Krewe of Hunters 8 The Uninvited (30 page)

“Interesting. The history of the house and the family came down
to us through Tobias Dandridge and his wife, Sophia,” Tyler said. “Lucy’s
sister.”

“So, he painted the picture of Bradley as a monster and left
that image of him for the world.” Allison sighed. “And now we know it’s probably
unfair.”

“Let’s go look,” Tyler suggested. “See if we can find the
second painting.”

“But…say there is such a painting,” Allison said, “would the
killer leave it here?”

“Maybe not, but maybe we’ll find a clue as to whether or not it
actually exists.”

Logan checked his watch. “You have about an hour,” he told
them.

“Let’s get on with it,” Tyler said.

* * *

Allison thought they should trace the path someone might
take through the house and discover how easy it would be to slip from the study
to other rooms—and then leave the property entirely. As they moved through the
study into the ladies’ salon and the music room, she could see how someone could
have crept through the various rooms without being seen by her, the lone
remaining guide, on the night Julian was killed. The house alarms didn’t extend
to the fence in front of the property or the wall that surrounded it.

She opened every cabinet and every drawer, looking for a place
where a painting might have been hidden. They didn’t find one, but toward the
end of their search, Allison opened a cupboard where musical instruments had
been kept during the Revolutionary era. It still contained a couple of fifes,
carefully displayed on shelves.

“Wait!” Tyler said.

She’d been about to close the door. He stepped past her and ran
a finger over the top shelf. He lifted the finger—and there was a slight smudge
on it.

“Paint?” she asked.

He nodded. “We’ll get a sample to the lab.”

“But if there was a painting here, it’s gone now.”

“The more we know—or think we know—the better off we’ll
be.”

“Hey!” Logan was standing in the doorway to the music room.
They turned to see what he wanted.

“Showtime!” he announced. “They’re arriving.”

Allison followed Tyler out to the narrow hall and down to the
entry. Ethan leaned on his cane, Cherry stood next to him and Nathan was just
coming in. She walked forward to welcome them all, her heart beating fast, but
behaving as naturally as she could.

“Let’s adjourn to the grand salon, shall we?” Logan invited.
“We can sit around the table.”

“Ohhh!” Cherry said with dismay. “Look what you’ve done to this
table! It’s over two-hundred years old, you know!”

“It’s covered with a plastic tarp that lets nothing through,”
Logan reassured her. “Not to worry. Please, have a seat. Coffee,
tea—anything?”

They heard a key in the door. “I’m here!” Jason called from the
entry.

“This way!” Tyler called back.

“Ethan, I just don’t know if it was such a good idea, bringing
this unit in. Sorry, you all, but really. You people don’t seem to have any
answers,” Cherry said.

“This will be solved.” Ethan spoke in a low, confident
voice.

“I’m curious. Evidently, you’ve discovered something,” Nathan
said cheerfully. “I, for one, am agog to hear!”

Annette arrived just after Jason. She acted as if she didn’t
want to be in the house; she was hostile and whispered to Allison, “I’m not
coming back to work here. I don’t want to wind up like Julian or Sarah. And I
don’t want to be accused of hurting anyone, either!”

“Sarah had an accident,” Cherry murmured.

“Now that we’re all present… If you’ll sit down, we’ll tell you
what we believe we can prove,” Tyler said.

He remained standing while the others took chairs. “First,” he
began, “take a look at these likenesses.”

He passed out copies of the computer images Jane had devised,
melding Allison’s face with the images of Lucy Tarleton.

Annette let out a little gasp. She stared across the table at
Allison. “Oh, my God! That is
uncanny.
”

“We don’t think it’s uncanny. We think its heredity,” Logan
said evenly.

“That’s ridiculous!” Cherry snapped. “Lucy didn’t have
children.”

“We believe she did, and we can prove it,” Tyler said. “We want
to do DNA testing.”

“What?” Cherry gasped.

“Why not? Cool!” Jason said.

“I don’t know… Disturbing the dead?” Ethan asked haltingly. “I
need to speak with Adam.”

