The Buried, page 2
Chapter Two
“What the hell kind of sick joke is this?” Bode asked as he stared with horror at the reservation list clutched tightly in his shaking hand. The Halcyon Hall receptionist had delivered a copy of the list to each of the six people, including him, gathered around the conference room table. He tore his gaze from that list to see if anyone had noticed what he had: that a dead woman was about to check into the hall.
His brother, Elijah, at the head of the table, glanced at the list and then back at Bode. “We’re lucky to have any guests at all with everything that’s happened around here the past month.”
Had it just been a month? It seemed longer. Infinite. Like a nightmare that was never going to end.
And was this another facet of it?
“Fortunately, not everything that happened here got to the press,” said the reporter sitting at the table next to Elijah. Edie Stone had been their worst nightmare when she’d first arrived on the island, determined to exploit the past of Bainesworth Manor that Bode and his brother had been desperate for people to forget.
But nobody was going to forget about it, no matter how much they wished they would, that they could.
“Thanks to you,” Elijah murmured as he reached out and squeezed her hand. They were always touching.
Bode wanted to be irritated, envious, but he couldn’t summon any jealousy. He’d always been in awe of his older brother, had always wished they could be closer. But because of the nearly ten years between them, they hadn’t really grown up together. Not with Elijah finishing high school early and going off to college while Bode was still in elementary. He’d always wanted a relationship with him, but he didn’t have to worry about Edie coming between them. Instead, with Elijah opening himself up to love, to hope, they had gotten even closer.
Warmth flooded Bode’s heart. His brother’s happiness brought him happiness. Like Adelaide did . . .
Every time his five-month-old baby smiled or cooed or looked at him. He would do anything for his daughter, anything to keep her safe. To protect her.
But how could this person pose a threat to her? This person claiming to be someone from Bode’s past who had died years ago.
“What is it?” Edie asked. Two psychiatrists and a psychologist sat around that conference table, but the reporter was the one who’d picked up on his distress. “What’s wrong?”
Now those psychiatrists, his brother and Dr. Gordon Chase, studied him with narrowed eyes, while the psychologist, Rosemary Tulle, smiled at him. “What is upsetting you, Bode?” she asked.
“Is it the number of guests?” The chef asked that question. Besides Bode, he was the only other person at the table who wasn’t involved in the mind side of the wellness center.
They used to have a publicist on staff, too, but she’d recently tried to kill Edie and Elijah. She’d hurt Bode worse than she had either of them, though. His shoulder throbbed with a dull ache from where she’d shot him. He was lucky it hadn’t been worse.
“I wish there were more, too, but it’s winter and almost Christmas,” the chef, Rene Rigaud, continued. “So it is not unexpected. As Edie said, it could have been worse regarding publicity, but I know who can make it better. . . .” The Frenchman grinned, as if just thinking of the friend he’d recommended for the job made him happy.
Just like Edie made Elijah happy for maybe the first time in his life. Bode didn’t know for certain, though, because there were so many years he and his brother had barely spoken.
Elijah chuckled. “I read Gare’s résumé. He’s coming in to interview next week.”
“If he’s half as good as Rene says he is, you should have just offered him the job,” Edie said.
Elijah grinned. “I’m sure I will.”
Edie expelled a ragged breath. “That’s good. Then I can go back to my day job.”
“Exposing the dark past of Bainesworth Manor?” Bode asked. He’d once resented and even feared the reporter’s determination to do that, but now he trusted that however she handled it, she would make damn sure it didn’t hurt Elijah.
“You two aren’t part of that dark past,” Edie said. “So neither of you are the Bainesworths who need to worry.”
“Neither of us are Bainesworths,” Elijah murmured.
Their mother was a Bainesworth, their father a Cooke. Cookes had once been respected hard workers on this island, but recently, their Cooke cousins had done unforgivable things. They’d paid for their sins with their lives. But he and Elijah would keep paying for sins they hadn’t committed just because of who their family was.
That was why Bode had changed his name completely. After dropping out of college when his personal trainer career took off, James Bane Cooke had become Bode James. Just like Bainesworth Manor had become Halcyon Hall. But renaming the property and himself hadn’t made any difference on Bane Island. Nobody would let either of them forget who and what they really were. That was probably why his mother and his aunt had left years ago and never returned.
He sighed, not with frustration but with resignation.
“We are worried, too,” Elijah said as he held up the reservation list. “This list is even shorter than last year’s at this time.”
The spa had been open for three years, with the first couple of years seeing a throng of guests even during the off-season. Maybe the ones who’d stayed that first winter hadn’t wanted to return because of the extreme weather on the island and the isolation when the bridge to the mainland shut down. But Bode suspected it was more than that....
“Gare will help with that guest list,” Rene said in support of his friend.
“You could help now,” Dr. Chase said.
And with a start, Bode realized the older man was addressing him. “How?” he asked.
“You’re the face of the hall,” Gordon Chase replied. “You’re the reason people come here in the first place.” He glanced around the table at Rene and Elijah and Rosemary. “No offense.”
They chuckled.
“You need to get out there again,” Chase suggested. “Write another fitness book. Put out more tutorials. Do a press tour.”
