The Accused

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and slowly blew it out. Then she opened her eyes and studied the house with the critical eye she used to study witnesses in a courtroom.

It was still gloomy with its broken shutters and paint peeling on the wooden eaves. The lawn—if one could even call it that—had been swallowed up by weeds and swamp grass that stood at least a foot high. Even the flower beds had been overrun, the stone edging barely visible behind the foliage. An enormous marble fountain that stood in the center of the circular drive had probably been beautiful at one time; but now it was covered with vines, its base filled with murky, stagnant water.

The attorney who’d explained the terms of the inheritance had called the estate “serviceable, if not pleasant.” Alaina decided he must be very good at his job. Legally, she couldn’t fault his description, but it left out so much.

It’s only two weeks.

Mr. Duhon had assured her that any repairs necessary to habitation would be handled by his firm, so it was merely a matter of picking up the phone if she found anything unlivable. A caretaker lived in a cottage somewhere on the property, but the attorney had warned her that the man was elderly and had not been allowed to hire help to keep up the property.

The results of yet another poor decision made by her stepfather spread out before her.

She pulled her SUV around the circular drive that had more weeds showing than the paved stones that comprised it, and parked as close as she could to the front doors. Dark clouds swirled overhead, and she worried that the storm that was scheduled to move in tonight might make an early appearance.

She’d packed only a single suitcase of personal items, but her laptop and food and living supplies took up another couple of boxes. With any luck, she’d get it all inside before the dam broke. Her suitcase had wheels, so she rolled it up the walkway and dragged it up the stone steps to the front door. She removed the enormous iron key from her purse and slid it into the lock, wondering if it would work in the rusted lock.

To her surprise, it turned easily, and a loud click echoed in the silent courtyard. She pushed the ten-foot wooden door open and stepped inside.

The entry resembled a museum more than a home. A huge, round open area stretched up two stories, a giant spiral staircase offering passage from the first floor to the balcony that circled above. Rooms and hallways branched off from the open area in every direction on both floors. Marble columns stood randomly throughout the downstairs area, vases and statues covered with thick layers of dust perching on top of them.

Okay, definitely kind of creepy.

That was her official legal opinion and the best prosecutor in the world couldn’t talk her out of it. Still, creepy was tolerable, especially with strong overhead lights. She reached for the switch plate behind her and the area surrounding the front door flooded with light.

She peered into the dim center of the enormous entry and frowned. Surely there was more lighting than this. Checking the wall behind her, she noticed another switch, this one lower on the wall than the light switch she’d flipped earlier. She reached over and pushed the remaining switch up.

The load groan and high-pitched squeals of machinery startled her and she stifled a scream as she scanned the room for the source of the noise. A sheet of light hit the floor in the entry and she looked up to see the roof sliding open. The flickering sun glinted off the glass ceiling the sliding panel exposed inch by inch. From the sounds of metal grinding, the panels hadn’t been opened in some time.

Saying a silent prayer that they didn’t break and cause the whole thing to come crashing down into the house, she watched until the panels slid completely from view. Relieved that she hadn’t broken anything after barely getting in the door, she took her first good look at the giant entry.

She sighed. It certainly didn’t look more cheerful in the light, and the cleanliness factor had actually dropped several points, but it gave her something to do. Manual labor was her preferred method of freeing her mind for thought. This house would provide plenty of thinking projects. And maybe, at the end of her two weeks, she’d have a plan for her career, for her life. Heck, fourteen days of cleaning this place and she might solve world hunger.

She hurried back to her SUV to get the rest of her supplies. Once she had everything inside, she’d go exploring for the necessities—kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and laundry facilities. Mr. Duhon had assured her all the necessary items were functional, so at least she didn’t have to worry about scrubbing her underwear on a stone in the fountain or cooking dinner over an open fire in the courtyard.

