keep a hand on the helm? Bring her straight in?” Sean asked Bartholomew as he brought up the anchor. Securing it, he added, “Jeez, am I crazy asking you that?”
Bartholomew looked at him with tremendous indignation.
“Really! That was absolutely—churlish of you! If there’s one thing I know, it’s a lazy man’s boat like this!”
Sean grinned. “I’ll be in the head in the shower for about fifteen minutes. That’s all you need to manage.”
“It’ll be great if we pass the Coast Guard or a tour boat!” Bartholomew cried.
Sean ignored him. He just wanted to rinse off the sea salt—his uncle had him curious.
He showered, dried and dressed in the head and cabin well within his fifteen minutes. In another twenty, he was tying up at the pier.
Duval Street was quiet.
As he walked from the docks to O’Hara’s, Sean mused with a certain wry humor that Key West was, beyond a doubt, a place for night owls. He was accustomed enough to working at night—or even partying at night—but he was actually more fond of the morning hours.
“What do you think Jamie wants?”
Sean heard the question again—for what seemed like the tenth time now—and groaned inwardly without turning to look at the speaker. Imagine, once he had wanted to see the damned ghost!
Oh, he could see Bartholomew way too clearly now, though when he had first come home to Key West—hearing that David Beckett was in town and worried for his sister’s safety—he had come with his longtime fear for Katie’s mind. She had always seemed to sense or see things. But that had been Katie, not him.
Bartholomew had apparently wanted to be known, though at first he proved his presence by moving things around.
Then Sean had seen him in that damned chair in the hospital room. Now he could see the long-dead privateer as easily as he could see any flesh-and-blood, living person who walked into his life.
He cursed the fact.
He had never believed in ghosts. He’d never wanted to believe. In fact, he’d warned Katie not to ever talk about the fact that she had “strange encounters” or had been “gifted” or “cursed” from a young age. The majority of the world would think that she should be institutionalized.
He wasn’t pleased that he saw Bartholomew. Now he had the fear that he would one day wind up institutionalized himself.
And he was far from pleased that the dapper centuries-old entity had now decided to affix himself to Sean.
“I will not answer you. I will never answer you in public,” Sean said.
Bartholomew laughed. “You just answered me. Then again, we’re hardly in public, you know. I think the whole island is still asleep. Besides, you’re a filmmaker. An ‘artiste!’ People will happily believe that you are eccentric, and it’s your brilliance causing you to speak to yourself.”
“Right. Don’t you feel that you should go and haunt my sister?” Sean asked.
“I believe she’s busy.”
“I’m busy,” Sean said.
“Look, I’m apparently hanging around for something,” Bartholomew said. “Others have gone on, and I haven’t. You seem to be someone I must help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“You will, I’m sure of it,” Bartholomew said.
Sean kept walking.
“So what do you think he wanted?” Bartholomew persisted.
“I don’t know,” Sean said flatly. “But he wanted something, and that’s why I’m going to see him.” He cast a glance Bartholomew’s way. The privateer—hanged long ago for a deed he hadn’t committed—was really quite a sight. His frock coat and stockings, buckle shoes, vest and tricornered hat all fit his tall, lean physique quite well. In his lifetime, Sean thought dryly, he had probably made a few hearts flutter. Sadly, he had died because of the death of the love of his life, and an act of piracy blamed upon him. However, after haunting the island since then, he had recently found a new love, the “lady in white,” legendary in Key West. When they filmed their documentary, Sean meant to make sure that he covered Bartholomew’s case and those of his old and new loves.
He’d heard once that ghosts remained on earth for a reason. They wanted to avenge their unjust deaths, they needed to help an ancestor or they were searching for truth. There were supposedly ghosts who were caught in time, reenacting the last moments of their lives. But that was considered “residual haunting,” while Bartholomew’s determination to remain on earth in a spectral form was known as “active” or “intelligent” haunting.
Bartholomew had been around for a reason—he had been unjustly killed. But Sean couldn’t figure out why he remained now. His past had been aligned with David Beckett and his family, and Sean had to admit that Bartholomew had been helpful in solving the Effigy Murders, all connected to the Becketts.
Maybe he had stayed because of the injustice done to him and because he still felt that he owed something to the Becketts. All Sean knew was that he had been Katie’s ghost—if there was such a thing—and now he seemed to be with him all the time.
Sean liked Bartholomew. He had a great deal of wit and he knew his history. He was loyal and might well have contributed to saving their lives.
But it was unnerving from the get-go to realize that you were seeing a ghost. It was worse realizing that the ghost was no longer determined to stick to Katie like glue, but had moved on to him. He was a good conversationalist—and thus the problem. Sean was far too tempted to talk to him, reply in public and definitely appear stark, raving mad upon occasion.
Ghosts were all over the place, Bartholomew had informed him. Most people felt a whisper in the breeze, sometimes a little pang of sorrow, and if the ghost was “intelligent” and “active,” it might enjoy a bit of fun now and then, creating a breeze, causing a bang in the dark of night, and so on. Katie had real vision for the souls lurking this side of the veil. So far, thank God, he’d seen only Bartholomew, and maybe a mist of others in the shadows now and then.
Sean had been damned happy before he’d “seen” a ghost at all.
Pirate Cut, he noted mentally. A good place to begin shooting. They hadn’t known in Bartholomew’s day that the reefs needed to be protected. They had brought their ships to the deep-water plunge just off the reef many times. Bartholomew knew for a fact that the legend about the area was true—ships of many nations had foundered here in storms, been cut up on the reefs and left to the destruction of time and the elements. But there was treasure scattered here, treasure and history, even if it had been picked over in the many years since.
It would also make for beautiful underwater footage. The colors were brilliant; the light was excellent. And it was near the area where Bartholomew had allegedly chased and gunned down a ship and murdered those aboard. Falsely accused, in the days after David Porter’s Pirate Squadron had been established, he had been hanged quickly, and it had been only after his unjust death that his innocence had been proven.
It
