The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters) (25 page)

“Who makes that announcement?” Aidan asked.

“Either the box office clerk, Sondra or Ron. Tonight it was Cindy Chessy, the box office clerk. She’s the first to leave every night. All she has to do is put the strongbox and computer in Sondra’s office, then she can head out,” he said. “Joshua had plans with friends who worked at a different venue. They were meeting for an early breakfast. I saw him leave and then I went to the mausoleum.”

“Mo?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have noticed the coffin,” she said. “I was tired and ready to go home. Phil pointed out that there was...someone in it. It’s across a field of graves from us.”

“And none of you saw anything?” he demanded, incredulous.

“Define
anything,
” Phil said dryly. “The graveyard is full of ghouls, and at the end of the night we pick up some of the props because it could snow. Anyone could have walked around here with a body and no one would’ve noticed.”

“Okay,” Aidan said. “Let me go over this one more time. Last tour is announced—”

“And we finish wherever we are, just to make sure everyone in the tour group is really gone. There’s often one jerk in the last group who wants to stay behind,” Phil told him.

“So, last tour, finish up, people run out—with body parts, bodies and other props,” Aidan said.

Phil nodded.

“So then, your friend Joshua Kirbin left.”

“Yes.”

“Is that when you noticed his coffin?” Aidan asked.

Phil shook his head with a grimace. “No. I’ve seen this place a million times. The others were out—like I said, they’re closer to the building—and I was just waiting for Mo and Grace. I saw Mo come around her mausoleum and Grace walked over to her.”

“Then Ron came out, worried about Sondra,” Mo said.

“We were talking and the floodlight was on,” Phil explained. “I was looking in that direction. And I saw there was something in the coffin—and I knew it couldn’t be Josh.”

Mo watched Aidan. He seemed weary; she had a feeling that something else had happened since she’d seen him.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Phil said, shaking his head again. “They’ll close us down now, won’t they? They’ll close it all down. They have to. I mean, Lord, you could leave corpses and heads everywhere here, and it would take a while for anyone to notice.”

“That is a problem, yes,” Aidan said. He looked at them both. “An officer is going to come and take all this down. Please stay here until he’s done and check with me before you leave. Mo—you and Grace—wait for me, please. I’ll see you home.”

It had been so shocking, so horrible, they hadn’t thought about the loss yet. But as she and Phil looked at each other, they both whispered, “Sondra.”

“I’m really sorry. I just met her today. She seemed to be a fine person,” Aidan said. He stood there for a moment, then turned and went out back.

A few minutes later an officer came in and took their statements. After that, Ron and Grace returned to the parlor.

“I don’t think I want to be here for Halloween next year,” Grace said dully. “I’m going to save up and go on vacation. I’m going to find a country where they don’t celebrate Halloween at all.”

“I can’t stop,” Ron said. “Makeup and fabrication. That’s my whole life.”

Eventually, Aidan came back in. “Ron, Phil, you two are free to go. Grace, I’ll follow you to your house. Mo, come with me,” Aidan told her. “We’ll get Grace home first.”

She nodded, feeling numb. When she left, she hoped she’d never have to come back here.

They stayed close behind Grace but Mo wondered if it even mattered.

The sun was already coming up. She didn’t know if it was because she was so shocked that she had nothing to say—or because she was just so worn-out.

When they reached Grace’s home, Aidan got out of the car and went to the door with her. Grace had an alarm system; Aidan waited for her to key in the numbers and lock herself in.

When he came back to the car, he spoke to her a little sharply. “Mo.”

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Was it...was it Sondra?” she asked.

“It was. I’m sorry.” His voice was as sincere, as sorrowful, as it had been when he’d said those words earlier.

“Me, too.” She took a deep breath. “Aidan, does this mean there’s some kind of psychopath on the loose? Sondra... I doubt she even knew Richard Highsmith or Wendy Appleby. This
can’t
be connected to them.”

He was quiet. Then he told her, “The Appleby house was broken into tonight—and trashed.”

“Thieves who knew she was dead and that the house was empty?”

“Thieves take things. The only thing missing was Wendy Appleby’s computer,” he said.

“What are you thinking?”

“The Krewe’s working on it now, but...I don’t think Wendy Appleby had a husband who was killed in an automobile accident. I think that was just her story.”

“What do you mean? And, anyway, why would that matter, whether she’d had a husband or not?” Mo asked. “Do you think she and Richard were having an affair? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know if they were having an affair now, but I think they did nine years ago. I think Richard was J.J.’s father.”

“What...what led you to that conclusion?”

