Chapter 20 Holt
HOLT
“Fair enough,” Holt said, nodding as he stared at Margo. She was right, and he’d thought about that too. “That’s a good point.”
“Did anyone outside of the four of you know about the investigation?” June asked, quickly de-escalating a debate between Margo and Holt.
“Lacey and Judy,” Margo answered.
“Before we continue,” June said. “Where does Lucy fit into all this? Was she involved? Does she even know about your YouTube channel and your investigation?”
“My mother doesn’t know anything,” Margo said, her eyes portraying a clear message. Leave my mother out of this. “I think she knows that we were looking into what happened ten years ago again. But that’s all.”
“So Lucy doesn’t know about Lacey’s involvement with Judy?” June asked. “Not even that they were working together with Vets Without Borders?”
“No,” Margo said. “She’s completely unaware of that. We kept it like that because my mother is busy enough trying to keep this town healthy.”
“Well, I think she’s starting to figure it out,” June pointed out. “Her twin sister is in the hospital with amnesia and the new vet Lacey hired is in a coma and has been revealed to be Gilbert Fry’s older sister.”
“Maybe,” Margo said. “But that’s all she knows.”
“You know you’re going to have to tell her, right?” June told Margo. Her tone became softer. “She deserves to know, and right now she thinks she has an enemy that tried to kill her sister.”
“And the man she’s just gotten romantically involved with again might just be involved with what happened ten years ago,” Holt stated.
He knew that was harsh, but these five, or rather seven…
eight if you counted his mother, had been playing with fire.
Worse, they’d lied about it and put more people in danger.
He no longer had time for nice. They needed to hear the harsh reality of what they were facing.
“I’m sure you’ve all now realized the consequences of keeping secrets like this. ”
“Dad!” Rad hissed a warning at him.
Holt knew his son had feelings for Margo, but he was just as guilty as the rest of them. Maybe even more so, as he was a police detective and knew better.
“I’m not going to apologize or mince words anymore,” Holt told them. “From here on out, none of you are to go anywhere near this case.” His eyes traveled between them and landed on his mother. “And that goes for you too, Mother.”
“I wasn’t involved in this investigation,” Mina told him.
“Keep it that way,” Holt ordered before glancing at Harvey. “How deeply are you involved in all this?”
“I only filmed the interviews and provided technical support,” Harvey told them.
“So that’s a yes!” Holt stated. “You’re in this up to your eyeballs.”
“Yes,” Harvey admitted. “Okay, yes, I played my part in the investigations, too. I’m also heavily invested in finding out the truth about ten years ago.” His eyes darkened with emotion. “My cousin was one of the firefighters who died.”
“I’m sorry, Harvey,” June said. “How did I not know that? Was it Basil or Dylon?”
“Basil,” Harvey told her. “I wasn’t told much about what he, Shaun, Travis, and Dylon were investigating back then.” He glanced at the other before continuing. “I just knew that my cousin was extremely worried by what they had found out.”
“It’s okay, Harvey, you can tell my father what you told us about that day,” Rad told Harvey.
“What was it?” Holt glanced from Rad to Harvey.
“Basil said they were going to meet with someone who could verify what they’d found out,” Harvey told them. “It was his, Travis, Shaun, and Dylon’s day off.”
“But the firefighters on duty that day were in a car accident,” Margo picked up the story. “So Shaun, Travis, Basil, and Dylon were called in for duty.”
“They responded to a forest fire at the campsite.” Willa’s voice was a little hoarse as she recounted her late husband's last moments. “They reported in when they arrived at the campsite in the location where the fire was supposed to be. Shaun radioed back to the station asking for the location again as they couldn’t find the fire, and that’s the last time he or any of his crew were heard from. ”
“Why wasn’t that in the report?” Holt asked. “According to the report, Shaun called in that the fire was at Gilbert’s cabin. They’d gone in to put it out, and he’d locked the door, then set the rest of the cabin on fire.”
“That’s the report that was put in when Nigel closed the case,” Ace hissed. “But the dispatcher told a different story.”
“Then we need to speak to the dispatcher,” Holt said.
“Good luck finding her,” Rad told his father. “Ace tried, Margo tried, Lacey, Judy, even I tried. She disappeared.”
“So did the call,” Willa told them. “To be replaced with what Nigel had logged in the case file.”
