Deadly Night (22 page)

There was someone else, too. Someone behind Fiona.

And then she heard a whisper.

I knew I was going to die. I had to die, because I suspected what was going on. I was out in the graveyard. He had brought women there before. It was where he used and discarded them…. Can you hear me? I couldn’t stop it then, and now it’s happening again. Someone has to stop it now. Can you hear me? Oh, please, can you hear me?

She heard gunshots, exploding loudly all around her.

What happened next was like a dream within a dream.

Fiona, beautiful in white, came running across the balcony, and then…she fell, tumbling in slow motion, almost as if she were flying.

There was a silent scream.

Can you hear me?

The scene faded, changed.

And the man was there.

The man with skin the color of café au lait and the sad eyes. And he was bent down over the woman, weeping.

From the house came the sound of a baby, crying.

The scene began to shift, and she thought she was about to wake up. She willed herself to wake up, because even in her sleep, she could remember that she had the diary and knew that it was important to read it. So important.

She didn’t wake up, though. Instead, she was walking, moving furtively, keeping her flashlight aimed low. She was looking for someone. She didn’t know who, but she was excited. Excited because of the note. It had to be from a coworker. Someone who wanted her to be in on the solution of a historical mystery, someone who had slipped onto the property and had uncovered evidence from the past. She thought she knew who it was.

And he liked her. She almost giggled at the thought.

She heard a name called in the night. Kendall tried to listen harder, because she knew the name, but it wasn’t hers.

“Come on. Hurry up.”

The voice was coming from the cemetery.

Then the part of her that was still Kendall, even in the dream, knew. She knew that if she went, she would die. A thick gray mist began to swirl around her, and there were bones, bodies, faces, all beginning to emerge from the earth, warning her to stay away, and yet the woman she was in the dream didn’t seem to see them.

She urged the woman she had become to stop, but it was no use.

She was going to die.

She couldn’t stop her body, so she had to wake up. It was the only way to live.

“Kendall!”

She heard her own name clearly, felt strong arms around her. She blinked, and then she was wide awake and held tightly in Aidan’s arms. He was staring down at her with concern and tenderness mingled in his eyes.

Nightmares.

Were they doomed to be plagued by them here?

He had shaken off the dream quickly. She still felt as if gray mist was clinging to her, as if she had to figure out the meaning, the message, of the dream. Would he still look at her with such tenderness if he knew she was on the verge of total insanity, thinking she could enter the past, enter into someone else’s body, in a dream?

“Sorry. I guess it was my turn for a nightmare,” she told him, and forced a smile. She reached up and touched his hair. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s fine. But what was it? What were you dreaming?” She didn’t have a chance to answer. He winced as they heard a truck honking as it lumbered into the yard. “Workmen,” he said.

She looked at him and smiled—more genuinely this time. “Then I suggest you take the first shower.”

“Do you remember your dream?” he asked her, clearly not entirely reassured that she was okay.

“No,” she lied.

He studied her face with concern for another moment, then kissed her and rose, heading for the bathroom. When she heard the water running, she was tempted to race in and join him. Maybe that would wash away the remnants of the dream, still clinging to her like a miasma of fear.

Her foot itched, and she reached down to scratch it. Her fingers touched something gritty, and she looked down.

Her feet were dirty, as if she had been running around barefoot on raw earth.

In a cemetery?

Without further thought, she ran in and joined Aidan in the shower. He might have been surprised, but he certainly didn’t protest. She slipped into his arms and let the water beat down on them. When he held her, she could forget the dreams in the magic of reality.

It was good just to stand in the hot shower, wet flesh sliding against wet flesh, knowing nothing but the sheer physical pleasure of making love.

Eventually they had to get out. He got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and headed downstairs to meet the workmen, while she dried her hair.

As soon as he was gone, she reached into her bag and found the diary she had stuffed in it when she packed.

She could tell by the aroma wafting up the stairs that he had made coffee. She went downstairs, poured herself a cup, then headed up to the attic and the rocker where she had liked to sit and read when Amelia was alive.

