by Kay Hooper
“People want to ride this late?” she asked, allowing herself to be led around the corner and along a narrow path through the shrubbery toward one of their favorite meeting places.
“Maybe three,” he grunted. “I told Cullen it was hardly worth the bother of saddling the horses, but he gave me the old company line about always entertaining the guests.”
“Well, it is what The Lodge is famous for, after all,” Alison said. Suddenly uneasy, she added, “Maybe we’d better not do this, Eric.”
“My work’s caught up, and I’m on a break.”
Alison hadn’t told him that her own “breaks” were slightly on the unofficial side, and she didn’t want to confess now. Eric was the best-looking single man under thirty employed at The Lodge, and she was still astonished that she’d caught him.
Well, sort of caught him. That wasn’t exactly official either.
“Nobody’s going to give us grief for taking our breaks,” he added, still pulling her along.
His eagerness sparked her own, helped along by her usual gleeful awareness of having pulled one over on Mrs. Kincaid. No fraternizing among the staff—yeah, right.
“Okay, but we’d better be quick,” she told him.
He grinned at her over one shoulder. “When weren’t we quick?”
Alison was about to offer a witty response to that when Eric suddenly stumbled and lurched forward, pulling her with him. They ended in a tangle on the ground, and her breathless laugh was cut off with brutal suddenness when she looked to see what they’d fallen over.
Once she started screaming, she couldn’t stop.
The body of Ellie Weeks lay sprawled just past the overgrown arbor, one outflung hand resting among a few bright flowers that had probably been planted long ago and just as long ago forgotten.
Her maid’s uniform was neat, her hair still in its accustomed and girlish high ponytail. But a braided leather strip cut deeply into the flesh of her neck, and above it her face was mottled, her eyes wide and tongue thrusting between her parted lips.
The big, bright lights illuminating the area so that the police could work as darkness fell lent the area a garish, almost stagelike glow. The young woman might have been posed, as though playing the part of murder victim only to rise unhurt when the curtain fell.
Except that she wouldn’t do that.
“It’s here,” Diana said softly.
Quentin reached for her hand. “This time we’ll stop it,” he said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I believe it.”
“I wish I did.”
Nate looked at them both rather curiously, but said, “Apparently, this was fairly popular as a meeting place for young lovers. Not far from the main building but more or less isolated, at least from the areas used by guests. It was a part of the original garden, but they’d allowed the hedges to overgrow and hide the two garden sheds.”
“That isn’t a garden shed.” Diana was gazing at the nearby small building that seemed clearly intended to have a different life than the prosaic one of storage. It was rather sadly pretty even with its paint peeling and the few faded plastic flowers that had survived, drooping, in its cottagelike window boxes.
Diana felt cold just looking at it, even more so than when she’d seen the young maid’s body. Every sense and instinct she could claim said there was something wrong with this place, something dark.
It was Stephanie, still pale and obviously shocked by the murder, who said, “According to what I was told, that was once a playhouse. For the children of guests. I don’t know why it fell into disuse.”
“I do,” Diana murmured.
“So do I,” Quentin said.
She looked up at him, a little surprised. “You remember?”
“I do now.” He glanced at Nate, who was waiting with brows lifted. “The summer Missy was murdered, weeks before she died, we had all gotten into the habit of using the playhouse as a sort of clubhouse, a meeting place. This area wasn’t so overgrown then, but it wasn’t commonly used by the adults and we liked the illusion of secrecy.”
Nate nodded. “Okay. And?”
“And . . . we were all heading here one morning, sort of in a loose group. Missy ran ahead and was the first one through the door. We heard her scream and came running.” He shook his head slightly. “The inside of the playhouse was a bloody mess. Someone had butchered a couple of rabbits and a fox, scattered pieces of them everywhere.”
“I don’t remember seeing a report about that,” Nate said.
“I don’t remember seeing a cop.” Quentin shrugged. “I assume The Lodge management at the time decided not to call the police, and I guess our parents agreed. They probably all chalked it up to some kind of sick joke or prank. The playhouse was cleaned up, even repainted. But none of us wanted to go near it again. Maybe the kids who came after us felt the same way about the place.”
Still frowning, Nate said to Diana, “Quentin was here; how do you know what happened?”
She answered readily. “I dreamed about it. When I first came here, before I met Quentin, I was having nightmares just about every night. I could never remember much about them after I woke up. But as soon as I saw the playhouse a few minutes ago, I remembered one of them. It’s like I was . . . Missy. Happy, running toward the playhouse, opening the door. And then seeing. All the blood, the . . . pieces. Trying to scream and not being able to at first.”
Quentin’s fingers tightened around hers. “Diana—”
“There was a little table and chairs inside,” she went on steadily, gazing toward the playhouse. “Whoever had done it . . . had put the severed heads of the rabbits and the fox in the middle of the table. Carefully arranged. Like a centerpiece.”
“Christ,” Nate said. “Quentin, was that—?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly the way it looked. Almost ritualistic. Probably what spooked the parents even more and kept everybody quiet about it, reluctant to investigate. I’ve seen that kind of thing before.” To Diana, he added, “Missy took it hard. She was never the same after that morning.”
