by Ghost Night
“Well, well, come on, what is it?” Ted demanded.
Still, neither man moved. Ted went rushing over and looked down, as well. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed—his voice filled with horror, not wonder.
“What?” Katie asked weakly.
Jay walked up next. He clapped his hand over his mouth and turned away.
Vanessa knew from Jay’s reaction that it was bad. She steeled herself and walked forward and looked down into a chest.
At first she didn’t realize what she was seeing.
And then she did.
The chest contained the oddly mummified and distorted remains of a human body. The clothing remained; the head was at an awkward angle. A hat still sat upon a skeletal head. The skin was dark and stretched over the frame, and the fabric of the clothing was stained, probably by the body fluids that had oozed from the corpse soon after death.
The eye sockets were empty.
And yet they seemed to stare and tear into Vanessa’s heart.
All she could remember at that moment were Sean’s earlier words.
The trunk, and its contents, are yours.
9
“It’s Dona Isabella,” Marty said knowingly.
“It can’t be Dona Isabella. She wasn’t killed until the pirates reached Haunt Island,” David said. “According to legend, at any rate. Although, frankly, everything about what happened is legend—after the pirate ship attacked the Santa Geneva.”
“We’ll have to wait, and that’s all there is to it—hope that the forensic anthropologist can help us,” Sean said.
“It wasn’t a treasure,” Jay said mournfully.
“If the body sheds light on history, the find is a treasure,” Sean said.
They were gathered at O’Hara’s. The trunk and body were locked in the workroom at the shop, and they were all lined up at the bar.
Vanessa was next to Sean. He had worried about her at first—neither she nor Katie had seemed thrilled about the discovery from the start. But oddly enough, once she had seen what was in the trunk, she had seemed more relaxed. Maybe she had somehow intuited that they weren’t going to bring in a stash of silver and gold, and maybe she felt that, this way, eventually, Dona Isabella would get the funeral she deserved—belatedly—and that there would be some kind of finality for someone, at least.
She had been fine in the showroom, and fine on the walk here. She had applauded and laughed with the rest of them when they had come in to the sounds of a singer doing a version of a Denis Leary number that was tawdry to say the least, but very well done.
Now, at the bar, she was nervously drinking a Scottish single-malt whiskey.
“Maybe the legend has been all wrong—maybe Dona Isabella survived the massacre and was later murdered and tossed over the remains of the Santa Geneva,” Jay suggested.
Sean looked at Vanessa. She didn’t seem to be listening.
“Maybe it’s not Dona Isabella, but Jim Morrison of the Doors,” he said, touching Vanessa’s hand.
She started, and looked at him. “Well, of course, that’s a theory,” she said.
He smiled. “A penny for your thoughts. A gold cob, rather,” he said.
She arched a brow, opened her mouth and shut it. She tried to speak again. Before she could, Jay exclaimed, “Why, as I live and breathe. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!”
Sean spun around on his stool. Four people had just come into O’Hara’s. There was a tiny, pretty woman; a tall, broad-shouldered and all-around big man; and two more men who appeared to be in their early twenties, average in height and size, both with sun-bleached brown hair.
“Your crew?” Sean asked Vanessa.
She nodded. “Zoe Cally, Barry Melkie, Bill Hinton and Jake Magnoli. Jake is taller and tends to slouch, and he’s no relation to Bill, though they do look kind of like two peas in a pod, in a way. Barry is the really tall guy, and Zoe is the woman. Obviously.”
“I didn’t know that they were all here,” he said.
“Neither did I. But Zoe and Barry told me earlier that they’d gotten hold of the kids.”
He knew the names. He’d looked up what he could find on the film crew and the events that had occurred around the filming. She had mentioned the names as well, telling him what she had seen and experienced the night of the murders.
“I had no idea that Bill and Jake were already here,” Vanessa added. “They had heard about your documentary, too. Before you had Liam find them all and call them, they all planned to come and try to get work with you.”
