Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3)

by Denise Moncrief

  They had only been on the road for a little while. Very little conversation was happening and Josh was beginning to wonder if there was going to be any. “So what did happen back in Little Rock?”

  Bennett’s head swung around to look at Josh, an irritated scowl on his face, and then turned back to the road. “It’s a long story.”

  “Long stories are always interesting.”

  Bennett muttered something under his breath. “Evidence went missing from the Lipton case, so she went out to Lipton’s house alone to see if she could find something else to connect Michael Palmer to Lipton. While she was there, she had an experience. The way she described it I think she propped her hand on the wall and it was as if the house spoke to her. That’s how she found out where Lipton was buried.”

  “So then… she claimed that Lipton spoke to her through his house?”

  Bennett nodded.

  “So she has the gift of touch? What do they call that?”

  “Psychometry.”

  “I bet that freaked her out.”

  Bennett eased the SUV around some debris in the road. “Yeah, she was pretty freaked.”

  “So why did you agree to help her this time?”

  “I didn’t. I agreed to help Grayson.”

  Josh shifted in his seat and rubbed his hands on his pants leg. He wanted to blame his sweaty palms on the humid night, but it was probably anxiety over going back to Laurel Heights.

  Bennett glanced at him sideways from the driver’s seat of his black, state-issued SUV. “You need a drink, don’t you?”

  “You don’t soften the blow much, do you?”

  “No. Not much.”

  Josh stared out the passenger window at the darkened landscape. Only a few more yards and they would pass the Hot Spot on their way out of town toward Laurel Heights. He could almost smell a cold beer calling his name through the barroom doors. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

  Bennett grunted. “That’s what they all say.”

  Who was this jackass to judge him? Bennett didn’t know him and never would with that attitude.

  They passed the Hot Spot, and Josh noticed Brett Duncan’s red Silverado parked on the lot. That meant a deputy would be making a run out to the bar before it closed at two. Duncan couldn’t get through the night without inciting someone to fight him. Duncan had never had the greatest of personalities, but he’d become even more intolerant and belligerent after his sister Cherish went missing. Josh had always speculated that Brett knew something about Cherish’s disappearance and the guilt was eating him from the inside out.

  Josh was very familiar with that kind of guilt.

  He finally addressed Bennett’s snide remark. “I haven’t had a drink in six days.”

  Bennett shot him another quick glance. “That long?”

  Did this guy invite him along just to insult him?

  Josh rubbed the crick in his neck. “Yeah, that long. When I was in the hospital, I couldn’t talk the nurse into sneaking me a cold one. I told her that she was a heartless wench. She wasn’t amused…much.”

  “I don’t guess she was.”

  The memory of Lucy in his hospital room flashed across his mind. He pushed it away. It was too soon to start processing what had happened to him.

  “There’s something about having a gun poked into already sore ribs that sobers a person up real fast.”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “Why does everyone always assume I’m gonna get drunk?”

  “Do you always get drunk? Maybe that’s why.” Bennett kept his eyes on the road, so Josh couldn’t fully read his expression.

  He pressed his lips together to keep from blurting the first caustic comeback that came to mind. Yeah, he had a problem, but it wasn’t as bad as people made out like it was. It was worse.

  “When Ashley called…”

  Why was he bringing up Ashley? Because his mind was never too far away from her. That’s why. Even when he had been with other women… He couldn’t be with other women anymore. The pain he’d seen in Ashley’s eyes when Tori had blurted the truth about him and Lucy Kimbrough had nearly killed him.

  “She assumed I’d be drinking tonight, so she called to talk me out of getting drunk.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  Josh shook his head in amazement at the state cop’s nerve. “I smashed the last bottle of Jack against my bedroom wall. It loses its appeal if I have to lick if off the wallpaper.”

  Josh pressed his palm flat against his thigh to keep from clenching his fist.

  Bennett didn’t miss a beat. “Were you drunk when you went out to the Jepson place?”

  So that’s what the guy really wanted to talk about, Josh’s misguided and failed attempt to locate Courtney Crenshaw. Bennett was obviously trying to gauge how credible his testimony would be if anything ever went to trial. Yeah, Josh got it. He had a reputation he was going to have to live down.

  “No. I needed to stay sharp if I was going to help Courtney.”

  “Were you?”

  He made a noise of disgust. “Not sharp enough if I let someone sneak up on me.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that whoever attacked you wasn’t…living?”

  Josh snorted. “You mean like the Ridge Trail ghost? That’s just a scary Halloween story. Nothing to it.”

  “Just a thought.”

  “Whoever knocked me out was a living, breathing human being…with bad breath.”

  Bennett seemed to study him for a quick, intense moment. “You should get some rest. You haven’t been out of the hospital that long.”

  Was this jerk for real? “So what am I doing out here this time of night?”

  Bennett grinned. “You can’t refuse a ghost hunt, can you?”

  “What the bloody freaking hell, Bennett?”

  “Call me Shaw.”

  He drummed his fingertips on the door handle and muttered, not exactly under his breath. “I might call you a lot of things.”

  Bennett made a noise that almost sounded like amusement.

