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

by Denise Moncrief

  Brandon roared with anger. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

  In a flash, just a single heartbeat, he shoved Sophia away from him. She lost her footing and tumbled down the winding staircase toward Dylan, banging into him and causing them both to roll down the remaining steps. Dylan’s head bashed against the wrought iron railing, and the lights went out.

  ****

  Angry voices boiled through the cracked-open front door of Wakefield Manor. Charlotte Soileau drew her weapon with one hand and shoved out of harm’s way the man who had arrived with her.

  “Stay outside.” Her order rang with all the authority she could muster.

  She’d already found Leslie Wakefield IV of Columbia, South Carolina, to be a headstrong man. He had insisted on accompanying her to the house. Without a doubt, she was going to regret caving in to his demand.

  She nudged the door open a little more, peeked inside, and took in the scene in one glance. Dylan Hunter and Sophia Cannon lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, both of them apparently unconscious with their arms and legs twisted at odd angles. Brandon Wakefield balanced on the rail of the upstairs balcony, teetering and about to fall off, clutching a rope tied to the balcony rail at one end and looped around his neck at the other.

  In an instant, she had holstered her weapon and rushed into the grand front hall. “Wakefield, stop! Don’t do it.”

  Behind her, the Les Wakefield she’d brought with her drew in a sharp breath. She gritted her teeth and refused to turn around to reprimand him. I told him to stay outside. What is wrong with him?

  Before she could stop him, Les had moved around her. It appeared Brandon and Les had engaged in a stare down. From the corner of her eye, she caught movement. Either Dylan or Sophia was stirring.

  Les’s stern voice pierced the heavy air in the grand hall. “You’re the imposter.”

  “I am not an imposter.” Brandon’s roar filled the cavernous room. He convulsed, his foot slipping. He dropped his hold on the rope and waved his arms at his sides in an obvious attempt to regain his balance.

  “You stole my identity and my inheritance.”

  Sophia had managed to pull herself up and leaned on the banister. Her hand covered her mouth, but her words slipped between her fingers. “Oh my God, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Les extended his arm, pointed a long finger at the fake Wakefield. “I want my life back.”

  Brandon jerked hard. The shudder that wracked Les’s body a moment later was a mirror image of Brandon’s convulsion. Both men curved backward and then bowed forward. A dark mass seemed to pass between them, leaving Brandon and creeping through Les’s flesh.

  Brandon Wakefield went limp and fell over the rail. The rope was just short enough that his feet dangled a few inches from the wood floor. Les Wakefield stood as still as a stone statue. His gaze apparently riveted on the imposter.

  Charlotte rushed forward, determined to save Brandon’s life. “Help me get him down from there.” She turned her attention to Sophia. “Wake Dylan up. I need help. Find me something sharp to cut this rope.” She threw an order toward Les Wakefield. “Move. Help me lift him up.”

  Les Wakefield remained immobile.

  It was too late anyway. The sharp crack that had reverberated around the room when the rope pulled taut had testified to the effectiveness of Brandon’s suicide attempt. By the time he’d been freed from the noose, he was already dead, his neck snapped in two.

  The next few hours were pure horror as Charlotte separated the participants in the tragedy and took statements. Dylan and Sophia were both still groggy from the hard lick they had taken to the head. Dylan hadn’t seen much more than Charlotte, but Sophia had told a confusing tale about what had happened before Dylan arrived. The EMTs finally carted them off to the nearest hospital, concerned that they’d both suffered a concussion.

  The new Les Wakefield had been hard to contain. The man didn’t seem affected by the death of another man in the front hall of the ancestral family home. Instead, he’d wanted to do a tour of the house. He’d become belligerent, demanding his rights, almost to the point she thought she was going to have to arrest him. Charlotte had her deputy drag him outside and refuse him admittance to the crime scene.

  Deputy Perot sidled up to her and removed his uniform hat. “What a day. Are we ready to wrap this up?”

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She still had a few questions for the grandson of the former sheriff of St. Denis parish. She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the parlor, slamming the door behind them. Anger had swelled inside her, so that her breath came in bursts.

  Tired of people withholding information, she demanded the truth. “When we discovered that woman’s bones in the cemetery the other day, why didn’t you tell me about your grandfather’s investigation into the disappearance of that couple in the 1960s? You knew who she was when we opened the crypt. You knew what questions I would eventually ask. You could have saved me a lot of trouble by telling me whatever your grandfather has told you about his investigation.”

  Perot stepped back from her wrath. “My grandfather never talked to me about them. All I know are rumors. The stories that old folk tell around here get added to and added to until they aren’t the true story any longer. You know that, Sheriff. You grew up here.”

  She did know that.

  “What did you hear? I want to know. Even if it is a rumor.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t tell family secrets, Sheriff.”

  She stepped toward him. “You took an oath, deputy.”

  “I’m still a Perot. I’m that before I’m anything else.”

  Steam must have boiled from her ears because Deputy Perot paled.

  “Your Paw Paw knew where she was buried, didn’t he?”

  His eyes widened.

