Scene Of The Crime: The Deputy's Proof

“There’s a tunnel,” she finally said. Her finger traced an indecipherable pattern on the top of the wooden table, and her gaze followed her finger’s movements.

“A tunnel?” Josh felt like he was attempting to pull a confession from a hardened criminal.

She stopped the movement of her hand and looked at him once again. “There’s a tunnel that runs from the backyard to a tree near the lagoon where Shelly was murdered. I discovered it about a year ago.”

“What would a tunnel be doing in your backyard?” he asked.

Her slender shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “I guess you’d have to ask the person who dug it, but it looks like it was made a long, long time ago. Maybe it was used to transport goods from the lagoon to here by the pirates who once lived around here.”

Josh frowned thoughtfully. Lost Lagoon had a history rich in pirate lore. He supposed it was possible that pirates could have unloaded their treasures onto little boats to navigate the small lagoon and then bring them here, where they might have had an inland camp.

He focused his attention back on her. “You haven’t answered my question. Why, Savannah? Why are you doing this?”

He studied her intently, wanting her to explain, to tell him what the payoff was for pretending to be her sister’s ghost. She frowned and looked out the darkened window.

Josh was a patient man. It was one of his strengths as a deputy. He leaned back in his chair, not willing to go anywhere until he had the answer he needed from her.

Was she crazy, as many people thought? Had the murder of her sister, the destruction of her family and her own isolation from everything and everyone caused mental illness of some sort?

She finally looked back at him and leaned forward. Her hair came untucked from the back of her ear, the long dark strands shining beneath the hanging light over the table.

“A month after Shelly’s murder, my parents forbade us ever to speak her name again,” she began. Her dark gaze went over his shoulder to the bare wall behind him. “They packed all of her things away in the storage shed out back and pretended she had never existed.”

She looked back at him, her eyes filled with a depth of simmering emotion. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my sister, my best friend and the person I’d shared a bedroom with since I was born. As time passed and Bo left town, everyone stopped talking about Shelly. It was as if she had never existed anywhere at any time. Even after my parents left town and I tried to talk to Mac about Shelly, he shut me down. He was so angry, still is so angry. He definitely didn’t want to hear Shelly’s name or anything I had to say about her.”

Josh understood her pain. He’d lost a twin brother when he’d been fifteen years old, and he knew for the rest of his life he’d feel as if an integral piece of himself was missing.

“I found the tunnel a year ago,” Savannah continued. “It took me weeks to get up the nerve to go down inside and explore where it went. When I finally did and realized it came up next to the place where Shelly had been murdered, I came up with the ghost plan.”

“But why? What do you get out of pretending to be her ghost?”

“I get to hear squealing teenagers say her name. I make sure nobody forgets about her. I keep her alive by pretending to be her apparition in death.” She shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy and you probably can’t understand it, but for those few moments when people are crying out Shelly’s name, I feel better. I feel as if she’s still with me.”

“It’s dangerous,” Josh replied. “You’re sneaking out of your house alone in the middle of the night to go down into a tunnel that you don’t even know is safe. There could be a cave-in, or somebody could come after you while you’re doing your little show.”

A whisper of a smile curved her lips, and for a moment Josh saw the semblance of the young woman she’d once been. “Actually, a couple of weeks ago Bo McBride did come after me. Apparently his new girlfriend, Claire Silver, told him about Shelly’s ghost and encouraged him to see the spectacle. I’d just finished my walk when he jumped over the bushes and chased me into the woods. I jumped into my rabbit hole and disappeared.”

“But that’s my point,” Josh protested. “You disappear down that tunnel, and if anything happened to you, nobody would know you were in trouble.” He leaned forward. “I want to check out this tunnel.”

Her eyes widened, and her gaze slid away from his. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ve been using it for almost a year, and it’s perfectly safe.”

“I’d still like to check it out for myself,” he countered. She looked at him again, and he knew in his gut that she was hiding something. “I figure you’ve got two choices.”

“And I figure I’m not going to like either one of them,” she retorted.

