Laurel Heights (Haunted Hearts Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  He released her and laughed so hard she wanted to hit him square in the mouth just to shut up his cackling.

  “This isn’t funny. I’m stuck between going inside the house and going to town. Neither option is very appealing right now.”

  His laughter halted abruptly. The light of understanding flickered in his hazel eyes. “Did something else happen?”

  “Right before Grayson knocked on the door... I’m not sure what happened, but I felt like I was being choked. When he knocked on the door, it was as if whatever had hold of me released me. I nearly fell on the floor.” She trembled with a sudden chill. “I guess it could have been a panic attack...”

  He turned serious in a heartbeat. All hint of teasing evaporated. “You think stress brings the weird stuff on?”

  “Seems like it sometimes. That’s why I’ve wondered if what’s happening to me is some sort of panic.”

  She grabbed his hand and began pulling him toward the house. Dry clothes would be nice. Her teeth were beginning to chatter.

  “Let’s change our clothes. Then we can decide what to do next.”

  She turned to look at him when she couldn’t get him to move.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you considered leaving? Getting rid of the place and moving on? There are a lot of things going on here. Whether human or supernatural... All of them seem dangerous.” He laughed, a tight burst of strained amusement. “You know, it’s almost like one of those horror movies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We keep going back into the house when it’s clearly out to get us. Like teenagers in a slasher movie who keep going into the woods even though they know the ax murderer is out there waiting for them.”

  She shuddered. “Not cool, Chase. That comparison is totally not cool.”

  “Ummm.... Yeah. Sorry.” He finally started toward the back door. “I have an idea...”

  “All right. What?”

  “Forget going into Fairview. Let’s take the highway to Little Rock. We can eat there. Buy what we need to fix the sink. Spend the night at a motel and come back here tomorrow.” He stepped toward her. “Maybe if we could get away from here for a while we could think a little clearer. Maybe come up with a plan to find out what’s going on.” He wrapped his arms around her again. “Maybe we could figure out what’s going on between us if the house would quit harassing us long enough.”

  She smirked. “You’re going to blame the house, huh?”

  His chin rested on the top of her head. “Better than blaming each other, don’t you think?”

  “It would be good to get away from here for a while. But I’m warning you...”

  He tensed. “What?”

  “I might get so comfortable being away from here I might not want to come back.”

  “If that happens, we can run away together.”

  She laughed. “Sure. I could empty my bank account, and we could leave the house behind and maybe hide from Rand for a few days before whoever he sends to kill us catches up with us.”

  He pushed her back a little. “You sure know how to ruin a mood.”

  “Well, we’ve got to face it, Chase. He’s never going to stop sending someone to look for us until either we’re dead or he’s dead.”

  Chase’s eyes turned a darker shade of brownish green. “Right now... I wouldn’t mind if death fixed our problem with Rand.”

  The wind suddenly rushed around them, and they trembled in unison as if their bodies were bound together. The sun had finally sunk into the western horizon, and a howl pierced the dusk.

  Yeah, Laurel was afraid. If she left Laurel Heights, she might never come back...and it might not be her idea to stay gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gray slid into the booth across from Josh. After leaving Laurel Heights, they’d traveled down the highway to a meeting with a specially organized joint task force that included members of law enforcement from five North Arkansas counties as well investigators with the Arkansas State Police and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

  At first, Gray hadn’t wanted to bring Josh along to the meet, but the sheriff had insisted. The old man must have gotten some sort of perverse pleasure from forcing the two of them to work together.

  No matter. The trip had given Gray and Josh a good excuse to indulge in their mutual interest in the paranormal activity at Laurel Heights, so they had agreed to stop by the house on the way out of town. Their visit with Laurel Standridge had taken longer than expected, and they’d ended up fifteen minutes late for the meeting. Their overdue arrival was noted and criticized. The meeting had been tense from that point forward.

  But the workday was over—unless someone discovered another dead body—and Gray was glad to be headed home. They still had about another half hour of travel before they’d reach the Fairview city limits.

  Josh complained he was starving to death, so Gray pulled off the highway and stopped at a barbecue joint that had a reputation for fall off the bone ribs.

  They’d been seated for a while, and the conversation had gotten uncomfortable for both of them, digressing away from business and delving into personal territory. Gray couldn’t look Josh in the eye any longer without saying something he shouldn’t say, so he glanced toward the door when it squeaked open. Across the restaurant, Sam Richards entered and glanced around as if searching for someone.

  “He’s a long way from town.”

  “Who?” Josh turned toward the door. “Oh, Richards. What about it?”

  “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “We’re a long way from town, too, Gray.” Josh was quick to point out the obvious with a smirk on his face.

  Richards remained in the doorway for another minute or two until Omar Cooley came in the door. The two of them greeted each other. Not a cordial greeting. They had the appearance of men ready to conduct business. The only trade Cooley engaged in was illegal.

  Gray studied their faces, gauging their expressions. Not a friendly meeting at all. Richards and Cooley appeared to be on the verge of a heated argument.

  “What’s he doing here with Cooley?”

