Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (83 page)

“And it had been in the hall?” Quinn asked.

Kathy nodded. “Colby said that he’s left it in the attic, but it was downstairs, in the hall. I tried to run,” she said in a whisper. “And it grabbed me.”

“It has some kind of a battery. Maybe it did move,” Tracy said. “And those old houses like ours…they’re creepy at night. Where we are on Elizabeth is close to the cemetery. We’re not in a tourist area. It can feel dark and as if…almost as if history is weighing down on you.”

“It moved,” Kathy said softly and flatly to Quinn.

He patted her hand. “We’re going to get rid of it—in a way that will make sure it can never, ever come back to hurt you.”

Tracy swung around and headed out to the hall. Danni came over and told Kathy to feel better, to rest, and to feel assured they’d manage the situation.

Then they left her; Colby Kennedy followed them out to the hall where Tracy was waiting.

Tracy didn’t look very cute or gamine-ish then. She looked cross—and the expression she had for Quinn and Danni was irritated—and maybe a little desperate.

“What are you doing? Encouraging her in this ridiculous notion?”

“Tracy,” Colby said, uncomfortable.

“Look, she was obviously delusional. I almost think she did it just because Colby and I were actually away on a vacation!” Tracy said.

“Tracy!” Colby was visibly shocked.

“I’m sorry; I’m sorry. I love Kathy, but this is a really serious situation and we have to help her—not feed into her fears. She needs therapy—not people who are just trying to humor her,” Tracy said. “I’m sorry,” she told Danni and Quinn. “I’m just tired. Really tired.”

“Yes, of course,” Danni said. “You must be exhausted.”

Tracy nodded. “Forgive me.”

“They’re just going to go down and get rid of zombie-nun,” Colby said.

“Please, just be careful of the house,” Tracy told them. “That’s horrible. Kathy is here…and I’m worried about the house. This is all just—very upsetting. Oh!” She exclaimed, looking stricken. “The cat!”

“Waldorf,” Colby said. “We have a cat. Actually, Waldorf is old—you might remember him?”

“I do—big fuzzy thing,” Quinn said. “I think he was already several years old when I came to visit you.”

“Don’t worry—we love animals,” Danni said. “We’ll take care of Waldorf.”

“There’s a great guest room downstairs,” Tracy told them. “The master upstairs is ours, of course, and I think Kathy had her things in the second bedroom upstairs.”

“Not a problem,” Danni said. “We’ll be fine wherever.”

“The cat! How could I have forgotten Waldorf?” Tracy asked with dismay.

“You were worried about Kathy, first, of course,” Quinn said.

Colby looked worried then, too. “The cops told me they locked the house, but they didn’t mention the cat. I hope poor old Waldorf isn’t out in the streets somewhere,” he said.

“We’ll find Waldorf,” Quinn assured him.

Colby handed Quinn a set of keys. “Call me?” Colby asked anxiously.

“Of course,” Quinn assured him. “First things first—we’ll find Waldorf.”

As they left the hospital hallway, Quinn could hear Tracy speaking to Colby. “I’m kind of worried. I’m not sure you should have called in kooks from New Orleans. I mean, all of New Orleans is voodoo crazy. We’re just going to make poor Kathy worse. I need coffee; I need a drink! I need something. I’ve got to take a break. I’ll be back soon. I need to get out of here—just for a few minutes.”

Danni glanced at Quinn. She had heard, too.

He arched a brow to her.

“I might rather live with the zombie-nun,” Danni said.

He grinned. She waited until they were heading to the parking lot to speak again.

“What do you think?” she asked him then.

“Tracy is upset, maybe,” he said. “Maybe she’s really nice. Or, maybe, poor Colby—great guy—married a bitch.”

Danni smiled. “I’m far more concerned with Kathy,” she said.

He looked her way and for a moment, he almost forgot who they were—and what they were doing there. It was a beautiful day and the area was stunning. There was a breeze that touched the air around them, making it pleasant when it should have been hot. Palm trees dipped and swayed with it; everything around them seemed cleaned and touched by it. The sky was a soft powder blue just touched here and there by a cloud that looked like a puff of cotton.