“You missed your calling,” Edie said. “Maybe you should have been a publicist, Dr. Chase.”
He chuckled now. “Oh, no, not me. I’m just parroting the things Ms. Plasky kept telling you.”
Elijah groaned at the mention of the former publicist.
“She might have been crazy,” Edie said, “but she was right.”
“You are the draw,” Elijah told him. “But I understand why you haven’t wanted to travel over the past year.”
Adelaide . . .
Even before she was born, he hadn’t wanted to leave her, hadn’t wanted Erika to go through her pregnancy without his support. Even though he hadn’t loved her, he’d already loved the child she carried. He had liked and respected Erika. He just hadn’t ever felt as if he truly knew her. That was why he’d so readily accepted that she’d left him and their new baby, that being a mother had been too much for her. He’d known another woman like that....
“Gare will probably suggest you start making public appearances again, too,” Rene said. “The morning shows and talk shows.”
Bode forced a laugh now. “What? Are you all trying to get rid of me?” He’d wondered if that had been the case with Amanda Plasky even before she shot him. She’d seemed to want him out of her way, so Elijah would have no distractions from her.
Then Edie had come along, and she’d definitely posed the bigger threat to Elijah’s attention for Amanda. Yet Bode was the one who’d wound up with a bullet in his shoulder.
“You could probably use a break from this place,” Elijah said. “And we could take care of Adelaide for you.”
Edie gasped. “Babysit? Us? She’d be safer with Bonita than with you or me.”
Bonita was the older sister of Edie’s landlady, Evelyn, at the boardinghouse in town. According to what the reporter had recently told Bode, Bonita’s parents had once committed her to Bainesworth Manor, and she’d never been the same. A once-vivacious teenager had come back like a child, and even as she neared seventy, she acted like a child yet. And she often looked for the child she’d claimed had been stolen from her at the manor.
Was it true?
Had someone taken the woman’s child?
Bode shuddered at the horrific thought of that, of someone stealing a baby. He couldn’t imagine his life without Adelaide if someone took her, couldn’t imagine the pain and loss of not being able to see her, to hold her, the fear of wondering where she was and if she was okay.
“I was just kidding,” Edie assured him.
He shook his head. “It wasn’t that. It’s just that . . . you’re right. The women and the babies from the manor . . .” He had to clear the emotion from his throat for a moment, that surge of sadness at the thought of ever losing his daughter. “. . . they deserve to have their truth told.”
Edie gasped again, and her eyes widened with surprise. “I didn’t know how you felt about that. . . .”
“I feel like we should do whatever we can to make up for the past,” he said. That was why he’d badgered Elijah until he’d agreed to go into business with him, to open their wellness center. But that hadn’t been just to make up for what had happened at Bainesworth Manor . . .
He glanced down at the reservation list. At the name jumping out at him. He barely resisted the urge to shudder again. How the hell had a dead woman gotten a reservation for the hall?
* * *
“You’re on the list, Ms. Lee,” said the voice emanating from the speaker. Mae held her breath as the Halcyon Hall gates creaked ever so slowly open; waiting until they were wide enough apart to not scrape against the car, she pressed down on the accelerator and sped through them. And then her breath shuddered out in relief. She’d made it . . . this far . . . at least.
Without a search warrant, under an assumed identity . . .
While she’d only had to upload a copy of Kimber Lee’s driver’s license with her application to Halcyon Hall, she would have to present it at the reception desk to officially check into the hall. Even with the changes she’d made to her appearance, she couldn’t be certain she would pass.
That she wouldn’t be tossed back out the gates, which now were closing behind her. She glanced into the rearview mirror just as the gates snapped shut, and a chill chased down her spine with a sense of foreboding.
Was that how those girls had felt all those years ago when their families had brought them here? Or when the state had committed them to the facility for their crimes?
Had Erika felt that foreboding? Had she had a sense that she might die here? And Heather? She’d had to know the risk she was taking, but she had taken it anyway. Like Mae was taking it now . . .
But she wasn’t like those women; she was better prepared. Along with the documents, she’d also packed her off-duty weapon: a Glock 19. While compact, it was still deadly. It would protect her if she needed protection. And she might not even get to stay.
So she eased her foot off the accelerator as she steered her car around the curves in the road that wound through some of the extensive grounds of Halcyon Hall. In the spring, it would probably be pretty. But now snow weighed down the boughs of the many pine trees and ice froze the ponds so no fountains gurgled. The only sound was the howl of the wind, echoed by the howls of coyotes.
Remembering what they’d done to Erika’s body, she shuddered. At least, according to the medical examiner, that had happened after her death. But there had been other things done to Erika that might have happened before her death that had contributed or outright led to it. That poor woman. She deserved justice. Real justice.
And laying the blame on Heather wasn’t it. Heather had to be in danger, too, or worse. Mae needed to find her, needed to find out and prove the truth. It had to be here.
She rounded the last curve, where the trees framed a mammoth building that was all gray stone and smoked glass with a green tiled roof. It looked like a castle or a prison. And just the sight of it unsettled Mae, as it had every time she’d come here. This time was worse because she wasn’t here in an official capacity; nobody knew she was here.