Sean was surprised to feel irritated.
This was so…pat.
He’d thought they’d have to hunt the crew down. He looked over at Vanessa, and he wondered if he hadn’t fallen into what she wanted as easily as any idiot.
Jay was by David. He looked stunned, and he stared at Vanessa. “Hey, wait, I didn’t even know those guys were in Key West,” he protested.
“Vanessa did,” he said.
There must have been something in his voice that accused her—or else she felt guilty about the situation.
Because she had planned it all this way from the beginning, and he had walked into it just the way she had intended all along?
It was probably a good thing that he’d never wanted to be an actor.
His face apparently gave away his thoughts. Vanessa was up in an instant, but she didn’t turn on him first. She looked at Jay, and then at him.
“Damn you, Jay, don’t you understand? They think it was set up that you showed up down here, too.” She stood tall and angry, and tossed a length of her hair over her shoulder as she spoke. “What? Are you all suddenly the KGB or the CIA? Why does something have to be a setup? Why isn’t it obvious to you all that something absolutely horrible happened? Two people were murdered. Maybe three. Two people we knew well—we’d been working with them for weeks. We found them, we saw them dead in the sand. Is it so odd that, hearing about your project, this group has all found its way to you?”
David was staring at Vanessa, surprised. He turned to Sean. “I thought you had Liam try to reach the rest of the crew.”
“I did,” he said.
Vanessa flushed. She winced. “I don’t know how everyone managed to be here so quickly. I’m sorry. I… Oh, never mind. It is going to work out best this way.”
By then, the group was coming their way, having seen Vanessa and Jay. Zoe Cally came forward with a huge, trusting smile.
As if she hadn’t any inkling they might not be wanted.
“There are large tables out back in the patio area. We’ll head out there,” Sean said. “We’ll go talk where we can hear.”
A would-be soprano was belting out a number from Phantom that was far out of her range and it seemed to him to be nothing more than a very loud screech at the moment.
He headed out back, waving to the others to follow him.
Clarinda, Jamie’s favorite server and Katie’s close friend, stopped him as he headed out. “Sean, should I set you all up out there? Do you want dinner and drinks, and should I be steering other people away?”
He paused, feeling a break in his temper at last. “Yeah, thanks, Clarinda, that would be great.” Come to think of it, they hadn’t eaten.
The contents of the chest had made them all forget the fact that they hadn’t had dinner.
She smiled sympathetically and moved on; Clarinda would have known, from Katie, what they had discovered in their “treasure” find.
He walked on out to the patio. It was typical Key West, lots of shrubs and trees surrounding Cuban tile flooring and wooden tables, some round, some square, some oblong. Umbrellas over the tables shaded them from heat during the day and were enough shelter against rain when it was light. He stood by the table, waiting.
The group began to trail out, Vanessa in the lead. Once they could hear, she began the introductions.
There was a large crowd outside by then, so it seemed. Vanessa, Jay and the film crew, himself, David, Jaden and Ted. Jaden and Ted were quiet
, watching, as if they were suddenly part of an unexpected reality TV show.
Vanessa was quiet after the introductions, taking a seat at one of the long, oblong tables.
“You all know what we’re planning on doing, right?” Sean asked.
“Yes!” Barry said. “It’s great. We’re so pleased. We were all going to ask you guys for work anyway, and then we talked to your cousin, Liam, and he explained that you wanted those of us who were involved to talk about what happened on camera. But we can help you enormously in other ways,” he said.
“Great,” Sean said. “I’m sure you all work well together. And that’s great. But what we really want is to get each one’s perspective of what went on at Haunt Island.”
Zoe began speaking quickly. “We’re so grateful for this opportunity.”
Clarinda came out in the midst of it all.
“Okay, guys, let me get your orders in. The place is getting busy,” she said.
Beer seemed to be the main order for the night, and O’Hara’s offered a vast variety. There was confusion as people took seats so that she could take food orders.
