Striding into Hillvale the next morning, Walker rubbed his bruised arm and studied the gardens of colorful flowers decorating the boardwalk and every vacant alley. Heavily blooming pink roses had seemingly sprung up overnight, spilling over what had been a broken, faded fence by the town hall. In addition to the playful barrels on the boardwalk, baskets displayed an array of blossoms dangling from the sagging overhangs of several stores.

Sam had turned the tired town from faded gray to a bouquet of vibrant color and fragrance—just as she was bringing him back to life. If he believed in magic, he would call her enchanted.

The men waiting inside the town hall were not in the least magical.

Walker had persuaded the sheriff that Xavier and Francois were more likely to talk if they weren’t intimidated by badges and uniforms. Monty was there as witness. He’d brought in more chairs from the lodge, and the two older men had aligned themselves in front of the mayor’s desk. Walker pulled the last chair to one side so he could watch faces.

Xavier no longer wore a green jacket. Someone had provided him with a navy blazer that he wore over an open-necked white shirt. Clean-shaven, back straight, with his graying hair trimmed, he almost looked like a lawyer again.

Francois had removed the epaulets from his livery, but his brass buttons still shone with polish. His face was lined and yellowed by years of smoking, and he hadn’t done more with his thinning gray hair than tug it into a rubber band at his nape. His brown-stained fingers shook as he reached for a cigarette that wasn’t there.

Monty had dressed casually, sporting a short-sleeved shirt—a blue one with a fancy collar and expensive detailing that had been probably been purchased in a Monterey boutique. Kennedys couldn’t even do casual properly. The mayor glanced at Walker, waiting for him to lead the discussion.

“All I want is details for my report, gentlemen,” Walker said. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he’d chosen his blue, collared shirt and khakis to give him a measure of authority. He addressed the lawyer first. “We’d like to close the case with no loose ends.”

He pulled out his recorder. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to record while we talk. Xavier, do you mind if we start with you? I think you’ve been familiar with Hillvale for as long as Monty and Kurt, am I right?”

The rental agent looked relieved to be able to speak. He hesitated, apparently seeking a starting place. “I came up here with their father during spring breaks, before Geoff married. Hillvale had quite a reputation as a happening place.” He looked almost startled that he’d said that. “The commune was no more than a group of starving artists, and the farm was dilapidated. We mostly came to do drugs. Ingersson always had a supply.”

“How much did you know of Geoffrey Kennedy’s desire to acquire more land and create a resort town?” Walker asked, not looking at Monty.

“Everything.” Xavier shrugged. “The shops were empty. Rats ran loose. The Ingerssons smoked up anything they earned. By the time I had my law degree, we’d already started buying out people who wanted to leave. Our families had money, and property up here wasn’t worth anything then. It was all perfectly legal.”

Walker waited, letting the older man gather his thoughts. This many words out of the spaced-out lawyer was a miracle in itself. Cass had done some serious mumbo-jumbo on his head.

He couldn’t believe that Cass had magic potions or hypnosis to influence witnesses, but Xavier had changed overnight. Or maybe he’d just dried out. That ought to worry him, but oddly, it didn’t. He’d seen what Cass had done to Sam—and what the Lucys had done to an avalanche. He still didn’t believe in magic, but there was something at work in Hillvale that he’d never seen in the city. He’d settle for believing in geological energy for now.

“But after a while, Geoff got impatient. He partnered with the Commercial development team and. . .” Xavier wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure when it became intense. He hired me to work with his mortgage company, and we started with aggressive sales pitches. We used borderline coercion on the shop owners to borrow and improve their buildings, even though we knew they couldn’t pay back the loans. I arranged a refinance on the Ingersson farm, even though they couldn’t prove they had an income, knowing they’d smoke the money and fall behind. Ingersson thought we were friends helping him through a bad time. But we were focused on the end game and didn’t really care about people who lost their homes or stores. They were old shacks and needed to be torn down anyway. We were young and ambitious and the world was our oyster, even after Ingersson went bankrupt and sued.”