And Danni had long, sleek, dark auburn hair that picked up the sunlight and shimmered with sunset hues. She was wearing sandals and a sleeveless white dress that made her look like a stunning co-ed just out for an easy vacation. She made him remember that he was in love, that they were in a tropical paradise, and that he longed to reach out and touch her and lie in the sand and….

They were here because a friend was in trouble.

And Danni’s eyes were large and as brilliantly blue as the sky—and filled with concern.

“About the situation,” Quinn said. “I don’t know what to think. I mean, you and I know that the thing might have…who knows? Been possessed or something. Or, Kathy might have activated it somehow, been tired—she forgets to sleep when she’s working, if I remember right. Anyway, we’ll find out in an hour or so, right?”

She nodded. “Absolutely, oh, fearless leader!” she told him.

He smiled back. Then he sobered and they both looked at one another. Fearless. No. They were both smart enough to be afraid. They had learned the hard way that very strange things—not yet explained by science, if they ever would be—definitely happened.

“Let’s enjoy the drive,” he said softly.

And they actually did. There was nothing like driving along and seeing the rippling blue water in shades of blue and green—touched by diamond glittering here and there as the sun shone down. They crossed over the Seven-Mile Bridge and passed through the lower keys, seeing some that were almost pristine, some with small fishing inns advertised, some with majestic mansions surrounded by nothing but the water and the sea.

As they drove by small islands with names like “No Name Key,” “Cudjoe Key,” and more, Quinn wished that they were on vacation. “If we get this taken care of,” he murmured. “We’ll have to go and see the sunset at Mallory Square. It really is fantastic. And music! The city has so much going on all the time. You’re going to love it.”

“I’ve been once,” she told him. “When I was in school.” She glanced his way. “It was one of Dad’s buying trips—though what he was really buying, I don’t know. I loved it! And Key West actually reminds me a lot of New Orleans.” She grinned. “They have a cool cemetery with a lot of above ground interments. They have Duval Street—we have Bourbon Street. We have French and Spanish architecture and the Garden District—they have amazing old Victorians. Then again—they have great water sports and we have the Mississippi!”

He smiled at her. She was looking out the window.  The sun was waning but the sky remained beautiful, turning to different shades of gold and mauve and pink.

They moved on through the lower keys, passing signs that warned them to be careful of the little Key deer. They actually saw one; Danni was delighted.

Finally, they came off of Stock Island and turned off onto Roosevelt, heading for Old Town. By then, the sun had faded away almost completely.

They found the address on Elizabeth Street. They dying sun seemed to encompass the old house in a blood red haze. Colby had been working on the house, Quinn knew, but the columns had been stripped and not re-painted as of yet, giving the Victorian architecture a decaying and ghostly aura.

“I can see where one might get nervous here,” Danni murmured.

“Not Kathy,” Quinn said. “She’s a trooper. She loves spooky things and horror movies and history—no one can tell you the history of this city with greater detail than Kathy. These houses never scared her. I’ll show you the big house she grew up in—that the family still owns. Trust me—Kathy does not scare easily.”

Danni grinned at him. “Maybe I do!” she said.

“A little late for that!” he teased.

They exited the car and headed up the walk to the old porch. The ceiling above the porch was painted blue—“haint blue,” or haunt blue, as it was known. It kept the “spirits” in check, or so went the superstition.

Quinn set the key in the lock and twisted it. The house was dark. He fumbled for a light switch. A chandelier in the center of the parlor blazed.

The house was nice—about two-thousand square feet, Quinn reckoned. Built in the mid-1800s, maintained by its owners through the decades. The Kennedy family still owned the big house the kids had grown up in, but, Quinn knew from Colby’s call, it had been rented out since his mom had gone into nursing care. Colby had been extremely proud to have purchased this place with his own earnings.

White lace curtains adorned the windows. There was a fireplace with a mantle. Between the living and dining areas there was a desk. Kathy’s computer remained on the desk.

“Nice home,” Danni murmured. “I don’t see the doll—zombie-nun—by the desk…or in the parlor. I do see the cat!”

As she spoke, a silver-gray fur-ball came flying at them. Waldorf actually managed to leap right into Danni’s arms.

“Poor thing is shaking!” Danni said.

“But he’s okay?” Quinn asked.

“Seems to be fine. I’ll make sure he has water and food,” Danni said. Holding the cat, she walked into the kitchen.

“Strange,” Quinn called.

