Chasing Angels (Teagan Doyle Mysteries Book 1)

by Karin Kaufman

  “Their demented club?” I said. “What I’d like to know is, what are the sacrifices Carissa made?”

  “How about killing Lloyd?” Dempster stood abruptly. “First I have to haul the Nickles in for questioning, then I’m bringing that witch on a broom in for interrogation—and I’m toning it down for the religious among us. Are the Petersons still at the hotel?”

  “Quaker Inn, yes,” Berg said.

  “And what club are you two talking about?”

  I told him I’d fill him in later. He had a witch to pick up.

  Dempster finished off his coffee, zipped up his coat. “I wonder if obstruction of justice would work. Maybe murder or accessory to murder, but that’s too much of a stretch at this point. Child endangerment or neglect? Maybe nothing will stick, but I can haul her child-abusing rear into the station.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Satan is real. Evil is real. I’d known that for a long time. And now I knew that evil lived inside women like Carissa Peterson and men like Dennis Reft. Kind, helpful people. People who seemed vulnerable and friendly, who were humble in appearance.

  The demonic presence in St. Michael’s was no intruder. Carissa, Reft, and the Nickles had flung the doors wide to welcome it inside, and then they had fed it, all with Matt’s unwitting support. For ambition and money, he’d been willing to pay a price, even at the expense of his own dignity, not to mention justice for the boy he’d hit with his car.

  But the true and more terrible price he would pay was the innocence of his daughter. I prayed to God he really didn’t know what Carissa had been doing with Sophie.

  My heart broke for their kids. They were with neighbors for now, but that would change tomorrow morning. What were Carissa’s plans for them? What lay in their future if the police or Social Services determined they could stay with her?

  There was no more monstrous crime than subjecting children to adult corruption, but I feared the linguine-spined Matt didn’t have it in him to defend their innocence. Above all he wanted a wife and his bed-and-breakfast dream, and for those he might give Carissa what she wanted. And he was dangerously naive when it came to the nature of evil.

  So what did Carissa want? Honor and glory for being mother to a couple of Damiens? And what had she done to win the favor of Lloyd and the others?

  To hide his part in the abomination, Reft had told Berg and me exactly what we’d wanted to hear. We’d lapped it up. Now we had to reexamine everything he’d said.

  But didn’t some of it, especially about Bishop Talbert and Neal, seem likely to be true? Dempster had stuck one toe in the investigative waters concerning those two, yet that small start had brought major pushback from his chief. Since when did a police chief interfere in the perfectly legitimate sidebar of a murder investigation?

  The thin November light was fading, and despite my fatigue I felt a growing restlessness. Berg and I had agreed to leave tomorrow morning, but I wondered how the Petersons would react when they discovered the Nickles had been taken in for questioning. Most likely they’d already heard. News traveled fast in their little circle. Would Carissa throw off all pretense and toss us out? In our favor, no one but Dempster knew I’d found the photo and letter in her bedroom.

  Berg was pacing the sanctuary again, praying softly. I was sitting in a pew, finishing another donut hole from the Quick Mart. As he walked past, I interrupted his prayers. “How did the Nickles know about my nightmares? Hattie said she had a dream about me, and it was specific. I need to know.”

  He sat with a weary groan. “Have you ever told anyone about your dreams?”

  “Never.”

  “Mentioned you were having nightmares?”

  “Never. I’ve been having them ever since, you know, but I’ve never said a word to anyone. Not even my parents when they were alive.”

  “Well, if the Nickles or someone they’re connected to looked into your past, it wouldn’t be hard to guess that you have nightmares.”

  “About drowning?”

  “About water, and that could logically lead to nightmares about drowning.”

  “Hattie said that in her dream I was drowning, and there were children all around me playing games, which there were. Kids playing games in the water and running around the pool.”

  “She said you were drowning?”

