The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters) (22 page)

He focused on the wispy form and on Mo. He decided not to move forward; he was going to let her discover what she could. His stumbling half sight might ruin everything.

Mo spoke softly now and then. He wasn’t sure what she was saying. He noted, though, that when she wasn’t speaking, she was listening.
Really
listening, as few people did anymore.

She turned suddenly, beckoning to him. He walked toward her, thinking that the cloudlike image would vanish completely when he came too close.

But it was still there.

“This is Lizzie—Elizabeth Hampton,” Mo said.

Even though he felt a little stupid, he didn’t allow himself to look around. Not this time.

He nodded politely. “How do you do?”

Mo, he realized, knew that he wasn’t seeing the woman as distinctly as she did.

“She’s going to ride back with us. I’ve told her where I’ve seen John Andre and that John has been searching for her. She’s desperate to see him. And I saw him at the Haunted Mausoleum, so if you don’t mind, we’ll take her there.”

A hitchhiking ghost!
Aidan thought.

“We’ll leave right away,” he said aloud.

“She confirmed that she had a daughter, also named Elizabeth. Elizabeth—this Elizabeth, Lizzie—kept out of sight—stayed in, and no one ever knew she had a child. A second cousin, Lizzie’s best friend, helped her, then took the child and raised her. Lizzie never let on that she’d had the baby. She was too afraid someone might figure out that her child had been John Andre’s. Back then, she didn’t dare admit the association.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Lizzie was killed by Ashley Gunter, her onetime suitor, and two of his
friends.
They claimed they executed her for being a traitor. Lizzie tells me they were cowards who weren’t with an army themselves—either army—and she knows she was killed because Gunter was bitter that she’d rejected him. And,” she added, “Lizzie says that the brief time she shared with Andre was sweeter than a lifetime with any other man. But if we could connect the two of them now...well, that would be wonderful.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Shall we go, then?”

They walked to the car. He wondered if he should be opening the door for the ghost, but it wasn’t really much of a question. He had to open the door for Rollo, anyway. The indistinct white shape seemed to move past him; he felt as though a hand rested on his for a brief moment. Mo was watching him and she smiled.

“That was a thank-you,” she told him.

He nodded, let Mo in and got into the driver’s seat.

“Tell her I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry about what was done to her. I hope her killers were caught and punished.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. Lizzie was there, a gentle, wafting shape lingering beside Rollo.

“Lizzie said they weren’t caught. Too many people still felt so bitter about the British army at the time. If they knew—or suspected—they didn’t speak up. But Gunter didn’t last long. He was killed in an accident with a wheat-grinding stone. Crushed to death. And his two accomplices drowned in the Hudson River. So perhaps they
were
judged. And punished. All Lizzie really cared about was her daughter—and the child was loved by her cousin and well raised.”

“And she spent her days here? Happily?” Aidan asked.

“She did, and so did her children. And her children’s children. But after that, they moved away. Our Lizzie had at least twenty great-grandchildren that she knew about. Then, around the time of the Civil War, they all scattered to various cities.”

“I’m glad she got to see her family grow,” Aidan said.

“That’s always both good and bad,” Mo said after a moment. “You see the triumphs, and you see the sadness. Children dying young of disease. Accidents striking down others. The pain of unrequited love. Just as you see the joy at the birth of a child or at a wedding.”

Aidan excused himself to call Logan Raintree on his hands-free phone. “Anything on that end?” he asked.

“Jillian and Taylor Branch left the hotel to go to a movie and have dinner. She was wearing a wig. I suppose she doesn’t want to be recognized in the area. The security guys went to a sports bar for lunch and to a gym. They’re back now,” Logan told him. “We’ve been pulling records on everyone. Haven’t found anything yet. Will re-interviewed the men who were working with the sound system. Jane interviewed the receiving clerk and is doing thorough investigations on each of the food and delivery companies as we speak. Van Camp and Voorhaven have been out at Tommy Jensen’s place, hoping they’ll catch a customer or passerby who might’ve seen something. Moving along—but so far, getting nowhere. You?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Aidan said. “We’re heading back in. I’ll let you know as soon as we have anything solid.”

