Somehow, our hands found each other in the middle. I wound my fingers through his. We might not be home free yet, but at least we had that point of connection.
Levi sighed and straightened up. “Now, let’s figure out how to get out of here.”
“What will we do with him?”
“He’s not going anywhere. We can leave him here and send the sheriff to pick him up.”
I patted my pockets. “I wish I had my phone.” My eyes flew open. “Hey! I just remembered.”
I searched Nathaniel’s body and found my own phone in his pocket. Sure enough, the video from the greenhouse was still there. “I better take some of this place, too.”
Levi dug his own phone out. “If I can get a signal, I can mark this place on Google Maps. We might even be able to find the exit from here.”
We both twiddled with our phones for a minute. I took photos and video of the growing room, but Levi put his phone away. “It’s no use. There’s no signal this far underground. We’ll just have to run a ball of string to the surface.”
I picked up a ball of gardening twine from the bed at my knee. “Here you go.”
He frowned. “I was joking.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Well, here it is. We might as well use it.”
At that moment, a shout made both of us spin around. Nathaniel leapt to his feet with a loud laugh. “Ha ha, suckers! You thought I was unconscious! Smell ya later! Good luck finding your way out of here.” And off he ran, as free as a bird.
Levi scowled at his retreating back. Then he pursed his lips and shook his head. “I really am losing my touch.”
“Now what are we gonna do?”
He shrugged. “Tie off your string and come on. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I tied the string to one of the support poles in the marijuana bed. Levi relit the lantern. We took hold of each other’s hands and headed for the tunnel when a distinct meow echoed off the walls. I whipped around fast enough to give myself a neck strain. A fluffy black cat appeared from behind one of the beds. She ran her long back and tail against the wooden boards. “Pixie!”
Levi glared at her. “That cat! She’s always turning up at the wrong place at the worst possible time.”
“Maybe it’s not the worst possible time. If she followed Nathaniel down here, she must know the way to get back. She looks comfortable enough, so she must come here a lot. Maybe she can show us the way out of here.”
Levi grimaced. “You want to follow a cat out of here?”
“We’ve got no other leads. You say she’s into everything, and look at her. She knows this place.”
Pixie sat down in front of us and gave her chest a casual lick. Then she blinked up at us and adjusted her whiskers.
Levi groaned. “All right. I’ll go along with it, just for the sake of peace.”
I bent down and scratched Pixie between the ears. Then I nodded toward the tunnel. “Come on, Pixie. Let’s go home.”
I took a step toward the tunnel and looked back at the cat. She gave me one more quizzical glance and trotted right past me into the dark. Levi followed her with the lantern, and I unrolled the ball of string behind, just like something out of a fairytale.
I didn’t see where Pixie went, but Levi followed her a long way through the tunnels. She twisted and turned. She went down when I would have chosen up. She tiptoed past splits in the tunnel when neither Levi nor I would have known which way to go.
The farther she went, the more certain I became she knew exactly where she was going. She must have come down here with Nathaniel all the time, and he never gave her a second thought. He never considered a cat could be his undoing.
Out of nowhere, I heard Levi hiss through his teeth. “We’re there!”
I peered around his shoulders, and there was the exit. Trees and blue sky waved beyond the round tunnel opening. We raced into the open and both collapsed on the ground in the forest.
Pixie regarded us with her feline nonchalance. She couldn’t understand the big deal. She was never in danger. Levi crawled to the nearest tree and rested his back against it while he got out his phone. “Yes! We’ve got signal. I’ll just mark this place, and then we can find our way to the nearest road.”
“Can you get a fix on our location?”
He nodded. “We’re just outside of town. We can stop by the sheriff’s office on the way.”
Once we caught our breath, he came to my side. “Come on. Let’s go. You can leave your string here.”
I glanced around. “Where’s Pixie?”
“She’s probably back at the inn by now. No one’s ever getting rid of that cat.”
He held his phone out in front of him in one hand and followed the map. We bashed our way through shrubbery and thick foliage until we broke out on the road leading into town. The park around Heather Ashfield’s statue came into view, and we saw a large crowd of people standing out in front of NightHawks.
Loud voices echoed down the streets the closer we got. We shouldered our way through the throng until I caught sight of Eliza standing nose to nose with Sheriff Mills. She jabbed her painted finger in his face. “You better go out there and find her. You don’t do jack squat in this town except sit behind your desk with that useless deputy of yours. Now you’ve got a credible report of a missing person, and all you can do is come up with some lame excuse about how you have to follow procedure. What good is it having a sheriff if you don’t do anything?”
I came to her side. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, Allie!” Eliza threw her arms around my neck. “I’ve been worried sick about you. When you didn’t show up for our dinner date, I went to the sheriff like you told me to, but he won’t listen to a word I say.”
Sheriff Mills settled his distorted leather belt on his hips below his oversized belly. “It’s a good thing I didn’t do anything. You’re ranting and raving about how she’s missing, and here she is, alive and well.”
“I’m not alive and well,” I retorted. “Nathaniel Rowe tried to kill me. If Levi hadn’t helped me, I’d be dead by now and it would be your fault.”
