Who Killed the Ghost in the Library: A Ghost writer Mystery (22 page)

“It would be interesting to learn just how much plastic surgery he had after that accident. He must have had a lot. He’s lived here thirty years, and no one recognized him, not even Aggie. We could ask Stanley III,” I said as Randy came back.

“Here you go,” he said, handing me a folder. “There’s no record of an Artie Shatton before 1984.
The birth certificate shows his date of birth as September 1950, instead of 1940, so he shaved ten years off his age. And of course, his social security number is different from the one under his birth name. That’s why Jo couldn’t find a trace of him. But he has made withdrawals from his trust fund over the years, nothing big until that $500,000 one. Some of that money went to Jake Yarborough.”

“I just can’t believe that Amelia didn’t know,” I said.

“Maybe she does know,” Mike said, “and maybe that’s why she fingered him for his father’s murder. I’ll bet there’s a clause in Stanley’s will or in the terms of the trust that would give the money to the other family members if one of them did something illegal.”

“That sounds rather callous
,” I said.

“The Ashtons cared about protecting the family name at all costs,” Mike replied.
“Frankly, nothing would surprise me, especially when it comes to wealthy families. They all think they’re above the law, and that their money can buy their way out of anything.”

“First things first,” I said. “We need to go see Stanley III.” Randy and Mike got up from the table and started to leave the kitchen. “And just where do you two thing you’re going?”

“I’ve got stock to put out at the bookstore,” Randy said.

“And I’ve got to get ready to go,” Mike said.

“Guess again, gentlemen,” I said. “The rules in this house are I cook, you clean. And don’t ask me if I’m kidding, because I’m not. Now get busy.”

I stood in the kitchen doorway to make sure neither one of them tried to duck out. Thankfully, it only took them ten minutes.
Before he left, Randy made me promise to let him know all the gory details of our visit, and I assured him I would. We got in Mike’s Bronco and took off.

He was pretty quiet as we drove out there. “You alright?” I asked him.

“Yeah, why?”

“You aren’t saying much.”

“Well, it’s a bit weird, you know? We’re going out to interrogate a…”

“…ghost,” I finished for him. “A poltergeist, or any other fancy word you want to use. You make it sound like this is something I normally do, Mike. I’m a ghost writer for people who don’t have the time or the talent to write their own story. Living, breathing people.”

“You’re pretty calm about all this.”

“Trust me,” I said as I turned into the Ashton driveway, “inside I’m screaming my head off.”

He parked and we got out. I didn’t see a reason to knock this time. Aggie wasn’t there, and I didn’t know if Stanley even wanted to see me, much less talk to me. Mike grabbed my arm and stopped me. “What?”

He jerked his head toward the door. “The door’s ajar,” he said, pulling his Colt 1911 out and holding it down to his side. I dug my Sig Sauer out and slowly followed him inside.

“Stanley,” I called out, “It’s Cam Shaw. I’m here with Mike Penhall.” There was no answer. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

The door slammed behind us, and we both spun
. “Is your ghost playing games with us?” Mike whispered.

“It’s possible. Very funny, Stanley. Knock it off. We just want to ask you about the night you died.”

I heard a noise behind us, and I turned around, but didn’t see anything. I tapped Mike on the shoulder and pointed to the library. He nodded, and we quietly made our way in that direction. “Mr. Ashton, it’s Chief Penhall. I believe that there was a cover up involving your death. It would help the investigation if you could fill in a few details for me.”

Looking into the library, we sa
w Stanley sitting in his desk chair. Jo was right: he didn’t look as solid as the night I first met him. “What’s happening to me?” he said as we entered the room.

“I’m not sure. Maybe we’re getting close to finding your murderer,” I told him, putting my gun back in my bag as Mike holstered his weapon. He started looking at the bookcases as I moved closer to Stanley.

“What kind of questions do you have for me?”

“
First, I have some news for you about your son.”

“What about him?”

“He’s alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, I’m very sure. I’ve even talked to him. He lives here in town, has for the last thirty years.”

