Bodies & Buried Secrets: A Rosewood Place Mystery (Rosewood Place Mysteries Book 1) (14 page)

It stood open, just a few inches, but it was definitely open. Annie took a step backwards and nearly fell down the slippery stairs of the front porch. She fell into Rory, who had climbed out of the car moments after she had.

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you going in there?” He looked at Annie, then followed her gaze to the gently swinging door.

“Because that was locked when I left it,” she said plainly. “And now, it’s not.”

Rory wouldn’t let Annie inside the house until he’d stepped inside first and made sure that it was empty. A very quick run through the empty house told him that it was, so he returned to bring Annie inside.

“Are you sure it was locked? Could it have come open in the storm?” Rory seemed to want to believe that there was nothing more sinister than the weather to blame for the open door, and Annie did, too, but she couldn’t. Unless she was losing her mind, that door had been firmly closed and locked when she left. As the storm raged outside, Annie pushed her worries to one side. She suspected that she had a mess to clean up and her mother and Devon were still sitting not-too-patiently in the car.

The floor of the parlour was dry, except for the trail of water that Annie and Rory tracked in. Annie surmised that this was because the porch was covered; it likely kept the rain out, at least in that part of the house. The rest of the house hadn’t been quite so lucky. The kitchen floor held a goodly-sized puddle from the open window above the sink, and the sitting room had a little moisture on the floor by each window, though this was the least of the damage done by the still-raging springtime storm.

The wind had invaded every open window, blowing over boxes and scattering papers across the shabby, unwaxed wooden floors. A box of books lay tilted on its side, its contents spilling out across the floor of the sitting room. As Annie rushed to close the windows, she nearly tripped over the small side table beneath it. Some thought tickled her mind, begging for her attention while she darted around the house, struggling to close the slippery windows in the old farmhouse.

Rory managed to locate Bessie’s large umbrella and liberate it from a pile of unpacked things still sitting in the parlour. He braved the elements once again to bring the rest of Annie’s family inside, and she began the task of mopping up the water that had accumulated downstairs. She only hoped that the upstairs wasn’t badly soaked, especially those rooms with leaks in the roof. She wanted to kick herself for leaving the windows open, but it had been so hot in the house without the air conditioning, and it would only get hotter as spring yielded to summer. She sighed and realized that she would have to spend a great deal of money having proper air conditioning installed in the old house since the previous owners obviously hadn’t been bothered enough to do so.

After what felt like hours, but was really only more like ten minutes, Annie’s entire family, plus Rory, was safe inside the farmhouse.

“Oh, my heavens!” Bessie’s exclamation was loud and dramatic. “Our sitting room! Annie, did the wind do this?”

Annie looked around at the spilled boxes and a lonely, broken lamp that lay in pieces on the floor. “I guess it must have,” she replied, rubbing her temples. “Devon, why don’t you run upstairs and check on the cat. Let me know if there’s any water up there anywhere.” He didn’t say anything but did as she asked. “Rory, would you mind grabbing the broom and dustpan for me? I think I left them by the back door in the kitchen.”

Annie began picking up books and re-boxing them. Then she did the same with the scattered papers that had blown around the room. Most of them, she noted with some annoyance, were simply pieces of junk mail her mother hadn’t bothered to throw out before she’d packed. Rory returned after a few moments with the broom and dustpan. He had a troubled look on his face but shrugged it off when she asked if anything was wrong.

“Must have been some mighty strong wind,” Bessie declared, “to knock that lamp plum across the room.”

Annie stopped mid-sweep. Her eyes darted from the broken lamp at her feet, which lay directly in front of the ancient fireplace, to the plug on the wall by the window, some
ten feet
away.

“That’s impossible,” Annie stated firmly. “There’s no way the wind did this.”

“Annie,” Rory began. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I think I should do it in the kitchen.” He took the broom from her hands and leaned it against the wall by the fireplace mantel. “Bessie, you sit down and rest. Annie and I need to clean up a little mess out back, and then I’ll make you a nice cup of Lady Grey.”

