“You didn’t think it was strange?”
“Of course I thought it was strange,” Rich said. “But…”
“But five hundred dollars,” Lance finished for him.
Rich’s mouth closed with an audible pop. He nodded and his face turned red. “Do you have a family, Lance?”
Lance felt the twinge of pain, a stab like a dagger in his heart. It was a low blow, and he suspected Rich knew it. But he remained calm. “No, sir. I have nobody.”
Maybe it was the way that Lance had phrased his answer that kept Rich Bellows from pressing on, or maybe he’d realized he’d gotten too personal when, as he’d said at the start, he was only trying to help.
Lance digested Rich’s story. Thought about potential implications. Said, “So you think that whoever attacked Victoria yesterday is the same person who’s been sending you the five hundred every month.”
Rich nodded. “Or … if it wasn’t specifically them, they had a hand in it. Hired somebody, maybe. But there’s more to it than that. I started thinking about what I told you the other night when you showed up, how everybody who rented the old farmhouse left, saying it was haunted. Well, we both know that’s silly, right? Places aren’t haunted.”
Lance said nothing.
“So,” Rich continued, “I started thinking that maybe whoever is sending me the cash is making the place seem haunted. I don’t know, going over there and rattling chains or slamming doors, or … whatever, just to scare whoever is renting the place into leaving.” He paused and took a breath. “Lance, I think there’s somebody out there that is trying hard—really hard—to make sure nobody stays in or around that house very long. And now, after yesterday, they’re getting more direct about it, and I don’t know how far they’re willing to go. It’s not a secret the whole town is talking about you, and whatever it is you’re out to accomplish here—up there, I should say. And I think you’ve got whoever attacked Victoria worried. I think they’re scared you’re going to do exactly what they’ve been trying to keep everyone else from doing all these years.”
Lance felt a prickle of realization at the base of his skull. Rich Bellows was definitely onto something. “What is it they’re afraid of?” Lance asked.
Rich shook his head. “No idea. But I think it’s for you to decide if whatever it is you’re after is worth getting hurt over, or worse.” There was the faintest shimmer of tears in Rich’s eyes by now. “I’ve already got my own wife’s blood on my hands, Lance. I don’t want yours, too. Leave. Today.”
Lance stayed where he was, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his pockets. He watched Rich Bellows recompose himself and then sit back in his chair. Rich pulled the tie completely loose from his neck and tossed it onto his desk.
Lance asked, “Do you have any idea who it might be, the person who’s sending you the cash?”
Rich shook his head, then changed to a sort of seesaw back-and-forth motion. “Well,” he started, “There’s only one person in town I know who would potentially care about that property enough to do something as extreme as this. But…” He shrugged.
“But what?”
“He wouldn’t have to pay me to get the information. He could just walk right in the office, or call me on the phone, or hell, stop by the house for dinner and ask me to do him a favor. And I’d do it for him, no problem. Why not?”
Lance understood. “You’re talking about Sheriff Kruger.”
Rich nodded. “I am.”
“What happened that night hit him pretty hard, huh?” Lance asked, seeing how much Rich would delve into unprovoked. “The fact that it was never really solved?”
Rich gave another shrug. “I don’t know about the whole unsolved part. I think the odds that Mark Benchley had a breakdown and killed them all are still fairly high. But, yes, it hit Ray hard. He’s never been the same.”
“And nobody likes to talk about that much around here, do they?”
Rich’s eyes narrowed and his brow creased. “You’ve noticed?”
Lance laughed. “Hard not to, sir. Every time somebody mentions the sheriff’s name and the farmhouse or the murders in the same conversation, it’s like they’re scared to get slapped on the wrist.”
Rich nodded but offered nothing more.
Lance said, “I know Natalie Benchley was Kruger’s sister, sir.”
Rich’s eyes widened, and then his face fell into a disbelieving grin. “You’ve done some research.”
“Sure.”