“Oh my god,” Stanley replied. “Did Aggie know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I think Amelia did.”

“Amelia? I don’t understand.”

“It’s pure speculation on our part, and we do plan to talk to her about it. But since she sits on the board of directors at the bank, we think she knew he was alive because he was withdrawing money from his trust fund.”

“But how would she know that?”

“She could have asked someone to keep an eye on the account for her, or she could’ve kept track of it herself. I honestly don’t know. But he did make a large withdrawal shortly before Cliff Scott was murdered.”

“You don’t think he had anything to do with that?”

“We’re not sure what to think, Mr. Ashton,” Mike said. “What I want to do is start from the beginning, which is the night you were killed. Do you think you could walk us through it?” Stanley nodded. “Great, where would you like to start?”

“Nothing really happened until I came into this room,” he said.

“I think you should start from the time you walked in the front door. You might remember seeing something that at the time didn’t seem important.”

Stanley got up from his chair and led us back to the foyer. I noticed he seemed to be floating a little bit instead o
f walking. It was a bit creepy. “I came in, put my briefcase on top of the table here,” he said, pointing at the cherry wood table against the wall. I called out for Amelia, but there was no answer from her or the children.” He headed for the kitchen. “There was a note on the table from Aggie, telling me there was a plate of food in the oven for me. I took it out, turned the oven off, got a fork out of the drawer and a napkin off the table, and took everything back to the library.”

We followed him back to the library. “I ate at my desk while I did some work. When I w
as done eating, I took everything back to the kitchen, left the plate and fork in the sink, the napkin on the counter, and I returned to the library.”

“Do you remember how much time passed between the time you came back from the kitchen and you were shot?” Mike asked.

Stanley shook his head. “I used to know, but after all these years, you lose your sense of time. It wasn’t long. There was a financial report from the bank in front of me, and I was checking the numbers. I heard a noise, but when I looked around, there was nothing there. I glanced down again, there was a bang and a pain in my chest.”

“The police report says you were on the floor behind your desk,” Mike said. “Do you remember falling to the floor?”

“No, I don’t. Voices…there were voices.”

“Voices?” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Two, maybe three, I’m not sure.”

“Let’s back up a minute,” I said. “Do you remember from which direction the shot came from?”

Stanley walked around and sat behind his desk again. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment. “There,” he said, pointed across the room to the bookcases behind us.

“We’ve looked at the blueprints for the house,” Mike told him, “and we’re wondering if there is a secret passage in this room.”

“Yes, there is,” Stanley replied. He pointed at the bookcases again. “Back there.”

We approached the bookcases, and started looked for something to indicate there was a door. “These are pretty solid,” Mike said, clearly impressed with the craftsmanship.

Stanley came and stood next to me. “I’ve always loved this room, even when I was a little boy. All these books were a way to escape the harsh lectures I got from my father about learning the family business, being responsible, and protecting the Ashton name. I never wanted to go into the banking business.”

“What did you want to do?” I asked.

“I wanted to be a college professor, to pass along my love of the classics to another generation. My father tried to keep me out of here because he said I was becoming too much of a dreamer like my mother. After a while, I got tired of the arguments, so I gave in. But I still managed to sneak down here during the day through that secret passage to get a book.” He pointed to a large brown book. “This one,” he said.

I took a closer look at the spine of the book. “
Moby Dick
?” He nodded. I pulled it forward, and the middle section slowly opened toward us. We had to move back to keep from being hit. We looked inside, but it was pitch black. I took out my phone, and opened the flashlight app. I aimed the light into the dark interior: there was a staircase that spiraled out of sight, and cobwebs everywhere. “Are there lights in there?” I asked Stanley.

“No, I usually used a candle when I was a kid.”

“I’ve got a flashlight in the car,” Mike said as I turn off the app. “I’ll go get it.” A couple of minutes later, he came back with a black, heavy duty Maglite. “This leads to the master bedroom, right?”

“Actually, the closet in the master bedroom. Just push the door open at the top of the stairs.”

