Unhallowed Ground (8 page)

“There were no bullet holes in the car or anything like that?” Renee asked, intrigued.

“Not that I saw, but then again, I wasn’t looking for any. The police have custody of the car now, as well, and they’ll find out what happened,” Caleb said.

“So Will says you’re here to find a girl—but not our missing girl?” Barry asked, perplexed.

“Right,” Caleb agreed. “You probably read about the case at the time. Her name wa—Her name is Jennie Lawson, and she disappeared a year ago on her way here. But of course I’ll share whatever information I discover with the local police, because it could help with the search for Winona Hart. They might have been abducted by the same person.”

“Maybe they both ran off to join a cult,” Renee said. “That kind of thing happens, you know.”

“It does, but usually someone who knows the person is aware that they’re dissatisfied with their lives, or that they’ve fallen under the influence of some sect,” Caleb explained.

“But the cases might not be related at all,” Barry speculated.

“That’s true, too.”

“So where do you start?” Caroline asked him.

“Well, theoretically, you start with the person’s last known whereabouts,” Caleb said.

“But this girl you’re looking for…the paper said no one even knows what she did after her plane landed in Jacksonville. She just disappeared,” Barry said.

“She picked up a rental car,” Caleb said.

“But after all this time…that car couldn’t possibly yield any clues,” Will said.

“You’d be surprised,” Caleb said. “Trace evidence can survive an awful lot. But it’s a moot point—unless we find the car. It disappeared, too.”

Just then the waitress arrived with their meals, and Caleb thought his fish—which no one else had ordered, he noticed—was delicious. Despite the arrival of their food, Sarah remained at the bar, chatting with the bartender.

The others asked him more questions as they ate; he answered some and deftly sidestepped others.

Finally he managed to turn the conversation away from himself and learned that Will had grown up in St. Augustine, as had Caroline. Renee had been there about seven years, having fallen in love with the city while attending college over in Gainesville. Barry was the latecomer. He’d done historical tours in Chicago, his hometown, and Charleston, before seeing an ad for docents for the museum.

“I love it here,” he told Caleb. “It gets chilly enough in winter for me to feel like there’s been a change of season, but we pretty much never get snow, and even
then, it’s just a few flakes that melt on contact. It’s a big deal when it happens, though, it’s so rare. And because we’re on the water, even summer is usually cool enough, better than a lot of other places. So I’m staying here for sure.”

“Seems like a pretty laid-back town,” Caleb said.

“Hey,” Caroline protested. “We have plenty of nightlife. And if it’s not exciting enough for you here, pop back onto the highway. In twenty minutes you’re on the outskirts of Jacksonville. A few hours in the other direction and you’re in Orlando, surrounded by theme parks.”

“So where is home to you, Caleb?” Renee asked, breaking in before Caroline’s lecture really got going.

“Virginia,” Caleb said.

“So is this your first trip to St. Augustine?” Caroline asked, and he thought she seemed a little bit suspicious, even slightly troubled.

“Yes,” he assured her.

“Hmm.”

“Why?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I could just swear I’d met you, or at least seen you, somewhere before, that’s all.”

“Who knows? Maybe in another life,” Will said, and yawned. “I’ve got work tomorrow, gang. I’ve got to get going.”

They all rose in unison just as Sarah returned to the table. “Sorry, guys. Al and I just started talking and I lost track. Looks like I missed dinner,” she added, staring at the lasagne congealing on her plate.

“Looks like,” Caroline said. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” She started for the door.

“Hey, wait, I’m walking you home,” Will called after her. He gave the others an apologetic look. “She’s a blonde…. I don’t want her out there alone at night.”

“Good call, stick with her,” Sarah told him.

“Don’t go thinking that just because you’re a brunette, that makes you safe,” Will said quietly to Sarah, then gave Caleb a speaking look before racing after Caroline.

“I’ll see Renee home safe and sound,” Barry said cheerfully, and something in the way he looked at her told Caleb that the two had been an item for a long time.

“We might as well head out, too,” Sarah told Caleb when the others were gone.

“What about the check?”

“It’s covered,” she assured him.

“That’s nice, but I pay my own way,” he told her. “Besides, I can expense it.”

“I’m so happy to hear we’re a business expense,” Sarah said.

He let out a sigh of aggravation, staring at her. “What the hell is it with you? You’re the one who invited
me
here.”

She was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Anyway, don’t worry about paying. Al—the bartender—told me that Harry was here earlier, saw us and told our waitress not to give us a check. So we were all Harry’s guests tonight. And I have to show up to work tomorrow morning, too, so I need to get going.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She waved to several people as they left, and a few
called out to her in return, but at least no one was asking her about the grisly find in her house.

