“Are you waiting for Ray and Hattie?” Berg asked. “They’ll be late this morning.”
Matt froze.
“Mr. Bergland?” Carissa said, throwing an arm over the back of the seat.
“Yes, Mrs. Peterson?”
There was resolution in her eyes. “If Matt won’t tell me, you do it.”
“Honey . . .”
“Knock it off, Matt. Don’t lie to me and then have the nerve to call me that. Mr. Bergland? Now, please.”
Gone was the at-his-wit’s-end husband trying to help his superstitious wife, and gone was the distraught and impressionable wife desperate for her husband’s emotional support. I’d had it all backward. Carissa was the strong one. She’d appeared fragile at first, but that was only because she had rightly sensed danger. Matt’s calm demeanor was a result of his knowing what that danger truly was and being the cause of much of it. He was free from the anxiety she suffered.
Berg cleared his throat. “Keeping in mind that we don’t know everything about the situation—”
Matt interrupted with a loud snort.
“Keeping that in mind, your husband and the Nickles are working together and have been for some time, possibly going back before you bought your home. On Friday, when Ray and Hattie claimed their dog had run away, they came to the church for two reasons. The first was to size up me and Teagan. They knew us by reputation, but we’d never met. Madame Lebec gave Ray Teagan’s business card, then Ray gave it to you so you’d call Teagan and she’d call me.”
“But I thought . . .” Carissa’s head did a slow pivot toward her husband. “I showed you Teagan’s card and you said you’d never heard of her.”
He shrugged and kept staring ahead. “I hadn’t heard of them. What do I know?”
“What kind of answer is that? Are you twelve? You acted like I was stupid to call but you were so understanding to let me do it.”
“I was trying to help. I didn’t do it right, okay?”
Berg dove back in. “The second reason Ray and Hattie came to the church is because they wanted to talk to your husband in private, which they were able to do when he offered to help search for Rusty. Am I leaving anything out, Matt?”
Matt had no answer.
“If I’m going to help you, help you both, I need to know if you were pressured into cooperating with the Nickles or if you did it willingly. You see . . .” Berg scooted forward, laying his hand on the back of Carissa’s seat. “The Nickles want the church, though for the time being they find your staying there useful. Eventually they’ll have plans that don’t include you, unless I’ve miscalculated the extent of your involvement.”
“What plans?” Matt asked.
“Ultimately? I don’t know that yet.”
Matt suddenly brayed with laughter. He swung around in his seat until his left hand was on the dashboard and his side was against the steering wheel. “Oh, come on. I’m supposed to be afraid of some elderly couple but you can’t tell me why? Wow, what a great way to make a living. It’s a masterful scam. Wish I would’ve thought of it, actually. Tell clients they’re in danger but you don’t know how, and walk away with a small fortune.”
Idiot. “We didn’t call you, you called us,” I growled. “You, Lebec, and Ray Nickle made sure Carissa got my card. You arranged this.”
Berg’s text message tone sounded from his coat pocket. He dug for his phone.
“Are we boring you?” Matt said.
“Have you lost your mind?” Carissa said. “I swear to God, Matt . . .”
“You swear what? Finish a sentence for once.”
“What else have you lied to me about? The church, Madame Lebec, the Nickles, their dog—if you lied about them, there’s more.” She turned from him, covering her ears with her hands as though trying to blot out everything she’d heard. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“That was Detective Dempster,” Berg said, infusing his words with gravity in hopes he could shake some sense into Matt. “You talked to an agent about purchasing St. Michael’s one day after the Colorado Diocese decided to sell it, weeks before it officially went on the market. How did you know it would be listed?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Doing a laughable impression of a wronged man, Matt put his right hand to his chest. “You’re talking to the police about me? Me? I hired you. You’re my employee.”
Carissa dropped her hands. “Stop it.”
“Two men have been murdered, both in the same manner,” Berg said. “The police have an eye on everyone connected with St. Michael’s.”