  “In my dreams it’s always me who’s drowning. But last night, for the first time, it was different. I saw a little girl drowning at the bottom of the pool. It must’ve been Bethany, though it didn’t look like her. She was younger. I was in the pool too, and this thing—like an angel, but angry—floated over me and told me to open my mouth and breathe in the water. When I wouldn’t, it said . . .” I faltered. This was all too intimate.

  “It said what?”

  I forced myself to speak. “It said, ‘This is why we’re sick of the sight of you.’”

  Berg grimaced. “That wasn’t an angel. You know that.”

  “It’s stuck with me because Ray Nickle said the same thing. The angels are sick of the sight and sound of me.”

  “That’s a lie, and you know that. When did he say this?”

  “Yesterday, after the locksmith left. We were in the kitchen when you went to answer the door.”

  “Then you were alone in the hall with him. I remember.”

  “He even knew Ian and I couldn’t have a child. How the hell would he know that?”

  “He would’ve done his homework, researched you before bringing you here.”

  “Either that or Ian told him.”

  ‘That’s not worthy of you.”

  “You don’t really think there are normal explanations for the Nickles knowing about Bethany and my marriage.” I wasn’t asking him, I was telling him, and I wanted him to be forthright, however much it might scare the crap out of me.

  “It’s possible, and we should always examine ordinary explanations first, but no, I don’t think so. This is spiritual warfare of a degree I’ve rarely seen.”

  I slumped in the pew, fighting sleep deprivation and mounting frustration. “So let me get this straight. The Nickles, Lebec, and Carissa—Reft too, maybe—bring us to St. Michael’s, ostensibly to determine if there’s an evil presence here, or if it’s haunted, as Carissa first told us. Only they’re the ones responsible for the evil. Then they make sure Lloyd’s body is discovered just before we’re hired and get Nicole to murder Meyer while we’re here. What on earth is the point? They know you’re good at what you do—that you can clear this church. Why hire you to do what they don’t really want you to do?”

  “Because I was wrong about this church.” He rapped the pew back with his knuckles. “If it once mattered to them, it no longer does, not after they decided to kill Lloyd. St. Michael’s is a battleground of little consequence.”

  My jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me we’ve been wasting our time.”

  “The battle matters, the ground it’s fought on does not. I think they wanted us to know they killed Lloyd.”

  “They sure wanted us to know about Talbert and Neal.”

  “We don’t know how involved those two are.”

  “Then there’s the Order of the High Places. Who knows if that’s real? Carissa encouraged Matt to tell us about the club.”

  “Spiritual wickedness in high places,” Berg said. “Ephesians.”

  “I thought the name was related to pagan worship in Old Testament times.”

  “It may be that too. High places . . .” His eyes wandered over the sanctuary. “This was once a beautiful church. What a shame.”

  “Still, we know more than they think we do. We know about Reft and Carissa, and we need to hold that advantage.”

  “Once they talk to Carissa and Reft, they’ll realize we know about the order and Frank Hecht, as well as Talbert and Neal. Maybe that was their plan.”

  “Is it unchristian to want to strangle Carissa?”

  Berg snorted. He looked back to me. “Our job here may be over, like it or not. Carissa doesn’t w
ant us, and my guess is neither does Matt. We’ve done as much as we can.”

  “Which isn’t much. We only got started.”

  “Now it’s up to the police. You can’t fight dark forces and the people who hired you to fight them. Besides, I think we’re being drawn to other battlefields.”

  “That thing in the basement?”

  “I think it’s gone for now, but it’ll be back.”

  I heard the phone buzzing inside his coat pocket. While he read the text I crammed another donut hole in my mouth. My tolerance for sugar amazed even me sometimes.

  “The license plate Joanne gave us traces to Frank Hecht,” Berg said.

  “What was Hecht doing at your house?” I said, spitting powdered sugar. “Trespassing in your back yard and looking through your windows. He was sending you a message, that’s what he was doing.”

  “Matt still hasn’t texted me with those names,” Berg said, looking at this phone’s screen.

  “Wanna bet Carissa talked him out of it? Did Dempster say anything else about Hecht?”

  “There’s not much he can say. Hecht lives in Fort Collins.”

