by Ghost Night
The head rolled through the sand. The body wasn’t attached.
Jay himself began to scream.
Frozen still, shaking from a sudden cold that threatened never to leave her, Vanessa remained just offshore. She didn’t move until Lew had gotten the authorities, until a kindly Bahamian official came and wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and led her away.
1
2 years later
Key West
Before him, frond coral waved in a slow and majestic dance, and a small ray emerged from the sand by the reef, weaving in a swift escape, aware that a large presence, possibly predatory, was near.
Sean O’Hara shot back up to the surface, pleased with his quick inspection of Pirate Cut, a shallow reef where divers and snorkelers alike came to enjoy the simple beauty of nature. It was throughout history a place where many a ship had met her doom, crushed by the merciless winds of a storm. Now only scattered remnants of that history remained; salvage divers of old had done their work along with the sea, salt and the constant shift of sands and tides and weather that remained just as turbulent through the centuries.
It was still, he decided, a great place to film.
He hadn’t opted for scuba gear that day—it had been just a quick trip, thirty minutes out and thirty back in, early morning, just to report to his partner, David Beckett, so they could talk about their ever-changing script and their plans for their documentary film.
Because Sean was an expert diver, he seldom went diving alone. Good friends—some of the best and most experienced divers in the world—had died needlessly by diving alone. But a free dive on a calm day hadn’t seemed much of a risk, and he was pleased that he had taken off early in the morning. Most of the dive boats headed out by nine, but few of them came to Pirate Cut as a first dive, and it wouldn’t get busy until later in the day.
And out in the boat, he wasn’t exactly alone.
Bartholomew was with him.
Climbing up the dive ladder at the rear of his boat, Conch Fritter, he tossed his flippers up and hauled himself on board. His cell phone sat on his towel, and the message light was blinking. Caller ID showed him that he’d been called from O’Hara’s, his uncle’s bar.
“I thought about answering it, but refrained.”
Sean turned at the sound of the voice. Bartholomew was seated at the helm of the dive boat, feet in buckle shoes up on the wheel, a National Geographic magazine in his hands.
Bartholomew was getting damned good at holding things.
“Thank you for refraining. And tell me again, why the hell are you with me? You hate the water,” Sean said, irritated. He pushed buttons on his phone to receive his messages, staring at Bartholomew.
“Love boats, though,” Bartholomew said.
Sean groaned inwardly. It was amazing—once he hadn’t believed in Bartholomew. Actually, he’d thought the ghost might have been one of his sister Katie’s imaginary friends. He realized he either had to accept that she was crazy or that there was a ghost. At that time, Sean couldn’t see or hear Bartholomew.
But that had been a while ago now. While solving the Effigy Murders—as the press wound up calling them—he’d ended up with his head in a bandage and stitches in his scalp.
It was the day the damned stitches had come out that he’d first seen the ghost—as clearly as if he had physical substance—sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed.
Sean listened to his messages. The first, from David Beckett, asking him what time he wanted to go out. Sean grinned. David was in love—and sleeping late. Sean was glad, since it seemed that his old friend was in love with his sister, Katie, and she was in love with him. They’d both seen some tough times, and Sean was happy for them.
The next message was from his uncle just asking him to call back.
He did so. Still, he didn’t learn much. His uncle just wanted him to come to the bar. Sean told him it would take him about forty-five minutes, and Jamie said that was fine, just to come.
“So what’s up?” Bartholomew asked.
“Going to the bar, that’s all,” Sean said. He was curious. Jamie wasn’t usually secretive.
“Can you keep a hand on the helm? Bring her straight in?” Sean asked Bartholomew as he brought up the anchor. Securing it, he added, “Jeez, am I crazy asking you that?”
Bartholomew looked at him with tremendous indignation.
“Really! That was absolutely—churlish of you! If there’s one thing I know, it’s a lazy man’s boat like this!”
Sean grinned. “I’ll be in the head in the shower for about fifteen minutes. That’s all you need to manage.”