Sean wound up at the head of the table at one end, David at the other. They did resemble some kind of strange patriarchs in a ragtag family.
“We’ve already started filming,” Jay told the newcomers excitedly. “And guess what? Vanessa found a corpse!”
“A corpse?” Zoe demanded, staring down the table at Vanessa.
“We thought we had a treasure chest. It was a corpse,” Vanessa said.
“Well, it was a chest—it just wasn’t filled with treasure,” Jay said. “It held a corpse. But you know what? We think it might be Dona Isabella.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Jaden protested softly. She joined the discussion with enthusiasm. “We don’t know anything, really, but the preservation is remarkable. Somehow, when the poor woman was murdered and stuffed in the chest, she became mummified. The chest was sealed, as if…as if…oh, I don’t know. Maybe someone felt remorse and wanted to see that she was preserved in her tomb in the sea. It’s eerie. She’s all there…clothes and all, and she’s at an strange angle…neck broken, at least that’s what it looks like.”
“Dona Isabella? I thought she died during the massacre on Haunt Island, or if not, when the pirate ship went down southwest of the Bahamas,” Zoe said.
“Everything about Mad Miller, Kitty Cutlass and Dona Isabella is pure speculation, really,” Vanessa said. “There were one or two survivors who actually made it to shore when the Santa Geneva went down. They were the ones who told of the pirate attack. The Santa Geneva was accosted, there was some kind of communication between Mad Miller and her captain, and then the Santa Geneva was fired upon. Before she sank, the pirates boarded, cutting down the crew and kidnapping Dona Isabella. We know, too, that there was a massacre on Haunt Island, because the Bahamians found the remains. They knew that the pirate ship had come there, and that it had sailed. We know that it went down in a hurricane, because it was seen by an American ship when that ship barely survived the same storm. In fact, sailors swore that the pirate ship went down when a massive burst of fire flared in the sky. If the Bermuda Triangle had been labeled the Bermuda Triangle back then, it might have taken the blame. They called it an act of God. At least they didn’t think that aliens came down and swept up the pirate ship.”
Zoe giggled. “Well, if aliens came down, they missed poor Dona Isabella’s treasure-chest tomb. Hey, I know debris travels, but not that far. The Santa Geneva went down off Key West, and the pirate ship—however it went!—perished off of South Bimini and Haunt Island. So the story is all wrong somewhere along the line.”
“If that is Dona Isabella,” Vanessa said.
Jay laughed, pretended a shiver and let out an “Oooooh! Well, of course, it has to be Dona Isabella. And her evil is rising—that’s why you two were afraid of the chest.”
“I wasn’t afraid of the chest,” Vanessa said, her tone aggravated.
“Right,” Jay said with a shrug.
Food came. The conversation changed to where everyone was staying on the island—Bill and Jake had taken rooms at the Banyan while Barry and Zoe were in the guesthouses on Duval, a couple blocks down from where Vanessa was staying.
Everyone talked about different projects. Barry admitted that he had looked up information on David and Sean and been impressed with their separate bodies of work. The evening wore on, then Jaden and Ted called it a night, promising to call Sean and David the minute they heard from Tara Aislinn, the woman who was coming down from the University of Florida, the forensic anthropologist they had reached who was fascinated by the find and delighted to come down and examine the body in the chest.
Before the group broke up, Sean said, “David and I are going to do some planning tomorrow. We’ll call you when we’re set with the decision on when to leave.”
Bill and Zoe decided to roam Duval and Barry went back to his room. Jay asked Vanessa if she wanted a walk down the street; he was tired and leaving. To Sean’s surprise, she stood and agreed.
David and Sean stood, as well. Vanessa came around the table and gave David a kiss on the cheek. As she neared him, Sean saw that her eyes were sharp.
He stopped her and asked, “What’s that look for?”
She shook her head and said softly, “You think that I set this up. You still say that I brought Jay in all the time, and I saw how suspicious you were earlier.”
