Ninth Grave (A Writer's Retreat Mystery Book 9)

by Kathi Daley

  “That poor girl. I can’t even imagine the terror she must have felt when everyone left and she was still locked in the storm drain.”

  “It sounds a lot like Clara’s dreams,” Jack pointed out.

  “It does. She must have been channeling Serena all along. Do we know where Lori and Henry Miller are now? Do they still live in town?”

  “I’m not sure. Hang on; I’m going to check something.” Jack returned his attention to his computer while I waited. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he was pretty good at finding whatever he needed. “The home owned by Henry and Lori Miller was sold in 2016. It is possible they might have moved to another house in town, but my guess is they moved out of the area.”

  “Can you find where they moved to?” I asked.

  “No. But maybe Rick can track down that information.”

  Jack continued to search and I continued to pace the room while we waited for Rick to call back. When he did, it was to tell us that the Millers had moved to Halviston, West Virginia, from Potter’s Bay.

  “Halviston is where Kim lived,” I said.

  Jack nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say Sam is either Henry or Lori.”

  “What do we do now? Confront Sam with what we know? Play dumb and hope that he will still give us the locations of the other four victims and that he will spare the ninth victim as he promised to do if we played along?”

  “Actually, if the three girls who died in the auto accident are considered Sam’s victims, we only have one more to find. We found the remains of four girls, plus the three accident victims, makes seven. We just need to find the eighth victim.”

  “Plus the ninth victim, if we aren’t able to find Sam in time,” I reminded Jack.

  Jack stared at his computer. “Sam sent us here. He gave us the clue that led to the car accident and Serena’s death. He knows we aren’t stupid, so I don’t think playing dumb is the way to go. I say we email him and tell him what we’ve learned. Then the ball will be in his court.”

  After Jack emailed Sam and spelled everything out, including that we suspected that he was probably Henry Miller, we waited for a reply. Sam responded with coordinates to what he assured us was the final victim to date. He also added a time to the coordinates this time: We were to be at that location at seven p.m. that night. It was four o’clock now, and the coordinates led to somewhere about two hours away, so we needed to get a move on. We doubted we’d be back, so we checked out of the motel we’d just checked into.

  The drive back to West Virginia was a quiet one. I couldn’t help but be terrified about what we might find at the end of this road. It seemed odd to me that Sam would send us the eighth victim last when the seventh victim had died first, but I was sure he had a reason.

  When we arrived at the coordinates, which led us to a beautiful yet isolated location, just as all the unmarked graves had been, we found a car already parked at the entrance to a dirt footpath. “You don’t think Sam is here, do you?” I asked.

  Jack frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t like this. Maybe we should turn back.”

  Jack didn’t respond right away, but I could sense he was considering it. “What if the car belongs to hikers? What if we turn back and lose Sam altogether?”

  “Or what if Sam is here and we are the eighth and ninth victims?”

  “Why would Sam tell us to come here and then leave his car in plain sight if he planned to kill us?” Jack asked.

  “The car looks like a rental. I suppose it could belong to tourists. If Lori and Henry did move to West Virginia, they would have local plates.” I glanced toward the wooded area to which the trail led. “What should we do?”

  “Let’s call Rick,” Jack suggested.

  I nodded, but when we pulled out our phones, neither had service. We could backtrack until we did, but it was already close to seven. If Sam was locked into that hour, we were running out of time.

  “Sam knows who we are,” Jack pointed out. “He knows where we live and where we’ve been at every step of this journey. If he wanted to kill us, he could have done it days ago. I say we follow this to the end.”

  I swallowed hard. “Okay. I’m in.” I put Kizzy on the leash. “The trail is narrow. I’ll follow you.”

  The hike from the parking area to the gravesite wasn’t a long one. I was expecting to find Henry, or possibly Lori Miller, but what I found shocked me to the core. “Lorelei?”

