Raintree Read online

  “I let him in, never knowing what he intended.”

  Him. Not Tabby, just as he’d suspected when he heard that she had been violated. Still, he could find out who’d raped and killed her, and then he could send her spirit to a better place. In that sense, his trip here had not been wasted.

  Marcia Cordell’s spirit sighed and drifted down to sit on a flowery sofa, her pose proper. “Dennis was always such an odd boy, but—”

  “Dennis. You knew him?”

  Miss Cordell gave Gideon a withering glance. It was a glance she had no doubt silenced students with over the years. “Young man, you asked me to tell you what happened, and I’m trying to do just that.”

  He didn’t point out that he was just a couple of years younger than she had been at the time of her death, hardly a young man. She had the spirit of an older woman, as if she’d carried something into this life too strongly from another. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said contritely. “Please continue.”

  She nodded her head. “Dennis Floyd is a neighbor. The Floyd family has been living in that house going on twenty years. Dennis was in elementary school when they moved in, and he was a pupil in my English class several years ago. He was not a good student,” she said with reproach. “He stopped by that night and asked to use the phone. He said their phone was out. Of course I said yes.” Her mouth thinned. “I didn’t see the danger coming until he grabbed me and threw me to the floor like a…like a…” she sputtered, and her face grew red. Even in death, she could blush.

  “I’m going to see that he goes away for what he did to you,” Gideon said. “He’ll be punished, in this life and in the next.”

  She nodded, obviously relieved. “Dennis needs to be punished for what he did to me. So does she.”

  The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck prickled. “She?”

  “The woman who was with Dennis, the one who urged him on. I didn’t see her, not at first. I would have had reservations about allowing a stranger into my home so late in the evening. Dennis knocked me down. He bound my arms and legs with duct tape, and left me lying on the floor while he went to the door to invite her inside.” She seemed to be as incensed at having a stranger in her home as she was at being murdered.

  “You didn’t know this woman.”

  Miss Cordell shook her head. “No. Dennis called her…” She wrinkled her nose in thought. “Kitty, I think, or…”

  “Tabby,” Gideon said softly.

  “That’s it.” Marcia Cordell pointed a fading and shaking finger. “She sat in that chair over there and watched while Dennis did unspeakable things to me. She smiled, and when I screamed for help she told me that no one would hear me way out here, so far away from everyone and everything else.” Her figure trembled, and she almost disappeared, as if she wanted to hide from the telling of her death. “When I cried, she asked me if I liked it. She asked me if I had always fantasized about having a young stud show up at my door to make a real woman out of me.”

  “She’s going to pay, too,” Gideon said. “I’ll see to it.”

  Miss Cordell nodded her head. “She’s the one who killed me.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought it was finally over, and then that horrible woman leaned over my body and put a knife to my belly. She…she cut me, and she enjoyed it. When she was tired of cutting, she started stabbing me and…”

  Gideon listened, while Marcia Cordell told him every last detail of the way Dennis and Tabby had tortured and finally killed her. He didn’t want to listen to the details, but Miss Cordell needed to tell the tale to someone who could hear her.

  He listened, and then he asked, “Is there anything you can tell me about the woman? You said Dennis called her Tabby. Did he ever use a last name? Did you see what kind of vehicle she was driving? Was there anything you remember that might help me find her?”

  Miss Cordell shook her head. “They left together, Dennis and that awful woman.”

  Which meant Dennis was likely dead, too. He couldn’t imagine Tabby leaving a witness behind. “Time to go, Miss Cordell,” Gideon said as he stood and looked down at her. “I promise you, I’ll make sure they pay for what they did. I’ll take care of them for you. Move on to the next phase of your existence and find peace. You deserve it.”

  “So do you,” Miss Cordell whispered before she faded to nothing.

  Gideon left the crime scene behind. If Dennis was still alive—unlikely, but not impossible—maybe he held the key to finding Tabby. If ever there was concrete proof that this world wasn’t fit for a child, this was it.

  Sheriff Webster stood by his patrol car, still working the brim of that battered hat. Gideon glanced around the overgrown yard. “Where’s Detective Malory?”

  “She decided to interview some of the neighbors while we were waiting for you.” He nodded to a small white house down the road. It was almost a quarter of a mile away but still the closest house to Marcia Cordell’s. “Detective Malory seemed to think maybe they might’ve seen something that night. We interviewed them all and didn’t get squat, but…”

  A knot of unease settled into Gideon’s gut.

  “Dennis Floyd drove by while we were talking and…”

  The sheriff didn’t get any further. Gideon turned toward the little white house and ran.

  Hope glanced back toward the Cordell house. The sheriff continued to lean against his patrol car, obeying her instructions not to bother Raintree. There was no telling how long Gideon might be inside, talking to the ghost. Odd, how naturally those words came to her mind. Talking to the ghost.

  If she could find something, any small detail, to add to what he learned, it might help. Maybe a neighbor had seen a car that night. That kind of information should have been in the report, but sometimes important facts were missed the first time around. Even if Gideon could find out who had killed the woman, they would need evidence in order to get a conviction.

  “Come on in and I’ll fix us some tea.” Dennis Floyd was in his mid-twenties, at a guess. He was a rail-thin young man, with thinning blond hair and small, pale blue eyes. His car and his clothing had seen better years, but the house itself seemed to be well maintained. The front porch was clean, and a number of flowering plants in clay pots brightened the place considerably.

  “My folks are at work,” he said as he opened the screen door for her. “I used to have my own place,” he added, apparently trying to impress her. “But when I was between jobs, I moved back in here. I’m workin’ steady now, but the folks need a little help with the yardwork and such, so I’m doing them a favor by stayin’ on.”

  Hope stepped into his cool, semidark living room. It was clean but musty, as if years of stale odors had seeped into the walls and would never wash out. There was too much clutter for her taste. The room housed too many knickknacks and ashtrays and dusty flower arrangements.

  “You’re investigating Miss Cordell’s murder, aren’t you?” Dennis asked as he walked past her.

  “Yes.”

  He headed for the kitchen, and Hope followed. The kitchen windows were uncovered, letting in enough light to make the room cheerier than the dismal living room.

  “The sheriff said the killer was some perv from out of town.”

  “Really? How does he know that?”

  Dennis made himself busy, fetching glasses from the cupboard, filling them with ice, then taking a pitcher of tea from the fridge.

  “No one around here could do such a terrible thing,” he said in a lowered voice as he poured two tall glasses of iced tea. “Why, we all loved Miss Cordell.”

  “Did you see anything unusual that night?”

  Dennis handed her a glass of tea, then leaned against the counter with his own glass in hand. “No, I don’t believe I did. The sheriff asked, of course, but I didn’t remember a thing that might help. Still don’t, I’m afraid.”

  “A car that didn’t belong, perhaps, or a stranger on the road?” Dennis shook his head, and Hope placed her untouched tea on the kitche