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And then it was quiet again aside from the incessant dripping.
Nikki didn’t move. She barely dared slip her phone from her pocket to check the time. Then she waited. For a full ten minutes while the cavernous basement with its makeshift graves seemed to close around her. She told herself she did not feel spiders on the back of her neck, that the rat she spied earlier was long gone, that everything was just fine.
Slowly, Nikki emerged, turning on the light from her phone, half expecting to hear Delacroix’s voice say, “I knew you were down there. What the hell are you doing here, Nikki Gillette?”
But the basement remained silent. Ominously so.
She managed to take a few more pictures, then cautiously mount the stairs. Since the door was dead-bolted and she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been inside, she left the way she came in, tiptoeing into the kitchen and hoisting herself over the sink. Once she’d wriggled outside, tumbling onto the porch and nearly losing her phone in the process, she lowered the window to within an inch of the sill, righted the bucket and observed the grounds again.
Delacroix or someone else could have arrived while she was inside. Her gaze skimmed the tall grass and dilapidated outbuildings, even sweeping over the weeping willow, but she saw no one, so she followed the path that had led her here, skirting the outbuildings before turning into the woods.
What had she just witnessed?
Was this some kind of weird ritual with Delacroix? Something she did with all her cases? Or was this specific to this case? Questions assailed her as she hurried through the rain, the path now muddy.
By the time she reached her car she noticed that the fisherman’s camper and pickup were gone. Her CR-V was parked alone on the mashed grass and weeds and sparse gravel. She climbed inside, swiped her face with her sleeve, then switched on the ignition.
The windows steamed and she cracked the passenger side and cranked on the defrost by rote. She even fiddled with the radio, settling on a station that played music from the nineties, but she barely noticed as she thought about the case and the people involved. She drove past the gates of the Beaumont estate, firmly shut, then the acres of grapevines of the Channing Vineyards. Tyson Beaumont, Jacob Channing, Owen Duval, Bronco Cravens. How were they involved with the disappearance and murder of Holly and Poppy Duval? And what about Rose? Once over the bridge she glanced at the road leading to Bronco Cravens’s home, where he had been so brutally murdered. Gunned down. Shot in the back? Because of the Duval girls’ homicides? Or some other reason? It wasn’t as if he was exactly an upstanding citizen. He could have owed the wrong people money or double-crossed a cohort in some crime.
But to murder him?
Beyond the Cravenses’ cabin, just upriver was the Marianne Inn. The spot where Chandra Johnson caught Holly Duval crying. Holly—the tough, rebellious daughter of Margaret and Harvey.
Nikki nearly turned around and drove to the old inn, but glancing at the clock she knew she didn’t have time.
Today was Sylvie Mo
rrisette’s funeral.
As difficult as it would be, Nikki would have to attend and somehow deal with the guilt that would surely settle on her. She would have to endure the silent accusations in the eyes of Morrisette’s coworkers and family.
For Reed.
Nikki made a note to drive back to the Marianne Inn.
Once Detective Sylvie Morrisette was laid to rest.
I tell myself not to panic. I should be able to handle this. Haven’t I always? Haven’t I been able to keep my secrets and hide the truth for twenty years? It’s not the cops that worry me. I can handle them—they’ll never even suspect. But that damned Nikki Gillette. She’s a problem. A wild card. And she won’t back off. She might be the one who exposes me and I have to keep track of her. The tracking device will help. Now, I just need to keep track of her until I finish my job.
Then I’ll deal with her.
CHAPTER 27
The funeral was tough.
Reed, with Nikki at his side, sat on a hard pew in the church and avoided staring at the black coffin, atop of which was a blanket of white and blue flowers, along with Morrisette’s official department picture, a head shot of her in uniform. She would have hated this, Reed thought, avoiding looking at the posed picture, preferring to remember her as she was, alive and sassy, all grit and determination, her hair spiked, her ears studded, her language salty and her heart, always, in the right damned place. Now gone. Grief grabbed hold of Reed’s soul. He tried to listen as the minister, a bald-headed man, his clerical collar stretched tight around his fleshy neck, gave a brief account of Sylvie Morrisette’s life, but Reed’s mind filled with images of the mercurial partner he’d once doubted but had come to trust.
From his pulpit, the preacher kept his remarks short, thankfully, but stumbled when speaking about Sylvie’s early life and her career. Obviously, he’d never met Sylvie Morrisette. Reed guessed she’d never stepped one snakeskin-booted foot into this nave with its soaring ceilings, stained-glass windows and slow-moving fans moving the air around in the nave. Minister Linley glossed over Morrisette’s marriages and concentrated on the fact that Sylvie was a dedicated cop and devoted mother.
No doubt Minister Linley had received his information from either Bart Yelkis and the Internet or possibly someone at the department.
Reed knew far more about his partner than the man leading the service.
Throughout it all, Nikki, dressed in black and seated next to him, had been respectful and solemn, bowing her head during prayer while, during the rest of the service, she’d kept her eyes on the preacher, avoiding the accusing gazes of Morrisette’s friends—mainly cops—or family. Though Reed and Nikki had chosen to sit near the back, more than once Bart Yelkis had looked over his shoulder from a front pew, where he’d sat wedged between his children, both dressed somberly, both quietly weeping. When Yelkis caught sight of Nikki he’d sent her a hateful glare that Nikki either didn’t see or ignored.
Reed didn’t. His jaw tightened and he reached into his pocket to rub his new talisman, Morrisette’s key chain with its star fob. It had been a rough day already as he’d had to explain to Margaret Duval that the woman who’d posed as Rose was a complete fraud. “I should have been there,” she’d said over the weak phone connection. “I would have known immediately if that woman was my little girl.”
“She wasn’t,” he’d said as gently as possible. “It was a scam, I’m afraid.” He would have proof soon, when the DNA came through.
