Evil Never Dies (The Lizzy Gardner Series Book 6)

by T. R. Ragan

  She crawled over the mattress until she could feel the ground. Smooth cement. Pushing herself to her feet, she kept her arms straight out in front of her, careful not to trip as she explored the room. The tips of her fingers brushed against a rough stone wall. She moved slowly, inch by inch, feeling around, hoping to find a window or a door. Finally. A door.

  She tried the knob, but it was no use. The door was locked. Down on her knees, she tried to peek under the door. She couldn’t see a thing. Back on her feet again, she crossed to the other side of the room and found a wall of empty wooden slots. She was in a wine cellar.

  A clear image of the man’s face came to her: he was wearing a hat and sunglasses. He had a crooked nose, an ugly, wiry beard, and a wide smile. The man who picked her up on the side of the road had brought her here.

  How stupid could she be? Getting into the car with a stranger was bad enough, but then asking him for drugs and taking his magic pills? Hell, she didn’t even know what kind of car he’d been driving. Four-door? Two-door? Blue? Green? She had no idea.

  She sank down onto the mattress and tried to get a grip, tried to think.

  Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty. Once again she began to crawl around the room on all fours, hoping he’d at least left her some food or water. But there was nothing here. No windows. No table. No chairs. No food and no water.

  “Are you awake?”

  Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. She scrambled to the door. “Please let me out. My family is probably worried sick about me. You have to let me call my mom.”

  “Oh, Claire. That would be foolish of me. You’re a smart girl. I can’t let you do that.”

  She banged on the door, didn’t stop until her hands hurt from the effort. “Let me out of here, you sicko!”

  She heard the squeak of metal. A sliver of light spilled through the top of the door. It looked like a mail slot. She stood on her tiptoes and found herself peering into gray-blue eyes.

  She stepped back, put a hand to her chest, tried to catch her breath.

  “Please,” she said when she realized he might leave her there and never come back. “I’m begging you. I’ll be good, but I don’t like the dark. And I’m thirsty. My throat is dry. I swear, I can’t breathe.”

  “My little drama queen,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass of water and something to eat. I’ll be back.”

  The metal door shut with a clank.

  She stood still. She needed to think. He said he would be back. As soon as he opened the door, she would attack him, claw at his eyes and then run.

  Where was she, though?

  If she escaped the wine cellar, would she find another locked door? And it didn’t help that she was small and he was tall. Inside the car, the top of his head had looked as if it was only an inch from the roof. The weird hat he’d been wearing probably made him look even taller. The hat. The strange hat and sunglasses made sense. His beard hadn’t looked right, either. It had to be a disguise. She never should have gotten into his car. What an idiot she was. And to think she had believed every word the man uttered. Right down to the ridiculous magic pills he happened to keep in his car. Shit!

  She chewed on her thumbnail. She already knew she couldn’t fight the man. Her little brother could practically pin her to the floor when they wrestled. When it came to fighting her way out of there, she didn’t stand a chance.

  Not without a weapon.

  That thought set her in motion. She moved around in the dark until she could feel the wooden wine rack beneath her fingers again. She brushed her hands over every wooden slot, looking for a loose board. The squeak of metal—the slot in the door—stopped her dead. Damn. She’d have to wait. She dropped down on the mattress.

  He had a flashlight this time, and the little beam of light hit her directly in the face.

  “There you are.” For a long moment, he merely stared at her, the beam of light roaming over her, his beady eyes unblinking. He was a creeper, all right.

  “Stay right where you are, Claire. You need to understand how this works. You need to stay perfectly still. If you do anything that I don’t tell you to do, bad things will happen. One wrong move and it’s over. Now, Claire, I want you to nod your head if you understand. Can you do that?”

  She nodded her head and prayed she would find a way out of there alive.

  It wasn’t long before she heard the door being unlocked.

  The door opened. Using his foot, he pushed a doorstop in place to hold it open while he brought in a tray. There was a bowl of soup and a tall plastic cup filled with water. There was also a napkin and a spoon. The bowl and the cup were made of plastic. No help there.

  He put the tray on the floor, then watched her closely as she reached for the water and gulped it down in thirsty swallows. She kept her eye on the spoon. It was metal.

  “You are a thirsty girl,” he said.

  His voice grated on her nerves. The man disgusted her. She looked at him, tried to get a view of the room and the stairs behind him. Stone floors and narrow steps made of stone curved around the wall until they disappeared. It was like some sort of medieval castle down here.

  “There’s no way out,” he said. “You can pound on these walls and scream at the top of your lungs all day long and nobody will hear you.”

  She started in on the soup. It was lukewarm and tasted like shit, but she was hungry. She needed to keep her strength up if she had any hope of escaping.

  “What happened to all of that bravado I saw yesterday in the car?”

  “That was before some creepy, disgusting old man brought me to his weird castle to keep me prisoner in his dungeon.”

  “There we go,” he said. “Much better.”

