Haven (26 page)

“GPS on her car?”

“Well, there we might have something. But you’re not going to like it. I know I don’t.”

“What is it?”

“Her car moved early this morning. From the inn, where it’s been since she arrived. It was parked downtown near several stores.”

“They’ve blocked off downtown for this damned festival,” Navarro said.

“I know. This was early. Around seven. The car was parked near the corner of Main and Oak streets. Then about ten minutes later, it vanished.”

“It what?”

“The GPS signal just stopped. Went dead.” Maggie’s voice was grim. “Jessie knows how to disable one, but it beats the hell out of me why she would. And if it wasn’t her…”

“Then whoever she’s after could be on to her.” Navarro saw Emma’s face whiten, and did his best to be positive. “Look, we all know those systems are prime targets for thieves. Maybe it was just stolen out of her car and she didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.”

“According to the police history, that sort of crime really doesn’t happen in Baron Hollow,” Maggie said.

Navarro didn’t ask how she knew that. “Okay. Then where she was parked…” He mentally went over the map of downtown, since he could see little of it due to the congestion of the festival. “The only thing open that early, around seven, would be the pharmacy.
They have a breakfast counter, and open up early, even on holidays.” He lifted his brows at Emma, and received a nod in return.

“Casual enough place to visit,” Maggie said. “You and Emma both saw her later in the day, right?”

“Yeah, she was among the crowd right up until sometime around noon. It’s nearly two now. We’ve been looking for at least an hour, and haven’t seen a sign of her”

“So we can last place her car near a pharmacy, but that doesn’t help us much. Would she have gone—wherever—on foot?”

“Emma says she’s been leaving the inn every morning for days with a backpack, and you say her car was there up until this morning. I’m betting she’d definitely be on foot, if she’s investigating. It’s just too damned hard to maneuver a car anywhere around town with this festival going on.”

“A good opportunity to check something out, if you knew whoever you were interested in was attending the festival.”

“Yeah. Unless he’s on to her. Then the festival becomes really good cover for someone else to also…vanish into the crowd. And we don’t even know who else to look for.”

Maggie’s sigh was audible. “It could be innocent enough, or at least not dangerous, if it’s her past she’s probing. Depending on what’s there, of course.”

“Which I intend to find out ASAP,” he said, his gaze fixed on Emma.

As she so often did, Maggie seemed well aware of what he meant. “Secrets can be burdens; don’t make Emma’s heavier, Nathan.”

“No. No, I’ll try not to. But if we’re going to find Jessie, I need all the information possible.”

“To decide whether she’s investigating her past or a killer.”

“
Maybe both. I think we need to visit the pharmacy and find out if she talked to anyone there.”

“Report back,” Maggie said. “If you become unreachable for more than an hour, I’m calling in the troops. Understood?”

“Understood.” He ended the call and slipped the phone back into its case on his belt. To Emma, he said, “I’m assuming you know everyone at the pharmacy?”

She nodded. “I could hear what your boss was saying, or at least some of it.” She winced as the band currently playing finished their song with a rousing drum solo, then said, “Why would Jessie have moved her car? I mean, if she’s been on foot all this time? The pharmacy is only a few blocks from the inn.”

“I don’t know why,” Navarro said, taking her hand. “Let’s go ask.”

As always at such open events, there were numerous currents within the crowd, and it took them a while to find one moving in the general direction of the pharmacy. Emma said hello to several people, but they didn’t stop for introductions, and she was all too aware that more than one curious soul had noticed their linked hands.

But she had more important things to worry about than her reputation, and when they crossed paths with Dan Maitland, she didn’t hesitate to ask, “Hey, have you seen Jessie?”

He’d been working on a corn dog, and dabbed at his mouth with a napkin before replying, “Saw her this morning. Talked to her for a few minutes. Why?”

“We’re looking for her,” Emma answered without further explanation. She saw his gaze drop briefly to her hand, still linked with Navarro’s, and wondered if he’d comment. They had dated from time to time, casually, more as friends than anything else.

