Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon (10 page)

“Hey, Katie!” she called.

“Hey—thought I’d take a walk over. Sean is at the house, and he and David are editing something, and so… I see you did the shopping. Want some help?” she asked.

“Help is always great. But you have to work tonight….”

“I have four hours,” Katie told her.

“I think you should dive right in,” Jonas said. He looked at Kelsey. “Ask Katie what she smells,” he suggested.

“What I smell?” she asked.

“Yes, do you smell anything?” Kelsey asked.

Katie arched a brow, her hands on her hips.

“Um…maybe the water is a little stagnant somewhere?” she suggested.

“Do you think that’s what it is?” Kelsey asked, relieved.

Katie laughed. “Hey, when they work on broadening
the highway from Florida City to Key Largo, and they’re reclaiming land, the smell of rot can be horrific!”

“I suggested that we open all the windows in the house—there’s a decent breeze today,” Jonas said.

“But if it’s the smell of the water, we’d be letting it in rather than out,” Katie said.

“Hmm. Good point,” Jonas agreed. “But—”

“Let’s do it anyway. With all the cleaners I’ve been using already, it’s probably a good idea,” Kelsey said.

“Hey, I’ll run back over and get my iPod and speakers,” Jonas said. “Might as well do this to some music.”

“Great,” Kelsey said.

“So, you’ll be staying here a while?” Katie asked her.

“There’s a lot to be done,” Kelsey told her.

“I think it’s great,” Jonas said enthusiastically.

“So do I,” Katie agreed. “Jonas, go get us music to heft and haul by!”

Grinning, he took off at a trot back toward the mainland. Katie snatched up a couple of the bags and headed into the house. “I think it smells great in here!” she said. “Okay, you’re right. It smells heavily of cleaner, and I think that will get worse as we go.”

“I’m sure,” Kelsey said.

In another trip, they had the last of the bags, and Kelsey was delighted that Katie had come, because she helped clean out the shelves in the kitchen as they put groceries away. “It’s amazing, what you’ve done already,” Katie said. “You know, I was a little girl the last time I was here, but this is an amazing house. I thought it was
the coolest place on the whole island. I mean, it was as if you
lived
in a museum. That was incredibly neat.”

“I did love living here,” Kelsey said. “I loved all the stories. One night my parents were going to a major fundraiser at the Casa Marina. I remember how gorgeous my mother was coming down the stairs. Then, of course, I remember the day she died.”

“Of course. I understand. That must have been so painful.” She hesitated. “So, what do you think you want to do with the place?”

“I don’t know. How strange—I don’t think that I want to let it go, but I’m not sure I could actually ever live here again.”

“Rental property?” Katie suggested.

“I don’t know yet. I just don’t know,” Kelsey said.

Jonas returned while they were in the kitchen, shouting to them from the porch and then as he entered, pausing to stare at them. “Girls! Or young women, if that’s somehow politically incorrect! You left the door open. That’s not a good thing. Opening windows is fine—inviting in all the possible drunken riffraff in the city is not!”

“We stand corrected,” Katie said cheerfully. “All right, windows! I’ll head upstairs.”

“We’ll handle it all down here,” Jonas said. He turned toward the laundry room.

Kelsey headed in the opposite direction, to the family room, and then on into Cutter’s study.

She paused, coming into the room. As a child, she had loved this room so much. It was where she came to sit on her grandfather’s lap to have him read to her from one of
the books in the endless rows of shelves, and where he weaved his great tales of adventure. It could be a dark room, though, with only the one window that led out to the porch.

She turned on the light switch, and the room came to light, revealing Cutter’s large mahogany desk, his ledger open on the old blotter as if he had been reading just before he had gone to sit down and die. Egyptian statuettes sat on one edge; a family picture taken twenty years ago sat on the other. The lamp on the desk was a beautiful Tiffany piece, and the hardwood floor was almost completely covered with a Persian carpet showing some signs of age but still beautiful. The fireplace was shared with the parlor, where the mantel was marble; in this room, it was hardwood. Elegantly designed fire utensils sat on the limestone apron around the fire, and a firebreak from the early eighteenth century hid the fact that the hearth area itself was shared.

It really was a beautiful old house. She hadn’t talked to Joe Richter yet about the actual value, but it occurred to her then that the house really was probably worth a small fortune.

And yet, oddly enough, she couldn’t imagine selling it.

She walked across the carpet and pulled back the dark crimson drapes and opened the window. Natural light flooded in softly.

