southern ghost hunters 01 - southern spirits (27 page)

Ellis's footsteps scraped in the tunnel behind me. At least I hoped it was him.

I turned, just to make sure. 

Shadows shrouded his features. "I'm here," he said, as if that would make this all right. 

As if anything could be right about creeping through a claustrophobic old tunnel underground, searching for a murdered girl.

"Take it slow," he added, as the beam of his light found a spot on the wall directly to my right. A white chalk mark slashed over the brick. "This is as far as I got." He paused, his voice lowering. "The rest is someone else's excavation."

I eased past Ellis's line and stumbled over a large rock, then stepped directly onto another. The floor was rough with debris. I glanced up as the back of my head brushed a jagged piece of brick. "This is where they had the cave in." Packed dirt and plant roots clustered above my head. Broken bricks clung haphazardly to the ceiling. It appeared as if it could collapse at any second.

This was insane. "We should turn back." 

Then I heard the voice again. "Help me."

I swore under my breath. "Only a little farther." First I'd find Joy Sullivan. Then I'd escape. I'd run out of here so fast they'd never catch me. 

I stumbled over another rock. Whoever had cleared this section hadn't been neat or thorough. They'd been in a hurry. 

Jagged stones littered the ground, forcing me to walk over them, to crouch as I avoided the ceiling. I pressed forward until a waist-high pile of broken brick and rock blocked the way. My breath came in hard puffs. It felt like a refrigerator down here. 

A slight breeze tickled my cheeks. 

"I think we're close," I said, my voice sounding loud in the narrow space. "Talk to me, Joy." I pulled a large rock off the pile and tossed it to the side. There was either something buried here or we were about to break through to…what? "We're here to help," I said, digging away another rock. Then another. They clanked against each other, and on the cement floor of the tunnel. For the first time, I saw cement instead of dirt covering it.

Ellis shone his light on the rocks in front of me. "Tell me what you see." 

"Nothing yet." It was unsettlingly dark beyond the rock pile. Which meant we were likely in the right spot. "But why did they stop digging here?"

"Maybe they were interrupted," Ellis said, as he started clearing the rocks from around our feet. 

I knocked the top of the pile into the darkness, sending down a cascade of stones. I needed to see what our intruder had been digging for. What about this tunnel, this place, this jumble of stones was so important? 

When I'd been so scared the first night, when the intruder had me cornered—that person had been headed down here. When the colonel warned me about uneasy sprits and tried to block me from the cellar—he feared for what was down here. And now Joy had shown Hale this exact spot.

I flinched as rock sliced at the soft skin of my palms, but I didn't care. It didn't stop me. Nothing could as I grabbed a large stone in front of me with both hands and yanked.

The pile collapsed. 

"Careful," Ellis warned, drawing me back as rocks and broken bricks crashed down onto my legs, falling away from a gleaming white skull. 

I shrieked. "It's…" 

"Human," he finished for me.

It stared up at me with empty eye sockets. The beam from Ellis's light caught it at the jaw, where a rough scraping of skin still clung to the bone. The skull had been shattered on the right side. Large holes gaped where teeth should have been and if I wasn't mistaken, I saw an arm bone peeking out of the rock next to it.

"Help me," the voice whispered. It came from all around us. 

Sweet Lord in heaven. We'd found Joy.

Ellis let out a sharp grunt. I turned as he jerked forward and collapsed right on top of me. "Ellis!" His body hit me hard, driving me backward onto the skull and the rock and the bones. 

I felt the sharp sting of impact as his light spun away. Debris rained down. Lord in heaven. The tunnel was collapsing. I rolled to the right and encountered hard metal. A hot electric shock pierced my leg and then nothing more. 

Chapter Twenty

My head buzzed. It rested against a cold rock. Cripes. It could be a bone. I stiffened and brought my hand up to check, or I tried to. A sharp tug and the clink of chain at my wrist stopped me. 

I froze, my heart pounding, every nerve on high alert.

I forced my eyes open. In the dim light, Ellis lay facing me. His head rested at an unnatural angle against a small mound of stones near the floor, the remains of the pile I'd found. 