  The road began a steady ascent into the hills approaching Ashley Ridge. In a few more miles, they would pass the long drive on the edge of Ashley Ridge that went up to the Jepson place and then the lot at the trailhead. Laurel Heights was still a good ways down the road, almost to the county line.

  “I’m going to search Cooley’s place.”

  Cooley was the undisputed source for meth in north Arkansas. Every law enforcement agency in Arkansas wanted to search old man Cooley’s place. So far, no one had been able to obtain a warrant. How could someone so criminally oriented produce no probable cause? Josh could have written up more probable cause on Sheriff Halsey’s Bassett Hound. Cooley wasn’t clean; he was just smart enough to not appear too dirty.

  As if he’d read Josh’s mind, Bennett filled in some missing information. “Cooley is dead. He died when his meth lab exploded in the caves behind Laurel Heights. I don’t think he’s going to object to a search.”

  “Next of kin?”

  A dead criminal’s family sometimes objected to just about everything.

  “As far as I can tell, the man spawned from thin air. If he has relatives somewhere, I doubt they’ll claim him or his property. I’m investigating his death. I think that warrants a search.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, you’d better be careful entering his house. I hear he’s got it booby trapped.”

  Silence fell between them for the next few miles. Just as they passed the road out to the Jepson place, Bennett seemed to focus his attention on the Ridge, a tall bluff of overhanging rock above the Ashley Creek valley that ran for about ten miles from the Jepson place past Laurel Heights to almost the county line.

  Years ago, the Park Service had created a trailhead for the path that ran along the edge of the Ridge overlooking the creek below. Gray had parked his car on the lot and the two of them had hiked the trail to Laurel Heights the night they investigated the garage. That had been a long night. It had only been
six days since the incident, but it felt like a bazillion years.

  Six days.

  Maybe Josh had actually stopped drinking after the garage incident. Maybe that was really what had sobered him up. A run-in with a malevolent spirit would certainly be a sobering experience for anyone.

  Josh stared in the direction of Bennett’s gaze. Across the low-lying foothills, a bright light floated along the edge of the tree line.

  Bennett finally broke the heavy silence that had enveloped them. “Is that the Ridge?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Did you see that?” The man actually sounded a bit like a breathless teenage girl.

  Josh wanted to laugh, but kept his mirth in check. Bennett wasn’t someone who would take teasing well. “That’s probably some kind of geological phenomena. The geography of the area lends itself to natural oddities.”

  Bennett glanced Josh’s way and then retrained his focus on the road ahead. “Could be the Ridge Trail ghost. You know…the one that clocked you.”

  “I don’t think so. A lot of teenagers have spent Halloween night out on the Ridge and the only thing that happened was some other teenager scared the piss out of them… Ashley and I always wanted to spend a night on the Ridge.”

  Josh’s mind tilted and then dredged up a ten-year-old memory.

  After he pulled into a spot behind a stand of bushes and killed the engine, Josh turned to Ashley and smiled. She was the most beautiful girl at Fairview High and he couldn’t believe she wanted to be with him. It was their second date, and he had wanted to do something different. Not the same old fast food and a movie sort of date. Ashley was a special girl, and she deserved something out of the ordinary.

  Ashley’s eyes glowed with excitement. “Have you heard the story about the ghost?”

  She had Josh’s attention. Gray had been going on and on about wanting to be a ghost hunter for weeks, and he had finally convinced Josh to get into it with him. Josh didn’t really believe in ghosts, but he thought it would be fun to investigate an old abandoned house at midnight. Gray almost had him talked into it.

  Maybe Ashley had heard an interesting ghost story he could tell Gray. “What ghost?”

  “Jackie Raymond said she and Brad came up here and um…went to the Love Shack. They were about to do it when something grabbed Brad by his you-know-what. He couldn’t do much of anything after that.”

  Ashley giggled and scooted closer to Josh.

  Her nearness rattled his concentration. He loved it that she wanted to get closer to him. The only thing his worthless father had left Josh was a beat up truck with a bench seat. No modern console to get between him and his date. She was sitting so close he could smell the girly scent of her shampoo. He loved the smooth softness of her bare upper arm brushing against his. The desire to pull her into his arms and kiss her raced through him. He would kiss her. Soon. His eyes devoured every centimeter of her face. The gorgeous color of her eyes. The way her hair curved around her neck. The angle of her jaw. Her lips.

  He shook his head, trying hard to concentrate on her words instead of her mouth. “That’s not what I heard.”

  Ashley’s eyes brightened a bit more. She licked those sweet kissable lips. The girl loved a juicy piece of gossip. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard that she’s pregnant.”

  “No!” Ashley seemed genuinely shocked.

  “And I heard it happened at the Shack.”

  Ashley snuggled even closer to him, so he twisted in his seat and wrapped his arms around her.

  “So the stories about the ghost pulling his…stuff were just rumors?”

  Josh tucked a strand of long, chestnut hair behind her ear. “Just rumors. But then, there are a lot of rumors about how many babies are made in the Shack.”

  “You know what we should do someday?”

