Unhallowed Ground
Unhallowed Ground
Heather Graham
When Sarah McKinley is finally able to buy and restore the historic Florida mansion that she has always loved, she dismisses the horror stories of past residents vanishing and a long-dead housekeeper who practiced black magic.Then, in the midst of renovations, she makes a grim discovery. Hidden within the walls of Sarah's dream house are the remains of dozens of bodies—some dating back over a century. The door to the past is blown wide open when Caleb Anderson, a private investigator, shows up at the mansion.He believes several current missing-persons cases are linked to the house and its dark past. Working together to find the connection and stop a contemporary killer, Sarah and Caleb are compelled to research the history of the haunted house, growing closer to each other even as the solution to the murders eludes them.But there is one who knows the truth…a spirit who follows every move they make. Soon Caleb begins to fear that if he can't stay a step ahead, he could lose Sarah to a killer with an ability to transcend time in a quest for blood and sacrifice.
Praise for
HEATHER GRAHAM
“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Death Dealer
“[A] sinister tale sure to appeal to fans across multiple genre lines.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Death Dealer
“Heather Graham will keep you in suspense until the very end.”
—Literary Times
“[A] solid trilogy opener…Dream messages and premonitions, ghostly sightings, capable detective work and fascinating characters blend to make a satisfying chiller.”
—Publishers Weekly on Deadly Night
“There are good reasons for Graham’s steady standing as a best-selling author. Here her perfect pacing keeps readers riveted as they learn fascinating tidbits of New Orleans history. The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing, and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”
—Booklist on Ghost Walk
“Graham peoples her novel with genuine, endearing characters.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Séance
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
Heather Graham
Unhallowed Ground
To the city of St. Augustine, and especially to Derek and Pablo-the-cat and our road trip.
To the carriage and tour companies—and everyone who’s fascinated by the unique legends of our nation’s oldest European-founded city.
It’s a remarkable place to visit.
Thanks, also, to the Inn on Charlotte, Victoria House, and Casa de Suenos (where they welcomed Pablo as well as the rest of us!)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Then, during the War of Northern Aggression
St. Augustine, in northern Florida, was beautiful, especially by night. It was the image of everything graceful and lovely in the Deep South and, when seen by the gentle glow of the moon, as serene a place as one might ever hope to see. Spanish moss dripped from old oaks like the sweep of a gentle lace blanket, and a low ground fog swirled in a faint breeze that seemed to carry with it the whisper of a moan. The silver mist curled around the mournful beauty of the cemetery, caressing the cheeks of stone angels and cherubs standing atop newly dug graves, as well as those that had been there for centuries.
The moon that night had a haze promising rain the following day. The misty halo around the full orb cast an eerie glow over the earth, turning the cemetery into a magical vision with its praying virgins, weeping guardians and majestic display of marble statuary, all bathed in the pale and eerie light.
Two women came with a lantern, one with purpose, and one carefully picking her way around the gravestones and funerary art.
“This way,” Martha Tyler said, lifting her lantern higher.
“How much farther?” Susan Madison asked nervously as the moon slipped behind a cloud and the shadows deepened.
Martha paused to stare back at her, contempt in her eyes. “If you are afraid, there is no reason to go any farther at all.”
Well, of course, I’m afraid, Susan longed to shout. She hadn’t been afraid before; it had all seemed like a lark, and why not? Life was a mess right now, and maybe Martha did have some kind of wonderful power to make everything better.
But now she was afraid. The beauty was gone from the night.
Only death seemed to remain.
Yes, she was afraid. She was walking in a shadowy graveyard by night, hearing nothing but the rustle of the leaves and the moan of the wind in the branches, and she was a fool ever to have thought that this would be an adventure.
She had convinced herself that she had to play this game, had to skirt the edge of social and moral insanity. The news in her life was always terrible, all about the war, death, advancing armies, defeats.
There was no guarantee that Thomas Smithfield would be alive in a matter of months, much less have anything left of his home, finances or wits. A love ritual might well be useless.
“We’re here now, anyway,” Martha said.
“We’re here? Where is here?” Susan demanded, looking around. They had passed the MacTavish mausoleum, the giant sculpted dogs that guarded the eighteenth-century entrance to the section containing the graves of children, and even the oldest and most chipped and broken stones in the cemetery. They were standing by a small broken wall, where trees grew tall and broad, breaking through the stones of the dead, and the moss dripped almost to the ground. The earth itself didn’t seem as if it belonged in any place created by man at all. It was more like a pit of churned dirt and broken pottery.
“Right here,” Martha said, pointing. Her voice dropped to a whisper, so soft that Susan could barely hear it. “We’re outside hallowed ground here. This wall—or what’s left of it—marks the boundary beyond which they buried the indigents and the…the unhallowed.”
Susan felt a sudden chill. It was summer, and even the nights could be sweltering here in the humid lowlands, with only the occasional breeze off the ocean to alleviate the wet heat. But tonight she was suddenly cold with a bone-deep sensation that came from far more than just the temperature.
Of course she was cold, she told herself. Martha was frightening her. That whisper she was using, the cemetery itself, bathed once again in the unearthly glow of shimmering moonlight filtered through haze and fog.
“You still have it? You didn’t drop the sacrifice?”
Susan told herself that the ominous tone was all part of Martha’s act, but even so, she shuddered as she reassured herself that she still had the little vial of blood, wrapped so tightly in her hand that she had practically forgotten she was carrying it.
“Yes.”
“You killed the creature yourself?” Martha asked.
“Yes.”
Martha approved her answer with a solemn nod as she took the vial of blood from her. “Now the black drink.”
Martha held up a small bottle filled with an inky liquid.
Susan stared at her.
“It’s herbs, child, just herbs. But they create magic.”
Susan wanted to refuse.
What was the matter with her? she wondered. All her friends had gone to Martha for potions and palm readings. Martha did have a talent for knowing what was going to happen. Not only could she foretell the future, but sometimes she could also actually make things happen. And always she was an amazing show-woman.
This was an adventure, Susan told herself, and maybe—just maybe—the potion would work.
Martha was standing in front of her, smiling, looking as gentle as a kitten, as well-meaning as a doting grandmother. She pressed the small bottle into Susan’s hand and helped her lift it to her lips. The concoction was sweet, not bad tasting, but it carried an aftermath of fire that sent slivers of steel running through her blood.
Suddenly crimson darkness descended, making a stygian pit of the cemetery, a fiery globe of the moon.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Susan said. Her voice sounded like a whimper, appalling her. “I’m sorry, I just want to leave.”
Martha laughed, but the sound was husky and taunting, frightening her further. “Such a terrified little girl. We’re here now, you’ve had the black drink, the worst is over. It’s time.”
The darkness lifted, and once again Susan found herself standing in the moonlight in the old cemetery she had walked through dozens of times before. There was nothing dark or terrifying or eerie about it; it was just a field of the dead.
And still, she wished she had never come.
But she didn’t want to run away and leave Martha to tell the tale of her cowardice. It would be mortifying if everyone knew what a silly coward she had been. The things that were said about her already were bad enough.
But what were her choices.
Stay and dig up a grave? Or run out of the cemetery alone? Tamper with the dead, or flee through a haunted world of shadow and decomposition, with no companion other than her own thundering heart?
“In seconds, my pet, you will be on the road to all that your heart desires. A passion and a tempest unlike anything even you have imagined. You came to me for help. You wanted magic. You’ve come this far, don’t stop now. Not before you secure all that you hope for on behalf of your babe and for your own life. It’s time,” Martha said. She sprinkled the blood across the disturbed earth of an antique grave, then lifted her arms to the night sky, the very image of a Druid priestess in a field of ancient stones or one of the voodoo queens of Jamaica, from where she had come long ago. She was not a colored woman, but neither was she white. She had no definitive color, really. She was a pasty shade, like the moon behind the haze, and her eyes were a strange and watery blue.
She didn’t give Susan a chance to respond. She began to chant, her face lifted toward the sky, her arms still upraised. The words were unintelligible, a mix of English, French, Spanish and something more ancient. As Susan watched her, she felt herself becoming almost hypnotized by the magic lilt of the words. It was as if her limbs grew leaden, and any desire to be anywhere else left her. The tombstones and vaults, cherubs and angels, even the great guardian dogs, began to appear as natural a setting as the cozy parlor of her home, welcoming her.
The low-lying fog, caught in the amber glow of the moon, seemed to dance around her, wrapping her in an exciting warmth, fanning an ember deep inside her. She watched, she waited, she heard the music of the words and felt strength in the growing heaviness of her form. When she could move, she told herself, she would do so with passion and vitality. She would be vibrant and alive, filled with magic herself.
But even as the sense of well-being warmed her like a cup of cocoa on a cold night, something else was growing, as well. An inner voice warning her that she needed to shake off the leaden sensation. That she needed to run.
Because the ground was moving, erupting as if from a force deep inside, shifting the old stones that lay askew nearby. A shower of dust rose as something solid and large emerged from the ground, like a tree growing at a fantastic rate. Particles of dirt and dust and marble were caught in the faint glow of the tainted moon, gleaming like the snowflakes she had read about in books.
That inner voice screamed at her to run, but it was too late.
She saw what had risen, and a scream rose in her throat, but she couldn’t move, and no sound issued from her lips. She could still see Martha, standing there now with a satisfied smile, and she knew that she was no more to the woman than a rung in a ladder, a stepping stone toward power over the darkness. She saw it all so clearly now.
And then she saw what was rising from the ground.
Saw that all Martha’s promises had been no more than a ruse to get her there.
The horror approached her, malignant, evil, and she was paralyzed. She knew that whatever had been in the black drink was paralyzing her, saw everything so clearly now that it was too late—oh, God, far too late—to know and see and understand, to know that this had nothing to do with wonder and fantasy and magic.
She saw and felt the essence of evil, heard the rasp of its fetid breath, smelled flesh and blood and bone and the pungence of the earth as her fate stepped closer and closer still, drawing pleasure from her terror and her newfound knowledge…
She had not come to make a sacrifice.
She had come to be the sacrifice.
1
Now
The area near the nature preserve was overgrown. Salt flats and marsh met Matanzas Bay and the Intra-coastal, and the water went from shallow to deep, from sloping sand to a sudden drop-off leading to a misty and strange world of fish, tangled plant growth and, despite the best efforts of local and federal lawmakers, de facto garbage dumps.
Caleb Anderson had been drawn to a shopping cart down at about twenty feet, then on to a tire rim beneath a tangle of seaweed at thirty-five, but neither one turned out to be hiding what they were looking for.
The problem was, the authorities were searching blindly. A girl named Winona Hart had disappeared. She had been at a party, but none of her underage drunken friends—half of them potheads to boot—seemed to know when she had left, where she had gone, or with whom.
He looked at his compass, then up through the filter of light to the cable from the police cruiser serving as their dive boat. In his mind, if anything was going to be found, it was going to be closer to the shore. Unless, of course, she’d been kidnapped by a boater and dumped somewhere beyond the bay and out in the Atlantic. If that was the case, their chances of finding her were almost nonexistent. The ocean was huge. True, if caught in a current or an undertow, a body might wash up on land. And if they came up with a suspect who regularly followed a certain route, even a weighted body might somehow be discovered.
But at the moment they were searching blindly. Still, he hadn’t wanted to miss the opportunity to be in on the search, not when he had promised he would do everything humanly possible to find Jennie Lawson. Admittedly, this grim attempt was not to find Jennie but a local teen who had now been missing for nearly forty-eight hours, a case that might or might not be connected to Jennie’s. No one knew if Jennie Lawson had actually made it to the beach in St. Augustine, her intended destination. They only knew that she had landed in Jacksonville, gotten off the plane and picked up a rental car. Neither she nor the car had been seen since.
He didn’t have much hope of finding Jennie alive. Her mother had told him that she knew Jennie was gone, because her daughter had come to her in a dream the night before her disappearance was reported and said goodbye. Caleb wasn’t sure what to believe, because Mr. Lawson seemed to think that Mrs. Lawson had lost her mind when their daughter had disappeared, and he had, in fact, made a motion behind his wife’s back to indicate as much.
Caleb had heard of stranger things than ghostly midnight visits, however, so he had simply smiled and vowed to Jennie’s mother that he would do everything he could to find out the truth, even if he couldn’t return her daughter to her. That had comforted her. Closure was something people needed. Perhaps it was too painful to live with eternal hope.
So Caleb was also looking for Jennie, or any sign of her, even if he was officially on the trail of another young woman for whom many were still holding out hope. But this dive was important for other reasons, too; it was giving him a chance to get to know the local authorities and the local expert on the surrounding waters.
As he moved toward the marshy shore, he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, but he was accustomed to such conditions. His dive light illuminated the surrounding area as he searched, and he was methodical in covering his assigned section of the bay. He had seen the grid, and he meant to search his assigned area thoroughly, leaving no possibility that anything had been overlooked. As an out-of-stater, he was the odd man out here. If he did anything to make the other men—and the one woman—on the local forensic dive team resent his presence, he would end up ostracized, and that would be a real problem in his search for Jennie. For that reason, getting along with the police lieutenant in charge of the case, Tim Jamison, and Will Perkins, the dive master, was crucial. Caleb was there mainly as a courtesy. He worked for a private agency, Harrison Investigations. The cases they took generally had an unusual twist, something inexplicable, even supernatural, that required their very specific professional services, but in this instance it was Adam Harrison’s personal friendship with Jennie Lawson’s father that had brought Caleb here.
He noted a glitter of light, just this side of the drop-off. He focused his dive light, and headed toward the glint, knowing full well that it might be just another shopping basket.
But as he neared the object in the water, he knew that this was no shopping cart.
It was far too large, for one thing. The full size of it became clear as he drew closer. It was an automobile.
All too often, people intentionally discarded cars in the water. Sometimes they were just junkers and nothing more.
Sometimes they held human remains.
And as he approached the Chevy mired in the mucky, seaweed-laden sand, he saw that this car was not empty. A solid kick with his flippers brought him to the driver-side window.
A face stared out at him, the mouth widened in a giant O, as if in a desperate quest for breath.
The eyes…
Did not exist. Already, the creatures of the deep had started to feed.
“Maybe Osceola was a hero, but they still tricked him and caught him and cut his head off. They chopped it right off!” a young boy said. He was about ten, cute and normal-looking in a T-shirt that had clearly just been purchased at the local alligator farm, jeans and sneakers. But he spoke with a relish that unsettled Sarah McKinley. Caroline Roth, seated at the computer and running the audiovisual end of the Heritage House presentation, let out a soft laugh, stared at Sarah, then grinned wickedly and shrugged.
“No,” Sarah said firmly, and smoothed down the skirt of her period outfit. She was a good storyteller and knew how to handle a large—and diverse—group like the one in the lecture hall that day, which was a mix of kids and adults, tourists and locals, couples, groups and singles. They were into the tail end of summer, so she was getting classes from schools that started early and teachers from schools that started late. There was a Harley event down in Daytona that week, so she was getting a lot of bikers, too.
One man in the crowd, though, seemed to stand out. He was tall, but not inordinately so, maybe six-three. He was dressed as casually as the next tourist in blue jeans and a polo shirt, but he didn’t look like the usual tourist. He wore sunglasses throughout her lecture—not an odd thing, lots of people didn’t take them off when they came in. He was built as if he were in the service and worked out heavily on a daily basis, or as if he were an athlete. He was tanned and rugged, the way a man who spent his day sailing might be, tawny-haired and attractive. What was odd about him, though, was that he was alone. He seemed the type who should be with a beautiful woman, one who was as lithe and athletic as he was himself.
“Decapitated!” another kid called out.
Sarah’s attention was drawn back to her lecture. She had been talking about Osceola, the most famous leader of the Seminole people, who had galvanized friend and foe alike when he had struck a knife into a treaty that would have been a death knell for his people. Like so many others, he had been imprisoned at the Castillo de San Marcos, the coquina shell bastion built by the Spanish that was the most imposing architectural feature of the city.
Leave it to a kid to dwell on the most gruesome fact he could think of—not to mention that he had it wrong.
“History records lots of terrible things that were done, but that wasn’t one of them,” she said.
“Hey, I heard he was decapitated, too,” a grown man interrupted.
Sarah took a deep breath. She couldn’t really blame the guy—who had a sunburn identifying him as out-of-state—when even Florida schoolchildren often had the story wrong. “Osceola was a great leader, and respected even by his enemies. The treachery that led to his capture was deplorable, and despite the Indian wars raging across the country at the time, people despised General Jesup for the way he treated Osceola, who came in peace, with his safety guaranteed, and was taken anyway. But he wasn’t decapitated by the U.S. Army. He was held for a while at Fort Marion, originally known as the Castillo de San Marcos, but he died of malaria up at Fort Moultrie, in South Carolina. He was attended by a shaman from his own clan, and an American doctor, a man named Frederick Wheedon, who did have his head removed and embalmed, but only after he was already dead. And,” she said, unable to resist, “legend has it that Dr. Wheedon used the head to punish his children. If they behaved badly, he would leave the head on their bedposts at night. In fact, he bequeathed the head to his son-in-law—just in case his grandchildren misbehaved. His son-in-law passed it on to a man named Valentine Mott, another doctor, who kept it in a pathology museum, but the museum burned down, and the head was lost.”
She had gained the silent stares of everyone in the room, of every age, and she offered them a broad smile. “You can learn a lot about Osceola and Florida’s Native Americans over at Fort Marion, and we have wonderful books on Osceola and the history of the area in our bookstore. Remember, St. Augustine is over four hundred years old.” She grinned at the boy who had first brought up the subject of decapitation. “All kinds of gruesome things have happened here.”
She announced that her speech was over and was given a nice round of applause, and a number of people thanked her as they walked out of the lecture hall. A few lingered to examine the artifacts in the cases that lined the walls, but she noticed that the tall stranger who had drawn her attention wasn’t among them.
Caroline, rising and stretching, started laughing as soon as the last of the four o’clock lecture group walked out of the room. “A few of those kids are going to wake up in the night imagining a head on their bedpost.”
“Yeah?” Sarah asked. “I don’t think that many kids have bedposts anymore.”
“I’m sure lots of them are staying at local B and Bs. And lots of those beds have bedposts,” Caroline reminded her.
“Well, what’s a story without something scary?” Sarah asked, sinking into one of the front row seats. “And I didn’t make anything up.” She looked at Caroline and sighed. “Now you’re going to give me a speech on being nice to tourists and downplaying our more gruesome history, right?”
Caroline shook her head. “No, not today, I’m not.” She frowned suddenly, distracted. “Do you think we know him from somewhere?”
“Him who?” Sarah asked.
Caroline looked at her and laughed again. “Him who was studly and cool. Oh, come on. You couldn’t possibly have missed him.”
“Yeah, I saw him,” Sarah said. Caroline could only be talking about the man she had noted earlier in the crowd. “But what about him?”
“I felt like I knew him, or should know him, from somewhere.”
“He was good-looking—”
Caroline stared at her hard.
“Okay, I admit he looked a little bit familiar, but maybe he’s just so gorgeous he reminds me of a movie star or something.”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know, I just had a feeling about him…. It’s like he looks like someone we once knew, only…different. I wonder if he signed in? I’ll go look. And as for you scaring tourists, have some patience with the kids, huh? It’s no wonder they’re sounding a little gruesome. Have you seen this?”
She picked up the local newspaper, which had been lying next to her computer.
“Seen what?” Sarah asked. “I didn’t read the paper today—I left right after I woke up and came here.” She winced. “It’s all that hammering, you know?”
“Oh, how’s that going?” Caroline asked.
“Loudly.”
Which was the understatement of the year, Sarah thought. She loved the historic property she had bought after her recent return to town, but it was badly in need of not just refurbishing but reinforcement, as well. The previous owner, Mrs. Douglas, had tried to salvage it before the days of community awareness, when it might have been torn down but she hadn’t had the funds to do all the necessary work. When Mrs. Douglas turned eighty, she had decided she was never going to get to it, so she decided to sell and offered the house to Sarah first, because Mrs. Douglas had been friends with Sarah’s maternal grandmother. Given the house’s history, the price had been amazing, another special deal because she had been so close with Sarah’s grandmother, and also because Sarah’s grandmother’s grandmother had been born a Grant, and the property was known as the Grant House. As far as Sarah knew, her mother’s side of the family had actually come from Savannah, but since the name—whether the connection was real or imaginary—had helped her to acquire the property, she was willing to go with it.
“I’ve wanted to live in that house for as long as I can remember,” Sarah said.
“I remember, and I always thought you were crazy. Old Mrs. Douglas never did anything with it, and we’ve been watching it crumble all these years,” Caroline said. “Remember when Pete Albright went in that Halloween? How we made up the most horrifying stories and then dared him to go in? Some head of the football team! He came out white as a ghost, saying he’d quit being quarterback before he’d sleep in the place all night. He said he heard ghosts in the walls and could feel them trying to touch him. He was absolutely terrified.”
“Of course he was. We were just terrible. We told him all those old tales about the woman who sold potions and voodooed people to death. And we told him it was full of corpses—which it had been, of course, since it was a mortuary for years.”
Caroline wrinkled her nose. She was a petite blonde, cute and winsome, even when she made a face. She’d dated Pete Albright back in the day.
“We were horrible. But he could be pretty macho, so I kind of think he deserved it. And as for you, well, you’re just crazy for living there. That house is spooky.”
“I’ve slept in the house, and it’s just fine. And I applaud Mrs. Douglas. She couldn’t begin to afford to fix it up, but she kept it from the wrecking ball. I say good for her.” Sarah shrugged. “Although I do wish she’d fixed at least a few things.”
Caroline smiled. “Hey, you wanted history. Not me—not to live with, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I like history fine or I wouldn’t be working here,” she was quick to say. Not that she really had much choice. The Heritage House was a private museum, owned and operated by her parents. They had come to St. Augustine the year before she was born, embracing everything about the city and quickly making it their home. They were delighted to boast that St. Augustine was the oldest continually inhabited European-based community in the country, founded by the Spaniards in 1565, long before the English stepped foot in Jamestown and even longer before the Mayflower sailed across the sea. They were history buffs, and they hadn’t started up their business to get rich; they simply loved what they did. Caroline’s father, Harry, wrote history textbooks, and that endeavor, not the museum, was what supported them.
“Give me plumbing and electric that work any day. And a roof that doesn’t leak,” Caroline told her.
“I hear you,” Sarah admitted. “But the house is magnificent. And in a year’s time, I’ll have it all set up as a bed-and-breakfast, and I’ll run a collectibles and antiques business out of it, as well. You’ll see,” Sarah assured her.
Caroline laughed. “We should both live so long.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry. You’ll get it done. I just don’t envy you the process. I grew up in the middle of constant renovations, remember? Every bad storm that came through, we were in the dark for weeks. No closets—they all had wardrobes back then. No whirlpool tubs.” Caroline frowned. “And I’m not sure you should be staying there alone. It’s too big. With everything that’s going on, I don’t think it’s safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I meant to show you the paper right away. I get sidetracked too easily.”
“What happened?”
“Another missing woman. This one a local.”
“Oh, no,” Sarah said, reaching for the paper.
“A student from the community college,” Caroline said. “She lived at home, but she went out a couple of night ago with a group of kids for a bonfire on the beach out on Anastasia Island…and didn’t come back. There’s her picture,” Caroline said, tapping the paper.
“That’s horrible,” Sarah said softly. The picture was of a young woman, pretty and blond. It was her high school graduation photo. She had bright eyes full of hope, and long shining hair beneath her cap.
“Scary, huh?” Caroline said. “She looks a lot like the girl who disappeared last year, the one who was on vacation from D.C.”
“That girl disappeared from Jacksonville,” Sarah said. But she stared at the picture. The girls really had been similar in appearance. The big bright eyes, the long blond hair. Serial killers often picked a certain physical type, and if there was a serial killer working somewhere in the area, he had obviously chosen his. Pretty blondes with large eyes. She looked at Caroline, who was still studying the paper. “They don’t know that the other girl ever even came this far. Jacksonville is a big city, and with traffic these days, an hour away.”
