Twice Layered Murder Page 15

  “There’s probably a dead mouse back there,” Sheriff Black said.

  Eww.

  Mayor McConnell shared my grossed out sentiments, shaking his head and using his paw to point to the brick again.

  “There’s definitely something back there,” I said. “And I’d like to find out what.”

  “I have no interest in unearthing rodent corpses, Ms. Redoux,” Sheriff Black said, huffing at me.

  “It’s not number one on my wish list either, Sheriff. But something tells me there’s more than that back there.”

  “Something?” Darrin asked me with arched brows.

  “Call it a hunch,” I said, touching around the brick that Mayor McConnell pointed out.

  “Your hunches concern me,” Darrin said.

  I pressed two fingers at the top of the brick and two fingers at the bottom. It pushed inward. The door slid back, revealing yet another secret area in this old place.

  “Really?” I said. “Because I barely give them a second thought.”

  “What on earth?” Sheriff Black mused, rushing toward me. “There are stories about secret rooms in this places, tunnels that were used as part of the Underground Railroad. I never took them seriously, though.”

  “We learn something new every day, Sheriff,” I said, starting into the room.

  “Don’t you think one of us should go first?” Darrin asked, grabbing at his pistol.

  Mayor McConnell paid him no mind though, glaring at him briefly before he hopped up through the wall and into the room.

  “Mayor McConnell doesn’t seem to think so,” I answered, daring him by quirking my mouth to the side.

  “Well then, if the dog thinks it’s a good idea, then, by all means, go for it.”

  He probably wasn’t being serious, and I knew that. But I went ahead anyway, stepping into the secret room behind Mayor McConnell.

  It likely looked like a foolhardy move to the pair of sheriffs and Priscilla, but I knew that if anything meaning to do me harm was in there, Mayor McConnell would have jumped into action already, taking them out.

  He proved that much to me back in Second Springs, when he wrestled that gun away from Angela and saved my life.

  All I could hope was that Chloe was in here and this nightmare would finally end.

  The room was as dark as you’d imagine a secret room in a basement behind a wall might be. But there was a faint glow in the distance and the sound of a television running.

  And the heat, the heat was unbearable.

  I heard the others step through behind me, staring out into the long dark hall that led into the illuminated room.

  “This is it,” Priscilla said, clutching her chest as she took in the heat that threatened to smother us like the world’s largest warm blanket. “This is the place where I was being kept.” Her eyes got wide, and her hands began to shake. “Chloe!” she shouted down the corridor. ‘Chloe, I’m coming!”

  She whipped her high heels off and struck off running toward the playing television.

  “Wait,” I screamed, reaching out for her, but it was too late.

  There was panic in her voice and way too much fervor in her steps for this to be a put on. I knew now without a doubt that what Priscilla was telling me was the truth.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t about to get herself killed.

  “Mayor McC—” I started, but the Irish setter was already off, galloping after Priscilla toward the back room.

  I looked back at Darrin, who had his gun pulled. He moved forward, passing me carefully and walking swiftly back toward Priscilla.

  “Chloe!” I heard her scream in the distance as I followed, sandwiched between Darrin and Sheriff Black, who also brandished his gun. “Chloe!”

  Something dark settled on my mind. What if Priscilla had found her? What if, what she came across was not a bound a gagged Chloe, but a severely injured or dead one?

  I tensed as we neared the room, rounding the corner into it, I saw that it wasn’t as hellish a space as I’d imagined.

  Yes, the wall was brick with chopped paint on it, exactly like what I’d seen in that video back in the common room. And yes, there were chains on the wall, presumably to hold someone in place. But other than that, the room was kind of nice.

  It held a huge king sized feather bed that put my double back in the apartment behind the pie shop at home to shame. A bowl of half eaten fresh strawberries sat on a nightstand beside it, and the television I heard playing when we walked into the room was a gigantic flat screen.

  “I wonder if this place is for rent?” Darrin quipped, obviously having the same reaction to the room that I was.

  That wasn’t the part that stuck out to me the most. This room being a virtual palace of a prison was curious, but that would have to be put on the back burner. Because, other than the niceties, this room was empty.

  Chloe was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is she?” Priscilla asked, her voice rising to a near fever pitch. “I know this is where she was being held! I just know it!”

  “It is,” I said, pointing to the chipped paint on the wall. “It matches up with the video. This is definitely where she was.” I looked over at Darrin. “But where is she now?”

  “She has to be in this building,” Darrin said, looking from me to Sheriff Black. “No vehicles have been allowed to leave the premises. Correct?”

  “None but the van headed to Second Springs.” He pointed to me. “The one she broke out of.”

  “So far as we know,” I answered.

  “What does that mean?” Sheriff Black asked, obviously taking it up as a challenge to the competency of his police force. “I promise you, Young Lady, you might have been able to weasel your way past my naïve nephew, but my people know how to guard a gate.”

  “I’m sure they do,” I answered. “But what if they didn’t use the gate?”

  “Explain,” Darrin said flatly. The poor thing. He was probably panting from trying to keep up with my mental laps.

