by Jana DeLeon
“Yes,” William said, and Carter could hear the sadness in the older man’s voice.
“So the firm that manages the estate hired you to oversee it—is that how this works?”
“Exactly. I have formed a relationship with the firm over the years, and they felt it was a good answer to the problems created with the stipulations for the inheritance. My living here makes it easier on everyone.”
“Ha, and easier for you to cajole the local sheriff into being hall monitor for the sisters.”
“Yes, well...that was supposed to have been a bit easier than it’s turned out to be—the hall-monitoring part, that is.”
Carter held in a smile at the attorney’s obvious chagrin. “You think? There’s still an intruder on the loose, I’ve had to kill a man and now I have a fiancé. I hold you responsible for all of this.”
William looked so stricken that Carter’s smile finally broke through.
“I’m joking,” Carter said. “About holding you responsible, anyway. The rest of it’s kinda true.”
William laughed, then sobered. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for, and it’s not what I had in mind, but I’m glad you’re here in the middle of this, Carter. You’re a good man and a good cop. I wouldn’t trust those women with anyone else.”
Carter rose and shook William’s hand. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“I’m counting on it.”
* * *
DANAE PLACED A PLATE of eggs and toast in front of Zach along with a glass of milk and one of the pain pills Doc Broussard had given him. “Eat some of that before you take the pain pill,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said and gave her a smile. “What about your breakfast?”
“I’m too wound up to eat. I need to work off some of this nervous energy, then I’ll have something.”
“You sure? There’s plenty here. I don’t know if I can finish it all.”
“I’m going to try to give Alaina a call.”
“Okay. I’ll be here if you need me.”
She gave him a nod and left the kitchen, pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket as she walked down the hall. She glanced at the display and blew out a breath of relief—it had a signal.
Seven-thirty a.m. She bit her lip. Alaina was an hour ahead in Boston. Hopefully, she’d be up. Danae pressed her sister’s number on the display and put the phone to her ear, clenching it harder with every ring that went unanswered.
Just when she figured it was going to go to voice mail, Alaina answered, sounding a bit breathless.
“Did I wake you?” Danae asked.
“No, I’ve been up for hours. My brother came this morning to take our mother to her doctor’s appointment and to have her hair done, and I just finished up a quick morning run. I was going to call you later. Is everything okay?”
“Yes... No. I don’t know.” Danae filled Alaina in on the intruder the day before and the attack on Zach, leaving out the part about ghostly lights and terror-filled screams.
“Oh! Is he all right?”
“Doc Broussard says he’ll have a headache for a couple of days, but he’ll be fine.”
“What did Carter say to do?”
“He hasn’t said much yet, but he’s supposed to meet us here later this morning.”
“Good.”
Danae bit her lip, trying to come up with a good way to ask her next question, but she couldn’t think of one. Finally, she just blurted it out. “Did Mom have another baby after me?”
Alaina sucked in a breath. “Heavens, Danae, where did that come from?”
“Just answer me. Did she?”
“No. Not that I remember. I mean, my memories are sketchy, but I don’t think I could have blocked out her having another baby.”
Relief swept through Danae and she sank onto the steps in the foyer.
“You’re kinda freaking me out. Why did you ask that?”
“I was going over some of the house records last night at my cabin,” Danae said and went on to explain the four entries she’d discovered.
When she finished, the phone was silent for so long that Danae checked to make sure the connection hadn’t dropped.
“They took money?” Alaina’s voice was barely a whisper. “All of them?”
“Yeah. I saw the woman who took me listed and your parents’ names and two others. You can’t really read one of them anymore but I’m assuming one of the others is the people who took Joelle.”
“But there were four? You’re sure?”
“Positive. It’s hard to miss four entries in a row for twenty thousand dollars, especially when everything else on the list was minor.”
“Did you tell Carter?”
“No. I...I couldn’t. It’s so demeaning. I just couldn’t say it out loud.”
But you were able to say it to Zach.
Danae pushed that thought from her mind. Her attraction to the contractor was enough to make her uncomfortable all on its own and something she definitely didn’t have the head space to address. Not right now.
“I understand,” Alaina said. “But it might be important for him and William to know. They might be able to help.”
“I know. I’ll tell Carter when he comes this morning.”
“He won’t judge you. Not Carter.”
Danae smiled at the absolute certainty in Alaina’s voice. Her sister was already deeply in love with the gorgeous sheriff. It made Danae happy to see the two of them together—talking about building a life together. Alaina was right. Carter was a good man.
Before she could change her mind, Danae launched into her next topic. “I...I saw something last night. When you called that first time yesterday, you asked if I believed in ghosts, but then you had to hurry off the phone. I’d forgotten about it when we talked last night, but I have to know why you asked.”
“Why is it so important now?”
Danae took a breath. “Because I saw something in my cabin. No one else knows, so I’d prefer if we keep this between us for the time being. I’m trying to get my footing in Calais. I don’t want everyone to think I’m crazy, like our stepfather.”
