Shaw's Landing (Haunted Hearts Series Book 4)

by Denise Moncrief

  “I’m not letting you sleep in my garage. It’s cold out there at night. You can use Mitchell’s old room.”

  It was odd to hear the woman call Gray by his first name. He hated the name Mitchell and preferred to be called by the truncated diminutive of his last name. But Courtney guessed it was a mother’s right to call her son anything she wanted to call him.

  Sally released her grip on Courtney, pushed open the door, and stepped aside to allow her to enter. Courtney hesitated. Maybe asking Gray’s mother for help was a bad idea.

  “Come on in, honey. I have a chicken potpie in the oven, and I don’t want it to burn while you make up your mind.” She motioned toward the kitchen just inside the open door. “You look like you haven’t eaten or slept in days.”

  Courtney finally smiled. Sally was offering more than she had hoped for. She wouldn’t have to sneak into the woman’s kitchen and raid her refrigerator after she’d gone to bed. “I promise I won’t stay no more than one night. Then, I’ll be gone.”

  Sally nodded. “Just one night. After you leave in the morning, I’m calling Mitchell and letting him know you’ve been here.”

  Fair enough. One night to rest was all she wanted. Before the sun came up in the morning, she’d be somewhere else. Courtney passed into the house, and her stomach rumbled with anticipation. “Your potpie sure smells good.”

  Sally nodded toward a hallway. “Go wash up. I’ll take the pie out. After you eat, we’ll see if we can find you a change of clothes and something to sleep in, and then you can take a shower. You look like you’ve taken a mud bath.”

  Courtney laughed. “It can get kinda dirty out on the road.”

  “Why are you riding a motorcycle?”

  The unspoken part of her question was that riding a bike wasn’t very ladylike. That was a very old-fashioned, southern idea of womanhood and a judgmental attitude, but then Sally Grayson was a southern woman of her generation. Courtney would bet there were plenty of women who road motorcycles that had the luxury and choice of acting like a lady when it suited them.

  In her life, she’d had to act like a modern woman, and modern women had to be as tough as modern men to survive. Grace and charm were of little value in the world Courtney inhabited. She didn’t have the luxury of being ladylike. Twin sweater sets and country club memberships were not part of her life, but then, she supposed those things hadn’t been part of Sally Grayson’s life either.

  Courtney sighed. “It’s all I have left in this world. If I didn’t have the bike, I’d be lost.” And have to walk or hitch a ride, possibly with strangers.

  Pity bloomed in Sally’s eyes, but she didn’t comment. Just as well. Courtney didn’t think she could handle any words of sympathy.

  She headed down the hall to wash up just as Sally had asked. The woman certainly had the mother attitude going on, the one that made a person feel as if she had to obey. Pain twisted Courtney’s heart. Sometimes a girl just needs her mother.

  Chapter Three

  Shaw Bennett had finally shoved everyone out of Victoria House so that he and Dickerson could finish their investigation of yet another crime scene. He studied the layout of the mansion. Didn’t all these old relics have a basement? He’d heard stories about how Alfred Hamilton ran a private club during the era of prohibition. Hiding his speakeasy in the basement would have made sense. There should have been an access somewhere, but so far, he hadn’t been able to locate one.

  He pushed through the door into the kitchen and scanned the room. The space was huge, but something was off about the dimensions. If he wasn’t mistaken, the length of the wall between the kitchen and the dining room seemed shorter on the kitchen side than on the dining room side. He tapped on the walls at regular intervals. A satisfied smile spread across his face when his knuckles struck what appeared to be a hollow spot.

  “What are you doing, Bennett?” Dickerson’s strident voice boomed from behind him.

  Shaw struggled to keep from flinching. The place had him spooked, but he’d never let on to Dickerson that it had.

  He adopted a neutral expression before turning to face the criminalist. “The dimensions of this room are off.” He pointed at the wall between the kitchen and dining area. “The other side looks longer than it does on this side. It sounds hollow right here.” He rapped on the spot he’d just found. “It seems odd that such a large house wouldn’t have service stairs or a basement.”

