by D. L. Wood
One hundred seventy-eight.
It would be a lot to sift through the research, locate each person, and get in touch to find out if they had any knowledge of the Stonehall Estate Legend, particularly knowledge gleaned from their parents, grandparents, etc. It was a task she would have to leave for whomever came on board at Stonehall to manage the gallery. She wondered if anyone would ever take the time to investigate the list now that the exhibit was complete.
I can at least look over the names of the living descendants for any that live close by. It might be a place to start. Who knows, we could get lucky.
Curiosity getting the best of her, she scanned the list without expecting much.
Then her eyes fell on a single name that made her gasp aloud.
She jerked her gaze up to find all three men staring at her.
“Chloe, what is it?” Jack asked.
“Detective Yarbrough,” she said, stepping quickly to him, “I have something you’re going to want to see.”
40
“What am I looking at?” Detective Yarbrough asked, holding Chloe’s cell.
“This.” She pointed to a name on the list.
“Greg Prater?” Detective Yarbrough read, his face scrunching as he looked at Chloe. “What is this?”
“It’s the living adult descendants from the males who graduated high school with Will Rader.”
Jack moved to peer over the detective’s shoulder.
“What made you pull this information?” Detective Yarbrough asked, leaning back on his heels as he appraised Chloe.
She explained her discovery of Will’s prison visitor and the trail that led her down. “I was just hoping to talk to these descendants, or have whoever took over the resort exhibit do it—you know, see if one of them had an ancestor who mentioned being involved in the robbery or knowing anything about it. I thought maybe we could find the accomplice that way and then”—she shrugged—“maybe find the stolen property. I never expected that one of them would actually be right on the property, working there, living there.”
Jack stepped to the side and turned to face the detective. “That’s a pretty unlikely coincidence, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t take odds on that one,” Riley echoed.
Detective Yarbrough stared at the list. “You’re thinking he landed there on purpose?”
“I’m thinking it’s weird that in all this time, he never bothered to mention that his”—Jack turned to Chloe—“what, great-grandfather?”
She nodded in confirmation.
“His great-grandfather had a connection to Will Rader.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Detective Yarbrough said.
“But what if he did?” Jack pressed. “What if he knew even more than that—information passed down through generations that could be a clue to where the stolen property is. He was there before the company bought the estate. Nearly a year before, serving as groundskeeper for the essentially abandoned property, doing just enough to keep it from falling further apart. He had the perfect opportunity to scour the land and buildings for the lost treasure with no one looking over his shoulder.”
“But none of that’s a crime, and it certainly doesn’t put him at the scene of Mr. Riley’s attack or Nate Lewis’s death.”
“Well, now that you know about this, think about it. Did you find anything at the scenes that could connect him to either event?” Chloe asked.
“All we found, as we told Ms. Nolan’s lawyer, was her name tag with Mr. Riley’s blood on it and the pin bent as if it had been ripped off her.”
“Hold up, what do you mean ‘Ms. Nolan’s lawyer’? Is Deidre involved in this?” Riley's face darkened and he pushed himself up, grimacing as he did so.
Detective Yarbrough held up a hand. “We’ll get to that later.”
“No, we’ll get to that now,” Riley snapped. “Why does she have a lawyer?”
The detective sighed, likely realizing he had exposed this truth a little too early. “In addition to the name tag, we also uncovered Mr. Lewis’s missing cell phone and the knife used to stab you—at least judging by the blood-type and wound match—hidden in her suite.”
“No, no, no.” Riley’s volume rose, his voice bouncing off the too-close walls. “She is not involved in this. And there’s no way she’s the one who took me down.”
“You said yourself it could have been a man or a woman.”
“Yeah, but not that woman! She’s what? Five-four at most? One hundred thirty pounds soaking wet? Even after she whacked me in the head, she wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“Two whacks to the head,” the detective reminded him, handing Chloe’s cell back to her.
“Whatever. It’s not possible.”
