by Matt Lincoln
“So, do you know anything about the people who bought the house?” I asked again.
“No, I don’t,” Paulina admitted, biting her thin lower lip. “And if they were renting, I’d know it, that’s for sure. I do know the Carltons, who live just across the bay. They’ve been complaining about some strange stuff going on there for a while.”
“Strange things?” I asked, raising my eyebrows and taking a step closer to her at this line. “What kind of strange things?”
“Oh, all kinds of things,” Paulina said, seeming to be invigorated by my interest in this tidbit of gossip. “Construction going on at all hours of the night. At night! For months on end. And strange men walking around the property at night. All kinds of stuff. The Carlton’s son is convinced they’re all ghosts, walking about! Can you imagine that?”
“No, no, I can’t,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Do you think that these Carltons will have a chat with me?”
“Sure, sure,” Paulina said, nodding. “They’re usually home in the evenings. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you stopped by. I can tell them you’re coming over if you like.”
“Yes, tonight, that would be excellent,” I said, smiling at her.
“I’ll go call them right now,” she said cheerily, grinning back at me with what looked to be dentures.
“Thank you!” I called after her as she rushed back to the kitchen, and presumably the phone.
I buried my face in my phone, searching through my messages to see if there was anything new from Holm or Diane, or even Nina, the FBI agent who may or may not be working on the Holland case.
There was nothing. Somehow that only made my shoulders tense even further.
I sent a quick message to Diane, updating her on what had happened at the museum and assuring her that I had everything under control. She didn’t respond right away, which was unusual for her, so of course, I got even more nervous and messaged Holm.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Going through all kinds of stuff,” he shot back quickly. “Diane’s been on the phone with the FBI for like three hours straight. Last I talked to her, she was just getting off the phone with you.”
“What’s she talking to them about?” I texted furiously, my thumbs slipping over the keys.
“Last night,” was all he said.
I sent him three question marks all in a row to follow up.
“I’ll let you know the second I know anything, okay? I swear, you’re needier than my ex,” he shot back, and that was the end of that, as Tessa was now coming back down the stairwell.
“Hey,” she said, smiling brightly at me and holding up the list of restaurants and attractions that Paulina had given us the night before. “There’s this neat little seafood place right on the bay. Might be a nice place to eat since most of downtown is closed after the shooting, anyway.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” I said, forcing a smile since my mind was still back in Miami, and we headed out the door, arm in arm.
“You’re overthinking again, aren’t you?” she asked as I pulled our rental car out of the bed-and-breakfast’s narrow driveway.
“I am,” I admitted with a low laugh, following as she pointed me in the right direction toward the restaurant. “But then again, aren’t I always?”
“That’s true enough,” she laughed, and the sound echoed pleasantly throughout the car.
I smiled for real then and rolled down our front windows so that the sea-scented air could waft in around us, instantly relaxing me and removing some tension from between my shoulder blades.
We drove along the coast for a few minutes and then pulled into a small parking lot. The lot led to a small series of stores that were on a lifted wooden building stretching out over the water. There were a few people lounging on a sandy beach off to the left of the building and a few patrons of the restaurant sitting outside on the deck, but other than that, the place was empty. The gift shop and the flower shop next to the restaurant both appeared closed.
“A little early to be closing up shop, isn’t it?” Tessa asked, arching an eyebrow at the closed sign on the door as we passed the gift shop.
“The police said the town’s pretty jumpy,” I pointed out. “This isn’t New York City or Miami. Shootings aren’t exactly a regular occurrence around here, especially in public places. People aren’t sure what to do with themselves. It’s probably the brave ones who used to live in big cities or the clueless ones who haven’t heard about the shooting yet, who are out and about today.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Tessa shrugged. “Though if everybody stopped every time there was a shooting in New York, no one would ever go anywhere.”
“My point exactly,” I said, holding the door to the restaurant open for her.
We were quickly seated by a waiter in a white shirt and black tie on the deck overlooking the water. The waves rolled up, and the deck jutted out such that I almost felt like I was actually at sea.
“So,” Tessa said when the waiter had left us with our water glasses, propping her elbows up on the wooden table and resting her chin on the backs of her hands. “What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows at her. “I think this was all a terrible mistake, and I should send you straight home before your uncle has my head for putting you in so much danger.”
“Oh, are you really on about this again?” Tessa scoffed, rolling her eyes and dropping her arms to the table with a thud. “I’m here. We’re in this together. End of discussion.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, holding up my hands in defeat. “But you know that I had to at least try one more time.”
“You are worried about my uncle, aren’t you?” she asked, wagging her eyebrows at me playfully as the waiter returned to deposit a basket of breadsticks on our table and give us our menus.
“Yes,” I admitted sheepishly with a clear of my throat. “But I’m even more worried about you.”
I met her eyes over my menu, and she did the same, with a wry smile plastered across her face.