“The recording was doctored?” Holt said, and Rad could see his father’s mind working overtime.
“No. Due to a convenient system upgrade around that time,” Ace explained, “a whole lot of calls were lost.”
“Unbelievable,” Holt hissed.
He didn’t like the way this was going. Someone had to have a lot of clout and or know how to pull off something like this. And his heart grew heavy as the evidence kept pointing to Police Chief Tom Morrison.
“Harvey, did your cousin say where or who they were meeting that day?” June asked. “Did he leave any indication?”
“No,” Harvey told her. “Before Nigel turned into a turncoat, he went through Basil’s apartment with a fine-tooth comb. He even brought me in to help him, as I knew Basil better than anyone, to see if he’d missed anything. But there was nothing.”
“There was nothing in our house, or Shaun’s office either,” Willa told Holt.
“Nigel didn’t find anything in Travis’s or Dylon’s apartment,” Margo added. “Dylon and Travis shared an apartment at the time.”
“Nothing was found?” June questioned. “Not on their phones, laptops, tablets, in their vehicles?”
“We went through everything,” Willa told her mother. “I even went through every pocket in all Shaun’s clothing.”
“I did the same for Travis’s, and then Willa and I volunteered to clear out Dylon’s and Basil’s clothes just so we could secretly go through their pockets as well,” Margo explained. “Heck, we even went through their shoes.”
“They had no post boxes or lockers at a gym?” Holt couldn’t believe that there was no note or record of anything.
“Nothing,” Ace repeated. “I even went through all the firetrucks, ambulances, and whatever space I could find at the fire station.”
Holt frowned. That was a little too convenient.
Maybe Nigel Frost had found something and buried it.
He seemed to have done a complete U-turn on the case.
Going from trying to prove his mother’s accident was not an accident and that the tragic fire of ten years ago was tied to it, to just closing off both cases.
He concluded his mother’s car crash was an accident after all, and that Gilbert Fry was responsible for his own death and that of four firefighters.
Firefighters who were all investigating what Holt believed was Cynthia Frost's car accident.
Which meant this tied back to Cynthia and not the cat burglar.
He gave himself a mental shake. Then how did the bracelet fit into this, or was that a completely separate mystery altogether?
“So what we have is nothing?” Holt glanced around the table. “And everyone who could give us answers is in the hospital and can’t help, or has disappeared, or is not answering calls.”
“While people are getting hurt, property is being damaged, and we’re all being threatened,” June added. “Did you find anything out at all?”
“To be honest, we’d just started investigating properly when the incidents to warn us off started,” Margo confessed.
“When Rad found that there was conflicting information in the police files, we decided to talk to people who’d been interviewed from town about the fire.
We used the guise of writing an article in memory of the four brave men for the tenth memorial. ”
“That seems clever enough,” Holt admitted. “When did the first threats start?” He glanced around the table. “Do you remember who the last people were that you interviewed right before the first incident started?”
“I spoke to Mr. Grundy at the green grocer,” Willa said.
“I spoke to Penny at the flower shop,” Margo added.
“I spoke to Mina,” Ace said.
Mina looked at him in surprise. “Is that why you asked me all those questions?”
Ace nodded.
“Rad?” Holt’s gaze fixed on his son, noticing how he’d not been as forthcoming to answer the question. “Who had you spoken to?”
“Chief Morrison.” Rad’s jaw clenched. “It was the chief.”
The room went deathly quiet, and Holt turned to catch June’s look, and he knew what she was thinking.
They’d had a conversation about Tom the previous night.
He could see in her eyes that she still didn’t believe this had anything to do with their old friend.
Holt wanted to believe it too, but again, everything was pointing that way.
“Uh…” Harvey cleared his throat and raised a hand. “I kind of asked Clive and Sienna about it.”
“What?” the entire table breathed, with the exception of Mina, who only raised one brow.
Harvey looked properly defensive now. “You all told me to find out whatever I could about ten years ago. I know they were right in the middle of it, too. And remember how worried the chief was when the cabin fire jumped and started heading toward the houses backing onto the forest. I thought they may have seen someone or heard something.” No one interrupted him as they all stared at him, and Holt knew that this was the first time Harvey had told them this.
“And I remember Nigel saying once that if somebody other than Gilbert had started that fire, their perfect escape route would be…”
“To go through the back of the forest and out through Point Drive,” Holt finished, his heart dropping even more.