Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 5

by Heather Graham

  Diego smiled. “Well, Terry, they did in fact find the key in your room.”

  Terry exhaled in surrender. “Okay, I admit it. I did it. I moved the statue up the stairs and into Scarlet’s bedroom. But, that’s it! It was a joke, just a joke. I kind of had a thing for her, and I figured she’d freak out and maybe come to me for protection or something. But she didn’t. And then you guys showed up and I realized it was pointless anyway, she was never going to look at me twice. But I didn’t murder anyone. I was in town when the Parkers were killed, too, so I couldn’t have done it.”

  “You will come down to the station, and we will talk further,” Lieutenant Gray said quietly.

  “But it was just a joke. I didn’t mean any harm,” Terry said, his voice high with fear and his face ashen.

  “And I guess you didn’t mean any harm tonight, either, right?” Linda demanded. “You might have killed all of us!”

  “I had nothing to do with tonight. I swear it,” Terry said. “For God’s sake, I’m the only one who got hurt.” He turned back to Diego and Gray. “And you don’t understand. That key can’t be in my room. It’s impossible. I threw it in a stream. I’m not stupid. I got rid of the damned thing immediately. So if you found a key in my room, I’m telling you now, it’s not the key I had made.”

  “Listen,” Clark Levin said. “You’ve got your man, so for the love of everything holy, can the rest of us go?”

  “Oh, good God!” Linda suddenly announced. “Trust me, Terry didn’t kill the Parkers.”

  “And how do you know that?” Brett asked her.

  “Because he was my date that night,” Linda said, shaking her head.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that earlier?” Diego asked her.

  Linda shrugged and glanced at Ben. “There’s an unspoken rule here that we don’t date guests. I was afraid of losing my job.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re wasting time with any of this,” Gigi complained. “This is Ben’s house. Obviously he’s the one who booby-trapped the moose.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not obvious,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “Why not?” Clark demanded, gruff as a bulldog, ready to defend his wife.

  “Because we base our conclusions on evidence, not supposition. The forensic team and the techs back at the station will be able to tell us more about things like the way the trigger mechanism was set, and when. That information will help us home in on a suspect.”

  “But this is Ben’s house,” Gwen said. “I don’t go into other people’s houses and start excavating behind their walls.”

  “Most people don’t,” Diego agreed. “But most people don’t commit murder, either.”

  Diego could see that they weren’t getting anywhere. Accusations were flying. Lieutenant Gray arrested Terry Ballantree for stealing the key and breaking into the museum, but that wouldn’t get them any closer to finding their killer.

  For the moment, he had to pin his hopes on forensics. With luck he would get something useful from that scrap of the burlap, as well as from tonight’s search of the house and grounds. Additionally, with Gray’s help in the manpower department, they had the ability to follow everyone here. Earlier they’d wanted to bring them all together to see how they reacted at the séance, now they needed to see who would do what once they were apart.

  “With the exception of Mr. Ballantree, none of you is under arrest or even being held. Mr. and Mrs. Barton, Mr. and Mrs. Levin, you are free to check out and find another hotel, but I must ask you not to leave the immediate area. Terry, suggest you do the same once—or if—Lieutenant Gray releases you,” Diego said.

  “Instead of a hotel, you might want to check into the hospital for that arm, don’t you think?” Gwen said derisively.

  “All of you, out,” Diego said, thoroughly sick of every single one of them by that point.

  “We’ll be escorting you into town to ensure you find room at a hotel of your choice,” Jane said.

  “Well, I, for one, am happy to be leaving this place,” Clark said, rising and reaching a hand down to his wife.

  “I’ll escort you,” Brett told them.

  “Just remember,” Lieutenant Gray said, “don’t leave the area and be sure we have your contact information in case we need to get in touch with you.”

  “Our lives will be at your convenience,” Gigi said, not even bothering to hide her contempt. “Clark, let’s go.”

  “What about us?” Gwen asked. “Who’ll go with us?”

  “I will,” Jane said.

  “Great, we get séance lady,” Charles muttered.

  “I’m sure Lieutenant Gray has a uniformed officer who can assist you instead,” Jane said.

  Diego lowered his head to hide his smile. Jane was a master of holding her cool no matter what. All that mattered to her was getting the job done. He was going to like being part of the Krewe.

  “I’d like to come back as soon as the police let me go. You’re not going to close the place, are you, Ben?” Terry asked.

  Ben just shook his head, looking shell-shocked. “Who knows what will happen?”

  For a long moment everyone in the room just stood there silently.

  “Freedom. We’re out of here,” Clark said, turning to Brett. “We’ll be packed in ten minutes.”

  Terry and the Bartons followed quickly on the Levins’ heels. Adam excused himself at that point, too, saying he wanted to do the paperwork on that night before the details started to fade.

  “What now?” Trisha asked, looking at Diego.

  “We’ll see what the forensic crews turn up,” he said. “The killer will make a mistake somewhere.”

  Scarlet walked over to him. “I know you have work to do here, but I should get back. Lara is still at the museum—alone,” she said softly.

