Текст книги "Unhallowed Ground"

Автор книги: Heather Graham

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 7 страниц]

“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?”

Without even waiting for an answer, she turned then and headed into her room. He heard the click as she locked her door.

4

It was perfectly natural that Sarah had a bizarre dream that night.

She was at Hunky Harry’s, but no one was what they seemed.

She was with her friends, but then she blinked and turned away, and saw that though a band was playing, the musicians were skeletons. They were dressed casually, in T-shirts and jeans, but a few wore top hats, as if they were planning to join an orchestra. They held their instruments with bony fingers, grinned wicked, lipless grins, and stared at her with empty eye sockets.

When she turned back to her table, everything about her friends had changed.

They were skeletons, as well. Will was drinking a beer, and she watched the amber liquid pass through his rib cage and disappear below the table.

Renee had a bandana tied around her head, just as if she were holding her hair in place, but there was no hair there. She was dressed in the homespun cotton outfit she often wore when giving lectures at the museum.

Barry was wearing a stovepipe hat.

A bone forefinger touched her shoulder. She looked up and saw that it belonged to Al, the bartender.

“You having a beer, or would you rather a glass of wine?” he asked her.

She opened her mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. She wanted to scream, to ask them all whether they realized something was wrong—that they had all turned to bones.

Then she looked across the room and saw someone who wasn’t a skeleton.

Caleb Anderson.

He was standing in the doorway, solid, living flesh.

His eyes met hers, and he shook his head, as if trying to make her understand…something.

“We all have masks on, all the time,” he said. She couldn’t really hear him because the music—an old Stones tune—was so loud, but she still knew exactly what he’d said.

“Look carefully at everyone,” he added.

Then he started walking across the room to her, but the air was suddenly filled with flying bones. They were everywhere, like a gauntlet of flying ribs and femurs.

She leapt up and tried to reach him, but all she could see were the bones…

It was a dream, of course—nothing but a dream—and she wanted out.

She woke up, her eyes flying open while the rest of her felt almost paralyzed for a moment, and realized it was daytime. Despite the drapes in her windows, sunlight was filtering through.

She groaned, then rose and looked at her watch. Eight o’clock. Breakfast would be on the table in thirty minutes, and it would be large and elegant. Bertie served fruit, juice, a selection of main dishes, and a wide selection rolls and breads, along with butter and homemade jams. Most of the B&Bs in town prided themselves on their breakfasts, and the Tropic Breeze was no different. She used good china, silverware, and eclectic but elegant serving pieces. Somehow she managed to pull it all together seven days a week, though it helped that she paid her employees so well that every college student in the area was happy to help her. They began work at six, getting coffee out for six-thirty, and they had breakfast all cleaned up by ten, so they could head to class.

Sarah knew all that because, years ago, she had been one of those college students, having gotten the jobs thanks to her parents’ friendship with Bertie.

But now she was a guest, so after a quick shower to wash away the uneasiness the dream had left in its wake, she neatly repacked, having decided that, as much as she loved Bertie, she was moving back home.

Bertie had refused to let her pay for her room, which made her feel guilty, and she had the carriage house, after all. She could live there while the academics and the authorities tramped through the mansion. She could keep an eye on everything going on, but she wouldn’t have to deal with the mess—or the creepiness. She should have thought of it the night before. No, she’d been too upset last night; it was good that she’d spent the night elsewhere.

She thought about the dream from which she’d forced herself to waken. Strange. Though no stranger than yesterday’s real-world events. She had been able to escape from the dream, but she wasn’t going to be so lucky when it came to reality. Her house was going to be filled with strangers for the foreseeable future. Her carefully thought-out plan to get her own B&B started was going straight to hell.

It was, she reflected as she left the room, strange that all her friends had turned into skeletons in the dream, while Caleb Anderson had remained flesh and blood—and ready to come to her rescue.

“Morning!” Bertie called to her cheerfully as she walked into the dining room. The older woman was in the process of refilling the old Russian samovar she used for regular coffee. “How did you sleep, dear?” Bertie asked.

“Like a baby,” Sarah lied. “Can I help?”

“No, but thank you for offering. Help yourself to breakfast, and let me know if there’s something special you want to see on tomorrow’s menu. You are staying tonight, too, right?”

“You know what? Thank you so much, Bertie, but no, I’m going to go home tonight.”

