Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3)

by Denise Moncrief

  Whatever had happened in the room had been intense. Grayson obviously had a new ghost story to tell him when he was over the shock of finding his ex-wife’s dead body. Shaw suppressed a smile at the sheriff’s admission.

  “What did you see, Sheriff?”

  “I saw the ghost of Victoria Hamilton.” Halsey nodded once at Tori. “But we have to explain this in a way the legal system will understand. Our crime scene specialist, Tori Downing, saved Lieutenant Grayson from taking a bullet in the face. That’s what happened here.” He then pointed toward the body on the floor. “That’s my gun in Kimbrough’s hand. She had it aimed at Grayson. Downing kept her from shooting him. It was justifiable. We’ll all testify to that.”

  Shaw’s history with Tori Downing seemed to flood him all at once. He turned his attention toward the woman he had saved from death, the woman that Michael Palmer would have killed if Shaw hadn’t put a bullet right between Palmer’s eyes. The current situation was not quite déjà vu, but scarily similar.

  “Is that what happened, Tori?”

  “Have I ever lied to you, Shaw?”

  “No. You wouldn’t even lie to get yourself out of trouble.”

  She blinked shiny emerald green eyes at him. “That’s how it happened.”

  Shaw glanced toward the body of Caroline Grayson. “And what happened to her?”

  Another man broke into the conversation, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. “She killed Caroline...as a gift to me.”

  A gift? This was bound to be a twisted story. “How do you know?”

  “She told me so.”

  “Kind of a strange gift.” Shaw caught the man’s eye and held it.

  Who could mistake that red head? His cropped top was more reddish blonde than Tori’s auburn hair. One of Grayson’s ghost hunting buddies. Josh McCord. Yeah, that was his name. Crime scene specialist for Hill County. It seemed too many members of Halsey’s staff were involved in the current situation for the case to remain under Hill County’s jurisdiction, just as Halsey had said.

  The group fell silent for a long moment. No one broke the tension. Just as well. Shaw needed to separate them before they agreed on a story. He wanted the truth instead of a well-rehearsed plausible explanation for the inexplicable. Once he had all the facts, he would write up the official version of what happened.

  He turned to Grayson and nailed him with his best expectant gaze. Grayson appeared to be in shock. The man winced and seemed to come out of a trance. He uncurled his fingers and revealed a digital recorder in the palm of his hand. “I recorded her confession. She killed both Jared Crenshaw and Caroline. She was psychotic. Thought she was protecting her lover.” His voice seemed disconnected from his body.

  Interesting. Grayson had managed to record Lucy Kimbrough’s confession on a digital recorder, the kind ghost hunters used for EVP sessions. That had taken some presence of mind, considering the man had just discovered the corpse of his ex-wife.

  Grayson resembled hell warmed over. The dull shadow of sorrow tinged his normally bright blue eyes. The Hill County lieutenant was a man who always appeared well groomed, wearing his cheap off-the-rack suits with confidence. His disheveled brown hair and crumpled shirt betrayed the trauma he had just endured. Any moment, he might shake off the shock and begin the grieving process. Shaw needed to get all the information he could from Grayson before the man wasn’t capable of giving a coherent statement any longer.

  He wasn’t ready to address the recording, so he returned his attention to Josh McCord, the man who had received such a gruesome gift.

  “Were you her lover?” He left the question open-ended. There were two dead women in the room. Shaw could be referring to either one. McCord could interpret his question any way he chose.

  The man seemed to recoil from Shaw’s harsh tone. “No. I never even considered she might think about us that way. Maybe I should have...”

  He groaned as he shifted from one foot to the other and then lowered his tall frame into the nearest chair. Scrapes and bruises covered his face and he seemed to favor his right leg. Every breath he sucked in seemed to pain him. He winced as he found a more comfortable position in the chair. McCord had obviously taken a beating recently. Had the dead deputy done that to him?

  Dickerson reentered the room, an expression of supreme distaste covering his features. His disapproving attitude reflected his opinion of the conversation he had no doubt overhead. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Would Dickerson change his opinion once he listened to the recording? Without a doubt, something disturbingly paranormal had happened in the room, and Grayson might have recorded it.

