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

by Denise Moncrief

  Hateful hands dragged her across the wood floor and pushed her face against the mirror. No, she wasn’t Celia. She’d never be Celia. She didn’t belong in the Manor house. In her heart she had added, “Not yet anyway.”

  Her inner defiance must have betrayed her and shown on her face. Her breath escaped her when her nose slammed into the glass. Moisture trickled down her cheek. The first sting of the cut throbbed on her chin. She raised a hand to wipe away the blood, but a tight fist pinched her fingers together cracking the tiny bones. Her vision blurred and the urge to succumb to the darkness nearly overwhelmed her.

  For the first time in her life she knew what death looked like. It had come for her and her unborn child. Her reflection in the mirror startled her. She screamed despite the certain knowledge no one could hear her except her tormenter. Her knees buckled, and the darkness overtook her.

  Minutes or hours later, she blinked, and dirt stung her eyeballs. She tried to open her mouth to scream again, but she tasted earth when she parted her lips. A clod fell between her teeth and lodged at the back of her throat. With such heaviness pressing on her face, her coughs were trapped in her mouth.

  She spread her fingers, hoping to orient herself to her surroundings. In the dark. In the dirt. Buried alive.

  The far off sound of thunder penetrated the layer of earth that covered her. Near and then far. When the crash came closer, the ground beneath her trembled from the boom. Moisture seeped through the dirt from above her. The rain that had once been her friend would soak the earth that surrounded her.

  Frantically, she wiggled her fingers, trying to claw a small opening. Every bit of progress was met with more dirt. How deep had she been buried? Too deep she knew. With an anguished cry, muted by tons of regret heaped on top her, the knowledge of death dragging at her consciousness, she realized she’d always been in too deep.

  The unmistakable scent of gardenias invaded her sinuses. She hated that smell. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes soon to become tiny muddy pools. She didn’t want to die with the stench of her sins accusing her for the rest of eternity, but it appeared she had no choice.

  She finally clawed through the dirt. The rain wet her fingers. Hope filled her until someone’s heavy heel crushed her will to live.

  Sophia awoke, startled and disoriented. She clutched at her chest with one hand and grabbed at the nearest object with the other. When her fingernails dug into Dylan’s thigh, he jerked and bellowed with pain.

  The room seemed to swim in darkness, and she became terrified she would slip back into the horrible scene she had just left.

  Dylan’s arms surrounded her and broke the moment. “Baby, wake up. It was just a dream.”

  “Dream? It was just a dream.” She repeated his words over and over until she almost believed them.

  When her world finally tilted into focus again, a worried frown had settled across Dylan’s face and creased worry lines in his forehead.

  He brushed her hair from her face. “Catch your breath, Sophia.”

  “Can’t breathe.” Her choked words escaped through bursts of air.

  He rubbed her back, up and down, a very comforting massage that caressed away the tension. “Sure you can. One deep breath at a time. If you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t talk.”

  A half-hearted snort erupted from her. “You still remember high school first aid class, huh?”

  He leaned his cheek against hers. His breath warmed her face. Little by little, her respiration rate slowed. That’s when the trembling set in. She tried to stall the shakes, but it was no use.

  “That must have been an awful nightmare.”

  His calm voice eased her down from panic to a low-grade anxiety.

  “It was awful. I dreamed someone had buried me alive.”

  “Who?”

  She gulped down another wad of malingering fear. “I don’t know. The face was all blurry. It seemed so real and so unreal at the same time.” She turned to face him and stared into his eyes, hoping for some reassurance that she wasn’t going nuts. “I know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Dreams can be like that.”

  “I haven’t had such an awful nightmare since…” It had been a long, long time.

  “Since that guy was stalking you.”

  He didn’t mean Brandon Wakefield who had been pretending to be Les Wakefield IV.

  She nodded. “No, not since him.”

  He continued to stroke her back with slow, steady caresses. In that moment, she appreciated him not just as a man, but as a decent human being as well. Maybe he had grown up a little.

  Maybe.

  “He’s never been back since that night, has he?”

  She knew what night he meant and shook her head. “I kept thinking he’d show up again one day, but he never has.”

  “I guess the things that Brandon has done don’t seem nearly as scary.”

  She laughed a brittle burst of non-amusement. “Oh, Brandon was creepy, and he was starting to scare me, but that guy terrorized me for weeks, and I never figured out who he was.”

  “I know, babe. I was there. Remember?”

  Baby and babe. It had been a long time since Dylan dared called her those sweet names, the endearments of intimacy.

  She shuddered once and started babbling. “He stopped one night. In the middle of one of his horrible phone calls, he just hung up, and I never heard from him again.”

  She wasn’t telling Dylan anything he didn’t already know, but somehow talking about the horror from the past diminished the horror of the dream she’d just lived through.

  “I never understood why he quit.”

  Dylan’s frown deepened, a puzzled expression covering his face.

  “What is it?” A hollow fear thudded into the bottom of her gut. She knew the look of revelation when it settled across his features. She’d seen it a million times. Her instinct roared that she wasn’t going to like what he had figured out.

  “What was it you said right before he hung up?”