“What?” Bertie demanded, aghast. “But, Sarah—”

“It’s okay, honestly. It’s not like I’ll be sleeping with the skeletons, so don’t worry. Anyway, I have the carriage house. It’s all set up and ready to roll. I’m so grateful to you for making room for me last night, but I’d rather stick close to home in my carriage house until all those people clear out of my house.”

“The dead as well as the living, huh?” Bertie said, shaking her head. “I still wish you’d stay here with me, Sarah.”

“You’re a sweetheart. And you know I’ll run back here in a second flat if I decide I can’t hack it staying in the carriage house anymore.”

“You’re always welcome here, Sarah, you know that,” Bertie told her. “You still have that key I gave you in case of emergencies, right? If you get scared at any time, day or night, I want you to remember that you have a place here.”

“I know, and I’m grateful.”

Sarah gave Bertie a hug and sat down next to a family of four who introduced themselves as the Petersons. The twelve-year-old daughter seemed to be going on twenty. The son, who was ten, seemed to be going on four.

Still, when the son wasn’t racing around, threatening one of Bertie’s antiques, the family seemed pleasant. She talked about the museum, and they said they would come by, which would be good for Caroline’s parents, who needed all the business they could get.

She wasn’t sure if she was relieved that Caleb Anderson wasn’t there, or if she missed sparring with him. He seemed to have an amazing ability to control his emotions, answering her evenly no matter what she said to him. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about the man. He worked for Adam Harrison, which was certainly in his favor. Granted, she didn’t know Adam that well, but she certainly knew him by reputation, and knew that he was trusted by every government agency out there. Of course, there were those who might think that made him suspicious from the get-go, but she wasn’t the type to see a government conspiracy around every corner. She had talked with Adam often enough to be convinced that he was an honorable man. But that only went so far. Caleb was his own person, and she had to judge him on his own merits.

As she and the Petersons talked, Sarah enjoyed her eggs Benedict, shaved potatoes with cheese and fruit with yogurt. When she had finished eating, she told the Petersons she would see them later and went back to her room. She still had a good fifteen minutes left to drop her bag in the carriage house and get to work.

When she reached her house, she saw a number of cars in the driveway, including the M.E.’s van that belonged to Floby, rumored to be the best of the local medical examiners. Sarah had met Floby shortly after her return to the city; he attended most community and city hall meetings, and loved St. Augustine with a passion.

She didn’t recognize the other vehicles, except for the unmarked sedan that Tim Jamison drove. Poor Tim. He must have felt the way she did about so much happening at once. At least her only other stress involved getting the house ready to receive paying guests, while Tim was spearheading the investigation into the disappearance of Winona Hart. Sarah herself hadn’t known the girl even existed until she saw the headlines trumpeting her disappearance and the fact that Tim was lead detective on the case, since she hadn’t been part of the intimate world of the historic district.

Sarah was suddenly angry with herself for not taking the girl’s disappearance more to heart. She argued inwardly that it was impossible for any one human being to take on the pain of the whole world, and the truth was that there was nothing she could do, nothing she could do that would help. If she could do something, she would. But she couldn’t think of anything she could possibly do that the police weren’t already doing.

She steered clear of the house and all the activity going on there and let herself quietly into the carriage house, deposited her bag, then left quickly, walking on toward the museum.

But as she walked, she found herself thinking about the people whose remains had ended up in her walls.

She was sorry they’d ended up that way, of course. But they had probably lived and died in the normal way, and after that…well, the body was just a shell. It was nothing once death had taken the heart, mind and soul.

On the other hand, the grim discovery was bound to make for some great ghost stories, that was for sure. What better way to lure the tourists than with tales of misty figures who walked the halls demanding a proper burial?

She was suddenly anxious to get her hands on the historical records and learn more about the mortician who was undoubtedly behind the nasty scheme that had led to the deads’ unorthodox entombment. Three hours of work, and then she would be off for lunch. That would be a great time to run over to the privately owned historical society library, which was open to the public several days a week.

In the grand scheme of things, coffin theft was morally reprehensible but not on a par with red-handed murder. She thought of some of the city’s genuinely gruesome history. Under Spanish rule, executions had been carried out by the garrote. It wasn’t a particularly bloody death—not like the spray of blood that accompanied the falling blade of the guillotine—but it was a painful one. The rope around the neck was tightened twist by twist. Onlookers in the square often bet one another on how many twists it would take a man to die. Luckily that particular tradition disappeared at some point as the city burned to the ground, and went from Spanish rule to British, then back to Spanish, until Florida finally became part of the United States.