Twenty minutes later, she had a pile of boxes and bags just inside the front door and felt less than excited about lugging them farther. The years of college study and sitting at a desk all day had apparently outweighed her morning jogs, especially when added on top of a long, somewhat apprehensive drive.

She glanced around the entry, figuring she’d find the kitchen first, then finally set off down a wide hallway to her left, assuming the largest hallways were more likely to lead to well-used areas. At the end of the hallway, a large arch opened into a spacious kitchen and breakfast area.

The room was at least twenty-five feet square with miles of stone countertops and windows framing every wall of the eating area. She looked out at the weeds and vines and froze as a sudden flash of pink azaleas, lush grass and a blooming magnolia tree ran through her mind. She’d eaten here looking out into the onetime beautiful gardens. It was so clear in her mind that it was as if she were looking at a snapshot.

Sighing, she walked back down the hall to begin moving the supplies to the kitchen. What had just happened was something she needed to get used to. She’d been old enough to remember the house when she’d left, but the trauma of losing her mother and her sisters all at once had forced those memories so far back into the recesses of her mind that she wondered if they’d been gone forever. Apparently that wasn’t the case, and being in the house was probably going to bring back some of those memories.

Maybe that was a good thing. At seven years old, she hadn’t been capable of processing what she’d been through on a logical level. Now that she was an adult, maybe it was time she dealt with her less-than-stellar past once and for all. Maybe it was something she needed to do to move forward with her career and her personal life.

The only clear memory she had was of that night—the night before they were sent away. And the sheer figure of her mother, dressed in a long white flowing gown and hovering over her bed.

She shook her head, trying to clear the image from her mind. It had been frozen there for so long, the lone thing she’d carried with her all these years. Logically, she knew that she’d been a scared little girl who’d just lost her mother, but emotionally, she still wondered if what she’d seen that night was real.

As she stepped back into the entry, she heard a noise overhead. Immediately she froze, trying to determine if she’d heard the normal sounds of an old house, or if something else, of the four-legged, undesirable variety, was inside with her. Her pulse quickened when she realized it was footsteps—the two-legged kind.

A single glance at the crack in the front door made her blood run cold. She was positive she’d closed and locked it behind her after carrying in the last of the supplies. But someone was inside with her.

She reached for her purse and pulled out the pistol she’d begun carrying after receiving her first official death threat on the job. Despite the heat and humidity, the metal was cold in her hand. She dug around in the side pocket for her car keys and mentally cursed when she remembered she’d set them on the kitchen counter.

She eased back down the hallway, praying she could get her keys and get out of the house. Surely someone with a legitimate reason to be inside would have knocked or called out upon entering. She could only assume that whoever had come in was up to no good. That was a problem for the sheriff, not an unemployed attorney who had no interest in playing the hero.

The footsteps faded away as she slipped down the hallway and into the kitchen to retrieve her car keys. She moved silently on the stone floor, giving mental thanks that she’d worn comfortable tennis shoes and jeans and not her usual casual wear of slacks, blouse and high-heeled sandals.

All she had to do was make it back down the hallway and out of the house. An athletic scholarship for sprinting had paid for most of her college. If she could get outside the house, she had no doubt she could beat the intruder to her SUV and get away. But as she hurried across the kitchen to the hallway, the pantry door flew open. Unable to stop, she collided with it and went sprawling to the ground, her pistol sliding across the stone floor.

She scrambled for the gun as a dark figure stepped out of the pantry. Panicked, she made a desperate reach for the pistol, which was still several inches away.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A deep voice sounded above her.

Chapter Three

One look at the man and she knew she didn’t stand a chance. He was easily six feet tall, with strong arms and chest. The butt of a pistol peeked out of the waistband of his jeans and she had no doubt he could fire before she could even latch on to her weapon.

This was it. Her life would come full circle in this swamp—birth to death.

“Alaina LeBeau?” he asked, staring down at her with a mixture of aggravation and resignation.

“Yes.” She pushed herself up to a sitting position.

