The ghost was suddenly distressed. Afraid.
Was it possible for a ghost to be afraid? she wondered.
Possible or not, the woman looked around frantically with her huge blue eyes and then began to fade from sight.
“Wait! Please!” Genevieve begged.
But the woman was gone. And in her wake she left only the whisper of her warning.
“Beware.”
Then there was nothing. Nothing, Genevieve realized, or the absence of something. There had been a subtle change in all of them. She looked at Brent, at Nikki, and realized she had nearly broken their hands, she had been gripping them so tightly. At the end of the table, Audrey was staring at her in shock.
Genevieve swallowed. “Brent, you saw her.”
“Yes.”
“Nikki?”
“Something…I knew she was here.”
“Audrey?”
“Not a damn thing,” Audrey admitted dolefully. “Some mystic I am.”
Genevieve smiled. “It’s just a good living, remember?” she said.
“Some of us have great eyesight, and some are born myopic. Some make great acrobats, while others are mathematicians,” Adam said kindly.
“Yeah, but…” Audrey said with a sigh.
“I wonder why she disappeared the way she did,” Brent mused.
“‘Beware’ and ‘help me.’ Not enough to give us much information,” Genevieve said. She was stunned to realize she wasn’t feeling terrified. She felt…relieved. There was a ghost.
Audrey brightened. “I know. The poor woman was murdered. She never had a decent burial. We need to have a service.”
“Oh, Audrey,” Genevieve said, “we don’t even know who she is.”
“Well, she hangs around with pirates a lot—were they here, too, by the way?” Audrey asked.
Genevieve shook her head.
“Still, you’re looking for the Marie Josephine. She was attacked by pirates before the storm that doomed her. The ghost has to be Anne, the captain’s daughter. We should just have a nice funeral service at sea and let her rest.”
“I’m not sure….” Genevieve murmured.
Nikki Blackhawk shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”
“Actually, it could,” Adam commented.
“How’s that?” Audrey asked.
“Are you sure you want her to disappear?” Adam asked.
“Of course! If she’s a ghost…wandering, suffering past pain and trauma, of course I want her to be at peace,” Genevieve said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“She does keep leading you to treasure,” Brent said.
Genevieve was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t want to disappoint the others, but…well, I think it’s obvious we’re on the right track. If there were a way to let her go, I’d gladly do it.”
“I can get hold of Father Bellamy,” Audrey offered. “We can hold a funeral service for Anne.”
“We should probably get Thor’s permission,” Genevieve said uneasily. “And if the papers got wind of it, I’m not sure it would be a good thing.”
“Not true at all. It could be spun into a nice human-interest story,” Nikki said.
They were all startled by a knock at the door. Audrey rose quickly, collecting the papers from her coffee table. “Would you mind getting it?” she asked of no one in particular.
Genevieve walked to the door. She was startled, when she opened it, to discover an entire crowd. Bethany, Alex, Victor, Jack, Jay and Thor were all there.
Thor was wearing his shades, making his expression unreadable.
“Hey,” she said, hoping she sounded surprised, but not nervous.
“Are we allowed in?” Victor asked.
“Uh…”
“Sure,” Audrey announced, coming to the door. “Hi, Victor.” She gave him a hug. “Jack…Jay. And you’re Alex, right?” She gave him a hug, too, but she didn’t approach Thor. “Come on in.”
“Do we need any introductions?” Adam asked politely as they all entered.
“No,” Thor said. “We didn’t all mean to barge in like this. Jay and I were hoping to find Adam, and we just ran into the others along the way.”
“Oh?” Adam said. “Well, here I am.”
“They have bad information at the police station, and we’re here so you can correct it,” Thor said. “I told Jay I met your son this morning. He didn’t believe me.”
Adam Harrison stared at Thor, mouth open in shock. After a moment he regained his composure enough to speak. “My son died ten years ago,” he said very softly.
Genevieve thought every single little muscle in Thor’s body must have tightened. His face was like stone.