“Now just hold on there a minute,” the sheriff returned.
“She’s right, Sheriff,” Levi interrupted. “I heard every word Nathaniel said. He killed Beatrice Garrett to stop her busting him for growing pot on her land, and he would have killed Allie, too. We got the whole thing on video, and we marked the location of his hidden underground growing room. It’s all there on Allie’s phone.”
Sheriff Mills knit his brows as the video rolled across the screen. “Huh.”
Just then, a shout went up from the back of the crowd. “Look! There he is! There’s Nathaniel Rowe now.”
Everybody turned around to rubber-neck. Sure enough, Nathaniel stood across the street at the gas station with one leg half-inside a beat-up Dodge Caravan. He glared at the crowd. A few people moved closer. He ducked inside the car, but the people moved quicker. In seconds, they surrounded him so he couldn’t drive away. They hauled him out, and Sheriff Mills actually did something to earn his salary that day by snapping the cuffs on his wrists.
Chapter 18
Sheriff Mills led Nathaniel across the street to the police station. People jostled on all sides and called out questions. Sheriff Mills raised his voice. “All right, all right. Just give us some space here. I’m sure it will all come out at the trial. Just give us some room here.”
The crowd parted for half a second, and Glenda barged up to the sheriff. “What are you doing? I demand you release my nephew at once!”
He shrugged and looked away.
Levi answered for him. “Your beloved nephew was caught growing and selling marijuana on the Barrell Inn’s property. He’s under arrest for the murder of Beatrice Garrett and the attempted murder of Allie Garrett.”
His voice boomed over the crowd, and everyone fell into a hush. Every eye gravitated to his face, including mine. He was ten times the police officer Sheriff Mills ever was. Who was he reall
y? Why did he really come up to Heather’s Forge?
He made me believe he came up to escape a failed relationship like I did, but in that moment, the truth hit me in the face. Something sinister lurked below the surface of Levi Stokes. He had experience arresting people. Everyone could see it. He couldn’t say those words the way he did if he hadn’t done it before, maybe even dozens of times.
“This is an outrage!” Glenda fumed.
“The outrage,” I countered, “is that my aunt had to live her last weeks in fear for her own life from you and your criminal nephew here. She never cared about your romance with Sheriff Mills. She was worried about Nathaniel, and you didn’t help by threatening to take her to court when she wanted to get her own property back. You used to be her friend, Glenda. You should have known better.”
Glenda pulled her head down between her shoulders, but before she could answer, another shrill female voice pierced the air. “You bastard! I’ll make you pay for this.”
Camille pushed her way forward. When she got to where Nathaniel and Sheriff Mills stood, she hauled back and slapped Nathaniel across the face. Glenda and several other onlookers gasped.
Camille pointed in Nathaniel’s face. “You lied to us all.”
“What are you talking about, Camille?” I asked.
She shot me a terrible glance. “He told us he would buy the inn and make it employee-owned if we got rid of you. He said we all had to do everything we could to scare you away. That’s why we…. that’s why we did what we did.”
I turned to Levi. “Is this true?”
He lowered his eyes to the ground. “I didn’t want to tell you. He promised us the moon and the stars once you were gone.”
“He told us you planned to grow pot on the property,” Camille blurted out, “when it was him doing it all along. He told us a bunch of lies about you. He said you planned to fire every one of us and bring in your own people. He said he looked you up on the Internet, and you had a conviction for sexual harassment at another company you worked for. He made it all up.”
I nodded, as much to myself as to anybody else. “So, that’s why you were so hostile to me when I first showed up.”
Camille slapped him one more time and stormed off.
I fixed my eyes on Nathaniel. “How could you do this, Nathaniel? How could you do something so underhanded?”
He gritted his teeth. “All’s fair in love and war.”
The screech of tires echoed down the street. A black Ford Fairlane hurtled past. I barely had time to catch a glimpse of Hector Englefink and Roger Englethorpe in the front seat before the car disappeared, heading south.
“There they go,” Levi murmured.
I waved to the sheriff. “You have to catch them. They can confirm they bought drugs from Nathaniel.”
“Don’t bother,” Levi countered. “They fled when they saw you arresting Nathaniel. They didn’t have time to go back to the inn before they left. We’ll find their drugs and probably their paperwork and personal information back at the inn.”
I studied him one more time. How did he think of that? He was the real investigator here. He knew what was going on with Nathaniel and those strange guests long before I did, and he never said a word. Now he wove a net around them to catch them. They could run, but they couldn’t get away.
Sheriff Mills tugged Nathaniel’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get you locked up where you belong.”
He led Nathaniel into the station. Deputy Leonard hurried ahead with a big show of jangling his keys. This must be the most exciting day of his life, when he got to lock somebody up for the first time. The simple fact that he didn’t catch the crook made no difference.
The crowd had already started to disperse. Had the last couple of hours really happened to me? Did he really kidnap me and abandon me in the tunnels to die? Did Levi and I really fight our way out, only to be led to safety by the cat?
The whole scenario seemed too fantastic to be real. Then again, what was Christmastime for, if not miracles and desperate redemption from hopeless straits? I shook myself alert and turned my back on the station. I called out to Eliza and the last stragglers hanging around. “Come on, everybody. We’ve got a Christmas party to prepare for!”
