Perhaps her stunned expression had an effect on Ben, who asked, “Can a camera be hacked?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But I just don’t get it. I didn’t see anything like that, and I never would have taken pictures of it if I had.” She shook her head and handed the camera back to Ben, as if she couldn’t bear to touch it.
But studied the camera and scrolled through the shots, then stared at her, frowning. “What did you do that for?”
“Do what?”
“Erase them all.”
“I didn’t erase anything!”
“Well they’re gone. I admit your elk is fantastic, but why on earth would you fake pictures of corpses on my property?” Ben said.
She stared at him, angry now, and totally confused. How could those vile shots have disappeared and the elk have reappeared in their place? “Really, Ben? You think I could do something like that? Because I didn’t take those pictures, and I didn’t erase them, either. I don’t know how they got there, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m sorry, Scarlet. But they were there, and it was a real shock to see them.”
He stared at her, puzzled, but she thought he believed her.
“We should just take your camera in to Marty Decker. He runs a great camera shop in town. I’m sure he can figure out what’s going on. You know, even if it’s just a camera, I think anything and everything can be hacked these days. I wouldn’t even have a computer if we didn’t need the damned thing for the business. Leave it with me. I’ll get it to him, and I’ll make sure he saves your pictures of the elk. They’re really beautiful.”
“Thanks, Ben,” she told him. “I use computers and cameras all the time while I’m working, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Ben shrugged, then asked, “You going to join us for dinner?”
She was still offended that he could even think she would do something like that, but on the other hand, she couldn’t really blame him. She forced a smile. “No, I’ve got some paperwork to finish, but thank you for the invitation. You’re sure you don’t mind taking the camera to your friend?”
“Not at all.”
“Okay, thanks.” She gave him a little wave and walked away. Terry Ballantree and the Bartons crossed her path, so she paused to say hello, even though she longed to get away and try to sort out what had happened.
“Scarlet, thanks so much for the tour yesterday,” Terry said. “Any way I can get another look before dinner? I’d love another look at some of those old photos.”
“We loved it, too,” Gwen said..
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves,” Scarlet said. “Ben is kind of strict about the museum. It’s only open Thursday to Sunday, and this is Monday, but if you’re all here for a few more days, I’ll ask him if I can take you back through for a private tour tomorrow or Wednesday.”
“Thanks,” Terry said.
“That would be great,” Gwen said. She and Charles were both in their twenties, and they almost looked like children playing at marriage, but Scarlet had found them both to be open and friendly. Charles had been a football player at Ole Miss, and Gwen had been a cheerleader. Now he had just started his own law practice. Gwen was blond and blue-eyed, a perfect contrast to his tall, dark and handsome.
Terry was a nice guy, too, though his never-ending enthusiasm was a bit exhausting. He was good-looking, with sandy brown hair and large hazel eyes, a generous mouth and a perfect nose. While he was only medium height, he was in good shape.
But with her nerves completely frayed right now, she just wasn’t up to dealing with any of them.
“I’ll talk to Ben and let you know,” Scarlet said, then quickly made her escape. “See you all later,” she called over her shoulder.
The old storage barn had been given windows sometime at the end of the Victorian era, and though plain shades were drawn over the museum windows, those upstairs boasted pretty drapes.
Scarlet unlocked the door and stepped inside. The security lights, added to the last of the daylight seeping in, created an eerie glow, but it didn’t bother her in the least. She was in love with the place. Many of the displays were the originals, over a hundred years old, as were the placards they held, written in cursive by a gentle hand almost a hundred and fifty years ago.
There were life-sized figures on pedestals arranged throughout the room, ranging from Ute chiefs in full battle regalia to Yankee and Rebel soldiers, fur trappers, gunslingers and frontier women, along with excellent re-creations of real people like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. There were twenty-two of them altogether, the oldest nearly as old as the ranch itself. Her favorite was a Ute woman holding a child and looking skyward. There was something so beautiful in her expression that Scarlet was certain she had been modeled from life by an artist who adored her.
The stairs to her apartment were to the far left. A sign hanging from a velvet rope advised No Admittance. She unhooked the rope and walked upstairs.
The whole second floor was hers. She had a kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom and even a guest room. It wasn’t fancy, but to be honest, she preferred it to the main house, which had been fully renovated to offer the rustic, frontier look guests expected.
In the main house, the parlor was spacious, and boasted Victorian furniture, period portraits and paintings, and a number of mounted animal heads, all of them at least a hundred years’ old. The dining room offered more massive heads, including a giant moose head that stared down at the large central table, which seated twelve.
