Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon (26 page)

“I don’t know. I believe in the power of the human will, and in goodness, and in evil—in men’s hearts. But it’s night. Me not believing it is night will not make it day,” she said.

“Yes, but,” Katie argued, “isn’t every reality a perception?”

“Only if we let it be,” Kelsey said. “Think of
The Emperor’s New Clothes!
Someone out there knows that what isn’t real, isn’t real.”

“You all are giving me a headache,” Ted said.

Clarinda stood. “Let me get your orders. Jamie said I could take an hour and hang with you all, but let me get the ball rolling here. Fish sandwiches are fresh and delicious,” she suggested.

“All the way around? We’ll make it easy?” Liam suggested.

It was agreed.

While Clarinda went in to get drinks and put in the food order, Jaden told Liam, “You might want to move on to page three hundred.”

He did so.

“Aloud, please!” Kelsey asked him. He read,
“At the turn of the century, with Spiritualism still a rage across the western world, the concept of owning holy relics became popular. Throughout Europe through many ages, and in other societies as well, holy relics were said to be godly. Lockets with hair from dead saints, reliquaries with bone fragments, even pieces of the deceased kept in small caskets, were said to ward off evil. In contrast, the fingers and toes of hanged criminals were also said to keep away evil. Abel Crowley became obsessed with the collection of these reliquaries, but on his deathbed, Peter Edwards swore that he had never owned such a relic, and that Abel Crowley had been a hypocrite—he had only ever sought out such reliquaries for their monetary value in gold, silver and gems.”

“Well, there you go,” Katie said softly.

Kelsey sighed. “It’s still so hard to fathom. Mind control, good spirits, evil spirits, my mom gone a very long time, Gary White just murdered, Cutter…and Avery.”

“And,” Ted pointed out, looking at Liam, “the slaughter of a goat on Smathers Beach.”

Liam shrugged. “The mind can go awry. Perhaps it all began innocuously enough—a man wanted to steal a diamond. The diamond was in a reliquary. We’re back to the whole point of perception. If the thief
believed
he could practice black magic—maybe in context with the
fact that he knew people were on certain medications that could cause hallucinations—he could project fear and terror and make it happen. I don’t know. I’m hoping we have a real lead. The clerk who sold the goat gave an artist a description of the culprit. Tomorrow, we’ll put it through the computer and see what we can come up with.”

Coming out of the back door of O’Hara’s, Clarinda suddenly dropped her tray. The drinks exploded in a shower of liquid and glass.

“Oh!” Clarinda gasped. “What a klutz! I don’t remember the last time I did something like that,” she said.

“Let me help you,” Katie said, leaping up.

“It’s all right,” Clarinda said.

“Nonsense. My uncle owns this place, and I’ve picked up many a spill, mostly my own.”

Kelsey was quickly over by the pair. “Your uncle owns the place, Katie. You go get more drinks, and I’ll help pick up.”

“I know where to find the broom,” Liam said, rising and walking past Clarinda. She stared at him, wide-eyed, and he suddenly found himself wondering if she was suspicious of Jonas herself.

Was she afraid that the picture, when cleaned up via computer image, would show them a clear shot of Jonas?

He swept, the girls collected large glass fragments and Katie came out with more drinks and their sandwiches.

Liam was determined not to betray his suspicions in
any way, and while they sat around and ate, he asked Kelsey how she liked the alarm system.

“I’ll get used to it,” she said. “Believe it or not, I’ve never had one before. But it’s good. It’s a very good idea.”

“You had an alarm system put on the house today?” Ted asked.

“Yes. Well, Liam took care of it,” Kelsey said.

“And your friend Avery is all right?” Jaden asked. “Vanessa is staying up with him?”

“Yes, and I’m sure they’re getting along fine. He’s an animator, and she’s a scriptwriter, editor—they’ll be fine,” Katie said, waving a hand in the air. “Oh, Kelsey, we don’t have to go up and get them tomorrow—Sean is going to go.” She laughed softly. “I guess my brother wants to make sure he gets the love of his life back.”

“That’s great,” Kelsey said.

“You’re busy, huh?” Clarinda asked.

Kelsey nodded. “I’m going through my grandfather’s logs. I’m going to find out everything he has, and exactly what he wants done with it all.”

Liam noted that she didn’t mention the reliquary.

That night, when they finished eating, they were ready to head out. Clarinda was still working, so they bid her good-night and went in to say good-night to Jamie O’Hara.

Bartholomew was standing on Duval when they emerged from the pub. He was waiting for an elegant woman. She was his lady in white, Lucinda, not the woman he had died for, but the love he had found in the afterlife.