  “Oh my God. That woman had a family up in Nashville that never knew what happened to her. Why would your grandfather keep quiet?” She was on to something because Perot was sweating buckets. “This is more than just about embarrassing him, isn’t it? What was that woman to him?”

  “You would have to ask him.”

  She yelled her disbelief. “Your grandfather is dead. How am I going to ask him anything?”

  Perot smiled. “Well, I guess the answer to your question will have to remain buried with the old man because I’m not gonna repeat things that I don’t know are true or not.”

  She backed up from him. No words formed. Incredible.

  “So I guess I need to turn in my badge and my weapon.” His eyes blazed with a challenge.

  The man knew she couldn’t fire him without good cause.

  “Perot, you look me in the eyes and tell me the stance you’re taking is an honorable one, and I will back off.”

  He stood a little taller. “This is about my family’s honor, ma’am.” He paused. It seemed he was well aware he had dodged the termination bullet. “But if you ask the right questions, I will try to point you in the right direction.” He leaned toward her. “The truth is important, Sheriff. Justice is important. But I can’t be the one who reveals this truth. It has to come from someone else.”

  A suspicion grew inside her tired mind. She cocked her thumb toward the department unit she could see through the window. Wakefield sat inside the car waiting to be released. “Do you know who tipped that man off that he had inherited the plantation? Because he seemed to already know before I told him anything.”

  Perot’s eyes blazed with certain knowledge. “Well now, I’d go have a little chat with your good friend, Bobby McIntosh, if you want an answer to that question.”

  His assertion shocked her. Why would Bobby go behind her back like that? More than that, how would he know about the man in South Carolina? The mystery of the real Les Wakefield went much deeper than a case of identity theft. If the DNA results came back that the man was the rightful heir to the Wakefield estate, then she�
��d give him some room, but she’d watch him like a hawk. Her gut told her there was something hinky about anyone who claimed to be a Wakefield.

  “What’s Bobby gonna tell me?”

  Perot shrugged, so she glared at him, the same mean look that usually wilted first time offenders.

  “You remember that missing girl from New Orleans?”

  She nodded. “Audrey St. Clair.”

  He seemed confused. “No. I don’t know who that is. I meant that girl that was Jordan Clark’s half-sister.”

  “Kristie Godchaux?”

  “Yeah, her. She came around here three or four years ago asking questions about the Wakefields.”

  Charlotte’s heart thumped harder. It was coming at her. Something hard to take. She braced for it.

  “After she asked all those questions, she left town, but Bobby McIntosh started asking a lot of questions. It wasn’t long after that his fiancée Tiffany fell off the bridge. You remember that?”

  “I wasn’t here then.”

  “They were engaged a long, long time. I didn’t think Bobby was ever going to marry that girl until that Godchaux girl came around asking question. Then he was in a hurry to get Tiffany to the altar.”

  Her blood boiled with aggravation. Her patience was leaving the room. She rolled her hand for him to get to the point of his story.

  “Sheriff Theriot always wondered if that girl didn’t have a little help going over the bridge. Bobby had some crazy idea that he was gonna dispute the Wakefield claim to the estate. You know, the girl was a Duchesne. But Tiffany didn’t want nothing to do with it.” He leaned in closer as if he was about to tell a juicy secret. “I think that Godchaux girl found out something important. She went out to Sephronia Adams’s place, and when she came back she was scared out of her mind. She left town in a real big hurry.”

  Perot had her undivided attention. “What did Sephronia tell her?”

  “Now how would I know that?”

  Yes, how would he? He hadn’t given her many details, but he had given her a vital piece of information and a lot to think about, and now she knew that Bobby and Sephronia had played her. The two of them knew much more about the Wakefield mystery than either of them had ever let on.

  The deputy smiled, obviously reveling in his role in revealing the past to the sheriff. “You should ask Bobby and Sephronia what they know about the Wakefield curse.”

  “What curse?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything more. You’ll have to ask them.” With those words hanging in the air, her deputy had the nerve to walk off.

  ****

  Dylan finally wheedled Sophia’s room number out of his nurse and discovered that she was right across the hall. When the area outside his door grew quiet, he tiptoed across the hospital corridor and slipped into her room. She lay flat of her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling above her. For a moment, he feared she was in some sort of trance. How much damage had the encounter with Brandon Wakefield done to her?

  “Sophia?” He whispered because he didn’t want Nurse Ratched to kick him out of Sophia’s room.

  She turned her head toward him and moisture formed in her eyes. “Dylan, I thought they weren’t going to let me see you. Are you okay?”

  Was she really worried about him? She shouldn’t be. She had taken the brunt of the trauma.

  He answered her with a light-hearted tone. “My head hurts like fire, but I have a hard head. We both took a hard bump. They’re keeping me overnight to make sure I don’t have a concussion. I’m pretty sure that’s why you’re still here too.”

  She reached out her hand to him. “If they think you might have a concussion, what are you doing out of bed?”

  “I had to see you. I’ll go back to my room and my torture chamber when I know you’re all right.” He lowered the rail and edged onto the side of her bed.

  “Where are we?”

  “The hospital in Metairie. It was closest.”