Rich sighed and leaned back in his chair further, putting his feet up on the desk. The heels of his dress shoes were worn and the laces tattered. The five hundred a month certainly wasn’t going to his personal wardrobe.
“Look, nobody’s real sure what the relationship between Ray and his sister was. Rumor is he would never step foot inside the farmhouse. Hardly ever visited,” Rich said. “But he loved Mary. I swear, when you saw the two of them in town together, if you didn’t know any better you’d be convinced Ray was her father. You’d see ’em at the park shootin’ hoops, or in Mama’s—always in the back booth, mind you—eating and talking like they’d never run out of topics. He went to all her school events. I think it half broke his heart when he found out she was going off to that boarding school. Worst part is, I don’t think he even knew it was happening until after the fact. I don’t think anybody did.”
Rich paused for a moment, as if trying to find his place. “You see … well … Ray never had any children of his own. Never been married, or even had a girlfriend that any of us folks who’ve lived here our whole lives has seen. He’s a great guy—smart, polite, a sly and dry sense of humor, and a heck of an honorable profession. But it’s like … it’s like he’s closed that part of his life—the part that might involve a woman, intimacy I guess you’d say—off from everything else.” Rich shrugged. “Some folks think he’s gay and is happier in the closet than out. But I don’t see it that way.”
It was then that Lance realized he might be the only person in Ripton’s Grove who had some insight into the true reason Sheriff Ray Kruger was the man he’d become.
“So people don’t mention the sheriff’s connection to Natalie and Mary Benchley because they’re trying to spare his feelings? Protect his privacy? Is that it?” It seemed extreme to Lance, but he supposed he’d heard of crazier things. Had seen crazier things.
Rich Bellows looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. Victoria’ll have lunch ready any minute now. And the kids are sure to be grumpy and tired.” He picked up his tie off the desk and draped it over his shoulder. He looked at Lance. “Two weeks after the night the Benchley family was killed, a reporter from some paper up north came into town, digging for a scoop, a scandal—hell, I don’t know how you guys operate. But he basically stalked the sheriff one day and cornered him in the parking lot of Mama’s and started asking questions about whether or not there was anything Ray felt he could have done differently to prevent what had happened. If he’d see any signs beforehand, or if Natalie had mentioned anything to him that might have been a call for help.”
Oh, boy.
“Ray didn’t like that,” Rich said. “The reporter spent three days in Central Medical, and the Ripton’s Grove sheriff’s office caught a break and settled out of court. But it was still a lot of money, Lance. A lot. Anywhere else, Ray would have lost his job, for sure. But around here—well, you know. Small towns. We know who Ray really is.”
Not entirely, Lance thought. He put a few more of the pieces together in his head and asked, “So the sheriff inherited the farmhouse after his sister and family were killed?”
Rich nodded. “He actually inherited it when his uncle Joe died, but he told Natalie she could have it. They were having a tough time, apparently, and Ray helped her out. Personally, I think that’s one of the reasons the whole thing shook Ray so hard—you know, aside from the fact that his sister and niece were killed. I think he feels responsible. I think he blames himself because if he’d kept the house,
and Natalie and her family hadn’t moved in, maybe they’d all still be alive.”
Rich headed through the office door and Lance followed. The sky had grown darker, and outside the windows looked gray and bored. “So Ray got the house back after the murders and contacted me almost immediately to see if we wanted to buy it. He said he didn’t want any part of the place. Can’t say I can blame him, right?” Rich tugged on a sport coat that’d been draped over the phantom receptionist’s chair. “Honestly, I didn’t want the place, but Ray was willing to take next to nothing for it, just to be done with the whole thing, and I figured the land alone was worth the investment. So I took him up on the offer.”
Lance had learned so much from Rich Bellows, he felt he should take the man over to Mama’s and buy him a whole meatloaf. But then he remembered that Rich had likely been the cause of Lance being potentially attacked and figured he’d call them all square.
Rich looked at Lance as he took his key ring out of his coat pocket. “It’s not Ray, is it? The one sending me the money?”
