Deeper Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 2)

by Vickie McKeehan

  On her third trip back to the closet, she eyed a couple of boxes stored on one side of the shelf and plied back the lids. One contained more magazines. Another held an assortment of men’s tennis shoes. She shook her head. Going through these would take a while. She didn’t have that kind of time to waste. She decided to move these into the catch-all bedroom. After making a couple of trips back and forth, she stood just inside the walk-in closet appreciating the space she’d created. But there still wasn’t enough room for Dylan’s stuff. She turned her attention to the other side of the walk-in closet.

  It was then she noticed some clothing hanging in the back that looked out of place. There were women’s dresses hanging at the end of the rack.

  Curious, Baylee stepped further along the rod holding hangars to get a better look. Instinctively, she started going through each piece of clothing, one by one, pulling back each dress, each blouse, each sweater, giving them the once-over. As she studied the outfits, she decided they were from at least two decades earlier, probably the 80’s.

  When she plied back a section of dresses, she suddenly spotted what looked like a crease in the wood hidden behind all of the clothes. To take a closer look, she had to remove several outfits from the rod. Creating a sizeable gap, she took a step toward the crevice in the wall.

  Feeling along the seam, she realized it was a recessed panel that was supposed to slide. She tried moving it to the left then the right. It was rough going at first. The track seemed to have rusted from lack of use. When she finally managed to work the piece of wood all the way open, she saw what looked like an old, dusty, leather-bound book propped up at an angle. Tentatively, she picked it up, swiping off cobwebs and dust with her hand. She felt the gold embossed words on the cover that read simply, My Diary.

  In the warmth of the small space, chills ran down her arms.

  Feeling a little like an intruder who’d just stumbled on someone else’s hidden, forbidden treasure, she took her find over to the bed and dropped down on the bare mattress to get comfortable. With a sense of dread, she sucked in a breath and slowly opened the book to the first page.

  She realized the book belonged to her mother.

  The first entry was dated the day she’d married William Scott.

  Curious, Baylee flipped through more of the pages, skimming each daily entry. At first, her early writings covered the mundane, ordinary reflections of a young woman in love. Then she realized some of the statements referred to the seventeen-year-old girl’s obvious smitten state with a much older man. It seems Sarah Moreland had been infatuated with William Scott from the minute she had walked on to that first movie set years earlier. The entries revealed that the teenager had obviously fallen in love with him long before they’d actually gotten together.

  Reading her mother’s heartfelt words, Baylee discovered William had taken Sarah’s virginity on her eighteenth birthday, three years before they’d tied the knot at the altar.

  Some of the paragraphs painted the picture of a naive, young woman who had poured everything she had into building the relationship with him from the beginning, even when it meant trying to please his every whim in bed. A little disgusted with some of the detailed descriptions, Baylee read on about how frustrated Sarah had grown at what he insisted she do. Who knew her father had been into bondage?

  As she read more, she discovered the marriage had been in trouble almost from the start, especially since William’s proclivity for kinky sex became more of a demand. According to Sarah’s own words, a mere two months into the marriage, she had suspected William was seeing someone else.

  That confirmed what her aunt, Karen Nash, had said about her father’s wandering eye. It seems William’s infidelity hadn’t fooled his naive wife for a minute despite her young age.

  As Baylee flipped through more pages, she learned her mother had eventually come to the conclusion that there was one woman in particular, an actress, that William couldn’t seem to stay away from, even during the course of his wife’s pregnancy, which apparently had happened by accident, certainly had not been planned, a mere month after their marriage.

  According to the entries, William had not been thrilled to discover he’d soon be a father. In fact, Baylee read in no uncertain terms how unhappy he’d been about the prospect. At one point, according to Sarah, he had demanded she end the pregnancy.

  A disillusioned Baylee sat there on the bed, feeling her mother’s pain. As she read the words, tears welled up in her eyes. As young as Sarah had been, she had stuck to her principles and had refused to give in to William’s wishes.

