Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon (22 page)

Definitely, it had to be the pressure.

“I am having some kind of a mental breakdown, brought on by the events surrounding my grandfather’s death, and the fact that a man was murdered on my property,” Kelsey said.

He smiled. It was a charming, handsome smile.

“I knew you sensed me before,” he said. “Many people do. Well, they sense me, and others, of course.”

Kelsey made her way to the desk, skirting around the ghost, keeping her eyes on him all the time. She tried to sit calmly and rationally in Cutter’s desk chair.

“If ghosts haunt this house, they should be the ghosts of my mother or grandfather,” she said. “Ghosts are
supposed to haunt the places where traumatic things happened.”

He reflected on that. “I’m ever so sorry,” he said.

She swallowed. “Liam—sees you?”

“Yes.”

“We’re sharing a mental breakdown?” she asked.

He walked around and sat at the chair in front of the desk, crossing one stockinged leg over the other. She noted the heels on his shoes and the buckles, the brocade of his coat and the elegance of his waistcoat.

They were so real.

He sighed. “No, I’m quite real. Or surreal, I suppose. For quite a while, I couldn’t begin to imagine why I was still here, but first there was the issue with David Beckett, although I had been attached to Katie O’Hara. She’s quite amazing, with a sight that rivals any I’ve come across. Oh, there are others out there, of course. Liam? He doesn’t have great sight. But he is a Beckett, and he’s been forced to see me, poor boy. It’s just been the way that things have come about.”

“Just how many people are sharing this breakdown?” she asked.

He smiled again, setting his hat on his lap. “Now? Hmm. Well, Katie and Sean and Vanessa and David, Liam—and now you.”

“Are we crazy?”

“Aren’t we all, just a bit?”

Kelsey closed her eyes, keeping them closed. She opened them. He was still there.

She hadn’t even been drinking.

“I’m glad that you see me,” he said. “It does make trying to protect you so much easier.”

“You’re trying to protect me?” she asked.

“Of course. Ghosts aren’t evil. Well, wait, I retract that statement. Most ghosts aren’t evil. But people are in death as they were in life, and sometimes…well, I don’t know what hell is, myself, and I’m hoping I never do. I don’t believe I’m headed in that direction, wherever it may actually be. I have seen the darkness of evil come up to claim its own, but never mind, that’s neither here nor there. As it stands, I believe that I’ve remained though the remnants of the past that directly involved me have been solved in order to see that justice befalls all Becketts.”

“I’m not a Beckett,” Kelsey said.

“No matter. A Beckett has involved himself with you. Oh, please, don’t take that wrong! You’re a lovely young woman. I’m delighted to help in any way that I can.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“Yes, I believe we’ve established that fact.”

Was there such thing as dreaming while one was wide awake? Had she blacked out, blanked out—without knowing it? Maybe she would wake up on the floor, having been hit on the head with a candlestick or a gargoyle or Chinese good luck cat.

“My dear young woman, you’re gaping. Not that you’re unattractive even while staring at me openmouthed, but you are lovelier still with a more customary and benign expression,” he said.

“I still don’t understand.” She suddenly felt tears pricking her eyes. Figment of her imagination, creation
of stress or real remnant of the past, she couldn’t understand why she would see an unknown privateer and not her mother or her grandfather.

“I don’t think any of us actually understands,” he said.

“Can
you
talk to my mother or my grandfather?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. Truly sorry. If they’ve remained behind, I’ve yet to come across them,” he told her. “And I’ve been in this house quite frequently lately. Nor have I met either in the cemetery.”

This was crazy.

A crazy that she wanted.

“But if you’re here, isn’t it possible that they are here, too? Somewhere?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s possible. But I’ve told you—I have not had the pleasure of the acquaintance of your mother or grandfather.”

“They could still be here,” she said stubbornly.

He appeared to inhale and exhale, sighing, but, of course, he was a ghost.

He wasn’t breathing.

“I’m sorry, Kelsey. Key West sometimes seems to crawl with spirits, and yet they are but two or three percent of those from this area who have passed on to whatever it is the next life brings to us,” he said. “Some walk down Duval, seeking what they lost or never had, lovers come and gone, wives, husbands, children. And there are those who see one, and those who see many, like Katie O’Hara. Still, I don’t suggest you share your sighting of
me with those who don’t already know of my presence. People do tend to think that you’ve lost your mind.”

