by Jana DeLeon
Brian frowned and stared at the wall behind her for a couple of seconds. Finally, he looked back at her and nodded. “You’re right. I was only keeping things from you because I don’t want anything to interfere with your work. I didn’t mean anything personal against you.”
“I know. But it’s important that we work together on this.”
Brian raised his eyebrows. “Really? I got the impression that you liked to work alone and pretty much be left alone.”
“That’s true, and no, I don’t want you standing guard in the library or sitting in a corner of my bedroom watching me sleep. But with both of us keeping an eye out, we have a better chance of catching this guy.”
“All right, then. First thing tomorrow, we jog the perimeter of the estate and look for secondary access points.”
“What do we do if we find one? I mean, if we find a trail, do we go down it like Olivia and John did on the trail to the cabins?”
“Yeah. If it looks passable and it’s not pouring rain, then we should check out anything available.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I know I don’t have to say this, but make sure you keep your weapon handy at all times.”
Justine nodded and rose from her chair. “I’m stuffed and dead tired. If you don’t mind, I’m going to put away these dirty dishes, catch a shower and then hit the sack.”
“I’m right behind you,” Brian said.
Justine made quick work of the dirty dishes, but lingered just a bit in the shower. She would have stayed even longer, but worried that the hot water might run out if she stayed in for too long. She slid on her yoga pants and T-shirt and wrapped a towel around her wet hair before exiting the bathroom.
“It’s all yours,” she called to Brian, who was watching the news on the television in the living room. He gave her a wave before she stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind her.
She towel-dried her hair in front of the mirror over the dresser and ran a comb through her long locks. Then she applied lotion to her face and hands, the usual extent of her beauty regimen, and pulled her damp hair back in a ponytail. As she reached to turn off the lamp on the end of the dresser, she noticed something in the reflection of the mirror. Something on her bedroom window.
She whirled around to look at the window and placed a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Rubbed in the dirt and grime of the window glass were the words I know.
Justine rushed to the window and pulled the heavy curtain across it. The words hadn’t been there when she’d opened the curtains that morning, she was certain. Pulling back the curtain a tiny bit, she peeked out into the darkness, wondering if someone was out there, waiting for her to see the words. Waiting for her reaction.
She let the curtain slide back into place and crawled into bed, leaving the lamp on, then checked the clip on her pistol and positioned the gun on the nightstand for easy access. Maybe her stalker would see the lamp remain on all night and know he’d unnerved her. Maybe he’d think she would reconsider working at laMalediction.
Maybe he’d picked the wrong woman to mess with.
JUSTINE STRUGGLED to contain her excitement as she and Brian stretched in the courtyard of laMalediction, preparing for their morning run. She’d managed to leave the rental house that morning while Brian was showering, under the guise of retrieving something from her car, but she’d actually spent the minutes removing the message from her bedroom window before Brian discovered it.
Now her mind raced with the possibilities that could come with discovering the family graveyard. Probably she shouldn’t look so happy to exercise. That might appear suspicious, given that most people didn’t smile when they were about to jog through a marsh at 7:00 a.m.
“Ready?” Brian asked.
Justine nodded.
“I’ll set my pace back a bit. Let me know if it’s too fast or too slow for you.”
Justine fell in beside him as he set a moderate pace that wasn’t going to burn off last night’s dinner, but allowed her ample opportunity to scan the grounds for footprints and the edge of the swamp for paths. Brian kept his focus on the ground as well, and Justine relaxed a bit, figuring with both of them on the lookout, if there was anything to find, they’d see it.
They jogged toward the north end of the estate first and Brian pointed to the trail behind the caretaker’s cottage—the one that Olivia and John had discovered during their time at laMalediction that led to cabins on the bayou. They continued their sweep of the grounds west, and Justine tried to hold in her frustration that the direction she wanted to look most would be the last ground they covered. Even though the estate hadn’t been kept up to livable standards for years, the old caretaker had still managed to keep quite a bit of acreage around the estate clear. It was a good ten minutes before they jogged toward the stretch of swamp that Justine had been waiting to see.
The markings of the trail were immediately visible. With brush so dense, the narrow channel was obvious. Brian drew up short just as Justine spotted the trail and pointed. He pulled the brush back and checked the ground for footprints, but the dirt displayed only jagged lines.
“He wiped his footprints away with brush,” Brian said.
Justine nodded. “Not something an innocent person takes the time to do.”
“No. Looks like we may have found our entry point.”
Justine scanned the distance from the north side of the courtyard to where they stood. “Then how did he get from here to the back of the courtyard that first night without us seeing him disappear and without leaving tracks? Not to mention that you left the house and circled the east side of the courtyard. You would have seen him if he’d tried to cross the estate, even in the storm.”
Brian glanced at the courtyard, then looked back at the trail. “Yeah, that white robe seemed to glow, but what if he took off the robe and shoved it in a black bag? He could have slipped by me in the storm if he was wearing dark colors.”
