Krewe of Hunters 2 Heart of Evil (25 page)

“I've seen her,” he admitted. “She brought me to you when you were out riding. But…I can't seem to get her to talk, to stay. Maybe she's ashamed, even though nothing was her fault.”

“Jake, she trusts you. She at least shows herself to you.”

“We'll be back soon. Take care until then, huh? Wait, hold on a minute!” The line fell silent and she frowned with concern. “Jake?”

“I'm here—Jackson just had a conversation with Detective Mack Colby. Seems that the remains of Toby and Marty yielded the same drugs—they were able to push the toxicology reports to the top level. You all be careful there, swear it!”

“Absolutely,” she promised him. “We're here, we're together, and we don't intend to let anything happen.”

“The best intentions,” Jake murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Stick together. I think that this killer is basically a coward—that's why he has to attack with a drug cocktail that's so potent it immediately renders his victims powerless. If you remain en masse, you'll be fine. We'll be there soon.”

“I'm glad,” she said softly. “Jake.”

“Yes?”

“You know, I was only afraid of you. I never stopped loving you.”

He was quiet for a minute; she wondered if she had spoken those words aloud.

“I've loved you forever,” he said and hung up.

Ashley looked at the phone and smiled. Walking back in, she found that Angela was washing dishes at the sink. “Hey,” Angela said. “I was going to bring
some tea up to Frazier, but I thought that you might want to.”

“Yes, thank you. I should sit with him for a few minutes. This has to be taking a terrible toll on him. Not because he isn't strong at heart, but just because—”

“He's in his eighties. The body wears down, and that's the way it is,” Angela said. “The water is just whistling now. You go on up. We'll keep at it on the computer.”

Ashley poured hot water over the leaves in the pot, turned off the stove and added a cup, sugar and milk to her tray. She started through the parlor; Whitney was sitting at the screens again, watching to see if there was any activity in the key areas.

“Hey, you know anything about this?” she called to Ashley.

Ashley walked over to her.

“Amundsen's Hay—Finest Feed. That's what that truck says,” Whitney said. “Is that a usual delivery?”

Ashley shrugged. “Yes, that's our feed store. When were they here?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I think the trunk—yep, there it goes, out the drive now.”

Ashley balanced the tray in one hand and dug her phone from her jeans pocket with the other. She speed-dialed Cliff's apartment.

“Hey,” she said, relieved when he answered.

“Hey, yourself.”

“And hey—as in hay for horses. We just got a delivery? I thought it was due yesterday,” Ashley said.

“It was, and it came. Seemed we had some kind of a double order. Amundsen's kid was driving the truck, and somehow it wound up on his books two days in a row. Rather than take back the order, they gave me a fifty-percent discount. I took it. Seemed like the thing to do right now,” Cliff said to her. “That all right?”

“Of course. That's always your decision. Those poor creatures would probably die if they had to depend on me.”

“Ah, Ashley. Our four-legged creatures love you.”

“Just checking that everything is fine,” Ashley said.

“Yep. And I'm a big old dude, Ashley. Don't be worrying about me.”

She laughed. “You're not old, and every female who comes out this way winds up with a crush on you. Don't go fishing for compliments.”

“Guess I'm just not feeling as if the love is going to come pouring in right now,” he said. “Seriously, all is good. I'm working in the stables. My eyes are open. I'll holler if I need anything.”

She hung up. The tea tray was starting to get heavy in her one hand. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and grasped the tray with both hands. “It's all good,” she told Whitney.

Whitney nodded and gave her attention back to the screens.

Ashley walked up the stairs to her grandfather's room.

“Hey, Ashley,” he said, opening his eyes when she entered. He'd been lying back on his pillow with his eyes closed. “I told Angela you all didn't have to bother.”

“Only so many names for so many of us to try to track,” Ashley said cheerfully.

He frowned.

“We think that it all stretches back to something that might have happened with one of the soldiers here linked to the original fight. Something that this latter-day idiot may see as a perceived slight that needs to be rectified.”

Frazier closed his eyes again. “I didn't think that anyone would actually be after Charles Osgood,” he said.

“Poor Charles.”

“Well,” Frazier told her, opening his eyes and plumping his pillow to rise against it for his tea, “I can say this. Charles was happy. We can be glad we gave him his moment in the sun, brief though it was.”

“Well, actually, Ramsay gave him his moment in the sun,” Ashley said.

Frazier smiled and nodded. “I never saw him happy, though. Never until that day.”

“True,” Ashley said. She was silent for a minute.

“Grampa, have you ever managed to talk with a ghost?” she asked him.

His lashes flickered over his eyes, and he was silent for a minute. “Ghosts—are they memories? My life is now filled them, and when we are accustomed to sorrow or loss, we learn to appreciate what shining moments we had. Your father! God, how he loved your mother. Well, you knew that. He'd have never have left you on purpose, but…I try to think that death for him was being with her. And that's how I find my peace.”

“That's beautiful, Grampa.”

He glanced at her wryly. “Well, it's all right. In all actuality, I wish we'd known that she was allergic to bees, and that it hadn't taken such a toll on your dad, and that they were still here with us. I ache a little every day. But I watch you—and I thank God for what I have.”

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “You're the best.”

“I like that,” he told her.

He sipped his tea. “Grampa.”

He set the cup down on his bedside table and closed his eyes.

“Grampa?”

He waved a hand in the air. “Ghosts exist. There. If they can reach you, you are among the lucky. I want there to be ghosts. I want to talk to my son again. I'd love a chance to tell my own father what a good man he was and what a rebellious rotten kid I was.
But they're gone. And if they're not, they don't reach out to me. So, I carry on conversations daily in my head. I tell your mother how beautiful you are and how good you are to your old grandfather. I tell your dad how proud he'd be of you. Do they hear me? God knows.

