Authors: Kylie Brant
Waking Evil 02 (46 page)
“Yeah, it was fine.” She got up to join the woman at the door, and watched, mystified, as Dev went out to reach into the open trunk of Leanne’s car. He hauled out a shopping bag in each hand. Ramsey stepped aside so he could get through the door. He headed into the dining room to set the bags on the table with a thud. Then he made a return trip.
“What’s in the bags? Dev mentioned a surprise, but he didn’t say you were bringing it.”
“Well, that’s just like him. He always did enjoy springin’ things on people.” To Dev she said, “Those last two bags are it, honey. Just go on and shut the trunk lid.”
Turning her attention back to Ramsey, she said, “They’re the record books, of course. From the museum. Dev said y’all were in a hurry to look through them and that pinched-up Shirley Pierson was no help a’tall when he went in to do research.” She smiled prettily when Dev dropped her keys in her outstretched hand as he went by her with the last of the bags.
Still at a loss, Ramsey said, “They let you check those things out of the museum?”
Leanne’s laugh tinkled out of her. “No, silly. Well, you could say I ‘checked them out’ on your behalf. And I’m so excited at bein’ able to help you on your case this way that I’m just practically ready to burst!” As if to prevent just that, she hugged her arms around her sides and gave a little hop. “The museum isn’t even open today. I just used the key I had made back in high school and let myself in the back.”
“I figured you’d wait until dark,” Dev observed, rejoining them in the kitchen. “Less chance of anyone noticin’.”
“It just so happens that I’m headed out of town this evenin’, so I couldn’t. But I was real careful, and no one saw me. I do want to put them back inside early mornin’ tomorrow, though, so Dev, you’ll need to meet me in back of the museum around four-thirty.”
Although his expression looked pained, he agreed. “I’ll be there.”
“Does Donnelle know about this?” But Ramsey was certain she already knew the answer to that question.
“No, and she better never learn ’bout it, either. I’d hate to have to explain after all these years how I came to have that key.”
“Leanne used the museum for a make-out place for years in high school,” Dev inserted wickedly. “Gotta say, for some of those fellas she took in there, it was probably the education of their lives. In more ways than one.”
The woman didn’t seem embarrassed in the least by the revelation. “Least I didn’t roll in the grass with whoever’d have me down near Hitchy Creek. Or in a haymow. ’Course once you could drive, backseats were more your style.”
At Ramsey’s raised brows, he shrugged. “In my defense, I have to point out that although the majority of my dates lacked an interest in history, they did end up with an education of sorts.”
Leanne gave a hoot at that, and even Ramsey had to smile. “I don’t doubt it.” She looked at the other woman. “I really appreciate this, Leanne. We’ll make sure the record books are back where they belong tomorrow morning.”
“After the night I’m plannin’, I’ll be draggin’ at that hour, but we all make our sacrifices. And I’ll expect a full accountin’ with all the juicy details just as soon as you can talk ’bout this case.”
Ramsey was half surprised to hear herself say, “You’ve got it.” She followed the woman out the back door to the porch. “Did that dress do the job the other night?” Remembering the woman’s words, she asked, “Did your ex bleed when he saw you in it?”
“Sliced and diced.” Leanne’s smile was feline. “I’d be lyin’ if I said that didn’t make my night.”
When Dev closed the door behind the woman, Ramsey walked over to him and slid her arms around his waist. Tipping her head back, she murmured, “You have a devious mind, Stryker.” She gave him a quick kiss. Settled in for a more lingering one. “I’m finding it’s one of my favorite things about you.”
He wasn’t a man to waste an opportunity. His lips warmed on hers and hazed her mind pleasantly. “Nice to know that my penchant for crime meets your approval.”
When his hands grew more inquisitive, she wedged her palms between them and gave his chest a light push. “You ever pull anything like that, and it jams up one of my investigations, I’ll slap the cuffs on you myself.”
His smile was wicked. “I think I just might enjoy that.”
Ramsey blew out a sigh. “Yeah, you probably would.”
It was a good thing, she concluded three hours later, that Dev had insisted they finish their meal before tackling the records. Ramsey rubbed the heels of her palms against her burning eyes. They were only halfway through the pile, and they hadn’t come up with anything really valuable yet.
They’d run across several references to turmeric, buried amidst a mind-numbing host of other herbs, plants, and crops in the endless cycle of planting and harvesting detailed in the records. There were the minutiae of preparing everything for use, whether it was cutting off and cleaning roots, pulverizing them to powder, or grinding grain and corn for food. None of it was remotely helpful, and she lowered her hands to gaze at the heavy leather-bound records balefully.
“So these almost have to have all been written by his wives, huh?” She glanced at the running list she was keeping of author names and dates. “Given the timeline we have placing Ashton in this area, it’s doubtful they’re relatives. Or children.”
“I’m guessin’ so. Look at this one.” Dev shoved a record over to her from his seat beside her. “It details more of what their property looked like. That clearin’ of Rose Thornton’s didn’t hold just the main cabin, but several structures.”
“With fourteen wives, the man would need several structures,” she muttered, scanning the page he indicated. “A curing barn. For the meat, I guess. Oh, a planting shed.” She read silently for a moment, the close, cramped writing hurting her eyes. “Clever, even back then. They were growing plants out of season, out of climate even, in a crude temperature-controlled building.” And turmeric, she noted, was on the list of plants grown there. “A celestial chapel for their devotions. Spent a ton of time in it, from the looks in those records.” Every meticulously recorded day mentioned devotions before dawn and again after nightfall. “Doesn’t look like all the time Ashton spent in church did him any good.”