  She kept her eye on the spoon as she lifted each spoonful of soup to her mouth. Be patient, she reminded herself, but the idea of sitting in this room for another hour, let alone another day, made it difficult to sit there and do nothing. She lifted her chin, looked him square in the eyes. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “You’re mesmerizing, Claire. I don’t think you have an inkling as to what an absolute masterpiece you are.”

  “Let me go. I can’t live here with you.”

  “Who said anything about living?” He picked up the tray and waited for her to put everything on it.

  Dutifully, she placed her bowl on the tray. The spoon was clutched tightly within her fist. She wanted to jab it into his eye, thrust the hard metal into his throat, but she felt unusually weak. The bastard had put something in her soup. Her head began to spin. Her eyelids felt heavy.

  “I bet you wish you were back home with that hateful family of yours—isn’t that right, Claire?”

  She wanted to spit in his eye, lunge at him, and rip that stupid beard from his face. But she was light-headed and tired. The spoon dropped from her hand. Her body sagged against the flimsy mattress. Instead of charging at him, she felt herself nodding in agreement right before she drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lizzy pulled to the curb, screeching to a stop. She threw the car in park in front of the building where Stacey Whitmore worked. Stacey had made the mistake of leaving her keycard behind in Lizzy’s car after their “interview” with Bennett. She’d left a message on Lizzy’s phone to arrange its return, but Lizzy hadn’t gotten around to dealing with it. Now would be the perfect time.

  Stacey had been ignoring her calls for days now. Something was going on, and Lizzy aimed to find out what it was. She had been inside the station before. Had followed Stacey inside, knew what to do—assuming the keycard still worked. It was quite possible it had been deactivated when Stacey had been issued a replacement. Things would get more complicated then. Lizzy would have to feign frustration with the lock mechanism, then bluff herself inside when someone came to deal with her.

  No plan B
necessary: Lizzy slipped the card through the slot and opened the door into the building. The receptionist gave her a funny look, but Lizzy ignored her and kept on walking. She passed by a long row of cubicles.

  Behind her, she heard someone calling out to her, but she ignored the voice and headed straight for Stacey’s cubicle.

  Stacey’s head shot up when Lizzy entered her space. “Lizzy!”

  “Hello, Stacey. Here’s your keycard back.” She tossed it on her desk. “Is there a reason you haven’t been returning my calls?”

  Stacey sorted through papers on her desk, tried to appear relaxed, but she was anything but. Her face had paled the moment she’d seen Lizzy.

  “What’s going on, Stacey?”

  Stacey bolted to her feet then, grabbed hold of Lizzy’s arm, and ushered her to an editing room. She shut the door. Then she crossed her arms and said, “Now you can talk.”

  “I have pictures of Miriam with Wayne Bennett,” Lizzy told her. “Pictures of the two of them cuddling and eating dinner in a dimly lit restaurant. Dozens of them. I also have the video that you helped me tape. The one where Bennett looks directly into the camera and says he’d never heard of Miriam Walters.”

  Stacey let out a breath. “I need that video back.”

  Somebody tried to open the door. “Is everything OK in there?”

  “We’ll be out in a minute!” Lizzy shouted.

  The door opened. It was a tall dark-haired woman with wild eyes. She pointed at Lizzy. “You’re going to have to come with me, miss. You can’t be back here without checking in first. I’ll need your ID.”

  Lizzy walked toward the woman, shut the door in her face, and locked it. Then she turned back to Stacey.

  “They’ll call security,” Stacey told her. “You don’t want to end up in jail again, do you?”

  “You’re seriously pissing me off. Tell me what’s going on right now, or I’m going to walk out there, find your boss, and tell him you’ve been working with me and that you borrowed station equipment to help me get a video of Wayne Bennett.” Lizzy curled her fingers around the doorknob, ready to open it and follow through with her threat. The look she saw on Stacey’s face said it all.

  “Bennett got to you,” Lizzy said.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Bullshit. The asshole got to you, or maybe he had a little talk with your boss and he told you to back off.” Lizzy shook her head. “You are now officially just like every other chickenshit reporter running around Sacramento with their tail between their legs.” Lizzy scowled at her. “My God. I really never thought a scumbag piece of shit like Bennett would get the best of Stacey Whitmore. Remember how fired up you were when you started out, fighting to get stories with substance, stories that just might make a difference? What happened to that Stacey?”

  Lots of frantic pounding on the door.

  “I thought you were different from the rest of the talking heads.”

  “I thought so, too,” Stacey said. “But things change, I guess. I thought I could make a difference and somehow save the world. What a crock of shit. Now I’m just hoping I can save myself. I really don’t know what else I can say other than I can’t be part of this reckless journey of yours.”

  “Then don’t call me begging for any more stories,” Lizzy said through clenched teeth.

  Stacey shook her head in frustration. “You really don’t get it, do you? Bennett is a dangerous man. We both agree on that. But I don’t carry a gun, Lizzy. I’m not a fighter. You certainly aren’t going to be able to protect me. I may not like it, but I can’t do anything about it. I can’t help you, Lizzy.”

