Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow (21 page)

“My Lord! Sean’s sister! Oh, my goodness, well, Jamie O’Hara’s niece, of course. What a beauty!” Alice gushed. “Even more so than your mother, and oh, my, Esther, remember how lovely and sweet she was. I understand your parents have moved from the house, but when they’re home, you must beg them to stop by, too. Sadly, we tend to be such hermits these days.”

“We’re just horrible,” Esther said. “And, oh, how I miss your grandfather, David. The world is a far sadder place with Craig gone.”

“He was certainly the best and finest man,” David agreed.

“Well, well, we’re standing around here outside when lunch is waiting!” Alice chastised.

“Come along in,” Esther urged Katie, taking her by the arm.

They were all introduced to a woman named Betsy, an attractive thirtysomething Bahamian who tended to the elderly sisters’ needs. She had already set up lunch on what the sisters referred to as their spring porch, a back porch with a tiled floor and screened windows that caught the sea breezes.

Lunch was a feast. Salad with berries and nuts, blackened grouper, vegetarian pasta-just in case-and all manner of fresh-baked breads.

The conversation was light at first as David and Sean talked about a few of their foreign exploits with photography and film, and Katie explained how she had wanted to come home to live, and thus formed her corporation, Katie-oke.

They were delighted.

“I used to carry quite a melody in my day!” Alice assured her.

“Ever hear a honking swan?” Esther asked.

“Esther!” Alice chastised.

“I’m teasing you, dear, of course!” Esther said. “My sister still has a lovely voice for a torch song.”

“I’ll have to get you in there,” Katie told her.

“Well, certainly, but not until Fantasy Fest is over,” Alice said.

Later, when pecan pie had been served, they moved out to the parlor for “a touch of sherry,” as Alice phrased it.

“Excellent for the constitution,” Esther assured them.

“What is that, Aunt Alice?” David asked, pointing to a large ledgerlike book that sat atop the mantel.

“That?” Alice replied. “That is our family history, young man. It’s always been there. You’ve never asked before.”

“May I?” he asked.

“Certainly. We’ve been here forever-but then your family has, too, Katie, Sean.”

David stood and brought the large, embossed book back to the sofa. “How old is this thing?” he asked.

“Oh, it was started in the eighteen twenties,” Aunt Esther said. “The first fellow to write in it was Craig Beckett-not your grandfather, David, of course.”

“He was quite a man, from all accounts,” Alice said proudly.

“Craig Beckett?” Katie said. She wanted to see the book herself. Actually, she wanted to take it right out of David’s hand. “He was a sea captain, right?”

“Yes, dear, he was. He sailed for Commodore Perry, and then for David Porter. In fact, the name David came into our family because of David Porter. Craig was admired far and wide. He could take down pirates-but he wasn’t a cruel man. I mean, many a pirate was hanged here, of course, but if a man could prove himself a privateer, Craig Beckett always showed mercy. He was strong, and he was fair.”

David was turning pages carefully. The ledger was nearly two hundred years old. It hadn’t been kept under glass-it was part of the family’s heritage, and Katie was certain that both aunts had read it through and through.

“Ah, well, look-he writes it himself. He had a fellow named Smith hanged. Seems like Smith was a bit of a bastard. Attacked a ship and killed all aboard-then saw another man hanged for the deed.” David closed the book, carefully set it back on the mantel, and turned to his aunts. “That was wonderful. I’ll be in town for a while, at least. Next time, I’ll take you out.”

Sean rose and Katie followed suit. The aunts stood as well, ready to walk their guests to the door.

“David, darling, you must come here again, too-anytime. You’re family, and we do love you so!” Esther told him.

“Of course. But I want to take you out.”

“I’m afraid it will have to be somewhere quiet these days,” Esther said. “We’ll talk!”

They both stood on tiptoe to kiss David then Sean goodbye. When they came to hug Katie, she asked, “Would you two trust me to take your ledger for a few days? I would absolutely love to read it. I’ll be very careful with it.”

“Well, of course!” Ester said. “We’ll be delighted for you to read it.”

