The Betrayed (7 page)

Chapter Seven

Zach parked his truck in front of the café and strode inside, still frustrated over the way his evening had gone. After checking the doors, Danae had insisted they clear out of the house for the day. Unable to formulate a good argument for insisting she stay when she was clearly distressed, he’d simply agreed and watched as she locked up the house and drove away.

He’d had no opportunity to finish his work on the window, so that one nail still held it fast in place. Tomorrow, he’d bring his crowbar and make quick work of it as soon as he had the opportunity, but that left him with a long night of nothing stretching in front of him.

Before his dad’s death, he’d always prided himself on his patience. The intricate carpentry work he did required tons of it, as did dealing with frustrating clients that changed their minds every other day. But ever since his dad’s funeral, he’d been unable to focus on his work—unable to stop the feeling of dread that flowed through him when he wondered what his dad had hidden from him.

Now he was in Calais, working at Ophelia’s house. But, at that moment, he was just as far away from answers as he had been in New Orleans.

Sighing, he took a seat on a stool at the empty counter. Every table save one was occupied and the volume in the small building was fairly loud and cheerful. All around him, people relaxed and shared their day with spouses, friends and children, but relaxation and sharing were the last two things on his mind. The only person who looked unhappy was the cook, who glanced back with a half scowl when Zach slid onto the stool.

“Mind if I join you?”

A voice sounded behind him and he turned just as Carter sat on the stool next to him.

Before he could answer, a perky brunette stepped in front of them. “What can I get you two?”

Zach glanced at the menu printed on the wall behind the counter then looked over at Carter. “How’s the chicken-fried steak?”

“Fantastic,” Carter replied. “Make it two of the chicken-fried steak. And two beers. On me.”

“That’s not—”

“No arguing,” Carter said. “It’s the least I can do your first night in town. Might as well have a good meal and general conversation before you have to head to Amos’s cabin and spend the rest of the night bored to tears. How anyone lives without a television and the internet is beyond me.”

Zach smiled. “Well, I appreciate it—the food
and
the conversation.”

“Did you get your supply list?” Carter asked.

“No. I got interrupted and we called it a day.”

Carter frowned. “What kind of interruption?”

“A couple of boxes fell off the desk in Purcell’s office. It shook Danae up a bit.”

Carter’s jaw flexed and he stiffened on the stool. “You sure they fell?”

“Far as I could tell. We checked the doors and they were all locked from the inside. No one was in the house besides Danae and me, and we were both downstairs at the time.”

Carter studied him as he delivered the information, and Zach wondered why the sheriff looked so concerned over something that sounded so simple. Suddenly, he had the overwhelming feeling that both Danae and Carter were keeping something from him, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Any reason why you think they didn’t fall?” Zach asked.

Carter stared at him for several seconds, and Zach could tell the other man was deliberating whether or not to tell him something. Finally, Carter nodded.

“I wasn’t at the house today just to check in on Danae. She called me because she thought she’d seen someone in Purcell’s office. She found the back door in the laundry room unlocked, but Danae was certain she’d checked it earlier and it was locked.”

“I see.” Finally, Danae’s edgy behavior began to make more sense. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“She asked me to keep it quiet, and besides, I didn’t really know you then.”

“You don’t know me now.”

Carter grinned. “That’s true, but I could tell you were bothered by the noise and you took her seriously about checking for an intruder. That tells me you have a problem with people who might try to scare women, and since you’ll be in the house all day, I figure it doesn’t hurt to have you paying attention.”

“You think someone is trying to scare her?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure how much you heard about the business with her sister Alaina.”

“Only the little that Danae told me—that she was attacked in the house and you shot and killed her attacker.”

“That’s the short version, but there’re a couple of things that still don’t sit right with me.”

“Like what?”

“One night someone broke one of the downstairs windows.”

“I saw the window you’re talking about when I was making my list. Danae assumed Alaina’s attacker got in that way.”