He ended the call and turned to Mo. “We’re going to the Haunted Mausoleum, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. They parked on the street. It was still early, so it was easy to do. During the major visitor season—this time of year—the mortuary didn’t open for tours. It only opened at night for the “haunted” experience.

“We just walk in?”

“No, there are gates. I’ll have to ask one of the bosses to let us in.”

He followed Mo, Rollo and the wisp that was the ghost of Elizabeth Hampton to the mortuary door. It was opened by a pleasant older woman in a sweater and slacks who was happy to greet Mo and Rollo—and to meet
him.
She was Sondra Burke, vice president of the historic tour company that owned and operated many of the historic buildings and tours, including the Haunted Mausoleum.

“Terrible things have been happening, Agent Mahoney,” she said, shaking his hand and patting Rollo. She was oblivious to the aura that followed them in. “It’s good that everyone out there is trying to decipher the truth. How ghastly—and how well planned, or so it seems. But I imagine Mo has you here for a bit of a breather and a few minutes of fun.”

“Aidan is an aficionado of old churchyards and cemeteries,” Mo told her. “I thought I’d take him through the house and for a walk out back.”

“Of course,” Sondra said. Her eyes twinkled. “But don’t be too late, if you don’t mind, Mo. We’ll need you back here fairly soon. You’ve become a real hit with our visitors.”

“Sure,” Mo promised.

She led the way through the mortuary with its now web-covered chandeliers and decorated hallways. The old viewing rooms had been staged in different ways for Halloween. In one, an animatronic mad doctor worked to reattach limbs to the wrong parts of a body. In another, a funeral was supposedly going on; the viewing was for an old Vaudeville star, who would be played by an actor. When people entered the room, he came back to life, jumped out of his coffin and began singing an Al Jolson tune.

“Down below, there’s the murderers’ gallery. You have to go through the streets of London and pass by Jack the Ripper and other infamous murderers. All are live actors, too. They’re good.”

“And where are you?” Aidan asked.

“Outside,” she told him. “Follow me. We go through the rear basement door.”

They exited to the graveyard that took up the rear and both sides of the immediate property. As they headed out, she explained which historical character or legend waited where.

The graveyard was fitted out with skeletons that looked around the corners of mausoleums. Rats and spiders lurked and lingered. Bits and pieces of bones were cast about here and there. The graveyard itself provided the rest—creepy old mausoleums and crooked stones—and there were three empty coffins that appeared to have fallen out of broken sarcophagi. When opening time rolled around and the actors were all in their places, it was truly creepy.

“Real actors will get into the coffins—and they’ll sit up groaning or jump out.”

“Nice.”

“It’s definitely spooky at night,” Mo said.

She came to a small mausoleum off the side of a path. “This is, er, my haunting ground. And where I saw Andre.”

He wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or the ghost of Lizzie, but suddenly he heard something like a whoosh of air.

He thought maybe the spirit gasped.

Rollo barked.

Mo smiled.

“What is it?” Aidan asked.

“He’s here—and they’ve seen each other,” Mo whispered.

“Ah.”

“Oh, Aidan, it’s really lovely. Try to see.”

He did see...something. Two indistinct shapes. The one shape he’d come to know—and another. It almost seemed as if light clouds circled each other—and finally came together.

He couldn’t tell if he simply heard Mo’s description of the two of them embracing—or if he actually saw them, a man and a woman meeting after a very long time.

He waited before he whispered to Mo, “Can she take us to her daughter’s grave? I don’t mean to be callous, but...time’s slipping away.”

She turned to him. “You can ask her, Aidan.”

He shook his head. “I know they’re there,” he said. “But I can’t see their faces. I just have what everyone has, Mo. The sense of someone else there.”

She studied him for a minute and he found himself caught in the beauty of her eyes. He stood very still; something in her made him want to reach out, to touch her—hold her as he believed Andre held his precious Lizzie. But he had to keep his distance. He’d touched her once and it had been wrong. He was an agent, here for a short time, working a case. They seemed to share some kind of attraction—physical, yes, but more than that. She aroused his instincts
and
his feelings. He forced himself not to think about caressing her face or kissing her lips. The thought was enough to arouse all those male instincts and this definitely wasn’t the time or place.

