knew that there was nothing in the items found in the grave that tied her grandmother to this Tucker Devlin person. She had no idea why Woody thought there was.

She remembered that the newspaper found in the suitcase was dated August 1936. She wished she knew when exactly her grandmother moved out. If it was before then, there would be nothing to worry about.

The whole thing was preposterous, of course. Her grandmother had always been a decent person, a beautiful bird of a woman who had known a lot of hardship, but who had an incredible work ethic and made a life for her and her beloved son. She would never hurt anyone.

Willa stood and kissed her grandmother’s forehead, wishing there was some magical way to snap her fingers, like a hypnotist, and bring her grandmother back from whatever faraway place she had floated off to.

She went to the nurses’ station and asked them to contact her if anyone came to see her grandmother. She didn’t mention the police specifically, but it was who she was thinking of.

As she was talking to the nurse, she saw someone round the corner beyond the station. It was Paxton Osgood, obviously there to visit her own grandmother. She looked considerably better than the last time Willa had seen her. That is to say, she was back to looking perfect.

If Willa called out hello, she was fairly certain Paxton would act as if Friday night had never happened. And if she was going to pretend that Friday night never happened, then they had no connection, no reason to exchange pleasantries in the first place. So Willa was just going to turn around and leave.

But that’s when something suddenly occurred to her.

Agatha. Of course.

Willa had never had much contact with Agatha Osgood, but she’d spent enough time at the nursing home to have heard how loud and stubborn, and sometimes outright mean, she could be. But Agatha and Georgie had been good friends as girls. Once Georgie had given birth to her son, Agatha had even helped raise him for the first few years of his life while Georgie worked for the Osgood family. They’d actually all lived together at Hickory Cottage until Ham was six years old. That’s when Agatha got married. Willa’s father once said his mother didn’t feel right living there after that. The two women soon grew apart, not for any specific reason, it seemed. But Willa’s father had once said that Georgie hadn’t thought of herself as one of their group anymore.

Willa followed Paxton down the far-right hallway and watched her disappear into a room. When Willa reached the room, she looked inside with surprise. Agatha’s quarters were like a fine Southern lady’s parlor. There were beautiful oil portraits on the wall, a matching suite of furniture, even a small refrigerator. It looked like, at any moment, a maid in a white uniform was going to enter and serve strawberry tea and petits fours.

Paxton was standing with her back to Willa. Willa cleared her throat and said from the doorway, “Paxton?”

Paxton turned and, after a moment of surprise, actually looked relieved. “Look, Nana,” Paxton said. “You have company. Isn’t that nice?”

Agatha was sitting on a love seat in front of her window, her body in a permanent stoop that reminded Willa of a seashell. But her movements were surprisingly quick, her head swinging around in the direction of Willa’s voice in the doorway. “Who is it? Who is there?” she asked.

“It’s Willa Jackson, Mrs. Osgood,” Willa said.

Agatha immediately tried to stand. “What is it? Is something wrong with Georgie?”

“No, ma’am,” Willa rushed to say. “She’s asleep right now.”

Agatha sat back in her seat. “Then what do you want?” she demanded.

Both Agatha and Paxton were staring at her. Willa was struck by how much alike those stares were. Paxton certainly favored her grandmother. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about my grandmother. I could come back later if this is a bad time.”

“Of course it’s not a bad time,” Paxton said, waving for Willa to enter. “Wouldn’t that be nice, Nana? To talk about the old days?”

“Stop being stupid, Paxton. It doesn’t become you,” Agatha said, then turned to Willa. “What do you want to know?”

Willa walked in a few steps. “I … It’s hard to say. You were friends.”

“We are friends,” Agatha snapped. “She’s still here. I’m still here. And as long as we are, we’ll always be friends.”

“You knew her the year her family moved out of the Madam?” Willa asked.

“Yes, of course I did. She moved in with me after that.”

“Do you remember anyone dying at the Madam that year? And then being buried under the peach tree? The police were asking me questions about Grandmother Georgie this afternoon. They were insinuating she might have had something to do with it. That she had something to do with him, the man buried there. But that’s preposterous. You knew her then. She would never have done anything like that.” She caught Paxton’s frantic hand motion a little too late. Uh-oh. This was obviously something they were trying to keep from Agatha.

The change in Agatha was remarkable. She actually gave a physical start and her eyes grew wide, looking like large brown marbles pressed into hard dirt. “What? What is this about? Paxton?”

“It’s okay, Nana,” Paxton said, walking over to her and patting her arm, which Agatha jerked away. “We took down the old tree at the Madam, and there was a skeleton buried there. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine now. In fact, we’re bringing in a nice big tree to replace it.”

“The moment you told me that you’d bought the Madam, I knew this was coming. You found him,” Agatha said. “You found Tucker Devlin.”

Willa and Paxton exchanged glances. The mood in the room turned tense. A cool breeze floated eerily by, smelling of peaches.

“How did you know his name?” Paxton asked carefully.

“Anyone who met him would never forget his name.”

Despite the fact that she knew Paxton was upset with her for bringing this up, Willa found herself taking another step forward. “You knew him?”

“He called himself a traveling salesman. He was really a con man. But even that didn’t do him justice. He was … magic.” Agatha whispered that last word, as if it had power. Without realizing it, Paxton and Willa moved in closer to each other, an action both would be hard-pressed to explain. “I’ll never forget the day we first saw him. Georgie and I were sitting in the grass up at the Madam, making crowns out of clover flowers. The wind was high that day, and I remember our dresses were flapping around our legs. I kept losing my sight when my hair crossed my eyes, so Georgie laughed and made me turn so she could braid my hair, and that’s when we saw him walking up the hill with his dusty suitcase. We had heard of him, of course. He’d been in town for a while selling ladies’ cosmetics, and the older ladies kept him to themselves. But he was on to bigger and better things that day. He reached the door of the Madam and paused, then turned to us. When he saw what Georgie was doing, saw me holding my dress so it wouldn’t fly up, he smiled—smiled like God looking down on His children. He whistled a few strange notes, and the wind stopped. Just like that.” Agatha paused. “The man could whistle and make the wind stop.”