He studied her face for a moment, then sighed and extended his hand to help her up from the floor. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Then why were you sneaking around my house and hiding in the pantry?” The fear she’d felt only seconds ago was speeding away, only to be replaced by aggravation now that she no longer felt threatened.

His green eyes flashed with anger. “I don’t ‘sneak around’ private property, and that’s not a pantry—it’s a stairwell.”

She peered around him into the doorway and, sure enough, saw a narrow set of stairs leading up to the second floor. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I’m Carter Trahan—Sheriff Carter Trahan—and I’m here to check off one day on my babysitting roster.”

Alaina clenched her jaw, forcing herself to pause before replying to his insulting statement. The last thing she needed was to alienate the man required to check up on her. “Mr. Duhon informed me that you’d be monitoring the residency terms of the will. I hardly need a babysitter.”

He merely raised one eyebrow and gave her an amused smile.

“Well, if you’re done slamming doors into visitors, Sheriff Trahan, I should get back to my unpacking. Next time you check on me, please knock.”

“I did knock … twice. Then I opened the door and called out from the entrance. I thought my voice would echo up to the second floor, but you kept on walking, so I went upstairs to catch you there.”

Alaina stared at him. “That’s impossible. I haven’t been upstairs yet.”

Carter frowned. “I saw someone enter the hallway upstairs that runs parallel to this one.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “It wasn’t me,” she managed, “and I came here alone. Perhaps the caretaker …”

He shook his head. “Amos is eighty-six years old and walks with a limp. Whoever this was walked quickly enough to disappear before I got upstairs. When I got to the bedroom over the kitchen, I could hear noise downstairs. The door to the servant’s stairwell was partially open, so I assumed you’d gone down that way.”

He pushed shut the door to the stairwell and had to give it an extra nudge when it jammed in the doorframe. “The door had no lock, but it stuck when I tried to open it. I hit it with my shoulder, which is why it flew open and struck you. But if anyone had used it right before me, you would have heard and seen them.”

“I heard you walking upstairs. That’s why I was hurrying to get out of the house, but I didn’t hear anyone before.”

Alaina crossed her arms in front of her chest, a slight chill running over her. “You’re sure you saw someone? Maybe it was a trick of shadows and light. Between the storm brewing and that glass ceiling, maybe it just looked like someone was upstairs.”

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t look as though he believed it for a minute.

He spun around and strode down the hallway to the entry. Ignoring his abrupt departure, Alaina hurried behind him as he knelt in front of the circular stairs.

“Only one set of prints, and they’re mine,” he said, pointing to the prints that led up the dusty staircase.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Alaina joked.

Carter rose and narrowed his eyes at her. “What ghost?”

She shrugged. “None in particular. I just figured old, spooky house equaled a ghost story of some sort, especially in a small community.”

“The locals have their share of beliefs about this house and your stepfather, but I prefer to deal with what I can prove. Given your profession, I assume you appreciate that.”

“Of course. I was just joking.” But she knew she was lying, before the words left her mouth. The memory of her mother’s ghost was something she couldn’t deny and had never been able to forget.

“Because I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, “I’m going to take a look around.”

“Of course … Thank you.”

He nodded. “Do you know how to use that pistol?”

“Yes. I practice at the range at least once a week.”

“Keep it on you. I’ll make sure I announce myself before accosting you again.”

He pulled his pistol from his waistband and strode up the stairs. She watched him for a couple of seconds, then ran back to the kitchen to scoop her pistol up from the floor. Her apprehension when she’d first arrived had turned into full-fledged worry.

Something didn’t feel right.

The last time she’d felt that way, a child had died.

CARTER PEERED INTO each bedroom off the main hallway over the kitchen, but none of them showed any signs of human passage. Tiny tracks of four-legged critters appeared periodically, but he easily identified and dismissed them. Four-legged creatures may not be desirable inside a home, but there were worse things.

