The Return of Rachel Stone

by Amy Cross

  “Scum,” he said finally, turning to his brother. “Herbert, you need to make sure all the doors and windows are locked. He won't be the last asshole who tries something, and next time you might get overheard saying something incriminating.”

  “How dare you!” Herbert roared.

  “Can the fake anger,” Jack said with a bitter smile. “You're not very good at righteous indignation, Herb. You tend to come across as a blustery old fool.”

  “I'm -”

  “The reporter didn't overhear anything too bad,” Jack added. “Luckily. I'm sure we can all think of moments when his presence might have been more difficult.”

  Herbert opened his mouth to reply, before hesitating and glancing over toward Margaret. She, in turn, looked down at the floor as she felt herself starting to blush. After a moment, the phone rang in one of the other rooms and Herbert stormed out.

  “It's going to be hell around here until Rachel's found,” Jack pointed out, watching as Margaret sat in one of the armchairs. “Eventually the media'll move on to another story, but you might be in for weeks and weeks of this nonsense. If you left, nobody would -”

  “I can't leave.”

  “But -”

  “Herbert needs me.”

  “Herbert and his mucky paws?”

  “Don't say things like that!”

  “It's true, though,” he continued, stepping over to her and stopping in front of the armchair. Looking down at the top of her bowed head, while she sat slumped and exhausted, he couldn't keep a faint flicker of disgust from his face. “I can't make you leave, Margaret, but let's get one thing clear. You could walk out right now. You have the opportunity. Herbert doesn't need you. So you could leave, and you're choosing to stay. That's fine, it's your prerogative, but you can't ever say that you were trapped here.” He paused, as she looked up at him with guilt in her eyes. “No matter what happens,” he added, “or what Herbert does to you. You're staying here because that's exactly what you want.”

  ***

  “It was a mistake coming back to Landsley,” Jack muttered later, as he stood at a window above the pub, looking out at the town square. “I can't do anything to help. Herb and Margaret are locked in their sick little dance.”

  “You can't leave, though,” Natalie replied. “Not while that poor girl is still missing.”

  “Our place in Malta is calling my name.”

  “You can't leave!” she said again, as she sat on the end of the bed. “You're not the kind of man who walks away from his family in their hour of need. Even if your family is filled with... Well, they're certainly pretty strange, aren't they?”

  “You've noticed?”

  “There's a vibe.”

  “Herbert knows who took Rachel,” he replied, surprising himself by being so candid. The idea had been at the forefront of his mind all day, but he'd never intended to share it with anyone. Instead it had somehow slipped out, and when he turned to Natalie he saw the shock in her expression. “He does,” he continued, figuring that the cat was out of the bag now. “I don't know what his game is, but he's up to something.”

  “You can't think that of your own brother,” she said, clearly shocked. “He's not a monster!”

  “You don't know him.”

  “No, but -”

  “He's up to something. He's scheming. Rachel's safe, wherever she is. I just can't figure out why he'd be doing this.”

  “Have you asked him directly?”

  “I let him know that I'm onto him, and I saw the fear in his eyes. That's why I'm not too worried about the poor girl. Herb's undoubtedly got her stashed away somewhere, and sooner or later he'll bring her back and pretend that she was miraculously saved. God knows what his endgame might be, but there's something he wants and this is the only way he can get it.” He hesitated for a moment, watching the town square, before turning to grab his laptop from the desk. “I should -”

  Before he could finish, he spotted something glinting in the opening of Natalie's purse. Instantly, he felt a numb sense of shock as he realized what he was seeing, and he tipped the bag slightly until one of his grandmother's diamond necklaces slipped out.

  “I can explain!” Natalie gasped.

  Jack stared at the necklace for a moment, before slowly turning to her.

  “I can explain,” she said again, with tears in her eyes. Her mouth hung open for a moment, before she finally bowed her head. “I'm so sorry, Jack. Please don't hate me. I did it again.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Today

  “Jo! Wait up!”

  “I don't have time to talk,” Jo replied, not even turning to look at Nick as she hurried from her car, heading toward the pub's front door. “I figured something out and now I need to check into the backgrounds of a few people. I'll explain later.”

  “You're not the only one who's been busy,” he said, and now Jo noticed that he sounded a little stuffy, as if maybe he was coming down with a cold. “I -”

  “I don't have time!” she said firmly, pulling the door open and heading into the pub. She'd only been gone a few days, but she felt as if every passing second was being wasted. She also knew that anything she told Nick would end up in the papers within a few hours, so she figured she needed to be careful. She hadn't even decided if she trusted him enough to tell him the girl's real name.

  “So you don't want to know where the sound of the crying baby came from?” he asked.

  “I really don't have -”

  Stopping suddenly, she turned to him.

  “What do you mean, the -”

  She furrowed her brow as she saw the thick white bandage covering his nose, and the dark red bruise that had left one of his eyes badly swollen.

  “Nick,” she said cautiously, “what happened to you while I was gone?”

