Laurel Heights (Haunted Hearts Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  The bartender scooped up the peanut shells and dropped them behind the counter. “Down the highway almost to the county line. On a hill to the left. You can’t miss it. Big iron gate on the drive with the name Laurel Heights on it.”

  Chase dropped some bills onto the counter to pay for his beer. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me. I haven’t done you any favors. That house will beat you up if you stay long enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The bartender shrugged.

  A woman wearing too much makeup hollered from the opposite end of the bar. “Hey, John. Another round for me and my new friend.” She burped and slapped a hand over her mouth.

  John rushed to pour the woman another drink, leaving Chase to ponder the bartender’s cryptic comment. How could a house beat up a man?

  ****

  Since Laurel had moved into her aunt’s house, she hadn’t fallen asleep once without pharmaceutical help. The sleeping aid usually lulled her into lullaby land, but the drug seldom got her through the night without a nightmare. She was quickly running out of the prescription and would have to resort to over-the-counter antihistamines soon. The doctor she had seen in Fairview wouldn’t renew her prescription. He hadn’t wanted to prescribe it anyway. She wouldn’t be going back to him.

  She lay still beneath her comforter, listening to the unusual sounds coming from the lower floor. The house made a lot of noises, especially at night. She sucked in a ragged breath when it made a few more. Thuds and bumps sounded like footfalls. Was someone in the house or was she paranoid? Every shadow reminded her of Rand. He was in prison and would be incarcerated for a very long time, probably the rest of his life, but he could easily send one of his loyal subordinates to find her.

  She wrapped her fingers around the grip of the baseball bat she kept next to her bed and hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. Confronting an intruder with a hollow piece of aluminum seemed like a lame defense. She had been considering purchasing a gun but hadn’t done so yet. Maybe it was time. She’d have to buy one under the radar because she didn’t want anyone doing a background check on her. Acquiring a shotgun shouldn’t be too hard. It seemed everyone in Arkansas owned a firearm of some sort.

  She threw off the comforter, rose from the bed, slipped across the room with the bat over her shoulder, and opened the door to peer down the hallway toward the front stairs. Nothing moved. The house was quiet. Maybe a little too quiet. Only moments before, a symphony of strange noises had disturbed the night. It was as if opening her bedroom door had turned off the sound.

  She stared at the back stairs directly across from her bedroom and considered going down to the first floor to check the door locks, but nixed the idea. Locked doors wouldn’t keep someone out of the house if they wanted to get in. Better to barricade herself in her bedroom and keep the bat close. She slammed the door shut.

  No moonlight filtered through the flimsy fabric covering the window. The moon hid behind a thick cloud cover. She tugged at the curtains, pulling them tighter to keep out the night. Before she stepped away, she caught a glimpse of something not quite right. Peeking between the curtain panels, she stared across the backyard. On the other side of the grimy window, a dim light flitted back and forth inside the detached garage.

  She shivered with apprehension. The structure was derelict, unlike the four-car garage attached to Rand’s half-million-dollar house in California. They had been living in the two-story, five-bedroom house for at least a year, but the place had never seemed like home to Laurel. Everything belonged to Rand. By the end of their disastrous relationship, he had treated her like a possession as well. Actually, maybe he had all along.

  Comparing her life then to her life now brought up memories of the beating Rand had given her and his attempt to attack her again. If Foster hadn’t shown up when he did, she’d probably be dead.

  She glanced at the clock beside her bed. It was nearly four in the morning, the darkest hour of the night. Who would be snooping around her place in the dark? Who would be in her garage at any hour? She contemplated calling the local Sheriff’s office, but decided against it. She didn’t want cops involved in her personal business. No. She would find out who was messing around her property without involving local law enforcement. Eventually, the intruder would show himself, and when he did, she would be ready for him.

