Victoria House (Haunted Hearts Series Book 2)

by Denise Moncrief

  “I’m sure there’s something here that would help, but it’s going to take a lot of work to figure out what,” he muttered and examined a dried smear on the kitchen counter. Blood? Maybe.

  Kimbrough followed the short path he had cleared to the center of the mobile home, faced one way, and then turned to face the other. The whole trailer could be viewed without moving an inch in either direction.

  “How can you tell there was a fight in here? This place has always been a disaster.”

  Maybe she hadn’t seen the blood in the bedroom yet. He had to refocus her attention. “What’d you find outside?”

  “Courtney’s car is parked under the shed out back. Her keys are still in the ignition. It’s out of gas. Might have been empty for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I saw her driving it.” She sniffed and turned in a full circle. “How will Josh be able to tell what’s old and what’s fresh?” She kicked the empty soda can as if to punctuate her question.

  He glared at her and she cringed.

  “Sorry.”

  Were Kimbrough and Josh on a first name basis? Most people in the department called him McCord. Gray studied her profile a moment. He knew so little about her, and truthfully nothing about the woman attracted him enough to find out more. But then, it seemed Josh had a personal relationship with every female in Hill County, so discovering they were on a first name basis didn’t surprise Gray.

  She twitched a little and cleared her throat as if she was well aware of his assessment of her and the knowledge pissed her off.

  “Shouldn’t he be here by now?”

  “He’s not coming. I dropped him off at his place to sleep it off.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have told her that, but then again maybe Josh shouldn’t have downed enough beer to get drunk when he was on call...again. Kimbrough needed to know whom she was getting personal with before it was too late.

  She raised an eyebrow. The entire Department knew of Gray’s animosity toward Josh. Kimbrough probably had tons of questions that Gray had no intention of answering. Against his better judgment he continued his thought, sure that she would repeat whatever he had to say about Josh to anyone that would listen. “We don’t need him here. He shouldn’t be involved with anything that has to do with Courtney anyway.”

  “Oh.” Her single syllable said so much without saying much of anything. It appeared that she understood exactly what he meant.

  “That new woman is on her way... What’s her name?” He asked even though he knew her name.

  “Victoria Downing, but she likes to be called Tori.”

  He wasn’t sure why he had engaged in such a thin subterfuge, except that his first encounter with Downing had been less than cordial, and he didn’t want anyone to think he approved of the new crime scene specialist. To say the two of them had gotten off to a bad start minimized the situation.

  But for this particular case, he needed Downing’s fresh perspective. She was new and from out of town, and he didn’t want anyone home grown working the case. He already had his suspicions about who might have made Jared and Courtney disappear.

  Actually he had asked dispatch to locate Downing and send her out specifically. When he had told Josh that Downing was on her way, he had fudged the truth a little bit. Okay, maybe a lot. He hadn’t actually requested her presence at the crime scene until after he’d been out to the trailer to verify there was indeed a large stain of drying blood on the bedroom floor.

  Kimbrough looked at him with a question in her deep, blue eyes that told him she had seen right through his pretense.

  “She should have been here by now,” Gray grumbled to Kimbrough even though he pretended he was grumbling to himself.

  ****

  Mrs. Jepson wiped her hands on her apron before opening the screen door for Josh McCord. “What brings you all the way out here this time of night, Joshua?”

  Courtney’s mother had known him since he was just a kid, always called him by his proper name. She used to babysit for Josh’s mom while Elizabeth McCord worked at the chicken-plucking factory as a USDA inspector.

  “I heard you reported Courtney missing.”

  Fear coupled with sadness washed over her face. “Jared, too.”

  He didn’t care about Jared Crenshaw. The piece of garbage wasn’t a man as far as Josh was concerned. The way he treated Courtney... The man didn’t deserve to live. That didn’t mean that Josh wanted to hasten Jared’s journey to hell. He just wanted to keep Courtney from going there with Jared, but she would only allow Josh to help her so much.

  Josh pushed his anger aside. He couldn’t wallow in his hatred for Jared Crenshaw. That kind of emotion would only immobilize him. Courtney needed him. He sensed that she was in deep trouble, might even be in mortal danger.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “It’s been awhile. Jared won’t let her come out here, you know, but I talked to her on the phone last Sunday while he was out hunting.”

  Josh took his time thinking before speaking. “She leaves him a lot and then comes back. You know that. Why is this time different?”

  Courtney could have left, and Jared could simply have been out tracking her down again. How many times had Jared found her and brought her back. Sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes willingly. Never did she come back happily.

  Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her smile. She appeared to have gotten old before her time, but then, so had her mother. Trudy Jepson had lived a rough life. Her old man had finally left her...the hard way. Jepson was still serving his life sentence without a chance of parole.

  “I went out to the trailer to check on her.” Her usual stoic exterior broke and she emitted a strangled sob. “There was a lot of blood on the bedroom floor. I was worried something bad had happened to her, so I called Fred.”

  “You should never call him. For anything.”

