Finally, she stopped on the side of the road, in front of what looked like a small century-old house that had obviously been restored but was looking a little run-down. She turned off the engine and shifted in her seat to study it. “This is where it all began.”
“Where what began?”
“The end.”
I shook my head, even more concerned about her. “What does that mean?”
She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. “This is where your daddy met Bill James.”
“Bill James lived in this little house?” I asked in disbelief.
A grin cracked her face—and I had to admit, Bill James was about the last person I could imagine living in a homey place like this. “No. Your father and I used to live in this small house.”
“What? I thought you’d always lived in our house.”
“Sure, after we got married.” She gave me a wicked grin. “But we lived in sin first, and this is where we lived.”
The house didn’t look like much. It was pretty tiny on the outside, and the landscape was overgrown. “How did Daddy meet him?”
“Believe it or not, it was at a barbeque we hosted. We invited a lot of friends, and Bill was a friend of a friend. They both worked for financial planning firms, and they became instant friends. Bill convinced your father to leave his firm and start a firm with him.”
“I had no idea. But why are you showing this to me instead of just telling me?”
She reached for the door handle and got out of the car.
I got out too and walked to the front of the car to meet her. “Momma, what are you doing?” I found myself whispering even though no one else was around. “Somebody owns this place.”
“Yeah,” she said in disgust. “Bill James.”
I blinked, sure I’d heard her wrong. “What? Is it a rental property?”
“No.” She started walking toward the house.
I trailed behind her, completely confused. He obviously didn’t live in what was probably a two-bedroom home. “Why would he buy this place?”
“Now that’s a good question,” she said as she walked up to the front porch and inserted a key into the doorknob. The door swung open, and she walked into the empty living room.
“How do you have a key?” I asked, still standing on the front porch.
“I used to live here.”
“Why wouldn’t he change the locks?”
She stood in the middle of the small room and turned around to face me. “Because he’s an arrogant asshole. He thinks he’s untouchable, and up until now he has been.”
What was she talking about? A buzz of excitement tickled my spine, but I couldn’t ignore that we were about to enter a house we had no business being in. “This is trespassing.”
“No one’s here to see us.” She headed toward the kitchen.
I turned around and looked toward the empty road, then groaned and followed my mother inside, shutting the door behind me. No need to make us look any more suspicious than we already did. “Why are we here?”
When she didn’t answer, I followed her into the kitchen. Empty. There was an open door next to the refrigerator, so I edged over to it. “Momma?”
“In the basement,” her muffled voice replied from the dark staircase.
The basement.
My head grew fuzzy and my knees turned weak. I stumbled and my butt hit the counter. I lifted my hand to my chest in an attempt to ground myself.
“Magnolia,” she said impatiently.
My breath came in rapid pants, and memories of the night I was held hostage in a basement ten years ago swamped my head. My stomach churned and I swallowed, frustrated and angry that I could still be paralyzed by the mere thought of descending the staircase. I was perfectly safe, for God’s sake. My dying mother was down there getting more irritated by the second that I was dragging my feet.
I could do this. I was tired of giving that man any more power over me than he already had.
I took a deep breath, steeled my back, and headed down the stairs.
Chapter 11
Halfway down the dark staircase, a mildew odor filled my nose. I stopped, holding the wood handrail in a death grip.
“Did you get lost?” Momma asked from around the corner.
“Sorry,” I said, trying not to sound breathless as I reached the concrete floor. The space was dimly lit and confining. There were a few towers of boxes in front of me, and an ancient-looking washer and dryer hulked against the wall to my left. “Why are we down here? It stinks.”
“You said you wanted answers.”
I rounded the corner and found my mother standing beside a filing cabinet and an old kitchen table with metal legs. There was a stained map spread out on the tabletop.
I moved closer to the map, seeing that it was a plot survey. My mouth dropped open. “Is that a map of the Jackson Project?”
“So you’ve figured that part out, have you?” I heard the pride in her voice.
“Yeah. But only bits and pieces. Daddy sold shares to the Jackson Project, but the people in charge of it had gotten permission to tear down historic homes through bribery. Once that was made public, the whole project fell through because of legal fees, and a lot of investors lost money.”
“And you know who his partners were?”
“Bill James.”
“Obviously.”
“Walter Frey was the CFO, and Neil Fulton was Winterhaven’s defense counsel.”
“Very good. And who else?”
I didn’t know for certain, but decided to take a stab at the answer. “Steve Morrissey, Christopher Merritt, Geraldo Lopez . . .” I hesitated, scared to have my fears confirmed. “And Max Goodwin.”
“Yes, but not the Christopher Merritt who disappeared three years ago. His father, Christopher Merritt, Sr. And yes, that snake was part of it too.”
I shook my head as I studied the map. “How did the police not put them together in any of their investigations?”
“Some of them were silent partners.”
“There was one more,” I said, turning to face her. “Someone with a name ending in –ogers.”
She nodded. “Rowena Rogers.”
I tried to hide the shock that my mother had known all along. “Did Geraldo Lopez kill her too?”