  ****

  Lt. Mitchell Grayson stared at the overcast sky. Bad things always happened on the darkest nights. Now six-thirty in the morning, the sun had already peeked over the eastern horizon, and he’d been at the scene a little over two hours. Sometime around four, a motorist traveling on Highway 65 had run over something semi-solid in the road. To the woman’s horror, the lump in the road was a dead body.

  Gray glanced toward another deputy who was trying to calm the driver. A patrol car’s halogen headlamps outlined the two women in the glare of artificial light. The driver still gasped and heaved after two and a half hours. He allowed a moment of pity for her. If she had gotten a clear look at the man, which he had to assume she had, it might have seemed to her like a scene straight out of a horror movie. That kind of experience left scars on a person’s psyche.

  He glanced first up the road north toward Fairview and then down the road south toward the Hill County line. The stretch of road didn’t have much more than trees, rocks, and an occasional abandoned shack. Before sunrise, few vehicles traveled the highway.

  There were only two inhabited houses within ten miles. Gray considered the property to the south, down the hill, just over the county line. Old man Cooley operated outside his jurisdiction. Cooley lived on a small patch of highway that crossed the corner of the next county. Because of its odd location, the neighboring county didn’t patrol there often, and Cooley was well aware of it, keeping himself and his criminal activities beyond Gray’s reach.

  The house up the road to the north belonged to Celeste Standridge’s niece. He struggled to remember the woman’s first name. She hadn’t been in the house long. It had taken Celeste’s lawyer over a year, no more like two years, to track her down. The property was still in probate, the final settlement of the estate pending the satisfaction of other debts Celeste owed, but the niece had acquired the right to live on the place already.

  Then, he remembered and wondered why her name had been so hard to recall. Laurel Standridge had inherited Laurel Heights. Celeste had obviously named the property after her niece. Gray knew nothing about the new owner. Actually, he didn’t know that much more about Celeste other than the rumors that floated around Fairview. Some said Celeste was crazy. Others said the house was haunted, and the paranormal activity made her act crazy. Either way, Celeste was known for her eccentricities.

  Gray had always wanted to spend the night in Celeste’s run-down house on the hill. Just one night. Just to see if the rumors he had heard all his life about the garage at Laurel Heights were true. Over the years, Celeste had hired numerous handymen to live on the property and take care of the place for her. No one had stayed more than a week, at the most. Most had spent one night in the garage apartment and left the next morning with a harrowing tale to tell.

  More than likely, most of the stories were exaggerated or just plain fabricated. Even so, with so many stories flying around about the place, there had to be an ounce of truth in some of them. Gray had wanted to do an investigation, but Celeste always refused to discuss the rumors with him.

  He returned his attention to the coroner who had crouched on the ground near the corpse. It had taken dispatch a while to locate Dr. Epps, but he had finally surfaced at his girlfriend’s house. Epps didn’t think his wife needed to know about his nocturnal activities and had grouched about the deputy who had called his house and upset Mrs. Epps.

  Gray walked the few paces down the hill toward Epps. “So what do you think?”

  Was Epps able to concentrate enough on the deceased to give him an adequate preliminary evaluation or was he still fuming about the deputy upsetting his
wife?

  “He was already dead when she hit him. Look at these wounds.” Epps lifted the front of the man’s blood-soaked shirt. “Someone cut him. There are at least six or seven penetration wounds on his torso. Knifed him to the hilt. He bled out, but not here. There’s hardly any blood. My guess? He’s been dead at least six, maybe eight hours.”

  “Between ten and midnight, huh? When was he dumped?” He asked even though he didn’t expect Epps to know. It would be Gray’s job to determine a timeline.

  “Can’t tell you that. Maybe the autopsy will tell us more.”

  “Is he ready to roll?”

  Epps nodded toward Deputy Sam Richards. Sam had done a lot of clean up after accidents. He didn’t blink as he helped Epps lift the body. The coroner zipped the black body bag, and Sam helped Epps load the victim into the back of a waiting EMT unit. Sam slammed the door shut, Gray slapped the side panel, and the emergency vehicle headed toward town.

