The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters) (27 page)

Again, Mo repeated his words.

Aidan was staring in the right direction. She thought he’d actually seen something of Lizzie and John Andre the other day.

If he would just let himself...

She remembered her dream, the nightmare in which he couldn’t reach her.

Because he couldn’t cross the bridge.

“Ask him—” Aidan began.

“Aidan,” she said. “You ask him. Richard is your friend. He came to you for help. Please, let him talk to you.”

“I can’t...I can’t see anymore.”

“Yes, you can. I know you can—if you let yourself.”

Aidan closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, his head bowed.

Then he looked up, directly at Richard.

Richard looked back at him, a crooked grin on his lips. “They got me, my old friend. They got me,” he said quietly.

Somehow, the words made it through.

Aidan stood. “Richard,” he breathed.

“I came to you because I know you’re the only one who would understand—and the only man who’d believe that a dead man could help.”

14

A
idan could see him.

He could see his old friend, almost as if he were there in the flesh.

For a moment, he was so shocked that his entire body seemed to go weak; luckily, the sofa was behind him, and when his knees buckled he simply sat down.

Richard moved away from the fireplace. He faded somewhat, but came and sat by Aidan on the sofa. The man looked at him with trust—trust Aidan wasn’t sure he deserved.

“I’m not that good yet at...at keeping form, I guess,” Richard said. “These people here, these very nice people, Candy and Daniel, have tried to advise me. It’s in the concentration, they tell me. I’m learning. But you’ll know I’m not being rude if I disappear.”

Richard seemed to find the wry humor in his situation.

“I swear, we’ll get to the truth,” Aidan told him. He tried to regain his senses.

He’d always known that there was something more, that the dead could reveal themselves, that they could talk.

He had just denied it for so long. Denied his ability to see and to hear.

He tried to make his voice stop shaking. “It would’ve helped a lot if you’d told me more in my dream that night. Or if you’d shown up here—before we had to go tearing vaults and mausoleums apart.”

“Sorry! I’ve been, er, coming to terms,” Richard said. “But it seems you’ve had a good companion in Mo.”

“Thank you.” Mo nodded politely. “Let’s get down to it, shall we? While we still have you, Richard.”

“I don’t know how much more I can tell you,” Richard said. “It’s true that I believe J.J. might be mine. But Wendy wasn’t seeing anyone, hadn’t seen anyone in years. So there was no jealous boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend—in the picture. And why would anyone kill over that, anyway? If anything, my political enemies would be pleased. There’d certainly be talk, whether it turned into a scandal or not. At the very least I’d be the no-good bastard who walked out on a pregnant woman.”

“Did you receive any threats?” Aidan asked him.

Richard shook his head. “No, I’ve never gotten anything that sounded even slightly like a death threat.”

“So,” Aidan said, “you came here and you’d planned a romantic reunion with Wendy. Do you think the fact that she’d been working as a stripper had anything to do with...your deaths?”

“Why would it? Again, that would only please my enemies,” he replied. “To the best of my knowledge, my life was moving forward. My personal life was about to be good again. I was coming home in the ways that really matter.”

“Had you ever been out to the Haunted Mausoleum?” Mo asked. “Either when you lived here or more recently?”

“Oh, the old mortuary out on the farmland? Yes, once as a kid, on a class excursion. It was all about history at that time. We didn’t call it haunted, although we all thought it was cool. We wanted to see the gruesome parts, but our teachers wanted to discuss history.”

“That would have been when?”

“Almost thirty years ago. An old lady owned it back then—she sold it to the tour company soon after.”

“Did you know Sondra Burke?” Mo asked.

“I never met her when I was alive,” Richard answered. “Nor have I seen her...now.”

“We may need to start looking at people who are obsessed with the old legends,” Aidan said to Mo.

She smiled. “That’s half of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.”

“Some people here don’t care in the least,” Richard told her. “My mom hadn’t even read ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ She just loved that the place was so beautiful.” As he spoke, Aidan could gradually see the sofa through Richard.

The specter was fading.

“You’ll come back?” Aidan asked.

“I will,” Richard promised. “And thank you, old friend,” he said quietly.

Then he vanished.

Aidan looked over at Mo. She was adorable and sensually beautiful at the same time. She wore one of her long T-shirt nightgowns. Her feet were bare and her hair tousled. She looked like someone who had just been rousted from bed.

He stood up and walked over to her, coming so close he was only an inch away.

“Thank you,” he said gently.

Warmth emanated from her. Her eyes were on his, and a smile curved her lips. “You’re welcome,” she said.

