Be Careful What You Witch For (A Family Fortune Mystery) (23 page)

38

Tuesday morning I woke early with suspicions and murder plots buzzing in my brain. I texted Mac and asked him to meet me at The Daily Grind. I left a note for Seth and headed off on foot, hoping the brisk air would clear my head. Thunderstorms were forecast for later in the day, but the clouds still looked friendly.

Mac was waiting for me at our usual table and Josh gave me a goofy grin and hooked his thumb toward Mac. Apparently our secret had become common knowledge.

After I sat down, Mac said, “He’s acting strange today.” He tilted his head in Josh’s direction.

I grimaced. “Our secret is out. My family found out we were together the night of Lucan’s accident. They jumped to conclusions and I think your mother is going to get a dinner invitation.”

Mac nodded. “It’s fine. It was getting too hard to cover up. Plus, I think Andrews has a crush on you. This will let him off the hook.”

“He does not.”

Mac remained silent but his eyebrows quirked upward.

“How’s the case going?” I asked. Any subject would be better.

Mac stiffened and met my eyes. “I can’t talk about it. I hope you and your gang have quit trying to ‘assist’ now that Dylan is out of jail.”

I held my hand open on the table. “I don’t want to fight about this. I was just asking. I hope you figure it out soon.”

Mac glanced at Josh and took my hand. His shoulders relaxed.

“It’s been a tough one, as you know. Rafe Godwin had a lot of enemies.”

I nodded, debating with myself over whether to tell him about the family tree. Mac was already investigating Morgan; maybe I should just leave it.

“I was thinking we should take a vacation when this case is over,” Mac said.

His announcement chased all other thoughts out of my mind. The thought of escaping a Crystal Haven winter and sitting somewhere warm with Mac while sipping drinks decorated with umbrellas seemed too good to be true. I immediately began thinking of what my story would be for the family, when I remembered that they already knew about Mac.

“Where would you want to go?” I asked.

“Somewhere warm where no one knows us.”

“That sounds amazing.”

We spent the next twenty minutes plotting our escape. We’d narrowed things down to a cruise or an island retreat when Tom burst into the coffee shop. Mac and I, who had literally had our heads together, jumped apart at his interruption.

“Clyde? Detective McKenzie?” He looked from Mac to me and back again. He seemed to have forgotten why he came in. He glanced at our still-clasped hands and his face turned pink.

“Andrews, what do you need?” Mac said.

“I . . . we need you at the station, sir. There’s someone who needs to speak to you.” Tom came to the table and lowered his voice. “It’s Skye Paxton. She says she has some information pertaining to the Rafe Godwin case.”

My pulse picked up speed. I hoped she wouldn’t tell him that I had known since the day before about Rafe and Morgan and their inheritance dispute.

“Does she have a parent with her?” Mac asked.

Tom shook his head. “She’s eighteen, which is good news for us because I wouldn’t want to question her with Bea Paxton in the room.”

“What’s wrong with Bea?” I asked.

“From what I’ve heard, she takes helicopter parenting to the Black Hawk level.”

39

I arrived home to find the dogs waiting at the door. I called Seth, but received no answer.

“Where’s Seth?” I asked Baxter and Tuffy.

Baxter seemed to shrug while Tuffy just glowered.

I found a note in the kitchen:
Had to go out—be back soon.

I immediately pulled out my phone to see if I had missed a text from him. He never wrote notes. I scrolled through my messages and even checked my e-mail—nothing.

I sent a text:
Where are you?

Instead of his usual rapid-fire response, it took a full five minutes until I received:
At the mall.

There was a mall in Grand Rapids, but how did he get there, and why? He hated shopping.

What mall? How did you get there?

I’m with Faith. Skye drove us.

Something felt wrong. I knew that Skye had gone to the police station. I doubted she had driven her little sister and Seth to the mall just before coming into Crystal Haven to talk to the police.

Where are you, really?

No response. I waited ten minutes and sent several more texts demanding an answer. As each moment passed I got more worried. Seth had never done anything like this, at least not to me. I reminded myself that he had managed to get himself all the way to Michigan without alerting his mother. But this was different, wasn’t it? He
wanted
to be here, and he had no reason to hide anything from me.

I didn’t want to overreact, but my gut told me that something was seriously wrong.

I called Diana, who was at the hospital visiting Lucan. She pointed out that we used to disappear all the time and our parents had no way of contacting us. That sort of calmed me except that this was unusual for Seth. And I remembered the kind of trouble Diana and Alex and I got into when we disappeared and our parents couldn’t find us. Diana said she’d check with me later after she got home from the hospital.

When I called Alex, he agreed it sounded strange.

