Grave Misgivings (20 page)

AFTER
Max’s weird comments, Maddie decided to distance herself from the boisterous man. He was probably joking, Maddie told herself. She wasn’t familiar with his sense of humor. Some people simply found odd things funny. Max was probably one of them.

After begging off on further conversation by saying she was going to get a drink, Maddie found herself wandering back in the direction of the drink cart. Her mind was busy with endless possibilities. The only thing she knew with any certainty was that she needed to talk to Rose.

Almost as if on cue, Rose appeared in the doorway that led from the dining room into the adjacent hallway. “Come with me,” she said.

Maddie glanced toward the far end of the table where Brian and Max were regaling Christy, Lauren, and Marla with some long-forgotten football story. She wasn’t sure leaving was a good idea, but she was sure Rose was her only chance of finding Cassidy.

Maddie knew she was running out of time. She had to trust the woman. There was no other way.

Maddie considered telling Christy she was leaving the room, but she knew that would draw unnecessary attention to herself. Instead, she wordlessly slipped away from her friends and followed Rose into the darkness.

“Did you find Cassidy?” Maddie asked, following Rose down the hallway while keeping her fingertips against the wall so she could maintain her bearings. It was hard to see her given the eerie darkness, but the frequent bursts of lightning gave Maddie enough glimpses to stay on track.

“I found a girl,” Rose said. “She’s been … hurt.”

Maddie swallowed hard, dread washing over her. “Where?”

“Close,” Rose said. “Follow me.”

“WE
can’t get the generator going,” Aaron announced, walking into the dining room and shaking his head to dislodge the rainwater.

“Eww,” Marla shrieked, jumping up from her chair. “You got me wet.”

“You’ll live,” Aaron said.

“Where is Maddie?” Nick asked, immediately searching the room for her.

“She was just here,” Christy said, scanning the dim dining area. “She was down there talking to Max for a little bit. Then Max came down here and told us a story. I don’t know where Maddie is. Maybe she went to the bathroom.”

Nick’s heart rolled painfully. She’d promised to stay in the room. Why would she possibly leave? He knew the answer before he internally finished voicing the question. Rose.

“Where is Max?” Aaron asked.

“Maybe he went after Maddie,” Lauren suggested. “He does know the house really well.”

Something niggled the back of Nick’s brain. “He does know the house,” he said. “He knows it as well as you do, Aaron. Maybe even better.”

“What are you getting at?” Aaron asked.

“He lied about being in the passageways,” Nick said. “The only reason he owned up to it was because Marla saw him and she called him on it in front of everybody.”

“So what?” Aaron asked, getting defensive. “He only went in there so he could play a prank on me.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I found the rubber snake in my bed.”

Nick tilted his head to the side, considering. “He lived in the servants quarters with his mother for years,” he said. “You yourself said that you thought the passageways were originally put in so your grandfather could … fornicate … with the help. There has to be a way to move from floor to floor in the passageways.”

“I also told you I wasn’t even born when all of that was going on,” Aaron said. “It was just a rumor that Gramps put in those passageways so he could slip downstairs without being noticed. I don’t know it for a fact.”

“It makes sense, though,” Nick said. “What if Max discovered how to get into the passageways from downstairs?”

“So what if he did?” Aaron pressed. “That doesn’t mean he did anything. What would be his motivation for hurting Cassidy? You said yourself that no one here has a motive … except for you and Maddie.”

“I’m glad to see someone has finally come to their senses and agrees with me,” Marla said.

“Shut up, Marla,” Nick and Aaron snapped in unison.

“Maddie and I went back down to the mausoleum this afternoon,” Nick said. “We wanted to look around and be sure that Cassidy didn’t accidentally find her way down there and lock herself in.”

“Crap. I didn’t even think of that,” Aaron said. “You obviously didn’t find her.”

“We didn’t,” Nick agreed. “Max showed up down there, though.”

“So?”

“We had a little talk,” Nick said. “He said a few odd things.”

“He always says odd things,” Aaron said. “That’s what he does.”

“This was odder than usual,” Nick said. “He talked about being jealous of you. He talked about loving the house and wanting to be part of the family when he was a kid. He talked about … people having stations in life.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Aaron said. “I … he said he was jealous of me?”

Nick nodded. “Was Max with you the entire night when you got drunk?”

“Yes,” Aaron said triumphantly. “We were all together the whole time.”

“Well, not the whole time,” Lauren said, casting an apologetic look in Aaron’s direction. “He disappeared for about a half hour. I only remember because he’d been rubbing my shoulders and I was hoping he would come back and finish the job.”

“I don’t remember that,” Aaron said, biting his lower lip. “That still doesn’t mean anything. Why would he want to hurt Cassidy?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her,” Nick said. “Maybe she just got in his way.”

“His way for what?”

“Where was Cassidy’s necklace found?” Nick asked, forcing himself to remain calm.

“In front of the window that looks into the room you’re sharing with Maddie,” Aaron said.

“Maybe Max wanted to see what was going on in our room, too,” Nick said. “Maybe finding Cassidy there was a surprise. Without a lot of time to think, maybe Max overreacted and … did something to Cassidy because he needed her to be quiet.”

“You’re reaching,” Aaron said. “Why would Max want to spy on you and Maddie? He’d just spent the previous two nights having sex with Marla. Sure, he said it was uninspired and she’s a dead fish in bed, but they still had sex. He’s not some sort of sick voyeur.”

“I am not a dead fish!”

Everyone ignored Marla.

“He’s always had a crush on Maddie, though,” Christy said.

Nick stilled. “What?”

“He has,” Christy said. “He’s always thought she was pretty. He was going to ask her out until you and Brian came to blows. That didn’t stop him from trying to spy on her in the woods, though. He even admitted it when we were drunk last night.”

