The Smoky Mountain Mist (7 page)

R
ACHEL
HADN
’
T
PLANNED
to take a nap. She had felt tired but not particularly sleepy when she’d climbed the stairs to her room on the second floor, but the whisper of rain against the windows and the long and stressful day colluded to lull her to sleep within minutes of settling on the chaise lounge in the corner of her bedroom.

When she next opened her eyes, the gloom outside had gone from gray to inky black, and the room was cold enough to give her a chill. She rose from the chaise, stretching her stiffened muscles, and started toward the bathroom when she heard it.

Music.

Seth must have taken her at her word and turned on the stereo system, she thought, surprised by his choice of music. She hadn’t figured him for a Chopin fan.

Then she recognized the tune. Nocturne Opus 9, Number 2. It had been her mother’s favorite.

It had been playing the night she’d died.

Rachel walked slowly toward the bedroom door, her gut tightening with dread. There were no Chopin CDs in the house. What the police hadn’t taken as evidence, her father had gotten rid of shortly after her mother’s death.

How had Seth found anything to play?

Did he know about how her mother had died? He might know the mode of her death, of course—the suicide had made the papers—but the gory details had never showed up in the news or even in small-town gossip. The police and the coroner had been scrupulously discreet, from everything her father had told her of the aftermath of her mother’s death.

So how could he know about the music?

She pushed open the door. And stopped suddenly in the center of the hall as she realized the music wasn’t coming from the den below.

It was coming from the attic above.

Acid fear bubbled in her throat, forcing her to swallow convulsively. Was she imagining the slow, plaintive strains of piano music floating down from above?

Was she reliving the night of her mother’s death, the way she had relived it in a thousand nightmares?

She had heard music that night as well, swelling through the otherwise silent house. It had awakened her from a dead sleep, loud enough to rip through the fabric of her tearstained dreams.

She’d felt nothing but anger at the sound. Anger at her mother’s harsh words, at the stubborn refusal to see things her way. She’d been fifteen and pushing against the fences of her childhood. Her father had been the more reasonable of her parents, in her eyes at least. He’d recognized her need to unfurl her wings and fly now and then.

Her mother had just wanted her to stay in the safe nest she’d built for her only child.

A nest that was smothering her to death.

She’d hated the sound of that music, the piercing trills and the waltz cadence. She’d hated how loud it was, seeming to shake the walls and shatter her brain cells.

Or maybe that had just been how it had seemed afterward. After she’d climbed the ladder up to the attic and seen her mother swaying to the music, her gaze lifted toward the unseen heavens, one hand waving in rhythm and the other closed around the butt of George Davenport’s Colt .45 pistol.

Terror stealing her breath, Rachel stared up at the ladder. The very thought of climbing into the attic was enough to make beads of sweat break out across her forehead and slither down her neck like liquid fear.

But she had to know. Not knowing was worse, somehow.

Biting her lip so hard she feared she’d made it bleed, Rachel reached up and pulled the cord that lowered the ladder to the attic. Music spilled out along with the ladder, louder than before. Not the rafter-rattling decibels of her memories but loud enough.

Swallowing hard, she started to climb the ladder, clinging to the wooden rungs as if her life depended on it.

She’d had no warning of what she’d find that night. There were things she’d gotten used to about her mother—her obsession with cleanliness, her moodiness, her occasional outbursts of anger—but none of those things had seemed more than the normal foibles of life.

Maybe her father had sheltered her from the worst of it. Or maybe it wasn’t as bad when her father was around. But he’d gone on a business trip, one that had eventually led to his securing the capital to start his own trucking business after working in truck fleet sales for most of his adult life. He was due back that night, but he’d been gone for almost a week.

Maybe a week had been all it had taken for her father’s palliative influence to wear off.

Rachel tried to put the memories out of her head as she forced herself up the final few rungs and stepped into the attic. But the memories rose to slap her in the face.

A plastic drop cloth lay on the hard plank floor of the attic, just as it had that night. And across the drop cloth, blood splashed in crimson streaks and puddles.

Fresh blood.

* * *

S
ETH
HAD
FOUND
an old Dick Francis novel in one of the bookshelves and settled down to read, but his weariness and the rain’s relentless cadence made it hard to stay awake. He’d closed his eyes for just a moment and suddenly he was back on the road to Smoky Joe’s Saloon, the steel girders of Purgatory Bridge gleaming in his headlights.