“He’s been texting Faith,” he said. “Maybe she talked him into going to the mall. Isn’t that what they do these days?”

I admitted that he might be with Faith, but neither of them could drive. I knew that Skye was busy at the police station, so how did he get there?

I decided to drive to the mall myself. It would only take twenty minutes, and I could search for him there. I left the dogs looking more forlorn than usual, and hopped in the Jeep.

An hour later, I’d walked the entire shopping center, investigated any store that I thought would attract a couple of young teens, and sent Seth a text every ten minutes.

Finally, I called Grace.

“Don’t freak out,” I said when she answered, “but Seth might be missing.”

“What do you mean
missing
?” she said. “I thought you were together all the time. How did this happen? You’re a police officer!” This from the woman who didn’t know if her kid was in New York or Michigan.

I took a deep breath. Arguing with Grace would not help me find Seth. “I went out for an hour this morning and when I came back, he was gone. He’s not answering his phone or his texts.”

“Let me get to a computer.”

I waited while Grace mumbled to herself on the other end of the line.

“I have GPS tracking on his phone in case he loses it,” she said. I heard a keyboard clicking in the background. “Let me see where the phone is.”

“I’m at the Grand Rapids mall right now. That’s where he said he was.”

“No, it says here the phone is off, but the last location is not at the mall.”

“Where is it?”

“It looks residential. I’ll send you the address. Call me as soon as you know anything.”

She texted the address to me and I left the mall. I recognized the location, but had no idea why Seth would be there. Then snippets of conversation came back to me. Mom saying parents always want to protect their kids, Neila describing her surprise at what a parent will do, and Morgan’s comment that looks can be deceiving. The entire picture shifted for me and I suddenly got very worried.

The early promise of a stormy day had been realized and dark gray clouds seemed to press down on me as I drove to Covenant of Grace. It was only a few minutes from the mall and when I pulled into the lot, I saw a dark Tahoe parked near the church offices; otherwise the place appeared deserted. I remembered Gladys telling me the church closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Fighting the wind, I tried the door of the old part of the church. Locked. I went to the back and found a small door that led to the back of the sanctuary cracked open. I slipped inside. Dark and silent, none of the usual noises of an electrified building greeted me. The power was out.

In the silence, I heard my own ragged breathing. None of this made sense and I felt more anxious the farther I got inside the church. I called Seth’s name but received only an echo from the empty sanctuary. I walked through the whole main floor of the church, peering through the glass into Gladys’s office and the other offices on that side of the sanctuary. I saw a small staircase on the other side of the front door and climbed it carefully. Since there were no windows, only a feeble light from the sanctuary’s stained glass lit my way. At the top of a short flight I found another door. I held my phone up to the sign in order to read it: B
ELL
T
OWER
.

I backed away from the door. No way. I wouldn’t go up there in
good
weather. I heard the wind howl outside and rain pelted the windows.

I turned and started down the stairs again when I heard a clatter on the stairs on the other side of the door. Sighing, I returned to the entrance to the bell tower.

I pulled the door open slowly, afraid of what I might find on the other side. I thought of my dreams about Seth, and knew I had no choice.

40

An ancient stone staircase greeted me and spiraled upward out of sight. The only light in the stairwell seemed to come from above.

I put my foot on the stairs and started climbing. I felt my way along the wall in the dim tower, carefully placing my feet on each step. At about the tenth step my foot kicked something that clattered all the way back down. I cursed to myself and turned around, using my phone’s small screen as a flashlight. I found it at the bottom—Seth’s dragon statue.

I ran up the stairs again, more frantic than ever.

I started to get dizzy from the constant turning and stopped to catch my breath. The wind howled above me. Either the stairs led directly outside, or a door sat open at the top of the staircase. I continued on, worried about what I would find at the top.

A scrabbling noise from behind stopped me. I made the mistake of looking back down the stairway. The gray slabs melted into black and then disappeared entirely. My issue with heights kicked in and added to my anxiety about Seth. Fighting to keep my heart rate down, and to breathe calmly, I struggled to remember my police training.
Shut off all emotion and get the job done.
I slowed my pace and prepared to meet the unknown.

A heavy wooden door stood open at the top of the stairs. Rain lashed its way into the opening and onto the top steps. Wind howled in gusts, bringing more icy drops in waves. I reached the doorframe and peered around to the open bell tower.

It was empty. The room was square and the worn dirt floor was wet from the rain. The openings on all four sides of the tower were set high in the wall starting about eight feet off the floor. I looked up into the bells and then noticed the ladder.