  Shaw rubbed his chin and then spoke. “Take that from him.”

  Dickerson bagged the recorder with a sniff.

  “I’m gonna need a statement from every one of you before you leave here today. You better be thinking about how you’re gonna explain what happened without bringing in anything paranormal. That kind of thing doesn’t go over too well with prosecutors.” Shaw glanced toward Downing. “Does it, Tori?”

  If looks could kill, Shaw would be dead.

  ****

  The state cop lowered his six-foot frame onto the sofa across the coffee table from Josh. His bearing suggested Bennett had served in the military. The man seemed like a no-nonsense sort of guy, so whatever smart aleck comments Josh might have tossed into the tense air between them, he kept to himself.

  He’d heard of Shaw Bennett. He was the ghost hunter who jammed Tori Downing up with the state prosecutor. He would bet she’d lost her job with the crime lab because of Bennett’s bungled attempt to prove the victim’s house was haunted. From the moment she’d claimed the house had spoken to her and told her where Lipton was buried, she’d lost her last shred of credibility with the state prosecutor’s office. Relying on Bennett to prove her claims had backfired. Funny how he had kept his job, but hers had swirled down the toilet.

  “How long have you known Tori?”

  Bennett cast a hard glare toward Josh. “I’m asking the questions.”

  Josh held up both hands. Bennett’s past relationship with Tori Downing was obviously a touchy subject. “Right. Go ahead. Ask.”

  “Why don’t you tell me your version of this story? Start at the beginning. How do you know Caroline Grayson?”

  Josh sighed. How he knew Caroline was a long, complicated story. “I’ve known her all my life. We grew up together.”

  Bennett leaned back and crossed his arms, his dark eyes studying Josh as if he was a laboratory specimen to be dissected. “Tell me why Lucy Kimbrough would offer Caroline Grayson to you as a gift.”

  Apparently Bennett didn’t have any reluctance to go for the jugular.

  The word gift seemed to cling to the man’s tongue as if it were heavy and metallic. Any minute Bennett would spit the word out like something distasteful. Josh’s stomach flipped. He might never think of gifts in the same way again.

  He structured his next words carefully, hoping to avoid questions that might lead to more questions. The trick was to give the state cop enough interesting and relevant information that he didn’t ask the right questions. Josh couldn’t tell anyone Gray and Ashley’s secret. It was a secret so huge it was theirs alone to tell. Ashley had blurted the truth one night not long ago and ever since then Josh had wished she hadn’t. It was the kind of information he was better off not knowing.

  He licked his lips and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, stalling for time until he could decide where the beginning actually began. “Gray should have never married Caroline. He didn’t love her. For a long time I thought he loved someone else, but I don’t think he’s ever really loved anyone. Not like that. Not until now… He wasn’t married very long before his marriage started falling apart.”

  Not the beginning, but a good place to begin.

  He stopped and recalled the conversation he’d overheard the night Ashley had come out to the Jepson place and taken him to the clinic. Gray and Ashley had an interesting
heart-to-heart talk while Josh was semi-conscious in the back of Gray’s car with his head in Ashley’s lap.

  “He’s in love with you, you know.” Gray’s distorted voice came from the front seat.

  Ashley laughed. “Really? Are you sure? I think he hates both of us.”

  “He could never hate you, Ashley.”

  “I don’t know about that, Gray. He thinks I’m in love with you.”

  Quiet for a painful minute. What would Gray say to that?

  “Why would he think that? You’ve never felt that way about me, even when I wanted you to.”

  “Did you ever want me to love you, Gray?” Her tone implied she thought he was teasing.

  “I thought so once upon a time, a long time ago.”

  No, Gray wasn’t joking.

  “Before Caroline?”

  “Before Jeremy.”

  “Did Josh know that?” Her question was uttered so quietly Josh almost didn’t hear her.

