“What will be different?” Genevieve asked.
“Well, he’s not known for sticking around anywhere,” Audrey murmured. “But then, you’re different.”
She was different, all right. She was worse. Far worse. She was crazy.
“Thanks,” Genevieve murmured.
Audrey shook her head. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. You know what’s freaky, though?” Audrey asked her.
“What?”
“Well, you know how I keep telling you I’m a fake? But I don’t even know everything that’s happening to you, but…I get a creepy feeling. As if there’s an aura around you. In fact, when you two left the other night, I was afraid. As if some kind of dark shadow remained when you were gone.”
“It’s her, not me,” Bethany said quickly.
“Bethany!” Genevieve snapped.
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, don’t worry. Like I said, Adam Harrison is coming himself. He’ll talk to you, probably bring in a few investigators.”
“Audrey, no! I can’t let that happen. I’ll be thrown off the project so fast you won’t believe it,” Genevieve told her.
“These aren’t the kind of people who come in and make a big splash. Trust me. Adam will be discreet.”
“You’re acting like you know the man, but you don’t. You got his number from a friend, who got it from their friend,” Genevieve said.
“Genevieve, please, have some faith in me,” Audrey implored.
“I do. I just wish you hadn’t asked anyone in without talking to me first,” Genevieve murmured.
“Do you want to go on just being scared and miserable?” Audrey asked.
“It will be okay,” Bethany said quietly. “Look, as long as people are discreet, who’s to know what they’re doing?”
“I don’t have a great feeling about this,” Genevieve said doubtfully.
Audrey waved a hand in the air. “Most people think ghosts are fun. They enjoy being a little bit scared.”
“That’s because they’re not really seeing ghosts,” Genevieve said.
“Open up a little. That ghost is probably trying to help you.” Audrey sighed. “I wish a ghost would help me find a treasure.”
“I found one coin,” Genevieve said. “Not exactly a treasure.”
“But she’s leading you to the treasure. Let her,” Audrey said. She reached down into her bag again and brought out a stack of papers. “I looked into the ship you guys are trying to find. Which I know you already did, but I had my own reasons.” She stared shrewdly at Genevieve. “You don’t believe the woman you’re seeing is the poor dead girl they found on the beach, do you?”
Gen stared at her in shock. “How did you…? No, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“I knew it,” Audrey said. “So listen, Gasparilla had quite a crush on this one woman. Interesting, because he could kind of plunder, pillage and rape at will. Maybe all guys just want the girl they can’t have. Anyway, apparently he had a real thing for the captain’s daughter, Anne. But even when he got hold of her, she spurned him for her young Spaniard, Aldo. Gasparilla was known for his violent temper and you’re talking about a time when people were hanged for the least offense. Life was cheap. To Gasparilla, execution might have seemed like the right punishment for a woman who spurned him. So maybe your ghost is Anne, the captain’s daughter.”
“Maybe,” Genevieve heard herself say.
“You know it makes sense. She likes you. Maybe she knows you care about more than just the treasure. Whatever. I truly believe once Adam gets here, he’ll find a way to explain things and make you comfortable with what you’re seeing. Your days are going to be a lot better.”
“And what do I do about my nights?” Genevieve asked.
“Easy,” Audrey grinned. “Keep sleeping with the stud.”
Despite the savage damage done to the body by the sea, salt, exposure and hungry ocean creatures, it was still possible to see that the young woman had been pretty. Once. Even the fact that she had been sewn back together after the autopsy couldn’t hide the fact that she had been blessed with great bone structure. Her hair had been a soft, natural blond. As the M.E. discussed the way the marks at her ankles gave evidence of her desperate effort to free herself, Jay’s phone rang. The M.E. continued speaking unemotionally to Thor, detailing the water in her lungs, and the blood marks in her eyes. Because of the man’s dispassionate tone, Thor was surprised when he met the doctor’s eyes across the width of the gurney and saw sadness there. “Poor thing,” the M.E. said. “All that potential, lost. She was young. She wanted to live,” he added softly. Looking up at Thor, he told him, “I have a daughter just about this age. And as long as I’ve done this, there’s a part of me that is still staggered by man’s inhumanity to man.”
Jay came back into the room. “She has a name,” he said. “Amanda Worth.”
“Family?” the M.E. asked.
Jay shook his head. “None known. We got her name because some guy called in anonymously to tell us who she was. What she was.”
“And what was she?” Thor asked.
Jay looked at him, troubled. “A working girl from Miami. Drifted south from somewhere up north. I guess she started out as a cocktail waitress on the beach, then found out that in certain clubs she could make a lot more money by being a little bit friendlier. The years went by. Younger girls came in. Then guys with the bigger bucks weren’t so interested. Business had begun to slide for her.” He shook his head. “Old and used up—at thirty. She’d picked up a cocaine habit, too, and started hitting the streets.”
“None of that seems surprising, even if it’s sad,” Thor said. “She got mixed up with the wrong guy in Miami, I guess. He took her out on a boat and…hell, boats in Miami. There’s a needle in a haystack for you.”