"Ellis," I reached for him, dislodging some of the rocks nearby. He groaned. Thank God. An iron manacle circled his right wrist. A thick chain hung from it, ending in a loop sealed into the concrete floor.

My left hand wore the matching manacle.

I sat up with a shock and realized I didn't have Frankie's urn anymore. My bag was gone. The only light filtered in from the way we'd come. Only now, there was a chest-high wall blocking the way. 

I heard the rhythmic scraping of metal on brick. 

I jerked upright as far as I could and saw Mayor Thad Steward on the other side. "Help me," I said automatically, unthinking, as he added another brick. 

He pursed his lips, his head bent as he focused on the job. "You're awake," he said, diligently scraping the mortar on his side, neatening it up. "I should have set my Taser higher."

Oh my God. He was walling us in here.

He was burying us alive.

I searched for a weapon, a forgotten key, a way out of here. I slid against the debris, unearthing an arm bone, a scrap of a blue dress, the ring worn by the last girl he'd trapped down here and left to die.

Help me.

"If you're looking for your bag, I've got it. And his gun," Steward added.

My breath came in pants. My mind swam as I tried to reason my way out of this, how to escape my chains as the mayor added another brick.

Tendrils of hair had fallen into my eyes. I tried to brush them away and failed. I couldn't reach. "You don't have to do this," I pleaded. Whatever had driven him to bury us alive, there had to be a way to change his mind. 

He shook his head like a stern parent as he added another brick. "I'm sorry, Verity. I tried to keep you out of it."

"I don't understand. Why are you doing this?" How could this be happening? It didn't make sense. 

He added another brick. "I tried to dig up her body. Bury it again on some property I own that I'll never lose." He made a face. "Disgusting, even if she is only bones now." He exhaled loudly, reaching for another brick. "I only needed one more night. She would have been resting somewhere else by morning if you two hadn't started digging around." He scraped the mortar on the brick. "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."

"You can barely walk," I said, trying to work out how kind, helpful Mayor Steward had managed to trap us in an underground prison. How did he even make it down the ladder? He had that war injury.

He snorted. "Right. The old bum leg. Guess I'll have to keep it up, but hell, it's a small price to pay. And the voters love a war hero."

I still couldn't believe it. Yes, Thad Steward had probably never been one of the most honest guys in the world. He'd made his living in politics. But a murderer? "You killed Joy Sullivan and buried her down here." 

He gave a low grunt. "I didn't kill her. I walled her up. Chained her to the floor." 

As if that were any different. He'd left her to die.

He frowned as he added another brick. The man moved fast, quicker than I ever imagined possible. Oh my God, we only had about a foot and a half left before... 

"Joy didn't have the good sense to leave things alone, either," he said, slightly out of breath as he scraped his trowel over the mortar. "I loved her. I did. But she didn't understand why I had to marry Genevieve Wydell. The Wydells have the money and the power in this town." He pointed the trowel at me. "You of all people should know that."

I did. All too well. But still, "If you loved Joy, why did you kill her?" Maybe it was self-defense. Maybe he didn't need to kill me in order to cover this up.

"She thought she could keep me by getting pregnant. Big mistake," he added.

Oh my God. I struggled against the shackles until the metal tore my wrists. I fought them as if my life depended on it. Because it did.

"Don't," Steward said, as if I were the crazy one. "I installed them myself. They'll hold." Once again, the mayor's trowel scraped over brick. 

And Ellis? I touched his hand. It was warm. I hoped he was okay. Yes, he needed to be okay so that he could be buried alive with me.

"This doesn't have to happen. Please. We can work this out," I reasoned, pleaded. "You were young. You didn't know what you were doing," I said, trying to find a way to justify what he'd done so he wouldn't have to kill me. We didn't have much time. And I couldn't afford to upset him. He probably couldn't tase me from over there, but if he did, I'd wake up chained behind a brick wall. I'd have no chance then.

He shook his head. "I'm just sorry you had to get caught up in this." He added another brick. I could barely see him on the other side now. "I like you, Verity. I do. That's why I shoved you off the cliff. Figured it was a more humane way to let you go." 

