“Well, we know Stuart didn’t kill Denise.”
“Do we? He’s out on bail.”
“And being watched.”
“Oh, come on, Monica. You’ve pointed out a couple of times how close New York is to Wheeling. Are you going to tell me Burgess, with all his resources, couldn’t possibly come here and make it back to New York undetected?”
“Maybe, but why would he?”
“Because he knew about Faith and the Six of Hearts and he wanted it to look like Angie was killed by someone seeking revenge.”
“Nonsense.”
“Is it?”
Monica drained her beer. “Could I have some more of this nectar of the gods?”
“It’s in the refrigerator,” Laurel said coldly, her mind racing. As Monica left the room, she thought of a terrible scenario. What if Monica were making it look as if someone seeking revenge for Faith’s death had killed Angie? Wouldn’t the death of Denise convince police that this was the motive? After all, Stuart Burgess didn’t even know Denise. And what about the heart and the six and the tarot card at the scene of Angie’s murder? After murdering her, could Stuart have called someone, had them tamper with the scene, plant evidence that would connect that crime with another, maybe one planned for the future? Who could have come up with such a scheme? Someone clever, ambitious, cold? Monica had been in New York when Angie was murdered. She’d been in Oglebay Park when Denise was murdered.
When Monica came back in the room and settled on the couch, Laurel tried to act natural although she felt as if every nerve in her body was tlirurnming. “Monica, when you came to Wheeling and told us the details of Angie’s murder, did you think any of us would go to the police?”
“No.” She gulped beer. “Well, maybe you. You were the one who fought hardest to tell the truth thirteen years ago.”
“Then why did you tell me? Why did you tell any of us and risk someone going to the police?”
Monica jiggled her foot. “Laurel, I’m not completely hard-hearted. I couldn’t leave the three of you in ignorance, sitting ducks just waiting for the killer.”
“I see.”
“It’s true. What are you implying was my real motive?”
“I don’t feel like explaining myself right now.”
“And I don’t feel like listening to any more of these veiled accusations. I’ve had a lot of scotch and this beer isn’t sitting too well on top of it.” Monica stood. “I’m going.”
“I want to ask you one question.”
“All right. One.”
“Will you have anything to do with Stuart Burgess’s defense?”
Monica tucked her long hair behind her ears. “No.” She looked closely at Laurel. “What are you smiling about?”
“About how cocksure you are.” Laurel shook her head. “You’ve never realized, have you, that I always know when you’re lying.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. You’re lying now. You will have something to gain if Stuart Burgess is found innocent.”
“Certainly, Laurel. When the firm wins, so does everyone who works there.”
“Oh, Monica, please! I believe your interests are a little less altruistic. I think you have a whole lot to gain from Burgess’s acquittal.”
Monica’s eyes narrowed. “You might be going down a dangerous road with all your speculations. I’ve never known you to be so confrontational.”
“For thirteen years I’ve lived in shame and fear. I don’t think I realized until recently just how reclusive I’ve become. I haven’t had close female friendships, and the one man I was truly serious about I sent away because I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth about Faith. I’m not going to live that way anymore, Monica. Maybe I am being confrontational. Maybe I’m even being foolhardy voicing all my doubts, but I’m tired of trudging around with a load of guilt on my shoulders. I’m sick of sitting here being quiet and watching my own back, guarding my own reputation. I’m going to do everything I can to find out who killed Angie and Denise, and to protect Crystal and myself. Everything.”
The corner of Monica’s lip lifted in a half-grin. “You’re not worried about protecting me?”
“If there’s one thing you’ve always excelled at, it’s protecting yourself.”
Monica looked at her oddly for a moment, then laughed. “You’re right, Laurel. I don’t need anyone. I never have.”
As she walked toward her car, Laurel could hear her still laughing.
