Ghost Night (20 page)

She heard the sound of the air-conditioner kicking on as she walked to the kitchen. It might be late fall, but the day was growing warm. The sun was bright outside, casting the dancing rays of rebounding sunlight into the room to play with dust motes in the air again.

She froze again.

He was there again.

Someone by the window. Someone in pirate attire.

She nearly screamed. She felt again the weakness of her legs buckling.

At first, her mind raced in a somewhat rational direction.

Carlos. It was Carlos Roca. She had seen him, and he was real, and she was wrong, and Sean was right, and he was guilty of murder, and now he had come for her.

But it wasn’t Carlos.

It was the pirate—the dandy pirate.

The tall, striking fellow with the sweeping hat and brocade coat. The one she had seen yesterday, and then briefly again just this morning.

She would blink, and he would go away. He wasn’t real. He was her mind playing tricks.

Really no. She was seeing things.

But she blinked, and this time he remained. She realized that he was staring at her with equal consternation. He jumped up, his eyes locked with hers, and gasped.

“Oh my God!” he cried.

She was hearing things, as well as seeing them. Not just a figurehead through a camera lens. Oh, no, this was much worse. This was a walking, talking pirate ghost.

In her room.

She let out a weak scream.

He let out a weak scream.

Her mouth worked hard.

“Mad Miller!” she gasped.

“Good God, no!” the apparition replied in horror.

Replied. It was talking to her, the images talked to her now, even when she was awake.

She fell back against the door, her hand flying to her throat.

“You’re not there,” she gasped out.

“My God! You can see me!” he cried. “You can really see me!”

Her knees were really buckling now. And he seemed to be fading in and out, and she wasn’t sure what she saw, or what she heard.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“A friend, I swear. All right, I’m dead, I’m a ghost—but I’m a friend, honest to God, please don’t scream again!”

She didn’t.

So much for being strong. So much for being the kind of woman who just
didn’t
pass out.

She slumped against the wall and sank to the floor, entering a sweet world of darkness and silence.

A
s he headed back to his house, Sean tried not to dwell on the stolen corpse. He called different suppliers, making sure that everything was set for them to leave in the morning. He had a few calls to make, since they needed everything from diving supplies to film, memory cards, backup equipment and groceries.

David called to let him know that he and Jamie were at the dock and that things were coming as promised.

He tried calling Vanessa, but she didn’t pick up.

She was at his house—locked in.

But he found himself hurrying. He didn’t know why the theft of the body disturbed him so much. Liam had been right—it had probably been some kind of a prank. Or, God knew, maybe an eccentric collector had decided that he just had to have a mummified murder victim from the early eighteen hundreds.

Still, as he neared his house, he was almost running. It occurred to him that he’d been gone a long time. Liam had not been able to leave the station then—he’d been tying up his paperwork and transferring his workload to other detectives throughout the day in preparation
for taking his vacation time with Sean and David and the crew.

An hour at the range had been good. He’d always had a clear eye and a steady aim, but since guns weren’t in his workaday world, he hadn’t carried one in a long time.

The day’s events at the fort and beach would be drawing to a close, but there would be parties, lectures and “pirate” entertainment as the night arrived. Once again, pirates and their consorts would be roaming the streets. At the moment, it was one of the most beautiful times of the day; there was nothing like a Key West sunset. The bright sunlight gave way to a gentle, pale yellow, and the brilliant blue of the sky overhead became a silver-gray. Then the sun started down, and it seemed that the horizon and everything around was shot full with a palette of unbelievable colors, from deep magenta to the most delicate pink, shimmering gold to gentle rose. It was most amazing to watch the sun set over the water, but to Sean, the colors were still visible, and the colors were what created the beauty.

The brighter shades were just giving way to violet, silver and gray when he reached his house. Once there, he bounded up the walk and fitted his key into the lock, calling Vanessa’s name.

In the foyer, he paused, calling her name again.

Vanessa was there. She walked to the foyer from the center of the house and the kitchen and dining-room area.

She stared at him with immense eyes that seemed to accuse him of the foulest of heinous deeds.

“Sean,” she said.

He noticed that she had shampooed her hair and that she was wearing a white halter dress that showed off the tan of her skin.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Bon voyage party at O’Hara’s. All of our friends will be joining us,” she told him. “It will be Katie’s last night for now, so she’s going to be there in case Clarinda needs her. David said as long as we’re all ready and aboard by ten we’ll be fine…oh, and Marty has turned his booth over to his friend for pirate fest—you have been gone awhile. Did you learn anything?”

“No. The police barely know where to start searching for the chest. I went—I went to target practice with Liam.”

“We’re having guns aboard?” she asked, frowning.

“Think about it. Yes,” he said.