“I can take care of myself, Ethan Marston,” she assured me. “Though I do enjoy being taken care of every once in a while.”
She shot me a wink, and I was suddenly very focused on the list of soups.
I took a sip from my water and perused the menu. In the end, I ordered a nice clam chowder, and Tessa ordered some kind of lobster salad. It looked good when the waiter brought it, but I was glad to have a hot meal after the day I’d had.
And it wasn’t over yet.
“I’m surprised you didn’t order the clam chowder yourself, being from New England and all,” I grinned at her as I took my first bite. It was delicious.
“Oh, that would be far too dangerous,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes. “You southerners never get it right. You’d have to listen to me complain about it through the whole meal.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” I said, noticing the familiar twinkle in her eye as she teased me.
“You say that, but I think you would,” she said dryly as she took a bite out of one of the breadsticks.
“Do you want a bite to find out?” I asked, offering my spoon to her.
She eyed it with something between distaste and curiosity.
“I don’t know…” she said slowly before ripping her eyes away from my spoon and turning her gaze on the ocean. “I think it’s safer if I don’t.”
“It’s good,” I teased, bringing the spoon to my own mouth instead when she refused it.
It was good, actually. It was more buttery than a traditional clam chowder, and I had no doubt that she was right that she would complain about it. But as far as I was concerned, she could complain all she wanted, as long as I got to listen.
“As long as you’re enjoying it, that’s enough for me,” Tessa quipped, turning back to face me and making a point to scowl down at my bowl as if it was full of slime. “Anyway, why don’t you tell me about what the police tol
d you? Are there any new leads?”
I had almost forgotten that Tessa hadn’t been with me when I spoke with Sergeant Wallace and Officers Bauer and Collins. She had been such a staple at my side on this whole trip that I practically remembered her being there beside me, even though I knew that she wasn’t actually there.
So as I ate my apparently disgusting and very wrong clam chowder, I told Tessa everything that the officers had told me, as well as the tip Paulina had given me while I was waiting for her to freshen up back at the bed-and-breakfast.
“Fascinating…” Tessa mused when I was finished, pressing the tip of her fork against her lips as she spoke. “An old pirate’s ghost… You don’t think…?”
Her voice trailed off as she met my eyes again with more than a little interest. I knew exactly what she was thinking. I had been thinking it myself, after all.
“I don’t know,” I said quickly, not wanting to jinx it. “I mean, what are the odds that Grendel actually spent time here?”
“I don’t know either, but I’d wager a guess and say they’re not bad,” Tessa said, excitement brimming in her green eyes, an almost perfect match for the sea below us. “I mean, he was in America. We know that much. And we don’t actually know how his journal ended up here. It may have already been in the region, and that’s why the museum got their hands on it in the first place.”
“I don’t know…” I repeated cautiously. “George seemed pretty impressed with Henry’s sleuthing skills. It wouldn’t surprise me if he tracked it down a half a world away.”
“But why, though, even if he did?” Tessa asked. “Why was he so keen to get his hands on it?”
“I mean, it was his job,” I pointed out, gnawing on the corner of a breadstick myself now. “And it’s a pretty cool artifact.”
“How many people have you run into who actually know about the Dragon’s Rogue, though?” Tessa asked me. “It seems like it was a pretty unique obsession for you and your grandfather to have. And besides, most of these nautical types are more obsessed with stuff like Lafitte’s ship, right?”
I had to admit that she had a point there. Lafitte’s fate and his long lost pirate ship had flummoxed nautical enthusiasts for a long time, to the point that I could hardly believe it when Holm and I found the ship in the New Orleans bayou on our mission there.
But still, what I really wanted to find was the Dragon’s Rogue. That was a unique position, however. She was right about that. Most people would consider their nautical career as reaching its peak with the Lafitte find.
“No,” I said, pushing away these hopeful thoughts and shaking my head, more not to jinx it than anything else. “Henry’s not just any old nautical enthusiast. This is his job, his life’s work. He would’ve known about Grendel and the Dragon’s Rogue.”
“Maybe,” Tessa admitted, though she didn’t sound convinced as she pursed her lips. “But still, you can’t deny the possibility that there’s a connection. Maybe Grendel docked his ship here for a while and stayed in that old house. Maybe he even died there, and that’s why everyone here says the place is haunted.”
“I don’t know,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time in this conversation. “Let’s just play it by ear. The main issue is these people who attacked us at the museum.”
“Another good point,” Tessa said, pointing her fork at me now as she seemed determined not to drop this subject. “We’ve said over and over again how unlikely it is that someone else tracked down the journal at exactly the same time you did. And we know they didn’t use the same methods. Otherwise, my friend George would’ve known about it. Maybe some other clue drew them here. Like the house. They bought it, after all.”
