He rubbed his chin with his free hand. “East Valley will bring a lot of wonderful new opportunities to our town. It’s an exciting development that I’ve enjoyed watching come to fruition.”
Leaning in closer, I went for the kill. “Yes, you’re very invested in East Valley from what I understand. You attended its ground-breaking ceremony and lauded it in an interview as a great boost for our local economy.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then there’s the several million of your own money that you devoted to the project.”
He froze, narrowing his eyes at me, nostrils flaring. “What are you talking about? Who told you that?”
I paused, pen hovering over the page. “I’m sorry, I thought you had—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped, his empty hand closing around my arm, making me drop my notebook. I gasped as his beer splashed my shoes and his putrid, alcohol-soaked breath slapped me in the face. “Whoever told you that is lying, and if you write that, or tell anyone—”
“I made a mistake,” I said, wrestling my arm away from him. “I mixed you up with someone else.”
Eyeing me in disbelief, he frowned. As suddenly as he’d become angry, he calmed, squaring his shoulders and clearing his throat. “Yes, well, maybe you should do your research better. If you want to write for a newspaper, you should know your facts.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled as he brushed past me and disappeared into the crowd.
I bent down to retrieve my pen and notebook with shaking hands, then approached the food booth for a handful of napkins, which I used to try to clean my shoes. I was going to smell like beer for the rest of the night.
Just as I tossed the damp napkins into the garbage can, the kids bounded up to me wide-eyed and excited after their ride. Grabbing my hands, they dragged me off toward the next one, determined to ride everything before the fairgrounds closed for the night. I followed in silence, hoping my anxiety over what had just happened with Canton Haines didn’t show. I hadn’t expected to get any real answers out of him, but he had proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had something to do with what was going on at Baldwin House. Despite what he insisted, I had proof—a photocopy of a check written from him to Douglas. The question of why still remained. What did that man have to gain by paying into Baldwin & Co.’s largest and most expensive development to date?
It just didn’t make any sense. One thing I did know was that Canton Haines was not to be trifled with. I could still feel the bite of his hand around my arm, and the warning in his tone hadn’t been lost on me.
Enjoying the fair became hard after my encounter with Canton Haines. Even once my hands had stopped shaking, a nervous energy had me glancing over my shoulder, and my mind wouldn’t stop racing at the idea that something deeper than I’d imagined was going on here. While part of me was terrified, the other part—the one that was most like my inquisitive mother—just had to dig deeper.
I was glad when the kids announced they had ridden all the rides they’d wanted. We made a quick stop on the way out to snag the funnel cake I’d promised Dad, and then put the summer festival behind us. By the time we’d arrived back at Baldwin House, both kids had fallen into a coma in the backseat, requiring their parents to come out to the car to carry them inside.
“Look at them, all tuckered out,” Faith crooned while reaching for Emma, who clutched a pink teddy bear she’d won in the crook of one arm. “Thank you for taking them, Bellamy. It looks like they had a great time.”
“Anytime,” I told them, finding that I meant it. “Thanks for trusting me to take them out.”
Douglas held Max with one arm and gave me one of his smiles—a grimace masquerading as a grin. “The kids adore you. Of course we trust you with them.”
I tried to smile back, but found it hard. If my suspicions were true, this man had been involved in the deaths of two women. My stomach lurched at the thought.
“You guys have a good night,” I told them, making a quick getaway.
I couldn’t get home fast enough. Once there, I made quick work of dropping Dad’s funnel cake in his hands and answering with a quick ‘great’ when he asked how the fair had been. Once alone in my room with the door closed, I retrieved my phone from my bag.
The screen lit up with two messages from Tate:
I saw you drop the kids off through my window. Looks like you wore them out good.
Also, still digging, but I found this. It might mean something.
With the second message came a link, which I clicked. It took me to an article from the website of our local news station, about a charity event happening at the former mayor’s house just a few weeks before the East Valley groundbreaking event. At the top of the article sat a picture of Douglas Baldwin standing beside Canton Haines. Both men—dressed in tuxedos and bow ties—smiled into the camera, and the former mayor had his arm around Mr. Baldwin’s shoulders. The story was a quick write-up chronicling the mayor’s annual fundraiser for his charity, a non-profit organization dedicated to childhood literacy. The funds raised that night for a lavish dinner and entertainment were going to establish literacy programs all over the state of Georgia. It was a program Canton had launched back in the nineties, and the work continued all throughout his tenure as mayor.
Closing out the article, I called Tate. His voice sounded thick and heavy, as if he’d been asleep.
“Hey,” he murmured. “You didn’t have to call. I just wanted you to see the article. Apparently, there are ties to Canton Haines I didn’t realize my dad had. It’s a clue, and I intend to follow it.”
“I called because I have something to tell you that couldn’t be put in a text,” I replied in a rush.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice clearer now, as if he heard the urgency in my voice and it had woken him up. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “While at the festival tonight with the kids, I saw Canton Haines. He was alone and drinking… so I thought it couldn’t hurt to approach him.”
“You did what?”