He bowed low as she came to him; he straightened, and she accepted his arm.

He looked back, aware that Liam was watching him. He smiled. “Good evening, friend. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He nodded. Katie saw Bartholomew, but Ted and Jaden, anyone on the street,
and
Kelsey would surely consider him mad.

He turned away from Bartholomew, glad of the glow of warmth and love that seemed like an aura around the two.

Ted and Jaden went their way—after he’d paid Jaden—and he and Kelsey drove Katie back to the Beckett house.

“Oh,” Katie said, getting out of the car. “Kelsey, tell Liam about the phone calls.”

“Pranks,” Kelsey said, waving a hand in the air.

“Tell me,” Liam said.

“Some idiot is calling me. First he called and breathed. Then he called and told me he was watching me. Then he called and said something about me not getting wet.”

“Not getting wet?” Liam asked.

“We had just walked out on the dock,” Katie said.

“Let me see your phone,” Liam told her.

Kelsey dug in her pocket and handed it to him. He saw the calls listed from Private Number and then the exchange and number on the other.

“The call with the actual number came after you’d gone out on the dock?” he asked. Kelsey nodded.

“I’m calling this in tonight. Maybe the graveyard shift can help,” he said.

He called in; none of the day crew was working overtime, but he knew Tony Santini, working the research desk. He gave Santini the number and handed Kelsey back her phone.

“Good,” Katie said, satisfied. She bid them all good-night.

Liam waited until she got to the door; David opened it before she knocked, and waved to them as Katie went in.

They drove on to the Merlin house.

Lights burned from the parlor and the porch. The house seemed welcoming.

Amazing what a good alarm could do. Peace of mind.

Perception,
Liam thought. Maybe life was all in the mind, all perception.

No, he’d been a cop too long to believe that.

“I was trying not to be obvious with the code,” Kelsey told him as they exited the car. So I chose Avery’s birth date, 1130, to get in, and backward to close up at night.”

“We just have to remember to set it; an alarm is only good when it’s set,” he told her.

She twisted the key, stepped in and punched in the numbers on the alarm pad. Liam came in behind her, and Kelsey grinned and reset the alarm.

She turned into him. “Liam, I found another note today. I have a feeling that it might be the last I’ll find in the book, but I think that I can find out what he’s
saying to me if I keep studying it. It’s as if the answer is there—I just have to really put my finger on it.”

He was suddenly, overwhelmingly tired. “Tomorrow,” he said softly.

She nodded. She had set her bag down when she’d keyed in the alarm. She started toward the stairs without it, and then came back, looking at him sheepishly. “I can’t help it. I need it in the room, and I need the door to the room locked.”

He put his arms around her and drew her close. “Guess what?” he asked huskily. “I locked the door to the room last night.”

She smiled. “You slept here?”

“I did. I couldn’t be close to you, but I could sense you near me, and dream and imagine having you beside me,” he told her.

He loved her eyes. They were great pools of brilliant blue, ever-changing in their depths, like the colors of the ocean when the sun was out, when a storm was coming, when night fell. Now they were tender, and soft, and sparkling, as well.

She pulled from his arms and headed for the stairs, turning back when she was halfway up.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well!”

He raced after her. By the time they reached the bedroom door he caught her. He kissed her long and hard and deeply against the door, drawing her hands over her head and pressing against her. His heart thundered; he felt as if he were on fire, and still, he had to kiss her
there, breathe her in and wonder how he had lived all the years she had been gone.

At last, his mouth still firm upon hers, tongues thrusting in a wantonly hot and probing kiss, he turned the doorknob, and they staggered into the room, laughing around the kiss. She drew her shirt over her head and let it fly and pressed against him again, her fingers looping beneath his waistband.

“The door,” she whispered against his mouth.

“The door,” he whispered back.

Still entangled, he backed his way to it and slid the bolt. Then he pushed her forward, and in a second they were on the bed. He released her bra, and her breasts tumbled into his hands and a spasm went through him, hardening him instantaneously. He covered her bare breasts with the curve of his hand, the molten caress of his tongue, and worked his way down. They were still half-clad, and entangled in their clothing, and they disentangled themselves while they made love, touching, stroking with fevered lips and tongues. Finally they were both fully naked and he rose above her and thrust within her, and for a moment he caught her eyes, and the honesty within them, and then she wrapped herself around him and they began to move, undulating slowly, then frantically, and when he came, he knew that sex had never been better, and that there would never be anyone in his life like Kelsey Donovan again. She’d been the ghost in his heart since she had left, and it seemed that all his life, he had been waiting for her return.

Exhausted, sated, they fell against one another. Entangled in one another’s arms, they slept.