“Detective Yarbrough,” Chloe said loudly, cutting across them, “who was your witness?”
“What?” asked the detective.
“The witness? The one who told you that they saw Deidre with Riley not long before the attack?”
His face clouded over as he bit his lip, giving the distinct impression of a man mulling something over. He ran a hand over his thick mound of black hair. “Greg Prater.”
“And you don’t think that’s suspicious now?” Jack asked.
“Especially since I dropped her at her door at around…” Riley looked to the ceiling before glancing back down. “It had to be no later than ten thirty. She almost wouldn’t agree to meet at all, but she caved eventually. We talked in the study for about ten minutes before she needed to head to her room for the night. I walked her up and was back in my room before eleven. I didn’t leave again until I woke up with a nagging feeling about that basement.”
“Did you argue?” Detective Yarbrough asked.
“Argue? What? No. Why would we have argued? Did somebody…did Prater say that?”
“That was his take on what he witnessed.”
“He’s lying,” Riley said vehemently.
“Why would he lie when he knew we could just ask you?” Chloe wondered aloud.
Jack tilted his head to the side, considering the question. “Maybe he was counting on Riley not making it. Or if he did make it, then Prater could blame Riley’s version on confusion after the injury.”
“Well, it’d be a plausible explanation,” the detective said.
“Hold on,” Chloe said, holding her cell out to Detective Yarbrough again. “Look at this. Every one of the living descendants I had the service investigate has a family tree and whatever information they could find on them is attached. When I pull up Greg Prater’s, it goes back three generations to his great-grandfather, Jonas Archibald Flint, one of the boys who went to school with Will Rader. And from what AncestorBase could find, this guy was not a good one. He had one stint in prison not far from here, then died in 1936 in a robbery in Poughkeepsie, according to the police report AncestorBase found. It looks like Flint stuck close to Stonehall.”
Jack squared his shoulders, staring Detective Yarbrough down. “And you’re telling us you don’t see any of these coincidences as warranting a look at Greg Prater? I know you’re just following the evidence, but come on, man, something about this stinks. Prater’s the one who found Nate Lewis. He has access to every square inch of that place, including Deidre’s suite. And he’d know how to avoid the cameras. He helped put them in, for goodness’ sake. And now he’s possibly got a connection to the stolen property and—”
“And he had one of Deidre’s name tags.” As the words came out of Chloe, she felt her insides freeze as a memory from the Praters’ cottage suddenly flashed in her mind. The cluttered living room. The piles of shoes and coats and papers. The table in the corner with keys and a bowl of coins, all sorts of knickknacks from the resort and…the name tag that read ‘Ms. Nolan.’
“What?” asked Detective Yarbrough, his voice sharp.
“I was in their cottage a few mornings ago,” Chloe said, hearing the rising fervor in her tone. “I found Molly running around the property really early in the fr
eezing cold and took her back to make sure she was safe. She let me in and—well the place was a disaster. Terribly cluttered, including all sorts of stuff from the hotel, like mints and uniform pieces and shampoo, and Deidre’s name tag was just piled up with it. I didn’t think anything about it at the time except that it had probably fallen off her and one of the kids had just picked it up. They’re constantly looking for the lost treasure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they snatch up little finds as they go along.”
“You didn’t ask about giving it back?”
“I didn’t give it a second thought. Molly was talking to me…it wasn’t like it was important.”
“Well, what about it, detective?” Jack asked. “Is all that enough to justify you questioning Prater? It should at least get you in the door.”
“Yeah,” Riley groused, “and check the dude for bruises while you’re at it. Like I said, I got some hits in. If it was him in that basement, he’d have a nasty looking gut by now.”
Detective Yarbrough frowned. “Question him, yeah, but search him or his place, no. It’s not enough for a warrant. At least not definitively. But…” He cast his gaze thoughtfully toward the door. “Riggs?”
Detective Riggs, who had been hovering by the door, stuck his head inside. “Yeah?”
