Devil's Night (31 page)

During the whole exchange, Henry had been hunched over the bar, scribbling notes on a seemingly endless series of cocktail napkins. Glancing up from them, he asked, “How did you find out about it?”

“Through someone at the realty firm who sold Mr. Fanelli the land. David Brandt is his name. He plays golf with the mayor. Said it might be a good way to introduce myself to some of the other business owners here.”

Kat assumed Lucia Trapani had made a very good impression, at least to the men in the room. She was undeniably beautiful, with just a hint of maturity that made her seem attainable. The women, however, probably hated her. Women such as Lucia excelled at making other women feel inferior.

“What time did you arrive at the fund-raiser?” she asked.

“Around ten,” Lucia said, taking another sip of bourbon.

“So you went to the history museum
before
the fund-raiser?”

Lucia stopped mid-sip. Lowering her glass, she looked at Kat with a combination of admiration and annoyance.
At last,
her expression seemed to say,
a formidable opponent.

“How did you know?”

“Your heels,” Kat told her. “The neighbors across the street from the museum heard them around nine last night. Next time you’re thinking about sneaking around town, it might be a good idea to wear flats.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Lucia said.

“Then what were you doing?” It was Henry this time, giving Kat a break from asking all the questions.

“Stopping by the museum, of course.”

“Wasn’t it closed?” Kat said, taking over again.

“I had an appointment of sorts.”

“With Constance Bishop?”

“That’s correct. We had some business to discuss.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why the bitch was trying to blackmail Mr. Fanelli.”

It wasn’t the answer Kat had been expecting. She recoiled in surprise, knocking over her glass of water in the process. Liquid rushed over the bar and landed on her lap. She reached for a napkin, but it was stolen by Henry before she could grab it.

His notes. Of course.

“That doesn’t sound like something Constance would do,” Kat said, off the bar stool and trying to flick away the water seeping into her trousers. “Are you sure she was blackmailing you?”

“She denied it,” Lucia said. “She swore up and down that wasn’t her intention. But I didn’t buy it. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

“This is about Rebecca Bradford, isn’t it?”

Once again, Lucia gave her that impressed-but-pissed-off look. “Yes. It recently came to my attention that an event of some historical merit happened on the land Mr. Fanelli purchased.”

Kat, resigned to spending the rest of the conversation wet, returned to the stool. “How did you find out?”

“Because someone sent me this.” Lucia reached for a leather satchel on the floor that had been tilted against her stool. She pulled out a book, handing it to Kat. It was a copy of
Witchcraft in America,
Connor Hawthorne’s book. “It was mailed to my office two days ago. No return address. No way to track it. Just the book and that paper.”

Kat turned the book in her hands. It was a new copy, shiny and clean. A slip of paper had been inserted into one of the later chapters, drawing attention to the passage about Judge William Daniel Paul. Typed across the paper was a terse note:
“The witch’s name is Rebecca Bradford. She and four other women were brutally murdered on your land and buried there. Meet me Friday at the Perry Hollow Historical Society. Midnight. Bring money.”

“And you think Constance sent this to you?”

“Of course,” Lucia said. “It’s not that unusual. You know, president of a struggling historical society maybe trying to get some cash. It’s happened before and it will surely happen again.”

“So you went to the museum and confronted her?”

“I did. But not at midnight. The element of surprise is one of a businesswoman’s best secret weapons.”

“You went early,” Kat said. “At nine. Was Constance there?”

“She was. I told her that I knew all about Rebecca Bradford, and I expressed my concern about the situation.”

Concern. That was an understatement. The company Lucia worked for was planning to build a casino on the same site where a massacre had occurred. Kat didn’t know too much about business, but she assumed something like that didn’t make for good PR. And if the land was declared a historic spot—which it very well could be, considering what had happened there—Giuseppe Fanelli’s first project in America wouldn’t even see the light of day.

“So,” Lucia continued, “I made Mrs. Bishop an offer to keep quiet about it.”

“A bribe?”

Lucia sighed. “Mr. Fanelli doesn’t offer bribes. He offers philanthropic donations.”

“How much was this donation?” Kat used air quotes when saying it. Even though she hated it when others used them, the situation called for it.