  Dylan knew the answer. They’d discussed her stalker’s last call many times. The horror seemed so long ago. Having gone through the ordeal of having a stalker once before had made the idea of going through it again with another stalker that much more horrifying.

  For some reason, she’d always made the mistake of arguing as if she could reason with the man. Every time, he’d pulled her into the conversation by saying something he knew would make her angry. The man knew her well, but she had no idea who he was. It was so one-sided. She had hated him, hated the sound of his voice, and hated the cadence of his speech. She had hated the feeling that he had gone through her personal life gleaning little factoids about her. She had particularly hated the way his voice broke every time he said her name.

  “I told him I didn’t know the boys from Atlanta. He called me a liar. I said I’d never been to Georgia. Then he made some weird comment about a peach tree, and I asked him what he was talking about. I told him I didn’t like peaches.” She paused. “Back then, I didn’t realize Peachtree was a main road in Atlanta.”

  Dylan’s revelation shot from his lips like a bullet. “Audrey knew. She used to live in Atlanta. Your stalker had you confused with her. When he figured out he’d been harassing the wrong woman, he left you alone. Why have I never figured this out before now?”

  It was a night for revelations, but Sophia had not expected that particular one to smack her right between the eyes. She’d been right. She didn’t like what he’d figured out. Not at all.

  “Try to go back to sleep, Sophia.” His voice resonated with weariness.

  How could she sleep? The ordeal had wired her. Bringing Audrey into the discussion had twanged her nerves.

  As if he had read her mind, he whispered into her hair. “I’m sorry I mentioned her. Please just let her stay in the past where she belongs. I don’t want to talk about her any more.”

  Neither did Sophia, but as she laid her head on her pillow and tried to settle into her
spot on the mattress, Audrey’s smirky attitude filled her mind. Audrey was the kind of person who embraced trouble like a dear friend. She could have easily left Atlanta and thought she’d escaped the mess she’d made there. That was Audrey’s approach to life. The woman got by with murder. The thought startled her. Why had she finished her sentence like that?

  What if there had been a case of mistaken identity? They had lived at the same address. What if her stalker had realized his mistake and refocused his attention on Audrey?

  ****

  Relief uncoiled the tension in Dylan’s muscles as Sophia’s breathing settled into the soft in and out of deep sleep. It had taken her awhile to calm, but she had finally dropped off. He curved his arm over her waist and snuggled his head as close to hers as he could without waking her.

  Dylan’s eyes remained wide open. His mind kept dwelling on their discussion of Sophia’s stalker. He wondered that one woman could attract the attention of two stalkers in one lifetime. It had been years since the man had harassed her, yet the memories of the middle-of-the-night calls and the odd gifts came back to him clear and strong.

  In a strange sort of way, Lettie’s story and Audrey’s story were similar. Both stories involved a case of mistaken identity. Most people familiar with the Wakefield legend had mistakenly believed the Wakefield Manor ghost was Celia. The stalker had mistakenly believed that Sophia knew some men from Atlanta when in all likelihood Audrey had. Mistaken identity. He dwelled on the concept awhile.

  Dylan had never mentioned Sophia’s stalker to Nick Moreau because he’d never considered there might be a connection to Audrey’s disappearance. But what if there had been a connection? The line of thought blew away his suspicions about what happened to her. He’d always believed she had left with a lover. What if she’d been forced to leave by the man who had stalked Sophia?

  He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was already three in the morning. How early could he antagonize Moreau with this new information? Would Moreau even listen to his speculation?

  He closed his eyes and stared at the back of Sophia’s head. Why hadn’t Moreau interviewed her when Audrey left? She would have been an obvious person of interest in Audrey’s disappearance? The question would nag him until he confronted Moreau about it. He should have brought it up before the man left the previous evening, but he hadn’t wanted to discuss his past in front of the sheriff.

  A to-do list had formed in his mind. Find the letters Hattie had written to Lettie. Confront Moreau about his inadequate investigative techniques. Locate someone who used to know Audrey in Atlanta.

  And last but certainly not least, get out of St. Denis Parish before anything else happened to further fray Sophia’s nerves.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sun was just coming over the eastern horizon when Charlotte busted the rusty lock on the storage building behind the Sheriff’s Office in beautiful downtown Wakefield. She’d been digging through old records almost an hour with nothing to show for her efforts except a runny nose. Her allergies were getting the better of her.

  Before she began her search, she’d had no idea the shed was in such bad repair. Decades of humid Louisiana summers had produced the nastiest sort of mold and mildew stench imaginable. The previous rain had left a puddle of water on the floor of the small building. There was a leak, and when she was through with her search, she was going to put two of her deputies onto the task of finding where the water was getting into the shed, even if they had to use a garden hose to flush it out.

  Many of the older files had no description on the outside of the box, but she thought she’d finally found the boxes from the last half of the 1960s. She lifted the lid of an old file, and the soggy cardboard almost fell apart in her hands. Inside, the documents appeared damp from the moisture that hung in the heavy air.

