Where Angels Rest (5 page)

“For you, Carrie,” he said.

The Angelmaker watched from beneath a hat in a blue vinyl chair, pulse kicking up as a woman walked past just a few feet away. She carried a laptop and purse, and a fat nylon suitcase that would have just barely squeezed into an overhead compartment. Her strides were swift, a woman on a mission.

Erin Sims.

No surprise that she’d come. As soon as the news reported a reprieve for her brother pending an investigation in Ohio, there had been no doubt she’d show up. A little knowledge of her character and a check of the airline schedule was all it took: She would take the first flight she could, no layovers. And since American Airlines flew the only nonstop route between Miami and Columbus, it hadn’t been taxing to get comfortable near baggage claim and simply wait her out.

Now, she passed nearly within arm’s reach of the chair, and the Angelmaker studied her. She hadn’t changed much, except that she looked a little worse for wear—like she’d taken a fall or something. But she was still slender and leggy, tall for a woman, and sporting thick waves of shoulder-length hair that could be brown or auburn
depending on the light. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense; her nose had a faint bend and her jaw was too square. But her lips were full and her eyes resembled green glass—big and bright and fringed with lashes so long there probably wasn’t a man alive who could look at her without imagining her on her knees, using her lips and batting those lashes up at him.

No doubt she would bat them at authorities in Ohio just as she had in Miami and Raleigh. Determined to make everyone listen to her lies.

The Angelmaker fell in behind her, sneering. The authorities wouldn’t believe her; they never had.

The angels, though, were different. They saw truths they shouldn’t. And when they did, they had to die.

Something Erin Sims might want to keep in mind.

She hoisted her bag over her shoulder and walked away from a Hertz kiosk, fingering a new key fob, deep in thought. Busy planning her strategy, no doubt.

Predictable as rain, the Angelmaker thought, and didn’t bother following her out of the airport. She wouldn’t be hard to keep track of. She’d probably show up at Hilltop before the night was over.

And how far would she get this time? Apparently, there was some sort of new evidence, but the news hadn’t said what it was. Enough for authorities to issue a stay of execution for Justin Sims. Enough to bring his dogged big sister to Hopewell on a quest to unearth the truth.

The Angelmaker smiled.
Don’t look too closely, Dr. Sims. If you find what you’re looking for, it will be the last thing you see. You could be an angel, after all.

Ohio greeted Erin with open hostility: a sky like steel wool, forty-one degrees and spitting. Two hours after
her flight landed, her phone’s nav-system had her tooling through sparsely populated cattle pastures and dead corn fields. A couple of gallons of coffee wore off near a town called Tiffin, so she stopped at a gas station for a Mountain Dew and Snickers bar, then drove five miles out of her way to find a Kinkos and bought a ream of bright yellow card stock—just in case. Yellow, advertisers said, was eye-catching.

A mile into Hopewell County, the Chamber of Commerce’s welcome station came up, a white building with dark beams that made it look like a German cottage. Erin considered it, then pulled in and looked at the wall of information. Hopewell, the county seat, boasted a population of 16,000. It was the site of Mansfeld College (“home of the 2007 and 2008 National Champion Women’s volleyball team”), an annual Oktoberfest, and a “Spring Arts Fling” each May. Next weekend, a kids’ soccer league would host regional finals at Blue Limestone Park. And at a newly renovated vaudeville theater called “The Palace,” a community group was doing the opera
Hansel and Gretel
this weekend.

“Geesh,” Erin muttered. “I wonder where Aunt Bea and Andy live.”

She found a phone book—the thickness of a magazine—beside an old pay phone and flipped through the scant yellow pages. There it was. S
PACIOUS ROOMS, FULLY FURNISHED, HISTORIC ATMOSPHERE
. M
AKE YOUR STAY THE
H
ILLTOP WAY, CALL 1-800-555-6038
. V
ISIT OUR ART POTTERY GIFT SHOP
. O
WNED AND OPERATED BY
J
ACK AND
M
ARGARET
C
ALLOWAY, SERVING GUESTS SINCE 2007.

Her heart bumped. The bastard, living his Norman Rockwell existence while Justin sat on Death Row. Well, no longer. This time, she’d make someone listen to what
she knew: Lauren McAllister had an affair with Huggins. She’d confided to Justin that he scared her. She’d drawn a picture of him before her death that could only be interpreted as disturbed.

