Unhallowed Ground

“The dead as well as the living, huh?” Bertie said, shaking her head. “I still wish you’d stay here with me, Sarah.”

“You’re a sweetheart. And you know I’ll run back here in a second flat if I decide I can’t hack it staying in the carriage house anymore.”

“You’re always welcome here, Sarah, you know that,” Bertie told her. “You still have that key I gave you in case of emergencies, right? If you get scared at any time, day or night, I want you to remember that you have a place here.”

“I know, and I’m grateful.”

Sarah gave Bertie a hug and sat down next to a family of four who introduced themselves as the Petersons. The twelve-year-old daughter seemed to be going on twenty. The son, who was ten, seemed to be going on four.

Still, when the son wasn’t racing around, threatening one of Bertie’s antiques, the family seemed pleasant. She talked about the museum, and they said they would come by, which would be good for Caroline’s parents, who needed all the business they could get.

She wasn’t sure if she was relieved that Caleb Anderson wasn’t there, or if she missed sparring with him. He seemed to have an amazing ability to control his emotions, answering her evenly no matter what she said to him. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about the man. He worked for Adam Harrison, which was certainly in his favor. Granted, she didn’t know Adam that well, but she certainly knew him by reputation, and knew that he was trusted by every government agency out there. Of course, there were those who might think that made him suspicious from the get-go, but she wasn’t the type to see a government conspiracy around every corner. She had talked with Adam often enough to be convinced that he was an honorable man. But that only went so far. Caleb was his own person, and she had to judge him on his own merits.

As she and the Petersons talked, Sarah enjoyed her eggs Benedict, shaved potatoes with cheese and fruit with yogurt. When she had finished eating, she told the Petersons she would see them later and went back to her room. She still had a good fifteen minutes left to drop her bag in the carriage house and get to work.

When she reached her house, she saw a number of cars in the driveway, including the M.E.’s van that belonged to Floby, rumored to be the best of the local medical examiners. Sarah had met Floby shortly after her return to the city; he attended most community and city hall meetings, and loved St. Augustine with a passion.

She didn’t recognize the other vehicles, except for the unmarked sedan that Tim Jamison drove. Poor Tim. He must have felt the way she did about so much happening at once. At least her only other stress involved getting the house ready to receive paying guests, while Tim was spearheading the investigation into the disappearance of Winona Hart. Sarah herself hadn’t known the girl even existed until she saw the headlines trumpeting her disappearance and the fact that Tim was lead detective on the case, since she hadn’t been part of the intimate world of the historic district.

Sarah was suddenly angry with herself for not taking the girl’s disappearance more to heart. She argued inwardly that it was impossible for any one human being to take on the pain of the whole world, and the truth was that there was nothing she could do, nothing she could do that would help. If she could do something, she would. But she couldn’t think of anything she could possibly do that the police weren’t already doing.

She steered clear of the house and all the activity going on there and let herself quietly into the carriage house, deposited her bag, then left quickly, walking on toward the museum.

But as she walked, she found herself thinking about the people whose remains had ended up in her walls.

She was sorry they’d ended up that way, of course. But they had probably lived and died in the normal way, and after that…well, the body was just a shell. It was nothing once death had taken the heart, mind and soul.

On the other hand, the grim discovery was bound to make for some great ghost stories, that was for sure. What better way to lure the tourists than with tales of misty figures who walked the halls demanding a proper burial?

She was suddenly anxious to get her hands on the historical records and learn more about the mortician who was undoubtedly behind the nasty scheme that had led to the deads’ unorthodox entombment. Three hours of work, and then she would be off for lunch. That would be a great time to run over to the privately owned historical society library, which was open to the public several days a week.

In the grand scheme of things, coffin theft was morally reprehensible but not on a par with red-handed murder. She thought of some of the city’s genuinely gruesome history. Under Spanish rule, executions had been carried out by the garrote. It wasn’t a particularly bloody death—not like the spray of blood that accompanied the falling blade of the guillotine—but it was a painful one. The rope around the neck was tightened twist by twist. Onlookers in the square often bet one another on how many twists it would take a man to die. Luckily that particular tradition disappeared at some point as the city burned to the ground, and went from Spanish rule to British, then back to Spanish, until Florida finally became part of the United States.