But all he said was, “In this crowd you could lose the Pope. But I’ll keep an eye out. If I see her, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

“Thanks.”

As they went on, Navarro said, “I saw them talking. Neither one looked very happy.”

“I know. I saw them too. But I also saw her talking with at least three other men, and though I can’t be sure, all those conversations looked less than casual.”

“Who was it?”

Emma didn’t have to think about it; she’d been so focused on Jessie when she caught glimpses of her that those images were burned in her mind. “Our cousin Victor. Sam Conway, who owns and manages the
Daily Ledger
. Peter Troy, a local bad boy from our high school days and a fairly useless alcoholic now. I also saw her talking to Nellie Holt.”

“Who is?”

“A casual friend from school, though more mine than Jessie’s since we’re the same age. Nellie writes feature stories for the
Ledger
. And dates Victor.”

“Dates?”

“They’re lovers. Months, at least, which must be a record of sorts for Victor.”

Quick to pick up on a note in her voice even with all the noise around them, Navarro said, “From what I’ve overheard and…sensed…local gossip says there’s a new tension between you and Victor. I’m guessing it has nothing to do with your friend being his lover.”

“Of course not. Nellie’s a big girl, no fool, and she knows what she’s doing.”

“
Local gossip also says Victor wants to buy land you don’t want to sell, and that’s causing the tension.”

Emma frowned at him as they paused to allow a cluster of people blocking their path to go on their way. “Well, you’ve really had your ear to the ground, haven’t you? I know our gossip mill is second to none, but I wasn’t aware there were so many people interested in whether Victor wins what he wants or I keep it. But it isn’t just local gossip you’ve…picked up, is it?”

“No,” he admitted. “I’ve been sensing bits and pieces. But either way, I don’t believe the tension between you and Victor is about land. Or, at least, that’s not the major cause. It’s about what happened to Jessie, isn’t it?”

“We can’t talk about that out in the open,” Emma said, continuing on toward the pharmacy.

Navarro bit back a sigh, then said, “So, basically, Jessie is touching base with people from the old days. Specific people.”

“That’s what it looks like. She could be pretty sure of seeing everyone today and being able to speak to whoever she wanted or needed to and make it look casual. More or less.”

“She ambushed them,” Navarro said. “If she had tough questions to ask, it would be the best way to catch someone off guard and possibly get a truthful—or at least honest—response.”

“I’m just afraid—”

“Afraid of what? That she asked the wrong person the wrong question?”

“Some secrets are dangerous,” Emma said finally. “And some people would do…a lot…to protect them.”

Aware of time ticking past, Jessie hesitated for just a moment, asking herself whether she really needed to do this.

Yes. She did.

She picked up her flashlight and left the cabin the way she had entered it, locking the door carefully behind her and then sliding the tool kit into her pocket.

She went around to the end of the cabin farthest from the almost-road that stopped on the other side of the stream. It wasn’t the logical place to find the entrance to a cellar, and he had camouflaged it very effectively with raised flower beds on either side of it, but once she had started looking, it had been easy to find.

It looked like a typical cellar entrance from this perspective; she didn’t even need a lockpick. She had opened the hatch-like door the day she’d found it, her last day exploring the exterior of the cabin, but had been running out of time and had been forced to stop there.

Even so, the sense of dread she felt from this place was all here, all down in the earth beneath the cabin, and she
had
to see what was down there. Even though she knew.

The lack of a lock on the exterior door troubled her, but she assumed there would be another door once she made her way down the steps that appeared to have been cut out of the hard earth. These old-fashioned cellars had been cut so there was a cool place to store vegetables and other perishables in the days before electric refrigeration came along.

Jessie turned her flashlight on and aimed it down the steps, hesitated only a moment, and cautiously began to go down. At the bottom of the stairs, she found—a root cellar.

At least to the casual glance.

The area smelled of the earth, and it was cooler than outside. But to Jessie it felt cold. Very cold. She had to force herself to ignore that chill, to stand her ground and shine her flashlight around the small space. Rough shelves with what looked like canning jars of various vegetables and soups; a neat rack of gardening tools; a couple of stacks of clay pots for plants or flowers. And—a door.