He sat in Cutter Merlin’s chair at Cutter Merlin’s desk, and he felt elated. An alarm system!

They were such fools.

So clever, and they knew nothing. The invisible could see so much while unseen. Even alarm codes.

Nothing. They knew nothing.

He was brilliant, and the last episode on the beach was going to give him everything that he needed. Everything.

Because it was time. Kelsey knew. Even if she didn’t know that she knew, the whereabouts of the reliquary were in her mind.

The time had come.

A spasm of anger ripped through him. She was up there now, in her room, with Beckett. They were probably naked. Sweating and copulating. He could imagine the feel of her skin. The feel of her breasts. And that bastard Beckett was with her. He was tempted to get the shotgun that they still hadn’t found, and go in, guns blazing. He’d see the look on Beckett’s face when he fired straight between his eyes. And then Kelsey would be there, naked on her knees in the spill of the cop’s blood, and she would be begging him; she’d do anything for her life….

He couldn’t do that. He still didn’t have the reliquary.

He had to stop thinking about her.

In her room.

Locked in. It irritated him beyond all reason that she locked that door. Why? Why the hell would she lock the
door in her house, when she was alone, and when she was with the cop?

And why…why in hell sleep with the book?

Kelsey, in the room, naked, sweaty, making love to the cop.

He winced.

The reliquary was the prize.

But he had waited long and patiently.

The prize would come now as he chose it.

Well, the cop had to go to work. Investigating him! Ha ha, that was a laugh.

The cop would go to work.

And he would be alone.

With her.

It was time.

He smiled suddenly. He rose and moved in silence through the house. He knew the house so very well.

There were things he could do this night that would ensure all would come to him tomorrow.

T
hat morning, Kelsey beat Liam downstairs. When he dressed and came down for work, she was reading the newspaper. The sacrificial murder of the goat was the lead story.

“Poor goat,” Kelsey said softly. She turned, leaning against the counter, and told him, “Yesterday, Katie took me by the dolphin center, and we spoke with Betty, the director there. I think the dolphin in back did save Avery. I’m pretty sure it’s a dolphin we called Captain Morgan, and my mom was instrumental in saving him years ago. Isn’t that amazing?”

He reached for a coffee cup. “Amazing, and amazingly good—for a change,” he said.

She looked down at the paper again, a small smile on her face. “Well, the coffee is good, too. Bartholomew brewed it.”

He nearly dropped his cup. He forgot all about the coffee. He set the cup down and turned to Kelsey. “What?”

“She sees me, old fellow. I told you she would,” Bartholomew said. Liam frowned, not seeing him. He
walked to the entrance to the dining room. The ghost was comfortably seated at the table, his feet up on the next chair as he read from Cutter Merlin’s book.

He carefully looked back at Kelsey. “You—see a ghost?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Describe him,” Liam said skeptically.

“He’s very handsome, actually. And quite charming,” Kelsey said.

“Thank you!” Bartholomew called.

Kelsey walked to stand in the doorway with Liam. “Great hat, white hose, buckled shoes…brocade coat, waistcoat, fantastic poet’s shirt. Really, Liam, you should have introduced us at the very beginning.”

“I was supposed to tell you that we have a friendly neighborhood ghost?” he asked.

Kelsey smiled and walked back into the kitchen. “He’s an amazing ghost.”

Liam caught her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. “You really see him? And hear him…and talk with him?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“And you weren’t…afraid?”

Her smile deepened. “Well, I did have a bit of a start, but I began to see him slowly…but no, I’m not afraid. I’m thrilled to know him. It means that there really is more,” she said softly.

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Well, good, then.”

“I really wish I could see my mom, that’s all.”

“None of us, including Bartholomew, really understand how it works, who stays, and why,” he said to her.

She nodded. “I understand. I’m still—glad.”

He leaned to kiss her lightly. She moved against him.

He eased back, knowing he had to go to work. “You’ve heard from Avery?”

“Yes, he’s doing well. David is going to drive up with Sean and pick him up—and Vanessa, of course. They’ll be back by early this evening.”

“Good,” Liam told her. “All right, I’m out of here. I’m going to go over and tear Gary White’s place apart, give the guys in Forensics some time to work the computer picture and to track down that number that was calling you. Keep in touch.”

He started out, then came back. “Kelsey?”

“Yes?

“Do me a huge favor. Stay locked in. Don’t go visit the dolphin, don’t get your mail—stay locked in, please?”

“Liam, it’s broad daylight—”

“Just today, please, Kelsey. Bartholomew is with you. Handsome and charming, right?”

She laughed. “Are you jealous of a ghost?”