“Admit it, Vanessa. They were all here already.”
“Admit it?” she inquired, her voice rising.
“Admit that…it all looks suspicious.”
“Whatever it looks like, it isn’t. And I guess I want more faith. You stared at me tonight as if you were suddenly certain that I’d planned the entire thing, our old crew taking over your project.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “Yes, it’s strange, but—”
“You’re a liar.”
“We can talk,” he said.
She shook her head. “No. Not tonight. I need some time. We can talk tomorrow. Tonight, well, tonight I need to take a look at everything that’s gone on.”
He was hurt, angry—and baffled, still feeling himself to be the injured party. He was doing exactly what she wanted.
But he wasn’t ready to throw it all over, and he wasn’t thinking about the project.
Vanessa…
The ego in him wanted to shrug and tell her that it wouldn’t be necessary to talk about anything intimate, if those were her feelings.
But he realized, too, that she must certainly have her own pride.
And he knew, too, that “talking tomorrow” was better than a real break. He’d give her the space she needed.
He was startled as she walked on by him, waiting for Jay. She was truly upset.
Jay gave David a cheery good-night and shook Sean’s hand. “What a day, eh?”
“Yeah, what a day.”
Jay hesitated. “Honest to God, this wasn’t any kind of a setup.”
“I never said that it was,” Sean told him.
Jay shrugged. “I saw the way that you looked at Vanessa.”
Lord. Were his suspicions—his thoughts—really that apparent? Even Jay had read his expression.
“You’re mistaken,” he lied.
Jay shrugged.
Vanessa was waiting for Jay on the sidewalk. He joined her, and Sean watched as they started north on Duval together.
“Well, that was interesting,” David commented.
“I’m sorry—doesn’t it feel a bit weird to you? First Vanessa shows up, pitching her slant to our project, then Jay. Then we think that it might make for a really interesting piece and put out a call to find the rest of the crew, and almost instantaneously they all show up?”
“Yes and no,” David said. He shrugged. “Maybe they did all hear about it and contacted one another. I don’t find it all that odd if they did. Trust me, I know. Events can change your life and haunt you day after day.�
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David Beckett had once stood accused of murder—if not by law, in the minds of many people who had heard what had happened.
Sean let out a long breath.
Back then, he and David had been friends. Close friends. And he hadn’t known what to believe. All he had known was that he had wanted to get away from home, and for years and years he had traveled, staying mainly away from home. Knowing the truth about the past—even though he had not been directly involved, like David—had changed everything.
And it was true, too, that he had returned home in all haste when he had heard that David Beckett was here. And then he had been glad as hell, because he had found that David and his sister had become a duo.
“Honestly, I don’t care one way or another,” David said. “Here’s what I care about—Liam doing background checks on them, finding out their work schedules—or with the young ones, their graduation status—whether they’ve really got the credentials they claim, all that. Parking tickets are okay—I get enough of those myself. But nothing else.”
Sean shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You know that you’re more intrigued by this now than ever,” David said. “And hell, Vanessa Loren is like a damned dousing rod. One day, a pendant. The next, a chest. With a body. Let’s face it, we’re in it now.”
“Have you talked to Marty? And Jamie? Are they in?”
“They were in from the beginning, too. I say we get Liam on the background checks and plan to head out soon. I’ll warn Katie.”
“All right,” Sean said.
She had just walked away.
Clarinda came out to finish clearing the table. “Hey, this is really getting wild, huh? All these people—and a body!” She shivered, placing empty glasses on her tray.
“It’s a very old body, Clarinda,” Sean said.
Katie came out the back door and strode toward them. Sean and David had taken their chairs again—at opposite ends of the long oblong table.
“Well. I guess you two scared everyone off,” she said. She frowned and looked at Sean. “Where’s Vanessa?”
“She went to her room.”
Katie’s brows shot up. “What did you do to her?”