“You knew something when you came here, when you first came to Sleepy Hollow,” she said.

He nodded. “I knew that Richard was dead.”

“How?”

“I dreamed about him coming to tell me.”

She nodded with a grim smile.

“Yeah. Too bad he didn’t tell me who did it, right?” he asked, his tone harsher than he would have liked.

“He came to you because he knew you’d pursue his murderer. That you’d achieve justice,” she told him. Then she stepped forward and spoke gently with the ghosts he couldn’t quite see.

“We can go to the cemetery now,” she said a minute or two later. They thanked Sondra for letting them in and left, with Mo promising she’d be back in plenty of time for costuming and makeup for the night’s event.

He drove them toward the Old Dutch Church and turned onto the road by the graveyard, along the border of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. He parked as close as he could to the site where St. Andrew’s Church had once stood. Where they’d found the bodies of Richard Highsmith and Wendy Appleby and the vault where they’d been beheaded.

The killer’s lair,
Aidan thought.

When they were out of the car, Rollo barked and wagged his tail. But he wasn’t following a scent; he followed in the wake of the ghosts.

They climbed uphill and came to the vaults. They passed the tomb where Wendy Appleby’s form had pointed the way to the inner sanctum.

They came to another vault deep in the recesses of a hill.

Aidan noted that the name in worn stone atop the vault was Bakker.

“That’s Lizzie’s cousin’s married name,” Mo said.

“And Lizzie’s daughter is buried there?” Aidan asked.

“Yes,” Mo told him after conferring with the ghost.

Aidan walked up to the heavy brass gate that guarded what appeared to be an old seal. To his surprise, when he set his hand on the lever to open the gate, it gave. He pushed at what should have been a two-hundred-year-old seal.

It, too, gave.

He pulled a penlight from his pocket and ran its beam over the inside of the tomb as he entered. He felt Rollo come up to him and knew that Mo was directly behind.

Inside was an altar. To either side were rows and rows of dead but the seals seemed to be mostly intact.

The vault was very dark, and his penlight did little to illuminate the space. He heard a squeal, but it was just a rat racing by. The dog barked his disapproval. Mo, however, didn’t react.

Then he felt as if he’d been touched again. Someone urged him to turn, to follow. At the back of the tomb was a sarcophagus in heavy stone with a name deeply engraved in it. “Elizabeth Bakker Highsmith.”

“Highsmith!” he said, his voice choked. He looked at Mo.

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

“I’m assuming it means that Richard was tracing his family tree. That he found out somehow that he’d had a relative he hadn’t known about who’d lived back in the Revolutionary days. What I can’t figure out is how it could be connected to his death.”

“But he was from here, isn’t that right?”

Aidan nodded. “But...time passes. And if he’d learned about this grave being here, he probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Everyone from this area has ancestors buried in one or more of these cemeteries.”

“It’s still possible that Lizzie’s grave doesn’t really have anything to do with why he was killed,” Mo said.

He was thoughtful. “I don’t think so. The matchbook with
Lizzie grave
on it came from the Mystic Magic strip club. And Wendy Appleby, who worked there, was targeted when she came to hear Richard speak. They were killed together. It all has to mean
something,
” he said. He turned around abruptly. In the near-total darkness of the mausoleum, he couldn’t see the ghosts at all—they weren’t even puffs of white in the air. But he said aloud, “Thank you, Miss Hampton. Thank you, Major Andre. Right now I don’t know exactly what this means, but it may become very important.”

A silence hung in the dank air of the tomb.

Then Mo spoke. “You’re welcome, Aidan. If they’ve helped in any way, they’re pleased.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let me get you home so you don’t miss your call time.” He paused.
Had Richard Highsmith been here?

The gate and the seal had given easily. Someone had come here not long ago. Richard? Or someone else?

“Let’s go,” he said.

“I should get there soon. And I still have to take Rollo to the house. Grace is picking me up there, so if I’m late, she will be, too.”