Victoria House (Haunted Hearts Series Book 2)

by Denise Moncrief

  “I didn’t think about it until—”

  “Didn’t you think that it might be significant?”

  She breathed hard, trying to remain calm. “I saw him right after I felt the—”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  His anger sliced her even deeper than the knife had. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  She stiffened her spine and sat up straight as if she had a rod rammed up her backbone. There was no need for him to be so judgmental. He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t Cop of the Year by any means. He had practically told her he was covering something up. She didn’t need his crap.

  “So what happened the other night when I called you and you were too busy to talk to me?”

  His scowl slid from his face in a heartbeat. His jaw tightened.

  “I wouldn’t understand, would I?” she asked quietly, calmly, because if she let a hint of the anger she felt infiltrate her tone, she’d erupt.

  He rubbed the side of his face hard. “Okay, I get your point. So do you want to tell me what happened or not?”

  She told him everything. Well, almost. She told him about her weird experiences in the house. About the image that had appeared and then immediately disappeared from the upstairs window. About what she’d witnessed from the driveway and then from the bedroom window of Victoria House. About the strange optical illusion in the ballroom that spelled her name. And finally, about the heavy feeling that had just about suffocated her.

  “So are you still going to live there after all that?”

  “I don’t know. Is there any chance it’s just my imagination?”

  He acted as if he was going to reach for her hand again, but then pulled back. Once again, their eyes locked. His blue eyes glowed with an emotion she couldn’t identify. She’d never seen that look on a man’s face before.

  A horn unlocked their gaze and he twisted the wheel to avoid collision with an on-coming truck.

  “I don’t know if it’s your imagination or not. There’s really only one way to find out.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that.

  Chapter Ten

  After leaving the highway and traveling very slowly up the mountain on a winding dirt road, Gray stopped his car in front of a run-down shack in the middle of nowhere. Before he opened his door, he turned to Tori. “Are you ready to meet one of the oddest human beings alive?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It’ll be all right. She knows me, and she probably will know more about you than you want her to.”

  “Is this some sort of newbie initiation thing, Gray? Because if it is—”

  “I swear it’s not.”

  He almost reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, but clenched his fingers before he did something foolish. She’d probably bite his hand off. He headed toward the shack, and she followed him, grumbling under her breath with every step.

  Timna opened the door before Gray could knock. “Mitchell! Welcome back. Heard you was coming to see me and I been looking for you.” The old woman gazed over Gray’s shoulder. “You must be Tori.”

  Tori shot a puzzled glance at Gray, but he ignored her unspoken question. No, he hadn’t told the old woman he was paying her a visit. Timna didn’t have a telephone. He wasn’t sure how she communicated with the world down the mountain. His idea to drive up to see her was definitely a spur of the moment thing. No, he couldn’t explain the inexplicable. Timna had her ways. Who could explain them?

  Timna motioned them toward a lumpy, broken-down sofa that had a wad of stuffing and a spring peeking out of a split seam. Tori sat, but didn’t rest her back on the grimy surface of the cushion. Gray plopped down next to her and made himself comfortable. He pulled the candy bar from his pocket and laid it on a piece of furniture that could loosely be defined as a coffee table. Timna nodded her aged head. Gray nodded in return.

  “I want to ask you about the Crenshaws.”

  Timna picked up the candy bar and unwrapped it. “Oh, that is a sad situation. Jared was nothing but trash. Have you found the woman yet?”

  “No, ma’am. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you’d heard something about that.”

  Timna wrapped her small mouth around the candy. Gray was alarmed to see that she took a larger bite than usual. Bringing her the king size bar had done him no good whatsoever. It wasn’t buying him more questions.

  “Somebody’s done been murdered,” Timna said with a gleam in her piercing eyes.

  Yes, he already knew that. “Do you know who did it?”

  She shook her head. “I ain’t heard that much.”

  “Know why?”

  Half the candy bar was gone now.

  She shrugged. “Why would any woman kill a man?”

  So Timna had heard the killer was a woman? Interesting.

  Gray nodded and answered, “Love gone wrong.”

  “Yes, sir, love is a mighty powerful thing. Makes even bashful people do crazy stuff,” Timna replied with a knowing smile. She shifted her eyes between Gray and Tori and grinned even bigger.

  The candy bar was almost gone and Gray was speechless. All his remaining questions left him. He watched in stunned fascination as Timna took the last bite, her eyes trained on him, as if challenging him to ask one more question before she finished. Her face collapsed into a disappointed frown when he didn’t come up with one.

  “Come again, young man. You too, miss,” she said with a toothy grin.

  That was their cue to leave. Conversation over. Timna didn’t like anyone hanging around too long. Gray rose from the sofa and started toward the door. Tori jumped to her feet to follow him.

  They made it all the way onto Timna’s ramshackle front porch before she called to him. “Mitchell?”

  He stopped and turned toward her. Once again, Tori nearly collided with him. It seemed she was always only a few inches behind him.

  “Yes, ma’am?” He hoped Timna would toss him a freebie.

  “You ever rescue that girl out in New Mexico?”

  He breathed in deeply. “No,” he snapped. “She can take care of herself. She said so often enough.”

