“Hey, darlin’,” he said when she called his name. “I was trying to be quiet.”
She rubbed her eyes. “I just woke up. What took you so long?”
He started talking as he pulled off his shirt and went to the bathroom to pick up his toothbrush. “We still don’t know who shot Jessie, and I have a feeling the whole Starkey clan won’t entirely calm down until we solve that question, but at least our caseload is now ‘one down, two to go’. And me, I’m dead on my feet.”
He filled her in on the high points of the night, including Helen’s turning over Joe’s boots and the taped confession.
She turned down his side of the bed and told him to sleep as long as he wanted.
Downstairs, she debated going to the bakery but she’d left things in good shape there, with instructions to Julio for the cake orders that would need to be addressed first. By now, he would already be there and most likely would have half the daily breakfast items in the oven. She went to the coat closet, pushed the clothing aside and opened the hidden safe. Her wooden jewelry box seemed a little forlorn when she took it out, and she realized she’d missed seeing and using it every day.
When Zenda the witch had shown up a second time yesterday, she’d made Sam a little nervous at first. But the young woman in her over-done magical ensemble had merely been inquisitive with her questions about the ‘artifact’. Apparently Mary told her just enough about it to whet her interest but since Mary knew nothing about the box’s actual powers, Zenda really didn’t either.
“I did some research on the Internet,” Zenda had said. “But the box Mary told me about wasn’t really described in any of the writings.”
Sam merely shrugged. “I don’t know what I can tell you, since I don’t have it anymore . . .”
Eventually, Zenda had given up and left, Sam hoped once and for all. Despite the weedy black clothing, at least she hadn’t done anything hocus-pocus-like. Sam gave the box a little pat but decided it should go back into its hiding place until she was certain the outside interest had gone away.
Now, she moved quietly around the house, feeding the dogs and donning her warm jacket to go out and give the horses their buckets of oats, a couple of chores that Beau normally did, but he’d looked so tired, poor thing.
Back inside, she spotted her cell phone on the coffee table, the readout showing that her mother had called once again. She gave a sigh and hit the callback button, beginning the call with reassurances that Beau’s department had solved the case and all was well once again in Taos County, skipping over the fact that he hadn’t actually said as much.
While Nina Rae basically ignored what Sam had just told her, going on and on about how worried they’d been, Sam neatened the stacks from the case file they’d dismantled. They still hadn’t made a lot of progress on finding Angela Cayne’s killer and hadn’t pieced together how it related to the shooting of Jessie Starkey. Beau had briefly mentioned that he was still holding a Rodarte cousin, and it could turn out that one of them had retaliated against Jessie for the original confession and Lee’s prison time. They could still be a long way from knowing all the answers. She thought of Althea Brooks again, the woman who’d lost her niece and didn’t even have her sister nearby so the two of them could grieve together. The whole situation was sad.
She took the first pause in her mother’s narrative as an opportunity say she needed to go, setting the pages back in place before she went to the kitchen. She’d just begun scouting through the pantry and fridge in search of something to eat when she heard sounds upstairs.
“Honey, you didn’t even get two hours’ sleep,” she said when Beau came down.
His face looked a little haggard and he was still in pajamas, but his eyes were alert.
“I think I catnapped but when I rolled over I was wide awake again. Lots to do today. Once we release the Rodarte cousins, I think I’d better be in Sembramos to make sure things stay calm.”
“I fed the dogs and horses. Now let me make you a decent breakfast.”
He smiled. “I was kind of hoping for that.”
She reached into the fridge but it was obvious she’d missed a vital item. “We’re out of eggs. Look, you go ahead and shower and get dressed and I’ll run out and get some.”
There was a small market at their end of town, pricier than the big stores but closer. She gave Beau a little nudge toward the stairs, then went out to her truck. At the market she picked up a dozen eggs and some fresh spinach. Omelets would be nice.
She walked to the checkout stand—one cashier on duty and a line of five people. At least most of them were like herself, grabbing one or two items early in the day. She joined the lineup and recognized the man in front of her. Linden Gisner.
He said hello, with that expression which says ‘you look familiar but I have no idea why.’ Sam introduced herself, noting that he was buying Excedrin and margarita mix. By the look of him, he needed the headache cure the most.
“I met your ex-wife’s sister the other day,” she said. The thought struck her that his friend who had greeted Althea as Heather might have said something to Linden. “Did you know she was in town?”
“Althea? No. Haven’t heard from her in years.”
Sam remembered that there was no love lost between them.
“She’s been hoping to hear from Heather all these years. She had the idea that Heather might have gone to Kansas.”
He gave a short chuckle as they moved up one space in the queue. “No idea why she would go there. But I guess it’s possible.”
Sam chafed. Too bad. He might have given them a lead. “Well, I’m nearly done with your house, just going back today for a couple of last-minute things. It’s sure a magnificent place, but did you ever notice cold spots? The wine cellar area always felt very chilly to me.”