“And not left footprints?”
“Yeah, that’s the big catch. The footprints could have easily been washed away overnight, but I should have found some behind the fountain.”
“Maybe it was some sort of illusion.”
He frowned. “You’re not buying into the ghost thing now, are you?”
“No, I mean like an optical illusion, where it looked like he was standing behind the fountain but he was really further back.”
“I checked for prints on all the ground between the fountain and the swamp, and around the edge of the swamp.”
“Then I don’t know, unless we have David Copperfield running loose in the Louisiana swamps.”
“Well, let’s check this trail first, and if we don’t find anything, I’ll call David’s people when we get back to the house.”
Justine laughed. “Sounds like a plan.”
His expression grew serious and he pulled out his pistol. “Just in case.”
She pulled her pistol from her ankle holster and stepped into the swamp behind him. Just in case.
Justine estimated they’d been following the almost in-discernible path about one hundred yards into the swamp when they stepped into a small clearing, about ten feet square. Brian pointed to the right.
“You check that side,” he said, “I’ll check the other.”
She followed the clearing around to the right, scanning into the brush and inspecting the ground, looking for another path. About midway down the side, she saw leaves on a bush that were dying. Granted, it was winter and everything was beginning to die, but these leaves were slightly more curled than the brush around it. As if they’d been pulled out of the ground and placed there to hide something. A path!
Justine peered into the swamp beyond the dying brush, trying to see signs of a graveyard, but the swamp was too dense to see beyond twenty feet or so. Still, she thought she caught a glimpse of something large and gray, but with all the winter colors in the swamp, she couldn’t be certain.
“Anything?”
Brian’s voice so
unded behind her and caused her to start. “No,” she said, and moved past the spot with the dead brush. If Brian found out that she was looking for the graveyard, he’d insist on going with her. She couldn’t afford to have him looking over her shoulder as she tried to unravel her family tree. Couldn’t afford for him to find out that her main reason for thinking the graveyard was in this area of the swamp was because she’d seen a ghost.
If Brian started wondering about her mental health, he might remember why she looked familiar to him. That was a risk she couldn’t afford to take. She finished covering her area of the clearing and met Brian back in the middle.
“I didn’t see anything,” Brian said, the disappointment in his voice clear. “This clearing doesn’t look natural, so why is it here?”
Justine studied the dirt beneath her feet. “There really should be ground cover like everywhere else,” she agreed. “Maybe someone had a tent back here that killed the ground cover. Maybe Wheeler was hiding here in a tent, not a fixed structure.”
“Then how did Wheeler get back and forth from New Orleans to this site without someone seeing him? He could hardly park in the courtyard of laMalediction and walk around. And if Wheeler used a tent, where is it now? Should we assume he removed it right before he was killed? Dying wasn’t part of his plan, so I don’t know that he’d have hidden all traces of his hiding place beforehand.”
“I don’t have an answer. Nothing seems to add up.”
Brian looked back down the trail to the estate grounds. “The only thing I can figure is he came in on the other trail from the boat dock. At night, he could have skirted the estate grounds until he made it here. But why go out of his way to hide here when he could have stayed off the other trail?”
“Maybe the other people who own those cabins creep around the woods and he was afraid he’d get caught. For that matter, wouldn’t one of them have reported Wheeler using the docks after he was killed?”
“Unless someone was in on it with him.”
“You think Tom Breaux could be?”
Brian stared into the swamp for several seconds and finally blew out a breath. “It would certainly make things easier to understand if that were the case—logistically anyway. But it makes no sense from the other perspective.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tom Breaux warned Olivia away from the house, just like he warned us away. Wheeler trapped Olivia here so she couldn’t leave. If Tom was working with Wheeler, why would he encourage Olivia to go?”
Justine shook her head. “I have no idea.” Brian was right. The entire situation didn’t add up.
“Is this what your job is always like?” she asked. “A bunch of things that look like clues, a bunch of things that don’t and none of them seem to be part of the same picture?”
“Fortunately, no. Most criminals are not very smart, and their motives are easy to identify. It’s the long-term criminals that are more difficult to ferret out. There are so many layers, and sometimes multiple objectives.”
“Long-term criminals with multiple objectives—that certainly sounds like what’s going on here.”
Brian gave her a rueful smile. “Guess Olivia and John aren’t getting the answers they want anytime soon.” He glanced once more around the clearing then looked back at her. “Well, there’s nothing else to do here, and I’m sure you need to get to work. We should head back to the house.”
Justine stepped behind Brian and followed him down the trail to the estate grounds. She’d worked hard to contain her excitement during their conversation, but now all she could think about was getting back into the swamp to investigate that opening in the brush. It had to be the graveyard. Maybe Wheeler had a temporary camp here because he thought the emeralds were in the graveyard and he came when he could to search.