“We don’t know that they bought it,” I pointed out, just as determined as she was to dodge this line of reasoning for fear of getting my own hopes up, though, to be honest, they already were. “We have no idea if the Hawthorne house is in any way related to what we’re doing here. It could just be an old house that some random people bought to refurbish as a tourist attraction. That’s the most likely explanation.”
“At the same time that all this is going down?” Tessa asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow at me as she returned her attention to what was left of her salad. “Paired with legends of an old pirate who stayed there? Please. If this isn’t in any way related to Grendel, I’d be shocked.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted, chewing on my lower lip. “And don’t get me wrong, I want you to be right. I just don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves, either. Our main focus now is making sure that Martha and everyone else in this town are safe from these people. Everything else is secondary, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Well, you have to say that, you’re a federal agent,” Tessa scoffed, her eyes gleaming at me again as she looked back up at me. “I, on the other hand, am an investigative journalist. I’m only concerned about where the story takes me.”
She bit a thick piece of lobster meat off of the end of her fork and winked at me again.
“That you are,” I sighed, shooting her a half-grin. “And it’s gotten you into trouble more times than one if I remember correctly.”
“Trouble is where the story is,” she pointed out, waggling her eyebrows at me again.
I wished, not for the first time, that this whole trip had actually worked out to be a vacation just for the two of us. I savored these moments together, and I wanted nothing more than to string more of them together than we were usually allotted. But alas, as Diane told Sergeant Wallace, trouble had a way of following me wherever I went. And Tessa had a way of chasing it down and looking for even more of it.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what the Carltons have to say about all this,” I said, slurping up the last of my soup. “I thought that we could head over there early this evening since Paulina said she would call ahead. I have their address.”
“That sounds like an excellent plan,” Tessa grinned. “And then, since they’re neighbors, maybe we can check out this haunted house for ourselves.”
“Hold on, I don’t know about that,” I said quickly, holding up my hands to stop this train of thought.
“Oh, Ethan, don’t go on about danger again,” Tessa complained, rolling her eyes. “You’re the lone agent on this case, so you need a partner, don’t you? Well, I’m it.”
I did not like the sound of that, and she knew it, hence the turn of her lip upward at the corner of her mouth as she said it.
“I don’t always need a partner,” I said simply, knowing better than to poke this beast directly again. “I’m good at working on my own.”
“Oh, please, not when you don’t have to,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes for a second time in short succession. “And it wasn’t exactly a suggestion.”
The waiter came back before I had a chance to say anything in response.
“Dessert this afternoon?” he asked us, looking between Tessa and me expectantly.
“Just the check, I think,” I said, pulling out my wallet, and he nodded and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, carrying our empty dishes along with him.
“So, where is this house?” Tessa asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the table in anticipation.
“It’s not far from here, actually,” I remarked, squinting out over the water as I pulled my MBLIS bank card out of my wallet. Now that this was an official case, dinner could be on them.
“Maybe we could walk,” Tessa suggested, following my gaze across the water to where we could see the thin outline of a house in the distance. “It’s a nice day for it, and by the time we get there, it’ll be evening. It’s still kind of early.”
I checked my watch. It was early, only around 5:30. And it was a nice day, warm with a gentle breeze coming off the ocean to keep it from being too hot out.
“That sounds like an excellent plan,” I said, smiling brightly at Tessa as the waiter returned with our check. I handed over the card before he had a chance to leave again.
“Is that it?” Tessa asked, nodding in the direction of the outline of the house in the distance. “Or is that the Hawthorne house?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, squinting at it again as the waiter rushed back to us yet again with my receipt. “I think it’s the Carltons, but who knows. I guess the houses are right across the bay from each other.”
“I guess we’ll find out then,” Tessa said, her eyes widening mischievously as I left the waiter a generous tip. “I can’t wait to catch a glimpse of this haunted house.”
22
Ethan
After our late lunch/early dinner, we left our rental car in the parking lot and made our way down to the beach, which was clear of people by then.
There had been a few scattered tourists when we’d first sat down at the restaurant, but now they had all gone home. As far as I was concerned, that proved the theory that they hadn’t heard about the shooting yet. Once they had, they cleared out of there as fast as they could. It wouldn’t surprise me if the tourists went home early to avoid any more trouble.
“Are you alright?” Tessa asked as we strolled arm in arm down the sandy beachfront.
I shook my head to clear it and glanced down at her, realizing that she was looking up at me in concern. My thoughts must have shown on my face.
“Oh, sorry,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking about something the police were worried about earlier. They’re afraid that what happened at the museum today will mess with the local economy, and, well, let’s just say that those people who were here earlier cleared out pretty fast.”
“Oh, yeah, Pierce was talking about that, as well,” Tessa said, her brow furrowed with worry now, too.
“Oh right,” I said, realizing that Tessa had been downstairs with the museum employees while I had been upstairs talking to the police. “What did they have to say while I was gone?”