Jay shook his head. “The caller seemed to know her pretty well. He said she had been all excited about a week or so ago, thought she was going to hook up with someone who might turn out to be more than a john.”
“And…?” Thor prodded.
Jay stared him, then sighed.
“According to the caller, she said she’d be heading south. The guy wanted her to see his home. In Key West.” Jay shook his head sorrowfully. “It sucks. I’m looking for a local murderer.”
“Then people need to be really careful,” Thor said softly. He was disturbed to feel a deep sense of unease. He tried to talk himself out of his fears. After all, the people he knew, the people he worked with, weren’t hookers and coke addicts. Even so, he found himself thinking with relief that the dead girl was a blonde, not a redhead, like Genevieve, not that that was necessarily even a factor. Besides, Bethany was a blonde, so maybe she needed to be especially careful.
He was bothered by the bizarre turn his thoughts were taking. He found himself realizing he was becoming involved, something he wasn’t sure he’d intended to do, and it made him feel…disturbed. It was the only word he could think of. He was falling for a woman who saw ghosts. And there was a murderer on the streets.
None of it connected, he told himself.
He and Jay thanked the M.E. When they left, he asked, “Think your higher-ups would let me use a police computer?”
Jay shrugged. “Sure. With your connections…don’t see why not. Just what are you looking for?”
Thor hesitated. “Disappearances…murders.”
“We don’t have much of a crime rate down here,” Jay said, his tone slightly defensive.
“Should make it easy, then,” Thor told him.
Marshall didn’t know quite what possessed him that day. He knew that any significant discovery could take not just days, but weeks or months. Sure, they had a coin, but the debris field could stretch well over a mile, taking into consideration the battle was fought just before the storm delivered the coup de grâce.
He didn’t believe in diving alone. Even top-ranked divers died that way. And he had a crew, a great crew.
A crew that included Genevieve Wa
llace, who despite having suddenly gone off the deep end on him—no pun intended, he assured himself—had made the first discovery. So…
So everyone had Saturday off. And God knew what they were all doing. Trying to take their minds off things, probably. It wasn’t every day a body washed up on the beach.
His own mood wasn’t great, but the urge to dive was on him. It was like a senseless itch, as if someone were pushing him to do something he didn’t want to and knew he shouldn’t. He fought it for a while. Then, just after lunch, he took off by himself. He found his coordinates, set out a dive flag and plunged in.
The reefs here were familiar to him, as familiar as the back of his hand. For people who spent their time in these waters, there were landmarks, just like tall buildings, statues, even curves in the road. He knew where Genevieve and Thor had found the coin; they had left a bright blue marker to identify the spot.
Staghorn coral covered the seabed beneath him. Beds of brain coral also found a home in the area. The fish life was rich and varied, as well. Fish in a myriad of colors darted all around him. He kept close to the bottom, searching the sand for any little ripple or oddity.
He had painstakingly covered about twenty feet of the ocean bed when he felt the first bump against his right thigh.
He straightened instantly, reaching to his calf for his dive knife.
His first thought was, shark.
He wasn’t frightened by the thought; he’d been in the company of sharks—lemons, hammerheads, blue, reef tips—on many occasions. This was the ocean; it was where they lived. They preferred to stay away from divers most of the time. Every once in a while though, a shark would become curious and get close. Sometimes one would even butt a diver. But it was true, in his experience, at least, that clanging a knife against a dive tank or simply landing a good punch on the creature’s nose would quickly send it away, even if it was a pretty big boy.
Or it could be a grouper, which could grow to huge sizes. They could be friendly. In fact, divers often found a grouper hanging around the same reef on a daily basis; they would name it, and sometimes tourists would come and pet the damned fish.
But when he looked around, he saw nothing. There was no six-hundred-pound grouper nearby that could have given him a friendly nudge. And if it had been a shark, it had disappeared damned fast.
He took his time, surveying his surroundings in all directions. Nothing. He turned back to his study of the ocean floor. He covered another twenty feet.
And then it came again.
A feeling that he’d been…
Pushed. Shoved.
And that he wasn’t wanted here.
Which was absurd. He was too old, too experienced and too levelheaded to believe anything so foolish.
But the sense of unease had settled in, just like the itch to get into the water had settled over him earlier. He told himself that he was a rational man. He held still, listening to the sound of his own breath through the regulator.
After a moment, he went on once again.
The next shove came almost immediately. And it was hard. It sent him flying through the water.
Marshall didn’t pause to think at all. He didn’t even look around. He shot to the surface, then swam for all he was worth until he reached his boat. Even as he threw his flippers up on the dive platform and wrenched off his mask, he felt a tug. On his leg. A forceful pull that threatened to drag him down into the depths…
No, he thought. Not like this.
Another jerk, hard against his ankles…
“God, no!”
There was a screaming, keening sound that seemed to tear across the blue sky, scattering the powdery clouds…
The sound was him.
There was no one at the tiki bar when Genevieve and Bethany returned from their lunch. Bethany yawned. “I think I’m going to take a nap,” she said, then looked at Genevieve. “No, no, I’m not. I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“Bethany, I’m fine. I can’t spend my entire life around other people,” Genevieve told her.
