Whisper of Evil Read online

  “You never told me who else in your family had it.”

  Nell shook her head, reminding herself that it was far too easy to confide in some people. In him. “Never mind. To answer your question, yes, it is still happening to me. I see things that aren’t there. I even hear voices sometimes. So if you want to prove I’m unfit to make decisions about the estate, you could probably at least give the judge something to think about.”

  His mouth tightened. “That is not what this is about, dammit.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  Nell shrugged but kept her gaze on his face. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit touchy about the subject. Keever was indiscreet enough to hint that someone had questioned my fitness to inherit the estate.”

  “Someone? He didn’t say who?”

  “He wasn’t quite that indiscreet.”

  Max frowned. “Hailey was disinherited, and from what I heard there were no loopholes in that part of the will. True?”

  “True, at least from a legal standpoint. I’m the sole heir.”

  “Could it have been Hailey?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you don’t think it was?”

  Nell shrugged again. “I think it isn’t like her to lurk in the background if she wants to fight about it, but maybe she’s changed in a dozen years.”

  “But if it isn’t her, with no Gallaghers left in Silence, who would stand to benefit if you were declared unfit or barred from inheriting?”

  “As far as I know ... no one.” Her tone was deliberate.

  “Except someone who might want to buy land you don’t want to sell? Jesus, Nell, I’d think you knew me well enough to know I don’t do things that way.”

  “Until this week, I hadn’t seen or talked to you in twelve years, Max.”

  “Whose fault is that?” he demanded roughly.

  For the first time, Nell avoided his dark eyes, fixing her own on the half-empty coffee cup before her. Ignoring the question hanging in the air between them, she said evenly, “How good a judge of character is any of us at seventeen? I thought I knew a lot of things then. And a lot of people. I was mostly wrong.”

  “Nell—”

  She did not want to answer the question she knew he wanted to ask, not here and not now, so she cut him off before he could ask it. “I’ll let you know about the land if and when I make up my mind. In the meantime, I don’t think there’s anything else we need to talk about, do you?” She made sure her voice was completely indifferent.

  Max stiffened visibly, then slid from the booth without a word and stalked out of the café.

  From behind Nell, a low and slightly amused voice murmured, “Looks like you still know how to push all his buttons.”

  She picked up her cup and sipped the nearly cold coffee, scanning the room to make sure no one noticed her talking to someone she wasn’t looking at in the booth beside hers. She kept her voice as quiet as his had been. “His temper was always his Achilles’ heel.”

  “A small but fatal weakness? Let’s hope not.”

  “You have such a literal mind.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, so I’ve been told. My one failing. Did you know, by the way, that Tanner’s been following you around town all morning?”

  “I was pretty sure he was.”

  “Any idea why? I mean, besides the obvious possibility?”

  “Maybe he’s suspicious.”

  “Of you? Why would he be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mmm. You still sure about him?”

  Nell drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I have to start with a certainty. That’s my certainty.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll stick to the plan.”

  “Do that. Oh—have you been out to the house, by any chance?”

  “Checked out that place in the woods you told me about, but didn’t find anything there. I didn’t go near the house, though. Why?”

  She hesitated, but only briefly. “It’s probably nothing. I’ve just had the feeling a few times that someone was watching me.” And calling my name.

  “Inside the house?”

  “Maybe through a window, I don’t know.”

  “Shit. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Look, it’s probably just my imagination.”

  “We both know you don’t imagine things.”

  “I’ve never come home before. And twelve years is a long time. It’s probably just that.”

  “Or ghosts, maybe?”

  “Oh, hell, don’t even suggest ghosts. All I need is another reason not to sleep at night.”

  After a moment, and in an uncharacteristically kind tone, he said, “Bad enough to be dropped into the middle of a situation like this one without dragging your own baggage in as well. It can get ... real easy to lose perspective. If this is too difficult for you, just say so.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Be very sure of that, Nell. The stakes are high. People are dying around here, remember?”

  “It’s hardly something I could forget.” She set her cup down, left a tip on the table for the waitress, and prepared to slide from the booth. “Just don’t crowd me, okay?”

  “Gotcha.”

  Nell didn’t look back or indicate any interest whatsoever in that other rear booth, just walked up front to pay her check and then left the café.

  Justin Byers hadn’t had much trouble fitting in since he had come to Silence a couple of months before. He’d always liked small towns, choosing them over cities whenever there was a choice to be made, and so he felt entirely comfortable here. And his duties as a detective in the Criminal Investigation Division of the sheriff’s department were both familiar and absorbing—especially these days.

  But the major reason he liked this town went by the name of Lauren Champagne. Deputy Lauren Champagne.

  Justin had never been given to fantasies—at least no more than the average male—but he’d discovered that his subconscious had a mind of its own. He was waking up virtually every morning in a tangle of sheets with his heart pounding and with the disconcerting realization that his dreams had been more than a little ... raw.

