Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3)

by Denise Moncrief

  The man was perceptive.

  “He told us to say, if anyone ever asked, that we left before Tino died, so that’s what we put in there.” Chase pointed at the documents, clearly unhappy with lying on paper.

  His straightforward comment took Shaw by surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have. Chase Peterson didn’t appear to be the kind of man who handled ambiguities too well.

  “I’ll look at them later. I’m sure you worded it just right.”

  Grayson had informed Shaw that Chase Peterson was an ex-cop. The man probably knew exactly what to say and how to say it.

  “What I want right now…I want the real story.”

  Laurel shifted in her seat as if she was ready to bolt and run. Chase grabbed her hand, and she settled back in her chair. He released his grip, but the fear etched in every line of her face remained. She tucked a strand of her stringy blonde hair behind one ear and then leaned back with her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the black and white checkered vinyl flooring, staring at her salad.

  Chase narrowed his eyes. “Why do you need to know?”

  It was an honest question, one that the man had the right to ask.

  Shaw glanced around the room. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them or their conversation, so he leaned forward and whispered. “When I cover up something like this, I like to know just what I’m covering up.”

  Chase laughed. “You don’t have a problem covering stuff like this up?”

  Shaw stared him in the eye. He was well aware of Chase’s past record. “Do you?”

  The man grinned. “Good point. What do you want to know?”

  Shaw wanted the woman’s perspective. Chase might soften the details of the story to spare Laurel any more pain. The horror of what she had endured was still so fresh, Shaw believed she wouldn’t sugar coat it.

  He could understand Chase’s inclination to protect Laurel, but Shaw needed the unvarnished truth, so he addressed Laurel. “Tell me what happened the night you left Laurel Heights.”

  She stopped staring at her partially eaten salad and raised her head. Chase’s eyes met hers across the table.

  “That’s kind of a rough story for her.”

  “You knew what I wanted to hear when you agreed to meet me.”

  Laurel scowled, turned to face him, and spoke each word very distinctly. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you’d better ask every question you can think of, because after this I never want to tell this story again.”

  “I understand.”

  And he really did.

  She dragged in a ragged breath before she started her narrative. “There was a lot of weird activity in my house, and I never could be sure if it was all my imagination or not.”

  “Weird activity? You mean paranormal?”

  She nodded, but the admission seemed to distress her. “Doors shutting by themselves. Things moving on their own. Noises all night long. Crazy stuff. But the things that happened weren’t all paranormal. That’s what confused everything.”

  “I guess it would.”

  “I had some cousins I didn’t know I had. They were using a tunnel that went out into the caves beneath Ashley Ridge to get in and out of my house. They were never quiet. It was like they wanted me to hear them. I think their goal was to spook me enough to leave. You see, living there, I was a little too close to the meth lab.”

  Shaw nodded. “That can be dangerous.”

  He’d seen the damage to the landscape behind Laurel’s house caused by the explosion.

  Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I followed the tunnel out to the caves.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. Her eyes turned toward the window and her gaze seemed riveted to the scene outside. When she turned back to Shaw, a different light shone from her eyes.

  “I think… It seems like… My aunt…who was really my mother…long story… I think she would take me over and speak through me.”

  “Take you over?”

  “It’s like she had me. She had become me. Or I had become her. Anyway, she talked through me.”

  Laurel was talking weird stuff. Sounded like what some people called channeling. Shaw had never witnessed anything like that nor did he know anyone who had.

  “Go on.”

  “I think she took me to the tunnel that led to the meth lab because I don’t remember finding the entrance. Some things that happened are just big blanks in my memory. Anyway, my cousin Zeke obviously followed me down the tunnel. I fired a gun and part of the cave wall fell on him. Please don’t ask me where the gun came from. The gaps in my memory… I think it’s probably because I wasn’t myself during those moments.”

  “That had to have been frightening. Coming in and out of consciousness and not knowing what had just happened.”