The entire house had been screened in the seventies, she knew, so she wasn’t going to have to deal with an onslaught of bugs or other creepy-crawlies. When her
parents had lived here, when it had been a family home, it had been wonderful.

She looked around the office. Except for the archway from the family room and the living room, and the large expanse of the fireplace, the room was shelved. Cutter’s library of books took precedence here, but there was also a stack of crates and boxes between his desk and the window, and on some of the shelves she could see his collection of bookholders and curios. Porcelain cats guarded one shelf, old seafaring nautical instruments were on another, and replicas of Mayan gods adorned another. The bookcase behind his desk had one relatively empty shelf just about six feet from the ground holding one of Cutter’s favorite pieces, a replica of King Tut’s gold mask purchased from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Memories here were good.

She turned to walk out of the room and then paused, certain that she’d heard something. A rustling sound.

She turned back and waited. Nothing. She smiled at herself. She’d opened a window. The breeze was coming in. And right now, it smelled clean and just a bit salty.

She headed for the door again, but once there, paused once more. She’d had the oddest feeling that…

She was being watched.

She turned back.

She gave herself a mental shake.

There was no one there.

“It’s my house now, you know,” she said softly aloud. “And I will love it as Cutter did, and allow no evil!”

What a ridiculous assertion. And how bizarre to feel
that someone was staring at her. It had to be the gold death-mask replica of King Tut.

But the death mask was a beautiful piece. Nothing evil about it.

She shook her head and determinedly left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

L
iam arrived at the Merlin house at five-thirty, just in time to see the house against the first pastel colors of the dying day.

It rose large and mysterious on the landscape, gray peeling paint and darker dormers giving it the look of something that lived and breathed.

He parked and, as he walked up to the house, he noted the open windows.

He knocked on the door and waited, then tried the knob.

It was open.

He entered and heard voices from the kitchen. He walked through the living room, noting that the floor had been swept, some of the clutter of boxes rearranged, and that it was already beginning to feel lived-in once again. He was still disturbed by the carelessness of the open door and windows.

Jonas, Katie and Kelsey were in the kitchen. They each had a bottle of beer and appeared to be happily chatting in a casual way.

Kelsey saw him enter the kitchen. He thought that
her blue eyes were immediately guarded. She had been leaning on the butcher-block counter but straightened.

“The door was open,” he said. “I knocked, but no one heard me.”

“Liam!” Katie said, pleased to see him. She came to give him a kiss on the cheek. “It must be getting late, then. I’m out of here.”

“We’re going to dinner. Wouldn’t you like to come?” Kelsey asked.

“It’s a work night for me. I’ve been asking Uncle Jamie to bring someone else onto the floor so that Clarinda can take over for me more often, but Jamie isn’t a trusting soul. He keeps putting it off. He actually needs to bring in a few more people, but… Anyway, I’m going to go home and spend some quality time with David! See you all tomorrow, or later, if anyone is bored and wants to come by. Jonas, I know I’ll see you soon. ’Bye all,” Katie said and stepped around Liam.

“I’ll follow you out. And lock the door,” Liam said.

“I’m out of here, too,” Jonas said. “I’m going to go home and wake Clarinda up! She’s looking forward to a lighter schedule, too.”

“Thanks, both of you, for all the help,” Kelsey said.

“No problem. When I see you struggling, I’m your man,” Jonas said lightly.

Liam wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t make him particularly happy just then to think that Jonas lived so close to the house, he could literally see Kelsey anytime she came out the door. He should have been glad; friends should be close. Jonas was a friend.

He winced inwardly, wondering if he was seeing the
man as a rival. Jonas and Clarinda had been together for years, so that was pretty foolish. Jealousy was not an attractive emotion. But he wasn’t certain he was jealous. He was uneasy. And he wasn’t sure why. He seemed to be making things up in his head.

But he had been the one to find Cutter Merlin dead, in the chair, his eyes wide open in fear.

“I’ll walk you both out,” he said lightly.

Kelsey followed him through the dining room and then parlor to lock the two out. She smiled at him, but he thought she still had a guarded look in her eyes.

“What?” she asked, when he had locked the door after the other two.

“Kelsey, you know what. Twice, I came here and people had broken in.”

She waved a hand in the air. “Liam, people knew that Cutter was dead, that the house was empty. An easy mark.”

“People know this place is a treasure trove,” Liam said.

She frowned, looking at him. “This house is my home, and I’m not going to set myself up to be paranoid to live here, Liam.” She lifted her hair, letting it fall on her neck again in an offhand manner. “Where did you have in mind to go?” she asked him.

“Nowhere—until we’ve gotten the windows closed again,” he said firmly.