“Yes, but let’s wait until you meet that Adam guy, huh?”
Genevieve, staring down the docks, noticed that Marshall’s boat was gone. She turned to Bethany, ignoring her friend’s last comment. “Marshall went out.”
“Marshall is impatient,” Bethany said.
“He was the one who said we should take things slow, that this job was going to take time, and we shouldn’t forget to have lives, so we wouldn’t get sick of the work,” Genevieve reminded her.
“Maybe he went fishing,” Bethany suggested.
“Alone?” Genevieve asked.
“How do you know he’s alone?”
“Good point. I don’t.”
Bethany yawned again. “Damn it. Go take a nap,” Genevieve told her.
“No, we can do something lazy, like watch a DVD.”
Looking around, Genevieve saw that Victor’s door was ajar. “No,” she said firmly. “Look.” She set her hands on Bethany’s shoulders, turning her friend so she could see Victor open the door. “I won’t be alone. I’ll go visit Victor. Quiz him about his latest conquests. He’ll enjoy that. I’ll be fine. You go and take a nap.”
“How do you know he isn’t entertaining a conquest right now?” Bethany demanded.
“Because his door is open,” Genevieve told her.
“Okay, now you have a good point. But if you need me—”
“If I need you, I swear, I’ll be on your doorstep. Promise.”
Bethany at last gave her a hug, yawned again and started off for her own cottage. Genevieve turned to head toward Victor’s.
She walked across the sand, then paused on his porch. There seemed to be a lot of thumping and banging going on inside. As she stood there, debating whether to knock, the door started to open.
“Victor,” she said.
Then she gasped.
He was standing there with a head in his hands. A mannequin’s head. The hair was stiff and flattened to the skull. Wide, blue, unseeing eyes stared out at Genevieve.
Her eyes narrowed instantly as she stared at her friend.
Victor appeared stricken. “Genevieve, I’m—”
“You son of a bitch,” she said softly, and started to turn.
“No!” he cried.
He tried to catch hold of her shoulders, but she shook him off. He raced around in front of her, the offending head still in his hands.
“You don’t understand,” he told her anxiously.
She stopped dead, staring at him coldly. “I don’t understand?” she said coolly. “Right. Get away from me, you son of a bitch.”
“Genevieve, please, I swear to you. I’m not the one who did it,” he pleaded.
She gritted her teeth, staring at him. She’d known Victor forever, and she wouldn’t have put the joke past him. And the fact that he had fished the mannequin out of the sea, once the real body had surfaced, was only common decency.
But he was staring at her with what seemed to be sincere apology and complete honesty.
“I see,” she said smoothly. “The mannequin just appeared in your cottage.”
“I swear to you, it’s the truth. We can go to church and I’ll swear to you right before the altar, I didn’t do it.”
Was she an idiot to even consider believing him? While he was standing there with a head in his hands?
“Okay, okay. I thought it would be funny to put a mannequin on your porch. But not to hurt you. You’re like my best friend forever. I would never hurt you. Ever. I thought it might smack you back into reality, that’s all. But I didn’t do it. Honest.”
“Then who did?” she asked softly. “And how did it wind up back in your cottage?”
He shook his head. He’d either gotten pretty damn good at acting, she thought, or he was telling the truth. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you holding the head?”
He flushed, looking away for a moment before turning back to her once again, eyes steady
, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want to be caught with it. I was dismantling it so I could take it to some Dumpster piece by piece.”
“I see.”
“Genevieve, you can ask at every store on the street. I never went to anyone trying to borrow or buy a mannequin.”
“I will check on it, you know,” she told him.
“I didn’t do it,” he repeated pleadingly.
Glancing down the beach, Genevieve saw that Alex was out, walking toward the tiki bar. She hadn’t noticed them arrive, but Liz and Zach were seated there, as well.
“Maybe you’d better hide the evidence then,” she said softly.
He swallowed, following her glance toward the tiki bar, and nodded. “Gen, I swear…”
“All right, I believe you. But if I ever find out you’re lying to me…well, friends don’t do stuff like this to friends. A joke is one thing—even if it wouldn’t have been funny to me in the least. Lying about it…”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Then hide that head. Especially under the circumstances.”
“Yeah.” He headed back toward his cottage, trying to nonchalantly tuck the head under his arm. He looked back at her. “Are you coming?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yeah,” she told him. And followed.
It looked like a strangely bloodless massacre had taken place inside. Arms lay atop his bed, legs were strewn on the floor. The torso had been tossed on the futon. The white gown lay crumpled and ruined beside it.
“My God,” Genevieve breathed.
“Hey, it was a mannequin. Not real,” he reminded her.
She shook her head. He had a box of heavy-duty garbage bags by the coffeemaker. Standing by the door, Genevieve watched as he bagged an arm.
“Are you going to help?” he demanded.
“Victor, you shouldn’t be getting rid of it. We need to find out who did this,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why? So that we know!”
He shook his head. “If I showed this to anyone, I’d be blamed. You know that.”
“I’m the one the trick was played on. If I’m not mad, what does it matter?”
“You believe me, but who else will? Not your new Romeo, that’s for certain!”