Boots and Bullets

by B. J Daniels

  Chapter Seven

  After getting very little sleep, Kate found herself going over what Cyrus had told her the night before. She had no idea how any of the pieces fit together. Babies, the hospital nursery, her mother, the postcard.

  The only thing that made any sense was that Cyrus was supposed to help her find her aunt’s murderer and figure out what had happened to her mother.

  Kate didn’t question that. She’d always believed there were things going on outside the realm of human understanding. If Cyrus had seen her aunt murdered in a dream, then Kate believed it was a message from the past.

  And the fact that the dream had brought cowboy P.I. Cyrus Winchester to her meant they were to work together to solve this. She had faith that if anyone could find out the answers she so desperately needed, it was Cyrus.

  At noon she put a Closed sign on the shop door to make preparations for the haunted house that coming weekend.

  But something kept nagging at her.

  As she passed the glass case with her mother’s bracelet in it, she had a sudden urge to take it out and look at it.

  Her grandmother had told her that when her grandfather made the bracelets, he’d wanted a way that the girls could tell them apart. That was why he’d put eleven bells on one and twelve on the other. Her mother’s, she recalled, had eleven on it.

  With trembling fingers, she used the key to open the glass cabinet and carefully took the bracelet. It felt cool to the touch. How many times had she held this, watching the silver play in the light, and wondered about her mother?

  More times than she could remember.

  Kate counted the bells. Eleven. It was her mother’s, then. Had her mother left it behind? Is that how her grandmother happened to have it? What other explanation could there be?

  She frowned, wondering if that was what had been nagging at her, or was there something else about the bracelet? Cyrus hadn’t told her why he recognized it. Had her aunt been wearing hers when he’d seen her in the dream?

  Her mother and Aunt Katherine had left a hole in her life that her grandmother Dimple had done everything humanly possible to fill. And she’d always known there was more to the story than her mother’s early death.

  With a sigh, she put the bracelet back, closed the case and hurried downstairs. She had too much work to do on the haunted house to think about this right now.

  But as she headed for the basement, Kate wondered where her aunt’s bracelet was. Her grandmother, who never threw anything away, would have kept it, of course.

  So why hadn’t it been in the jewelry box with her mother’s?

  Because her grandmother had never gotten it back.

  CYRUS DIDN’T HAVE any trouble finding the Ingram place north of town, although he wasn’t sure why he still felt he needed to talk to Martha Ingram about that night in the old hospital.

  The Ingrams lived in a newer-model home on what appeared to be a few acres.

  As he got out of his pickup, he spotted an older house behind it and wondered if that was where the now deceased Wally Ingram had lived.

  Martha Ingram answered his knock and welcomed him inside. She was a tall, slender woman with a head of salt-and-pepper hair and crinkles around her eyes when she smiled.

  The house smelled of pumpkin bread and he was reminded again of how many months he’d lost as he let her lead him into the warm living room. Outside it was one of those cold, crisp autumn days he was familiar with in Colorado.

  “You said you wanted to ask about my father?” Martha asked once they were seated and he was holding a hot cup of coffee and had tried the pumpkin bread. It was delicious.

  Cyrus couldn’t help feeling he was wasting this woman’s time and his own. But like Kate, he couldn’t understand why he’d dreamed of her aunt if there wasn’t something more to it. He explained that he’d been in the hospital that night.

  Martha Ingram nodded. “I remember.”

  “You saw me?”

  “I couldn’t sleep so I walked down the hall to the nurses’ station. I passed your room and saw you lying there. I hope you don’t mind, I asked about your condition and was told by the nurses on duty that you were in a coma from a head injury. I’m so glad that you’ve obviously recovered so well.”

  “I heard I was hooked up to a lot of equipment.”

  “Oh, yes. The nurses were monitoring you. My father was only on a morphine drip to make him comfortable. We knew he would be passing soon, given his declining condition. It really was a godsend.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be. My father had a wonderful life. He would have said as much himself.”

  Cyrus liked her attitude. “Your father must have been very special.”

  “He was,” she said, her voice breaking. “I will always miss him.”

  He hesitated. Why was he bothering this woman so soon after her father’s death when he already knew there was no possible way he’d seen a murder that night?

  Because he felt he owed it to Kate to at least try to figure this out. “Did you hear anything when you were in your father’s room or on one of your walks?”

  “Like what?”

  “Let me be honest with you. I thought there was a murder the night I spent in the old hospital.”

  “A murder?” She looked appalled.

  “Did you ever see the nurses leave their station?”

  “No. There was always at least one sitting there. As I said, they were closely monitoring you.”

  He saw something change in her expression. “You remembered something?”

  “Well, yes, but I’m not sure if I should tell you this. I suppose it’s all right. I had gone for another walk down the hall when I heard one of your monitors go off.”

  “Do you remember what time that was, by any chance?”

  “No—wait, you know, I do. I remember looking up at the clock and being surprised at the time. It was a couple minutes after midnight. I remember thinking it felt later than that.”