  “We poked a big hornet’s nest.”

  “That’s our job description.”

  I rose, stretched my arms, shook out my legs. “If Nicole had killed Lloyd, there’d be evidence. She’s young and sloppy, and Dempster said the Lloyd scene was pristine. So who killed him, and how did they do it without leaving a trace?”

  “He was probably killed in the basement. It’s the safest place for a murder. If he put up a struggle, no one would hear it or see it, including unexpected visitors knocking on what they think is still a church door.”

  “Killing him there would also give them more time to wall him up, and they only had to move him a few feet, not drag him out of a car or down the stairs.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Moving to the aisle, I continued to stretch, bringing my back and limbs to life. Why was Lloyd killed? I hadn’t discarded the notion that he’d been stealing donations that belonged to the Nickles and their string-pullers, but how had he been lured back to Wells?

  “What if Lloyd disappeared because he’d taken money—or too much money, anyway—and the Nickles or whoever lured him back to do the ritual with Sophie?” I asked. “You know, ‘All is forgiven, please come back, we need you.’ Then they killed him as planned and at the same time he became a sacrifice of sorts. All the while, they meant for Reft to perform the ritual.”

  “Supposition. We need concrete evidence.”

  My thoughts were scattering like stray buckshot, nothing hitting the target, and we didn’t have time to chase wild geese. Berg was right: the evil would return to this house, along with its owners.

  Yet something had to be done to protect Sophie and Liam. If Lloyd’s death was as much a ritual as Sophie’s ceremony . . .

  “Drop cloths.” I spun back to Berg. “There are plastic drop cloths in the basement, in that second room. With renovations going on, the police wouldn’t have given drop cloths a second thought, if they even searched the basement after Lloyd disappeared. Lay down a couple, maybe tape one to the wall for spatter, then throw them out with the garbage when the job’s done.”

  “A possibility,” Berg said, nodding his agreement.

  “And bloody clothes could’ve been thrown away or burned or . . . Hang on, I hear something.”

  A door slammed shut. Berg and I turned in unison toward the narthex. “I forgot the chains.”

  “Must be the Petersons—they used a key.”

  I strode quickly for the doors and was surprised to see Madame Lebec leading the Peterson family, kids included, through the narthex.

  “We’re back,” Matt said cheerily. His face fell when he saw my expression.

  “Sorry,” Carissa said, “but we couldn’t spend another minute at the Quaker Inn, and the kids needed to come home.”

  The home she’d wanted to shield them from only days earlier. Yeah, sure.

  “I think also,” Lebec began, glancing over her shoulder at Carissa, “the family needs a new approach. What I mean is, they’ve given you a fair chance and they want their home back.”

  Berg came up alongside me. Lebec went thin-lipped and slit-eyed.

  “Hello, Audrey,” he said.

  “It’s Madame Lebec,” she said.

  Matt rubbed his hands together. “Well, we do owe you for all your hard work, of course. We really appreciate it, honestly. I can pay you now or you can send me the bill, whichever you prefer.”

  “I’ve been expecting a text from you,” Berg said.

  “Ah.” He darted a sideways look at Carissa.

  “We talked about that,” she said, “and we decided to leave all this behind us and make a new start, for the sake of our family.”

  She was asserting herself, taking over—as she probably always had. What an actress.

  “You’re no longer concerned about the noises and whatnot?” I asked, glancing at Sophie and Liam. Sophie was chewing on her lower lip, looking like she might cry, and Liam was making a show of studying his shoes.

  “It seems warmer in here, doesn’t it?” Carissa said. “Yes?” She smiled and looked to her children, obliging them to agree with her. “It really does.”

  “Can I go to my room?” Sophie said.

  “Of course you can. You too, Liam. Go on. Dinner in an hour.”

  “I’m confused,” I said, watching the kids take off for their rooms.

  Lebec snickered, shooting me a snide of-course-you-are look.

  “If you want to make a fresh start,” I went on, returning to Carissa, “why is Lebec here? That’s going backward.”

