fine.”
“Katie! Awake and see the sunrise, lass! Me—ghost. I love to remember the days when I was strong and tough and could defend a girl with certainty and vigor. If you get into real trouble because the place is being pilfered or plundered by a criminal—”
“Bartholomew, what thief turns on the lights?” Katie demanded.
Bartholomew groaned. “A drunk one? Katie—!”
Bartholomew groaned. Katie had jumped the low white-picket gate that surrounded the place.
“Katie!”
“What?”
“Murder, murder most foul!” Bartholomew cried.
He’d always been fond of quoting and paraphrasing Shakespeare.
“Murderers do not turn the lights on!” she tossed over her shoulder in return.
“How do you know?” he demanded
She ignored him and walked up the limestone path that led to broad steps to the porch and the door.
She felt him close behind her.
Was she crazy? No! This was about to be her place, and she could speed-dial the police in two seconds. She wasn’t going in with lights blazing; she would see what was going on by lurking in the darkness. She knew the place.
At the door she paused. She reached for the knob and as she did so, the door opened, creaking a bit, as if it had been pushed by a sudden wind.
“I did not do that!” Bartholomew whispered.
She shook her head impatiently and stepped in.
The once beautiful hardwood floors did need work, she noticed. Workmen had been in and out through the years, and their boots had done some damage. The gate area still boasted an old-fashioned cash register, but the mahogany desk, where an attendant sold tickets, was beautiful. It had been bought from an auctioneer and had once been the captain’s desk in an old sailing ship. The swivel chair behind it was equally old, handsome and still comfortable. Katie was familiar with everything; she had walked through with Liam Beckett just a few days earlier.
The light that she had seen from the street had come from the entry. It was the muted light of the foyer’s chandelier, and it cast a gentle glow over the place.
Katie opened her mouth, about to call out, but she didn’t. She chose not to twist the turnstile—the noise here would be like an explosion. She sat atop the old mahogany desk and swung her legs around, then stepped to the other side.
Looking up was eerie. Figures of Papa Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, were posed coming down the stairway. They had always been a big hit at the museum, with eighty percent of those going through the place having their pictures taken with the pair.
“Don’t you dare go up those stairs,” Bartholomew commanded sternly.
Katie almost smiled, grinning at him. “Bartholomew, you’re scared. A ghost can’t be scared. My God, Bartholomew. You were a pirate.”
“Privateer. My boat was authorized by the government,” Bartholomew corrected irritably. “And don’t be ridiculous, I’m not frightened. Yes, wait, I am frightened for you, foolish girl. What is the matter with you? I know your family taught you better. Innocent young ladies do not wander into dark alleys.”
“This isn’t a dark alley.”
“No, it’s worse. You can get trapped in here.”
“I’m not going upstairs,” she assured him.
She walked to the side, realizing that she was going in the wrong historical order. She wasn’t going up the stairs; she just wanted to see what was going on.
“Katie,” Bartholomew warned, following her.
She turned and stared at him. “What? I’m going to be scared silly? I’m going to see ghosts?”
“Ghosts will seldom hurt you. Living people, bad people, criminals, rapists, murderers and thieves—they will hurt you,” Bartholomew said sternly.
“Just one more minute…We’ll check out the downstairs, and I’ll call the cops. Or Liam. Liam is a cop. All right? I just don’t want to cry wolf.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to create an alarm when there’s no need. Maybe Liam was here earlier and left the light on.”
“And the door open?” Bartholomew said doubtfully.
Katie shrugged.
She walked to the left, where the tour began once visitors reached the first floor. The first room offered one of Key West’s most dramatic tales—the doll story. As a little boy, Robert Eugene Otto had been given a very creepy doll, supposedly cursed by an angry family servant who knew something about voodoo. Robert Eugene Otto became obsessed with the doll, even naming it Robert, after himself. Robert the Doll moved about the house and played pranks. In later years he drove the real Robert’s wife quite crazy.
From the somewhat psychotic, the history in the museum became sad and grimly real with a memorial to the sailors who had died aboard the battleship Maine when it had exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898. The museum’s exhibit showed sailors working on the ship. From there, curtains segued into an area where dancers moved about at the Silver Slipper. World War I came and went. Prohibition arrived, and bootleg alcohol made its way in an easy flow from Havana to Key West.
A pathway through the pantry in back led around to the other side of the house. It was dark, with little light from the glow in the foyer seeping through. Papa Hemingway made another appearance as 1931 rolled in and Pauline’s uncle bought them the house on Whitehead Street as a wedding present.
Katie knew what she was coming up to—the exhibit on Count von Cosel and Elena de Hoyos. Just a small piece of the museum, really, in a curtained sector through an archway. It had always been a popular exhibit. Until, of course, the re-created figure of poor Elena had been replaced by the strangled body of a young Conch woman. The beginning of the end.
People liked the bizarre, the romance and even the tragedy of history, but with this event fear had suddenly come too close. It was one thing to be eccentric in the Keys.
Real violence was not welcome.
There was more, she thought, so much more, to the museum. It was sad, really, that the story got so much attention.
There was fun history. Sloppy Joe moving his entire bar across the street in the middle of the night, angry over a hike in his rent. Tennessee Williams, working away at La Concha Hotel, penning the words of his play A Street-car Named Desire. Another war, soldiers and sailors, the roadblocks that caused Key West to secede and become, if only for hours, the Conch Republic.
The rest of history paled beside the story of von Cosel and Elena. So it had always been.
Morbid curiosity. Had he really slept with the corpse? Ooh, Lord, disgusting! How?
Katie
