Unhallowed Ground

“Very smart,” Caleb said.

“Yes, especially given the circumstances. I’m working with little more than bone on that corpse, too, which is proving to be more tedious than you’d imagine. At least I know where all his body parts are. Here…well, as you can see, some of these skeletons are still more or less together, and some have fallen completely apart. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.”

“So it appears,” Caleb agreed.

The man studied him again, up and down, making an assessment.

“You work for some secret agency, huh?” the medical examiner asked him.

“Hardly secret,” Caleb said. “We’re just licensed investigators, like lots of other firms. But my boss doesn’t advertise. He’s the quiet kind and only takes on cases that call for what we can offer that other agencies can’t.”

He knew that Tim Jamison was watching him as he spoke, intrigued. Tim had been asked by the mayor, who been asked by the governor, to bring Caleb in on the case of the newly missing girls. He was both wary, and curious. But he seemed open-minded enough, and that was all Caleb really cared about.

“So where has Miss McKinley gotten herself off to, Tim?” Floby asked.

“She left for the night. She grew up here—she’s got plenty of friends around who would offer her a place to stay for the night. I’m not sure where she’s headed. She loves this old place, though. This has to be a big setback for her.”

“Not so bad—unless the whole house turns out to be riddled with corpses,” Floby said cheerfully. “And I don’t think it will. This seems to have been the…dump, shall we say? And as I said, I’ll have the pros in tomorrow to clear out these unwanted tenants, you cops and that professor will do some investigating—though I’m sure you’ll find out these people were already dead before they got stuck in the wall, just in case anyone was worried about that—and then everyone will get the burial they should have gotten years ago. And she’s a historian with on-site experience, so she’ll understand the significance of this find. And since she’s not a shrinking-violet kind of girl, I’m betting she’ll want in on the investigation herself.”

“I’d really appreciate permission to help, too,” Caleb said.

Floby looked at Tim Jamison, who nodded, giving Floby the okay to allow a stranger in on the find.

“We’ll be starting bright and early, so we can catch all the light we can. Someone will be posted out on the porch twenty-four seven to keep the lookie-loos away, so you just check in with him whenever you get here,” Floby told him.

“Thanks. I’ll leave you two, then. I appreciate being let in on this, Lieutenant,” Caleb told Jamison.

Jamison shrugged. “I don’t know who you know, but they sure as hell know all the right people.” He gri

“Of course.”

Two handshakes and Caleb was out the door. He took a minute to turn and stare up at the house—just as a small crowd was still doing from the sidewalk, gruesomely speculating on the state of the bodies.

Caleb moved quickly past the crowd to avoid being questioned by those who had seen him leave the house and moved farther down the street, then stopped and studied the house again.

Brick, mortar and wood. The place embodied everything that old-town Southern charm should be. It was a decaying but grand old edifice. It wasn’t evil, it was just a house. Still, he felt that there were things waiting to be discovered there, things that he needed to know.

But no ghosts danced on the wraparound porch. No specters wavered in the windows.

The house was just a house.

He turned and headed back toward his B&B, pla

Suddenly she stopped, as if sensing someone behind her. For a moment she went dead still. Then she swung around and stared at him before asking, “What the hell are you doing here?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you following me?”

3

“Man, that was really creepy,” Caroline said, walking along Avila Street. She shuddered and moved closer to Will. It was strange. She had known Will most of her life. They had fought and teased one another as kids. They had become friends as adults. They had shared their trials and tribulations with other members of the opposite sex with one another.

Then…

They’d been together one night—at Hunky Harry’s, as a matter of fact—and in the middle of laughing at something together, they had looked at each other and their laughter had stopped. And now…well, it wasn’t as if they’d gone insane or anything, but they were both carefully negotiating the transition from friends to the realization that they wanted to be much more.

Will set an arm around her shoulders. “Leave it to Sarah. And what happened earlier today, that was pretty damn creepy, too.”

“Yeah, tell us about it. Who is this Caleb guy, anyway?” Barry asked, strolling up alongside Will.

“Hey, wait! What about me?” Renee demanded, pushing forward.

“What are you trying to do? Block the whole sidewalk?” Caroline complained.

But they all wanted to hear what Will had to say, so they crowded together and walked along in an awkward group, trying to hear him clearly.

“I think the guy is some kind of corpse magnet,” Will said. “We were looking for that missing girl, Winona Hart, and Lieutenant Jamison said Anderson had to be on the dive team. He didn’t explain why, just said the mayor had told him to extend every courtesy to the guy and let him work with us. He has co

“So who was the guy he found?” Renee asked.

“Frederick J. Russell, a banker from Jacksonville,” Will said. “He was reported missing about twelve months ago.”

“So what happened to him? How’d he end up in the water?” Renee asked.

Will sighed, shaking his head as he looked at her. “He was still in his car, so they figure he just drove too fast and wound up in the water. Not too hard to figure out.”

“Hey,” Renee protested. “Was he drunk? Had he been suicidal? Maybe someone was after him or something.”

“She’s right,” Caroline pointed out. “What does the coroner say? Maybe someone shot him and that’s why he drove off the road.”

“There’s no coroner’s report yet,” Will admitted, sounding slightly embarrassed, Caroline thought. “Who knows? He might have been drunk, though I don’t know if they’ll be able to figure that out this late in the game. The body…well, if you ask me, it was a lot creepier than anything in Sarah’s house. Let’s just say that on land, we eat the fish. But if you die in the water, the fish eat you.”

“Oh, Lord!” Caroline exclaimed. “I was going to order fish….”

“It’s not going to be the same fish that ate the corpse,” Barry said.

“And how do you know?” Caroline demanded.

“Good question,” Barry admitted. “Cheeseburger for me.”

“Getting back to Anderson, the guy is a little scary. I mean, he’s okay. I like him,” Will said. “But…he’s been here a day and he already found a body we missed for a year. And then all those bones are found at Sarah’s place and he just happens to show up? It’s pretty weird, don’t you think?”