It was a big wedding. Ashley had two sisters-in-law and three very close friends, including Wendy, for bridesmaids; Tara, of course, was her maid of honor. Brad was Eric’s best man, and by the time the wedding day arrived, Rafe had become a good friend, and so he was an usher. Tony Panther, an old army buddy and two friends from the council rounded out Eric’s lineup. The wedding-guest list was huge, and as the time for the ceremony drew near, Eric realized that he hadn’t even begun to meet Ashley’s relatives. They had been arriving all day, up to the last minute.
He saw Ashley running into the church’s nave. She laughed, seeing him, and he would have laughed in return, but she was so breathtaking a bride that his breath caught and he reached for her hands. “This is it,” he whispered. She had chosen a soft cream color for her long gown. It was traditional in cut, almost a Renaissance style, and had a fabulous pearled train. She wore a tiara with a sweeping veil, and beneath it, her eyes were stunning. He was suddenly very humble, thinking that God had granted him this angel, not to be borrowed, but to be cherished forever.
“This is it,” she repeated. “You’re sure, right?”
“More sure than I have ever been in my whole life about anything.” He forgot her dress and her veil and his own tuxedo and he drew her against him, kissing her deeply.
Someone cleared a throat loudly. “Ashley!” It was Tara. “He’s not supposed to see you in the gown and Father O’Neill’s saying that we must come into the chorus room and get ready!”
They separated, though their gazes remained on each other. They both smiled with tremendous happiness.
“For heaven’s sake, Eric! You’ll be married soon, and you can stare at each other all night!” She grabbed Ashley’s hand and pulled her away. Eric, still smiling, turned around to walk outside for one more moment before taking his place by the altar.
He was startled to see a very pretty girl of about thirteen come racing up to the church. She paused, just as startled to see him.
Her hair was ebony and fell down her back in blue-black swirls. Her complexion was deeply tanned, her eyes a soft hazel. She was an Indian, and yet he didn’t think that she was a Seminole or a Miccosukee. He was almost positive that she wasn’t related to him. He didn’t think that he had any long lost relatives.
“Hi! You’re—you’re him, right? Eric? Oh, thank goodness, if you’re here, then I’m not late. I had to wait for the sitter for the baby. Mom said that he was just too young for the ceremony. It was tricky finding the right person to come to the hotel room. I’m talking too much, right? I’m sorry, I’m nervous!”
She paused, gasping for breath and just staring at Eric with a beautiful smile on her face.
He smiled himself. “You’re not late,” he told her. “And, yes, I’m Eric.” He hesitated just a second. “Who are you?”
“Leah. Leah Dane. I’m Ashley’s niece.” She stuck out her hand, flushing again. “And you’re almost my Uncle Eric. If that’s all right, of course.”
After a moment, he started laughing. Leah just stared at him, and he tried to sober quickly. “Leah Dane, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. And I’ll be quite delighted to be your uncle.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But what’s so funny?”
“Your aunt,” he assured her. He set his hand on her shoulders and turned her toward the church. “I think I should be getting down to the altar. There’s Brad motioning to me. You’ll meet him soon enough. By the way, what is your tribe?”
“Nez Perc;aae,” Leah said. She glanced at him slyly. “Aunt Ashley never told you, huh?”
“She never told me,” he said solemnly. He smiled and pushed her ahead. “We’d better get on. We’ll get a chance to talk more later. And maybe you can help me get one back on Aunt Ashley, huh?”
She flashed him a dazzling smile and walked into the church.
Brad called softly to Eric, and minutes later, Eric was standing by the altar. An organ, a harp and two guitars were playing, and the last of the attendants had walked down the aisles. Ashley came toward him at last. He saw the emerald fire in her eyes beneath the veil, and he saw her smile. Though night was falling, he felt as if the sun’s radiant beams were shining down on him. He smiled, remembering Leah.
We are going to have beautiful, beautiful children, he thought. Then he took Ashley’s hand in his hand, and turned around to face the priest. He vowed his love, and all of his life, to her.
* * * * *
Keep reading for a special preview of the next thrilling novel in the New York Confidential series,
A PERFECT OBSESSION
Coming soon from
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham and MIRA Books
Join FBI agent Craig Frasier and criminal psychologist Keiran Finnegan as they track a madman who is obsessed with perfect beauty.
A serial killer is striking a little too close to home
In the second novel in the New York Confidential series,
A PERFECT OBSESSION
Coming soon from
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham
and MIRA Books.
A Perfect Obsession, Heather Graham
CHAPTER 1
“Horrible! Oh, God, horrible—tragic!” John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegan’s Pub.
Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.
Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.
It wasn’t just any body.
It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.
Finding the old graves wasn’t much of a shock—not in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Club Le Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The church’s congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Church—whose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old institution had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, life—and business—went on.
And with life going on….
Well, work on the building’s foundations went on, too.
It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased body—moments before it hit the news—that Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family establishment, Finnegan’s on Broadway. Like the old church/nightclub behind it, Finnegan’s dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. They’d barely opened; it was still morning, and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. She’d just been down in the basement or cellar, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.
“I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! They, I mean in Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies—not the new body. But then…opening a decaying coffin and finding… Jeannette Gilbert! And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at my site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students here. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was….”
John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair, and his little gold-framed glasses.
He held doctorate degrees in archeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.
Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys—and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.
Jeannette Gilbert. Media princess. The model and actress had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging kidnappers for her safe return.
At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release, her agent and manager, Oswald Martin.
Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette, dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—gold-digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.
In the past few weeks the “celebrity” magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that, but only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor—struggling his way into TV, movies, and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones!—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge.
While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.
Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.
It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.
Now, Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it seemed evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.
Not that she any of the facts other than that Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb, but it was unlikely that Jeannette Gilbert had crawled into an historic coffin in a lost catacomb to die of natural causes.
“It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my silly young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to us, those of us who were working. I was there for hours while they grilled me. And now…now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double-shot of single malt scotch to swallow in a gulp.
He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.
It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.
After all…
He’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.
The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was on the other side of the block from Club Le Vampyre.
The whole situation, aside from the grief of a young woman’s untimely death, was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro during the week. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family—belonging to a distant great-great uncle—from the mid-nineteenth century. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.
So, while Declan actually managed the pub and made it his life’s work, she was employed by doctors Fuller and Miro, Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. And they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.
The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage regarding Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about it now and then for six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club! Like that! In an old church!
The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown gravesites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.
Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.
Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about very old gravesites.
Because they were old—they were the earthly remains of people who’d lived—and died—long ago.
Not the newly deceased.
At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. Kieran was among the first to find out; that was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China, very well. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s Pub one night a month as long as she could remember.
When she’d see him looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch—and she’d sat down with him so she could try to calm him down.
“Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them…
Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.
Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.
“I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find others dead. Of course, John Shaw hadn’t known the woman, he did work with the dead all the time—the long-dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.
But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.
He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently murdered.
“I was—I am!—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built St. Paul’s to accommodate folks further north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built St. Augustine’s for those a little north of St. Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, there was—until about seventy-five years ago—an entrance to th
e catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground area outside, most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves… Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”
He sipped his scotch again and looked at her intently. “Kieran, you’re not to say a word, not yet. The police…they asked me not to speak about this until…until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents are living, but she must have family…” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome—ghastly!”
This time, he didn’t sip his scotch. He swallowed it down in a gulp.
Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.
She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.
She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. They were talking about giving up their current situation, in which they each had dresser drawers at the other’s apartment, and moving in together.
But while she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, which hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.
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