The more space he covered with no indication of the intruder, the more frustrated he became with the entire situation. When William had described Alaina as a successful Baton Rouge attorney, Carter had immediately formed a mental picture of a masculine-looking female. The tall, fit woman with hazel eyes and miles of wavy brown hair didn’t fit into his image at all.

He’d expected to be annoyed and he was, but he hadn’t expected to find her attractive, and that annoyed him even more.

Peering into the last bedroom along the hallway, he blew out a breath. There was no indication that anyone had traveled down this hall besides him, but he knew he’d seen something. Or maybe Alaina was right and the weather and glass ceiling had conspired to create a shadow he had taken for a person.

He started around the balcony that circled the entry, checking the rooms that shot off in every direction. None of them appeared disturbed until he reached the last. Trenton Purcell’s office, he thought as he stepped inside. A huge ornate desk stood in the center of the room. Bookcases, stuffed with leather-bound texts, formed every square inch of the walls, even framing the doorway.

The layer of dust here wasn’t as thick as it was in the rest of the rooms, which made sense assuming Purcell had spent a lot of time in here. He took a step toward the desk and realized that a narrow doorway sat in the back corner of the room, barely visible because it was stained the same color as the bookcases.

He pushed the door open to find a bedroom with another entry off the balcony. The bed was still covered with navy sheets and spread, and several bottles of medicine stood on the nightstand. He picked one up and checked to make sure it belonged to Purcell, then placed it back on the table.

Three doors occupied the far wall of the bedroom, one standing open, exposing the master bath. He opened the second door and found a musty walk-in closet, still full of tattered suits. He expected the third door was more storage but found another servant’s staircase instead.

It made sense, he supposed, that the servants would have a private entry into the master bedroom. That way, they couldn’t be seen going about their work by any household guests. At least, it made sense as much as having people living in your home and waiting on you did to Carter. He wasn’t convinced the convenience was worth the loss of privacy.

He followed the staircase down and pushed open the door at the bottom. It opened easily and without a sound and he stepped out into a laundry room at the back of the house. A door leading into the backyard was positioned at the rear of the room. A quick check showed it to be locked, but he pulled it open and studied the ground outside, trying to make out footprints. Unfortunately, ground cover of cracked stones, dirt and vines wasn’t the kind of material that was easily imprinted.

He stepped back inside and closed and locked the door. There was absolutely no indication that anyone had been in the house except him and Alaina. The fact that he’d found nothing to suggest the presence of an intruder should make him happy, but he couldn’t work himself up to that point.

The reality was, for the first time in his life, Carter knew exactly what his mother meant when she said she “felt” something was wrong but couldn’t put her finger on it. Something was very wrong in this house.

Whatever it was, he didn’t think it would remain hidden for long.

Chapter Four

Alaina felt as though she’d waited forever, but finally Carter emerged from one of the back hallways and into the massive entry room. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and felt the tightness in her chest release. Then she realized that he’d just entered the room from the first floor but hadn’t used either of the stairwells to get down from the second floor.

“How did you get downstairs?” she asked as he approached.

He frowned. “A servant’s stairwell in the master bedroom. It led to the laundry room off the back of the house.”

“How many hidden passages are in this house?”

“More than I’ve found so far, I’d guess.” He didn’t look happy about it.

“Did you see anyone …? I mean, I guess you didn’t, but did you see any sign that someone had been up there?”

“No.”

“But?”

He sighed. “But I don’t believe in fanciful things like ghosts and I have perfect vision. I saw something on that landing.”

“An animal maybe?”

“It was too large to be any animal that would be in the house and I couldn’t find tracks on the landing.”

She swallowed. “Then maybe it was a shadow. With that enormous glass ceiling and the storm brewing, couldn’t it have created a moving shadow that looked like a person?”

“I suppose,” he said, but didn’t seem convinced. “Look, maybe you shouldn’t stay here just yet.”