“I think that I’ve lost my mind,” Kelsey said.

“I rest my case.”

She frowned suddenly and gasped. “It was you—you staring down at me in my sleep. Or, you are what I fear, what I feel.”

He sat very straight, staring at her indignantly. “Never!” he said.

“Was that fear, my imagination, then? My paranoia? Or was it as real as seeing a ghost?” she asked.

Once again, he seemed to sigh. “My dear, dear Miss Donovan. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. This lack of life is much like life itself in several ways. I can only be one place at one time. I can only travel with the speed of my legs or that of any conveyance in which I might be seated. One day, before I pass over, I’d like to take an airplane ride. How wonderful! Soaring above the earth. Ah, but that is not for now. Now I am trying to discover what I can that will help you. I don’t have the power to push large pieces of furniture, but I am quite proud of my prowess with a modern coffee brewer. I can push buttons. I can think. I can see. And what I see, I can tell those who see me. Am I making sense?”

Kelsey smiled. She was seated at her grandfather’s desk. A ghost was sitting across the desk from her, speaking as if they were at a casual meeting.

Did the ghost make sense?

“You see me,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to tell you in what ways I can help—and in what ways I cannot.”

“Did you know my grandfather when he was alive?” she asked.

“I’m afraid I did not. I saw him a few times about town. But I did not know him. I spent years being nothing more than a shiver or, perhaps, upon occasion, a source of comfort, before Katie O’Hara finally spoke to me.”

“Did you know my mother?”

“No, I am afraid I did not.”

“Then how do you know that neither she nor my grandfather are about, haunting Key West?”

“This house is filled with pictures, Miss Donovan. I would recognize both.”

“Oh,” she murmured, disappointed. “What about Gary White?” she asked excitedly. “He was murdered. Surely his spirit must be wandering around seeking justice!”

“I’ve tried to explain—not everyone remains behind. Some pass through life to death and what comes after without this time in the midst of the veil.”

“Is that what it is, really?” Kelsey asked. “A veil between life and death?”

“I don’t know. That’s just what I’ve heard it called,” he said.

“I keep closing my eyes. You’re not disappearing,” Kelsey said.

“I won’t disappear. I’ve been coming clearer and clearer to you since we were first together,” he said. “Now…well, I’m sorry if it distresses you. You will continue to see me.”

Kelsey shook her head. “It doesn’t distress me. It
makes me believe that I might see those I loved once again.”

“Kelsey, please don’t count on that,” he said.

“You were in the cemetery,” she said. “You spoke softly to me. You comforted me.”

He smiled. “I thought that you had felt me there.”

“My grandfather believed that my mother was murdered. My grandfather might have been murdered, and Gary White was murdered,” she said.

“Yes,” Bartholomew said. “I’ve heard. And, of course, forgive me, I’ve been reading over your shoulder.”

“But you don’t know who killed Gary White?”

“I wasn’t here,” he explained.

“And you haven’t seen Gary White? His ghost, I mean?”

“Miss Donovan, if I had the answers, I certainly would have given them to Liam by now! All I can do is help him trace what we know and…tell him what information I can get from others, like myself, I have had the pleasure of meeting. Well, usually, it’s a pleasure. Now and then, one does come across someone quite unpleasant who has stayed behind. I’ll tell you what I know, and what I believe. There was a man named Peter Edwards. Whether all the stories about him are true or not, I don’t know. But, supposedly, he used black magic to curse or hex or kill Southern blockade runners during the war, and, later on, got mixed up with a very evil man named Abel Crowley. At some point in his life, he truly began to regret what he may or may not have done. Tattling on a man during wartime is much like killing him. Pete rued his transgressions, and he tried to use the book your
grandfather had—the book in this very room—to atone for his sins. Pete is still walking around the cemetery. Perhaps he can help us again, and perhaps knowing about the books and what they are supposedly capable of doing, or enabling, is the key to what is going on now. I don’t believe that men can bring about hexes and curses. I believe they are capable of greed, envy, viciousness and violence.”

“All right. What do you think of Liam’s theory? After reading my grandfather’s notes, I think he’s right that someone knew about the real reliquary, and the fake reliquary, years ago. I believe that person somehow killed my mother—though exactly how her fall was caused, I don’t know. After my mother’s death…” Kelsey paused, perplexed.