“God can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of the wrong person.” At her surprised look, Dev shrugged. “The things some people have done in the name of religion over the history of mankind are pretty horrifying.”
She couldn’t disagree. Not when it was appearing more and more possible that someone had raped and killed Cassie Frost with some sort of god complex in his mind. Ramsey wondered where someone like Quinn Sanders would have met up with a man like that.
Handing the book back to him, she resumed studying the list she’d made. “We’re missing a record.”
“No, this is it,” he said, without lifting his head from the record he was studying. He was wearing those glasses he’d had on in the book photo, she noted, which he’d sheepishly admitted to need for reading. She’d snuck more than one look at him in them throughout the night. She thought she just might strip him naked when they were done, all but those rimless glasses. On him, they looked sexy.
Jerking her attention back to the list she made, she cleared her throat. “Yeah, but each record book was written by a different woman, recording the daily activities of the Ashton clan for a calendar year. And one year’s missing.”
Finally, he lifted his head. “I asked Leanne specially. She says these are all of them. And she’s had the run of that museum since she was in grade school, what with Donnelle’s devotion to the place. She’d know.”
Once she’d discovered how they were arranged, she’d flipped the front of each open and noted the name and year covered. Silently, she began jotting the years down in chronological order.
Once done, Ramsey looked up, satisfied. “Like I said. We’re missing one. 1892. The records run from 1882 to 1898, so it didn’t start right away when Ashton went down there. That’s seventeen years. We’ve got sixteen books. And if our assumption is true and these are written by Ashton’s wives, he must have acquired a few wives after his marriage to Ruth.”
“Goes to figure, given his history,” Dev agreed. “Probably had even more than that. Could be he just gave his favorites the honor of writin’ the annual records.”
“So where’s the missing book?”
They looked at each other for a moment. “Could have been lost through the years, I s’pose. Or ruined.” He gave a quick grin. “Maybe someone spilled a beer on it or somethin’.”
“Or maybe it was destroyed.” Her mind was working rapidly. “Maybe someone wrote something in it that Ashton didn’t like.”
Dev looked dubious. “What would that be, that they didn’t write borin’ enough? Because I gotta tell ya, readin’ this stuff the first time had my eyeballs bleedin’. It’s not any better tonight. I can’t for the life of me figure how people got the strength to face ’nother day if this”—he thumped the book in front of him for emphasis—“is all they had to look forward to.”
“When did Ruth Ashton disappear?”
He paused. Then, without a word he got up from the table and went to his computer desk in the next room, began rummaging through the notes stacked there. When he went still, she knew she had her answer.
“Eighteen ninety-two.”
Her mind was a jumble with pieces of the puzzle, and she gave them time to click into place before speaking. “So what if she displeased Ashton somehow? Maybe he found out about the letters she’d written home.” And how, she wondered for the first time, had Ruth managed to smuggle them out for mailing in the tight-knit community in the first place?
“That may have given him reason to kill her, but not to destroy the record she created.”
“Unless he got his hands on a letter, discovered she was selling him out to her parents, and then took a closer look at the records she was writing.” Driven to move, she shoved her chair back and paced the length of the room. “There had to be constant supervision in their life. These people lived in each other’s pockets. Ruth would have had to be smart to conceal something in the records that was escaping everyone else’s attention.” But the fact she’d somehow managed to write and mail those letters home proved she’d been plenty smart.
“Eighteen ninety-two.” Dev looked pensive, staring into space.
When he didn’t go on, she said, “What?”
“Thinkin’ back to what Donnelle told us ’bout the legend. The red mist is sighted every generation or so. The first time was in 1922.” He paused a beat. “The way I count it, that’s exactly thirty years later. Maybe the legend of the red mist originated from acts a generation earlier than we’ve been thinkin’.”
Everything inside her reared away from his conjecture. Facts. He’d gotten her facts about the existence of the religion. Facts suggesting that Rufus Ashton had been one very sick fuck. But she was nowhere close to embracing the local superstition or using the information they’d uncovered to support it.
She was here to solve a murder. One in
this
century. Her only interest in Sancrosanctity, Ashton’s church, was that it gave her background for the profile she’d be developing.
this
century. Her only interest in Sancrosanctity, Ashton’s church, was that it gave her background for the profile she’d be developing.
A man acting on the beliefs taught by a cult—damned if she’d call it a religion—originating in the 1870s. A man who used its beliefs to condone his own twisted pleasures.
Ramsey was on shaky ground, and she was glad she didn’t have Raiker here, challenging her at every turn, forcing her to defend her conclusions. His tactics kept his consultants sharp, made them exacting in their deductions. But there was nothing exact about what she was considering now. They were light on evidence, heavy on speculation. And as a professional, that made her more than a little uneasy.
“Okay.” She shot him a look that was half apologetic, half defiant. “I’m not ready to go there. But the rest of it . . . yeah, it could fit. Where’s that last record book? Have we looked in it?”
Dev reached for it, and she rounded the table to peer over his shoulder as he flipped through it. The careful writing halted midway through the book. Both of them read silently.
“So Ashton died in March, 1898.”
“Again, here’s hoping there’s a hell,” she muttered. “Sounds like they built a special crypt for him.”
“I know that mausoleum,” he said pensively. “The cemetery butts up against Rose’s land. It’s in the oldest corner of the area. Used to play around there when I was a kid.”
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