“It’ll be great if we pass the Coast Guard or a tour boat!” Bartholomew cried.
Sean ignored him. He just wanted to rinse off the sea salt—his uncle had him curious.
He showered, dried and dressed in the head and cabin well within his fifteen minutes. In another twenty, he was tying up at the pier.
Duval Street was quiet.
As he walked from the docks to O’Hara’s, Sean mused with a certain wry humor that Key West was, beyond a doubt, a place for night owls. He was accustomed enough to working at night—or even partying at night—but he was actually more fond of the morning hours.
“What do you think Jamie wants?”
Sean heard the question again—for what seemed like the tenth time now—and groaned inwardly without turning to look at the speaker. Imagine, once he had wanted to see the damned ghost!
Oh, he could see Bartholomew way too clearly now, though when he had first come home to Key West—hearing that David Beckett was in town and worried for his sister’s safety—he had come with his longtime fear for Katie’s mind. She had always seemed to sense or see things. But that had been Katie, not him.
Bartholomew had apparently wanted to be known, though at first he proved his presence by moving things around.
Then Sean had seen him in that damned chair in the hospital room. Now he could see the long-dead privateer as easily as he could see any flesh-and-blood, living person who walked into his life.
He cursed the fact.
He had never believed in ghosts. He’d never wanted to believe. In fact, he’d warned Katie not to ever talk about the fact that she had “strange encounters” or had been “gifted” or “cursed” from a young age. The majority of the world would think that she should be institutionalized.
He wasn’t pleased that he saw Bartholomew. Now he had the fear that he would one day wind up institutionalized himself.
And he was far from pleased that the dapper centuries-old entity had now decided to affix himself to Sean.
“I will not answer you. I will never answer you in public,” Sean said.
Bartholomew laughed. “You just answered me. Then again, we’re hardly in public, you know. I think the whole island is still asleep. Besides, you’re a filmmaker. An ‘artiste!’ People will happily believe that you are eccentric, and it’s your brilliance causing you to speak to yourself.”
“Right. Don’t you feel that you should go and haunt my sister?” Sean asked.
“I believe she’s busy.”
“I’m busy,” Sean said.
“Look, I’m apparently hanging around for something,” Bartholomew said. “Others have gone on, and I haven’t. You seem to be someone I must help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“You will, I’m sure of it,” Bartholomew said.
Sean kept walking.
“So what do you think he wanted?” Bartholomew persisted.
“I don’t know,” Sean said flatly. “But he wanted something, and that’s why I’m going to see him.” He cast a glance Bartholomew’s way. The privateer—hanged long ago for a deed he hadn’t committed—was really quite a sight. His frock coat and stockings, buckle shoes, vest and tricornered hat all fit his tall, lean physique quite well. In his lifetime, Sean thought dryly, he had probably made a few hearts flutter. Sadly, he had died because of the death of the love of his
life, and an act of piracy blamed upon him. However, after haunting the island since then, he had recently found a new love, the “lady in white,” legendary in Key West. When they filmed their documentary, Sean meant to make sure that he covered Bartholomew’s case and those of his old and new loves.
He’d heard once that ghosts remained on earth for a reason. They wanted to avenge their unjust deaths, they needed to help an ancestor or they were searching for truth. There were supposedly ghosts who were caught in time, reenacting the last moments of their lives. But that was considered “residual haunting,” while Bartholomew’s determination to remain on earth in a spectral form was known as “active” or “intelligent” haunting.
Bartholomew had been around for a reason—he had been unjustly killed. But Sean couldn’t figure out why he remained now. His past had been aligned with David Beckett and his family, and Sean had to admit that Bartholomew had been helpful in solving the Effigy Murders, all connected to the Becketts.
Maybe he had stayed because of the injustice done to him and because he still felt that he owed something to the Becketts. All Sean knew was that he had been Katie’s ghost—if there was such a thing—and now he seemed to be with him all the time.
Sean liked Bartholomew. He had a great deal of wit and he knew his history. He was loyal and might well have contributed to saving their lives.
