by Lisa Jackson
The whole area seeming abandoned and sinister.
She turned her attention to the river, past the spot where the pier had been to the willow tree with its drooping branches, leaves turning with the breeze, the end of the limbs floating on the dark ominous water.
Shake it off, Nikki told herself and squinted, searching for any shadow of a boat hidden within the willow’s shroud. Don’t freak yourself out. It’s just a gloomy, depressing day. Get a move on.
Cautiously she picked her way around the edges of the sheds and barn, then stayed near the surrounding trees, all the while snapping pictures. She eyed the contents of the machine shed, and pump house, barn and stable, all rotting, all empty aside from whatever equipment had been left to rust in the weather.
She passed by the old garden, now overgrown with tangled, out-of-control rose bushes and tall weeds, then walked beneath the drape of branches and leaves that turned in the wind. There was no boat tied to the gnarled trunk, but she saw a deep indent in the muddy bank where the prow of a boat could have rested if the craft had been tied to a thick branch or the trunk.
Who was here that day?
Someone who was curious?
Or someone nefarious?
Why hide in these protective limbs?
She thought about the accident that took Morrisette’s life, the other boat with the red and white prow that had scraped against Nikki but dealt Sylvie Morrisette a deathly blow.
Could someone have been steering the craft? It was so crazy that day, so confusing, but surely someone would have seen someone in the boat.
But as far as she knew, it had never been retrieved.
“Odd,” she said aloud, and peered from the shelter of the willow to the house, so dark and imposing. She took another couple of pictures with her iPhone, then stuffed it into the back of her jeans and walked through the rain to the back porch.
The rain had picked up.
A skitter of fear slid down her spine, but she ignored it and stopped long enough to take some pictures of the back of the estate, gloomy and dark and unkempt, the siding gray and rotting, the chimneys crumbling at complete odds with the way she remembered the house as a child. How grand it had been, how polished and proud with its gleaming windows reflecting the setting sun, the clapboard painted white, the tall shutters black and gleaming on that hillock with its groomed and terraced lawns.
No longer.
And never again, she thought, pocketing her phone.
She kept on, close to the woods, and once she was close to the house, crossed the knee-high grass, bent now with the wind and rain. She, too, was wet, her hair dripping, her shoulders damp. Quickly she hurried across the dirty floorboards of the porch. The doors to the back living area, French doors now boarded over, were locked and she wasn’t surprised. She suspected that Tyson had secured the building the day she’d seen him at the front gate, but she also figured that old locks and windows would probably give way with a little pressure.
Walking along the wide wraparound porch, she eyed every possible way in. She checked a second door, a side entrance that she knew from her own exploration of the house as a child had been the servants’ entrance and led to the basement. It, along with the front door with its arched transom, was locked tight.
No surprise there.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
She tried several windows that weren’t boarded over. All were locked tight. “Terrific,” she muttered under her breath as she made her way to the back of the house again. Walking on the wraparound porch, she tried two kitchen windows that were secure and considered how hard it would be to remove the plywood over one near the corner.
Was she that desperate?
There has to be a way in.
She tried every window and door again, pushing harder.
The only one that gave at all was a smaller one over the sink in the kitchen that hadn’t been boarded over. It was high and she had to find an old bucket to turn over and stand on, but when she reached up and pushed, she felt the window give a little.
Maybe she could get in here.
The window wasn’t sealed as it was a bit crooked in its casing. But still. What did she have to lose?
Balancing on the overturned bucket, she jimmied the window, pushing up from the bottom, feeling it wiggle and give a bit.
Maybe?
Sweating, she pushed, getting her arms and weight into it. Slowly, with a noisy screech, it started to give. She pushed upward, straining, a jab of pain in her left shoulder reminding her she hadn’t completely healed from her last visit to this place. “Come on, come on,” she whispered, replanting her feet and pushing hard. Sweat beaded her brow and ran down her nose while rain pummeled the roof, water running in the old rusted gutters and seeping through rotting shingles.
Her fingers were beginning to ache, her back and shoulders straining.
The window budged again.
Another shove.
Bits of the old, swollen casing suddenly gave.
The window slipped upward a few more inches, just enough to allow her to wriggle through.
She didn’t think twice.
Disregarding the pain in her shoulder, she pushed herself through the opening and crawled into the sink, where dust and rust were visible on the ancient chipped porcelain and a brown spider scurried down the drain. She dragged her body through, her shoulder starting to throb. Once inside, she left the window open for her exit.
The interior was dim, only bits of light from the dark day slipping through the few grimy windows that hadn’t been boarded over. She walked carefully through the rooms, her ears straining. Using the camera on her cell phone, she took pictures of the interior, focusing on the tattered draperies, dusty tiles on the fireplace, and cobwebs draping the corners and balusters of the staircase. She climbed to the third floor, taking photos, shoving aside the feeling that she was walking on someone’s grave. Most of the rooms were bare and empty, but she caught images of peeling wallpaper, old, rusted bedsprings and a broken treadle sewing machine, all objects of a different era, all deteriorating. She caught several images of the crumbling ceiling tiles, broken chandelier and even an abandoned bird’s nest under the exposed eaves.