The animal heads actually made Scarlet a little sad, but Trisha had told her that they were part of the tradition of the West and the guests expected them. Even so, Scarlet had never quite gotten used to them, and she had actually declined several meals at the main house because she felt so uncomfortable eating with the dead moose looking down at her.
Her place, however, was, in her opinion, just as nice as the main house, not to mention it was her own.
And neither her apartment nor the museum had trophy heads anywhere on the walls.
The apartment had been recently remodeled and refurbished. The master bedroom held two antique dressers, a washstand with a pitcher and bowl and an antique bed frame that held a very modern and comfortable queen-sized mattress.
Scarlet loved her job here and was enjoying the emphasis on the Civil War, Reconstruction and westward expansion. It was so different from her work in Florida, which had focused on the Seminole Wars.
She walked into the kitchen and decided to brew tea while debating whether to go into town for dinner. She hadn’t actually left the property in a few days, so getting out and about was probably a good thing to do. She could become reclusive all too easily, she knew.
She was mulling over the strange pictures on the camera and pouring hot water over a tea bag when she heard a thump.
It was a loud thump. Loud enough to make her nearly spill scalding water over her hand.
She quickly set down the kettle and frowned. The sound had come from downstairs, where there shouldn’t have been anyone. She was certain she’d locked the door behind her.
Unease filled her. There wasn’t even a door between her and the downstairs, something she’d never thought about before.
She dug in her pocket quickly for her cell phone. After the camera incident, she didn’t want to sound like a paranoid idiot, but she didn’t want to take any chances, either.
She dialed the main house. “Hey,” she said when Ben picked up, “I’m just checking. Is anyone supposed to be downstairs in the museum? I just heard…something down there.”
“Not to worry, I’ll be right there,” he told her.
“I hate to bother you.”
“It’s a bother of about thirty steps. I’ll see you in two minutes.”
As soon as Scarlet heard B
en’s key in the door she ran down the steps to meet him.
He hit the switch that turned on all the overhead lights. “Let’s see what’s up, okay?” he asked.
“Thanks. I didn’t know—I thought maybe someone was supposed to be in here.”
He shook his head. “You, Trisha and I have keys. No one else. So what did you hear?”
“A thump.”
“A thump. Hmm. Well, let’s look around.”
The museum consisted of a single large room, with the platform holding Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir right in the middle.
They began to walk from one end to the other and found one of the frontiersmen on the floor.
“I’ll be darned. My great-great-whatever fell down,” Ben said.
“Poor Nathan Kendall,” Scarlet murmured. The mannequin was a handsome one; Nathan’s father-in-law had commissioned it—along with one of his daughter, which had disappeared at some time over the years—because he’d wanted them for his grandchild. Scarlet had never been sure whether she’d thought that was nice or creepy.
He grinned and hunkered down by the fallen figure. “I guess he wants to be sure we remember him. Well, we should. We’re both his descendants, after all. Give me a hand, will you?”
Scarlet helped him lift the mannequin. It was heavy, which made sense, since it had been carved from solid wood, then painted with care and dressed in period clothing. She assessed the handsome features for damage, thinking the nose might have been broken in the fall, but it was unharmed.
“Why would a statue just fall over?” she ventured.
“Who knows? So much mining went on around here, the earth is always adjusting. You okay?”
“Of course. The noise just startled me, that’s all.”
“I should probably install a security system out here. I never really thought that much about it. Locks on the doors. I didn’t even buy a gun and learn how to shoot until a few months ago. They frown on stockbrokers packing heat on the streets of New York.”
“I know how to shoot,” Scarlet said quietly. “But I don’t own a gun.”
“That’s right, I forgot. Your ex-husband was a cop.”
“Agent,” Scarlet said. “Federal agent.”
“I remember meeting him in New York one time, before you took that job in Florida. He seemed like a nice guy. But…none of my business. His loss is our gain, I say.”
“He is a nice guy,” Scarlet said. “Sometimes things just don’t work. Anyway, yes, he taught me how to use a gun.”
“Well, there you go—you’ve got a room full of guns right here,” Ben said. “Of course, half of these are older than the war between the States.”
“But most of them are in good working order,” she said. “Anyway, I’m fine. I think I’m going to head into town, but I’ll make sure I lock up when I go and when I get back.”
“`Night, then,” he said and left, locking the door carefully behind him.