His suggestion was tempting, especially given that she was completely creeped out, but it wasn’t conducive to the reason she was there.

“Is there a hotel in town?” she asked, wondering if spending the night in a hotel and milling among the locals the rest of the day would give whoever was lurking in the house the notice to clear out—assuming it was a human in the first place. Rats, raccoons and storm clouds probably wouldn’t care about the local gossip.

“No hotel. No rental property either. Calais is a small spot on the map and a dead end at that. People don’t come here unless they intend to, so there’s not much call for hotels and such. New Orleans is only a little over an hour’s drive, though.” He looked hopeful as he delivered that last statement.

She could do it—probably should do it—but the thought of packing everything back in her SUV and spending another hour plus on the road didn’t sound even remotely appealing. If she thought it would change something, she might consider it, but staying in New Orleans wouldn’t create any local gossip at all. It would only be delaying the inevitable.

She sighed. “I appreciate your concern, but if you saw something tangible, my staying in New Orleans for a night isn’t going to make it clear out. And it’s just one more day I’ll have to make up staying here.”

“It would give me a chance to poke around some more.”

“You’re welcome to do that while I’m here. In fact, as I’ll be the one living here for two weeks, I’d prefer it if I did it with you.”

She could tell by the way his jaw flexed that he didn’t like it. The attorney had already warned her that the sheriff who’d agreed to the terms of the will had long since passed. While the new sheriff had agreed to meet the terms of the will, he was neither under any legal obligation to do so, nor was he being paid for his time.

His babysitting comment earlier had left her no doubt as to how he felt about his assignment. She sympathized with his position, but ultimately it wasn’t her problem. If he didn’t want to deal with it any longer, Alaina was certain Mr. Duhon would find someone else.

Finally, he blew out a breath. “Okay, then the first thing we should do is locate a bedroom for you that is easily secured. No servants’ passages and a good, sturdy lock.”

“One with a connecting bath would be best.”

“I agree. The master bedroom has a connecting bath but also several ways in and out.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, as if to ward off the unease she felt at the thought of sleeping in the same bed that her dead stepfather had slept in. “I wouldn’t want to sleep in there anyway.”

“I don’t blame you. Let’s check downstairs first.”

Alaina nodded and walked to the left side of the entry as Carter took the right. A careful inspection of the downstairs rooms did not reveal any equipped as a bedroom.

“We could move some bedroom furniture downstairs,” Carter suggested as they met at the back of the entry.

She shook her head. “There’s no connecting bath for any of the rooms. There’s a half bath off the kitchen, but that’s the only one I’ve seen downstairs so far.”

“There’s another off the laundry room.”

She blew out a breath. “Both of those are hallways away from these rooms, and I can hardly put a bed in the middle of the kitchen or the laundry room, or shower in the sink.”

“No. Neither of those rooms is secure anyway. They both have wide entries with no doors.”

“Probably to make carrying laundry and food easier.”

“Which doesn’t help us at all.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to stay upstairs.”

He motioned toward the spiral stairwell. “After you.”

As she walked up the stairs, she looked out the glass ceiling. The clouds overhead swirled, creating constantly shifting patterns of light and shadows.

“That storm looks like it’s going to be bad,” she said as they stepped onto the landing.

“It doesn’t look like a mild one,” he agreed. “I can’t believe that glass ceiling is still intact. We had a horrible storm last week—lots of lightning and hail even.”

“It’s got a panel that covers it. I accidentally opened it thinking it was a switch for the lights. It didn’t sound like it had been used in some time.”

Carter looked up and frowned. “Your stepfather was a recluse. Maybe he didn’t like the light either.”

Preferring to lurk in the shadow like most monsters.

She shook her head. Now was not the time for fanciful thoughts, especially those that might scare her once she was alone in this house in the dark. She had no concrete memory of her stepfather, but she knew she’d feared him. That was all she wanted to know.