  Josh turned toward the doorway again. “That doesn’t look good, Gray.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Cooley and Richards took a seat on the other side of the dining room.

  Josh slid down the bench further into the shadows of the booth. “I don’t think they saw us.”

  Gray moved closer to the wall and out of Cooley’s line of sight. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  Josh nodded his agreement. “What kind of connection would Sam have with old man Cooley? Whatever it is, it can’t be legal.”

  “Maybe he’s pumping him for information on his network.” Even as Gray voiced the optimistic option, he knew that wasn’t the case. Sam wasn’t proactive. He did just what he was told to do and nothing more.

  “We should wait until they leave and follow them.”

  “Follow them? What for?” Gray wasn’t sure he wanted to be mixed up in Richards’s off-duty mess.

  The conversation with Timna came back to Gray like a flash of comprehension.

  Timna winked. “That good for nothing cousin of hers stole it all.”

  So Celeste had cousins. Who knew? “Which cousin?”

  “Was it Zeke or Jake? Maybe it was Sam or Rufus. I can’t be sure. There’s a lot of them.”

  Could old Timna have been talking about Sam Richards? He knew he was operating on instinct more than revealed fact, but his gut told him he wasn’t far from the truth.

  “When I get back to the office, I’m going to do a little checking into Sam’s family tree.”

  Josh’s eyes lit with understanding. They’d always been able to communicate with few words. Ever since they were in the third grade.

  “Cooley operates awfully close to Laurel Heights, doesn’t he?”

  Josh was sharp. He’d managed to wra
p all the unspoken threads together and tie them into a knot.

  “Yes, he does.”

  “So how does Sam relate to Laurel Heights?”

  Josh could be so perceptive when he was just a smidgen inebriated. He was at just the right level of buzzed to be useful. A couple more beers and he’d be useless.

  “I think Sam might be Laurel Standridge’s cousin.”

  “Really? What makes you think that?”

  Gray squirmed a little. He was well aware of Josh’s opinion of Timna. “I went up the mountain—”

  Josh sputtered. “You still listening to her bull crap? She doesn’t know anything.”

  “You have an attitude toward her—”

  “Nope. She has an attitude toward me.” Josh stabbed his finger into his chest.

  Timna hadn’t been kind to Josh. She had a habit of telling things just the way she saw them, and Josh had a habit of living in denial.

  A lot of people had a negative attitude when it came to Josh, but Gray refrained from saying so.

  “She told me Laurel Standridge was in trouble and she was right.”

  He wasn’t going to tell Josh about Timna’s comments on Gray’s ex-wife. Well, she would be his ex if one of them would ever pony up the money to file the papers.

  “Gray, come on, man! She knows if you’re asking about someone then they are probably in trouble. It’s not hard to figure out. She’s a good guesser. Don’t give her too much credit, like she has clairvoyance or something.”

  Gray’s shoulders tensed. Who was Josh to criticize his judgment? The man had made a mess of his life.

  “Clairvoyance is a big word for you, isn’t it?”

  Josh threw up his hands and leaned back on the bench, turning his head away from Gray. The waitress chose that moment to serve their ribs.

  Silence fell between the two men as they devoured their meal as quickly as possible. Neither of them broke the tension with renewed conversation. By the time Gray wiped the last drop of barbecue sauce from his lips, Josh had downed enough beer he was visibly affected.

  When the waitress brought the check, Gray grabbed it. “I’ll put it on my expense report.”

  “I’m not arguing.” Josh slid out of the booth, wobbled a little, and glanced toward the other side of the dining room. “They’re gone.”

  Gray followed Josh’s gaze. “I didn’t see them leave.”

  “They could have seen us and didn’t think we saw them. Maybe they slipped out the back. We can’t follow them now.”

  Josh had more enthusiasm for pushing his limits than anyone Gray had ever met. If the sheriff had found out about it, following another deputy without discussing it with the boss would have earned them both a formal reprimand. Gray didn’t need another one of those in his file.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A strong wind buffeted the truck, making it hard for Chase to keep it between the lines. The hairs on his neck prickled like they did when he felt someone staring at his back. He checked the rearview mirror again. No one was within sight.

  Laurel had remained quiet ever since he backed out from under the sycamore tree and headed down the steep drive to the highway. They still had about an hour and a half of travel before they made it to the outskirts of Little Rock. A long stretch of highway disappeared into the hills ahead of them as they approached the Buffalo River.

  Chase didn’t think he could stand the silence any longer, so he cleared his throat and then offered a conversation starter. “Grayson doesn’t have a clue who killed your cousin.”

  He glanced at Laurel, hoping to catch her reaction, but she continued to stare through the windshield at the road ahead of them.

  “Nope, I don’t think he does. He acts like we’re his prime suspects or something.” She stated her opinion matter-of-factly as if being under investigation by the local Sheriff’s office didn’t bother her.

  “We are his prime suspects. A first cousin of yours was murdered down the road from your property. I’ve gone to prison for murder. You’ve been involved in a murder investigation with a cloud of suspicion still hovering over you. He has no other viable suspects. When all else fails, a cop falls back on the obvious.”