  “We didn’t know this place existed. There’s an entire corridor running from the outhouse in the backyard to this place. I’d be shocked if these were the only surprises a house as old as this had to offer.”

  I looked over at Mayor McConnell, but his gaze wasn’t as forceful or knowing as it had been before. Was it possible that we had reached the limits of his knowledge?

  “She’s right,” Darrin said. “If this place was used as part of the Underground Railroad, then there’s likely a tunnel or two that might surface someplace far from here, maybe even outside the gates.”

  “And, with them, the surveillance system,” Sheriff Black lamented.

  “So, that’s it?” Priscilla balked. “She’s just gone? She could be anywhere?”

  “Yes and no,” Darrin answered. “We need to find these tunnels. We search them to their ends, and we might find Chloe or at least a clue to where Chloe might be.”

  * * *

  No,” I answered, walking around the room. I caught sight of some balled up tissue in the corner, just like the tissue I saw in Chloe’s room after she was taken. “That’s like chasing an ice cube through a blender. You guys have been searching this place all day, and it took my dog to find this place. We need to find out who’s responsible. That’s what will lead us to Chloe.”

  “Another wall we’ve hit,” Darrin answered. “But we are closer than we’ve been. There might be a clue or two here that could shed some light on the identity of the person or people responsible.”

  “Look at this,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s a good thing the family refused to let the show tape here today. They’d have had a field day with this stuff.”

  “Pfft,” Priscilla snorted.

  “What?” I asked, turning my attention from the tissues to Priscilla.

  “No, you’re right. They’d have probably dug through this place with a fine tooth comb, but they’d have had to be here first. And they weren’t interested in that at all.”

&n
bsp; “That’s not right,” I said. “They’re not here because they weren’t allowed.”

  “Oh honey, they’re the television. If they’re not allowed, they make themselves allowed,” Priscilla answered. “They didn’t come because they don’t want anything to do with this.”

  “With the marriage?” I asked, my eyes narrowing and my mouth quirking to the side.

  “Of course with the marriage. She’s their resident bad girl.” Priscilla put air quotes around the words. “She’s the troublemaker, at least when the editors are through with her. And what’s more, she’s the wild child, the villain. Do you really think they wanted to give their villain a happy ending?” She shook her head. “Not this soon in the run. They could have gotten another three years easy out of her flirting with other people’s husbands and wild nights out on the town. They told her as much. They begged her not to take that stupid ring from that stupid boy, but she did it, anyway.” Priscilla shrugged. “I guess that’s love for you.”

  “Oh…oh no…” I said, the pieces clicking together in my mind. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What is it?” Darrin asked, glaring over at me curiously.

  I ignored him.

  “Priscilla, may I use your phone?” I asked.

  “Um, sure,” she said and handed it over.

  “You have pretty much the same set of contacts as Chloe, right?”

  “Give or take a few people,” she answered.

  “Good,” I said, scrolled down the contact list until I got to the right person and pressed the call button. I stood fuming in silence until I heard a voice on the other end of the line.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Rita Redoux. I know you’re the one who took Chloe. I’m in the room you set up for her. You have exactly thirty seconds to get down here. Otherwise, my next call is going to be to the newspapers!”

  I hung the phone up and tossed it back to Priscilla.

  “You know?” Darrin asked, the beginnings of a smile starting on his lips.

  “Oh yeah,” I said.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah,” I repeated.

  “Good enough,” he said. “Let’s end this.”

  26

  I folded my arms and waited to hear the footsteps that I knew were coming.

  “What did you just do?” Sheriff Black asked, looking from Darrin, to me, and back again.

  “She just unearthed your kidnapper,” Darrin answered.

  “What? How?” he asked, his face red and blustering.

  “I’d like to know that too, I think,” Priscilla added quietly.

  “You helped me,” I said, turning to Priscilla. “And you, too,” I added, looking at Sheriff Black.

  “You’re going to have to explain yourself, little lady,” Sheriff Black demanded.

  “Listen up,” Darrin said. “Because, if history is any indicator, this little lady is about to blow your mind.”

  I blushed more than a little. Darrin believed in me, and he wasn’t going to let anyone treat me like I was less than their equal. I couldn’t help but smirk. “Come on, Darrin. Don’t oversell me.” I quirked my mouth to the side. “Chloe Covington’s family is old money. They’ve been southern socialites since before the Civil War.”

  “True enough,” Sheriff Black said.

  “When you’re a socialite, when you’re running in certain circles, appearance is everything.” I started pacing. “So, I got to thinking. Why would a family that puts so much emphasis on appearance get entangled with a trashy reality show that makes up scandals when it couldn’t uncover them?”

  “I’m going to overlook the fact that you called my source of income trashy because I’m really curious as to what the answer to that question is,” Priscilla said, biting on her finger nervously.

  “Simple,” I answered smiling. “Because someone forced her to. And that was the same person who forced her into pretending her engagement was real, the same person who made her milk her bad girl persona, and the same person who kidnapped her.” I heard footsteps falling, the person in question nearing us. “Oh yeah. It also happens to be her father. Come on in, Mr. Covington,” I shouted into the hallway.