  As a woman, not to mention Sarah’s daughter, Baylee felt particularly outraged at her father’s callousness and infidelity. His betrayal during his wife’s pregnancy had to have been especially hurtful, since more than likely Sarah had been at her most vulnerable.

  As Baylee continued to read further, the journal left no doubt the cheating had never stopped. Instead, there were nights when William hadn’t come home at all.

  Totally absorbed in the story, Baylee thumbed forward through the book, looking for a name. Surely, Sarah had discovered the name of the woman that had played such an integral part in ruining her marriage. When one name finally jumped off the page, stunned, Baylee flew off the bed. She tore down the hallway so fast she turned over several cartons of old books, spilling the contents all over the hardwood floor. She didn’t even stop to pick up the mess but rather took the stairs two at a time, looking to share what she’d found with everyone else.

  “According to what my mother wrote, the entire time they were married he was caught up in this affair with Alana. There wasn’t one day that he actually spent trying to make his marriage work. He was playing around from the start,” Baylee railed, as she paced back and forth in front of the stone fireplace in the living room.

  “Your father and Alana were involved,” Dylan stated again, incredulously. “I thought they hated each other. You said there were times when he tried to keep you and Kit apart because they had some kind of private war going on between them and you two kids were caught in the middle,” Dylan pointed out, genuinely perplexed.

  “The war obviously came later. Like you said, they must have had a falling out at some point. According to her journal, the two of them were hot and heavy during the entire course of the marriage. Read some of her entries; read how many times he saw Alana over the course of three years. Some nights the man didn’t even bother coming home. It’s disgusting, he’s disgusting. He even spent time with Alana when my mother was pregnant. It’s obvious to me he never even made an effort to make the marriage work. And when he found out she was pregnant, he badgered her to end it. Poor Sarah.”

  “But why would she leave her journal behind?” Dylan wanted to know. “That makes no sense. And why leave it hidden here instead of the house in Beverly Hills?”

  “Maybe by the time she made the last trip to Catalina, spending any time in this house, she probably thought, ‘Okay, it’s over for good. There’s no need to bring my diary along because it reminds me of the lousy, cheating bastard I’m married to.’” Kit shot a compassionate look at Baylee. “Sorry.”

  “Why? That’s exactly what he was, a lousy, cheating bastard and with Alana of all women. I feel sorry for my mother. All these years I blamed her for walking out, for leaving him, for leaving me. Now, I know why. Could you just imagine how that made her feel knowing she never really had his attention, not even from day one? That he was never really committed to the marriage. No wonder she turned to someone else.”

  But Dylan wasn’t convinced. He thumbed through the journal. “So far, I haven’t found any mention of Luc Delaine at all.”

  “This book only covers the first year of marriage.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense. Are you sure this was the only book inside that hidey hole?”

  Baylee looked bewildered for about two seconds before she took off like a shot out of the room and raced back upstairs. By the time she reached the master bedr
oom, Dylan was hot on her heels.

  “I didn’t even consider there might be more, didn’t even look,” she admitted to Dylan as she stumbled around in the closet, stepping over some of the clothes now strewn all over the floor before falling to her knees and reaching into Sarah’s cubby-hole, hiding place.

  She took a deep breath. Sure enough, there in the back were two more leather-bound books, one covering the second year of marriage, the other, the third.

  As Dylan thumbed through the books, he commented, “I’ll say one thing for your mother, she was meticulous in detail.”

  “She was. She obviously poured her heart and soul out in these.”

  “Where do you suppose the last one is? By my calculation, she kept these starting the first of every year she was with William. She was five months into another year when she went missing.”

  Baylee gaped at him. She hadn’t even thought of that. “Good question. I guess I’ll need to turn Dad’s house upside down to find out.”

  “Maybe it’s somewhere in this house.”

  She kissed him on the mouth. “Dylan, you think of everything. I guess we start here and tear this house upside down first.”