  After shuffling through the folders, she still hadn’t found anything that mentioned the Wakefields. If someone had been pretending to be Les Wakefield and had conned the local banker into turning over the property, surely former Sheriff Boots Theriot would have made a file for his report.

  She sighed and scratched her head with a gloved hand. Then she glanced at her fingernails protruding through rips in the latex and hoped she hadn’t gouged mold into her scalp. Another sneeze erupted from her dripping nose.

  Maybe it was time to give up the search. What were the odds that Theriot had actually recorded anything useful to her current investigation?

  She stood and studied the contents of the building, trying to memorize the locations of documents by decades. The small shed held an incredible amount of history, considering St. Denis was such a small parish. She’d see if she could squeeze a few dollars from her budget to hire contract labor to sort and properly store the paperwork before it was lost to the poor climate control forever. She was going to have to purchase a better storage shed.

  The metal door squealed open. For a moment, she couldn’t determine who was standing in the glare of sunlight. She shielded her eyes and was surprised to see Boots.

  “I heard you wanted to see me.” Displeasure rattled in his voice.

  The old man hated to be disturbed from his retirement. Hunting and fishing filled his days. There was no room on the old man’s calendar for anything as mundane as an official law enforcement inquiry.

  Yes, she’d asked one of her deputies to call him into the office. Charlotte looked him up and down. From the appearance of the old geezer, retirement had not been kind to him. She suspected Boots included a fair amount of alcohol consumption in his retirement plan. Probably unlabeled swamp hooch.

  “I’m not going to sneak up on the subject. I’m gonna ask you right out what you know, and I expect a straight answer.”

  Boots’s jaw clenched. The election in which she defeated him for sheriff had not been a pretty affair. He’d cried foul for days afterwards.

  “Now, Charlotte, I’m insulted. Why wouldn’t I be straight with you about what I know about anything?”

  There was a first time for everything. This could be one of them.

  She refused to engage in meaningless posturing, so she got to the point. “Tell me about the man that came down here in the sixties and claimed to be the lost Wakefield heir.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, Sheriff.” He said the word sheriff with a deep amount of disdain laced with a fair amount of disrespect.

  She wasn’t letting him get by with playing ignorant. “There should have been a record of your investigation. Why can’t I find it?”

  “I never said there was an investigation.”

  “Of course, there was. A man comes down here and claims he’s Les Wakefield. Not long after he moves into the Manor house with his wife, they both disappear. Then a sheriff’s deputy from another state comes looking for a missing woman that fits Mrs. Wakefield’s description. If you didn’t do an investigation, then you should have been kicked out of office a long, long time ago for dereliction of duty.” She’d pieced a lot of it together from what Drew Hennigan, the former bank manager, and Sephronia Adams, the old swamp woman, had told her.

  “That happened the year before I was elected. I only know what I heard. Just a bunch of rumors.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

  She leaned into the old man. “Because I found her bones yesterday. That’s why.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned. We never could find her.”

  So there had been a search. “Maybe that’s because you didn’t look hard enough.”

  He laughed. “We looked for that piece of…for her everywhere.”

  “Well, then, you didn’t look in the right place.”

  “Where’d you find her?” He seemed genuinely curious.

  “In the cemetery.” She paused for the right effect. “In the crypt with old man Les Wakefield. You know, the one who hung himself in 1937.”

  That set the old man back on his heels. “You don’t say. Never would of thou
ght of looking for her there.”

  Obviously. “So tell me what you know about her. Was Celia Wakefield her real name?”

  He scratched his chin and pondered her question a long while. “Let’s go outside to talk. This shed smells like cat pee.”

  Maybe you should have replaced it twenty years ago. Once she closed the door behind them, he acted like he was about to walk off. She stepped around him and got in his path. “Oh no, you don’t. You’re not going anywhere until you talk.”

  “You can’t hold me.”

  “I could charge you with impeding my investigation.”

  His eyebrows knitted across his wrinkled brow. “You’re a mean woman, Charlotte Soileau. Mean like your old man.”

  “Don’t bring my Daddy into this. Now, out with it. What do you know?”

  He sighed as if being put upon by a pushy woman. She knew the attitude. She’d seen it a million times in the line of duty.

  “The whole thing was an embarrassment. That’s why Sheriff Perot kept the case file in his office. He didn’t want anyone accidentally coming across it. When I was rightfully elected, the file was missing. I swear.” He overemphasized the words rightfully elected.

  The sheriff before Boots was the grandfather of Deputy Perot. How much did her deputy know about the incident in the sixties? He hadn’t indicated at the cemetery that he had any idea whose bones had been stored in the Wakefield crypt.

  She nodded for Boots to continue. “Go on.”

  “The woman’s name was Celia, but I can’t remember what her maiden name was. She lived in Nashville when the man found her. The deputy from Tennessee said she left with the man pretty soon after she met him. There’s a marriage license for Leslie Wakefield and Celia something or other filed in the courthouse up there. 1966 or ‘67, I think. The thing is…her Daddy gave a missing person’s report when he heard she’d run off with this guy. Said the girl’s reputation had been ruined and this man took advantage of her reputation to seduce her into leaving with him. Since, you know, back then no one else would have had her.”