The Night Is Alive koh-10

by Heather Graham

  “And you...saw Blue. And spoke to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you. He hardly ever appears. He’s never spoken.”

  “Not to you, perhaps.”

  “I’m his descendent!” she said indignantly.

  He shrugged. “Well, have you ever tried speaking to him?”

  She straightened, glaring at him with hostile, narrowed eyes.

  No, Malachi decided, it didn’t seem he’d gone about this the right way at all.

  “So, you’re old friends. Where is he now?” she asked.

  “Certainly not old friends,” Malachi said. “And I haven’t met a ghost yet who appears on demand. I’m sure he’s around somewhere, though. I don’t think he leaves these premises. At least not often.”

  “And you spoke with him where, exactly?” she asked.

  “In the tunnel.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I didn’t know he was there at first. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘This is where he died. He was strong of heart. His death was not so simple.’”

  She stared at him with such incredulity, Malachi found himself growing irritated. She saw Blue herself.

  “Mr. Gordon, even if you are for real, I wish you’d leave right now. My grandfather died. We buried him today. But you know that. You were watching.”

  He stared back at her. “I can leave, or we can get started. Your grandfather called you because he suspected something or knew something—at least, that’s what you wrote to Agent Crow.” He tapped the newspaper. “So Gus is dead, possibly a victim, and there are three more—in a city where the murder rate is customarily quite low. Four victims in a short period of time. Do you want to sit there doubting me, or do you want to piece together what we know? Shouldn’t take long. It isn’t a lot.”

  “Almost nothing,” she agreed after a moment, disgust in her tone. She picked up the newspaper behind the bar. “Another girl dead, found on the riverbank. The police haven’t released cause of death, and when I tried to speak with them, I got nowhere. I tried to tell them Gus hadn’t just died—that there had to be someone else down there in the tunnel, someone who caused him to die.” She shook her head, studying him. “Look, you’re not even an agent. How are you going to get any information?”

  He smiled. “I honestly have a private investigator’s license and I am now on the federal payroll as a consultant. Feel free to check that out. Call Jackson Crow. I think he’ll be expecting you.”

  “Call him? I don’t have a number. All I could find in the material I have from Quantico was an email address. And I couldn’t reach him on an official line now. It’s nearly eight!”

  “I have his cell number. And he might be in the office, anyway. He works long hours.”

  “Right. So I could be calling anyone!”

  He smiled at that. “Ever suspicious. That should make you a good agent, but you do have to go with your gut and trust someone at some point.”

  “I’m really not seeing why that should be you,” she said.

  “Ouch.”

  “You could have approached me earlier—while there were still people here.”

  “As you said, your grandfather’s funeral was today. And then, I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to advertise the fact that you’d called in...the ghost investigators.”

  “Give me that number,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket.

  He rattled off the numbers and she dialed. She watched him as she spoke. “Mr. Jackson Crow, please.”

  Malachi could hear the deep murmur of Crow’s voice from where he stood.

  “If you’re Jackson Crow, would you by any wild chance still be at work?” She was silent for a minute. “I see. Then...would you be good enough to call me back on an official line?”

  Jackson murmured something again. She pressed the end button on her phone and studied him while she waited for it to ring. When it did, she looked at the exchange. After she’d answered, Malachi could once again hear the deep timbre of Crow’s voice as he spoke to Abby Anderson.

  She thanked Crow, then ended the call. She frowned slightly, but now there seemed to be a touch of wonder in her eyes.

  “He said that once we get an initial investigation going, he’ll come down himself.”

  Malachi nodded.

  “He said you do know what you’re doing.”

  Malachi laughed at that. “I’ve been working as a P.I. I needed to be on my own. But I was a cop, up until about four years ago in the city of New Orleans. I have a connection in the homicide department here.”

  “A connection?” she asked. For the first time he heard a touch of hope in her voice. “What kind of a connection.”

  He smiled at that. “Detective David Caswell, homicide. My ex-partner. Have you met him?”

  “No.”

  He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s David’s card. Keep it with you. He’s a great guy. He married a woman from Savannah about a year ago and moved up here. But when we were both working in New Orleans, he was my partner.”

  He waited.

  She was still looking at him, as if he were an alien who’d suddenly landed in the tavern. Or...a ghost.

  He sighed. “So, I guess you’re with me—or on your own.”

  She was silent for another minute. “All right, then,” she said at last. “We’ll work together. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I’ve gone through all the real training, but you have the connections. You said you wanted to get started. What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s compile the little that we do know about the victims. Then we’ll figure out what we want to ask when we get in to see David. This is your city. Tomorrow I want to see where the bodies were discovered.”

  “Blue Anderson just showed you where I found my grandfather,” she said huskily.

