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Pallas reluctantly pulled free of Ambrose’s grip. “I almost forgot. Margaret Moore is over there somewhere buried under a bunch of caskets. I don’t know if she’s alive. She had a gun.”
“I’ll find her,” Ambrose said
Pallas hurried after him. “She’s under that pile over there.”
Ambrose smiled a little. “Your doing?”
“I was desperate.”
“Nice work.” Ambrose stepped over a shattered casket, ignoring the bones. “I see her. Looks like she’s semiconscious. Here, hold the flashlight.”
Pallas took the light and watched Ambrose dig through the rubble. Margaret groaned when he freed her. She stared at him, shocked.
“Well, fuck,” she said. “It’s the writer.”
“I get that a lot,” Ambrose said. He leaned down and retrieved the gun that she had dropped. “Can you stand?”
“No,” Margaret said.
“In that case, you can sit there on that pile of bones until the cops get here.”
Galvanized by the realization that she was sitting on a bone pile, Margaret scrambled to her feet.
“I hate this place,” she muttered.
“Move,” Ambrose said.
Margaret stumbled through the clutter of caskets and bones. Pallas was about to follow her, but she stopped when she saw an envelope on the floor.
She reached down and picked it up. The stationery was yellowed with age. She could sense the energy infused into the paper.Excitement. Rage. Triumph.
“What is it?” Ambrose asked.
“It must have fallen out of one of the caskets when they crashed on top of Margaret Moore,” Pallas said. “No address, but there’s a letter inside. I’ll read it later.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Emery Geddings wasin one of those body bags in the crypt,” Ron Quinn said. “The coroner thinks he was given a fatal dose of some drug. The dead woman in the other bag has been tentatively identified as Brooke Kendrick. She was bludgeoned to death.”
Pallas watched Ron pour tea into three mugs. “Have you always known about the old smuggling tunnel under the asylum?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ron said. He carried the mugs across his vintage kitchen and set them on the table. “I grew up here, same as Emery. Poor guy. He couldn’t bring himself to get out of the drug business. The money was just too easy.”
Ron handed a mug to Pallas and one to Ambrose and sat down.
Pallas inhaled the bracing aroma of the green tea. She and Ambrose and Ron were gathered at Quinn’s house because they wanted privacy, and at the moment there were not a lot of options in Carnelian. The events in the crypt had gone down a few hours earlier and by now the entire town was aware that something dramatic had occurred in the ruins of the asylum. It would have been impossible tofind a bar or a restaurant where they could have talked without attracting attention.
“That tunnel was built at the same time the asylum was constructed,” Ron said. “A hospital for the insane was the perfect cover for a smuggling operation. As you discovered, it did double duty as a crypt for the patients who died on the premises. The smuggling along this section of the coast was focused on liquor. The business came to an end in the early nineteen thirties, and the hospital was closed a few years later. Over time people mostly forgot about the old tunnel.”
“Geddings obviously knew about it,” Ambrose said.
Ron chuckled. “His family was in the trade for generations.”
“He made the mistake of going into business with Moore and Guthrie,” Ambrose said. “Logan told me Guthrie is awake. He sustained a concussion but he’ll live. He and Moore are asking for their lawyers, but Logan says he’s got all he needs to hold them on charges of murder, attempted murder, embezzlement, drug dealing, and kidnapping. After they grabbed Collier they used his phone to send the text. Evidently that wasn’t the original plan but they changed course when they saw him in the garage. Collier had his phone out and was about to send you a message, so they took advantage of the opportunity.”
“So they admitted they killed Geddings and Fenner?” Ron asked.
“Logan says they aren’t admitting to any of the deaths but he’s sure he can tie them to the murder of Geddings. They claim they had nothing to do with Fenner’s death, however, and can prove it. He’s planning to check out their alibis but he admitted that murder charge may not hold up, because it looks like an overdose.”
