“I’m sorry, are you actually offering me sympathy after you tried to kill me?”
“I didn’t try to kill you,” I replied. “I … you misunderstand what happened.”
“How? We were standing next to the water, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air and landing in the middle of that filthy mess. There was no one else there.”
There was no rational way I could explain what happened, so I decided to change the subject. “You should know that Stephen, Dakota and Charlie have been taken in for questioning today,” I offered. “Landon and Chief Terry are talking to them right now.”
Chloe furrowed her brow. “For what?”
“Well, for everything,” I said. “You heard about the pot field, right?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Everyone heard about the pot field. It’s the lead story in the Hemlock Cove … oh, wait. You write for The Whistler. There’s no way to make sense of that.”
I was starting to think rehab was a good idea. Chloe was definitely scattered. “Did you know about the field?”
“Everyone knew about the field,” Chloe replied. “The only people who didn’t know about the field were the cops and … well … you.”
That was interesting. Teenagers are prone to exaggeration, but I had trouble believing the pot field managed to remain secret given the number of parties at Hollow Creek. “How long was it there?”
“Um … I don’t know,” Chloe said, shrugging. “It’s been there as long as I can remember. I first heard about it when I was in middle school. I didn’t know what Nathaniel was talking about when he mentioned it, but he was definitely talking about it then.”
“So, what? Are we talking, like, four years here?”
“That sounds about right.”
Holy crap! Teenagers today are much better at keeping secrets than we were at that age. Aunt Tillie would’ve sniffed out a secret pot field within days. She wouldn’t have needed years. “Who planted it?”
“I … .” Chloe tilted her head, considering the question. She didn’t want to rat out her friends. I got that. The truth was going to come out no matter what, though. Charlie was going to spill his guts faster than a zombie on The Walking Dead.
“The police are going to find out one way or another,” I prodded.
“I have no idea who planted it the first time,” Chloe said, resigned. “Every year a group of kids takes over the field from another group of kids. They get … selected.”
I frowned. It was like a pot popularity contest. “Was your brother one of the chosen ones?”
“He was one of the popular boys.”
That wasn’t an answer. “Nathaniel was one of the popular ones, so he ran the field with a couple of his friends,” I surmised. “It gave him extra money. When he went to college, he lost out on that money, and your mother didn’t have any extra to give him. Did he try to take over the field again when he came back this summer?”
“I have no idea.”
She was lying. I was on the right track. I knew it. “Who are they working with?”
“Who is who working with?” Chloe asked. She looked genuinely confused.
“They have to be working with someone,” I pressed. “I overheard Stephen, Dakota and Charlie worrying about what ‘they’ would do. Who is the ‘they’ those boys are talking about?”
“I have no idea.” Chloe crossed her arms over her chest, defiant.
“Chloe, you’re not protecting anyone but the people who killed your brother,” I said. “Is that what you want? Do you want your brother’s murder to go unsolved?”
“I don’t really care,” Chloe said. “I’m not ratting on people. That’s not who I am. I don’t know a lot about my brother because he was always mean to me, but I know what he would think of anyone who talked to you guys. I’m not going to do it. There’s nothing you can do to make me.”
“You’re making a poor decision here,” I said. “You’re going to regret it.”
“I think I’ll live,” Chloe shot back. “I’m not taking advice from the woman who tried to drown me in the same creek my brother died in. I know that’s something I would regret.”
I watched Chloe flounce away in the direction of downtown. Her pace was brisk and yet her shoulders dipped. She was a troubled girl, and I had a feeling it was going to get worse before it got better.
I lifted my eyes to find her mother staring at me through the bay window at the front of their house. Her face was … dark. She probably thought I tried to kill Chloe, too. I lifted my hand in a half-hearted wave, but Patty didn’t return it. There was no way she was going to talk to me. This was another dead end.
I was out of options. Again.
I FOUND myself back at Hollow Creek an hour later. I’m not good with down time when I’m waiting for answers. I’m impatient. I can’t help it. I blame Aunt Tillie. She set a poor example on that front. I hoped Nathaniel would make an appearance so I could question him. He was the only one with the answers I needed.
I scuffed at the dirt as I walked, debating how I could reconcile what Chloe said with my emerging theory regarding the pot field and her brother’s death. If it really had been up and running for years – and I had no reason to doubt that – the pot field served as a money-making endeavor for years. Still, how could the kids simply hand it over to the next generation without putting up a stink? Someone had to organize it. Someone had to make rules and force the kids to follow them.
If Nathaniel came back and thought he was going to step into his old job, that might be enough to propel someone to kill him. It wouldn’t be enough to propel someone to stab him eight times, though. That still bothered me.
“What are you doing back here?”
I shifted when I heard Nathaniel’s voice, fixing him with a hard look. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to you,” I answered. “You’re not talking, and there are a lot of things about this that don’t make sense.”
“You’ve ruined everything,” Nathaniel said. “You ended the parties. You burned down the field. There’s nothing left here. You ruined it all!”
“You’re left here.”