More recently, the city had had to cope with the notoriety of what they called “the murder house.” In a nice part of town, in the nineteen-seventies, two neighbors had gone at one another. Witnesses—who all mysteriously died or went mute before the trial—saw the owner of the house on the left emerge and slit the throat of the woman who lived on the right. He’d been furious with her for the insults she’d thrown at him after he’d called an animal control agency to take away the menagerie she’d kept in her yard. The murderer had lots of friends in high places, and once the witnesses disappeared, the charges against him were dismissed and he moved away. If anyone had a reason to haunt a house, it was that poor woman who had been so brutally murdered on her own front steps, but as far as Sarah knew, the people now living in the house had never experienced a single spectral incident.

In comparison, the skeletons of people who’d died naturally were nothing, even if they had ended up in the wall of her house. They made for a good story and some lively conversation, nothing else. But she did want to know the whole story of what had happened. It was her house, after all.

With that thought uppermost in her mind, she looked around and realized she’d reached the museum.

The morning traffic on I-95 heading north from St. Augustine to Jacksonville was light. Once Caleb neared the city, he took the 295 extension leading around the downtown area and toward the airport, which was north of the city center. The car rental agency he was seeking was just half a mile from the airport. When she had arrived in Jacksonville a year ago, Jennie Lawson had deplaned, waited for her luggage and boarded a courtesy shuttle for the rental agency.

Then she had driven away in her rental car and disappeared. There was no record on her credit cards of any later purchase, and the car she had rented, a silver Altima, had never been found.

He cautioned himself to be methodical, to start at the beginning and, no matter how tedious and repetitious, get the facts straight before he started trying to extrapolate his way to a conclusion.

Those were simple rules of any investigation, and Caleb always followed them.

As he drove, he tried to keep his mind on the case, but he couldn’t help it: his mind kept wandering back to yesterday, and all those bones.

They’d been the unknowing victims of a mortician’s greed, pure and simple. Another ghoulish story to add to the repertoires of the multitude of ghost tours that wound through the city by night.

Nothing to do with the real tragedies of two missing girls, at least one of them presumed dead.

Caleb wondered why the chronologically separate cases seemed linked together somehow—if only in his mind. And then there was the house where the long-dead bodies had been found. He had felt drawn to it from the moment he had seen it. A natural fondness for architecture? No, definitely something more. Something instinctive had made him stop in front of the house and study it.

Maybe instinct had something to do with his fascination with the house’s owner, as well. Sarah McKinley was decidedly attractive. But he was equally drawn by her ability to speak, and her fascination with history and people.

But he was here because of Jennie Lawson, he reminded himself. He needed to forget about the bones in the wall and get his mind back on his assignment. Jennie hadn’t disappeared into thin air. He had to find out what had happened to her.

Caleb parked outside the rental agency, strode inside and took his place at the end of the line, which at least moved quickly. When he got to the front, he asked the cheerful young woman at the counter—who wanted to offer him an upgrade before he even got out a word—if he could speak with the manager. She immediately looked crestfallen, as if she hadn’t been cheerful enough. He explained that it was about a previous rental, and she directed him to a small glassed-in office to the left. The manager rose, looking concerned as Caleb entered, but he offered a hand and introduced himself as Harold Sparks. Sparks looked at Caleb suspiciously after studying his credentials and shook his head. “The cops were all over us about this a year ago. I wish I could help, but I can’t tell you a thing.”

“Would it be possible to speak with the rental agent she saw?” Caleb asked. He had taken out his notebook, and now he looked down at the page. “Mina Grigsby.”

The other man’s jaw tightened. “She’s been through this before, too.”

“I understand,” Caleb said patiently.

Sparks shrugged, looking abashed. “Sorry. Sure. Either of us would do anything to help find the woman, it’s just that…there’s nothing else to say or do. She came in the courtesy shuttle, she rented a car—and she disappeared. The cops kept coming back because once she left here, everything’s a dead end. We’re all they’ve got. Her picture ran in all the papers, and no one came forward to say they’d seen her anywhere, not a gas station, a restaurant, or a hotel, bowling alley, movie theater or bar. It’s almost as if aliens came down and swept her up. But I’ll call Mina into the office, and you two can chat.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">