  Lorelei Walker nodded. It was then I noticed that she had a gun, which she was holding in a shaky hand.

  “What is this all about?” I asked. “Did Sam contact you as well?”

  “Lorelei is Sam,” Jack said.

  In that instant, I knew it must be true. “You killed all those girls?”

  Lorelei shook her head. “No. I didn’t kill them. My husband, Henry, killed them. I just buried them.”

  I glanced at Jack. The crease on his forehead was about as deep as I’d ever seen it.

  “So you are really Lori Miller,” I said.

  She nodded. “Lorelei Walker is my pen name.”

  I supposed that made sense. “But why?”

  “Our daughter, Serena, died in March 2014. She died horribly. She died alone. She was forcibly restrained and locked in a storm drain by four girls she went to high school with after having the audacity to show up at a party to which she had not been invited.”

  I knew this was true, but I had no idea what to say.

  Lorelei wiped a tear from her cheek. “Serena was different. She was shy and awkward, and no matter how hard she tried to fit in, she never did. When she entered her senior year of high school, she made a vow to herself to make friends before she graduated. She knew that having social skills would be important in college, and she tried hard to master a set of behaviors that she’d decided would help her to fit in. The problem was that she had already been labeled a loner and a loser by her classmates, so any attempt to make friends was met with ridicule. Henry and I were blind to a lot of what happened during the months prior to Serena’s death. It wasn’t until after she was gone and we read her diary that we truly understood the depths of the bullying she’d had to endure at the hands of the cruel and insensitive girls she had tried to befriend.”

  I waited quietly while Lorelei gathered her thoughts.

  “I’m not sure why she didn’t simply give up when her attempts were rejected, but being teased and harassed only seemed to make her more determined to do what she’d set out to do. My poor baby became the butt of everyone’s joke. She was berated in school and on social media. The girls she tried to befriend taunted her and called her names. They stole her belongings and physically abused her. And still my girl endured. She turned the other cheek and returned bullying with kindness right up until the day those witches locked her in the storm drain and left her to die.”

  “I’m so very sorry.” Tears were running down my cheeks. “I can’t imagine the pain you and she must have endured. It must have been unbearable.”

  “It was. I was devastated, but I worked my way through it. I thought we might be all right, but something happened to Henry the day we found Serena’s body. I probably should have seen it sooner, but in the beginning, I was dealing with my own grief and wasn’t focused on the fact that his had driven him to obsession. Initially, we hoped the girls who had caused Serena’s death would be brought to justice, but we could never prove that the teens who had been bullying Serena were the ones who had locked her in that storm drain. I hoped that time would heal our grief, but when three of the four girls Serena had mentioned in her journal were killed in a car accident after attending a graduation party, I knew in my heart Henry was responsible. The choice I made then is one I regret to this day. I turned a blind eye and did nothing. I hoped that with the death of those girls, Henry would begin to heal, but in the end, that wasn’t what happened.”

  “What did happen?” Jack asked.

  “Things seemed to get better after the accident and that
could have been the end of it, but one of the four girls Serena had identified in her journal as having been the ones who bullied her left town between the time of Serena’s death and the accident. It wasn’t until months after Julianna, Tiffany, and Brittany were buried that I realized that Henry was obsessed with finding Athena. The girl had run away from home and no one knew where she was, including her own parents, so I thought the risk to the girl was minimal and focused my attention on trying to help Henry move on with his life. I actually thought I was getting somewhere until he came home with the body of a young girl who looked a lot like Athena but clearly wasn’t in the trunk of his car.”

  “Lisa,” I said.

  Lorelei nodded. “Henry had stopped for gas when the girl pulled up in her car. She did look an awful lot like Athena. She was blond and beautiful and shared similar facial features. I know I should have turned Henry in to the police, but the poor man was so broken. He told me he was sorry, that he didn’t know why he had done it and that it would never happen again. I was still mourning the death of my daughter and I couldn’t bear to lose my husband as well, so I buried the girl Henry had stashed in his trunk and we never spoke of it again. Well, we didn’t speak of it for a year.”

