Zoe Donovan Mystery: Haunted Hamlet Part 14

"I know." I sighed. I was so tired.

Ellie handed me a cup of coffee with a touch of milk, just the way I like it when I need something to sooth my stomach while stimulating my mind. "You love him and he loves you. What he did before you got together shouldn't matter."

"I know, but it does."

"Why?" Ellie challenged.

"I don't know; it just does."

"You dated other guys," Ellie reminded me. "You had intimate relationships with other men before you got together with Zak. Those relationships have nothing to do with your feelings for Zak, and I'm sure his relationship with Brooke has nothing to do with his feelings for you."

"Did you know?" I asked.

Ellie looked shocked. "What? How would I know?"

"I don't know, but it occurred to me that you were digging your nails into my leg yesterday to keep me from speaking up at the meeting."

"I knew what Brooke was going to propose," Ellie explained. "I'd gotten to the meeting early and Willa had filled me in. I also knew you'd be jealous, but I knew her idea was good for the town. We need the money Brooke's idea will bring in, and I didn't want you to throw a fit until you had time to think about it. I gathered by what she said that she knew Zak from the past, but I swear to you, I had no idea about the nature of their relationship. I would have told you."

I sighed again. "I know. I'm sorry. I guess I'll go home and talk to Zak."

"I think that would be best."

I hugged Ellie, loaded Charlie into my truck, and headed back to the house Zak and I shared. My heart sank when I noticed that his truck wasn't in the drive. I felt extra bad when I noticed that the Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein Zak had moved to the yard for the party were lying on the ground in several pieces. I must have plowed them down when I left the night before.

"Zak," I called as I walked through the front door.

No answer.

At least Bella was still there, as was the stray dog we'd begun to refer to as Karloff, after the Boris Karloff movie we'd watched recently. If Zak was going to be gone for long, he would have taken the dogs. Wouldn't he?

I changed into a heavier sweatshirt, then headed back outdoors with all three dogs trailing behind me. I felt bad for putting Zak through what probably had been a very long night. I also felt bad for ruining his display. He'd worked so hard on it. I couldn't undo the stress I'd caused the man I loved, but maybe I could fix the display.

I picked up the pieces that were lying across the drive and repaired what I could. I was going to need help with Frankenstein and his lady, and I knew just who to call. I put on a pot of coffee and considered the mess I'd made of my life while I waited. I'd really thought I had a grip on my often illogical emotions. I'd worked hard to leave behind my insecurities and become a woman worthy of a man like Zak. Apparently, I still had additional work to do.

Life would be so much easier if you could decide how you wanted to feel and your emotions just fell into line. I didn't want to be a jealous, insecure mess who hurts the people she cares most about with childish tantrums and illogical rants, but as hard as I try, I find that the way I want to feel and the way I do feel are often not the same.

"You still love me, don't you?" I looked at Charlie as I attempted to rehang the lights in the same artistic manner Zak had so carefully arranged them.

Charlie barked and wagged his tail.

"So what are we going to do with me?"

Charlie c.o.c.ked his head as if he were trying to understand what I was saying. He put his paw on my leg and licked my cheek when I bent down to pet him.

"Maybe I need to take a lesson from you, my little bundle of unconditional love."

"Thank you for coming," I greeted Joel as he pulled up in front of the house an hour later.

"No problem. I'm happy to help. What exactly is the problem?"

"I'm afraid Frankenstein has been decapitated and the missus isn't doing much better. Can you fix them?"

Joel picked up the pieces and took a closer look. "I don't see why not. I've been working with props since I was a kid. Do you know what happened to the arm?"

The arm? I looked around. I thought I had all the pieces. "I'll check the bushes I ran over on my way out last night."

"A few too many c.o.c.ktails?" Joel teased.

I blushed.

"Don't worry; I've been there."

I didn't say anything as I carefully began rummaging through the shrubs that were quite a bit worse for wear after my off-road excursion through the middle of them.

"I found the arm," I said, holding it up.

"Is the hand attached?"

It wasn't.

"Bring me the arm and I'll get started on it while you keep looking for the other missing pieces," Joel said.

"You're very good at what you do," I complimented as I watched him begin to reattach the arm. "You could probably get a job doing something with special effects in Hollywood if you wanted."

Joel laughed as he returned to his truck to sort through his tools and supplies. "Thanks, but no thanks. I've done the Hollywood thing. It isn't for me."

"You tried to get a job doing sets?"

