Unhallowed Ground (13 page)

C
aleb woke suddenly from a sound sleep, his sharp senses aware of footsteps on the walkway outside his room.

He looked at the clock. It was barely 6:00 a.m. but the footfalls were light, a woman’s. Probably just someone heading home after a late night.

And then, even though he heard the steps marching straight toward his room, he was stunned when he heard a pounding on the outside door of his room, and even more stunned when he got up and opened the door to reveal Sarah standing there with a murderous look on her face.

For a moment she simply stood in the doorway, shaking with rage. Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

“You…bastard,” she began. “I should call the police. I should have you arrested. And I still may. What in God’s name did you think you were doing?”

Without waiting for his answer, she walked to the bed, still trembling with fury, grabbed a pillow and threw it at his head with a vengeance.

“What the hell…?” he demanded as he caught the pillow.

She went for another. “What kind of an idiot are you? You could have scared me to death. Or what if I kept a gun? I could have shot you!”

The second pillow came hurtling his way.

He tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about as he dodged the pillow. She had one hell of an arm on her. She would have been great at a company softball game. “What are you talking about? And I
do
carry a gun, so it was dangerous as hell for you to burst in here!”

Before she could send the last of his pillows flying his way, he rushed her, wrenching the pillow from her hands and tightening his arms around her to stop her from starting on the rest of the bedding, his momentum bearing them both down on the bed. Glad that he’d slept in boxers, he tried to keep a distance as he held her down, but it was difficult. She was on fire. Her eyes were wild with a passion for revenge over something he couldn’t fathom, and her skin was soft as silk. She was vital and vibrant, and he found himself fighting the rise of desire while he attempted to subdue her and get to the root of the problem.

She stared at him, silver eyes as sharp as knives, her breasts heaving with the exertion of her breathing.

“Do you think this is all a game? What did you think you were doing, playing dress-up and sneaking into my house at night?”

“Calm down,” he insisted. He wasn’t the only guest, and Bertie was undoubtedly somewhere nearby, too,
and there was Sarah, pinned beneath him, screaming accusations that made no sense. No one would ever believe that he’d been the one being attacked.

“Don’t you ever set foot on my property again,” she warned him. “I was an idiot to come here. I should have called the cops immediately.”

“Sarah, listen to me. I swear to God I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he vowed.

She blinked, and for a moment she seemed on the verge of believing him. Then she apparently discarded the thought as totally impossible.

“You were in my carriage house,” she accused him.

He answered carefully. “Of course I was. I was there with you. But that was the only time I have ever been there, I swear.”

She was still a ball of tension beneath him, but he could feel her trying to control herself. She was seething, but she’d stopped trying to escape his hold.

“Let me up,” she demanded.

Carefully, he did so. To his astonishment, she began ransacking his room, looking through the closet, the drawers and his open luggage. He was glad that his computer was sitting open on the small antique desk; she might have sent it flying, otherwise, as she hurled his clothing over her shoulder.

He didn’t even think to try to stop her. It would only have made her madder.

At last, exhausted, she stood still for a moment. From her expression, he could tell that she hadn’t found what she was looking for.

“What did you do with it?” she demanded.

“With what?” he asked.

“The clothes!”

“You’ve just seen every piece of clothing I have with me,” he said, sitting on the foot of the bed and staring at her. “Maybe
I
should be calling the police.”

“Be my guest.”

“Sarah, can you tell me what’s going on and what you think I’ve done?” he asked, hoping he sounded patient, since he certainly didn’t feel that way.

“You came to my house and stood at the foot of my bed, pretending to be a nineteenth-century ghost. And I don’t care what you say, I know it was you. The facial hair was great, and the wig was even better, but it was you.”

He frowned. “Someone broke into your carriage house?”

“Not someone—you!” she accused.

“In nineteenth-century clothes?” he said skeptically. “Did it ever occur to you that you were dreaming?”

“Oh, no. It was no dream. It was real, and I have your footprints to prove it,” she announced.

He stood. She backed away from him.

“Sarah, I walked you home, then came back here, and I never left this room after that. I did not bring a period costume with me to St. Augustine. I don’t know what to say to convince you, but I would never break in to someone’s house and play a joke like that. Aside from the fact that it’s cruel, it’s also illegal. You must have had some kind of a nightmare.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare, it was a…a play. And you were the flesh-and-blood star,” she said. She stared hard at him, then said, “Shoes!”

She went back to the closet and pulled out his shoes, turning them over and looking at the soles.

At last she stood, hair a wild tangle about her face—but now with just a trace of doubt on her features.

“I told you, after I said good-night to you I came back here and went to sleep,” he said evenly.

At that moment there was a tap on his door, and Bertie called, “Excuse me, but is everything all right in here?”

Sarah winced, closing her eyes tightly for a moment.

“Everything’s fine, Bertie,” he called. “Just give me a minute.” As he spoke, he was pulling on a pair of pants.

As soon as he was decent, he went to the door and opened it for Bertie, who walked in hesitantly, a wary look on her face.

He couldn’t blame her. This was her home as well as her business. She could hardly be expected to ignore the sounds of a heated argument and flying objects coming from a guestroom.

“Caleb? What’s going on here?” she asked, taking in the state of the room. Then she saw Sarah and just stared.

Caleb crossed his arms over his chest. “Sarah will explain,” he said.

Sarah shook her head. “Someone…someone dressed up and played a trick on me, tried to scare me. He looked just like Caleb,” she said.

“When did this happen?”

“About an hour ago,” Sarah said.