Lance shook his head. “No, sir. I don’t think so.”
Rich nodded, as if this was the answer he’d been expecting. “Any idea who it is, then?”
Lance nodded, letting a cold truth sink in. One that he had probably been suspecting this entire time but had only now managed to fully convince himself of. “It’s whoever really committed those murders. I think they’re worried somebody is going to find them out.”
Rich grimaced, as if Lance’s words had caused him physical pain, then he shivered. “So you’re saying there’s a murderer walking around Ripton’s Grove?”
Lance nodded again. “Can’t say for sure they’re still here, but I’m thinking it’s likely.”
“And I’ve been on his payroll all these years.” Rich shook his head, and his breath caught in his chest. “God … what have I done?”
Lance said nothing. Slipped out the door and stood on the sidewalk, listening to Rich Bellows step out and lock the deadbolt. Rich’s Explorer was parked on the street. As he walked toward it, his face carrying a fresh expression of sorrow, he called to Lance. “Want a lift to the bus station? I’ll buy you a ticket anywhere you want to go.”
Lance shook his head. “No, sir.” He thought about Ethan. “I’m not finished here.”
Rich looked at Lance with questioning eyes, but he got no response. “You won’t tell anyone about the cash, right, Lance? You gave me your word, right?”
Lance shook his head. “I won’t, sir. But I think you should. I think it’s what Sheriff Kruger would want, don’t you?”
Rich Bellows didn’t say anything. He climbed into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and then drove away, leaving Lance standing alone on the sidewalk.
31
Lance stood on the sidewalk for a long time. He watched Rich Bellows drive away, back to his home, back to his wife and children and his life that he knew would be waiting for him. Lance wondered if the man would call Sheriff Kruger and tell him about the emails, the money. Lance doubted it. He didn’t think Rich Bellows was a bad person at all, but Rich was too afraid to lose everything to admit he might have done something wrong at such a potentially large level. Aiding a criminal—a murderer—would weigh heavily on his mind for a long time, Lance was sure of that. Maybe one day Rich would fess up, but it wasn’t Lance’s place to do it for him.
Because what good would it do, really? If Lance marched straight to the sheriff’s office right now and told Ray Kruger everything he’d just learned from Rich, what would happen? First, they’d have to believe Lance was telling the truth, which from recent experiences seemed like a fifty-fifty gamble. Second, if they did decide that Lance wasn’t blowing smoke up their tails, then what? They call Rich Bellows and ask him to verify? Make him give up access to his email? Would they have to obtain a warrant for that information? The Benchley family murders had been six years ago—what would the process be for anything pertaining to such an old case? And say they did get access to Rich’s email, then they’d have to get computer gurus to analyze it and probably work with other outside resources to try and get some sort of trace on the email’s origin. Lance was no computer expert—flip phone, remember?—but he’d seen enough TV and films and read enough spy novels to know that there were enough ways to disguise email and web traffic that the whole thing could end up being a wild goose chase.
And it would take time.
Time Lance didn’t have.
What was he supposed to do? Spend his days eating meatloaf at Mama’s and sleeping in the bed of a dead girl day after day, night after night, just on standby until the answers came in—if they came in? Or waiting for another sound bite from the mystery dinner theater performance that had been slowly revealing itself to him in the farmhouse?
He didn’t have the answers, and as far as he could tell, there was absolutely no way he was ever going to get them. This problem was too big. It had too many moving pieces, too many unknowns. It had all happened too long ago.
And what good was the information he’d gotten about Sheriff Kruger’s past, the abuse he’d suffered? The sheriff was a grown man—a troubled man, sure, and rightfully so, but he was grown. He could take care of himself. Ray Kruger’s uncle was dead. His sister and family were dead. Lance couldn’t do anything to fix any of that.
Whoever thought that Lance was a threat to fingering them as the Benchley family’s killer, the joke was on them. Lance was no closer to adding any closure to that horrible night than he’d been the moment he’d stepped off the bus two days ago.