"No, I wanted to be a filmmaker. It was my dream during my teens. Once I graduated high school, I began making amateur movies that I sent off to every producer I could get an address for. Eventually, I left this area and headed to Tinsel Town, but things didn't work out, as you can probably guess. I think I can duplicate the missing foot, but we're really going to have to find the original hand if you want it to wave."

Joel turned and looked at me. Suddenly, I knew who was responsible for the deaths all those years ago, and in the split second before he hit me and I blacked out, I realized Joel knew that I knew.

I'm not sure how long I was out, but when I woke up, I was bound and gagged. I recognized my prison as the secret room in the Henderson house. I couldn't hear or see anyone else there, so I hoped Joel had simply left me to die. He didn't know that Zak and I knew about the secret room. My guess was that he planned to leave me there, much the way he had Bart. Of course, he must have noticed that Bart was no longer tucked into his final resting place, so perhaps he planned to come back and finish me off after all.

I tried to work the ropes around my wrists, but they wouldn't budge. I found myself beginning to struggle to breathe as panic set in. I realized that I was hyperventilating, but with the tape over my mouth, I could only breathe through my nose. I knew I needed to get out of there, but the harder I struggled to free my hands and legs, the more difficult it was to catch my breath. I forced myself to close my eyes and stop moving. I needed to relax. Once I returned my breath to a normal pace, I could figure out what to do.

I focused on my breathing as I cleared my head of all but the most positive thoughts. I concentrated on Zak and how much I loved him. I thought about building a life with him and growing old together. I pictured the animals we shared and found myself beginning to panic again as I realized that they had been with me in the yard when Joel knocked me out. I knew that Charlie would have attacked Joel when he hit me. G.o.d, I hoped Joel hadn't hurt him.

I tried once again to free my arms. I needed to get home. To Zak; to Charlie; to my life.

The harder I struggled, the shallower my breath became. I forced myself to stop and rest when I began to get dizzy. There was plenty of air in the room. The tape wasn't blocking my nose. I would be fine if I could control my mind and my emotions.

I could hear thunder in the distance. I guess another storm had blown in. The closer the sound of the clattering in the sky, the darker things became. There were no windows in the room, but there had been light coming through the small holes someone had bored. Probably Joel, when he set up the house of horrors for the camp counselors that night. I held my breath as I heard voices below. I prayed it was Zak with Salinger, but I quickly discovered it was Joel, with another man I couldn't see and whose voice I only vaguely recognized.

"If the body is gone, it's only a matter of time until the cops figure this out," the voice I couldn't quite place stated. "We should just leave. Maybe try for another country where we can finally put all this behind us."

"We're in this mess because of you," Joel pointed out.

"Me? What did I do?"

"You didn't control things, so I had to handle them."

"Handle them?" the voice spat. "You call smothering Carol and killing Bart in cold blood handling things? I should have gone to the cops a long time ago. If I'd known what you'd done to them, I would have. No one was supposed to get hurt."

"And no one would have gotten hurt if you'd taken care of everything like we agreed. My job was to film the event and your job was to handle the actors."

"They weren't actors. They were just kids who had no idea what was really going on. Your idea to create an actual horror scene had merit, but we didn't stop to consider the very real consequences."

"If you had done your job like we agreed, we would have had our film and no one would have been any the wiser," Joel insisted. "That film could have opened doors for both of us."

"Whatever." I could hear one of the men pacing back and forth. "There's nothing I can do about what happened to the others, but I won't let you kill that girl. We need to let her go and take our punches."

"If you think you'll get off easy by ratting me out, you're dead wrong."

"Put that gun away," the voice who wasn't Joel's demanded. "We're in this together, and we need to accept the consequences of our actions."

"Like h.e.l.l."

I heard a struggle and then a shot. I would have screamed if my mouth hadn't been taped.

I sat quietly as I waited for the other shoe to drop. Both men seemed to know that I was locked in the room; the question in my mind was, who was the shooter and who was the victim? If Joel had ended up with the gun, chances were that I'd be next. If, however, the owner of the second voice had been the victor, I might be minutes away from being freed.

As the minutes turned to what seemed like hours, I realized that one of the men was most likely dead and the other had probably left. I struggled again to free my wrists. If Joel had killed the other man, he must plan to come back for me. I really needed to get out of there.

I could hear thunder clapping all around. All at once I had an image of a lightning strike hitting the old house and the entire thing becoming engulfed in flames. I found myself beginning to panic again. A rickety old house was nowhere to be trapped in a lightning storm.

