Her phone rang again.
“That’ll be Livy calling back,” she said, not taking her eyes off the gun. “She’ll want to know why I hung up. Maybe bad enough to come out here.”
“We’ll be gone before she can get here.”
“Ben can be here in five minutes. That’s who she’ll call if I don’t answer.”
He handed the phone to Taylor. “Put it on speaker. I don’t have to tell you to watch what you say, not if you want your mother to live.”
Taylor almost dropped the phone. With a shaky finger, she pressed the speaker button.
“Did you call me?” Livy’s voice sounded hollow in the room.
Ethan shook his head.
“Um, not on purpose.”
“Well, where are you? I thought you were coming downtown.”
“I, ah, got busy. I’m on my way now.”
Taylor heard a voice in the background. “Ask when she’ll get here.”
Nick was with Livy?
“Hurry up.” Livy sounded impatient. “I have some information for you.”
“We’ll talk about it when I get there, chère.” Taylor quickly ended the call, and Ethan grabbed the phone, tossing it on the table.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes. “What did you do with my mother?”
“She’s waiting for you at Oak Grove. And don’t look at me like that. This is entirely your fault. You couldn’t leave well enough alone. No, you had to keep digging and digging. ‘We need to know the truth.’” He mimicked her voice. “I can’t let you ruin my career.”
She took a step back. “It’s been you from the start. In Newton, you hired Scott to stalk me, but here, you did your own dirty work.” Taylor gasped. “You gave Scott that overdose.”
“You’re not as smart as you think.” Ethan laughed, and the sound sent chills through her. “I sent him to Newton just to get him out of my hair, and he gets a crush on you.”
“You can’t frame him for this.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about Scott.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Taylor swallowed. She had to buy time. It’d take Livy and Nick thirty minutes to get here . . . if Livy understood. And Ben was almost as far away.
“Why didn’t you kill me then? When you killed my dad?”
“I didn’t know you were in the basement that day. Then you acted weird after your dad didn’t come home, and I suspected but could never be sure. There were times I actually considered it, but I knew I had to make it look like an accident. The opportunity never opened up.” He shoved her toward the door.
She stumbled, and despair welled up. She should have figured out it was Ethan all the time. And because she hadn’t, her mom would pay the price. All of her skill and knowledge wouldn’t help now—it wouldn’t save her or her mother.
“Move.”
The hard steel of the gun pressed into the small of Taylor’s back.
Livy put down the receiver. “We have to get to the Martin farm.”
“Why?”
“There’s only one reason Taylor would call me chère when she hung up—she’s in trouble.”
Nick hurried behind her, not understanding. But if Livy was going to Taylor, so was he. “Where was she?”
“Still at home. Let’s take my car. I’ll call Ben and get him to meet us there.”
As they pulled from the parking garage, Livy said, “Chère was our code for ‘I need help, come bail me out.’ And it may be nothing more than my overactive imagination—”
Her cell phone rang.
“It’s the lab.” She put the phone on speaker.
“Got your results. Positive for insulin.”
37
Given a choice, Taylor would stage her last stand in the kitchen, but if she failed, it would mean sure death for her mother. Once outside, Ethan forced her into the driver side of his Escalade and instructed her to drive to the old home place. As they inched past Jonathan’s travel trailer, she searched for Pete. Where was he when she needed him? And where was Jonathan?
Oak Grove drew closer, its empty windows reminding her of opportunities lost . . . and her nightmares of dying in this desolate house. Adrenaline shot through her veins. Not if she could help it.
“How do you think you’re going to get away with this? You can’t just kill two people and not be a suspect.”
“I’m not stupid, Taylor. The police will have a suspect. A dead one. It’s really too bad, you know . . . Jonathan carrying the guilt of killing his brother all those years. Today he just lost it and killed you and your mother before turning the gun on himself.”
Ethan directed her to park under the ancient oak. “He’s wanted to tell the truth for years, you know. Now I’ll tell it for him, or at least my version.”