“You may do that, of course, Mr. Oxford,” Logan said. “I’m
afraid he had to go back to D.C. yesterday, but you can call him, and of course,
we’ll bring him out again. We’ve concluded that someone is afraid of the
discovery that Lucy did bear an illegitimate child. That someone is so obsessed
with history, he or she doesn’t want the truth known.”

“About a possible descendent?” Nathan asked. “But…that’s not
logical, is it? That makes the story all the more appealing! It means we have a
flesh-and-blood replica of our beautiful Lucy!”

“Wait a minute,” Cherry protested. “Just because you can play
with a computer and make Allison look like Lucy? I repeat—ridiculous!”

“That’s not the only aspect of our theory, Cherry,” Tyler said.
“Martin Standish has letters in a safety deposit box that appear to have been
written by Lucy. Reading between the lines, they indicate she was never in love
with Stewart Douglas, that they were very good friends, and there was no reason
for either Stewart Douglas
or
Brian Bradley to have
killed her.”

“Well,
someone
killed her. She
ended up very dead!” Cherry said.

“So, we’ll find a way to do the DNA testing.” Logan cleared his
throat. “I don’t know how many of you are aware of this, but Allison was
attacked at the hospital today. Someone dressed up in hospital scrubs came after
her with a needle. A lethal dose of some kind of drug, I’m sure. So, where were
you all today?”

“What?”
Cherry demanded,
rising.

“You’re accusing
us?
” Nathan burst
out.

“Well,” Tyler said, sitting on the edge of the table, “we know
it’s one of you. It has to be. We just have to figure out which. You’re the only
ones who know the house well enough. So, if we can trace your movements
today?”

Jason raised his hand. “Hey, call Evan McDooley! I was working
all day.”

“I’ve already been accused,” Annette said. “And I’m too
short!”

“This is ridiculous,” Cherry muttered again. “Fire them, Ethan.
Get rid of them!”

“Cherry, you do stand to lose the most, you know,” Tyler said
in a reasonable voice. “No longer being the star of the history center—I mean,
hey, a real live descendent of Lucy Tarleton?”

“That’s not what a murder is committed for!”

“No, it’s not, is it, Cherry?” Tyler asked.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Annette said abruptly. “You’ll
have to excuse me.”

She got up to leave the room but asked, “Do I need a
guard?”

No one spoke and she headed toward the back.

“So?” Tyler asked. “Who’s next?”

“I was in my house all day. My housekeeper can vouch for me,”
Ethan said indignantly.

“Stockbroker and business,” Nathan said.

“Oh, please. I was at the gallery,” Cherry said.

As Cherry’s words died, they suddenly heard a high-pitched
scream. Annette was yelling in a panicked voice. “Help, help! Oh, my God!”

Allison jumped up, ready to run. Tyler was ahead of her,
thrusting her behind him as Logan dashed toward the rear of the house, the
others following him.

Allison slammed into Tyler when he stopped at the door to the
bathroom. “It bit me!” Annette screamed. “It bit me!”

Logan dialed 9-1-1; Tyler stepped past him.

There was a copperhead coiled behind the trash basket. As it
started to strike again, Tyler pulled his Glock and shot the snake, then
crouched down by Annette.

It was while he bent to minister to her that Allison felt the
pinprick in her leg. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She felt
someone’s arms around her, dragging her back. She tried to blink to see clearly;
Logan and Tyler were involved with Annette. She saw Cherry’s face, filled with
concern. Jason Lawrence had knelt down beside Annette.

She didn’t see Ethan Oxford or Nathan Pierson.

But she knew one of them was behind her. He’d drugged her and
was dragging her away, and she couldn’t speak or blink, and soon, everything was
black.

18

T
he snake had been a fairly small
copperhead, but Tyler didn’t believe for a minute that it had just made its way
into the house—any more than a copperhead had
just
made its way into Sarah Vining’s car.

He knew the emergency crew would arrive shortly, but he
fastened a tourniquet created from Jason’s tie beneath Annette’s knee.

She was crying and screaming all the while, and he knew the
others were rushing around, trying to get her water, trying to help.

