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“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.”