“Oh, yeah, he did,” Lauren said. “I forgot about that.”

Nick clenched his jaw, frustrated. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“What does it matter now?” Lauren asked. “You and Maddie are obviously together. It’s not like he thinks he can get between you.”

“That’s not what he was saying to Maddie,” Marla said.

“What do you mean?” Nick asked, snapping his head in Marla’s direction.

“I heard them talking while you guys were outside,” Marla said. “Max was giving Maddie an earful about how she didn’t really love you and she was only with you because everyone thought you should be together. He was yammering on about self-fulfilling prophecies and how Aaron was only successful because of his family’s money and Maddie was only with you because everyone expected it of her.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Nick asked.

“Because I was hoping he would convince her to dump you,” Marla said. “Trust me. You could do much better.”

Nick slammed his hand down on the table, furious. “Where is Maddie? Did she leave this room with Max?”

“I didn’t see Maddie leave the room,” Christy said. “I did see Max leave, though. He seemed distracted.”

“Dammit,” Nick said, grabbing a candle from the center of the table and stalking toward the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Aaron asked.

“To find them.”

“WHERE
are we?” Maddie asked. She’d been following Rose for five minutes, and while the ghost wasn’t exactly chatty, she hadn’t been silent either.

“This is the heart of the house,” Rose said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Maddie admitted.

“Here,” Rose said, gesturing toward a blank wall.

“What am I looking at?”

“There’s a door behind there,” Rose said. “We’re in the servants’ quarters. No one lives down here now. All of the staff lives offsite. This part of the house is empty now, but it’s where everything happened when I was living here.”

Maddie’s heart went out to the woman. “Is this where your husband came to … ?”

“Have sex with the maid staff? Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?” Maddie asked, using her fingertips to search the wall for a door. “How do I open this?”

“There’s a button on the side of the framework just there,” Rose said, pointing. “Push it up.”

It took Maddie a moment to find the button, and when she did an audible click filled the air before the wall seemingly gave way and fell open. “What’s in here?” Maddie asked.

“What you’ve been looking for.”

Since it was dark beyond the wall, Maddie had no choice but to feel her way through. Surprisingly, when she moved a few feet inside, she realized that emergency lights lit the way down a narrow hallway. It wasn’t bright, by any means, but it wasn’t dark either. The lights looked to be running off of batteries.

“Do these passageways go throughout the entire house?” Maddie asked.

“Jim had them installed because he thought they would hide his actions,” Rose said, leading Maddie down the hallway. “That was before he stopped caring about hiding his actions.”

“Were you … jealous?”

“No. I was relieved. The man was insatiable. He only cared about his needs, though. Mine were never a consideration.”

“Did you ever love him?”

“I never did anything but loathe him,” Rose said. “I know people in town gossiped about us. I know they thought I was jealous and sad. That wasn’t the case, though.”

“Were you really thinking of packing up your son and leaving?”

“No,” Rose said. “As much as I hated Jim, he was a relatively decent father. He loved our son. We came to an agreement. I ignored what he was doing and he let me do what I wanted to do. It wasn’t a happy marriage, but it was a comfortable compromise.”

“Tell me about Rosario.”

“She was … bigger than life,” Rose said. “I knew she was trouble the second we hired her, but I figured she was Jim’s problem. She came to this house with plans to seduce him. It wasn’t a hard task. All she had to do was smile at him, spread her legs, and he was hers.

“She played things differently than the other women, though,” she continued. “She teased him … and she played hard to get … and she taunted him to distraction. Once she was sure she had him, she gave him what he wanted.”

“Was she pregnant?” Maddie asked.

“Yes.”

“When did you find out?”

“I knew before Jim did,” Rose said. “The staff was loyal to me because they knew I would be loyal to them. When Jim tried to fire them for some imagined slight, I was the one who stepped in and smoothed things over.

“Rosario wasn’t secretive about her desires,” she said. “She told anyone who would listen that she was going to displace me from this house and claim Jim and his money for herself. I was rooting for her. I wanted Jim to divorce me.”

“Why?”

“Because if I divorced him I would get nothing,” Rose said. “If he divorced me I was due a payout. That’s why I put up with him for as long as I did. I didn’t want a lot, but I did want enough to buy a house. I figured we could share custody and everything would be okay.”

“What happened?” Maddie asked.

“When Jim found out I wanted a payout to leave, he balked,” Rose said. “He didn’t want to give me money. For a rich man, he was pretty tight with the purse strings when he wanted to be. He and Rosario had plans to marry as soon as the ink was dry on our divorce. Jim put a stop to all of that when I refused to divorce him.”

“How did Rosario take that?”

“Not well.”

“Do you think … is it possible … ?”

“Are you asking me if Rosario killed me?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t be sure,” Rose said. “She did wear a particular perfume, though, and that’s the last thing I ever smelled.”

Maddie felt inexplicably sad for the woman. “Why do you think you’re still here, Rose?”

“At first I think I was hanging around until someone paid for killing me,” Rose said. “I stopped caring about that years ago, though. Rosario never got what she wanted, so there was no reason to hold my anger close enough to darken my heart.”

“So why are you still here now?”

“I don’t think I can leave until … he does.”

Maddie stilled. “He who?”

“Jim,” Rose said. “He’s still here, too.”

Things started to slip into place for Maddie. “Is he the poltergeist?”

“He’s the anger,” Rose said. “Look in there.” She inclined her head toward a wooden door. “Be quick. I think he’ll be here soon.”

“Jim?”

“No,” Rose said, shaking her head. “The other evil.”

Maddie had no idea what that meant, but she was too keyed up to press Rose further. After fumbling with the loose handle for a few moments, Maddie pushed open the door and found herself staring into the bowels of … Hell.

“Omigod.”