With the tourniquet in place, he looked at the wound; there was
no need to try sucking out the poison and spitting it out himself. The EMTs
would deal with it much more efficiently than he could ever manage. Copperhead
bites were common enough in the area.

“I’m going to die!” Annette cried.

“You’re not going to die. Put your arms around my neck. I’ll
carry you out to the sofa. When the EMTs get here, they’ll give you an antidote.
You’ll spend the night in the hospital.”

Cherry Addison came running up, her high heels clicking away,
as he brought Annette to the sofa. Logan was still on the line with the 9-1-1
operator, taking her directions and nodding to Tyler that he’d done the right
thing.

“I hate this house!” Annette sobbed as he set her down. “I hate
this house. It’s evil. It’s evil, evil, evil. And now, I’m going to die in it.
Oh, no. Oh, my God! I’m going to become one of the ghosts of the
Tarleton-Dandridge House!”

Jason knelt down beside her. “Annette, come on! The house isn’t
evil.”

“I don’t ever want to see it again. I hate it!”

Tyler could hear the sirens; the emergency crew would arrive
any minute. He stood, leaving Jason at Annette’s side and Cherry standing close
by, the glass of water in her hand.

He looked around. Ethan Oxford, his complexion gray, was right
behind him.

But he didn’t see Allison.

Or Nathan Pierson.

“Logan!”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s Allison?”

Logan, too, looked around. “I’ll take the upstairs,” he said
urgently.

“Nathan?” Tyler turned to Ethan. “Where is he? Where did Nathan
go?”

Ethan shook his head, looking old and defeated. “I…I was
watching Annette,” he said.

Tyler raced to the front, letting the emergency crew in. They
came from their vehicle with “poison control” bags in their hands.

“Back there,” he said briefly. He ran outside, but there was
nothing to see. He pulled out his phone and called Jenson at the local station,
telling him to get some officers out, that the area had to be searched
immediately. They needed an emergency canvas.

He rushed back in, grabbing Oxford by the shoulders. “Nathan
Pierson. Did he drive here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes,” Annette said weakly. “Yes, he drove.”

Walking toward the hallway, Logan pulled out his phone again
and asked Jenson for an alert on Pierson’s car. He ran out the front door again,
anxious to see if Nathan was trying to wrest Allison into his car.

But as he raced out, he felt something—someone—behind him.

He turned.

It was Lucy Tarleton. And she beckoned Tyler to the back of the
house.

* * *

Allison was perfectly aware of where she was and what
was happening.

She was in the apartment above the stables, stretched out on
the floor. That faint scent of oiled leather, hay and horses still remained,
wafting up from below.

Nathan Pierson was kneeling beside her. He looked amused—and
sad.

“Ah, yes, in a few minutes, they’ll come searching for you.
They’ll check the crypt, because they’ll be sure that you were spirited away to
die on top of Lucy’s tomb. That would be poetic justice, but…I don’t want them
finding me. They won’t think of anything as simple as the stables. What’s that
you say?” He laughed, knowing very well that she couldn’t answer him. “They’ll
search for you everywhere? Yes, they will! Everyone loves you. In fact, I’ve
actually been in love with you for years. You knew that, didn’t you? A love-hate
relationship, I’d guess you could say. Keeping alive the image of Lucy as a true
heroine and not a slut hasn’t been easy. Still, what a sweet, bright young woman
you proved to be. Of course, I’ve watched you. I suspected you had to be a
descendent, but we had historic records and that baby of Lucy’s was so quickly
swept away from all danger that your family remained above reproach. Oh, dear
girl! For many years, you were like a beauty on a pedestal that I admired from
afar. You loved the house and you told the stories dutifully. And what a
scholar! Brains and beauty, Ally. Brains and beauty.”

She would have answered him—if she’d been able to. She could
see him; her eyes could move but it seemed that her body was incapable of
obeying her brain.

Why?
she wanted to ask him.

“Ah, why, you ask?” he said, smoothing back her hair.

