Krewe of Hunters: The Hidden Part 30

"I'm going to die," he said.

"No, Terry, you're just going to need a bandage," she said rea.s.suringly.

"Is the d.a.m.ned thing disarmed yet or not?" Clark growled, irritated. "I've stayed through a lot, Kendall, but my wife and I are out of here now."

"I understand," Ben said.

"I don't know why you're so worried, Levin. It's obvious I was the target," Terry said peevishly.

"If you'll notice, Terry, my chair was skewered-twice," Scarlet said impatiently.

"If I'll notice?" Terry protested. "I'll tell you what I noticed. According to the ghost, you know everything."

"And I'll tell you again, I don't know anything," Scarlet insisted.

They heard the front door burst open, and Brett came running in, his Glock in his hand.

"Oh, my G.o.d, he's going to shoot us!" Gwen shrieked.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Gigi snapped at her. "He's law enforcement."

"Who on earth trusts law enforcement?" Gwen asked her.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Brett demanded, shaking his head. "I saw the candles go out, so I had Lara set the alarm and lock up after me. I ran over, and then I heard screaming. Lieutenant Gray and his men are coming, too. Diego, what's going on in here?"

"Someone rigged the moose, turned it into some kind of crossbow," Diego said, rising. "Brett, give me a hand with this thing, will you? I'd like to get it out of the way, just to be safe. It was set on a spring system-Linda's tap on the wall set it off. We need to get some engineering techs on this to figure out just how it was rigged."

"Gotcha," Brett said.

"So we're safe now?" Clark demanded, rising and running his fingers through his short gray hair. "Gigi, get up. We're going to our room right now, and then we're out of here in the morning."

"No one is out of here until they've been questioned," Diego said, his voice ringing with authority.

"What? You can't believe that Gigi or I had anything to do with this," Clark said angrily. "We're-we're retirees!"

"Sir, you were here all day and you come here every year. I'm afraid you'll have to answer questions just like everyone else," Diego informed him.

"That's preposterous," Clark said, drawing himself up. "In fact, it's criminal of you to even keep us here."

"No, murder is criminal," Adam said in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Did anyone call an ambulance?" Terry asked, his voice pathetic.

"Terry, you don't need an ambulance," Gwen said. "I've had worse mosquito bites."

"You weren't hit," Terry protested. "They weren't after you, they were after me."

"Medical help is on its way," Brett said, heading over to Diego and the offending moose head. "All of you, give us some s.p.a.ce."

"Everyone into the parlor, please. Follow me," Adam said, quietly but firmly taking charge.

Clark put an arm around Gigi's shoulders and turned to stare at Ben. "You! You're responsible for all of this. You found those bodies because you put them there! What was this? Your attempt to create a haunted house and compete with The Stanley? You're a psycho. We're out of here tonight." He spun on Diego. "Arrest us if you want, but we won't stay in this house a minute longer than you're pointless questioning takes!"

Trisha stepped forward. "You're right. You will get out of my house. My husband is not a psycho, much less a murderer, and you're a complete ingrate. We've given you discounts, free nights. You outeat every guest every morning, and this is how you repay us? I can't wait for you to go."

"Trisha," Ben said, "just let them go. We should have closed down as soon as we found the Parkers."

"Everyone, please," Adam said. "Let's all be civil and head to the parlor. Now."

Scarlet noted the strength in his voice and the ice in his eyes.

Adam was normally mild, calm and the complete opposite of pushy. But right now, when he spoke in that tone, no one was willing to argue with him.

Clark, his arm still fiercely around his wife's shoulders, headed for the parlor. Terry, holding his arm and looking ready to collapse, left next, followed by Gwen and Charles. Ben looked at Adam and then said, "Trisha, my love, that means us, too."

Gwen suddenly spun around, her expression shocked. "Oh, my G.o.d! Clark's right-it is you, Ben! You were in here today, plastering or painting or something."

"Painting. I was painting. Touched up some nicks and sc.r.a.pes, which was probably only necessary because someone has been messing around with my house," Ben protested.

Linda was still sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, looking incapable of getting up under her own steam. Diego offered her a hand, and she managed to stand with his help. She stood there for a moment and looked around.

"I have to clean up this mess," she said.

"Not now," Diego told her. "Not now. Just go ahead and join the others."

Still looking distressed and disoriented, Linda left.

Adam glanced at Diego, then followed the group into the parlor. Once he was gone, Diego closed the door to the dining room and walked over to where Scarlet was standing.

His expression hardened when he saw the small silver arrows that had pierced the chair right after she had vacated it.

"You all right?" he asked, catching her by the shoulders and searching her eyes.

"Yes. Fine," she a.s.sured him.

"The arrows don't appear to have been aimed at anyone specifically," Brett said.

"Despite the fact that Terry and Scarlet appeared to be targets, I agree with you. The perp couldn't have known where people would be sitting-except maybe that Jane would probably be at the head of the table-or even that the weapon would be tripped tonight," Diego said. "What do you think? Set to go off a while ago or only configured today?"

"No idea," Brett said. "Maybe forensics can figure something out."

Diego reached into his pocket for gloves before pulling one of the arrows from Scarlet's chair and studying it. He shook his head.

"What?" Scarlet asked.

He turned to show her the arrow. The shaft was some kind of silver metal, but it was tipped with what looked like an old Native American stone arrowhead.

