Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) (33 page)

She unlocked her room, fumbling with the key and almost dropping it.

“Casey, please—”

“Goodnight, Eric.”

She finally got the door unlocked and practically fell into the room, bolting the door behind her and leaning against it, pressing her hand against her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.

“You really are a mess, aren’t you?” Death turned on an old reel-to-reel projector. “Look. I got that whole scene on tape. You can analyze it and see where you went wrong.”

Casey stared at the images on the wall, of her and Eric, standing so close together just moments before. She strode forward and thrust her hand through the projector, causing it and the image on the wall to waver.

“Can’t you ever leave me be? Can’t I ever have a moment to deal with my emotions on my own?”

Death looked at her, not without kindness. “Apparently not, my love.”

Casey ran into the bathroom, where she locked herself in until she woke up on the floor several hours later, cold, and with a crick in her neck.

Chapter Thirty-seven

It was quiet in the bathroom, but really, really uncomfortable. Casey sat on the side of the tub, rolled her neck a few times, and decided she ought to find a better place to sleep. Her room was empty, thank God, and the stupid projector was gone. She undressed and climbed into bed.

And lay there, awake.

Where was Wayne? And why on earth did he disappear all day? Had someone taken him? Or worse? Or had this all become too much to deal with, the history, and his wife’s jealousy, and now the death of someone he had once loved? Or perhaps still loved?

Casey squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force herself to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, she was no longer thinking about Wayne, but about Eric asleep in the next room. Or possibly not asleep.
That
certainly wasn’t going to relax her.

She got up, put on running clothes, and slipped out into the night. She began jogging without a destination, glad simply to be on her own. Her feet pounded the pavement, and her body loosened up quickly in the warmth of the night. It had cooled since earlier in the day, but still she was slick with sweat within minutes. She ran up and down the residential streets, passing Betsy and Scott’s, and then the Greers’. She wondered if Wayne had returned; there was a light on in an upstairs room. Either he was home and they were hashing out the implications of the past twenty-four hours, or his poor wife was waiting up. Casey considered stopping to check, but decided it really wasn’t any of her business, and Wayne’s wife—whatever her name was—was capable of calling the cops if she thought it necessary. She wouldn’t welcome another intrusion on her life by people who were concerned with the fate of Elizabeth Mann.

Casey ran through downtown, past the pharmacy, the bank, the school. And then she found herself retracing the path to the park, where Elizabeth and her father had lived for those last months, before Elizabeth’s life was turned upside-down and his had ended. The park was quiet now, no parents and toddlers, no dogs, no school kids arguing over who would be on which team. The lamps along the path shone brightly, and Casey felt almost like she was being followed by a spotlight.

She was glad when she neared the relative privacy of the spot where Cyrus Mann had bled out. She ducked off the path toward the broken-up asphalt, where enough light found its way through the trees that she could see at least the outlines of her surroundings. There was still no sign, of course, that the Manns had ever been there. No bloodstain on the gravel, no tire tracks, no plaque to commemorate Cyrus’ passing. And still no smoking gun.

Casey meandered around the splotchy lawn where Cyrus and Elizabeth had spent so much time. Had he hidden something there? Were there still any secrets left to find? She poked in the crooks of trees, beneath bushes, and under rocks, hoping she wouldn’t get bitten by any snakes or spiders, but soon realized that her efforts were pointless. Any cop—or criminal—worth his stuff would have scoured the place. Where else might Cyrus have hidden something important enough to get him, and now his daughter, killed?

A stick broke in the silence, and Casey darted behind a tree. She listened so hard her ears felt filled with static. Nothing happened for several seconds, until she heard another stick snap, and the rustle of dry grass. She peeked out from behind her tree to see a man come into view. His back was to her, and in the patchy light she couldn’t see enough details to know who it was. Had the man who’d questioned the boys come back to hunt down the hidden object? Or had she been followed? What if it was Eric?

The man stood there for a while, as if he were waiting for something, and turned a slow circle. His face remained in shadow. Casey didn’t see any point in a confrontation, so she decided to stay put until he left or did something incriminating.

He didn’t leave. Instead, he brushed off a spot on the picnic table and sat on the bench backward, his elbows resting on the table top. He tilted his face up like she and Eric had done not long ago, toward what sky showed through the branches, and a slice of light hit his face.

It was Wayne. Whole and unhurt. And here in Marshland.

Casey stepped out from behind the tree. “Wayne?”

He jumped up so fast he almost fell backward when his foot struck a thick patch of weeds. “Who is it?”

“It’s Casey. We’ve been looking for you.”

“Here?”

“No.” She walked forward and stood across the table from him. “I was just out for a run and stopped by.”

“Why were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t. I was looking for something.”

“What?”

She sat down and waited for him to follow suit. He didn’t. “Wayne. Please. Sit down.”

He looked around, then sighed heavily and sat sideways on the bench, not facing her.

“What’s going on, Wayne?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Are you really going to try that? You’ve been missing all day—have you even told your wife you’re back?—you didn’t go to work, your son has admitted to exposing Elizabeth’s secrets—”

“What?”

“And a strange man has been in town asking if anyone knows where ‘it’ is. I don’t suppose he’s asked you?”

He sat up. “He’s here
today
?”

“No. Last week. You didn’t see him?”

He was quiet for so long Casey thought he wasn’t going to answer. But he slumped, hanging his head. “Of course I saw him. Do you really think he’d come and talk to the boys, but not me?”