“And we know you’ll take care with it,” Alice said.

She thanked them. Sean looked at her and rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “I’m going to be careful!” she whispered to him.

“It’s a bit frightening, borrowing a family treasure,” Sean said, aware that the others were looking at the two of them.

“Katie, I know you’ll take it home and take good care of it,” Alice said. “We’re not worried in the least.”

“I’ll defend it with my life,” Katie promised.

“Good Lord, don’t do that, child,” Alice said, smiling. “Your life is worth far more.”

A minute later, they were in the car, heading back. One of the streets was blocked for construction; Katie hadn’t intended on coming down Duval with its throngs of tourists, but she did so.

“Good God, what is that?” Sean demanded from the backseat.

“What?” she asked. Her eyes were on the road. Tourists didn’t have the sense to look before they stepped off the sidewalk.

A red light allowed her the chance to look. One of the shops had a Robert the Doll mannequin out in front, except it was oversize.

“A balloon?” Sean asked, puzzled.

David was looking out the window, as well. “No, I think it might be canvas, but it’s got some kind of an inner structure, wood or metal. Damn, that’s ugly.”

Katie kept driving. She could see that there was a line to get into the museum where Stella Martin had been killed and laid out.

Stella was still at the morgue.

And people would be thronging in to see where she had lain.

“Capitalism at its best,” Sean murmured.

“We do need to survive as a city,” Katie said.

She drove on, turning down her street and bringing the car into the drive. “Sean, should I back out and park in the street so that you can reach your car?”

“No. I’m going to bed. I could sleep for a week. If I go to sleep now, I may feel human again by tomorrow.”

She parked the car and they all got out. Sean headed toward the house and then looked back. He strode over to them with purpose. “All right, someone has been killed, and Fantasy Fest may be starting off with a bang, but there is a killer on the loose. Katie, if you two don’t come here for the night, you make sure that I know you’re staying out.”

He stared at David.

“Of course,” David told him.

“All right, all right, it’s a little bit weird, but I actually prefer it if you stay here at night,” he said.

Neither of them moved.

Sean waved a hand in the air and walked on into the house.

“I’m going to take a run down to the police station. Will you go in for a while and promise me that you’ll stay there?” David asked her.

She lifted the journal. “Sure. But you know, I work tomorrow night again.”

“Hey, I’m getting to just love karaoke,” he assured her.

She kissed his cheek and headed into the house. “Lock it!” he called to her, and then started walking.

Katie went on in and set the ledger on the dining-room table. She wished that she had the books from the library as well, but they were at David’s house.

She couldn’t read more than one at a time anyway, she told herself.

It had been hot outside. She ran upstairs, jumped into the shower and afterward slid into the coolest cotton dress she could find. The shower refreshed her, and she went back downstairs. She set the kettle on the range top to boil. Now that she was cooled down, she was in the mood for a cup of hot tea.

She turned away from the stove and went dead still.

Her heart thudded against her chest, and seemed to stop.

Danny Zigler was here.

She looked to the door, and saw that it remained locked.

She had seen him last night; it might have been a dream, or something like a dream, but she had already seen Danny, and she had thought that he was dead.

But now she knew.

How she had ever imagined that he might be flesh and blood, that he might have broken into the house, she didn’t know.

He began to fade even as she stared at him. He had his old baseball cap in his hands, and his hair seemed unkempt. His clothes looked mussed and dirty.

“Danny,” she said softly.

He faded away completely.

Then he reappeared. He pointed to the table.

She frowned, looking down.

He was pointing at the journal she had taken from the Beckett house.

“Danny, what is it? What am I looking for?” she asked.

He faded away again, his arm, hand and then fingers disappearing last.

Then, there was no one there at all.

Craig Beckett wrote a wonderful log. It was personal, but she assumed that he had gotten accustomed to keeping such a diary because he’d been a ship’s captain.

He had lived a long life, dying at the age of ninety-six in eighteen ninety-five. He painted a vivid picture of when Key West had been little more than a trading post with a hardy group of settlers working to turn it into a place that would boast, in the Victorian era, the highest per capita income in the United States.

