The Butler Didn't Do It (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 2) (16 page)

I almost gave up and turned around, but I’d come this far. I continued on to Jonas’ room and tried again.

The door opened smoothly.

Well, well, what do you know? It’s always those with the most to hide who are the most careless, isn’t it? I liked to think it was karma nipping at their tails.

I went inside and closed the door gently behind me. The room was pitch-black, the drapes over the sliding door pulled tight. I left the light switch alone and used the flashlight on my phone to guide me around the bed to the small table beside it. I felt around and found a flat, skinny partition beneath the table top—easy to miss. A pen rattled as I slid the drawer out and
Bingo!
I reached for the fancy pad with the stylized Hollow House header. It only had a couple of sheets left, an obvious relic from more prosperous days.

The subtle sound of a handle depressing froze me. I held my breath, but that didn’t stop the door opening. Light flooded the room before it crossed my mind to dive under the bed.

FOURTEEN

Jonas closed the door behind him, cocked his head. A shock of salt and pepper hair fell over one eye. “What the hell are you doing?”

I gulped and pulled my hand out of the drawer, slid my phone into my back pocket. “Laundry service?”

“You store the sheets in the bedside drawer?” he smirked.

“Miss Crawley mentioned that the stationary supplies were running low in the rooms,” I improvised and, with a little shrug, I pushed the drawer in again. “I should—I guess I should—” Thank God I had my acting skills to fall back on, because I was no natural born criminal. My heart hammered ten-to-none and my lips were so dry, they kept sticking to my teeth. “I should go.”

Jonas stepped away from the door and folded his arms. “Yes, you should go.”

He’d moved slightly to the side, but he was still between me and the door. Every instinct inside me was screaming, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do: scream for help. But how would that look? I was the intruder here. And Jonas hadn’t touched me. He hadn’t even threatened me, if I discounted the ugly gleam in his eyes and the smirk.

I edged around the base of the bed, swallowed past the lump in my throat that grew thicker with every step that narrowed the distance between us.

Jonas said nothing, just watched and smirked.

Dear Lord, I had a bad, bad feeling about this. I had to remind my heart to beat as I drew up alongside Jonas.

One more beat.

One more step.

I turned my eyes from him for a second to look at the door handle and that’s all it took. A hand clamped over my mouth. An arm locked around me from behind, trapping my arms and pinning my body to his.

I knew it!

I squirmed and kicked out as he dragged me away from the door.
“Hmmmph, hmm, hmmp!”

“Stop struggling,” he growled in a low voice. “I won’t hurt you.”

Yeah, right!

I jabbed back with my elbows, kicked harder, wriggled as if my life depended on it—which it probably did.

Jonas barely noticed. The man was all muscle and dense bone. He strode across the room, dragging me along like a demon-possessed ragdoll.

There was a brief moment of hope when I managed to spike his lower calf with my stiletto. He grunted a curse and his lock around my chest slackened, but before I could do anything with it, he slammed me facedown on the bed and sat on top of me. One hand pressed the back of my head down, squashing my face into the covers. The feather quilt took all my screams and most of my air. I went still, struggling to draw breath.

I felt Jonas move on top of me. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it didn’t take long to figure out. He’d been shaking out the pillows. He tied an empty pillow case around my mouth, stuffed some of it inside when I opened my mouth to scream, then he used another to bind my hands behind my back.

His massive weight lifted from me. I rolled my head to the side and breathed deeply through my nose. I got one good breath in before he yanked me from the bed, mindless to my bucking and kicking, and hauled me by my arm toward the sliding doors.

As soon as I realized his intention, I changed tactics and went limp, hanging from his hold on my arm like a deadweight. I’d done many stupid things in my short life, but walking out into a dark forest with my murderer on my own two feet would not be one of them.

Jonas slid the door open and simply dragged me along on my knees. The railing along the bottom sliced through my jeans and tore at my skin with a searing pain. I cried out, somehow managed to suck in cotton and almost choked as I stumbled back onto my feet. Tears sprung to my eyes. Pain. Frustration. Self-pity. Anger, directed mostly at myself. Snooping in Jonas’ room had been my absolute worst idea to date. If I survived this, I swore I’d never have a bright idea ever again.

He pulled me along the paved area outside his room and headed straight into the forest. Deeper and deeper, until the pines packed tight and blocked out the hazy glow of starlight. We’d been walking for about five minutes before he threw me down onto the ground. Without hands free to break my fall, I hit the forest floor hard with my shoulder and hip. If there was pain, it didn’t register through the stark horror that overtook me. Two weeks ago, Principle Limly had kidnapped me from Hollow House and left me in a dank cellar to die. Two lousy weeks, and here I was again. Okay, not in a cellar beneath the Mason Creek house, but you know what I mean.

I shuffled awkwardly up against a tree trunk and tucked my knees in.

“I’m going to remove the gag now.” Jonas hunched down in front of me. “You will not like what happens if you scream and no one will get here in time to save you. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Not so high and mighty now without your detective friend hovering over you, huh?”

If the situation wasn’t so dire, I would have rolled my eyes. I was a five-foot-five out of work actress going through a divorce. High and mighty wasn’t even on my radar, let alone within reach.

His arms came around me to untie the knot behind my head. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and he was right in my face, so I had a close up view of his crazy. Mean eyes. Cruel mouth drawn in a sneer. I believed him. I would not like what happened if I screamed.

He pulled the pillow case away and pushed to his feet.

I spat a stray feather out and worked my jaw loose, glaring up at him. “What do you want with me?”

“We’re going to have a little chat.” He paced in front of me. “How about we start with why you were in my room and don’t even think about saying you were changing the sheets.”