  She nodded, but weariness shadowed her eyes. No doubt, she wanted to go home. Maybe now that Brandon Wakefield was dead she could go back to the way life had been before everything got crazy. No, she couldn’t go back to her apartment. He wanted her to stay with him, but maybe that discussion was best left until they were discharged from the hospital.

  Curiosity defeated him. He had to ask. “What happened?” He stopped his questions before they flooded her. “Maybe I should wait until you feel better to ask a ton of questions.”

  A weak smile played across her lips. “I couldn’t help it, Dylan. I had to see those letters. I didn’t want to wake you up, but it was as if they were calling to me. It was… I couldn’t stop myself. It’s like the old swamp woman said…it’s in my blood.” The thought seemed to sadden her.

  He took her hand in his. “I’m glad he didn’t kill you.”

  She laughed and maybe she did find it funny. “Me too.” The amusement disappeared from her eyes in an instant. “He killed her.”

  “Les? Killed Lettie?”

  She nodded. “But that’s not all he did…”

  The way she trailed off made him believe what she was keeping to herself was significant to her personally.

  “Did he…through Brandon…did he…”

  She tilted her head. “Hurt me? You saw him push me down the stairs.” She shivered hard. “The memory of him hanging there…that’s going to be enough horror to last me a lifetime.” She tightened her hand around his. “Dylan, I want out. I don’t want to work for this new guy. I don’t want anything else to do with that house or the people who lived there. The new guy…he’s creepy. He reminds me so much of Brandon when he was being Les…”

  Dylan’s uncomfortable laughter swirled around them. “He’s Les the original’s great-grandson. Maybe his genetics are strong. Maybe it’s because he looks just like him.”

  She shook her head. There was more to her attitude than any version of creepy Les creeping her out.

  He brushed the hair from her eyes. “Sophia, what is it? What aren’t you telling me?” He swallowed hard. “We weren’t going to keep things from each other anymore, remember?”

  Her head snapped toward him. Her eyes flashed with anger, for just a moment. The anger vanished as rapidly as it had formed. “Of course, you’re right.” She paused long enough he sensed her struggle. “I think…I think…I might be Les Wakefield’s great-granddaughter.”

  She couldn’t have told him anything that shocked him more.

  “I don’t want to be related to him. When we were in the bedroom where I found the letters, Lettie tried to confront him, but he was stronger than her. That’s what frightens me about the place. I always thought the light entities were stronger than the dark ones. I always thought the light destroyed the dark. His energy was stronger than hers, and her spirit fled without the freedom she wanted. After all that, I couldn’t help her the way she wanted me to.”

  Her thoughts seemed to wander off to another place for a while, and Dylan was afraid to drag her back to the moment.

  She shivered and clutched his hand. “What happened to the letters? They explain a lot. Does the sheriff have them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her eyes brightened, and her face flushed. “Celia got away from him, you know. She left him, and someone named Phillip helped her. I think he’s been trying to take his revenge out on women named Celia ever since then. The ghost that the sheriff sees is one of those women. I could have been the next Celia. I could have been a ghost. He was going to take me to the cemetery and kill me.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “They are all buried in that cemetery. All the Celias. I know it. I feel it. Lettie is not going to be free until all of them are free.”

  Dylan stroked her cheek. She had become so worked up he feared for her blood pressure.

  “Don’t you see? I can’t go back there. I can’t handle it. There’s too much death. Too much anger. Too many spirits trapped there. I can’t free them all, and I’d want
to.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll never go back there again.” He dared to go revisit the discussion she had cut short. “Why do you think you’re related to the Wakefields?”

  She remained silent so long he thought she wouldn’t answer him. “The spirit of Les Wakefield implied that my great-grandmother Hattie had been with him. At least, I think that’s what he was trying to tell me. And it seemed to me that might be why the place calls to my blood so much. If I have Wakefield blood… If that’s so, I can’t go back there if I ever want to be normal.”

  Neither of them had noticed Sheriff Soileau slip into the room. “So then you don’t want me to have the lab process the sample for DNA?”

  Sophia jumped and placed her hand on her chest. “You should knock before you come into a room, Sheriff.”

  Soileau smiled. “I did.” She dropped into the chair next to the bed. “I came here to tell you…” She rubbed the back of her head. “This is hard.”

  More bad news, no doubt. “Go ahead. Just tell us.”

  “We searched the grounds. Borrowed ground penetrating sonar from the state. We found three more sets of remains.” She paused and studied Sophia’s face. “One of them, the oldest set, was beneath the house.”

  Sophia flinched.

  “After you told me about your dream, I thought we’d search under the house. The combination of dirt and rain… Just made sense it would be under the house, I guess.”

  Dylan glanced at Sophia. Her lips pressed tightly together. She’d told him about the nightmare, and obviously she had told the sheriff as well.

  “So you’ve found all of them? All of the Celias?” Sophia’s question trembled on the edges of her lips.

  Soileau nodded. “Yeah, all of them. Now, we have to identify them. They all had to have come from somewhere. Somebody out there wants to know what happened to them.” She paused a moment. “So what do you want me to do with the sample?”

  Was the sheriff really leaving that up to Sophia?

  Soileau answered his question as if reading his mind. “I don’t really need the test for evidence, do I?”