The house had a feeling of abandonment and with no air circulating, cobwebs and dust everywhere, it seemed dead inside.
Ridiculous, she told herself but couldn’t help feeling goose bumps rise as she finally took a few shots of the narrow back staircase to the basement.
The scent of rot filtered upward as she, bolstering her courage, descended. So what if bodies had been found down here? Using the flashlight’s beam, she stepped into what had so recently been a crime scene. Evidence of the police having been there was visible though the basement was still packed with old furniture and boxes and old clothes.
The floor was covered in mud, drying in some spots, wet and gooey in others, the sound of dripping water breaking the silence. With a quick look around, she discovered the area that had been cleared away from an outer brick wall and the dark, gaping hole with its hiding place.
The Duval girls’ tomb.
Her throat went dry at the thought of what had happened here, how the girls may have suffered, how they’d been laid to rest and hidden from their family and the world. She shined her light in the cavern, now clean, whatever evidence had been inside meticulously extracted by the police.
She took pictures, best as she could, the flash on her camera flaring like lightning in this basement with its low ceiling and dark secrets. She stepped closer to the wall and then stopped at the sound of a voice.
That was crazy. No one was here. But . . .
Was that a female voice? For a second she thought of Nell, the girl who had drowned here, Baxter’s sister, the rumored ghost. The hairs at her neck lifted and she froze.
It couldn’t be.
The voice was getting louder.
Seriously?
She couldn’t be found here.
No one could suspe
ct she’d been on the estate or in the house. She thought of the open window over the kitchen sink and the overturned bucket on the porch. Oh, crap, oh, crap, oh, crap! She backed up slowly, toward the stairs. If she could sneak out before anyone came down here—
Clunk!
The back of her legs hit something—God knew what—as she inched her way backward, the voice louder.
“I know, okay? I’ll check it out. But we can only rush things through as fast as we can . . .”
Nikki recognized the voice.
Definitely not a ghost. She slid around what felt like a chest of drawers and hid behind it as she heard a key in a lock.
That stopped her cold.
Who had a key?
The person who killed Bronco Cravens? Had he . . . no, she found a duplicate? But why come here? Why in the middle of a rainstorm—
The door opened and footsteps sounded in the staircase.
Nikki’s heart was hammering fast, her throat dry as she tried to make herself as small as possible. She peered around the edge of the bureau.
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be back soon . . . okay. Talk to you then.”
Who is the woman?
The footsteps started descending.
Oh. God.
A flashlight’s beam swept into the basement, moving swiftly, startling a rat that scurried out of its path.
She bit back a scream.
Don’t panic.
But she was already silently freaking out and wondering why the hell she hadn’t brought a weapon of any kind.
Because you thought you’d be alone. You thought Tyson’s cameras and NO TRESPASSING signs would be enough to keep anyone from coming.
Shrinking back into the cavity beneath the stairs, she hardly dared breathe while watching the bluish glare of the flashlight’s beam as it swept over boxes and crates, stacks of bags and broken furniture.
The beam arched over the ceiling near her, exposing cobwebs and tools hanging on the crossbeam.
A hammer!
Not much of a weapon, but something. If she could just get to it.
The beam moved through the piles of trash, away from the stairs to the wall where the bodies had been buried.
Nikki thought about the hammer. Should she go for it?
It was risky and little help against a gun—
You don’t know if this person, whoever it is, has a weapon.
Still . . .
The beam slid into the cavern.
Nerves strung to the breaking point, she silently stepped away from her hiding space and reached up, her hands swiping the air wildly. Shit! She tried again, touched the hammer and it slipped off its nail, sliding through Nikki’s sweating palms. Her heart nearly stopped as her fingers tightened over the claw, feeling it slice her skin just before the hammer hit the ground.
But there was movement in the still air.
“What the hell?” The flashlight’s beam swung toward the stairs.
Oh, God.
Nikki, like a frightened snail, withdrew as far as she could into the dark alcove. She shifted the hammer, holding on to the smooth wood of the handle, wondering if she’d have to use it.
“Is someone there?” the woman demanded, harshly.
Nikki’s heart knocked crazily in her chest.
Her slick fingers held the hammer in a death grip.
Whoever was holding the flashlight started walking toward the stairs. “I know you’re here,” she said.
Nikki hardly dared breathe.
The beam swept closer, skating across the floor.
Slowly, Nikki raised her weapon and felt the spit dry in her mouth.
Closer.
The beam swept inches from Nikki’s feet.
Oh. Lord.
She braced herself.
“What the—?” the woman said as a rat scurried across the swath of light. It darted from its hiding spot beneath the lowest step across the muddy floor to disappear into a crevice between two stacks of boxes.
“You little shit!”
In that second, Nikki placed the voice: Jade Delacroix.
Reed’s partner.
What the hell was Delacroix doing down here?
She’s a cop; she has every right to be here. It’s you who shouldn’t be down in this godforsaken basement.
Lowering the hammer, Nikki watched from the shadows as Delacroix turned and walked back to the tomb, snapped the flashlight onto her belt, and then placed her hands on the bricks above the dark cavern. Over the drip, drip, drip of water, Delacroix whispered what sounded like a prayer.
