and the history of the area in our bookstore. Remember, St. Augustine is over four hundred years old.” She grinned at the boy who had first brought up the subject of decapitation. “All kinds of gruesome things have happened here.”
She announced that her speech was over and was given a nice round of applause, and a number of people thanked her as they walked out of the lecture hall. A few lingered to examine the artifacts in the cases that lined the walls, but she noticed that the tall stranger who had drawn her attention wasn’t among them.
Caroline, rising and stretching, started laughing as soon as the last of the four o’clock lecture group walked out of the room. “A few of those kids are going to wake up in the night imagining a head on their bedpost.”
“Yeah?” Sarah asked. “I don’t think that many kids have bedposts anymore.”
“I’m sure lots of them are staying at local B and Bs. And lots of those beds have bedposts,” Caroline reminded her.
“Well, what’s a story without something scary?” Sarah asked, sinking into one of the front row seats. “And I didn’t make anything up.” She looked at Caroline and sighed. “Now you’re going to give me a speech on being nice to tourists and downplaying our more gruesome history, right?”
Caroline shook her head. “No, not today, I’m not.” She frowned suddenly, distracted. “Do you think we know him from somewhere?”
“Him who?” Sarah asked.
Caroline looked at her and laughed again. “Him who was studly and cool. Oh, come on. You couldn’t possibly have missed him.”
“Yeah, I saw him,” Sarah said. Caroline could only be talking about the man she had noted earlier in the crowd. “But what about him?”
“I felt like I knew him, or should know him, from somewhere.”
“He was good-looking—”
Caroline stared at her hard.
“Okay, I admit he looked a little bit familiar, but maybe he’s just so gorgeous he reminds me of a movie star or something.”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know, I just had a feeling about him…. It’s like he looks like someone we once knew, only…different. I wonder if he signed in? I’ll go look. And as for you scaring tourists, have some patience with the kids, huh? It’s no wonder they’re sounding a little gruesome. Have you seen this?”
She picked up the local newspaper, which had been lying next to her computer.
“Seen what?” Sarah asked. “I didn’t read the paper today—I left right after I woke up and came here.” She winced. “It’s all that hammering, you know?”
“Oh, how’s that going?” Caroline asked.
“Loudly.”
Which was the understatement of the year, Sarah thought. She loved the historic property she had bought after her recent return to town, but it was badly in need of not just refurbishing but reinforcement, as well. The previous owner, Mrs. Douglas, had tried to salvage it before the days of community awareness, when it might have been torn down but she hadn’t had the funds to do all the necessary work. When Mrs. Douglas turned eighty, she had decided she was never going to get to it, so she decided to sell and offered the house to Sarah first, because Mrs. Douglas had been friends with Sarah’s maternal grandmother. Given the house’s history, the price had been amazing, another special deal because she had been so close with Sarah’s grandmother, and also because Sarah’s grandmother’s grandmother had been born a Grant, and the property was known as the Grant House. As far as Sarah knew, her mother’s side of the family had actually come from Savannah, but since the name—whether the connection was real or imaginary—had helped her to acquire the property, she was willing to go with it.
“I’ve wanted to live in that house for as long as I can remember,” Sarah said.
“I remember, and I always thought you were crazy. Old Mrs. Douglas never did anything with it, and we’ve been watching it crumble all these years,” Caroline said. “Remember when Pete Albright went in that Halloween? How we made up the most horrifying stories and then dared him to go in? Some head of the football team! He came out white as a ghost, saying he’d quit being quarterback before he’d sleep in the place all night. He said he heard ghosts in the walls and could feel them trying to touch him. He was absolutely terrified.”
“Of course he was. We were just terrible. We told him all those old tales about the woman who sold potions and voodooed people to death. And we told him it was full of corpses—which it had been, of course, since it was a mortuary for years.”
Caroline wrinkled her nose. She was a petite blonde, cute and winsome, even when she made a face. She’d dated Pete Albright back in the day.
“We were horrible. But he could be pretty macho, so I kind of think he deserved it. And as for you, well, you’re just crazy for living there. That house is spooky.”
“I’ve slept in the house, and it’s just fine. And I applaud Mrs. Douglas. She couldn’t begin to afford to fix it up, but she kept it from the wrecking ball. I say good for her.” Sarah shrugged. “Although I do wish she’d fixed at least a few things.”
Caroline smiled. “Hey, you wanted history. Not me—not to live with, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I like history fine or I wouldn’t be working here,” she was quick to say. Not that she really had much choice. The Heritage House was a private museum, owned and operated by her parents. They had come to St. Augustine the year before she was born, embracing everything about the city and quickly making it their home. They were delighted to boast that St. Augustine was the oldest continually inhabited European-based community in the country, founded by the Spaniards in 1565, long before the English stepped foot in Jamestown and even longer before the Mayflower sailed across the sea. They were history buffs, and they hadn’t started up their business to get rich; they simply loved what they did. Caroline’s father, Harry, wrote history textbooks, and that endeavor, not the museum, was what supported them.
“Give me plumbing and electric that work any day. And a roof that doesn’t leak,” Caroline told her.
“I hear you,” Sarah admitted. “But the house is magnificent. And in a year’s time, I’ll have it all set up as a bed-and-breakfast, and I’ll run a collectibles and antiques business out of it, as well. You’ll see,” Sarah assured her.
Caroline laughed. “We should both live so long.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry. You’ll get it done. I just don’t envy you the process. I grew up in the middle of constant renovations, remember? Every bad storm that came through, we were in the dark for weeks. No closets—they all had wardrobes back then. No whirlpool tubs.” Caroline frowned. “And I’m not sure you should be staying there alone. It’s too big. With everything that’s going on, I don’t think it’s safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I meant to show you the paper right away. I get sidetracked too easily.”
“What happened?”
“Another missing woman. This one a local.”
“Oh,