“What’s strange?” Danni asked.

He walked to the hallway, into the kitchen, into the one small downstairs bedroom, and then into the bathroom—all through the downstairs.

“Quinn?” Danni asked.

“Hang on,” he said.

He ran up the stairs and opened the doors to the three bedrooms there, the bathroom, back into the bedrooms, and into every closet.

He ran back down to Danni, frowning.

“Quinn?” she said again.

“I don’t see the doll either,” he told her. “It isn’t anywhere.”

“Maybe someone else—”

“No, no—the police locked the place tight when Kathy was taken to the hospital. Colby is friends with the police chief—he assured him that was true.”

“Then what?” Danni asked. “The zombie-nun walked out?”

Walked out…and headed up the island chain for Marathon…and Kathy Kennedy?

Chapter 2

David Gray crumpled his beer can in his hand and eyed the stacked sarcophagi in front of him. Key Westerners were weird, he thought. They couldn’t just make mausoleums—they just stacked people on top of people in big blocks—stone or cement or whatever. Some of the graves were in the ground, some were in strange things—like the hump of a brick tomb—or whatever—down the row, and some were stacked one on top of the other like file cabinets.

It was dark, and he could barely make out the shapes of things, but this was a good enough place to sleep.  Some jock-ass frat boys or bachelor party jerks had tried to stay in for the night, boasting about how cool they were, but the cops had come by and kicked them out. Davy laid low to the ground behind the big red brick tomb after he’d hopped the fence, of course, to get in himself. And now, the drunken buffoon party boys were gone; no one bothered him here.

He stayed low and drank his beer and thought about what a god-awful place this had turned out to be—for him, at least. Everybody knew everybody here—even the damned Eastern-Europeans who worked in the frigging shops, the Russians, Hungarians, Albanians, and what not. Pretty people, most of them—except for his bear-hairy ex-boss.  They barely knew English—but they all knew that he’d been fired from three clubs for drugs and alcohol. “I mean what?” He asked a decaying plaster angel at his side. “It’s Key West—a pile of buzzed-out frat boys or giggling girls running around someone in a cheap wedding veil sloshed out of their minds! You serve them better if you’re a little feeling-fine yourself, you know?”

He wasn’t even sure it was his habit of imbibing a bit before work that had gotten him fired from the last restaurant. It was probably because big-hairy-beefy guy had been jealous. The problem, a hotter-than hell Polish girl, had been the boss’s quasi girlfriend. She hated his hairy ass and liked Davy. That’s what had done it.

He popped open another beer and noted that the six-pack of cheap beer he’d managed to buy on a major sale was going down—down, down. Only a few left. That was all right; he’d sleep better for the beer and in the morning, try to figure out what he was going to do with his life. In truth, he loved Key West and the quirkiness of it. The thought made him grin—he actually even loved the cemetery. There was a stone in the row of tombs or mausoleums or whatever that read, “I told you I was sick.”
Yep, now, there was someone who told the truth!

He leaned back. He was by one of the oldest tombstones. He wondered if anyone was really beneath it—supposedly some dude who had died in the 1850s. But—cool story, and Key West had plenty of cool stories!—a hurricane had ripped up graves in the middle of the 1800s and bodies had come washing down Duval Street. That’s when they had put the cemetery here—highest point on the island, though, hell, you could have fooled him. It wasn’t that high.

He squashed his beer can and almost threw it across the grass and stones. But, he didn’t. He set it with the collection at his side and almost laughed aloud at himself. Boozing loser that he might be, he didn’t litter in a cemetery.

He suddenly heard laughter and a bunch of tittering. The jock-ass jerk boys were back. They hopped the fence. There were four of them and he could hear them talking to one another.

“Jamesy, you gotta go back for that snooty bitch at the bar—tell her who your daddy is! Bet she’ll be all over you, splayed out on a bed with a big ‘come on in’ sign set up on her thighs!” One of them said.

Davy winced. Yep, loser that he was, he didn’t like that kind of language. Made him feel squeamish.

“We need to get out of here,” another said. “The cops already came once and you guys are louder than a—“ He stopped speaking, breaking off to laugh. “Louder than a whole horde of screaming whores faking their orgasms!” He broke into drunken laughter again, enjoying his own joke tremendously.