  Brett heard her and walked over. “Lara is fine. Meg and Matt drove up just as I was running over here earlier, so they went up to hang out with her.”

  Scarlet smiled. “Still, I’d like to get back home.”

  “And there isn’t much reason for me to be sitting here anymore,” Angus said, evidently listening in. “Horses are much safer—and most of the time much nicer—than people.”

  “I’ll walk Scarlet and Angus back to where they need to be, and then head back here to help Clark and Gigi find a hotel,” Brett said.

  Diego looked at Scarlet. She seemed surprisingly fine, considering she’d nearly been skewered earlier, but he could see the question in her eyes.

  What happens now?

  “I won’t be long,” he told her. “We’ll get the guests out and situated, and I’ll be back.”

  After she left with Brett and Angus. Lieutenant Gray came over to him and said, “I’ll have men watching their movements. You can leave that to me.”

  “Thank you,” Diego said. “Whatever the killer is after, he hasn’t found it yet. Someone will be on the move.”

  Gray nodded in agreement.

  Ben rose on shaky legs. “What do we do?” he asked. “I’m starting to wonder—should I leave, too? Burn the place to the ground?”

  “For tonight, go to sleep,” Diego told him.

  “But will we be safe?” Ben asked.

  “Meg, Matt, Jane and Adam will all be here,” Diego said.

  “Safer than leaving, then,” Ben agreed. He looked up the stairs, where the last of his guests were gathering their things to leave. He shivered suddenly. “Much safer than leaving.”

  * * *

  “Are you really okay?” Brett asked Scarlet.

  They’d seen Angus safely to the stables. He’d assured them that he would be fine; he had his shotgun, and he was damned good at watching out for vermin.

  Then they’d headed to the museum, reset the alarm after entering and called up
to Lara, Matt and Meg to let them know that they were downstairs.

  But Brett had paused to question her before going up.

  “Surprisingly okay,” she assured him. “I just wonder, how could anyone have rigged that moose head? I don’t want to believe Ben is doing this, but it has to be him. He and Trisha bought the heads. It’s their house. He was working in the dining room, painting, today.”

  “I’d say this has all been in the works for a long time. Daniel was killed months ago, and we don’t even know for sure that was the beginning. That means any number of people had the chance to rig the moose. Not to mention there’s been nothing resembling security around here until this week, and there’s still no alarm up at the main house. In a way, the fact that so much evidence points at Ben suggests that he’s being set up.” He hesitated.

  “What? What else?” she asked him.

  “We talked to Will Chan today. He’s still working on your camera, but he thinks someone did mess with it, that they took pictures of pictures in a book and then hacked the workings so they’d be erased two minutes after being viewed. So it’s almost certain that the killer rigged both your camera and the moose head.”

  “Actually, that’s a relief,” she told him. “Because I just don’t think Ben could have faked his reaction to those pictures.”

  “I agree. We’re moving forward, we really are.”

  She studied Brett. “I keep wondering… The pictures on my camera, they were an illusion. Do you think it’s possible that something else is going on here, that it’s all really an illusion? That the murders of Nathan Kendall’s descendants are a smoke screen for something else? I mean, this far down the line, how do we really know who’s descended from Nathan and who’s not? Someone might have fooled around outside of marriage, so there could be descendants who aren’t on record, or supposed descendants who really aren’t. How can we ever know the truth?”

  “We can’t, not really. But if the killings are a smoke screen, we still have to figure out for what. I don’t know. Maybe there is something here at the ranch that someone wants. But it’s late now, and none of us will be any good without sleep. Are you ready to head up?”

  “In a few minutes. I just need a little time alone first.”

  “All right,” Brett said. He walked over and made sure that the door was locked and that the “armed” light on the alarm was blinking as it should be.

  When he was gone, she stood alone in the museum. She looked around at the display cases and the many mannequins.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said softly, thinking of all the tragedy that had invaded Nathan’s life and the lives of so many of his descendants now.

  She felt Daniel’s presence even before he spoke to her.

  “Do you play the slot machines?” he asked her.

  “Pardon?” She frowned as she stared at him. He was good; he looked as solid as any man on the street.

  He smiled. “Slots. I love them. Loved them, that is. And they have all kinds of bonuses that really increase your payoff. But the thing is, there’s no way to walk into a casino and know that a slot machine is ready to give. You can sit at one forever and ever, and that bonus just won’t kick in. Other times, you just sit down and the bonus triggers and triggers and triggers. And the thing is, life is like that. Some men just touch money and it makes more money. They get sick, but they always get well. Some people do atrocious things to others and get away with it. Sometimes your life is like the machine that pays off nonstop. Other lives, there just isn’t going to be a bonus. That was me, Scarlet. And Cassandra,” he added softly. “We just weren’t meant to have a bonus.”

  “Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry. But,” she said, and then hesitated. “You are here—as a ghost, true, but still you’re here. We’re talking. You met Cassandra. Maybe life is like a slot machine. Your first life wasn’t your day for the bonus. But now you have another life, and maybe this time you’ll get the bonus.”

  He grinned. “I wish I could give you a hug,” he said. Then he went quiet and nodded toward the stairs and the pedestal where Nathan’s statue stood. “He’s here,” he said quietly.

