Ghost Night (19 page)

Vanessa was quiet, and she still seemed disturbed. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

She made a face. “The body is creepy. I’m glad they’re taking it to Gainesville.”

“It’s not really creepy. It’s another mystery. We—
you
—found a pendant, which did belong to Dona Isabella, at least according to historical sketches. Then, we—
you
—find a body in a chest, and it proves
not
to be Dona Isabella. That’s interesting. I don’t remember anything about a maid traveling with her, though, of course, a woman of her stature probably did travel with a servant. Ah, maybe Mad Miller threatened her by killing the maid, and then gave her something of a decent burial. Or, God knows, maybe Kitty Cutlass did the deed.”

Vanessa shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ll have to see what they discover. Both of those doctors seemed fascinated and thrilled, so it was an incredible discovery.”

She was silent.

“Hey, you all right?”

“Of course.”

“You’re the only person who makes incredible finds who seems depressed by their talent. The pendant…well, I can see that as a fluke. But none of that chest was showing above the sand. How in hell
did
you become so certain there was something there?”

She paused and stopped walking and stared at him. “You really want to know? If you make fun of me now, I’ll never forgive you.”

“I will not make fun of you.”

She took a deep breath, her eyes sharp on his. “I keep thinking that I see a figurehead in the water. I dream about it, actually. It’s scary and creepy. It has Dona Isabella’s face.”

He felt his lips start to twitch and remembered he had promised not to make fun of her.

“I see,” he managed to say.

“You don’t believe a word,” she said.

“I’m not saying that!” he protested quickly. He started walking again, eager to get to his home on Elizabeth Street before he somehow managed to lose her once again. “Here’s what I think,” he said, still holding her hand, and swinging their arms easily between them as they walked. “The story goes that poor Dona Isabella was kidnapped from her transport to Spain by Mad Miller and his pirates. She was forced to Haunt Island and either murdered by Mad Miller or Kitty Cutlass, or still a prisoner—probably one who was raped and abused—when the pirate ship went down in the storm. So you see the face of Dona Isabella because you feel such sympathy for her. And it would be natural that you see the face in the water—as a figurehead—when you are instinctively honing in on something. How’s that?”

“Psychology 101?” she asked dryly.

“The mind can do amazing things,” he told her. “Then, face it, you’ve had horrible nightmares since your friends were murdered on Haunt Island—and you found them. There are all kinds of wonderful defense mechanisms in the mind.”

“What if the spirit of Dona Isabella is lurking in the water?” Vanessa asked. “Or…worse! What if Mad
Miller is a decayed old pirate like Geoffrey Rush in
Pirates of the Caribbean?
”

He laughed.

Then he realized that she was serious.

“I remember one time, when Katie and I were small, and we were at the old cemetery, bringing flowers to the grave of one of my mom’s friends. Katie was acting nervous. My dad told her that the dead were the safest people in the world—that they couldn’t hurt anyone. He told her that she had to learn to be very smart and wary and savvy—it was the living who hurt one another.”

She nodded. “Of course. I didn’t think that Mad Miller or Kitty Cutlass rose out of the sea to kill and dismember Georgia and Travis.”

“Of course not. It’s sad to say, because I know you liked him, that most probably Carlos Roca was responsible.”

She seemed to start, and to shudder.

He set his arm around her and pulled her close.

“Hey, sorry!”

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “I just— I doubt it. All right, I know that there have been horrible serial killers who had neighbors who had sincerely believed they were just nice, quiet people. But I knew Carlos. And I don’t think so—no matter how it looked.”

They had reached the house and he opened the door, drawing her in. He locked the door and asked, “Do you want something to drink? A shot of…something. Kahlúa and cream, cup of tea, water, cola, soda…?”

She laughed. “Hmm. Tea and whiskey.”

“The old Irish remedy for anything that ails you,” he said. He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

As the water boiled, he tried to casually look around the house for Bartholomew. The ghost was nowhere to be seen.

Probably out with his lady in white, Lucinda, the new love of his life.