But it was unnerving from the get-go to realize that you were seeing a ghost. It was worse realizing that the ghost was no longer determined to stick to Katie like glue, but had moved on to him. He was a good conversationalist—and thus the problem. Sean was far too tempted to talk to him, reply in public and definitely appear stark, raving mad upon occasion.
Ghosts were all over the place, Bartholomew had informed him. Most people felt a whisper in the breeze, sometimes a little pang of sorrow, and if the ghost was “intelligent” and “active,” it might enjoy a bit of fun now and then, creating a breeze, causing a bang in the dark of night, and so on. Katie had real vision for the souls lurking this side of the veil. So far, thank God, he’d seen only Bartholomew, and maybe a mist of others in the shadows now and then.
Sean had been damned happy before he’d “seen” a ghost at all.
Pirate Cut, he noted mentally. A good place to begin shooting. They hadn’t known in Bartholomew’s day that the reefs needed to be protected. They had brought their ships to the deep-water plunge just off the reef many times. Bartholomew knew for a fact that the legend about the area was true—ships of many nations had foundered here in storms, been cut up on the reefs and left to the destruction of time and the elements. But there was treasure scattered here, treasure and history, even if it had been picked over in the many years since.
It would also make for beautiful underwater footage. The colors were brilliant; the light was excellent. And it was near the area where Bartholomew had allegedly chased and gunned down a ship and murdered those aboard. Falsely accused, in the days after David Porter’s Pirate Squadron had been established, he had been hanged quickly, and it had been only after his unjust death that his innocence had been proven.
It was a good story for a documentary. Especially considering the events of the recent past, when a madman had decided that it was his ancestor who had been wronged and that the Becketts were to pay.
The whole story needed to be told, and it would.
And perhaps, if he managed to get Bartholomew’s story out there, with any luck Bartholomew might “see the light” and move on to the better world he believed he would find.
It was true that Bartholomew was not a bad guy and that, if he were flesh and blood, he’d be great to hang out with. But with Katie engaged to David Beckett now and basically living at the Beckett house, it seemed that Bartholomew was really all his.
And no way out of it—it was awkward. Disconcerting. And he was starting to look as if he walked around talking to himself. So much for an intelligent and manly image, Sean thought dryly.
“Bartholomew, please, stop talking to me. You’re well aware that I look crazy as all hell when people see me talking to you, right?” Sean demanded.
“I keep telling you, you’re an artist. And a true conch,” Bartholomew said. “Born and bred on the island. Tall, with that great red hair, good and bronzed—hey, fellow, a man’s man as they say,” Bartholomew told him, waving a ringed hand in the air. “Trust me—you’re masculine, virile, beloved and—an artist. You’re allowed to be crazy. And, good God, man—this is Key West!”
“Right. Then the tourists will have me arrested,” Sean said.
They’d reached O’Hara’s, toward the southern end of Duval. Sean cast Bartholomew a warning glare. Bartholomew shrugged and followed Sean in.
Sean walked straight up to the bar. Jamie O’Hara himself was working his taps that day.
“Hey, what’s up?” Sean asked, setting his hands on the bar and looking at Jamie, who was busy drying a beer glass.
It was early in the day—by Key West bar standards. Just after eleven. Jamie, when he was in town, usually opened the place around eleven-thirty, and whoever of his old friends, locals, or even tourists who wandered in for lunch early were served by Jamie himself. He cooked, bussed and made his drinks, poured his own Guinnesses—seven minutes to properly fill a Guinness glass—and he did so because he liked being a pub owner and he was the kind of employer who liked people, his employees and his establishment. He could handle the place in the early hour—unless there was a festival in town. Which, quite often, there was. Starting at the end of this week, he’d have double shifts going on—Pirates in Paradise was coming to town.
At this moment, though, O’Hara’s was quiet. Just Jamie, behind the bar.
