Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (35 page)
Read Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) Online
Authors: Joy Elbel
There wasn’t a single car on the road so we were able
to make really good time. The sun rose up over the horizon
behind us, chasing us the whole way there. The steeple of the
Baptist church was visible on the skyline long before I could
see anything else. My heart raced. Please let me be wrong!
But somehow, I knew I wasn’t.
And as we pulled down the narrow backstreet and the
steps of the church were in
plain
sight, I had my
proof.
Something
was
lying
on those steps—something
red and
white. It was a body—just like in my dream.
Rachel rammed her foot against the brake and the car
slid to a stop. She didn’t even bother to turn the car off. The
engine continued to purr as we flung open the doors and ran
toward the motionless form.
One ankle stuck out from the
bottom of her dress, bluish-purple in color. It was the color of
death.
Rachel cowered behind me with her hand shielding
her eyes from the horrors before us. “Is it her? Is it
Crimson?”
The girl was face down on the cement, a veil covering
her head from view.
Delicately, I pinched the lace shroud
between my finger tips and gave it a tug. One lock of red hair
popped out. Crimson red hair.
Rachel screamed and the church bell began to ring, its
peals hanging ominously in the rosy light of dawn.
Crimson
was gone but the bell wasn’t for her. I was going to be the
next victim—the bell was tolling for me.
The death knell resonating from the church bell tower
was
soon drowned out
by
sirens
as
police cars
and
an
ambulance flooded the small street. The church pastor soon
joined the throng of people gathered around the body. Rachel
and I remained in her car crying in our flannel pajamas. The
cops hadn’t spotted us yet but when they did, we had some
serious explaining to do.
Two girls in their pajamas—one sporting fuzzy bunny
slippers, no less—usually don’t drive around town in the early
morning hours discovering bodies, now do they?
They were
going to want to know what we were doing there and we
couldn’t tell them the truth. I had to act fast.
“Listen, Rachel,” I said, wiping the tears away with the
sleeve of my robe, “We need to come up with a good excuse
for why we’re here and how we found the body. The police
are going to start asking us questions, you know. We have to
come up with a story and stick to it.”
ideas?”
No.
Think, Ruby, think!
What could we say we were
doing out here?
What would bring two teenage girls out at
this time on a Sunday morning?
A plan began to take shape
in my brain.
“So what if we told them I was thinking of running
away and you were trying to talk some sense into me? I
have
been fighting with Dad a lot lately. It wouldn’t be that far of a
stretch for someone in my position to want to run away from
home, would it?”
if they
tell your parents?
You’ll be in some serious hot water then!”
True, but it was way more believable than the truth
though, wasn’t it? It was definitely worth the risk. A good
enough excuse was in place and not a moment to soon.
Tap! Tap! Tap! A stern looking officer rapped on my
window to get our attention and motioned for us to get out of
the car. “Let me do all of the talking,” I hissed to Rachel before
opening my door.
Wrapping my robe around me, I stepped
out onto the sidewalk beside him.
“Are you the girls who called 911 to report a dead
body at the church?” Captain Donaldson, his name badge
read. Just my luck. I decide to lie to the police and I get the
police captain himself.
Where was the sympathetic young
rookie when I needed him? If this were a movie, I would be
talking
to the newest member of the
force, flirting
and
charming my way through my fictitious story.
Damn you,
Hollywood, for being so misleading.
“Yeah, that was us. We were just driving past when
we saw her lying there.
We checked to see if we could help
her but it was obvious that she was already dead.
So we
called 911 and waited in the car.” The temperature was well
below freezing but a nervous sweat crept over me.
“What were you girls doing out here?”
Don’t panic—just stick to the story! “I had a big fight
with my dad and I was thinking about running away. I called
Rachel to come get me and she did. She’s just been driving me
around, trying to talk me out of it.”
as he turned to Rachel. “Is that what happened, miss?”
his
Medusa-like
gaze. “That’s what happened, officer.”
