Elle pressed a hand to her ribs. “I’m going to talk to that kid right now!”

“No.” Rune pulled the phone out of the pocket of her skirt. “Let me handle it.” She dialed the General Store and spoke in a voice that trembled. “Tamalyn, darling, I know how you feel about Adam, and I didn’t want you to hear from anyone else. He fell coming down the porch steps. Just fell! No reason.”

Adam heard Tamalyn’s high-pitched squeak.

Rune continued. “He broke his neck. He’s dead!”

Elle covered her mouth in horror at Rune’s audacity.

“I have to go now, to close his staring eyes that will never again gaze on a starry sky and cover his still-warm body with a blanket. Good-bye!” Rune hung up. She nodded at Elle and Adam. “That should do it. Let’s sit down, have our lunch and wait for her to get down here. It shouldn’t take long.”

“That is harsh!” Elle protested.

“She set the trap for you without ever thinking her beloved Adam could very well have tripped. Or me. People die taking falls.” Rune watched Elle grimace as she pressed her ribs. “You’re lucky you weren’t badly hurt.”

Hastily Elle took her hand away.

“Tamalyn already got away with that stunt once. Remember when you fell at the store? Angelica tripped, too. If Angelica ever discovered what Tamalyn was up to, that young woman would be out of a job. Her mother would be afraid to allow her near the baby. Everyone in town would view her with suspicion, and she’d be shunned until the day she left for college.” Rune enumerated all the reasons Tamalyn needed to learn a lesson. “She’s getting off easy.”

Elle couldn’t argue about that. But she’d lost her appetite. She waited, tense and uneasy, until Adam lifted his wrist. “She’s coming,” he said.

Elle heard the sound of bicycle tires racing down the gravel driveway and a faint, constant sobbing interspersed with panicked words like “No!” and “I didn’t mean...”

Tamalyn skidded around the corner of the porch, dropped her bike, ran toward the bottom of the stairs. She stared at the worn grass there, then lifted her gaze to the porch where Adam, Elle and Rune watched her. The blood drained from her face. She gasped out loud. She stammered, “You...you lied!” She pointed at Elle with a shaking finger. “How dare you scare me like—”

Elle could not believe she was getting blamed.

Adam stood, walked to the railing and held up the thumbtack dangling from the floss.

Tamalyn stopped in midsentence. She turned her palms up and spread her fingers, as if trying to disassociate herself from the deed. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Kill anyone?” Rune questioned her ruthlessly. “That wasn’t a cute practical joke. You could have killed any of us. Do you understand you could go to prison?”