So nobody would know if she went missing like Erika had, and now Heather.
She drew in a deep breath as she parked in the visitor lot in the front of that intimidating building. She’d parked here many times while conducting investigations over the past few weeks. Too many investigations, and yet not enough.
There was one case that hadn’t been solved, at least not to Mae’s satisfaction. One criminal she suspected was going free yet, and it wasn’t Heather Smallegan. Unlike Adam, she believed Heather’s father; but then, the distraught dad had shared more with her than he’d been willing for her to share with anyone else. He was worried it might make Heather look guiltier to some.
But to Mae, it had cleared away whatever doubts that written confession gave her. She now knew, beyond a doubt, that it was fake, and that Heather wasn’t the killer eluding justice.
That killer was here. At Halcyon Hall.
And so was she . . . for now.
* * *
Once the morning meeting wrapped up, Elijah pressed the button that opened the conference room to the hall. He’d had to wrap up earlier than he’d wanted because new guests were due to arrive soon. Not as many guests as he and Bode would have liked, but enough to ensure that their venture wasn’t over yet.
They could keep the hall going; they had to keep it going. They had too much invested in it. Too much invested in each other right now. That was why he reached out to hold Bode back while Dr. Chase, Chef Rene, and Rosemary walked out the open door into the hall.
Edie remained sitting beside him. They’d exchanged a look earlier, when Bode had made that remark about making up for the past. Elijah wasn’t the only one worried about his brother.
Bode glanced to that open door before turning toward him. “I should get going, too,” he said. “I need to greet the new arrivals.”
“What’s really bothering you about the reservation list?” Edie asked. “You never actually answered that question.”
Elijah smiled that she’d picked up on that, too. She was such a good reporter because of how damn brilliant she was.
Bode shrugged his broad shoulders, then grimaced slightly, as if the movement hurt him. And because of his healing gunshot wound, it probably had. “It’s like you said . . . not enough of them . . .”
Elijah narrowed his eyes and studied his brother’s face. His jaw was taut, as if he was clenching it. “That’s not it.”
Bode sighed. “There’s a name on it, of somebody who shouldn’t be on it.”
Edie snorted derisively. “I doubt anybody could have gotten on the list without being thoroughly vetted. Lord knows I tried.”
Elijah chuckled, then nodded in agreement. “You know the process,” he reminded Bode. “Potential guests need to fill out the application and supply proof of their identity.”
“And yet AKAN made it onto the list as Olivia Smith,” Edie pointed out.
AKAN was the pop star who’d checked in under the name of one of her backup dancers. “She was using her license,” Elijah said. “They look alike, and she did admit the truth to us during the application process. We knew she was a celebrity checking in under an alias.”
“Who’s the person you’re concerned about?” Edie asked his brother.
A muscle twitched in Bode’s cheek, as if he was clenching his jaw even harder. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
Elijah glanced down at the list. “What? Who are you talking about?”
“A dead woman,” Bode murmured. “She’s supposed to be dead.”
“Could you be wrong?” Edie asked.
“No.”
His brother’s certainty concerned and unsettled Elijah, making dread settle heavily in his stomach. In moments like this, Bode reminded Elijah of the man for whom his younger brother was named. James Bainesworth. But Bode was nothing like him. He would never intentionally hurt anyone.
“Who is it?” Elijah asked. “I’ll take care of it.”
Bode shook his head again. “No. I will.”
Apprehension tightened the muscles in Elijah’s stomach, making him feel even sicker with dread. But whatever doubts he’d once had about his baby brother were gone. He trusted him. His concerns now were for this guest and why they’d checked in under an assumed name.
“Jamie . . .” a voice whispered, drawing their attention to the open doorway.
Very few people called Bode by his original name anymore. . . now that their cousins were dead. Because Elijah had gotten even closer to his younger brother since then, he’d stopped himself from using it. He didn’t think of him as Jamie anymore. He thought of him as Bode.
How would the guest standing in that open doorway even know that Jamie was Bode’s real name? She’d been staying with them a long time, on and off, over the three years since they’d opened. More on than off . . .
Which described the woman as well as her stay.
Morgana Drake’s probably white hair had been dyed a bright red, and she wore thick makeup that seemed to highlight rather than conceal the many lines in her face. To confirm her true age, Elijah would have to pull up the records she’d submitted with her application to stay.
But he was less interested in her age than in her sudden appearance and her knowledge of his brother. Bode had tensed as well as he glanced around him, as if looking to see if she was addressing someone else.
She knew Elijah’s name, unfortunately. She’d been creeping him out lately with her odd questions. She asked one of those questions now . . . of Bode.
“Can’t you hear her?” she asked.
Bode stood up, then, and approached the woman. “Hear who?”
“The girl . . .” she replied, her voice still just a raspy whisper. “. . . she’s calling for you . . .”
“What girl?” Bode asked.
“The dead girl . . .” Morgana murmured before she turned and rushed down the hallway, as if that girl was calling out to her now. The woman fancied herself a medium who communed with the spirits, and she believed the hall was full of them.