  “Then I guess we’re done here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lizzy turned back to the door and opened it.

  Two security guards with starched white shirts and shiny badges tried to grab hold of her arms. “Let go,” Lizzy said, wrenching them free. “I’m leaving.”

  Shady Oaks Nursing Home looked slightly better than the last time Kitally visited. The smell of sanitizers was strong and the floors looked as if they had just been mopped. Even the dingy plastic chairs had been removed.

  She walked up to the front counter and recognized the woman with the frizzy brown hair. She had the same annoyed expression scrawled across her face.

  “Hi,” Kitally said. “I’m here to see Betty Ackley. I’d like to check in.”

  “Weren’t you here recently for a tour?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I don’t believe you mentioned you knew Betty Ackley.”

  “I don’t believe I did,” Kitally said. “Betty Ackley is the reason Mom and I are interested in checking the place out for my grandmother. Is there a problem?”

  “She doesn’t get too many visitors. It strikes me as odd, that’s all.”

  Kitally glanced at the woman’s nametag. Her name was Birgitta. “Can I please get a badge?”

  The woman took her time, but she finally handed Kitally a clipboard with a list of names followed by blank spaces where she was to sign her own name.

  With that done, Kitally made her way to the hallway with all the rooms where she’d first met Cecil and Betty. Unlike the front area, the hallway and rooms had clearly not been cleaned recently. The smell of urine and soiled bed linens became hard to ignore as she went along. Shady Oaks was definitely understaffed. The door to Cecil’s room was closed, but she found Betty sitting in the chair next to her bed. Once again, the television was blasting.

  Betty’s eyes lit up when she saw her in the doorway. She picked up the remote and turned down the volume. “Did you bring me some chocolates?”

  The woman might be old, but she was sharp. Kitally set her big leather bag on the edge of the bed, pulled out two boxes of assorted chocolates, and handed them to her. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I bought you a little bit of everything.”

  “Thank you.” Betty studied her for a moment. “I really didn’t expect you to come back to see me. I was just trying to keep you out of trouble. The people around here can be frightening at times.”

  Kitally looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was within hearing distance before she said, “I came back for a reason.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Did you send a message to a man named Gus Valentine?”

  Betty said, “Shhh,” and then gestured toward the door.

  Kitally went to it and peeked into the hallway. It was all clear. She shut the door and went back to where Betty was sitting.

  “What do you know about Gus Valentine?” Betty asked.

  Kitally kept her voice low. “I work for an investigative agency. Gus hired us to look into the death of his wife, Helsie. Are you the one who sent the note telling him to have an autopsy done?”

  Betty put a trembling hand to her chest. “I am the one who wrote that note. Helsie was my friend. She knew something wasn’t right about this place, but she died before we could figure out what was going on.”

  “Do you think her death was suspicious?”

  “Yes. I think they killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she knew too much about what’s happening around here.”

  The idea that someone might be killing off residents who were dependent on them made Kitally sick to her stomach. “You said the two of you were friends. Did Helsie tell you what she knew?”

  “She was convinced they killed Marty.”

  “They being who exactly? An orderly? A doctor?”

  “The whole kit and caboodle,” Betty said. “All of them. This is a family-run operation. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all under suspicion.”

  “Maybe we should alert authorities, fill out a report.”

  She shook her head. “It won’t do any good. Helsie called the police, and look what happened to her. She d
ied before they found time to come see her.”

  “You would think that might have raised a few red flags.”

  “You would think. But Birgitta convinced the police that Helsie had dementia and was upset because someone was stealing her Oreo cookies.”

  “How about you? How’s your memory?”

  “My brain is working like a newly oiled machine. Movie trivia is my specialty. Ask me anything.”

  Kitally thought Betty was kidding until the woman elbowed her and said, “Go on—ask me something.”

  “OK. Let’s see. Who played Dorothy in the original Wizard of Oz?”

  “Judy Garland. Too easy. Ask me another.”

  “What’s the name of the movie starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara?”

  “Ha! Trick question. They made . . . let me see . . . five films together. Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, McLintock!, and Big Jake.”

  Kitally laughed. “The only one I knew was The Quiet Man.”

  “Well, that was the best one.” Betty narrowed her eyes. “How would you know anything about The Quiet Man?”

  “Late-night movies,” Kitally said. “Sometimes I have a difficult time getting to sleep.”

  “Huh,” Betty said. “Well, enough playing around. Dixie will be making the rounds soon. We need to figure out how we’re going to sneak into the main office and take a look around.”

  “What? We can’t do that.”

  “Of course we can. I thought you were a detective.”

  Kitally shook her head. “No, I said nothing of the sort.”

  “You’re here to ask questions about Helsie’s death, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you do work for a private investigator, isn’t that right?”

  “True, but—”

  “But nothing. You’re a detective, and it looks like you’ve got yourself a sidekick. This is going to be fun.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kitally said. “Let’s pretend for a moment that we do somehow get into the main office. What exactly would we be looking for?”