Sarah might have known Bertie longer, but at this
moment, Bertie seemed to be taking his side, Caleb thought.

“So you came here—and trashed his room?” Bertie asked quietly.

Caleb stood, took Sarah by the shoulders and steered her toward the door. “Bertie, I think Sarah needs a cup of coffee. Why don’t you give me a few minutes to take a shower, and then I’ll go back with her and try to get to the bottom of the situation. Will that be all right, Sarah?” he asked, as if he were talking to a particularly slow-witted child.

She was still angry, but now she also looked uncertain, even mortified. Maybe she was finally accepting the idea that a nightmare had sent her marching over here to accost a half-naked and innocent—at least of dressing up and scaring her, he thought, hiding a grin—man in his bed.

“Be quick,” she said scathingly, gathering her anger around herself like a shield.

“Sarah…” Bertie said, leading Sarah out and closing the door in her wake.

He locked the door, and then with the women gone, took a quick shower and dressed with the speed of lightning. When he emerged, the kitchen help were just arriving and Sarah was nursing a cup of coffee.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what’s up at your carriage house.”

“Would you two like some breakfast first?” Bertie suggested.

“Thank you, but I think this needs to be resolved. Now,” he said. “And don’t worry about the room.
Nothing’s broken, and I’ll deal with the mess when I get back later today.”

He didn’t let either woman protest as he maneuvered Sarah out the front door. She was as stiff as a two-by-four, and waves of heat and hostility seemed to be sweeping off her into the morning air. She hurried to get ahead of him, but his strides were long, and he soon caught up to her.

When they reached her property, she turned on him again. “Just admit that you did it. I promise I won’t call the police.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he told her. “Now, tell me why you’re so convinced this was something more than a dream. Was the door open after your…visitor left?”

She looked away. “No. But you’re a private investigator, and you have…skills, maybe some kind of a key.”

“A key that opens the lock
and
the dead bolt?” he demanded.

“It’s possible,” she said defensively.

He stepped past her with disgust. “I don’t have a magic key, okay? So would you be so kind as to open the door?”

She did so. “Be careful where you walk. I don’t want you to mess up the evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“The mud and grass you—
someone
tracked in. See? At the foot of the bed.”

He hunkered down and studied the rug. There were indeed bits of mud and grass on the floor, as if they’d been tracked in by someone who had come through the
door, circled the sofa to stand at the foot of the bed, and then…vanished.

He stood, puzzled. “You do need to call the cops, I think.”

She sank down on the arm of the sofa, staring at him. He was sure she was feeling desperate, still wanting it to have been him, wanting the mystery to have a solid answer.

“They’ll think we tracked it in when you walked me home last night. They’ll think I’m crazy. Especially when I tell them that he was dressed in period clothing.”

“Is anything missing?” Caleb asked her.

She shook her head. “No…it was…I’m telling you, it was
you.
In costume.”

“And
I’m
telling
you,
it wasn’t,” he said firmly.

She looked lost—still prickly and defensive, but lost.

“Sarah, it really might have been a dream.”

“Explain the dirt and the grass.”

“Maybe we did track it in last night.”

“We walked on the sidewalks. The driveway is paved and the walk is stone. Neither of us stepped off the walk onto the lawn,” she said.

“All right, what did this person say or do? Did he just stand there looking at you?” Caleb asked.

“No. He kept saying he ‘didn’t do it,’ that he had loved her,” Sarah told him, getting up and pacing agitatedly.

“I see,” he said consideringly.

She socked him on the shoulder. Not hard, but enough to make her point.

“Don’t you dare patronize me. I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say you were,” he protested. “Sarah, it had to be a dream. There’s no other explanation. Unless you think I have a doppelganger with a bad sense of humor hanging around the area? Because I swear to you, I wasn’t here. I wouldn’t play that kind of a joke on anyone. Ever. So…it wasn’t me. We can call the police, if it will set your mind at rest. In fact, I was heading to the station this morning anyway. You can come with me and make a report, and they can search my room again, my car, anything that you want. You can have them dust for prints, too. Of course, you will find mine, along with yours, but…maybe they’ll find someone else’s, too.”

She shook her hear. “It wasn’t anyone else,” she said stubbornly. “It was you.”

He hesitated. “Look, when you came into the bar last night, you were already upset, because of Mr. Griffin showing up at your house. I think he said more to you than you shared with the others. Want to tell me now?”

She sat down again, deflated, staring at the floor. “I have to admit, he looks kind of scary, very old and very skinny. He talked about the history of the house, and he kept saying it was evil. That part’s crazy, but I have to admit, he had the history right. Before the Civil War, the house was owned by a family called MacTavish, and the father was a mortician. The son, Cato, went off to fight when the war started. He came back wounded, only to find that his father was dead and his fiancée had disappeared right after he left. Then other young women started disappearing. He ended up being accused of murder, so he just took off, abandoning the
house. His housekeeper—who supposedly practiced voodoo and magic—left right after he did. A man named Brennan had been living here with Cato, learning the mortician’s trade, and he ended up buying the house for back taxes after the war. The Brennans hung on to it for generations, and then—like I was saying last night—Mr. Griffin’s daughter disappeared on her way to meet a friend here back in the nineteen-twenties. Cary said a bunch of girls disappeared at the same time. Anyway, Mr. Griffin is convinced the house itself is evil. I think he heard about the bones being discovered, and now he believes that people’s souls have been caught here.” She hesitated. “He thinks I can communicate with them, and that I have to talk to them and find out…something, or else women will keep disappearing and…dying.”