He laughed, the sound so deranged, she shuddered. He pulled the keys from the ignition. “Sit there until I come around.”
Taylor thought about making a run for it, but she couldn’t outrun a bullet. Instead, she did as he said. Once inside the house, she trudged toward the basement door, her footsteps echoing in the empty hall.
Taylor’s heart thumped with each step down the dark stairs. Cold dampness seeped into her bones. She had been here so many times in her dreams. She stepped off the landing into the basement, where a portable lantern lit the room. Her mom’s small frame huddled against the brick, her platinum hair plastered to her head, her hands bound in front of her. Jonathan sat on the hearth, his head buried in his hands. He looked up.
“I’m sorry, Taylor. I didn’t know Ethan planned . . .” He covered his mouth with his hand.
Her uncle’s face framed with fuzzy red hair formed in her mind’s eye. “But you knew Ethan killed Dad. You could have told.”
“You knew?” Her mom struggled to turn and look at Jonathan. “All these years, you knew?”
Her uncle seemed to shrink before her eyes, then her gaze went to the sealed fireplace behind him. No one had to tell her that the chimney contained her father’s body. Dead. Her lips tingled as blood drained from her face. Her fingers curled into fists as shock morphed into anger. Ethan had robbed her of her father. And now he intended to kill the rest of her family.
She could almost hear Ethan explain to everyone how Jonathan broke under the pressure and killed his sister-in-law and niece. He probably already had a story prepared on how Jonathan managed to get them both in the basement.
Ethan prodded Taylor with the gun. “Put your hands behind your back.”
“No.” She turned around to face him.
He lifted the gun toward her mom. “Would you rather I shoot your mother in her hand or her knee?”
He was evil enough to do it. Which would leave him with four bullets in the revolver. More than enough. She turned around and winced as he jerked tape around her wrists, hope slipping with each wrap. The sealed chimney mocked her. “Why the chimney? Why not the tunnels?”
Ethan jerked his head toward her mom. “Because Allison here roamed those tunnels. Couldn’t take a chance on her finding the body.”
Mom gasped. “How could you?”
He shrugged. “It really was an accident. I never meant to kill James.”
The lack of emotion in his voice sent a shiver through Taylor. She had to buy time and turned to her uncle. “I don’t understand why you wanted to sell the land and this house. Weren’t you afraid the new owners would find the . . .” Taylor couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
Ethan shoved her toward the hearth. “Because I was the one buying the property.”
“You? Why would you want it?” Taylor braced against the rough fireplace and slid to the floor, the corner bricks digging into her arm. If Livy and Nick didn’t arrive soon, they would die. She pressed her back and hands against the rough brick and rubbed up and down, scraping the skin.
“I’m tired of giving your uncle money and never getting anything in return. At least this way I’ll have the land and
this house.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jonathan came to life. “Shut up, Ethan.”
How deep was her uncle involved in this? She needed to ask questions. Anything to stall until Livy and Nick got there. If they came. She had to keep them talking. “You won’t get away with killing us, Ethan.”
“We can’t do this.” Jonathan stood.
Maybe he hadn’t slipped over the edge of no return. “It’s not too late, Jonathan. You haven’t killed anyone yet.” Taylor hoped that was true. “Don’t you see? Ethan is going to kill us and pin it on you. It’s the only way he can get out of this mess. He told me.”
Jonathan shot an anxious glance at Ethan.
“Sit down, Jonathan. You’re not going to do anything. You never have.”
“Ethan will kill you, just like us,” Taylor said. She shifted to face Ethan. “How about the Yates and Wilson murders? Are you going to pin them on him as well?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that!” Sweat poured down Jonathan’s face. He paced. “I told you killing Wilson would bring a lot of attention. That the cops would figure out Yates didn’t commit suicide.”
Ethan turned a cold eye to Jonathan. “You were glad enough you didn’t have to pay him any longer.”