Annie was too surprised by Rory’s knowledge of her mother’s tea preference to ask him about what it was he wanted to show her, and when she got to the kitchen, she couldn’t immediately see anything out of place. There was still a little water on the floor, but the towels she’d thrown down when she first arrived had cleared most of that up. Thank goodness Rory had managed to get the washing machine and dryer hooked up before all the mess with the Chief--

“Annie!” Rory whispered loudly in the empty kitchen. “Are you still with me here?”

She realized that she did feel sort of spaced out, and she was suddenly aware that her thoughts had been drifting. “I’m so sorry, Rory--I just, well, I’m so tired, and I skipped breakfast this morning. Now the storm and all this mess...I just don’t know how much more I can take.” She covered her face with both hands. “Good lord! It feels like my life has become some bad movie that just won’t end. First, David dies and leaves me to raise Devon with barely a cent to my name, then I get the bright idea to move in with my mother in this beautiful monstrosity of a house, and now people keep dying on my property. Oh, and let’s not forget that somebody wants some treasure they think is buried here, so they may kill us all to get to it.”

Annie threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”

Rory pulled her into a hug, and she didn’t resist. “I’m sorry, Annie, I really am. I mean, about your husband, about your finances, that sort of stuff. But I’m not sorry you bought this place.” He pushed her away slightly, tilting her head up so that she could see his face. “I’m glad you bought it. I know you’ll make it as beautiful as it deserves to be. And I’m glad you hired me to work for you. Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten how special you were to me all those years ago.” He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry if I hurt you back then, but you needed to be out of this little town.” He left it at that, offering nothing more in the way of an explanation.

“Wh--what did you want to talk to me about?” Annie wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t time to cry just yet.

Rory took a deep breath. “When you left, did you lock this back door, too?”

“Of course. There’s no way I’m leaving that one unlocked, not after, well, you know--Suzy.”

Rory’s jaw clenched, and Annie could see the veins in his forehead begin to twitch. “Annie, that door was unlocked when I came in here, and that’s not all. He pointed to the floor beside the door. “There were footprints there, Annie, wet ones.”

Annie looked closely at the floor. She could just make out the faintest trace of a footprint, but the water was mostly evaporated. “Are you sure it wasn’t yours or mine?” She knew the answer, but she needed Rory to confirm it.

“I’m positive. Annie, somebody was in your house during the storm, and they had to have left just minutes before we got here.”

Annie’s blood felt suddenly like icewater pumping through her veins. She felt lightheaded, and the room seemed to tilt oddly to one side. She reached out to Rory, but he already had his arms around her.

“Whoa, Annie, sit down.” He lowered her to the floor and propped her up against the wall, then ran to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of soda. Popping the top, he put the can to her lips. “Here, drink a little of this. It should help.”

Annie sputtered as the cold fizz hit her throat. “Ugh, it’s not diet,” she moaned.

“Of course not. If you faint, you need some sugar. You probably had low blood sugar from not eating all day. My mama was the same way.” He turned the can of drink and took a swig for himself. “And you most certainly don’t need diet sodas,” he chided. “They’ll kill you with all that artificial stuff.”

Annie let her gaze travel to the spot on the floor where Suzy’s body had been found. “I guess Suzy must have drunk too many diet sodas, huh?” She let out a chuckle, then covered her mouth, but Rory was already laughing, too, so she let her own nervous laughter join his. “We need to get back in there with my mother,” she said at last, pulling herself to her feet with Rory’s help. “I don’t think she needs to know about the back door, but we ought to stick close in case our visitor comes back.”

They found Bessie sitting in her favorite chair in the sitting room, shuffling papers and trying to dry the few pieces that were damp. She had pulled out a stack of photographs that had been tucked away among some other papers, and she smiled softly as she sat them to one side. “Everything alright in the kitchen? You two certainly seemed to take your time ‘chatting’ out there.” Her bright eyes twinkled and she gave a throaty chuckle. “Should I leave you two alone?”

Annie blushed, but Rory just laughed. “No, Miss Purdy, I don’t reckon we’ve picked up where we left off if that’s what you’re asking. There was a bit of a mess out there, but we cleaned it up, so you don’t have to worry about slipping in any puddles later.”

Annie’s curiosity got the better of her and she reached for the photographs sitting beside her mother. “What are these?”