  Getting old man Haskins involved in anything was a bad move. He couldn’t understand the kind of loyalty Trudy Jepson had for Haskins. Sure, she’d kept his household going while his wealthy wife gallivanted all over the world, but that didn’t mean Haskins owed Trudy any special favors. She would end up owing Haskins more than her gratitude, probably owe him an obligation she would never be able to repay. Haskins had a way of owning people.

  Some people compared Haskins to Alfred Hamilton, the Baron of Hill County, infamous for his stranglehold on the economic, political, and social climate of the county for years until his untimely murder in 1924. Hill County’s first major murder mystery, still unsolved. The comparison was valid if Hamilton had been as classless as Haskins was.

  Trudy Jepson straightened and stretched to her full height. A proud stance for a proud woman. “He promised me he would help me if he could. How else was I going to get Halsey to pay attention? How many times has he sent one of his deputies out to their place? Courtney always backs off and won’t file a complaint. Doesn’t matter. Halsey should have thrown Jared in jail. There are ways to keep someone there. You know that. If Halsey wanted to. No, he wouldn’t help without incentive. It’s got to where the sheriff thinks going out to their place is a waste of his deputies’ time. I just thought he needed a little extra motivation.”

  “How much blood was there?” Josh hated asking her the question but he had to know.

  “A lot. Like someone had been bleeding a long time.”

  It was the Department’s policy to answer every request for emergency assistance. Too much liability if they ignored a call that turned out to be critical. Once someone had gone out to the Crenshaw place, they couldn’t ignore the blood. The deputy who responded to the call would have to investigate. No matter what Haskins thought he’d accomplished by getting Halsey involved in the mess.

  “Involving Halsey was unnecessary, Trudy.”

  She blinked. The woman had a mind of her own and did just what she wanted to do. That was Trudy Jepson.

  “Gray is out there now.” She sniffed back another sob. “He w
ouldn’t let me stay. Made me leave and told me he’d call me when he had anything to report. It’s been hours.”

  Maybe not that long. It had been a little over an hour since Gray had dropped him off at his front door and expected him to sleep it off. Josh had been faking how much the beer had affected him. He hadn’t consumed enough to make him that wasted. Gray told him Courtney was missing, he had to get involved in the Crenshaw case whether Gray wanted him to or not.

  As soon as Gray cleared the driveway, Josh had rushed to the garage and taken the tarp off his Harley. Gray refused to take him to his truck, but he didn’t need the truck to get around. He could pick it up at the office in the morning. The bike would get him where he needed to go that night.

  “Is there anything I need to know...you know, before Gray starts asking me all sorts of questions I don’t have the answers for?”

  She studied him with watery brown eyes. “Sit down and let me make you a pot of coffee.”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s all right.”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “Why does everyone always assume I’m drunk?”

  She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Son, I can smell it on you.”

  “Spilled some on my shirt.” He wiped at the invisible spot.

  “Where were you drinking this time?”

  Trudy sounded exasperated. He hated disappointing her.

  “Actually I had dinner down at Smokey’s with Gray. We had a couple of beers with our meal. I haven’t had enough to be drunk, so... I am not drunk.”

  “If you say so.” She motioned him inside. “Sit down, Joshua.” Her voice held that stern tone it always had when he was in trouble with her. “Gray will find her. One way or another. There’s something else I wanna talk to you about.”

  Her tone made him wary. She had resorted to her lecture voice. Trudy had been more of a mother to him than his mother ever had. He had to listen, so he lowered his butt onto her worn plaid sofa. The furniture was threadbare and battered, just like her life had been.

  She sat next to him. “I heard a rumor that Caroline has been seen.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  How did rumors like that get started?

  “They say she roams around down by the lake.”

  Oh, right. That whole Lady Of the Lake thing. How many people over the years had claimed to see the ghost of Victoria Hamilton wandering around Lake Jefferson? Now, they were starting rumors about Caroline too.

  “That might be true if Caroline were dead, but she isn’t dead. The last time I saw her she was alive and well and stepping onto a bus headed for California. She’s not dead and I wish everyone would quit hinting that I had something to do with her disappearance. I didn’t have any more to do with her leaving than I did with Jeremy Haskins’s disappearance. The two things aren’t related. She didn’t disappear. She left on purpose.”

  “Is that why you drink?”

  He shook his head. Had he heard right? “What?”

  “There’s got to be some reason why you’re drowning yourself, son. Is it because of that woman?”

  He snorted his derision at her theory. “If...and this is a big if... If I’m drowning myself in alcohol, it isn’t because of Caroline.”

  “Then it must be over another woman.”

  He jumped to his feet. Why did it have to be over a woman?

  Her fingers wrapped around his forearm. “Why don’t you just tell Ashley how you feel about her, Joshua?”

  Yeah, there was the problem. The insurmountable problem he could never overcome. Ashley would never love him. Not when she thought he had taken Caroline away from Gray and ruined Gray’s life. He suspected Ashley’s feelings for Gray ran much deeper than she was willing to admit. The two of them had a bond that couldn’t be broken.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Of course, it is.” She pulled him back down onto the sofa next to her. “Just tell her.”

