by B. J Daniels
He hiked in the way Grace had come out but he’d found no spot that looked like a great hiding place for three million dollars.
It was dark by the time he headed back to Whitehorse. As soon as he could get cell service, he called Andi. The call went straight to voice mail. She must have her phone turned off.
That was odd. He glanced at his watch. She should have been to the apartment by now.
That’s when he noticed that he had a message. With relief he saw that it was from Andi.
He listened to it as he drove toward home, anxious to see her. Returning to the picnic spot had brought back a lot of memories—as well as doubts about Grace. How could he not have seen how secretive she was back then?
He knew he hadn’t seen it for the very reason he hadn’t wanted to. He’d wanted to believe she was exactly who she pretended to be.
“Geocaching?” he said and played the message a second time, realizing he’d missed something.
He listened again, then snapped the phone shut. “Sorry, Andi, it was a great idea, but I don’t have a GPS,” he said to the empty pickup.
But maybe Grace had one. No, not Grace, Starr. There was no Grace. The only way she could be more dead to him was if Starr was alive and he found himself coming face-to-face with her.
He turned on the radio, trying to exorcise the memories and not worry about Andi. Christmas carols. It was only a few days until Christmas and he hadn’t even shopped.
Not that he’d shopped the last six years, but this year he’d been starting to look forward to it.
As he saw the lights of Whitehorse appear on the dark horizon, he felt his excitement growing. He couldn’t wait to see Andi. He just hoped her car would be parked behind the shop and the lights on in the apartment. Hopefully, too, she’d cooked the pizza because he was starved.
But as he pulled in, he saw that the parking space at the back was empty. No light on in the shop. No Andi.
He felt a sliver of worry burrow under his skin as he parked and got out. The note was gone off the back door. That made him feel better.
She’d at least been here. He turned on the light. There was no smell of store-bought pizza. He closed the door behind him, sensing something wrong.
The door to the shop was standing open. The light he always left on was out and there seemed to be a cold draft coming from the darkness.
Without taking off his coat, he moved toward the shop. The moment he was out of the light of his apartment, he drew the .357 and slipped into the darkness just inside the door to let his eyes adjust before he reached for the overhead light switch.
The florescent lights came on in a blink, illuminating the whole place. He moved swiftly to the farthest aisle where he could see the front door.
It was open. He remembered locking that door. It wasn’t something he would forget.
Quickly he moved to the next aisle. Empty. Then the next. His heart dropped at the sight of the pile of spilled lures, the packages spread across the floor as if there’d been a struggle.
He rushed up the aisle and around the end to the counter. Nothing looked out of place—just as he’d feared. He hadn’t been robbed. He’d known that the moment he’d seen that the big ticket items hadn’t been taken—nor the cash register broken into.
At the front door, he peered out into the darkness. There were tracks in the snow, but the wind had filled them in except for slight hollows. He had no way of gauging how long ago the tracks had been made or by whom.
He slammed the door and bolted it, his heart in his throat. Where was Andi?
The phone rang, making him jump. He stared at the landline on the counter for a moment as he tried to calm down. It could just be a call asking if he had any minnows or if the fish were biting on Nelson.
But as he picked it up, he knew better.
Never in this world, though, did he expect to hear the voice he heard on the line.
His dead wife said, “Okay, now, listen. You do as I say and we’re all going to come out of this just fine.”
“Grace?”
She didn’t seem to hear, her voice clipped. “Do not go to the police. I’ve left my demands.”
“Grace!” But she’d already hung up.
His hands were shaking so hard he had trouble putting the phone back into the cradle. He dropped to the stool behind the counter and tried to pull himself together.
Grace was alive. What about their baby? The child would be five years old.
He let out a sound, half sob, half choked-off howl.
This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t possible and yet he’d heard her voice. At first she’d sounded like her old self, then her words had become so unemotional. But it had been her.
Not Grace, he reminded himself. Starr Calhoun was alive.
And she had Andi.
He reached for the phone and checked caller ID. Blocked. He dialed *69. The phone rang and rang. No voice mail. Probably a cell phone that couldn’t be traced.
He started to dial the sheriff’s department, but stopped himself. Hanging up the phone, he remembered what she’d said. I’ve left my demands. He hurried through the shop back to the apartment and looked around, not seeing the manila envelope at first.
The envelope was propped against something in the corner of the counter. As he reached for it, he saw what had been behind the paper. Andi’s shoulder bag with her new can of pepper spray. He’d seen it last night at the cabin and been thankful she had replaced the other can.
He’d known Andi had been taken when he’d seen the lures and realized there’d been a struggle. But seeing her shoulder bag brought it all home. Her car, though, hadn’t been parked outside. He glanced in the purse, knowing her car keys would be gone. They were.
