Chapter 9 - Beneath the Winter Chapel

The winter chapel had not been used in twenty years.

It stood above the north ridge, a narrow cedar building with a bell tower and a frozen stone path. Richard tried to stop us from going.

That alone guaranteed we would.

The county sheriff finally arrived with two deputies, but the fire had split their attention. Ethan showed them the threat messages, the burned barn, and Claire’s letter.

Sheriff Molina agreed to send one deputy with us.

Inside the chapel, Eleanor pointed to the altar.

“There used to be a storage hatch beneath it.”

Richard said, “This is ridiculous.”

The deputy replied, “Then you won’t mind us looking.”

We moved the altar rug.

Underneath was a square iron handle.

The hatch opened into a crawlspace beneath the chapel.

Ghost refused to go down.

That scared me more than anything.

Ethan took a flashlight. “I’ll go.”

“I’m coming.”

“No.”

“This stopped being your family’s secret when I found that ring in my wedding dress.”

He gave up arguing.

We climbed down together.

The space smelled of cedar rot and old earth. Near the far wall, the beam of my flashlight caught a suitcase wrapped in plastic.

Inside were women’s clothes from the late 1980s, a passport belonging to Claire Cole, and a bloodstained wool coat.

Ethan whispered, “Oh my God.”

There was also a second cassette.

We brought it upstairs.

This recording was clearer.

Claire’s voice trembled.

“Thomas is dead. Richard says it was an accident. It wasn’t.”

A man’s voice appeared faintly in the background.

We all froze.

Richard.

You could hear him outside Claire’s room shouting, “You leave tonight and you lose everything.”

Claire whispered into the recorder, “He doesn’t know I copied the ledgers.”

Then came a sound like breaking glass.

The recording stopped.

The little red light on the cassette player kept spinning, but there was only empty tape now. Claire’s silence felt deliberate, as if she had stopped speaking because someone had entered the room.

Dad looked at the ceiling. “That crash on the tape—glass breaking—I heard the same thing that night from the service road.”

Richard snapped, “You never told police that.”

“No,” Dad said. “Because by sunrise you had already told them I was the suspect.”

Sheriff Molina’s deputy stared at Richard.

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Richard slowly backed toward the chapel door.

And then a rifle shot shattered the stained-glass window.