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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.”