Neither of them moved. He wondered if they were both hesitant, each waiting for other to make the next move.

Be a man,
he told himself.

He stroked her cheek and felt the silky smoothness of it. She moved toward him, drawing even closer. She rose up and touched his lips with hers. He pulled her into his arms. She smelled as sweet as a spring day in the woods, with a hint of the earth about her. Desire came instinctively to life in him and he could have sworn his own body temperature spiked a thousand degrees as their lips met and melted, as he tasted her mouth. He felt the pressure of her hips against him, the crush of her breasts.

He took his mouth from hers and looked down into her eyes. He had no real idea what he was going to say. Probably something that would give her an out.

But he didn’t.

Instead, the words that fell from his lips were, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

She smiled. “According to Grace, I was supposed to ask you to have sex with me several days ago.”

He almost laughed. “Sex? Just sex?”

“I wasn’t supposed to ask rudely or crudely, of course. Grace was firm about that. And Ron believed I should’ve told you that you had a great body and you shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

“And what did you think?”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

He kissed her again. Kissed her slow and long and deep, and allowed his hands to run down the contours of her back and splay over her buttocks, drawing her even harder against him. He felt her touch, her fingers over his back, felt the passion in the kiss she returned. Their path was charted; he wanted to taste her forever, and he wanted her clothes off and both of them naked together. While he savored the one sensation, he imagined the next and then...

His phone rang.

No.

He had to answer it. Mo knew that. She’d already backed away from him and was straightening her nightgown, watching him.

It was Logan, calling to say that they’d gotten the workforce from the Haunted Mausoleum down to the station. He didn’t know how long they could keep them there.

“I’m on my way.”

Aidan ended the call and looked at Mo.

“I have to go,” he said huskily, and he was sure he’d never regretted anything so much in his whole life.

She smiled—and he knew he
was
falling in love with her.

“You’re not going without me,” she told him. “You shouldn’t drive without coffee, anyway! If you make some, I’ll be down in five, I swear it.”

She took off for the stairs and paused just once. “Um, can we hold on to that thought—the one we were just having?

“Yes,” Aidan promised. “Oh, yes.”

Rollo barked.

“Okay, Rollo. You can come to the station with us,” he said.

He was glad that he felt so comfortable walking into her kitchen. He knew how to make coffee there. This was— What? The third time? He thought about what Richard had said.

It was like coming home—when he hadn’t even realized he’d been away.

* * *

Logan Raintree was at the station when Mo and Aidan arrived; he was the first to meet them at reception. He didn’t seem surprised to see Mo and he greeted her cordially—and Rollo, too.

“Everyone who was working last night is here,” Logan told Aidan. “And so far not one has complained about being called in. A number of them have been crying. They lost an employer they all cared about.”

Lieutenant Purbeck came out to the reception area. “Mahoney.” He nodded at Aidan. “Glad you’re here. Van Camp’s been talking to people, but I’m down one officer. Agent Raintree here assigned Voorhaven to do guard duty with the little boy, J. J. Appleby,” he said, glancing at Logan.

“J.J. really likes Jimmy,” Logan explained. “And we feel J.J. and Debbie need to be protected until we get to the bottom of this.”

If
they got to the bottom of it.

The unspoken words seemed to linger in the air. No one said them.

No one here would accept them or would even willingly acknowledge that possibility. Mo knew that without a doubt.

Purbeck smiled at her. “You doing okay, Mo?”

She nodded.

“Thank you again. You and Rollo. You were there last night, too, right?”

“I was,” Mo said. It still bothered her terribly.

Why hadn’t she heard—or sensed—anything wrong?

“And you saw nothing?”

“Nothing at all,” she said with disgust. “I thought the night was so routine, it was almost ridiculous. I walked around and around.”

“Too bad Rollo wasn’t playing a ghost dog,” Purbeck noted. “Anyway, Aidan, I’m stepping out of my office. You can do your interviews there. Mo? You want to hang with me? I’ll get you some typically bad coffee.”

She started to tell him that, sure, that would be nice.

But Aidan said, “I’d prefer to have her sit in with me. She knows all the players, and she knows the place. She’ll be able to tell if what she hears is the truth. It might make a difference. We’re not interrogating these people, we’re hoping to get something from them.”

“As you like,” Purbeck agreed.

“I’ll start sending them through,” Logan said.

“Great. But, Lieutenant Purbeck, can we begin in the conference room? I’d like to throw them all together first,” Aidan said.