“I pretended that I was a writer for the school paper working on an article about the town’s history. I asked him some questions just to see if I could get him to open up, and he did.”
“Well, what did he say?” Tate asked, his voice edgy as if he didn’t like where this was going.
“That’s the thing. He seemed kind of bored with the whole thing, until I mentioned East Valley.”
“Bellamy, you didn’t!”
“You should have seen him, Tate,” I rushed on. “His entire demeanor changed. He grabbed my arm and asked me where I’d gotten the information about him donating money. When I pretended it had been a mistake, he pretty much warned me to keep my mouth shut.”
A long pause passed between us, and, for a moment, I thought I’d lost the call.
“Hello?”
“How could you do something so reckless?” he asked, his voice low and ominous.
“I saw an opening and I took it,” I argued. “Look, now we know that the money changing hands was a dirty deal. If he wanted to help the economy of the town flourish by supporting the East Valley development, there would have been news about it. A public event with one of those big, fake checks being handed over… something. But that isn’t what happened. Canton wrote your dad a check from his personal bank account, and then gave it to him under the table. Now we know that it’s information they don’t want to get out. The question we need to answer is why.”
“We can answer that question without taking unnecessary risks,” he countered. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and it sounds like we might be in over our heads. Letting anyone know what we’re doing could be dangerous.”
I sighed, running a hand over my hair and pushing a few stray curls back from my face. “Look, I was just trying to move things along here. All the discoveries we’ve made have been on your end. I just wanted to help.”
“Y
ou can help by continuing your search on those murdered women,” he insisted. “I don’t want you putting yourself in a dangerous position because of me, okay? Promise me, Bell.”
Taking a deep breath, I exhaled past the butterflies that appeared in my stomach at his shortened version of my name. I liked it way too much.
“I promise,” I mumbled.
“Thank you,” he replied. “So, did you have fun at the fair?”
“I did. The kids had a blast, too. I wish you would have come.”
He paused. “Yeah, maybe next time.”
“We could go at night,” I prodded. “It’ll be fun. I always enjoyed the fair at night… all the lights and stuff. The Ferris wheel sucks during the day because it just puts you closer to the sun and the heat. But at night… well, it’s my favorite thing.”
I heard him sigh on the other end of the phone and knew I was asking for too much. Going out in public hadn’t ended well for us last time.
“Sorry, Bell,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I’m just not ready.”
“Well, that’s okay,” I replied, injecting cheer into my voice. “Maybe you can hang out with me and the kids at the house this week. Max could really use some male bonding time.”
“He said that?”
I smiled at the hope I heard in his voice. It was just as I’d thought—Tate and Max needed each other and just didn’t know how to go about being there for one another. It was no wonder with their dad being so cold.
“Not in so many words, but trust me. He wants you around more, Tate.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
“Definitely. Dress for trampoline jumping.”
He laughed, a low and deep sound that pulled on the corners of my mouth until I was grinning. “I can’t wait.”
As the days following my encounter with Canton Haines began to pass me by, I grew more and more frustrated with my search. There was simply no information to be found on murders, because it wasn’t something that happened in Wellhollow Springs often. Three years’ worth of obituaries and news stories had turned up very little—and no victims who looked like our ghosts.
Seated with my laptop on the bed, I grunted in frustration and buried my face in my hands. I’d come to the end of my rope and there wasn’t a single lead for me to follow. Meanwhile, Tate was still busy looking for some thread tying his father to the mayor, or a reason why such a large check would have changed hands. Our investigation had stalled and hit the wall, which just annoyed me. I was used to being good at things. I did not fail. Messing this up wasn’t an option, because Tate’s health and future could be on the line. If he was right about the ghosts having caused his disease, then getting rid of them might cure him. But we couldn’t get rid of them until we found justice.
Slamming the laptop shut, I stood, deciding a break was in order. It was late, but Dad had volunteered to work at the festival in the kids’ tent. McGuire’s always provided a reading corner in one of the kids’ activity tents. Handing out our business cards and bookmarks at the event tended to lead to more sales following the festival, so it was great for business. I’d offered to help, but he’d urged me to stay home and relax. Little did he know that taking it easy wasn’t going to happen. I could hardly sleep now for trying to puzzle things out.
Trudging to the kitchen, I made a sandwich and grabbed a soda. On my way back to my room, I noticed Dad had left his door open and the light on—something Mom had continually gotten on his case about when she’d been alive. Stepping inside, I reached for the light switch with my elbow, both hands carrying my snack and drink. The wall of drawings and written notes caught my eye. Stepping away from the light, I approached the desk, scanning his hastily scrawled records beside the haunting pictures. Taking a bite of sandwich, I chewed, inclining my head as I began to notice something very strange.
Swallowing, I put the soda and sandwich down on the table, careful to use my napkin to keep crumbs off the surface. I pushed his desk chair aside and stepped closer, narrowing my eyes to read some of the more illegible words.
It struck me that a lot of the deaths he’d recorded from three years ago were accidental. I frowned at the number of them. Wellhollow Springs being a small town, it didn’t make sense that there should be a sudden increase in accidental deaths in one year that didn’t continue to the next. It might have been just a fluke, but my gut told me I was on to something.
