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CHAPTER 68

Bend, Oregon Friday, August 2, 2024

ELLIS MARGOLIS HADN’T FELT THIS OUT OF CONTROL SINCE THAT fateful summer in 1995 when things had begun to fall apart. Back then it was Baker Jauncey who had set off the cascading dominos. With some luck, and some difficult decisions back then, Ellis had navigated his way through that situation. His mother had become his unwilling accomplice after she killed Annabelle during a rage-fueled altercation. Their relationship had never been the same since that night. His mother hated Ellis for killing Preston, even though he’d done it to save her life. At least, that’s how the story played out.

The truth was, that after Annabelle had revealed to Ellis that Preston knew about the fraud at the law firm, Ellis had no choice but to kill them both. But when he returned to Preston’s house on the Fourth of July, his mother had already taken care of Annabelle. And when Ellis saw Preston choking his mother, he knew there would never be a better opportunity to solve all his problems.

That night at Preston’s house had drawn Ellis and his mother together in a way they had never before known. They’d never been closer. To hold another’s secrets brought people together more powerfully than even unconditional love. Their livelihood depended on the other staying quiet about that night, and for twenty-nine years they both had. Then Sloan Hastings showed up.

Ellis had been running through his options since the day Nora told him that baby Charlotte had turned up in North Carolina. It was a scenario Ellis had never considered. His biggest loose end over the decades had been Margot Gray. But he had kept her content over the years. Only recently had she gone off the rails with guilt, when the Sloan Hastings story broke, and Margot put things together. Ellis managed to quiet her just in time, but Margot Gray was just one of several problems. The world was closing in around him, but he’d found a solution that would solve all his problems.

Back on that fateful July night, he had loaded Preston and Annabelle’s bodies into his truck and cleaned up Annabelle’s blood from the kitchen floor using pool chlorine diluted in water. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop the investigators from finding traces of her blood on the floor. But the detectives had never come close to figuring out what happened in that house, or where Annabelle and Preston’s bodies had been hidden. Late at night on July 4, 1995, Ellis had driven up to the winery to bury the bodies far out in one of the vineyards. So many years had passed that Ellis couldn’t remember the exact location.

Then, he’d driven baby Charlotte across the country and found Margot Gray. He paid her handsomely to take care of the baby for a few months and then pose as Charlotte’s mother during the makeshift adoption. It had gone off without a hitch and allowed Ellis to avoid the impossible task of having to kill his infant niece. In retrospect, however, killing the child would have prevented the turmoil he was going through today. More hard decisions lay ahead. But he could weather the current storm only if he went through with them. No one would suspect that he was responsible for the carnage at Margolis Manor. Not when the perfect fall guy was in his midst.

He used the hammer to pound the handle of the screwdriver. With one final effort he drove the tip of the screwdriver into the lock, splintering the door. When he pushed the door open, the darkroom was empty. But laid across the table were photos that stole his breath. They brought him back to that night at Preston’s house. In one photo he saw his mother fighting with Annabelle. Another pictured his mother holding the long, serrated knife.

How, Ellis wondered, had these photos come to be? Who had taken them? How were they possible? On the table next to the enlarger, Ellis saw an old Nikon FM10 camera. In a flash he remembered finding it in the child’s bassinet. After the cleanup, he’d taken the camera and stashed it in his attic.

Finally, Ellis’s gaze fell to the last photo. It was an image of himself, staring straight out from the picture, the baseball bat he’d used to kill his brother in his hands. Confusion flooded his system at how these photos could exist. But his bewilderment was overcome by guilt, as if seeing himself in the act made it all real. He was a master at compartmentalizing his actions, but the photo allowed the memories of that night to seep from the part of his mind that he had locked them in. He remembered walking into Preston’s home with the baseball bat, prepared to use it on Annabelle. He remembered seeing Preston on top of his mother, his brother’s hands around her neck. He remembered the dull thud of the bat connecting with Preston’s temple.

He blinked several times, working to free his mind from the grip of the troubling memories. Then he looked to the far end of the room and saw that the door to the caves was open. He took off in a dead sprint.

“Nora!”