“What? Serial killers don’t have cars?” Caroline asked her.
“I know, I know. But look on the bright side. Maybe this girl will turn up,” Sarah said. “Thing is, you can’t obsess, or you’d never leave your house. You just have to be smart and careful.”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m not worried about me. I’m the world’s biggest coward. I wouldn’t live in your spooky old house alone for all the tea in China. I’m worried about you. Nothing scares you, and I think some things should.”
“Not true, trust me. I have a healthy respect for being careful. I lock my doors, and I got friendly with my neighbors right off the bat,” Sarah protested.
Caroline sniffed. “Oh, right. To the left, the pregnant teenager whose husband is in the service. And to the right, the octogenarian. They’ll be a big help in a pinch.”
“Brenda Cole isn’t a teenager, she’s twenty-one. And Mr. Healey is not an octogenarian, he’s only in his seventies—and he has a dog.”
“A teacup Yorkie!” Caroline said.
“One vicious teacup Yorkie, I’ll have you know. He barks like a son of a bitch,” Sarah assured her, then laughed. “Which he is, of course. But seriously, I’m okay, honestly. I have a baseball bat, I will have an alarm system, and I can dial 911 faster than a speeding bullet.”
“Just be careful,” Caroline warned her.
“Yes, ma’am, I promise.”
“Okay. Hey, want to have dinner?”
“I can’t. I have to get home. Gary is at the house.”
“And he’s going to work all night?” Caroline asked.
“Until dark. He’s trying to finish tracing all the pipes today. I have a leak in one wall. So I’m going to head home and call up for pizza delivery.”
“Stop for a six-pack on the way home, too,” Caroline warned. “Make Gary happy. He’s the best. He’s nice, and he can do anything. Funny how all that works out, huh? Gary was such a shop geek in high school, and now he’s doing great. Pete Albright was a star, and I hear he’s working in a fast food restaurant up in Atlanta. Go figure.” She yawned. “Anyway, I’m meeting Will with Renee and Barry. You should grab Gary and go with us.” When Sarah started to reply, Caroline waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. I know, the house comes first. Anyway, let’s go get changed.”
“Will, huh?” Renee Otten and Barry Travis were fellow docents who had struck up a romance, and Will Perkins was Sarah’s second cousin. Their mothers had been close, so he was almost like a brother to her, practically a fraternal twin, since they were both the same age, born a day apart, and shared the same coloring. And lately he and Caroline had become quite the item.
“He’ll be disappointed that you’re not coming. You haven’t been home that long,” Caroline said, turning on the reproach.
Sarah laughed. “I’ve been here six months. And Will and I see plenty of each other. In fact, he has threatened to move in once the place is done.” While she had attended Florida State—not all that far away in Tallahassee—for her bachelor’s degree, she had gone to Virginia for grad school, and then taken a job with an Arlington historical research and tour agency. But when Caroline’s parents had needed another docent, especially one with her knowledge of local history and lore, she had decided it was time to come back. Virginia was beautiful, and she would always love it, but nothing could compare to the city in which she had been born and raised.
“Fine, be that way. In the meantime, I’m changing into something cute and cool and sure to wow them over at Hunky Harry’s.”
“Honey, all you have to do is walk into Hunky Harry’s to wow everyone,” Sarah assured her. “Trust me, you’re ‘wow’ material even in what you’re wearing now.”
The lectures they gave covered topics ranging from the coming of the first Spaniards to British rule, American rule, the Confederacy, Henry Flagler and the railroad, Prohibition and beyond, and they had different outfits to wear for each. Today they were focused on the Seminole Wars and the Civil War. So today they weren’t dressed in silk and satin as would befit a pair of Southern belles.
Today they wore homespun cotton skirts and prim shirts that buttoned chastely to the neck. They were middle-class women of the era, those who churned butter and milked cows. And still, Caroline looked adorable. Sarah had yet to see a style from any era that Caroline didn’t wear well.
“Why, Miss McKinley, you do go on,” Caroline said with a mock simper. “And my, my, but if you aren’t just a plate of buttered grits yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, Missy-yourself, let’s just change and get out of here,” Sarah said as they left the lecture hall. Barry Travis, in breeches and a homespun cotton shirt, was also heading toward the door marked Cast Members Only. He was a tall, handsome man of thirty, with longish brown hair that worked well in historical context.
“I hope you two can get changed quickly, because I’m starving. Renee is ushering the last of the book buyers out the front door, and we are officially closed,” he said cheerfully.
“Sarah’s not coming,” Caroline informed him.
“Can’t,” Sarah said. “My house needs me.” She smiled to acknowledge that even she knew how silly that sounded.
“You know,” he said, studying her and shaking his head, “you could have bought a nice new condo.”
“There will be other nights,” she said.
“What if the world ends tomorrow?” Barry demanded.
“My house will be one day closer to done, and Gary won’t hate me,” Sarah said.
“I give up,” Barry said. “We’ll miss you as we dine on succulent burgers—oh, wait. You didn’t suddenly become a vegetarian, did you?” he asked her.
“She’s a fish-a-tarian, I believe,” Caroline.
“Pescatarian,” Barry said.
“Whatever,” Caroline agreed.
“Doesn’t matter. You can torture me with thoughts of food and I won’t care. Besides, I’m not sure anything at Hunky Harry’s is actually succulent. Anyway, have a great time, and drink a beer for me.”
“It’s a good thing Harry didn’t hear you say that. And it’s not true—the food there is good,” Barry protested.
“Yes, you’re right. The food is very good, especially the fish. But I can’t go. Not tonight,” Sarah said.
She hurried into the women’s locker room and quickly changed. Caroline had been right about one thing: she should stop and pick up a six-pack. Maybe a twelve-pack. Gary had a few employees working overtime right along with him.
She managed to escape without getting into further conversation, because when Caroline came in, she headed straight for the showers. Was she primping so hard for Will? Maybe. The two of them had always liked one another, but Sarah had never seen any signs that their relationship was anything beyond friendship. Then again, who knew? They said that friends made the best spouses. She certainly didn’t know.
She’d fallen in love once, and it had been a brief and poignant affair. Clay Jenner had been a soldier. They’d met in Newport News, and had quickly discovered they both loved Buddy Holly, Peggy Lee, lounge music and historic ships. They’d spent a few months laughing, talking, listening to music and exploring historic sites. Then he’d been deployed. He’d been wonderfully romantic, going down on one knee when the cherry blossoms had been exploding all over the park, and he’d offered her the diamond she now wore on a chain.
He hadn’t come home. That had been three years ago now, and although she would probably never get over the pain of losing him, she had accepted that he wasn’t coming back. He had gone into the military for the schooling and the benefits, but, as he had told her, he’d signed the paper swearing that he would obey his superior officers and defend his country. It would have been nice if he could have served out his time somewhere safe, like Germany, but it hadn’t happened that way.
He had been killed in a sniper attack. A bullet straight through the brain. He had probably never known what had hit him.
For that she was grateful. As her dad had told her once, every man and woman would die. An easy death was something that meant even though God might take a man early, he loved him enough to keep him from suffering.
Now she was glad to be home, where there were no memories of Clay, and glad to have moved into her house.
She didn’t drive to work anymore; her house and the museum were in the area that was referred to as Old Town. After stopping for a twelve-pack and walking another four blocks through enclaves of tourist-centric businesses, she was thinking that a six-pack would have been fine.
She was almost at the walk that led up to her house when she saw him. The man she had noticed during her lecture.
While many buildings in Old Town sat right up near the sidewalk, there was actually a stretch of lawn in front of her place, along with a front walk and driveway—they’d needed a place for the cars and hearses to go. The man was only on the sidewalk, but he was right at the start of the coquina shell walk that led to her front porch. And he was staring at the house.
He must have sensed that she was watching him, because he turned, looked at her gravely, then smiled as she walked toward him, eyeing him carefully.
“Well, hello. It’s Ms. McKinley, right?” he said. “Excellent lecture—thank you.”
She nodded, staring at him warily. “Can I…help you?”
“I was admiring the house,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if she should say that it was hers or not. People had a tendency to be friendly in St. Augustine. In fact, there were dozens of B&Bs in the city, most of them homes that were open to strangers. In fact, she couldn’t wait for her own house to be one of them.
But at the moment, she apparently had a bigger-city attitude going. And the first rule was never let a stranger know where you live.
He didn’t look like a stalker. In fact, he was extremely attractive.
She reminded herself that many a serial killer had been attractive. They weren’t all wild-eyed Charles Mansons. Ted Bundy had traded on his boy-next-door good looks.
She decided she was being ridiculous. The odds were strongly in favor of his being a tourist, one with an interest in history, given that she’d first seen him at the museum. Plus, there were still plenty of people about on the streets, and though the day was dying, there was still lots of light.
He didn’t seem to need a reply. “The architecture is striking. It’s quite a compelling place. Haunting, even.”
“Thanks,” she said. When he looked at her curiously, she added, “I own it.”
He studied her for a moment, then laughed. “Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that a historian owns a piece of history. I see you have a lot of work going on.”
“When you buy an old building, you have to be prepared for a lot of work,” she told him. The twelve-pack was getting heavy but she fought against shifting the weight. She didn’t want him offering to carry it and walk her up to the house. It wasn’t a B&B yet, just a big old place without an alarm, and she didn’t own a dog—not even a teacup Yorkie.
Of course, he didn’t seem the menacing type. He looked far more likely to go after what he wanted with wit and charm. My, how her thoughts had quickly wandered.
“Well, congratulations on owning such a beautiful old place. Oh, by the way, my name is Caleb Anderson. And I know you’re Sarah McKinley. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said. Then she startled herself by what she said next, because he had already turned to walk away. “Are you in town long?” she asked him.
She thought he hesitated before answering—only a half second, but a hesitation all the same.
“I’m not sure. I’ll be around a few more days, at least. Thanks again. I really enjoyed your lecture—especially the way you handled those kids.”
“Thanks,” she said.
He lifted a hand. “Hope to see you again,” he said casually and walked on, heading in the direction of Old Town and the shops that stayed open into the night.
She watched him go, then felt the heaviness of the twelve-pack again. She turned and hurried inside, and was immediately glad of her efforts. Gary Morton, all muscles and friendly smiles, kissed her cheek and told her she was brilliant. The two men working with him were equally happy.
“Although I did wonder when you were actually going to make it into the house,” Gary said. “Who’s the hunk?”
“Hunk?” she asked, pretending not to know exactly who he was talking about.
“Tall, well-built guy you were just talking to out front?” he teased.
“Oh. Just some guy who was at one of the lectures today. He was admiring the house. This is the historic district—people are supposed to admire my house.”
He grinned. “Are you sure it was just the house he was admiring?”
She laughed. “Since he was staring at the house before I got there, I’m assuming that, yeah, it was just the house he was admiring. Anyway, we—as in you and me—were invited to dinner,” she told him. “Will, Caroline, and Renee and Brad from the museum.”
“What? You didn’t invite Mr. Gorgeous?” he queried, grinning.
“Gary…” she said warningly.
“Okay, okay. Don’t hit me.” He put up a hand as if to protect himself, smiling all the while. “But pizza is good enough for me. I want to get this place in shape for you, so I need to knock out that last wall. I know it means a lot of work and a lot of mess, but you can’t have a leaking water pipe. It will destroy the whole place on you, given time. You can go ahead if you want to. You don’t have to be here wielding a sledgehammer.”
“No, no, thank you, but I’m just as happy to hang around while you knock down walls,” Sarah assured him, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m dialing the pizza guy right now. What do you guys want…?”
“One cheese, one pepperoni, that’ll be great, thanks,” Gary said, then turned and disappeared down the hallway.
Sarah ordered the pizza, then took a minute and looked around.
At the moment, everything seemed to be coated in a thin layer of white dust. But even as she noted the dust, she was happy. It was such a beautiful place. So what if it had been a mortuary for a while? It had originally been built as the home of an American politician’s aide soon after Florida became a territory. She had a sweeping porch that led to the original etched glass entry door. There was a small mudroom, still with the original tile. The house boasted a huge foyer, with a hall that stretched back toward a multitude of rooms that, while certainly viewing rooms during the house’s tenure as a mortuary, had been planned as an office, a formal dining room, dual parlors—one for ladies and another for gentlemen—a music room and a laundry room. Somewhere along the line, a kitchen had been added to the house proper. The original kitchen had been a separate building out back; it was now empty but would one day make a beautiful apartment. The old carriage house had already been turned into an apartment, and though it, too, needed work, it was livable. The plumbing worked, and she’d put new sheets on the old four-poster bed in the large downstairs room. She’d put in sink, refrigerator and a microwave, just in case some of Gary’s crew should ever need to stay. The carriage house stood just to the left of the driveway, creating an L with the main house. She couldn’t help but take a moment to bask in the fact that she actually owned such a beautiful house. Well, she and the bank.
So far, Gary hadn’t had to rip apart either of the front parlors. The men’s parlor, on the right, was done in wood and dark tones. The ladies’ parlor was light, with soft beige-toned wallpaper and crown molding painted to match. It was peeling, but that was all right. She could handle the cosmetic details later. There was a grand piano in the parlor, out of tune, but it had come with the house, and she intended to have it tuned and lovingly repaired eventually. There was also a small secretary, where she worked when she was home. Now she took one of the beers for herself, sat down at her desk and started looking at the articles she had collected on old St. Augustine, looking for anything about the house.
She found herself musing rather than reading.
There was no reason to think there was anything suspect about the man from the museum staring at her house. There was plenty to admire about it, and this was a tourist town, after all. And that was what tourists did. They stared.
He wasn’t the usual tourist, though. Of that she was sure. He had an air about him. Like a…cop. No, not a cop. A CEO. No, not a CEO, either. She wasn’t quite sure what it was that made him so striking, even over and above his looks. Maybe it was that build, sleek and powerful, and a stance that seemed to speak quietly of confidence.
Strange. Caroline had thought he seemed familiar. There was something familiar about him, but Sarah couldn’t begin to figure out what it was. She was certain she would have remembered if she had ever met the man before.
“Hey!”
She had been so lost in her thoughts that she was startled when she heard Gary’s voice.
“What is it?”
“Sorry, I think you should see this.”
She looked at him, surprised. She didn’t know a thing about construction, and she had told him so when she hired him to supervise the restoration of the mansion. Whatever he came across, he was supposed to deal with it. He knew what would fly with both the contemporary codes and the demands of the historic board. He knew walls and leaky water pipes. She didn’t.
“What?” she asked again, worried by the look he was giving her. Things had been going so well, so incredibly well, and she didn’t want anything to change that.
This wasn’t going to be about leaking pipes. Instinctively, she knew that.
Just the tone of his voice was disturbing as if she had suddenly rounded a corner to find herself in an alien world. A creeping feeling of terrible unease began to fill her, slowly at first, then cold and sweeping, like skeletal fingers of ice reaching from a grave on a winter’s day.
“Bones,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.
“Bones?” she repeatedly blankly. “What, you found a dead squirrel?” she asked weakly, though she knew full well that wasn’t he had found.
“No, Sarah. Human bones.”
“Well, the house was used as a mortuary,” she reminded him, though she knew she was being stupid. She just didn’t want it to be true. It was as if everything had suddenly shifted. The world had been good, and now, from this moment on, it was going to be something altogether worse.
“We found them in the wall, Sarah. The wall. Mortuaries didn’t usually wall up the dead,” Gary said, then looked at her questioningly, as if waiting for her to decide what to do.
She nodded. “I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them we have a skeleton in the wall.”
“A skeleton?” Gary repeated, staring at her blankly.
“Right,” she said slowly. “Bones. A skeleton.”
“Sarah, please. Just come look.”
She stood at last and followed him back to what she intended to one day be a beautiful library.
She knew then what he had wanted her to see. There was no skeleton in the wall.
There were dozens of them.
2
“I heard you found a body,” Adam Harrison said over the phone. Adam never did waste time with pleasantries over the phone, Caleb thought. No “Hey, how are you settling in? Good trip?”
In person, Adam Harrison—Caleb’s boss and CEO of Harrison Investigations—was charming. One of the most dignified and courteous men who had ever walked the earth, Caleb was convinced. But he just wasn’t a phone man.
“Yes, but nothing that has anything to do with our case. I just heard from that lieutenant friend of yours. The body is—”
“Frederick J. Russell, banker, who must have been speeding around that curve. He’s been missing for twelve months, and if there’s anything more, no one will know until the coroner’s finished his report. A fine day’s work, even if there’s no connection,” Adam said.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t get you any closer to what you’re looking for. Have you discovered anything from talking to the locals?”
Caleb smiled, glad that Adam couldn’t see him. “Adam, I’ve only been here twenty-four hours. But I’m out there, meeting people. I’ll do everything in my power to chase down the girl who just went missing and see if we can discover some connection between her case and Jennie’s. Frankly, I’m hoping this girl just ran off with some guy. I’d just as soon not find her corpse.” He was afraid he was going to find her dead, though there was always hope. As for Jennie, her own mother sensed that she was gone.
“Have you gotten a feel for anything?” Adam asked.
Caleb hesitated. A feel for anything. That could mean just about anything when you worked for Adam. Harrison Investigations specialized in the bizarre. The unexplained. The things that went bump in the night. Caleb didn’t think they were going to find anything bizarre connected to this case, though. At any given time, hundreds of serial killers were on the prowl around the world. Most murders resulted from a moment’s fury and were relatively easily solved. The husband who suddenly stabbed his wife with the carving knife over a burned meal usually wasn’t smart enough to hide the prints or other trace evidence that would lead police straight to him.
But serial killers…they were hard to catch. All the DNA in the world couldn’t help if the killer wasn’t in the system. Ditto fingerprints. And they went after strangers, so linking their victims was a challenge, because the pattern connecting them wasn’t obvious. And that was just when the bodies were found. At Quantico he’d once attended a lecture on the number of serial victims who went undiscovered. Swamps were a great place to dispose of bodies. Soft tissue decayed quickly; animals and insects destroyed evidence.
Complicating things further, serial killers were frequently mobile. They attacked when and where the moment—and the victim—was right; they might kill in one location and dispose of the body in another. The killer might move from Florida to Georgia…or Oregon—wherever life took him, killing all the while and counting on geography and competing bureaucracies to keep his victims from being connected into one ongoing case.
Caleb was afraid that Jennie Lawson might have been the victim of just such a killer, and because of that, her mother might never have the peace of burying her precious daughter’s body.
But did any of that add up to a feel for anything?
“No gut intuition, not yet,” he told Adam. It was barely a white lie. He genuinely wasn’t sure he’d had a feeling for anything. Admittedly, he’d been interested in that house, the beautiful old colonial that was undergoing a lot of renovation work, as soon as he’d seen it. But had he actually been drawn to it? Beckoned?
And was it coincidental that it was owned by the gorgeous brunette from the historical museum? He was forced to admit that it probably was. The woman obviously had a passion for history, so there was nothing odd about her owning a piece of it. But was it odd that he had felt drawn to both?
Who wouldn’t be drawn to such a beautiful woman, with her flashing green eyes, the sense of fun touched with a bit of wickedness that had come out as she handled those kids, her obvious intelligence, and the lithe, sleek body that had been obvious even hidden under the dowdy clothing of a long-ago day.
“Caleb—you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m sorry. Like I said, nothing yet. Trust me, I’ll be doing everything in my power to find Jennie Lawson. If she’s here anywhere, I will find her.”
“Of course. Don’t forget, follow up on everything. No matter how off-the-wall you may think your hunch is, check it out. Those are often the signs that will take you where you need to go.”
“Right. I’ll keep in contact. Though I assume you’re getting information from the police faster than I am.”
“I’ll keep you up-to-date on things.”
“Thanks. And likewise.”
Caleb hung up.
He stood and stretched, then wandered to the door.
He had chosen a bed-and-breakfast on Avila Street not for its charm—though it certainly offered enough—but because he could get a room on the ground floor with a private entrance. His doorway was on the side of the building, and a bougainvillea-shaded walk led straight out to the street at the rear of the rambling old Victorian.
Old Town St. Augustine was pretty much an easily navigated rectangle. On the coast, the massive Fort Marion, the old Spanish Castillo de San Marcos, served as the city’s massive landmark, and the town had grown around it in the remaining three directions. Now the bay was lined with restaurants, hotels, shops and B&Bs. Beyond that main stretch were all kinds of smaller but interesting tourist attractions: the oldest house, the oldest schoolhouse, the oldest pharmacy—this was a city that prided itself on being old, and it was a historical treasure trove. Interspersed with the tourist attractions were more B&Bs, one-of-a-kind shops and even a number of private residences. At night, the backstreets were quiet, except when the sightseeing carriages and ghost tours went by.
With St. Augustine’s notoriety as the oldest continually inhabited European city in the United States—with sixty years on Jamestown—naturally it was rumored to harbor a lot of ghosts.
As he stood on the sidewalk, feeling the Atlantic breeze that cooled the city year-round, he was startled as one police car went by, and then another, quickly followed by a third.
They were turning down St. George Street.
Caleb followed.
“Oh, my God. This is ghastly,” Caroline breathed.
“Caroline, please,” Sarah said.
“Horrifying,” Caroline went on.
“Caroline!” Will protested. “Please, they’re bones.”
“Human bones,” Caroline reminded him. “Human bones.”
Will looked at Caroline, then rolled his light green eyes at Sarah as he ran a hand through his dark chestnut-colored hair.
St. Augustine could be a very small town. One officer had talked to another after Sarah had called the police, and the story about the bones in her walls had traveled like lightning, with a cop friend of Will’s reaching him while he and the others were waiting for a table. The police had barely arrived before her cousin and her friends showed up, as well.
“This is history in the making,” Barry Travis said, looking far more contemporary in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.
“History?” Renee Otten protested. “As if we need more ghost stories in St. Augustine.”
“I’ll bet the undertaker was selling coffins to the families of the dead, dumping the bodies in the walls, then selling the coffins again,” Sarah said. She felt tired. And despite the logic of her words, she was still unnerved. She loved this house, and she was pretty certain that she was right. In a few cases, something like mummified tissue remained on the bodies—enough to hold them together. And there were stained scraps of fabric left, as well, which seemed to date the interment to the mid to late eighteen-hundreds.
She felt terrible, of course, that human beings had been treated with no respect and no reverence whatsoever. But she found it criminal, not ghastly. And she was aware, above all, that this discovery meant bringing in a team of historians and anthropologists, on top of the forensic specialists. She would be like a visitor in her own house. She had learned enough about dig sites when she worked as a historian in Arlington, charting relics and remains, to know that for a fact.
“How can you be so sure? Maybe someone who lived here was a monster. A murderer. There was a guy in Chicago who did away with whole families in the late eighteen-hundreds. He was worse than Jack the Ripper—but they caught him,” Will offered.
She glared at her cousin. “Will!”
“Sorry,” he told her.
They were standing just inside the doorway. Behind them stood Tim Jamison, the police lieutenant who’d been handed the case. He was convinced that these weren’t modern-day homicides, but there were still plenty of questions to be answered. He was supervising the arrival of medical personnel and forensic anthropologists. Gary was sitting in the kitchen, drinking beer. He had already given Tim his statement but didn’t want to leave yet.
There were already a few reporters hanging around, and Gary didn’t want to deal with them. He just wanted to eat his pizza, drink his beer and stop the leak.
“Look at it this way,” Caroline said, brightening. “They’re obviously very old bones. They’ll get them all out quickly and start studying them in some lab somewhere. You’ll be able to get back to work on the house, and when you do open for business, it will be fabulous. People love to stay at haunted houses. There’s some castle in Ireland that’s supposed to be haunted and you can’t even get a reservation there for years.”
