by Paula Graves
“I don’t know.”
But he could see she did know. She just didn’t want to tell him.
A hank of hair had fallen into her face, hiding half her expression from him. He pushed it gently back behind her ear. “Maybe you had a bad dream?”
She shook her head.
“Not a dream?”
She looked less certain this time when she shook her head. “I don’t think it was. I’ve never sleepwalked before.”
“Then it probably wasn’t a dream,” he agreed. The concession didn’t seem to give her much comfort. “Do you remember why you went up the ladder? Does it lead to the attic?”
She nodded. “I was dozing. And then I heard the music.”
A snippet of memory flashed in his head. Rachel, gliding precariously along the girder rail, humming a song to herself.
“Was it this song?” he asked, humming a few notes.
Her head whipped up, her eyes locking with his. “How did you know?”
The anger in her tone caught him off guard, and he had to put one hand on the sofa to keep from toppling over. “I dreamed it. Just a minute ago.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s Chopin,” she said tightly. “A nocturne. I heard it coming from the attic.”
“So you went up to the attic to see where the music was coming from?”
Her lips trembled, and the bracing anger he’d seen in her blue eyes melted into dread. “I went up because I already knew where it was coming from.”
He didn’t know what she meant. “What did you find?”
“Everything but the body.” Her gaze wandered, settling on some point far away.
He stared at her with alarm. “What body?”
Her gaze snapped back to his. “My mother’s.”
Letting her words sink in, he tried to remember what he knew about her mother’s death. It had happened when she was young. He’d been a teenager himself, on the cusp of learning an exciting if larcenous new life at the feet of Cleve Calhoun. The death of some rich woman on the east side of town hadn’t registered.
She’d killed herself, he knew. No other details had ever come out, so he’d figured she’d taken pills or slit her wrists or something.
If she’d killed herself in the attic, maybe she’d hung herself. “When you say everything was there but the body—”
“I mean everything,” she said flatly. Her voice had gained strength, and her trembling had eased. “There was a plastic drop sheet, just like that night. She hated messes, so she was determined not to make one, even when—” Rachel stopped short, her throat bobbing as she swallowed hard. “The music playing was Chopin’s nocturne. And afterward—the blood—”
Oh my God, he thought. She saw it.
“Did you find her?” he asked gently, hoping that was the extent of what she’d experienced that night, as bad as it must have been.
She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I saw it happen.”
He stared back at her a moment, finally understanding her reaction to whatever she’d witnessed up in the attic. “Oh, Rachel.”
She looked away from him. “I saw it again. I know I saw it.”
But she wasn’t sure, he realized. She was doubting herself. Why?
“Do you want me to go take a look?” he offered.
Her gaze whipped back around to his. “You think I’ve lost my mind.”
He didn’t think that, although given her experience in the attic years ago and the stresses of the past few days, he had to wonder if she’d misinterpreted whatever it was she’d seen. “I just think I should take a look. Maybe there’s an intruder in the house.”
The idea of a third party in the house seemed not to have occurred to her, which made Seth wonder if she suspected him of trying to trick her. The wary looks she was sending his way weren’t exactly reassuring. “I’ll go with you.”
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
She nodded quickly, her eyes narrowing.
It was a test, he realized. He’d been with her ever since she’d fallen out of the attic, so if he were the culprit, everything would be as she’d left it.
It was a chance he’d take. If someone was trying to gaslight her, he might still be in the house. They might still be in danger.
He climbed the ladder first. She waited until he’d stepped into the attic to start up after him, clutching the rungs with whitened knuckles. She moved slowly, with care, giving him a few seconds to view the room without any comment from her.
It was a small space, rectangular, with a steeply peaked ceiling of exposed rafters. The floor was hardwood planks, unpolished and mostly unfinished, though in the center of the room, large splotches and splashes of dark red wood stain marred the planks.
He looked doubtfully at the stain. In the dim light from the single bare overhead bulb, the splotches of red did look like blood. But what about the drop cloth? That was a pretty significant detail for her to have conjured up with her imagination.
Except she hadn’t, had she? She’d told him the drop cloth had existed. In the past, on the night of her mother’s suicide.
“No.” Behind him, Rachel let out a low moan.
He turned to find her staring at the wood stain, her head shaking from side to side.
“I saw the drop cloth,” she said. “I did. And there was blood. Wet blood.”
Seth looked back at the stain. It was clearly dry. No one would ever mistake it for wet blood. So either Rachel had imagined everything—
Or someone had been here in the attic with her, hiding, and removed the evidence after she’d run away from the terrifying sight.
“You don’t believe me,” she accused, color rising in her cheeks. “You think I’m crazy.”
“No, I don’t,” he said firmly, hiding his doubts. Until this moment, except when she was clearly under the influence of some sort of drug, Rachel had seemed completely sane and lucid. Plus, he’d worked for her company for over a year now and watched her tackle the tasks of learning her father’s lifework with determination and tenacity.