“And now I’m alone, thanks to you,” Nathaniel spat.
His reaction made me inexplicably sad. Sure, he was a drug dealer and rampant asshat, but he was still a sad and lonely young man. “You don’t have to stay here, Nathaniel,” I reminded him. “In fact, you’re not meant to stay here. You can move on.”
“Maybe I don’t want to move on.”
“Do you know what will happen to you if you carry on like this? You’ll turn into a poltergeist. Do you know what that means?”
“I’ve seen the movie,” Nathaniel replied dryly. “The original was much better than the remake.”
“That can be said about every movie,” I shot back. “A poltergeist is rage. That’s all it is. If you give in to what you’re feeling, you’ll never have any peace. Is that what you want?”
“I can’t have what I want, can I?” Nathaniel challenged. “I wanted a future. I wanted to be someone. I died as a Hemlock Cove nobody. What’s worse than that?”
“You died someone,” I said. “You might not have been who you wanted to be, but you were still someone.”
“And who is that?”
“You were a son. You were a brother. You were a human being. That’s gone now. You can still have an afterlife if you allow yourself to release the rage.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Nathaniel said. “I want to be angry. It’s the only thing I have right now.”
I shook my head. Apparently stubbornness was a shared trait in the Jamison family. “Tell me who you were working for,” I said, changing tactics. “Chloe said this field has been operational for years. Every year a new group of students took over the operation. You were forced out, but you tried to come back, didn’t you?”
“I did a good job,” Nathaniel seethed, his aura flashing red. “I should’ve been left in charge. Those idiots who were running it this y
ear … well … you saw what happened. They killed the entire business.”
“Who were they working for?”
“I don’t snitch,” Nathaniel said. “I’m not telling you that.”
“Even though they killed you?”
“They didn’t kill me,” Nathaniel replied. “They tried to force me out of the business and cut me out of the profits, so I have no love for them, but they didn’t kill me. Besides, I stole their cash stash as payback. They got what was coming to them for trying to block me.”
The money in the cave. “If they didn’t kill you, who did?”
Nathaniel’s face contorted, his eyes traveling to a spot over my shoulder. I refused to let him distract me, though. I needed answers and I was sick of him refusing to answer my questions.
“Who killed you, Nathaniel? It’s important. I need to know.”
“Why don’t you turn around and find out.”
Oh, crap. Not again.
Thirty-One
Behind me? If whoever was behind me didn’t do it first, Landon was definitely going to kill me this time. Crap on toast!
I turned quietly, my shoulders stiff, and found … . No way!
“What are you doing here?”
Chloe’s eyes darted in eight different directions before landing on me. Her hair was a mess, as if she’d been dragging her hands through it for lack of anything better to do. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated. She was stoned, although she looked a little more than that. She appeared to be verging on the edge of mania.
“I was out here … looking around,” I replied, choosing my words carefully. “I was upset after talking with you and I wanted to clear my head.” I risked a glance at Nathaniel out of the corner of my eye. He glowered at his sister. This wasn’t good. How could I have missed this?
“You were upset after talking with me?” Chloe arched her eyebrows suspiciously. “Why doesn’t that seem likely?”
Probably because she was stoned and paranoid. Marijuana doesn’t generally make people violent, so I had a feeling there was some sort of upper involved here, too. Crap, crap … double crap. Why did I come out here without telling anyone? I’m such an idiot sometimes.
“Are you looking for someone else to drown?” Chloe’s eyes flashed in the same instant Nathaniel’s aura mimicked the change. They were tied together in rage.
“I think I’m going to leave you here to … talk to your brother in private,” I said, taking a wide berth as I stepped around Chloe. “You guys probably have a few things to discuss.” I hoped I could get to my car and call Landon before locking myself away from the Jamison siblings. If Nathaniel was going to explode on his sister again – which looked likely – he had the capacity to kill her. Whether Chloe killed her brother was irrelevant right now. I wasn’t going to let the girl die if I could help it.
“Talk to my brother?” Chloe was more belligerent than confused. “My brother is dead! How can I talk to him?”
“Tell her you can see me and I’m here,” Nathaniel suggested. “I want to see her face when she finds out her secret isn’t safe … that stupid, little … .”
I ignored the rest of his outburst. “Many people go to the locations where their loved ones died so they can feel close to them,” I said. “You came out here to talk to your brother, right? There’s no other reason for you to be here.” Unless you’re a true psychopath and you’re reliving the crime because you get off on it, I silently added.
Chloe shook her head. “I came here to relive his death.”
Oh, well … crappity, crap, crap, crap. If I didn’t have bad luck I would have no luck at all today. “What do you mean?”
“She means she stabbed me to death and left me to rot,” Nathaniel hissed. “Ask her about it. I want to hear what she says. I want to know why.”
“Shut up,” I hissed, causing Chloe to jerk her head in my direction.
“Who are you talking to?”
“I’m talking to you,” I replied without missing a beat.
“Were you telling me to shut up?” Chloe challenged.