She offered Sarah a bright smile, then turned pale. “Those poor people. I bet they really do haunt the house. Can you imagine how terrible it must be to just get dumped out of your coffin? Oh! And we were just talking about Pete Albright this morning—and how we’d made up stories about people being buried in the house. And now it turns out those stories were true. I know I’d be furious enough to be haunting the place if my body had been dumped out of my coffin, wouldn’t you?”
Sarah laughed at that. “Caroline, if someone dumped my body out of my coffin, I wouldn’t care because I’d already be dead. My friends and family would have to be furious for me. And I don’t believe we hang around after we’re dead.”
“You an atheist or something?” Barry asked, surprised.
She shook her head. “No, I believe in God and the afterlife, and I even like going to church. That’s my point. We go to heaven or…wherever when we die. We’re no longer tied to our bodies. So if I was dumped out of a coffin, I doubt if I’d know it, and if I did, I wouldn’t care. I mean, we’re organic, we rot. So I don’t think that I’d be hanging around to haunt anyone, that’s all.”
“It’s that time she spent in Virginia,” Caroline said, shivering. “She worked in a bunch of old graveyards. I guess she got used to hanging out with dead people.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.
“If you go over to the old cemetery just down the street, they tell you that you’re only seeing half of it, that the street is paved right on top of hundreds of graves,” Sarah said. “And the tourists eat it up. So if I get a good haunted-house story out of this, is that so bad?”
Renee shivered and moved closer. “When they said human bones, it scared me to death, I have to admit. I mean, with that girl missing and all…”
“Renee! You thought someone murdered her, then hid her body in my house—behind a wall, no less—and I never even noticed?” Sarah asked sarcastically. Renee turned bright red, and Sarah instantly felt sorry. Renee was a good docent; she just seemed to be a bit of an airhead in real life. She was pretty and sweet, and kids loved her, but Sarah couldn’t quite understand how she and Barry had ended up in a relationship. Barry was inquisitive and intuitive, and knew a lot more history than what was contained in the training material the docents received. And Renee was…Renee.
“Well, of course…not,” Renee said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that that poor girl is missing and it has me worried, you know?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump on you,” Sarah assured her quickly. “Of course that missing girl was the first thing you thought of. I’m just grateful that ‘my’ bones do seem to be very old ones. You know, I’ve heard stories about this house, but never anything about a crazy undertaker filling the walls with his…clients. I’m going to have to do some more research and see what I can find out.”
“The only way you would have heard the story would have been if someone had already discovered the bones and dug them out,” Will said, his tone ironic.
She cast him an exasperated stare, but he didn’t notice. He was looking out the open door to where a crowd had gathered on the street, a uniformed officer keeping them back. “Hey, I know that guy.”
“What guy?” Sarah asked.
“Don’t go staring,” Will said.
“Why? Whoever he is, he’s in front of my house,” Sarah said. She gripped Will’s shoulder and looked past him, then gasped.
“What?” Caroline asked, jumping.
“It’s him.”
“Him, who?” Caroline demanded, then gave a little gasp of her own and said, “Oh, my God, it’s the guy from the museum!”
“He was here when I got home, staring at the place,” Sarah said.
“I told you, I thought I knew him from somewhere…oh, my God!” Caroline said. “You don’t think that—”
“He was a creepy old undertaker after the Civil War and stuffed a bunch of bodies in the walls?” Will asked, laughing.
Caroline flushed. “No. It’s just that—”
“I know who—” Will began. But he didn’t get a chance to finish. Lieutenant Tim Jamison was striding their way.
“Let him in, Fred,” Tim Jamison said into his radio, obviously speaking to the uniformed officer who was holding the onlookers back.
Sarah watched as Fred let the man from the museum step past.
“Hey!” she said as she caught Tim’s arm.
He turned back to her. “What?”
“Tim, who is that? Why are you letting him in?”
“I know who he is,” Will said. “I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s a diver, and he just did some work with us.”
“A diver?” Sarah repeated, confused.
“He’s actually a P.I. with some firm out of Virginia or D.C.—and he’s a diver,” Tim told Sarah. “He’s connected, too. The captain told me to help him out as much as I can. Will you excuse me?”
Sarah let him go, though she wanted to protest that it was her house everyone was traipsing through, and she should be the one to tell any nonessential personnel whether they could or couldn’t enter.
“He’s a damned good diver. He found a body this morning,” Will said.
“What?” Sarah, Caroline and Renee demanded in unison.
“The plot thickens,” Barry said, twisting a pretend moustache.
Sarah shot him a glance telling him that his joke was in poor taste, then turned to Will. “The missing girl?” she asked.
Will shook his head. “We were looking for her, but it was a crapshoot. We don’t know exactly when she disappeared, much less where she went, we don’t know if she was killed…the bosses decided to send divers down since she’d been at a beach party when she was last seen. They called me in as the dive master and coordinator. We didn’t find her—but your guy did discover a submerged car with a man in it. He knows his stuff—he’s a good diver.”
So he’d found a body. And now there were bodies in her house. Did that mean anything?
“His name is Caleb Anderson,” Will supplied.
“I could swear I know him from somewhere,” Caroline said.
And then, walking beside Tim, he was coming up on the porch. “I don’t think this discovery can possibly impact your search,” Tim was telling him. “This is a case for the history books—and new fodder for the ghost tours around here. Intriguing, though.”
Caleb Anderson reached the group standing just inside the door, then reached out and shook hands with Will, nodded at the others, then walked over to stand next to Sarah. “Quite a discovery,” he said to her.
“Yes, not what I was expecting, certainly,” she said.
Caroline moved forward, offering her hand. “Hi. I’m Caroline Roth. I saw you at the museum earlier. And these are our fellow docents, Barry Travis and Renee Otten.”
“Nice to meet you,” Caleb said, shaking hands all around before turning back to Sarah. “You haven’t owned the house very long?” he asked her.
“A few months,” she said.
“But she’s been in love with it forever—since we were little kids,” Caroline said. “She was working in the D.C. area and just came home a few months ago to help out at the museum. And then she got the opportunity to buy this place and jumped at it.”
Sarah stared at Caroline, wondering if her friend was going to give him her full biography. Then she wondered why it mattered. It wasn’t as if her life were a secret in any way. Still, for some reason, she thought that the stranger should have to work for his information regarding any of them—maybe because she didn’t think info about him was going to be easy to come by.
“I see. Well, it is a beautiful place—and the bones will add a nice touch of the macabre to its history—” Caleb said.
“Anderson?” Tim Jamison said, breaking in. “This way.”
“Excuse me,” Caleb said, and left them, following Tim to the almost-library, where the walls had been torn out.
“Come on,” Will said to Sarah. “Pack a bag and let’s head out. You can stay at my place tonight.”
“Or you can stay with me,” Caroline offered.
Sarah shook her head. “Will, you live in a studio. And, Caroline, no offense, because you know I love her, but your mom will just mother me to death. I’ll go to Bertie Larsen’s Tropical Breeze.”
Bertie owned a charming little B&B around the corner. At any given time there were twenty to thirty such establishments operating in town, and the owners tended to help each other out. Sometimes business in the city was the proverbial feast, and sometimes it was famine, but the owners tended to stay friends, or at least allies. As a group they could advertise or petition the city for benefits like tax breaks, benefitting them all when they worked together. And since some places accepted pets, some accepted kids and some neither, they often passed on a competitor’s name when they didn’t meet a potential guest’s criteria.
Bertie wasn’t just a fellow businesswoman, she had become a good friend who had already given Sarah lots of advice. Best of all, her inn had a number of rooms with private entrances, and Sarah was in the mood for privacy. She crossed her fingers that a room with a private entrance would be available.
“If you’re sure…” Will said.
“I am,” Sarah insisted. “I don’t mind spending the night away from home, but I want to be able to get in and out of my own house easily if I need to. And since we all agree I can’t stay here tonight, please excuse me. I’m going to gather a few things.”
Sarah didn’t wait for an answer as she hurried up to her bedroom. She’d meant to just grab her toiletries and an outfit for the next day, but she found herself sitting down on the foot of her bed instead.
“This…sucks,” she muttered aloud.
She loved her bedroom. The mattress was new, but the bed was original to the period, a massive four-poster, intricately carved. The dresser, free-standing mirror, secretary and bedside occasional tables matched the bed. The floor was hardwood, and she had stripped, stained and waxed it herself, then purchased the elegant Oriental carpet on eBay. Her clothing was hung in the wardrobe she’d gotten from Annie’s Antiques, just down Ponce. The private bath featured a claw-foot tub and porcelain taps. She felt real pride in everything she had accomplished here and in the rest of the house.
But tonight there would be people in and out. Gary had agreed to stay to help as they used echo-location to discern whether there were additional bodies entombed in the walls. And despite her own credentials, Sarah—who had worked on many burial sites but had never managed one—had agreed that the excavation of the bones should be supervised by Professor Manning, an expert from the college who had one doctorate in history and another in anthropology. She was far too close to the situation here, too involved.
She just wanted those skeletons out of her walls and respectfully interred—somewhere far away.
It was definitely going to be one hell of a story. So far the police had agreed to her request that no press be let into the house until the researchers and police had carried out the necessary investigations. The bones wouldn’t be going to a mortuary any time soon. While the circumstances leading to their presence in her walls were being determined, the bones themselves would be going to various institutes for study.
Study that would take time.
She let out a groan of frustration, stood up, grabbed her things and stuffed them into a small rolling suitcase, and then paused, looking around the room and catching sight of herself in the standing mirror. She looked too thin and too pale, she decided. Why? She wasn’t afraid of the bones, wasn’t afraid of being haunted by ghosts crying out for help. She firmly believed that the soul did not remain in the body after death.
Still, this discovery had somehow changed everything.
Her house had now become a small part of history, a part of local lore and legend, in a way she had never anticipated or wished for.
There was nothing genuinely tragic about the discovery—an undertaker of long ago had done all the right things in public, then made money by selling the same coffins over and over again. The souls of the people in the walls were long gone, and anyone who had loved them was long gone, too.
But for some reason it felt as if her life was going to be different from now on, and that made her uneasy.
At least I’m not a blonde, she found herself thinking, then winced. Where had that thought come from? A young woman, a blonde, was missing, and that was sad, but it had nothing to do with her house. It was odd, though, that there had been two disappearances in two years—two young women, both with blond hair. Maybe it wasn’t the most admirable way to be thinking, but it was reassuring to know that at least she didn’t seem to fit the profile of those recent victims.
She sighed and turned to leave. For tonight, she wanted out of here. Rolling her bag behind her, she hurried downstairs.
There was no one in the entry or hallway, but she could hear voices coming from the library.
The room where the grisly discovery had been made.
As she stood there, wondering whether she should let someone in charge know she was leaving, Caroline reappeared.
“Come on, at least come get a drink with us,” Caroline suggested.
“All right, but let me run over to Bertie’s and get a room first.”
“I still say you could stay with me,” Caroline told her, then gave in when she saw that Sarah’s mind was made up. “Never mind. Go on and get your stuff over to Bertie’s, then meet us at Hunky Harry’s.”
“It’s a plan,” Sarah agreed.
“You’ll really show?”
“Yes, I’ll really show,” Sarah said. “I promise.” She quickly gave Caroline a kiss on the cheek and headed out. From the corner of her eye she’d seen Will, Travis and Renee heading toward them from the hallway, and she wanted to get away from everyone. She desperately needed a little respite from the day’s excitement.
She made it down to the sidewalk, where there was still a throng of tourists and a few locals. Friends. She found herself caught up in conversation, whether she wanted to be or not.
Luckily, the cops were there, too, clearing the area. As soon as she could manage it without being hated by every friend and acquaintance in the area, she escaped.
There was something about the house, definitely. It had drawn him from the first, and Caleb didn’t think it was because he had somehow sensed that a long-ago funeral director had been playing fast and loose with the corpses of his “clients.” Tim Jamison hadn’t seemed surprised to see him standing on the sidewalk, but then again, a couple dozen people had been standing there. Still, he was glad when the police lieutenant asked him in. Maybe the fact that he had found a corpse in the water earlier that day somehow made him worthy.
Jamison had just finished clearing everyone unofficial out of the room where the skeletons had been found.
“Is this something, or what?” the cop was saying now. “I remember the newspapers being filled with something similar just a few years ago—the mortician comforting the grieving relatives, then dumping the bodies of the deceased and selling the coffins again. Coffins aren’t cheap. Even cheap coffins aren’t cheap, and the satin-lined, down-stuffed ones will really cost you. There’s lot of money to be made selling those suckers over and over again. I guess there have always been people willing to make an extra buck or two off the dead, no matter how they do it.”
Caleb looked around the library. Most of the plaster had been torn out, revealing piles of bones between the studs. Some of the bones were still attached to each other by bits of mummified sinew and tendon, preserved inside their plaster prison.
It was a gruesome sight, even for him. In some cases shreds of clothing remained. One of the corpses was wearing the remnants of a Civil War-era hat. It looked as if they had stumbled on a particularly bizarre scenario for a haunted house. Someone might easily think the remains were the result of an exhibit designer’s mad imagination.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Jamison asked. “Hell, I’m a homicide cop. I’ve worked in Jacksonville, Miami and Houston—tough towns, all of them—and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The lieutenant shook his head, staring at the remnants of what had once been living, breathing human beings.
A small man was standing close to the wall, the epitome of the absent-minded professor with his glasses and tufts of wild gray hair, peering closely at the remains, a penlight in his hand. “You know, embalming started becoming popular after the war—the Civil War. They had to try to get those dead boys back home to their mamas and sweethearts. But it really came into vogue for most Americans because of Abraham Lincoln. When he died, his widow wanted him buried back in Illinois, so they held a public viewing as the body traveled cross-country by train, so they had to keep Abe looking good for the mourners. He was embalmed by injecting fluids through the veins, but I think these poor souls were embalmed in the much less efficient fashion of the day, such as disemboweling a corpse and stuffing it with charcoal, or perhaps just immersing the body in alcohol. I imagine they were given proper viewings to satisfy the families, and then they were walled up. You can see here—” he pointed out different shades of plaster that had been chipped from the walls “—that they were put in at different times. Just guessing from the look of the corpses, I’d say this was all done within a ten-year period. See how the bones have darkened just a bit more? That ten-year span was a very long time ago. Fascinating, the way some of the corpses have mummified. My office will retrieve the remains in the morning. Legally, we could arrange removal right now, but I want to bring in specialists to make sure everything is handled correctly. This is quite the find.”
The man finally turned from his macabre monologue, saw Caleb and sized him up. He pocketed his penlight and offered him a hand. “How do you do? You’re that out-of-towner who found that fellow who’s been missing a year, aren’t you? I did his autopsy this afternoon. I’m the M.E. here in town, Florence Benson—my parents were fans of the Ziegfeld follies, I’m afraid—so they call me Doc Benson or Floby around here. Nice to meet you. You solved a sad mystery today.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Doc Benson, and I’m glad to have been of service,” Caleb assured him. “Did you find out anything interesting regarding the body I found?”
“I sent what tissue samples I could gather out to the lab, but after a year in the water…it’s hard going. I’m reserving my comments until I’ve completed my work.”
“Very smart,” Caleb said.
“Yes, especially given the circumstances. I’m working with little more than bone on that corpse, too, which is proving to be more tedious than you’d imagine. At least I know where all his body parts are. Here…well, as you can see, some of these skeletons are still more or less together, and some have fallen completely apart. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.”
“So it appears,” Caleb agreed.
The man studied him again, up and down, making an assessment.
“You work for some secret agency, huh?” the medical examiner asked him.
“Hardly secret,” Caleb said. “We’re just licensed investigators, like lots of other firms. But my boss doesn’t advertise. He’s the quiet kind and only takes on cases that call for what we can offer that other agencies can’t.”
He knew that Tim Jamison was watching him as he spoke, intrigued. Tim had been asked by the mayor, who been asked by the governor, to bring Caleb in on the case of the newly missing girls. He was both wary, and curious. But he seemed open-minded enough, and that was all Caleb really cared about.
“So where has Miss McKinley gotten herself off to, Tim?” Floby asked.
“She left for the night. She grew up here—she’s got plenty of friends around who would offer her a place to stay for the night. I’m not sure where she’s headed. She loves this old place, though. This has to be a big setback for her.”
“Not so bad—unless the whole house turns out to be riddled with corpses,” Floby said cheerfully. “And I don’t think it will. This seems to have been the…dump, shall we say? And as I said, I’ll have the pros in tomorrow to clear out these unwanted tenants, you cops and that professor will do some investigating—though I’m sure you’ll find out these people were already dead before they got stuck in the wall, just in case anyone was worried about that—and then everyone will get the burial they should have gotten years ago. And she’s a historian with on-site experience, so she’ll understand the significance of this find. And since she’s not a shrinking-violet kind of girl, I’m betting she’ll want in on the investigation herself.”
“I’d really appreciate permission to help, too,” Caleb said.
Floby looked at Tim Jamison, who nodded, giving Floby the okay to allow a stranger in on the find.
“We’ll be starting bright and early, so we can catch all the light we can. Someone will be posted out on the porch twenty-four seven to keep the lookie-loos away, so you just check in with him whenever you get here,” Floby told him.
“Thanks. I’ll leave you two, then. I appreciate being let in on this, Lieutenant,” Caleb told Jamison.
Jamison shrugged. “I don’t know who you know, but they sure as hell know all the right people.” He grinned. “You proved your abilities this morning. I’m happy to keep you in the loop—all the loops. And I’m sure you’ll do me the same courtesy in return.”
“Of course.”
Two handshakes and Caleb was out the door. He took a minute to turn and stare up at the house—just as a small crowd was still doing from the sidewalk, gruesomely speculating on the state of the bodies.
Caleb moved quickly past the crowd to avoid being questioned by those who had seen him leave the house and moved farther down the street, then stopped and studied the house again.
Brick, mortar and wood. The place embodied everything that old-town Southern charm should be. It was a decaying but grand old edifice. It wasn’t evil, it was just a house. Still, he felt that there were things waiting to be discovered there, things that he needed to know.
But no ghosts danced on the wraparound porch. No specters wavered in the windows.
The house was just a house.
He turned and headed back toward his B&B, planning to check his e-mail and then head out for something to eat. He’d barely made it around the corner when he saw Sarah McKinley ahead of him, towing a small wheeled overnight bag along behind her. She was alone. That surprised him; she’d been with a group of friends last time he’d seen her.
Suddenly she stopped, as if sensing someone behind her. For a moment she went dead still. Then she swung around and stared at him before asking, “What the hell are you doing here?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you following me?”
3
“Man, that was really creepy,” Caroline said, walking along Avila Street. She shuddered and moved closer to Will. It was strange. She had known Will most of her life. They had fought and teased one another as kids. They had become friends as adults. They had shared their trials and tribulations with other members of the opposite sex with one another.
Then…
They’d been together one night—at Hunky Harry’s, as a matter of fact—and in the middle of laughing at something together, they had looked at each other and their laughter had stopped. And now…well, it wasn’t as if they’d gone insane or anything, but they were both carefully negotiating the transition from friends to the realization that they wanted to be much more.
Will set an arm around her shoulders. “Leave it to Sarah. And what happened earlier today, that was pretty damn creepy, too.”
“Yeah, tell us about it. Who is this Caleb guy, anyway?” Barry asked, strolling up alongside Will.
“Hey, wait! What about me?” Renee demanded, pushing forward.
“What are you trying to do? Block the whole sidewalk?” Caroline complained.
But they all wanted to hear what Will had to say, so they crowded together and walked along in an awkward group, trying to hear him clearly.
“I think the guy is some kind of corpse magnet,” Will said. “We were looking for that missing girl, Winona Hart, and Lieutenant Jamison said Anderson had to be on the dive team. He didn’t explain why, just said the mayor had told him to extend every courtesy to the guy and let him work with us. He has connections in Washington. Some hotshot sent him down here. I have to tell you, we were ticked at first. But the thing is, in the last year, we’ve dived that area a dozen times, and no one ever found that car. But—he found it as easy as if he had a map. Now that’s creepy.”
“So who was the guy he found?” Renee asked.
“Frederick J. Russell, a banker from Jacksonville,” Will said. “He was reported missing about twelve months ago.”
“So what happened to him? How’d he end up in the water?” Renee asked.
Will sighed, shaking his head as he looked at her. “He was still in his car, so they figure he just drove too fast and wound up in the water. Not too hard to figure out.”
“Hey,” Renee protested. “Was he drunk? Had he been suicidal? Maybe someone was after him or something.”
“She’s right,” Caroline pointed out. “What does the coroner say? Maybe someone shot him and that’s why he drove off the road.”
“There’s no coroner’s report yet,” Will admitted, sounding slightly embarrassed, Caroline thought. “Who knows? He might have been drunk, though I don’t know if they’ll be able to figure that out this late in the game. The body…well, if you ask me, it was a lot creepier than anything in Sarah’s house. Let’s just say that on land, we eat the fish. But if you die in the water, the fish eat you.”
“Oh, Lord!” Caroline exclaimed. “I was going to order fish….”
“It’s not going to be the same fish that ate the corpse,” Barry said.
“And how do you know?” Caroline demanded.
“Good question,” Barry admitted. “Cheeseburger for me.”
“Getting back to Anderson, the guy is a little scary. I mean, he’s okay. I like him,” Will said. “But…he’s been here a day and he already found a body we missed for a year. And then all those bones are found at Sarah’s place and he just happens to show up? It’s pretty weird, don’t you think?”
Caroline moved even closer, and he hugged her more tightly to him.
“I don’t think it’s his fault that the bones showed up in Sarah’s walls,” Renee reminded him. “I mean, those skeletons have been there forever. Anyway, you said you liked the guy.”
“I do,” Will said.
“I sure liked him,” Caroline offered.
“Oh, yeah?” Will said teasingly. “You just think he’s hot.”
Caroline laughed. “He is hot. But you’re the only sizzling hunk of man flesh I’m interested in, mister. I’m thinking about Sarah.”
“Sarah?” Will echoed.
“Of course Sarah,” Caroline said.
“I’m not too sure about that. I mean, we really don’t know anything about him,” Will said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea at all,” Barry agreed. “We’re going to have to check him out if we’re thinking about hooking him up with Sarah.”
Renee giggled. “What’s the matter with you guys? Sarah is an adult, and she’s not going to ask us who she can and can’t date!”
“Besides, she knows him at least as well as we do, even if they just met today,” Will said.
“Well, I think he’s a corpse magnet, and I don’t like it,” Barry said flatly.
They all stopped and stared at him. “Hey, we have to look out for our girl, right?” he asked defensively.
“Okay, I’ll ask around and see what I can find out about him,” Will promised. “And we’ll all try to get to know him—if he hangs around.”
“He seems like a decent guy. I hope he does hang around,” Caroline said.
“There you go again—you think he’s hot,” Will said, grinning.
“He’s an inferno,” she agreed. “And I’d really love a drink. Let’s hope we can get a table.” She shivered suddenly and looked at Will. “You know, with all this, we’re forgetting that a girl from here and now is still missing.”
“Well, your stud is on the case,” Will said. “Maybe he’ll find her.”
“Yeah, and hopefully alive,” Barry noted glumly.
“He’s actually here looking for a girl who disappeared a year ago,” Will said. “Her case was in the papers again today. The cops are wondering if there’s a connection between the two cases.”
“I saw the papers. I even showed the article to Sarah,” Caroline told him.
A horse-drawn carriage full of tourists clip-clopped by on the street. “A young woman committed suicide in that hotel, on the top floor,” the guide was telling his passengers. “They say her ghost still visits the room every new moon.”
They all went still as the carriage passed, their gazes turning involuntarily toward the top floor of the hotel.
“I need a drink now,” Renee announced, and hurried on ahead of them to Hunky Harry’s, just a couple of doors away.
Caroline found herself standing alone on the sidewalk for a moment as the others passed her and went inside. She suddenly felt a chill, and she realized that a frisson of fear was sweeping through her.