2
Laurel sat up the rest of the night, listening to music, pacing, trying to cry in order to release some of her pent-up emotion, but the horror was too new. She kept seeing Denise in her plaid hostess skirt smiling as she stood behind Wayne playing “Great Balls of Fire.” Her gray eyes had warmed with pride as she looked at her husband. Those eyes would never warm again, not with pride, not with love, not with the simple joy of being alive.
Laurel knew if her mother were here, she would already be whipping up the traditional tuna casserole and Jell-O mold to take to the Prices’ tomorrow. Laurel hated both dishes. Besides, God knew how many of those delicacies the Prices would receive. She’d pick up a nice tray at a deli, although she doubted if Wayne and Audra would have much appetite. The food at homes of the bereaved were mostly for guests.
And what about her own Christmas plans? Day after tomorrow she was supposed to close the store and fly to Florida. The fact that she hadn’t wanted to go anyway had nothing to do with her decision. She picked up the phone at seven o’clock and called her mother.
“This is a surprise hearing from you so early in the morning,” Meg Damron said. “How was Angie’s funeral?”
“Sad, like all funerals, but quite the affair. The governor was there and a few celebrities.” She took a deep breath and said hurriedly, “Look, Mom, I’m not going to be able to come down for Christmas.”
“What!” her mother burst out. “Why?”
“Because…well, there’s been another death. Denise Price. She used to be Denise Gilbert.”
“Denise! Of course I remember Denise. What happened?”
“She was…murdered last night.”
“Murdered?” her mother repeated slowly. “Where? How?”
“At the Oglebay light show. She was beaten to death.”
Laurel could almost feel her mother struggling with the concept. At last she said, “At Oglebay? That’s unthinkable! Nothing like that has ever happened there. Beaten to death?”
“Yes. Behind one of the big displays.”
“Oh, my God! Beaten to death! Just like Angie. You, Denise, and Angie—you were all friends. Is there a connection?”
“I don’t know,” Laurel hedged. “I don’t think Angie and Denise have even seen each other for years.”
“But the coincidence…” Her mother’s voice trailed away, then came back full force. “I want you to close the store and the house and come down here today!”
“I can’t, Mom.”
“You can and you will!”
“Mom, Denise left a little girl. She’s only eight and she saw the body—”
“And I assume she has a father and other family to look after her. You aren’t staying.”
“I am.”
“Laurel, for heaven’s sake, why are you being so stubborn? You know your father and I can’t come back. Claudia needs us—”
“I know she does. I want you to stay in Florida with her. But my place is here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to argue and I can’t go into all the details, but I won’t be coming for Christmas.”
“Do you know how worried I’m going to be about you?”
“Don’t worry.”
“That’s easy to say. As if Hal and I don’t have enough on our minds with Claudia and all the squabbling she’s been doing with your father. I don’t know what’s come over her. I also don’t know when the baby is coming.” Her mother sounded as if she were going to cry. “Laurel, I think you’re being incred
ibly inconsiderate.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way but I’m doing what I need to do. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
When she hung up, Laurel murmured, “I only hope that’s a promise I can keep.”
3
Laurel called Norma. “Do you still have the spare key to the back door of the store?”
“Certainly. You don’t think I’d lose a store key, do you?”
“No. I don’t know why I even asked. I don’t suppose you’ve heard about Denise Price, have you?”
“No. Who is she?”
“She is…was a friend of mine. She was murdered last night.”
“What?” Norma squawked. “Murdered!”
“Yes. I don’t want to go into details right now, but could you and Penny handle the store for me this morning? I was up all night and I just don’t think I can make it.”
“Of course you can’t! Oh, Laurel, I’m so sorry. First Angela Ricci and now this lady. Lord, Lord, what is this world coming to?”
“I don’t know, Norma, I really don’t know.”
“Well, you stay home and get some rest. Penny and I can handle everything all day.”
“I can’t thank you enough. I can tell you that after the first of the year I intend to give everyone raises.”
