“Did you know my mother?”
“No, I am afraid I did not.”
“Then how do you know that neither she nor my grandfather are about, haunting Key West?”
“This house is filled with pictures, Miss Donovan. I would recognize both.”
“Oh,” she murmured, disappointed. “What about Gary White?” she asked excitedly. “He was murdered. Surely his spirit must be wandering around seeking justice!”
“I’ve tried to explain—not everyone remains behind. Some pass through life to death and what comes after without this time in the midst of the veil.”
“Is that what it is, really?” Kelsey asked. “A veil between life and death?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what I’ve heard it called,” he said.
“I keep closing my eyes. You’re not disappearing,” Kelsey said.
“I won’t disappear. I’ve been coming clearer and clearer to you since we were first together,” he said. “Now…well, I’m sorry if it distresses you. You will continue to see me.”
Kelsey shook her head. “It doesn’t distress me. It makes me believe that I might see those I loved once again.”
“Kelsey, please don’t count on that,” he said.
“You were in the cemetery,” she said. “You spoke softly to me. You comforted me.”
He smiled. “I thought that you had felt me there.”
“My grandfather believed that my mother was murdered. My grandfather might have been murdered, and Gary White was murdered,” she said.
“Yes,” Bartholomew said. “I’ve heard. And, of course, forgive me, I’ve been reading over your shoulder.”
“But you don’t know who killed Gary White?”
“I wasn’t here,” he explained.
“And you haven’t seen Gary White? His ghost, I mean?”
“Miss Donovan, if I had the answers, I certainly would have given them to Liam by now! All I can do is help him trace what we know and…tell him what information I can get from others, like myself, I have had the pleasure of meeting. Well, usually, it’s a pleasure. Now and then, one does come across someone quite unpleasant who has stayed behind. I’ll tell you what I know, and what I believe. There was a man named Peter Edwards. Whether all the stories about him are true or not, I don’t know. But, supposedly, he used black magic to curse or hex or kill Southern blockade runners during the war, and, later on, got mixed up with a very evil man named Abel Crowley. At some point in his life, he truly began to regret what he may or may not have done. Tattling on a man during wartime is much like killing him. Pete rued his transgressions, and he tried to use the book your grandfather had—the book in this very room—to atone for his sins. Pete is still walking around the cemetery. Perhaps he can help us again, and perhaps knowing about the books and what they are supposedly capable of doing, or enabling, is the key to what is going on now. I don’t believe that men can bring about hexes and curses. I believe they are capable of greed, envy, viciousness and violence.”
“All right. What do you think of Liam’s theory? After reading my grandfather’s notes, I think he’s right that someone knew about the real reliquary, and the fake reliquary, years ago. I believe that person somehow killed my mother—though exactly how her fall was caused, I don’t know. After my mother’s death…” Kelsey paused, perplexed.
“What?” Bartholomew asked.
“Nothing happened. My mother died, my father and I moved away, and nothing happened. Not until Cutter died.”
“A million-dollar diamond is a prize well worth waiting for,” Bartholomew commented.
She nodded, and then frowned again. Out the window, she saw someone moving.
The someone was running, running around from the front to the rear of the house.
“What in the world…?” she began, jumping to her feet.
Leaving Bartholomew to follow in her wake if he chose….
If he was real….
She raced around to the back.
She saw a man at the end of the dock.
And then she saw Avery.
He was facedown in the water, twenty feet from shore.
12
Ah, but it was invigorating, fascinating, exciting beyond imagination to watch!
Ah, they didn’t know….
He had been the one to do the screaming. Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, and it had worked so well.
He was invisible.
He paused for a moment. Today, he had shaved it very close. He had barely disappeared into himself before the others had come, before the frantic quest for life had begun. But then again, cutting it so close led to the brilliant wonder that he was feeling now.
Victorious. Amazed, amused, so vastly entertained.
He watched, and he felt himself so incredibly clever, so jubilant.
He backed away….
Soon, the fun would really begin.
After questioning Chris Vargas, Liam returned to the station. He realized he never had bothered to have lunch, and he managed to eat a rock-hard bagel as he looked over the reports from the day.