“He wanted us to think that, but the window was broken from the inside, and it was still nailed shut. He didn’t do his homework on that one, and I didn’t let that information leak out.”

“Then how did he get in?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say he was already in there when we arrived. I changed the back door and patio locks that night, but he could have been hiding there already. Quite frankly, he could have remained hiding there even after I went looking for him.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to remain unseen in that mess,” Zach agreed.

“Exactly, but the story gets worse. Everyone’s assuming the guy I killed broke the window, but there’s no way he could have. The night that happened, he was in Baton Rouge at a charity event with over a hundred witnesses.”

Zach frowned. “And you have no idea who did it?”

Carter shook his head, but something in his expression made Zach wonder if the sheriff had his suspicions. “So you think someone has their own purpose for lurking.”

“I have to wonder. First Alaina and now Danae are swearing they saw someone in the house. I don’t like to think either of them is imagining it.”

“But after what happened to Alaina, wouldn’t Danae be on edge? I mean, they’re sisters. I assume they’re close.”

“Not at all. Until this morning, Alaina didn’t even know Danae was her sister. None of us did. When Danae came to town, she did it under an assumed name and took a job waitressing at this café.”

Zach stared at Carter, confused. “Why weren’t they in contact before? Are you telling me Alaina didn’t recognize her own sister?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. When their mother died, Purcell shipped the three girls off to distant relatives at all ends of the country. They had no way to contact each other. Alaina wrote letters to Purcell once she was older, trying to find her sisters, but he never answered. Danae was only two years old when their mother died. Alaina was only seven.”

Zach felt a ball of anger form in his stomach and he clenched his jaw. His mother had passed when he was five, but at least he’d had his father. Those girls had been pawned off on strangers. “What a worthless son of a bitch.”

“We are in complete agreement on that point.”

The cook shoved two plates of food onto the sideboard and threw a dish towel onto the counter. “I’m going on break,” he barked at the waitress as she came to deliver the food. He pushed past her and shoved open the back door, scowling at them before he slipped through the opening.

The waitress slid two plates covered with huge chicken-fried steaks, mashed potatoes and corn in front of them. “You two going to stop jawing long enough to eat?” she asked and grinned.

“Oh, yeah,” Carter said and managed a smile.

“You got a problem with the cook?” Zach asked after the waitress walked away.

“You noticed that, huh?”

“I thought he gave me a dirty look when I sat down, but now I realize you were walking up behind me at the time. Since I’ve never met the man, I’m assuming the look was for you.”

Carter nodded. “It was for me, all right, but don’t think he’s going to be any happier with you. Jack Granger spent twenty years playing errand boy for Purcell, who apparently promised him untold riches when he died.”

“But the money wasn’t Purcell’s, right? I mean, that’s what I gathered from William when we spoke about the situation in regard to the condition of the house.”

“It was never Purcell’s to give, but that didn’t stop him from making promises. Jack recently took up with a widow with a sick girl. He was counting on that money to pay for medical care they can’t afford.”

“That sucks.” Zach’s heart went out to the surly cook and the sick girl.

“It does,” Carter agreed, “and I was ready to feel all kinds of sorry for him but then he started drinking again. And when Jack is drunk, he’s stupid and mean.”

Suddenly, Zach understood what Carter was getting at. “You think he might be behind the break-in?”

“It’s crossed my mind more than once. Especially as he threatened to ‘show us all’ when I tried to talk some sense into him.”

“You think he’s trying to scare them away from their inheritance? Would he get anything?”

Carter frowned. “I don’t know what happens to the money if the sisters don’t meet the terms of the will. That’s something that I was going to cover with William, but everything with Alaina went down before I got to it. I hoped that it was all over with her situation, but the facts show that something else is going on in the house.”

“And you’re sure he’s capable?”

“More than. He’s tolerable when he’s sober, but he’s never been what you’d call a nice man.”

“If it’s him, what’s his goal?”