Brett walked over to study the arrow with them. "Our killer certainly seems to be fixated on history," he said. "What do you think? How complicated was it, rigging that moose head?"

"Someone knew what they were doing with a trigger mechanism. I haven't pulled it apart to check out the whole thing, but it looks like it was set with industrial-strength rubber bands. But that's not rocket science. Anyone familiar with archery-especially crossbows-could have done it. When Linda knocked on the wall in the right place, she set off the firing mechanism, and the way the arrows were set, they followed one after another automatically."

"But until now the killer seems to have chosen his victims carefully, and even this method was obviously no guarantee," Scarlet said.

Diego didn't look at her. "I don't know. You were nearly hit, and Terry Ballantree actually was."

"And let's not forget that this is Ben's house, so if anyone knew about the s.p.a.ce behind the moose head where a weapon could be set up, it's him," Brett said.

Just then they heard the front door opening, followed by someone shouting, "Police!"

"Lieutenant Gray," Brett said. "He said he'd be ready for our call, and he was."

Diego nodded and headed to the dining room door, then stopped and looked back at Scarlet, a question in his eyes.

"Yes?" she said. She was loathe to leave the room.

Nathan Kendall had been there tonight. She had heard him, and she hadn't been the only one. But it was her name he had spoken, and he'd said that she knew who had killed him. If only that were true, she thought.

"You can't stay here alone. Come with us," Diego said.

"Yes, of course," she said with a sigh.

She knew she couldn't allow herself to be vulnerable, but she didn't want to leave the room. She wanted to see if Nathan would return now that things had calmed down.

Brett walked past her on his way to the door and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Come on, kid, the fun and parlor games are just beginning."

She nodded. "Yes, of course, I'm coming."

But still she paused.

The dining room was different now. The glare of the electric chandelier fell differently on the antique furniture, the arrow-riddled chairs and the downed moose head. Despite the destruction, the room didn't feel at all spooky. The magical aura of the seance was gone.

And yet...

They had found Nathan Kendall. Or rather, he had found them.

He had said that she knew who had killed him, but he hadn't ruled out the possibility that he knew his murderer's ident.i.ty, too. So, did he know? And could he help them?

They had expected something to come from the seance, and it had, though it certainly hadn't been anything they'd expected.

She wasn't Krewe or any kind of law enforcement, but the ghosts of the Conway Ranch were coming to her. And that had to mean something, right?

Brett and Diego were waiting expectantly for her to join them, but she ignored them both.

"Nathan," she said softly to the room. "Nathan Kendall. We need your help. Are you still here? Will you speak to me?"

She didn't receive an answer in words.

But she could have sworn that a gentle hand touched her cheek.

"Scarlet?" Diego called.

"Come on," Brett urged gently.

Reluctantly, she joined them as they went to greet Lieutenant Gray.

As Brett had said, the fun and parlor games were just beginning.

16.

"This is ridiculous. Why are you questioning us?" Gwen asked indignantly. "We just came for our honeymoon. We stayed on after what happened because we didn't want to be like rats deserting a sinking s.h.i.+p. But to suspect that Charles and I could be guilty of any of this is-is preposterous!"

"And I was nearly killed," Linda said, tossing back her blond hair. "You can't possibly believe I was stupid enough to rig up a weapon and then let it kill me."

"No, I'm the one who was nearly killed," Terry said, staring at her and holding up his wounded arm.

A paramedic had already seen to his injury, applying antibiotic ointment and, as Scarlet had predicted, a small bandage.

Lieutenant Gray was in the parlor, watching, listening, questioning. A crime-scene unit had been called, and they were working throughout the house, with a focus on the dining room.

Gray was standing by the mantel. He had the look of a man who had unexpectedly found himself in the middle of a freak show.

Brett had headed over to the stables and asked Angus to join them, so the grizzled old stable master was there now as well, his expression clearly saying that he thought he'd landed in the middle of an asylum.

"We didn't do this," Ben insisted to Gray. Trisha, sitting next to him, nodded.

"Don't look at us," Clark said.

"As far as I'm concerned, we're through with Estes Park," Gigi said firmly. "The area's absolutely ruined for us now."

"Thank the Lord Almighty I wasn't here for that idiotic seance," Angus muttered.

"There's absolutely no reason to hold us all here. If anything, we're victims, too. What about Scarlet? She's the one who had those awful photos on her camera. She's the one who brought in her quote-unquote friends. Some special agents, nearly getting us all killed. She's far more suspicious than anyone else I can think of."

"Scarlet was seen in town by dozens of people the night the Parkers were killed," Lieutenant Gray told them. He looked at Ben almost apologetically. "While you and your wife were here. Yes," he said, turning to stare at Gwen, "and so were you, Mrs. Barton, along with your husband. So if any of you knows anything, now would be the time to talk to me."

Diego didn't blame Gray for being angry. He felt as if he had stepped into an Agatha Christie mystery himself, except that there would be no drawing-room conclusion tonight.

The people at the Conway Ranch were all behaving like rats confined too long in a cage that was far too small, attacking one another with a vengeance.

He walked into the center of the room. "Could I see whatever's in your pockets, please?" he asked. "And your purses, ladies."

"Certainly not," Charles Barton said angrily. "This is America."