“Well, we don’t have to leave right away. Come in and sit down and let’s talk for a minute, shall we? Sit, please. Can I get you something? It is your house, of course. Thank goodness, the choices here are much broader than what I have up in my room. Beer? Wine? Soda, soda and whiskey, or whiskey. Rum! That’s right. It’s a pirate drink. Strange, I’ve had this growing affection for a good stiff drink from just about the time I arrived here.”

She was definitely behaving strangely, and yet she certainly seemed stone-cold sober.

He followed her to the dining room. He noticed that Bartholomew was there. He was seated at the dining-room table. He looked at Sean with a guilty expression.

Sean frowned, feeling a sensation of dread.

“I’ll take a beer,” Sean said. “But I can get it myself.”

“No, no, let me. Sit,” she said.

He took a chair at the end of the table. Bartholomew—for once—was silent.

Vanessa set a beer in front of him. She had taken one for herself, and walked around to take a seat at the other end of the dining-room table.

“Sean, I mentioned to you that I see a figurehead—with Dona Isabella’s face on it—in the water, and it leads me to things beneath.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. Carefully.

She learned toward him, eyes snapping with light and anger. “You hypocrite!”

“What?”

“You tell me everything is a trick of the mind—when you live with a ghost!”

He was certain that his jaw fell. Then, of course, he gave himself away by staring at Bartholomew. She saw him! She saw Bartholomew.

“What a jerk!” she told him. “You might have mentioned your pirate friend to me!”

“Privateer,” Bartholomew said, but weakly.

“You see him,” he said, his voice just as pale.

“Yes, and he nearly gave me a heart attack. You should have told me. When I saw him, I thought that he might have been Mad Miller—”

“That was terribly insulting,” Bartholomew interjected.

“How was I supposed to know?” Vanessa snapped
to him. She wagged a finger at Sean. “You should have told me!”

He opened his mouth but no sound came. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You would have thought that I was crazy.”

“Really? That’s great. Instead, I’ve been thinking that I’m crazy.”

“You can see him—clearly?” Sean asked.

“She’s far more perceptive than you’ll ever be,” Bartholomew said.

“Thank you so much,” Sean said dryly.

“You want everything to be black and white,” Bartholomew said. “You want science and explanations.”

“There is probably a science to everything,” Sean said. He looked at Bartholomew. “We just haven’t figured it all out yet.”

“I hope not—I hope something is left to a—a dimension of faith, or the next world, be it Heaven or Hell,” Bartholomew said earnestly. “God forbid someone discovers how to force a soul to stay on this earthly plain.”

Sean looked from Bartholomew to Vanessa. “You hear him clearly, too?”

“Perfectly. Actually, we had a lovely discussion this afternoon. He’s been around watching out for me a great deal of the time. I kept feeling as if there were…something. Of course, I didn’t believe in
ghosts,
” she said. “But now…”

“Oh, please,” Bartholomew said. “You are not all sharing a mental experience, or conjuring the same imaginary friend.”

Vanessa smiled and laughed easily. “No. Now I know,” she told him. She spoke to him fondly.

Well.

“You…should have told me that you…that you knew there might be some things that were—unexplainable,” Vanessa said. “It would have helped me a lot.”

He got up and walked around the table to her, taking her hands. “Vanessa…trust me, if I hadn’t thought that…well, seriously, you know…
most
people can’t see Bartholomew.”

“Frankly, I was stunned,” Bartholomew said.

“I—think we’re at a point where we need to trust one another,” Vanessa said.

He kissed her gently on the lips. “Yes, but you must understand—”

“Oh, yes. I do. Just as you really need to understand that I came here not knowing that Jay and the others would show up—and that when you think about it, it’s not odd at all,” she said solemnly.

He pulled her to her feet. He smoothed her hair back. “I’ll never doubt you again,” he said softly.

“Oh, good God,” Bartholomew said. “I thought we were going out.”

They both turned to look at him.

“Never mind. I’m going out.” He looked at them, shook his head and made a tsking sound. “I shall see you when you get there.”

Vanessa wound her arms around Sean’s neck and kissed him. A few minutes later, he told her huskily that if they were going to leave, they needed to go. And they did.

O’Hara’s was insane that night, inside. People had heard about the excitement of finding a pendant from the ill-fated
Santa Geneva
that had once graced the neck of Dona Isabella, and then the discovery of a body in a chest—and the theft of the body in the trunk. For a while, as everyone arrived, they stayed inside, but when they had all gathered at last, Jamie suggested the patio, a private area in the back, and they all agreed.

Everyone in their group who would be heading out the following day was there.

Clarinda was doing her first night as a karaoke hostess, and despite her innate shyness, she was doing very well.

They could hear the singers and the music faintly, and the night was typically beautiful, not really cool but not hot.

Vanessa sipped a Guinness, enjoying the taste and leaned back against Sean, oddly relaxed. She’d seen a ghost.

