“Oh, yeah, right, the Post Office. I keep forgetting.”
“Finding that account info wasn’t easy, let me tell you. There were dogs. Big dogs.”
“Chained?”
“Nope, loose inside the house.”
“How’d you get past ’em?” There was professional interest in Nick’s voice now. “Dogs can be a real problem.”
“I had help,” Judson admitted. “I went over to Poole’s place with a bag of kibble and Nicole Hudson. She’s the one who fed the dogs whenever Poole went out of town on one of his contract jobs. The mutts know her, and they love her. In fact, she’s going to adopt them now that Poole is no longer around.”
“Did this Nicole know what Poole was doing when he went out of town?”
“No. Tell me about the account.”
“We found it right quick after you gave us the number and the password,” Nick said.
“But?”
“But it was closed.”
Judson stopped in the middle of the room. “Are you sure?”
“When it comes to large sums of anonymous cash, I pay close attention,” Nick said. “So does your mother.”
“I don’t doubt that. Go on.”
“Poole’s offshore account was emptied quite recently.”
“He must have known we were onto him,” Judson said. “Maybe he moved the money as a precaution.”
“Not unless he did it from beyond the grave.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“That account was closed about forty minutes after Poole had his unfortunate encounter with a sharp object this morning.”
“Shit.”
“Whatever. According to the timeline that you gave me, Poole suffered his lethal accident in the floral shop at approximately two a.m. The account was closed shortly thereafter. So, it looks to us like maybe—”
“Like maybe there’s someone else involved in this thing.” Judson headed for the door. “Someone who not only knew about the offshore account but also knew that it was time to move on.”
“Whoever he is, in addition to being very, very good on a computer, he must have his finger on the pulse of what’s happening there in Wilby,” Nick said.
“He sure as hell does. The bastard has a front-row seat.”
Judson yanked open the door and went swiftly out into the hall. Max vaulted from the bed to the floor and dashed after him.
“You’re on your own, cat,” Judson said.
Max stuck like glue.
Judson opened the stairwell door and started down. Max followed on his heels.
“Are you in a stairwell?” Nick asked. “There’s this hollow sound.”
“I’m using the emergency stairs. This explains why I didn’t find Evelyn’s computer or that damn camera at Poole’s house this morning.” Judson gripped the railing and leaped down the next flight of steps. Max bounded after him. “I’ll talk to you later. Call the Wilby 911 number and tell the operator to get someone out to the old lodge immediately. Tell her there’s another murder about to take place.”
“What’s going on?”
“Gwen left a few minutes ago. She’s on her way to meet Sundew. And she’s alone.”
Forty-two
Gwen pulled into the driveway of the old lodge. It was not raining, but the gray skies were growing darker and more ominous by the minute. Wesley Lancaster’s rental car was parked under the shelter of the peaked roof at the front entrance. She stopped directly behind him.
His extraordinarily generous offer to buy the lodge to use as a set for his new series had come as a surprise that morning, but the more she thought about it, the more interesting the idea became. The large sum of money would do wonders for her precarious finances while she set up her psychic investigation business.
Wesley was not waiting for her inside his car as she had expected. There was no sign of him lounging impatiently in the entryway, either. It occurred to her that to kill time he had walked around the lodge building to get a closer look at the falls.
She took the code out of her tote and started to key it into the high-tech lock. Belatedly, she realized that the door was unlocked.
She pushed open the heavy steel door.
“Wesley? How in the world did you get the code for the door?”
There was no response from the heavily shadowed interior of the lab. She walked into the energy-infused darkness. The familiar buzz stirred her senses.
The low floor lights came up, illuminating a section around her feet.
She set the tote down on a nearby table and turned to search the shadows. Despite the illumination in the middle of the space, she did not see anyone silhouetted against the glow. She moved forward.
“Wesley? Are you there?”
She saw the body on the floor when she reached the intersection of two aisles. The Viking blond hair was unmistakable.
“Wesley.”
She rushed toward the figure, her senses flaring. Relief flashed through her when she saw Wesley’s aura. He was not dead, but she could tell that he was not in a normal sleep state. He was unconscious.
She crouched beside him, searching for signs of an injury. The sound of the dead bolt of the front door lock sliding home sent a flood tide of fear through her.
It was only then that she realized the floor lights at the front of the lab were still illuminated.
A familiar voice spoke from the shadows.
“You know,” Riley Duncan said, “I gotta thank you and Coppersmith for coming up with a great endgame. I was getting bored with the whole psychic chat room thing. Finding clients for Poole was way too easy.”
Her first thought was that Riley didn’t look like a killer. He looked like what he was—the front desk clerk at the inn. Then she saw the weak light gleam on the barrel of his gun.
“But you didn’t know how to get out of the game, did you?” she said. Instinctively she stayed crouched on the floor next to the unconscious Wesley, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. “After all, Poole was a professional hit man. He killed people for a living, and he did it by paranormal means. He was dangerous.”
“Let’s just say, I knew that I would have to be real sure of success on the first attempt. Figured I had time. Besides, as long as Poole was working, his offshore account was getting bigger and bigger. Then he told me that Ballinger was onto us. Said he had to get rid of her. Next thing I know, you show up. I knew right away that you thought Ballinger had been murdered.”