Authors: Heather Graham
“I’ll walk Scarlet and Angus back to where they need to be, and then head back here to help Clark and Gigi find a hotel,” Brett said.
Diego looked at Scarlet. She seemed surprisingly fine, considering she’d nearly been skewered earlier, but he could see the question in her eyes.
What happens now?
“I won’t be long,” he told her. “We’ll get the guests out and situated, and I’ll be back.”
After she left with Brett and Angus. Lieutenant Gray came over to him and said, “I’ll have men watching their movements. You can leave that to me.”
“Thank you,” Diego said. “Whatever the killer is after, he hasn’t found it yet. Someone will be on the move.”
Gray nodded in agreement.
Ben rose on shaky legs. “What do we do?” he asked. “I’m starting to wonder—should I leave, too? Burn the place to the ground?”
“For tonight, go to sleep,” Diego told him.
“But will we be safe?” Ben asked.
“Meg, Matt, Jane and Adam will all be here,” Diego said.
“Safer than leaving, then,” Ben agreed. He looked up the stairs, where the last of his guests were gathering their things to leave. He shivered suddenly. “Much safer than leaving.”
* * *
“Are you really okay?” Brett asked Scarlet.
They’d seen Angus safely to the stables. He’d assured them that he would be fine; he had his shotgun, and he was damned good at watching out for vermin.
Then they’d headed to the museum, reset the alarm after entering and called up to Lara, Matt and Meg to let them know that they were downstairs.
But Brett had paused to question her before going up.
“Surprisingly okay,” she assured him. “I just wonder, how could anyone have rigged that moose head? I don’t want to believe Ben is doing this, but it has to be him. He and Trisha bought the heads. It’s their house. He was working in the dining room, painting, today.”
“I’d say this has all been in the works for a long time. Daniel was killed months ago, and we don’t even know for sure that was the beginning. That means any number of people had the chance to rig the moose. Not to mention there’s been nothing resembling security around here until this week, and there’s still no alarm up at the main house. In a way, the fact that so much evidence points at Ben suggests that he’s being set up.” He hesitated.
“What? What else?” she asked him.
“We talked to Will Chan today. He’s still working on your camera, but he thinks someone did mess with it, that they took pictures of pictures in a book and then hacked the workings so they’d be erased two minutes after being viewed. So it’s almost certain that the killer rigged both your camera and the moose head.”
“Actually, that’s a relief,” she told him. “Because I just don’t think Ben could have faked his reaction to those pictures.”
“I agree. We’re moving forward, we really are.”
She studied Brett. “I keep wondering... The pictures on my camera, they were an illusion. Do you think it’s possible that something else is going on here, that it’s all really an illusion? That the murders of Nathan Kendall’s descendants are a smoke screen for something else? I mean, this far down the line, how do we really know who’s descended from Nathan and who’s not? Someone might have fooled around outside of marriage, so there could be descendants who aren’t on record, or supposed descendants who really aren’t. How can we ever know the truth?”
“We can’t, not really. But if the killings
are
a smoke screen, we still have to figure out for what. I don’t know. Maybe there is something here at the ranch that someone wants. But it’s late now, and none of us will be any good without sleep. Are you ready to head up?”
“In a few minutes. I just need a little time alone first.”
“All right,” Brett said. He walked over and made sure that the door was locked and that the “armed” light on the alarm was blinking as it should be.
When he was gone, she stood alone in the museum. She looked around at the display cases and the many mannequins.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, thinking of all the tragedy that had invaded Nathan’s life and the lives of so many of his descendants now.
She felt Daniel’s presence even before he spoke to her.
“Do you play the slot machines?” he asked her.
“Pardon?” She frowned as she stared at him. He was good; he looked as solid as any man on the street.
He smiled. “Slots. I love them. Loved them, that is. And they have all kinds of bonuses that really increase your payoff. But the thing is, there’s no way to walk into a casino and know that a slot machine is ready to give. You can sit at one forever and ever, and that bonus just won’t kick in. Other times, you just sit down and the bonus triggers and triggers and triggers. And the thing is, life is like that. Some men just touch money and it makes more money. They get sick, but they always get well. Some people do atrocious things to others and get away with it. Sometimes your life is like the machine that pays off nonstop. Other lives, there just isn’t going to be a bonus. That was me, Scarlet. And Cassandra,” he added softly. “We just weren’t meant to have a bonus.”
“Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry. But,” she said, and then hesitated. “You
are
here—as a ghost, true, but still you’re here. We’re talking. You met Cassandra. Maybe life
is
like a slot machine. Your first life wasn’t your day for the bonus. But now you have another life, and maybe this time you’ll get the bonus.”
He grinned. “I wish I could give you a hug,” he said. Then he went quiet and nodded toward the stairs and the pedestal where Nathan’s statue stood. “He’s here,” he said quietly.
Scarlet turned and stared at the mannequin. As she watched, Nathan Kendall stepped around it and started walking toward her.
“Hello, Nathan,” she said quietly.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then his eyes narrowed as he turned and stared at Daniel.
Daniel grinned. “Hey, Gramps!” he said.
Scarlet ignored Daniel and addressed Nathan. “You’ve been here all along, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“Do you move the mannequin?” she asked. “Not up the stairs—we know Terry did that. But when it fell over, that was you, wasn’t it?”
Nathan seemed to wince. He nodded. She realized that he’d been there for years and years, watching and waiting, but apparently he’d never tried to communicate before. He might be an old ghost, but he wasn’t at all a practiced ghost.
He was a ghost, just as Daniel was. But the spirit that remained was the essence of the man, and some men were outgoing, like Daniel, and others were introverted, dealing privately with the demons that had plagued their lives, and clearly Nathan was the latter.
She smiled and moved closer to him. “You’ve been trying to help us, haven’t you? You pushed your statue over because you were trying to tell us that what’s happening now is connected to what happened to you.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was like the wind blowing over brittle leaves in winter. “I can push,” he said, and he almost managed a smile. “But I cannot carry.”
“It’s all right, we know that Terry moved the statue upstairs,” she said. “But what we don’t know and hope you do is who killed you. Was it Rollo?”
She knew that it was painful for him to speak, but she felt she had no choice but to press him. This was important. Crucial.
“I don’t know. I never knew, I only knew that I was going to die. All I saw was the burlap bag he wore over his head,” he said, and winced. “A mask like the ones we wore when we were robbing banks and stagecoaches. I did bad things, things that hurt people. Perhaps I deserved what happened to me, but...”
“Did you recognize his voice?” Scarlet asked.
“I felt as if I should have, but...I didn’t. He might have disguised it. I don’t know.”
“Do you know what he wanted from you? Was he looking for the gold?”
He nodded. “Yes. He kept demanding to know where it was. I tried to play for time, but the pain...” A shadow crossed his face as he remembered. “I prayed that someone would come, that Jillian and the baby would escape.” His voice grew stronger as he spoke. “But she must have heard, and she rushed out and surprised him, so he turned and shot her, and for the love of God, all I could do was scream her name until... Until I realized I wasn’t making a sound. That was when I realized I was dead.”
“Why didn’t you just give him the gold?” Scarlet asked.
“Because I never knew where Jillian had hidden it,” he said softly. “I found it by accident, after a hard rain that revealed a vein of pure riches—what Rollo was looking for, I imagine. So I dug it out and gave it to her, told her to put it where I wouldn’t know and couldn’t be tempted. Maybe she left it with her father, I don’t know. It was for a rainy day, for our son.”
“It was Rollo—it must have been Rollo,” Scarlet said. “I can’t believe it was your father-in-law.” She’d meant the words as a statement, but they came out sounding more like a question.
The ghost of Nathan Kendall shook his head sadly. “Never Tom Vickers. He may not have liked me, but never would the man have killed his own daughter.”
“Do you know if the gold is connected to what’s happening now?” she asked. “Could someone know you found gold and that it’s somewhere here, on the ranch?”
“I wish I’d never found it,” Nathan said. He looked at Daniel and shook his head sadly. “So much tragedy because of man’s greed.”
“Well, I didn’t have any gold. I wasn’t worth more than what I had in my pockets,” Daniel said.
“I think every bit of this has been planned— starting with your death, Daniel,” Scarlet said. “The killer is looking for the gold, pure and simple, but he wants it to look like someone has gone crazy and started killing descendants of Nathan Kendall. I think his original plan was for Ben to be arrested for the murders, but when it became clear that wasn’t going to work he switched tactics and started finding ways to ruin Ben’s business, like that trick with the moose head. Either way, the business would end up closed down and the place would be abandoned, maybe forever. But even if it was only temporary, while Trisha tried to sell the property, the killer would be free to rip it apart from stem to stern until he found the gold.”