I forced myself to calm down and take slow breaths though my nose. Panicking was only going to make things worse. After what seemed like forever, I heard voices once again. My heart began to pound, and I imagined that it was Joel, back to finish the job. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I began to lose control of my breathing. I felt like I was going to vomit, which wouldn't be a good idea considering I had no way of removing the tape from my mouth.

Death by vomit. That was not how I wanted to go.

I closed my eyes and mentally forced myself to relax. I heard footsteps on the stairs leading to the attic. I almost pa.s.sed out from relief when I recognized Zak's voice. When he opened the door to the room and shone his flashlight inside, I began to weep.

"G.o.d, Zoe, are you okay?"

Zak ran over to me and wrapped me in his arms.

"Tape," I tried to say through the tape still covering my mouth.

Zak looked at my face and cringed. "I'm sorry. This is going to hurt."

He ripped off the tape and I sucked in the first full breath I'd been able to take since waking up in the secret room.

"What took you so long?" I gasped.

"I didn't know you were here," Zak said as he began to untie my hands. "I went to talk to Brooke this morning and when I came back you weren't home, so I figured you were still at Ellie's."

"But my truck. Charlie?"

"The truck wasn't in the drive. Neither was Charlie."

"Oh G.o.d, did Joel hurt Charlie?"

"Charlie is with Scott. Don't worry; Scott swears he'll be fine."

"Get the rest of these ropes off. We have to go."

Chapter 14.

Thursday, October 30

By the time Zak and I got back from the vet the previous evening, we were both completely exhausted. As I'd predicted, when Joel hit me, Charlie had attacked him, and then Joel had kicked my dog, fracturing a rib. He'd locked Charlie in my truck and then took it down to the dirt road that parallels the lake and left it hidden in some trees. While I quite literally wanted to kill Joel for kicking my dog, I was grateful that he hadn't killed him. Neither Bella nor Karloff seemed any worse for wear, and even though the door had been left open, the cats had been safely napping inside throughout the entire ordeal.

When Zak got home, he'd noticed that Bella and Karloff were sitting on the front porch. The front door was cracked open, so he'd figured he hadn't closed it all the way when he left and the dogs had simply gotten out. Zak didn't realize I wasn't still at Ellie's until he decided to go over there to talk to me and she informed him that I'd gone home early that morning.

When he got home from Ellie's, he looked around. Really looked around. He noticed that someone had cleaned things up and moved parts of Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein. After a bit of thought, he'd put two and two together. He pulled up the calls that had been made on our landline that day, and when he'd realized that I'd called Joel, he'd logged onto his computer and tracked the signal put off by my truck's communication system. Once he found Charlie and the otherwise empty truck, he'd called Scott and Salinger and then come looking for me in the one place he figured Joel would take me.

"I've never been so scared in all my life," Zak said as we lay in each other's arms after sleeping for a good twelve hours.

"I know. Me neither. I'm so sorry about everything. If I hadn't let my jealousy get the better of me, none of this would have happened."

Zak kissed the top of my head where it rested on his bare chest. "No, it's my fault. I should have told you about Brooke. At first we didn't really have a relationship, so it didn't seem relevant. And then, when our flirtation moved toward something more, I was afraid you would be upset. I thought about telling you, but I was afraid it would destroy what we were just building. But now that I've had a chance to really think about it, I know in my heart we would have worked things out. I promise I'll never keep anything from you again."

I reached up and kissed Zak on the lips. "I was really scared when I got home and you were gone," I admitted.

Zak caressed my hair, which had grown long enough to create a curtain around us. I'd thought about getting it cut, but when you have a thick curly mess that has to be clipped back most of the time anyway, it doesn't seem worth the effort.

"I guess I should have called you or texted or left a note or something," Zak said. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I just knew I had to do what I could to fix things, so I went to see Brooke to ask her to leave Ashton Falls. I needed to make sure she understood that there was absolutely no future for us. I'm in love with you. I want to marry you. I have no interest in dating anyone other than you. Ever."

I smiled. "Did she leave?"

"I'm not sure. She made a case for this being a free country, so she could live wherever she wanted and there was nothing I could do about it. If you want my opinion, I think she was just being difficult because she was hurt that I no longer wanted her in my life. If she hasn't left yet, I'm sure she will once she realizes that I am most definitely not available."

"But the auction? We really do need the money."

"We'll get it another way."