All his instincts told him to call Carter. As sheriff, Carter could put an APB out on Andi’s car. Starr could be apprehended quickly—before she could do anything to Andi. But what if he jeopardized Andi’s life? And what if Starr had kept the child, had the child with her?
He looked down at the large manila envelope still clutched in his left hand. Do not go to the police. Starr hadn’t said anything about the sheriff. She knew his brother was the sheriff. Did it mean anything that she’d said police?
Semantics. He understood what she’d meant. He couldn’t risk Andi’s life. Houston was dead. Murdered. Lubbock was dead. Also murdered. Starr wasn’t bluffing. She had nothing to lose. What was another murder?
Carefully he opened the envelope.
The words had been cut from a magazine so it resembled a kidnapping demand. Which was exactly what it was, he realized.
You have twenty-four hours.
Or your precious reporter dies.
Find the money.
I will contact you this time tomorrow.
Don’t let me down.
His mind raced. Starr. But if she’d hidden the money, then she would know where it was. And if Houston had hidden it...
This didn’t make any sense. Why would Starr think he knew where the money was? He remembered Andi asking the same question. Only then they’d believed it had been Lubbock who thought Andi could find it.
He began to pace the floor, trying to put it together. Lubbock hadn’t known where the money was. Houston was dead. And now Starr didn’t seem to know where the money was, either? Who the hell had hidden it, then?
Geocaching. He thought back to Andi’s message. But he hadn’t had a GPS. He’d since purchased one, but he wasn’t very good at using it. Had Starr had a GPS he didn’t know about and used it to hide the money and now lost the coordinates?
Twenty-four hours. He swore. How was he going to find the money in that length of time when apparently the Calhouns couldn’t find it?
Calm down. Starr thinks you know something, remember something. He jumped a
s his cell phone rang.
With trembling fingers he dug it out. “Hello?”
“Cade?” It was his brother.
“Carter, hey.”
“Did I catch you in the middle of something? You sound...odd.”
“As a matter of fact...” Cade said.
“Then I’ll make this short and sweet. I got the judge to approve an emergency exhumation. I had to go out on a limb to get this. I’ve also got the crime lab standing by to run the DNA. Everyone is grousing about the added expense since the ground had to be heated. You do realize it’s almost Christmas and colder than hell. But by tomorrow, we’ll have our answer.”
Cade wanted to tell him not to bother. He already had his answer. But he couldn’t do that without risking everything. He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
“This is going to be over soon,” Carter said.
That’s what Cade feared.
Chapter Fourteen
IN THE WEE hours of the morning, Cade sat bolt upright in his chair in the small apartment living room where he’d spent the night.
Daylight bled through the blinds. He hadn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time, waking up with a start, everything coming back in a nauseating rush.
His head hurt, mind still reeling. But as he got up, he hung on to his waking thought.
Houston’s body had been found down in Old Town, the original Whitehorse. The town had moved five miles north when the railroad came through to be closer to the line.
Assuming Starr had killed Houston, what was she doing in Old Town? There was little left in the old homestead town. A community center that served as the church and the home of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle famous for its quilts.
There were a half dozen houses, even more old foundations filled with weeds. Most of the population lived on ranches in the miles around Old Town.
The house where Houston’s body had been found was known as the old Cherry House. Every kid in the county knew the place was haunted. Hell, Old Town had every reason to be haunted given everything that had happened out there over the years.
Most residents had seen lights not only in the abandoned, boarded-up Cherry House, but also in the old Whitehorse Cemetery. Along with lights, there’d been rumors handed down over the years of the eerie sound of babies crying late into the night.
Cade and his brother had played in the old Cherry House when they were kids even though every kid was told the house was dangerous and to stay out of it. Which only made him and Carter more anxious to go into the house.
He’d taken Starr to Old Town, past it to the ranch his family used to own, and he’d probably mentioned the place.
But still, how would she have gotten Houston into that house to kill him? There wasn’t any way she could have carried his body down to the root cellar where his remains were found.
Unless he’d been alive when he’d gone down there. Unless she’d told him that’s where she’d hidden the money.
Cade put call forwarding from the landline in the shop to his cell phone just in case Starr called again, then grabbed his coat and headed for the door. The sun on the new snow was blinding as he drove south. This time of the morning there was not another pickup on the road. He passed a couple of ranch houses, then there was nothing but the land, rolling hills that flattened as they fell toward the Missouri River Breaks.
He knew he was on a fool’s errand. His brother and the rest of the sheriff’s department had searched the entire house after getting an anonymous tip that there was a body buried in the house. The tip said the body was that of a woman who’d been missing for over thirty years.
As it turned out, the human remains were male and had only been in the ground not nearly as long.
Old Town looked like a ghost town as Cade drove past the community center, the cemetery up on the hill above town and turned down by the few houses still occupied to pull behind the Cherry House. He parked his pickup, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. The last thing he needed was to have some well-meaning resident call the sheriff.
