Chapter 8

The night I heard the tapping again, I was alone in the inn.

Priscilla had taken Bea to a movie in Natchez. They were going to get ice cream afterward, a treat for Bea's good report card. The inn was empty-no guests, no staff, just me and the old walls and the sound of the river.

I was in the kitchen, washing dishes, when I heard it.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three soft taps, coming from the dining room.

I set down the plate I was holding. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. The taps hadn't come from the sealed dumbwaiter-that shaft was still boarded up, still painted over, still alive with secrets. They had come from the wall behind the sideboard.

I grabbed a flashlight and walked into the dining room.

The room was dark. The chandelier was off. Rain tapped on the windows-just ordinary rain, no storm. But the tapping sound was still there, soft and rhythmic, like a finger on wood.

I traced it to the sideboard. The wall behind it was old-original to the house, from when this had been a riverboat captain's home. I had never noticed anything strange about it before. But now, with the flashlight angled low, I saw the faint outline of a seam.

Another seam.

Another hidden door.

I pulled the sideboard away from the wall, scraping the floor. The seam was clearer now-a rectangle about the size of a cabinet door, painted over, sealed with caulk. I grabbed a screwdriver from the toolbox and wedged it into the crack.

The panel gave easily. Too easily. As if it had been opened recently.

Behind it was not a tunnel. Not a room. Just a small, shallow cavity, maybe a foot deep, built into the wall. And inside the cavity was a baby monitor.

The same kind of baby monitor I had used to record Cora. The same kind of baby monitor I had used to record Bea. But this one was different-it was old, scratched, with a cracked screen and a broken antenna. And it was turned on.

I picked it up. The audio was terrible-full of static and feedback. But underneath the noise, I heard a voice.

Cora's voice.

"Bea," she whispered. "Bea, can you hear me?"

My blood ran cold. The monitor was transmitting. Someone had set it up to transmit-from the hospital? From the facility? From somewhere else entirely?

I grabbed my phone and called the sheriff.

The investigation took two weeks. It turned out that Cora had been smuggling messages to Bea for months-ever since her transfer to the long-term care facility. She had bribed an orderly to bring her an old baby monitor and a transmitter. She had hidden the receiver in the wall cavity, connected to the inn's electrical system, so it would run continuously as long as the power was on.

Bea had never mentioned it. She had never told us. She had just listened, in secret, to her mother's voice.

The sheriff's deputies found the monitor and confiscated it. They searched the inn from top to bottom. They found no other hidden rooms, no other tunnels, no other secrets. Just the cavity, the monitor, the voice.

The orderly was arrested. Cora was put in solitary confinement. The facility increased its security. And I sat in my kitchen with Priscilla and Bea and told them what I had found.

Bea cried. Priscilla held her. I held them both.

"Why didn't you tell us?" I asked Bea gently. "Why didn't you tell us she was still talking to you?"

Bea wiped her eyes. "Because she said you would be mad. She said you would take the monitor away. She said she just wanted to hear my voice."

"Sweetheart," Priscilla said, "she was manipulating you. She was using you. She doesn't love you-not the way you deserve to be loved."

"She said she did."

"She lied."

Bea was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "I don't want to hear her voice anymore."

I pulled her close. "You won't. I promise."

The next day, I had the wall cavity sealed with concrete. I had the sideboard bolted to the floor. I had the inn rewired, inspected, and certified by an electrician. I put new locks on every door and new lights in every hallway. I made the Holloway House a fortress.

And then I made a decision.