He was thoughtful for a moment. “I never wanted to kill you,
but since you’ve ruined everything, it seems only right that I explain. I am an
American, Lucy. I am a patriot. I grew up going to every reenactment. Now, there
are idiots who claim Washington was just a man and Lincoln had his faults. They
like to talk about the way the founding fathers owned slaves and fought with one
another. We have to stop that kind of talk, Allison. At the Tarleton-Dandridge
House, we were true patriots. Lucy was a real heroine—along with her sister, her
brother-in-law and the man who should have been her husband, Stewart Douglas.
But you—and some of those others—wanted to ruin the image. Don’t go thinking I’m
crazy. I’m not. I’m a patriot. A true patriot. All those years ago, that kid.
That stupid, stupid kid! He wanted to break in to steal the portrait of Beast
Bradley. We need that portrait. It shows the truth—that the British were our
enemies. They stole our freedoms and they wanted to kill us. Tobias Dandridge
painted that portrait because that was the man who came to destroy his
life.”

Allison was able to swallow and work her mouth. She tried to
dampen her tongue; the effort was nearly useless but she discovered she could
croak out words.

“Tobias. Tobias Dandridge.”

“What?” Pierson demanded. He smiled. “The drug’s wearing off. I
didn’t give you enough. Oh, it’s not going to kill you. I’m afraid I’ll have to
stab you to death. Like poor Lucy Tarleton. That’s true poetic justice.”

She was glad she couldn’t feel anything. Despite everyone’s
determination that she not be alone, she was alone. With a man who meant to
slice her to ribbons. And she could hardly blink. She tried to fight the terror.
She needed courage.

To do what? Die when she couldn’t move?

Courage wasn’t about not being afraid. Courage was being
terrified, and going forth despite the fear.

She struggled. She could move her lips. “Tobias,” she
whispered. “Tobias Dandridge was the one who murdered Lucy. That’s what you’re
afraid I was going to figure out. We’ve had it wrong for years. Lucy gave the
baby away to hide from Tobias. She was afraid. The British were leaving and she
knew it. Bradley couldn’t take her with him—and she wouldn’t have gone. She was
in love with him, but she really was a patriot. You do her a tremendous
disservice, hiding the truth. She was in love with Bradley, but she still
carried information to the patriot troops. Dandridge killed her—and convinced
her father that Bradley had done it. And he painted the portrait so the world
would believe it, believe that Bradley was a monster. He also killed Lucy
because it meant Sophia would inherit the house and everything Angus Tarleton
possessed—and he was going to marry Sophia. But Sophia suspected the truth, and
that was why the other painting was kept in Lucy’s bedroom. I imagine she hid
that painting while he was alive. Sophia believed Lucy’s spirit deserved a
righteous image of the man she had loved.”

“That’s just a theory,” Nathan said irritably. “The same as any
other.”

She was surprised that he could hear her, since she could
barely form the words. He leaned close to her—so close. “But I believe it’s the
truth,” she told him. “And others might believe it, too. I’m living proof that
Lucy had a child. And if she’d had her supposed patriot lover’s child, the baby
would have been loved and cherished—even if she’d been killed.”

“You would have written that filth!” Nathan said.

She didn’t respond.

He paused for a minute. “Listen.” He raised his head. “Listen.
The sirens are blazing in the night. They’re going to save Annette. But they
can’t save you because they don’t know you’re here. They think I’ve kidnapped
you and taken you somewhere, and they’ll comb the city. But you’re here. I know
this house, I know everything about it. I know how to slip in and around it, how
to hide in it. They’ll be searching the city and they’ll think of the graveyard,
but never the stables. This is so fitting, you see. Down there—in the stall
below us—is where Lucy kept Firewalker, and where she came when she was about to
ride out to the patriot camp. This is where she came when she was still loyal.
And, Allison, it’s where you’ll die. You’ll die—like Lucy. You’re talking nicely
now, but you can’t scream. I’m going to make sure you can’t scream. I really am
sorry. I’m going to spill your blood on this property. It’s so fitting,” he said
again. He started to reach into his pocket and she knew he had the needle there,
ready to shove into her flesh.