“We never got anywhere with that unidentified partial print on Lewis’s cell phone.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Nope.”
Detective Yarbrough turned back. “If the resort will give us permission, I think I’ve got an idea.”
“You can have whatever you need,” Jack answered quickly.
Detective Yarbrough dialed his cell, then barked into it. “I’m gonna need a Forensics Tech at Stonehall Estate…Yeah, I’m aware it’s New Year’s Eve. I don’t care. Pull someone in…right. Have her meet me there. Now connect me to the Digital Evidence Section.” He looked up, his eyes darting between Jack and Chloe as he spoke to whoever was on the line. “I’m gonna need a favor.”
41
It was two in the morning, just hours into the start of the new year, when Detective Yarbrough, Detective Riggs, and Chloe walked onto the porch of the Praters’ cottage. The world was frozen around them, the temperature having dropped sharply during the night, the heavy snow now four inches deeper, blanketing everything in fresh white. Their footsteps sounded like cannons on the wooden planks, interrupting the sweeping quiet rendered by the snowfall.
Chloe’s stomach was in her boots as Detective Yarbrough knocked on the front door. As instructed, she waited several feet back from the detectives. She couldn’t believe he had allowed her to come at all. But he had wanted her there to confirm where she had seen the name tag and to help him press Prater as needed about the historical facts she’d uncovered, if they became relevant. Jack hadn’t liked the idea and insisted he be allowed to go with her. Detective Yarbrough refused, which was why Jack now stood in the Praters’ driveway, where their car was parked to the side of the detectives' vehicle. She turned to offer him the reassuring smile she had worked up and saw he was still standing beside their car, not relaxed or leaning against it, but rather in a fully alert stance, feet shoulder-width apart, arms by his sides, fists clenched, ready to charge if needed.
Detective Yarbrough knocked again, and Chloe turned back to the door, nervous apprehension coursing through her. Finally, footfalls sounded from inside, drawing closer and closer to the door until it opened, revealing a bleary-eyed Greg Prater in sweatpants and a long sleeve T-shirt.
He squinted at them for a moment. “Um, what’s going on? It’s Detective Yarbrough, right? It’s two a.m. Couldn’t this wait?”
“No, sorry, Mr. Prater. May we come in?”
Greg blinked several times and cleared his throat. His eyes widened, then his brow furrowed when he saw Chloe behind the detectives.
“Um, sure.” He stepped aside to allow the detectives to enter. Chloe remained where she stood until Detective Yarbrough waved her forward, then followed him inside.
Greg shut the door behind them, keeping out the cold and any possibility of Jack seeing what was happening. If she knew him like she thought she did, she suspected he’d already moved from the car, heading to the front door, ready to press his ear against it.
The house was warm, the heat slowly penetrating through to her chilled skin but doing nothing to ward off the nervous chill in her bones. The space was cluttered as before, if not more so. Molly apparently hadn’t undertaken any cleaning. Chloe’s eyes flashed to the end table. Deidre’s name tag was gone.
“What’s she doing here?” Greg asked, directing his question to Detective Yarbrough. He shuffled past his visitors, through the living room to the bar-height counter at the entrance to the kitchen and leaned against it.
“She’s assisting in our investigation.” The detectives stood in the center of the living room with Chloe behind them.
“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?”
“Mr. Prater, we need to question you in regard to the death of Nate Lewis, the assault on Aaron Riley, and multiple counts of damage to Stonehall Estate property.”
“What?” Greg’s reaction seemed forced.
“Greg?” Vanessa Prater appeared in the doorway to the side of the kitchen, dressed in a robe and fuzzy socks. Her hair was mussed, and she was blinking hard. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Go back to bed,” he said, almost like an order.
“But—”
“Do it, Vanessa,” Greg said more sternly. “And keep the kids out of here. Keep them in their rooms.”