And the ghost had proved to be real, or a real mass hallucination. Apparently, Bartholomew had actually been Katie’s ghost and helped out in David’s time of trouble; though Liam wasn’t really in on actually seeing and conversing with the ghost, he knew there was
something.

And as crazy as it sounded, she wasn’t frightened anymore—she was in awe. It was actually something of a dream come true, actually conversing with someone who had lived almost two centuries ago. He had told her his own sad story, which had connected bizarrely with David’s, and then he had told her that somehow,
he knew it just wasn’t right for him to leave yet—follow the light to wherever it might bring him—because he felt he was still needed on Earth. Which was really fine now, because after years and years and years, he had finally met the lady in white, his Lucinda, who had been a lonely figure walking up and down Duval and haunting the cemetery for years—afraid to reach out to others. Bartholomew had no explanation as to why some people had a sense of something, and some actually saw ghosts. Some saw particular ghosts and not others and, of course, there were plenty of ghosts to be seen! The streets of Key West were often riddled with ghosts; after all, people had been dying there forever.

Bartholomew hadn’t come to O’Hara’s with them; he was determined to join the film project, and so he would spend the night with his beautiful Lucinda.

Vanessa was leaning against Sean. They sat at one of the benches horse-style and it was easy and comfortable to lean against his back.

Sean and David had spent some time delineating duties for each member of the crew and assigning boats. Then Sean lifted his beer. “To success—and safety!” he said.

They all toasted.

The conversation turned to the chest Vanessa had discovered—and the stolen mummified body.

“What if,” Jay said, thinking as he went, “what if…what if it was Dona Isabella? The anthropologist might have been wrong. Maybe they dressed her up in peasant garb. Maybe she broke free herself, and was going to come after everyone in…revenge for what happened to her?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“Jay!” Vanessa snapped. “That’s…ridiculous. Mummies don’t come to life, and why would Dona Isabella want revenge on anyone living? You’re talking as if you’re plotting out another horror movie, and we’re doing a documentary.”

“It would be a great and creepy premise,” Barry said.

“A sequel!” Zoe said.

Vanessa glared at her. “There isn’t going to be a sequel—there was never really a movie. Therefore, you can’t have a sequel.”

“Well, actually…” Jay said.

Vanessa felt her muscles tighten up with tension. It had been a nice night—thus far. Sipping Guinness, munching on O’Hara’s specials such as Shillelagh Sticks—rolled and baked corned beef in pastry—and Tam O Shanters—something like sliders. Such a nice night. She’d been so amazed—and pleased—about Bartholomew. She’d been so happy to be with Sean. And now…

“Jay, what are you talking about?” she demanded.

He flushed, and lifted his hands uneasily. “I’ve had a call from a rep with a national distributor. He thinks we have a surefire hit—especially with everything else that went on.”

Vanessa sat up, staring at Jay. “Jay—our lead actors were murdered.”

“Bad things have happened before and movies have still come out and been very successful—and it was really a wonderful chance for fans to say goodbye,” Jay said, defending himself.

“When the leads were murdered?” Vanessa asked icily.

“I’m sure somewhere along the line, yes…but think of the real things out there! Poor Heather O’Rourke of
Poltergeist
died very young—and they’ve used her scenes in tacky advertisements! When they filmed the
Twilight Movie
years ago, a star and two children were killed, and it aired. People said goodbye to Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee, Heath Ledger and many more actors when their movies aired after their deaths.”

Vanessa felt Sean holding her back, but she stood anyway, walking over to Jay. “That would be the height of bad taste, and I put my money into that film, too, and I won’t allow it.”

“That’s great for you—you’ve hit jobs that pay well. I need to make some money, Nessa,” Jay pleaded.

“Jay, it’s wrong.”

Sean stepped into it then. “Well, the surviving members of your crew are here, Jay. Why don’t you find out how they all feel?”

Bill spoke up first. “All right, I was more or less a lowly production assistant on the shoot. But…I liked Georgia and Travis. And they have family living now. Family—who might be hurt.”

Barry cleared his throat. “I don’t know what I feel. Georgia wanted to be a star. And she survived in the movie. She might be happy.”

“Yeah, Georgia was sweet. Dumb, but sweet,” Zoe said. “But Travis…Travis was a jerk.”

“Zoe!” Bill gasped, horrified.

“Hey, I’m sorry—it’s horrible that he died the way he did, yes. But was he a nice guy? No!”

“My money was in it, Jay,” Vanessa said. “And I say no.”

Jay inhaled and stared at her. He exhaled and took a long sip of his beer, and looked at her again. “What if we find out what happened?” he asked.

“What?” she said.

“We all came here. We heard about Sean and David and their project, and we all came here. Doesn’t that mean something? We all care, we were all horrified. Vanessa, I own the majority share—fifty-one percent.”