  Dickerson stared at him for a whole minute before speaking. “You’re still worrying over how Kimbrough got Caroline Grayson upstairs without either Downing or Grayson hearing or seeing her, aren’t you?” He laughed with apparent unease. “You’re looking for a hidden passage or something, aren’t you?”

  Shaw nodded. “We need to figure out exactly how Lucy Kimbrough managed to get the dead woman all the way upstairs, so we can handle any extra questions.”

  “There is no way we are going to be able to explain what really happened without leaving some questions unanswered if we leave certain things out of our report. Besides, you know there’s always a question or two still left over after any investigation.”

  It only took one paranormal incident to turn a man into a believer. Maybe Dickerson hadn’t seen something supernatural with his own eyes, but he’d certainly heard it with his own ears. When they had arrived on the scene, Shaw had separated all the witnesses before they could collaborate on a story, and they had all told a similar paranormal tale. Dickerson had thrown his obvious skepticism around quite a bit. Then, he had listened to Grayson’s digital recording of the event, and even though what he had heard had changed his attitude, it hadn’t changed his personality.

  “There are certain aspects of this case that should not be addressed publicly.” Shaw stared at the man, holding his breath.

  “Don’t worry, Bennett.” Dickerson held up his free hand. “I know what I heard, but who’s gonna believe us? Grayson’s explanation of why he just happened to have a digital recorder handy… We can’t enter that recording as evidence. We’ll lose our jobs.”

  Good. Dickerson got it.

  “We have to understand everything about this case, so that we can write it up in a way that makes sense. In a way that seems normal.”

  Dickerson shook his head. “Murders are never normal, so how are we gonna make this one look normal? Tell me that, Bennett.”

  Shaw had to agree. There was always something just a little bit hinky about all of them.

  Dickerson dropped his ever-present crime scene kit to the floor before walking across the short space to the wall with the hollow spot. He examined the drywall for a long moment, not touching it, but scanning every inch with his eyes. “We can’t see what’s behind this wall without tearing it down.”

  “That’s your professional opinion?”

  Dickerson offered him a tired smile. “I haven’t seen too many hidden rooms, but I know when something doesn’t look right. If there’s a spring-loaded door in that wall, I can’t find the trigger.”

  Shaw didn’t want to have to deal with the new owner of Victoria House, Pearl Hamilton’s granddaughter. “We can’t tear it down. Tori Downing would throw a hissy fit. She might even sue us, and we don’t have sufficient cause to destroy the wall without her permission.”

  A mischievous gleam sparkled in Dickerson’s brown eyes. “You could ask for her permission.”

  Shaw laughed. “I’m not in a position to ask favors from her.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you are.”

  The man obviously knew the whole stupid story about Shaw and Tori Downing and the misbegotten Lipton case, the fiasco that had cost Tori her job with the Arkansas State Crime Lab. His career with the State Police had almost gone down the crapper with hers.

  Dickerson smirked, and it seemed he was enjoying a little too much amusement at Shaw’s expense. “You could knock it down and beg for forgiveness later.”

  “You know that isn’t proper protocol.” He didn’t need to tell Dickerson about proper
protocol. Dickerson wrote the procedure manual. Yet Shaw couldn’t resist the temptation to aggravate the man.

  “Are you really talking to me about protocol? Proper protocol ran away from home here, Bennett. There’s nothing proper about this investigation. Do you really think Downing is going to make a big stink about anything we do? She’s caught up in this mess just like we are. I think we should do everything we can to provide a reasonable explanation for what went on here. We need to know how Lucy Kimbrough brought a dead woman into the house, especially if we have two sworn officers of the law saying they had nothing to do with it and didn’t see a thing.”