“So what is it, Wayne? What is he looking for?”

“I don’t know—”

“Will you
stop
? Of course you know. You know more than anyone else about this whole mess, and it’s been eating at you all these years. The look on your wife’s face told me that.”

He flinched, as if Casey had struck him. Which she wouldn’t necessarily have been opposed to doing.

“It’s not important anymore.”

“Not important? I’ll tell you what’s
not important
.” She half-stood, leaning so far over the table that she was in his face. “
Not important
is you living your pathetic life down here, wishing you still had Elizabeth, wishing it all away, when my little brother is in jail for killing her. Which he didn’t do, and you know it. And if I have to drag you all over this town, you will tell me what the man is looking for and where it is.”

Wayne swung his leg over the bench to escape, but Casey grabbed his ankle. He stood hopping on one foot. “Let go! I’ll tell you, okay? I’ll tell you.”

She glared at him for several seconds before throwing his leg down, cracking his ankle on the bench. He hesitated, rubbing his foot, then took off limping toward the main part of the park. Casey heaved a sigh and chased after him, dodging branches and rocks and tree roots. Wayne made it to the sidewalk, but Casey caught him, grabbing him from the back and pinning his arms to his sides. He tried kicking her, so she swept his feet out from under him and flipped him onto his stomach, grabbing his arm and twisting it straight out behind him, her hand on the back of his elbow.

“Stop!” He arched his back upward. “Stop! Please!”

Casey knelt over him until he let his head drop forward onto the ground, and his body relaxed. She let go of his arm, but stayed there, squatting beside him, one knee on his back, in case he tried to run again.

He turned his head to the side. “Can I get up?”

“No.”

“I won’t run.”

“Uh-uh.”

He closed his eyes. “Fine. What did you want to know?”

“You remember. What was the man asking about? What is ‘it?’”

“Plans.”

“Plans? What do you mean? Plans for what?”

“Can I get up?”

“No.”

“Can I call my wife?”

“When we’re done.”

“Cyrus was a woodworker, right? He was really good at it, designed things, built them.”

“I know, he had his own business, ran it into the ground. You told us all that already.”

“Right, then he went to work for a houseboat business down in Whitley. Rich folks wanted boats as comfortable and luxurious as their houses. Maybe more. He was the go-to guy. But he got laid off, not sure why, and he couldn’t find anything else.”

“Why couldn’t he? The early nineties weren’t like now. There were jobs all over.”

“Not that suited him, I guess. Elizabeth always said he was picky about where he would work. Wanted to be his own boss, pretty much, even though it didn’t turn out so well when he was. Can you take your knee out of my back now?”

Casey eased off. “So what were these plans you were talking about?”

“I don’t know for sure, but from what Liz heard it sounded like plans for a special houseboat.”

“Wait, this was while he worked for the houseboat company?” Bells were ringing in Casey’s head.

“I guess, but afterward, too, when they were living in the car. Those men, the ones in the picture, they came to him and he spent all this time designing something. I got to the park one time, and he had his stuff spread all over the picnic table. He had a big sheet of plywood he would use as his drafting table, and he had blueprint paper spread out on it. I walked up and surprised him. He got all mad and told me to go away. Liz wasn’t there, so I didn’t want to stay, anyway, but it was weird.”

“What was on the blueprints?”

“What I told you. A houseboat. Or stuff he was designing for one, anyway.”

“And you think those blueprints are what they’re looking for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess they could incriminate somebody somehow, or else whoever commissioned the boat is still after these men to get it done.”

“That’s unlikely. There’s got to be somebody else who could design something. And after all this time they probably wouldn’t need it anymore.”

“Can I get up now?” Casey let him sit up, and he rubbed the elbow she’d overextended. “Liz swore me to secrecy about what I saw, because she didn’t know what kind of trouble her dad could get in for whatever he was doing, and after he was killed and she disappeared, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

“You never thought it might have something to do with his death?”

“A houseboat? No. I never thought a houseboat was worth killing over.” She watched him until he said, “What?”

“How long have you told yourself that?”

He ran a hand over his face and replied quietly. “Ever since that night.”

“You never told anyone about them? Not the police?”

“I knew they didn’t find any blueprints when they searched the car, so I figured they were long gone and out of the picture. That maybe the job was even done. So I thought it would just make Cyrus look bad if I talked about how he’d reacted when I’d seen them. I know, I know, it was dumb. I was a teenager who’d just lost his best friend. His
girlfriend
.”

“But even now, as an adult, you never thought you should tell?”

“What good would it do? Cyrus is long dead, and until yesterday I thought Liz was gone, too. Not dead, necessarily, but just…gone.”

Casey hauled him to his feet. “It’s going to do some good now.”

“Now? In the middle of the night?”

Would it really help anything to tell him about the blueprints she’d found in Betsy’s box? Was it worth it to wake them all up and look? Casey wanted to do it. She wanted to wake up the whole town. But nothing could happen quicker than if she just waited until everyone was awake—Betsy, Chief Kay, her lawyer Don, even Ricky. “Okay, in the morning. I guess now you should let your wife know you haven’t skipped town.”

“She wouldn’t think that.”

“Great, so she thinks you’re dead.”

He yanked his arm from her grip. “Can I go now?”

“You need to tell the cops tomorrow morning.”

“I will.”

“First thing.”

“I said I will.”

Casey let him go, watching as he flickered from lamp to lamp along the path, until he was gone.