Scarlet looked at the handsome face of Nathan Kendall. He and his wife had both been killed soon after he’d built the place, though their infant son had been spared. No one had ever been brought to justice for the murders. Some believed that the marauders he’d once ridden with had murdered them for revenge. Others said that Nathan’s father-in-law—a United States marshal who had taken over the ranch and raised the child, and who had opposed the marriage—had been responsible. Scarlet hated to think that a father might have killed his own daughter, but she knew that such things still happened to this day.
Back then, there had been no way to find the killer or killers. Forensic science had barely existed, and this little plateau had been truly isolated. Estes Park had been a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and The Stanley had yet to rise on the mountaintop across the way.
“You behave,” she told the statue, wagging a finger at it. “I’ve been here two months and you’ve been good so far. Keep it up. I’m going out, and I don’t want to find that you’ve messed up the place when I get back, okay?”
She ran upstairs, and grabbed a sweatshirt and her shoulder bag, then went back down
She looked around the museum before leaving. Everything was quiet, just as it should have been.
But she was still spooked by the fallen mannequin.
Maybe it bugged her so much because it had come right after she’d seen those horrible pictures on her camera. Could a camera be hacked? She simply didn’t know.
She did know that she hadn’t taken those pictures.
If Diego only was here, maybe she wouldn’t feel so uneasy.
But Diego wasn’t with her. She had made that choice, and now…
She regretted it every day.
But this was her life now. And she loved Estes Park and the museum and the Conway Ranch. Okay, a mannequin had fallen over. No biggie. Maybe someone had bumped into it the other day and it had been unsteady ever since, so her walking around upstairs was all it had taken to tip it over.
And the pictures…
Ben had undoubtedly been right. She’d been hacked or tricked or played for a fool, somehow. She had just bought it on impulse at the electronics shop at the Miami airport, so some jerk there had probably fooled with it.
But how would anyone at the airport have known that she would be staying in the mountains, much less right here at this very ranch? She was certain she hadn’t said anything.
She let out a groan of self-disgust.
Getting shaky over this was ridiculous.
Scarlet stepped outside and started to close the door, but she paused and looked back, then said, “You all behave in here, do you understand me? I’m your best friend, preserving your history for posterity, so you need to listen to me, okay?”
Naturally, the mannequins did not reply.
She closed and locked the door and headed for her car, determined to think only about which restaurant to choose in town.
ISBN-13: 9781460382271
The Forgotten
Copyright © 2015 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Can the same killer strike again—a hundred and fifty years later?
Estes Park, Colorado, is a place of serenity. But it wasn’t always so serene. Shortly after the Civil War, Nathan Kendall and his wife were murdered there, leaving behind a young son. The crime was never solved.
Now…historian Scarlet Barlow is working at a small museum attached to a B and B, the same building where that murder occurred. She recently came to Colorado, reeling after her divorce from FBI agent Diego McCullough. Diego—who’s just been asked to join the Krewe of Hunters, a unit dealing with “unusual” situations…
When Scarlet unwittingly takes pictures of people who’ve been murdered—just like the Kendalls a hundred
and fifty years before—the police look at her with suspicion. Then the museum’s statues of historic people, including Nathan Kendall, begin to talk to her, and she knows it’s time to call her ex-husband. Diego heads to Estes Park, determined to solve the bizarre case that threatens Scarlet’s life—and to reunite with the woman he never stopped loving.
Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham
“Once again, Heather Graham has outdone herself. The Betrayed took me on a fantastic trip to Sleepy Hollow and I’d travel with Graham anywhere… This chilling novel has everything: suspense, romance, intrigue and an ending that takes your breath away.”
—Suspense Magazine
“The Hexed will take you through an intriguing maze with the right amount of twists and turns to keep you off balance to the surprising ending.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life, using exceptionally vivid details to add depth to all the people and places.”
—RT Book Reviews on Waking the Dead, *Top Pick*
“Murder, intrigue…a fast-paced read. You may never know in advance what harrowing situations Graham will place her characters in, but…rest assured that the end result will be satisfying.”
—Suspense Magazine on Let the Dead Sleep
“Graham deftly weaves elements of mystery, the paranormal and romance into a tight plot that will keep the reader guessing at the true nature of the killer’s evil.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Unseen
“I’ve long admired Heather Graham’s storytelling ability and this book hit the mark. I couldn’t put The Unholy down.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Suspenseful and dark.… The transitions between past and present flow seamlessly, and the main characters are interesting and their connection to one another is believable.”
Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 5 Page 59