  A couple minutes after midnight. The same time Cyrus had been convinced he’d gotten out of bed and walked down to the nursery to see the nurse’s aide switch the babies—and end up murdered.

  KATE WAS IN THE BASEMENT working on preparations for her haunted house when she felt a gust of cold air blow in from outside.

  “Cyrus?” He’d called earlier to tell her about his plans to talk to Martha Ingram. She’d made him promise to stop by afterward to tell her how it went and had told him where she kept the spare key. “I’m down here. Cyrus?”

  She listened, didn’t hear anything and thought she must have imagined someone coming in one of the doors. Still, she felt a little spooked and that surprised her. Nothing about this building had ever given her any qualms. It had been love at first sight, which just showed how rattled she was, she thought now with a smile.

  The basement under the old library building was dark and dank, a warren of spooky space that she’d known the moment she saw it would make a great haunted house. There were stairways on four sides that went up to the shop level. In the center was a labyrinth of wooden structures lined with bookshelves, making the basement a maze that would allow participants to come in one way and leave by another exit.

  Kate had turned on the lights but they did little to illuminate the dark corners. Over the last few weeks, Andi and Jasmine had helped her turn the basement into something that would definitely be spooky come Halloween night.

  Jasmine’s latest creations, a trio of ghosts, now floated on a cable above Kate’s head. On Halloween they would float out of the darkness, promising to scare even the most cynical trick-or-treaters.

  There were other monsters throughout the basement, including vampires, werewolves and the devil himself, who would pop up at the very end from a smoldering pit of fiery brimstone. Andi and Jasmine had gathered volunteers to man the stations and make sure everyone got through the maze safely.

  Andi had come up with little alcoves with gru
esome things to touch and smell, including what appeared to be a bowl of eyeballs, a dissected brain and a boiling caldron of witch’s brew straight out of Macbeth.

  As Kate worked to make sure everything was ready and in working order, she had trouble keeping her mind on the job at hand. Her thoughts kept going to Cyrus. Last night in his hotel room there’d been that awkward moment when she’d thought he was going to kiss her.

  Kissing her had probably been the last thing on his mind. She sighed. Just as Cyrus probably didn’t feel what she could only describe as chemistry between them. At least on her side.

  She was so involved in thought that at first she wasn’t sure she heard the sound. A stair to the basement creaked.

  Then she heard it again. She froze, listening. Footsteps? Hadn’t she thought just moments before that she’d felt a door open? Both Andi and Jasmine had keys and Cyrus would use the spare key she’d told him about. No one else had a key and she’d made sure all the doors were locked.

  With a start, she realized how asinine that was. She hadn’t had the locks replaced on the outside doors to the basement because of the expense. Who knew how many keys to this place were loose in Whitehorse from when it had been a library?

  That thought did nothing for her growing anxiety. Someone was slowly coming down the basement steps.

  “Hello?” she called again, still sure it had to be someone she knew just trying to scare her in her own haunted house.

  She couldn’t see anything from where she stood next to the soon-to-be-writhing tub of hideous-looking rubber snakes that Andi had tagged the Viper Pit.

  She heard another groan, but realized it wasn’t coming from the stairs. It was coming from the short landing at the top of the steps, where all the electrical boxes were kept for the building.

  Kate barely had the thought when the lights went out.

  CYRUS FELT HIS HEART kick up several beats at the news Martha Ingram had given him. “What did the nurses do when my monitor went off?”

  “They rushed into your room,” Martha Ingram said. “I heard one of them say your eyes were open and you were…very agitated. But the monitor went back to its normal beeping and the nurses came out looking relieved. I asked if you were all right and they said you were. That you’d had some kind of weird episode.”

  A weird episode. His heart was in his throat. “But you’re sure I didn’t leave my bed.”

  “Oh, no. I can’t see how you could have in your condition and with everything that was attached to you,” she said. “I stood there and talked to the nurses for probably another twenty minutes after that and you didn’t move an inch. The nurses seemed worried about you and kept checking the monitors and going into your room after that to make sure you were all right.” She looked chagrined. “I hope I’m not speaking out of school here. I wouldn’t want to get the nurses in trouble. They were so wonderful to my father and me and so worried about you.”

  Cyrus nodded. “Thank you. I think this does clear things up for me.”

  “So was there a murder that night?” she asked with a shiver.

  “No. I guess it really was nothing more than a bad dream.”

  Martha smiled, clearly relieved, and offered him more coffee and pumpkin bread.

  “Thank you, but I should be going. I appreciate you talking with me about this.”

  “Well, if I’ve relieved your mind, then I’m glad.”

  On the drive back into Whitehorse, he called Cordell after finding half a dozen messages from his brother.

  “Is everything all right?” Cyrus asked, afraid something had happened to his brother. Most of the investigative cases they took weren’t dangerous, but you never knew when one could turn that way.

  “Everything is fine here,” Cordell snapped. “I’ve been worried sick about you. Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

  “I met someone.”

  His twin let out a laugh of relief. “So you’re feeling like your old self?”