She’d lived here her entire life. She knew practically every restaurant owner, bartender and shopkeeper in the city. She knew the people who worked in the hotels and museums, and owned the local B&Bs.
And she was suddenly afraid.
Something new had come to the city.
Or maybe something old, very old—and very evil—had been awakened.
Caleb caught up to Sarah McKinley, who was staring at him with suspicion. Even so, she was a beautiful woman.
At that moment, she reminded him of a small but ferocious terrier.
He stopped walking and stood dead still on the sidewalk, staring at her in return.
“Were you speaking to me? If so, no, I’m not following you. I’m headed to my B and B,” he told her.
She blinked. A flush rose to her cheeks, and she winced. “Sorry. But…” She continued to stare at him suspiciously. “Where are you staying?”
“Roberta’s Tropic Breeze, over on Avila,” he said.
She closed her eyes, bit her lip lightly and let out a sigh.
“You’re kidding? Are you saying that’s where you’re staying, too?” he asked.
“Bertie is an old friend,” she told him. “There are dozens of B and Bs in this city,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re staying at the same one I am.”
“Hey, I made my reservation before I left home,” he told her. “I was definitely there first. And why are you staying there, anyway? You must have tons of friends in town.”
“Precisely,” she said.
He laughed. “Sorry, but I’m not checking out. I’d be delighted to help you with that bag, though.”
“I’m perfectly capable of dealing with my own suitcase.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.”
She stared at him for a long moment.
“Okay, I won’t help you with your bag. Nice seeing you.”
She seemed to realize that she was being rude for no real reason and let out another sigh. “Sorry. Yes, thanks, I’d love the help.”
He lowered his head, whispering, though there was no need. “It’s okay—all the people who want to talk to you are still over on your street, staring at your house.”
“Yeah?” she said, her voice skeptical. “I took one step outside and everyone thought that I had all the answers since it’s my house. I have no clue as to how those bodies ended up in my walls.”
“It was a mortuary. The answer should be easy enough to find,” he told her, then looked at her quizzically, taking the bag as they walked. “You’re a historian, right?”
“Yes. I have my master’s degree in American history.”
“You must find this fascinating.”
“I would—if it wasn’t my house we’re talking about. I dreamed about buying that place when I was a kid. I love everything about it. Now I own it, but they have to hack into all the walls, and God knows when I’ll get back in,” she said.
“Oh, it won’t be that long,” he offered.
She glared at him. “Have you seen how the cops, not to mention all the experts, work?”
He laughed. “Okay, then think of it this way. Most people have a ghoulish streak. The value of your property is going to soar. People will be clamoring to take it off your hands.”
“But I don’t want to sell!” she protested. And then they were approaching Bertie’s place.
Caleb saw Roberta Larsen standing anxiously on the porch, and she hurried down the steps as soon as she saw them, too.
“Sarah, you poor dear. Come on inside. I’ve got a nice cup of tea ready for you. And of course you’re welcome to a cup, too, Mr. Anderson.” She kept talking as she ushered them up the steps and through the door. “Sarah, you’re right in here, first room behind the parlor. Mr. Anderson, if you’ll just drop that bag in the room for Sarah…? Sarah, come right into the parlor and catch your breath.”
Roberta Larsen was closing in on seventy, but she was still slim and beautiful, wrinkles and all. And she apparently knew Sarah well.
“Yes, ma’am,” Caleb said.
“He’s a Southern boy,” Roberta told Sarah.
“Northern Virginia,” he said.
“You can always tell the true Southern boys. They say ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ Roberta assured Sarah. “Not that there’s anything wrong with Yankees. I just love it when those wonderful northerners come down to visit. But you can always tell a Southern boy.”
Caleb saw that Sarah was trying to hide a grin, and he was glad. She needed to smile. Then he smiled, too. It had been quite a while since anyone had called him a boy.
Roberta’s place was impeccably kept. The furniture was antique and polished to a high shine, and the parlor—where she served cookies, soda, wine and beer in the afternoon—was comfortable as well as beautiful, with coffee tables, plush sofas and wingback chairs, a fireplace, and rows and rows of books. Roberta had a full silver tea service set out on the central coffee table, though they seemed to be the only guests around at the moment, Caleb thought as he went to deposit Sarah’s bag in the first bedroom, as instructed. It was next to his, but her room didn’t have its own access to the outside the way his did, he noticed.
After setting the bag at the foot of the bed, he noted the large window on one wall. He had a feeling she might come and go via that window, if she got the urge to avoid conversation.
He returned to the parlor, where the two women were already seated. Roberta was pouring tea. “I just don’t believe this,” she said to him as he entered. “Or maybe I do. What a crazy day. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Anderson, it’s not that St. Augustine is crime free. But we’re a tourist town—have been for years. There used to be executions down in the square. The Spanish garroted their condemned in public. These days, though, we pride ourselves on being nice, on doing our best to share our remarkable past without any bloodshed.”
“Bertie,” Sarah said, sipping her tea, “it’s all right. Whatever happened in my house happened a very long time ago, and no one thinks people were murdered and then stuffed in the walls. The general consensus seems to be that the mortuary owner was hiding bodies so he could resell coffins.”
“Yes, but for Gary to have found them today, the same day…Mr. Anderson found that poor drowned man, and with one of our local girls missing…” Roberta’s words trailed off, and she shook her head sadly. “I don’t know whether to be glad or not that they didn’t find the poor woman. And did you know that Mr. Anderson is here because another woman disappeared a year ago? Silly me. You must know that, because obviously you two know one another.”
Sarah stared at him as if curious to see his reaction to that. He shrugged.
The phone rang just then, and Bertie hurried off to answer it.
“Just exactly who do you work for?” Sarah asked him suspiciously.
“An investigations firm,” he said. “Harrison Investigations.”
Her eyes widened with surprise and then she frowned. “You work for…Adam Harrison?”
“Do you know Adam?” he asked. It was his turn to be surprised.
“I’ve met him several times. I worked in Virginia for a while after I got my master’s at William and Mary. I was working on a dig when Adam was called in. It turned out that some local college students were messing around at one of the local historic cemeteries, using light and sound effects to make the place seem haunted. Then I saw him again when one of my coworkers was convinced that a ghost was moving his equipment around. I don’t know what the real situation was, but your boss arranged for a proper funeral and the reinterment of some bones we’d found, and, imagined or not, the problems stopped,” Sarah told him. “So I know the kind of case your firm handles.” She was looking at him differently now.
He had yet to meet anyone who didn’t like, or at least respect, Adam, Caleb thought. And now he had a new in. Miss Sarah McKinley was not going to be so hostile and suspicious now, because he was connected to Adam.
Sarah was frowning again. “But I thought…Adam only investigates when there’s a question of a ghost being involved? Not that I believe in ghosts,” she said firmly.
“Ghosts?” Roberta said, returning from the other room in time to catch the tail end of the conversation. “Well, this is St. Augustine. We’re supposed to be overrun with ghosts. Dozens of locals make their livings off the ghost trade. We would certainly never want to get rid of our ghosts.” She hesitated, eyes narrowing. “Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Anderson?”
“Call me Caleb, please,” he told her. What was he supposed to say to that? “I know several people who believe with all their hearts that they’ve seen a ghost or had some kind of paranormal experience,” he said. That was vague enough. But she was still looking at him curiously, and he found himself going on. “Sometimes, when a person has lost a loved one, they’re convinced that they’ve smelled that person’s cologne or heard their footsteps. I had a friend in college who was certain his home was haunted by his grandmother. He swore he could smell her Italian cooking. What has been proven is that some people do have what we call extrasensory perception—you know, when a mother knows that her child has been injured halfway across the world, that kind of thing.” Both Roberta and Sarah were staring at him now. He was beginning to feel as if he’d suddenly grown horns. “Hey, what do I know? We’re all in the dark, guessing about the great beyond. No need to fear, though, Roberta—I certainly wouldn’t want to drive away any of your local ghosts. I say, if they’re bringing in the tourist dollars, more power to them.”
He saw a small smile start to brighten Sarah’s features. Then she said, “Oh!” suddenly, and stood up as if she’d just remembered something. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I have plans I almost forgot all about.” She stared at Caleb again, as if carefully debating something, then apparently made a rather grudging decision to include him. “I’m meeting a few friends, and my cousin Will for drinks and dinner. You’re welcome to join us.”
“I’ll be happy to, if you’re sure you don’t mind,” Caleb told her.
“I just asked you,” Sarah said.
Which didn’t mean she didn’t mind, he thought. Too bad. She had asked, and he was going to take advantage of that to spend some time with a beautiful woman.
“Sure. I haven’t eaten yet. Sounds great,” Caleb said, and stood, too. “I can even protect you from the curiosity seekers on the way,” he said.
“I’m not really the type who needs protection,” she said.
Everyone needs protection, he told her silently. If you had seen half of what I’ve seen in this life…
“You two have a good time,” Roberta said. “I’ll see you both at breakfast.”
They thanked her for the tea and headed for the door. Outside, Caleb asked Sarah if she wanted him to drive.
“We’re only going about four blocks,” she told him. “Unless you can’t walk that far,” she added just a shade too sweetly.
“I should be fine,” he told her. “Where are we going?”
“Hunky Harry’s.”
“There’s really place called Hunky Harry’s?” Caleb asked incredulously. “Is there really a Harry? And is he hunky?” he teased.
“There is a Harry, and he’s been old as long as I can remember, so he’s got to be…really old. And he likes to think he’s hunky. It’s a popular place with locals and tourists alike. So popular that he changes the name periodically, when he gets sick of the crowds.”
“So Harry is a real character.”
She shrugged, walking toward Avenida Menendez. “Maybe you’ll get to see for yourself. He may or may not be around tonight. He comes in when he feels like it. When he does, he cleans tables, washes glasses, even cooks up a few appetizers. Yes, he’s a real character.”
She was keeping a definite distance between them, he noticed. She still didn’t trust him; he wouldn’t be here at all, walking with her, planning to spend time with her friends, if it weren’t for Adam.
“So exactly why are you here in town?” she asked.
“Jennie Lawson,” he said.
She looked at him. “The woman who disappeared last year?”
“Yes. You heard about it, I take it?”
“I wasn’t living back down here then, but Caroline showed me the newspaper this afternoon. Jennie Lawson was mentioned because of Winona Hart, the local girl who just disappeared. The article said they don’t know that she ever got to St. Augustine.”
“I know, but according to her mother, she was heading here.”
“And you think you can find her—here—after all this time?”
“Her mother doesn’t think she’s still alive, but she does think I’ll find out what happened to her, whether she got this far or not.”
“You know, there’s a possibility that…that she wanted to disappear.”
“There’s always that possibility. But…” He left off speaking and shrugged. “What I was saying to Roberta before? I’ve found that to be true. Whether it’s instinct, extrasensory perception or what, I don’t know. But when a mother feels her child is dead, she’s almost always right.”
She stared at him, obviously bothered by his words. “That’s horrible.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Any death is sad.”
“No, I mean your attitude. How are you going to find her if you don’t believe it’s possible that she’s alive? You need to…believe,” she told him.
“I need to do everything in my power—whether she’s alive or dead—that’s what matters,” he said.
She shook her head in disgust.
“All right,” he said, “you tell me. What about the local girl? What’s your feeling about her? Did she just run away? Is she trying to punish her parents? What do you believe?”
She kept shaking her head, pulling ahead of him a little. “No. But things…happen. Maybe she’s hurt somewhere. And that’s why it matters that people move quickly.”
“Jennie disappeared a year ago,” he reminded her.
“Maybe she has amnesia. Stranger things have happened,” she assured him.
“I will find her. Alive or dead, I will find out what happened to her,” he said flatly.
She fell silent for a few seconds, then, changing the subject, said, “You met Will Perkins this morning.”
“Yes. Why?”
“He’s my cousin.”
“Cool.”
She was walking very quickly now, as if she were uncomfortable with him. “There’s the restaurant,” she said.
Avenida Menendez fronted the water. From where they stood, he could see the massive fortification of Ft. Marion, gleaming in the moonlight in all its historic glory. Horse-drawn carriages lined the opposite side of the street. Groups of tourists were walking around, some couples holding hands or arm in arm. There were several hotels nearby, and numerous restaurants. The downtown historic area was small, the streets busy with car traffic along with all the pedestrians. He saw tables in front of a café and bar. The neon sign, adorned with palm fronds and plastic alligators, advertised Hunky Harry’s.
She preceded him, winding her way through the outside tables and walking straight to a table at the rear. He eyed the single empty chair as he recognized Will, Caroline and the other two docents from the museum, Renee Otten and Barry Travis.
“Hey!” Will saw him and stood, grinning. “Nice that you came along.” He set an arm around Sarah’s shoulders, drawing her against him to give her a rub on the head. They were obviously close. They resembled one another, too, with the same shade of hair and eyes, so much alike, yet Will was as completely masculine as Sarah was feminine.
“Sarah invited me along. I hope that’s all right,” Caleb said, after greeting everyone.
“It’s great!” Renee said enthusiastically.
“I’m impressed you got Sarah here. I thought for sure she’d blow us off tonight,” Caroline said.
“Here we go, another chair,” Barry offered, pulling one over from another table.
“Thanks,” Caleb said, taking the seat.
Everyone started talking at once, stepping on each other’s words, and he tried to keep up the chatter until a waitress came and took their orders. He opted for the fish of the day and wondered why the others all gave him funny looks.
As soon as the waitress left, the conversation turned to the skeletons in Sarah’s house.
“How long do you think it will take them to remove them all?” Renee asked.
“It can take months—years, even—at some sites,” Barry said glumly.
Sarah glared at him.
“Sorry,” Barry said.
“You don’t have to let it take months,” Caleb said to Sarah.
They all stared at him. “You have training in the field, too, so you can call the shots. So far, you’ve done all the right things, brought in the authorities and the experts. Now you can take control. You know the right people, so keep the process moving. Whatever crime took place, it was over a hundred years ago. You can see to it that everything is done right, that people are respectful of both the bodies and the historical record. And then you can let the forensic anthropologists have their day once the bodies are out of your house.”
Sarah stared at him and nodded slowly. “I…guess so.”
Caroline tossed her hair back. “Don’t just guess. Caleb is right. Take control.”
“It’s true. This is the kind of work I was doing in Virginia, but I certainly wasn’t in charge. In a lot of ways, historians are really just record keepers, secretaries for the past. Once the bodies are removed and the remains dated…come to think of it, it will be intriguing to research the situation. And it is my house, damn it!” She slammed a fist on the table and grinned. “If there’s investigating to be done, there’s no reason why I can’t do it.”
“And Caleb there can help you, I bet,” Barry said.
His words were followed by a moment of silence as everyone stared at Caleb.
“Well, you’re an investigator, right?” Barry asked.
“Yes, I’m an investigator,” Caleb agreed.
“Yes, but I’m a historian,” Sarah said. “And the bodies in my house are over a hundred years old. It’s not a police matter, because there’s no one left alive to arrest. It’s all a matter for the historians now,” Sarah said, then stood, as if agitated. “Excuse me, I’m just going to say hello to a friend at the bar.”
Caleb noted that no one standing at the bar seemed the least bit interested in their little group.
He stayed at the table with the others. It never hurt to know as many locals as he could. It wasn’t likely that this foursome could help him find Jennie Lawson, but they might know someone or something about the area that could be pertinent at some point.
And Sarah’s house…well, he had to admit it fascinated him. Historian or not, he was drawn to it, and when he got a feeling like that, it almost always meant something.
“She’s touchy tonight,” Will said, apologizing for Sarah.
“I would be, too,” Caroline said defensively.
“It will better once those bodies are out of her house,” Renee said.
“Seriously,” Barry said. “She just found out she’s been sleeping with a bunch of bodies. You talk about a haunted house…Their spirits are probably all running around screaming, ‘Let me out, let me out!’”
“Oh, Barry,” Renee protested, giggling.
“So tell us about yourself,” Caroline said, inching her chair closer to Caleb’s. “You met Will today, right? Diving? And you found a body in a submerged car. Did he drive off the road?”
“I found the body, and it’s in very bad condition. The medical examiner is on it now. As to how he ended up in the water, I’ll leave it to the police to figure that out,” Caleb said.
“There were no bullet holes in the car or anything like that?” Renee asked, intrigued.
“Not that I saw, but then again, I wasn’t looking for any. The police have custody of the car now, as well, and they’ll find out what happened,” Caleb said.
“So Will says you’re here to find a girl—but not our missing girl?” Barry asked, perplexed.
“Right,” Caleb agreed. “You probably read about the case at the time. Her name wa—Her name is Jennie Lawson, and she disappeared a year ago on her way here. But of course I’ll share whatever information I discover with the local police, because it could help with the search for Winona Hart. They might have been abducted by the same person.”
“Maybe they both ran off to join a cult,” Renee said. “That kind of thing happens, you know.”
“It does, but usually someone who knows the person is aware that they’re dissatisfied with their lives, or that they’ve fallen under the influence of some sect,” Caleb explained.
“But the cases might not be related at all,” Barry speculated.
“That’s true, too.”
“So where do you start?” Caroline asked him.
“Well, theoretically, you start with the person’s last known whereabouts,” Caleb said.
“But this girl you’re looking for…the paper said no one even knows what she did after her plane landed in Jacksonville. She just disappeared,” Barry said.
“She picked up a rental car,” Caleb said.
“But after all this time…that car couldn’t possibly yield any clues,” Will said.
“You’d be surprised,” Caleb said. “Trace evidence can survive an awful lot. But it’s a moot point—unless we find the car. It disappeared, too.”
Just then the waitress arrived with their meals, and Caleb thought his fish—which no one else had ordered, he noticed—was delicious. Despite the arrival of their food, Sarah remained at the bar, chatting with the bartender.
The others asked him more questions as they ate; he answered some and deftly sidestepped others.
Finally he managed to turn the conversation away from himself and learned that Will had grown up in St. Augustine, as had Caroline. Renee had been there about seven years, having fallen in love with the city while attending college over in Gainesville. Barry was the latecomer. He’d done historical tours in Chicago, his hometown, and Charleston, before seeing an ad for docents for the museum.
“I love it here,” he told Caleb. “It gets chilly enough in winter for me to feel like there’s been a change of season, but we pretty much never get snow, and even then, it’s just a few flakes that melt on contact. It’s a big deal when it happens, though, it’s so rare. And because we’re on the water, even summer is usually cool enough, better than a lot of other places. So I’m staying here for sure.”
“Seems like a pretty laid-back town,” Caleb said.
“Hey,” Caroline protested. “We have plenty of nightlife. And if it’s not exciting enough for you here, pop back onto the highway. In twenty minutes you’re on the outskirts of Jacksonville. A few hours in the other direction and you’re in Orlando, surrounded by theme parks.”
“So where is home to you, Caleb?” Renee asked, breaking in before Caroline’s lecture really got going.
“Virginia,” Caleb said.
“So is this your first trip to St. Augustine?” Caroline asked, and he thought she seemed a little bit suspicious, even slightly troubled.
“Yes,” he assured her.
“Hmm.”
“Why?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I could just swear I’d met you, or at least seen you, somewhere before, that’s all.”
“Who knows? Maybe in another life,” Will said, and yawned. “I’ve got work tomorrow, gang. I’ve got to get going.”
They all rose in unison just as Sarah returned to the table. “Sorry, guys. Al and I just started talking and I lost track. Looks like I missed dinner,” she added, staring at the lasagne congealing on her plate.
“Looks like,” Caroline said. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She started for the door.
“Hey, wait, I’m walking you home,” Will called after her. He gave the others an apologetic look. “She’s a blonde…. I don’t want her out there alone at night.”
“Good call, stick with her,” Sarah told him.
“Don’t go thinking that just because you’re a brunette, that makes you safe,” Will said quietly to Sarah, then gave Caleb a speaking look before racing after Caroline.
“I’ll see Renee home safe and sound,” Barry said cheerfully, and something in the way he looked at her told Caleb that the two had been an item for a long time.
“We might as well head out, too,” Sarah told Caleb when the others were gone.
“What about the check?”
“It’s covered,” she assured him.
“That’s nice, but I pay my own way,” he told her. “Besides, I can expense it.”
“I’m so happy to hear we’re a business expense,” Sarah said.
He let out a sigh of aggravation, staring at her. “What the hell is it with you? You’re the one who invited me here.”
She was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Anyway, don’t worry about paying. Al—the bartender—told me that Harry was here earlier, saw us and told our waitress not to give us a check. So we were all Harry’s guests tonight. And I have to show up to work tomorrow morning, too, so I need to get going.”
“Let’s go, then.”
She waved to several people as they left, and a few called out to her in return, but at least no one was asking her about the grisly find in her house.
Even so, he was certain that the whispering would start as soon as they were gone.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. “So what will you be doing tomorrow?” she eventually asked him.
“Heading to Jacksonville,” he said.
She looked over at him. “You think your missing girl is in Jacksonville?”
“No. I think she’s here. And I think Winona Hart is going to be found here, too—eventually. But I want to go to the agency where Jennie rented her car. I would have done that today, but I had the opportunity to go on the dive, and I didn’t want to miss it.”
“There is the possibility that she just drove off into the sunset,” Sarah said.
“No. She didn’t get insurance on the car because her parents had insurance that already covered her. If she’d been planning on just taking off with the car, she’d have bought insurance so that her parents wouldn’t be liable,” he said.
“You overestimate people,” Sarah said. “If she was depressed or upset about something, she wouldn’t have been thinking about insurance.”
“But she wasn’t depressed, and she wasn’t upset.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“I talked to her parents.”
“The parents are often the last to know,” she reminded him.
“Not these parents.”
She was still skeptical, he could see, but he didn’t argue with her.
“Do you really think you can read people that well?” she asked at last.
“Not always, but sometimes? Yes.”
“Some people wear very convincing masks,” Sarah pointed out.
“Very true.”
“So how do you deal with that?” she asked.
“All masks crack with time, or under the right heat,” he said. “So what about you? What will you be doing tomorrow?”
“Oh, I’ll be going to work. I need the money more than ever now,” she said, her tone slightly resentful.
“You’re not going to hang at home, hovering over your property?”
“I’ll let them tramp around a while on their own. Then I’ll get involved,” she said.
They had reached the B&B. Caleb used his key to open the front door instead of going around the side to his private entrance. “Thanks for inviting me tonight,” he said.
“I’m glad you could come,” she answered, but there wasn’t a lot of warmth in her words. They were courteous, spoken by rote.
“Well, have a good day at work tomorrow. And…hey.”
“Hey what?”
“Be careful. Something does seem to be going on around here,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m not a blonde. And I’m sure not about to run out and buy a big bottle of bleach right now.”
“Two blondes have gone missing, true. But that fact might be coincidence. If the two disappearances are connected, the real link might be something else entirely,” Caleb said. “Everyone needs to be careful right now. No one knows yet what links the missing girls.”
She smiled. “I’ll be careful. And I’ll see you at breakfast, anyway.”
“Right.”
She hadn’t headed toward her room yet. The light coming from the parlor was dim, but he could see that she was staring at him closely. “Caroline is convinced that she’s seen you before.”
“Yeah, I know. But I don’t see how. But anything is possible, I guess. Maybe we crossed paths in an airport somewhere.”
She was still staring at him.
“Yes?” he said at last.
“I was just curious,” she said.
“About?”
“When does your mask crack? When do we get to know the real you?”
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Heather Graham
When Sarah McKinley is finally able to buy and restore the historic Florida mansion that she has always loved, she dismisses the horror stories of past residents vanishing and a long-dead housekeeper who practiced black magic.Then, in the midst of renovations, she makes a grim discovery. Hidden within the walls of Sarah's dream house are the remains of dozens of bodies—some dating back over a century. The door to the past is blown wide open when Caleb Anderson, a private investigator, shows up at the mansion.He believes several current missing-persons cases are linked to the house and its dark past. Working together to find the connection and stop a contemporary killer, Sarah and Caleb are compelled to research the history of the haunted house, growing closer to each other even as the solution to the murders eludes them.But there is one who knows the truth…a spirit who follows every move they make. Soon Caleb begins to fear that if he can't stay a step ahead, he could lose Sarah to a killer with an ability to transcend time in a quest for blood and sacrifice.