The truth of it hit me. He'd lied. "There was no treasure in Wilson's Cave."

"No. But there was a cliff above it." Bricks scraped on the other side of the wall. "That treasure story's as old as dirt. Nothing's ever come of it. But the cliffs, they're real. One fall. Snap your neck. You don't feel anything after that." He leaned his head into the hole, his fingers curling over the edge. "In fact, I should have tased you again when you woke up. Then you might not suffer so much. Sorry about that."

A shiver sliced through me. There was no getting through to him. I was going to die.

I gasped for breath as the panic welled up. I opened my mouth as my lungs seized hard, trying to suck in enough air.

"Screaming won't help," he said, getting back to work. "I imagine Joy screamed a lot. She was the dramatic type. Didn't have the lovely southern gentility you possess. Most of the time. Still, these walls are thick. I didn't hear a thing."

I swallowed hard, trying to piece it together. Maybe I could find a way out. Supposedly this tunnel led to the old house. Of course the mayor was the one who'd told me that. He could have been lying. "You followed me after I talked to you," I said. It all made sense now. 

 "I did. I even had to miss the Sugarland Holiday Glee Committee meeting. Without me there, they approved yellow and white lights for this year's city hall holiday display. Yellow and white. Not red and green. See what I gave up for you?" 

He was insane, a complete psychopath. 

He tsked. "My knee still hurts from shoving you."

"Good," I muttered.

He chuckled, adding another brick. "Truth is," he said, slightly out of breath, "I'd have rather killed Ellis. He's the one who took my property. He started digging it up."

"And now you have us both," Ellis muttered. 

His head still lay against the rocks, his eyes were still closed.

"Well, look who's awake," Steward crooned. "I have to get me a new Taser. This one doesn't work as well as it used to. Anyhow, don't start on me. Won't do you any good. Joy begged the entire time." He added another brick and we lost more light. "That was tough. This is clean up."

The wall was almost to the top of the tunnel now. Shadows drenched our side of the wall.

Ellis tried to sit, and failed. Rocks skittered down the pile where he'd rested his head. "People will notice we're missing," Ellis said to me, his voice low. "This will be one of the first places they look."

"Oh, I'll lead the search for you," Steward chuckled. I could hear him grunt as he leaned down to grab another brick. "It's the least I can do, seeing as I know the property so well."

I glanced at Ellis as cold fear settled over me. Ellis's gaze raked over the tunnel, desperately searching for a way to escape.

"I think you might be down by the river," Steward continued, "or in the old house." He chuckled. "We'll certainly have to question that scary looking handyman you hired."

"What did you do to Harry?" Ellis demanded.

"I blessed him with a bottle of his favorite whiskey. He's in the alley behind my office, sleeping it off, with no alibi. We'll waste a lot of time blaming him."

"They'll look," I insisted. Melody wouldn't let this go, my mother either. 

"We'll be worried sick," the mayor agreed. "Although I doubt they'll search too hard down here. I'm using original brick. It looks perfect from this side, undisturbed for decades if I do say so myself." He wheezed loudly, adding another brick. "I'll also get my property back."

 "Over my dead body," Ellis muttered.

"That's the idea, son. I have the money to buy it. Genevieve will throw a fit, but your mother never liked her anyway." I could hear the smile in his voice. "She'll sell it to me to spite your great aunt." 

Ellis struggled against the manacle. "My will states that this property will go to charity."

"You don't have a will," Steward said. "I asked your mamma. Seeing as you're a police officer and all. Dangerous profession." The trowel scraped the other side of the wall. "Your mother always felt I deserved this place, said it was a crime when I lost it," he mused. "No. This is error proof. Sound proof. All in all, there are worse ways to go." He slid the second to last brick onto the wall. "Now what has to happen to poor Melody…that part
has
kept me awake at night. She was a special one."

Was?
I straightened, struck by a new energy. Blood pounded through my veins. "What did you do to Melody?"

"Nothing yet," he said simply. "But I have to kill her when I'm done with you. You told her too much."