  Gray watched the wagon roll up the hill and out of sight and then turned toward Sam. “How long before someone from Crime Scene gets here?”

  “McCord is on his way. He was hard to wake.”

  “McCord? Why McCord? What about that new woman? What’s her name—”

  “Victoria Downing, but she wants everyone to call her Tori.” Richards smiled and licked his lips. “She’s a—”

  “Crime scene specialist,” Gray snapped.

  Sam cleared his throat. “Dispatch said McCord was on call.”

  Gray groaned at the thought of added tension at the scene. Almost everyone knew about the animosity between Gray and Josh McCord. Josh was never going to be Gray’s best friend again. Despite his efforts to get McCord assigned to a different shift, he hadn’t been able to distance himself from the man. Their shifts often overlapped, and McCord might be on call any time of day or night.

  Gray would have to work with McCord whether he wanted to or not. He needed to get this stretch of highway open as soon as possible before the morning contingent of truckers hauling loads between Fairview and Little Rock started traveling the roadway.

  “You think this was murder?” Sam rarely took anything a step beyond the obvious. It was the reason Sam was still on patrol instead of being promoted to the investigations unit.

  “Yeah, I think so.” Gray dribbled a bit of sarcasm into his reply, but otherwise held his tongue and kept his opinion of the deputy’s lack of deductive reasoning skills to himself. It wasn’t his job to fix Sam Richards.

  ****

  Laurel set a cup of hot coffee on the kitchen table and dropped into a chair. She stirred the brew with little interest, her eyes heavy. After her middle-of-the-night scare, she hadn’t gone back to sleep. She dawdled in the kitchen, pondering another long, lonely day.

  She had yet to make any friends in Arkansas. Her nearest neighbor lived far enough away that making his acquaintance had been difficult. She didn’t like Omar Cooley. Something wasn’t right about him. Her other neighbors had been aloof to say the least. They had come just short of being rude to her. She didn’t mind the distance between their place and hers.

  The old house needed a lot of work, but Laurel had no one to share the project with her. Everyone in town had turned her offer of work down as if there was danger of infecting themselves with some unknown disease if they ventured onto her property. She had to wonder why the residents of Fairview were afraid of Laurel Heights. Should she be scared of the same things? She had gotten the impression there were rumors circulating in town concerning her Aunt Celeste. Were her neighbors also gossiping about Laurel as well?

  A loud knock on the front door startled her and made her spill the coffee. She wiped up the mess with a napkin before rising from the table. Another bang bang bang on the door. Whoever intruded on her Sunday morning wanted her attention badly. The vibration from the knocking rattled the windowpanes in the kitchen.

  Wrapping her robe around her waist, she trudged into the living room and peeked out the side window. A man waited on the front porch, shifting from one foot to the other. He was a good-looking stranger, so she ran her fingers through her hair, hoping to minimize her obvious just-got-out-of-bed appearance. She set the chain on the door, opened it a crack, and glared at the man without offering him a polite greeting. After all, he was invading her Sunday morning solitude.

  “I’m Lieutenant Mitchell Grayson with the Hill County Sheriff’s Department.” He flashed his badge at her in what seemed like a half-hearted effort to identify himself. “I have a few questions to ask you, Miss Standridge.”

  So he already knew her name. Did everyone in Hill County know who she was?

  “What about?” She thought she knew why he was on her front porch at seven o’clock in the morning. How had he found out about the mysterious light in her garage the previous night?

  “I’m investigating an accident that happened down the road about four this morning. A woman ran over a body in the middle of the highway.” He paused, obviously waiting for her reaction.

  She wouldn’t give him one. She’d learned to present cops with a blank expression.

  “Did you hear or see anything unusual last night?”

  “No, I didn’t hear anything.” Except a symphony of weird noises in the house. But down the road? No.

  “We haven’t been able to identify the victim. Would you mind looking at a picture of him?” He removed a photo from the pocket of his off-the-rack suit jacket.

