Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(105)

Savanna searched every room before approaching the door leading to the basement. She’d been hoping to find something that would make going down there unnecessary. But other than confirming that Dorothy was indeed one of the filthiest housekeepers she’d ever seen, and that her mother-in-law still had alcohol in her cupboards, Savanna had come up with nothing, other than a few more letters from Gordon. The accusations contained in some of those letters were simply ridiculous. He claimed that Savanna had wasted his money on furniture and clothes and frivolous purchases or they would’ve had more savings, that it was her idea to take out a second mortgage on the house, that she’d colluded with the police to get him out of her life so she wouldn’t have to share her inheritance. Those letters upset her, but no one else would care about them. They certainly wouldn’t keep him in jail.

She had to keep looking. And that meant...the basement.

She checked the time on her phone. She’d been at Dorothy’s for over an hour already. She’d been working as fast as possible, but leaving everything as she found it took time, and the more time she spent in this house, the more anxious she became. She was dying to get out. If she didn’t leave right away, she’d miss her flight. That meant a sizable fee—this time, one she’d have to pick up herself—another reschedule, alerting Gavin and trying to figure out what to do with the kids until she could get back.

Those concerns were almost enough to make her give up. But she knew she’d have to answer—to herself, if no one else—for not doing more while she had the chance.

Think of Emma Ventnor, and Meredith Caine, who felt you should’ve done more. Well, now you’re doing it.

She had to force the door. As old as it was, it’d been repainted so many times it no longer fit the opening properly. But she got it unstuck with a reverberated wham-am-am-am and flipped the switch at the top of the stairs.

One bulb couldn’t illuminate the darkest reaches of the damp and musty basement, couldn’t reach around the corners to reveal what might be shoved or buried there, couldn’t ease all of Savanna’s misgivings. So she used the flashlight on her phone, too.

Taking a deep breath, she started down.

The stairs creaked beneath her weight and the smell that greeted her turned her stomach. It was far worse than she remembered—bad enough to make her fear she might find more than she’d bargained for. Could Emma Ventnor’s body be down here? Other killers had buried their victims under their houses. John Wayne Gacy had done that with at least twenty-five people, if she remembered right. She’d seen a documentary on him. She’d also heard a news report years ago about an old lady in Sacramento who buried several of her boarders in her backyard and continued to collect their social security checks.

Savanna felt weak and shaky by the time she reached the bottom. Finding a body would be a good thing, she told herself. That would prove Gordon was responsible for Emma’s death. But she didn’t want to uncover something that gruesome, still wanted to believe that Emma was alive.

Stopping in the middle of the basement, she turned in a tight circle, training her light on everything around her. She’d already found Dorothy’s storage pile. It was in disarray, like all of Dorothy’s things. Savanna wasn’t going to waste her time going through that now. She feared she’d wasted too much time trying to find something upstairs.

When nothing struck her as odd or out of place, she examined the floor instead of the walls, thinking she might find evidence of the dirt having been disturbed. She saw nothing that would lead her to believe a body or anything else had been buried down here—except that sickening stench. She wished she could tell Sullivan about it, that it would get him out here with a whole team of forensics specialists. On TV, she’d seen police search the ground with some type of penetrating radar, but would reporting the smell be enough?

She had only one chance. She had to get more while she was here.

“Emma, are you down here?” Thinking of the girl as being alive and needing her help made it possible for her to swallow her revulsion and press on, into that small area where she had to stoop over because the ceiling was so low.

There the stench was far worse. She’d never smelled a decomposing body, so she couldn’t be certain, but this smell had to be similar. Was it Emma?

Her hand shook as she used her flashlight to go over the ground inch by inch. She should’ve brought a bigger flashlight, but she hadn’t wanted to carry a lot of things. She’d felt she might need to be nimble, and she’d proved that when she’d had to climb through the window. But in this small room, she couldn’t see anything that fell outside the six-inch diameter of her little flashlight, and that terrified her. A spider could drop on her at any moment, or she could accidentally step on a human hand jutting out of the ground—

Quit freaking yourself out, she admonished. There are policemen and forensics people who have to do this all the time. But the second her light hit the rotting carcass she’d smelled, she screamed and bumped her head as she jumped back, dropping her phone.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered as she went to her knees. She had to get her phone, couldn’t leave it there and run. But once her hand landed on the hard plastic rectangle, she forced herself to take another look at what she’d found and realized it wasn’t a human body. It was a dead rodent, caught in a mousetrap. That was what had caused the smell.