Nate seemed to grope for words, then said, “So, Diana, you’re saying you dreamed about this because Missy, who might have been your sister, experienced it?”
“I guess so,” she replied. “Maybe a lot of my nightmares here were actually Missy’s. If she was as scared that summer as Quentin remembers.”
Quentin said, “It’s not that uncommon, Nate. These sorts of abilities often run in families, and a blood connection between Missy and Diana could have helped form a psychic bond that survived separation.”
“And survived the death of one of them?”
“Stranger things have happened, believe me.” He wasn’t quite ready to confide that he and Diana believed a far stranger thing was happening here and now, not when they had no more than the century-old story of a murderer caught and punished.
Nate shook his head, but said, “Look, guys, I know we’ve all seen a lot of weird stuff here in the last few days, and I get that you two believe most of it is somehow connected. But this”—he gestured toward the sprawled body only a few yards away—“is a murder. Not a nightmare memory. Not buried bones ten years dead, not remains that may or may not have been left by some animals in a cave, but a victim of a flesh-and-blood killer, a victim who was still breathing a couple of hours ago. Somebody choked the life out of this girl, and my job is to find out who and catch the son of a bitch. With all due respect, that’s really the only thing I’m thinking about right now.”
And all I want to think about, his tone said.
No one argued. No one could.
Calling on his more mundane experiences as an investigator, Quentin asked, “Did you get anything helpful out of the couple who found the body?”
“Hysterics from her and shock from him, mostly. They literally fell over the body. I don’t think either of them knows anything. They didn’t see or hear anyone else in the area, they said.”
“Probably a fairl
y reliable statement, I imagine; if they were being secretive, they would have paid attention to their surroundings.”
Stephanie said, “No fraternizing among the staff. It’s one of Mrs. Kincaid’s rules.” She looked at Nate, clearly trying to avoid another look at the body of Ellie Weeks. “For what it’s worth, Mrs. Kincaid was watching Ellie. She believed the girl was up to something.”
“What kind of something?”
“I have no idea, and if she knew, she wasn’t willing to come right out and say it.”
“I’ll talk to her.” Nate made a note, then looked toward the body, watching for a moment as his two crime-scene technicians worked. “I have several of my people taking statements from the rest of the staff and the few guests left here. So far, the only thing that might prove helpful is that one of the other maids is pretty sure she saw Ellie talking to a man inside The Lodge. It was at least a couple of hours ago, so the timing is right. And from the description, it was Cullen Ruppe.”
Quentin said, “Interesting, how he keeps coming up.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. Time for a talk, I think.”
Quentin nodded, and frowned slightly. “He was seen with her during the storm. But her clothing is dry, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, except for where the material touches the ground.”
“Then she was carried out here no more than an hour ago, after it stopped raining.”
“You think she was killed somewhere else?” Nate demanded.
“I’d say so. The ground is almost completely undisturbed, and she likely would have struggled.” Quentin’s voice was detached, but a muscle tightened in his jaw. “The grass is so thick here, there’s no way your CSI team will find any footprints. So unless he was real stupid or careless and dropped something to help identify him . . .”
“She was strangled inside the main building and then was carried outside and no one saw it?” Stephanie shook her head. “Is that even possible?”
“You’d be surprised what’s possible,” Quentin said.
“I’m looking for a motive,” Nate told her. “What reason could someone have had to kill this girl? Maybe your Mrs. Kincaid can point me in the right direction.”
“Maybe she can. She seems to know just about everything that goes on here. Which brings me to this other wrinkle.” Stephanie looked at Quentin and waited for his nod before telling Nate, “Apparently, most of the previous managers of The Lodge were paid to keep a record of all the . . . um . . . indiscretions taking place here and being hidden here. While the guests thought their secrets were being discreetly kept safe—and while they were paying through the nose to supposedly ensure that—it was all being written down.”
Nate frowned, not sure this had anything to do with his murder investigation, but interested despite himself. “And used?”
“That,” Quentin told him, “is what we’re all wondering. There’s no sense keeping a record unless you mean to use it. So the question is, what was the plan?”
“Blackmail?”
“Could be. Or insurance in case clout was needed somewhere along the way. Sometimes, knowledge is worth more than gold.”
Cullen Ruppe was not, at the best of times, a cheerful man. He worked with horses for a reason: because he didn’t like to deal with people. Unfortunately, he hadn’t yet been able to find a job that took people out of the equation.
Especially when there was trouble.
“I told you,” he said to the cop, “that I didn’t go near the main building today. Until you called me up here, anyway.” They were in one of the first-floor lounges that was serving as a rather ludicrously comfortable interrogation room.
Hard to feel threatened or even defensive when you were sitting on an elegant sofa with coffee in a silver pot on the table before you.
McDaniel made a show of consulting his notes, and said mildly, “Funny. I have a statement from a witness who saw you up here. In fact, she’s pretty damned sure she saw you talking to Ellie Weeks. And that would have been just a few minutes before Ellie was strangled. With a braided leather lead rope from one of the barns.”