“Cherish your ghosts, child. Real or in your head. Cherish them. Now, go work with those young people below, and let me get some sleep.”

She smiled, and sat in the chair at his bedside.

He opened his eyes again. “What?”

She laughed. “I just want to be near you for a few minutes.”

He reached for her hand. She grasped his.

She sat with him in silence, and in time, she heard his even breathing. He was napping.

She almost dozed with him herself. Then her cell phone buzzed, and she jumped up quickly, hurrying out to the hall to answer it.

When she answered it, there was no one there.

She looked at the caller ID. Beth.

She dialed back, feeling a sense of relief. Beth had already made it to New York.

Once again, she got nothing but voice mail.

She left a message. “Beth! It's Ashley. I think you're there, because you called me. But now you're not answering. Call me. Now you got me worried.”

She hung up. She found herself looking at the attic stairs. Tempted, she walked up and stood in the room again.

“You were with me this morning!” she said. “Marshall started my dream, but you were with me this morning. You made me see—but not clearly enough. Please, help me.”

She realized that dusk was coming, falling softly and surely beyond the garret window, the window from which Emma had watched her beloved Marshall fall in a bayonet attack.

But Emma was not going to appear for her, or so it seemed. Sighing, she flicked on one of the small lights over a display cabinet containing family letters and other artifacts. She slid open the case, thankful now that the cases were never locked—which, of course, had made it easy for the killer to take the Enfield and the bayonet.

She picked up a letter and began to read it. She couldn't make out who it had been written to; the script was all but illegible. She'd catalogued everything in the room, and had reviewed them recently for the team, but she'd never read this one in depth. It was too difficult to decipher. She narrowed her eyes, hoping that swirly cursive would become easier to read, but she couldn't really tell. She saw that it was signed on the bottom—twice. Ramsay Clayton…and there was another name. The letter, she finally realized, had been written to Ginnie. Ginnie H. And it had been signed by Ramsay Clayton—and someone else. Either someone had written the letter for Ramsay Clayton, or Ramsay Clayton had written it for someone else. She thought that she saw an oddly
shaped
4
beneath the name Ramsay Clayton. “My dear wife,” she read aloud. “Forgive that this is not my hand; it has been broken in a ski…ski accident?” she said, and almost laughed at herself. “Skirmish! It says skirmish.”

The sound of her own words faded away. She turned and saw her.

Emma was pale and almost a shadow against the far wall, where she had once urged her children to gather.

“Help me,” Ashley whispered. “Please, only you know!”

The phantom figure of Emma started to move toward her. She was going to speak. She seemed to be pointing toward the letter.

Ashley's phone began to ring again. She cursed the sound; the phantom figure coming toward her evaporated into thin air. She set the letter down in the case as she answered the phone.

She answered tersely. “Hello?”

The line went dead again. She muted the phone and tried calling back quickly, but she got her friend's voice mail again. At least she was able to call. She looked around, but saw nothing but the shadows of the darkening day fill the room. “Please,” she said softly, “Please, come back.”

 

Cliff stopped raking hay off the main floor and looked up. Varina was whinnying loudly, as if she was in distress.

Once Varina started up, Jeff decided he was going to make some noise, too.

“Hey, girl, what's the problem?” he asked. He walked over to pat the horse, gentle as he stroked the softness of her nose. “It's all right, girl, it's all right.”

She tossed her head back, unappeased by his words.

“Calm down, girl. You're the one they all look to here, just like your mistress, you know. Calm down.”

The horse let him soothe her. Then the mare gave another toss of her head again, letting out another loud whinny.

On the other side of the stables, Tigger grew restless. Cliff heard something like a bang from his stall, and he walked over to soothe the young gelding. “Tigger, don't you go getting feisty on me, now. These are tiring days, boy.”

He hoped that kick hadn't broken off part of the stall's side. He couldn't see. It was getting dark. He cursed and went to flick on the overhead bulb that would light up the entire stables.

Though the light banished the shadows, he was still uneasy. He stepped back into his apartment for his shotgun and came out again, looking around.

The horses were still restless.

 

Ashley stood in the near darkness when she felt the tremor of her phone. She had just about thought that she had seen a figure growing from the shadows.

“Damn it!” she swore. She glanced at the caller ID. “Beth!”

“What is it, where the hell are you that this number keeps going dead?” she said aloud. She punched the return key.

This time, there was a click.

“Beth, damn! This has been driving me crazy. Where are you? Are you having fun in the city?” she said, realizing she was speaking in a rush.

There was silence at the other end, and then the sound of breathing.

“Beth?”

A throaty, masculine voice came to her—not Beth's.

“Ashley.”

“Who is this? Where is Beth?”

The chuckle that sounded in her ears seemed barely human. She shook her head. There was no devil on the other end of the line. There was a human monster, and she had to be very careful now.

“What do you want? Who is this? Where is Beth?” she asked again.

“Beth is still alive.”

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“I can see you,” the voice said.

She froze. “If you can see me, where am I?” she demanded.

Her heart was racing; she wanted to find Angela and the others, but she was afraid that he really did see her.

And that he really had Beth.

The chuckle came to her again; the chuckle that seemed to make her heart stop and her blood turn to ice.

“You're in the attic,” he said.

It was dark here; he couldn't possibly see her now.

“No, I'm not. Actually, I'm in the parlor, and everyone around me can hear the call,” she said.

The laugh—more irritated now. “You're in the attic, and if you talk to any of the people in that house with you, Beth is going to die. You know that I'll do it. And you know that I don't care how. I can cut her, I can shoot her…drown her. She's going to die, and it will be all your fault.”

She tried to control her sense of raw panic and fear. She had to be sensible. There was a chance that Beth was already dead.

“You know that I have her. I have her phone,” he said.