“And what will happen when I’m dead? They won’t stop until they
find you.”

“Foolish girl, I’ve been getting rid of those who were disloyal
for years. I will get away with all of it. I’ve spent the past days—when I
wasn’t silencing a few people—at my bankers’. My money is now in foreign
accounts. You can’t imagine the number of countries that don’t honor extradition
to the United States. I’ll lie low for a few years, and then all will be fine.
Don’t worry about me, my dear. So nice of you to think of me at a time like
this, though. I do appreciate your concern.”

“How did you kill Julian?” she asked. Her fingers almost moved.
“And why?”

“Oh, Julian! That’s easy,” he said. “I left the house, walked
back in right behind him and returned to the office and then down the servants’
stairs. I have a very special copy of that painting of Bradley. I’d switched the
paintings during the middle of the board meeting. I had a copy of the original
done ages ago and a magician in San Francisco did a little altering for me.
Seriously, if any of you had come in on me, what would you have said about a
board member adjusting a painting?” He shook his head. “Old Angela—I tested it
on her three years ago and…well, what can I say? It worked. But Julian, that
narcissist! He was so busy posing in the chair he didn’t hear me—not until I had
the painting ‘speak’ to him. He never saw me. I was behind the chair by the
bookcases. He was so involved with himself that he never heard me, even when I
pushed his head down.”

“No, he didn’t see you or hear you. But why—”

“I was afraid of what he’d learned reading your so-called
research. I couldn’t trust him. And I didn’t like the way he acted around
you.”

“But—”

Nathan Pierson had the needle out. “We can’t chat here any
longer. I’m sorry to do this to you and sorry you can’t scream. I believe Lucy
screamed when she was executed for her disloyalty to the cause she claimed to
love. But I can’t have you heard up at the house. Think about it. All that
commotion inside—and here you are, dying…bleeding out in the stables and they’ll
hate themselves, but—”

“They see you, Nathan,” she said.

“Who sees me? We’re alone. They’ll rush to the tomb. Then
they’ll decide I took you off the property. By the time they run around like
ants you’ll be dead and I’ll be long gone.”

“Lucy sees you.”

“Lucy is a ghost story.”

“Lucy is a ghost—not a story. She’s watching you now.”

She made him turn; he dropped the needle and had to reach down
to get it.

Then Allison saw that Lucy really was there. She’d slipped into
the doorway, and Tyler was behind her.

He was ready, she thought. He had his Glock out as he walked
into the room.

Nathan Pierson heard him at just that moment. He rose, drawing
Allison’s body against his. She flopped in his arms, twitching in an attempt to
regain some motion.

“Let her go, Nathan,” Tyler said calmly.

“You can’t take a shot,” Nathan told him. “You could shoot
Allison. Shoot her and kill her, and her death would be your fault.”

“Lucy isn’t going to let that happen,” he said.

“Lucy! There is no damned ghost! What the hell is the matter
with you people? Ghost busters, it’s a joke.”

“Not true. Lucy is here—and Julian is, too. I’m sure he hates
you even more than Lucy does.”

“There are no ghosts!” Pierson shouted. “Now you…you back up
and let me leave with her or I swear I’ll plunge this needle straight into her
heart. It’s filled with a Norcuron mix—I stole it from the hospital. In her
heart? It’ll kill her in a flash.”

Allison reminded herself that courage was about being
terrified—and going forth anyway!

She managed to open her mouth.

She had one chance and she knew it. She prayed that her drugged
muscles would work.

She bit Nathan Pierson. Bit him as hard as she could.

He screamed. She was nearly dead weight.

He didn’t drop her, but it was enough. Tyler used those split
seconds to speed across the room, leaping over the trunks in his way, and tackle
Nathan Pierson, bringing the three of them down to the ground. Pierson fought
him desperately, reaching for the needle. But Tyler smashed his arm and grabbed
the syringe and the two of them rolled, crashing into the wardrobe against the
far wall.

Allison couldn’t see what was happening. She willed herself to
turn. Inch by inch…

By half inch.