It was the early pages she turned to first. He wrote about being a young sea captain in the navy and his decision to leave the navy and work for David Porter as a civilian.

He described the events she had learned about from Bartholomew in detail. Of course, he hadn’t seen the attack that had taken Victoria’s life-the attack that Eli Smith had blamed on Bartholomew-but described it from imagination and experience. The canons firing and fire streaking through the sails of the ship, men and women screaming as smoke, fire or the tempestuous sea threatened their lives. Pirates killing everyone in their path with their broadswords. It was an unprovoked attack, and one that shocked the town, because David Porter had all but eliminated piracy a few years before it had taken place.

Craig Beckett wrote about his friendship with Bartholomew. “A man of my heart; a man who loved the sea, and his country. He might have remained a brigand, but he knew that I spoke to him truly, that I understood how he had taken enemy ships and no others. In the city, he was a model citizen, but also a man, who came to love too deeply if not with sense. I sincerely doubt that the rascal Smith could have ever started such a rumor, one so vile as to take a life, if Bartholomew had not so deeply loved Victoria. It was with the heaviest of hearts that I learned of the crowd that formed, a lynch mob, one with no more sense than that of a school of fish, darting here and there at the whim of one, that burst in upon that good fellow and dragged him to the hanging tree. They say that he died with dignity, claiming his innocence and showing no fear.”

Katie was surprised to feel her eyes stinging, and then she realized that tears were dampening her cheeks.

She wished that she could hug Bartholomew.

Not that she knew where he was!

Ah, well, she would do her best when she did see him next.

When he had seemed so taken with the woman in white-the one he now knew to be Lucinda, whose brother had died in a storm-he had told her with a certain wistfulness that Victoria had moved on. She was not among those walking the streets of Key West in any spectral way. She must have been a very strong woman-killed so ruthlessly, and yet able to move on to the higher plain of heaven, or wherever it was that the souls of the dead finally found peace.

Katie turned a page in the book, careful to dry her hands so as not to smear the ink or hurt the delicate pages.

Bartholomew’s story was a sad one. She could certainly understand it if he was to walk around near the hanging tree, still crying out his innocence.

She started reading again. The days of the bold wreckers came into play. Sponge divers, builders, settlers…

After a while, she felt a presence near her. She looked up, thinking that Sean might have awakened, even if he had said that he could sleep for a week. But it wasn’t her brother.

Bartholomew was back. He was perched on the edge of the table.

“I was reading about you,” she told him. “I’m so sorry.”

He waved a hand in the air. “Yes, it was quite unjust, but a very long time ago.”

“Where have you been this time?” she asked.

“Police headquarters. Apparently, Lieutenant Dryer has been combing the streets, and he’s quite irritated by all the shenanigans for Fantasy Fest. Seems he can’t get in the questioning he wants at various bars because there are so many people in the streets. Anyway, that’s left most of everything at the station in the hands of Mr. Liam Beckett, who is dealing with all competently, even if his frustration level is quite high.”

“Did you learn anything new?” she asked him.

“Not at the station,” Bartholomew said.

“Then?”

“Well, I can tell you this-Danny Zigler is dead.”

“I know.”

“You’ve seen him, too?” Bartholomew asked.

“He was here-for a split second. He pointed at the book,” Katie said.

“And the book is?”

“Captain Craig Beckett started it, and other Becketts over the years have kept it up. It’s not exactly a family bible, but it’s history as the Becketts saw it over the years,” Katie explained.

“There we are-back to the past,” Bartholomew said, deep in thought.

“Where did you see him?” Katie asked.

“Down on Duval. He was looking up at the strip club. He faded to nothing the minute he saw me.”

“I think that, unlike our other ghosts, Danny may know who killed him,” Katie said.

“Have you told anyone that he’s dead?” Bartholomew asked.

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

Katie sighed deeply. “Who is going to believe me? What am I going to say?”

“Well, that is a problem. You might suggest to someone that you believe that he’s dead.”

“Yes. But I don’t think they need me for such a suggestion. No one has been able to find him.”