Probably still angry with him.

That was all right; he didn’t want to be haunted that night.

The water boiled. Vanessa got out two cups and he procured the tea cups and the whiskey. When both were prepared, he suggested, “Let’s take them up to bed.”

She nodded. “Works for me.”

He meant to have a little finesse. Give her a few minutes, watch a bit of a late-night comedy. But they were still too new to one another. Once they had shed their clothing, they made love. He couldn’t bemoan his lack of subtle courtesy, because she was so passionate, so urgent, and completely and erotically seductive. She seemed to come beneath his very skin. It was one thing to feel the ultimate in climax and satiation. Sex was instinct, it was breathing, it happened all the time. But it was something else to feel the wonder when he lay with her after, something else to feel that nothing in the world could ever be so complete, so fulfilling…even so necessary.

They drank their tea then, cold, and though she kept drifting to sleep at his side, she would awake again and again with a start.

He found the remote and at long last turned on a late-night talk show. The noise seemed to soothe her.

She slept next to him as if he were a bastion against the edge of eternal darkness.

Waking with Sean was amazing; she had felt his body and warmth throughout the night, and she had slept deeply. She opened her eyes and felt wonderful. He had been on his stomach at an angle, and she had been sleeping against his back. Great back, broad shoulders, long clean lines, bronze flesh. She drew her finger down the length of his spine delicately, waking him immediately.

He woke well, too. It was all so new and amazing, of course. He turned and took her into his arms, a wicked look in his eyes, and they made love to start the day.

Afterward, Vanessa headed to Katie’s room to shower and leave Sean in his own space, and once she was dressed, she came downstairs and to the back of the house where he’d set up his office. He was there already, telling her that coffee was poured and that when she was ready, they’d go over the shooting schedule and she could tell him anything that she thought he might have missed.

Walking into the kitchen while reading the schedule that Sean had printed for her, she stopped, stunned—as if she’d been hit by a brick.

For a moment—just for a moment—she thought that she saw the pirate again. Tall, lean, dashing, rich black hair, plumed hat, standing thoughtfully by the dining-room window, staring out at the day.

She saw him in such detail!

And then he was gone.

She blinked. There was nothing there. Sun streaming in played on the dust motes in the air.

She hurried over to the coffeepot and poured a large
cup. She nearly scalded her throat in her hurry to drink it down.

Now she was seeing things nearly on an hourly basis. And after such a miraculous night of deep and undisturbed sleep.

Sean walked into the kitchen to pour himself more coffee. He frowned, looking at her. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Really? You look—scared.”

She smiled. “With you in the room? Never,” she said with a laugh. She walked over and hugged him and drew away quickly. “I had another thought that we might add in on your schedule.”

“Right,” Sean said, smiling. “What scene would you add?”

“Jay and me at night, walking down to where we saw nothing. Where I found the bodies the next morning. Very descriptive without being gruesome.”

“I like it. Write it in. Obviously, we’ll film hours that we’ll wind up editing out, but any scene that you think might enhance the project, just tell me.”

Vanessa lowered her head and smiled. It was amazing that he might have hurt her so much and made her so angry—and that, as far as a working relationship went, he was completely confident and comfortable. He knew what he wanted; he knew where he was going. It occurred to her then that they both wanted the same thing. She hoped they made an excellent documentary that was engrossing and made others think, as well.

Until that moment, she realized, she’d been thinking of her own agenda.

The phone rang, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin.

Sean arched a brow to her. “Hey, telephone. It’s a landline—remember those? Granted, we don’t use them much anymore.” He walked over to answer it.

She couldn’t be so jumpy. They would lock her up—before they could even get to the project.

Sean answered the phone. He frowned and reached into his pocket. “Sorry, forgot to plug it in last night.” He glanced at Vanessa and smiled. “I got distracted,” he said.

Then his smile faded. “You’re kidding!” he said.

He listened again.

“I’ll be right there,” he said.

He hung up and stared thoughtfully at Vanessa.

“What?” she demanded.

“The body was stolen.”