“Of course. Trust me, I don’t want anyone to know, either. It’s not exactly the thing that improves a reputation. What did you see?”
Danae told her about falling asleep on the couch and waking up to the vision above her. “I think it was Mom. She looked like the picture I have, which looks a lot like you.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A long white nightgown. Her black hair hung loose around her shoulders and she was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her.”
Alaina sucked in a breath. “She spoke?”
“She was trying, but no sound came out until she started to fade away. Then it’s almost like in my mind I heard her saying ‘So close’ over and over. Is that what you saw?”
“I’m sure one of the things I saw was Mom, but she never spoke. So close to what?”
“It could be anything—home, each other... I just don’t know.”
“I wonder...”
Danae frowned, finally focusing on her sister’s very deliberate wording. “You said Mom was one of the things you saw. Does that mean you saw something else? Some other ghost?”
“Yes. That first night I stayed in the house. Remember I came in the café before dawn the next morning?”
“I remember. You’d slept in your SUV that night because something had spooked you, but you never said what it was.”
“I don’t know. A ghost, I guess, but it didn’t look anything like Mom. This one was gray with red eyes, and there was so much anger in it. I could almost feel it spilling out on me. It looked... I know it sounds crazy, but it looked like it wanted to kill me.”
Danae gasped. “Oh, no! No wonder you were terrified, and I made a joke about seeing ghosts when you walked into the café. I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. How could you have known? This isn’t exactly the kind of conversat
ion you have with just anyone.”
“That’s true. There’s something else—something I left out of Zach’s story.” She told Alaina about the scream Zach heard right before the attack and the pulsing light that appeared on the landing.
“That scream would have sent me off on a dead run,” Alaina said. “He’s got some serious backbone if he stood there trying to figure that out.”
Danae smiled, unable to stop from admiring the contractor’s fearless if dangerous approach to problem solving. “He seems to be made of stern stuff.”
“Good. Because I don’t want you there alone. Not ever. Not even for a minute. And get out of that house before dark. Promise me.”
“I promise. Alaina, what’s happening here? What’s happening to us?”
“I don’t know, little sister, but we’re going to figure it out.”
Chapter Eleven
Carter pulled up in front of Bert Thibodeaux’s run-down shack, pleased that the trucker’s old rig and pickup truck were both parked next to it. It was early, but Carter wanted to make sure he caught Bert before he went out on a run. The trucker was often gone for days at a time, so it was a stroke of good luck that Carter found him at home.
He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing stirred inside, so he knocked again, this time louder. Something crashed to the floor and he heard cursing. A couple of seconds later, the door flew open and Bert glared out at him.
He was a beefy man and had a good three inches on Carter. He wore soiled jeans and a white T-shirt, but his bare feet, uncombed hair and red, watery eyes let Carter know he’d woken up Bert. The angry expression on the trucker’s face told Carter exactly how Bert felt about it.
“Good morning, Bert. Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
“Hell, no, you can’t come in. It’s hardly a time of the morning to be entertaining. What do you want with me? Ain’t no warrants out for me. All my tickets are paid.”
Carter glanced behind the man into his cabin. It was a mess of dirty clothes and torn furniture. Empty beer cans, chip bags and frozen-pizza boxes littered every surface and most of the floor. A lacy red bra hung from one of the lamps, and Carter wondered briefly what kind of woman would get undressed in there. Perhaps one who’d had a tetanus shot.
Bert noticed Carter’s gaze and pulled the door close to his side so that his massive body was blocking any view inside. “What do you want?”
“William Duhon tells me you used to do some work for Purcell—that you made a little scene in his office over the way the estate is being handled.”
“That worthless SOB promised me the money for a brand-new rig. I ran up and down the highway to New Orleans for him for over ten years. I got a right to make a scene.”
“No, you don’t. William isn’t responsible for what Purcell did, and he’s just doing his job administering the estate. He’s bound to the terms of the will, same as everyone else.”
“That still don’t make it right.”
“I agree. None of it is right or fair, but what Purcell did to those girls after their mother died wasn’t fair, either.”
“I guess not, but they’ll get theirs in the end. What do I get? What does Jack Granger get? All that work—all those years—and what do we have to show for it but a whole lot of nothing?”
“Would you mind telling me exactly what you did for Purcell all those years?”
Bert narrowed his eyes at Carter. “Why you asking?”
“Because some questions have arisen about Purcell’s use of estate funds. I’m trying to get answers for William.”
“I ain’t saying nothing, then. If Purcell was up to illegal stuff, I’m not going to take the rap for that in addition to getting screwed out of a decade of pay.”
“If Purcell did anything illegal, that’s not on you. I’m just trying to get a better feel for the man—figure out what it was that made him tick.”
Bert studied Carter for a minute, then finally shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. He was a strange one. He bought stuff all the time—at auctions and those fancy stores in New Orleans with ugly art that costs a fortune. God only knows how much he spent on that stuff.”
“So you transported the things he bought from New Orleans to here.”