Monty got up and opened a small refrigerator, producing icy bottles of water that he handed around. This was Monty’s father Xavier was talking about. It couldn’t be easy hearing this.

“And then six or seven years after the lawsuit was settled, and we had almost acquired all the land we needed, I had a tourist ask me an odd question about the ownership of the farm and some of the lots in town.” Xavier quit looking in Walker’s direction. “That was nearly two decades ago. The face and name have faded. I was drinking heavily then. I got sloppy drunk and talked to a few of the guys in the development team. They wore those awful green jackets and everyone hated them.”

“The people or the jackets?” Walker asked, hiding the horror building at this tale. Xavier didn’t even remember Michael Walker’s name, but his father had almost certainly been the tourist asking questions.

“Both,” Xavier replied with a snort. “But they were going to make us rich. So I told them about the snoopy tourist, pointed him out in the bar. Alan Gump was one of the men I talked to.”

Walker glanced at Monty, who looked paler than usual. But the mayor tightened his jaw and drank from his water bottle without speaking.

Xavier continued, “Talking to Gump was probably the worst decision of my life, but at the time, it was just meaningless bar talk. He said he recognized the inquisitive stranger from LA, and he’d have a talk with him. I went back to my office in San Francisco the next day. I had no idea what happened until later, when the sheriff started making inquiries about a missing tourist.”

Francois had tensed at the mention of Gump. The chauffeur reached for a cigarette again, then took the bottle of water just to steady his hands.

Intent on telling his tale, Xavier seemed unaware that anyone was in the room. He stared at an ugly piece of abstract art over Monty’s head. “The bottom started falling out of our dreams about that time. It’s all pretty blurry in my head,” Xavier admitted. “The sheriff canvassing the town for a missing tourist was followed by legal beagles from the attorney general’s office. Gump and the rest of the green jacket sales team faded away. Geoff died, and I. . . fell apart.”

He stopped like a mechanical toy whose spring had worn out. He stared blankly at the bottle cupped between his hands.

“Kennedy’s death halted the development plans?” Walker asked, disappointed that Xavier knew no more about his father’s death. “The plans died with him?”

Xavier shrugged. “Some of the team may have hung around, talking to Carmel, but she was too grief-stricken to care. She sold the mortgage company, and I was too addled to hold onto my job. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”

Francois took a swig of water, then spit it at the worn wooden floor. “You let the monsters live to kill and torment again, you pathetic, sanctimonious bag of hot air.”

After the chauffeur’s burst of venom, Monty Kennedy lost it. “Francois! This is not the time to throw blame. They found your fingerprint on my mother’s gun, the one that killed Juan!”

Walker understood the explosion. Until this moment, Xavier had seemed to convict Gump for murder, if only by innuendo. But Francois had hit the guilt button. Not spineless Xavier, but Geoffrey Kennedy had been the one to set the vultures to picking Hillvale’s bones. Monty’s father had let loose the soulless fortune hunters to claim the land, much as the gold diggers had destroyed the Spanish in a different era. And the Spanish had destroyed the natives before that.

Walker gestured for Monty to sit back. “Tell us about Juan and Gump,” he said to Francois, offering him a stick of gum.

The chauffeur ripped off the wrapper and chewed to calm himself. “They are murdering turds,” Francois finally said.

Monty clenched his hands in an apparent attempt to keep from throttling his mother’s toady. Walker had to keep one eye on him while interviewing Francois.

“You saw them kill Michael Walker?” he asked without inflection.

Francois shrugged. “I saw nothing back then. The green-jacket turd told me he needed to change his tire, and I gave him my tools. He brought them back washed. He was wearing his ugly green jacket when he borrowed the tools but not after. He stank of sweat, but I thought nothing of it until I saw him get in a car with matching tires. Who keeps matching tires for a spare? Not in that little Corvette.”

Walker’s gut twisted, but he pushed on. “Was anyone else with Gump who might have seen him change or not change his tire?”