She’d been right. Allen Yates had figured out they had killed her dad and then blackmailed Ethan and her uncle. “Why kill Rob Wilson? He didn’t harm anyone.” The tape around her wrists gave a little.
“Shut up,” Ethan growled.
“Jonathan.” She kept her voice soft, hoping that if it came down to it, he couldn’t commit murder. “Help us.”
“You’re talking to a lost cause, Taylor. Your uncle is in too deep. Like me.”
“Did you seal my father’s body in the chimney before you used his plane ticket, Ethan? Or after you returned from Houston?”
Was that admiration in his eyes? Taylor hoped so. She knew his type—Ethan needed someone to know how smart he was. For twenty years he’d gotten away with the perfect crime, but he’d been unable to brag about it. Had to be eating him up.
“Security was a joke then. Nobody checked IDs.” He cocked his head. “You always were smart. Just not smart enough to leave well enough alone.”
“Why? At least tell me why you killed him.”
“No, don’t answer her!” Jonathan’s voice broke.
Ethan glanced toward her uncle, and his lip curled into a sneer. “What’s the matter, Jonathan? Don’t you want your niece to know that none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for your gambling problem? That even now you wouldn’t need to sell the land if you had just quit.”
Her mom gasped. “You murdered him for money?”
“I told you, I didn’t murder him,” Ethan said. “It was an accident. James caught me in the act of forging a five hundred dollar check to the company Jonathan and I formed.”
“Did you think my husband wouldn’t catch you?”
Ethan turned to her mother. “James trusted his brother, the accountant—who better to take care of the farm books? James was going to the police. He didn’t care that the money was to bail his brother out of a gambling mess.”
“What about the ten thousand dollars in the safe? Which one of you got that?” Taylor asked.
Ethan turned to her uncle. “Jonathan, would you like to explain that?”
Jonathan didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think so. We split it. I invested my part, Jonathan blew his on the dogs across the river.”
“So you killed him.” Taylor almost had the tape loose. “And you call that an accident?”
“I wasn’t going to jail then.” He leveled the gun at Taylor. “And I’m not going to jail now.”
“No!” Jonathan lunged at Ethan, knocking the gun out of his hand. It skittered across the basement floor. Taylor broke free of the tape and struggled to her feet. As the two men fought, she pulled her mother up and pushed her toward the stairs. “Hurry!”
They ran for the steps, Taylor urging her mother on. A shot rang out, the bullet splintering the wooden joists above her head. Then three more.
At the top, her mother fumbled with the door. “It won’t open!”
Ethan’s last bullet blasted a hole in the door over their heads.
She pushed past her mom and threw her weight against the door.
Footsteps pounded the steps behind her. Taylor gave one last push, and the door flew open. She shoved her mother through it. “Run! Get help!”
Ethan grabbed her ankle. She turned and kicked, aiming at his nose.
He screamed again but held on to her leg. They teetered at the top of the steps. Taylor grabbed for the banister, but Ethan’s weight pulled her down the steps with him.
Nick clenched his hands as Livy pounded on the Martins’ front door. Taylor was in trouble, he felt it. “No one’s here.” Livy shook the doorknob. “And it’s locked. Let’s try the back door.”
They sprinted around the house. Nick reached the door first. Unlocked. He shoved it open, calling Taylor’s name as he entered the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Livy demanded. “You don’t even have a gun. Let me go first.” She pushed through the kitchen door. “Taylor, it’s me, Livy.”
Nick spied her cell phone on the table. “This is why she doesn’t answer her phone.”
He trailed Livy as she moved cautiously through the dining room, her gun held in front of her. Empty. At the foot of the stairs, Livy called out again, and again silence answered them.
Nick chafed as they crept up the stairs. He wanted to take them two at a time. Livy paused outside Taylor’s bedroom door and then whipped around the corner into the room. “She’s not here.”
Outside, a siren wailed up the driveway, and Ben got out of his SUV. They met him at the back door.
“No one’s here,” Livy said.
Ben waved a police report. “Have you seen Pete Connelly?”
