Free By The Howling by Olivia Stowe

thought perhaps it was from the direction of Brenda’s house, the lot where the murdered woman was found being just beyond that. Charlotte didn’t want to read too much into that, though, as she recognized that her mind might just be trying to rationalize events. What was more telling, though, was finding Sam on her doorstep, his leash attached and his paws muddy, on the following morning. If she’d been sharp, she would have collected some of the mud from the crevices in his paws. That might have linked him—and, therefore Susan—to the death scene by Brenda’s house. But Charlotte herself had washed away that possible evidence when she had bathed Sam later that day.
    As she was thinking these thoughts, Charlotte walked into the second bedroom upstairs—and stumbled onto something that she hadn’t, in her remotest conjecturing considered but that now became one more interlocking piece of the puzzle, a flash of light in the darkness.
    The room was strewn with items one did not associate with bedrooms. She would only have been curious at the eclectic nature of the furnishings and probably would have written it off to the bedroom being used more as a storeroom than a guest bedroom—if her eyes hadn’t gone immediately to the Japanese porcelain tea set that sat in the middle of one of the twin beds—her Japanese porcelain tea set, the one that was missing from the buffet under her dining room window.
    The first thought that entered Charlotte’s mind was, I’ve got to get Grady Tarbell to the antique shop in Easton to confirm that the stamp album I found there is his.
    What she did next, was to scoop an item up from the other twin bed and march back up River Street to the Vales’ B&B.
    This time it was Joyce who answered the door, and as soon as she saw what Charlotte was carrying, she broke down into tears. Todd appeared and took Joyce by the shoulders and guided her back into the house. He turned his head to Charlotte and wearily said, “You’d better come in, I suppose.”
    “So, this is your set of silver? You confirm that?” Charlotte asked, when Joyce had stopped blubbering and was sunk into the commodious overstuffed chair Charlotte had occupied on her previous visit. Charlotte was perched on the edge of a hard Windsor side chair, trying not to make it bear all of her weight.
    “Yes, it’s ours,” Joyce answered in a small voice.
    “And you realize that I found it in the Wells’ house, along with other property that was probably stolen from houses in the village—including something of mine that I know was taken?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you give this silver to Susan?”
    “No.”
    “And so we understand what the implications of that are, don’t we?”
    “Yes, I suppose so.”
    “Does this have anything to do with your secretiveness on Susan being your daughter? And is this why there was the estrangement between you two that I have sensed?” Actually Todd had told Charlotte about the estrangement, but Charlotte was too polite to tattle on him. Todd seemed to realize that and gave Charlotte an appreciative, if startled, look.
    “Susan was . . . difficult . . . from childhood. And she was frequently in trouble. I had hoped when she came back here . . . but . . .”
    Joyce just let her voice trail off, and, as she rose to leave, Charlotte tried to give her what little hope she could. “This doesn’t reflect well on Susan, of course, but it does give us some added hope that she is alive. That is something you can hang on to; I know this is trying for you.”
    Todd looked up. “Oh, how does this give us hope?”
    “It gives us some rationale we didn’t have before on why Susan would leave virtually in the middle of the night on her own volition—and thus that she might not be in quite the harm’s way we supposed.” And then, when neither of the Vales said anything, while they were digesting and gaining strength from this hope, Charlotte continued. “Did Susan talk to either of you that