He parked behind Rachel’s Honda and got out, deeply aware of the brisk, cool wind whipping his hair and his clothes. It was strong. Too strong. It would fling Rachel right off the bridge if he didn’t get to her.

But no matter how far he walked, she was still a few steps farther away, dancing gracefully along the narrow girder as if she were walking a tightwire. Her arms were out, her face raised to the sky, and she was humming a tune, something slow and vaguely familiar, like one of the classical pieces his sister had learned in her music class at school and tried to pick out on the old, out-of-tune upright piano that had belonged to his grandmother.

Suddenly, Rachel turned to look straight at him, her eyes wide and glittering in the faint light coming from the honky-tonk down the road.

“You can’t save us all,” she said.

A gust of wind slammed into his back, knocking him off balance and catching Rachel’s clothes up in its swirling wake, flapping them like a sail. She lost her balance slowly, almost gracefully, and even though he threw himself forward, he couldn’t stop her fall.

He crashed into the girder rail in time to hear her scream. It seemed to grow louder and louder, even as she fell farther and farther away. The thirty-foot gorge became a bottomless chasm, and the scream went on and on....

He woke with a start, just in time to hear a scream cut off, followed by dreadful silence.

Chapter Seven

Taking the stairs two at a time, Seth reached the second-floor landing in seconds. Down the hall, Rachel lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of a ladder dropped down from an opening in the ceiling.

“Rachel!” Ignoring the aches and pains playing chase through his joints and muscles, he hurried to her side, nearly wilting with relief when she sat up immediately, staring at him with wide, scared eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded winded. “I don’t know if I’m okay.”

She looked terrified, as if she’d been chased down the ladder by a monster. Tremors rolled through her slim body like a dozen small earthquakes going on inside her, making her teeth rattle. Her fingers dug into his arms.

He wrapped her in a bear hug, cocooning her against his body. She melted into him, clinging like a child.

What the hell had she seen?

“I need to go downstairs,” she moaned. “Please, I can’t be up here.”

He helped her to her feet and led her down to the den, looking around desperately for a bar service. “Do you have any brandy?”

She shook her head as she sat on the sofa. “Dad had liver cancer. We all stopped drinking after the diagnosis.”

Of course.
“Okay, well, maybe some hot tea.”

As he started to get up from where he crouched in front of her, she grabbed his hands and held him in place. “Don’t go.”

“Okay.” He settled back into his crouch, stroking her cold fingers between his. “Can you at least tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

But he could see she did know. She just didn’t want to tell him.

A hank of hair had fallen into her face, hiding half her expression from him. He pushed it gently back behind her ear. “Maybe you had a bad dream?”

She shook her head.

“Not a dream?”

She looked less certain this time when she shook her head. “I don’t think it was. I’ve never sleepwalked before.”

“Then it probably wasn’t a dream,” he agreed. The concession didn’t seem to give her much comfort. “Do you remember why you went up the ladder? Does it lead to the attic?”

She nodded. “I was dozing. And then I heard the music.”

A snippet of memory flashed in his head. Rachel, gliding precariously along the girder rail, humming a song to herself.

“Was it this song?” he asked, humming a few notes.

Her head whipped up, her eyes locking with his. “How did you know?”

The anger in her tone caught him off guard, and he had to put one hand on the sofa to keep from toppling over. “I dreamed it. Just a minute ago.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s Chopin,” she said tightly. “A nocturne. I heard it coming from the attic.”

“So you went up to the attic to see where the music was coming from?”

Her lips trembled, and the bracing anger he’d seen in her blue eyes melted into dread. “I went up because I already knew where it was coming from.”

He didn’t know what she meant. “What did you find?”

“Everything but the body.” Her gaze wandered, settling on some point far away.

He stared at her with alarm. “What body?”

Her gaze snapped back to his. “My mother’s.”

Letting her words sink in, he tried to remember what he knew about her mother’s death. It had happened when she was young. He’d been a teenager himself, on the cusp of learning an exciting if larcenous new life at the feet of Cleve Calhoun. The death of some rich woman on the east side of town hadn’t registered.

She’d killed herself, he knew. No other details had ever come out, so he’d figured she’d taken pills or slit her wrists or something.