Nodding, I took the flashlight from Mike and started to move into the passage, but he stopped me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Upstairs.”

Mike shook his head. “Fat chance,” he said, taking the flashlight from me and pulling out his gun. “We don’t know what’s up there. Let me go look around first.”

“Why, you chauvinist pig!”

“I’m not being chauvinistic. I’m trained for this, you aren’t. Just stay put.” He walked into the open space and disappeared up the staircase.

“He likes you,” Stanley said. I shrugged. “You like him, too.”

“Not at the moment.”

“
He’s just trying to take care of you. Let him. I can tell he’s a gentleman. He’s a good man.”

I heard a noise from the front of the house. It
sounded like a crunching noise, followed by squealing tires. I went back outside and looked around, not seeing anything unusual at first, but I could smell burnt rubber. That’s when I took a closer look at the Bronco, and realized it had been flipped on its passenger side and said a few choice words. “Son of a motherless goat herder!”

An engine revved on the left side of the house, and the next thing I knew, a big, black truck came barreling around the corner, bearing down on me.

Chapter 39

It was one of those trucks that had been jacked up so high you needed a ladder to climb into it. The tires were about the size of a tractor wheel, and I thought I was going to be eaten by the large silver grill. The truck wasn’t slowing down. I turned and took off around the
right side of the house.

Running has never been my favorite thing; okay, who am I kidding here? I hated running. I’d rather have a root canal. But at this point, running was preferable t
o being run down like roadkill. For some reason, an old black and white WWII movie,
Sink the Bismarck!
popped into my head. The German fleet commander had ordered the crew of his ship to perform a zig zag pattern in order to get away from the English pursuers. I decided this might be a good thing for me to do; it would be hard for that big truck to zigzag through the fields without risking the chance of rolling. At least, that’s what I hoped.

Moving side to side didn’t seem to bother the driver at all. They continued on the same straight path, and I began to realize why. There was a fence to my right; if I kept zigzagging, I’d be cut off. Crap. I altered my course, continuing the pattern, but in a northern direction.

I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to get a glimpse of the driver. That’s when it hit me: this was my nightmare coming true. When I faced forward again, I realized where he was steering me. Toward the well. Crap, crap, crap. Reaching into the side pocket of my bag, I pulled out my phone. Have you ever tried to send a text while you’re running for your life? Yeah, it really doesn’t work too well, especially when you fumble the phone and it ends up being flattened by a tire bigger you are.

The well wasn’t that far ahead. I had to make a decision. If I turned to my right, I could jump the fence, but the driver would probably just crash right through and keep after me. If I went to the left,
I didn’t think I could go in that direction fast enough to avoid being crushed like my phone. I could try and pull a u-turn, but I was getting tired of running and there was a sharp pain growing in my right side. Yeah, yeah, no comments about me being out of shape, thank you very much. It looked like I had only one choice. The well.

Running past the well,
I ripped the Velcro straps on the splint, took it off, and tossed it aside. It would just get in the way, and I needed both hands for whatever was about to happen. I went another twenty yards before turning around and going in the opposite direction. The unexpected move seemed to rattle the driver, because they hit the brakes and started sliding sideways. I ran straight to the well, and caught a break. There was a rope still tied to a nearby tree, and it went down into the well. Grabbing it, I swung my legs over the edge of the well and rappelled halfway down.

I heard the truck come to a stop, the door open and close, followed by footsteps. I moved further down, hoping he couldn’t see me, trying to remember how deep the rescuers had said the well was. Twenty-five, thirty feet? I didn’t want to fall and find out.

The rope jumped in my hands. Whoever was up there was messing with it. My heart started pounding, and I quickly rappelled further down the well. Surely he wasn’t going to pull me back up. And then the rope went slack and I was falling to the bottom. I landed on my back. I remember hearing a cracking sound right before I hit my head on the hard ground. At that moment, I was very grateful they had removed the bones and Aggie’s body from here the other day. The thought of being down here with them made me want to throw up.