“What?” Bartholomew asked.

“Nothing happened. My mother died, my father and I moved away, and nothing happened. Not until Cutter died.”

“A million-dollar diamond is a prize well worth waiting for,” Bartholomew commented.

She nodded, and then frowned again. Out the window, she saw someone moving.

The someone was running, running around from the front to the rear of the house.

“What in the world…?” she began, jumping to her feet.

Leaving Bartholomew to follow in her wake if he chose….

If he was real….

She raced around to the back.

She saw a man at the end of the dock.

And then she saw Avery.

He was facedown in the water, twenty feet from shore.

A
h, but it was invigorating, fascinating, exciting beyond imagination to watch!

Ah, they didn’t know….

He had been the one to do the screaming. Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, and it had worked so well.

He was invisible.

He paused for a moment. Today, he had shaved it very close. He had barely disappeared into himself before the others had come, before the frantic quest for life had begun. But then again, cutting it so close led to the brilliant wonder that he was feeling now.

Victorious. Amazed, amused, so vastly entertained.

He watched, and he felt himself so incredibly clever, so jubilant.

He backed away….

Soon, the fun would really begin.

After questioning Chris Vargas, Liam returned to the station. He realized he never had bothered to have lunch, and he managed to eat a rock-hard bagel as he looked over the reports from the day.

Gary White had played at a small coffeehouse on Margaret Street in the days before he had disappeared and died. The owner hadn’t had much conversation with him. Gary wasn’t a brilliant performer, but he’d been fine, playing soft tones that fit the bill for people who didn’t want loud music. Getting away from loud music in Key West wasn’t always easy.

He had fixed a leaky pipe for a Mrs. Vinnie Wilfred over on Simonton Street the following afternoon.

He hadn’t been seen since.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone about the Merlin house, nor had he mentioned visiting the library, and he had certainly not spoken to any of them about reading any books.

Liam’s head was pounding. He was getting nowhere. He might be running down chimeras. No. Gary White was dead. Murdered. Someone had murdered him. The clues had to be out there.

He had died on the Merlin property.

That had to mean something, too.

It meant a killer was laughing at him as he chased his own tail.

He left the office at precisely five, thinking that Kelsey might have discovered something else helpful in her grandfather’s book.

He was just pulling into Kelsey’s drive when he heard the sound of her scream.

It was coming from the back of the house.

He jerked the car to a halt and went tearing around the house.

There were people in the water. Clothed people in the water.

Kelsey.

Avery.

And Jonas.

Liam rushed to the shore and saw that Kelsey and Jonas were pulling Avery from the water. Kelsey was speaking to her friend, words tumbling from her lips.

Avery was pale and bloated-looking; his lips were blue.

Jonas and Kelsey had just dragged him ashore when Liam met them there. He had his phone out, and he dialed in for emergency assistance.

His phone slipped from his hands as he reached the three upon the beach. “Kelsey, I’ve got the training!” he told her, pulling her from Avery’s prone body so that he could begin CPR. He could hear her sobbing softly behind him, and he knew that Jonas had his arms around her, trying to reassure her. He tried to block out the sounds of life around him and give his total attention to the man before him, counting out, breathing in, pressing down, breathing out. Nothing.

Then, after he did his best to breathe life into the man, Avery suddenly coughed and spit out a stream of water. He inhaled.

He was breathing.

He twisted Avery, trying to make sure he didn’t choke on the water, and by then, the emergency technicians had arrived.

He stood up. He felt Kelsey move against him, trying to get to Avery, sobs shaking her body.

“Good work, Lieutenant,” one of the EMTs said. “He’s alive.”

“Why isn’t he moving?” Kelsey asked.

“He…might have suffered a concussion, if he fell off the dock,” the EMT said. “We’ll get him airlifted to the hospital.”

“I’m coming with him,” Kelsey said.

“Of course.”

She was dripping wet.

“Go, Kelsey, they’ll airlift you. I’ll get there in the car,” Liam said.

The emergency medical technicians had a stretcher and two of them were positioning it to lift Avery’s muscle-bound and heavy body upon it. While they were doing so, Liam knew he had to get some answers.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Kelsey said. “I saw Jonas running—”

“I was watering the plants in front. I heard a scream. I came tearing over,” Jonas supplied.