  He took out his notepad and pen. A number of law enforcement professionals were now using their smartphones as notebooks, but he still preferred a pen and pad. Maybe actually writing the words gave him time to think about them. “Our first victim, Ruth Seymour, was a young woman who loved the city. She came to Savannah happy, excited and ready to enjoy a bit of history searching on her own before meeting her friends. She did check into her bed-and-breakfast—her car was found in their parking lot. Next victim was Rupert Holloway from Iowa. It’s easy to understand why no immediate connection was made with the first victim, since Rupert was a man and in the city on business. Ms. Seymour would have been searching out tourist haunts. But a mobile phone exec? I’m not so sure. He was due to see business associates for lunch on the river—but he never showed. Our third victim was a student in the city. Her hometown was Memphis, Tennessee. So far, we don’t know where she was last seen, only that her body was discovered on the riverbank.”

  “So, they have in common that they were all found by the river,” Abby said. “Plus they were from out of town.”

  He nodded.

  “And,” she said slowly, “you think that my grandfather died because he knew something about the murders or the murderer.”

  “Probably. You found him in the tunnel. The tunnel leads down to the river and a dock. Well, not exactly. There’s landfill now, but basically, when you follow the twists and turns of the tunnel, you come out at the very edge of the Dragonslayer property—about a hundred yards from the embankment and another fifty from the dock.”

  “But...Gus really didn’t spend his time walking around in the tunnel,” Abby said.

  “No. So he went down there for a reason,” Malachi said. He closed his notebook. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow around ten. We’ll have a talk with David and you can show me around the city, the river and the docks.”

  “All right.”

  He waited. He thought she’d ask him where he was staying. She didn’t.

  “Well, then, lock me out, Ms. Anderson. I made sure that both grates—at the entrance to the tunnel here and at the riverbank—were secured and bolted.�
�� He glanced around. “There should be a better alarm system here.”

  “We’ve been fine. And don’t even suggest that we’d harbor a murderer here!” Abby said indignantly.

  He raised a brow. “Hard to say, isn’t it—when you don’t know who the murderer might be.”

  She didn’t respond to that but said, “Allow me to show you out.”

  As Malachi walked to the door, she followed. “This is a big, rambling place for you to stay alone, Ms. Anderson.”

  She smiled at him. “Blue’s here, isn’t he? I’m not alone. Good night, Mr. Gordon.” She closed the door and he heard her lock it. Bemused, he headed out to the parking lot for his car. He wasn’t particularly good with people anymore, he realized.

  But then again, that was why he’d worked on his own for the past four years.

  * * *

  “Hey!” Abby said aloud when the door was closed. “Blue Anderson! Why don’t you speak to me?”

  She got no reply and the tavern was silent. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it had grown late. Well, not that late. It was only eight-thirty. Still, she’d been up most of the previous night. She needed to get some sleep. Looking around one last time—wary in case anything had been left unsecured—she decided she should pack it in for the night and go to bed.

  Jackson Crow had responded. She should’ve been elated.

  But...

  He’d sent her a rookie!

  She told herself she should be grateful that she received a reply at all—even if it came in the form of Malachi Gordon. The man who claimed he’d spoken to Blue. Well, Crow had told her on the phone that if she and Malachi found a situation in which the Krewe could be of real assistance, he’d come himself and he’d bring more associates. Gordon also claimed to have an in with the police, which could help. And, if she needed someone intimidating, the man was tall and did have a strange air of authority about him. He wore his suit well; he was ruggedly attractive, which could be good with the right people.

  She hoped he didn’t usually walk around claiming he’d just spoken with the local ghost.

  Abby cleaned up the mess she’d made when she’d broken the liquor to create a makeshift weapon. Then she went upstairs, but rather than turning in, she walked back to Gus’s office. She’d started to go through his papers and invoices during the past week, but had been continually interrupted by someone needing an answer to a restaurant or bar question—or people who wanted to tell her how sorry they were about Gus and then tried to make her feel better by mentioning his age and reminding her that he’d led a good life.

  Now she sat back behind his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers.

  Invoices from liquor companies.

  She looked around, feeling the silence of the tavern weigh down on her.

  “Blue?” she said again.

  But the ghost of her ancestor didn’t appear.

  She looked back at the papers in her hands. She saw Gus’s handwriting on some of them. One note indicated that a certain flavor of vodka had not gone over well with his customers. Another said that the salesman now working for a particular company was one of the best he’d ever met.

  As she began to leaf through them, another paper slipped down to the desk, smaller and different from the invoices. It was a sheet ripped from a small notepad. She quickly read the words he’d written, almost as if he’d been thinking out loud and had scribbled them down.

  The murders. Am I right? Call Abby.

  Just as she read the words, she heard the loud ship’s buzzer that was the tavern’s doorbell.

  It startled her so much that she jumped and the sheets she’d been reading flew into the air, wafting back down in disarray.

  Glad that she hadn’t gotten into her pajamas yet, and wondering who would come by when most of the city knew the tavern had been closed in honor of Gus, she started to run down the stairs. She hesitated, ran back up to her room and opened the little dresser next to her bed, retrieving her service Glock and sliding it beneath her jacket. Then she ran down the stairs again to the front door. She looked through the ship’s portal to see who was calling.

