Кэти Дэйли - The Curse Of Hollister House

“Fine by me. I’ll heat up the chili and make some corn bread, and we can carve straight through the dinner hour.”

“Be sure to call your grandmother to let her know what we are doing,” I counseled. “We wouldn’t want her to worry.”

“I’ll call her. She won’t worry as long as I am with you and I have a ride home.”

“I can drive you home when we’re done,” I offered.

During the next few hours, I remembered what it was like to be a kid again. I remembered what it was like to find pure joy in the simple things. I remembered what it was like to laugh without inhibition. I remembered the magic I’d somehow lost along the way. There would be those who would say my friendship with Paisley had been beneficial to her, and I hoped that was true. But the truth of the matter was our friendship was helping me more than I could ever say.

“Cass just pulled up,” Gracie called out to me just as I was getting ready to take Paisley home.

I hesitated.

“I’ll take her,” Gracie offered. “There is leftover chili in the refrigerator if Cass is hungry.”

“Thanks, Aunt Gracie.” I hugged Paisley. “I’ll see you tomorrow for your piano lesson.”

“I’ll be here.” She hugged me back.

Cass came in through the back door just as Gracie and Paisley were leaving. Tom went with them as well.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Starving.”

“There is leftover chili and corn bread.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I grabbed a beer and popped the top before passing it to Cass. “So, how’d it go?” I asked. “Did your lead pay off?”

“It did.”

“And?”

“And Patricia’s killer is behind bars.”

I frowned as I sliced the corn bread. “That seems like it would be a good thing, but you don’t seem happy.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not. The case was a rough one.”

I scooped the chili into a bowl and put it in the microwave. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It isn’t pretty,” he warned.

I set the plate with the corn bread and honey butter on the table. “I’m a big girl. I’m sure I can take whatever it is.”

Cass took a sip of his beer. “It turns out that Patricia had an older step brother who lived with the family.”

Oh, God. I already hated where this was going.

“The brother, who just turned twenty, had been molesting her for years. Patricia never told a soul until recently, when, after a few beers they’d snuck from her dad’s stash, she’d come clean with a friend. The friend persuaded her to tell her mom, which she planned to do as soon as her mom returned from visiting her aunt. Somehow, the brother found out. When she arrived home early from the party after arguing with her boyfriend, the brother just happened to be the only one at home. He confronted her, she fought back, and he killed her.”

“Oh, God.”

Cass continued. “He’d read the details of Tracy’s death in the newspaper and decided to make it look like the person who killed Tracy also killed Patricia.”

“The scratch marks?”

“He scratched her with his nails after she was dead, which, as it turns out, was a good thing, because we found skin under his nails that we will use to send the guy to prison for a very long time.”

“So who put you on to the brother?” I wondered.

“The friend Patricia told her secret to. After Patricia turned up dead, she wondered if it hadn’t been the brother. It took her a few days to work up the courage to tell me what she knew, but eventually, she did the right thing.”

“I hate that Patricia was killed by a family member.”

“Yeah.” Cass sighed. “Me too. He wasn’t blood, but still. It was not the sort of ending anyone wants to see.”

I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down across from Cass. “So it looks like Patricia’s death is definitely not linked to Tracy’s.”

“I guess not.”

“Where does that leave Buck? I mean, the whole reason the sheriff released him was because Buck couldn’t have killed Patricia. Now that you know the two deaths were not carried out by the same person, will you rearrest him for Tracy’s murder?”

Cass frowned. “I still don’t think that Buck killed Tracy, but I do think he might be able to help us figure out who did.”

“How is that?”

“It seemed as if Buck was covering for someone. I’m not sure if he was being bribed or threatened to do so, but if we find out who Buck was protecting, it seems like we should be able to identify the killer.”

Chapter 25

Sunday

Once again, I found myself sitting in the attic with Alastair in the wee hours of the morning. I’d tried to go back to sleep after waking when a noise outside my bedroom window startled me, but as hard as I tried, sleep evaded me. I wasn’t sure why I spent so much time up here. I guess it was the one place in all the world I felt the safest. I’d spent most of my time up here when I came to live with Gracie after my parents died, and I’d almost lived up here after Stella was murdered and any innocence I might still have possessed had been completely destroyed.

I plucked the Nancy Drew journal Stella and I had kept off the pile of books where I’d left it and curled into the window to read. Most of the cases Stella and I took on were silly. I opened the book to find a page entitled The Case of the Missing Sock , which was followed by The Case of the Too-Salty Casserole . That one was a toughie. It seemed that the casserole Stella’s mom had made for dinner turned out too salty and she blamed the grandmother, who’d been visiting at the time, saying that she’d added salt to it after she’d finished mixing it and transferred it to the casserole dish for baking. The grandmother denied having done so, and an argument erupted between the two, which for some reason, Stella thought she could mediate by finding the truth about the too-salty casserole.

I smiled as I remembered the fun Stella and I’d had. I don’t think we ever did figure out how the casserole came to be too salty, but we did find that missing sock. The cases we opened became spaced further and further apart as we got ready to enter middle school. I think we both decided somewhere along the way that participating in a Nancy Drew club was for babies.

I opened the book to the end in an attempt to remember our last case. The Case of the Peeping Tom. I frowned. I’d totally forgotten about this one, which had been opened by Stella shortly after we started middle school. She was sure that someone was spying on her. I remember that she thought someone had been looking through the air vent in the girls’ locker room while she was changing for volleyball. How could I have forgotten about this? Sure, I’d been traumatized beyond description when Stella was murdered, and I pretty much blocked everything from my mind. But this? Why hadn’t I realized that a Peeping Tom would be an important thing to know about when investigating a murder?

I looked at the notes.

Day 1 – Someone was watching me through the vent in the girls’ locker room. The notation was written in Stella’s handwriting. I could hear someone breathing, but I couldn’t see their face.

Day 2 was written in my handwriting. I spoke to the other girls on the volleyball team. Several of the others reported a similar experience to the one Stella reported.

Day 3 was recorded by Stella. Chills were experienced when the creepy art sub watched me walk away after class. I think I might fake being sick tomorrow.

Art sub? I didn’t take art because I had private piano lessons during sixth period, which counted as my elective. I wondered if we could find out who the sub for Stella’s art class had been. I made a mental note to ask Cass. It was twenty years ago, but it would seem that employee records were kept forever.