Liam looked at Jonas, hoping that the raw anger and suspicion he was feeling wasn’t written all over his face. “And what did you see?”

“Nothing. He was in the water.”

“Kelsey?”

“I saw Jonas racing out to the water. I followed him. I saw Avery.”

“He was facedown,” Jonas said.

“You didn’t see how he got that way?” Liam asked.

Both Kelsey and Jonas shook their heads.

“But you arrived first?” Liam asked Jonas.

“I saw Jonas race past a window, and I came after him,” Kelsey said. “I was a split second behind him.”

“I told you, I heard a scream,” Jonas said.

“But you didn’t hear the scream?” he asked Kelsey.

“I was inside—all the windows are closed and bolted,” she said.

“We’re ready,” one of the med techs said.

“Go,” Liam told Kelsey. “Stay with him. I’ll be on the phone with you, and I’ll be there as fast as I can drive up. They have to get to the airport, and get him in emergency transportation. I won’t be that far behind you.”

Kelsey nodded jerkily. “Oh, my God, if Avery isn’t all right,” she whispered.

“He’ll be fine,” Liam assured her. Of course, he didn’t know that at all.

Kelsey started to follow the med techs around the side of the house.

“Kelsey, grab your purse and a sweater,” he said. “Your phone, you’ll need your phone,” he told her.

She nodded again and went through the house. He followed her; Jonas Weston followed him.

He lowered his head and bit his lip.

Kelsey said that she saw Jonas go by the window. She’d reached the water area just a split second behind him.

Jonas couldn’t have caused this.

“You want to hear something odd?” Jonas asked him.

“What?” Just inside the back door, Liam spun to face him.

Jonas backed away, his jaw tight. “I came over and helped save that man,” he said.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. What?” Liam asked.

“It looked like there was something in the water. Something big. It was right beneath him,” Jonas said.

“Like what?” Liam asked.

“I don’t know. It’s nearly dusk. The water is dark. It—it just looked like a dark shadow.” He tried to offer a weak smile. “Well, you got the man breathing. I’m sure when he comes to, he’ll be able to tell us exactly what happened.”

What the hell had happened? Avery Slater was a well-built, coordinated man who didn’t seem the type to slip off a dock.

“Thanks, Jonas. Thank you. I’m sure Avery is going to be very grateful as well. I’m glad you were here for Kelsey,” he said.

He tried to keep sincerity in his voice.

He wanted the man to leave.

He had to get a few things together for Kelsey and get up to the hospital. No matter how quickly he moved, it was going to take some time to get there. Screw it.

He would call the station and say that he’d need his own helicopter.

“Thank you, Jonas,” he said again pointedly.

“Right. Right,” Jonas said, backing out the door. “Call me. Call me, please, and let me know how he’s doing.”

“Of course,” Liam promised as Jonas finally left.

Liam called the station and ordered his helicopter. He asked for a crime-scene unit to be sent out to the Merlin estate again.

He was asked what they were supposed to be looking for.

“A large black shadow,” he said. “I don’t know. Hopefully, the victim will be able to tell us what happened.”

Ricky Long had answered at the desk. He didn’t seem to think that the request was odd, but before he hung up, he asked, “Lieutenant, are we sure we have a victim?”

“What do you mean?”

“The man might have just fallen off the dock. I mean…never mind.
I
don’t have any problem telling people they’re supposed to be looking for a large dark shadow. After all, they’re going out to the Merlin house.”

Naturally, they had to save a life first. Ah, yes, running around like chickens with no heads. Desperate to get a man out of the water, desperate to make him breathe.

It had all worked very well, especially considering that it had been a spur-of-the-moment plan. He’d heard Kelsey speaking. The book! That damned book! He could have taken it; it had been right in front of him. But he’d never imagined that old Cutter had stuck notes into the thing. He’d needed Kelsey there, needed her to point the way.

But now he needed the book. God knew what else the notes said, what Cutter Merlin might have suspected
or figured out by that time. Merlin had been a fool. He should have gotten rid of the real reliquary years ago. But he had held it, determined to catch his daughter’s murderer….

The excitement began to ease as the med techs left with the body, with Kelsey.

He slipped back in, ready to go for the book.