Even so, he was certain that the whispering would start as soon as they were gone.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. “So what will you be doing tomorrow?” she eventually asked him.

“Heading to Jacksonville,” he said.

She looked over at him. “You think your missing girl is in Jacksonville?”

“No. I think she’s here. And I think Winona Hart is going to be found here, too—eventually. But I want to go to the agency where Jennie rented her car. I would have done that today, but I had the opportunity to go on the dive, and I didn’t want to miss it.”

“There
is
the possibility that she just drove off into the sunset,” Sarah said.

“No. She didn’t get insurance on the car because her parents had insurance that already covered her. If she’d been planning on just taking off with the car, she’d have bought insurance so that her parents wouldn’t be liable,” he said.

“You overestimate people,” Sarah said. “If she was depressed or upset about something, she wouldn’t have been thinking about insurance.”

“But she wasn’t depressed, and she wasn’t upset.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I talked to her parents.”

“The parents are often the last to know,” she reminded him.

“Not these parents.”

She was still skeptical, he could see, but he didn’t argue with her.

“Do you really think you can read people that well?” she asked at last.

“Not always, but sometimes? Yes.”

“Some people wear very convincing masks,” Sarah pointed out.

“Very true.”

“So how do you deal with that?” she asked.

“All masks crack with time, or under the right heat,” he said. “So what about you? What will you be doing tomorrow?”

“Oh, I’ll be going to work. I need the money more than ever now,” she said, her tone slightly resentful.

“You’re not going to hang at home, hovering over your property?”

“I’ll let them tramp around a while on their own. Then I’ll get involved,” she said.

They had reached the B&B. Caleb used his key to open the front door instead of going around the side to his private entrance. “Thanks for inviting me tonight,” he said.

“I’m glad you could come,” she answered, but there wasn’t a lot of warmth in her words. They were courteous, spoken by rote.

“Well, have a good day at work tomorrow. And…hey.”

“Hey what?”

“Be careful. Something does seem to be going on around here,” he said.

She smiled. “I’m not a blonde. And I’m sure not
about to run out and buy a big bottle of bleach right now.”

“Two blondes have gone missing, true. But that fact might be coincidence. If the two disappearances
are
connected, the real link might be something else entirely,” Caleb said. “Everyone needs to be careful right now. No one knows yet what links the missing girls.”

She smiled. “I’ll be careful. And I’ll see you at breakfast, anyway.”

“Right.”

She hadn’t headed toward her room yet. The light coming from the parlor was dim, but he could see that she was staring at him closely. “Caroline is convinced that she’s seen you before.”

“Yeah, I know. But I don’t see how. But anything is possible, I guess. Maybe we crossed paths in an airport somewhere.”

She was still staring at him.

“Yes?” he said at last.

“I was just curious,” she said.

“About?”

“When does
your
mask crack? When do we get to know the real you?”

Without even waiting for an answer, she turned then and headed into her room. He heard the click as she locked her door.

I
t was perfectly natural that Sarah had a bizarre dream that night.

She was at Hunky Harry’s, but no one was what they seemed.

She was with her friends, but then she blinked and turned away, and saw that though a band was playing, the musicians were skeletons. They were dressed casually, in T-shirts and jeans, but a few wore top hats, as if they were planning to join an orchestra. They held their instruments with bony fingers, grinned wicked, lipless grins, and stared at her with empty eye sockets.

When she turned back to her table, everything about her friends had changed.

They were skeletons, as well. Will was drinking a beer, and she watched the amber liquid pass through his rib cage and disappear below the table.

Renee had a bandana tied around her head, just as if she were holding her hair in place, but there was no hair there. She was dressed in the homespun cotton outfit she often wore when giving lectures at the museum.

Barry was wearing a stovepipe hat.

A bone forefinger touched her shoulder. She looked up and saw that it belonged to Al, the bartender.

“You having a beer, or would you rather a glass of wine?” he asked her.

She opened her mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. She wanted to scream, to ask them all whether they realized something was wrong—that they had all turned to bones.

Then she looked across the room and saw someone who wasn’t a skeleton.

Caleb Anderson.

He was standing in the doorway, solid, living flesh.

His eyes met hers, and he shook his head, as if trying to make her understand…something.

“We all have masks on, all the time,” he said. She couldn’t really hear him because the music—an old Stones tune—was so loud, but she still knew exactly what he’d said.

“Look carefully at everyone,” he added.

Then he started walking across the room to her, but the air was suddenly filled with flying bones. They were everywhere, like a gauntlet of flying ribs and femurs.

She leapt up and tried to reach him, but all she could see were the bones…

It was a dream, of course—nothing but a dream—and she wanted out.