“No. She disappeared, out of sight, although it never made the news. She used to be one of Ava Milton’s cronies,” she said. “And I had no idea how people were vanishing, although I did suspect Steve Morrissey was behind your father’s disappearance.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked incredulously. “He would have literally gotten away with murder.”
“We all have our reasons, Magnolia,” she said, lowering herself slowly into a folding chair. “Why didn’t you go to the police ten years ago?”
I stared at her as the blood rushed to my feet. “You’re not going to ask me why I didn’t tell you?”
“I know why you didn’t tell me. But you could have reported it without telling me. Was it because the officers didn’t believe your story about your father arranging to meet with Walter Frey the night of his disappearance?”
“No. You want to know the truth?” I asked, feeling the weight of my past pressing on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I tugged at the neckline of my shirt. “I blocked it out.”
Her eyes narrowed. I could tell she suspected I was trying to get out of answering.
“I remembered running into the woods, but at some point, everything blacked out. I woke up hours later, lying on the ground at the edge of the woods, soaked to the skin from the rain. I had a massive headache and a lump on the side of my head, and I was so dizzy I could hardly walk up the hill to the house. I stopped to vomit, but all I could think about was getting in the house so I’d be safe.”
“And I berated you,” she said quietly.
“I couldn’t remember anything other than that something really bad had happened. I knew I was in danger, and that me being at home
somehow put you and Roy in danger. So I left the next day.”
“You left to protect us?”
“And myself,” I said. “It wasn’t a completely selfless move.”
“And the blood on your dress?”
“I had a cut on my leg.”
She was quiet for several seconds. “And do you remember now?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “It came back in bits and pieces, but I remember it all now.”
“What happened?”
How much should I tell her? The bare minimum. “I stumbled upon someone torturing a woman, and he said if I told anyone, he’d kill you and Roy.” I held her gaze. “His head was covered with a hood, so I never saw his face, but he knew my name.”
She sat back in her chair, looking like she was about to tip over from exhaustion and grief. “Was it Bill James?”
I wasn’t surprised she’d mentioned his name. I had my own suspicions of my father’s former boss, especially in light of Brady’s insistence that I not meet with him. “I don’t know. Why do you think it might have been him?”
She stood, which took such obvious effort I almost offered to help. “That’s why we’re here. Why would Bill have bought the house your father and I used to own? Even stranger, why would he have tried to hide that fact? He bought it through a subsidiary of a company he owns, but I found out nonetheless. I think he’s hiding something here and he wants to make sure no one finds it.”
“What?”
She picked up a paper off the work table. “Not what. Who. His wife.”
Panic wrapped me up like a dirty, unwelcome blanket, and the edges of my vision turned black. I knew I was about to pass out, but I couldn’t pass out in this basement. I stumbled to the chair my mother had just vacated and sat down, leaning forward to get the blood back into my head.
I felt my mother’s hand on my back, moving in slow, soothing circles.
“What makes you think that?” I finally asked.
“She disappeared before your father and I were married. Brian and Bill had just started their business. Since they didn’t have a lot of money, they worked from their own home offices and sometimes worked together. Your dad and I had gone to Seattle for my college friend’s wedding. Bill needed a client file, so Brian told him to come by our house and pick it up.”
“What does that have to do with his wife?”
“When we got back, the house was a mess. I could tell that Bill and some of his friends had partied here, and I was pissed as all get out, but that was the extent of it . . . until I heard she’d gone missing. She’d been at the party, but no one remembered seeing her afterward.”
“You think Bill James killed her. Why?”
“Rumor had it that she was sleeping around. Bill didn’t like it.”
“So he killed her? That wouldn’t be a smart move. Still, I don’t understand what it has to do with him buying your house.”
“There was a leak in the basement,” she said, moving to a far corner and pointing to the floor. “We had to have some of the concrete ripped out and replaced. We had it done while we were on our trip, so we wouldn’t have to deal with the noise and the chaos.”
I swallowed bile as I realized what she was saying. “You think his wife might be buried under that concrete? Did you tell the police?”
“Your father worked with the man, so I didn’t want to falsely accuse him. Besides, it seemed so unbelievable . . . But I wasn’t sure, so I called in an anonymous tip and told the police about the party, and how the floor had been replaced that same weekend. They never came to check it out. Her credit card was used in Las Vegas several days after she disappeared, so they decided she must have run off.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
“Bill was on a business trip when the card was used. His flight was to San Diego and he paid for a hotel there, but . . . he could have booked a hotel in her name and driven there to check in.”
“Did the desk people remember seeing her check in?”
“It never got that far. Her family corroborated his story. I bought the whole thing until a couple of years ago, after Roy started working for Bill. We all met for dinner, and something he said about his first wife made me think he really did it.”
“What did he say?”
“He looked me in the eye with his sneaky smile and said, ‘If you’re smart enough, you can pull one over on anyone and everyone.’”
I shook my head. “As eager as I am to pin this on him, that’s pretty generic.”