  No doubt Tori would pounce on Timna’s question and want an explanation.

  “She’s back and she still needs help.” Timna smiled. “I can see you’re a bit distracted. But honey, you can’t move on ‘til you take care of that lil’ bit o’ trouble.”

  He groaned. He could already see the wheels turning in Tori’s head, gearing up to ask a bazillion questions he didn’t want to answer. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her to see Timna. Why hadn’t he anticipated the old woman bringing up Caroline?

  ****

  Tori remained quiet for most of the drive back to Fairview. She wasn’t exactly sure what happened at the old woman’s house, but she sensed there was a lot more revealed by the woman than she realized. Gray was reserved to say the least, and Tori was, for once, wise enough to keep her mouth shut.

  They were already in Fairview when she finally broke the silence. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I’ve got to do this myself.”

  Did he mean locate Courtney Crenshaw or deal with the little bit of trouble to which Timna had referred? Gray was certainly a man of many layers, and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he knew more than a few women who needed saving. Tori was bubbling with curiosity, but wasn’t sure what she could safely ask without trouncing on his personal business. He didn’t appear inclined to answer any questions at all.

  “Timna is really a character.” She hoped to start a conversation before their trip was over. Riding in silence with an intense, yet handsome man was a bit nerve-wracking. “The candy bar was her fee, huh?”

  He smiled. “She’s usually dead on with her information. I just don’t know this time. I wasn’t looking for a woman.”

  Was that what had him so disturbed? No, Timna’s advice about the woman from New Mexico seemed
to shake him more than anything. For the first time, the man didn’t seem his usual confident self.

  Sometimes the direct approach worked with him, but most of the time, it didn’t. Tori decided to take an indirect route. “That seemed to surprise you.”

  “I thought I knew what happened out there and why, but when you put another woman into the mix… Well, that changes everything.”

  The strain on his face made her want to encourage him somehow, but she couldn’t when she wasn’t exactly sure why he was discouraged.

  “Look...the best way you can help is to just keep doing what you’re doing. Do a thorough job on everything we collected. Don’t leave anything undone. I don’t want to accuse the wrong person, and I can see how easily I could do that. I want to make sure I find out the truth about what happened. Whatever the truth is.”

  “Will you let me know if there’s anything else I can do?”

  He didn’t seem to want her help, but she was aching to help him because she sensed the depth of his dilemma.

  “Thanks,” he replied without expression.

  She got the idea his response was empty.

  He kept his head turned toward the windshield. Wouldn’t even glance her way. He parked his car in front of the Sheriff’s office and left the engine running while she sat in the vehicle a moment longer. He cleared his throat. Was he uncomfortable with her sympathy or did he merely want her out of his way?

  “Okay, then.” She nodded, reluctantly got out of the car, and watched him drive away.

  He wasn’t going to share his personal or professional problems with her. For some reason, that thought stung.

  ****

  As he drove away, Gray made himself stare straight ahead. He didn’t dare glance back to see what Tori’s reaction was to his behavior. He’d shut her out after asking her to be an extra set of ears.

  He smiled. She’d found a bit of amusement in that.

  The woman was full of surprises, so unpredictable. She could be argumentative and prickly, sometimes downright testy. Yet when she sensed he was in distress, she had offered her help. The sympathy wasn’t an act. Now what was that all about? Gray didn’t want the woman’s sympathy. Really all he wanted from her was some consideration. No, actually he didn’t need anything from her except that she do her job. He certainly didn’t need to become entangled with a woman who was hard to read.

  Yet when she told him about being cut and he’d held her hand... Something felt so right about the moment. Like it was right for him to comfort her. So what was wrong with him? She’d wanted to help him, just like he’d wanted to help her. Couldn’t he handle a role reversal?

  His cell phone vibrated just as he pulled into his driveway. He recognized the number for the direct line to the lab at the Sheriff’s Department and groaned. Since Josh was on leave that meant the caller was Tori. Who else would call him from the lab?

  Not quite ready to deal with her again so soon, he ignored her and made his way inside. After the stress of the last few days, all he wanted was a hot meal and a cold beer. A month or two hibernating in his bed would be nice. He grabbed a brew from the refrigerator and dropped into a chair at the worn kitchen table, a small dinette set he’d inherited from his grandmother.

  He needed to tell Sheriff Halsey about what Timna said, yet he felt compelled to confront Lucy Kimbrough about the fingerprint first. No, if he interviewed Kimbrough without consulting Halsey, the sheriff would give him all sorts of grief. And maybe, just maybe it was wise to have Halsey with him when he talked to the deputy about how Tori found her fingerprints where they shouldn’t have been. It might be good to have a witness.

  He’d done too much on his own lately, too much he could get into deep trouble over. He didn’t want to add one more infraction to the growing list of things for which he could be fired, or even worse yet, arrested.

  Gray was reaching for the phone to call Halsey when it buzzed.

  He groaned. Tori again.

  “Yes.” He didn’t bother to hide his irritation.

  “Gray—”

  “What?”

  “I hate to tell you this…”

  “Just spit it out,” he snapped.

