Deadly Harvest (35 page)

“Zachary Flynn, Miss MacElroy,” Zach said politely. “Jeremy's brother.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, looking him up and down. “Well, you just go on into the kitchen over there while I get Rowenna decked out. I made biscuits, and there's coffee on the stove. Unless you prefer tea?”

“Coffee is fine by me,” Zach said, and started in the direction of the kitchen.

“You. Upstairs,” Ginny said.

As Rowenna obediently followed orders, she noticed that Zach hadn't gone to the kitchen after all. He was silently returning to the foyer—and crossing through to Dr. MacElroy's study.

Upstairs, Ginny chattered on about everything and nothing. The festival was so much work, but it was good for tourism. It was terrible, just terrible, all those women dying right under their noses. Thank God Jeremy was such a nice young man. He listened to her and checked out the lights.

Rowenna found herself hoping it wasn't going to be too cold for the duration of the festival. The harvest cape itself—rich brown velvet with fall leaves cut from satin sewn on it—was warm. But beneath it, over brown tights and a bodysuit, the queen's gown was pure gauze, scattered here and there with more satin leaves. At least there were brown fur-lined boots to go with it, and long, fur-trimmed brown gloves, as well.

When Rowenna was fully dressed, Ginny stepped back. “Oh,” she said, clapping her hands together in delight. “You're perfect. Absolutely perfect. Let's show Mr. Flynn, shall we?”

Had Zach had time to finish searching through the doctor's desk? Rowenna wondered.

“I think we should keep the outfit a surprise,” Rowenna said.

“If you say so,” Ginny said with a sigh. “If only I could look like that. I did, once, of course. I was quite beautiful in my youth.”

“You're still beautiful,” Rowenna assured her.

She took her time getting dressed again.

When they got downstairs, Zach was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. “Ginny, your back lock has been jimmied,” he told her. “Did you know?”

“What?”

He waved for them to follow him through to the kitchen and over to the back door. There were marks on the door and the frame, and the lock was broken.

“Oh, my God!” Ginny gasped. “Someone broke in here.”

“I've called in the police—and a locksmith,” Zach told her. “With your permission, I'll walk through the rest of the house and just make sure things look secure.”

Ginny nodded fervently. “Do you think someone is hiding in here now?” she asked, clutching Rowenna's arm.

“Zach will make sure you're safe,” Rowenna assured Ginny. “But I'm sure whoever did this is long gone.”

She couldn't believe Zach had broken the lock just to get a chance to inspect the house. That was going a little overboard, Rowenna thought.

But she didn't give him away.

She let Ginny cling to her, and by the time Zach finished his inspection, a policeman was at the door. Zach explained the situation, and they left Ginny in the hands of the officer. On their way out, they saw the locksmith's truck arriving.

“That was quite a ruse,” she told him. “What happens when they find your fingerprints all over that lock?”

He looked at her in surprise, his brows drawn together very much the way Jeremy's often were. “That wasn't a ruse, and they won't find my fingerprints. Her house really was broken into.”

“What?”

“It probably happened last night, and I think it was because someone was planting this. I found it on the doctor's desk.”

He tossed something on her lap. It was a book about New England funerary art, the same book she owned and hadn't been able to find. She looked at him in shock. Was this in fact her copy? If so, why would someone take it from her house and leave it on Doc MacElroy's desk?

Or was the book Mary Johnstone's? Had Doc MacElroy really had it in his own possession, or was someone out there trying to frame both Adam
and
the doctor?

L
eaving Joe and the hospital behind, Jeremy was just about to call Zach when his phone rang.

He didn't know the number, but he recognized the area code. Southern California.

“Eric Rolfe?” he asked as he flipped the phone open.

“Yeah,” Eric said in surprise. “Uh, yeah…Listen,” he said bluntly, “can you meet me? Now. Right away? It's urgent.”

“Where are you?”

“Meet me at the shop—Adam and Eve's shop.”

“The cops locked it up last night.”

“No, you have to come to the back. Through the alley by the movie theater.”

Since he was personally convinced that Adam was innocent, and since Eric Rolfe was high on his list of suspects, Jeremy decided meeting the man made sense. But he intended to be careful. Very careful.

He followed Eric's directions. He had never realized just how many crevices and hidey-holes there were in the area. When he reached the back of what he was certain had to be the right shop, there was no one there. But then the back door opened.

Eric Rolfe popped his head out. “Come in,” he said in a whisper. “Quick.”

His gun was holstered beneath his jacket, so, alert and ready for anything, Jeremy went in.

They were in a storeroom. Boxes were everywhere, along with an old Victorian sofa and a tiny refrigerator. Suddenly someone started to emerge from a curtained dressing room, and Jeremy nearly reached for his gun, then stopped in shock.