Jamie was the perfect Irish barkeep—though he had been born in Key West. He, like Sean’s dad, had spent a great deal of time in the “old country” visiting their mother’s family—O’Casey folk—and he and Sean’s dad had both gone to college in Dublin. Jamie could put on a great brogue when he chose, but he could also slip into a laid-back Keys Southern drawl. Sean had always thought he should have been an actor. Jamie said that owning a pub was nearly the same thing. He had a rich head full of gray hair, a weather-worn but distinguished face, bright blue eyes and a fine-trimmed beard and mustache, both in that steel-gray that seemed to make him appear to be some kind of clan chieftain, or an old ard-ri, high king, of Ireland. He was well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a seaman’s muscles.
Jamie indicated the last booth in the bar area of the pub, which was now cast in shadow.
He realized that someone was sitting in the booth.
He couldn’t help but grin at his uncle. “You’re harboring a spy? A double agent? Someone from the CIA working the Keys connection?”
Sean knew that bad things—very bad things—could happen, even in Key West, Florida, “island paradise” though it might be. He’d seen them. But someone hiding in the shadows seemed a bit out of the ordinary.
Jamie shrugged and spoke softly. “Who knows why she’s sitting in the dark? She’s a nice kid. Came in here, I guess, ’cause the world seems to consider it neutral ground or something. She heard about you and David and the documentary you two are going to film together.”
Sean frowned. “We’ve had ads in the papers for crews for the boats and the filming. David and I have been setting up for interviews at his place.”
“What do you want from me, son, eh? She came in here, knowing I was related to the O’Hara looking to film about Key West and her mysteries. I said yes, and she asked if there was any way she could speak to you alone.”
“She’s applying for a job? Then she should go about it just like all the others and ask for an interview,” Sean said, annoyed. He couldn’t really see the woman in the corner, but he thought she seemed young. Maybe she was trying to secure a position by coming through the back door, flirting, drawing on his uncle’s sympathies.
“I don’t think that it’s work she’s looking for, but I don’t know. She’
s pretty tense. She wanted to know about the recent business down here—you know, all the nasty stuff with the murders—and she was mainly wanting to know, so it seemed, how you all coped with the bad things going on. Like, frankly, were you a pack of cowards, was it really all solved by the police, did I think that you were capable people—and did you really know the area.”
“Oh, great. She sounds like someone I really want to hire!” Sean said.
Jamie laughed. “She’s not that bad—she was dead honest in the questions she asked me. She didn’t use the word coward, that was mine. There’s something I like about her, Sean. Talk to her. She seems tense and nervous—and somehow, the real deal.” His uncle leaned closer to him. “There’s some mystery about this girl, and yet something real. Talk to her. Oh, and by the way, she is really something. She’s got every diving certificate, advanced, teacher, you name it. She’s gotten awards for her writing, and oh—hmm. She happens to have amazing blond hair, giant blue eyes and a shape to die for, nephew. Check it out. Go ahead. What’s the matter, boy, scared?”
Sean looked at his uncle in surprise and laughed. Scared? No. He was at least intrigued. Couldn’t hurt to talk to the woman. He and David were anxious to get started on their project because it was important to both of them—and it was also what they were best known for in their separate careers. But they were discussing just what bits and pieces and stories they would use for their documentary. Bartholomew’s situation was a must, Robert the Doll was a must, and the bizarre, true and fairly recent history of Elena and Count von Cosel was also a must. It wouldn’t be Key West if they didn’t touch on Hemingway and the writing connection. And there had to be pirates, wreckers, sponge divers and cigar makers, and how the Conch Republic became the Conch Republic. But as to exactly what they were using and what they were concentrating on, they were still open. They hadn’t made any hard-and-fast decisions yet, but since David was home and planning a wedding with Sean’s sister, they had decided that, at long last, they should work together. Friends in school who hadn’t seen each other in a decade, they had both gone the same route—film. Once the tension and terror of a murderer at work in Key West had died down, David had decided he was going to stay home awhile. That had a lot to do with the fact that he was in love with Sean’s sister, Katie O’Hara. But David was a conch, too—born and bred in Key West from nearly two generations of conchs. David belonged here.