The Betrayed (11 page)

Relief swept through Danae and she sank onto the steps in the foyer.

“You’re kinda freaking me out. Why did you ask that?”

“I was going over some of the house records last night at my cabin,” Danae said and went on to explain the four entries she’d discovered.

When she finished, the phone was silent for so long that Danae checked to make sure the connection hadn’t dropped.

“They took money?” Alaina’s voice was barely a whisper. “All of them?”

“Yeah. I saw the woman who took me listed and your parents’ names and two others. You can’t really read one of them anymore but I’m assuming one of the others is the people who took Joelle.”

“But there were four? You’re sure?”

“Positive. It’s hard to miss four entries in a row for twenty thousand dollars, especially when everything else on the list was minor.”

“Did you tell Carter?”

“No. I...I couldn’t. It’s so demeaning. I just couldn’t say it out loud.”

But you were able to say it to Zach.

Danae pushed that thought from her mind. Her attraction to the contractor was enough to make her uncomfortable all on its own and something she definitely didn’t have the head space to address. Not right now.

“I understand,” Alaina said. “But it might be important for him and William to know. They might be able to help.”

“I know. I’ll tell Carter when he comes this morning.”

“He won’t judge you. Not Carter.”

Danae smiled at the absolute certainty in Alaina’s voice. Her sister was already deeply in love with the gorgeous sheriff. It made Danae happy to see the two of them together—talking about building a life together. Alaina was right. Carter was a good man.

Before she could change her mind, Danae launched into her next topic. “I...I saw something last night. When you called that first time yesterday, you asked if I believed in ghosts, but then you had to hurry off the phone. I’d forgotten about it when we talked last night, but I have to know why you asked.”

“Why is it so important now?”

Danae took a breath. “Because I saw something in my cabin. No one else knows, so I’d prefer if we keep this between us for the time being. I’m trying to get my footing in Calais. I don’t want everyone to think I’m crazy, like our stepfather.”

“Of course. Trust me, I don’t want anyone to know, either. It’s not exactly the thing that improves a reputation. What did you see?”

Danae told her about falling asleep on the couch and waking up to the vision above her. “I think it was Mom. She looked like the picture I have, which looks a lot like you.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A long white nightgown. Her black hair hung loose around her shoulders and she was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her.”

Alaina sucked in a breath. “She spoke?”

“She was trying, but no sound came out until she started to fade away. Then it’s almost like in my mind I heard her saying ‘So close’ over and over. Is that what you saw?”

“I’m sure one of the things I saw was Mom, but she never spoke. So close to what?”

“It could be anything—home, each other... I just don’t know.”

“I wonder...”

Danae frowned, finally focusing on her sister’s very deliberate wording. “You said Mom was one of the things you saw. Does that mean you saw something else? Some other ghost?”

“Yes. That first night I stayed in the house. Remember I came in the café before dawn the next morning?”

“I remember. You’d slept in your SUV that night because something had spooked you, but you never said what it was.”

“I don’t know. A ghost, I guess, but it didn’t look anything like Mom. This one was gray with red eyes, and there was so much anger in it. I could almost feel it spilling out on me. It looked... I know it sounds crazy, but it looked like it wanted to kill me.”

Danae gasped. “Oh, no! No wonder you were terrified, and I made a joke about seeing ghosts when you walked into the café. I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. How could you have known? This isn’t exactly the kind of conversation you have with just anyone.”

“That’s true. There’s something else—something I left out of Zach’s story.” She told Alaina about the scream Zach heard right before the attack and the pulsing light that appeared on the landing.

“That scream would have sent me off on a dead run,” Alaina said. “He’s got some serious backbone if he stood there trying to figure that out.”

Danae smiled, unable to stop from admiring the contractor’s fearless if dangerous approach to problem solving. “He seems to be made of stern stuff.”

“Good. Because I don’t want you there alone. Not ever. Not even for a minute. And get out of that house before dark. Promise me.”