Shouts and cheers went up, and the rest of the bystanders hurried away in different directions. Eliza walked on my right side and Levi on my left. “Do you guys need a ride home?” Eliza asked.
I glanced at Levi. “What do you say? Do you want to catch a ride, or would you rather walk?”
“What do you say?”
I smiled at Eliza. “All right. We’ll take a ride. We’ve covered enough ground for one day.”
Levi muttered under his breath, “I’ll say.”
We stopped in front of Eliza’s car when Sheriff Mills emerged from the station. He bellied over to me with his rolling gait. “You did real good today, little lady. Couldn’t have done better myself.”
I couldn’t stop smiling, I was so happy. “Thank you, Sheriff. Where should I send the video evidence?”
His eyes snapped wide open. “Oh, that! I never thought of that. Well, you see, I never took video evidence into custody before. I’ll have to check the procedures on that.”
I pulled the car door handle. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll copy it and send it over to you. Maybe I could send another copy to the State Troopers’ Office, too, just in case one of the copies gets lost between now and… whenever.”
I stole a glance at Levi, and he gave a subtle nod of approval. Yes, that man knew exactly what he was doing in cases like this, but I dared not blow his cover now, not even to myself. He came up here to escape something. He didn’t want to jump right back into it.
Sheriff Mills rubbed his hands together. He already looked back over his shoulder at the station. He would rather be in there behind his desk than out here, talking to a bunch of strangers about things he didn’t know how to do. “Yes. That’s sounds like a good idea. You do that.” He tipped his hat. “You folks have a pleasant evening. See you at the party.”
He waddled into his office. Eliza, Levi, and I got into the car, and she motored out to the lake. Back at the inn, the first thing I did was check the ledger. I had Hector and Roger’s phone numbers, their addresses, and even their car license plate number recorded. I made up my mind to send that information to the State Troopers’ Office, too. I couldn’t let this case fall through the cracks like Aunt Beatrice’s murder did.
I headed up the stairs, but when I opened Hector’s room door, Levi appeared. “Don’t go in there. Don’t touch a thing until the authorities give you the okay. This is a crime scene. Whatever’s in there to find will be used as evidence against Nathaniel. Just close the door and stay out of there.”
I cast one long wistful glance around the room. “Just one quick look. I promise I won’t disturb anything.”
He lowered his voice to a soft murmur. “I understand how you feel. Believe me, there’s no greater temptation than the drive to solve a mystery, but just remember this. If you went in there right now, you’d be tampering with evidence. Do you really want to run the risk of letting Nathaniel walk away scot free after what he did? Anything you touched in that room would be thrown out as evidence. The simple fact that you set foot in that room would give him all the ammunition he needed to claim you concocted the whole case against him. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not.”
“Then close the door. The more you look, the more you’ll come up with reasons to go in there. Shut the door, and don’t open it again. Let the State Troopers’ investigation team open it, and when they’re finished, they’ll tell you when you can clean the place up and book it out to other guests. Until that happens, do your best to forget about it.”
I indulged in one more sweeping glance. He was right, of course. He was always right. I could trust him, and the bottom line was I really needed a level-headed person like that around. I needed him reminding me to keep a rein on my insatiable curios
ity. He understood, and he still said to leave it alone. I could follow his lead on this one.
I pulled the door closed and locked it. I handed him the key with a sigh. “You better hang onto this. I don’t trust myself not to look.”
His shoulders relaxed. “Good work. I’ll keep it safe for you. Now get downstairs and start organizing this party. That will take your mind off the case.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I went downstairs, and the rush of Camille, her hired helpers, Eliza, and half a dozen decorators caught me in the ceaseless ebb of excitement. I didn’t give the case another thought for the rest of the day.
Eliza charged around shouting orders like a general on the field of battle. Camille ruled the kitchen, and I let her have full control of the buffet tables and everything that went on them. For just a moment, I stood rooted in the front hall. People swirled in every direction. Voices filled the inn as never before. The place came alive in ways I never dreamed of before.
I watched the manic preparations from the outside. The party took on a life of its own. It evolved into a huge event involving dozens of workers all pulling together. I dove in with both feet. This place was my home. I belonged here at last. This was my place, and these were my guests arriving. I could take the helm and make this inn the central hub I always wanted it to be.
I marched into the dining room. Eliza and three other women worked to string lights on the Christmas tree. Another man stood on the ladder across the room hanging holly and pine garlands around the windows. Sprigs of mistletoe hung in the doorways, and glistening gold and silvers balls hung like sparkling stars from the ceiling.
Camille rushed around the buffet tables. She adjusted this and that. She laid out silver and dinnerware. I caught sight of the notice already propped up in the most prominent position: Camille Hayes Catering. Good for you, Camille. You own it and make this your shining moment.
We could all own this moment. We could all gain from it. We didn’t have to work against each other anymore. That was the greatest part of the whole thing. Nathaniel took his shadowy gloom with him. The clouds parted and left the inn peaceful and prosperous and humming with productive holiday spirit.
Green with Envy Page 11