“Of course not. I … .” I scanned her hands. She didn’t look armed. That didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. Given Nathaniel’s rage, I knew he was dangerous. This whole situation was starting to get ugly. “Chloe, I think that maybe you and I should head back to town. You look a little … hyped up.”
“Hyped up?” Chloe snorted. “Haven’t you heard? I’m an addict. My mother is going to send me to a lockdown facility. Do you know what that means?”
“It means she’s going to have to go cold turkey,” Nathaniel sneered. “She deserves it. She’s a … whore!”
His vehemence took me by surprise. Sure, it was looking more and more likely that Chloe killed her brother, but his outright hatred for his own flesh and blood was surprising.
“It means you probably have some tough days ahead of you,” I answered, flexing my fingers. “Once you dry out, though, you’ll feel like a new person.” I hoped that new person wasn’t still homicidal. What? Sometimes I’m an optimist.
“I don’t want to dry out,” Chloe seethed. “I don’t want the edge off. If the edge is off, then I’ll have to remember … .”
Oh, here it comes.
Nathaniel leaned forward, intent on his sister. “Admit what you did to me, you bitch! Tell her how you murdered me and then tossed me in the creek like I was garbage.” He was screaming. I had to get control of this situation.
“Why did you kill Nathaniel, Chloe?” I decided to put all of my cards on the table – while keeping a safe distance from Chloe’s human hands and Nathaniel’s ethereal ones. They both could do damage.
Chloe’s face turned from miserable to shocked. She opened her mouth, working it, although no sound came out. Finally, she collected herself enough to address me. “How did you know?”
“I … .” What was I supposed to tell her? “Nathaniel told me … and you kind of just told me now, too.” There was no sense in lying. If she melted down, it would give me a chance to put distance between us. If she didn’t believe me, it might be a good thing, because people fear the insane. If she did believe me, though, I might actually be able to get somewhere.
“Nathaniel told you? How?”
“What have you heard about my family, Chloe?” I asked. “The first day I ran into you on the street in front of your house, you mentioned that we were witches. You said you didn’t believe it, that you thought it was all an act to fit in with Hemlock Cove’s rebranding. What if I told you that all of it is true?”
“I would say you were crazy!”
“That would be your right,” I said. “I’m not crazy, though, and I have been talking with your brother.”
Chloe considered the statement, taking time to scan the area around me. “Is he here now?”
Well, that was interesting. Would she believe me after all? “He is.”
“And he told you I killed him?”
“He did,” I said. “Although, to be fair, he refused to tell me for days, and only now told me when you approached. I had no idea who I would find behind me.”
“What did he say?” Chloe asked, her voice low.
“He said that … he understands and he forgives you,” I lied, taking a chance.
“Don’t tell her that,” Nathaniel screamed, lashing out with his rage and shoving me. The force wasn’t hard enough to topple me, but it did cause me to wobble before regaining my footing. “Tell her the truth!”
“Was that Nathaniel?” Chloe asked, her eyes widening to almost comical proportions. “Did he … do something to you?”
“He has some issues,” I gritted out, rubbing my arm in the spot where Nathaniel made contact. The skin was cold. That was interesting. His rage was hot, but his ghostly anchors kept him cool to the touch. I had no idea what that meant. I was in uncharted territory here, and I didn’t like the feeling.
“Is he the one who threw me in the water?” Chloe asked, realization dawning. “He is, isn’t he?”
“Of course he feels that way,” Chloe spat, her expression unreadable as her eyes darted from one spot to another. She was desperate for a glimpse of Nathaniel. I realized she wanted to believe I was telling the truth, yet she was still doubtful. I had to prove myself to her. “He always thought he was destined for big things … even though he never wanted to work. He thought big things would just somehow magically happen to him.”
“You take that back,” Nathaniel raged.
“Nathaniel, you need to calm down before you do something that you’ll regret,” I warned, fixating on the enraged young man.
“How will I regret anything?” Nathaniel scoffed. “I’m dead.”
“You still haven’t moved on,” I reminded him. “I told you there was a better place out there for you to go to. There’s also a worse place. If you do something horrible now, you’ll go there.”
“Send him to the bad place,” Chloe ordered, narrowing her eyes. “He has it coming.”
These two were quite the pair. Chloe was a killer who showed no remorse, and Nathaniel was a murder victim with absolutely no redeeming qualities. I had no idea how to approach either of them. “I’m not in control of sending him anywhere,” I said. “He has to choose to let go.”
“Why won’t he let go?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Most murder victims who remain behind do so until their killer is caught,” I offered. “Some have other reasons … like seeing their family one last time or ensuring the safety of someone they love. Nathaniel doesn’t like you, but he seems more upset that I ruined Hollow Creek’s booming pot business.”
“That’s so typical,” Chloe said. “All he’s ever cared about is money and himself. He didn’t care who he hurt in the process. He’s a … jackass.”
That was putting it mildly. “Let’s start from the beginning, Chloe,” I said, keeping my voice soothing and calm. “Tell me what happened the night Nathaniel died.”
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