“The way he looked at me . . . I would bet everything I own that he knows I’m the one who called in the tip.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Just a gut feeling.”
“So how’d you find out he owns the house?”
“When I need to think, I drive around, and sometimes I would find myself driving past this house. I saw it was for sale; then a few days after that dinner, I discovered it had been sold. I don’t know why—maybe it was intuition—but I had a dying need to know who had bought it, especially since months passed without anyone moving in. That’s how I found out.”
“And you barged in and checked it out?”
“No. I only checked it out after you came back and everything was all boiling to the surface. Now I’m certain Bill James killed his wife and he bought this house to help cover his secret.”
My mother truly believed Bill James had killed his wife, and she was not prone to fanciful ideas.
“So he bought the house to ensure his secret,” I said. “What about all this other stuff?” I made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the filing cabinet, table, and boxes.
“The Jackson Project. Photos of big-name clients. Files on everyone in his group.” She paused and looked into my eyes. “It’s his trophy room, Magnolia.”
Oh, God.
Panic shot through my body. This time sitting down wouldn’t be enough to stanch it. I was going to throw up on the floor.
“I can’t stay down here.” I bolted up the stairs and found the bathroom just in time. I vomited into the toilet full of mold and water stains, then threw up again from the stench of the toilet. When I was sure I wouldn’t barf a third time, I turned on the water in the sink. It sputtered, but nothing came out of the faucet.
“The water’s turned off,” Momma said from the hall. “But the electricity’s on.”
Great. I was leaving evidence of our trespassing behind. “So he can see when he goes down into the basement,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Can we leave now?”
“We need to get back anyway. Tilly’s probably in a tizzy running the kitchen by herself.”
I made a beeline for the front door. “How can you calmly tell me that Daddy’s old partner is a monster, then talk about the catering kitchen in the next breath?”
“I’ve known about this a helluva lot longer than you. The shock’s worn off.”
We went out the front door and Momma locked it behind us. As we walked toward the car, I noticed she was moving slower than before. Our visit to the house had taken something out of her too, only she had a lot less energy than I did right now. I held out my hand. “Let me drive. I miss driving out here in the country.”
She handed me her keys with a look that told me she didn’t buy my excuse for a minute.
“Aren’t you worried about Roy working for Bill?” I asked after we were both in the car.
“Of course. I’ve tried to warn him that Bill is dangerous, but he always tells me not to worry.”
“As in he’s not worried because he doesn’t perceive a threat, or he thinks he can handle it?”
“I’m not sure,” she said as she rested her head on the seat back. “But I have to trust he’ll be okay. I don’t know what else to do.”
Roy didn’t think Bill was a threat to him because he was probably part of whatever his boss was currently mixed up in. Now I was even more worried about Belinda getting ensnared in something deadly.
“I remembe
r going for drives when I was a kid,” I said as I started the car, “but I don’t remember ever driving by this house.”
“I didn’t start driving by here until . . . after your father died.”
Died. That was the first time she’d conceded that he’d been killed instead of running off with Steve Morrissey’s wife. I briefly considered telling her about the serial numbers of the three gold bars, but quickly decided against it. I needed to wait until I had something concrete. “Did you ever think Daddy ran off with Shannon Morrissey?”
“No.”
I turned to look at her. “Yet you didn’t press it.”
“When the police made up their minds so quickly, I decided not to try dissuading them. I knew your father was part of something he was ashamed of, but he refused to talk about it much. I decided dead or run off, it was all the same—he was gone. My job was to protect you and Roy.” She pointed out the windshield. “Why are we still sitting here? Did you forget how to drive?”
I hid a grin as I pulled away from the curb and made a U-turn in the road. “You said Bill James worked with famous people.”
“Their connection with Max Goodwin garnered them a country music client or two.”
“Any I would know?”
She rattled off a few names I vaguely recognized from the radio, then several I didn’t. “Bill took the higher-profile clients,” she said. “Your father preferred the new up-and-comers like Clint Duncan and Rusty Blankenship.”
“And Tripp Tucker,” I said. “He sued over the Jackson Project.”
“Oh, yes. Tripp Tucker. You probably don’t remember, but he came over to the house a few times for dinner. The poor kid’s father ran off when he was a toddler, and he really looked up to your daddy. Brian tried to keep him on the straight and narrow, but Tripp ultimately flamed out.”
“He died?” I asked in surprise.
“No. He had one media disgrace too many.” She leaned her head back on her seat. “His label cut him, and he was bitter and angry.”
“Which is why he sued Daddy and plenty of other people.”
“Yeah. He lost the last of his money with that land deal. Last I heard, he’s here in Franklin, living off the residuals from the songs he wrote, but he’s not living high on the hog. Just gettin’ by. He wasn’t the only one your father took under his wing. So many young kids come to Nashville to try to make it, and when they finally get some success after scraping by for years, they want to blow it. Your father tried to teach them how to budget and how to invest.”
Call Back: Magnolia Steel Mystery #3 (Magnolia Steele Mystery) Page 12