If she was hoping he would say he’d taken care of the taxes, he didn’t. Apparently he didn’t give a whit about the house that had once represented so many dreams for him. When a guy was rich enough to build all the big houses he wanted, she supposed he could walk away without regret. He thunked the bottle of margarita mix down onto the conveyor and growled something at the cashier.
Okay, Sam thought. No sense in small-talk before a man’s had his headache drugs. She waited until he’d finished his purchase before she set her items on the belt.
Back at home, Beau looked ready to start the day, shaved and in a fresh uniform.
“How do you do that?” she teased. “If I’d missed a night’s sleep I’d be looking like a hag for days.”
He laid places at the kitchen table while she beat the eggs and heated the skillet, telling him of her assignment to go out to the big house and pick up her signs.
“I’m glad this job is done,” she said as they sat down with their spinach omelets. “The house is faintly creepy and the guy who owns it is just weird—a super-young girlfriend, and I think they start drinking really early in the day.” She related the grocery store encounter.
“That’s not the strangest thing you’ve come across with this job.”
True. Most empty houses were just that, empty and a little sad, but Sam had come across worse than construction dust and cold breezes in other places where she’d been required to break in.
Beau ate quickly and poured his coffee into a travel mug. “I should—”
“No need. I’ll get the dishes and then I’m on my way too.” She gathered things and headed to the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later she walked out to her truck and in another five was northbound on the familiar road. At the big house, everything appeared normal. She parked, pulled up her yard sign and tossed it into the back of the truck. The sign-in sheet she always left on a kitchen counter was still there; she filled it out before deciding that she really should do one final walk-through, just to be sure Delbert Crow wouldn’t have any reason to nitpick her work or delay paying her invoice.
The master suite upstairs looked fine and if no one focused on the window glass,
even those would probably pass muster. Down in the great room, same thing—a few bits of leaf debris that she’d probably tracked in herself, but she picked those up and stuffed them into her pockets. When she reached the wine cellar she realized that she’d never cleaned this room much at all.
Without electricity, the dim room didn’t look too bad but she really should have at least dusted the wine racks and swept the floor. Back to the truck for a broom, dustpan and cloth, along with her big flashlight. She left the door standing open when she entered the chilly room and used her flashlight to get a sense of the amount of dust. The wooden shelves that formed V-shaped racks for wine were thick with it. She started in, resigned to the extra work, hurrying to get it done quickly.
Top to bottom, left to right—she wiped each compartment, moved to the next. At the far right side, about eye-level, her hand hit the edge and she heard a metallic snick. The shelf moved imperceptibly.
Oh, great, I’ve broken something. She dropped her cloth and gripped the edge of the shelf. Instead of a loose board that needed straightening, she found that the entire shelving unit shifted. One more tug and it came outward, leaving a gap of more than a foot from the wall.
Cold air rushed out of the space. Sam backed away.
What the—
She grabbed her flashlight and turned it on again, aimed it at the black space. A set of concrete steps led downward.
To what, Sam wondered as she squeezed through the opening and aimed the light downward. She’d never come across a basement in a home here, and this one certainly wasn’t conveniently located to serve as a rec room. Either the house had been designed with a basement in mind from the start, or the wine shelves had been added later as a means of concealing it. Ten concrete steps ended at a landing and a blank wall. She gingerly took her first couple of steps downward.
At the landing, two more steps were revealed and a small concrete-walled room, about ten feet by ten. She aimed the light all around, probing the corners. No furnishings, no storage boxes. Only one thing—leaning against one corner, resting on its stock, stood a rifle. Okay, this was a bit of overkill for a hidden gun safe.
Goosebumps rose on Sam’s arms. The cold? Or the discovery that the only item in this entire house was an expensive rifle with a high-power scope?
There could be a logical explanation but Sam wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She pulled out her cell phone to call Beau. He could tell her whether she should touch it or not. Surely the taxation department wouldn’t be especially happy when the person who bought this house at auction discovered they’d received a gun as part of the deal.
She looked at the lit readout on her phone. No signal. Okay, she was pretty well surrounded by thick walls. She started back up the steps. She’d just cleared the narrow opening back into the wine room when a shadow crossed the doorway.
Out in the foyer stood Linden Gisner.
Chapter 29
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he shouted.
“I’m cleaning the house,” she stammered, slipping the phone behind her back. “Remember, it’s my job?”
But his eyes were focused on the wine rack and the opening beyond.
“You went down there, didn’t you?” His eyes grew wilder, his face redder, his voice louder. “You snooped in my private room!”
“I—” She felt the phone buttons with her thumb, praying that the signal had come back. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Gisner. It’s still your house until the auction.”
“You just had to pry around, didn’t you?” Although he’d lowered the volume, the quieter tone was scarier. “You had to find what’s down there.”
He kept stepping toward her. The pieces snapped into place.
“Was that the gun that killed Jessie Starkey?” she asked, edging aside, hoping for a chance at the open door.
Gisner’s face looked ready to explode, red and puffy. “The justice system failed to keep him. I had to take care of it.”