Well, I wasn’t going to admit the truth. That left me with precious little to say.

I glanced around. If I timed this right, I’d have maybe a five second lead. Not much, especially with my hands tied, but it was dark and the dense woods would help. The problem was, I’d lost my sense of direction and I’d rather not be running away from the house.

“You’re just like Lydia,” Jonas muttered.

“How’s that?”
Keep him talking.
Behind my back, I wriggled my wrists furiously, trying to slip my bonds.

“She thought she was better than me because she was the youngest GRIMMS member to ever make the Honored Masters scroll. She said I’d never make it, that I didn’t have the imagination to solve anything that couldn’t be tallied up in neat columns with a calculator.”

“Is that why you killed her?” I gasped. He wasn’t a hitman after all. This was purely personal. “Professional jealousy?”

“Lydia’s great-great granddaddy was a founding member of the GRIMMS,” he huffed in disgust. “We all know she only made the scroll because of her family connections.” He stopped pacing to come down before me again, looked me in the eye. “I didn’t kill her.”

Yeah, well, it’s not like he’d admit it.

My wrists were chafed and I hadn’t worked up any slack. I tucked my fists in and tried the sliding method.

“And I won’t take the fall for you,” Jonas went on. “I’m not the easy mark you thought I was.”

I forgot about freeing my hands to stare at him. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s why you were in my room,” he said. “Planting evidence.”

“Planting evidence?” I repeated dumbly. “Have you lost your mind? I didn’t kill Lydia!”

“That’s exactly what the murderer would say.”

I scowled at him. “You said it, too.”

“Yeah, but we both know I was telling the truth.”

We could go a few more rounds, pointing fingers at each other, but something else was going on here. I just had to figure out what. “I never met Lydia Fieldman before last night. Why on earth would I kill her?”

“I did my homework. You got a taste of notoriety with that Daggon woman’s murder and you wanted more. God knows what makes people like you tick, but the answer is usually money.” Jonas straightened slowly, looking down on me. “You found a way to stand out in a crowded market. Everyone wants a little more reality in their shows nowadays, but it wouldn’t do to actually murder your guests, would it? You needed someone else to take the blame for that.”

He was completely deluded, but I had to say, Jonas made a compelling argument. None of this, however, explained what was really going on here. “What do you want, Jonas?”

“A confession.” He reached inside his jacket pocket.

My heart gave a wild kick, but he didn’t pull out a gun.

He held his phone up to me. “You’re going to admit everything into this.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’re not much use to me alive.”

“Is that a threat?”

He shrugged. “Start talking, and you’ll never have to find out.”

It suddenly hit me. Jonas had already spelled out what was going on, he’d just swopped the players around. He intended
me
to take the fall for
his
crimes.

Given the circumstances of substantial duress, I was pretty sure Nate could get me out of any statement I made into the phone recorder.

But the thought of confessing to a murder sickened me to the stomach. And besides, if my confession landed up in the wrong man’s hands (the kind who cared more about closing cases than about the truth), and with my luck that was a real possibility, I could spend the rest of my life rotting away in prison.

“A coerced confession will never stand up in court,” I told Jonas.

“It doesn’t have to,” he said. “You will be caught and convicted, it’s only a matter of time, and the hypothesis I submit tomorrow will be proved correct. When it comes out that I solved the murder of GRIMMS’ most prestigious member, and I’d already taped your original confession long before your arrest, my place on the Honored Masters scroll will be assured.”

My mouth opened and closed like a gobsmacked fish. After all I’d been put through, Jonas wasn’t the murderer. He wouldn’t put all this effort into riding the coattails of my conviction if he was. He was just an overgrown kid who wanted a gold star for getting the answer right.

Jonas bent over me with his cell phone. “Talk.”

Two things happened right then.

For one, I heard the distant rumbling of an engine on the Valley Road. The sound grew rapidly closer, the kind of growl that might belong to Nate’s truck, then slowed as if to take the turn. The packed dirt road that led to Hollow House was directly ahead of us.

I also had a major epiphany (totally not the same thing as a bright idea, which I wasn’t doing anymore.) If Jonas hadn’t murdered Lydia, then it was unlikely he’d go to the extreme lengths of killing me. That didn’t rule out him roughing me up some more, but maybe I could afford to take a giant risk.

I rolled onto my side and kicked out with both legs. My shins struck his ankle with a bone-shuddering impact that sent a tingle all the way up my spine, but the force swept him clear off his feet. I scrambled onto my knees, onto my feet, and then I darted forward through the trees. Okay, I tottered blindly through the trees. I was wearing stilettos and it was practically impossible to keep my balance with my hands tied behind my back.

Jonas shouted my name, his heavy footfalls closing in on me.

Headlights flashed through the branches, right there in front of me. I burst through the line of trees to see the red taillights of Nate’s truck driving off. Jonas jumped me from behind. My ankle twisted out from under me as I went down, bouncing to to my knees first, then smacking the dirt road with Jonas sprawled on top of me.

Packed dirt clawed my cheek. There was an oaf crushing the life from me. On the plus side, tires squealed as Nate executed a one-hundred-and-eighty degree handbrake turn. He must have seen the movement in his rearview mirror.

Jonas hastily picked himself off me, but it was too late, the truck’s headlights had already caught him red-handed. I pulled myself up, shaky with relief, and nearly toppled over. Not my ankle giving way, thankfully. One of my stiletto heels had snapped off during the tussle.

The truck slammed to a halt. Nate climbed out, the engine still running, and charged toward us.

Jonas didn’t even try to run, just stood there with slumped shoulders and muttered a few choice words.