More recently, the city had had to cope with the notoriety of what they called “the murder house.” In a nice part of town, in the nineteen-seventies, two neighbors had gone at one another. Witnesses—who all mysteriously died or went mute before the trial—saw the owner of the house on the left emerge and slit the throat of the woman who lived on the right. He’d been furious with her for the insults she’d thrown at him after he’d called an animal control agency to take away the menagerie she’d kept in her yard. The murderer had lots of friends in high places, and once the witnesses disappeared, the charges against him were dismissed and he moved away. If anyone had a reason to haunt a house, it was that poor woman who had been so brutally murdered on her own front steps, but as far as Sarah knew, the people now living in the house had never experienced a single spectral incident.

In comparison, the skeletons of people who’d died naturally were nothing, even if they had ended up in the wall of her house. They made for a good story and some lively conversation, nothing else. But she did want to know the whole story of what had happened. It was her house, after all.

With that thought uppermost in her mind, she looked around and realized she’d reached the museum.

The morning traffic on I-95 heading north from St. Augustine to Jacksonville was light. Once Caleb neared the city, he took the 295 extension leading around the downtown area and toward the airport, which was north of the city center. The car rental agency he was seeking was just half a mile from the airport. When she had arrived in Jacksonville a year ago, Jennie Lawson had deplaned, waited for her luggage and boarded a courtesy shuttle for the rental agency.

Then she had driven away in her rental car and disappeared. There was no record on her credit cards of any later purchase, and the car she had rented, a silver Altima, had never been found.

He cautioned himself to be methodical, to start at the beginning and, no matter how tedious and repetitious, get the facts straight before he started trying to extrapolate his way to a conclusion.

Those were simple rules of any investigation, and Caleb always followed them.

As he drove, he tried to keep his mind on the case, but he couldn’t help it: his mind kept wandering back to yesterday, and all those bones.

They’d been the unknowing victims of a mortician’s greed, pure and simple. Another ghoulish story to add to the repertoires of the multitude of ghost tours that wound through the city by night.

Nothing to do with the real tragedies of two missing girls, at least one of them presumed dead.

Caleb wondered why the chronologically separate cases seemed linked together somehow—if only in his mind. And then there was the house where the long-dead bodies had been found. He had felt drawn to it from the moment he had seen it. A natural fondness for architecture? No, definitely something more. Something instinctive had made him stop in front of the house and study it.

Maybe instinct had something to do with his fascination with the house’s owner, as well. Sarah McKinley was decidedly attractive. But he was equally drawn by her ability to speak, and her fascination with history and people.

But he was here because of Jennie Lawson, he reminded himself. He needed to forget about the bones in the wall and get his mind back on his assignment. Jennie hadn’t disappeared into thin air. He had to find out what had happened to her.

Caleb parked outside the rental agency, strode inside and took his place at the end of the line, which at least moved quickly. When he got to the front, he asked the cheerful young woman at the counter—who wanted to offer him an upgrade before he even got out a word—if he could speak with the manager. She immediately looked crestfallen, as if she hadn’t been cheerful enough. He explained that it was about a previous rental, and she directed him to a small glassed-in office to the left. The manager rose, looking concerned as Caleb entered, but he offered a hand and introduced himself as Harold Sparks. Sparks looked at Caleb suspiciously after studying his credentials and shook his head. “The cops were all over us about this a year ago. I wish I could help, but I can’t tell you a thing.”

“Would it be possible to speak with the rental agent she saw?” Caleb asked. He had taken out his notebook, and now he looked down at the page. “Mina Grigsby.”

The other man’s jaw tightened. “She’s been through this before, too.”

“I understand,” Caleb said patiently.

Sparks shrugged, looking abashed. “Sorry. Sure. Either of us would do anything to help find the woman, it’s just that…there’s nothing else to say or do. She came in the courtesy shuttle, she rented a car—and she disappeared. The cops kept coming back because once she left here, everything’s a dead end. We’re all they’ve got. Her picture ran in all the papers, and no one came forward to say they’d seen her anywhere, not a gas station, a restaurant, or a hotel, bowling alley, movie theater or bar. It’s almost as if aliens came down and swept her up. But I’ll call Mina into the office, and you two can chat.”