If she’d killed herself in the attic, maybe she’d hung herself. “When you say everything was there but the body—”

“I mean everything,” she said flatly. Her voice had gained strength, and her trembling had eased. “There was a plastic drop sheet, just like that night. She hated messes, so she was determined not to make one, even when—” Rachel stopped short, her throat bobbing as she swallowed hard. “The music playing was Chopin’s nocturne. And afterward—the blood—”

Oh my God,
he thought.
She saw it.

“Did you find her?” he asked gently, hoping that was the extent of what she’d experienced that night, as bad as it must have been.

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I saw it happen.”

He stared back at her a moment, finally understanding her reaction to whatever she’d witnessed up in the attic. “Oh, Rachel.”

She looked away from him. “I saw it again. I know I saw it.”

But she wasn’t sure, he realized. She was doubting herself. Why?

“Do you want me to go take a look?” he offered.

Her gaze whipped back around to his. “You think I’ve lost my mind.”

He didn’t think that, although given her experience in the attic years ago and the stresses of the past few days, he had to wonder if she’d misinterpreted whatever it was she’d seen. “I just think I should take a look. Maybe there’s an intruder in the house.”

The idea of a third party in the house seemed not to have occurred to her, which made Seth wonder if she suspected him of trying to trick her. The wary looks she was sending his way weren’t exactly reassuring. “I’ll go with you.”

He frowned. “Are you sure?”

She nodded quickly, her eyes narrowing.

It was a test, he realized. He’d been with her ever since she’d fallen out of the attic, so if he were the culprit, everything would be as she’d left it.

It was a chance he’d take. If someone was trying to gaslight her, he might still be in the house. They might still be in danger.

He climbed the ladder first. She waited until he’d stepped into the attic to start up after him, clutching the rungs with whitened knuckles. She moved slowly, with care, giving him a few seconds to view the room without any comment from her.

It was a small space, rectangular, with a steeply peaked ceiling of exposed rafters. The floor was hardwood planks, unpolished and mostly unfinished, though in the center of the room, large splotches and splashes of dark red wood stain marred the planks.

He looked doubtfully at the stain. In the dim light from the single bare overhead bulb, the splotches of red
did
look like blood. But what about the drop cloth? That was a pretty significant detail for her to have conjured up with her imagination.

Except she hadn’t, had she? She’d told him the drop cloth had existed. In the past, on the night of her mother’s suicide.

“No.” Behind him, Rachel let out a low moan.

He turned to find her staring at the wood stain, her head shaking from side to side.

“I saw the drop cloth,” she said. “I did. And there was blood. Wet blood.”

Seth looked back at the stain. It was clearly dry. No one would ever mistake it for wet blood. So either Rachel had imagined everything—

Or someone had been here in the attic with her, hiding, and removed the evidence after she’d run away from the terrifying sight.

“You don’t believe me,” she accused, color rising in her cheeks. “You think I’m crazy.”

“No, I don’t,” he said firmly, hiding his doubts. Until this moment, except when she was clearly under the influence of some sort of drug, Rachel had seemed completely sane and lucid. Plus, he’d worked for her company for over a year now and watched her tackle the tasks of learning her father’s lifework with determination and tenacity.

She deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Where was the drop cloth?” he asked.

She waved toward the stained area. “Right there. Over that stain. It was stretched out flat, covered with blood. Splotches and puddles. Still wet.”

She walked slowly to the center of the floor, gazing down at the stain. Her troubled expression made his chest tighten. “I didn’t imagine it. I know I didn’t.”

Okay, Hammond, think. If you were trying to con her into believing she’d lost her mind, how would you go about it?

“Who has access to the house?”

She relaxed a little at his pragmatic question. “I do, of course. My stepmother, but she’s in North Carolina. Her sister lives in Wilmington, and Diane went to spend a couple of weeks with her. I think my stepbrother, Paul, probably has a key. And my father used to keep a key in his office at the trucking company in case one of us locked ourselves out and there wasn’t anyone else around.”

“Do you know if it’s still there?”

“I don’t know. I was planning to go through my dad’s office next week and see if there was anything else that needed to be handled.” Grief darkened her eyes.

Impulsively, he pulled her into his arms.

She came willingly, pressing her face against the side of his throat. When she drew away from him, she seemed steadier on her feet. “You think someone set me up?”

“I’ve been asking myself what steps I’d take to try to convince you that you were losing your mind.”

“You think that’s what’s going on?”