Justine always carried emergency supplies in her car and had stashed a long length of rope in her backpack that morning. Maybe some of the answers she was looking for were hidden in that swamp.
Chapter Nine
Brian and Justine grabbed a quick breakfast after their jog, before preparing to start their respective duties. Brian was disappointed that their jog hadn’t yielded more information, but reminded himself that he’d only been at it for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the rest of his day would center around furniture inventory and not investigating. He picked up the sensor from the library table and pressed in the code to arm the alarm system.
“I’ll be working upstairs on the west side of the house, if you need me,” he said. “Are you breaking for lunch?”
Justine glanced at her watch and shook her head. “I’ll probably just grab a sandwich and work through. I keep feeling like I should be further along than I am.”
“Sounds good. There’s a storm moving in late this evening, so I figure we should head out of here by six at the latest, but I’ll keep my radio on and listen for changes.”
“That’s fine.”
Brian gave the library one final glance, making sure everything looked in place. “Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
He left the library and continued upstairs, but a nagging feeling that he’d missed something persisted. Had he missed something on their jog? A trail perhaps? But as he recounted the jog in his mind, he couldn’t think of a single place where he might have faltered in his review of the terrain.
Which meant the only other thing that could come under question was Justine. Something about her wasn’t quite right in his mind, but he couldn’t place what. Certainly she was guarded, but that wasn’t the issue. He understood guarded and often practiced it himself, both professionally and personally. And he was certain she was who she claimed to be. He’d seen her published articles and contributions to books, along with the photos to match, and so far, she’d given no indication that she was doing anything but the job she was hired for, except for when she was helping him.
So what was the problem?
That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and one for which he had no answer. He grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator in the kitchen, and his notebook, and headed upstairs to continue with the furniture inventory. Right now, he needed to focus on making a list of everything for the appraiser to review. The appraiser was scheduled to visit laMalediction the following week, and he needed to have the list ready as a starting point for the appraiser’s work.
That shifted bookcase still bothered him. There was no way a passage could be located in such a narrow space, so why shift the furniture? The only thing he could think of was that someone else had been in the house, looking for passageways, like him. But who? Obviously, not someone who was already in the know; and why would anyone take a chance at entering the house now, when it was under so much scrutiny after Olivia’s ordeal?
Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.
Brian was beginning to regret coming to Cypriere. Not only did he feel as if he wasn’t making progress on locating the passageways, he was doing a poor job of protecting Justine and their belongings. Not even three full days in Cypriere, and he’d had his tires slashed, and the person he was supposed to be protecting was lured into a trap and knocked unconscious. When all this was over, he might need a vacation from his vacation. Maybe he was losing his edge—getting too personally involved, when he needed to take a professional approach to the situation.
He flipped the notebook open and entered the bedroom at the end of the hall. Standing around wasn’t going to sort out his personal issue or get the work done. He gave the room a cursory scan to get a feel for it, then checked the list of items John had recorded for that room—two bookcases, one four-poster bed, two nightstands, one decorative table with a pink vase. Everything seemed in order. He pulled the photos of the room from the envelope in the back of the notebook and checked the photos against the furniture.
It was off.
He faced the wall with the bed and tried to match the placement of the bed and nightstands with the striped wallpaper behind it. The bed was a foot over fro
m where John had photographed it. But why? The bed stood against an exterior wall. There was no way a passageway could be contained behind it.
He stared at the bed for a moment, then a thought hit him. The bed couldn’t be hiding a passageway, but something may be contained in a hiding place in the floor beneath the bed. He’d left the furniture sliders in the last room he’d worked in, so he headed down the hall to the east wing of the house to retrieve them to move the bed. He removed the sliders from underneath the bookcase and turned to leave the room, when something moving outside the bedroom window caught his eye.
He rushed to the window and peered outside just in time to see Justine slip into the swamp on the east side of the estate where they’d searched the trail this morning. His pulse began to race as his emotions shifted from fear to anger. How had she circumvented his security system? And more importantly, why? He tossed the sliders on the bookcase and rushed down the stairs. It took only a couple of seconds to disarm the alarm, and then he bolted out the front door for the swamp.
He glanced back at the house as he jogged across the estate and pulled up short to get a better look at something. A door to the tiny balcony off a second-floor bedroom was open and a rope dangled from the balcony railing. He felt the blood rush up his face as he hurried to the trail. Justine better have a damned good explanation for her actions.
Not that he could think of a single one.
He located the trail they’d investigated before, and stepped into the swamp. Justine was nowhere in sight, but the trees and brush were thick, and she had a jump on him. Why go down this trail again, when they’d already searched it? Unless she’d found something and hid it from him, but why would she do that? Justine was here to do a job, and he was here to protect her. Why would she hide anything from him?
Unless she wasn’t who she claimed to be. Unless her reason for being at laMalediction was for some other purpose than Olivia hiring her.
