Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Author:Sarah Stewart Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Twenty-one

Warren took a shower and stood for a moment in front of his closet. He had winnowed his wardrobe when he’d moved out of the Boston house last year, before he’d gone out west. As a result, he didn’t have many clean clothes to choose from. It would have to be the pale-blue polo his mother had sent him for his birthday and a pair of almost-clean khakis. Dressed, he felt normal again. The air had cooled a bit and as his hand hovered over the gin bottle downstairs, he decided on the spur of the moment to have his cocktail, and maybe some dinner too, at the Bethany Inn.

It was a pleasant walk down to the other side of the green and it was only when he saw a well-dressed couple walking ahead of him that he remembered it was Friday night. Well, he’d find out what the nightlife was like in his new hometown.

Doctor Farnham’s Tavern was at the back of the inn, a cozy bar and restaurant with a huge stone fireplace decorated with an old pair of skis and fifteen small tables in the square room. It had been empty when Warren had his clam chowder the other night, but now it was almost full, tables of couples and groups of four or six eating and talking. He spotted Barbara Falconer in a group of young men and women. They were laughing and she was telling a story, her friends listening with obvious affection and interest. He found himself wondering if her fiancé was one of the men at the table. When she saw Warren, she smiled and waved and he waved back. He sat at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic.

“You want something to eat?” the bartender asked him. It was not the older man from Warren’s first visit. This was a much younger man, with longer sideburns than most of the men in Bethany, and a blue button-down shirt that looked like Brooks Brothers.

“Yeah, what’s good? I had the clam chowder the other night and it was fine, but…”

The man—boy, really—leaned over the bar and said, “Let me tell you something since you’re new. Vermont’s not really the place to get seafood.”

Warren grinned. “Thanks for the tip. Can I just have a hamburger?”

The bartender gave him a thumbs-up. “Good choice.”

Warren sipped his gin, his mind settling down and starting to work again. One thing was clear to him now. There was someone in Bethany who knew about the fires, who had been living in the woods, and had perhaps been involved in both fires or, at the very least, had been a witness to one or both. Someone who had not shown his face. This was interesting and warranted further investigation. They would need to search the woods for Jorah Hatchett’s mysterious cow wrangler.

And of course, the more Warren learned about Hugh Weber, the more he wondered about how he’d treated his wife. If he’d been abusive, well … Warren had been involved in a few homicides where the killer had been a fed-up wife.

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