She frowned, ready to protest.

“Please, Kelsey. Don’t be paranoid—do be responsible. I’ve had a lot of officers busy around here, you know, clearing out teenagers and opportunists,” he said.

“Sure. I’ll run upstairs, if you want to run around downstairs,” she conceded.

He nodded. He watched her head for the stairway, then decided to do a circle of the house himself.

Odd. When they had been kids, they had never thought about any kind of danger when Kelsey had forgotten her key and they’d crawled in through the broken screen in back, over the washer and dryer. Now the thought that the house was vulnerable in any way made him extremely unhappy.

He quickly secured the windows in the dining room, kitchen, laundry room and family room, and then went into Cutter’s office. He walked over and closed the one big window, securing the bolts on it. He paused, looking around the office. Even with the crates and boxes aligned between the desk and the window, there was something different about the room.

He thought about it a moment and realized that it looked lived-in. Naturally. It was where Cutter had spent most of his time.

He didn’t know why, because he knew what he had just done, but he went back to secure the window once again. He liked the room, but for some reason it gave him an uneasy feeling.

When he came out, he met Kelsey in the living room.

“All locked up,” she said cheerfully.

He tried to shake his feelings of tremendous unease, remembering that his life had not been particularly normal in the last year. His own grandfather’s death had brought David home, to answer an unsolved murder.
Vanessa Loren had come to them specifically because of the brutal killing of her coworkers, and none of the mysteries had afforded easy answers, not to mention the fact that they had all been cast into extreme danger. Perhaps he had become so jaded and suspicious that he couldn’t even look at his friends with trust.

And if he kept behaving like a law-enforcement tyrant, there would be no reason for Kelsey to pay attention to anything that he had to say.

“Turtle Kraals?” he suggested. “It’s just across the bight.”

The Merlin house was on a tiny spit of land that was actually just a geographical feature of the bight. The bight was about a twenty-acre span in the bay—although the word itself came from the Old English
byht,
which meant bend, or a bay created by a bend. By the bight was a bigger bay, which confused many people.

The marina was close. Tourists boarded old schooners and other craft to sail in the bight.

The Merlin house still seemed remote.

“Turtle Kraals it is,” Kelsey agreed. “Shall we swim,” she asked with a grin, “or drive on over to the marina? Or walk?”

“We’ll play it lazy and drive,” he said.

In less than twenty minutes, they were seated in the restaurant.

Liam brought the gray plastic bag in with him, but didn’t mention it at first.

They both apparently knew the conversation was going to grow more serious, but they began with casual
suggestions about food. “Conch chowder! I haven’t had any in ages,” Kelsey said.

“It’s good here, very good,” Liam said.

“Ah, fresh snapper. That sounds good,” Kelsey said.

“What are we having tomorrow?” Liam asked.

“Oh, everything I could think of!” she said. “They had fresh mahimahi, so I bought some fish. Ribs, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers…corn, salad, potato salad, baked beans, all kinds of stuff. A pack of desserts—you name it!”

“Well, then, snapper might be a nice choice tonight,” he said.

She nodded. Their waitress arrived, and they ordered. When the woman had gone, Kelsey stared at him. “All right. What’s in the bag?”

“Cutter’s belongings. Valaski, the medical examiner, gave them to me,” Liam said.

She didn’t reach for the bag. “Valaski,” she said softly. “He came when my mother died. I thought he was ancient then. But I was young.”

“He’s closing in on retirement. But he’s good at what he does,” Liam said. “He kept Cutter’s clothing for the mortuary,” he said.

She nodded. “He’ll have a viewing on Sunday night, and I’m having him buried in the family plot on Monday morning.”

“That’s good,” Liam said. He handed her the bag. She didn’t open it.

“Kelsey, when I found him, he was clutching the little casket in the bag, and a book titled
In Defense from Dark Magick
was on his lap,” Liam said.

“Oh?”

“Don’t you want to see them?” he asked. “Oh, and his watch and Masonic ring are in the bag, as well. I’m sure they will mean something to you.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

Their drinks and salads arrived. She took a long sip of iced tea, as if it were something alcoholic and might give her warmth and false strength.

He leaned toward her. “Kelsey, I didn’t want to tell you on the phone, but now I think you need to know. The reason I’m worried about you out there is because I think that Cutter… Well, I think that he was scared to death.”

“Liam, I’m not leaving the house.”

“Do you know anything about the book or the casket?” he asked her.

