The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias (Haunted Hearts Series Book 6)

by Denise Moncrief

  Dylan touched the gun in his waistband, had almost forgotten it was there. He pulled it out and let it dangle toward the floor.

  “Now can we call the sheriff?” Sarcasm could have laced her words, but it didn’t. Her question was more of a plea than a demand.

  He dug his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “Call her.”

  Her end of the conversation with the operator fluttered in the background of his consciousness, so focused was he on the man standing in front of Wakefield Manor.

  When she returned, she startled him. “The operator said she’d get my message to Sheriff Soileau. What’s he doing now?”

  “Same thing. Just staring.”

  She replaced his hand on the blinds, allowing him the chance to slide his free arm around her. Their heads pressed together, cheek to cheek.

  It seemed they had been frozen in time, but it was probably only fifteen or so minutes when Brandon finally moved. He stumbled up the short steps. From the side of the house, a woman wearing an orange dress approached him. The woman glided onto the porch, and Brandon’s lips moved as if he were carrying on a conversation.

  “I wish we could hear what they’re saying.”

  “Maybe he’s the only one that’s talking.”

  Sophia’s suggestion was valid. Brandon could be hallucinating. But then if he was, so were they.

  After an interminably long time, engine noise moved toward them from the road beyond the oak trees.

  Sophia shifted a little, turning her head toward the approaching vehicle. “The sheriff is here.”

  The sheriff’s SUV pulled up next to Brandon’s car. Sheriff Soileau emerged from her vehicle, and her shouted words drifted toward Dylan and Sophia on a gust of wind that had arisen out of nowhere on a windless night. Brandon jolted out of his trance. His head swiveled toward the SUV, and the sheriff stopped short. Brandon lifted the woman in the orange dress off the ground and carried her in his arms. Together the two of them disappeared through the double front doors of Wakefield Manor.

  The sheriff propelled into motion as if someone had just hit reset on the entire scene. Dylan grabbed Sophia’s hand and tugged her out the trailer door. She didn’t balk, keeping pace with him every step of the way.

  When they had finally come even with the sheriff’s vehicle, Sheriff Soileau had already entered the house behind Wakefield.

  Odd. The cloudless sky produced a rather intense windstorm. Dylan’s stomach muscles tightened. His mind gathered all the stimuli coming his way and tried to sort it out. The night, the scene, the circumstances swelled his psyche with foreboding.

  He glanced at Sophia, hesitating before the steps that would lead them into the unknown. “Should we follow them inside?” He shouted over the chaos swirling around them.

  She held back, leaning away from the house. “She’ll let us know if she wants us to come inside, right?”

  What decency said he should do and what common sense said he ought to do fought a hard battle. He didn’t want to drag Sophia into danger, but he didn’t want to leave her on her own. Yet, the urgency of the situation called to him from inside the house.

  Every second that passed intensified the impression that something had gone horribly wrong. “We can’t just stand here.”

  “We can’t leave. What if she needs help?”

  The discussion went no further. A scream interrupted them, surging at them, ringing around them as if terror had crawled up from deep within the bowels of the house and captured them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sophia Cannon had called Charlotte with an urgent message from Dylan Hunter. Charlotte had considered the possibility that Hunter might be making the whole thing up, but only for a fleeting moment. She’d seen the apparition with her own two eyes. Besides that, a woman in an orange dress with white polka dots had invited Charlotte into the house for lemonade only a few days before and then had disappeared through a door that didn’t exist. Based on her experience, it wasn’t that hard to believe the same entity—whether living or dead—had been lifted from the ground and carried into the house by Brandon Wakefield.

  Almost as soon as she walked through the front door of Wakefield Manor, a blood-curdling scream rushed at her from the back of the house. She drew her weapon and advanced toward the kitchen door behind the stairs, careful to test the floorboards of the grand front hall before she put her weight on them. Hunter had nailed pieces of plywood across the surface of the damaged floor, making it easier to get around the house, but that didn’t mean traversing the floor was that much safer.