“He should be!” Bartholomew called.

“Handsome and charming is in love, did he tell you? Her name is Lucinda, and they like to haunt the streets together,” Liam told her.

“Lovely. Go to work. I’ll stay in. I’ll be fine. I have a lot of reading and a whole lot of looking to do.”

“A needle in a haystack,” Liam said.

Kelsey smiled. “I have a few ideas,” she assured him. “The religious angle. All paths to God. Hey, I haven’t found it yet. I’m thinking about a few things. I think that it all fits in together. I’ll call you as soon as I have found it.”

“Bartholomew,” he called.

“I’ll be here, I’ll be here!” Bartholomew assured him.

He left the house at last. His first stop: Gary White’s apartment.

Kelsey sat at the dining-room table with Bartholomew, going over everything with him and wondering if truth and lies and perception weren’t the same thing. Was she really talking to a ghost? Was it a mass hallucination? Had they all hypnotized one another?

She preferred the concept that she was carrying on a conversation with a charming ghost named Bartholomew.

“Well, was it worth it? He almost dropped his cup when I mentioned that you had brewed the coffee,” Kelsey said.

Bartholomew laughed. “Ah, yes, the look on his face. Well, he deserved it. He was the worst skeptic in that group. Poor boy, though. He never had a cup of coffee.”

“And it really is excellent,” Kelsey said.

“Thank you.”

“Well, down to it! The truth, the answers, are in this note, I know it. Listen, I’m going to read it again,” Kelsey said.

“Kelsey was always my little wonder child. She was fascinated with history. Her friends’ parents sometimes thought I must be very odd, even scary, because of the objects I collected. But Kelsey knew and understood peoples and cultures, and as we often discussed, there are so many paths to God. Kelsey knew that the true path to God only came through great sacrifice. She knew this even as a child.”

Bartholomew shook his head. “I don’t understand. If he’s giving you clues, I’m not getting them. Why not just say where he left the reliquary.”

“He couldn’t do that. Someone else might have found the book and the notes,” Kelsey explained.

“So, what you’re getting out of it is—religion?”

“Yes, and he’s using it for two reasons—he found a great hiding place, and because he was a believer in a higher power—God.” She smiled. “He was also a believer that love—love for each other or love for God—sometimes involved making sacrifices. He didn’t believe in the book he was holding. But he held that book because the perpetrator believed in the power of that book. Oh, I’m not sure, nothing is a direct clue. But, anyway, time to get started.”

“Where?” Bartholomew asked.

“Corner table, the runes and the masks of the Norse gods. The cabinet with the chalices, the mummy and the voodoo altar,” she said.

“I’m not much help,” he said ruefully.

“Being with me helps me,” she assured him.

“Start with Odin,” he suggested.

Gary White’s room was a cluttered mess.

Liam knew that officers and a crime-scene unit had gone through it and found nothing, but he wasn’t satisfied.

He was certain that Gary White had been in on some part of what was going on. He had been too young to have been guilty of subtly finding a way to kill Kelsey’s mother. He went through the clutter of magazines—most of them old, taken from coffeeshops or tables on the streets—paper bags, fast-food containers and junk. He wasn’t sure if he was sorry for the man or angry when he saw the musician’s guitar sitting next to the one overstuffed chair.

The drawers were full of worn clothing; the hamper was overfull. He was about to leave the apartment in frustration when he looked at the chair again.

He strode to it and pulled up the cushion. It was heavy, with a zippered upholstery cover over it.

He unzipped it and stuck his gloved hand into the cushion. He felt around.

And he found something. A book.

He pulled it out. It was
the
book.

Had he been killed because he had held out on someone?

Or had the murderer never thought that Gary White could hide something so completely?

“Not in Odin, eh?” Bartholomew asked, leaning against the wall as he watched her.

“Not in Odin. Not in the chalices, not in any of the rune cases,” Kelsey said.

“The mummy?” Bartholomew suggested, wrinkling his nose.

She walked over to the mummy. Though the coffin was open, there was a sheet of glass over it, keeping the mummy from deteriorating. She lifted the glass. This mummy had been dug up long, long ago. Long before they had known about preservation techniques. Though the sarcophagus was nice, handsomely painted, she knew that it was common for the upper-class working masses. The mummy hadn’t been buried with jewels or anything of value.

“I’ll probably break it to dust,” Kelsey muttered. She had on a pair of gloves, not the best, but the kind that came with certain hair products. She’d found them under the sink. Cutter’s last housekeeper must have used them.

“Dust to dust,” Bartholomew reminded her.

She tried to feel around the mummy. The old wrappings made her sneeze.

“Finding anything?”