  At first, he thought Gray had replied and he hadn’t heard him, but then Gray’s voice seemed to echo around the car. “I would have never come between the two of you. Not on purpose. He was my friend. We’d still be friends if it weren’t—”

  “If it weren’t for me.”

  “No, we’d still be friends if it weren’t for Jeremy Haskins. Our secret ruined my relationship with him. And it ruined my relationship with you. Things have never been the same since.”

  “Maybe you should have left me to take care of my own problem. You should have reported it. Maybe we wouldn’t have gone through all this mess.”

  Gray didn’t respond, but his non-answer said more than any reply he could have made.

  “Why do you think he drinks, Ashley?”

  The car stopped with a jerk followed by the click and ratchet of the gear shifting into park.

  She made a disgruntled sound. Obviously a question she wasn’t prepared to answer. The rush of a deep intake of breath and then a slow exhale brushed the hair on the top of Josh’s head.

  “Because he broke you and Caroline up.”

  “No, he didn’t, Ash. My marriage failed without his help. Caroline knew we had a secret that we weren’t sharing with her. She felt left out...on the outside of our marriage looking in. Can you imagine how awful it must have been to know I had a loyalty to another woman that I couldn’t break and I couldn’t trust her enough to share it with her?” Gray snorted with apparent derision. “I don’t blame her for leaving.”

  Josh shook off his introspection. He needed to take the interview in the right direction before Bennett realized there was a gap in his story, a huge gap shaped like Jeremy Haskins’s death.

  “Caroline left Gray, but she didn’t tell anyone she was leaving, and when she just up and disappeared, the whole county thought she’d been murdered. I mean, she didn’t tell anyone but me where she was going. I put her on the bus out of town… Some idiot started the rumor that she was the new Lady of the Lake ghost. Quite a few people thought I’d killed her.”

  He stopped. Let Bennett come up with the next question, the one that would lead him away from the real source of contention in Gray’s marriage to Caroline.

  Bennett lifted his eyebrows. “Why would they think that?”

  “Everyone thought we were having an affair.”

  “Seems to me like the obvious suspect would have been the betrayed husband.” Bennett laughed and the sound of his pseudo-mirth made Josh’s skin prickle.

  A good point. Josh had never claimed the rumors running rampant in Hill County made much sense.

  He shook his head and smiled. “Gray didn’t kill his wife.”

  Bennett grunted. “Obviously. You still haven’t explained why they thought you killed her.”

  Josh shifted in his seat. A stab of pain ripped through his chest every time he gulped in a deep breath. All he wanted to do was lie down on a soft bed.

  “Years ago…a lot of people thought I killed Jeremy Haskins. You know what they say… If a killer gets by with murder…”

  “Jeremy Haskins. Fred’s son?”

  Josh made sure he had Bennett’s eye before responding. He couldn’t afford the slightest hesitation in his declaration of innocence. “I didn’t kill him.”

  Recently, he’d found out who had. Gray and Ashley’s secret had become Josh’s secret. He’d go to the grave before he’d tell anyone what Ashley had told him.

  “Why would they think you killed Haskins?”

  “Everyone thought my girlfriend was cheating with him.” He hated admitting that. Hated pulling Ashley into the mess. He’d hoped to leave her out of it.

  “Let me guess. Haskins has never been found, and you were the last person to see him before he disappeared. Just like Caroline Grayson.”

  Josh blinked at him. The less said, the better.

  “So what does Jeremy Haskins’s death have to do with Caroline Grayson and Lucy Kimbrough?”

  Bennett was sharp. He’d noted the thin connection between the two deaths.

  Josh’s admission gushed from his mouth. “Lucy thought we were a couple because I spent one night with her. I never felt that way about her. She was psycho… Anyway, I think she’d seen Caroline, talked to her maybe. I’d heard that Caroline was back in town, but I didn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen her myself.”

  He gulped down a breath before continuing. “Lucy said Caroline was going to tell Halsey who killed Jeremy, and since she thought I had done it, she decided to kill Caroline to keep her quiet. She did that for me.”