Bartholomew waved a hand in the air. “They might believe that he killed Stella Martin, and that he’s in hiding. I’m pretty sure that’s what the lieutenant believes. When he left the station, he told Liam Beckett that he was sorry, but that he was going to damned well take care of the whole Danny Zigler disappearing act.”

“Katie!”

The sharp sound of her name startled her. She glanced up the stairway.

Sean was awake. He hurried down the stairs, his hair tousled, a worried frown twisting his features. He came to her at the table, looking around.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I’m reading the Beckett family book,” she told him.

“Who were you talking to?” he demanded.

“I wasn’t talking.”

“Katie, I heard you-loud and clear.”

“No one, Sean.”

“Katie?”

She was suddenly weary of the doubt from her own brother. “Isn’t that what you taught me to say, Sean? People will think that you’re crazy, don’t ever tell them that you speak to ghosts?”

Sean groaned. “Oh, God, Katie, please!”

“Sean, I’m telling you the truth!”

He walked away from her, slamming his palm against his forehead. “I should never leave you. Screw the whole career thing. My only sister is going to wind up locked away in a nuthouse.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much for the vote of confidence!”

“Katie, the dead are-dead.”

“Fine. As you say. Therefore, I wasn’t talking to anyone.”

He stared at her and walked to the end of the table.

Right where Bartholomew was sitting.

He walked by Bartholomew, pacing. “All right, Katie, you talk to the dead. If you talk to the dead, why don’t you mumbo jumbo up one of the murdered girls and ask her who killed them?” Sean demanded.

“They don’t know who killed them.”

“Right.”

“The killer walked up behind them with some kind of plastic bag, slipped it over their heads and then strangled them.”

“How convenient. They never saw his face.”

“Well, it’s true,” she said stubbornly.

He reached for the chair at the end of the table. “Call one of them. Let me ask a few questions through you.”

He started to sit. She gasped as Bartholomew stood and angrily tugged at the chair. To Katie’s amazement, it moved.

And Sean plunked down on the floor.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

Katie cast Bartholomew a glance and hurried to help her brother to his feet, but Sean was already up.

And confused. He gripped the chair hard before sitting in it again.

He stared at Katie, folding his hands slowly before him. “Katie, you’re beautiful. And brilliant. And you have the voice of a lark. You love it here, you want to live and work here, and that’s all great. But maybe you shouldn’t be here. Maybe you’re just too steeped in the history-and water sports,” he added dryly.

“Sean, I talked to ghosts when I was in school, in New York, and in Boston,” Katie said.

“Is there a ghost in here now?” Sean asked.

“Yes.”

“One of the dead women?”

“No.” Sean was waiting. “A pira-a privateer named Bartholomew,” she said. “He moved the chair because you were mocking me.”

“Bartholomew. Bartholomew, can you hear me?” Sean called out loudly in a deep voice.

“Will you tell him that I’m dead-not deaf?” Bartholomew demanded.

“He said that he’s dead, not deaf,” Katie said.

Her brother shook his head. “Katie, I want to believe you. If he’s here, why can’t I see him?”

“Why can’t he see you?” Katie asked Bartholomew. “By the way, you can ask the questions yourself. I don’t need to repeat them.”

“He can’t see me the way some people can’t hear a tempo, the same way some people have no empathy for others, the same… He doesn’t have the right sense for it, and he just isn’t willing to try,” Bartholomew said. “No insult-most people don’t.”

“He says that you don’t have a sixth sense,” Katie said.

“Why is he here?”

“To protect you, of course!” Bartholomew said.

“He wants to protect me,” Katie said.

“Tell him that I’m home now.”

“He can see that.”

“So why won’t he leave?”

“Because he’s got the sense and intuition of a peg leg!” Bartholomew said.

“You’ve got the sense and intuition of a peg leg,” Katie told her brother.

“Lord help us all!” Sean muttered.

“All right, Katie, he’s your brother, but he’s just about daft,” Bartholomew said. He walked to the book. She saw him concentrate.

Then he picked it up; it floated in the air.

He let it fall with a heavy thud.