Snagging a sheet of paper from the printer, I lifted a pencil from the nearby holder and scribbled down five names and dates. I scooped up my food and hightailed it back to my room, forgetting about the light and the door.
Once seated on the bed again, I renewed my search, this time beginning with the five accidental deaths on my sheet of paper. Their obituaries were easy enough to find, and, before long, I had notes taken to show Tate later. Something was definitely off. Each death had been bizarre, yet each had been labeled an accident by the sheriff—who in our county also acted as coroner.
Noticing that most of the accidents had happened six months or more before Canton had written the check to Douglas, I wondered what I would find if I searched closer to the timeframe we were dealing with. Moving my cursor to the ‘search’ bar of the local news website, I input ‘accident’ and waited for the results. I filtered my search by date, and then quickly scrolled to the year I was looking for. Along with the stories of the deaths I’d already looked into was a headline that dropped a cold stone of dread into my gut.
SINGLE VEHICLE CAR CRASH NEAR BALDWIN HOUSE ENDS IN TRAGIC DEATH.
My hands shook as I clicked to open the article, my mouth going dry while I waited for the page to load. I felt my lips moving as I read the words of the story about Camila Vasquez, who had lost control of her car on the winding road leading up the hill Baldwin House sat on, then back down and straight out of town via Highway 8. She had been an FBI agent visiting from Virginia on assignment. Her car had hit the guardrail and gone over the side of a steep drop-off, sending her into the ravine. She’d died on impact.
I winced as I glanced at a photo of the wreckage—a small sedan turned to a hunk of twisted metal. Toward the bottom of the article, I found a photo of Camila that looked as if it might have been taken in official capacity for the FBI.
My breath caught and held in my lungs as I zoomed in on the picture, my eyes widening in recognition. She was young and pretty, with dark olive skin and sleek, black hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore minimal makeup, and her expression portrayed toughness. Her starched white blouse contrasted sharply with her skin and black blazer, her only jewelry a pair of small diamond stud earrings.
“Well,” I murmured. “Hello, Camila Vasquez, aka Glass-in-Neck Ghost.”
Picking up my laptop, I ran into my dad’s room and plunked it down onto the desk. It only took a moment for me to plug it in and begin printing. By the time I printed everything I’d gathered, I had used up all the paper. Finding paper clips in the little side drawer of the desk, I organized everything in clusters, grouping information on each of the deaths in separate piles. Then, I shoved them all in a large manila envelope I found in one of the bigger drawers. By the time I reloaded the printer with paper and took everything back to my room, Dad’s key sounded in the front door lock.
I swiftly closed my door, hoping he would think I was asleep and not try to talk to me. My mind was racing a mile a minute, and I didn’t think I could suffer through mundane conversation. Heck, I didn’t think I’d make it through the ten hours that were left before I could get to Baldwin House to show Tate what I had found.
Sleep was as elusive as ever, and I lay tossing and turning for hours before finally drifting off. I only dozed for four hours, but impatience to deliver my findings to Tate made it hard to feel tired. I jumped out of bed and got dressed, not bothering to eat before leaving for Baldwin House.
I arrived to find Ezra in the entryway chatting with Tate, who was dressed in shorts, a tank top, and s
neakers—but no hat. They both glanced up and smiled when I walked in.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I was just on my way out,” Ezra replied. “I’ll be gone for a few days visiting family. I had a few last-minute things to take care of for Mr. Baldwin before I left.”
I shifted under his gaze, well aware of the bulky envelope I held and his seeming curiosity over it.
“Okay, well… have a good trip.”
“Will do,” he replied, making his way toward the hall to a side exit—one with a ramp that led down to where he parked his truck. Pausing, he turned to glance at me over his shoulder. “By the way… I’ve been asked to inform you that the ban on the third floor of the house has been lifted. You are free to come and go throughout the entire house as you please.”
At my shocked expression, he gave a coy smile, and then continued on his way down the hall. Turning to Tate, I found him watching me with a smug smirk, his eyebrows raised.
“Did you…” I trailed off, uncertain what to say.
“I did,” he confirmed, coming closer and folding his arms behind his back. “Making it off limits to visitors was my decision, and I don’t want that anymore. So, you know… feel free to walk in on me fresh from the shower anytime. Oh wait, you already did that!”
We laughed, but my stomach did a little flip. Had he been insinuating that I was welcome in his bedroom? Pressing a hand against my middle, I told myself to get a grip. Of course he hadn’t meant it that way.
Realizing we were now alone, I peered over his shoulder to make sure Hilda and the kids were still in the kitchen before I held up my envelope.
“Tate, I found something,” I whispered. “Something big.”
Plucking the envelope from my hand, he hid it behind his back. “Not yet.”
Frowning, I made a grab for the envelope, but he backed away, putting it out of my reach. “What are you doing? This is important.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said with a shrug. “Feels like there are a lot of papers in here, which means it’s going to take some time to go through. The kids are going to want your attention soon, so there isn’t time now. It can wait.”
Bellamy and the Brute Page 17