  ***

  “It's a pretty simple set-up, really,” he explained as he took the back off the makeshift speaker that he'd unscrewed from a tree in the grounds of the Stone family estate. “You can buy these in any tech shop for about thirty quid. Wireless, run on batteries, operated by an app on a phone and -”

  “And used to play the sound of a baby crying in a forest?”

  “Bingo. Well, you can set it to play anything you like, really.”

  “But wouldn't someone have seen it?” she asked. “This has been going on for years.”

  “It was hidden pretty well,” he replied, “but you're right, it's quite new. The thing is, I found some old holes next to it, so I think this device replaced an older one. I mean, it's one thing for people to wander past the house and hear the sound, but it's another for them to actually go looking for the source. Only the Stones would've been able to do that, and I guess they either didn't look too carefully, or the person who went to look -”

  “Already knew it was there,” Jo muttered, before glancing at him. “So did you fall out of a tree or something while you were getting this thing down?”

  “Huh? Oh, you mean my nose?” He shook his head. “No, someone socked me right in the face.”

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “After I found this thing and removed it,” he continued, “I got to thinking that maybe the person who was using it, the person with the app, might wonder why it'd stopped working. So the other night I went out there again and kept watch. It took a few hours, but eventually I spotted someone climbing over the wall. I followed and watched as this figure went straight to the tree and searched for the box. Then he or she started to leave, and that's when I made my presence known.”

  “So you got beaten up?”

  “I was involved in a fracas.”

  “Is your nose broken or just fractured?”

  “Broken,” he said, with a hint of reluctance. “In two places.”

  “That must have been quite a fracas.”

  “Yeah, well, this particular individual got a lucky blow. A couple of lucky blows, actually. Nine times out of ten, I'd have had the bastard on the ground, but unfortunately I let h
im slip away. Big guy, he was.”

  “But you didn't get a good look at his face?”

  “I was too busy bleeding.”

  “And he ran away from the house? He climbed over the wall?”

  He nodded.

  “Which suggests it's not someone who lives there,” she pointed out. “Someone must have been trying to torment the Stones. Drive them crazy, perhaps, or remind them of something. At the same time, the sound was never loud enough for them to hear it from inside the house, it only carried as far as the lawn.” She paused for a moment as she tried to figure out exactly what had been happening. “None of this makes any sense, but what other reason could there have been for setting up that recording?”

  “Whoever did it,” Nick replied, “he was a big bloke. Tough, maybe even a bodybuilder. I'd've had him otherwise.”

  “I'm sure you would. Maybe Rachel – I mean, maybe Cassie was working with someone.”

  “And you're sure that was her real name? Cassie Hayes?”

  “You promised not to put any of this in the paper yet.”

  “Sure thing. So long as you don't let anyone else find out about it first. I want my exclusive when we're done with all this stuff.”

  “And you'll get it. But not while the investigation could be compromised.”

  “You like to get your man, do you? So how does it work with private detectives, anyway? Do you get, like, a bonus if you nab the person you're after?”

  “This isn't about the case I was hired to look into,” she replied, staring down at the device Nick had taken from the tree. “Not anymore. This is personal now.”

  ***

  “They buried her as Rachel Stone,” Jo whispered, standing in the churchyard at the edge of town and staring down at the newly-installed gravestone. “They buried her under the wrong name.”

  “I suppose that can be fixed later,” Nick pointed out.

  “They must have been in a real hurry,” she continued. “It's less than a week since she was killed.”

  “A man with expensive lawyers can get a lot done in a week,” Nick replied. “Besides, I don't think there was much doubt over how she was killed. Just the question of who pulled the trigger, and in that regard the cops don't seem to have made much progress.”

  “By the time this is all over,” Jo continued, “I'm going to make sure that Cassie is buried in the proper place, with the proper name above her.” She turned to him. “I checked online. She has parents, grandparents, and two siblings. She has a whole family out there who are waiting for her to walk back through their front door sometime. Someone's going to have to tell them the truth.”

  “That she showed up in Landsley, masquerading as Rachel Stone for no apparent reason, and then she got shot by a masked gunman on a bike?”

  “I'll need to be able to tell them the whole story. I'll -”

  Stopping suddenly, she spotted a familiar figure in the distance, stepping through the gates of the cemetery with a bunch of flowers in his hand. Bradley Botham began to make his way toward the grave, but he stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw Jo, and for a moment he seemed poised to turn around and leave.

  “I need to speak to you!” she called out, hurrying over to him. “It's important!”

  “I'm afraid I can't be of much use anymore,” he replied. “Margaret has stopped speaking to me altogether, so I can't even offer a line of communication. I don't know what I did wrong, but after the poor girl was killed, Margaret just dropped me completely. I wasn't even allowed to attend the funeral, that's why...” He looked down at the flowers he was holding. “Well, that's why I came today. To pay my respects. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “She wasn't Rachel Stone.”

  “No. I rather guessed that.”

  “But the family wanted her buried as Rachel?”

  “I think they saw it as a rather neat conclusion to the whole sorry saga.”