Sean leapt out of his chair, staring. He looked at Katie, then at the book. Naturally, he picked up the book, searching it for wires.

“I told you,” Katie said, “I am good friends with this fine fellow, Bartholomew.”

Sean set down the book. “Katie… Look, whatever this was, whatever you see…hear, you still have to keep it quiet. Do you understand? A man like David will think you’re crazy.”

“I didn’t think that you were happy about David to begin with,” Katie said.

“David was my friend. An all-right guy. But he’s bitter, tainted. Life hit him hard, and now he’s back, and there’s been another murder. It’s almost like someone is trying to frame him-or he is a murderer and brilliant and I’ll have to shoot myself when I haven’t saved you from him.”

“He’s not a murderer.”

“And how do you know that for a fact?”

“Because he was sleeping with me when the last murder was committed.”

Sean groaned. “Oh, good God, I don’t want details.”

“You asked!”

“All right, then. Here’s the truth of it. He’s gone off and gotten rich on his own, and pretty damned famous and respected in his field, as well. He isn’t going to stay here. He hates Key West. He’s going to care for you-and leave you.”

“When he leaves, I’ll be glad of the time we shared,” Katie said stubbornly.

Sean looked around the room. “Bartholomew, talk some sense into her.”

Sean started for the stairs.

“Sean,” Katie said.

“What?” he turned to look at her, a hand on the banister.

“Danny Zigler is dead.”

Sean let out a long, low groan. “Do you happen to know who killed him? I mean, does he happen to know who killed him? Or where he is, for that matter?”

She shook her head. “He-he doesn’t really know how to be a ghost yet.”

Sean just continued up the stairs.

Katie sat back down at the table. Bartholomew perched on the edge of the table again, grinning. “Actually, your brother is not wretched. After all, he’s an O’Hara. They usually knew how to drink, and how to fight-and all in all, remain honest men!”

David was glad of the phone call when it came. He’d been reading computer screens for so long, his eyes were blurring. He was going to find the truth. Where Mike Sanderson had been and when.

Thanks to Liam-and the fact that everyone knew Pete tolerated him, and he’d gone to school with half the force-he was able to hang around the station and make use of it.

“David, it’s Sean.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, everything is fine.” Sean hesitated a minute. “I just wanted to check in. Any word on Danny? Katie is really worried about him. She thinks he might be dead.”

David was quiet a minute. “I think he might be dead, too. I don’t think he could have been the killer. I think Pete does, though. He’s been out most of the day, hunting for Danny. I’m not sure if he thinks Danny was guilty, or if he’s angry that he’s disappeared. Or if he’s worried. He’s getting a search warrant for Danny’s place, and he’s going to serve it himself.”

“All right, well…I’ve known Danny a long time and I was just thinking about him.”

“Thanks.”

When he hung up, David stood and stretched. He closed the files and glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock, and he was getting hungry. He thought about stopping for takeout, but decided that though he could call, he’d just walk back to Katie’s house and find out what she wanted to do for dinner.

What they wanted to do. Her brother was home now. Sean would be included.

He stuck his head into Pete’s office, where Liam was still working. “Do you ever go home?” he asked his cousin.

Liam looked at him bleakly. “I want to be on the street. Can’t-not with Pete out. Sure, I get to go home. I usually have it pretty easy. But, sweet Mother Mary, this is just not good. Fantasy Fest-in the midst of all this.” He sat back and tapped a pencil on the desk. “Mike Sanderson is back out there now, and Tanya’s brother is out on the street, as well. No one seems to care too much about Stella Martin, other than her friend Morgana. She’ll wind up in a pauper’s grave.”

“Did you follow through on the location where I found the charge card?”

“I did. Couldn’t find anything else. Here’s what’s sad, really sad. This guy is good. He doesn’t leave evidence. He leaves the bodies in an exposed place-seriously exposed. They’re posed almost as if he’s fooling around, as if he’s using the most bizarre local story. I talked to one of our police behavioral profilers today. He’s convinced that the killer has to be local and uses the scenarios to prove that he’s local, that this is his place.”