  Which made it damned hard to be cool and professional when he encountered Lauren in the course of the day.

  “Hey, Justin,” she offered easily when they met on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse on Thursday afternoon.

  “Hey, Lauren.” He hastily quashed a fleeting mental image of creamy bare flesh and strove to be professional. “Where’s Kyle?”

  “Inside. We had some paperwork for the clerk of court.” She shrugged. “What’re you up to?”

  “Still trying to run down all the financial info on George Caldwell. You know, for a fine, upstanding banker, he sure had tangled finances.”

  Lauren smiled wryly, her dark eyes grave. “Isn’t that par for the course where these killings are concerned?”

  “Yeah, there always seems to be a mess left behind. Except we haven’t stumbled over any of George’s secret vices yet.”

  “You think you will?”

  Quite without planning to, he heard himself say, “Well, let’s just say I’m a little bothered by a few things. These scattered financial records, for one, all of which I still haven’t been able to track down. As for his personal accounts at the bank where he worked, there’ve been some regular deposits to at least one of them with no explanation of where the income originated. It wasn’t salary or bonuses, and so far it doesn’t look like investment income.”

  “Maybe his wife knows.”

  “Maybe, but I’m under orders not to bother her with questions.”

  With a lifted brow, Lauren said, “Sheriff’s orders?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” she said after a moment, “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  Justin was worried that the sheriff did have his reasons but reminded himself that Lauren had been here longer than he had and might well feel loyal to Ethan Cole, so all he
said was, “It’s making things a little difficult, that’s all. Caldwell knew how to handle money, and that included how to hide it.”

  “To avoid paying taxes, you think?”

  “Maybe. Or to squirrel some of it away in case he and Sue finally decided to divorce. What she couldn’t find, he wouldn’t have to share.”

  “Not so unusual for a man contemplating divorce.”

  “No,” Justin agreed. “But it would be nice to know for sure if that was his motive.”

  Lauren nodded but didn’t comment, since her partner, Kyle Venable, joined them then to say dryly, “We have a couple of warrants to serve. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “Loads,” she agreed in the same tone. “Justin, good luck with your investigation.”

  “Thanks. See you, Lauren. Kyle.”

  “We’ll be around,” Kyle told him cheerfully, then followed his tall and striking partner back toward their cruiser.

  Justin watched them—well, Lauren—until they got into the patrol car and left the courthouse, then continued on his way. He spent nearly an hour in the courthouse checking over property records, then paid a third visit to the bank where George Caldwell had been a VP.

  By the time he came out and headed back toward the sheriff’s department, he was feeling more than a little frustrated. It wasn’t that he was being stone-walled, exactly; with Caldwell’s death a clear murder, the judge hadn’t hesitated to order the bank to make its records available to the investigators. Problem was, the bank records looked clean.

  It was Caldwell’s personal financial records that looked suspect, but there was nothing firm Justin could point to in order to explain why he had this itching on the back of his neck that told him to keep digging.

  He just knew, dammit. Knew there was more to the story than he had yet discovered.

  The problem was how in hell to find it.

  The sheriff could have made it easier on him but instead had virtually tied his hands, and much as he wanted to it wasn’t something Justin intended to complain about. He was treading carefully with the sheriff, perfectly aware that Ethan Cole didn’t really trust him and equally aware that the sheriff was hiding something. Or trying to.

  That was something else Justin knew but couldn’t prove. And wasn’t really sure he wanted to try and prove, all things considered. But he didn’t have much of a choice.

  Not really eager to return to the station any sooner than he had to, Justin stopped off on the way back for a cup of decent coffee at the downtown café. He sat alone at a front table and gazed broodingly out at the passing traffic.

  Such a nice little town.

  “Hey, Detective Byers—” One of the young waitresses he’d spoken to maybe twice stood by his table holding an envelope. “This was left for you.” She handed it over.

  His name was block-printed on the front—just his name, nothing to identify him as a cop. For some reason, that bothered him.

  “Who left it, Emily?”

  She shrugged and popped her gum. “Dunno. Vinny just found it on the counter and told me to bring it over to you. Guess somebody figured you’d stop by. You usually do, most afternoons.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Emily.”

  “Welcome.”

  As she wandered away, Justin made a mental note to stop being so goddamned predictable, then stared at the envelope, turning it in his hands. The usual number-ten business-type, treated for security so what lay inside wasn’t easily visible, at least through the paper. But what lay inside clearly had shape and bulk, something like a small notebook from the feel of it.

  The envelope had been handled by so many people he knew it was useless to worry about fingerprints. As for what was inside ...

  He wasted a couple of minutes trying to convince himself somebody had sent him an early birthday card—okay, maybe an early birthday booklet—sighed, and carefully pried up the lightly sealed flap.

  It was indeed a small, black notebook, the sort some people carried around in their pockets or purses to jot down phone numbers or whatever. Justin handled it carefully by the edges, even though his instincts and training told him the polished surface was polished for a reason and would yield no fingerprints whatsoever. Inside, a number of the lined pages contained notes. Two initials at the top of each page, followed by what looked like a list of dates and dollar amounts.