Nathan Kendall nodded and looked at Daniel, but he was fading. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He was almost gone, but before he faded entirely he approached Scarlet, who felt a gentle touch on her cheek.
Then he was gone.
Daniel met her eyes and asked, “Did you hear him?”
“Just now?”
“Yes.”
“I heard him tell you he was sorry.”
“Perhaps the dead hear the dead speak more clearly than the living. Because he told you to be careful. He’s afraid for you, Scarlet. So am I.”
“You don’t need to be, either of you. I
am
careful,” she promised, then thought about the past—and the present.
“And I have Diego,” she said.
But did she?
Maybe not forever. Maybe he was only here because he was an honorable man who had sworn to serve and protect.
“Daniel,” she said.
But he was gone, too.
She looked around the quiet museum and a chill settled into her bones.
She prayed there were no more horrors to come.
But as she ran upstairs to join the others, she knew in her gut that her prayers would go unanswered.
17
I
t was getting late. Diego saw to it that the guests left—escorted—and got rooms at a brand-new name-brand hotel down by the highway. Lieutenant Gray promised that officers would be assigned to watch both couples and Terry Ballantree, tracking their movements 24/7. He shook his head like a sad old bulldog when he took his leave. “Hope you know what you’re doing, Agent McCullough. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Lieutenant Gray, I always hope that myself,” Diego said drily.
After Linda, Ben and Trisha went up to bed, Diego joined Matt and Meg, who had returned to the main house, along with Adam and Jane. They sat up late, discussing the events of the night and their plan to keep watch through the hours ahead.
“I was here most of the day, and other than Ben, I didn’t see anyone in the dining room,” Adam told them. “It would have taken a while to set up such an elaborate weapon, so my money is on it having been in place for a while.”
“Yes, but until today,” Jane said, “no one knew we were going to have a séance.”
“True,” Diego admitted, “which means whoever rigged that moose head was playing the long game.”
“And that points to Ben,” Adam said.
“Too conveniently?” Matt suggested.
Diego turned to Adam. “Scarlet believes that Nathan Kendall was killed by Rollo Conway, the original owner of this property. She thinks Rollo was bitter about having to sell, certain that Nathan had found the gold Rollo had spent years looking for with no luck. Rollo never found anything worthwhile on his other property, so it must have burned him up to think Nathan had gotten rich on what should have been
his
gold. So Rollo tortured Nathan to get him to give up the location of the gold. I think Rollo wore the burlap bag over his head to look like one of the thugs Nathan had ridden with. He probably didn’t know they were all dead at that point. If that theory’s true, our killer might not have any connection to Nathan Kendall, he might be distantly related to Rollo Conway. Can we get our researchers on that?”
“I’ll make the call now,” Adam said.
“I think it’s about three in the morning back East,” Diego said.
“The Krewe never sleeps,” Adam said lightly.
Meg grinned at Diego. “Our tech office is staffed 24/7—just waiting to hear what we might need.”
“Nice,” Diego said.
The Krewe of Hunters. He liked it. What the hell had he been thinking, not to jump right on immediately with Brett?
He’d been thinking that if he just stuck to his comfortable life in Miami and worked hard, somehow he would learn to live, really live, again without Scarlet.
“Do you think we’ll find out that someone in our suspect pool is a descendant of Rollo Conway?” Matt asked.
Diego mulled that over for a moment. “I don’t know. But there’s real logic to the theory, so let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I keep wondering if we should have cleared this place out at the start,” Adam said.
“I don’t think we’d have saved any lives,” Diego said. “In fact, I think we would have made it easier for the killer to search this place for the gold or whatever it is he’s after, and that he still would have killed people, because that’s his cover for what he really wants. Anyway, I’m hoping we scared our killer tonight, and a scared killer makes mistakes.”
“Ready to run, or do something desperate because he believes the ghost really saw something and Scarlet knows what it is?” Jane asked.
“Except that if she
does
know something, it seems pretty clear she has no idea what it is,” Meg said thoughtfully.
“I have no idea whether she knows anything or not,” Diego said, “but after tonight everyone will think she does, and I have to admit that worries me.”
“We’re missing something—something we should know from the journals,” Jane said.
Diego nodded, feeling his throat tighten. “I need to get back,” he said huskily.