Praise for
HEATHER GRAHAM
“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Death Dealer
“[A] sinister tale sure to appeal to fans across multiple genre lines.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Death Dealer
“Heather Graham will keep you in suspense until the very end.”
—Literary Times
“[A] solid trilogy opener…Dream messages and premonitions, ghostly sightings, capable detective work and fascinating characters blend to make a satisfying chiller.”
—Publishers Weekly on Deadly Night
“There are good reasons for Graham’s steady standing as a best-selling author. Here her perfect pacing keeps readers riveted as they learn fascinating tidbits of New Orleans history. The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing, and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”
—Booklist on Ghost Walk
“Graham peoples her novel with genuine, endearing characters.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Séance
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
Heather Graham
Unhallowed Ground
To the city of St. Augustine, and especially to Derek and Pablo-the-cat and our road trip.
To the carriage and tour companies—and everyone who’s fascinated by the unique legends of our nation’s oldest European-founded city.
It’s a remarkable place to visit.
Thanks, also, to the Inn on Charlotte, Victoria House, and Casa de Suenos (where they welcomed Pablo as well as the rest of us!)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
Then, during the War of Northern Aggression
St. Augustine, in northern Florida, was beautiful, especially by night. It was the image of everything graceful and lovely in the Deep South and, when seen by the gentle glow of the moon, as serene a place as one might ever hope to see. Spanish moss dripped from old oaks like the sweep of a gentle lace blanket, and a low ground fog swirled in a faint breeze that seemed to carry with it the whisper of a moan. The silver mist curled around the mournful beauty of the cemetery, caressing the cheeks of stone angels and cherubs standing atop newly dug graves, as well as those that had been there for centuries.
The moon that night had a haze promising rain the following day. The misty halo around the full orb cast an eerie glow over the earth, turning the cemetery into a magical vision with its praying virgins, weeping guardians and majestic display of marble statuary, all bathed in the pale and eerie light.
Two women came with a lantern, one with purpose, and one carefully picking her way around the gravestones and funerary art.
“This way,” Martha Tyler said, lifting her lantern higher.
“How much farther?” Susan Madison asked nervously as the moon slipped behind a cloud and the shadows deepened.
Martha paused to stare back at her, contempt in her eyes. “If you are afraid, there is no reason to go any farther at all.”
Well, of course, I’m afraid, Susan longed to shout. She hadn’t been afraid before; it had all seemed like a lark, and why not? Life was a mess right now, and maybe Martha did have some kind of wonderful power to make everything better.
But now she was afraid. The beauty was gone from the night.
Only death seemed to remain.
Yes, she was afraid. She was walking in a shadowy graveyard by night, hearing nothing but the rustle of the leaves and the moan of the wind in the branches, and she was a fool ever to have thought that this would be an adventure.
She had convinced herself that she had to play this game, had to skirt the edge of social and moral insanity. The news in her life was always terrible, all about the war, death, advancing armies, defeats.
There was no guarantee that Thomas Smithfield would be alive in a matter of months, much less have anything left of his home, finances or wits. A love ritual might well be useless.
“We’re here now, anyway,” Martha said.
“We’re here? Where is here?” Susan demanded, looking around. They had passed the MacTavish mausoleum, the giant sculpted dogs that guarded the eighteenth-century entrance to the section containing the graves of children, and even the oldest and most chipped and broken stones in the cemetery. They were standing by a small broken wall, where trees grew tall and broad, breaking through the stones of the dead, and the moss dripped almost to the ground. The earth itself didn’t seem as if it belonged in any place created by man at all. It was more like a pit of churned dirt and broken pottery.
“Right here,” Martha said, pointing. Her voice dropped to a whisper, so soft that Susan could barely hear it. “We’re outside hallowed ground here. This wall—or what’s left of it—marks the boundary beyond which they buried the indigents and the…the unhallowed.”
Susan felt a sudden chill. It was summer, and even the nights could be sweltering here in the humid lowlands, with only the occasional breeze off the ocean to alleviate the wet heat. But tonight she was suddenly cold with a bone-deep sensation that came from far more than just the temperature.
Of course she was cold, she told herself. Martha was frightening her. That whisper she was using, the cemetery itself, bathed once again in the unearthly glow of shimmering moonlight filtered through haze and fog.
“You still have it? You didn’t drop the sacrifice?”
Susan told herself that the ominous tone was all part of Martha’s act, but even so, she shuddered as she reassured herself that she still had the little vial of blood, wrapped so tightly in her hand that she had practically forgotten she was carrying it.
“Yes.”
“You killed the creature yourself?” Martha asked.
“Yes.”
Martha approved her answer with a solemn nod as she took the vial of blood from her. “Now the black drink.”
Martha held up a small bottle filled with an inky liquid.
Susan stared at her.
“It’s herbs, child, just herbs. But they create magic.”
Susan wanted to refuse.
What was the matter with her? she wondered. All her friends had gone to Martha for potions and palm readings. Martha did have a talent for knowing what was going to happen. Not only could she foretell the future, but sometimes she could also actually make things happen. And always she was an amazing show-woman.
This was an adventure, Susan told herself, and maybe—just maybe—the potion would work.
Martha was standing in front of her, smiling, looking as gentle as a kitten, as well-meaning as a doting grandmother. She pressed the small bottle into Susan’s hand and helped her lift it to her lips. The concoction was sweet, not bad tasting, but it carried an aftermath of fire that sent slivers of steel running through her blood.
Suddenly crimson darkness descended, making a stygian pit of the cemetery, a fiery globe of the moon.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Susan said. Her voice sounded like a whimper, appalling her. “I’m sorry, I just want to leave.”
Martha laughed, but the sound was husky and taunting, frightening her further. “Such a terrified little girl. We’re here now, you’ve had the black drink, the worst is over. It’s time.”
The darkness lifted, and once again Susan found herself standing in the moonlight in the old cemetery she had walked through dozens of times before. There was nothing dark or terrifying or eerie about it; it was just a field of the dead.
And still, she wished she had never come.
But she didn’t want to run away and leave Martha to tell the tale of her cowardice. It would be mortifying if everyone knew what a silly coward she had been. The things that were said about her already were bad enough.
But what were her choices.
Stay and dig up a grave? Or run out of the cemetery alone? Tamper with the dead, or flee through a haunted world of shadow and decomposition, with no companion other than her own thundering heart?
“In seconds, my pet, you will be on the road to all that your heart desires. A passion and a tempest unlike anything even you have imagined. You came to me for help. You wanted magic. You’ve come this far, don’t stop now. Not before you secure all that you hope for on behalf of your babe and for your own life. It’s time,” Martha said. She sprinkled the blood across the disturbed earth of an antique grave, then lifted her arms to the night sky, the very image of a Druid priestess in a field of ancient stones or one of the voodoo queens of Jamaica, from where she had come long ago. She was not a colored woman, but neither was she white. She had no definitive color, really. She was a pasty shade, like the moon behind the haze, and her eyes were a strange and watery blue.
She didn’t give Susan a chance to respond. She began to chant, her face lifted toward the sky, her arms still upraised. The words were unintelligible, a mix of English, French, Spanish and something more ancient. As Susan watched her, she felt herself becoming almost hypnotized by the magic lilt of the words. It was as if her limbs grew leaden, and any desire to be anywhere else left her. The tombstones and vaults, cherubs and angels, even the great guardian dogs, began to appear as natural a setting as the cozy parlor of her home, welcoming her.
The low-lying fog, caught in the amber glow of the moon, seemed to dance around her, wrapping her in an exciting warmth, fanning an ember deep inside her. She watched, she waited, she heard the music of the words and felt strength in the growing heaviness of her form. When she could move, she told herself, she would do so with passion and vitality. She would be vibrant and alive, filled with magic herself.
But even as the sense of well-being warmed her like a cup of cocoa on a cold night, something else was growing, as well. An inner voice warning her that she needed to shake off the leaden sensation. That she needed to run.
Because the ground was moving, erupting as if from a force deep inside, shifting the old stones that lay askew nearby. A shower of dust rose as something solid and large emerged from the ground, like a tree growing at a fantastic rate. Particles of dirt and dust and marble were caught in the faint glow of the tainted moon, gleaming like the snowflakes she had read about in books.
That inner voice screamed at her to run, but it was too late.
She saw what had risen, and a scream rose in her throat, but she couldn’t move, and no sound issued from her lips. She could still see Martha, standing there now with a satisfied smile, and she knew that she was no more to the woman than a rung in a ladder, a stepping stone toward power over the darkness. She saw it all so clearly now.
And then she saw what was rising from the ground.
Saw that all Martha’s promises had been no more than a ruse to get her there.
The horror approached her, malignant, evil, and she was paralyzed. She knew that whatever had been in the black drink was paralyzing her, saw everything so clearly now that it was too late—oh, God, far too late—to know and see and understand, to know that this had nothing to do with wonder and fantasy and magic.
She saw and felt the essence of evil, heard the rasp of its fetid breath, smelled flesh and blood and bone and the pungence of the earth as her fate stepped closer and closer still, drawing pleasure from her terror and her newfound knowledge…
She had not come to make a sacrifice.
She had come to be the sacrifice.
1
Now
The area near the nature preserve was overgrown. Salt flats and marsh met Matanzas Bay and the Intra-coastal, and the water went from shallow to deep, from sloping sand to a sudden drop-off leading to a misty and strange world of fish, tangled plant growth and, despite the best efforts of local and federal lawmakers, de facto garbage dumps.
Caleb Anderson had been drawn to a shopping cart down at about twenty feet, then on to a tire rim beneath a tangle of seaweed at thirty-five, but neither one turned out to be hiding what they were looking for.
The problem was, the authorities were searching blindly. A girl named Winona Hart had disappeared. She had been at a party, but none of her underage drunken friends—half of them potheads to boot—seemed to know when she had left, where she had gone, or with whom.
He looked at his compass, then up through the filter of light to the cable from the police cruiser serving as their dive boat. In his mind, if anything was going to be found, it was going to be closer to the shore. Unless, of course, she’d been kidnapped by a boater and dumped somewhere beyond the bay and out in the Atlantic. If that was the case, their chances of finding her were almost nonexistent. The ocean was huge. True, if caught in a current or an undertow, a body might wash up on land. And if they came up with a suspect who regularly followed a certain route, even a weighted body might somehow be discovered.
But at the moment they were searching blindly. Still, he hadn’t wanted to miss the opportunity to be in on the search, not when he had promised he would do everything humanly possible to find Jennie Lawson. Admittedly, this grim attempt was not to find Jennie but a local teen who had now been missing for nearly forty-eight hours, a case that might or might not be connected to Jennie’s. No one knew if Jennie Lawson had actually made it to the beach in St. Augustine, her intended destination. They only knew that she had landed in Jacksonville, gotten off the plane and picked up a rental car. Neither she nor the car had been seen since.
He didn’t have much hope of finding Jennie alive. Her mother had told him that she knew Jennie was gone, because her daughter had come to her in a dream the night before her disappearance was reported and said goodbye. Caleb wasn’t sure what to believe, because Mr. Lawson seemed to think that Mrs. Lawson had lost her mind when their daughter had disappeared, and he had, in fact, made a motion behind his wife’s back to indicate as much.
Caleb had heard of stranger things than ghostly midnight visits, however, so he had simply smiled and vowed to Jennie’s mother that he would do everything he could to find out the truth, even if he couldn’t return her daughter to her. That had comforted her. Closure was something people needed. Perhaps it was too painful to live with eternal hope.
So Caleb was also looking for Jennie, or any sign of her, even if he was officially on the trail of another young woman for whom many were still holding out hope. But this dive was important for other reasons, too; it was giving him a chance to get to know the local authorities and the local expert on the surrounding waters.
As he moved toward the marshy shore, he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, but he was accustomed to such conditions. His dive light illuminated the surrounding area as he searched, and he was methodical in covering his assigned section of the bay. He had seen the grid, and he meant to search his assigned area thoroughly, leaving no possibility that anything had been overlooked. As an out-of-stater, he was the odd man out here. If he did anything to make the other men—and the one woman—on the local forensic dive team resent his presence, he would end up ostracized, and that would be a real problem in his search for Jennie. For that reason, getting along with the police lieutenant in charge of the case, Tim Jamison, and Will Perkins, the dive master, was crucial. Caleb was there mainly as a courtesy. He worked for a private agency, Harrison Investigations. The cases they took generally had an unusual twist, something inexplicable, even supernatural, that required their very specific professional services, but in this instance it was Adam Harrison’s personal friendship with Jennie Lawson’s father that had brought Caleb here.
He noted a glitter of light, just this side of the drop-off. He focused his dive light, and headed toward the glint, knowing full well that it might be just another shopping basket.
But as he neared the object in the water, he knew that this was no shopping cart.
It was far too large, for one thing. The full size of it became clear as he drew closer. It was an automobile.
All too often, people intentionally discarded cars in the water. Sometimes they were just junkers and nothing more.
Sometimes they held human remains.
And as he approached the Chevy mired in the mucky, seaweed-laden sand, he saw that this car was not empty. A solid kick with his flippers brought him to the driver-side window.
A face stared out at him, the mouth widened in a giant O, as if in a desperate quest for breath.
The eyes…
Did not exist. Already, the creatures of the deep had started to feed.
“Maybe Osceola was a hero, but they still tricked him and caught him and cut his head off. They chopped it right off!” a young boy said. He was about ten, cute and normal-looking in a T-shirt that had clearly just been purchased at the local alligator farm, jeans and sneakers. But he spoke with a relish that unsettled Sarah McKinley. Caroline Roth, seated at the computer and running the audiovisual end of the Heritage House presentation, let out a soft laugh, stared at Sarah, then grinned wickedly and shrugged.
“No,” Sarah said firmly, and smoothed down the skirt of her period outfit. She was a good storyteller and knew how to handle a large—and diverse—group like the one in the lecture hall that day, which was a mix of kids and adults, tourists and locals, couples, groups and singles. They were into the tail end of summer, so she was getting classes from schools that started early and teachers from schools that started late. There was a Harley event down in Daytona that week, so she was getting a lot of bikers, too.
One man in the crowd, though, seemed to stand out. He was tall, but not inordinately so, maybe six-three. He was dressed as casually as the next tourist in blue jeans and a polo shirt, but he didn’t look like the usual tourist. He wore sunglasses throughout her lecture—not an odd thing, lots of people didn’t take them off when they came in. He was built as if he were in the service and worked out heavily on a daily basis, or as if he were an athlete. He was tanned and rugged, the way a man who spent his day sailing might be, tawny-haired and attractive. What was odd about him, though, was that he was alone. He seemed the type who should be with a beautiful woman, one who was as lithe and athletic as he was himself.
“Decapitated!” another kid called out.
Sarah’s attention was drawn back to her lecture. She had been talking about Osceola, the most famous leader of the Seminole people, who had galvanized friend and foe alike when he had struck a knife into a treaty that would have been a death knell for his people. Like so many others, he had been imprisoned at the Castillo de San Marcos, the coquina shell bastion built by the Spanish that was the most imposing architectural feature of the city.
Leave it to a kid to dwell on the most gruesome fact he could think of—not to mention that he had it wrong.
“History records lots of terrible things that were done, but that wasn’t one of them,” she said.
“Hey, I heard he was decapitated, too,” a grown man interrupted.
Sarah took a deep breath. She couldn’t really blame the guy—who had a sunburn identifying him as out-of-state—when even Florida schoolchildren often had the story wrong. “Osceola was a great leader, and respected even by his enemies. The treachery that led to his capture was deplorable, and despite the Indian wars raging across the country at the time, people despised General Jesup for the way he treated Osceola, who came in peace, with his safety guaranteed, and was taken anyway. But he wasn’t decapitated by the U.S. Army. He was held for a while at Fort Marion, originally known as the Castillo de San Marcos, but he died of malaria up at Fort Moultrie, in South Carolina. He was attended by a shaman from his own clan, and an American doctor, a man named Frederick Wheedon, who did have his head removed and embalmed, but only after he was already dead. And,” she said, unable to resist, “legend has it that Dr. Wheedon used the head to punish his children. If they behaved badly, he would leave the head on their bedposts at night. In fact, he bequeathed the head to his son-in-law—just in case his grandchildren misbehaved. His son-in-law passed it on to a man named Valentine Mott, another doctor, who kept it in a pathology museum, but the museum burned down, and the head was lost.”
She had gained the silent stares of everyone in the room, of every age, and she offered them a broad smile. “You can learn a lot about Osceola and Florida’s Native Americans over at Fort Marion, and we have wonderful books on Osceola and the history of the area in our bookstore. Remember, St. Augustine is over four hundred years old.” She grinned at the boy who had first brought up the subject of decapitation. “All kinds of gruesome things have happened here.”
She announced that her speech was over and was given a nice round of applause, and a number of people thanked her as they walked out of the lecture hall. A few lingered to examine the artifacts in the cases that lined the walls, but she noticed that the tall stranger who had drawn her attention wasn’t among them.
Caroline, rising and stretching, started laughing as soon as the last of the four o’clock lecture group walked out of the room. “A few of those kids are going to wake up in the night imagining a head on their bedpost.”
“Yeah?” Sarah asked. “I don’t think that many kids have bedposts anymore.”
“I’m sure lots of them are staying at local B and Bs. And lots of those beds have bedposts,” Caroline reminded her.
“Well, what’s a story without something scary?” Sarah asked, sinking into one of the front row seats. “And I didn’t make anything up.” She looked at Caroline and sighed. “Now you’re going to give me a speech on being nice to tourists and downplaying our more gruesome history, right?”
Caroline shook her head. “No, not today, I’m not.” She frowned suddenly, distracted. “Do you think we know him from somewhere?”
“Him who?” Sarah asked.
Caroline looked at her and laughed again. “Him who was studly and cool. Oh, come on. You couldn’t possibly have missed him.”
“Yeah, I saw him,” Sarah said. Caroline could only be talking about the man she had noted earlier in the crowd. “But what about him?”
“I felt like I knew him, or should know him, from somewhere.”
“He was good-looking—”
Caroline stared at her hard.
“Okay, I admit he looked a little bit familiar, but maybe he’s just so gorgeous he reminds me of a movie star or something.”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know, I just had a feeling about him…. It’s like he looks like someone we once knew, only…different. I wonder if he signed in? I’ll go look. And as for you scaring tourists, have some patience with the kids, huh? It’s no wonder they’re sounding a little gruesome. Have you seen this?”
She picked up the local newspaper, which had been lying next to her computer.
“Seen what?” Sarah asked. “I didn’t read the paper today—I left right after I woke up and came here.” She winced. “It’s all that hammering, you know?”
“Oh, how’s that going?” Caroline asked.
“Loudly.”
Which was the understatement of the year, Sarah thought. She loved the historic property she had bought after her recent return to town, but it was badly in need of not just refurbishing but reinforcement, as well. The previous owner, Mrs. Douglas, had tried to salvage it before the days of community awareness, when it might have been torn down but she hadn’t had the funds to do all the necessary work. When Mrs. Douglas turned eighty, she had decided she was never going to get to it, so she decided to sell and offered the house to Sarah first, because Mrs. Douglas had been friends with Sarah’s maternal grandmother. Given the house’s history, the price had been amazing, another special deal because she had been so close with Sarah’s grandmother, and also because Sarah’s grandmother’s grandmother had been born a Grant, and the property was known as the Grant House. As far as Sarah knew, her mother’s side of the family had actually come from Savannah, but since the name—whether the connection was real or imaginary—had helped her to acquire the property, she was willing to go with it.
“I’ve wanted to live in that house for as long as I can remember,” Sarah said.
“I remember, and I always thought you were crazy. Old Mrs. Douglas never did anything with it, and we’ve been watching it crumble all these years,” Caroline said. “Remember when Pete Albright went in that Halloween? How we made up the most horrifying stories and then dared him to go in? Some head of the football team! He came out white as a ghost, saying he’d quit being quarterback before he’d sleep in the place all night. He said he heard ghosts in the walls and could feel them trying to touch him. He was absolutely terrified.”
“Of course he was. We were just terrible. We told him all those old tales about the woman who sold potions and voodooed people to death. And we told him it was full of corpses—which it had been, of course, since it was a mortuary for years.”
Caroline wrinkled her nose. She was a petite blonde, cute and winsome, even when she made a face. She’d dated Pete Albright back in the day.
“We were horrible. But he could be pretty macho, so I kind of think he deserved it. And as for you, well, you’re just crazy for living there. That house is spooky.”
“I’ve slept in the house, and it’s just fine. And I applaud Mrs. Douglas. She couldn’t begin to afford to fix it up, but she kept it from the wrecking ball. I say good for her.” Sarah shrugged. “Although I do wish she’d fixed at least a few things.”
Caroline smiled. “Hey, you wanted history. Not me—not to live with, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I like history fine or I wouldn’t be working here,” she was quick to say. Not that she really had much choice. The Heritage House was a private museum, owned and operated by her parents. They had come to St. Augustine the year before she was born, embracing everything about the city and quickly making it their home. They were delighted to boast that St. Augustine was the oldest continually inhabited European-based community in the country, founded by the Spaniards in 1565, long before the English stepped foot in Jamestown and even longer before the Mayflower sailed across the sea. They were history buffs, and they hadn’t started up their business to get rich; they simply loved what they did. Caroline’s father, Harry, wrote history textbooks, and that endeavor, not the museum, was what supported them.
“Give me plumbing and electric that work any day. And a roof that doesn’t leak,” Caroline told her.
“I hear you,” Sarah admitted. “But the house is magnificent. And in a year’s time, I’ll have it all set up as a bed-and-breakfast, and I’ll run a collectibles and antiques business out of it, as well. You’ll see,” Sarah assured her.
Caroline laughed. “We should both live so long.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry. You’ll get it done. I just don’t envy you the process. I grew up in the middle of constant renovations, remember? Every bad storm that came through, we were in the dark for weeks. No closets—they all had wardrobes back then. No whirlpool tubs.” Caroline frowned. “And I’m not sure you should be staying there alone. It’s too big. With everything that’s going on, I don’t think it’s safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I meant to show you the paper right away. I get sidetracked too easily.”
“What happened?”
“Another missing woman. This one a local.”
“Oh, no,” Sarah said, reaching for the paper.
“A student from the community college,” Caroline said. “She lived at home, but she went out a couple of night ago with a group of kids for a bonfire on the beach out on Anastasia Island…and didn’t come back. There’s her picture,” Caroline said, tapping the paper.
“That’s horrible,” Sarah said softly. The picture was of a young woman, pretty and blond. It was her high school graduation photo. She had bright eyes full of hope, and long shining hair beneath her cap.
“Scary, huh?” Caroline said. “She looks a lot like the girl who disappeared last year, the one who was on vacation from D.C.”
“That girl disappeared from Jacksonville,” Sarah said. But she stared at the picture. The girls really had been similar in appearance. The big bright eyes, the long blond hair. Serial killers often picked a certain physical type, and if there was a serial killer working somewhere in the area, he had obviously chosen his. Pretty blondes with large eyes. She looked at Caroline, who was still studying the paper. “They don’t know that the other girl ever even came this far. Jacksonville is a big city, and with traffic these days, an hour away.”
“What? Serial killers don’t have cars?” Caroline asked her.
“I know, I know. But look on the bright side. Maybe this girl will turn up,” Sarah said. “Thing is, you can’t obsess, or you’d never leave your house. You just have to be smart and careful.”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m not worried about me. I’m the world’s biggest coward. I wouldn’t live in your spooky old house alone for all the tea in China. I’m worried about you. Nothing scares you, and I think some things should.”