  He paused to catch his breath. “Did you know they downed two bottles of wine between them? That’s probably why they didn’t hear anything. As exhausted as they both were, they must have passed out, but who’s gonna believe them if we don’t offer something to support their story. Typically the ex is the obvious suspect. We have a passel of cops claiming a dead deputy sheriff, who can no longer defend herself, killed Caroline Grayson. That might look like a colossal cover up to an outsider, don’t you think?”

  Dickerson posed some valid points. The man had a good grasp on how serious the situation was.

  “Who in their right mind would dump the body of a cop’s ex-wife in the house of his new girlfriend?” Shaw posed a question but didn’t really expect a solid answer.

  Dickerson shook his head. “Come on. You listened to the recording. Kimbrough obviously wasn’t in her right mind.”

  No, she wasn’t. “Okay, let’s tear down this wall…or maybe we could just carefully saw out a chunk of it and peek behind it before we tear the whole thing down. Might just be a dead space behind here and nothing more.”

  Dickerson was already heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Shaw didn’t want to be left alone in Victoria House. If Dickerson was going to town to acquire the necessary tools, Shaw was going with him.

  “We need a saw, don’t we?” Dickerson grinned. “I keep one in my trunk for just such occasions.”

  How many of this type occasion had the man dealt with?

  After Dickerson left the room, Shaw only hesitated a moment before he called Tori Downing. He had a good excuse for bothering her, and maybe while he had her on the phone he could gauge her mood to determine just how much trouble he would be in after he and Dickerson mutilated her kitchen wall.

  She seemed a little distracted when she answered, so Shaw went straight to the pretext of his call. “Has Grayson gotten there yet?”

  After Shaw was through interviewing everyone at the scene, Tori and Josh McCord had headed over to Ashley Rivers’s house to wait for Grayson. He’d left on an unexplained mission and had asked Tori to stay with Josh and Ashley until he returned, and Shaw feared Grayson intended to do something incredibly stupid.

  “No, he’s still gone, and we haven’t heard from him. I’m getting really worried.”

  “Where did he go, Tori?” He asked even though he thought he already knew the answer.

  Nothing but silence in reply to his question. He thought the call had dropped for a moment. No, he could hear her breathing. From past association with Tori, he had observed how stubborn she could be, but he could be just as persistent as she was obstinate.

  “He went to see Haskins. Am I right? He should have waited and taken me with him. That was… Let me know if Grayson doesn’t show up by dawn tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  From what he had learned already, Fred Haskins was a dangerous man.

  A long expulsion of breath from Tori. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  Was she really talking to him about drama? “That’s why you’re worried about him, isn’t it?” Shaw understood her concern. Grayson was intentionally walking right into danger.

  “I promise I’ll call you if he doesn’t show up.” The woman sounded like she’d had enough of Shaw. Another awkward silence ensued. “Is there something else you wanted?”

  He shifted his cell from one ear to the other. “I called to ask permission to cut out a chunk of wall in your kitchen.” He did what he’d told Dickerson he wasn’t going to do. He hadn’t wanted to upset Tori because she’d been through enough already, and she could get hostile when she was pushed to her limit, but if he was going to prepare them to deal with public opinion, he had to have answers that made sense.

  She made a strangled noise. “Why?”

  “I found a hollow space behind it.” Shaw held his breath waiting for her response.

  “What does that have to do with…what you’re investigating?”

  Why did she feel the need to whisper? She was supposed to be with Josh McCord, who already knew the whole story. In fact, McCord was the central figure in the horrible tale of how Lucy Kimbrough went off the deep end. Maybe his girlfriend, Ashley Rivers, didn’t know all the details, but surely by now, McCord had filled her in on most of them.

  A surge of sympathy swelled inside him. A reaction that was totally unexpected. Shaw answered Tori slowly and carefully. “Because I’m having a hard time figuring out how Lucy got Caroline into the house and upstairs without you or Grayson seeing her. That doesn’t look good for either of you. Your story might not fly, Tori. I know you don’t want to go through that again, so give me something I can work with here.”

