grinning.
“Gary…” she said warningly.
“Okay, okay. Don’t hit me.” He put up a hand as if to protect himself, smiling all the while. “But pizza is good enough for me. I want to get this place in shape for you, so I need to knock out that last wall. I know it means a lot of work and a lot of mess, but you can’t have a leaking water pipe. It will destroy the whole place on you, given time. You can go ahead if you want to. You don’t have to be here wielding a sledgehammer.”
“No, no, thank you, but I’m just as happy to hang around while you knock down walls,” Sarah assured him, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m dialing the pizza guy right now. What do you guys want…?”
“One cheese, one pepperoni, that’ll be great, thanks,” Gary said, then turned and disappeared down the hallway.
Sarah ordered the pizza, then took a minute and looked around.
At the moment, everything seemed to be coated in a thin layer of white dust. But even as she noted the dust, she was happy. It was such a beautiful place. So what if it had been a mortuary for a while? It had originally been built as the home of an American politician’s aide soon after Florida became a territory. She had a sweeping porch that led to the original etched glass entry door. There was a small mudroom, still with the original tile. The house boasted a huge foyer, with a hall that stretched back toward a multitude of rooms that, while certainly viewing rooms during the house’s tenure as a mortuary, had been planned as an office, a formal dining room, dual parlors—one for ladies and another for gentlemen—a music room and a laundry room. Somewhere along the line, a kitchen had been added to the house proper. The original kitchen had been a separate building out back; it was now empty but would one day make a beautiful apartment. The old carriage house had already been turned into an apartment, and though it, too, needed work, it was livable. The plumbing worked, and she’d put new sheets on the old four-poster bed in the large downstairs room. She’d put in sink, refrigerator and a microwave, just in case some of Gary’s crew should ever need to stay. The carriage house stood just to the left of the driveway, creating an L with the main house. She couldn’t help but take a moment to bask in the fact that she actually owned such a beautiful house. Well, she and the bank.
So far, Gary hadn’t had to rip apart either of the front parlors. The men’s parlor, on the right, was done in wood and dark tones. The ladies’ parlor was light, with soft beige-toned wallpaper and crown molding painted to match. It was peeling, but that was all right. She could handle the cosmetic details later. There was a grand piano in the parlor, out of tune, but it had come with the house, and she intended to have it tuned and lovingly repaired eventually. There was also a small secretary, where she worked when she was home. Now she took one of the beers for herself, sat down at her desk and started looking at the articles she had collected on old St. Augustine, looking for anything about the house.
She found herself musing rather than reading.
There was no reason to think there was anything suspect about the man from the museum staring at her house. There was plenty to admire about it, and this was a tourist town, after all. And that was what tourists did. They stared.
He wasn’t the usual tourist, though. Of that she was sure. He had an air about him. Like a…cop. No, not a cop. A CEO. No, not a CEO, either. She wasn’t quite sure what it was that made him so striking, even over and above his looks. Maybe it was that build, sleek and powerful, and a stance that seemed to speak quietly of confidence.
Strange. Caroline had thought he seemed familiar. There was something familiar about him, but Sarah couldn’t begin to figure out what it was. She was certain she would have remembered if she had ever met the man before.
“Hey!”
She had been so lost in her thoughts that she was startled when she heard Gary’s voice.
“What is it?”
“Sorry, I think you should see this.”
She looked at him, surprised. She didn’t know a thing about construction, and she had told him so when she hired him to supervise the restoration of the mansion. Whatever he came across, he was supposed to deal with it. He knew what would fly with both the contemporary codes and the demands of the historic board. He knew walls and leaky water pipes. She didn’t.
“What?” she asked again, worried by the look he was giving her. Things had been going so well, so incredibly well, and she didn’t want anything to change that.
This wasn’t going to be about leaking pipes. Instinctively, she knew that.
Just the tone of his voice was disturbing as if she had suddenly rounded a corner to find herself in an alien world. A creeping feeling of terrible unease began to fill her, slowly at first, then cold and sweeping, like skeletal fingers of ice reaching from a grave on a winter’s day.
“Bones,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.
“Bones?” she repeatedly blankly. “What, you found a dead squirrel?” she asked weakly, though she knew full well that wasn’t he had found.
“No, Sarah. Human bones.”
“Well, the house was used as a mortuary,” she reminded him, though she knew she was being stupid. She just didn’t want it to be true. It was as if everything had suddenly shifted. The world had been good, and now, from this moment on, it was going to be something altogether worse.
“We found them in the wall, Sarah. The wall. Mortuaries didn’t usually wall up the dead,” Gary said, then looked at her questioningly, as if waiting for her to decide what to do.
She nodded. “I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them we have a skeleton in the wall.”
“A skeleton?” Gary repeated, staring at her blankly.
“Right,” she said slowly. “Bones. A skeleton.”
“Sarah, please. Just come look.”
She stood at last and followed him back to what she intended to one day be a beautiful library.
She knew then what he had wanted her to see. There was no skeleton in the wall.
There were dozens of them.
2
“I heard you found a body,” Adam Harrison said over the phone. Adam never did waste time with pleasantries over the phone, Caleb thought. No “Hey, how are you settling in? Good trip?”
In person, Adam Harrison—Caleb’s boss and CEO of Harrison Investigations—was charming. One of the most dignified and courteous men who had ever walked the earth, Caleb was convinced. But he just wasn’t a phone man.
“Yes, but nothing that has anything to do with our case. I just heard from that lieutenant friend of yours. The body is—”
“Frederick J. Russell, banker, who must have been speeding around that curve. He’s been missing for twelve months, and if there’s anything more, no one will know until the coroner’s finished his report. A fine day’s work, even if there’s no connection,” Adam said.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t get you any closer to what you’re looking for. Have you discovered anything from talking to the locals?”