“The boy is all that matters now,” Lance said to himself and the quiet city street. “He’s the one I need to worry about.”
Now, more than ever, Lance was convinced that Ethan was the real reason he’d been meant to stop in Ripton’s Grove. Everything else had just led to their meeting.
He walked three blocks back toward Mama’s and made a right, stopping at a small convenience store he’d passed on his way to Central Medical the day before. He stocked up on bottles of water, protein bars, nuts, and a few packets of instant coffee. He tossed them all into his backpack, ignoring the curious looks given to him by the woman behind the checkout counter, and then pushed out the door and headed back toward the park. Back toward the trail that would lead up the mountain.
It was time to talk to Jacob Morgan. If he and Ethan weren’t home yet, Lance would wait as long as it took. Because honestly, he had absolutely nothing else to do in this town anymore.
The clouds continued to thicken, darkening the sky. Beneath the cover of the trees, the world seemed even darker. The wind was picking up, rattling branches and making the leaves sound like the crashing waves of the ocean as they bristled and swayed and collided with each other above. Lance walked with his head down, his hood up, staring at the trail and watching each step he took, one foot in front of the other. His backpack was weighed down with his fresh supplies, and already the satisfying feeling of his Mama’s breakfast in his stomach was beginning to fade. He did not reach for a snack, however. Did not even feel the weight on his back. All his mind was focused on was Ethan.
Over and over again, Lance replayed the scene from last night. The way the boy had been entranced by the basement door—or more specifically what
(who)
was behind it. “She’s down there! She’s down there!” the boy had cried. If Lance hadn’t already heard the young girl crying to be let out himself, he wouldn’t have understood—not fully, anyway. But he had heard. And Ethan—small, innocent, special Ethan—had heard her too. Mary Benchley had called out to both of them.
Something else still sat at the forefront of Lance’s thoughts about that night. The way Jacob Morgan had reacted so quickly, almost from the moment Ethan had begun to walk toward the door. It was as though he’d sensed the boy was slipping into his other place, the place where he could hear the dead and see things that nobody—especially a young boy—should see. He knows, Lance told himself again as he reac
hed the place where he’d turn and walk through the woods to Jacob Morgan’s house. He knows what his nephew can do.
“I can help them,” Lance said aloud as he crunched through a fresh crop of fallen leaves, the latest victims of the strong winds. “And they can help me.”
The first thing Lance noticed was that the plume of smoke wafting from the chimney was thicker, denser. They’re home, he thought. Fresh logs on the fire, and they’re home. His steps picked up their pace, but he kept himself from running full-on in case Jacob Morgan was watching out the window. Lance didn’t want to appear to be a threat … or a crazy person. Depending on how his intended conversation went, that last part might be unavoidable as it was.
Lance walked up the porch step and approached the front door. The rocking chair to his right, the baby bear chair, was rocking gently in the wind. Lance pulled down his hood, attempting to look less like a burglar, raised his hand, and knocked three times.
He waited. Heard muffled voices from behind the door. The shuffling of feet.
Jacob Morgan opened the door slowly. The first thing Lance saw was the knife in his hand.
The second thing Lance noticed was that there was a smear of what looked like peanut butter on the blade. His heart quickly recovered from the spike in pulse it’d achieved at the sight of a potential weapon in Jacob Morgan’s hands, and Lance offered his best smile.
“Lance, hi,” Jacob said, opening the door wide, lowering the peanut-butter-smeared table knife. “What’s up? Get bored up on the hill all by yourself? Thought you’d come down for what barely passes as civilized company?” Jacob chuckled at his own joke and motioned for Lance to step inside. Lance looked into the cabin, saw Ethan sitting on an old couch with a picture book in his lap. He had a finger on one of the pages, moving it slowly left to right, his lips moving as he sounded out words. He looked up, as if sensing Lance staring, and their eyes met briefly before Ethan returned his gaze to the book.
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