  The aura of someone’s presence behind her caused every muscle in her body to tighten. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She strained to listen. The rush of wind sweeping through the open door drowned out the rustle of any movement. She swiveled to face the potential menace behind her. The hall was empty.

  She bit her lower lip and continued her search. Once she reached the kitchen door, she nudged it open, entering gun barrel first. The room appeared empty of anything resembling life. In fact, death seemed to crawl over her like a swarm of angry ants. She resisted the urge to flail her arms and legs to escape the sting.

  Until that moment, she didn’t know one could feel death and live to remember the sensation. She’d smelled death before. Surely, she’d seen it. But she’d never felt it.

  Sorrow settled into her soul. The urge to mourn enveloped her, and it seemed her heart would break into a million pieces. For what or whom was she grieving?

  She scanned the room and moved on, turning around to face the large central hallway again. Mumbled voices drifted from the closed door to the right near the front of the house. She placed one careful step at a time, mindful of every creak of the makeshift wood floor.

  She wrapped her stiff fingers around the door handle and pulled. The scene inside the room took her breath. Shielding her eyes from the intense brightness, she remained rooted in place, certain that she was hallucinating. An apparition with the appearance of a female had her fingers coiled around Brandon Wakefield’s neck, and his feet hovered over the torn carpet beneath him by at least three inches. Her instinct told her this was not the same ghost that wore the orange dress with the white polka dots. This ghost had more power.

  Liar. Liar. Liar. The ghost’s angry words were inaudible, but the truth of them shrilled loudly in her head like a clarion.

  How could a whispered accusation sound so loud and so ominous?

  Brandon had no answer for the apparition’s indictment. His face had turned an abnormal shade of blue-white. His arms twitched at his sides as if he wanted to defend himself but had no control of his limbs. He spluttered, and the sounds coming from his mouth made no sense.

  Charlotte should have intervened, but she couldn’t make her legs move or her mouth open. As the scene unfolded before her, the blurry edges made it appear as if she were watching a really bad horror movie.

  She wanted to warn Brandon not to go with the ghost into the cemetery at night, but the thought was ludicrous, laughable even. Everyone knew the plot of a horror movie. The stupid kid went into the cemetery even though the psycho had murdered ten of his friends there already.

  Where had Charlotte’s thoughts come from? The apparition hadn’t said anything about a cemetery.

  “Brandon.” His name finally roared out of Charlotte’s mouth.

  Two sets of eyes shifted her direction. His eyes glowed red in the darkened room. The ghost’s eyes burned bright white as if her eyeballs had been replaced with two incandescent orbs. Spindly fingers unwound from Brandon’s neck, almost like someone was peeling them up from his skin one finger at a time.

  Charlotte blinked and the ghost shattered into a flurry of tiny pinpoints of light. The blood in Charlotte’s veins must have turned to cement and hardened. When Brandon Wakefield balled his fist and lifted his arm, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t even put her arms up to defend her face from the blow that zoomed at her in slow motion.

  Her mind snapped to full al
ert even though her body betrayed her. If she were paralyzed with fear, or whatever was happening to her, then she wouldn’t be able to stop Brandon Wakefield from doing whatever he wanted to her.

  A million thoughts raced through her mind while the world around her slowed to a tenth of its normal speed. One thought seared her mind, more urgent than the rest. Was this how she was supposed to die? She wasn’t ready yet.

  ****

  Dylan nudged the ice pack aside and studied the sheriff’s eye. “You’re gonna have a shiner.”

  Brandon Wakefield had bolted out the front door, rushed into his car, and thrown rocks up as he barreled down the gravel drive to make his getaway. Dylan and Sophia had found the sheriff on the floor. Not unconscious, but groaning from the hit she’d taken. She’d moved slowly like someone just coming out of anesthesia.