“I promise. Alaina, what’s happening here? What’s happening to us?”

“I don’t know, little sister, but we’re going to figure it out.”

Chapter Eleven

Carter pulled up in front of Bert Thibodeaux’s run-down shack, pleased that the trucker’s old rig and pickup truck were both parked next to it. It was early, but Carter wanted to make sure he caught Bert before he went out on a run. The trucker was often gone for days at a time, so it was a stroke of good luck that Carter found him at home.

He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing stirred inside, so he knocked again, this time louder. Something crashed to the floor and he heard cursing. A couple of seconds later, the door flew open and Bert glared out at him.

He was a beefy man and had a good three inches on Carter. He wore soiled jeans and a white T-shirt, but his bare feet, uncombed hair and red, watery eyes let Carter know he’d woken up Bert. The angry expression on the trucker’s face told Carter exactly how Bert felt about it.

“Good morning, Bert. Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

“Hell, no, you can’t come in. It’s hardly a time of the morning to be entertaining. What do you want with me? Ain’t no warrants out for me. All my tickets are paid.”

Carter glanced behind the man into his cabin. It was a mess of dirty clothes and torn furniture. Empty beer cans, chip bags and frozen-pizza boxes littered every surface and most of the floor. A lacy red bra hung from one of the lamps, and Carter wondered briefly what kind of woman would get undressed in there. Perhaps one who’d had a tetanus shot.

Bert noticed Carter’s gaze and pulled the door close to his side so that his massive body was blocking any view inside. “What do you want?”

“William Duhon tells me you used to do some work for Purcell—that you made a little scene in his office over the way the estate is being handled.”

“That worthless SOB promised me the money for a brand-new rig. I ran up and down the highway to New Orleans for him for over ten years. I got a right to make a scene.”

“No, you don’t. William isn’t responsible for what Purcell did, and he’s just doing his job administering the estate. He’s bound to the terms of the will, same as everyone else.”

“That still don’t make it right.”

“I agree. None of it is right or fair, but what Purcell did to those girls after their mother died wasn’t fair, either.”

“I guess not, but they’ll get theirs in the end. What do I get? What does Jack Granger get? All that work—all those years—and what do we have to show for it but a whole lot of nothing?”

“Would you mind telling me exactly what you did for Purcell all those years?”

Bert narrowed his eyes at Carter. “Why you asking?”

“Because some questions have arisen about Purcell’s use of estate funds. I’m trying to get answers for William.”

“I ain’t saying nothing, then. If Purcell was up to illegal stuff, I’m not going to take the rap for that in addition to getting screwed out of a decade of pay.”

“If Purcell did anything illegal, that’s not on you. I’m just trying to get a better feel for the man—figure out what it was that made him tick.”

Bert studied Carter for a minute, then finally shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. He was a strange one. He bought stuff all the time—at auctions and those fancy stores in New Orleans with ugly art that costs a fortune. God only knows how much he spent on that stuff.”

“So you transported the things he bought from New Orleans to here.”

Bert nodded. “And back again when he sold them.”

All of a sudden, Carter got it—the remarkably simple answer to the question he’d had about Purcell and the money.

“He sold the stuff he bought?” Carter asked. “You’re sure?”

“I didn’t see the actual things I was carrying, if that’s what you mean. They were always wrapped or in crates, but nothing went inside that house that me, Jack or Amos didn’t carry in, and I was the only one who made regular trips to New Orleans. He was either selling the stuff he bought or stuff that was already there.”

Carter nodded. “I appreciate your time.”

“Don’t thank me, and tell that attorney not to thank me, either. I’m going to see a lawyer about this. I’ll tie that estate up in court until those girls are dead before I let Purcell get away with screwing me from the grave.”

He slammed the door and Carter got back into his truck and drove away. One question had been answered—he now knew how Purcell made money off an estate that he couldn’t withdraw large blocks of cash from. But that only led to another question. Where was that cash now?