  “The obvious?” She snorted. “He’s obviously not doing his job if he still thinks either one of us had anything to do with that.”

  “He’s doing the best he can.”

  He wasn’t sure why he was defending Grayson, except that the inclination to defend a member of law enforcement was a hard habit to break.

  “And that’s what’s so sad.” Laurel’s sarcasm sounded like metal scraping on concrete.

  He turned to catch a glimpse of her just as she rolled her eyes.

  “He thought my father had Celeste committed to a psychiatric hospital, and my father had been dead for three years when he had her committed.” She said it as if it was perfectly normal for a dead guy to do anything more than be a dead guy.

  “How could your father have anyone committed if he was dead? You know that’s impossible, right?”

  She glanced his way and blinked at him as if he’d asked the lamest question ever. Then she leaned back in her seat and propped her bare feet on his dash. He bit his tongue to keep from insisting she drop her feet to the floorboard. No way was he going to sidetrack the conversation once she’d started it, but he would eventually have to tell her the rules for riding in his truck. No feet on the dash. Ever.

  His eyes zoomed in on her bright pink polished toes. Actually, her toes were kind of cute. He shook the thought out of his head. How in the world could he think anyone’s toes were cute? He’d gone soft on the woman, no doubt. When a man got mushy, his judgment usually suffered. When he was distracted, he made mistakes. He determined to up his level of vigilance because he had the unmistakable feeling they were being followed even though he couldn’t identify their follower or how far back the tail was. Just because he couldn’t spot the man didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

  Laurel was still speculating, so he tuned back into her running commentary. What had he missed while he was thinking about her cute toes?

  “After Grayson told me someone had her committed, I felt like I had something in common with her. We both had someone try to put us in the hospital. How much of a coincidence do you think that is?” She sniffed as if trying to hold back strong emotion. “Maybe crazy runs in the family.”

  Someone had tried to have Laurel committed? He wanted to ask who had done that to her. Probably Rand.

  Laurel wasn’t crazy. No, she was just a little beat up from a hard life. That was all. He waited for her to get past the emotional moment, thinking the best way to deal with it was to ignore it.

  “If someone was pretending to be Celeste’s brother—my father—why didn’t she say something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Barely had his words left his mouth before she was talking again. Maybe she wasn’t even listening to him. Maybe she was just rambling, purging all her pent up thoughts, and she didn’t need his commentary or his opinion. They had talked about a lot of things and ran circles around them, but they’d never nailed down exactly what bothered them about what was happening all around them.

  It was as if the house attracted danger. Maybe the bartender was right. The house could probably beat a man up. Perhaps he should try harder to encourage Laurel to leave it behind and run away somewhere with him.

  After a few minutes of absolute quiet, she picked up the loose thread of her seemingly one-sided conversation again. “I can guess what Grayson thinks. At first, he implied that my father and I tried to con dear, old Aunt Celeste out of her pitiful fortune. Maybe he thought we killed my cousin to keep him quiet or something. Then he found out my father couldn’t have had anything to do with it because he’s been dead too long. That blew that theory for him. Now, he’s speculating that me and my long lost cousin what’s-his-name that I didn’t know I had were in some sort of conspiracy to steal from Celeste. All he has are stupid theories.”

&nbs
p; Had she really forgotten her cousin’s name, or was acting like she had forgotten his name a weird way of distancing herself from the situation?

  “His name was James.”

  She sighed as if the world was too heavy for her to carry on her shoulders. “Right. Someone killed James. How is that supposed to be my problem if I never knew him?”

  “Well, someone did kill James, and it is your problem because Grayson made it your problem. Whether you want it to be or not. I don’t think things are going to settle down in your house until his murderer is caught. Whoever murdered James is still hanging around.”

  Laurel shivered. The thought of having a murderer lurking around her house must have chilled her to the bone. It certainly unnerved Chase.

  “So you think what’s going on in the house has more to do with James than with Rand.”

  He wasn’t ready to go that far. Truth was, he didn’t know what was going on at Laurel Heights.

  “Someone is trying to mess with you. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.” He scratched his head and then flexed his stiff fingers. “Some strange things have happened to me, too. Like when someone shoved me down the stairs. I know you didn’t see anyone on the stairs behind me... I can’t explain that, but the man that ran into me the other night was no apparition. He was real. Flesh and bone real. If Rand sent him to harass you, he wouldn’t have run away from me. He would have confronted me. So I’m thinking the strange things going on in the house have to do with James and his death.”

  “Maybe there are two people sneaking around Laurel Heights for different reasons—whoever Rand sent to harass me and whoever killed my cousin James. Both of them could be hanging around for different reasons. Waiting for just the right moment to attack. Trying to scare us or freak us out or get us to leave.”

  He found it interesting that she included him as one of the targets. When had they become us?

  “You know, that’s just creepy.” She suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. “It used to be the odd noises and weird feelings only happened at night, but things have started happening in the daytime, so whoever is doing this is getting braver and more desperate. What if the two of them bump into each other?”