Nikki strained to hear the words.
“I’ll find him. I swear,” Delacroix said, before making a quick sign of the cross over her chest. With that she abruptly turned, grabbed the flashlight and headed for the stairs. Once again, Nikki shrank into the shadows as the policewoman mounted the steps quickly, almost running, the floorboards creaking overhead, a door opening and closing.
A lock clicked into place.
And then it was quiet again aside from the incessant dripping.
Nikki didn’t move. She barely dared slip her phone from her pocket to check the time. Then she waited. For a full ten minutes while the cavernous basement with its makeshift graves seemed to close around her. She told herself she did not feel spiders on the back of her neck, that the rat she spied earlier was long gone, that everything was just fine.
Slowly, Nikki emerged, turning on the light from her phone, half expecting to hear Delacroix’s voice say, “I knew you were down there. What the hell are you doing here, Nikki Gillette?”
But the basement remained silent. Ominously so.
She managed to take a few more pictures, then cautiously mount the stairs. Since the door was dead-bolted and she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been inside, she left the way she came in, tiptoeing into the kitchen and hoisting herself over the sink. Once she’d wriggled outside, tumbling onto the porch and nearly losing her phone in the process, she lowered the window to within an inch of the sill, righted the bucket and observed the grounds again.
Delacroix or someone else could have arrived while she was inside. Her gaze skimmed the tall grass and dilapidated outbuildings, even sweeping over the weeping willow, but she saw no one, so she followed the path that had led her here, skirting the outbuildings before turning into the woods.
What had she just witnessed?
Was this some kind of weird ritual with Delacroix? Something she did with all her cases? Or was this specific to this case? Questions assailed her as she hurried through the rain, the path now muddy.
By the time she reached her car she noticed that the fisherman’s camper and pickup were gone. Her CR-V was parked alone on the mashed grass and weeds and sparse gravel. She climbed inside, swiped her face with her sleeve, then switched on the ignition.
The windows steamed and she cracked the passenger side and cranked on the defrost by rote. She even fiddled with the radio, settling on a station that played music from the nineties, but she barely noticed as she thought about the case and the people involved. She drove past the gates of the Beaumont estate, firmly shut, then the acres of grapevines of the Channing Vineyards. Tyson Beaumont, Jacob Channing, Owen Duval, Bronco Cravens. How were they involved with the disappearance and murder of Holly and Poppy Duval? And what about Rose? Once over the bridge she glanced at the road leading to Bronco Cravens’s home, where he had been so brutally murdered. Gunned down. Shot in the back? Because of the Duval girls’ homicides? Or some other reason? It wasn’t as if he was exactly an upstanding citizen. He could have owed the wrong people money or double-crossed a cohort in some crime.
But to murder him?
Beyond the Cravenses’ cabin, just upriver was the Marianne Inn. The spot where Chandra Johnson caught Holly Duval crying. Holly—the tough, rebellious daughter of Margaret and Harvey.
Nikki nearly turned around and drove to the old inn, but glancing at the clock she knew she didn’t have time.
Today was Sylvie Mo
rrisette’s funeral.
As difficult as it would be, Nikki would have to attend and somehow deal with the guilt that would surely settle on her. She would have to endure the silent accusations in the eyes of Morrisette’s coworkers and family.
For Reed.
Nikki made a note to drive back to the Marianne Inn.
Once Detective Sylvie Morrisette was laid to rest.
I tell myself not to panic. I should be able to handle this. Haven’t I always? Haven’t I been able to keep my secrets and hide the truth for twenty years? It’s not the cops that worry me. I can handle them—they’ll never even suspect. But that damned Nikki Gillette. She’s a problem. A wild card. And she won’t back off. She might be the one who exposes me and I have to keep track of her. The tracking device will help. Now, I just need to keep track of her until I finish my job.
Then I’ll deal with her.
CHAPTER 27
The funeral was tough.
Reed, with Nikki at his side, sat on a hard pew in the church and avoided staring at the black coffin, atop of which was a blanket of white and blue flowers, along with Morrisette’s official department picture, a head shot of her in uniform. She would have hated this, Reed thought, avoiding looking at the posed picture, preferring to remember her as she was, alive and sassy, all grit and determination, her hair spiked, her ears studded, her language salty and her heart, always, in the right damned place. Now gone. Grief grabbed hold of Reed’s soul. He tried to listen as the minister, a bald-headed man, his clerical collar stretched tight around his fleshy neck, gave a brief account of Sylvie Morrisette’s life, but Reed’s mind filled with images of the mercurial partner he’d once doubted but had come to trust.
From his pulpit, the preacher kept his remarks short, thankfully, but stumbled when speaking about Sylvie’s early life and her career. Obviously, he’d never met Sylvie Morrisette. Reed guessed she’d never stepped one snakeskin-booted foot into this nave with its soaring ceilings, stained-glass windows and slow-moving fans moving the air around in the nave. Minister Linley glossed over Morrisette’s marriages and concentrated on the fact that Sylvie was a dedicated cop and devoted mother.