“Not true, trust me. I have a healthy respect for being careful. I lock my doors, and I got friendly with my neighbors right off the bat,” Sarah protested.
Caroline sniffed. “Oh, right. To the left, the pregnant teenager whose husband is in the service. And to the right, the octogenarian. They’ll be a big help in a pinch.”
“Brenda Cole isn’t a teenager, she’s twenty-one. And Mr. Healey is not an octogenarian, he’s only in his seventies—and he has a dog.”
“A teacup Yorkie!” Caroline said.
“One vicious teacup Yorkie, I’ll have you know. He barks like a son of a bitch,” Sarah assured her, then laughed. “Which he is, of course. But seriously, I’m okay, honestly. I have a baseball bat, I will have an alarm system, and I can dial 911 faster than a speeding bullet.”
“Just be careful,” Caroline warned her.
“Yes, ma’am, I promise.”
“Okay. Hey, want to have dinner?”
“I can’t. I have to get home. Gary is at the house.”
“And he’s going to work all night?” Caroline asked.
“Until dark. He’s trying to finish tracing all the pipes today. I have a leak in one wall. So I’m going to head home and call up for pizza delivery.”
“Stop for a six-pack on the way home, too,” Caroline warned. “Make Gary happy. He’s the best. He’s nice, and he can do anything. Funny how all that works out, huh? Gary was such a shop geek in high school, and now he’s doing great. Pete Albright was a star, and I hear he’s working in a fast food restaurant up in Atlanta. Go figure.” She yawned. “Anyway, I’m meeting Will with Renee and Barry. You should grab Gary and go with us.” When Sarah started to reply, Caroline waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. I know, the house comes first. Anyway, let’s go get changed.”
“Will, huh?” Renee Otten and Barry Travis were fellow docents who had struck up a romance, and Will Perkins was Sarah’s second cousin. Their mothers had been close, so he was almost like a brother to her, practically a fraternal twin, since they were both the same age, born a day apart, and shared the same coloring. And lately he and Caroline had become quite the item.
“He’ll be disappointed that you’re not coming. You haven’t been home that long,” Caroline said, turning on the reproach.
Sarah laughed. “I’ve been here six months. And Will and I see plenty of each other. In fact, he has threatened to move in once the place is done.” While she had attended Florida State—not all that far away in Tallahassee—for her bachelor’s degree, she had gone to Virginia for grad school, and then taken a job with an Arlington historical research and tour agency. But when Caroline’s parents had needed another docent, especially one with her knowledge of local history and lore, she had decided it was time to come back. Virginia was beautiful, and she would always love it, but nothing could compare to the city in which she had been born and raised.
“Fine, be that way. In the meantime, I’m changing into something cute and cool and sure to wow them over at Hunky Harry’s.”
“Honey, all you have to do is walk into Hunky Harry’s to wow everyone,” Sarah assured her. “Trust me, you’re ‘wow’ material even in what you’re wearing now.”
The lectures they gave covered topics ranging from the coming of the first Spaniards to British rule, American rule, the Confederacy, Henry Flagler and the railroad, Prohibition and beyond, and they had different outfits to wear for each. Today they were focused on the Seminole Wars and the Civil War. So today they weren’t dressed in silk and satin as would befit a pair of Southern belles.
Today they wore homespun cotton skirts and prim shirts that buttoned chastely to the neck. They were middle-class women of the era, those who churned butter and milked cows. And still, Caroline looked adorable. Sarah had yet to see a style from any era that Caroline didn’t wear well.
“Why, Miss McKinley, you do go on,” Caroline said with a mock simper. “And my, my, but if you aren’t just a plate of buttered grits yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, Missy-yourself, let’s just change and get out of here,” Sarah said as they left the lecture hall. Barry Travis, in breeches and a homespun cotton shirt, was also heading toward the door marked Cast Members Only. He was a tall, handsome man of thirty, with longish brown hair that worked well in historical context.
“I hope you two can get changed quickly, because I’m starving. Renee is ushering the last of the book buyers out the front door, and we are officially closed,” he said cheerfully.
“Sarah’s not coming,” Caroline informed him.
“Can’t,” Sarah said. “My house needs me.” She smiled to acknowledge that even she knew how silly that sounded.
“You know,” he said, studying her and shaking his head, “you could have bought a nice new condo.”
“There will be other nights,” she said.
“What if the world ends tomorrow?” Barry demanded.
“My house will be one day closer to done, and Gary won’t hate me,” Sarah said.
“I give up,” Barry said. “We’ll miss you as we dine on succulent burgers—oh, wait. You didn’t suddenly become a vegetarian, did you?” he asked her.
“She’s a fish-a-tarian, I believe,” Caroline.
“Pescatarian,” Barry said.
“Whatever,” Caroline agreed.
“Doesn’t matter. You can torture me with thoughts of food and I won’t care. Besides, I’m not sure anything at Hunky Harry’s is actually succulent. Anyway, have a great time, and drink a beer for me.”
“It’s a good thing Harry didn’t hear you say that. And it’s not true—the food there is good,” Barry protested.
“Yes, you’re right. The food is very good, especially the fish. But I can’t go. Not tonight,” Sarah said.
She hurried into the women’s locker room and quickly changed. Caroline had been right about one thing: she should stop and pick up a six-pack. Maybe a twelve-pack. Gary had a few employees working overtime right along with him.
She managed to escape without getting into further conversation, because when Caroline came in, she headed straight for the showers. Was she primping so hard for Will? Maybe. The two of them had always liked one another, but Sarah had never seen any signs that their relationship was anything beyond friendship. Then again, who knew? They said that friends made the best spouses. She certainly didn’t know.
She’d fallen in love once, and it had been a brief and poignant affair. Clay Jenner had been a soldier. They’d met in Newport News, and had quickly discovered they both loved Buddy Holly, Peggy Lee, lounge music and historic ships. They’d spent a few months laughing, talking, listening to music and exploring historic sites. Then he’d been deployed. He’d been wonderfully romantic, going down on one knee when the cherry blossoms had been exploding all over the park, and he’d offered her the diamond she now wore on a chain.
He hadn’t come home. That had been three years ago now, and although she would probably never get over the pain of losing him, she had accepted that he wasn’t coming back. He had gone into the military for the schooling and the benefits, but, as he had told her, he’d signed the paper swearing that he would obey his superior officers and defend his country. It would have been nice if he could have served out his time somewhere safe, like Germany, but it hadn’t happened that way.
He had been killed in a sniper attack. A bullet straight through the brain. He had probably never known what had hit him.
For that she was grateful. As her dad had told her once, every man and woman would die. An easy death was something that meant even though God might take a man early, he loved him enough to keep him from suffering.
Now she was glad to be home, where there were no memories of Clay, and glad to have moved into her house.
She didn’t drive to work anymore; her house and the museum were in the area that was referred to as Old Town. After stopping for a twelve-pack and walking another four blocks through enclaves of tourist-centric businesses, she was thinking that a six-pack would have been fine.
She was almost at the walk that led up to her house when she saw him. The man she had noticed during her lecture.
While many buildings in Old Town sat right up near the sidewalk, there was actually a stretch of lawn in front of her place, along with a front walk and driveway—they’d needed a place for the cars and hearses to go. The man was only on the sidewalk, but he was right at the start of the coquina shell walk that led to her front porch. And he was staring at the house.
He must have sensed that she was watching him, because he turned, looked at her gravely, then smiled as she walked toward him, eyeing him carefully.
“Well, hello. It’s Ms. McKinley, right?” he said. “Excellent lecture—thank you.”
She nodded, staring at him warily. “Can I…help you?”
“I was admiring the house,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if she should say that it was hers or not. People had a tendency to be friendly in St. Augustine. In fact, there were dozens of B&Bs in the city, most of them homes that were open to strangers. In fact, she couldn’t wait for her own house to be one of them.
But at the moment, she apparently had a bigger-city attitude going. And the first rule was never let a stranger know where you live.
He didn’t look like a stalker. In fact, he was extremely attractive.
She reminded herself that many a serial killer had been attractive. They weren’t all wild-eyed Charles Mansons. Ted Bundy had traded on his boy-next-door good looks.
She decided she was being ridiculous. The odds were strongly in favor of his being a tourist, one with an interest in history, given that she’d first seen him at the museum. Plus, there were still plenty of people about on the streets, and though the day was dying, there was still lots of light.
He didn’t seem to need a reply. “The architecture is striking. It’s quite a compelling place. Haunting, even.”
“Thanks,” she said. When he looked at her curiously, she added, “I own it.”
He studied her for a moment, then laughed. “Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that a historian owns a piece of history. I see you have a lot of work going on.”
“When you buy an old building, you have to be prepared for a lot of work,” she told him. The twelve-pack was getting heavy but she fought against shifting the weight. She didn’t want him offering to carry it and walk her up to the house. It wasn’t a B&B yet, just a big old place without an alarm, and she didn’t own a dog—not even a teacup Yorkie.
Of course, he didn’t seem the menacing type. He looked far more likely to go after what he wanted with wit and charm. My, how her thoughts had quickly wandered.
“Well, congratulations on owning such a beautiful old place. Oh, by the way, my name is Caleb Anderson. And I know you’re Sarah McKinley. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said. Then she startled herself by what she said next, because he had already turned to walk away. “Are you in town long?” she asked him.
She thought he hesitated before answering—only a half second, but a hesitation all the same.
“I’m not sure. I’ll be around a few more days, at least. Thanks again. I really enjoyed your lecture—especially the way you handled those kids.”
“Thanks,” she said.
He lifted a hand. “Hope to see you again,” he said casually and walked on, heading in the direction of Old Town and the shops that stayed open into the night.
She watched him go, then felt the heaviness of the twelve-pack again. She turned and hurried inside, and was immediately glad of her efforts. Gary Morton, all muscles and friendly smiles, kissed her cheek and told her she was brilliant. The two men working with him were equally happy.
“Although I did wonder when you were actually going to make it into the house,” Gary said. “Who’s the hunk?”
“Hunk?” she asked, pretending not to know exactly who he was talking about.
“Tall, well-built guy you were just talking to out front?” he teased.
“Oh. Just some guy who was at one of the lectures today. He was admiring the house. This is the historic district—people are supposed to admire my house.”
He grinned. “Are you sure it was just the house he was admiring?”
She laughed. “Since he was staring at the house before I got there, I’m assuming that, yeah, it was just the house he was admiring. Anyway, we—as in you and me—were invited to dinner,” she told him. “Will, Caroline, and Renee and Brad from the museum.”
“What? You didn’t invite Mr. Gorgeous?” he queried, grinning.
“Gary…” she said warningly.
“Okay, okay. Don’t hit me.” He put up a hand as if to protect himself, smiling all the while. “But pizza is good enough for me. I want to get this place in shape for you, so I need to knock out that last wall. I know it means a lot of work and a lot of mess, but you can’t have a leaking water pipe. It will destroy the whole place on you, given time. You can go ahead if you want to. You don’t have to be here wielding a sledgehammer.”
“No, no, thank you, but I’m just as happy to hang around while you knock down walls,” Sarah assured him, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m dialing the pizza guy right now. What do you guys want…?”
“One cheese, one pepperoni, that’ll be great, thanks,” Gary said, then turned and disappeared down the hallway.
Sarah ordered the pizza, then took a minute and looked around.
At the moment, everything seemed to be coated in a thin layer of white dust. But even as she noted the dust, she was happy. It was such a beautiful place. So what if it had been a mortuary for a while? It had originally been built as the home of an American politician’s aide soon after Florida became a territory. She had a sweeping porch that led to the original etched glass entry door. There was a small mudroom, still with the original tile. The house boasted a huge foyer, with a hall that stretched back toward a multitude of rooms that, while certainly viewing rooms during the house’s tenure as a mortuary, had been planned as an office, a formal dining room, dual parlors—one for ladies and another for gentlemen—a music room and a laundry room. Somewhere along the line, a kitchen had been added to the house proper. The original kitchen had been a separate building out back; it was now empty but would one day make a beautiful apartment. The old carriage house had already been turned into an apartment, and though it, too, needed work, it was livable. The plumbing worked, and she’d put new sheets on the old four-poster bed in the large downstairs room. She’d put in sink, refrigerator and a microwave, just in case some of Gary’s crew should ever need to stay. The carriage house stood just to the left of the driveway, creating an L with the main house. She couldn’t help but take a moment to bask in the fact that she actually owned such a beautiful house. Well, she and the bank.
So far, Gary hadn’t had to rip apart either of the front parlors. The men’s parlor, on the right, was done in wood and dark tones. The ladies’ parlor was light, with soft beige-toned wallpaper and crown molding painted to match. It was peeling, but that was all right. She could handle the cosmetic details later. There was a grand piano in the parlor, out of tune, but it had come with the house, and she intended to have it tuned and lovingly repaired eventually. There was also a small secretary, where she worked when she was home. Now she took one of the beers for herself, sat down at her desk and started looking at the articles she had collected on old St. Augustine, looking for anything about the house.
She found herself musing rather than reading.
There was no reason to think there was anything suspect about the man from the museum staring at her house. There was plenty to admire about it, and this was a tourist town, after all. And that was what tourists did. They stared.
He wasn’t the usual tourist, though. Of that she was sure. He had an air about him. Like a…cop. No, not a cop. A CEO. No, not a CEO, either. She wasn’t quite sure what it was that made him so striking, even over and above his looks. Maybe it was that build, sleek and powerful, and a stance that seemed to speak quietly of confidence.
Strange. Caroline had thought he seemed familiar. There was something familiar about him, but Sarah couldn’t begin to figure out what it was. She was certain she would have remembered if she had ever met the man before.
“Hey!”
She had been so lost in her thoughts that she was startled when she heard Gary’s voice.
“What is it?”
“Sorry, I think you should see this.”
She looked at him, surprised. She didn’t know a thing about construction, and she had told him so when she hired him to supervise the restoration of the mansion. Whatever he came across, he was supposed to deal with it. He knew what would fly with both the contemporary codes and the demands of the historic board. He knew walls and leaky water pipes. She didn’t.
“What?” she asked again, worried by the look he was giving her. Things had been going so well, so incredibly well, and she didn’t want anything to change that.
This wasn’t going to be about leaking pipes. Instinctively, she knew that.
Just the tone of his voice was disturbing as if she had suddenly rounded a corner to find herself in an alien world. A creeping feeling of terrible unease began to fill her, slowly at first, then cold and sweeping, like skeletal fingers of ice reaching from a grave on a winter’s day.
“Bones,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.
“Bones?” she repeatedly blankly. “What, you found a dead squirrel?” she asked weakly, though she knew full well that wasn’t he had found.
“No, Sarah. Human bones.”
“Well, the house was used as a mortuary,” she reminded him, though she knew she was being stupid. She just didn’t want it to be true. It was as if everything had suddenly shifted. The world had been good, and now, from this moment on, it was going to be something altogether worse.
“We found them in the wall, Sarah. The wall. Mortuaries didn’t usually wall up the dead,” Gary said, then looked at her questioningly, as if waiting for her to decide what to do.
She nodded. “I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them we have a skeleton in the wall.”
“A skeleton?” Gary repeated, staring at her blankly.
“Right,” she said slowly. “Bones. A skeleton.”
“Sarah, please. Just come look.”
She stood at last and followed him back to what she intended to one day be a beautiful library.
She knew then what he had wanted her to see. There was no skeleton in the wall.
There were dozens of them.
2
“I heard you found a body,” Adam Harrison said over the phone. Adam never did waste time with pleasantries over the phone, Caleb thought. No “Hey, how are you settling in? Good trip?”
In person, Adam Harrison—Caleb’s boss and CEO of Harrison Investigations—was charming. One of the most dignified and courteous men who had ever walked the earth, Caleb was convinced. But he just wasn’t a phone man.
“Yes, but nothing that has anything to do with our case. I just heard from that lieutenant friend of yours. The body is—”
“Frederick J. Russell, banker, who must have been speeding around that curve. He’s been missing for twelve months, and if there’s anything more, no one will know until the coroner’s finished his report. A fine day’s work, even if there’s no connection,” Adam said.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t get you any closer to what you’re looking for. Have you discovered anything from talking to the locals?”
Caleb smiled, glad that Adam couldn’t see him. “Adam, I’ve only been here twenty-four hours. But I’m out there, meeting people. I’ll do everything in my power to chase down the girl who just went missing and see if we can discover some connection between her case and Jennie’s. Frankly, I’m hoping this girl just ran off with some guy. I’d just as soon not find her corpse.” He was afraid he was going to find her dead, though there was always hope. As for Jennie, her own mother sensed that she was gone.
“Have you gotten a feel for anything?” Adam asked.
Caleb hesitated. A feel for anything. That could mean just about anything when you worked for Adam. Harrison Investigations specialized in the bizarre. The unexplained. The things that went bump in the night. Caleb didn’t think they were going to find anything bizarre connected to this case, though. At any given time, hundreds of serial killers were on the prowl around the world. Most murders resulted from a moment’s fury and were relatively easily solved. The husband who suddenly stabbed his wife with the carving knife over a burned meal usually wasn’t smart enough to hide the prints or other trace evidence that would lead police straight to him.
But serial killers…they were hard to catch. All the DNA in the world couldn’t help if the killer wasn’t in the system. Ditto fingerprints. And they went after strangers, so linking their victims was a challenge, because the pattern connecting them wasn’t obvious. And that was just when the bodies were found. At Quantico he’d once attended a lecture on the number of serial victims who went undiscovered. Swamps were a great place to dispose of bodies. Soft tissue decayed quickly; animals and insects destroyed evidence.
Complicating things further, serial killers were frequently mobile. They attacked when and where the moment—and the victim—was right; they might kill in one location and dispose of the body in another. The killer might move from Florida to Georgia…or Oregon—wherever life took him, killing all the while and counting on geography and competing bureaucracies to keep his victims from being connected into one ongoing case.
Caleb was afraid that Jennie Lawson might have been the victim of just such a killer, and because of that, her mother might never have the peace of burying her precious daughter’s body.
But did any of that add up to a feel for anything?
“No gut intuition, not yet,” he told Adam. It was barely a white lie. He genuinely wasn’t sure he’d had a feeling for anything. Admittedly, he’d been interested in that house, the beautiful old colonial that was undergoing a lot of renovation work, as soon as he’d seen it. But had he actually been drawn to it? Beckoned?
And was it coincidental that it was owned by the gorgeous brunette from the historical museum? He was forced to admit that it probably was. The woman obviously had a passion for history, so there was nothing odd about her owning a piece of it. But was it odd that he had felt drawn to both?
Who wouldn’t be drawn to such a beautiful woman, with her flashing green eyes, the sense of fun touched with a bit of wickedness that had come out as she handled those kids, her obvious intelligence, and the lithe, sleek body that had been obvious even hidden under the dowdy clothing of a long-ago day.
“Caleb—you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m sorry. Like I said, nothing yet. Trust me, I’ll be doing everything in my power to find Jennie Lawson. If she’s here anywhere, I will find her.”
“Of course. Don’t forget, follow up on everything. No matter how off-the-wall you may think your hunch is, check it out. Those are often the signs that will take you where you need to go.”
“Right. I’ll keep in contact. Though I assume you’re getting information from the police faster than I am.”
“I’ll keep you up-to-date on things.”
“Thanks. And likewise.”
Caleb hung up.
He stood and stretched, then wandered to the door.
He had chosen a bed-and-breakfast on Avila Street not for its charm—though it certainly offered enough—but because he could get a room on the ground floor with a private entrance. His doorway was on the side of the building, and a bougainvillea-shaded walk led straight out to the street at the rear of the rambling old Victorian.
Old Town St. Augustine was pretty much an easily navigated rectangle. On the coast, the massive Fort Marion, the old Spanish Castillo de San Marcos, served as the city’s massive landmark, and the town had grown around it in the remaining three directions. Now the bay was lined with restaurants, hotels, shops and B&Bs. Beyond that main stretch were all kinds of smaller but interesting tourist attractions: the oldest house, the oldest schoolhouse, the oldest pharmacy—this was a city that prided itself on being old, and it was a historical treasure trove. Interspersed with the tourist attractions were more B&Bs, one-of-a-kind shops and even a number of private residences. At night, the backstreets were quiet, except when the sightseeing carriages and ghost tours went by.
With St. Augustine’s notoriety as the oldest continually inhabited European city in the United States—with sixty years on Jamestown—naturally it was rumored to harbor a lot of ghosts.
As he stood on the sidewalk, feeling the Atlantic breeze that cooled the city year-round, he was startled as one police car went by, and then another, quickly followed by a third.
They were turning down St. George Street.
Caleb followed.
“Oh, my God. This is ghastly,” Caroline breathed.
“Caroline, please,” Sarah said.
“Horrifying,” Caroline went on.
“Caroline!” Will protested. “Please, they’re bones.”
“Human bones,” Caroline reminded him. “Human bones.”
Will looked at Caroline, then rolled his light green eyes at Sarah as he ran a hand through his dark chestnut-colored hair.
St. Augustine could be a very small town. One officer had talked to another after Sarah had called the police, and the story about the bones in her walls had traveled like lightning, with a cop friend of Will’s reaching him while he and the others were waiting for a table. The police had barely arrived before her cousin and her friends showed up, as well.
“This is history in the making,” Barry Travis said, looking far more contemporary in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.
“History?” Renee Otten protested. “As if we need more ghost stories in St. Augustine.”
“I’ll bet the undertaker was selling coffins to the families of the dead, dumping the bodies in the walls, then selling the coffins again,” Sarah said. She felt tired. And despite the logic of her words, she was still unnerved. She loved this house, and she was pretty certain that she was right. In a few cases, something like mummified tissue remained on the bodies—enough to hold them together. And there were stained scraps of fabric left, as well, which seemed to date the interment to the mid to late eighteen-hundreds.
She felt terrible, of course, that human beings had been treated with no respect and no reverence whatsoever. But she found it criminal, not ghastly. And she was aware, above all, that this discovery meant bringing in a team of historians and anthropologists, on top of the forensic specialists. She would be like a visitor in her own house. She had learned enough about dig sites when she worked as a historian in Arlington, charting relics and remains, to know that for a fact.
“How can you be so sure? Maybe someone who lived here was a monster. A murderer. There was a guy in Chicago who did away with whole families in the late eighteen-hundreds. He was worse than Jack the Ripper—but they caught him,” Will offered.
She glared at her cousin. “Will!”
“Sorry,” he told her.
They were standing just inside the doorway. Behind them stood Tim Jamison, the police lieutenant who’d been handed the case. He was convinced that these weren’t modern-day homicides, but there were still plenty of questions to be answered. He was supervising the arrival of medical personnel and forensic anthropologists. Gary was sitting in the kitchen, drinking beer. He had already given Tim his statement but didn’t want to leave yet.
There were already a few reporters hanging around, and Gary didn’t want to deal with them. He just wanted to eat his pizza, drink his beer and stop the leak.
“Look at it this way,” Caroline said, brightening. “They’re obviously very old bones. They’ll get them all out quickly and start studying them in some lab somewhere. You’ll be able to get back to work on the house, and when you do open for business, it will be fabulous. People love to stay at haunted houses. There’s some castle in Ireland that’s supposed to be haunted and you can’t even get a reservation there for years.”
She offered Sarah a bright smile, then turned pale. “Those poor people. I bet they really do haunt the house. Can you imagine how terrible it must be to just get dumped out of your coffin? Oh! And we were just talking about Pete Albright this morning—and how we’d made up stories about people being buried in the house. And now it turns out those stories were true. I know I’d be furious enough to be haunting the place if my body had been dumped out of my coffin, wouldn’t you?”
Sarah laughed at that. “Caroline, if someone dumped my body out of my coffin, I wouldn’t care because I’d already be dead. My friends and family would have to be furious for me. And I don’t believe we hang around after we’re dead.”