“I could be way off, but it’s a theory worth exploring. We found the Woman in White—who had an affair with Major Andre. And then a daughter, who married a Highsmith. As for
Lizzie grave
—there was a picture at the Appleby house with Wendy and J.J. at the cemetery. It looked like a school outing. And on the back of it she’d written, ‘Lizzie’s grave.’ It’s too much of a coincidence that they both wrote those exact words. They might have met there—or planned to meet there. To discuss J.J. or the future? Maybe she’d hidden the truth from Richard all these years.”

“And maybe you’re wrong. Maybe they were both history buffs. Or else Wendy did know Richard, discovered the grave and just wanted to tell him about it. Wendy wasn’t from here, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Wendy Appleby was dancing on the Broadway stage nine years ago—and Richard always loved theater.”

Mo shook her head. “From everything I hear, they were both decent people. Why wouldn’t Wendy have told Richard? Why wouldn’t they have at least let their child know the truth?”

“People have reasons—bad ones, sometimes—for doing things. It’s possible that, at the time, Wendy didn’t want to trap him into marriage but didn’t want to give up her baby, either.”

“That’s just conjecture,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, but before he could continue, his hands-free phone rang. Mo heard his part of the conversation and wasn’t surprised when he told her, “There’s no Mr. Appleby. No father listed on J.J.’s birth certificate.”

She nodded. “I could tell from what you were saying. But why kill people for that? And why kill Sondra? Like I said, I don’t believe she knew either of them.”

“Could be smoke and mirrors,” Aidan said.

“Pardon?”

“Make sure someone else dies in the same gruesome manner. To create a diversion, send us in the wrong direction,” he explained. When they reached her house, he got out of the car and walked her to the door. “Mo, I’m sorry to ask, but can you get Rollo and can we keep going tonight?”

“Keep going?”

“We have another head to find,” he said. “And I’m sure you know the location of just about every headless horseman in the city.”

Her heart sank.

She didn’t want to find Sondra’s head. She hadn’t known Sondra the way Phil and Ron and Grace had. But she’d met her through the years—and Sondra had been wonderful to Mo for the few days she’d worked there.

But she also didn’t want to think of Sondra’s head set up as a ghoulish mockery to be discovered by someone else, a child, perhaps.

“I’ll get Rollo,” she said.

13

“W
here should we go?” Aidan asked Mo as she returned to the car with Rollo.

“There’s the large metal headless horseman by the bridge,” Mo said. “But that one’s huge. You’d need several people to get a head on top of it. And there’s one at the entrance to the village set up specifically for Halloween. Other than that...at this time of year, they’re everywhere.”

“Yes, but you and Rollo can locate the one we need.” He paused. “How did you find Richard Highsmith’s head the day we met?”

“I had a piece of Richard’s clothing and I let Rollo get his scent.”

Aidan didn’t want to sound ridiculous, but asked his next question, anyway.

“Did you get a feel for Richard then—or see him?” Mo looked out the front window of the car. He hadn’t started the engine yet.

“Let’s go back to the Haunted Mausoleum first,” she said. “I may get a sense of where to go from there—and we can find one of Sondra’s sweaters or something she wore for Rollo.”

As he drove, he glanced over at Mo. She’d been up all night again.

So had he.

But he’d had more experience with nights like this.

Today, the announcement that another murder had taken place,
at
a haunted attraction, would mean the events would be closed again. Mo wouldn’t be expected at work tonight.

“Are you all right?” he murmured. “Tired?”

She turned to him. “I’ll survive.”

When they reached the Haunted Mausoleum, the police and crime scene experts were still busy. While Mo went to retrieve something of the dead woman’s from her office, Aidan took the time to check in with Gina Mason, who was supervising her crew. She stood with Detective Lee Van Camp out in the graveyard.

“Anything here?” he asked the two of them.

“Anything?” Gina repeated. “This place was
full
of people last night. The people in costume who were at work—and the hundreds walking through. There are cigarette butts everywhere, even though smoking’s not permitted in the graveyard. Kids will sneak off. There are footprints all over the place, not to mention fibers and hair.”

“What about the body?” Aidan asked. “Any results from that? Any witnesses?” he added.

Van Camp answered him. “We can hope, but we don’t know yet. The M.E. came for the body, and his people will examine it. But as far as witnesses go, this is almost like a magic trick. You know, it’s all about distraction. An event was going on here, and the problem is, everyone was looking at that and screaming. They’re
supposed
to get scared and scream. The killer could’ve carried that body in front of dozens of people—and they’d all have thought it was part of the show.”

“We’re going to have to speak to every one of the employees.
Somebody
must’ve seen something,” Aidan insisted.

“I’ve got police messengers heading to every address,” Van Camp said wearily. “We’ll get to all of them.”

“So we believe she was in her office when she was taken—right here, right on the property. We can assume she was knocked out with chloroform first, but there’s not a drop of blood in the mortuary itself. Or have you found something?” Aidan said.