It was Eve.

“Eve, what the hell are you doing here?” Jeremy asked her softy. “The cops are looking for you everywhere.”

“I know. And I'm sorry. But…this is all my fault. I have to clear my husband. Somehow.”

He looked at her, waiting for her to explain.

“I told Rowenna that I thought that he might be…Oh, God, how horrible of me. And then she told you, and you told the cops, and…” She trailed off on a wail.

“No, Eve. We found your store card—with what look likes gum on it—by the remains of another dead woman,” Jeremy told her. “What suddenly changed your mind about Adam—and why are you hiding?”

“Before Adam went to see Rowenna, we'd had another fight. He told me that even though he'd been reading up on Satanism and thought we should carry books about it, he didn't know where that spell book had come from—he'd never seen it before. And I didn't believe him at first, but then when Rowenna came and said Adam should be there, and she left…and he still didn't come back, and I was worried, so I went out to look for him myself, only I guess I was so upset I forgot to lock the door…and then I came back, but there were cops everywhere, so I got scared and hid. And then this morning I was going to keep looking for him, but I saw in the paper that they found him. But he's not guilty. Jeremy, you have to prove that he's not guilty. And you have to keep looking for that woman, for your friend's wife.”

“I read the spell book, too,” Eric said, clearing his throat. “Eve called me this morning. Sorry. I told her she should call you. You have to read it yourself, though. It's all about sacrificing seven women and becoming Satan. And there are spells for illusion and hypnotism, so you can put the woman under your power.” Eric handed him the book.

“There's a secret page,” he said. “At the back.”

Jeremy found the page. It showed an artist's rendering of the devil, with six dead woman staked up in front of him. They were decked in leaves, and their necks were broken. Behind the devil stood a woman who appeared to be his handmaiden. Half her face was old and decrepit; half seemed to be regaining youth and beauty as the devil came into his power.

Another woman stood before the devil, wearing a crown and a cloak of leaves, and looking toward heaven, as if for salvation.

But the devil was reaching for her.

“I'm not sure what it means,” Eric said, “Except that once again there are seven victims.”

The seventh victim was beautiful. There was something especially innocent and pure about her as she looked skyward.

She was decked in leaves and wearing a crown.

She was the harvest queen.

Terrified, Jeremy reached for his phone.

 

Zach's phone was ringing. He glanced at it.

“Jeremy?” Rowenna asked.

“No, our older brother, Aidan,” Zach said. “I'll take it out here. You go on in, I'll be right with you. I'll give Jeremy a call, too, let him know where we are, what we're up to.”

She nodded and headed into the museum.

June Eagle was at the desk. “A friend of mine is right behind me. Send him on back, will you, please?” Rowenna asked as June handed her the key.

“Sure. Dan is around somewhere,” June said. “If I see him, I'll tell him that you two are going to be back there. You know how he is about that reading room.”

Rowenna nodded, then made her way through the exhibits toward the back of the museum.

She didn't want to look at the Harvest Man or the killers who'd come after him. Just entering the area where the tableau stood made her skin crawl now. But she had to go past them to reach the reading room.

As she hurried through, she noticed that figure of Andrew Cunningham, in his eighteenth-century garb and high hat, seemed to have moved, as if he'd turned to watch people go by. She shuddered and averted her eyes, hurrying on and reminding herself that Zach was right behind her and Dan might already be in the reading room.

The reading room door was open.

She was glad to see that books she'd been reading yesterday were still lying on the table, so it would be easy to show Zach what she had found. She wandered over to the bookshelf, looking for something similar to the spell book Adam had been reading. As she searched the titles, she gasped.

Her heartbeat quickening, she pulled out the guide to local funerary art.

Her phone started to ring, and as she fumbled in her bag to retrieve it, she heard a sound behind her, turned…and gasped.

The wax figure of Andrew Cunningham hadn't just turned, it had come to life.

It was standing right there behind her, but with a face she knew.

She opened her mouth to scream, but she was too late.

Before she had a chance to make a sound, Cunningham slammed her in the head with the butt of an eighteenth-century hunting rifle.

She fell to the floor, a stygian darkness closing in.

 

Rowenna hadn't answered her phone. Just as Jeremy was about to call Zach, his phone started ringing. Brad.

“Brad, what is it? And hurry. I have to reach my brother.”

“You're not going to believe this, but I found a woman in Memphis who not only saw who Dinah Green was talking to in the bar, but who she was with outside it that night,” Brad said.

“Who?”

“Adam and Eve Llewellyn, Eric Rolfe, Dan Mie and Dr. MacElroy.”

Jeremy's heart tightened in his chest. Five people.

Adam was in custody. Eve and Eric were right there with him, staring at him anxiously.