  She nodded. “After the rockslide, I knew I needed to get out of there, that the tunnels and caves could collapse any second, but before I could leave, my next-door neighbor, Cooley, came out of the dark. There must have been another tunnel that came from the direction of his house. Otherwise, it’s like he just came out of the wall.”

  Her words fell from her lips rapid fire.

  Chase squeezed her hand. “Slow down, honey. You know talking about this makes you hyperventilate.”

  She licked her lips and breathed in deeply. “Cooley was about to kill me. I know he was. But Chase came down the tunnel. I’m not sure what happened next, except that Chase and I got out and we left Cooley in the cave behind us.” She stopped and bit her lower lip. Pain shadowed her eyes. “I think Cooley might be…might have been my biological father.”

  That piece of information startled Shaw. “Why do you believe that?’

  Chase cleared his throat. “Something Laurel said when Celeste had her… If it was Celeste’s words coming through Laurel, then Celeste called Cooley her baby.” He glanced at Laurel and the woman seemed to wilt. “Grayson did an EVP session in the garage. I’m sure he told you about his experience…”

  Shaw nodded. “I’m not sure he’s quite over that yet.”

  “Can’t imagine he is. Anyway, he recorded a woman’s voice asking for her baby. We figured the voice belonged to Celeste. At first, we thought James was the baby she meant. Then once we learned Laurel was really her daughter, not her niece, we thought maybe she was talking about Laurel, but then while we were in the caves it became obvious to me that the voice belonged to Celeste and the baby she meant was Cooley.”

  Laurel’s eyes welled with tears. “We’ve kind of pieced things together. If Celeste was romantically involved with Cooley… I don’t want to be his daughter. He was a nasty old man. Mean as hell. And oh my God, he cooked meth. I got away from that when I left San Diego.” She sniffed. “What I don’t get… Celeste gave me away, but she kept James.”

  “James?”

  “The twin brother I never knew I had.”

  This was a twisted story. Why were all the family histories in Hill County so tangled?

  Shaw needed to guide her away from her family tree or he would never get the whole story from her. “Okay, so you got out of the tunnel. Then what happened?”

  “I woke up on the front lawn. Chase had carried me out of the house. Grayson had just come up the drive.”

  Laurel lifted her water glass to her lips, but she stalled before she took a sip.

  Chase took up her narrative when it seemed she couldn’t continue. “We had already planned to leave town. That’s why Grayson told us we should go before anyone else showed up. No one would ever have to know we came back one more time before we left.”

  “You must have gone back inside the house.”

  Laurel spoke again, her voice wavering a bit. “I’d left something behind, and I didn’t want to leave town without it. I knew I might never come back.”

  Shaw’s heart raced a bit faster. His instincts were firing. He could always tell when an interviewee was getting to the important part of the story.

  “Chase had gone into the bathro
om. Tino must have thought I was alone. That’s when he came into the room. The cold look in his eyes… The hate on his face… He was going to kill me.” She stared straight at Shaw. “Have you ever faced death twice in one day?”

  “Who was Tino?”

  Shaw had already identified the dead guy, but he wanted to hear what Laurel had to say about the man who had been pulled through her balcony railing.

  “I thought my ex-boyfriend sent him. Rand always said he’d get his revenge. He can’t get to his enemies from prison. That’s why he gets someone else to do his dirty work for him. But before Tino died… He said some things that made me think he’d come after me on his own. I don’t know. I probably will never be sure, because Rand will never tell me the truth.”

  Chase locked eyes with her and the two of them seemed to share some silent communication. When Laurel continued, her tone of voice had changed. She was leaving something out of the narrative. Something critical.

  “You certainly had a lot going on out here. Your cousins were trying to spook you and your ex might have sent someone to kill you. You seem to be a target for trouble, Laurel. Why did your ex want revenge so badly? What did you do to him?”

  The silence was deafening.

  “Then what happened?”