“Oh, honey, that’s not necessary,” Norma said, but she sounded pleased. “You take care of yourself today and don’t worry about one thing at the store.”
Laurel wouldn’t have to force herself not to think of the store. At the moment the running of Damron Floral seemed like one of the least important things in her life. Her main concern was trying to prevent more murders.
“And how do you intend to do that, Wonder Woman?” she asked herself sarcastically. The idea that she—shy, quiet, troubled Laurel Damron who had run home from college to hide behind the counter of her father’s floral business—could root out and expose a killer seemed ludicrous, the stuff of young teenage dreams. But what was her alternative? To flee to Florida? To slink around in fear until the murderer got her or Crystal?
No. It was time to emerge from her carefully constructed shell and face not only the past but the future. She could no longer live with the feeling that people had died because of what she should have done, what she could have done if she’d only had the nerve.
An hour later she was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater. As she pulled on a jacket, she decided to take the dogs with her. Leashes attached, they trundled through the snow to the car.
Laurel didn’t know why she had an overwhelming desire to see the Pritchard barn. She’d gone by it several times since the night Faith died, each time wondering why the owners left it standing. The fire that night would have completely destroyed it if the sleet hadn’t been so heavy and the wood already damp from all the snow. The family who owned the farm let the wreckage stand, although each year took its toll on the structure. Five years ago the family moved away. They’d never had any luck with the place, nor had anyone else who’d owned the farm since the early Pritchards. Each year everything from unusually heavy spring rains to midsummer heat waves and droughts to hordes of destructive insects mined the crops. Laurel didn’t believe it would ever be used as a farm again. A few years from now it would probably be the site of a shopping mall.
As she drove down the rutted road she and the other Six of Hearts had traveled that awful night thirteen years ago, she remembered the tales she’d heard about the Pritchard farm all her life. Supposedly right before she was hanged, as she stood with the noose around her neck with the preacher entreating her to repent, Esmé Dubois cursed not only the people who’d found her guilty of witchcraft, but the land and everyone who set foot upon it. Strangely enough, during the nearly three hundred years following Esmé’s death, the inhabitants of the farm had suffered an unusually large number of deaths and accidents. In the mid-1800’s there had even been a murder when the owner found a field hand making love to his daughter. He’d stabbed the field hand to death with a pitchfork. The girl, it was whispered at the time, had a miscarriage and ran away, never to be heard from again. The owner spent the next twenty years in prison while his wife and three young sons lost the farm and ended up destitute. In the 1930’s the four-year-old son of a farmer riding the tractor with his father fell backward, landing under the set of razor-sharp disks. In the sixties a man had caught his coat sleeve in a corner husker and been pulled into the machine. Hours later his young wife found the shredded remains of his body and nearly lost her mind with grief.
A place of death, that was the Pritchard farm. The darkness started with the deaths of the Pritchard children blamed on Esmé Dubois and ended…She thought of Faith, but the darkness didn’t end with Faith’s death. The darkness still lingered over everyone who came in contact with the farm, especially the barn. It certainly still lingered over the Six of Hearts, who’d sneaked out here when they were heedless teenagers and dabbled in the occult.
Laurel had never really believed in the power of the occult, not when she was young and they were playing Monica’s games, not even now. Still, the history of the Pritchard farm could have a powerful effect on a more impressionable mind than hers, maybe so powerful it would lure someone into making it look as if Faith were reaching beyond the grave, using a living agent to avenge her death.
She pulled as near to the barn as possible and coaxed the dogs from the car. She held their leashes, even though she knew it wasn’t necessary. In strange territory, the dogs would stay as close to her as possible.
She crunched through the snow, looking at the landscape. Snow dusted the trees, every limb covered with white, looking lacy against a low pewter sky. A few evergreens drooped beneath the weight of the snow, and in the distance Canadian geese floated peacefully on a big pond as if the weather were a pleasant seventy degrees.