She deserved the benefit of the doubt.
“Where was the drop cloth?” he asked.
She waved toward the stained area. “Right there. Over that stain. It was stretched out flat, covered with blood. Splotches and puddles. Still wet.”
She walked slowly to the center of the floor, gazing down at the stain. Her troubled expression made his chest tighten. “I didn’t imagine it. I know I didn’t.”
Okay, Hammond, think. If you were trying to con her into believing she’d lost her mind, how would you go about it?
“Who has access to the house?”
She relaxed a little at his pragmatic question. “I do, of course. My stepmother, but she’s in North Carolina. Her sister lives in Wilmington, and Diane went to spend a couple of weeks with her. I think my stepbrother, Paul, probably has a key. And my father used to keep a key in his office at the trucking company in case one of us locked ourselves out and there wasn’t anyone else around.”
“Do you know if it’s still there?”
“I don’t know. I was planning to go through my dad’s office next week and see if there was anything else that needed to be handled.” Grief darkened her eyes.
Impulsively, he pulled her into his arms.
She came willingly, pressing her face against the side of his throat. When she drew away from him, she seemed steadier on her feet. “You think someone set me up?”
“I’ve been asking myself what steps I’d take to try to convince you that you were losing your mind.”
“You think that’s what’s going on?”
“Look at you just a few minutes ago. Shaking like a leaf and not sure you could trust your own eyes.”
She looked stricken. Her reaction piq
ued his curiosity, but he kept his questions to himself. If it was something he needed to know, she’d tell him soon enough.
“Remember how I told you I thought those murders were part of trying to target you?”
She nodded, her expression guarded.
“What if the goal was to make you appear crazy?”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes flickered with comprehension. It made sense to her, he realized. Maybe even seemed inevitable.
“Your mother was already dead, and your father was dying. If I were ruthless and wanted to make you doubt your sanity, I’d take steps to isolate you even further. I’d take away your support system. Amelia Sanderson had been your friend since you were both in college, right?” He had learned that much while nosing around town about the murders.
She nodded, a bleak look in her wintry eyes.
“April Billings was your first hire, and you saw a lot of yourself in her, didn’t you?” He could tell by the shift in her expression that he’d gotten it right. He usually did, he thought with a hint of shame. It had been one of his most useful talents, his ability to read people, relationships and situations. “And you’d made Coral Vines your own personal rehabilitation project. You’d helped her find a grief counselor to deal with her pain about her husband’s death. I bet you’d even given her information about a twelve-step program for her alcohol addiction.”
“How do you know this?” she asked in a strangled voice.
“I used to do this for a living. Reading people. Finding out their secrets and figuring out their relationships so I could use the knowledge to my advantage.”
She couldn’t stop her lip from curling with distaste, though she schooled her expression quickly. It didn’t matter. He felt enough disgust for his past for the both of them. “And Marjorie was like a mom to me,” she added, filling in the next obvious blank. “My mentor.”
“But you still didn’t break, did you?” He touched her face before he realized he was going to. He dropped his hand quickly, bracing himself for her rebuke.
But all she did was smile a shaky smile. “No, I didn’t break.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence you were drugged the night of your father’s funeral. You were as vulnerable as you’d ever been at that moment, I would guess. He couldn’t let the opportunity pass.”
“This doesn’t make any sense. It never has. Your sister said she thought these murders were about me, and you said it, too, but why? Why would you think it? Just because I knew them?” She shook her head, clearly not wanting to believe it. “I saw the stories in the papers—Mark Bramlett was connected to serial murders in Nashville, too. What makes you think he was anything more than a sick freak who got off on killing women? Why does everyone think someone hired him?”
She didn’t know about Mark Bramlett’s last words, he realized. The police hadn’t told her.
“I was there when Mark Bramlett died,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“I’d tracked down the truck Bramlett used for the murders to help Sutton Calhoun find Ivy Hawkins. You remember Sutton, right? The guy who was investigating April Billings’s murder?”
She nodded. “Yeah, he and Ivy came to me for a list of the trucks we rented out. That’s how they found Bramlett.”
“I wanted to know why Bramlett killed those women. I knew them all, you know. Amelia was always kind to me, and she didn’t have to be. April Billings was full of life and so much potential. I grew up with Coral Vines on Smoky Ridge. She was the sweetest kid there ever was, and after her husband died, I tried to help her out with things around her house she couldn’t do herself.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Marjorie Kenner tried to steer me right, back in school. I didn’t listen, but I never forgot that she tried.” He thought about the kindhearted high school librarian who’d fought for his soul and lost. “I wanted justice for them, too. I wanted to see Bramlett pay.”
“Did you?”
He nodded slowly. “I watched him die. But before he went, he said something.”
She closed her hand around his wrist, her fingers digging urgently into his flesh. “What?”
“I’d told Ivy Hawkins I thought you were his real target. And as he died, he told her I was right. He said, ‘It’s all about the girl.’”