“Oh, those are some photos I had been meaning to put in an album, but I just never have gotten around to it. I’m lucky they didn’t get wet; it would have ruined them terribly.”

Annie flipped through the photos and saw pictures of her mom’s old house, then her heart skipped when she saw what was probably one of the last photographs taken of her father. “Oh, didn’t Daddy look good there,” she said, forcing a smile to keep tears at bay. Annie missed her father terribly, and she knew that her mother must have been so lonely after he died. Part of her wished that she’d insisted that David had allowed them to move back to South Carolina back then. If they had, David might still be alive.

She looked at Rory, then at the still very much decrepit farmhouse. Despite the fact that it needed a lot of work, she knew that she could turn it into something really special for her little family, and she couldn’t imagine sharing that with David. He’d been, she thought, the love of her life, at least, that part of her life that had come after Rory. Now David was gone, and she didn’t miss him nearly as much as she thought a grieving widow should. And here was Rory, stepping up to help her out when her supposed true love had cheated on her and then had the nerve to drop dead.

She paused as she came to a photograph of David, Devon, and herself. Devon was ten in the photo, and they’d come down to visit her parents for their anniversary, not knowing that only a year later her father would be gone. She couldn’t help but notice that her smile didn’t look at all real, and she realized that much of her marriage hadn’t really been as happy as she would have liked it.

A tiny spark of thought began to form in her mind. Now was her time. Now she could be as happy as she wanted, without a husband who cared more for his work than for his family. Now Annie could make her dreams a priority, and she was not going to let some murdering treasure hunter take those dreams away from her.

Annie returned her mother’s photos to the table beside her chair and then turned her attention to the drawer. The journal was still tucked safely away inside, so the intruder hadn’t managed to find that at least. Wordlessly she pulled it out and handed it to Rory. He looked at the book quizzically, then cocked his head to one side.

“I found this beneath the floor below the attic door,” Annie explained, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the gold coin. She wasn’t sure why she’d tucked it into her back pocket before she left the house that morning, but she was certainly glad that she had. If the person who’d been in her home had found it, they may have waited around to see if she had more, and Annie was fairly certain that she didn’t want to meet whoever was skulking around in a thunderstorm trying to find a mysterious treasure, especially since they were willing to kill for it.

Rory flipped through the pages of the journal as Annie explained what she’d found to her mother. Bessie’s eyes grew large as she listened, and she could hardly wait to have a turn looking at the ancient diary.

“Well,” Rory said finally, passing the book to an eager Bessie. “That certainly is a wonderful snapshot of this place’s history. I’d say it probably belongs in the local history museum, or at least needs to be preserved somehow.”

Annie agreed. “It’s just a shame that it doesn’t tell us more about how John came into his money. Maybe it’s just me, but that McKinney character sounds like a con artist.” After living in New York for nearly two decades, Annie could smell a con artist from a mile away, or so she liked to think. In reality, she was often a little too soft for her own good, but something about Edward McKinney just felt kind of off to her. Probably it was the fact that he claimed to be Blackbeard’s descendant. She was fairly certain that honest people didn’t go around bragging that they were related to such notorious characters in history.

“Well, it’s a shame that this John fellow didn’t keep a diary of his own,” Bessie replied, never taking her eyes off the page she was reading. “I guess men really don’t do those sorts of things, though, do they?”

“Well, now, actually, they did in those days,” Rory replied. “In fact, John would have kept much more than a diary. He would have kept a log of the slaves he bought and sold, the crops they grew and sold, and any other plantation business records. I guess none of them survived throughout the years. Heck, it’s a miracle this diary survived.”

“Well, something else had to have survived,” Bessie argued, finally looking up from the diary, “because Thomas Anderson had a copy of it. Where on earth did he get his little half-a-treasure map, hmm?”

Annie sat herself down in the chair opposite her mother. “I guess we’ll never know where he found it. After all, dead men tell no tales, right?”

Rory groaned at her attempt at pirate humor. “You know, the really frustrating thing is, we are walking through the same rooms that Cooper and his sister walked through all those years ago. It’s a shame we couldn’t just reach back through time and ask them.”

Annie shivered slightly. “I guess I try not to think about all the people who lived here before us, especially when you know that some of them died right here. I’d like to focus on the living folk, thank you very much.”