  The sheriff huffed and puffed a couple of times before she responded. “The last time I was hit that hard…”A pained expression crossed her face. Whatever she was about to say was going to go unsaid. “You know, he said something really strange to me. He said a Wakefield never could turn his back on a Soileau. None of us could be trusted. What do you suppose he meant by that? Does the guy even know my name?”

  Dylan shrugged. “He might. Depends on how much Moreau told him.”

  “Nick? He only says what he has to. Nothing more. Nothing less. He wouldn’t mention my name.” She paused and seemed to reorganize her thoughts. “No, it’s like Wakefield wasn’t talking about me, but about my family. Does that sound weird? How would he know anything about my family?”

  Sophia offered her opinion. “Yeah, that’s weird. A mystery, like so many things about this place. Don’t you feel it? The place is cursed.”

  Sheriff Soileau stood to her feet, still pressing the ice to her head. “I’m going to go now, and the two of you should reconsider staying out here.” She wobbled and grabbed the edge of the dinette table.

  Sophia fussed around her, steadying her by the elbow. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Dylan could take you back to town.”

  He tossed Sophia a disgusted frown. She smirked at him and turned her head.

  “No. I’m fine. I just wish…” The sheriff shook off Sophia’s hand. “I’m all right. I’ve been hit harder than this.” She turned her attention to Dylan. “By tomorrow afternoon, the coroner should have the order of exhumation for Les Wakefield. I’ll let you know when we plan to come out here.”

  Dylan nodded his understanding. “Of course. We won’t get in your way.”

  The light that flashed in the sheriff’s eyes suggested she doubted that. She made it all the way to the door with her hand on the knob. “I don’t have a good feeling about leaving you out here. Brandon Wakefield could return.”

  Dylan smiled. “We’ll be fine.”

  He hadn’t told her about his friend, Smith and Wesson. She probably wouldn’t like the idea of a person of interest in a missing person’s case owning a gun. In the aftermath of the sheriff’s attack, he’d been successful in concealing its existence from her. Once he’d entered the trailer, he’d tucked it back in its drawer without her noticing. At least, he hoped he had.

  The sheriff opened the door and offered him one more bit of wisdom. “Make sure you know who you’re aiming at before you take that gun off safety, Mr. Hunter.”

  Sophia snorted behind him.

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The sheriff grumbled on her way toward her SUV. “Why does everyone call me ma’am? I’m not ancient.”

  When she was inside her car, Sophia broke down into hysterical laughter. Dylan held back only a moment before joining her.

  When the mirth subsided, Dylan wandered back to a more serious topic. “I wouldn’t have believed her if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

  Sophia sobered in a heartbeat and shivered. “She said the apparition looked just like the woman she’d seen in town. If that was a ghost, she was driving a car.”

  Dylan rubbed his chin where a bit of late-in-the-day stubble had sprouted. “Maybe the car was not really there. Maybe it was a ghost car. What do they call it when something happens over and over?”

  “Residual haunting.”

  He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “How would you know that? Have you been researching ghosts or something?”

  “I watch ghost hunting shows.”

  He grinned. “Me, too.”

  A moment of silence engulfed them, laced with expectation and hope. Could they manage to rebuild their lost relationship based on the simplest of common interests…like ghost hunting?

  He had to say something to dispel the sudden tension. “Jordan has done some ghost hunting back in Arkansas.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I should get him to tell you the story. I can’t believe he lived through all that.”

  She stepped closer to him. Curiosity brightened her eyes. Her scent invaded his sinuses. He remembered the smell, distinctive and enticing and only hers. For a while after they split, he could still recall it if he concentrated.

  She tilted her head. “What are you thinking about?”

  Should he confess his thoughts? No, she wasn’t ready for him to express even the most insignificant of his feelings toward her. Actually, every way he felt about her at the moment seemed huge as if his emotions were expanding and threatening to burst his heart.