  Chloe’s father strode in, his hands raised over his head in submission.

  “What?!” Sheriff Black did a double take. “This can’t be right. You kidnapped your own daughter?”

  “I’m afraid this whole thing has been a very large and very unfortunate misunderstanding,” Mr. Covington said, glaring at me.

  “Misunderstand, my foot,” I answered. “You allowed an investigation to take place. You orchestrated mayhem in the highest degree.”

  “So, if I understand this correctly, Chloe Covington was a willing perpetrator in all of this?” Sheriff Black deduced. “The kidnapping was a farce?”

  “Not exactly,” I answered. “Do you want to explain this, or should I?”

  “I’m not admitting to anything that might incriminate myself,” Mr. Covington said, his hands still in the air.

  “Fair enough,” I shrugged. “Stop me if you heard this before.” I went back to pacing. “The family fortune has been dwindling for a while now, hasn’t it?”

  Mr. Covington didn’t answer.

  “It’s why you allowed your daughter to dip her foot into the scandalous world of the entertainment business, why you allowed her to become a household name. It was to fund your lifestyle, to keep up appearances.” I shook my head. “But even the television money wasn’t enough, was it? It was just a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. This sort of place, throwing parties like the ones necessary to keep this place in vogue; it all gets very expensive. Pretty soon, you were running through the money faster than you could make it.”

  “Mr. Covington,” Sheriff Black said. “Is this true?”

  “Of course it’s true,” I answered when it became clear he wasn’t going to. “And you know it.”

  “I know no such thing,” he answered.

  “You do, otherwise you wouldn’t have mentioned the ‘hard times’ the family was going through.”

  “I-I-,” he stammered. “I wasn’t alluding to money issues. I naturally assumed they were fine on that end. What I was talking about had to do with business things. Mr. Covington brokered a deal to rent pieces of this building out for events during the summer. I saw him at City Hall drafting a renter’s agreement.”

  “Is that what he told you?” I asked, my brows arched and my eyes pointed directly at Mr. Covington. “Would you care to tell him the truth now?”

  “It wasn’t to rent out pieces of the building,” Mr. Covington admitted, his eyes on the ground. “It was to sell it.”

  “Sell it? You mean the building?” Sheriff Black gasped. “But this has been Covington property for almost two hundred years.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?!” Mr. Covington spit. “Of course I know it! But the money isn’t there. I couldn’t keep the lights on.”

  “But you still didn’t ever intend on actually selling, did you?” I asked. “You weren’t going to be the one who lost his family’s legacy.”

  “No, I was not,” he answered flatly.

  “What did you do?” Priscilla asked, still chewing on her finger.

  “He did what he had to, what the people in television would describe as ‘building your own drama.'”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Covington said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t I?” I dared him. “You needed a second source of income and renting this place out had crossed your mind before. But this sort of old world glitz didn’t hold the same allure to the masses that it used to. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.” I pointed at him. “However, you know what does hold that allure; the tabloids.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t sure before Priscilla said the producers of Real Southern Debutantes had no interest in the wedding. You told Daniel and Debra the opposite; that Chloe was going to be booted from the show if she didn’t go
through with the wedding. But that wasn’t true, was it? It was you that needed it. You knew that the fairytale wedding of a reality star would turn this into a premier venue again. Your problems would be solved. All you had to do was string a potential buyer along so that he’d pay the bills until your plan worked out. That was who I heard you on the phone with a few minutes ago, wasn’t it?”

  Mr. Covington’s eyes got wide.

  “How did you…?”

  “I’m everywhere. Deal with it,” I answered. “But that wasn’t the only flaw in your plan. You didn’t take into consideration your daughter might actually have a mind of her own, that she wouldn’t go through with a fake wedding just to keep your family’s antiquated business afloat.”

  “Children aren’t the way they used to be,” he answered. “In my day, we did what our fathers told us. No questions asked.”

  “And that’s what was going to happen by any means necessary as far as you were concerned, wasn’t it?” I asked, scolding him with my tone.

  “She said no. She said she wouldn’t go through with it.” He balled his fists up in anger. “But I had already sunk the last of our money into this wedding. I was in debt to a buyer. If she didn’t do this, then I was ruined. I was going to have to tell everyone we were broke.”

  “But you weren’t broke,” I scoffed. “Chloe had money. Or she did until you wasted it all on your fragile male ego.”

  “You don’t understand,” he pleaded with me. “This is the only life we’ve ever known. This is the only thing I know how to do. If I lost this place, I wouldn’t have anything.”

  “You’d have had your daughter,” I answered. “But that wasn’t enough for you. So you kidnapped her.”

  “I just needed some time. I needed to create a scandal big enough that my buyer would back out and forgive the debt. Then, once I was able to talk some sense into her, we’d go through with the wedding. It would be a happy ending, the fairytale everyone would want to be a part of. Even that stupid show would have to report on it. This place would be in all the papers. It would make me richer than our family had ever been before. And then, I wouldn’t have to take Chloe’s money. She’d have it for herself.”