It looked newer than she had expected it to, but that was probably because it was a steel door, its surface smooth and reflective. Jessie had to move toward it several steps before she could really make out any details in the glare of her flashlight’s reflected beam.

It was solid except for a two-foot-by-two-foot piece of heavy steel mesh, closely woven but not so closely as to prevent air from, presumably, reaching the space beyond it. And it had what looked like a simple door handle, with a simple keyhole beneath it. That was all.

She wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. Nor was she surprised
that the lock was more difficult to pick than might have been expected from its appearance. So much so that after a good ten minutes of careful effort she felt a decided sense of triumph when she finally heard the
click
, and got to her feet to open the door.

Pain. Terror. Pain. Terror. Pain.

Jessie drew in a breath, realizing only then that the force of the emotions battering her had literally stopped her breathing, and for long enough that the first breath she drew was actually painful.

In more ways than one. Because when she did breathe, all she smelled was death.

Somehow, she managed not to drop everything and run as she wanted to do, as all her instincts and senses insisted she do. Instead, she shored up her walls even more, with desperate strength, and stepped through the door.

It felt like she was entering hell itself.

Her flashlight showed her that this part of the cellar was intended to store something other than vegetables or tools. This space was lined with lumber walls and ceiling, and the metal racks fastened to those walls held…implements…that were tools of horror. Knives and other bladed instruments like saws; whips of every kind; straps ending in buckles and spikes; heavy cudgels, their ends horribly stained.

Everything was stained. With blood.

If he was neat to a fault upstairs, down here he allowed his inner demons their absolute freedom. Because nothing had been cleaned, not even of bits of human tissue and hair caught in sticky blood.

Sickened, she turned her flashlight’s beam away from that tool wall, and wished she hadn’t. Directly in front of her was a chair contraption that
was also stained with blood, and beyond it was a cot—with a heavy chain with a cuff at one end and the other end bolted to the wall.

The mattress on the cot was stained.

Again, Jessie wanted to run, but there was a closed door on the left-hand wall, and she took a step farther in, turning her flashlight so she could see—

She felt something against her ankle, and in the instant before it happened, she realized that she had fallen into his trap.

The trip wire was rigged to what was probably a simple pulley and weight system that slammed the steel door shut behind Jessie, and when she whirled to shine her light on the door, she went cold to her marrow.

This side of the door was smooth, featureless except for the heavy steel mesh ventilation panel.

There was no handle.

There was no lock.

There was no way out.

“
WHAT DO YOU
mean she left town?” Emma was staring at Patty, a clerk at the pharmacy who insisted she had talked to Jessie that morning before the festival.

“It was early and I’d agreed to pull a split shift,” she explained, more to Navarro than to Emma. She tucked a strand of coppery hair behind one ear and smiled at him winningly. “So I could spend at least part of the day at the festival. I was here early. And so was Jessie.”

“What did she say?” Navarro asked.

“
Not a lot, really. Said her throat was scratchy, allergies probably, and bought some cough drops. I asked her if she was looking forward to the fireworks tonight, and she said she’d be gone by then. Said her work had called, and she had to head back to New Mexico. Have you ever been to New Mexico? Because it really sounds gorgeous, and—”

“Did she say when she was leaving?” Emma asked.

“Said she’d probably stay for a while, maybe until lunchtime, but then she had to hit the road.”

“You’re sure?” Emma sounded baffled, and wore the expression as well.

“Well, I’m sure that’s what she said. Had her car outside, said she was going to park it way down on the end of town closest to the highway so she could get out when she had to.”

“Thanks,” Navarro said briefly, drawing Emma, unresisting, away from the counter and toward the door. As soon as they were outside the store, he said, “Would she lie about something so…trivial to her?”

“Patty? No, I don’t think so. She’s known as one of the biggest gossips in town, but she’s also—sometimes uncomfortably—accurate in what she says.” Emma shook her head. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Jessie leave without so much as a word?”