“Then who was with us this morning?”
Adam frowned, looking truly perplexed. “Mr. Thompson, no one was with us this morning.”
“Come on,” Thor said impatiently. “You had an English muffin, I ordered eggs, your son…”
“Yes?”
“He didn’t order,” Thor said
Adam looked down for a moment. “Others have seen him, too. Sometimes I get the sense of him, but…”
“What in God’s name are you two talking about?” Victor asked, but the two men paid him no attention.
Thor stood stiffly for a minute, then turned to Audrey. “Thanks for opening the door to an entire horde,” he said pleasantly, then turned and left.
They all stared after him. “What the hell was that all about?” Jack demanded.
Genevieve looked at Adam Harrison, who looked back at her and smiled. “Maybe a good thing,” he said briefly.
“We’re all frigging nuts,” Jack said. “Well, hell, this is Key West,” he said proudly.
“Anybody hungry?” Victor asked, looking at his watch.
“Sure,” Jay agreed. But as he spoke, his phone rang. He excused himself, stepping back outside to take the call.
“Well?” Victor said. “Anyone else hungry?”
“Sure,” Bethany murmured.
“Nikki? Brent? Audrey? Uncle Adam?” There was a twist on the last. Genevieve decided that everyone had somehow intuited at this point that Adam Harrison wasn’t really Audrey’s uncle.
“Dinner sounds like a fine suggestion at the moment,” Adam said. “Audrey, what do you say?”
“Sure.”
Victor slipped an arm around her shoulders as they left.
Bethany gazed at Genevieve and rolled her eyes. Genevieve just shrugged.
Thor returned to the hotel. He doubted the crew that had been on duty that morning would still be working, but he could at least find out how Adam Harrison was registered.
The clerk at the desk was a young woman. He was prepared, since she wasn’t supposed to give out certain information. He didn’t have the credentials to demand answers to his questions, but he had a number of different legal IDs from various associations that would make it appear he had plenty of authority.
He didn’t need to use any of them. The young woman apparently recognized him and was quick to help him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Thompson, but no. Adam Harrison is registered alone. To the best of my knowledge, no one else came in with him. He’d be more than welcome to have two or three adults in the room, so I can’t imagine why he’d pretend not to have company,” she said very seriously.
He thanked her and walked back into the night.
The usual activity was going on, people wandering aimlessly, stopping to look, to shop, to buy a little trinket here or there from the sidewalk vendors.
He paused for a moment, just watching. Adam Harrison didn’t need to have a roommate for them to have been joined by a young man at the breakfast table. Maybe it had just been some kid hired to put on an act. He found himself irritated to realize, looking back, that there had really been no interaction between the man claiming to be Josh Harrison and anyone other than himself. The kid hadn’t ordered food. He’d never spoken to the waitress or to his supposed father.
It had been a sham, of course. But a convincing one. He should probably be visi
ting the local high school drama club. Tomorrow morning, he would find the waitress. She would know that Adam hadn’t been alone.
He felt his anger rising, and it disturbed him to know he also felt unease rising beneath it. His anger, he decided, was righteous. The dive was going to hell. First off, Marshall had been sold to him as the ultimate professional. But a professional didn’t disappear in the middle of a project, no matter what. A professional didn’t even call in sick. The only way to get out of this kind of work was to call in dead.
He gritted his teeth, watching as a tall blond woman emerged from the hotel. She was attractive, but there seemed to be an edge to her. As he watched, she caught his eye. She smiled and sauntered over to him. “Hello. Lovely night. Have a light?” she asked, producing a cigarette from her small clutch bag.
Her skirt was short, her shoes high. Her blouse revealed a great deal of cleavage.
“Sorry, I don’t smoke.”
She nodded, dropping the cigarette back into her bag, her eyes remaining focused on his. “Are you looking for company?” she asked bluntly.
He shook his head. Working girl. “Sorry,” he said softly. “And watch out, miss. A woman was found dead, you know.”