“I’ll need to get your information in case we have
further questions for you.” He took out a pen and a notepad,
jotting down Rachel’s name and address as she gave it to him.
Then he turned to me.
I was sunk! He was going to get my info and then take
me straight home to my still-sleeping father and I was never
going to get to see Zach again. This is what I get for trying to
help someone else out?
Go ahead, Misty, stick another pin
into that voodoo doll you have of me—I dare you!
Things
couldn’t get any worse!
Captain Donaldson scribbled furiously as I gave him
my information. When he was done, he looked up at me. “So
did she?”
Did she what?!
What was he talking about?
I was
afraid to speak for fear that I would incriminate myself in
some way so I cocked an eyebrow and gave him a questioning
look.
“Ohh,” I said with profound relief, “Yes, she did. It was
a stupid idea in the first place.
All I really needed to do was
vent and get it out of my system. I’m totally ready to go home
now.”
“Good. Now that you’ve seen firsthand what can
happen to teenage runaways, maybe you’ll appreciate your
family a little more.”
Teenage runaway? Crimson wasn’t a runaway—she
was a missing person.
I was curious about his comment so I
boldly challenged it. “That’s the body of a missing person not
a runaway, right?
Crimson—Charisma Cox. She’s been
missing since Halloween.”
Captain Donaldson shook his head no. “Portia
Demetri, 15—runaway from Pittsburgh.
Last seen November
27
th
at an ice skating rink just outside of Monroeville.
Her
family thought she ditched town to be with her boyfriend.
Guess they were wrong.”
I didn’t know whether to be excited or to be sick.
Could that be the same ice skating rink that Lucas took me to?
Could he be the boyfriend she left Pittsburgh to be with? Had
Zach been right about Lucas all along? Rachel didn’t seem to
get the dual meaning of what we’d just heard. All she caught
was that the body on the steps wasn’t her friend.
As we drove back to Rosewood, Rachel gushed about
the fact that Crimson might still be alive. “I mean I totally feel
bad for Lexxus or Mercedes or whatever the hell that poor
girl’s name was but at least it wasn’t Crimson!
But this
does
prove one thing, though, I’m afraid. There’s definitely a serial
killer on the loose!”
I remained quiet, not ready to face the fact that Lucas
might be tied into this whole thing somehow after all. What I
really needed to
do was
get the full story on Portia’s
disappearance.
I was sure that after that, Lucas would be
completely exonerated.
I snuck back into the house without my parent’s ever
even knowing I’d left. Good thing, too. My wellspring of lies
and excuses was bone dry. Work was only about three hours
away—it would be pointless to even try to go back to sleep.
Not to mention impossible. I’d just seen my first real dead
body. Not a centuries old bones and dried flesh skeleton like
Levi’s in the tunnels beneath the house but a real live corpse.
One that had been breathing within
the last twenty
four
hours. One that I could have helped if I’d only found her
earlier.
So I made a cup of French vanilla cappuccino and sat
down with my laptop. Portia Demetri. I typed the name into
the search engine and waited for the results to pop up. The
top entry was a website her family set up in the hopes that
someone would know where she was. I clicked the link and
sipped at my drink while it loaded.
The first thing I saw was a picture of the girl whose
body I’d just found, alive and smiling for the camera. She was
a pretty brunette with green eyes and bright red highlights in
her hair. The picture was taken on an athletic field where she
posed in uniform with a soccer ball. The caption below said
that it was the last photo taken of her.
It was so strange to read the posts from a family
hoping to get their daughter back alive when I knew that she
was dead before they did.
I was a morbid voyeur, peeking
into strangers’ lives and possessing information they didn’t
have. How did I get involved in something so dangerous? I
had serious misgivings but it was too late to turn back now.
Mine wasn’t the only life in danger.
So I rummaged through
the website gleaning
any
information I could.