Drops of sweat were beading Matt’s chin and he was pressing so hard into the steering wheel I thought he’d bruise his ribs. He looked like a large, cornered rat who still hoped he could do a verbal tap dance out of the mess he’d made.
“Listen, we’d been searching for a suitable place for a bed and breakfast,” he said. “Talking about it for months. I have contacts, you know? So big deal.”
“Contacts in the diocese?” Berg asked. “At that point no one outside a few higher-ups in the diocese knew about the decision to sell.”
Was Berg bluffing? Though Dempster might have discovered that Matt inquired about buying the church before it went on the market, I doubted the detective had any way to know about decisions within the diocese and their timing.
“Big whoop, I took a chance,” Matt said. “Didn’t want to lose out. So sue me.”
“No, Matt,” Carissa said, “you didn’t tell me about the church until the day the real estate agency listed it. Not one word about it.”
“I kept an eye out,” Matt mumbled. “You know me. I wanted us one step ahead of the game. And I got us the church, didn’t I? We got in there before anyone else. If I hadn’t been proactive, we’d still be looking for a place.”
By this time Matt’s face and body were a veritable guidebook of tics and tells. He was lying like a child: badly, obviously, and with no idea how transparent he was.
“So you had a real estate agent look into it without talking to me?” Carissa asked.
“As soon as it was listed, we talked. I just waited until the sale was a sure thing.”
“Was yours the only offer on the church, Carissa?” Berg asked.
I jumped in. “It couldn’t have been. Not a beautiful, historic church in a growing town.”
“There were other offers, and I was surprised they accepted ours,” Carissa said. “I don’t think it was highest. What have we gotten into, Mr. Bergland? Are the Nickles or someone else trying to scare us? Are they trying to make us leave? Should we leave? I think I should keep Sophie and Liam out. They can’t go back.”
“First, you have to understand that evil is real,” Berg replied.
Carissa looked at Berg with horror.
“There’s nothing evil in our home,” Matt said.
“There is,” Berg said. “If you don’t face up to that, and to your part in it, this will continue and you’ll lose your home forever.”
“He’ll lose more than that,” Carissa interjected.
“You expect me to believe this crap about evil?” His world crumbling before him, there was desperation in Matt’s voice. “You’re trying to ruin me—and my marriage. God, Lebec was so right about you. You’re the dangerous one.”
It seemed to me Carissa had heard enough. With her husband now out of the equation, she focused solely on Berg. “I’m ready. What do I do? Whatever you say, I’ll do it, but please, me and my kids—we have to be safe. I don’t know where to go.”
But Berg wasn’t so quick to write off a marriage, even one involving the clearly contemptible Matt Peterson. “Right now, you two are working at cross-purposes,” he said. “You want a safe home for your family, but your husband wants something else. What that is, I’m not sure. Is it power, Matt? Money? Or were you threatened in some way? The only way we can help you is if you’re honest.”
When Matt at last spoke, his voice was flat, leaden. “We planned a bed and breakfast. For fi
ve years it was our dream. I want to stay there.”
“Do you want to stay in your marriage?” Carissa asked, her voice rising. “You’re not thinking about that, but let me tell you, it’s on the line.”
He nodded wordlessly, his body going limp against the wheel. “They’ve got me.”
“The Nickles?” I asked.
Matt was watching his wife, judging, I think, whether their marriage could withstand complete honesty, but Carissa stayed silent. She wasn’t going to make it any easier for him, liar that he was. If he truly valued honesty, he’d choose it on his own strength.
“About five months ago,” he said, his eyes still on his wife, “when you and the kids were in South Dakota, I had a few drinks at the office, after a meeting. I’d never done that before, and I swear I haven’t done it since. On the way home I hit a kid on a bike.”
Carissa grunted. The kind of grunt someone makes when they’ve been socked in the chest.
A second later she yanked on the door handle and flew out of the car, Matt reaching out for her. “He didn’t die, Carissa! Just a broken leg—he’s alive!”