  “Your attitude is not helping.”

  “Do you have something to say or not?”

  “The envelope is missing, you... I thought you’d want to know. This is on you, Grayson. You’re the one who wanted to do things weird. Don’t ask me to do—”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes, it’s missing. Leaving it there made me very nervous. I know it’s a safe, but everyone on the administrative staff has access to it. I wanted to make sure the envelope was still there, and you know what? Surprise, surprise. It wasn’t.”

  His mind wasn’t wrapping around the news just yet. The envelope was sacred. No one touched it. Everyone knew the rule. Obviously someone had something to hide.

  “So I double checked to make sure the electronic record was still on the computer. It’s been erased. Gone. Not even a hint that it was ever processed.”

  Stunned. He was just...stunned. He suspected Lucy Kimbrough’s involvement in the Crenshaw case, even though he was still unsure what her motive would be. But this? Would Kimbrough have enough technical knowledge to erase evidence of the match? Would she have access to the AFIS system?

  “Gray? Are you still there? What do you want me to do? It would look strange if I started dusting inside the vault, don’t you think? But I can’t just ignore something this important.” Her tone held a sarcastic edge.

  She hadn’t liked the way the evidence was handled and she was reminding him she’d been right. Who was she to question how they did things in Hill County? Her background wasn’t exactly clean. She’d had her share of scandal. The woman hadn’t left many friends behind in Little Rock. So she could just get over herself.

  “Gray, there’s something else...”

  He groaned. What else could there be? The missing evidence was bad enough.

  “Yesterday, someone called my cell.”

  She paused and he didn’t like the sound of nothing. It was heavy with her distress.

  “Whoever it was used one of those voice boxes as a disguise. He...she... I don’t know which...threatened me if I didn’t lose the evidence.”

  His breath caught in his throat. Should she be telling him this?

  “I’ve been accused of losing evidence before. Do you understand what kind of position this puts me in?”

  Oh, he understood. He closed his eyes, tried to rub the itchy weariness out of them.

  Then, he felt bad for his attitude. He’d lashed out at her for no other reason than she’d called him in the middle of dealing with his strange new emotions, feelings, or whatever toward her. Things he didn’t want to feel for her. He wasn’t ready for that. Not until he was over Caroline. Really over Caroline. Besides, he had to work with Tori. He didn’t need that kind of distraction. Certainly not a woman-sort-of distraction. Not with the rumors going around that Caroline was back in town.

  Because of his distrust of Josh McCord, he’d pulled Tori into a situation that wouldn’t look good for her.

  “Hey, look, I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s been a long, long day. A long week. What I have to do... I’m not looking forward to it. It’s gonna cause me all kinds of problems. What I’ll have to do... I need to talk to Halsey. I think I want Halsey with me when I confront Kimbrough. Don’t worry about the missing evidence. I’ll take care of it. There’s no need to tell anyone about the phone call.” He considered his next words carefully. No need to scare her unnecessarily. “Be careful, Tori. The caller may have gotten his way, but you could still be in danger.”

  “I know how to handle myself.”

  He had no doubt that she did. She had been cut and she was still in law enforcement.

  “I know you do...and Tori?”

  “What?” Her voice sizzled with anger.

  He needed to say what he had to say even if she ripped him a new orifice. The woman
needed to carry a weapon. He couldn’t protect her. Not all the time. Not even if she wanted him to. Not even if she allowed it. No, she needed to be able to protect herself.

  “Get certified. Do it tomorrow.”

  She was quiet for a long minute, and when she finally spoke the heat had left her tone. “Well, then...I guess I’m leaving for the day. I’ll need to get up early tomorrow to go to the range before I come in for work.”

  She paused and he thought he heard her inhale deeply as if she was sucking all the oxygen off the planet. “You’ll let me know what happens?”

  “Sure, I’ll call you. If an interview happens. What are you...um...doing this evening?” For some reason, he didn’t want to say goodnight yet.

  “I’m going out to the house and do some cleaning.”

  His shoulders tensed. He didn’t want her going back to Victoria House alone. The things she had experienced... He sensed danger but couldn’t define it, and if he couldn’t define it, then he couldn’t explain it, and Tori wouldn’t listen to him without good reason.

  “You know, I wouldn’t mind getting a look at the Crenshaw trailer from where you were standing when you saw someone break in. Maybe I could go out there with you.”

  He wanted to slap his hand over his wayward mouth. Bang his head on the table. Why was he inviting himself to spend the evening with her?

  There was another long pause.

  When she finally spoke, there was a hint of amused sarcasm in her voice. “You’ve always wanted to get inside the house, haven’t you?”

  He smiled as if she could see him and was glad she couldn’t. “I’ve been inside the house. Once. Earl caught us. It wasn’t pretty.

  She groaned as if he was making her weary. “What happened?”

  “If you’ll let me go with you tonight, I’ll tell you the whole story.” He waited a second. “I’ll bring something to eat and a six pack.

  “I don’t drink beer.” Her tone was flat.

  “Okay, then, I’ll just bring a couple of diet sodas and a pizza.”

  “Diet? Are you implying I need to lose weight?”