Vanessa’s gaze darted from the detectives to Chloe, which elicited a widening of her eyes, before she backed from the doorway and disappeared from sight.
“I didn’t have anything to do with Nate Lewis or the assault on Aaron Riley.” Greg eyeballed the detectives viciously. “What’s going on? Am I a suspect? You already caught Deidre Nolan—”
“Would you lift your shirt for us, Mr. Prater?” Yarbrough interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“Lift your shirt. Show us your torso. The person who assaulted Mr. Riley sustained heavy blows and would undoubtedly be rather bruised by now. Just lift your shirt, and we can check that box off.”
Greg stiffened. “I’m not showing you anything. This is bogus. You’ve got no probable cause—”
“Your partial fingerprint was found on Nate Lewis’s cell phone.”
“What? So? I held Nate’s phone a hundred times for him while we were working together.”
“The problem is that it was the only print found on the phone. It had been nearly wiped clean. Didn’t even contain Nate Lewis’s print. Nothing except one partial along an edge.”
“Then I’d say whoever wiped it should’ve done a better job.”
“And then there’s the camera footage,” Riggs said, piping in for the first time.
“What camera footage?”
“Exactly,” replied Yarbrough.
“Look, I’ve had about enough—”
“There’s no camera footage of you going to the generator shed around the time Nate Lewis was killed.”
“Yeah, because I wasn’t there.”
“Or of you coming back.”
“Again, because I wasn’t there.”
“Or of you going there that morning when you found him. You told us you went straight from your house to the outbuilding to make sure everything was in working order—”
“After what had happened the day before, I thought I should just in case.”
“—and found Mr. Lewis.”
“Right.”
“So then why isn’t there footage of you walking from your house to the outbuilding?” Yarbrough asked, dropping this truth like a bomb that imploded rather than exploded, creating a vacuum of silence that sucked up the air in the room.
“There is.”
Detective Yarbrough shook his head. “Nope. Not there. We checked. You know what I think? I think that y
ou’d been so intent on avoiding the cameras the night before, you automatically did it again without thinking. Speaking of which…” Detective Yarbrough swiveled to Chloe. “Is it here?”
She shook her head.
Greg’s brow furrowed. “Is what here?”
“Ms. Bartholomew delivered the children to your house a few days ago and noticed a name tag with Ms. Nolan’s name engraved on it on that table over there.” He pointed to the end table in the corner. “Only it’s not there now.”
“I don’t know anything about it. My kids probably found it and brought it here. Probably took it again, playing with it or something,” Greg retorted, his face growing redder by the second. A bead of sweat was making its way down his forehead.
“Awfully suspicious it’s not here now,” Riggs said.
“Doesn’t mean it was the one you found with Mr. Riley.”
Standing behind the two detectives like she was, Chloe couldn’t see Yarbrough’s face. But his shoulders dropped as his posture straightened, and she would have bet the value of the lost treasure that his mouth was twisted in a smirk.
“We never released that information to the public, Mr. Prater. So there’s only one way you’d know we found Deidre’s name tag in the basement.”
Time seemed to stand still for the briefest span as Greg’s gaze drifted from Detective Yarbrough to a silver laptop perched on the granite counter. Then, like someone fast-forwarding a previously paused video, the room erupted into movement. Greg dove for the laptop, snatched it, and turned, bolting out the back of the kitchen and down the hallway leading into the rear of the cottage.
The detectives charged after him, Yarbrough shouting, “Go, go!”
Chloe stood frozen in place, her brain racing. I should stay. Safer to stay. But…
From somewhere upstairs, Vanessa’s shouts of “Greg? Greg?” came, followed by a pounding of feet on the stairs.
Not waiting to see if it was Vanessa or the kids headed down, Chloe ignored caution and shot after the detectives. A blast of cold air hit her halfway down the hall. The back door was wide open as the detectives flew through it, racing after Greg, who was already almost to the tree line. He knew those woods well. If he made it to them, it was unlikely they would catch him.