  Cyrus wasn’t about to tell him how he’d met Kate or what the initial attraction had been. “I’m going to stay a few more days.” He listened to the silence, knowing what his brother was waiting for. “You were right. It turns out there was no murder at the hospital the night I was there, just like you and everyone else said.”

  “Then I’m glad you went up there to check it out,” Cordell said, sounding even more relieved.

  “I’m going to a haunted house on Halloween. This woman I met, Kate Landon, is putting it on.”

  “A haunted house? This woman sounds perfect for you.”

  Cyrus laughed. “We do seem to have a lot in common.” Cordell didn’t know the half of it, he thought as he hung up.

  PITCHED INTO total blackness, Kate grabbed hold of the tub of rubber snakes, cringing as her fingers brushed one of the vipers. “This isn’t funny!” she called out, her words echoing through the cavernous space. “I’m serious. Turn the lights back on. Now.”

  On the far side of the basement she could make out a faint glow. Whoever it was had a small flashlight. She listened for a moment, feeling as if she could hear the person breathing. Her heart began to pound harder as she heard another creak of a wooden stair. Was the person leaving? Or coming down the steps toward her?

  She fumbled for her cell phone, panic rising even as she told herself that no one would want to harm her. It was just a mistake. It had to be someone she knew thinking this was an amusing joke to play on her. Scare her in her own haunted house.

  But at the thought of Cyrus and his murder dream, she quit kidding herself. Whoever this was— She dropped her cell phone. It fell into the huge tub of writhing snakes.

  Hurriedly she felt around for it, searching frantically in all that cold rubber. No phone.

  Suddenly the person stopped moving. She froze, listening to the chilling silence.

  Then she heard another sound. What was that? She couldn’t place it. A squeaking noise that sent fear racing up her spine.

  A moment later, a loud snap filled the air, then a hissing noise.

  Kate sensed something coming at her through the dark and ducked—just not soon enough. She let out a cry as she was struck so hard it knocked her to the floor. Before she could move, feeling dazed and in pain, something fell over her, covering her like a blanket. She beat at the fabric, fighting for breath, until she realized it was only the cloth ghosts that had fallen on her.

  With that realization came another on its heels. The person had cut the overhead cable that held some of the props. She touched her forehead, felt a scrape where the cable had struck her.

  She heard footfalls on the stairs, then the side door to the basement banged closed, then open again if the cold air that came in was any indication. In the silence that followed, she decided whoever had cut the cable was gone. She tried to get to her feet in the blinding darkness and banged into something heavy, sending stars shooting across her vision.

  “KATE? KATE!”

  “Down here.” Something in her voice sounded all wrong to Cyrus.

  “What are you doing down there in the dark?” He felt his apprehension mounting when she didn’t answer. He felt around for the light switch to the basement. He’d been concerned the moment he’d seen the side door to the basement standing wide open.

  This late in October, the temperature often dropped down into the teens at night and barely got up to fifty during the day. Today had been particularly chilly because of the wind. He couldn’t imagine why Kate would leave the door open when she’d told him where she kept the spare key.

  He’d tried to call her at the shop and hadn’t been able to reach her. That had sent up red flags, since she’d said she would be working on the haunted house and had been anxious to hear how his meeting had gone with Martha Ingram. But maybe she couldn’t hear the phone in the basement and hadn’t taken her cell phone down with her since it went straight to voice mail.

  When he’d swung by the shop he’d seen the side door standing open.

  “Kate
?” Cyrus called again as he found the light switch and the lights came on.

  She made an angry sound, a cross between a sob and a curse.

  “Kate?” He hurried down the stairs. Had she fallen? Had the power gone off? Had—

  He spotted her fighting off three ghosts as she tried to get to her feet. Lying next to her along with the discarded ghosts was a thick cable coiled on the concrete floor. “What happened?”

  She looked up at him and he saw where the cable had struck her forehead and realized that it must have snapped. A deep-seated fear rushed at Cyrus. He remembered the first time he’d seen her coming down the hall at the old hospital. What if his damned dream was a premonition that something was going to happen to Kate?

  “Are you all right?” he asked, hurrying to her. She was trembling as he helped her to her feet and surveyed her injury. There was a bright-red scrape where the cable had hit her, bloody to the touch, but other than that, she seemed to be all right.

  “Don’t worry, I can fix the cable and I’ll make sure this time it doesn’t come undone again,” he said as he looked into her beautiful green eyes.

  “It didn’t come undone. Someone cut it. I heard them come in and…” She waved a hand through the air. “I pulled out my cell phone just before the person turned off the lights and cut the cable—and dropped it into the tub with the snakes.”

  “Here, let me,” he said and felt around in the snakes until he located the phone. He handed it to her.

  “I guess someone doesn’t like haunted houses,” she said as she turned on her phone. “I must have turned it off when I was trying to call 911.”

  “I guess.” Cyrus felt sick. This had nothing to do with the haunted house and she damn well knew it. If he’d had any doubt that his dream meant something, he didn’t anymore.

  Chapter Eight

  “Go ahead and say it,” Kate said holding Cyrus’s dark gaze. “I’m right. Or are you going to try to convince me whoever did this really doesn’t like haunted houses?”