Cullen kept his face expressionless and his gaze on the cop. He didn’t so much as glance at the other two sitting off to the side, though he was keenly aware of them. He’d been aware of them, in fact, long before they’d invaded his tack room at dawn to uncover an old secret.
Calmly, he said, “Your witness made a mistake. I wasn’t up here.”
“She’s sure it was you.”
“She’s wrong. It happens.”
“I haven’t been able to place you down at the barns when you said you were there, Cullen.”
“Horses don’t make for talkative witnesses. Sorry about that.”
“Which means you don’t have an alibi.”
Cullen shrugged. “If you can find a reason for me to have killed that girl—and believe I would have been stupid enough to use one of my own lead ropes to do it—arrest me.”
McDaniel ignored that and instead switched gears. “Another funny thing. That trap door in your tack room.”
“Tack room’s not mine, it belongs to The Lodge. And we both know that door was made a long time before either one of us was born.”
“And you’ve never been down that ladder? Never been down in those caves?”
Cullen hesitated and swore inwardly. Everybody knew about trace evidence these days, about DNA and such. The human body had a nasty habit of shedding skin cells and hairs and God only knew what else with every step.
And something other than God knew he’d gone down into the earth more than once.
He wished he dared look at the two off to the side, wished he dared ask them if they knew what was going on, if they understood. Because this cop didn’t, that was plain. He didn’t understand, and not understanding could get a lot of people killed, and worse.
Far worse.
“Cullen? Have you been in those caves?”
He couldn’t risk an outright lie that might trap him later, and so answered casually, “Maybe a long time ago. I worked here once before, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. You worked here twenty-five years ago. You were working here when Missy Turner was murdered.”
He’d been ready for that one. “I was. And I was in the training ring working with a young horse all that afternoon and well into the evening. Along with an assistant trainer and two of the guests. The cops found that out quick enough. I didn’t even know the little girl had been killed until I heard all the sirens.”
McDaniel consulted his notes, lips pursed.
Cullen wanted to tell him to cut the bullshit but, again, didn’t dare. He had no way to be sure he was right, not really, not swearing-on-the-Bible sure, and if it turned out he was wrong, well, he wanted a way out of this mess. Alienating a cop—either of these two cops, especially the fed—could turn out to be a mistake. A big mistake.
It was getting late. Late in the evening and just . . . late. He could hear his watch ticking, and he hadn’t worn a ticking watch in years.
“You left The Lodge not long after, I believe.”
“Months later.”
“After the fire.”
Again, Cullen concentrated on keeping his breathing even. Normal. “Yeah. After the fire.”
“We never really knew what started that fire,” McDaniel mused. “Any ideas?”
“No. Which is what I told the cops at the time. It was obvious they suspected arson, but I’d no reason to burn the place.”
“I suppose not. And you left because . . . ?”
“Because I was ready to move on.” He stopped it there and stared McDaniel in the eye defiantly.
The cop didn’t blink. “I see. Well, let me ask you something else, Cullen. How well did you know Laura Turner?”
He shrugged. “She was house staff, I was stable staff. We don’t mix much now and didn’t at all then.”
“You’d both been here for several years; are you trying to tell me you didn’t know her at all?”
/>
“Didn’t say that. Said we didn’t mix in those days. I knew her name, knew her to speak to, to say hello. Knew she had a kid. That’s about it.”
“Did you go to her daughter’s funeral?”
That one caught Cullen unprepared, and he had to settle himself before answering evenly, “All the staff went.”
“Just a matter of paying your respects, I guess.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was like that.”
McDaniel nodded, and as if it had been a signal, the fed left the silent redhead’s side and came to sit in the other chair across from Cullen.
“Still paying your respects?” he inquired casually.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Cullen. On a hunch, I asked Captain McDaniel to check something for me before we called you up here. And it turns out that the caretaker at the cemetery definitely noticed your visits. Once a week, ever since you came back to work at The Lodge. You visit Missy’s grave, and you leave a single flower there.”
Some hunch. Some goddamned hunch, Cullen thought.
He found himself gazing into a pair of extremely sharp blue eyes, and debated silently before deciding once again to hold his peace. He couldn’t afford to be wrong, couldn’t take the chance they’d lock him up before this was finished.
Because it had to be finished. This time.
Still, he had to say something, had to at least appear to cooperate, else they’d lock him up anyway. Part of the truth, he thought, was better than none.
“Okay, so I pay my respects. So I knew Laura Turner and her daughter a bit better than I let on.”
He could see he’d surprised the fed, and pressed his advantage to lead the “conversation” in the direction he wanted it to take.
“I knew that little girl didn’t belong here. Never should have been here. And sure as hell never should have died here. There’s nobody from this place ever visits her. The caretaker told me that. So I visit. And put something pretty on her grave.”
Slowly, the fed said, “What do you mean, she never should have been here?”
Cullen hesitated visibly, striving to look reluctant. “I overheard something, okay? Something that made me realize Laura’s own little girl had died—and she had stolen Missy away from her rightful parents.”