She woke up, her eyes flying open while the rest of her felt almost paralyzed for a moment, and realized it was daytime. Despite the drapes in her windows, sunlight was filtering through.

She groaned, then rose and looked at her watch. Eight o’clock. Breakfast would be on the table in thirty minutes, and it would be large and elegant. Bertie served fruit, juice, a selection of main dishes, and a wide selection rolls and breads, along with butter and homemade jams. Most of the B&Bs in town prided themselves on their breakfasts, and the Tropic Breeze was no different. She used good china, silverware, and eclectic but elegant serving pieces. Somehow she managed to pull it all together seven days a week, though it helped that she paid her employees so well that every college student in the area was happy to help her. They began work at six, getting coffee out for six-thirty, and they had breakfast all cleaned up by ten, so they could head to class.

Sarah knew all that because, years ago, she had been one of those college students, having gotten the jobs thanks to her parents’ friendship with Bertie.

But now she was a guest, so after a quick shower to wash away the uneasiness the dream had left in its wake, she neatly repacked, having decided that, as much as she loved Bertie, she was moving back home.

Bertie had refused to let her pay for her room, which made her feel guilty, and she had the carriage house, after all. She could live there while the academics and the authorities tramped through the mansion. She could keep an eye on everything going on, but she wouldn’t have to deal with the mess—or the creepiness. She should have thought of it the night before. No, she’d been too upset last night; it was good that she’d spent the night elsewhere.

She thought about the dream from which she’d forced herself to waken. Strange. Though no stranger than yesterday’s real-world events. She had been able to escape from the dream, but she wasn’t going to be so lucky when it came to reality. Her house was going to be filled with strangers for the foreseeable future. Her carefully thought-out plan to get her own B&B started was going straight to hell.

It was, she reflected as she left the room, strange that all her friends had turned into skeletons in the dream, while Caleb Anderson had remained flesh and blood—and ready to come to her rescue.

“Morning!” Bertie called to her cheerfully as she walked into the dining room. The older woman was in the process of refilling the old Russian samovar she used for regular coffee. “How did you sleep, dear?” Bertie asked.

“Like a baby,” Sarah lied. “Can I help?”

“No, but thank you for offering. Help yourself to breakfast, and let me know if there’s something special you want to see on tomorrow’s menu. You are staying tonight, too, right?”

“You know what? Thank you so much, Bertie, but no, I’m going to go home tonight.”

“What?” Bertie demanded, aghast. “But, Sarah—”

“It’s okay, honestly. It’s not like I’ll be sleeping with the skeletons, so don’t worry. Anyway, I have the carriage house. It’s all set up and ready to roll. I’m so grateful to you for making room for me last night, but I’d rather stick close to home in my carriage house until all those people clear out of my house.”

“The dead as well as the living, huh?” Bertie said, shaking her head. “I still wish you’d stay here with me, Sarah.”

“You’re a sweetheart. And you know I’ll run back here in a second flat if I decide I can’t hack it staying in the carriage house anymore.”

“You’re always welcome here, Sarah, you know that,” Bertie told her. “You still have that key I gave you in case of emergencies, right? If you get scared at any time, day or night, I want you to remember that you have a place here.”

“I know, and I’m grateful.”

Sarah gave Bertie a hug and sat down next to a family of four who introduced themselves as the Petersons. The twelve-year-old daughter seemed to be going on twenty. The son, who was ten, seemed to be going on four.

Still, when the son wasn’t racing around, threatening one of Bertie’s antiques, the family seemed pleasant. She talked about the museum, and they said they would come by, which would be good for Caroline’s parents, who needed all the business they could get.

She wasn’t sure if she was relieved that Caleb Anderson wasn’t there, or if she missed sparring with him. He seemed to have an amazing ability to control his emotions, answering her evenly no matter what she said to him. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about the man. He worked for Adam Harrison, which was certainly in his favor. Granted, she didn’t know Adam that well, but she certainly knew him by reputation, and
knew that he was trusted by every government agency out there. Of course, there were those who might think that made him suspicious from the get-go, but she wasn’t the type to see a government conspiracy around every corner. She had talked with Adam often enough to be convinced that he was an honorable man. But that only went so far. Caleb was his own person, and she had to judge him on his own merits.

As she and the Petersons talked, Sarah enjoyed her eggs Benedict, shaved potatoes with cheese and fruit with yogurt. When she had finished eating, she told the Petersons she would see them later and went back to her room. She still had a good fifteen minutes left to drop her bag in the carriage house and get to work.

When she reached her house, she saw a number of cars in the driveway, including the M.E.’s van that belonged to Floby, rumored to be the best of the local medical examiners. Sarah had met Floby shortly after her return to the city; he attended most community and city hall meetings, and loved St. Augustine with a passion.