Gary White had played at a small coffeehouse on Margaret Street in the days before he had disappeared and died. The owner hadn’t had much conversation with him. Gary wasn’t a brilliant performer, but he’d been fine, playing soft tones that fit the bill for people who didn’t want loud music. Getting away from loud music in Key West wasn’t always easy.
He had fixed a leaky pipe for a Mrs. Vinnie Wilfred over on Simonton Street the following afternoon.
He hadn’t been seen since.
He hadn’t spoken to anyone about the Merlin house, nor had he mentioned visiting the library, and he had certainly not spoken to any of them about reading any books.
Liam’s head was pounding. He was getting nowhere. He might be running down chimeras. No. Gary White was dead. Murdered. Someone had murdered him. The clues had to be out there.
He had died on the Merlin property.
That had to mean something, too.
It meant a killer was laughing at him as he chased his own tail.
He left the office at precisely five, thinking that Kelsey might have discovered something else helpful in her grandfather’s book.
He was just pulling into Kelsey’s drive when he heard the sound of her scream.
It was coming from the back of the house.
He jerked the car to a halt and went tearing around the house.
There were people in the water. Clothed people in the water.
Kelsey.
Avery.
And Jonas.
Liam rushed to the shore and saw that Kelsey and Jonas were pulling Avery from the water. Kelsey was speaking to her friend, words tumbling from her lips.
Avery was pale and bloated-looking; his lips were blue.
Jonas and Kelsey had just dragged him ashore when Liam met them there. He had his phone out, and he dialed in for emergency assistance.
His phone slipped from his hands as he reached the three upon the beach. “Kelsey, I’ve got the training!” he told her, pulling her from Avery’s prone body so that he could begin CPR. He could hear her sobbing softly behind him, and he knew that Jonas had his arms around her, trying to reassure her. He tried to block out the sounds of life around him and give his total attention to the man before him, counting out, breathing in, pressing down, breathing out. Nothing.
Then, after he did his best to breathe life into the man, Avery suddenly coughed and spit out a stream of water. He inhaled.
He was breathing.
He twisted Avery, trying to make sure he didn’t choke on the water, and by then, the emergency technicians had arrived.
He stood up. He felt Kelsey move against him, trying to get to Avery, sobs shaking her body.
“Good work, Lieutenant,” one of the EMTs said. “He’s alive.”
“Why isn’t he moving?” Kelsey asked.
“He…might have suffered a concussion, if he fell off the dock,” the EMT said. “We’ll get him airlifted to the hospital.”
“I’m coming with him,” Kelsey said.
“Of course.”
She was dripping wet.
“Go, Kelsey, they’ll airlift you. I’ll get there in the car,” Liam said.
The emergency medical technicians had a stretcher and two of them were positioning it to lift Avery’s muscle-bound and heavy body upon it. While they were doing so, Liam knew he had to get some answers.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Kelsey said. “I saw Jonas running—”
“I was watering the plants in front. I heard a scream. I came tearing over,” Jonas supplied.
Liam looked at Jonas, hoping that the raw anger and suspicion he was feeling wasn’t written all over his face. “And what did you see?”
“Nothing. He was in the water.”
“Kelsey?”
“I saw Jonas racing out to the water. I followed him. I saw Avery.”
“He was facedown,” Jonas said.
“You didn’t see how he got that way?” Liam asked.
Both Kelsey and Jonas shook their heads.
“But you arrived first?” Liam asked Jonas.
“I saw Jonas race past a window, and I came after him,” Kelsey said. “I was a split second behind him.”
“I told you, I heard a scream,” Jonas said.
“But you didn’t hear the scream?” he asked Kelsey.
“I was inside—all the windows are closed and bolted,” she said.
“We’re ready,” one of the med techs said.
“Go,” Liam told Kelsey. “Stay with him. I’ll be on the phone with you, and I’ll be there as fast as I can drive up. They have to get to the airport, and get him in emergency transportation. I won’t be that far behind you.”
Kelsey nodded jerkily. “Oh, my God, if Avery isn’t all right,” she whispered.
“He’ll be fine,” Liam assured her. Of course, he didn’t know that at all.
Kelsey started to follow the med techs around the side of the house.