“Nothing that remotely resembles a trail,” Gina Mason told him. “And, I swear, Agent Mahoney, my people are good.”

“I don’t doubt it. But we found the killer’s lair at the old cemetery, which would’ve been too far for him in this time frame. However, it’s where we found his tools for cutting off the heads.”

“A hatchet and knife, available in any hardware store in the nation,” Gina told him.

“Okay, she was knocked out in her office, carried out by the killer masquerading as an actor and then...then beheaded somewhere else, maybe at his previous lair, and brought back here to the graveyard,” Aidan said.

“That’s what we’ve got so far,” Van Camp agreed.

He heard a ruckus from somewhere in the building. Turning, he saw that Rollo seemed to be leading Mo out. One of the techs yelled, “Hey, what the hell? Get that monster away from my crime scene.”

Van Camp moved forward quickly. “Hey, that’s Rollo. Leave him be!”

Mo tugged on the dog’s leash and got control of him, then skirted around the scene, but Rollo was barking furiously.

“Let him go,” Aidan said.

She did.

Rollo raced straight to the mausoleum, the one Mo had walked around all evening as the Woman in White.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what he’s after. That mausoleum hasn’t been touched, other than by an outside cleaning or painting crew, in well over a hundred years.”

Aidan walked to the front of the mausoleum. As Mo had implied, it was tightly closed. The iron gate was locked, and beyond that was a seal. He pushed and shoved and prodded at the seal, it appeared to be, as she’d said, untouched for a very long time.

Aidan stepped back and spoke to Van Camp. “The dog wants us to go in.”

“I’ll get the sledgehammers and crowbars,” Van Camp said.

Aidan stood next to Mo. He wanted to put an arm around her shoulders, but right here and now that would be entirely inappropriate.

“Did Rollo find the head?” he asked her. “Is that what he’s signaling?”

“I don’t think that’s where the head is,” she replied. “How could anyone possibly even get in there? How do you hack up a body without being heard?”

“Easily enough. There’s a sound system, which was playing funeral music and creepy noises while the killer was doing whatever he was doing, wasn’t there?”

“Yes...” She turned to look at him, a confused expression on her face. “Aidan, I didn’t leave my post all night. I did nothing but walk around and around that mausoleum.”

“But I doubt you would have heard anything even if the killer passed right by you,” he told her. “As I understand it, there’s constant commotion during one of these events.”

Van Camp’s officers began to work with their sledgehammers. In ten minutes, they’d broken through the seal.

“After you,” Van Camp said to Aidan with a little mock bow.

Aidan took one of the massive flashlights from an officer, then stepped inside and flooded the tomb with light.

It had been built for a family, allowing for about twenty-five bodies to be entombed. There was an altar at the rear. A cross that was encrusted with tomb dust and spiderwebs had been set aside. The altar was covered in blood.

A hatchet and knife had been left beside it.

Aidan damned himself a thousand times over for not finding the killer more quickly.

Whoever was doing this was doing it under their noses and certainly getting a thrill from knowing that he was killing people—and cutting their heads off—virtually in plain sight.

But how had the killer gotten into the tomb?

This one really seemed to be a locked-room mystery.

“Van Camp, we need more lights!” he called.

He reminded himself that there was really no such thing as a locked-room mystery. There was always an answer.

Van Camp came in with two officers, directing them to stay near the entrance and hold the lights high.

“How the hell?” Van Camp asked.

“This is a mortuary. Maybe there are tunnels to bring the dead straight out from the embalming rooms,” Aidan suggested. “Also,” he said, “the last interments here took place shortly after the Civil War. God knows, it might have been part of the Underground Railroad, too. This might even have been a way to hide runaway slaves.”

“But where would those tunnels be?” Van Camp demanded, looking around.

Aidan stepped back out and saw Mo watching him silently.

“Do you know anything about tunnels from the embalming room to the mausoleums?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Sondra would have known.” She brightened just a little. “Grace might know, too. She’s worked out here often enough.”

“Can you call her?” She nodded, fumbling as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. They’d taken Grace home a while ago; she might have fallen asleep.

No. Her boss had just been murdered. Grace answered on the first ring.

Mo spoke to her for several minutes then put her phone away. “She said there might have been tunnels. My house became a hospital during the Civil War, and she said this place was where many of the dead were brought because the mortician was one of the best embalmers of his day. Embalming became popular during the Civil War when soldiers died far away. Anyway, along with the dead, sometimes people were smuggled—alive—in coffins. She knows of one area where there really was an extension of the basement. It was kept shut because they were doing secret things here. They were hiding people who were running, sometimes slaves—and sometimes soldiers deserting the Southern cause. It’s behind the room where the actor who plays a mad doctor has his, uh, chop shop.”