* * *

D
ANAE
FLIPPED
THROUGH
stack after stack of paper, trying to find more documents from around the time of her mother’s death. The lantern was the only source of light in the dark office, and it wasn’t nearly strong enough to illuminate the mess that Purcell had created. She’d thought the room was cluttered, but the reality was it was practically littered with paper.

Stacks of paper covered almost every inch of the floor and oozed out of every drawer in the desk. The top of the desk was piled two feet high with folders and paper, except for the small section she’d cleared the day before to stack the boxes on. The bookcases contained few books. Mostly, they held stacks of paper and folders. Even the areas that held books had paper stacked on top of books.

It would take her forever to make sense of it all. She’d originally thought the rate for the work overly generous, but now she understood why William had to pay such an amount to get quality work. It would take everything she had not to run screaming from the mess inside of an hour.

She slumped into the office chair and assessed the small stack of papers that she’d located from the time period surrounding her mother’s death. All around her were discarded piles that hadn’t fallen into that time line. No one would ever guess that she’d already spent the better part of an hour digging through the mess.

“You doing all right in here?” Zach’s voice sounded from the doorway.

“I guess. It’s such a mess I feel like I’m spinning my wheels.”

“Maybe you should try to separate it by date first, then concentrate on one piece at a time.”

She sighed. “There’s decades of paperwork in here. Apparently, my stepfather, my mother, my grandparents and heaven only knows who else thought they should keep every scrap of paper their hands ever touched.”

Zach scanned the room. “It does look a bit overwhelming. Tell you what—I found a stack of cardboard boxes and packing tape in one of the downstairs rooms. I could line them down the hallway, and you can label them by decade or whatever works.”

“That’s not a bad idea. At least I’d be getting the paperwork out of the room. As it is, it’s so cluttered that I can’t move it far enough away to get to it all.”

Zach nodded. “I’ll go get the boxes.”

As Zach assembled boxes, Danae lined them down the hallway, against the wall, and labeled each with a different decade spanning seventy years.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have to meet a fire code,” Zach said as he finished with the last box.

Danae glanced at the line of boxes that stretched almost the length of the hallway, only skipping over entrances to rooms. “I’ll probably need multiple boxes for some periods, too. In fact, I’m sure of it. I don’t think everything in the office will fit in the amount of boxes we have here.”

Zach nodded. “I hope you wanted long-term employment when you agreed to this.”

“I’m going to hazard a guess that William will say to look at the more recent time frames and forgo things that happened when my grandparents were in charge. Too many things could have happened to assets purchased that long ago.”

“That’s true enough. Do you want me to take a look at the electricity while you’re working up here?”

“I don’t want you overexerting yourself. Take it easy, at least for a day.”

“The voltage meter fits in the palm of my hand and I only need to remove a couple of screws.”

“Then I guess that’s okay.”

He smiled. “I’ll go get my equipment.”

Danae walked back into the dim office and sighed at the long day that stretched in front of her. She was twitchy, jumping at every little noise, and had checked her watch every two minutes since hanging up on the call with Alaina. It was almost eleven o’clock and she wondered why Carter hadn’t made it to the house yet. She vacillated between hoping he’d found out something important and hoping he hadn’t run into trouble.

She picked up a stack of paper on the desk and started flipping through it, checking the dates to ensure they all fell in the same decade. When she finished that stack, she placed it facedown in one of the few bare spots on the desk and picked up another stack.

The second stack of paper was also from the 1950s and she flipped it over on top of the first stack and decided to try another location. The bookcase behind the desk was crammed with nothing but paper. Maybe she would find more updated documentation there. She stepped behind the desk and slid a tall stack of papers off a shelf and carried it back to the desk.

When she saw the dates on the first paper, her pulse quickened. It was from the year her mother died, just a couple of months before. She was definitely getting closer. She flipped through the pages, noting date after date that led up until the time of her mother’s death and right after. When she got to the last page, she went back to the first and started studying the transactions, but the dim light in the room made it hard to read the faded cursive.