  “And then Henry killed Patricia,” I said.

  Lorelei nodded. “I’d spotted him noticing her when we ran into her at the restaurant. He didn’t say anything, but I knew. I was afraid to bring it up to him in case I was wrong, but I had a bad feeling about things, so I began to follow her, just to make sure that she was all right, and that Henry wasn’t following her. After a few days with no sign of Henry taking action, I allowed myself to believe that he hadn’t noticed the physical similarities between Patricia and Athena after all. When he came home with her body in his trunk, I was as surprised as anyone.”

  “Henry had killed five women by this point,” I said. “How could you still turn a blind eye and do nothing?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I know what I should have done, but what I did was to bury the girl and then convince Henry that we should move away from the place that held so many awful memories. I guess I let myself believe that a change of scenery would allow Henry to give up on the idea of finding Athena.”

  “But moving didn’t change Henry’s behavior,” Jack said. “He killed Kim, and then Jessica.”

  Lorelei nodded. “He did. Each time he brought home a body, I allowed myself to believe it would be his last, but after Jessica, I knew that there would never be a last girl. I knew that he was sick and that his obsession owned him. I knew that stopping him was my responsibility, so I killed him.”

  I gasped. “You killed him?”

  Lorelei nodded. “Henry is buried in the eighth and final grave.” She pointed toward a spot under a tree. “This grave. I’m sure that once you call Rick Savage, who I know has been helping you, it won’t be long until you get word that the victim in this grave is a tall, thin, middle-aged man with dark hair and a dark soul.”

  “You know that we are going to have to tell the police what you’ve just told us,” Jack said.

  Lorelei nodded. “I know. And I wouldn’t expect you to do anything else. I have nothing to live for. Not really. I tried to move on after Henry was gone and make a new start, but I suppose I am as much a victim of everything that has happened during the past five years as anyone else. The empty hole you see in front of you is to be the ninth and final grave. It is to be my grave.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I sobbed. “We can get you a good lawyer and psychiatric help.”

  Lorelei pulled the trigger. I screamed and ran forward as her body seemed to fall in slow motion. In a way, I understood why she did it. She’d lost so much and she didn’t have anything to look forward to except living out her life behind bars. Still, a life, any life, has value, and I knew that the loss of the woman she had been before her daughter died was a significant loss to the world indeed.

  Chapter 17

  Monday, May 20

  It had been a week since we’d witnessed Lorelei’s death. The gang had decided to get together and share a meal to remember the talented writer before the Mastermind meeting. I still didn’t understand why Lorelei had done things the way she had. I guess she found that she could no longer live with what had happened but wanted to reveal the locations of the graves of the girls she’d buried and tell her story to someone she thought might understand. Once our journey with Lorelei had come to an end, Clara’s nightmares had ceased as well.

  “I heard Rena gave her notice,” Brit said to me.

  “She did. I think she should have checked out the retreat first rather than assuming it would be a young, happening place because Alex lived here, but trying to convince her to stay didn’t seem right. I even refunded the deposit she put down for the six-month lease.”

  “Two weeks ago we had four new members and tonight we just have one. Perhaps we should really think things through the next time we decide to invite people in.’

  “I totally agree. But having said that, I think that Grayson is going to be a huge asset to the group once he settles in a bit.”

  “Yes. And you did help Lorelei find closure, even though the end result was not what you would have wanted, and Jax seems to be happy hanging out on the sidelines, so I guess that things worked out the way they were supposed to.”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you ever find out why Lorelei made you go on that crazy journey?” Brit asked. “She knew who killed those girls so why make you and Jack research their deaths?”

  “I’m not really sure why she did it. She may have wanted the victims to be real to us for some reason. And they were. We’d be given a name and location and then, as we spoke to people who knew them, they became real people in our minds.”