  The dates on each page were spaced no less than a month apart, with some only every three or four months, and at least one page contained only two dates, more than six months apart.

  He was no expert, but the spiky handwriting—different from the block-printing on the envelope— looked familiar. It looked like George Caldwell’s handwriting.

  Frowning, Justin pulled out his own notebook and made a careful list of all the dates, in chronological order. What he ended up with was a date for almost every month spanning the past three years. And when he compared the dates to earlier notes he had made, he was grimly unsurprised to find that they matched the dates of the regular deposits into one of Caldwell’s bank accounts.

  Those unexplained deposits.

  That unexplained income.

  “Blackmail,” Justin muttered under his breath. It was possible. Maybe more than possible. Every one of the dead men had led a double life, a secret life, their crimes and sins hidden until their deaths had exposed those dark truths.

  It appeared that someone had become impatient with Justin’s failure to uncover George Caldwell’s nasty little secret and had decided to help the investigation himself. Or herself.

  One of the blackmail victims?

  The killer?

  And if either, why give the book to him? Why hand evidence like this over to a detective investigating the murder of George Caldwell? To ensure justice?

  Or something else?

  Justin looked at the initials that headed each page. Each, presumably, represented a name. Most were unfamiliar to him, or at least suggested no one he knew. Two did suggest names that he knew, or thought he knew.

  M.T.—Max Tanner?

  And E.C.—Ethan Cole?

  “Ah, shit,” Justin muttered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Max hadn’t planned on following Nell around all day. He really hadn’t. And after her cool dismissal at the café, seeking her out again should have been the last thing on his mind. But he found himself hanging around where he could watch her Jeep, and when she left town a few minutes later, he followed her at a discreet distance until she turned off into the driveway of the old Gallagher house.

  It was late afternoon by then, and he had a dozen things that needed doing at the ranch, but even though he went back home and tried to concentrate on his work, he found his mind wandering again and again. An uneasy sense that he needed to be somewhere else nagged at him.

  It had happened before, years ago, an urge he hadn’t heeded—something he would forever regret. And it had happened again recently when he’d felt driven to saddle his horse and head toward Gallagher land, discovering Nell in the middle of the woods and in the middle of one of those “visions” of hers that left her frighteningly vulnerable.

  He had almost forgotten how unsettling they were, those episodes of hers. She was physically there, eyes open, breathing—but somewhere else as well. Somewhere no one else could follow. And wherever it was, either the effort of getting there or simply what she saw left her pale and shaking.

  She had told him once, hesitantly, that she had no control over what happened to her and had no idea what it was that triggered the episodes—but what she saw during them was invariably something that frightened her. When he had pressed her for details all those years ago, she had said only that “some places remember” what had happened in them—or would happen.

  It had made no sense to him then. It still didn’t.

  But whatever he felt about her peculiar abilities, it didn’t change his uneasiness and anxiety now. There was someplace he needed to be, and it wasn’t here at the ranch. As a mild spring night fell, that re
stless urge to be somewhere else, to do something, was driving him crazy. He resisted as long as he could, but the feelings just kept intensifying until he couldn’t ignore them any longer.

  And he was only mildly surprised when his truck rounded the curve near the Gallagher driveway, to see Nell’s Jeep pulling out onto the road.

  Eight P.M. Where was she going?

  In just a few minutes, it became obvious she was heading away from Silence; she took the new highway and headed south, in the general direction of New Orleans.

  Max followed cautiously, not even bothering to find reasonable excuses for what he was doing. There weren’t any. There was nothing in the least reasonable about any of this, and he damned well knew it.

  Traffic wasn’t especially heavy on this Thursday evening, so Max stayed back as far as he dared without losing sight of the taillights of Nell’s Jeep. Which is why he nearly missed it when she took an off-ramp about a dozen miles from Silence.

  Forced to close the distance between them or risk losing her in the darkness, Max followed her for several miles along a winding country road until she pulled off at a small and distinctly seedy motel where, the sign proclaimed, rooms were for rent at an hourly as well as nightly rate. Since only two cars were parked in front of two of the units, it appeared business wasn’t exactly booming.

  Whatever Max had expected, it wasn’t this.

  He cut his lights and pulled a little past the turnoff, watching as her Jeep bypassed the flickering neon sign indicating the office and went directly to the last unit at the end of the building. She parked in front, got out, and apparently used a key to let herself into unit number ten.

  Max watched a dim light come on inside the room. The curtains were drawn, so it was impossible to see what was going on in there. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, frowning, then swore under his breath and turned his own truck back toward the motel.

  He parked off to the side and crept toward the unit on foot, being very careful not to give away his approach with the slightest sound.

  Not careful enough.

  He heard a click he recognized and froze even before he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel against his neck.