“Brett and Lara are at the apartment with her, and the alarm is set. She’s all right,” Meg said firmly.
“I know. I just need to get back anyway,” Diego said.
“Go,” Adam told him.
Diego nodded. He headed for the door and then paused. “Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Lieutenant Gray about taking Ben and Trisha in.”
“So now you
do
think they’re guilty?” Jane asked.
“No. I think they’re innocent. But I think they’re in danger—just as Scarlet and Terry and Gray himself are—and making it look like we suspect them is the best way to protect them. Ben will understand if you explain it and if it means he’s helping the investigation, not to mention I think he’s finally realized his wife might be in danger, too.”
“What about Linda Reagan?” Meg asked.
“I think she bears watching,” Adam said.
Diego nodded.
“Then we’ll watch her,” Jane said.
“See you in the morning,” Adam said to Diego.
“In the morning,” he agreed, then left.
He was ready to reach for his Glock as he walked toward the museum.
He looked over at the stables. The drapes were open, and he could see Angus sitting in his chair, probably watching television. His shotgun was at his side.
Diego reached the museum and was ready to key in the alarm code as soon as he opened the door, but he didn’t need to. The door opened and Scarlet was there, with Brett and Lara right behind her.
Scarlet blushed slightly. “We just wanted to make sure you got in safely,” she said.
Behind her, Brett shrugged. Diego knew his partner well. The shrug meant,
What was I supposed to do? She was worried about you, and I wasn’t about to let her come down here alone—or leave Lara upstairs alone.
“Thanks. I’m safe, I promise. Now we’re locking up, going through the whole place and getting some sleep,” he told her, then looked at Brett.
“I’ve checked, but it never hurts to check again.”
“Nathan was here,” Scarlet said, following close behind him as the four of them walked through the museum.
Diego stopped short and turned to face her. “What did he say?”
“He didn’t move the statue of himself upstairs, but we knew that. He
did
knock it over, though. And, Diego, he
did
find gold, and that’s why his killer was torturing. He wanted to know where it was. Nathan would have given it to him, too, but he didn’t know where it was himself. He would have done anything to protect Jillian, except that he’d given her the gold to hide for the future, for their son. Oh! And his killer wore a burlap bag over his head, just like our killer. I told him I thought it was Rollo, and why—did Matt and Meg explain when they got up to the house?”
Diego nodded. “They did.”
“Good. Anyway, I think Nathan agrees with me about Rollo, even though he never saw his killer’s face and didn’t recognize his voice.”
“We’re tight as a drum down here,” Brett said.
“Good. Let’s try to get some sleep,” Diego said.
They headed upstairs, where, by rote, he and Brett went through the apartment, even though someone had been there all night.
In the hallway, they said their good-nights and went to their separate rooms.
The minute the door was closed behind them, Scarlet turned into his arms. There was a sweet rush of urgency about her. They didn’t speak as they struggled out of their clothing, and when they fell into bed, he thought he might drown in the silk of her flesh and the fall of her hair. The night was electric. They should have been exhausted after everything that had happened, but they made love as if it might be the last time, as if the earth might open and take them away with the morning’s light.
As in fact he feared it might.
After they climaxed, when they lay replete, Scarlet didn’t speak and he thought that she might have fallen asleep, curled against him, her head on his chest, one long leg draped over his body. He thought about their marriage and the way it had been destroyed, and he wondered again how they had managed to tear each other apart so completely.
And then she spoke.
“I understand now,” she said softly. “I understand how you can’t walk away from a case like this.”
“No. It’s not right—it will never be right—for a job to take precedence over a marriage,” he said. “Most people would have thrown me out long before you did.”
She sat up and looked down at him, a hand on his chest. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not most people.” She grinned slightly. “Though I might have been stupid and acted as if I was.”
He only meant to hold her, but the minute he pulled her into his arms the urgency returned, the feeling that they had to cling tightly to one another because the cataclysm was coming and it would try to pull them apart.
They made love again. Afterward, when she curled up against his side, he held her close and they slept.
Diego began to dream, and in his dream the old Cuban refugee woman was back. She walked up to him through a sunlit field, and he realized he was standing on the mountain, and in the distance he could see the Rocky Mountains tipped with brilliant, sparkling snow.
“You’re a good man,” the old woman said. “But sometimes that isn’t enough. You have to listen, listen with your soul. Only then will you know how to survive.”