And while none of that had been sufficient to get anyone to look at the case again, Erin’s discovery last week was different. Her PI learned that Huggins had fled to Virginia after she chased him from Raleigh, and another young woman—a woman just like Lauren—had an affair with him and then disappeared. She’d been gone for five years now, presumed dead. Erin had spoken with the girl’s parents last week, got enough information that the PI traced the lover to Hopewell and found a man who could be John Huggins.

Could be.
Erin’s own turn of thought drained some of the strength from her limbs. She looked at the ad in the yellow pages. What if the owners of this inn
weren’t
John and Maggie Huggins?

Time to find out. She’d dealt with enough indifferent sheriffs over the years to know she wasn’t going to leave the job to this one. She wanted to go to Huggins herself, see him with her own eyes and hear his voice. Then, when she was armed with the certainty that she’d found Huggins, she’d bully the sheriff into listening to her.

She checked into a Red Roof Inn, washed her face and added a sweater and denim jacket, then headed to Hilltop House. She tooled up the winding drive and parked the rental car in a gravel lot with three others. She looked around. The main house was huge, in the middle of a spread of outbuildings: an enormous barn, an old-fashioned carriage house, a modern garage. A pickup truck crouched outside the garage, freshly washed and looking out of place among the other vehicles, with undercarriages smattered
with slush and salt. The flower beds that had bloomed so colorfully in the online photo were empty now, but the boy and girl sculptures still stood in the garden.

Dead giveaways, Huggins, she thought, eyeing the sculptures. His wife, Maggie, was one of the most drop-dead beautiful women Erin had ever seen. Her sculptures were equally beautiful.

Erin started to get out then stopped, a thump of fear holding her back. She scanned the area. No cars waiting to run her down.

She cursed. Stupid thought. Whoever had taken a run at her at the prison certainly hadn’t followed her to Ohio.

She walked up the wide front porch, through an elegant wood-and-etched-glass door, and into Huggins’s lair. She stared. As soon as she’d seen the Internet listing for Hilltop House she’d given no thought to the inn itself—only to what the discovery of Huggins with a new identity might mean for Justin. Now, standing in a grand foyer with the smell of sweet, spiced cider flaring her nostrils and the sound of a fire crackling nearby, she felt as if the world had tipped sideways.

Not the home of a vicious murderer at all: It was gorgeous. Twelve-foot ceilings with tiered crown molding and wine-red walls, cherry floors splashed with thick rugs. A wide staircase rose to second and third stories and on the wall of the grand foyer hung a set of beautifully decorated clay masks. Mrs.
Calloway,
Erin thought, and couldn’t help but be impressed by her talent. There were seven of them—all approximately the same size and shape like the classic comedy-tragedy masks, but each adorned like a fabulous Mardi Gras mask, with jewels and feathers and designs all crafted from clay. They were stunni—

Her breath caught: Something moved in the hallway at the top of the stairs. She peered into the dimness only to see a shadow slip out of sight. Huggins? No. Huggins sauntered. This person… skittered.

She rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms and stepped beneath an archway, looking into a large room. Against the far wall sat a sideboard covered with cheeses, crackers, and bunches of grapes, and a tureen of what must be the hot cider she smelled. The tiny glands beneath her tongue came to life and she realized that except for the Snickers bar, she hadn’t eaten since… this morning? Last night? She wasn’t sure.

She went back through the foyer and through an opposite archway. Another rich, spacious room. In the center burned a fire in a double-sided stone fireplace and on the chimney, a hand-painted sign pointed the way to the gift shop. On either side of the fireplace sat a collection of armchairs, footrests, and lamp tables, perfect for cozying up on a cold winter evening.

Two men had done exactly that. One, an older gentleman with an unlit pipe in one hand and a brandy snifter in the other, sported a graying shock of hair and a magazine on his lap. Back issues of
Field & Stream
sat in a stack at his feet. He lifted his glass when he noticed Erin. The other man, a younger version of the same features and body type, set aside a laptop computer and stood. Erin started to say something to him, then noticed his jaw go slack and heard a
click
behind her. She turned, the hairs on her neck standing up.