CHAPTER 32
I wasn’t an expert at reading body language, but it was easy to deduce that though Carissa was disgusted with Matt, not to mention terrified and enraged, she was beginning to yield as they talked, bending in her love for him. Matt had pursued her through the parking lot, and now Berg and I watched them through the window on my side of their car. They were oblivious to the toing and froing of the diners around them, and I supposed that was promising.
“Matt’s reaction to his terrible error in judgment was to let himself be blackmailed by an evil man,” Berg said.
I knew he had a lesson in that for me. He usually did when he made pronouncements like that. It was a comparison to my crime and my reaction, in hopes of lifting my spirits.
But I wasn’t ready to hear it. For one thing, Matt hadn’t killed anyone, and for another, I was beyond tired and so my defenses were down. I liked my defenses. “Did the Nickles threaten him? Or maybe they got him off the hook. He didn’t say.”
“We’ll find out when they return to the car. Hang on, text message.” He retrieved his phone, tapped. “Dempster says the Nickles drove off, presumably heading for Boyle’s.”
“He kept them busy a while, didn’t he?”
“Good man.”
“Anything else?”
“He wants to meet us at the Coffee Bean downtown in half an hour. He says we should watch our backs and, I quote, ‘Something’s really off with those two crows.’”
“No kidding,” I said with a laugh. “Well, I’m game. The Coffee Bean must sell bagels or something, and my stomach’s making unpleasant sounds. Breakfast with the Petersons is off.”
Berg texted back. I watched the Petersons hug in a tentative way—more tentative on Carissa’s part than Matt’s—then start back to the car.
“Here they come,” I warned. “It looks like Carissa’s put away her ax for now.”
“Maybe they’ll stay together and come out stronger on the other side.”
“One day you’ll have to tell me your secret. How you can be so trusting, I mean.”
“It’s not trust, it’s hope.”
Matt and Carissa got in the front seats and Carissa immediately turned to Berg and me. “Matt’s promised to tell you everything. He won’t leave anything out. I haven’t heard most of what he has to say, but he promises me he’ll be completely honest. Right, Matthew?” she asked without looking at him.
“I will,” Matt said.
“We need you two to help us or we won’t make it,” Carissa went on. “We’ll lose our home—I’ll pack and leave today—but more than that, we’ll lose our family, because I’ll leave Matt too. He knows that.”
“I’d say that’s a good start,” Berg said. “Now it’s up to you, Matt. Tell me about your accident.”
Matt’s mouth tightened. He figured Berg would start with the tough stuff.
“There was a boy, eleven years old, riding on County Road 50 in Fort Collins. Seven at night.” He shook his head. “But it was June, so it was light out. I guess I wandered into the bike lane, because all of a sudden I felt my car hit him and I saw him fly up on the hood and come down on the other side of my car. I don’t know how he didn’t hit the windshield harder. He slid across it, really. I ran over his bike, but not him. He was screaming. I could tell his leg was broken.”
“Did you call the police?” Berg asked.
“I called 9-1-1. Then I started throwing up.”
“So you stopped after the accident. That’s good. Did any other cars stop?”
“Yeah, they did, and some people helped the kid and other people called 9-1-1 and made sure I didn’t try to leave. Then an ambulance came. The paramedics knew I was drunk.”
“What did the police do?”
“They booked me, towed my car, charged me, took me to a cell to sober up.”
“But I called you that night,” Carissa said. “We talked.”
“Not until about ten o’clock. I remember you and the kids were out late with your parents.”
“Hold on,” Berg said. “So three hours after the accident, you were back at home?”
“A lawyer bailed me out. I didn’t hire him, he just showed up. He asked if I’d admitted to being drunk. I said I hadn’t but I’d taken a breathalyzer test, and he told me not to talk to anyone about the accident, including Carissa.”
“And you obeyed his instructions,” Carissa said.
A sullen silence followed her words.
“And then?” Berg said.
Carissa turned away from Matt and gazed out the windshield at the crowded parking lot.