“But why, if he was innocent? The evidence showed that Jessie and Lee didn’t kill Angela. Eventually, everyone in town would have accepted that.” Her thumb swept across the phone buttons, pressing the one she hoped was the speed-dial for Beau.
“She deserved it!” Gisner shouted. “That little whore!!”
What? Angela?
“She killed my baby!”
The car accident. Another step toward the doorway.
“Angela Cayne teased me for years—showing off that little body, flirting, making me want her. Then she gets in the car, drunk, and has that wreck, and it’s my Molly who’s gone!”
“Wait—Angie said she wasn’t drinking that night but she tested positive . . .”
He stepped closer. Sam edged sideways again.
“So what, if I gave her a little something to relax her? She wore that tight shirt that showed off everything, flashed it in front of me all evening. The girl was hot for me, thought she was in love with me! A little booze, she would have come right in the bedroom with me, once Molly went to sleep.”
You were coming on to your daughter’s sixteen-year-old friend, gave her liquor, and then blamed her? The man was clearly working outside of reality. But then she remembered Angie’s diary, the lovesick notes about an older man. The girl had gotten in way over her head.
“But the girls start laughing and carrying on and decide to go out. In Angela’s car.” His eyes welled up but his snarl was pure anger.
Two more feet to the door. Gisner kept facing Sam as she’d subtly circled the perimeter of the wine room, his back now almost to the basement opening. She edged again toward the light from the foyer.
“Molly was all I had. She always was. Heather was a user. Married me for my money and then stayed home all day. Never did anything useful.”
Except raise a wonderful daughter for you.
“Where did Heather go? She must have told you her plans.”
“Oh, I know where she went all right. Straight to hell!”
“She’s dead?” Sam got a sickening feeling that all the searches for Heather Gisner had come way too late. A flash of the face from her dream—the face that looked so much like her older sister.
Gisner didn’t answer her question. With wild eyes, he raved about how all women were users who took men for their money and then acted like sluts. When his gaze traveled to the dark opening where the steps led downward, Sam realized that it would only take him one big leap forward to grab her and throw her down there. Had she connected with Beau’s phone yet?
She spun and dashed for the foyer.
But he was quick. By the time she’d cleared the doorway, he’d crossed the wine room and grabbed for her arm. Impossible to get past him and out the front door. She ran across the great room, hoping she could get the wide doors open before he grabbed her. His heavy breathing was too close behind.
She ran the other direction, holding her phone in front of her as she crossed the big room. The little icon showed that it was searching for a signal. Her feet slithered on the tile floor. Signal—finally! She hit Beau’s speed-dial once again, kept running.
“Beau, help! Up at the big house! Linden Gisner’s chasing me!”
She started up the stairs with Gisner no more than ten feet behind her. She kept repeating her shouts for Beau. No time to raise the phone to her ear and find out whether he’d heard her. The master suite, she realized, offered no protection. The bathroom was one of those open to the rest of the room. There was a door on the toilet cubicle, but did it have a lock? Not worth the risk.
Otherwise, the mezzanine. That would be a sure-death drop to the hard floor of the great room nearly twenty feet below.
Gisner was puffing a bit on the stairs, now only a few feet behind her. Sam spun and raised one leg. Her foot caught him in the forehead, sending him crashing back to the landing. But in the process she nearly lost her own balance. She gripped the uppermost end of the banister and pulled herself back.
He got up and bellowed in anger
as he started back up the final seven stairs.
The balcony or the bathroom? Sam had no chance to decide. He was nearly upon her.
Chapter 30
She yanked open the French doors where the master bedroom overlooked the great room. On the driveway below she saw flashing lights. The faint sound of a siren drifted up to her.
“The sheriff’s here. You’ll never get away,” she said, trying to calm Gisner down.
But her voice was anything but normal and the shakiness only seemed to make him bolder. He charged at her and she dashed to the balcony.
“Beau! Upstairs!”
Below, she heard the front door hit the wall as if it had been kicked in.
“Sam! Is he armed?” Beau’s shout reassured her.
“No! But I’m right at the edge of the balcony.”
Beau stepped into sight in the great room below, his gun drawn. “Gisner! Back away!”
For a moment the crazed man lowered the arms that had been reaching toward Sam’s neck as he charged toward her. He glanced down.
“Or what? You shoot at me, I’ll jump and I’ll pull her down too.”
He was still more than six feet away. Not enough to make certain that he couldn’t keep that promise. Sam risked a fast glance toward Beau. Two more patrol cars were coming up the drive.
The next ninety seconds crawled. Faint footsteps sounded downstairs; Sam saw Beau make a couple of subtle signals with his head; she caught the sound of careful steps, saw a flash of khaki uniform. She held Gisner’s gaze, distracting him as two deputies eased their way up the stairs, weapons drawn.
“Gisner, give it up,” Rico said, his service pistol aimed squarely at the killer’s head.
This time, the threat to grab Sam and jump never came. Gisner realized it would be hopeless to try. Rico’s gun never wavered. As deputy Withers snapped cuffs around his wrists, Gisner started protesting.
8 Sweet Payback Page 22