  He couldn’t. Not when Gray and Ashley shared a secret so big between them that it left no room for Josh. It had been such a big secret that it had ruined Gray’s marriage to Caroline. How many times had Caroline cried on Josh’s shoulder? Everyone thought she’d had an affair with him, but there was no affair. She’d just needed someone to talk to and he had given her some attention, which was so much more than her so-called husband had done. His interference in Gray’s marriage was the one thing Ashley could never forgive, and there had been a long list of things he’d done that needed her forgiveness.

  Enough was enough. Trudy was right. Ashley would never know how he felt unless he confronted her. It was time Ashley stopped blaming him for Caroline’s disappearance. It was time she learned that it was her secret with Gray that had drove Caroline away. It was past time Ashley told him the secret that was keeping them apart.

  He rose to his feet and smiled. Appreciation and warmth swelled in him for the woman who had raised him in his mother’s place.

  “I have to go. I need to talk to Ashley.”

  She returned his smile. “Yeah, you do. If you don’t do something now, she might ruin her life with that man.”

  He knew what Trudy meant. Ashley’s affair with her boss was a whole other problem he might have to tackle before he could even address what had happened in the past.

  Chapter Four

  Tori sucked in a deep breath when she spotted Lt. Grayson standing inside the Crenshaws’ trailer. Everyone at the Hill County Sheriff’s Department insisted he was a great guy, but she didn’t get that from him. The man’s arrogance had abraded her last nerve the few times she’d worked with him.

  Standing on the concrete block outside the open trailer door, she avoided stepping on the obvious bloody shoe print on the top step, reluctant to venture any further without direct instructions. She studied the side of Grayson’s face as he stared hard at something, turning it over in his gloved hand. When it appeared he hadn’t sensed her presence, she cleared her throat to get his attention.

  His head whipped around. Irritation flashed across his features and then quickly disappeared. “Took your time getting here.”

  She wanted to snap back at him but held her tongue. No way was she getting into a spitting match with the man. She’d been almost back to her motel when she’d been contacted by dispatch and sent to the lake she had just left. A trip to the office to get her kit had taken her even more time.

  Technically, Grayson wasn’t her boss and she didn’t have to explain her actions to him. She stood her ground with her head tilted sideways, trying her best to shoot fiery darts of attitude right back at him. He locked eyes with her and muttered something in a low, gravelly voice.

  The bass tones resonated throughout her body, sending an electric shock wave along every one of her nerve endings. She swallowed hard. She’d always loved a deep voice, but she could never be attracted to the man. They were co-workers. He was irritating. She was not looking for love. Especially in all the wrong places.

  But Grayson was some sweet eye candy. Dark brown hair. Deep blue eyes. A strong chin. He had one of those symmetrical faces that cameras love. He would have been Hollywood perfect but for the scar on his left temple that started on his forehead and ran into his hair.

  “Well, I’m here now, so tell me where you want me to start.”

  He blinked at her.

  Was the man suddenly mute?

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t usually have to tell the crime scene people their job.”

  She dropped her kit to the ground, crunching glass in the process. “Hold up. Let’s get something straight. This scene is...” She waved her hand to indicate the entire mess. “This is a disaster, and I’m not going to be responsible if something gets overlooked. You’re in charge of this crime scene. You tell me what you want collected and sign for it before I turn it over to the lab.”

  He appeared to be relieved by her insistence on his supervision in the evidence collection. She didn’t get the b
ig deal. It was protocol. He was lead investigator on the scene. What was his problem?

  “We’re going to bag and tag anything and everything that even remotely looks like it might be relevant. Then, I want you to analyze what you can and send the rest to Little Rock.”

  “Why? Our lab can handle prints and trace.”

  Analyzing the evidence from this scene could take days, weeks, maybe even months.

  He paused just long enough to give his next words extra significance. “I don’t want our lab touching it.”

  Deputy Kimbrough stuck her head through the open door. “Do you need help in here?”

  Her sudden appearance made both Grayson and Tori jump. Grayson recovered first, but didn’t turn toward Kimbrough, just kept his gaze locked with Tori’s. “No, you can go back to your regular patrol. We can take it from here.”

  Kimbrough’s forehead creased in a frown. “Oh, okay, then.”

  Tori waited until the deputy had slammed her car door and started her engine before pouncing on Grayson. “Why’d you send her away? There’s a lot of potential evidence here. We could have used her help.”

  Grayson rubbed his face hard with the palm of his hand. “Two people are missing, and something violent obviously happened here. There’s enough blood in the bedroom that someone probably bled out. At least one of them is more than likely dead, and it’s possible that someone in law enforcement is involved.” The frown on his face indicated he didn’t like revealing his suspicions. “I want to involve as few people in this investigation as possible.”

  “If you’re talking about covering something—”

  “This isn’t a cover up.” His voice cracked like a whip.

  “Really? It’s starting to look like one.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You aren’t from around here.”

  What is that supposed to mean?

  As if he read her mind, he smirked and answered her unspoken question. “You’re not Barney.”

  No, she wasn’t. Too many times she had been compared to her predecessor and she didn’t like it.