She smiled as she stopped speaking and faded into the sunlight. He stood on the mountain alone as a chill breeze began to blow, flattening the grass around him. In seconds the daylight was gone and it was full night. The white mountaintops began to move closer, but they weren’t mountain peaks dazzling with snow anymore.
They were gravestones.
He woke with a start and realized that his phone was vibrating under his pillow.
It was Lieutenant Gray.
“They’ve lost Charles Barton,” he said without so much as a hello. “My men watched the damned hotel all night and never saw him leave, but his wife called us this morning, crying hysterically, saying he was gone. I’ve got her down here right now. You want to come talk to her? She’s a mess—certain the killer got hold of him somehow.”
* * *
Scarlet was still feeling the effects of a very deep and comfortable sleep when Diego woke her to tell her what was going on.
Charles Barton had eluded the police, and they were torn between suspecting that he was a victim, or the killer. Gwen was a basket case down at the station, and Diego was going down to question her. He explained that he was going to take Ben and Trisha down with him, which the group had decided on the night before.
Linda had gotten dressed and gone out very early; Jane and Adam were following her. Meg and Matt were watching Angus, while the police were still assigned to keep an eye on Terry and the Levins.
Scarlet said she would be fine with Brett and Lara, but he promised that if he was going to be detained long at the station, he would send someone to pick her up and bring her down to be with him.
She nodded vaguely when he left her.
She started to drift back to sleep and then woke with a start. She looked around, suspicious that someone was in her room, but it seemed to be empty. Still, she decided to shower and dress, then head into the kitchen.
Company would be good right now.
The company of the living.
She found Brett and Lara at the kitchen table. They’d brewed coffee, and cereal, milk and juice were on the counter. Lara was working on her laptop, and Brett was pacing back and forth by the window that looked out on the stables.
Lara grinned at Scarlet and told her in a whisper, “He hates sitting around watching. He’s an action kind of a guy.”
“I heard that,” Brett said. “And I’m absolutely fine.”
“We’re supposed to stay right here, right?” Scarlet asked.
“Unless there’s a compelling reason to be somewhere else,” Brett said. “If there is, I let Diego know I’m taking eyes off the stable, then stick to you like glue. He’s really afraid for you, Scarlet. You know that. And he’s not being overprotective. You
are
in danger here.”
“I know that,” she assured him. “Want to help me help you?” she asked.
“What are you thinking?”
“The morgue. I’d like to go to the morgue.”
* * *
“I don’t know what happened!” Gwen said. “I was having one of my headaches, so I took a pill—like the one I took the night the Parkers were killed. When I take those pills, I don’t hear anything. I’m so afraid. Charles has been acting so strange. He’s afraid—and he has a right to be. I mean, we’re not used to wide-open spaces and people carrying guns everywhere.”
She was sitting across from Diego in an interrogation room, though everyone had tried to make the place comfortable for her. She had a cup of coffee right in front of her, and a plate of Danishes sat untouched nearby.
She stared at him. “Fat lot of good you all have done us. He disappeared—even though there was a patrol car right outside the hotel. Someone came in and kidnapped him right out from under the cops’ noses.”
“Gwen, I can’t help but feel that there’s something you’re not telling me,” Diego said. He waited a moment and then added, “It’s very unlikely that kidnappers walked into that hotel, then managed to walk out with your husband without being seen.”
“Well, he was there, and then he wasn’t. Obviously he left somehow.”
“That’s true,” Diego agreed, “but it’s easier to slip out unnoticed than it is to be forced or dragged out with potential witnesses everywhere.”
Gwen gasped. “You think that Charles...! But I told you. Charles and I were together at the Conway Ranch when the Parkers were killed.”
“And you had taken one of your pills that night,” he reminded her. “You just told me that they knock you out and you don’t hear a thing. How do you know
where
your husband was?”
“I
had
taken a pill,” she murmured thoughtfully. “But...he’s my husband.” She sat back, her cheeks burning, stared at him for a moment and then looked down at her hands. “I’d know, wouldn’t I?” she asked, her voice breathy. “I’d know if my husband was a homicidal maniac. Wouldn’t I?”
He realized that the last question was a plea.
“Has he been behaving lately as if he was...a different man?” Diego asked.
She looked away from him, staring at the wall as if it was a window and she was looking out. A little sob escaped her.