“You can take me down through that tunnel and I can see for myself that it’s safe and secure, or I can get a backhoe in here to fill in the entrance in your backyard.”

She sat up straighter in her chair, a flash of anger in her eyes. “You can’t do that. My backyard is private property.”

“I can do it,” he replied calmly. “That hole is a danger. A small child could fall down it. I can make a case to have it filled in without your permission for the safety of the community.”

She glared at him. It was the most emotion he’d seen from her since her sister’s death. “Fine, I’ll take you down into the tunnel.”

Josh nodded and stood. “Why don’t we plan on around noon tomorrow? I’ll come here and we can check it out.”

She stood as well, her body vibrating with tension. “Don’t take this away from me, Josh. It’s all I have in my life.”

He had a ridiculous impulse to step forward and pull her into his arms. Instead he stepped toward the back door. “I’m just trying to keep you safe, Savannah. That’s my job.”

“If I felt unsafe, I would have called Sheriff Walker,” she replied.

“Maybe you aren’t in a mental state to know what’s safe and what isn’t.”

He knew he’d spoken the wrong words by the flash of unbridled annoyance that filled her eyes and stiffened her stance.

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m perfectly sane. I know people think I’ve become a weird recluse who only comes out at night to work at the local haunted hotel, but that’s my choice. The way I live my life is nobody’s business but my own.”

“Point taken,” Josh replied. He opened the back door. “I’ll see you at noon tomorrow. Good night, Savannah.”

She shut the door behind him with more force than was necessary, and he headed for his patrol car parked at the curb in front of her house.

He got into the car and started the engine but didn’t immediately drive away. Instead he sat and stared at her house. No lights shone from the front windows just as very little light had shone from her eyes on the occasional times he’d seen her in the last two years.

Despite his intense attraction to her two years ago, since that time he’d tried not to think about her. It was only curiosity about Shelly’s “ghost” that had brought him here tonight.

Guilt was a terrible thing, he thought as he finally pulled away from the curb. Savannah was broken. She’d been broken since Shelly’s murder...a murder that had never been investigated as vigorously as it should have been.

As a deputy, Josh had followed orders, but as a decent man, he had known nobody was doing enough to close the case. Closure might have made a difference to Savannah.

Yes, she was broken, but he had no hero complex. He wasn’t the man to fix her, but what he could do was make sure she was safe if she insisted on doing her ghostly walks.

He couldn’t go back in time and do things differently in the case of her sister, but he could see to it that if Savannah insisted on continuing her haunting ghostly walks, at least the tunnel she used was safe.

Chapter Two (#ulink_4e600b90-98f7-5c0d-b41e-7bc124491e59)

Savannah awoke with the unaccustomed emotion of anger tightening her chest. It had been so long since she hadn’t awakened with the familiar grief that it took her a moment to recognize the new feeling that pressed so tight inside her.

Then she remembered the night before and Deputy Josh Griffin and knew immediately he was the source of her unusual anger. He was going to be here at noon and insist he go down into the tunnel with her, and when he did, he’d ruin everything.

He’d see that it wasn’t just a single tunnel but rather a network of tunnels. Word would get out, people would start to explore and her nights of ghost walking would be over forever. She’d never hear Shelly’s name again except in the deepest recesses of her broken heart.

She rolled over in bed and stared at the opposite side of the bedroom. The wall was covered with pictures of Shelly and Savannah, hugging each other when they were ten and eleven, Shelly dressed for prom at sixteen with Savannah posing with her, moments captured in time of the closeness of the two.

A desk held items that had been special to Shelly—the dried flower corsage that Bo McBride had given to her on prom night, a framed picture of the Manhattan skyline at twilight, a ceramic frog and a variety of other knickknacks.

Savannah had unpacked the items from the shed after Mac had moved out, comforted by the little pieces of Shelly that now remained in the room the two had shared for so many years of their lives.

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Just after ten. Normally she’d sleep until at least noon or one due to her overnight work hours at the Pirate’s Inn. She’d be sucking wind tonight if she didn’t get a nap in sometime during the afternoon or early evening.