“A million dollars.”

Once again, Kat was stunned. If Fanelli was willing to offer a million bucks in hush money, imagine how big—and profitable—he expected the casino to be.

“Did she accept it?”

Lucia shook her head slowly, as if she still couldn’t believe it twenty-four hours after the fact. “Constance said that while the historical society needed the money, she couldn’t accept it if it meant rewriting local history.”

Constance Bishop had turned down a cool million because taking it wasn’t the right thing to do, a fact that made Kat’s heart swell with both pride and sorrow. There were few people she could think of who would have rejected such money. Certainly no other members of the historical society. Kat imagined that Claude Dobson or Emma Pulsifer would have grabbed the money without a second thought. Burt Hammond would have given her a pen to write the check.

“Did it make you angry that she turned down your offer?”

Lucia gave her a smile that looked as lethal as her glare. “I’m assuming that’s a veiled way of asking me if I killed her.”

Kat knew Lucia couldn’t have hit Constance over the head or started the fire at that time. It was far too early. But she definitely could have come back later in the night, especially once the fire alarm cleared the restaurant. Instead of taking Main Street, Lucia could have slipped through the backyards to the museum, just as Kat and Connor had done earlier. It took two minutes total.

“It’s simply a question.”

“I wasn’t pleased, of course,” Lucia said. “But I respected her decision. It didn’t change the fact that the casino would be built. All it really did was save the company a million dollars. But I did wonder why she had sent me a copy of the book. I mean, why else send it if not for blackmail purposes? When I asked her, she acted surprised.”

Again, Henry looked up from his notes long enough to ask a question. “So she denied sending it?”

“That’s right,” Lucia said. “She said she hadn’t told anyone about what happened on that land. That’s when I showed her the book and note I got in the mail. When Constance saw it, she demanded to know who had sent it. She said it wasn’t a well-known book. Actually, she seemed shocked that I had a copy.”

As well she should have been, Kat thought. Constance Bishop had tried to keep her research under wraps. Sneaking out in the night. Hiding everything she knew from everyone but Connor Hawthorne. That’s why she had been so unnerved by Lucia’s presence. She had just learned that someone else knew what she was researching.

“When we spoke earlier today,” Henry told Lucia, “you mentioned talking to a reporter about the land here in Perry Hollow.”

Lucia nodded at the memory. “Yesterday, yes. I tried to brush him off, but he was as persistent as you.”

“So it was a man?” Henry said.

“Yes. Why?”

Although this was all news to Kat, she understood where Henry was going with his questions. “Did he give a name?”

“He didn’t,” Lucia said. “He just said he was a reporter and wanted to know what Mr. Fanelli planned on building here. He said he worked for the local newspaper. Since I knew it was going to get out one way or another, I told him it was a casino. He thanked me and hung up.”

“Then you weren’t talking to a reporter,” Henry said, shaking his head at the thought of a professional journalist not asking a few follow-up questions. “I’d be fired if I did something like that.”

“We know this man didn’t give you a name,” Kat said. “But did he mention a newspaper?”

“He did. It was this town’s paper. The Perry Hollow something or other.”

“The
Perry Hollow Gazette
,” Henry said, naming his former employer.

Lucia snapped her fingers. “That’s it. I remember being surprised because I had never heard of it before.”

That’s because it no longer existed. The
Perry Hollow Gazette
had been defunct for a year. Its last issue, still sitting in a locked honor box outside its old building, featured a story about the Grim Reaper killings—a constant reminder that bad things had taken place in town. Every time Kat walked past it, she felt like kicking the box in, stealing the remaining papers and torching them.

“Was I duped?” Lucia said, looking like she could use another stiff drink.

“You were,” Kat told her. “Someone was only posing as a reporter. Possibly the same person who’s starting these fires.”

It wasn’t hard to piece together. Someone else knew about Rebecca Bradford. He also knew Fanelli was going to build on the land where she had been buried. He’d sent a copy of the book to Lucia before calling to get the scoop on what was being built.