“Thank you,” Caleb said. He knew that the police had been here; he knew that the manager and the poor clerk had been through it all before. And he didn’t think he was going to learn anything new, but that was half the job, doggedly repeating what had been done, always searching for whatever little bit of information might have seemed insignificant at the time but now just might become a clue.

Mina Grigsby was one of those thin, nervous-by-nature people, but she didn’t seem to have a problem talking to him. She nodded when her manager explained that Caleb was a private investigator, and she quickly perched on the edge of her boss’s desk, looking expectantly at Caleb as Harold Sparks excused himself.

Caleb smiled reassuringly. “I’m sorry,” he began. “I know you’ve been asked about Jennie Lawson before.”

“Oh, it’s okay. Really. I’m glad to hear that someone is still looking in to what happened to her. She was very pretty and very sweet. And polite. I think that’s why I remember her so clearly. We didn’t have the exact car she had requested, but she wasn’t nasty about it, the way some people are. I mean, the rental forms say ‘a certain vehicle or its equivalent.’”

Caleb agreed. “I’ve rented plenty of cars, and you’re certainly right about that, Miss Grigsby. Mina. I know that she came in, got the keys and left, and that her agreement for was two weeks. And I know that you two just met to transact business, but I was hoping she might have said something, given you an idea whether she was meeting up with friends or what her plans might be. Something that might have come back to you in the time since she went missing. If I had anywhere to go from here, it would be very helpful.”

“Well, let me think…I mean, she didn’t say where she was staying. She did say that she wasn’t leaving the state with the car.”

“Did she say anything about her plans? Anything at all?”

Mina was thoughtful for a moment; then she smiled. “Well, to be perfectly honest, people don’t always get too excited about Jacksonville. They’re all heading somewhere else—down to the beaches, or St. Augustine, or Daytona, the space center…even the theme parks. But Jacksonville is a great city, with a really nice river walk and lots of history. It’s old, too, you know.”

“Of course. Was she planning on visiting Jacksonville?”

“Yes—but on her way back. She was anxious to see St. Augustine. She said that she’d be heading straight there. I told her where there were some very good restaurants…but she wasn’t planning on eating for a while. She had a bottle of soda in her purse, and some Power-Bars. She wanted to get started seeing things right away.”

“Did she say what things?”

Mina shook her head slowly again. “No, not exactly.”

“Not exactly? Think, please, Mina. What exactly did she say?”

“Well, she said that she was going to take a ghost tour—but that wouldn’t have been until that night.”

“Did she say anything about a hotel reservation? Or maybe a B and B?”

“No. She was going to head into Old Town and find a place that appealed to her—I do remember her saying that.”

Caleb waited, because she appeared to be thinking with intensity. She let out a sigh after a moment, and he decided he had gotten all he could from her, and that it wasn’t terribly helpful. He could—and of course would—speak to the ghost tour operators, guides and ticket vendors, but since Jennie Lawson’s picture had been up all over the city and no one had come forward, he didn’t think that avenue would take him far, either. Still, he had to follow where the trail led.

“There was one more thing,” Mina said, surprising him.

“Oh?”

“I’d forgotten all about this. She told me she was going to get a reading. You know, a palm reading or the cards or something. She wore a pentagram around her neck, and I asked her if she was a witch. She said no, she just liked it. There was a ruby set in one of the points of the star. She said she wasn’t a believer, but she liked the stories. I guess that’s why she was going to take that ghost tour.” She fell silent, then sighed again, shaking her head as she looked at him. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t think of anything else.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?” Caleb asked.

“Yes. Jeans and a red T-shirt, and she was pulling a black, white and purple suitcase. She said it was wonderful—she could always find her luggage at baggage claim.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Caleb assured her.

“Really?” She seemed genuinely pleased. “It’s terrible. And sad. And now another girl’s missing, and she looks…so much like Jennie Lawson.”

“Yes, she does,” Caleb acknowledged.

“I hope you find her. Jennie Lawson, I mean. And the other girl, too, of course,” Mina told him, then stood and offered her hand. He thanked her again as they shook, and then she left and went back to work. He would have thanked Harold Sparks again, but the man was behind the counter, pretending to be busy. He nodded Caleb’s way, so Caleb nodded in return and left.

He had learned something new, something no one had mentioned, something that wasn’t in any of the police files. Jennie Lawson hadn’t been on her way to explore Ft. Marion. She hadn’t been planning to explore the bar scene or seek out a dance club.