Pete! Now he knew why Digger looked familiar. Shave the long hair, and it was the guy Nick ran into at the picnic.
“That’s him! Digger.” Nick jerked Scott’s wallet from his pocket and waved the photo. “He’s the one who framed Scott.”
“ViCAP says the prints I took from his tea glass match a partial print found at Ralph Jenkins’s apartment,” Ben said.
“The kidnapper in Seattle?”
The information rocked Nick. “I don’t get it. If Pete killed that kidnapper and then tried to kill Taylor, why did Ethan try to kill my brother?”
“I don’t know. But Pete works for Ethan sometimes,” Livy said. “Ethan must have been involved somehow.”
“Have you checked the barn? Or the trailer Pete was staying in?” Ben asked.
“You check the trailer,” Livy said. “I’ll check the barn. And you,” she said to Nick, “come with me.”
He followed Livy to the barn. No Taylor, no Ethan, and no Pete.
Livy holstered her gun. “Let’s see if Ben’s found anything.”
At the travel trailer, Ben yelled for them to come in. “You have to see this.”
A computer sat on the small table. A photo of Taylor jogging filled the screen, then faded into one of her on a flat rock.
“Pete’s obsessed with her,” Ben said. He handed Nick three sheets of paper. Meade Funeral Home letterheads. Ben hit the escape button and clicked on another folder. “He has thousands of photos of her, all the way back to high school. And look at this.” He opened another folder, and a slide show started.
Livy gasped. “That’s those murdered women. The ones with their mouths glued shut. How did I not realize this?” She rubbed her forehead. “I mean, he was always just Pete Connelly, the guy no one ever saw.”
“That’s how it works,” Nick said. “I’ve researched obsessive love relationships, usually in connection with a serial killer, but it’s always the same. The obsessive personality is buried under a normal, nonthreatening persona.”
“Well, if he’s obses
sed, at least he won’t kill her,” Livy said, her voice sober.
“I don’t know.” Nick heaved a sigh. “If Pete thinks he can never have Taylor, he might decide no one else can have her either.”
“Ohh,” Taylor moaned. Cold seeped into her back from the stone floor. She opened her eyes, and her mom’s tear-streaked face came into focus. “Mom? What are you doing here? Why did you come back?”
Her mom rocked on her heels. “I couldn’t leave you, and when I ran into Pete . . .”
At least her mom’s hands were loose, but the look in her eyes . . . Taylor had found a trapped fox once with the same look. “He came to help?”
“Ethan’s dead. Pete shot him.” Her mom spoke in a monotone.
“Pete?” Taylor struggled to get up. The scent of Old Spice pervaded her senses.
Her mom buried her face in her hands. “I think Jonathan is dead too.”
“Having a bit of trouble, Taylor?”
She jerked her head toward Pete’s voice and gulped at the .40 mm Glock pointed at her. Stay calm. Act as if everything is normal. She lifted her gaze to his face and stared into dead black eyes. The eyes of a psychopath. Ethan had been frightening. Pete terrified her.
“The Old Spice. It was you . . .”
“Nice touch, huh?” Pete’s mouth curved into a sneer.
“How did you know?”
“Overheard you tell Livy one time you hated that scent, that it reminded you of your dad.”
Taylor lowered her gaze. Talk to him . . . connect with him. She sucked in a breath and forced her body to relax, especially her vocal cords. She spoke softly. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“He wanted me to kill you in Newton.” Pete smiled. A dead man’s smile. “Didn’t mean to hit you so hard that night, but I had to make Ethan think I tried.”
“Why?”
He gave her a puzzled look. “That should be obvious. To stop you from looking for your father.”
“But why did he wait until May? I asked Jonathan about my dad at Thanksgiving.”
He laughed, the sound dry, humorless. “Jonathan never told him. Ethan found out when your friend on the Memphis Police Department sent a request to the archives.”
Shadows of the Past (Logan Point Book #1): A Novel Page 31