Yet more questions remained, the big one being who would do such a thing, followed closely by the matter of why. If it was Danny Batallas starting these fires, what on earth did it have to do with Rebecca Bradford? Kat also wondered how he would have found out about her in the first place, especially since Constance had insisted on being so secretive.

“When you and Constance discussed the book, did she mention how
she
had found a copy?” Kat asked. “If it’s an obscure book, how did she learn about it?”

She assumed Constance had purchased the copy that was discovered in the museum. But it still didn’t explain how she had learned about the book in the first place. It wasn’t as if she had started researching the Bradford case before reading it. Nor was it likely that Connor had sent her a copy. He didn’t know the incident mentioned in his book had taken place in Perry Hollow until Constance told him about it.

“Actually, she talked about that,” Lucia said. “She said she stumbled upon it a few months ago.”

Kat leaned forward, waiting expectantly. Henry, she noticed, was also at rapt attention, his pen poised over a fresh cocktail napkin.

“Where?” he asked.

“The library, of course,” Lucia said. “This town does have a library, right?”

*

Henry sat in the passenger seat of Chief Campbell’s patrol car, gripping the edges of his seat as the vehicle veered around a corner on their way off Main Street. Five minutes had passed since they left Lucia Trapani at the restaurant. Not a lot of time, but enough to get a good grasp on what was happening.

“Someone sure wants to stop that casino from being built.”

“You mean other than me?” Kat said. “Once they hear about it, I suspect a lot of people in town won’t like the idea.”

“Enough to set half of Perry Hollow on fire to prevent it from happening?”

It was the only explanation for the fires sprouting up all over town. Someone else knew about both Rebecca Bradford and the casino. The book, Henry assumed, was sent to Lucia Trapani as a way of derailing the project. When that didn’t work, the person decided to start torching things in an attempt to scare them off.

“You don’t think someone was simply trying to squeeze money out of Fanelli to keep quiet?” Kat asked.

“Maybe,” Henry said. “But if that was the case, why start the fires? For that matter, why kill Constance Bishop?”

“I’m still not sure she was the main target.” Kat jerked on the steering wheel again. “It’s possible she stumbled upon whoever is doing this while they were starting the fire at the museum. Collateral damage, so to speak.”

“Do you think it was a member of the historical society?”

“I’m not ruling anyone out,” Kat said. “Not even Connor Hawthorne.”

“And where is Mr. Hawthorne?”

“In the capable hands of Carl Bauersox.”

Kat made another turn, barreling into the driveway in front of Deana Swan’s house. She brought the Crown Vic to a halt, remaining inside as Henry unbuckled his seat belt. This was now his job.

He exhaled before getting out of the car and cutting across the lawn. He rang the doorbell. It was loud, just as he remembered it. Hearing it clang deep inside the house, his first thought was
I hope it doesn’t wake the baby
. But when the front door opened, Henry saw that little Adam was already awake. Deana was holding him, a bottle in hand and a towel tossed over her shoulder.

“Hey,” she said, genuinely happy to see him. “I was wondering what time you’d be back. How’d the interview go?”

She looked past Henry, seeing Kat’s patrol car in the driveway. Anxiety flooded her face.

“What’s going on? Has there been another fire?”

“Not yet,” Henry said. “But I need a favor.”

Deana kept her eyes on the patrol car. “What?”

“We need you to open the library for us.”

11
P
.
M
.

They made an odd group, the four of them, crammed into Kat’s patrol car. She and Henry rode up front. Deana Swan was in the back with the baby. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Kat saw her huddled over the infant’s portable car seat, making sure everything was secure.

No one had bothered to tell Kat what Deana was doing with a baby. There wasn’t enough time for explanations. Not that Kat required one. Yet another thing she and Henry needed to talk about once this was all over.

Since there was a baby on board, Kat drove slowly, winding the Crown Vic down side streets on the way to the library. The slow pace gave her time to scan the houses along the street and the people who lived in them. The homes were all decorated for Halloween. Lit jack-o’-lanterns flickered on front porches, and ghoulish displays filled yards. Kat spotted scarecrows, fake cobwebs, strands of lights blinking orange and purple. And on nearly every front porch, sitting in stillness among the festive décor, were people with hunting rifles cradled in their arms.