She didn’t recognize the other vehicles, except for the unmarked sedan that Tim Jamison drove. Poor Tim. He must have felt the way she did about so much happening at once. At least her only other stress involved getting the house ready to receive paying guests, while Tim was spearheading the investigation into the disappearance of Winona Hart. Sarah herself hadn’t known the girl even existed until she saw the headlines trumpeting her disappearance and the fact that Tim was lead detective on the case, since she hadn’t been part of the intimate world of the historic district.

Sarah was suddenly angry with herself for not taking the girl’s disappearance more to heart. She argued inwardly that it was impossible for any one human being to take on the pain of the whole world, and the truth was that there was nothing she could do, nothing she could do that would help. If she
could
do something, she
would.
But she couldn’t think of anything she could possibly do that the police weren’t already doing.

She steered clear of the house and all the activity going on there and let herself quietly into the carriage house, deposited her bag, then left quickly, walking on toward the museum.

But as she walked, she found herself thinking about the people whose remains had ended up in her walls.

She was sorry they’d ended up that way, of course. But they had probably lived and died in the normal way, and after that…well, the body was just a shell. It was nothing once death had taken the heart, mind and soul.

On the other hand, the grim discovery was bound to make for some great ghost stories, that was for sure. What better way to lure the tourists than with tales of misty figures who walked the halls demanding a proper burial?

She was suddenly anxious to get her hands on the historical records and learn more about the mortician who was undoubtedly behind the nasty scheme that had led to the deads’ unorthodox entombment. Three hours of work, and then she would be off for lunch. That would be a great time to run over to the privately owned historical society library, which was open to the public several days a week.

In the grand scheme of things, coffin theft was morally reprehensible but not on a par with red-handed murder. She thought of some of the city’s genuinely gruesome history. Under Spanish rule, executions had been carried out by the garrote. It wasn’t a particularly bloody death—not like the spray of blood that accompanied the falling blade of the guillotine—but it was a painful one. The rope around the neck was tightened twist by twist. Onlookers in the square often bet one another on how many twists it would take a man to die. Luckily that particular tradition disappeared at some point as the city burned to the ground, and went from Spanish rule to British, then back to Spanish, until Florida finally became part of the United States.

More recently, the city had had to cope with the notoriety of what they called “the murder house.” In a nice part of town, in the nineteen-seventies, two neighbors had gone at one another. Witnesses—who all mysteriously died or went mute before the trial—saw the owner of the house on the left emerge and slit the throat of the woman who lived on the right. He’d been furious with her for the insults she’d thrown at him after he’d called an animal control agency to take away the menagerie she’d kept in her yard. The murderer had lots of friends in high places, and once the witnesses disappeared, the charges against him were dismissed and he moved away. If anyone had a reason to haunt a house, it was that poor woman who had been so brutally murdered on her own front steps, but as far as Sarah knew, the people now living in the house had never experienced a single spectral incident.

In comparison, the skeletons of people who’d died naturally were nothing, even if they
had
ended up in the wall of her house. They made for a good story and some lively conversation, nothing else. But she did want to know the whole story of what had happened. It
was
her house, after all.

With that thought uppermost in her mind, she looked around and realized she’d reached the museum.

The morning traffic on I-95 heading north from St. Augustine to Jacksonville was light. Once Caleb neared the city, he took the 295 extension leading around the downtown area and toward the airport, which was north of the city center. The car rental agency he was seeking was just half a mile from the airport. When she had arrived in Jacksonville a year ago, Jennie Lawson had deplaned, waited for her luggage and boarded a courtesy shuttle for the rental agency.

Then she had driven away in her rental car and disappeared. There was no record on her credit cards of any later purchase, and the car she had rented, a silver Altima, had never been found.

He cautioned himself to be methodical, to start at the beginning and, no matter how tedious and repetitious, get the facts straight before he started trying to extrapolate his way to a conclusion.

Those were simple rules of any investigation, and Caleb always followed them.

As he drove, he tried to keep his mind on the case, but he couldn’t help it: his mind kept wandering back to yesterday, and all those bones.

They’d been the unknowing victims of a mortician’s greed, pure and simple. Another ghoulish story to add to the repertoires of the multitude of ghost tours that wound through the city by night.

Nothing to do with the real tragedies of two missing girls, at least one of them presumed dead.

Caleb wondered why the chronologically separate cases seemed linked together somehow—if only in his mind. And then there was the house where the long-dead bodies had been found. He had felt drawn to it from the moment he had seen it. A natural fondness for architecture? No, definitely something more. Something instinctive had made him stop in front of the house and study it.