  “It was like a dark force sucked him clean out of the room. Next thing you know, there’s a loud crash and a noise like something was splitting in two. When Chase went out into the hall to see what happened, he saw Tino on the first floor. Dead.”

  She turned pitiful eyes on Shaw. “We didn’t kill him. You believe me, don’t you?”

  He shouldn’t tell a suspect yes or no to that question, but he was certain the woman was telling him most of the truth, the part that mattered to him.

  He nodded. “As crazy as this story sounds, yes, I believe you.”

  “How am I going to explain what happened? Especially to people who have never been through something like that.”

  Shaw leaned his elbows on the table. “No one ever has to know.”

  “Besides you?”

  “Besides me.”

  A wounded expression appeared on her face. “I just want to know…”

  She stuck her chin out and stared a Shaw. Resentment coupled with deep sorrow brimmed from her eyes.

  “Why did Celeste keep James and give me away? Why didn’t she want me?”

  Shaw’s mind recalled the sharp sting when a powerful force slapped the book from his hand. “I’m not sure…” He hesitated to tell her what he and Josh had done.

  He didn’t want his actions to damage the woman any more than she was already damaged, but he pushed aside his concerns. She needed to know of his discovery.

  “When I was in the house, I found a book that might be Celeste’s diary.”

  Laurel’s eyes widened. “Did you read it? What did it say? Did she mention me or why she did what she did?”

  “We found it last night in a hidden compartment in the closet in your bedroom. Before I could even touch the book, something slapped my hand and flung the book out of the closet. When Josh McCord tried to pick it up, something kicked him in the butt and he fell face forward. The book slid across the floor and ended up in the center of the room.”

  He paused, made sure he had Laurel’s complete attention. “Josh is kind of cocky…”

  She nodded. “I’ve met the guy.”

  “He challenged the entity, and I think that got it all riled up. I asked the entity if it wanted someone besides one of us to read the book.”

  Laurel leaned toward him. “Did you get an answer?”

  Shaw held her gaze.

  “Me? She wants me to read the book?”

  “Why do you say she? Have you had an interaction with the entity in that room?”

  She smiled. “Of course, I have. I’m sure she’s Celeste. I’ve spoken with her.”

  “So not only has she spoken through you, she’s spoken to you as well?”

  Laurel smiled, a wistful sort of expression. “Yes, she has.”

  “Then, there’s obviously a reason she chooses you. She must want you to know what’s in that book. So will you come with me out to Laurel Heights to get it? Josh and I left it in the middle of the floor.”

  She pressed her back against her chair. “I never want to go out there again.”

  “I think you should. Neither of you are going to have any peace until you do.”

  Chase shook his head. “Laurel and I are doing just fine.”

  “I meant Laurel and Celeste.”

  Understanding flashed in Chase’s eyes. The man was sharp.

  The minutes of the clock ticked by for what seemed like an eternity before Laurel answered Shaw. “Okay, I’ll go back, but not without Grayson.”

  Shaw released the breath he’d been holding. That might be an impossible request to fill.

  Chapter Nine

  After a long day, all Josh wanted to do was chug down a Bud longneck, but instead of heading down the highway toward the Hot Spot, he drove north toward the Missouri state line. The Duncan clan had a place outside of town, and Josh was hoping to find Brett Duncan there. After he calmed Brett down, Sheriff Halsey had released Cherish’s brother with a stiff warning not to try to punch a cop anymore. Whether Brett listened or not was another story. Taking a swing at a Hill County deputy was a Friday night event for Brett.

  Josh wished Halsey had given him a chance to interview the man before he cut him loose. When Josh had asked Deputy Jackson how his interview with Brett had gone, it annoyed the snot out of Josh when Jackson shrugged his shoulders. According to him, Brett had nothing much to say. Brett couldn’t give him a lead. After all, Brett hadn’t seen his sister in four years.