She smiled. “Still gotta make a living. Well, I’m sorry, too, handsome. Have a nice night.”
She headed off down the street.
Thor turned, walking down toward the water, determined to get back to Genevieve. He hadn’t liked leaving her earlier, but at the same time, he’d needed some distance. Not from her, exactly, but from the craziness, the whole thing with ghosts and dreams and….
His own sense of impotence, his inability to protect her. It had to stop. But by leaving that afternoon, he’d left her free to spend the day with Audrey and those government-sanctioned ghost hunters.
As he walked at a brisk pace, he nearly collided with Jay Gonzalez.
“Hey,” Jay said, startled.
“Hello. You didn’t go to dinner with everyone?” Thor asked. He still didn’t know if Jay Gonzalez was on his suspect list or not. The man’s wife had died under mysterious circumstances. And he’d been around for the previous disappearances.
“Duty called,” Jay said.
“Oh?” Thor said sharply.
Jay shook his head. “No more bodies. No real ones, anyway. A fellow working garbage detail freaked out. Went to empty his truck and thought he had a bunch of body parts. In a way, he did. Someone hacked up a mannequin and disposed of it all along Duval Street.”
“A mannequin? Did he find the head?”
Jay looked at him curiously. “Yeah. Why?”
“Was it blond?”
“Yeah, there was a blond wig.”
“Have you got anything on it?” Thor demanded. “There’s some kind of prankster out there.”
Jay frowned, shaking his head. “Thor, it’s not a crime to dispose of a mannequin.”
“Genevieve claimed someone left a mannequin on her doorstep the morning the body was found. She thought the body was a mannequin, in fact, and then it turned out there was a real victim. Doesn’t that strike you as something that should be investigated?”
Jay groaned. “Come on, Thor, there’s a big difference between chopping up a mannequin and killing a flesh-and-blood person.”
Thor just stared challengingly at him.
“All right. I’ll put in a few hours tomorrow and try to find out which shopkeeper was missing a dummy, and who they sold it to or why it wasn’t reported as stolen, if that’s the story.”
“Thanks. Anything new on the victim or the killer?”
Jay cast him a weary look. “A hooker found dead, any trace evidence pretty much gone. What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to solve the crime,” Thor said.
“A ghost tell you that?” Jay asked irritably.
“Actually, I was going on the premise that you’re a good police officer. You don’t want to go with that, fuck you.”
Jay let out a sigh. “Sorry. Listen, I won’t be on the dive tomorrow. We’re running short of manpower. They’ll still give you the boat.”
“Anything more from Marshall? Has he called anyone at the station again.”
Jay shook his head. “No.”
“Aren’t you getting a little worried?”
“Yes,” Jay admitted.
“He wanted this dive,” Thor said.
“I know. Look, I’ve got word out in Miami.”
“No one knows where he’s staying?”
“No.”
“You could pull the phone records, find out where he called from.”
“Yeah, I’d need to do some paperwork for that,” Jay said. “But I will. And like I said, I arranged for you to have a police dive boat.”
“Thanks.” He couldn’t help adding, “We have the mighty Brent and Nikki, right?”
Jay shrugged.
“Hell, this whole thing is about as professional as a party boat,” Thor grated.
Jay grinned. “Some people have connections. You know that—you use them yourself.”
True enough. “Point taken,” Thor said.
Jay waved a hand in farewell. “They were going out somewhere for dinner. Check along Duval. You’ll find them.”
Thor did find them. By then Lizzie and Zach had found them, as well. “I think it’s an absolutely charming idea,” Lizzie was saying as he approached the table. There was an empty seat. He realized they had planned on him joining them at some point.
“What’s a charming idea?” he asked, sitting down.
He was located between Nikki Blackhawk and Audrey. Audrey was the one who answered him. “A funeral service.”
“A funeral service is charming?” he asked.
“A service for poor Anne,” Audrey said. “To lay her ghost to rest.”
