The Suicide Club

When she’d worked in there last spring, she had opened the window and turned on the ceiling fan, allowing it to pull in the scent of honeysuckle along with the cooler night air. It had been too hot and humid to do that this summer, of course, and although she found it hard to believe the window had been unlocked for months, she couldn’t deny the possibility.

“In here.”

Jace stood in the doorway of the room she’d indicated, a hand on either side of the frame. “They dust for prints?”

“I didn’t find this was unlocked until after they’d left.”

He walked across the room, looking intently at the carpet, which, chosen for its tight weave and durability, didn’t show footprints. Then he leaned forward, making an inspection of the sill. “I’ll get someone out here.”

“What for?”

“To dust for prints.”

“Does it have to be tonight?”

He turned, eyes examining her face. “Were you asleep?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She laughed. “Call it residual snake phobia.”

“You don’t like them.”

“No better and no less than the average person.”

“Yeah? They give me the creeps.”

His honesty surprised her. Most men she knew, even if they felt that way, would have been reluctant to admit it.

“He strike at you?”

She nodded, crossing her arms over her body as she remembered the near miss.

“So how come he didn’t hit you?”

“I don’t know. I heard him. But first…”

“What?” he asked when she hesitated.

“I remembered something my grandmother told me when I was a little girl.”

“Your grandmother?”

“We used to pick blackberries every summer when we went to visit her. Snakes love to hide in the vines. They stink—like goats, my grandmother told us—and that if we ever smelled that, we should run.”

“Goats?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what goats smell like. This was…rank. Unpleasant. I smelled it when I leaned over the hamper. Actually, I smelled it when I came into the bathroom, but I didn’t know what it was. Not until I heard the rattle. By that time…” She shivered, the image of that lethal, arrow-shaped head shooting out of the basket in her mind again. “In the middle of lifting the top off the basket, I just suddenly knew what was inside. I jumped back and let go of the lid. It fell on the snake. I don’t know whether that distracted him or whether he wasn’t long enough to get to me. And I didn’t stop to figure it out.”

“At least he warned you.”

“I wondered if that was deliberate.”

“On the part of the snake?” Again, there was that hint of amusement in his voice.

She found she didn’t mind it, even if it was at her expense. “On the part of whoever put it there.”

“You think…they didn’t intend for you to get bitten.”

“Wishful thinking?”

“Maybe. If this was a prank, it was a dangerous one. And they went to a lot of trouble to carry it off.”

“I don’t think it was a prank.”

“Yeah? Neither do I. For what it’s worth.”

“My kids knew we had dinner together.”

“So?”

“It was discussed in my senior English class yesterday.”

“And you think this is related.”

“Don’t you?”

“You first.”

“Maybe I’m too prone to look for symbolism, but…” She took a breath, steeling herself to say it. “I do believe it’s related. Somebody thinks I’m helping you.”

“So they put a snake in your house.”

“Snake in the grass,” she said softly.

“What?”

“They’re saying I’m a snake for helping you.”

“Sorry. A little too much symbolism for me.”

“Even the kind of snake they used, notorious for warning about its intentions to harm.”

“So…you think this was a warning?”

“Don’t you?”