Carter shook his head. “Maybe to scare them away, figuring if he can’t have it, no one else should. Maybe just to steal some things he thinks are valuable and try to sell them, and they’re in the way of his doing that.”

“The house is crammed full of stuff. It would be impossible to know if something’s missing.”

“Yeah, that’s the reason William has Danae going through Purcell’s records. He’s trying to put together an inventory of potential valuables so they can attempt to locate them in the mess.”

Zach mulled over the information. All of it had been delivered in a very straightforward manner, but something was missing. Suddenly, it occurred to him.

“So if the guy you killed didn’t break the window and you changed the locks, how did he get into the house later to attack Alaina? I didn’t see any damage to the exterior doors and they looked like the originals.”

Carter’s expression darkened and he leaned over a bit toward Zach. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” he said, his voice low. “I couldn’t change the front-door lock. It’s some antique that requires a specially forged key. I doubt there are a lot hanging around, but there’s a slight possibility he could have acquired a front-door key, but we didn’t find one on him.”

“So you don’t think that’s the most viable option?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think. By the looks of things, Purcell was a secretive and paranoid man. I wouldn’t put it past him to have a secret entrance to the house. I think he’d feel safer knowing he had an escape hatch, so to speak. But I have yet to find such an alternate entrance and haven’t had much time to look.”

“Was Alaina’s attacker from Calais?”

“No. Baton Rouge.”

“Then how...”

“I don’t know. Maybe he paid someone in Calais for the information.”

“And they would have just given it to him?”

“He could have drummed up some legitimate story and thrown in a wad of cash. These are simple people who barely get by. It wouldn’t take much to fool many of them.”

Zach nodded. “And nobody would dare come forward and admit something like that after what went down.”

“Exactly.” Carter sighed and stabbed the chicken-fried steak with his fork before attacking it with his knife, taking his obvious frustration out on his dinner.

Zach took a bite of the steak. It was likely the best chicken-fried steak he’d ever had, but his mind couldn’t latch onto that fact long enough for him to relax and enjoy it. It was too busy spinning with all the information Carter had given him.

He’d hoped thoughts of an intruder in the house were only Danae’s stressed imagination at work, but maybe that wasn’t the case. Clearly, Carter was concerned, and the man struck Zach as observant and intelligent—not at all the type to be taken in by dramatics or supposition. The disgruntled cook only supported Carter’s suspicions, and if Zach had to guess, he probably wasn’t the only resident Purcell had made promises to.

Then there was the fact he’d revealed about Danae when delivering the rest of the story—that she’d come to Calais pretending to be someone else. For what purpose did she come here? To see Purcell, the man who’d thrown the sisters away? If so, to what end? And why hide her true identity? Danae acted like a woman who’d seen trouble in her past—could it have followed her to town, as it did her sister?

He sighed and took another bite of his steak. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one in Calais looking for answers.

* * *

D
ANAE
STEPPED
OUT
of the tub and dried herself off before pulling on a thick, fuzzy robe, one of the few luxuries she’d afforded herself in the past year. She felt more relaxed, which was partially due to the hot bath, but probably mostly thanks to the two glasses of wine she’d consumed while soaking. She couldn’t remember a time when she was so stressed that she’d actually gotten out of the tub for a refill, and she hoped to never experience one again.

Her mind turned to dinner as she stepped into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to peruse her limited choices. Part of the perks of working at the café had been the free meals. Now that she was gainfully employed outside of the food industry, she was going to have to stock more than sandwich fixings and bagged salad.

She reached for the cheese and butter, figuring a grilled-cheese sandwich and chips were as good as anything else she had to choose from, and placed them on the counter next to a loaf of bread. As she reached for the skillet, which was hanging on a wall hook, her cell phone rang and she whirled around, her breath caught in her throat.

Idiot,
she chastised herself as she reached for the phone on the kitchen counter, her hour-long soaking completely undone in an instant.