I heard the rope land with a thump near me, followed by something hard hitting my
left leg. Whoever was up there had thrown a rock down! I bit my lip to keep from crying out. Rotten son of a motherless goat herder…when I got out of here, I was going to make them pay. Of course, there was just one problem with this…okay, maybe two problems. The rope was down here with me, and no one knew I was out here, except the idiot that chased me.

The first thing to do was to check for broken bones. There were rocks digging into various parts of my backside. Thankfully, I had hit my head on dirt, not rocks. But when I sat up,
I felt very dizzy and I wanted to throw up. Good thing I am so hard headed or I’d be dead by now. I checked my extremities, and I noticed that my left arm was sore and felt like it had a weird shape to it. It was hard to tell anything for certain with no light. The spot where the rock had hit my left leg was really sore. I saw lots of ice packs in my future.

“Cam!” a voice from above called out to me. For a moment there, I thought this was either divine intervention, or I was really dead and didn’t realize it yet. I pinched myself and yelled. Still alive. “Cam! It’s Mike! Are you alright?”

“I’m at the bottom of a well. Do you think you’d be alright if you were in my position?”

“Help is on the way. Hang tight.”

“What do you think I’m going to do, run off to another well or something?”

“Nice to see your sarcastic side is intact. Did you break anything?”

“Yeah, I think I broke my left arm. I don’t think it’s supposed to feel wavy.”

“How’s your head?”

“Fine, as long as I don’t move.”

“Just keep talking to me.”

I didn’t want to talk about my nightmare come to life. “What about the secret passage? Did you find anything?”

“Not really. I mostly got covered with cobwebs.”

My gut feeling was that passageway was an important part of Stanley’s murder. I was sure that whoever killed him used it to get away so they wouldn’t be seen by Aggie. But that narrowed the list of killers to three: Aggie, Ray or Stanley IV, aka Artie. Artie…was he an innocent bystander or did he really kill his father, then Ray, Aggie and Cliff to cover it up? Why kill Aggie and Cliff after all these years? My head started to throb, and I closed my eyes, gently massaged my temples.

“Cam? You alright down there?”

“Just dandy.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“I’m just glad it’s dark down here. I don’t think I could handle light right now.”

I heard some noises from up there. “Cam, help is here.
I’ll be down there to get you shortly. Can you move to the back side of the well? I don’t want to rappel down and step on you.”

“Yeah, I can.” Instead of trying to stand up, I slid backwards until I felt cold concrete against my back. “Not much room down here, you know.
And how are you going to come down here with a hole in your arm? Isn’t that a big no-no by doctor’s standards?”

I heard some arguing going on up top.
“I’ll have a flashlight attached to my belt, pointing down. You just let me know when it gets close so I’ll know to be careful.”

“I will.”

A few minutes later, another rope was thrown down, but this time, it didn’t land next to me. A tiny light appeared at the top of the well, and it got brighter and bigger as Mike came down. A couple of minutes later, I warned him that he was almost to the bottom. He slowed down and dropped to the ground in front of me. Releasing the caliper, he knelt next to me. “Really, we have to stop meeting like this,” I said. “I told you I don’t like being the damsel in distress.”

“Stanley saw the truck almost run you over in front of the house. He went upstairs to tell me, and we watched from the back windows. There were a pair of binoculars on the desk next to me, and I grabbed them to keep an eye on you. When you grabbed that rope and went over the edge, my heart dropped into my stomach. What were you thinking?”
 

“That I didn’t want to be run over by a monster truck.”

He ran his hands over my arms and legs. I winced when he touched my left arm. “Isn’t this the one you sprained?” he said. “Where’s your splint?”

“
Out there somewhere. I tossed it before I went over the edge of the well.”

“I think you broke it this time.”
He gently cupped my face in his gloved hands. “I have never been so scared in my life. I called for help as I ran downstairs and out the door. By the time I got around the corner, the truck was driving toward the opposite side of the house. I didn’t get a look at the driver. I kept hoping you were going to pull yourself up once you realized they were gone. Then I got to the well and noticed the rope had been cut.”