Portia was last seen at the Diamond
Blades rink near Monroeville—the same skating rink Lucas
took me to. After her disappearance, friends told police that
Portia had met a new boy there less than a month before her
disappearance. She dated him in secret because, as she told
friends, “my parents wouldn’t approve”. When asked why,
she claimed that they would just think he was too old for her.
Diamond Blades employees never recalled seeing her with
anyone. The only description of her new boyfriend she gave
to friends was vague at best. Brown hair, brown eyes and that
he would be famous one day.
Physically, that description applied to Lucas as well as
countless millions of other boys in the world.
But the part
about being famous—that applied to Drake. He was a rookie
in the NFL, about to make his mark in the world of football.
He was suspended from playing shortly after Crimson’s
disappearance and could easily have gone to Pittsburgh in
search of another victim.
I went to that website thinking I
would find evidence against Lucas, something that might clear
Drake’s name. Instead, I was caught in an avalanche of proof
that Drake probably was the killer after all. Two questions
remained—where was Crimson and why did he kill Portia
first?
Enough Nancy Drew for one day. I closed my laptop
and got in the shower to clear my head. Ghosts, killers, dead
bodies—all of
it needed to vacate my
brain.
The most
important thing was to figure out a way to get my dad to stop
hating Zach.
Shelly had gotten him to limit my grounding to
two weeks but he wouldn’t budge on the Zach issue. I was not
to see Zach outside of school—he was clear about that. If only
that second package hadn’t arrived, he probably wouldn’t
have been so immovable on the subject.
He looked at the lingerie as a defiance of his authority.
Zach didn’t send it but Dad was convinced that he did.
Protesting Zach’s innocence only brought one question—if
he
didn’t send it, then who did?
Who indeed.
Maybe I could
track down the store where the gifts were purchased and find
some answers that way?
The only way to prove that they
didn’t come from Zach was to find out who did send them.
Satisfied with my new plan of attack, I went to work
with a smile on my face and a renewed sense of purpose.
Things would eventually work themselves out in the end,
wouldn’t they? I knew all too well from personal experience
that lies and deceit had a way of unraveling themselves if you
just gave it enough time. But as I stepped up to the front door
of Something Wick-ed, my positivity melted away. There was
a white box with a red ribbon perched neatly on the doorstep.
A card on top bore my name in bright red permanent marker.
Surreptitiously, I looked up and down the street for
any sign of who might have left me the package but saw
nothing.
The only other sign of life was the librarian, Mrs.
Tuttle, and her prissy little Shih Tzu, Mandy.
They looked
guilty, alright, but I quickly
discerned why—Mandy
was
taking a “shih tzu” of her own right there on the sidewalk.
Satisfied that no one was watching me, I opened the
door to Something Wick-ed and swiftly locked it behind me. I
threw my keys and bag on the counter and focused on the
box, anxious to find out what was inside it.
Then I paused.
Maybe I didn’t
want
to see what was inside it.
So I stared at for about thirty seconds before making
up my mind to open it.
Who was I kidding?
Of course I
wanted to see what was
inside!
One tug on the ribbon
released it and I picked up the lid. A familiar looking card lay
on top.
“I hope you like games, my bride. I want you to have
as much fun hiding it as I will have seeking it.”
Tossing the
card to the side, I reached into the box and pulled out a white
lace garter. And that’s when it hit me. These gifts weren’t
from an admirer—they were from a killer.
Letting go of the garter instantly, the elastic snapped
back and sent it flying across the store.
Allison, Crimson,
Portia—every one of them had dark hair streaked with red.
Just like me. Both Allison’s and Portia’s bodies were found at
the church, dressed in wedding gowns.
Some sick psycho
wanted me to be his next “bride”. Grounded or not, I picked
up the phone and dialed Zach’s number. Drake dated two of
the victims for sure, maybe a third. And the night I met him at
the Halloween party, he complimented me on my hair. He
had
to be the killer.