  The man standing outside appeared to be about forty; he was of medium height with sandy-brown hair and was wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and a tie that had been loosened.

  Cop, she thought instantly. Plainclothes cop.

  That was instinct, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “Yes? The tavern’s closed,” she called.

  “Ms. Anderson?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a few questions.”

  “Badge?” she said.

  He produced his credentials. His badge looked real, as did the ID he flashed with it.

  Abby opened the front door. The cop seemed uncomfortable. “Detective Peters, Ms. Anderson. I just remembered seeing in the papers that you were closed today for your grandfather’s funeral.”

  She nodded. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here about this girl,” he said, showing her a picture. “Her name is—”

  “Helen Long,” Abby said. “Yes, I know her. She works for a friend of my grandfather’s, Dirk Johansen. He does pirate ship tours and she plays a pirate wench.”

  “She’s missing,” Peters said. “Her roommate called it in this morning.”

  Abby frowned. “Dirk was here all day. He didn’t mention that she was missing.”

  “He might not know yet,” Peters told her. “Helen Long was off today, and she was off yesterday. She had lunch here with friends. Do you remember seeing her?”

  Abby nodded. Like so many people, Helen had made a point of approaching her to express her condolences. She hadn’t really known Gus that well. She’d only worked for Dirk for about a month. Helen had grown up in Atlanta but come to Savannah to be an extra in a pirate movie, since the exterior shots were filmed in the city. She’d been waiting to see if she’d gotten a part in another movie about to be filmed down in New Iberia, and she’d been honest with Dirk about her intentions.

  “I did see her. She had lunch here, yes.”

  “Do you remember seeing her leave?” he asked.

  “Yes. Wait, no—she was with some girlfriends and they left first. She stayed at the bar awhile longer. I don’t know when she left. I went back upstairs after I talked to her,” Abby explained. “But my staff and a few customers might be able to tell you more. Dirk was here himself at the time, sitting with Bootsie—Bob Lanigan—and Aldous Brentwood. My bartender, Jerry Sullivan, was on, as was the day manager, Macy Sterling. I’m sure they’d be more helpful.” Abby paused, wondering about something. “Helen’s been missing since she was seen at lunch yesterday? I thought you had to wait until an adult was gone for more than twenty-four hours before you filed a report.”

  “Usually,” Peters agreed. “But...we’ve had a few people go missing and then turn up dead. Like I said, her roommate called it in when she woke up this morning. Helen never came home last night. And she hasn’t shown up today. So—” he cleared his throat “—we’re starting early with this one.”

  “I see. I’m glad,” Abby told him. “She’s a sweet girl, Detective. I wish I could help you. And you should speak with my staff and my customers. They may know more.”

  “I’ll do that tomorrow, thank you. And if you can think of anyone else who might’ve seen her, please get in touch.” He passed her a card, which she tucked into her pocket.

  “Of course!”

  “Well, then, good night,” Peters said. He looked as if he wanted to say more. “I’m sorry,” he said again, “but this was the last place her girlfriends saw her, so...”

  “If you want to search these premises, you’re more than welcome to do so,” she assured him.

  “I’ll try to speak with your people first,” Peters said. “Someone might’ve seen her leave—and they might’ve seen who she left with.”

  “I hope so. I have a list of numbers. You can call them now, if you wish. It’s really not
that late.”

  “Thank you.”

  Abby hurried back behind the bar and found the list Sullivan kept there of their regulars. He was a good bartender and liked to memorize their drinks. Then she moved over to the host stand to find the sheet with staff contact information, as well. Peters waited politely at the door. She gave him the pages and he thanked her.

  Abby locked the door again and stood there for a moment. Where the hell was Blue?

  Not making an appearance that night, it seemed. Wearily she went back upstairs, sorted out the papers that had flown everywhere and sat back down.

  Helen.

  She felt horrible. She knew Helen.

  So far, those who’d disappeared had taken a few days to be discovered.

  Maybe there was still hope.

  She stared down at the paper that was back in her hands, written in Gus’s broad scrawl.

  The murders. Am I right? Call Abby.

  This time, as she reflected, she nearly jumped sky-high again when the office phone on the desk began to ring.

  Once again, papers flew.

  “Abby!” It was Dirk Johansen. She knew why he had to be calling....

  “Hi, Dirk.”

  “Oh, my God! My actress—my pirate wench—Helen. She’s missing,” he said.

  “I know, Dirk. I’m so sorry.”

  “You know?”

  “A detective was just here. Apparently, she was last seen having lunch at the tavern.”

  His voice was thick. “Yeah, that’s the last time I saw her, too. I told the cops that,” he added.

  “Did you see her leave?”

  “Yep. She was teasing about the pirate days with Aldous, Bootsie and me...and Sullivan. Then she looked at her watch and said she had an appointment. She didn’t say who with. She just went running out.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “No, she was actually doing some online dating. She said she’d met at least six guys and found one, maybe, worth a relationship.”

  “I’m sure that’ll help the police.”