Old and rickety, it led to one of the openings. I remembered seeing a balcony with a balustrade running around the tower outside of the bell openings. I had assumed it was a decorative touch by the church architects. The ladder told a different story. Apparently, there was access, albeit rickety, old, and uninviting.

Convinced that Seth needed my help, I tamped down the churning in my gut that accompanied brushes with heights. I tested the ladder and found it to be just as decrepit as it looked. I hoped it would hold my weight. I began to climb, the wind almost drowning out the creaks and groans of protest sent up by the ladder. As I reached the top, I carefully eased my head out into the storm and saw a narrow catwalk running around the tower, enclosed by the balustrade. I struggled up onto the ledge and plastered my body against the tower. I looked to my left briefly and saw nothing, then forced my head around to the right with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t look down.

I took slow, shuffling steps along the walkway toward the first corner. I had gotten so turned around, I wasn’t even sure which way I was facing. Could I be seen from the road? Would anyone driving by for a fun, storm-lashed jaunt look up and see me? Peering around the first corner, my chest tightened when I didn’t see Seth. I wondered if he’d even come up the ladder. Where could he be? My sodden clothing stuck to me and I shivered from the cold and the fear.

“Seth!” I shouted into the wind. My own voice echoed back to me.

I continued shuffling along, gripping the wet stone until I came to the next corner. I edged around the corner and my whole body let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“Seth, are you all right?”

I started toward him, and he caught my eye and shook his head ever so slightly. I stopped, wondering if I had misinterpreted him with all the rain in my eyes. I couldn’t waste any more time. I was starting to feel that paralyzing tension in my shoulders and my head spun.

I gestured at him to come with me. His eyes got big and he cut them toward the other corner.

“What’s going on?” I edged closer, and then I saw what he was trying to warn me about.

A gun, pointed at Seth, and held by Bea Paxton.

“This does complicate things,” she said over the wind.

She stepped toward us, holding the gun in both hands and keeping it trained on Seth.

“Mrs. Paxton, what are you doing?”

She glanced at me and then back to Seth. After I found Seth, I felt even dizzier. I had never passed out from my heights issue, but I knew it was possible. I flattened my hands against the rough walls and tried to convince myself that I was safe and close to the ground.

“Faith has been talking to Seth,” Bea said. “I can hardly believe my own daughter would turn against me but that seems to be the case. I’ll deal with her later. But Seth has to go.”

I looked from one to the other. Seth’s eyes were wild with terror and Bea’s were wild with crazy.

“Mrs. Paxton, let Clyde go,” Seth said. “She doesn’t know anything and I already told you, I won’t say anything.”

Bea’s lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed.

“No, that won’t work,” she said. “I’m going to have to change the story. Instead of depressed teen jumps to his death, it’ll be brave aunt tries to save nephew . . . and fails.”

She took a step forward. I had been inching my way closer to Seth, hoping to get near enough to grab him and . . . something.

“Or do
you
want to be the hero?” Bea took another step toward Seth. “Maybe you followed her up here and tried to talk her down. It’s so sad how many suicides there are these days.”

Seth leaned away from her. He had his back against one of the posts that ran from the catwalk up to the short ledge that circled the tower, but he was dangerously close to the balustrade. It was only three feet tall and it wouldn’t take much to push him over. Just the thought of it had my stomach in knots and my head whirling.

“That’s far enough.” A voice came from behind Bea.

She whirled toward it and the gun went off. I saw a flap of black fabric disappear behind the corner. The distraction was enough and Seth shoved her hard from behind. She slipped on the wet stones and fell to her hands and knees. The gun clattered away and skittered to the edge of the walkway. I wanted to lunge forward and grab it, but I was frozen in place. I had made the mistake of watching the gun fly to the edge, which led to me looking down. Rooted to the spot, I couldn’t even tell Seth to kick the gun off the ledge.

Just then a black-robed figure appeared at the other end of the walkway, its face hidden in the folds of its hood. Bea looked up and saw it and scrabbled away from the gun. Seth seemed rooted to the spot until Bea’s backward progress brought her near him again. She started to stand, and in a move that I hadn’t realized he knew, he grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back. The dark figure stepped forward rapidly, laughing in that shrill way I had heard in my dream, a rope held in its hands.

I finally found my voice, and shouted, “Seth, look out!” But too late. Whoever was in the robes—and at this point I was convinced it was Death herself, or Morgan—was already upon them. I tried to reach for Seth but my hands wouldn’t peel away from the wall.
I knew it!
Bea and Morgan were in it together. My breath came in shallow gasps and there were dark spots at the periphery of my vision. The last thing I saw was the figure taking Bea’s loose hand and pulling her to a stand.