  The horror washed over him again. Josh felt sick deep down in his gut. “She killed for me… Caroline died for nothing. How did things get so mixed up? Caroline would still be alive right now if it weren’t for those rumors about me.”

  Bennett seemed to chew on Josh’s rushed monologue for a moment and then leaned forward. His eyebrows drew across the bridge of his nose. “Did Caroline know who killed Jeremy Haskins?”

  “How would I know? We never discussed it.” And that was the truth. They hadn’t. “Look… Lucy said something… She said I played Ashley just like I played Caroline.” Strong emotion flooded him. Not unexpected, but startling nonetheless. What if Lucy had done something to Ashley? “If she hurt Caroline, then I’m really worried about Ashley.”

  “Who’s Ashley?”

  “My ex-girlfriend. Ashley Rivers.”

  Bennett nodded and pulled his cell from his pocket. “What’s her number?”

  Several attempts later, Bennett had not been able to contact Ashley. She wasn’t answering her cell or her landline, and the woman who answered the phone at the clinic said Ashley had left hours ago. She was still alive during the time Lucy was busy kidnapping Josh, so Lucy obviously hadn’t harmed her, but Josh wouldn’t stop worrying about her until he caught up with her and saw for himself that she was all right.

  There was an undercurrent of danger swirling around the situation. The feeling that there had been, and maybe still was, more to fear than Lucy and her psychotic behavior. Something else was at play, and Josh wanted to know where the danger was coming from before he decided those he cared about were safe. That included Ashley whether she wanted his consideration or not.

  Before Bennett was through with Josh, they had gone through his recent ordeal step by step, from the moment someone had conked Josh over the head out at the old Jepson place, to Ashley and Gray taking him to the clinic, to Gray arresting him in the hospital for the murder of Jared Crenshaw, to Lucy forcing him out of his hospital room at gunpoint, and finally to finding Caroline’s body in Victoria Hamilton’s bed at Victoria House. Bennett had shown up right behind Sheriff Halsey, just as the intense scene in Victoria’s bedroom had come to a terrifying conclusion.

  Bennett kept firing questions at Josh. The man wanted details. Josh still hadn’t sorted out all the players…both in the natural and supernatural realms. He did his best to give the state cop some answers, but the chain of events just wasn’t coming back to him so clear. He had suffered a concuss
ion, after all.

  “You seem to be a person of interest in quite a few murders here in Hill County. Jeremy Haskins. Caroline Grayson. Jared Crenshaw. Why is that?”

  Josh didn’t even blink. “You might have missed a few.”

  Shaw didn’t appear to be amused, seemed to be waiting for Josh to elaborate. He had no more answers that he was willing to give. Josh could wait him out.

  The silence dragged on.

  Bennett huffed. “If you were in my place, what would you think? There’s a lot of suspicion surrounding you. What is it about you that makes other people suspect you’re a killer?”

  “Maybe I’m just in a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning again.”

  Josh groaned.

  “So you went out to the Jepson place and that’s where someone busted your head. Why did you go out there?” Bennett’s tone reeked of suspicion.

  Josh imagined popping the man in the face with his fist. Not a good idea, Joshua!

  “Jared Crenshaw’s wife, Courtney…she went missing the same time Jared did, and she’s still missing. Gray wanted to question her about Jared’s death, but I knew she wouldn’t come in on her own. So I went looking for her. Courtney’s grandmother used to live in that house. I took her out there once when her grandmother was still alive. I thought maybe that’s where she was hiding.”

  The day they visited her grandmother had been a good one. Courtney had everything to look forward to in her life that day, back before she met Jared.

  “Lucy Kimbrough was obviously obsessed with you. Maybe she followed you out there. Do you think she’s the one who ambushed you?”

  Josh considered the question. Closed his eyes, hoping to see the scene once more in his mind’s eye. “I’m not sure why she’d do that. How could she know I was going out there to meet another woman? She was psycho and obsessed with me, but she wasn’t a mind reader. No, I’m certain whoever hit me was a man.” Josh had sensed the presence of a masculine form right before he’d passed out.