  Scarlet turned and stared at the mannequin. As she watched, Nathan Kendall stepped around it and started walking toward her.

  “Hello, Nathan,” she said quietly.

  He looked at her for a long moment. Then his eyes narrowed as he turned and stared at Daniel.

  Daniel grinned. “Hey, Gramps!” he said.

  Scarlet ignored Daniel and addressed Nathan. “You’ve been here all along, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you move the mannequin?” she asked. “Not up the stairs—we know Terry did that. But when it fell over, that was you, wasn’t it?”

  Nathan seemed to wince. He nodded. She realized that he’d been there for years and years, watching and waiting, but apparently he’d never tried to communicate before. He might be an old ghost, but he wasn’t at all a practiced ghost.

  He was a ghost, just as Daniel was. But the spirit that remained was the essence of the man, and some men were outgoing, like Daniel, and others were introverted, dealing privately with the demons that had plagued their lives, and clearly Nathan was the latter.

  She smiled and moved closer to him. “You’ve been trying to help us, haven’t you? You pushed your statue over because you were trying to tell us that what’s happening now is connected to what happened to you.”

  “Yes,” he said, and his voice was like the wind blowing over brittle leaves in winter. “I can push,” he said, and he almost managed a smile. “But I cannot carry.”

  “It’s all right, we know that Terry moved the statue upstairs,” she said. “But what we don’t know and hope you do is who killed you. Was it Rollo?”

  She knew that it was painful for him to speak, but she felt she had no choice but to press him. This was important. Crucial.

  “I don’t know. I never knew, I only knew that I was going to die. All I saw was the burlap bag he wore over his head,” he said, and winced. “A mask like the ones we wore when we were robbing banks and stagecoaches. I did bad things, things that hurt people. Perhaps I deserved what happened to me, but…”

  “Did you recognize his voice?” Scarlet asked.

  “I felt as if I should have, but…I didn’t. He might have disguised it. I don’t know.”

  “Do you know what he wanted from you? Was he looking for the gold?”

  He nodded. “Yes. He kept demanding to know where it was. I tried to play for time, but the pain…” A shadow crossed his face as he remembered. “I prayed that someone would come, that Jillian and the baby would escape.” His voice grew stronger as he spoke. “But she must have heard, and she rushed out and surprised him, so he turned and shot her, and for the love of God, all I could do was scream her name until… Until I realized I wasn’t making a sound. That was when I realized I was dead.”

  “Why didn’t you just give him the gold?” Scarlet asked.

  “Because I never knew where Jillian had hidden it,” he said softly. “I found it by accident, after a hard rain that revealed a vein of pure riches—what Rollo was looking for, I imagine. So I dug it out and gave it to her, told her to put it where I wouldn’t know and couldn’t be tempted. Maybe she left it with her father, I don’t know. It was for a rainy day, for our son.”

  “It was Rollo—it must have been Rollo,” Scarlet said. “I can’t believe it was your father-in-law.” She’d meant the words as a statement, but they came out sounding more like a question.

  The ghost of Nathan Kendall shook his head sadly. “Never Tom Vickers. He may not have liked me, but never would the man have killed his own daughter.”

  “Do you know if the gold is connected to what’s happening now?” she asked. “Could someone know you found gold and that it’s somewhere here, on the ranch?”


  “I wish I’d never found it,” Nathan said. He looked at Daniel and shook his head sadly. “So much tragedy because of man’s greed.”

  “Well, I didn’t have any gold. I wasn’t worth more than what I had in my pockets,” Daniel said.

  “I think every bit of this has been planned—starting with your death, Daniel,” Scarlet said. “The killer is looking for the gold, pure and simple, but he wants it to look like someone has gone crazy and started killing descendants of Nathan Kendall. I think his original plan was for Ben to be arrested for the murders, but when it became clear that wasn’t going to work he switched tactics and started finding ways to ruin Ben’s business, like that trick with the moose head. Either way, the business would end up closed down and the place would be abandoned, maybe forever. But even if it was only temporary, while Trisha tried to sell the property, the killer would be free to rip it apart from stem to stern until he found the gold.”

  Nathan Kendall nodded and looked at Daniel, but he was fading. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He was almost gone, but before he faded entirely he approached Scarlet, who felt a gentle touch on her cheek.

  Then he was gone.

  Daniel met her eyes and asked, “Did you hear him?”

  “Just now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard him tell you he was sorry.”

  “Perhaps the dead hear the dead speak more clearly than the living. Because he told you to be careful. He’s afraid for you, Scarlet. So am I.”

  “You don’t need to be, either of you. I am careful,” she promised, then thought about the past—and the present.

  “And I have Diego,” she said.

  But did she?

  Maybe not forever. Maybe he was only here because he was an honorable man who had sworn to serve and protect.

  “Daniel,” she said.

  But he was gone, too.

  She looked around the quiet museum and a chill settled into her bones.

  She prayed there were no more horrors to come.

  But as she ran upstairs to join the others, she knew in her gut that her prayers would go unanswered.