“The lawyer drove me home,” Matt continued, “and told me my car would be taken care of—you know, cleaned up, fixed—and someone would leave it on my driveway.”
I snorted in disbelief. “You didn’t think that was weird?”
“Of course I did, but I was at the end of my rope! I was gonna lose my job, rack up enough legal fees to bankrupt me, maybe even go to jail—and I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want Carissa to know what happened and then think . . . even less of me.”
“Your car was returned?” Berg asked.
“Looking like nothing had happened to it,” Matt said. “Then I met the lawyer the next day in Fort Collins.”
“The Nickles are here,” Carissa said.
Matt jerked around. “Damn. Where?”
“There,” Carissa said.
My eyes followed her finger to where it pointed. A few feet from the diner’s door, Ray and Hattie were leaning into each other, talking, eyes scouring the cars in the parking lot. Any second now, I thought.
“Never mind them,” Berg said. “Look at me, both of you. What was the lawyer’s name?”
As Matt angled back, he reached into his jeans pocket for his wallet, found a card, and handed it to Berg. “Frank Hecht.”
Mystified, Carissa asked, “You’ve been carrying his card all this time?”
“He said I might need it in the future.”
Berg stuffed the card in his coat pocket. “You won’t be needing it from here on out.”
Matt put up a token fuss but quickly dropped his objections.
“What went on in this meeting?” I asked.
“Hecht said he could make everything go away. No charges filed against me, and any record of what happened would disappear. He even said the boy’s parents wouldn’t sue me for medical bills or damages. He’d taken care of all that.”
“Leaving you with a price to pay,” I said.
In my peripheral vision I saw Ray and Hattie perk up. They’d spotted us.
“Hecht knew Carissa and I were looking for a place to renovate for a bed and breakfast, so he—”
Carissa interrupted with a wave of her hand. “Wait just a second. Only a few friends knew that.”
“Hecht knows the Nickles. I found that out later.”
“I don’t
understand,” Berg said. “This was before you met the Nickles, wasn’t it?”
“I met Ray . . .” Matt took hold of his wife’s hand, but she pulled back. “I promised I’d tell you everything, so I will. I met Ray two weeks before the accident.”
“My God, Matt. You’ve known him that long?” Carissa asked. “I’ve been so stupid.”
“I talked about wanting to run a bed and breakfast the first night we met,” Matt said.
“Where did you meet?” Berg asked.
“At a club.”
“What club?”
“We’re not supposed to—we’re never supposed to say the name. Mr. Bergland, they’re going to come after me. You have no idea. These people—I don’t even know who most of them are, but they don’t play around.”
“If you want your life back, your family’s life back, you’ll tell me and the police everything you know. Bring everything into the light.”
“Tell him, Matt,” Carissa said.
“Okay. Yes. It’s called the Order of the High Places. They didn’t tell me the name until my third meeting.”
“Order of the High Places,” Berg repeated.
“Most private clubs have ridiculous names, don’t they? Elks this or that, Moose something.”
“Where is this club?”
“It’s not in a settled place. It moves around, mostly in people’s homes. This time it was at a house in Fort Collins. The next two times it was in Denver.”
Carissa recoiled. “The nights you said you had business there? You lied about that too?”
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
“Why did you go to the first meeting?” Berg asked.
Matt lifted his shoulders.
“That’s not an answer,” Berg said.
“The crows are here,” I announced as the Nickles closed in on the car, Ray smiling affably with those pearly browns of his.
Like a child, Matt squeezed his eyes shut and refused to look. “Oh, God,” he moaned.
“Ignore them,” Berg commanded. “Stand up for your family, Matt, and do it right now. This is your chance, and you may not have many more. Why did you go to the first meeting?”
His eyes still closed—good grief, he was terrified of the couple—he said, “I met someone at work—he wasn’t there that night—and he said he thought I was right for the club, and that the club could help me get ahead. He knew I was having trouble at work, a lot of it because of my boss. The guy denied me a pay raise I deserved—I needed.”
Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1) Page 22