  But after several hours of clearing out closets, tearing through drawers, rearranging book shelves, none of them discovered the final journal belonging to Sarah Moreland.

  Although they didn’t locate the last diary, it was clear in the ones they had read that Sarah cared for Luc Delaine. Time and again, she had declared her love for him, but never as a lover.

  Because it seems Luc had hoarded a secret.

  Luc Delaine, the tennis player ranked number four in the world, had been gay.

  CHAPTER 19

  “So if Luc was gay, that pretty much puts William’s story in the fictional category,” Dylan said as he flipped a burger on the outside grill while Baylee whirled together frozen margaritas a few steps inside the patio door of the kitchen.

  “Maybe she ran off with him in spite of that just to get away from William? Maybe it was her only opportunity to escape,” Baylee offered the minute the noise from the blender ceased.

  Dylan sent her a dubious look. After believing a lie which her father had propagated for twenty-two years, what did he expect? He’d known she might be resistant to the truth, but he didn’t think she’d continue to hang on to her father’s phony story when faced with hard facts.

  As soon as Baylee appeared outside with the pitcher, Kit got up to pour the mixture into goblets. She handed one off to Jake as he sat at the outdoor table, holding the baby on his lap.

  “I’ve got a ton of questions about William’s story too,” Kit said, eyeing Baylee the same way Dylan had. “But first, how did William and Alana come to despise each other? Because they did.”

  Dylan flipped another burger and pointed out, “Not only that, but how did the man come to purchase a home five houses down from her then switch gears and decide she was off-limits to his daughter? Sometimes going off the deep end so much about it, he’d forbid that child from stepping foot inside Alana’s house.”

  Maybe now was his chance to get Baylee to see how William’s story didn’t add up. “I just don’t buy the fact that Sarah’s married to the guy for three years, puts up with his cheating ways and then one night she decides to pack up and leave her daughter behind with him. Plus, she leaves those journals behind, especially when she makes it clear in between those pages that the only reason she didn’t divorce his ass in the first place was because of you, Baylee. She’s trying hard to make the marriage work in spite of William’s infidelity because of you. She’s doing everything she can, putting everything into the marriage.”

  And there was one point Dylan could not get past. “I just want to say that every time I’ve been around your father, he’s acted like he’s carrying around a lot of guilt—about something.” Dylan shrugged before adding, “Just a personal observation by an outsider looking in at the situation with a new perspective. This ongoing affair he had with Alana might be it.” But he didn’t think so. “Or, it could be something more sinister.”

  A couple of feet away, Kit stopped in her tracks and stared at him at the grill.

  The image came quickly, like a blur across her vision. It made her dizzy. Everything and everyone around her ceased to exist as she focused on the scene as it played out and she was sent back in time to that night inside William’s house, watching in slow motion as it happened.

  While the others continued to chat, Kit had taken a side trip to the night Sarah went missing.

  Baylee went into detail about how Dylan thought William had done something to Sarah until she glanced over at Kit and noticed she’d turned pale as a ghost. Kit had a pained expression on her face. Baylee turned to look at Jake, who was also staring at Kit, watching her every move.

  Baylee saw Kit abruptly drop into one of the lawn chairs, white as chalk.

  “What’s wrong, Kit?”

  Kit drew in a deep breath as the images remained constant, like a movie on DVD, as she watched two women, the woman who’d raised her, and the woman’s best friend, Jessica, standing together at the top of a staircase, arguing with a petite blonde woman.

  Having seen pictures of Baylee’s mother, Kit winced as the event became sharper, clearer, as if someone fine-tuned the picture.

  Kit swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “That night Sarah demanded Alana and Jessica leave the house. She wanted them out. They hadn’t been invited. Apparently, Alana had used a key she had to William’s house. That’s how she slipped in that night, she and Jessica. Alana strolled right in, bold as brass. Wait. Alana had sold William his house and had copied the key, kept it without William’s knowledge. The key allowed the two of them to simply walk in the front door that night and right up the stairs, where they confronted Sarah on the landing just after she’d put Baylee to bed. Hmm, that’s exactly the way they entered the Parkers’ home the night they killed the old couple.”