The remains of the old barn loomed ahead, snow piled on its peaked roof, the rough, unpainted boards of its walls dismal and neglected. She could barely see the farmhouse in the distance, but she felt as if she were being watched from it. That was quite possible. Abandoned so long, it had surely become a haven for vagrants. She didn’t worry about them in the barn—no one would choose to live in that half-destroyed building with its dirt floor when they could stay in the house, even if the house had no heat or running water and most of the windows were broken. A slight mist hung over the farm, making the air heavy, threatening more snow by afternoon. A sharp wind blew up, tossing her curly hair to one side and making her shiver. She could never remember seeing a more desolate place than the Pritchard farm. It seemed unreal, like something out of a frightening fantasy.
Laurel stopped in her tracks. What was she doing out here? What had drawn her to this place? The unlikely notion that because the trouble had started here, the solution lay here, too? Had her resolution in the long, shadowy hours of night to find the murderer eclipsed her good judgment, her sense of reality? Maybe it wasn’t even safe to be out here alone. She reached in her pocket and felt the canister of Mace. It wasn’t very reassuring. She’d never considered buying a gun and two weeks ago would have said the idea was ridiculous. Now it didn’t seem ridiculous at all. With a murderer on the loose, it certainly made more sense than exploring with Mace and two timid dogs.
April and Alex seemed to read her thoughts and agree. She had to pull on the leashes to get the dogs into the barn, where they pressed against her legs for reassurance.
Laurel looked around. Near the front of the barn only a few hand-hewn supporting posts, charred and gray, stood alone. She walked farther into the barn, pulling the dogs along. Stalls where long-dead animals had once spent their nights still stood, filthy and stripped of even the smell of cows and horses. Snow feathered through holes in the roof. An ancient pitchfork leaned against a wall. Was it the one the farmer had used to kill the field hand so long ago? Laurel wondered. Had the young couple been found here, in this barn? Near the pitchfork lay a moldering blanket. From behind it she saw a rat watching her closely. God, how many
more of them were in here? Maybe hundreds.
She was turning to go when something caught her eye. A bale of straw sat in the middle of the floor. Faith had stood on one just like it. Instinctively Laurel looked up, then gasped.
A hangman’s noose dangled from a tie beam—a noose fashioned from new rope.
Suddenly the dogs began barking uproariously. Several pigeons flapped noisily up from the loft, flying crazily under the roof, looking for escape holes. The rat and two of its friends skittered across the floor, heading straight for Laurel. She let out a strangled cry and whirled.
Ten feet behind her stood Neil Kamrath.
Fourteen
“Neil!” Laurel managed in a tone at least an octave higher than normal. “What are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same question.” He walked toward her and, to her surprise, both dogs stood firm. Alex actually growled. “Am I about to be attacked?”
“I’m not sure.” Laurel was certain he was in no danger, but it was best not to say so. “I just felt an urge to look at this place. I don’t know why.”
“Me, too.” Neil wore jeans and a suede jacket. He calmly lit a cigarette while her heart trip-hammered. Had he followed her here? There was no one to help her if he meant to do her harm. She tried to casually put her hand in her pocket for the canister of Mace. Dammit. The lid wasn’t even off. She could be dead before she got it out of her pocket, uncapped it, and pointed in the direction of his eyes.
She looked around. “There were rats running right toward us.”
“They’re hiding now. This place must be filled with them. Rats will attack, but not unless they’re cornered.” He looked up at the noose. “I suppose you saw this.” Laurel was having trouble getting her breath. “What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know. The rope is new.”
“It’s a threat, Laurel.”
She looked at him steadily. “To whom? Who could know I’d come out here?”
“Maybe it wasn’t directed at you. Maybe it was meant for Crystal or Monica.”
“Crystal is too frightened to come here. I don’t think Monica is haunted by this place. She wouldn’t come.” He took a puff of his cigarette and she said, “You followed me here, didn’t you?”
In the Event of My Death Page 18