Rachel looked horrified. “He said that? Why did no one tell me?”
“I don’t know. But I can probably get in touch with Ivy Hawkins if you want confirmation.”
Rachel turned away from him, her gaze moving over the attic, settling finally on a darkened corner. “I wonder—” She walked toward the corner, leaving Seth to catch up. “Do you have a light?”
He pulled his keys from his pocket and engaged the small flashlight he kept on the keychain. The narrow beam of light drove shadows out of the dark corner, revealing another trapdoor in the attic floor.
And wedged in the narrow seam of the door was a thin piece of torn plastic.
As Rachel reached out for it, Seth caught her hand. “Fingerprints.”
She looked up at him, a gleam of relief in her eyes. “It’s from the drop cloth. It was really here.” She tried to tug the door open, but it didn’t budge.
Seth reached into another pocket and pulled out his Swiss Army knife. Tucked into one compartment in the case was a small pair of tweezers. He used them to pluck the piece of plastic out of the trapdoor seam.
The flimsy plastic was shaped like a triangle, smooth on two sides and ragged on the third, where it had apparently ripped away from the bigger sheet of plastic. In one corner of the plastic, a drop of red liquid was almost dry. Seth caught a quick whiff of a sharp iron odor.
“Is that—”
He nodded. “Blood.”
She put her hand over her mouth.
“Rachel, whoever did this could still be in the house.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”
“Where does this trapdoor lead?”
“A mudroom off the kitchen, I think. I’ve never used this exit, but there’s a trapdoor in the ceiling of that room.”
“Are there any weapons in this house?”
She swallowed hard. “My dad had a Glock. He kept it in his bedroom drawer. I guess it’s still there.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
She looked sick. “Yes.”
“Let’s get you downstairs and locked in that room. Then I’ll take a look around.”
“Don’t you need the gun, then?”
He shook his head. “With my record, a gun is more trouble than it’s worth.” He had the Swiss Army knife, and he was pretty good at fighting with whatever weapons he could find. Unless their intruder was carrying a gun himself—and Seth had a feeling he wasn’t—Seth would be safe enough. He wasn’t the target. Rachel was.
Rachel appeared unnerved until they reached the second-floor hallway, clear of the ladder. She seemed to calm down once she was on solid ground.
She unlocked her father’s gun from its case and, with more or less steady hands, went about the task of loading ammunition into the magazine while Seth watched. She met his gaze with scared but determined eyes. “Done.”
“I’ll be right back.” He closed the door behind him, waiting until he heard her engage the lock before he went in search of the intruder.
The stairs creaked as he descended to the first floor, making him wince. He paused at the bottom and listened carefully for any sound of movement. He heard rain battering the windows and siding. Electricity humming in the walls. His own quickened breathing.
But no other sounds.
He crossed the main hallway, checking room by room until he was satisfied they were empty. Reaching the kitchen, he stood in the center of the warm room, struck unexpectedly by the memory of his body brushing again
st Rachel’s here earlier that afternoon, back when his worst worry was whether or not his body betrayed his unanticipated arousal.
He’d give anything to go back to that moment right about now.
The mudroom was off the kitchen, she’d said. He went to the small door on the other side of the refrigerator and listened through the wood for any sound on the other side. He heard nothing but silence.
Backtracking to the kitchen counter, he went to the knife block by the sink and selected a long fillet knife. He crossed back to the mudroom, gripped the knife tightly in his right hand and opened the door.
Nobody jumped him as he entered. The room was empty.
He looked for signs of recent occupation. At first glance, the room appeared undisturbed. No mud on the floor, no telltale drops of blood from the drop cloth the intruder must have taken with him.
But there wouldn’t be, would there? That had been the point of the drop cloth, to keep the evidence contained for easy, complete removal. Rachel’s tormenter wanted her to doubt her own mind, which meant he couldn’t leave any clues behind.
Maybe he’d heard Seth’s voice earlier, outside the attic when he’d first responded to Rachel’s cries. That might have pushed him to make a hasty exit at the first opportunity, which had come when Seth had taken Rachel to the den to recover from the shock of what she’d seen.
The intruder had moved fast, rolling up the drop cloth and the evidence it contained, and made a quick escape through the mudroom hatch. But in his haste, he hadn’t realized one corner of the drop cloth had snagged in the trapdoor seam.
Had he taken the time to fold the drop cloth into a more manageable square before he left the attic? Possibly not. Which meant he’d have been moving at a clip, trying to get out of the house before he was discovered. Maybe he’d left other evidence behind besides the torn piece of plastic sheeting.
The back door was locked when Seth tried the handle, but anyone with a key could have locked it behind him as he left. Using the hem of his borrowed T-shirt, Seth turned the dead bolt and opened the door to the backyard. Beyond the mudroom door, he found a flagstone patio, not the muddy ground as he’d hoped. Not that it would have mattered, he supposed. With the rain coming down in torrents, any footprints the intruder might have left would have been obliterated in seconds.