“Could we talk about this later? I really want to get out of…wait a minute, did you say there was a pair of binoculars in the room you were in?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Whoever killed Aggie must have stood there and watched the rescue efforts. They wanted to make sure she was dead.” Another wave of dizziness hit me. “Can we get out of here now? I really want to go home.”

Mike helped me up, put the extra belt he had brought with him around my waist, and got me hooked up to the rope. I hadn’t noticed he was wearing a pair of sunglasses on his head until he reached up and took them off before handing them to me. He gave it a hard tug, and I started moving up. “Just hang onto the rope. Let them do all the work. I’ll be right behind you.”

The closer I got to the top, the more grateful I was for the sunglasses. Even with them on, the sunlight was bright and I closed my eyes. When I got to the top, two pairs of hands reached out and helped me out.
One of them was Kim Thornton, who held onto me while Oliver Malloy unhooked me and removed the belt. She led me away from the well and over to the back end of a white truck. “Where are you hurt?” she asked me as she helped me up onto the tailgate. “What happened?”

“Shouldn’t that be what doesn’t hurt?”
I said before telling her about the rampaging truck chase.

“Turn sideways so I can get a look at your back.” I did as she asked, and as she lifted my shirt, I heard her gasp. “You’ve got bruises already forming all over your back, girl.”

“Well, there are rocks down there,” I pointed out, “plus an extra one that someone threw down to make sure I was dead. It hit me on my left leg.”

Kim got off the truck and knelt in front of me. Lifting my pants leg, she shook her head. “You are going to be really sore for a while. What about your head?”

“It’s fine, as long as I don’t move or stare directly into the light.”

“That explains why Mike wanted my shades,” she said, standing up. She gently felt the back of my head. “Another knot.
They’re going to have to check that out at the hospital.”

I started to shake my head, but stopped myself in time. “I know what they are going to say, you know what they’re going to say. I’ve got everything I already need at home. The only thing I want to do is go home and soak in a nice hot bubble bath and forget my troubles for a while.”

Mike appeared at the top of the well and pulled himself up. He took off the belt, handed it to Oliver, and came over to us. “How is she?”

“Well, she’s turning black and blue,
I’m pretty sure she has a full blown concussion this time, and she is refusing to go to the hospital,” Kim told him.

“You’re going,” Mike said to me.
“What about her arm?”

“I’m not,” I said stubbornly. “They’re just going to tell me to go home, rest and have someone wake me up every hour.” I looked at Kim. “True or not true?”

“Probably,” she reluctantly admitted, “but this arm is going to have to be X-rayed because I’m pretty sure you have a bad break.”

I sighed,
hopped off the tailgate, grabbing Mike’s arm to steady myself. I handed Kim her shades, squinting my eyes against the bright sunlight. “Thanks for letting me use them.”

“Keep them
. I’ll get them from you later.”

Mike
wrapped his arm around my waist as we started walking toward the house. “My gun is in my bag.”

“I’ll take care of it when we get to the truck. I have a locking gun case in my Bronco.”

“How are we going to get home? That idiot smashed up your Bronco.”

“Danny
is going to let us borrow his truck, and wait for a wrecker to take care of the Bronco.”

“Thanks. And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For being a royal pain in the butt this week.”

“Well, you definitely have been a pain,” he agreed, “but I think I’ve learned more about you in this past week than I ever thought possible.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both,” he said as Danny came toward us.

They started leading me toward
Danny’s Dodge Ram, but I stopped them. “Take me to the house for a minute,” I said.

“Why?” Mike asked.

“Please.”

“Stay here, Danny. Get my gun case out of my truck. It’s in the back end near my tool box,
” Mike told him as he took me to the house.

We walked inside, and Stanley was standing in the foyer. “Are you alright?” he said.

“A little banged up, but I’ll be okay,” I said. “Mike told me what you did, and I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “I deeply regret having involved you in this matter. I wish you would reconsider and drop the whole thing.”

“No,” I said, “I think we’re very close to solving the whole thing. That’s what you hired me to do, and I intend to see it through to the end.”