Jeremy and Zach arrived just minutes after the workmen. Aidan met them downstairs, and they looked over the contractor’s schedule again. The electricity would be off all day Monday, as would the water. By the end of the week, though, except for a bit of detail work, the house would be done according to the work plan. A new kitchen, something they would want eventually, would take another week, at least, at a later date, since all the appliances, counters and cabinets would have to be special-ordered. And a cleaning crew had been scheduled to come in and spiff up the stables, which were being called into use for the party.

Just as they finished speaking, a car came up the drive. Aidan, shielding his eyes from the sun, saw that Vinnie was driving, accompanied by another member of the band and Mason.

“Good, you’re all here,” Vinnie said, hopping out of the car. Mason followed, looking up at the house, and the other guy—Gary, Aidan thought—came last.

“What are you three doing out so early?” Aidan asked, walking over to them.

“We’re not trying to be pains in the ass,” Gary said quickly, shaking Aidan’s hand and grinning at Jeremy and Zach. “We just want the gig.”

“The gig?” Zach asked.

“Playing for the benefit,” Gary said.

Vinnie’s face had gone a slightly mottled shade of red, but he spoke quickly. “I asked Aidan about it last night. He said it was your call, Jeremy.”

“And I said they should come ask you right off,” Mason said with a shrug. “Strike while an iron is hot, you know?”

Jeremy looked at his two brothers. “Why not?”

“Best band on Bourbon Street,” Zach agreed.

Vinnie just stared at them. “That easy?”

“Yeah, that easy,” Jeremy said.

“Cool,” Vinnie breathed.

“Told you,” Mason told him, setting his arms around his friends’ shoulders.

“Yeah, you told us,” Gary agreed. He looked around. “Where do you think you’ll want us to set up? You guys going to have a haunted graveyard or anything like that?”

“No,” Aidan said sharply. Maybe too sharply. “We’ll limit events to the stables, maybe the downstairs of the house. But since there hasn’t been a horse around in years, the stables will be the best place.”

“Great,” Vinnie said, then pumped their hands one by one. “It’ll be great. You have to sit in with us, Jeremy. And the publicity we’ll get from this, well, it’s priceless. Thank you.”

Aidan couldn’t help it. He still felt a slight reservation. Had he been right to erase Vinnie from his mental suspect list? Even though Vinnie hadn’t lied about taking Jenny back to her B and B, what was to say that he wasn’t the person she’d gone out to meet later?

Then there was Mason. Always at the store, always at the bar. And now studying the house as if he’d never seen it before. Aiden
knew
he’d been out there, so why stare at it now…unless he was looking for something that might give him away?

“The place looks great,” Mason told them.

“First time you’re seeing it?” Zach asked.

“Oh, hell, no,” Mason said, laughing. “Vinnie and I both used to come out here with Kendall. You know, when she was staying with Amelia.”

“Right,” Aidan said.

At that moment Kendall suddenly came tearing out of the house, brandishing a book. “I’ve figured it out!” she cried.

They all turned to stare at her.

“Hey, guys. Hi. What are you doing here?” she asked, her glance moving from Vinnie to Mason to Gary.

Vinnie picked her up and spun her around. “It’s official! We got the gig!”

“Super!” she said, as he set her down.

Aidan watched the two of them. They were close. Brother and sister close. Was it possible that Vinnie could be a sadistic killer and Kendall truly have no idea?

“What was that you were saying when you ran out here?” Aidan asked her.

She looked at him, then Jeremy and Zach. “I found out the truth about Sloan and Brendan,” she said, smiling again.

“Are you talking about that old story again?” Vinnie asked.

She nodded, obviously feeling triumphant. “They didn’t kill each other. Not the way we always heard it.”

“Kendall, stop. You’re about to ruin the one good ghost story that goes with this place,” Vinnie objected.

