Unhallowed Ground

“The only way you would have heard the story would have been if someone had already discovered the bones and dug them out,” Will said, his tone ironic.

She cast him an exasperated stare, but he didn’t notice. He was looking out the open door to where a crowd had gathered on the street, a uniformed officer keeping them back. “Hey, I know that guy.”

“What guy?” Sarah asked.

“Don’t go staring,” Will said.

“Why? Whoever he is, he’s in front of my house,” Sarah said. She gripped Will’s shoulder and looked past him, then gasped.

“What?” Caroline asked, jumping.

“It’s him.”

“Him, who?” Caroline demanded, then gave a little gasp of her own and said, “Oh, my God, it’s the guy from the museum!”

“He was here when I got home, staring at the place,” Sarah said.

“I told you, I thought I knew him from somewhere…oh, my God!” Caroline said. “You don’t think that—”

“He was a creepy old undertaker after the Civil War and stuffed a bunch of bodies in the walls?” Will asked, laughing.

Caroline flushed. “No. It’s just that—”

“I know who—” Will began. But he didn’t get a chance to finish. Lieutenant Tim Jamison was striding their way.

“Let him in, Fred,” Tim Jamison said into his radio, obviously speaking to the uniformed officer who was holding the onlookers back.

Sarah watched as Fred let the man from the museum step past.

“Hey!” she said as she caught Tim’s arm.

He turned back to her. “What?”

“Tim, who is that? Why are you letting him in?”

“I know who he is,” Will said. “I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s a diver, and he just did some work with us.”

“A diver?” Sarah repeated, confused.

“He’s actually a P.I. with some firm out of Virginia or D.C.—and he’s a diver,” Tim told Sarah. “He’s co

Sarah let him go, though she wanted to protest that it was her house everyone was traipsing through, and she should be the one to tell any nonessential perso

“He’s a damned good diver. He found a body this morning,” Will said.

“What?” Sarah, Caroline and Renee demanded in unison.

“The plot thickens,” Barry said, twisting a pretend moustache.

Sarah shot him a glance telling him that his joke was in poor taste, then turned to Will. “The missing girl?” she asked.

Will shook his head. “We were looking for her, but it was a crapshoot. We don’t know exactly when she disappeared, much less where she went, we don’t know if she was killed…the bosses decided to send divers down since she’d been at a beach party when she was last seen. They called me in as the dive master and coordinator. We didn’t find her—but your guy did discover a submerged car with a man in it. He knows his stuff—he’s a good diver.”

So he’d found a body. And now there were bodies in her house. Did that mean anything?

“His name is Caleb Anderson,” Will supplied.

“I could swear I know him from somewhere,” Caroline said.

And then, walking beside Tim, he was coming up on the porch. “I don’t think this discovery can possibly impact your search,” Tim was telling him. “This is a case for the history books—and new fodder for the ghost tours around here. Intriguing, though.”

Caleb Anderson reached the group standing just inside the door, then reached out and shook hands with Will, nodded at the others, then walked over to stand next to Sarah. “Quite a discovery,” he said to her.

“Yes, not what I was expecting, certainly,” she said.

Caroline moved forward, offering her hand. “Hi. I’m Caroline Roth. I saw you at the museum earlier. And these are our fellow docents, Barry Travis and Renee Otten.”

“Nice to meet you,” Caleb said, shaking hands all around before turning back to Sarah. “You haven’t owned the house very long?” he asked her.

“A few months,” she said.

“But she’s been in love with it forever—since we were little kids,” Caroline said. “She was working in the D.C. area and just came home a few months ago to help out at the museum. And then she got the opportunity to buy this place and jumped at it.”

Sarah stared at Caroline, wondering if her friend was going to give him her full biography. Then she wondered why it mattered. It wasn’t as if her life were a secret in any way. Still, for some reason, she thought that the stranger should have to work for his information regarding any of them—maybe because she didn’t think info about him was going to be easy to come by.

“I see. Well, it is a beautiful place—and the bones will add a nice touch of the macabre to its history—” Caleb said.

“Anderson?” Tim Jamison said, breaking in. “This way.”

“Excuse me,” Caleb said, and left them, following Tim to the almost-library, where the walls had been torn out.

“Come on,” Will said to Sarah. “Pack a bag and let’s head out. You can stay at my place tonight.”

“Or you can stay with me,” Caroline offered.

Sarah shook her head. “Will, you live in a studio. And, Caroline, no offense, because you know I love her, but your mom will just mother me to death. I’ll go to Bertie Larsen’s Tropical Breeze.”

Bertie owned a charming little B&B around the corner. At any given time there were twenty to thirty such establishments operating in town, and the owners tended to help each other out. Sometimes business in the city was the proverbial feast, and sometimes it was famine, but the owners tended to stay friends, or at least allies. As a group they could advertise or petition the city for benefits like tax breaks, benefitting them all when they worked together. And since some places accepted pets, some accepted kids and some neither, they often passed on a competitor’s name when they didn’t meet a potential guest’s criteria.

Bertie wasn’t just a fellow businesswoman, she had become a good friend who had already given Sarah lots of advice. Best of all, her i

“If you’re sure…” Will said.

“I am,” Sarah insisted. “I don’t mind spending the night away from home, but I want to be able to get in and out of my own house easily if I need to. And since we all agree I can’t stay here tonight, please excuse me. I’m going to gather a few things.”

Sarah didn’t wait for an answer as she hurried up to her bedroom. She’d meant to just grab her toiletries and an outfit for the next day, but she found herself sitting down on the foot of her bed instead.

“This…sucks,” she muttered aloud.

She loved her bedroom. The mattress was new, but the bed was original to the period, a massive four-poster, intricately carved. The dresser, free-standing mirror, secretary and bedside occasional tables matched the bed. The floor was hardwood, and she had stripped, stained and waxed it herself, then purchased the elegant Oriental carpet on eBay. Her clothing was hung in the wardrobe she’d gotten from A

But tonight there would be people in and out. Gary had agreed to stay to help as they used echo-location to discern whether there were additional bodies entombed in the walls. And despite her own credentials, Sarah—who had worked on many burial sites but had never managed one—had agreed that the excavation of the bones should be supervised by Professor Ma

She just wanted those skeletons out of her walls and respectfully interred—somewhere far away.