At last, she set her fork down and looked in the bag. She frowned. “I…think he had both for a very long time,” she said. “I remember that he used to keep the casket on his desk, and I know that the book was on one of the bookshelves.”

He nodded. “Would you mind if I took the casket back and asked Ted and Jaden to take a look at it and see if they can find out anything about it in their reference materials?”

“No. I don’t mind at all,” she said.

He sat back. She smiled at him. “Liam, the more I’m in it, the more I love the house.”

He nodded uneasily. “It’s a great house,” he said flatly.

She seemed more at ease. “So, why don’t we talk
about you for a while? It’s not a surprise that you’re a cop, you know. You always wanted to solve every riddle. So…what have you been doing all these years? Did you graduate, go right into the police force?”

He shook his head, wishing that his tension would ease. “I went to the U of M. I went into criminal studies, spent some time in Miami, took special classes that were offered up in Quantico, thought about the FBI and came back to Key West. I loved Washington, D.C. It was a great place to live, but I missed the water. Yes, it’s on the Potomac. I miss the kind of water you can go in every day.”

She laughed. “That was an easy roundup of a lot of years!” she told him.

Their main courses arrived. She talked about her drawing, and about her partner, Avery. He was a whiz with animation, and they worked well together. She loved being her own boss. “Which, of course, is why I’m able to spend time down here now,” she said. “But you’re kind of the boss now, aren’t you? I heard about the shake-up in the police department—and about David coming home to vindicate himself from any suspicion,” she said.

“The chief is a great guy. I’m under him,” Liam said. “But since I’m known to work all hours and all days, I can take time when I need it, which I did recently, when I went off with David, Katie, Sean, Vanessa and others on the film shoot, trailing the recent massacre on Haunt Island.”

She set a hand on his. “That’s the problem, Liam. You’ve been so busy with really horrific events. Please—you’re worrying about me too much. I’m fine.”

When she touched him, he felt as if time and place whirled around them. Her fingertips created an instant tension in his muscles, ignited a fire in his blood and caused dangerous things to happen to his state of arousal.

He drew his hand back. “I just want you to be careful, Kelsey, that’s all.”

She seemed troubled that he had drawn away. He didn’t want to explain.

Soon after, they finished and walked out on the docks. They could almost see the Merlin house from the pier; some of the high-growing pines obscured it, but she had left on lights in the front and back of the house, so a glow could be seen.

“It’s pretty, huh?” Kelsey asked.

“Um…”

“Let’s go back and sit on the beach?” she suggested.

They drove back to the house. When she unlocked the front door, he was tense again. He didn’t know what he expected. That something might have changed?

But nothing appeared to be any different.

Kelsey seemed happy. She suggested they bring drinks and cookies out to the sand, since they had passed on dessert. He agreed. They went out through the family room and down to the small beach area. The wash of the waves against the shore was a pleasant sound. Light glowed from the house and from an almost full moon above. Light clouds could be seen drifting over the water.

“It is really beautiful, isn’t it?” Kelsey asked.

“Just like Eden,” he said dryly.

She smacked his shoulder. “Liam.”

It was arousing to just touch his shoulder!

“Hey! It’s beautiful,” he agreed. He was quiet a minute. “You own an amazing piece of property, with the best view around. It still worries me. I still wish you’d stay with me. Or Katie and David, or Sean and Vanessa, or—”

“I’m not staying with any set of lovers, thank you very much.”

“Jonas runs a B and B,” Liam reminded her.

“That would be silly.”

“He wouldn’t charge you.”

“Then I wouldn’t stay there. And it actually isn’t money. Cutter was solvent, and I’m already on his banking accounts, and, thank you, but my career is actually lucrative!”

“I assumed it was. You said that it would be silly.”

“It would be silly.”

“What about staying with me?”

She was looking out on the water. A slow smile touched her lips, and after a moment she answered softly, “I can’t stay with you.”

“Why not?”

“I’d wind up sleeping with you.”

“How crazy,” he said.

“Oh! Well, I—” Her words faltered; she seemed to think she had received a rejection.

“It’s crazy,” he interrupted quickly, “because I believe we’re going to sleep together anyway, and I believe we would have slept together years ago had you
stayed, and not staying with me is not going to prevent what surely seems to me to be just a little bit desperately inevitable.”

The breeze from the ocean whispered by, lifting a strand of her hair, an ebony that seemed to burn with a blue depth in the moonlight. Her lips curled slowly back into a smile. They still weren’t touching; they were just inches apart, seated on the sand, legs stretched out before them while the surf came near enough to brush their toes.

She stared at the night.

“I’ll never understand,” she said quietly.