“No, actually, it makes it an even sadder ghost story.” She lifted the book she’d been holding. “This starts out as Fiona’s diary, and it’s charming. She talks about her secret wedding to Sloan. Brendan was there, so he knew they were married. Then Sloan rode off to fight again. Almost a year later, Sloan went AWOL when he was on a mission close to home. Meantime, a couple of Union soldiers came out from the city. But here’s the thing—they weren’t just a couple of greedy bastards, out to see what they could steal. One of them was a killer. He used his position with the military to “interrogate” women, and then he killed them. He’d been using this property to kill them and hide their bodies for a while. Fiona heard something one night, so she slipped out to see what was going on and saw him leaving, and that was when she looked around and saw what he’d done. What he’d been doing for a while. But he saw her, and after that, she was afraid every day. She wrote everything down in her diary, but she knew no Union officer was going to listen to her, so she was waiting for Brendan to get back, so she could tell him and
he
could report what was going on. But he didn’t come back in time. The killer, a man named Victor Grebbe, didn’t come just to harass her and to steal from her, but to kill her. She knew when she saw him ride up that she was going to die, so she gave the diary to Henry, the caretaker, who had stayed on to help her. She didn’t want him to die, too, so she told him to take the diary and the baby Sloan never even got to see and hide.

“Grebbe found her, then, and Sloan rode up just in time to see her die when Grebbe chased her onto the balcony and she threw herself off to get away from him. He shot and wounded Grebbe, and then Brendan showed up. He didn’t recognize Sloan, probably thought he was a deserter from the Confederate army, attacking a Union officer. So they did shoot each other, but they never intended to. And they weren’t fighting over Fiona.”

“How on earth can you know all that from
Fiona’s
diary?” Aidan asked. “She was dead once she went off the balcony.”

Kendall opened the book to a page near the end. “See where the writing changes? This was written by Henry, the free black man who had stayed on the property to be with Fiona. When it was all over, he finished the story just before he took the baby—Sloan and Fiona’s baby—with him to hide out until the war was over. The baby was named Declan Flynn, and when he was about ten, Henry brought him back to New Orleans, where he put in a claim for the property, and somehow, they won it back.”

“Cool,” Mason said.

“Wow, that will really help you publicize the event,” Vinnie said.

“I’m not so sure we need that much publicity,” Jeremy said. “We have to limit attendance to a couple hundred people, and I think we can guarantee that many tickets already. Then again, this is a matter of history, so it’s important for people to know the truth, and good publicity can’t hurt, right?”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful to know that the cousins never meant to kill one another, war or no war—publicity or no publicity,” Kendall said. “And at least Brendan managed to shoot Grebbe before he died.” She smiled grimly. “Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I want to go back and read this over again.” She turned to her friends. “Congrats, guys. And hey, Gary, here’s your new beginning.” She waved and went running happily back toward the house.

Aidan caught Vinnie and Mason looking at him speculatively after she left.

The house was full of workmen, but that didn’t bother Kendall.

She didn’t want to stay in the house. She wanted to head out to the cemetery, but she didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want anyone stopping her, and she didn’t want to have to explain why she was sure there was some kind of a clue out in the cemetery. And she certainly didn’t want to try explaining to Aidan that she was convinced Fiona was trying to communicate with her in dreams, much less that she had seen Henry—several times.

The workers didn’t pay any attention to her as she passed, which made it easy enough to slip out, skirt around the stables and head through the trees to the burial ground.

She’d been in the cemetery before, including for Amelia’s service, but today she was looking at tombs she had never really paid much attention to before. She bypassed the stones she had read a dozen times and skipped the family mausoleum. She forced her way through the overgrowth and took a closer look at some of the in-ground graves, especially those whose stones had been broken by the growing roots of large trees.

The cemetery looked strange. It had been dug up in places, and then dirt had been packed in little mounds over the graves again.

Aidan? It must have been Aidan or one of his brothers; she couldn’t imagine that he would have let anyone else dig up what was now his family cemetery.

She went from grave to grave, glad of the breeze coming up from the river, and even glad that she could hear the noise of hammers and saws, along with the shouts of the workmen.