Bert nodded. “And back again when he sold them.”
All of a sudden, Carter got it—the remarkably simple answer to the question he’d had about Purcell and the money.
“He sold the stuff he bought?” Carter asked. “You’re sure?”
“I didn’t see the actual things I was carrying, if that’s what you mean. They were always wrapped or in crates, but nothing went inside that house that me, Jack or Amos didn’t carry in, and I was the only one who made regular trips to New Orleans. He was either selling the stuff he bought or stuff that was already there.”
Carter nodded. “I appreciate your time.”
“Don’t thank me, and tell that attorney not to thank me, either. I’m going to see a lawyer about this. I’ll tie that estate up in court until those girls are dead before I let Purcell get away with screwing me from the grave.”
He slammed the door and Carter got back into his truck and drove away. One question had been answered—he now knew how Purcell made money off an estate that he couldn’t withdraw large blocks of cash from. But that only led to another question. Where was that cash now?
* * *
DANAE FLIPPED THROUGH stack after stack of paper, trying to find more documents from around the time of her mother’s death. The lantern was the only source of light in the dark office, and it wasn’t nearly strong enough to illuminate the mess that Purcell had created. She’d thought the room was cluttered, but the reality was it was practically littered with paper.
Stacks of paper covered almost every inch of the floor and oozed out of every drawer in the desk. The top of the desk was piled two feet high with folders and paper, except for the small section she’d cleared the day before to stack the boxes on. The bookcases contained few books. Mostly, they held stacks of paper and folders. Even the areas that held books had paper stacked on top of books.
It would take her forever to make sense of it all. She’d originally thought the rate for the work overly generous, but now she understood why William had to pay such an amount to get quality work. It would take everything she had not to run screaming from the mess inside of an hour.
She slumped into the office chair and assessed the small stack of papers that she’d located from the time period surrounding her mother’s death. All around her were discarded piles that hadn’t fallen into that time line. No one would ever guess that she’d already spent the better part of an hour digging through the mess.
“You doing all right in here?” Zach’s voice sounded from the doorway.
“I guess. It’s such a mess I feel like I’m spinning my wheels.”
“Maybe you should try to separate it by date first, then concentrate on one piece at a time.”
She sighed. “There’s decades of paperwork in here. Apparently, my stepfather, my mother, my grandparents and heaven only knows who else thought they should keep every scrap of paper their hands ever touched.”
Zach scanned the room. “It does look a bit overwhelming. Tell you what—I found a stack of cardboard boxes and packing tape in one of the downstairs rooms. I could line them down the hallway, and you can label them by decade or whatever works.”
“That’s not a bad idea. At least I’d be getting the paperwork out of the room. As it is, it’s so cluttered that I can’t move it far enough away to get to it all.”
Zach nodded. “I’ll go get the boxes.”
As Zach assembled boxes, Danae lined them down the hallway, against the wall, and labeled each with a different decade spanning seventy years.
“It’s a good thing we don’t have to meet a fire code,” Zach said as he finished with the last box.
Danae glanced at the line of boxes that stretched almost the length of the hallway, only skipping over entrances
to rooms. “I’ll probably need multiple boxes for some periods, too. In fact, I’m sure of it. I don’t think everything in the office will fit in the amount of boxes we have here.”
Zach nodded. “I hope you wanted long-term employment when you agreed to this.”
“I’m going to hazard a guess that William will say to look at the more recent time frames and forgo things that happened when my grandparents were in charge. Too many things could have happened to assets purchased that long ago.”
“That’s true enough. Do you want me to take a look at the electricity while you’re working up here?”
“I don’t want you overexerting yourself. Take it easy, at least for a day.”
“The voltage meter fits in the palm of my hand and I only need to remove a couple of screws.”
“Then I guess that’s okay.”
He smiled. “I’ll go get my equipment.”
Danae walked back into the dim office and sighed at the long day that stretched in front of her. She was twitchy, jumping at every little noise, and had checked her watch every two minutes since hanging up on the call with Alaina. It was almost eleven o’clock and she wondered why Carter hadn’t made it to the house yet. She vacillated between hoping he’d found out something important and hoping he hadn’t run into trouble.
She picked up a stack of paper on the desk and started flipping through it, checking the dates to ensure they all fell in the same decade. When she finished that stack, she placed it facedown in one of the few bare spots on the desk and picked up another stack.
The second stack of paper was also from the 1950s and she flipped it over on top of the first stack and decided to try another location. The bookcase behind the desk was crammed with nothing but paper. Maybe she would find more updated documentation there. She stepped behind the desk and slid a tall stack of papers off a shelf and carried it back to the desk.
When she saw the dates on the first paper, her pulse quickened. It was from the year her mother died, just a couple of months before. She was definitely getting closer. She flipped through the pages, noting date after date that led up until the time of her mother’s death and right after. When she got to the last page, she went back to the first and started studying the transactions, but the dim light in the room made it hard to read the faded cursive.