“What?” she repeated.

“I’m heading out to meet Liam. I won’t be long. The body was stolen out of the university van. The problem is, no one knows when. They’d packed it up this morning, and Doctors Aislinn and Latham were at a Cracker Barrel in the middle of the state when they decided to check to make sure that the chest wasn’t moving around too much. Well, it wasn’t moving. It was gone.”

“Someone stole the body out of the van?” she repeated incredulously.

He nodded.

“Who in the hell would want to steal a mummified body?” she demanded.

“Here’s my question,” he said. “Who in hell would even know that it was there to be stolen?”

Liam was in his office, filling out paperwork. He looked up the minute Sean came in and glumly waved toward a chair on the other side of his desk.

“Anything?” Sean asked him.

“Nothing—this may be worse than the damned Bermuda Triangle. Most of the time, we can’t even find a stolen car, and then we find them half the time because they have LoJack, but they’re stripped. But this isn’t a car we’re looking for, it’s a chest with a body in it! This is going to be impossible. They don’t know when it happened. They had just left a Cracker Barrel in the center of the state when Dr. Latham decided to check on their cargo. So—they’d stopped for breakfast in Florida City. The van might have been broken into then. It could have happened when they pulled off a few times along the way. So, it might have been stolen anywhere from Key West to Orlando. They believed that their cargo was safe—who tries to steal a corpse?”

“Is there anything we can do?” Sean asked.

“We have reports filled out and sent around the state,” Liam said. “They’ve dusted for fingerprints. The lock was sprung with a pick, but that doesn’t really help any. The door could still be secured, so it doesn’t mean that the chest was stolen later than earlier.” He shook his head. “Someone must have thought it was a treasure chest.”

“There was an article that ran in the paper this morning—David talked to a reporter last night, and I believe it went around on the wire and on the Internet. The article announced that it was a body that had been found.”

“Maybe the thieves weren’t on the Internet, and God knows, they probably didn’t read the newspaper, either,” Liam said. “The officers here are livid, of course. Keys police tend to be very territorial—they take the theft personally. She was
our
creepy old body, the way they look at it. They’ll be doing everything they can, searching for anything suspicious. Obviously, you need a reason to stop people and search their trucks or vans, but we’re good and subtle around here—learned a lot from the drug traffic. Someone may just find the chest somewhere—I mean, once they’ve discovered they haven’t any gold, silver or precious gems, they may just abandon the chest.”

Sean shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think that the body was stolen on purpose.”

“What? By gang members? Like some kind of initiation? If we have a large clan of devil worshipers down here, I don’t know anything about it,” Liam said.

“I don’t think it was gang members or devil worshipers. I think it was someone…I don’t know. Someone involved, somehow,” Sean said.

“And recently, two unexplained disappearances,” Liam said.

“We may be getting into something very bad.”

“Well, I am a cop. It’s the kind of thing I’m supposed to be doing,” Liam said dryly.

“Are you set for tomorrow?” Sean asked.

“I am—shifts covered for two weeks,” Liam told him. “Why?”

“I’d like to go for some target practice sometime before tomorrow.”

“Target practice?”

“It’s been a while for me,” Sean said.

“You are really expecting trouble,” Liam said.

“Hey—now a nearly two-hundred-year-old body has been stolen. Yes, I guess I am expecting trouble.”

“And you still want to proceed?”

Sean hesitated. “I think I feel now more than ever that we have to,” he said. “Maybe stealing the body was someone’s idea of a prank. And maybe there is something here that we’re not seeing—but maybe we’re close, and there was something we weren’t meant to discover. I don’t know. Not much makes sense yet. But yes. With what and who we have—hell, yes, we have to move forward now.”

While Sean was gone, Vanessa continued to study the schedule, adding in notes and suggestions. She liked reviewing his work, and going over all the notes he had made about supplies, lighting and editing in the scenes that would go with the narrative.

She rose at one point, realizing that they’d had coffee but not breakfast. Now it was nearly lunchtime, and she was hungry.