  Even though Dylan stood at the grill, he turned to meet Baylee’s eyes before he stared over at Kit in disbelief. The three of them eyed Kit as if horns had suddenly sprouted from both sides of her head right before their very eyes. But Kit didn’t even notice. She steamed right on.

  “That’s it. That’s exactly right. Dylan is correct; something sinister happened.” From the lawn chair, Kit glanced up at Dylan. “You’ve hit the mother lode. Only it wasn’t William.”

  Kit picked up Baylee’s hand and gripped it so hard, it hurt. “Your childhood dream is fairly accurate. You did see Alana and Jessica. Both of them were there that night, both of them fought with Sarah. Sarah didn’t stand a chance against both of them. They towered over her, over-powered her.”

  “You remember my dream from therapy? How? Even I don’t remember all of it.”

  “I do. But I’m not projecting what I heard in group. I’m sure of it. Of course, I remember your discussing what happened in the dream with Strasberg. And you know why? Because there were so many times I saw both of those women do such despicable things it branded me for life. Things that for the longest time I couldn’t put together, didn’t understand fully what was happening. We were just kids, Baylee, trying to survive our own personal anguish. How could we know the adults around us were such evil people? But I obviously didn’t let go of the images, couldn’t for some reason get them completely out of my head.”

  Kit sat up straighter. “But what you remember wasn’t a dream. It happened. It was real.”

  “Intuition again, Kit?” Jake asked in wonder.

  “It’s something. I’m just not sure what. But we should confront your father with the journals; find out the truth once and for all, the sooner, the better.”

  “Do you think he even knows about what they did?”

  Kit’s brows drew together in concentration. After some time, she concluded, “Oh, he knows.” And wasn’t that a kick in the pants, she thought. But then she took in the stricken look on Baylee’s face. “Dylan’s correct that William’s
carrying around a ton of guilt. It’s eating him up inside. I’m sorry, Baylee.”

  “Don’t be. Somehow it doesn’t surprise me,” Baylee said solemnly. “What else did you see?”

  Kit described the entire scene, reiterated her idea. What little three-year-old Baylee had witnessed that night was Alana fighting with her mother, and then Jessica Boyd had stepped in to finish the job by pushing Sarah down the stairs. When she finished, Kit recognized their skeptic looks.

  “I’m telling you it wasn’t a dream. What Baylee saw was the real deal,” Kit insisted.

  “Baylee’s been having this dream as long as she can remember,” Dylan pointed out, as he plated the burgers. “That has to be significant in the bigger picture.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Jake asked Kit, wanting to believe what she saw as fact.

  “The same way I knew the dream about the Parkers was significant, as if it had already happened exactly the way I saw it.”

  “But that was your dream,” Baylee pointed out. “How can you possibly see what my dream is like? And it’s been years since I’ve spoken about it in group.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. All I know is what I see coupled with what I remember from group. I remember it freaked me out just as much then as it does now that the women you saw looked like Alana and Jessica. I believed it back then, Baylee. But who would have believed either one of us, even if we’d pursued it? I might not have said anything at the time, probably didn’t, as a matter of fact, but just because I stayed quiet doesn’t mean I forgot how you described what happened, how terrifying it was for you.

  “But don’t you see I saw the sequence of events as they killed the Parkers in my head, I saw them in gritty detail, just like now; I see grainy images, but I recognize Alana and Jessica. And they’re fighting, arguing with a woman with blonde hair, who was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt at the time. They were yelling at each other. And then all of a sudden Alana moved in, hauled off, and slapped her. Jessica swoops in like she’s coming to Alana’s rescue, gets into the middle—and wham—she pushed Sarah, the much more petite woman, down the stairs.”