Carrying a couple of the sheets, she walked into the hall, where the light was better. The cursive was much easier to make out, but the faded spots were many and it was still difficult for her to make out all the words. As soon as she got a chance, she’d pick up a magnifier at the general store. The store probably didn’t have anything that would please Sherlock Holmes, but she knew they kept small magnifiers in stock for sewing.

From what she could make out, large deposits were made into the account randomly, and never for the same amount. Royalties, maybe? But then, she wasn’t aware that Purcell had any money or investments of his own, and wouldn’t royalty payments have recurring dates? She sighed and dropped the papers in the appropriate boxes, mentally adding one more thing to the list of things she needed to discuss with William. Sitting in his office yesterday, everything had seemed so simple.

Too simple.

The thought echoed through her mind, forcing her to acknowledge one of the driving mottoes she’d always lived by—if something appeared too simple, it was always going to be a bear. Still, it seemed horribly unfair that she’d come to Calais for answers and all she’d found were more questions.

“Hey.” Zach’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t. Just interrupted a bunch of negative thinking that needed to stop.”

He held up the voltage meter. “Well, positive or negative, I can pick up the energy signal. I’m not going to get in your way, am I?”

“Not at all, but we need to clear you a path to the light switch, unless you want to try to hook up that thing leaned over ten thousand sheets of paper.”

“It’s usually better to have a clear view and both feet planted on the floor when playing with electricity.”

She smiled. “If we move those three piles nearest the wall, that will probably be enough. Let me grab one of the extra boxes.”

She snagged one of the empty boxes from the hall and grabbed a stack of the paper and dropped it inside.

“Do you want to try to keep this in order?” he asked.

“I don’t see the point. Most of the stuff I’ve looked at isn’t sequential. It’s like God came into the office and shuffled all the paper like a deck of playing cards.”

He laughed. “Now, there’s an interesting visual.”

When they removed the last of the large stacks away from the light switch, she dragged the box back into the hall to get it out of the way, then returned to the papers on the desk as Zach removed the plate from the light switch.

It was comforting having him right there next to her, even though she’d never admit it out loud and was a little perturbed that she felt that way. In every crisis she’d come across before now, she’d always been the strong one—the person everyone else looked to. Her own personal crisis had been borne silently and without aid, not even so much as a cry on an understanding shoulder.

It almost seemed as if revealing her true self had weakened the wall surrounding her, and now everyone and everything was systematically chipping away at it, exposing more of herself than she felt comfortable showing. For the first time since she was a child living in Rose’s house, she didn’t feel in control, and that bothered her.

“What the—” Zach’s voice broke into her thoughts.

He was staring down at his voltage meter, a stunned look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s spiking like crazy, registering way more voltage than is normally found in home wiring.”

He held up the box and she saw the needle jerking back and forth in the center of the display.

“Maybe that’s what is causing the problem—the wiring’s shot,” she said.

He raised his head and looked directly at her, his eyes wide. “You don’t understand. I haven’t hooked it up to the light switch yet.” He lifted the loose wires up in his free hand.

She gasped as one hand involuntarily covered her mouth. It wasn’t possible that the device could register electrical charge when it wasn’t even connected to an outlet, but it was happening right in front of her.

“How...how can that be?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

He shook his head. “I have no idea. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

He moved the box around, but the needle still swung back and forth over the center of the screen. When he waved it in the direction of the bedroom doorway, it spiked even higher. He frowned and stepped toward the bedroom. When he stopped in the doorway, he lifted the two loose wires in the air and pointed them inside. The needle sprang to the right side of the meter and stayed pinned against the side, not moving at all.

“It’s in there,” she said. “Whatever is causing it is in the bedroom.”

She looked down at the box, and suddenly, the needle fell from the right to the left. Zach shook the box and lifted the wires farther into the room, but the needle remained at zero. He stepped back into the office and walked over to the light switch, but the needle didn’t move even a millimeter.