“Look at you just a few minutes ago. Shaking like a leaf and not sure you could trust your own eyes.”

She looked stricken. Her reaction piqued his curiosity, but he kept his questions to himself. If it was something he needed to know, she’d tell him soon enough.

“Remember how I told you I thought those murders were part of trying to target you?”

She nodded, her expression guarded.

“What if the goal was to make you appear crazy?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes flickered with comprehension. It made sense to her, he realized. Maybe even seemed inevitable.

“Your mother was already dead, and your father was dying. If I were ruthless and wanted to make you doubt your sanity, I’d take steps to isolate you even further. I’d take away your support system. Amelia Sanderson had been your friend since you were both in college, right?” He had learned that much while nosing around town about the murders.

She nodded, a bleak look in her wintry eyes.

“April Billings was your first hire, and you saw a lot of yourself in her, didn’t you?” He could tell by the shift in her expression that he’d gotten it right. He usually did, he thought with a hint of shame. It had been one of his most useful talents, his ability to read people, relationships and situations. “And you’d made Coral Vines your own personal rehabilitation project. You’d helped her find a grief counselor to deal with her pain about her husband’s death. I bet you’d even given her information about a twelve-step program for her alcohol addiction.”

“How do you know this?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“I used to do this for a living. Reading people. Finding out their secrets and figuring out their relationships so I could use the knowledge to my advantage.”

She couldn’t stop her lip from curling with distaste, though she schooled her expression quickly. It didn’t matter. He felt enough disgust for his past for the both of them. “And Marjorie was like a mom to me,” she added, filling in the next obvious blank. “My mentor.”

“But you still didn’t break, did you?” He touched her face before he realized he was going to. He dropped his hand quickly, bracing himself for her rebuke.

But all she did was smile a shaky smile. “No, I didn’t break.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence you were drugged the night of your father’s funeral. You were as vulnerable as you’d ever been at that moment, I would guess. He couldn’t let the opportunity pass.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. It never has. Your sister said she thought these murders were about me, and you said it, too, but why? Why would you think it? Just because I knew them?” She shook her head, clearly not wanting to believe it. “I saw the stories in the papers—Mark Bramlett was connected to serial murders in Nashville, too. What makes you think he was anything more than a sick freak who got off on killing women? Why does everyone think someone hired him?”

She didn’t know about Mark Bramlett’s last words, he realized. The police hadn’t told her.

“I was there when Mark Bramlett died,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“I’d tracked down the truck Bramlett used for the murders to help Sutton Calhoun find Ivy Hawkins. You remember Sutton, right? The guy who was investigating April Billings’s murder?”

She nodded. “Yeah, he and Ivy came to me for a list of the trucks we rented out. That’s how they found Bramlett.”

“I wanted to know why Bramlett killed those women. I knew them all, you know. Amelia was always kind to me, and she didn’t have to be. April Billings was full of life and so much potential. I grew up with Coral Vines on Smoky Ridge. She was the sweetest kid there ever was, and after her husband died, I tried to help her out with things around her house she couldn’t do herself.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Marjorie Kenner tried to steer me right, back in school. I didn’t listen, but I never forgot that she tried.” He thought about the kindhearted high school librarian who’d fought for his soul and lost. “I wanted justice for them, too. I wanted to see Bramlett pay.”

“Did you?”

He nodded slowly. “I watched him die. But before he went, he said something.”

She closed her hand around his wrist, her fingers digging urgently into his flesh. “What?”

“I’d told Ivy Hawkins I thought you were his real target. And as he died, he told her I was right. He said, ‘It’s all about the girl.’”

Rachel looked horrified. “He said that? Why did no one tell me?”

“I don’t know. But I can probably get in touch with Ivy Hawkins if you want confirmation.”

Rachel turned away from him, her gaze moving over the attic, settling finally on a darkened corner. “I wonder—” She walked toward the corner, leaving Seth to catch up. “Do you have a light?”

He pulled his keys from his pocket and engaged the small flashlight he kept on the keychain. The narrow beam of light drove shadows out of the dark corner, revealing another trapdoor in the attic floor.

And wedged in the narrow seam of the door was a thin piece of torn plastic.

As Rachel reached out for it, Seth caught her hand. “Fingerprints.”

She looked up at him, a gleam of relief in her eyes. “It’s from the drop cloth. It was really here.” She tried to tug the door open, but it didn’t budge.