  Jackson was a moron. It wasn’t hard to figure out why Brett was so angry. Cherish’s brother probably thought the Sheriff’s Department hadn’t tried hard enough to find his sister and now she was dead. She hadn’t received any justice and Brett hadn’t gotten any answers.

  No one in town seemed to know where Brett worked, so Josh figured the guy wasn’t currently employed. He seemed to drift from one menial job to another. According to the registrar at the Hill County School Board, Brett hadn’t finished high school.

  The odd thing? No one seemed to be the least bit interested in why Josh was asking questions about Brett. Maybe no one had heard about Cherish’s murder yet. After all, Josh still hadn’t heard anything about a positive ID of the dead woman.

  A few miles out of Fairview, Josh located the drive to the Duncan house. Old man Duncan had died a couple of years ago, and the place had been left to his grandson. No one had seen Brett’s mother in fifteen years. His father had moved to Mississippi with his third wife. Brett lived alone in the house his grandfather had left him.

  Josh spotted Brett’s vehicle parked beside the Duncan house and pulled up behind it. Before Josh exited his truck, he sucked in a deep breath. The interview could turn ugly, and more than likely, Brett would toss a punch at Josh before it was over. The man was destined for either the grave or jail.

  The front door of the house banged open before Josh got two steps away from his truck. Brett stopped on the edge of his front porch and leveled a double-barrel shotgun at him. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Josh raised his hands. “My name is Josh McCord, and I’m a crime scene specialist with the Hill County Sheriff’s Department.

  Brett slid the action on the weapon. “Get off my property.”

  Josh kept his hands in the air. “I’m not here to cause you any trouble, Brett. I want to find out who killed Cherish, just like you do. I just want to ask you a few questions. That’s all.”

  Brett lowered the gun and narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t the guy investigating her case, so why are you asking questions?”

  “I’m just a guy who wants to find out what really happened.”

  Brett lifted the gun again. “I’m not going to tell you things just so you can go talk about her behind her back. It ain’t righ
t to talk about her after she’s dead.”

  Josh lowered his arms a smidgen. “Brett… Lower the gun. I’m not here just so I can gossip about her.” He took a step closer and Brett’s right eyelid twitched. Josh steeled his jumpy nerves. He was getting tired of facing down a gun barrel. “No one deserves what happened to her. Someone in this town has some answers, and I want to find them so that whoever did that to her won’t do that to anyone else.”

  “I’m not really concerned about anyone else in this town.” The edge in Brett’s voice could have cut through a steel girder.

  “But you would like to know who murdered your sister, wouldn’t you?”

  Brett’s jaw tightened.

  “I know who killed my sister. I’ve known for years. I told Sheriff Halsey what I know. He ignored me.” Bitterness simmered beneath Brett’s words. “Why do you think I took a swing at the sheriff?”

  Either Brett was confused or Halsey hadn’t told him how long the woman had been dead. Perhaps Brett knew something about Cherish’s disappearance and assumed the woman had been dead for four years.

  Josh wanted to curse a blue streak. Halsey should have emphasized the preliminary nature of the identification. Would Brett be invited to the morgue to view the body?

  “I won’t ignore you.”

  Josh held his breath.

  “How do I know that? How do I know you won’t blow off what I say just like every other cop in this county?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Brett chewed on Josh’s question for a moment, and then finally lowered the weapon. “I’m not going to tell you what I know, but I will tell you… You should beat the truth out of Zach Halsey, cause that’s the only way he’s gonna tell it. He was the last person to see her alive before she disappeared. That’s all I’m gonna say. Now, get off my land before I change my mind about pulling the trigger.”

  Josh backed up until he bumped into his truck, grasped for the handle behind him, cracked open the door, and slipped into the driver’s seat. Brett was still standing on his front porch when Josh backed down the drive. The shotgun now rested in the crook of Brett’s arm. Never had Josh seen such a mixture of hope and anger on one man’s face.