“No.”

“How about the sarcophagus?”

“I’m going to have to crawl in it.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Bartholomew reminded her.

She crawled in and searched every corner, patting the sides. To her astonishment, a secret panel sprang up from the floor of the sarcophagus. “Bartholomew!”

“You found it?”

“No! But…”

She sneezed and crawled out. Perplexed, she looked at Bartholomew. “But it… I’m not sure. It’s just made me think.”

She walked to the door of Cutter’s office and turned on the lights. The room looked as it always did. She started walking around, pushing at books, stomping on the floor.

“Oh, dear,” Bartholomew said.

She shook her head. “I’m not going crazy. I keep thinking that someone is in here, even when it’s locked up. Even now, with an alarm. I lock my bedroom at night. Even Liam locked the door when I wasn’t here.”

“I can pat walls,” he said.

“Perfect, help me!” she said.

He started around the room. As he did so, Kelsey’s phone rang. Distracted, she answered it without looking at the caller ID.

“Kelsey.”

It was Liam.

“Hey,” she said.

“You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. How’s it going with you?”

“I just found the book taken from the library. It was in Gary White’s apartment,” he said.

“So…Gary White signed himself in as Bel Arcowley?”

“So it seems.”

“But he’s dead,” Kelsey said.

“He had to have been acting for someone,” Liam said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But I know where he was going when he left the library. To work for Jonas. Kelsey, don’t let anyone in. If anyone comes over, don’t answer the door. Not until I’m with you.”

“Liam—”

“I may be paranoid, but I’m a cop, and better safe, right?”

“Okay,” she said softly.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I was going through all the religious artifacts. I found a secret drawer in the sarcophagus. It made me think. I’m tapping around in his office, trying to see if I can find another hiding place.”

“Keep in touch, all right?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Call me if—anything,” he said.

“I promise.”

“Kelsey?”

“Yes?”

“Never mind, we’ll talk later,” he said.

They hung up.

She began looking around Cutter’s desk. Her phone rang again, and she answered it, almost dropping it as she did so, she was so certain she would find something. “Hello, Kelsey.”

She recognized the voice instantly. She started to close the phone, but she heard laughter.

“Don’t hang up on me so quickly, Kelsey. I just want
you to know… No, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. Except die.”

Liam walked into the station and straight over to Ricky Long, who was working with the telephone number that the caller had used to threaten Kelsey.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. It’s a prepaid phone, no contract necessary, sold all over, and the purchaser probably paid cash.”

“Pretty much what I expected.”

“But we’re trying to trace it down to the most likely area through the satellites,” Ricky told him hopefully.

“How close can they narrow it?”

“Down to a block, possibly, and if it lets out a signal again, it can be pinpointed more accurately,” Ricky assured him.

“Great. Keep me posted.”

He headed over to the desk where Dave Aspen, the sketch artist, was working with his sketch scanned into the computer.

“Well?

“Lieutenant,” Dave said, looking up. “What timing. I’ve gone ahead and done a slide show with various different scenarios of facial hair and even nose putty.”

“That sounds great. Let me see.”

He pulled up one of the rolling chairs to sit next to Dave while he hit a computer key. “Okay, here’s a cleaned-up version of what I drew yesterday from the clerk’s description. Next, without the beard and the mustache. Now, the nose seemed a little too long and pointed,
so I played with it. Oh, wait, this is the one with the eyebrows thinned. Now here’s the one with the thinned brows, facial hair gone, best representation of the lips and mouth I can manage, and—”

He broke off; Liam was standing.

He should have known!

Just as he did so, Ricky came rushing over to him. “Lieutenant!”

“What, Ricky, what?”

“He called her again. The phone is on the Merlin estate. He might be calling from within the house.”

She’d had it. Completely had it. She was on to something, and this idiot was calling her, trying to scare her out of the house.

“Back off, ass,” she said and snapped the phone closed.

“What was that?”

“A jerk!” she said angrily. “I’ll fool around in here in a minute again. I don’t know what I’m looking for. And I’m feeling… I don’t know. Like I need to sit down, like I’m going to pass out.”

“Then you need to sit,” Bartholomew said. “Take a break.”

“No, no, I can’t. I think I have to keep going. Okay, I tried the mummy. The chalices, the runes…Odin! Time for the voodoo altar.”

She walked back out to the living room and stared at the altar. There were numerous saints, little statues, big statues. There were offerings to the saints on the black velvet altar cover. There were Mardi Gras beads spread
over it in a series of colors. A child had offered up a princess doll that was almost life-size. It had been given to the Virgin Mary, who looked down at her benignly, her hands spread in an offer of tenderness and peace.