Within ten minutes, everyone had gathered in the conference room. Those who hadn’t yet greeted one another with hugs of commiseration did so. Everyone crowded around to pet Rollo, too. Hug him, actually. The dog must have seemed like a bastion of strength and normalcy to them. Grace, Ron and Phil came over to Mo and hugged her especially tight. Then they all found places to sit.

“So,” Aidan said, from his position at the head of the table. “We all know what happened last night. And I am so very sorry for your loss. I met Sondra Burke briefly, and she was lovely.”

Heads bowed.

He looked over at a young woman whose white-blond hair contrasted dramatically with her tanned skin. “Ms. Chessy, right? You were at the hostess stand, taking money?”

Cindy Chessy, a nice enough girl Mo barely knew, nodded vigorously.

“Did you see anyone who looked out of place?” Aidan asked.

“No. No one weirder than usual,” she replied. “People aren’t allowed to wear costumes when they come here. Only the actors can wear costumes. That way, no guests can try to freak people out or get into anything.”

“Makes sense. What did you do after you sold the last ticket?”

“Closed the entry gate and took the lockbox to the office. Sondra wasn’t there, but I didn’t think anything of it. She slips out to observe sometimes.”

“And then you left?”

“Yes.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Then I left. I’m always first out of there. I’m not an actor—and I’m not paid as much as the actors. They know I leave early and no one cares.”

“I’m sure they don’t.” He had a group of folders in front of him, folders containing each person’s work file.

“Let’s see. Phil and Ron, we talked last night. So let me start with Joshua Kirbin,” Aidan said.

“Me?” Joshua squeaked. He was sagging against the wall. There were only about twelve chairs at the conference table and the people who weren’t in them either leaned against the wall or sat on the floor.

“You were in the coffin,” Aidan said.

“Whatever happened, it happened after I was gone,” Joshua insisted. “I had plans last night, so I got out of there as fast as I could. The Ripper—Jack the Ripper.” He pointed at Phil. “You saw me.”

“I told them I saw you leave, yes,” Phil said, “and that was maybe...ten minutes before I saw the body. Or rather, that there was something in the coffin.” Aidan swiveled in his chair to look across the table. He gestured at a tall boy, a senior at the local college, Mo thought. His name was Harry Pickford.

“Harry, you were playing the mad doctor. Do you remember somebody going by to get to the doorway behind you?”

Harry stood up, opened his mouth and then sank back in his chair. “Yes,” he said. He glanced over at Phil. “I thought it was you— Someone in a sweeping black cloak like yours but with a hat lowered over his face. I thought...I thought it was a new gimmick.”

“Me!” Phil protested. His voice sounded like a squeak, too. “I never left my place. I was outside all night.”

“Weren’t the historical characters inside, and outside it was the legendary characters and well-known ghosts?”

“Mostly, yes, but...Jack the Ripper was supposed to skulk through the cemetery and show up unexpectedly. So I did my little walk around one of the tombs. Like Mo,” Phil said.

“Anyone else see this Jack the Ripper character slipping past?” Aidan asked.

“I’m pretty sure I saw him go by,” another young man, Perry Lichtman, said. He raised his hand as he spoke, as if they were in school. “I’m the one being operated on by the mad doctor. I saw
something—
but I’m in this boxlike thing, poking my head out, screaming most of the time. I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to be bent over.”

“No one would think anything of it,” a girl, Mindy Myers, who played Countess Bathory, told Aidan. “The Grim Reaper—Tony over there—flits around the place all the time.”

“Did any of you see anyone go to the office last night?” Aidan asked next.

The room was silent as they looked at one another, shaking their heads.

“No, but I thought that the person moving around like a hunchback and carrying a big sack was Tony,” Ron said. “The Grim Reaper.”

“So, you saw it, too?”

“Yeah, I usually sit in the dressing room and read magazines or whatever, waiting to clean up at the end. I leave with Sondra. Or, if she’s already gone, I make sure everyone else is out before we close up. Sometimes during the show I wander through to see how people look in their makeup and do costume checks. I saw the figure moving—and I thought Tony was doing a hell of a job,” he added dryly.

Mo had been standing by the back wall, Rollo obediently crouched beside her. She suddenly felt weak and decided to sit on the floor. They’d all been there, at the mausoleum; they’d all been there while a killer had snuck in on Sondra and killed her. Then that killer had come through the place, carrying Sondra, to behead her in the mausoleum. After that, he’d crept back through the whole site with the head and the body. He’d left the body—and gone on to display the head. And no one had noticed him, seen what he was doing, even when he’d been right in front of them.