“You an atheist or something?” Barry asked, surprised.
She shook her head. “No, I believe in God and the afterlife, and I even like going to church. That’s my point. We go to heaven or…wherever when we die. We’re no longer tied to our bodies. So if I was dumped out of a coffin, I doubt if I’d know it, and if I did, I wouldn’t care. I mean, we’re organic, we rot. So I don’t think that I’d be hanging around to haunt anyone, that’s all.”
“It’s that time she spent in Virginia,” Caroline said, shivering. “She worked in a bunch of old graveyards. I guess she got used to hanging out with dead people.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.
“If you go over to the old cemetery just down the street, they tell you that you’re only seeing half of it, that the street is paved right on top of hundreds of graves,” Sarah said. “And the tourists eat it up. So if I get a good haunted-house story out of this, is that so bad?”
Renee shivered and moved closer. “When they said human bones, it scared me to death, I have to admit. I mean, with that girl missing and all…”
“Renee! You thought someone murdered her, then hid her body in my house—behind a wall, no less—and I never even noticed?” Sarah asked sarcastically. Renee turned bright red, and Sarah instantly felt sorry. Renee was a good docent; she just seemed to be a bit of an airhead in real life. She was pretty and sweet, and kids loved her, but Sarah couldn’t quite understand how she and Barry had ended up in a relationship. Barry was inquisitive and intuitive, and knew a lot more history than what was contained in the training material the docents received. And Renee was…Renee.
“Well, of course…not,” Renee said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that that poor girl is missing and it has me worried, you know?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump on you,” Sarah assured her quickly. “Of course that missing girl was the first thing you thought of. I’m just grateful that ‘my’ bones do seem to be very old ones. You know, I’ve heard stories about this house, but never anything about a crazy undertaker filling the walls with his…clients. I’m going to have to do some more research and see what I can find out.”
“The only way you would have heard the story would have been if someone had already discovered the bones and dug them out,” Will said, his tone ironic.
She cast him an exasperated stare, but he didn’t notice. He was looking out the open door to where a crowd had gathered on the street, a uniformed officer keeping them back. “Hey, I know that guy.”
“What guy?” Sarah asked.
“Don’t go staring,” Will said.
“Why? Whoever he is, he’s in front of my house,” Sarah said. She gripped Will’s shoulder and looked past him, then gasped.
“What?” Caroline asked, jumping.
“It’s him.”
“Him, who?” Caroline demanded, then gave a little gasp of her own and said, “Oh, my God, it’s the guy from the museum!”
“He was here when I got home, staring at the place,” Sarah said.
“I told you, I thought I knew him from somewhere…oh, my God!” Caroline said. “You don’t think that—”
“He was a creepy old undertaker after the Civil War and stuffed a bunch of bodies in the walls?” Will asked, laughing.
Caroline flushed. “No. It’s just that—”
“I know who—” Will began. But he didn’t get a chance to finish. Lieutenant Tim Jamison was striding their way.
“Let him in, Fred,” Tim Jamison said into his radio, obviously speaking to the uniformed officer who was holding the onlookers back.
Sarah watched as Fred let the man from the museum step past.
“Hey!” she said as she caught Tim’s arm.
He turned back to her. “What?”
“Tim, who is that? Why are you letting him in?”
“I know who he is,” Will said. “I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s a diver, and he just did some work with us.”
“A diver?” Sarah repeated, confused.
“He’s actually a P.I. with some firm out of Virginia or D.C.—and he’s a diver,” Tim told Sarah. “He’s connected, too. The captain told me to help him out as much as I can. Will you excuse me?”
Sarah let him go, though she wanted to protest that it was her house everyone was traipsing through, and she should be the one to tell any nonessential personnel whether they could or couldn’t enter.
“He’s a damned good diver. He found a body this morning,” Will said.
“What?” Sarah, Caroline and Renee demanded in unison.
“The plot thickens,” Barry said, twisting a pretend moustache.
Sarah shot him a glance telling him that his joke was in poor taste, then turned to Will. “The missing girl?” she asked.
Will shook his head. “We were looking for her, but it was a crapshoot. We don’t know exactly when she disappeared, much less where she went, we don’t know if she was killed…the bosses decided to send divers down since she’d been at a beach party when she was last seen. They called me in as the dive master and coordinator. We didn’t find her—but your guy did discover a submerged car with a man in it. He knows his stuff—he’s a good diver.”
So he’d found a body. And now there were bodies in her house. Did that mean anything?
“His name is Caleb Anderson,” Will supplied.
“I could swear I know him from somewhere,” Caroline said.
And then, walking beside Tim, he was coming up on the porch. “I don’t think this discovery can possibly impact your search,” Tim was telling him. “This is a case for the history books—and new fodder for the ghost tours around here. Intriguing, though.”
Caleb Anderson reached the group standing just inside the door, then reached out and shook hands with Will, nodded at the others, then walked over to stand next to Sarah. “Quite a discovery,” he said to her.
“Yes, not what I was expecting, certainly,” she said.
Caroline moved forward, offering her hand. “Hi. I’m Caroline Roth. I saw you at the museum earlier. And these are our fellow docents, Barry Travis and Renee Otten.”
“Nice to meet you,” Caleb said, shaking hands all around before turning back to Sarah. “You haven’t owned the house very long?” he asked her.
“A few months,” she said.
“But she’s been in love with it forever—since we were little kids,” Caroline said. “She was working in the D.C. area and just came home a few months ago to help out at the museum. And then she got the opportunity to buy this place and jumped at it.”
Sarah stared at Caroline, wondering if her friend was going to give him her full biography. Then she wondered why it mattered. It wasn’t as if her life were a secret in any way. Still, for some reason, she thought that the stranger should have to work for his information regarding any of them—maybe because she didn’t think info about him was going to be easy to come by.
“I see. Well, it is a beautiful place—and the bones will add a nice touch of the macabre to its history—” Caleb said.
“Anderson?” Tim Jamison said, breaking in. “This way.”
“Excuse me,” Caleb said, and left them, following Tim to the almost-library, where the walls had been torn out.
“Come on,” Will said to Sarah. “Pack a bag and let’s head out. You can stay at my place tonight.”
“Or you can stay with me,” Caroline offered.
Sarah shook her head. “Will, you live in a studio. And, Caroline, no offense, because you know I love her, but your mom will just mother me to death. I’ll go to Bertie Larsen’s Tropical Breeze.”
Bertie owned a charming little B&B around the corner. At any given time there were twenty to thirty such establishments operating in town, and the owners tended to help each other out. Sometimes business in the city was the proverbial feast, and sometimes it was famine, but the owners tended to stay friends, or at least allies. As a group they could advertise or petition the city for benefits like tax breaks, benefitting them all when they worked together. And since some places accepted pets, some accepted kids and some neither, they often passed on a competitor’s name when they didn’t meet a potential guest’s criteria.
Bertie wasn’t just a fellow businesswoman, she had become a good friend who had already given Sarah lots of advice. Best of all, her inn had a number of rooms with private entrances, and Sarah was in the mood for privacy. She crossed her fingers that a room with a private entrance would be available.
“If you’re sure…” Will said.
“I am,” Sarah insisted. “I don’t mind spending the night away from home, but I want to be able to get in and out of my own house easily if I need to. And since we all agree I can’t stay here tonight, please excuse me. I’m going to gather a few things.”
Sarah didn’t wait for an answer as she hurried up to her bedroom. She’d meant to just grab her toiletries and an outfit for the next day, but she found herself sitting down on the foot of her bed instead.
“This…sucks,” she muttered aloud.
She loved her bedroom. The mattress was new, but the bed was original to the period, a massive four-poster, intricately carved. The dresser, free-standing mirror, secretary and bedside occasional tables matched the bed. The floor was hardwood, and she had stripped, stained and waxed it herself, then purchased the elegant Oriental carpet on eBay. Her clothing was hung in the wardrobe she’d gotten from Annie’s Antiques, just down Ponce. The private bath featured a claw-foot tub and porcelain taps. She felt real pride in everything she had accomplished here and in the rest of the house.
But tonight there would be people in and out. Gary had agreed to stay to help as they used echo-location to discern whether there were additional bodies entombed in the walls. And despite her own credentials, Sarah—who had worked on many burial sites but had never managed one—had agreed that the excavation of the bones should be supervised by Professor Manning, an expert from the college who had one doctorate in history and another in anthropology. She was far too close to the situation here, too involved.
She just wanted those skeletons out of her walls and respectfully interred—somewhere far away.
It was definitely going to be one hell of a story. So far the police had agreed to her request that no press be let into the house until the researchers and police had carried out the necessary investigations. The bones wouldn’t be going to a mortuary any time soon. While the circumstances leading to their presence in her walls were being determined, the bones themselves would be going to various institutes for study.
Study that would take time.
She let out a groan of frustration, stood up, grabbed her things and stuffed them into a small rolling suitcase, and then paused, looking around the room and catching sight of herself in the standing mirror. She looked too thin and too pale, she decided. Why? She wasn’t afraid of the bones, wasn’t afraid of being haunted by ghosts crying out for help. She firmly believed that the soul did not remain in the body after death.
Still, this discovery had somehow changed everything.
Her house had now become a small part of history, a part of local lore and legend, in a way she had never anticipated or wished for.
There was nothing genuinely tragic about the discovery—an undertaker of long ago had done all the right things in public, then made money by selling the same coffins over and over again. The souls of the people in the walls were long gone, and anyone who had loved them was long gone, too.
But for some reason it felt as if her life was going to be different from now on, and that made her uneasy.
At least I’m not a blonde, she found herself thinking, then winced. Where had that thought come from? A young woman, a blonde, was missing, and that was sad, but it had nothing to do with her house. It was odd, though, that there had been two disappearances in two years—two young women, both with blond hair. Maybe it wasn’t the most admirable way to be thinking, but it was reassuring to know that at least she didn’t seem to fit the profile of those recent victims.
She sighed and turned to leave. For tonight, she wanted out of here. Rolling her bag behind her, she hurried downstairs.
There was no one in the entry or hallway, but she could hear voices coming from the library.
The room where the grisly discovery had been made.
As she stood there, wondering whether she should let someone in charge know she was leaving, Caroline reappeared.
“Come on, at least come get a drink with us,” Caroline suggested.
“All right, but let me run over to Bertie’s and get a room first.”
“I still say you could stay with me,” Caroline told her, then gave in when she saw that Sarah’s mind was made up. “Never mind. Go on and get your stuff over to Bertie’s, then meet us at Hunky Harry’s.”
“It’s a plan,” Sarah agreed.
“You’ll really show?”
“Yes, I’ll really show,” Sarah said. “I promise.” She quickly gave Caroline a kiss on the cheek and headed out. From the corner of her eye she’d seen Will, Travis and Renee heading toward them from the hallway, and she wanted to get away from everyone. She desperately needed a little respite from the day’s excitement.
She made it down to the sidewalk, where there was still a throng of tourists and a few locals. Friends. She found herself caught up in conversation, whether she wanted to be or not.
Luckily, the cops were there, too, clearing the area. As soon as she could manage it without being hated by every friend and acquaintance in the area, she escaped.
There was something about the house, definitely. It had drawn him from the first, and Caleb didn’t think it was because he had somehow sensed that a long-ago funeral director had been playing fast and loose with the corpses of his “clients.” Tim Jamison hadn’t seemed surprised to see him standing on the sidewalk, but then again, a couple dozen people had been standing there. Still, he was glad when the police lieutenant asked him in. Maybe the fact that he had found a corpse in the water earlier that day somehow made him worthy.
Jamison had just finished clearing everyone unofficial out of the room where the skeletons had been found.
“Is this something, or what?” the cop was saying now. “I remember the newspapers being filled with something similar just a few years ago—the mortician comforting the grieving relatives, then dumping the bodies of the deceased and selling the coffins again. Coffins aren’t cheap. Even cheap coffins aren’t cheap, and the satin-lined, down-stuffed ones will really cost you. There’s lot of money to be made selling those suckers over and over again. I guess there have always been people willing to make an extra buck or two off the dead, no matter how they do it.”
Caleb looked around the library. Most of the plaster had been torn out, revealing piles of bones between the studs. Some of the bones were still attached to each other by bits of mummified sinew and tendon, preserved inside their plaster prison.
It was a gruesome sight, even for him. In some cases shreds of clothing remained. One of the corpses was wearing the remnants of a Civil War-era hat. It looked as if they had stumbled on a particularly bizarre scenario for a haunted house. Someone might easily think the remains were the result of an exhibit designer’s mad imagination.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Jamison asked. “Hell, I’m a homicide cop. I’ve worked in Jacksonville, Miami and Houston—tough towns, all of them—and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The lieutenant shook his head, staring at the remnants of what had once been living, breathing human beings.
A small man was standing close to the wall, the epitome of the absent-minded professor with his glasses and tufts of wild gray hair, peering closely at the remains, a penlight in his hand. “You know, embalming started becoming popular after the war—the Civil War. They had to try to get those dead boys back home to their mamas and sweethearts. But it really came into vogue for most Americans because of Abraham Lincoln. When he died, his widow wanted him buried back in Illinois, so they held a public viewing as the body traveled cross-country by train, so they had to keep Abe looking good for the mourners. He was embalmed by injecting fluids through the veins, but I think these poor souls were embalmed in the much less efficient fashion of the day, such as disemboweling a corpse and stuffing it with charcoal, or perhaps just immersing the body in alcohol. I imagine they were given proper viewings to satisfy the families, and then they were walled up. You can see here—” he pointed out different shades of plaster that had been chipped from the walls “—that they were put in at different times. Just guessing from the look of the corpses, I’d say this was all done within a ten-year period. See how the bones have darkened just a bit more? That ten-year span was a very long time ago. Fascinating, the way some of the corpses have mummified. My office will retrieve the remains in the morning. Legally, we could arrange removal right now, but I want to bring in specialists to make sure everything is handled correctly. This is quite the find.”
The man finally turned from his macabre monologue, saw Caleb and sized him up. He pocketed his penlight and offered him a hand. “How do you do? You’re that out-of-towner who found that fellow who’s been missing a year, aren’t you? I did his autopsy this afternoon. I’m the M.E. here in town, Florence Benson—my parents were fans of the Ziegfeld follies, I’m afraid—so they call me Doc Benson or Floby around here. Nice to meet you. You solved a sad mystery today.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Doc Benson, and I’m glad to have been of service,” Caleb assured him. “Did you find out anything interesting regarding the body I found?”
“I sent what tissue samples I could gather out to the lab, but after a year in the water…it’s hard going. I’m reserving my comments until I’ve completed my work.”
“Very smart,” Caleb said.
“Yes, especially given the circumstances. I’m working with little more than bone on that corpse, too, which is proving to be more tedious than you’d imagine. At least I know where all his body parts are. Here…well, as you can see, some of these skeletons are still more or less together, and some have fallen completely apart. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.”
“So it appears,” Caleb agreed.
The man studied him again, up and down, making an assessment.
“You work for some secret agency, huh?” the medical examiner asked him.
“Hardly secret,” Caleb said. “We’re just licensed investigators, like lots of other firms. But my boss doesn’t advertise. He’s the quiet kind and only takes on cases that call for what we can offer that other agencies can’t.”
He knew that Tim Jamison was watching him as he spoke, intrigued. Tim had been asked by the mayor, who been asked by the governor, to bring Caleb in on the case of the newly missing girls. He was both wary, and curious. But he seemed open-minded enough, and that was all Caleb really cared about.
“So where has Miss McKinley gotten herself off to, Tim?” Floby asked.
“She left for the night. She grew up here—she’s got plenty of friends around who would offer her a place to stay for the night. I’m not sure where she’s headed. She loves this old place, though. This has to be a big setback for her.”
“Not so bad—unless the whole house turns out to be riddled with corpses,” Floby said cheerfully. “And I don’t think it will. This seems to have been the…dump, shall we say? And as I said, I’ll have the pros in tomorrow to clear out these unwanted tenants, you cops and that professor will do some investigating—though I’m sure you’ll find out these people were already dead before they got stuck in the wall, just in case anyone was worried about that—and then everyone will get the burial they should have gotten years ago. And she’s a historian with on-site experience, so she’ll understand the significance of this find. And since she’s not a shrinking-violet kind of girl, I’m betting she’ll want in on the investigation herself.”
“I’d really appreciate permission to help, too,” Caleb said.
Floby looked at Tim Jamison, who nodded, giving Floby the okay to allow a stranger in on the find.
“We’ll be starting bright and early, so we can catch all the light we can. Someone will be posted out on the porch twenty-four seven to keep the lookie-loos away, so you just check in with him whenever you get here,” Floby told him.
“Thanks. I’ll leave you two, then. I appreciate being let in on this, Lieutenant,” Caleb told Jamison.
Jamison shrugged. “I don’t know who you know, but they sure as hell know all the right people.” He grinned. “You proved your abilities this morning. I’m happy to keep you in the loop—all the loops. And I’m sure you’ll do me the same courtesy in return.”
“Of course.”
Two handshakes and Caleb was out the door. He took a minute to turn and stare up at the house—just as a small crowd was still doing from the sidewalk, gruesomely speculating on the state of the bodies.
Caleb moved quickly past the crowd to avoid being questioned by those who had seen him leave the house and moved farther down the street, then stopped and studied the house again.
Brick, mortar and wood. The place embodied everything that old-town Southern charm should be. It was a decaying but grand old edifice. It wasn’t evil, it was just a house. Still, he felt that there were things waiting to be discovered there, things that he needed to know.
But no ghosts danced on the wraparound porch. No specters wavered in the windows.
The house was just a house.
He turned and headed back toward his B&B, planning to check his e-mail and then head out for something to eat. He’d barely made it around the corner when he saw Sarah McKinley ahead of him, towing a small wheeled overnight bag along behind her. She was alone. That surprised him; she’d been with a group of friends last time he’d seen her.
Suddenly she stopped, as if sensing someone behind her. For a moment she went dead still. Then she swung around and stared at him before asking, “What the hell are you doing here?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you following me?”
3
“Man, that was really creepy,” Caroline said, walking along Avila Street. She shuddered and moved closer to Will. It was strange. She had known Will most of her life. They had fought and teased one another as kids. They had become friends as adults. They had shared their trials and tribulations with other members of the opposite sex with one another.
Then…
They’d been together one night—at Hunky Harry’s, as a matter of fact—and in the middle of laughing at something together, they had looked at each other and their laughter had stopped. And now…well, it wasn’t as if they’d gone insane or anything, but they were both carefully negotiating the transition from friends to the realization that they wanted to be much more.
Will set an arm around her shoulders. “Leave it to Sarah. And what happened earlier today, that was pretty damn creepy, too.”
“Yeah, tell us about it. Who is this Caleb guy, anyway?” Barry asked, strolling up alongside Will.
“Hey, wait! What about me?” Renee demanded, pushing forward.
“What are you trying to do? Block the whole sidewalk?” Caroline complained.
But they all wanted to hear what Will had to say, so they crowded together and walked along in an awkward group, trying to hear him clearly.
“I think the guy is some kind of corpse magnet,” Will said. “We were looking for that missing girl, Winona Hart, and Lieutenant Jamison said Anderson had to be on the dive team. He didn’t explain why, just said the mayor had told him to extend every courtesy to the guy and let him work with us. He has connections in Washington. Some hotshot sent him down here. I have to tell you, we were ticked at first. But the thing is, in the last year, we’ve dived that area a dozen times, and no one ever found that car. But—he found it as easy as if he had a map. Now that’s creepy.”
“So who was the guy he found?” Renee asked.
“Frederick J. Russell, a banker from Jacksonville,” Will said. “He was reported missing about twelve months ago.”
“So what happened to him? How’d he end up in the water?” Renee asked.
Will sighed, shaking his head as he looked at her. “He was still in his car, so they figure he just drove too fast and wound up in the water. Not too hard to figure out.”
“Hey,” Renee protested. “Was he drunk? Had he been suicidal? Maybe someone was after him or something.”
“She’s right,” Caroline pointed out. “What does the coroner say? Maybe someone shot him and that’s why he drove off the road.”
“There’s no coroner’s report yet,” Will admitted, sounding slightly embarrassed, Caroline thought. “Who knows? He might have been drunk, though I don’t know if they’ll be able to figure that out this late in the game. The body…well, if you ask me, it was a lot creepier than anything in Sarah’s house. Let’s just say that on land, we eat the fish. But if you die in the water, the fish eat you.”
“Oh, Lord!” Caroline exclaimed. “I was going to order fish….”
“It’s not going to be the same fish that ate the corpse,” Barry said.
“And how do you know?” Caroline demanded.
“Good question,” Barry admitted. “Cheeseburger for me.”
“Getting back to Anderson, the guy is a little scary. I mean, he’s okay. I like him,” Will said. “But…he’s been here a day and he already found a body we missed for a year. And then all those bones are found at Sarah’s place and he just happens to show up? It’s pretty weird, don’t you think?”
Caroline moved even closer, and he hugged her more tightly to him.
“I don’t think it’s his fault that the bones showed up in Sarah’s walls,” Renee reminded him. “I mean, those skeletons have been there forever. Anyway, you said you liked the guy.”
“I do,” Will said.
“I sure liked him,” Caroline offered.
“Oh, yeah?” Will said teasingly. “You just think he’s hot.”
Caroline laughed. “He is hot. But you’re the only sizzling hunk of man flesh I’m interested in, mister. I’m thinking about Sarah.”
“Sarah?” Will echoed.
“Of course Sarah,” Caroline said.
“I’m not too sure about that. I mean, we really don’t know anything about him,” Will said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea at all,” Barry agreed. “We’re going to have to check him out if we’re thinking about hooking him up with Sarah.”
Renee giggled. “What’s the matter with you guys? Sarah is an adult, and she’s not going to ask us who she can and can’t date!”
“Besides, she knows him at least as well as we do, even if they just met today,” Will said.
“Well, I think he’s a corpse magnet, and I don’t like it,” Barry said flatly.
They all stopped and stared at him. “Hey, we have to look out for our girl, right?” he asked defensively.
“Okay, I’ll ask around and see what I can find out about him,” Will promised. “And we’ll all try to get to know him—if he hangs around.”
“He seems like a decent guy. I hope he does hang around,” Caroline said.
“There you go again—you think he’s hot,” Will said, grinning.
“He’s an inferno,” she agreed. “And I’d really love a drink. Let’s hope we can get a table.” She shivered suddenly and looked at Will. “You know, with all this, we’re forgetting that a girl from here and now is still missing.”
“Well, your stud is on the case,” Will said. “Maybe he’ll find her.”
“Yeah, and hopefully alive,” Barry noted glumly.
“He’s actually here looking for a girl who disappeared a year ago,” Will said. “Her case was in the papers again today. The cops are wondering if there’s a connection between the two cases.”
“I saw the papers. I even showed the article to Sarah,” Caroline told him.
A horse-drawn carriage full of tourists clip-clopped by on the street. “A young woman committed suicide in that hotel, on the top floor,” the guide was telling his passengers. “They say her ghost still visits the room every new moon.”
They all went still as the carriage passed, their gazes turning involuntarily toward the top floor of the hotel.
“I need a drink now,” Renee announced, and hurried on ahead of them to Hunky Harry’s, just a couple of doors away.
Caroline found herself standing alone on the sidewalk for a moment as the others passed her and went inside. She suddenly felt a chill, and she realized that a frisson of fear was sweeping through her.
She’d lived here her entire life. She knew practically every restaurant owner, bartender and shopkeeper in the city. She knew the people who worked in the hotels and museums, and owned the local B&Bs.
And she was suddenly afraid.
Something new had come to the city.
Or maybe something old, very old—and very evil—had been awakened.
Caleb caught up to Sarah McKinley, who was staring at him with suspicion. Even so, she was a beautiful woman.
At that moment, she reminded him of a small but ferocious terrier.