  Lebec jumped in. “I’m cleaning up the mess you two made.”

  “What mess would that be?” Berg asked.

  “Please don’t argue,” Carissa said. “We’ve made our decision, and we ask you to respect that.”

  “Absolutely,” I said, reeling back my anger. “But is it possible for us to have some coffee before we go? Just a cup? I could really use some, and so could Berg.”

  “Fine,” she said through her teeth. “Give me a minute.”

  Carissa marched off, and Lebec, her face breaking into a triumphant smile, followed her spiritual mistress to the kitchen. In a very short time, I’d learned about Lebec what she doubtless had never learned about herself: spitefulness blinded her.

  Matt hung back in the narthex, embarrassed. Perhaps he retained a spark of decency, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  “We really are grateful for your help,” he said. “The new locks, just for starters. Really. I wished we’d thought of them. We’re going to feel a lot safer from now on.”

  “Don’t,” I said. I unreeled my anger.

  “Excuse me?” His face fell again. Up and down, up and down. Happy it was all over, shocked that it really wasn’t.

  “I said don’t feel safe.” I turned to Berg, looking for his assent. To help a family he’d once spilled the beans on that charlatan Lebec, but I was about to take a crack at a bona fide woman of evil. It was time, and I had photographic proof.

  Berg nodded.

  I took the phone from my pocket.

  CHAPTER 38

  Matt held the door open, staring out at the darkened landscape. The lawn of his family’s home. He looked like a man who wanted to run down the steps and keep running. “Where did you find that photo?”

  “Taped to the back of your dresser, along with the letter,” I answered.

  Not a peep about how I’d violated his privacy.

  “She kept it,” he said softly.

  “A souvenir of the day, I think.”

  “Our daughter?” he said, still gazing outside. He twisted back, looking only to Berg. “I don’t know what to do. What do I do? This is my fault, isn’t it? They’re just kids. They should be playing games, not doing this sick crap. What did I do wrong? Tell me what to do!” His voice rose, echoing in the narthex. “I can’t, no I won’t . . .” He be
gan to shake his head. “I won’t let her twist them. It stops now! Right now! By God, it stops!”

  Berg put his hand on Matt’s shoulder, quieting him.

  “What’s all the shouting for?”

  We turned as one to face Carissa. Lebec was a few steps behind her, holding the bag of Schneider’s Coffee I’d bought.

  Matt took a menacing step forward, but Berg seized his arm. Matt wailed, a man on the edge of violence. “What the hell have you done to our family?”

  “What?” Carissa’s eyes ping-ponged from Matt to me to Berg and back.

  “Don’t do that,” Matt shouted. “Don’t play dumb. My God, you had me fooled. You’ve been making me feel like crap since we bought this place. You’ve been playing me all the time—and all the while you—you! You knew about my accident, didn’t you? Huh? And you accuse me of lying?”

  “Calm down, Matt,” Berg said.

  “You put our daughter through some twisted ritual and took photos? Like it’s a birthday party? And that so-called priest! What did you say his name was, Mr. Bergland?” Matt shot a glance at Berg.

  “Dennis Reft.”

  Carissa stiffened her back. “Oh.”

  Silence fell over the narthex. Oh? We waited. Was that all she had to say?

  “Mom?”

  Liam had crept unnoticed into the hall. Farther down the hall, Sophie stood at her door.

  “Liam, Sophie, go to your rooms and stay there, okay?” Matt said.

  “Go right now,” Carissa said.

  Sophie shut her door and Liam turned on his heels and ran back to his room.

  I looked at Matt and watched as his expression changed, like sand shifting into a new and harder shape. It was no longer a question of what his dreams were or of what he wanted or what he had lied about to get. His dreams were over. His marriage was over. But his children remained, and he would fight for their innocence.

  He looked away from his wife, dismissing her utterly, though perhaps not irrevocably.

  “Mr. Bergland, I lied to you,” he said. “I knew something was in that wall before Hattie told me to call a contractor. A few days before that Ray went with me to the—”