Kelsey wasn’t sure who gave her the blanket she was wearing. It helped, though. Winter in Florida was doing the right thing, being mild at the moment, but still, being wet, and drying slowly and stiffly, was not comfortable. And yet, other than the fact that she’d been shivering, she hadn’t thought much about it. She simply realized she had acquired a blanket somewhere along the line, and she was grateful for it. She hoped she remembered to thank all the right people.

Avery didn’t come to while they were in the helicopter.

He didn’t come to at the hospital.

She was terrified that any minute, a doctor would walk out of the double-swing doors with a sad expression and shake his head sadly while her heart and mind rebelled at the horror of such an impossible tragedy.

Not Avery, too. Please, God, not Avery, too. Please don’t let him be touched by whatever monstrosity of greed or fate plagues my family.

The day had been absurd. She should pinch herself and discover that the entire thing had been a nightmare or a daymare, or a hideous creation of her mind.

But it wasn’t.

She’d never felt the wet and the cold so thoroughly in a dream. It was real. At least, this part of it was real. Before…before she had seen Avery floating facedown in the water, she’d been talking to a ghost. A ghost named Bartholomew. And everyone knew him, of course. At least, Liam knew him. Liam, the dead-steady, capable, solidly sane cop. Or so said the ghost. But the ghost knew Katie, David, Sean and Vanessa, too. Naturally. The ghost was a conch. Conchs were friendly.

She couldn’t bear sitting there, waiting….

When she thought that she would lose her mind, she saw Liam walking down the hallway. How he had gotten there so quickly, she couldn’t imagine. She jumped up and went running to him.

“How is he?” Liam asked huskily.

“I don’t know. He wasn’t conscious, but they keep telling me that I shouldn’t be horribly worried about that. But they won’t tell me that he’s okay, either. How in God’s name did you get here so fast?” she demanded.

“I decided to abuse a little power and order a copter for myself,” he told her dryly. “It is police business. I believe he was attacked.”

Kelsey shook her head. “Liam, Jonas didn’t attack him.”

“I didn’t say it was Jonas.”

“It’s obvious that you’ve been suspicious of Jonas.”

“Really? It’s that bad?”

“Why?”

“The bone-thin leads I have point to him,” Liam said.

“He didn’t hurt Avery. I saw him run by the window.
I ran through the house. I was one step behind him when we plunged into the water to get Avery. Oh, God, he wasn’t breathing. You resuscitated him. I don’t know how long he wasn’t breathing. He hasn’t come to. In movies, when someone spits the water out of their lungs, they wake up!”

“Let’s believe that he’s going to be all right, Kelsey.”

“Liam, I don’t know how long he was in the water!”

“But Jonas heard him scream. That means he couldn’t have been without oxygen that long. The human body is remarkably resilient, Kelsey. He’ll be all right,” Liam said.

She wasn’t sure she dared believe him. But she was glad that he was there. She was more than glad, she realized. He was a steadying influence. He was the love and support she needed.

How strange that she realized it so clearly now. She’d been away so long. They’d been out of one another’s lives. And she knew now that she had always loved him, and it had been so easy to be with him because she should have been with him long ago.

Ah, but could he feel the same? How could anyone be certain about her, when it seemed that her family and even the house itself were cursed?

Not cursed. There was someone out there killing people. A real live human being. She didn’t know what forces were driving that person, but a person was trying to steal the reliquary, and that person was committing murder because of greed.

And, after all, Liam was friends with a ghost. They were all a bit different, so it seemed.

“I’m going to see what I can do,” Liam told her. “I’ll be right back.”

When he stood and left, she saw Bartholomew. He had apparently accompanied Liam.

“You said that you wanted to fly,” she told him, smiling weakly.

“Not this way,” he said.

“It’s all right. How was the ride?”

“Tense,” Bartholomew said.

“But did you enjoy it?” she asked.

“I think I’d like to fly first class in an airplane, someplace with first-class hotel accommodations,” he said. He shrugged. “I’ve roamed the Caribbean, I’ve set sail on majestic waters, I’ve walked streets of mud and seen a great deal of time pass. I’d like something contemporary and modern, and, of course, I can’t really feel it, but I’d love a hot tub and a cushion-top bed.”

He made her smile. She wished she could really touch him, squeeze his hand.