  Her voice fell so soft on his ears. He could listen to her for hours. His heart thundered in his chest.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “We should come out here one night…at midnight…and see for ourselves if there’s really a ghost in the Shack.”

  Josh laughed. “Are you sure that’s what you really want to do in there?”

  She smiled, the light of delicious anticipation glowing in her bright eyes. “Well, yeah. That and a few other things.”

  He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers. The sweetest sensation, almost like an intense electrical jolt, rushed through his body, heating him in his lower regions. She swayed toward him, arching her back.

  He spoke with his lips almost touching hers. “We should do that. How about tonight?”

  She whispered in his ear. “Not tonight.”

  He leaned back and gazed into her eyes.

  “Why not?”

  “Too soon.”

  “But we will. Right?”

  She grinned at him. “We haven’t been dating long enough.”

  Bull crap! He knew of other couples that had done it on their first date.

  She put some distance between them. “We should follow the system.”

  “What system?”

  “First date, awkward get-to-know-you conversation. Second date, awkward get-to-know-you kisses. Third date, awkward get-to-know-you sex.”

  The seriousness of her expression kept him from teasing her.

  “When do things stop being awkward?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never gotten that far.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers.

  “Wouldn’t you like to find out what comes after the third date?”

  “McCord?”

  Josh blinked his eyes, the memory dissipated, and he turned his attention back toward Bennett.

  “I asked you if you knew where Courtney Crenshaw was hiding. Are you going to tell me the truth?”

  This ghost-hunting trip with Bennett was starting to remind Josh of an awkward first date. He shuddered. The comparison creeped him out. Bennett wasn’t his type. Too male. Josh liked females. A lot. He liked everything about women. The way they walked. They way they talked. The way they used their smiles to get what they wanted. The way their bodies molded to his. All softness and sweet curves.

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. I told her she should come in and let us protect her. She wouldn’t listen.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  The switch from thinking about Ashley to talking about Courtney was difficult. Josh had spent many hours sitting in Trudy Jepson’s kitchen after school eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking a tall glass of milk. Courtney was always there. Not really a pretty girl, she had average features, but she could turn on a smile that would light up a football stadium.

  When they were in middle school, Courtney used to tell Josh about all her heartaches. She wanted to be one of the popular girls. It wasn’t to be. She lived in the wrong part of town. High school had not been much easier for her. No decent guy wanted to date Jepson’s daughter. The girls didn’t want to hang around with her. She often told Josh that he was the only friend she had.

  “Growing up in the Jepson house was difficult for her, so she’s kind of tough just like her mother. They had to be. Her father is in the state pen, and he won’t be eligible for parole for a very, very long time.”

  “Yeah, I read his case file. Trudy Jepson is better off without him.”

  Trudy’s feelings for her husband were just as tangled as Courtney’s had been for Jared.

  Josh told Bennett everything he knew about Courtney…everything he thought might be useful to the state cop.

  Bennett seemed to absorb every word. “If Jared owed a lot of money, that could be why he was cooking meth for Cooley. Was he a user?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Josh recalled the night Jared came after him with a baseball bat, bleary eyed and belligerent. His hyped up state hadn’t kept Jared’s swing from landing a few good blows before Courtney broke up the fight by slamming Jared upside his head with a two-by-four. Lucky for her, Jared couldn’t remember
the incident when he sobered up the next day.

  “Was Courtney using?”

  “Not that I could ever tell.”

  “Could you tell if she was?”

  “Maybe.”

  Bennett turned into the driveway of Laurel Heights. “Doesn’t matter if the debt was hers or Jared’s. The boss, whoever he is, will want his money, and he’s going to want Courtney to pay off Jared’s debt.”

  “If that’s the case…and I think it is…then Courtney is in real trouble. She doesn’t have the money and she’ll be desperate to get it.”

  “Is she dangerous?”

  “Courtney?” Josh chuckled at the thought. “No.”

  “Even though she was married to a meth cooker? That’s a hard life.”

  “I guarantee she had no part of that…unless he made her do things she didn’t want to do. She’s probably relieved to be away from it…and scared someone is going to drag her back.”

  ****

  Laurel Heights stood in shrouded darkness. They had approached it from the rear by parking in the nearest trailhead access lot and taking the Ashley Ridge Trail. Josh and Shaw faced the house and stared at it for a solid minute before Shaw approached the back door and pulled down the yellow crime scene tape. When he twisted the knob, the door nudged open without resistance.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Josh.

  Josh’s eyebrows rose. “Did you expect it to be unlocked?”

  “I expected to have to use the key.”

  “How did you get a key?”

  Shaw kept his attention on the door. No need to tell the guy that Grayson had given him the key, and Grayson had gotten it from Laurel Standridge right before she left town. “I told my guys to lock up when they were done. I didn’t think the owner would want people snooping around her place after word got out that someone died here. You know how it is when a house with a history is abandoned.”

  Ghost stories brought out the weird in some people, and the place already had a reputation for being haunted.

  Josh nodded. “Something must have made you try to open the door first…without the key.”

  Bennett stared at the partially open door. “Just an odd feeling.”

  “Like someone has been here ahead of us.”