“Yes. Until then my aunt used the house here in Shelbyville as a getaway.”
He glanced down at his notes. “Evidently she liked to get away several times a year for long periods of time.”
“She enjoyed the peace and solitude of the mountains.”
“According to my information, you drove up here frequently to visit her when she was in residence, so you’re not exactly a stranger in town,” he said.
He had never met Vella Tallentyre. She had been institutionalized a couple of months before he arrived in Shelbyville to take over the tiny police department. He had heard a lot about her, though. His secretary, Marge, had told him that the local parents never let their kids go trick-or-treating at the old house on Halloween. The youngsters thought Vella was a real witch. All the rumors about hearing voices had scared the heck out of them. Probably freaked out the parents, too, he thought.
“No,” Raine said, “I’m not a stranger to the area but I don’t really know anyone in town. Whenever I came up here I stayed with Aunt Vella, and as I’m sure you’re aware, she did not have a lot of close friends in the community.”
“I get the feeling you don’t have any fond feelings for our fair town.”
She shrugged. “The people of Shelbyville treated my aunt as if she were a freak. Why would I hold any of them in high esteem?”
He decided to ignore that. From what he’d heard, it was true. “When was the last time you were here?”
“A little over a year ago. That was when I helped Aunt Vella move.”
Vella Tallentyre hadn’t exactly moved. She had been institutionalized. He made a note.
“And you’re back now because you’ve inherited the house and plan to list it with a local real estate agent?” he said.
“That’s right. Mr. Spicer and I were going through the place to see what needed to be done to get it ready for sale.”
“How did you know that something was wrong down there in the basement?”
He could have sworn her jaw tightened a little and her disturbing eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
“I noticed the padlock on the storage locker door. I knew that it hadn’t been there the last time I was in the house.”
“Why call nine-one-one? Why not call a locksmith?”
“I was almost certain it had to be a police matter. There was no legal way that padlock could have been placed on the door. The house is private property and it has been locked up for a year. No one was authorized to go inside except Ed Childers, the man who took care of the place for Aunt Vella. He worked for her for years. But he died some six or seven months ago.”
“What made you so certain that Childers didn’t put that padlock on the storage locker before he died?” he asked.
“I’ll admit that I couldn’t be absolutely certain but, frankly, it never occurred to me that he might have been the one who locked the door.”
“You just leaped to the conclusion that a crime had been committed?”
“A crime was committed,” she said drily. “Whoever entered my aunt’s house and installed that padlock had, at the very least, broken into the place.”
He sat back, thinking about it. His cop instincts were not entirely satisfied but at least he now had a rational explanation for her actions. That was a very good thing because the detectives from Seattle and Portland as well as the media were already on their way. He had a press conference to prepare for. It was going to be a zoo. Discovering the young woman alive in the basement of the old Tallentyre house was the biggest break yet in the unsolved murders attributed to the Bonfire Killer, and he was the man in charge.
“Thank you, Miss Tallentyre. That’s all for now. How long will you be in town?”
“I’m going back to Oriana in the morning.” She rose and paused with an inquiring expression. “Unless I can get into the house tomorrow? I’m really anxious to put it on the market.”
“It’s a crime scene now. Going to stay that way for a few days.” He stood. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“I understand.” She hitched the strap of her dark green purse over one shoulder.
“Where are you staying tonight?”
“The Shelbyville B and B.” She took her long black raincoat off a wall hook. “You have my contact information in Oriana.”
“Right.”
Belatedly he realized he should have helped her with the raincoat. But she already had it on. Strange how much it resembled a long black cape.
He did manage to open the door for her. She paused before going through it. He got the feeling she had decided there was something unpleasant she had to say before she left.
“Do you want to know what my intuition tells me about the killer?” she asked without inflection.
Here it comes. Damn. Just when he had begun to hope that she wasn’t going to tell him she was psychic.
“Sure,” he said, keeping his tone just as even as her own. “Tell me about the killer.”
She seemed to draw even deeper into herself. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly but he could see that she was determined to say whatever it was she had to say.
“He locked the woman in the basement because his mother used to punish him that way,” she said quietly. “She left him in the dark for hours and then she beat him with a belt because he had befouled himself while he was confined. She told him that there was a demon inside him and that she had to drive it out.”
“No offense, Miss Tallentyre, but that’s the kind of useless crap every so-called profiler I’ve ever met says about the perp. Next you’ll be telling me that he’s an organized killer, right? That he’s a white male somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four. That he’s an intelligent loner with no close ties to family, church or community.”
“I don’t know about those things,” she said very steadily, “but I can tell you that you’re looking for a man who is convinced that he has been possessed by a demon. He thinks of himself as a witch hunter.”
He exhaled heavily. “I appreciate your insights.”
“The first witch he ever killed was his mother. He covered up the crime by setting fire to her body. That should give you a starting point. He obviously got away with that murder, which implies that it is either a cold case or a death that was made to look like an accident.”
He was not impressed. “They call this guy the Bonfire Killer because he kills his victims, dumps them in a field and sets fire to the bodies, destroying all the evidence. No big secret there.” He paused, intrigued in spite of himself. “What makes you think he killed his mother?”