Carter’s men had boarded up the house again and put up no-trespassing signs. There’d been talk of burning the old place down since the county had taken it over for taxes and had had no luck selling it.
With a crowbar from his toolbox in the back of the truck, he pried up the plywood covering the back entrance enough that he could squeeze through. The job had gone much easier than he’d expected. Apparently he wasn’t the first to enter the house since it had been reboarded up.
He was glad he’d brought the .357 under his coat since he wasn’t sure who’d been here before him. Starr? Had she come back to the scene of the crime? It still bothered him. If she’d hidden the money, then why would she want him to find it? He had a hard time believing she couldn’t find it again. She’d been nothing if not meticulous.
The house was cold, dark and dank inside. It smelled like rotting dead animals. He breathed through his mouth, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The floor was littered with old clothing and newspapers.
Houston Calhoun wasn’t the first person to die in this house. As the story went, one night more than thirty years ago, old man Cherry took his wife down to the root cellar, a dirt part of the basement where they kept canned goods, and shot her to death before blowing out his own brains.
To this day, no one knew why. The Cherrys left a son who died only weeks later in a car accident between Old Town and Whitehorse. The son left behind a wife, Geneva Cavanaugh Cherry, and two small children, Laney and Laci.
It was said that Geneva couldn’t live with the death of her husband and took off never to be seen again.
Laney and Laci had been adopted by their grandparents, Titus and Pearl Cavanaugh, and both had recently returned to Old Town after years away.
So it was no wonder that people believed the house was haunted, Cade thought as he snapped on his flashlight. He had no idea what he was looking for. Something. Anything that would give him a way to save Andi.
For years he’d believed he would never get over Grace—let alone ever fall in love again.
But the first time he’d laid eyes on Andi Blake he’d felt more than desire. He’d felt a strange pull.
It had been push-pull ever since. He’d fought it with all the strength he could muster. But he’d finally given up.
He knew he would be a fool to fall in love with her for a half dozen good reasons.
But he also knew reason flew out the window when it came to love. Grace had certainly proved that. He’d known she was running from something—just as he’d known Andi Blake was. But we were all running from something, haunted by our own personal demons, he thought as he searched the ground floor before climbing the rickety stairs to the floor above.
There was less debris up here. A couple of old bed frames and mattresses that the mice had made nests in. A few old clothes that had faded into rotten rags.
He shone his flashlight on the walls. Someone had used spray paint to write obscenities on several of the walls. He moved through, stopping at a small bedroom off the back. It was painted a pale yellow. Grace’s favorite color.
With the flashlight, he swept the beam across the room. His hand stopped as something registered. He sent the beam back until he saw where someone had written some words in a neat black script.
Like a sleepwalker, he stepped into the room, the beam illuminating a couple of the words. His heart began to beat harder, his breath coming in painful puffs, the room suddenly chilling.
Only you know my heart.
Only you know my soul.
Find me for I am lost.
He shuddered as if an icy hand had dropped to his shoulder. The cold seemed to permeate the room.
Grace’s meticulous handwriting. He would know it anywhere.
He closed his e
yes. How long had this been there? This cry for help? He backed into a wall and leaned there, wanting to howl, his pain was so great.
He had known her.
But the fact that she’d been here, written this, told him how her struggle against her past had ended in this house six years ago. She had killed her brother. And more than likely with Cade’s .45.
Had it been self-defense? Had they struggled?
His cell rang, startling him. He fumbled the phone out of his coat pocket and snapped it open. “Yeah?” He braced himself, ready to hear Starr’s voice on the other end of the line.
Years before, he’d reached the woman who called herself Grace. He prayed now that he could reach her again in Starr. That woman had loved him enough to want to have his child. That woman hadn’t been a cold-blooded killer. That woman, if he could reach her, would spare Andi.
“Cade? It’s Carter. I have news.”
* * *
ANDI DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d been out. She woke sick, her mouth cottony and her stomach queasy. As she opened her eyes and sat up, she took in her surroundings in a kind of dazed, confused state.
The room was small, windowless, the floor bare except for the rug and sleeping bag beneath her. Off the room was a small doorless alcove that held nothing but a stained toilet and sink. Clearly no one lived here and hadn’t for some time.
As she slipped from the sleeping bag and tried to stand, she noted that she was still fully dressed in the same clothing she’d had on yesterday. That alone she took as good news.
She could recall little except entering the bait and tackle shop to close the front door and the light going out. After that, nothing until a few moments ago when she’d come to, but she was sure she’d been drugged. Her limbs felt rubbery and useless. Her legs barely wanted to hold her up.
She heard a sound behind her and turned too quickly. Everything dimmed to black and she sat down hard on the floor. She could hear the steady, heavy tread of someone coming up what sounded like stairs. The footfalls grew louder.