“Thanks,” Aidan said, and hurried back to the mortuary, Van Camp in tow. Mo and Rollo were close behind. He headed straight down to the basement. The tour groups went from the basement—the embalming area—out to the graveyard, after going by the creepy displays and actors.

Mo was almost touching his back. “Over there,” she said. “You can see the gurney and the plastic bloodied body parts. You can just see the outline of a door there.” She pointed at it as she spoke. “The door’s painted the same white as the wall, and you can barely see the latch. It’s painted, too.”

Aidan walked behind the display and felt around until he found the almost-invisible latch. It was really just an outer ring. He twisted it and pushed the door open. The tunnel beyond was empty, stretching into darkness.

He turned on the light the officer had given him and walked through the tunnel. He didn’t protest when the others followed. Eventually he came to a wall and began looking around.

He glanced up at the ceiling—and saw a hatch. “Hey, anybody up there now? Gina!” he shouted. “Hey!”

He heard Gina Mason’s voice as if from the bottom of a well. “Yeah, yeah, I’m in here!” Gina called down.

“Watch out!” he warned her.

He reached up and pulled on the clasp that held the hatch door closed. It gave easily. All he had to do was figure out how the killer had hiked himself up into the tomb. Carrying a body...

A moment later, Gina’s face appeared above him. “You’ve found it, Aidan,” she said excitedly. “We couldn’t see it from up here. The entry’s kind of a stone square, just like the other ones on the floor.”

Aidan turned to Van Camp. “The killer went to Sondra’s office, knocked her out and...” He paused, looking at Mo. “He strangled her there. Well, the M.E. hasn’t said so yet, but I’m willing to bet he will. Then the murderer carried the corpse right through the mortuary and down to the basement without being stopped or questioned. The guests, the tour groups, would’ve thought it was part of the show, and I’m assuming the actors were so busy with their own parts they didn’t notice. He came through the tunnel with her and somehow got her body up there. But then how did he get the body out of there to put it in the coffin—just after the real actor who’d stepped out of the coffin had left?”

“He must’ve come back through here, with, um, both body parts,” Mo said.

“We’ll be talking to every performer who works here,” Aidan muttered, “in case anyone was aware of an extra ‘actor.’”

“There are a few employees who wear black with Haunted Mausoleum insignias on their shirts. They direct people and keep them moving, and they know where the exits are if there’s an emergency,” Mo explained.

“We’ll be talking to them, too,” he said. “We’re reaching out to every single employee.”

When they’d exited the basement, he hunkered down beside Rollo, petting him and praising him. “Rollo, you are the best. You’re a very smart dog.”

Rollo woofed his appreciation.

Aidan stood up and saw that Mo was almost as pale as the Woman in White she’d played.

“Mo? What’s the matter?”
Besides the obvious,
he could have added.

“I was there. I was right there while it was happening,” she said. “I should’ve known something. I should’ve
heard
something. Sondra was killed, and I was there and did nothing,” Mo said.

“She was killed in the office, Mo. You couldn’t have done anything.”

She turned to him with glazed eyes. “You don’t know that, Aidan. He knocks them out—but we aren’t sure yet where he kills them.”

“The evidence is that he kills them right away, Mo. She was knocked out and strangled, and then brought here. You couldn’t have done a thing.”

Aidan was reasonably certain of that, but there was room for doubt. Still, it was important now for Mo to believe it—true or not.

“I’ll get you home,” he said.

She shook her head stubbornly. “No. We’re going to find...the rest of Sondra. She was a friend, and she was Grace’s boss for years. We’re not to let her head be a bizarre spectacle on the street somewhere.”

Van Camp had been listening. “I have officers out looking at all the horsemen we know about,” he said.

She nodded. “It might not be a headless horseman that’s always up, always visible. It could be like part of someone’s Halloween display.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Aidan asked.

She stood for a minute, unmoving, her eyes closed. He started to fear that she might pass out. Van Camp placed a hand on Aidan’s shoulder as they waited.

“There’s one near the dry cleaners where we found Wendy Appleby’s head, which is down the street from Tommy Jensen’s. This horseman is part of a display in front of a big local retailer with a massive parking lot. They also have witches and goblins and pumpkins and other stuff. The headless horseman is the centerpiece,” Mo said, opening her eyes.

“Let’s go. Let’s get there quickly before someone else discovers it,” Aidan said.

“It’s just my...theory. I may be wrong.”

“But it is a logical conclusion,” Aidan told her.

He didn’t really think it was simply a logical conclusion. Mo had a gift, an ability he’d never seen before. She could close her eyes, it seemed, and somehow
watch
what had happened, watch it in her mind. She could envision what they were looking for.

She and Rollo made one heck of a team.

“I’ll follow you,” Van Camp said. He walked over to Gina Mason. “Have your team ready to go when I call you.”