Jennie Lawson had been in search of something scary.

Sadly, it seemed that she had found it.

The United States took control of Florida in 1821, and it became a territory in 1822.

Sarah already knew that her house had been built that year as a home for Thomas Grant, a statistical consultant advising the politicians and military men intent on making Florida a state. Apparently he’d been talented enough with numbers to parlay his own earnings into a small fortune. The home had originally been built to accommodate his wife and seven children, and he’d owned it for thirty years, after which it had been sold to the MacTavish family. It had remained in their possession through the Civil War, after which it had been abandoned when Cato MacTavish had suddenly left the state.

Sarah had always known the basic facts and figures that went with the house, and she’d heard the rumors that it was haunted in the way all old places were supposedly haunted. There was a rumor that Cato’s father had a woman working for him who was the child of a Haitian—descendent of refugees from the Haitian revolution—and an Indian, though no one knew exactly what tribe. There was a white man somewhere in her genetic background, as well—a plantation owner or an overseer. She had been the “spell queen” of the area, selling love potions and other such supposed magic.

There were stories, too, that women had died and disappeared during those years, and that Cato MacTavish had killed his wife, or possibly his fiancée, and that he had abandoned the property rather than face justice and the hangman.

What she knew for a fact was that the MacTavish family had used the house as a mortuary at the beginning of the Civil War, and that it had been abandoned after the war, then bought for back taxes by the Brennan family—who had used the house as an address both before and after the sale, which was very strange, unless it was an error in the record keeping. They had used it as a mortuary again, and it had remained in the family until it had been more or less abandoned once more, before finally being then purchased by Mrs. Emily Douglas, who had eventually sold it to Sarah.

What she wanted to do was hunt down the truth behind the rumors, to see what was smoke and what was fire. She knew how to dig through old records—she had a master’s degree, after all—and the historical library was very good, so she didn’t expect to have too much trouble.

The first thing she came across were a number of blueprints showing the changes that had taken place in the house over the years. She was immediately grateful to the person who had put the kitchen in at the turn of century—one of the Brennan clan—and even more grateful that the house had been built from the start with full plumbing and bathrooms. Electricity had gone in during 1904.

None of that seemed to have anything to do with the bones in the walls, other than the fact that she discovered that nothing had been done to the walls in the library where the corpses had been found—not on record, at least—since 1857, when some cosmetic work had been done after a fire had damaged the plaster. Of course, then as now, people had often done whatever they wanted to inside a house, despite codes and regulations. These days St. Augustine had a very strict historical preservation policy, but even so, and even by those who honored it when it came to the exterior of their houses, inside work was generally at the discretion of the owner.

The guilty mortician must have been one of the MacTavishes or the Brennans, since it was highly unlikely that an outsider could have sauntered in with a string of bodies and walled them up. Now all she had to do was find the criminal in question.

Sarah glanced at her watch and realized that an hour wasn’t nearly enough to finish her digging. It was time to return to work.

She left the library—a historic building itself—and headed back to the museum. On her way, she saw that flyers had been posted everywhere.

Have you seen this woman?

The picture was of the missing local girl, Winona Hart. She was smiling and bright-eyed in her photo, a beautiful young blonde whose innocence and zest for life had been captured by the photographer’s lens.

Sarah felt a tightening in her heart, and she wished there was something she could do to help find the girl, but she doubted that a master’s in history qualified her to be of much help in a missing persons case.

But…

Caleb Anderson was here to search for another woman. Could the two disappearances be related? She wished she knew more about the psychology of crime. Would a serial killer hang around a city like St. Augustine so he could kidnap and most likely kill two women a year apart?

She realized that she was still staring at the picture. It was one thing to read about the girl in the paper, see a grainy photo and impersonally hope for the best. Now, looking at such a lifelike image, she felt as if she had somehow become involved. Those big bright eyes seemed to stare at her. Winona was so young, so pretty, and so full of life and laughter.

She was surprised when she reached out to touch the picture, as if she were actually reaching out to touch Winona Hart’s face.

And she was even more surprised by the electric sizzle that streaked along her arm when she made contact with the paper.

“I’m so sorry,” she caught herself saying aloud. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t know how I can possibly help you.”

Then, feeling like a fool, she looked around and hurried down the street, walking quickly now, since her lunch hour was definitely over.