That left two people.

“Good work, Brad. I'll call you back as soon as I can. I have to reach Zach.”

He hung up without another word and was about to dial Zach, but his phone rang again. His brother had beaten him to the punch.

“Zach, where are you?”

“The History Museum. Listen, Joe just called me—your number went to voice mail. Long story, but Brisbin's scrubland belongs to Ginny MacElroy.”

“Ginny?” Jeremy said, stunned. That meant Nick MacElroy had access to it, as well. And he was local. He was bound to know the history of the place.

The house had been burned to the ground.

But houses had basements.

“Zach, we've got to get out there. Where are you now?”

“Outside in front of the History Museum. Where are you?”

“Around the corner. I'll meet you there.”

“I'll go in and get Rowenna,” Zach said.

Eric and Eve were staring at him as he hung up. “I need to go meet my brother and Rowenna,” Jeremy said. “Rowenna…she's the harvest queen. We thought he had seven—the five he'd already killed, Mary Johnstone…and you, Eve.”

“Oh, my God…” Eve breathed.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “But it's Rowenna he wants for his finale. The harvest queen.”

“So who owns the property?”

“Ginny MacElroy.”

“Ginny? You think
Ginny
did it?” Eric looked ready to laugh at the ludicrousness of the idea.

“No. I think it's the doctor,” Jeremy said.

“No, it can't be,” Eric protested.

“Why not?”

“I told you, the eyes…I saw Damien. And it wasn't Dr. MacElroy. MacElroy is too old. I know it wasn't him.”

Eve gasped. “It's Dan,” she breathed. “Dan Mie.”

“Dan Mie,” Jeremy repeated, scrambling the letters in his mind to form the name Damien.

“Oh, God,” he said.

“I've got to get out to the old Brisbin property. You two, stay here. Eric, call Joe and tell him Eve's okay, and that the old Brisbin property is connected to this somehow.”

His phone rang again. Zach.

“Zach, what? I'm on my way.”

“It's Rowenna. She's gone. I don't know how—no one used the emergency exit, and the girl at the desk swears there's only one other way in and out, but she's gone. The police are on their way, but you've got to get the hell over here now!”

 

The blackness began to recede, and she thought she heard people talking. She looked up and saw the late autumn sky, a soft gray-blue punctuated with clouds, and she could feel the gentle touch of the breeze.

She was lying on something soft and yet firm, redolent of growing things.

The earth.

She was lying with her hands folded corpse-fashion over her chest, and she had the sense that she was in the graveyard, on a grave. She blinked and realized it wasn't real, and yet she could feel the grass beneath her, she could smell roasting chestnuts at a stand not far away.

She felt rather than saw the shadow coming.

“You're not real,” she said. Her voice was weak, and her head was pounding.

Then he was there. She knew him, even though he was wearing a turban, makeup and a magnificent cloak. He looked so different. Handsome, which was funny, she thought hysterically, because she had never thought of him as at all good-looking. “Dan,” she breathed.

“Not Dan,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Damien, the Harvest Man, and I'm about to rule the world. I won't just worship Satan, I will
be
him in the flesh.”

She was amazed to hear herself laugh, but all the time, her mind was racing. She had to buy time, had to keep him talking, had to find a way to throw him off balance. “Damien. Dan Mie. It's an anagram. Was that what made you think you were supposed to be the Devil's heir? When you figured out that you could turn your name into his? Or was it the fact that you were always a nobody? You needed something to make you feel important, so you decided to be the Devil?”

She could tell from his expression that she had found his weak spot. She was making him angry. Good. Angry people got careless. They made mistakes.

Right. Like there was any salvation for her now. She didn't know where she was. She couldn't really be in the cemetery, because there would be people around, so somehow he had created an illusion.

So where
was
she?

She fought with her own mind, trying to dispel the fantasy he had created and let reality in.

She felt the breeze, and suddenly she wasn't lying down. She was running. She was in a cornfield, running for her life. The stalks bent as she forced her way through them. The sky overhead was steel-gray, and the very heavens seemed to rumble and roar.

Crows screamed, dive-bombing her, their calls deafening as they darted around her, chasing her.

Leading her to the stake where her life would end.

No!

It was another illusion. She had to fight it.

She closed her eyes, ignoring everything but her sense of touch. She felt the ropes that were binding her arms. She felt the cold, and felt the dankness of the air. Felt the hard-packed earth beneath her.

She was somewhere…underground. In a grave?

Had she been buried alive?

No, that wasn't the Harvest Man's way. She opened her eyes and looked around her.

Damien was gone. She could hear him, though. He wasn't far away. He was talking to someone. She could hear a low, muted voice replying to him. A feminine voice.