  He cleared his throat. “Jordan and Chelsea are staying at the condo for a while until he can find a permanent place for them to live. I want them to come up here.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to search the house, and I want to try to communicate with the ghosts. And I don’t want us…you and me…to do it alone. I think we need help.”

  She licked her lips. Ideas and questions appeared to roll around inside her head. “That’s a good idea. You think he’ll do it?”

  Her response was not what he expected. He’d gotten used to her disputing practically everything he said.

  Maybe he was exaggerating a bit. But only a little.

  He rubbed his itchy palms on his pants legs. “I’ll call him in the morning. Right now, I need some rest. I’m exhausted, but I bet I’ll have a hard time falling back to sleep after all that.” He nodded toward the trailer door in the general direction of the manor house.

  “I don’t think I can.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I just keep thinking about how he could have killed the sheriff. If he’d attack someone in law enforcement, what would he do to us? He could be hanging around watching.”

  “When he went inside the house, didn’t he act strange? Like the ghost was controlling him or something?”

  “Yeah, something was wrong with him.” She stretched and yawned. “I think I’m going to lie down awhile. Maybe I can sleep after all.”

  He nodded goodnight to her as she passed him and made her way toward the bedroom.

  “Sophia?”

  She turned but didn’t quite face him. Her eyes glistened as if she’d teared up.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She offered him a thin smile. “Me, too.”

  He dared to hope she was thawing toward him a little.

  ****

  The next morning, Sophia had watched Dylan from the doorway as he supervised the work crew he had hired to replace the damaged floorboards in the manor house. Each board had to be placed precisely to Dylan’s specifications. Her appreciation for his intense attention to detail escalated over the course of the day. He’d done his homework and ordered timber true to the period. In the late 1800s, the floors would have been constructed from bald cypress trees harvested from the nearby swamp. Fortunately, Dylan had found a vendor who supplied reclaimed cypress for antebellum home restoration.

  She smiled at him when he left the foreman of his crew and approached her. “You’ve chosen some beautiful wood for the floor. It’s really starting to look nice, but that smell.” She waved her hand in front of her face.

  He returned her smile. “Yeah, well
, it kind of stinks when you’re working with it.”

  “Better than that horrible gardenia smell.” She followed him out of the house and down the steps to the front lawn that had been cleared of vines. “I’ve walked around the house today and even ventured into the surrounding gardens as far as I could without getting tangled up in kudzu. I haven’t seen a single gardenia bush.”

  “Maybe we’re not really smelling gardenias.”

  “After my experience with Les’s…I mean, Brandon’s gardenia overkill? No, I know that smell.”

  He picked up a broken limb and tossed it off the lawn into the nearby brush. “Jordan said he could come up here tomorrow.”

  When he stopped at the edge of the drive, they faced each other. The wind played with the hair on top of his head. Sophia pushed down the urge to run her fingers through the golden brown waves to straighten them. “Do we have to wait for him? With the flooring in place, we should be able to search the house.”

  He glanced toward the Manor. “I don’t think they’re going to be done today, but there should be enough new floor in place that we could get around. I really want to see what’s inside the rest of the house.”

  The sun was lowering in the western sky. Sophia scrunched her shoulders when a slight breeze sent chilly fingers up and down her arms. Long limbs shifted overhead. Shadows lengthened. The world beyond the tree-lined drive deepened into a void that appeared endless. How far could a person wander into the darkness without getting lost? Even during the day, she hadn’t wanted to venture too far into the depths.

  She shivered. “It must be ten degrees cooler in the shade.”

  “That’s why the original owners planted the trees. No such thing as central air back then.”

  She bit back a quick retort. Oh course, she knew that. She’d studied antebellum plantation home construction just as he had. He grinned at her as if he’d read her defensive thought.

  The foreman of the work crew stomped down the front steps and stood before Dylan. “We’re done for the day.”

  Dylan glanced at his watch. “Still another hour or so of daylight, Collin.”