  “Why?” She didn’t want to see any pictures of dead men. Finding a body in her garage once was enough for a lifetime.

  A glint of authority coupled with a hint of exaggerated patience radiated in Grayson’s deep blue eyes. He held the picture out to her as if he had no doubt she would comply with his request.

  She didn’t reach for the photo or even look at it. “I wouldn’t know him.”

  “How do you know that? You haven’t looked at it yet.”

  “I don’t need to. I don’t know anyone in Arkansas.” She couldn’t be any plainer.

  The longer the man stood on her front porch, the more likely he was to ask her questions she didn’t want to answer.

  “Please, take a look,” he insisted with a tight smile.

  “Oh, all right.” Anything to get him to leave. She reached through the crack and snatched the picture from his outstretched hand. “I don’t know him. Is that all?” She shoved it back at the pushy cop.

  He blinked at her and took the photo from her. “Is everything all right out here?”

  “Sure.” She refused to twitch. “Why do you ask?”

  “If anything unusual happens, would you let me know? Here’s my card.”

  The man acted as if he was investigating a murder instead of a traffic accident.

  “Anything unusual? Like what? You said it was an accident. Is there something I should know?”

  She reached for his card and then wished she hadn’t. Accepting his card might seem like she was agreeing to cooperate.

  “The man was already dead when the car hit him.” His expression was unreadable. He presented her with a cryptic cop face.

  It had been her observation that all cops had a cryptic cop face.

  The strange light bouncing around in her garage in the early hours of the morning held new significance. Was a murderer hiding on her property? Should she tell the deputy what she’d seen only a few hours ago?

  “You’re welcome to search the grounds if you wish.” She hoped the cop would find something or someone in her garage, and she wouldn’t have to do the dirty work of getting rid of the intruder.

  Grayson stared at her as if digesting her suggestion, which must have sounded a bit odd under the circumstances. “Thank you, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Not yet anyway.” His tone was even as if she hadn’t just said something unanticipated. “Thank you for your time.”

  He held her gaze a bit too long before he turned and descended the front steps. She watched his back as he headed down the drive toward his vehicle. When he g
lanced over his shoulder, their eyes locked, and she closed the door quickly.

  Chapter Three

  Two Weeks Later

  Chase lowered the putty gun, set it carefully on the top step of the ladder, and rolled his shoulders to relieve the kink that had formed in the center of his back right between the shoulder blades. He turned on a slow pivot and found Laurel staring at him.

  She was acting strangely again. Chase had worked for her for almost two weeks, and during that time she had exhibited some rather interesting quirks.

  “Is there something you wanted?” Intense observation had always made him antsy, especially since his time in prison.

  “Uh, no. Nothing. I was just passing down the hall.” Her eyes darted everywhere.

  She couldn’t or wouldn’t look him in the eye. Sometimes she acted as if she’d seen the inside of a jail cell, but he was certain she hadn’t. She was doing more than just passing down the hall. She’d been hovering outside the door for well over a minute. Her eyes had practically stared a hole in his back. He drew in a deep breath, giving his aggravation ample time to diminish. He was lucky to have the job, so he let her scrutiny slide.

  “I’m finished setting in the windows in this room. I think I’ll call it a day if you don’t mind.” He held his breath, waiting for her reaction. It wasn’t yet four in the afternoon.

  He didn’t keep regular hours, and that seemed to be okay with her as long as he called her and warned her he was on his way. The one time he’d shown up ready to work without notice, she had become very agitated with him and had never explained her seemingly over-the-top reaction. After that, he’d always been careful to inform her when he planned to arrive and when he intended to leave. She never argued, but she never seemed ready for him to go either.

  If one day he decided he wanted the day off, he was sure she wouldn’t object. She needed his help if she wanted to open the place for business in time for the summer tourist season just a couple of months away. He preferred the predictability of a regimented schedule, but he needed the flexibility to come and go as he pleased with minimal objections from her.