“Juan,” Francois spat. “The blackmailing little worm was everywhere, even back then. I had to give him the watch Mrs. Kennedy gave me for Christmas when he threatened to tell her I was letting kids wash the car and pocketing the extra she paid me to have it done.”

Monty raised his eyebrows. “That was an expensive watch. You make that much on car washes?”

Walker figured the blackmail was over more than car washes, but that line of questioning was beside the point. He gestured for Monty to quiet.

“So Juan might have seen Gump using your tools for whatever purpose?” Walker asked.

Francois shrugged. “I saw Juan burn a green coat in the incinerator. It looked muddy, and when I asked him about it, he told me Gump was good for a lot of cash for keeping his mouth shut. I figured I’d look out for chances, but the ugly coats did not come back much after that, not until recently. The snake shed his green skin, but he was still poisonous.”

Walker kept his expression neutral, even realizing that Francois offered only circumstantial evidence that Gump had killed his father. But everyone involved was dead, adequately punished for their misdeeds.

What mattered was how justice should be served now.

“And recently?” Walker asked. “What made you take the gun? Were you frightened?”

Francois gestured dismissively. “Me? Not me. It was Mrs. Kennedy. That pig Juan threatened to tell you about how the skeleton died. He said it would look very bad for her and her family. He wanted a pay increase.”

Shit. Walker glanced at Monty, who ran his hand over his eyes at this hint that his father may have been involved in murder.

“Your uncle learned from your experience with Juan’s blackmail,” Walker told the mayor, not opening the path of Kennedy involvement in the skeletal remains. “Presumably, your mother did too?”

Monty nodded understanding. “Juan was all bluff.”

“So how did Mrs. Kennedy deal with Juan?” Walker asked, as if they were sitting at a bar carrying on irrelevant bar chat.

Francois rolled the water bottle between his hands. “She got the gun from the vault. She locked it there when the mister died, said she didn’t want her boys to have it.”

“And then she shot Juan?” Walker asked, allowing a hint of incredulity through.

Francois shook his shaggy head. “No! She is a lady. She would never do such a thing. She just threatened the swine and told him if he ever approached her in such a manner again, she would kill him rather than just fire him. She finally booted the little turd.”

Monty raised his eyebrows. “That must have been the night she was in such a rage. She told us she’d fired the wretch, and Kurt argued. Juan was a rat, but he was an observant rat and good at his job.”

Walker nodded and directed his question at Francois. “And then she told you to put the gun back in the vault?”

Francois nodded. “She gave me the key and the gun. But Gump was there that night. I saw him having dinner, and I remembered what Juan said about him paying big cash. So when I had a chance, I told him that Juan had been blackmailing Mrs. Kennedy about the skeleton on the property. I didn’t know what he knew, but I took a chance, just to see if he’d pay to keep my mouth shut.”

Xavier drained his bottle and set the empty on the table. “I remember that night. Kurt had to drive me home because Gump was staying at the lodge and had been drinking. Gump didn’t want to take me home as he usually did.”

Walker nodded and turned back to Francois. “And then what happened?”

“Gump gave me a hundred, thanked me for letting him know. He asked if he could borrow the gun before I put it back. He said he wanted to threaten Juan into leaving so he didn’t bother Mrs. Kennedy again. I thought maybe he was sweet on her.”

Monty buried his head in his hands, and Walker sympathized. The mayor had to suck up the knowledge that his family was the reason that a monster had been unleashed on Hillvale. And the second time was his and Kurt’s fault. The two of them had sat there that night, discussing plans for a development with a murderer. That was how Monty’s father’s life had ended—with blood on his soul.

“You didn’t think anything of it when Gump returned the gun at midnight and told you to take it to the vault?” Walker asked, sounding like a cynical cop.

“It smelled of gunpowder,” Francois said in distaste. “I’d heard the shots earlier, but Bernardo said he’d heard a lion in the woods, and Gump had been shooting at it. I took his money and drove the gun to the vault and didn’t think anything more.”

“Until morning, when you learned Juan was dead?” Walker asked in disgust.

Francois chomped on his gum hard enough to crack molars and refused to speak.