  “This isn't over,” Jo said firmly. “A girl has been murdered. She died right in front of me, just as she was about to tell me something important about the Stone family. For some reason, she'd gone into their household and dug around until she uncovered something incriminating, and I think she already knew where to look. If Margaret won't speak to me, do you think you could put me in touch with the other brother? His name's Jack, isn't it?”

  “Jack Stone hasn't been seen in town for fifteen years,” Bradley replied.

  “Do you have his contact details?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but something seemed to hold him back.

  “What happened to Jack Stone?” Jo asked finally.

  “I pieced some of it together over the years,” Bradley explained, his voice trembling slightly with fear. “Margaret let a few things slip, and I overheard enough at the house to understand the rest. Of course, for the longest time I didn't want to believe any of it, but if that poor young girl uncovered the Stone family's darkest secret... Well, I think I might know what that secret is. And perhaps I was wrong to keep my mouth shut for so long. I thought I was helping Margaret, but I think she needs the truth to come out. It might free her. I'm sure she'll thank me one day.”

  “You have to tell me,” Jo replied.

  “You'll think I'm utterly out of my mind.”

  “I don't think anything could surprise me now,” she continued. “Not when it comes to these people.”

  Bradley hesitated, before stepping past her and making his way toward the gravestone. Jo and Nick followed, and then they watched as he looked down at the inscription.

  “What was her real name?” he asked finally.

  “Cassie,” Jo replied. “Cassie Hayes.”

  “Cassie.” He paused, before turning to Jo. “Well, Miss Mason, I rather think that Cassie Hayes figured out what really happened to the Stones fifteen years ago. And if that's the case, then I'm really not surprised that one of them had her murdered. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't do it on the very first night she showed up at the house.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  15 years ago

  “There,” Jack muttered as he set the necklace on a nightstand in one of the mansion's many spare bedrooms. “No-one'll ever know it was missing.”

  “I'm so sorry,” Natalie replied, with tears still in her eyes. “I just thought...”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment.

  “You must hate me,” she added, sitting on the end of one of the beds. “You brought me here to your family home, and the first thing I did was steal some jewelry.”

  “I don't hate you,” he said with a sigh, staring at the necklace for a moment longer before sliding the drawer shut. “I know about your past, Nat. I know it's not easy to change. When I left this house the last time, I took a couple of silver letter openers and pawned them on my way to the airport. Herb had kindly deigned to give me some money from the family kitty, but I was bitter and I wanted to take more than he was willing to give. So I took the silver and got about five hundred quid for it. I didn't really do it for the money. I did it to spite that bastard.”

  “I just wanted to have some money of my own,” she replied, wiping her eyes. “I wanted to be able to buy you something nice, instead of always needing you to give me cash.” She hesitated, with a hint of fear in her expression. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He shook his head.

  “But Jack -”

  “Of course I don't want you to leave.” He headed over to her and put a hand on either side of her face, before leaning down and kissing her passionately. After a moment he pulled back, but he kept his hands on her cheeks. “I love you,” he continued. “I understand you, or at least I think I do, and I think you understand me too. And I still trust you more than I trust any of the other people in this house.”

  “I thought those six months in jail had sorted me out,” she sobbed. “I thought I'd been scared straight, but then I saw the necklace and -”

  “It's okay,” he added, placing a finger against her lips. “We all make m
istakes. We all give in to our temptations sometimes. In fact, I'm tempted to think this house, this family, brings the worst out of everyone who gets too close.”

  “I don't need excuses. And I'm not a bad person, I swear!”

  “I know that. I'm not a bad person either. But this house changes the way I think, and it's doing the same to you. Hell, maybe it's like that for everyone, but I don't intend to stick around and find out. I'll book us on a flight back to Malta and we can leave tonight.”

  “But your niece -”

  “Is fine!” he said firmly. “Believe me, I know Herb's just playing some kind of wretched game. Rachel will be back soon. Diana's the one who's in trouble, but she and I never got on. She's as bad as Herb, so I reckon she can fend for herself.” He paused for a moment. “Besides, Herb owes me another payout.”

  “Can't you just take your share without having to beg?”

  “I'm adopted, remember?” he continued. “Just like Margaret, I'm technically not entitled to anything. Thank our father's last will and testament for that arrangement. But Herb owes me anyway, and this is the last time I'm ever going to ask him for money. I'm going to set myself straight, I'm going to start that business I've always talked about. We're going to start that business.” He paused, before reaching down and taking her hands in his. “When we get back to Malta, let's get married. Let's just -”

  Before he could finish, the sound of breaking glass filled the house, followed by a cry of rage.

  “Family trouble?” Natalie asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Again?”

  ***

  “These people are incompetent idiots!” Herbert roared as he stormed back to his desk, passing Margaret as she swept broken glass into a dustpan. “Why can't anybody in this miserable world do their job properly?”

  “What's wrong?” Jack asked, reaching the doorway with Natalie in tow. “Herb, that vein on your forehead is positively throbbing! Careful, or it might burst out from your face.”