  “I suppose it is possible that Lorelei wanted to know more about them. I mean, she buried them, but she didn’t kill them. Maybe she needed for you to do the legwork that would make them real in her mind so she could do what she knew in her heart she had to do.”

  I let out a breath. “I suppose that is as good an explanation as any.”

  “The whole thing really is too depressing.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed with that.

  Brit and I chatted for a while longer before she went to say hi to Alex and I made my way to where Vikki and Clara were sitting. Clara was smiling and happy now that the dreams had stopped.

  “Now that Jack’s case has been wrapped up, is someone else going to present this evening?” Clara asked.

  “George and Grayson are looking into a case involving a robbery that resulted in two deaths. The incident occurred two decades ago, so I’m not sure what they will need from us, but it sounded interesting and no one else had anything, so we agreed they would use the meeting to share their research.”

  “I’d still like us to look into the death of Clayton Powell, the man who originally owned the house Rhett Crawford eventually purchased. We solved the mystery surrounding the events at Rhett’s party, but we still don’t know how Clayton died,” Vikki said. “If you remember, all the windows and doors were locked from the inside and hadn’t been tampered with, and there were no signs of foul play, yet the man had clearly been murdered.”

  I nodded. “That would be an interesting case as well. The house is long gone, so investigating a mystery that old would be difficult, but we ought to at least discuss at some point.”

  “That’s what I love about this group,” Clara said. “If there is a mystery to be solved, the members of this group are always willing to pitch in and solve it.”

  Up Next from Kathi Daley Books

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  Preview of Answers in the Attic

  I looked out my window and smiled as the bountiful days of spring pushed out the last breath of winter, bringing rebirth and renewal to the rocky seashore and dense forest. After months of short days, long nights, and frigid temperatures, the sun shone brightly, causing flowers to bloom, birds to sing, and wild
life to venture from their winter homes. In the forest, rivers spilled over their banks as the annual runoff found its way to the sea.

  As I set about tidying my room, I decided that today was the day I was absolutely going to start cleaning out the attic in the mansion I’d been refurbishing to operate as a country inn. My contractor, Lonnie Parker, had been bugging my roommate, Georgia Carter, and me to get it done so that he could start ripping out walls and adding plumbing to create the last of the six suites we planned to rent to our guests. The suites on the three main floors of the mansion were just about complete and ready to be furnished. Lonnie thought the attic, once we got it cleaned out, would take six to eight weeks to complete, depending on the plumbing and electrical situation, which he couldn’t confirm until he was able to open up the walls. At this point, we were looking for a completion date for the inn in mid-June. That actually worked out, because we’d all but decided to hold a grand opening celebration in July. We didn’t have overnight guests booked until August, but we wanted to do a couple of outdoor events first, to ease into the whole 24-7 scenario.

  I pulled up the top quilt on my four-poster bed after straightening the lower layers and was smoothing away the wrinkles when my Maine coon cat, Rufus, attacked the pillows, messing up the quilt in the process. “Get down, you silly cat. I’ll never get this done with your help.”

  “Meow.”

  “Yes, I know that you want to play, and normally, I’d be happy to play with you, but I have a very busy day planned. Let’s finish making this bed and then go have some breakfast.” I picked up the orange cat and then took a deep breath. “I smell coffee as well as something baking in the oven. Maybe Georgia made muffins today.”

  I’d already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, so I grabbed a pair of flip-flops and slipped them on my feet. While my main goal today was to get started on the attic, I also had a crew coming by this afternoon to put the finishing touches on the float for this weekend’s Easter parade. In addition to my need to tackle the attic and finish the float, I was itching to get outside in the garden, which my landscaper and I were planting if the opportunity presented itself. The landscape architect had drawn up a lush and colorful setting that would take years to grow in completely, but I figured it should be downright gorgeous right off the bat once the flower beds and planter boxes were added.