His face must have looked like a thundercloud, and he couldn’t help staring at Genevieve, seated farther down the table between Victor and Jack.
“There’s nothing otherworldly about it,” Audrey said. “Father Bellamy has been asked many times to do services for people lost long ago.” She shrugged. “I happen to know he’s available tomorrow morning. And I have a friend at the paper.” She noted the wariness in his look and spoke quickly. “A friend who writes good things. We want your permission, of course. But she thinks it’s a lovely story, a beautiful young woman caught between pirates, the love of her life and a strict father, then dying young. It’s got all the elements. You’re not superstitious, of course, but a lot of sea people are. So what do you think?”
He looked up and down the table. Jack shrugged. Victor grinned. Genevieve was just staring at him.
“Really, Thor,” Lizzie chimed in. “Come on, the work is only going to get harder. Let’s go for it.”
Thor stared across the table at Adam Harrison. The man was looking at him impassively.
“Mr. Harrison, what do you think?”
Adam lifted his hands. “I certainly don’t see any harm in it.”
“Well?” Audrey asked anxiously.
Thor stared across the table at Genevieve. She hadn’t said a word, but she was looking at him hopefully. He thought about the way she had homed right in on their finds. Directions from a ghost?
He didn’t believe in ghosts.
But apparently she did. And maybe she didn’t want to be shown anything by the undead anymore. He thought it was all in her mind, in her dreams, but there had been that seawater….
And Adam Harrison might well be playing him for an idiot. Staring at the man, he couldn’t quite get a handle on him. He just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who went around perpetuating elaborate hoaxes.
Hell, someone had played a trick on Genevieve—a real trick, with a real mannequin—but Harrison hadn’t been here at the time. As far as he knew…
Maybe a funeral service could put a stop to all of it.
There was also a real murderer out there, a vicious killer who had allowed a woman to drown with no hope.
/> And why the hell did he feel that crime had something to do with the dive?
He stared at Audrey. “We’d better not get any bad press out of it. And, hey,” he said, addressing the others, “I made the call to come in early today, but from now on we’ll be making a minimum of three dives a day. We know we’re in the right area, but we need to find the largest debris fields before the heavy equipment comes in. With or without Marshall.”
“Where the bloodly hell is Marshall, do you think?” Alex asked, sounding annoyed.
“I don’t know, but at least he’s all right. According to Jay,” Genevieve said. There was a note of worry in her voice, despite her words.
“It’s not like him,” Jack said. “I’ve known Marshall since he was a kid. He didn’t get where he is by acting like this.” He shook his head.
“Let’s not get going on another anxiety fest, huh?” Alex suggested.
“Food’s here!” Victor announced, pointing as two waiters approached them bearing large trays laden with plates, and the conversation moved on.
“Your place or mine?” Thor murmured softly, slipping an arm around Genevieve’s shoulders as they left the restaurant.
Despite his words and his touch, Genevieve felt a strange reserve in him. She didn’t know what he was really thinking, and it hurt, because she wanted to be close to him even more.
“Sure you want to keep sleeping with me?” she asked softly in return.
“If you’re sure you want to keep sleeping with me,” he assured her. “By the way, did you know Jay was called out because a garbageman found a dismembered mannequin in the garbage?”
Her heart thudded. “I knew he’d been called away suddenly, but not why. Um, a mannequin. Really?” Why was she lying to him? Protecting Victor?
“I’m curious—why was Jay called in on it? I think it’s legal to throw away a mannequin.”
“Legal, yes,” Thor agreed with a shrug. “But I guess the fact it was in pieces scared the garbageman. And in light of what’s going on…”
“So,” she said slowly, “is Jay investigating?”
“He’s going to find out if one was stolen or sold to anyone.” He stared at her hard. “The joke was played on you. Don’t you want to know who did it?”
“I suppose. Though to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I really care. I mean, everyone sobered up and got mature the minute the real body was found.”