  Tori and Grayson might not have been paying attention to anything or anyone but each other. There was no evidence that they’d spent any time in any of the beds, but Shaw saw the way Grayson’s eyes latched onto Tori every time she came into a room.

  Dickerson had found the empty bottles, but there was no telling how long ago the wine had been consumed. The two of them had fallen asleep that morning, and that was kind of early in the day for drinking wine and passing out. Tori had claimed the two of them had gone out to the house to do some cleaning because the place had been abandoned for so long and Tori wanted to eventually move in. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe they hadn’t been there the night before. Dickerson had also found the wrappers from a couple of breakfast burritos in the kitchen trash.

  “I’m not sure how finding a hidden space behind a wall would help you with that, but do whatever you need to do.” She wasn’t objecting, but weariness underscored her words.

  Her easy acquiescence made Shaw feel a bit guilty. Maybe he should have just done what he wanted to do and asked for forgiveness later, just as Dickerson had suggested. He gazed out the window that overlooked the back of the property. A streak of lightning lit up the sky above the overgrown gardens. A shadow passed across the glass, just a glimpse of movement. Had Dickerson already returned? He turned to speak to him and found the room empty. Surely, the spirits that haunted the place needed a little rest before making another appearance.

  “You understand how important it is to try to have answers to all the potential questions that might be asked, don’t you?”

  She sighed. “Oh course, I do. It’s the unanswered questions that knock me on my butt. Every time. We’ve both learned the hard way that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle things. Look, Shaw… I gotta go.”

  Before he could reply, the call had disconnected.

  It seemed odd that Tori Downing would rely on him. Perhaps their shared experience with the Lipton case had created a bond between them that couldn’t be broken no matter how much they had angered or publicly criticized each other.

  He had learned something from his association with Tori Downing. He’d bet that Tori had learned the same lesson. In cases like this, all those involved in the investigation had to present a united front and keep the hint of anything paranormal out of the public discussion.

  Just as he slipped his cellphone into his pocket, Dickerson returned with an electric jigsaw. After satisfying himself there were no electrical lines he might cut, Dickerson made short work of cutting a one-foot by one-foot hole in the wall. When he removed the piece of drywall and Shaw finally peered into the open space, he wasn’t surprised to find a staircas
e.

  ****

  Ten minutes later, they had a hole in the wall big enough to slip through. Dickerson motioned toward the staircase. “There could be snakes down there. You go first.”

  It reminded Shaw of a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he was no Indiana Jones and Dickerson was no Sallah.

  First, Shaw stared up the narrow flight toward the second floor. If Kimbrough had carried Caroline Grayson up the stairs, she had made more work for herself than necessary. He was fairly certain the dumb waiter still operated. It was large enough Kimbrough could have folded Caroline into it and saved herself some effort.

  He shook the thought out of his head. Shaw was in the habit of figuring out all the ways a murderer could have done his or her job more efficiently. In his opinion, it was a sick habit, but a habit that was a necessary part of his job.

  When he turned his gaze downward, he smiled. He’d been correct in his assumptions. He could just make out a large space at the bottom of the stairs. The house did indeed have a basement.

  Shaw slipped through the opening. Dickerson was right behind him as he descended into the semi-darkness. It was the first time he’d noticed how loud Dickerson breathed. He wanted to admonish the man to whisper his breaths, but then that was an absurd suggestion. He shook his head. What was it about the house that made his mind wander, that fueled his imagination? It was as if he’d developed a late-onset case of Attention Deficit Disorder.

  He stopped on the bottom step and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, he waited a minute before moving into the room so that he could adjust to the dim light.

  “Would you look at that?” Dickerson exclaimed two steps above him as he sprayed the dull glow of his flashlight around the room.

  Shaw’s vision blurred, and his head suddenly felt heavy. He tried to shake the fuzzy away. When he finally refocused, he observed the detritus of an abandoned meth lab. “Cooley didn’t mind using other people’s basements to brew his stuff, did he? I’m surprised this one didn’t blow too.”