John Huggins aimed a shotgun at her chest.

E
RIN FLINCHED,
then the shotgun faded from view and the only thing in the world was the man behind it.
Huggins.
His eyes struck her first—one green and one blue—both pale and piercing and cold. Then the rest of the details filtered in… six feet tall, well-toned for a man of his age. His waist was a few pounds thicker, his temples a touch grayer, the crow’s feet a bit deeper in his skin. But he was the same man.

Dear God, she’d found him.
It’s going to be okay, Justin.

“Misters McCormick,” he said, without moving the shotgun even fractionally, “move out of the room, if you please. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“What the hell?” the older McCormick boomed. “Jack, what are you doing?”

“Move out, Wilson. You too, Evan,” he said. “I’m not the marksman the two of you are, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Son of a bitch,” the younger man said. Erin noticed that he saved and shut down his document before closing his laptop, as if more inconvenienced than frightened
by the appearance of John Huggins with a shotgun. The two guests moved behind Huggins like lazy dogs being nudged from their evening naps.

“Now, Wilson,” Huggins said, once they were safely behind him, “pick up that phone in the foyer and call nine-one-one. Tell Sheriff Mann there’s an intruder on my premises.”

“Have you lost your mind?” the man asked.

“You might also tell him that this particular intruder is in violation of a restraining order.”

Erin thought the older man picked up the phone, but couldn’t strip her eyes from John Huggins long enough to be sure. Her body had gone to stone, her mouth so dry she couldn’t swallow. She was going to heave the near-nothing in her stomach if she stood in the same room with him any longer. Eleven years. More than a third of Justin’s life had been spent in prison because of the man now aiming a gun at her, calmly issuing directives to his guests.

She groped for the name he’d used. “Mr. McCormick?” she said. The man at the phone looked at her, startled. “Did Jack Calloway ever tell you that his real name is John Huggins? Did you know that he was accused of killing a young wo—”

“Wilson McCormick has been coming to Hilltop since we opened and is one of my wife’s most loyal patrons,” Huggins interrupted. “He’s not likely to be bothered by your ranting and raving.”

“Listen to me,” Erin grated out. She looked at the McCormicks behind him. “You have to understand.”

“All they need to understand,” Huggins said, “is that you are a poor, misguided woman who believes her brother’s lies instead of the facts. I’ve told you before, Dr. Sims, I didn’t murder Lauren McAllister. And I will not let you
ruin my reputation or hurt my wife again by spouting your lies.”

Erin gritted her teeth. The
bastard,
standing there, pointing a shotgun at her and somehow making himself appear the victim. “So what are you going to do, shoot me right here in front of God and everyone?” She glanced at the younger McCormick, who’d gone wide-eyed, then the elder, who had the phone pressed to his ear and occasionally said something into it. She had to make them listen. Somehow—

“Jack.” The front door swung wide. The newcomer stopped short when he saw the stand-off. He was forty-something, and looked like he’d just stepped out of the casual section of
Gentleman’s Quarterly.
He glanced around, keeping one eye on the gun. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you,” Erin jumped in, but they spoke right over her.

“This is the woman I told you about, Dorian,” Huggins said.

“His real name is John Huggins—”

“She’s the reason Margaret and I changed names and—”

“He killed a girl and let my brother go to prison for it.” Fury carried Erin forward. As if in some sort of out-of-body experience, she realized she was walking toward him, right toward the shotgun. She didn’t care; he wouldn’t shoot her. That wasn’t his style and there were too many witnesses. But they weren’t listening to her. No one believed her.

Listen to me, Mom. You have to believe me.

“I want her arrested, Dorian,” Huggins said.

“It’s you who should be arres—” A hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her breath. Panic struck and she
flailed, then realized it was the younger McCormick who had grabbed her from behind.

“Stop it, lady,” he ground against her ear. “He’s got a gun.”

She writhed, trying to yank free, and everything dragged into slow motion. Sirens whined outside the door. Boots stomped in, voices shouting over one another. A handful of strangers appeared on the stairwell and the man from
GQ
kept talking and wagging a finger and Huggins’s wife came in from the back, still strikingly beautiful and standing in front of her masks wringing her hands. Huggins’s shotgun finally came down and Erin shook off the hands that held her.