He stopped walking and stood dead still on the sidewalk, staring at her in return.
“Were you speaking to me? If so, no, I’m not following you. I’m headed to my B and B,” he told her.
She blinked. A flush rose to her cheeks, and she winced. “Sorry. But…” She continued to stare at him suspiciously. “Where are you staying?”
“Roberta’s Tropic Breeze, over on Avila,” he said.
She closed her eyes, bit her lip lightly and let out a sigh.
“You’re kidding? Are you saying that’s where you’re staying, too?” he asked.
“Bertie is an old friend,” she told him. “There are dozens of B and Bs in this city,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re staying at the same one I am.”
“Hey, I made my reservation before I left home,” he told her. “I was definitely there first. And why are you staying there, anyway? You must have tons of friends in town.”
“Precisely,” she said.
He laughed. “Sorry, but I’m not checking out. I’d be delighted to help you with that bag, though.”
“I’m perfectly capable of dealing with my own suitcase.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.”
She stared at him for a long moment.
“Okay, I won’t help you with your bag. Nice seeing you.”
She seemed to realize that she was being rude for no real reason and let out another sigh. “Sorry. Yes, thanks, I’d love the help.”
He lowered his head, whispering, though there was no need. “It’s okay—all the people who want to talk to you are still over on your street, staring at your house.”
“Yeah?” she said, her voice skeptical. “I took one step outside and everyone thought that I had all the answers since it’s my house. I have no clue as to how those bodies ended up in my walls.”
“It was a mortuary. The answer should be easy enough to find,” he told her, then looked at her quizzically, taking the bag as they walked. “You’re a historian, right?”
“Yes. I have my master’s degree in American history.”
“You must find this fascinating.”
“I would—if it wasn’t my house we’re talking about. I dreamed about buying that place when I was a kid. I love everything about it. Now I own it, but they have to hack into all the walls, and God knows when I’ll get back in,” she said.
“Oh, it won’t be that long,” he offered.
She glared at him. “Have you seen how the cops, not to mention all the experts, work?”
He laughed. “Okay, then think of it this way. Most people have a ghoulish streak. The value of your property is going to soar. People will be clamoring to take it off your hands.”
“But I don’t want to sell!” she protested. And then they were approaching Bertie’s place.
Caleb saw Roberta Larsen standing anxiously on the porch, and she hurried down the steps as soon as she saw them, too.
“Sarah, you poor dear. Come on inside. I’ve got a nice cup of tea ready for you. And of course you’re welcome to a cup, too, Mr. Anderson.” She kept talking as she ushered them up the steps and through the door. “Sarah, you’re right in here, first room behind the parlor. Mr. Anderson, if you’ll just drop that bag in the room for Sarah…? Sarah, come right into the parlor and catch your breath.”
Roberta Larsen was closing in on seventy, but she was still slim and beautiful, wrinkles and all. And she apparently knew Sarah well.
“Yes, ma’am,” Caleb said.
“He’s a Southern boy,” Roberta told Sarah.
“Northern Virginia,” he said.
“You can always tell the true Southern boys. They say ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am,’ Roberta assured Sarah. “Not that there’s anything wrong with Yankees. I just love it when those wonderful northerners come down to visit. But you can always tell a Southern boy.”
Caleb saw that Sarah was trying to hide a grin, and he was glad. She needed to smile. Then he smiled, too. It had been quite a while since anyone had called him a boy.
Roberta’s place was impeccably kept. The furniture was antique and polished to a high shine, and the parlor—where she served cookies, soda, wine and beer in the afternoon—was comfortable as well as beautiful, with coffee tables, plush sofas and wingback chairs, a fireplace, and rows and rows of books. Roberta had a full silver tea service set out on the central coffee table, though they seemed to be the only guests around at the moment, Caleb thought as he went to deposit Sarah’s bag in the first bedroom, as instructed. It was next to his, but her room didn’t have its own access to the outside the way his did, he noticed.
After setting the bag at the foot of the bed, he noted the large window on one wall. He had a feeling she might come and go via that window, if she got the urge to avoid conversation.
He returned to the parlor, where the two women were already seated. Roberta was pouring tea. “I just don’t believe this,” she said to him as he entered. “Or maybe I do. What a crazy day. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Anderson, it’s not that St. Augustine is crime free. But we’re a tourist town—have been for years. There used to be executions down in the square. The Spanish garroted their condemned in public. These days, though, we pride ourselves on being nice, on doing our best to share our remarkable past without any bloodshed.”
“Bertie,” Sarah said, sipping her tea, “it’s all right. Whatever happened in my house happened a very long time ago, and no one thinks people were murdered and then stuffed in the walls. The general consensus seems to be that the mortuary owner was hiding bodies so he could resell coffins.”
“Yes, but for Gary to have found them today, the same day…Mr. Anderson found that poor drowned man, and with one of our local girls missing…” Roberta’s words trailed off, and she shook her head sadly. “I don’t know whether to be glad or not that they didn’t find the poor woman. And did you know that Mr. Anderson is here because another woman disappeared a year ago? Silly me. You must know that, because obviously you two know one another.”
Sarah stared at him as if curious to see his reaction to that. He shrugged.
The phone rang just then, and Bertie hurried off to answer it.
“Just exactly who do you work for?” Sarah asked him suspiciously.
“An investigations firm,” he said. “Harrison Investigations.”
Her eyes widened with surprise and then she frowned. “You work for…Adam Harrison?”
“Do you know Adam?” he asked. It was his turn to be surprised.
“I’ve met him several times. I worked in Virginia for a while after I got my master’s at William and Mary. I was working on a dig when Adam was called in. It turned out that some local college students were messing around at one of the local historic cemeteries, using light and sound effects to make the place seem haunted. Then I saw him again when one of my coworkers was convinced that a ghost was moving his equipment around. I don’t know what the real situation was, but your boss arranged for a proper funeral and the reinterment of some bones we’d found, and, imagined or not, the problems stopped,” Sarah told him. “So I know the kind of case your firm handles.” She was looking at him differently now.
He had yet to meet anyone who didn’t like, or at least respect, Adam, Caleb thought. And now he had a new in. Miss Sarah McKinley was not going to be so hostile and suspicious now, because he was connected to Adam.
Sarah was frowning again. “But I thought…Adam only investigates when there’s a question of a ghost being involved? Not that I believe in ghosts,” she said firmly.
“Ghosts?” Roberta said, returning from the other room in time to catch the tail end of the conversation. “Well, this is St. Augustine. We’re supposed to be overrun with ghosts. Dozens of locals make their livings off the ghost trade. We would certainly never want to get rid of our ghosts.” She hesitated, eyes narrowing. “Have you ever seen a ghost, Mr. Anderson?”
“Call me Caleb, please,” he told her. What was he supposed to say to that? “I know several people who believe with all their hearts that they’ve seen a ghost or had some kind of paranormal experience,” he said. That was vague enough. But she was still looking at him curiously, and he found himself going on. “Sometimes, when a person has lost a loved one, they’re convinced that they’ve smelled that person’s cologne or heard their footsteps. I had a friend in college who was certain his home was haunted by his grandmother. He swore he could smell her Italian cooking. What has been proven is that some people do have what we call extrasensory perception—you know, when a mother knows that her child has been injured halfway across the world, that kind of thing.” Both Roberta and Sarah were staring at him now. He was beginning to feel as if he’d suddenly grown horns. “Hey, what do I know? We’re all in the dark, guessing about the great beyond. No need to fear, though, Roberta—I certainly wouldn’t want to drive away any of your local ghosts. I say, if they’re bringing in the tourist dollars, more power to them.”
He saw a small smile start to brighten Sarah’s features. Then she said, “Oh!” suddenly, and stood up as if she’d just remembered something. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I have plans I almost forgot all about.” She stared at Caleb again, as if carefully debating something, then apparently made a rather grudging decision to include him. “I’m meeting a few friends, and my cousin Will for drinks and dinner. You’re welcome to join us.”
“I’ll be happy to, if you’re sure you don’t mind,” Caleb told her.
“I just asked you,” Sarah said.
Which didn’t mean she didn’t mind, he thought. Too bad. She had asked, and he was going to take advantage of that to spend some time with a beautiful woman.
“Sure. I haven’t eaten yet. Sounds great,” Caleb said, and stood, too. “I can even protect you from the curiosity seekers on the way,” he said.
“I’m not really the type who needs protection,” she said.
Everyone needs protection, he told her silently. If you had seen half of what I’ve seen in this life…
“You two have a good time,” Roberta said. “I’ll see you both at breakfast.”
They thanked her for the tea and headed for the door. Outside, Caleb asked Sarah if she wanted him to drive.
“We’re only going about four blocks,” she told him. “Unless you can’t walk that far,” she added just a shade too sweetly.
“I should be fine,” he told her. “Where are we going?”
“Hunky Harry’s.”
“There’s really place called Hunky Harry’s?” Caleb asked incredulously. “Is there really a Harry? And is he hunky?” he teased.
“There is a Harry, and he’s been old as long as I can remember, so he’s got to be…really old. And he likes to think he’s hunky. It’s a popular place with locals and tourists alike. So popular that he changes the name periodically, when he gets sick of the crowds.”
“So Harry is a real character.”
She shrugged, walking toward Avenida Menendez. “Maybe you’ll get to see for yourself. He may or may not be around tonight. He comes in when he feels like it. When he does, he cleans tables, washes glasses, even cooks up a few appetizers. Yes, he’s a real character.”
She was keeping a definite distance between them, he noticed. She still didn’t trust him; he wouldn’t be here at all, walking with her, planning to spend time with her friends, if it weren’t for Adam.
“So exactly why are you here in town?” she asked.
“Jennie Lawson,” he said.
She looked at him. “The woman who disappeared last year?”
“Yes. You heard about it, I take it?”
“I wasn’t living back down here then, but Caroline showed me the newspaper this afternoon. Jennie Lawson was mentioned because of Winona Hart, the local girl who just disappeared. The article said they don’t know that she ever got to St. Augustine.”
“I know, but according to her mother, she was heading here.”
“And you think you can find her—here—after all this time?”
“Her mother doesn’t think she’s still alive, but she does think I’ll find out what happened to her, whether she got this far or not.”
“You know, there’s a possibility that…that she wanted to disappear.”
“There’s always that possibility. But…” He left off speaking and shrugged. “What I was saying to Roberta before? I’ve found that to be true. Whether it’s instinct, extrasensory perception or what, I don’t know. But when a mother feels her child is dead, she’s almost always right.”
She stared at him, obviously bothered by his words. “That’s horrible.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Any death is sad.”
“No, I mean your attitude. How are you going to find her if you don’t believe it’s possible that she’s alive? You need to…believe,” she told him.
“I need to do everything in my power—whether she’s alive or dead—that’s what matters,” he said.
She shook her head in disgust.
“All right,” he said, “you tell me. What about the local girl? What’s your feeling about her? Did she just run away? Is she trying to punish her parents? What do you believe?”
She kept shaking her head, pulling ahead of him a little. “No. But things…happen. Maybe she’s hurt somewhere. And that’s why it matters that people move quickly.”
“Jennie disappeared a year ago,” he reminded her.
“Maybe she has amnesia. Stranger things have happened,” she assured him.
“I will find her. Alive or dead, I will find out what happened to her,” he said flatly.
She fell silent for a few seconds, then, changing the subject, said, “You met Will Perkins this morning.”
“Yes. Why?”
“He’s my cousin.”
“Cool.”
She was walking very quickly now, as if she were uncomfortable with him. “There’s the restaurant,” she said.
Avenida Menendez fronted the water. From where they stood, he could see the massive fortification of Ft. Marion, gleaming in the moonlight in all its historic glory. Horse-drawn carriages lined the opposite side of the street. Groups of tourists were walking around, some couples holding hands or arm in arm. There were several hotels nearby, and numerous restaurants. The downtown historic area was small, the streets busy with car traffic along with all the pedestrians. He saw tables in front of a café and bar. The neon sign, adorned with palm fronds and plastic alligators, advertised Hunky Harry’s.
She preceded him, winding her way through the outside tables and walking straight to a table at the rear. He eyed the single empty chair as he recognized Will, Caroline and the other two docents from the museum, Renee Otten and Barry Travis.
“Hey!” Will saw him and stood, grinning. “Nice that you came along.” He set an arm around Sarah’s shoulders, drawing her against him to give her a rub on the head. They were obviously close. They resembled one another, too, with the same shade of hair and eyes, so much alike, yet Will was as completely masculine as Sarah was feminine.
“Sarah invited me along. I hope that’s all right,” Caleb said, after greeting everyone.
“It’s great!” Renee said enthusiastically.
“I’m impressed you got Sarah here. I thought for sure she’d blow us off tonight,” Caroline said.
“Here we go, another chair,” Barry offered, pulling one over from another table.
“Thanks,” Caleb said, taking the seat.
Everyone started talking at once, stepping on each other’s words, and he tried to keep up the chatter until a waitress came and took their orders. He opted for the fish of the day and wondered why the others all gave him funny looks.
As soon as the waitress left, the conversation turned to the skeletons in Sarah’s house.
“How long do you think it will take them to remove them all?” Renee asked.
“It can take months—years, even—at some sites,” Barry said glumly.
Sarah glared at him.
“Sorry,” Barry said.
“You don’t have to let it take months,” Caleb said to Sarah.
They all stared at him. “You have training in the field, too, so you can call the shots. So far, you’ve done all the right things, brought in the authorities and the experts. Now you can take control. You know the right people, so keep the process moving. Whatever crime took place, it was over a hundred years ago. You can see to it that everything is done right, that people are respectful of both the bodies and the historical record. And then you can let the forensic anthropologists have their day once the bodies are out of your house.”
Sarah stared at him and nodded slowly. “I…guess so.”
Caroline tossed her hair back. “Don’t just guess. Caleb is right. Take control.”
“It’s true. This is the kind of work I was doing in Virginia, but I certainly wasn’t in charge. In a lot of ways, historians are really just record keepers, secretaries for the past. Once the bodies are removed and the remains dated…come to think of it, it will be intriguing to research the situation. And it is my house, damn it!” She slammed a fist on the table and grinned. “If there’s investigating to be done, there’s no reason why I can’t do it.”
“And Caleb there can help you, I bet,” Barry said.
His words were followed by a moment of silence as everyone stared at Caleb.
“Well, you’re an investigator, right?” Barry asked.
“Yes, I’m an investigator,” Caleb agreed.
“Yes, but I’m a historian,” Sarah said. “And the bodies in my house are over a hundred years old. It’s not a police matter, because there’s no one left alive to arrest. It’s all a matter for the historians now,” Sarah said, then stood, as if agitated. “Excuse me, I’m just going to say hello to a friend at the bar.”
Caleb noted that no one standing at the bar seemed the least bit interested in their little group.
He stayed at the table with the others. It never hurt to know as many locals as he could. It wasn’t likely that this foursome could help him find Jennie Lawson, but they might know someone or something about the area that could be pertinent at some point.
And Sarah’s house…well, he had to admit it fascinated him. Historian or not, he was drawn to it, and when he got a feeling like that, it almost always meant something.
“She’s touchy tonight,” Will said, apologizing for Sarah.
“I would be, too,” Caroline said defensively.
“It will better once those bodies are out of her house,” Renee said.
“Seriously,” Barry said. “She just found out she’s been sleeping with a bunch of bodies. You talk about a haunted house…Their spirits are probably all running around screaming, ‘Let me out, let me out!’”
“Oh, Barry,” Renee protested, giggling.
“So tell us about yourself,” Caroline said, inching her chair closer to Caleb’s. “You met Will today, right? Diving? And you found a body in a submerged car. Did he drive off the road?”
“I found the body, and it’s in very bad condition. The medical examiner is on it now. As to how he ended up in the water, I’ll leave it to the police to figure that out,” Caleb said.
“There were no bullet holes in the car or anything like that?” Renee asked, intrigued.
“Not that I saw, but then again, I wasn’t looking for any. The police have custody of the car now, as well, and they’ll find out what happened,” Caleb said.
“So Will says you’re here to find a girl—but not our missing girl?” Barry asked, perplexed.
“Right,” Caleb agreed. “You probably read about the case at the time. Her name wa—Her name is Jennie Lawson, and she disappeared a year ago on her way here. But of course I’ll share whatever information I discover with the local police, because it could help with the search for Winona Hart. They might have been abducted by the same person.”
“Maybe they both ran off to join a cult,” Renee said. “That kind of thing happens, you know.”
“It does, but usually someone who knows the person is aware that they’re dissatisfied with their lives, or that they’ve fallen under the influence of some sect,” Caleb explained.
“But the cases might not be related at all,” Barry speculated.
“That’s true, too.”
“So where do you start?” Caroline asked him.
“Well, theoretically, you start with the person’s last known whereabouts,” Caleb said.
“But this girl you’re looking for…the paper said no one even knows what she did after her plane landed in Jacksonville. She just disappeared,” Barry said.
“She picked up a rental car,” Caleb said.
“But after all this time…that car couldn’t possibly yield any clues,” Will said.
“You’d be surprised,” Caleb said. “Trace evidence can survive an awful lot. But it’s a moot point—unless we find the car. It disappeared, too.”
Just then the waitress arrived with their meals, and Caleb thought his fish—which no one else had ordered, he noticed—was delicious. Despite the arrival of their food, Sarah remained at the bar, chatting with the bartender.
The others asked him more questions as they ate; he answered some and deftly sidestepped others.
Finally he managed to turn the conversation away from himself and learned that Will had grown up in St. Augustine, as had Caroline. Renee had been there about seven years, having fallen in love with the city while attending college over in Gainesville. Barry was the latecomer. He’d done historical tours in Chicago, his hometown, and Charleston, before seeing an ad for docents for the museum.
“I love it here,” he told Caleb. “It gets chilly enough in winter for me to feel like there’s been a change of season, but we pretty much never get snow, and even then, it’s just a few flakes that melt on contact. It’s a big deal when it happens, though, it’s so rare. And because we’re on the water, even summer is usually cool enough, better than a lot of other places. So I’m staying here for sure.”
“Seems like a pretty laid-back town,” Caleb said.
“Hey,” Caroline protested. “We have plenty of nightlife. And if it’s not exciting enough for you here, pop back onto the highway. In twenty minutes you’re on the outskirts of Jacksonville. A few hours in the other direction and you’re in Orlando, surrounded by theme parks.”
“So where is home to you, Caleb?” Renee asked, breaking in before Caroline’s lecture really got going.
“Virginia,” Caleb said.
“So is this your first trip to St. Augustine?” Caroline asked, and he thought she seemed a little bit suspicious, even slightly troubled.
“Yes,” he assured her.
“Hmm.”
“Why?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I could just swear I’d met you, or at least seen you, somewhere before, that’s all.”
“Who knows? Maybe in another life,” Will said, and yawned. “I’ve got work tomorrow, gang. I’ve got to get going.”
They all rose in unison just as Sarah returned to the table. “Sorry, guys. Al and I just started talking and I lost track. Looks like I missed dinner,” she added, staring at the lasagne congealing on her plate.
“Looks like,” Caroline said. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She started for the door.
“Hey, wait, I’m walking you home,” Will called after her. He gave the others an apologetic look. “She’s a blonde…. I don’t want her out there alone at night.”
“Good call, stick with her,” Sarah told him.
“Don’t go thinking that just because you’re a brunette, that makes you safe,” Will said quietly to Sarah, then gave Caleb a speaking look before racing after Caroline.
“I’ll see Renee home safe and sound,” Barry said cheerfully, and something in the way he looked at her told Caleb that the two had been an item for a long time.
“We might as well head out, too,” Sarah told Caleb when the others were gone.
“What about the check?”
“It’s covered,” she assured him.
“That’s nice, but I pay my own way,” he told her. “Besides, I can expense it.”
“I’m so happy to hear we’re a business expense,” Sarah said.
He let out a sigh of aggravation, staring at her. “What the hell is it with you? You’re the one who invited me here.”
She was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Anyway, don’t worry about paying. Al—the bartender—told me that Harry was here earlier, saw us and told our waitress not to give us a check. So we were all Harry’s guests tonight. And I have to show up to work tomorrow morning, too, so I need to get going.”
“Let’s go, then.”
She waved to several people as they left, and a few called out to her in return, but at least no one was asking her about the grisly find in her house.
Even so, he was certain that the whispering would start as soon as they were gone.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. “So what will you be doing tomorrow?” she eventually asked him.
“Heading to Jacksonville,” he said.
She looked over at him. “You think your missing girl is in Jacksonville?”
“No. I think she’s here. And I think Winona Hart is going to be found here, too—eventually. But I want to go to the agency where Jennie rented her car. I would have done that today, but I had the opportunity to go on the dive, and I didn’t want to miss it.”
“There is the possibility that she just drove off into the sunset,” Sarah said.
“No. She didn’t get insurance on the car because her parents had insurance that already covered her. If she’d been planning on just taking off with the car, she’d have bought insurance so that her parents wouldn’t be liable,” he said.
“You overestimate people,” Sarah said. “If she was depressed or upset about something, she wouldn’t have been thinking about insurance.”
“But she wasn’t depressed, and she wasn’t upset.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“I talked to her parents.”
“The parents are often the last to know,” she reminded him.
“Not these parents.”
She was still skeptical, he could see, but he didn’t argue with her.
“Do you really think you can read people that well?” she asked at last.
“Not always, but sometimes? Yes.”
“Some people wear very convincing masks,” Sarah pointed out.
“Very true.”
“So how do you deal with that?” she asked.
“All masks crack with time, or under the right heat,” he said. “So what about you? What will you be doing tomorrow?”
“Oh, I’ll be going to work. I need the money more than ever now,” she said, her tone slightly resentful.
“You’re not going to hang at home, hovering over your property?”
“I’ll let them tramp around a while on their own. Then I’ll get involved,” she said.
They had reached the B&B. Caleb used his key to open the front door instead of going around the side to his private entrance. “Thanks for inviting me tonight,” he said.
“I’m glad you could come,” she answered, but there wasn’t a lot of warmth in her words. They were courteous, spoken by rote.
“Well, have a good day at work tomorrow. And…hey.”
“Hey what?”
“Be careful. Something does seem to be going on around here,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m not a blonde. And I’m sure not about to run out and buy a big bottle of bleach right now.”
“Two blondes have gone missing, true. But that fact might be coincidence. If the two disappearances are connected, the real link might be something else entirely,” Caleb said. “Everyone needs to be careful right now. No one knows yet what links the missing girls.”
She smiled. “I’ll be careful. And I’ll see you at breakfast, anyway.”
“Right.”
She hadn’t headed toward her room yet. The light coming from the parlor was dim, but he could see that she was staring at him closely. “Caroline is convinced that she’s seen you before.”
“Yeah, I know. But I don’t see how. But anything is possible, I guess. Maybe we crossed paths in an airport somewhere.”
She was still staring at him.
“Yes?” he said at last.
“I was just curious,” she said.
“About?”
“When does your mask crack? When do we get to know the real you?”
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Heather Graham
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Ужасы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: When Sarah McKinley is finally able to buy and restore the historic Florida mansion that she has always loved, she dismisses the horror stories of past residents vanishing and a long-dead housekeeper who practiced black magic.Then, in the midst of renovations, she makes a grim discovery. Hidden within the walls of Sarah′s dream house are the remains of dozens of bodies—some dating back over a century. The door to the past is blown wide open when Caleb Anderson, a private investigator, shows up at the mansion.He believes several current missing-persons cases are linked to the house and its dark past. Working together to find the connection and stop a contemporary killer, Sarah and Caleb are compelled to research the history of the haunted house, growing closer to each other even as the solution to the murders eludes them.But there is one who knows the truth…a spirit who follows every move they make. Soon Caleb begins to fear that if he can′t stay a step ahead, he could lose Sarah to a killer with an ability to transcend time in a quest for blood and sacrifice.