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“I’m going to have to crawl in it. ”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Bartholomew reminded her.
She crawled in and searched every corner, patting the sides. To her astonishment, a secret panel sprang up from the floor of the sarcophagus. “Bartholomew!”
“You found it?”
“No! But…”
She sneezed and crawled out. Perplexed, she looked at Bartholomew. “But it… I’m not sure. It’s just made me think. ”
She walked to the door of Cutter’s office and turned on the lights. The room looked as it always did. She started walking around, pushing at books, stomping on the floor.
“Oh, dear,” Bartholomew said.
She shook her head. “I’m not going crazy. I keep thinking that someone is in here, even when it’s locked up. Even now, with an alarm. I lock my bedroom at night. Even Liam locked the door when I wasn’t here. ”
“I can pat walls,” he said.
“Perfect, help me!” she said.
He started around the room. As he did so, Kelsey’s phone rang. Distracted, she answered it without looking at the caller ID.
“Kelsey. ”
It was Liam.
“Hey,” she said.
“You’re all right?”
“I’m fine. How’s it going with you?”
“I just found the book taken from the library. It was in Gary White’s apartment,” he said.
“So…Gary White signed himself in as Bel Arcowley?”
“So it seems. ”
“But he’s dead,” Kelsey said.
“He had to have been acting for someone,” Liam said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I know where he was going when he left the library. To work for Jonas. Kelsey, don’t let anyone in. If anyone comes over, don’t answer the door. Not until I’m with you. ”
“Liam—”
“I may be paranoid, but I’m a cop, and better safe, right?”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“What are you doing?”
“Well, I was going through all the religious artifacts. I found a secret drawer in the sarcophagus. It made me think. I’m tapping around in his office, trying to see if I can find another hiding place. ”
“Keep in touch, all right?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Call me if—anything,” he said.
“I promise. ”
“Kelsey?”
“Yes?”
“Never mind, we’ll talk later,” he said.
They hung up.
She began looking around Cutter’s desk. Her phone rang again, and she answered it, almost dropping it as she did so, she was so certain she would find something. “Hello, Kelsey. ”
She recognized the voice instantly. She started to close the phone, but she heard laughter.
“Don’t hang up on me so quickly, Kelsey. I just want you to know… No, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. Except die. ”
Liam walked into the station and straight over to Ricky Long, who was working with the telephone number that the caller had used to threaten Kelsey.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. It’s a prepaid phone, no contract necessary, sold all over, and the purchaser probably paid cash. ”
“Pretty much what I expected. ”
“But we’re trying to trace it down to the most likely area through the satellites,” Ricky told him hopefully.
“How close can they narrow it?”
“Down to a block, possibly, and if it lets out a signal again, it can be pinpointed more accurately,” Ricky assured him.
“Great. Keep me posted. ”
He headed over to the desk where Dave Aspen, the sketch artist, was working with his sketch scanned into the computer.
“Well?
“Lieutenant,” Dave said, looking up. “What timing. I’ve gone ahead and done a slide show with various different scenarios of facial hair and even nose putty. ”
“That sounds great. Let me see. ”
He pulled up one of the rolling chairs to sit next to Dave while he hit a computer key. “Okay, here’s a cleaned-up version of what I drew yesterday from the clerk’s description. Next, without the beard and the mustache. Now, the nose seemed a little too long and pointed, so I played with it. Oh, wait, this is the one with the eyebrows thinned. Now here’s the one with the thinned brows, facial hair gone, best representation of the lips and mouth I can manage, and—”
He broke off; Liam was standing.
He should have known!
Just as he did so, Ricky came rushing over to him. “Lieutenant!”
“What, Ricky, what?”
“He called her again. The phone is on the Merlin estate. He might be calling from within the house. ”
She’d had it. Completely had it. She was on to something, and this idiot was calling her, trying to scare her out of the house.
“Back off, ass,” she said and snapped the phone closed.
“What was that?”
“A jerk!” she said angrily. “I’ll fool around in here in a minute again. I don’t know what I’m looking for. And I’m feeling… I don’t know. Like I need to sit down, like I’m going to pass out. ”
“Then you need to sit,” Bartholomew said. “Take a break. ”
“No, no, I can’t. I think I have to keep going. Okay, I tried the mummy. The chalices, the runes…Odin! Time for the voodoo altar. ”
She walked back out to the living room and stared at the altar. There were numerous saints, little statues, big statues. There were offerings to the saints on the black velvet altar cover. There were Mardi Gras beads spread over it in a series of colors. A child had offered up a princess doll that was almost life-size. It had been given to the Virgin Mary, who looked down at her benignly, her hands spread in an offer of tenderness and peace.
There was a pounding on the front door. She walked to it and looked through the peephole.
Jonas was out there. Liam had told her not to let anyone in. And she was starting to feel like hell, so weak and disoriented.
He was waving at her wildly, saying something, but she couldn’t hear him.
She shouted at him. “I’m sick, Jonas! Go away. ”
“Watch yourself, Kelsey,” Bartholomew said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m fine. I must have eaten something…bad. ”
She stumbled back to the voodoo altar.
Her eyes returned to the large princess doll. A great sacrifice for a small child who had surely loved the doll.
She stared at the smiling princess doll, and at its crown. The crown was large and covered in cheap gold paint. Perhaps the doll was supposed to depict Mardi Gras royalty.
The altar seemed to spin before her. She blinked, positive she was seeing something.
Her phone started ringing. It was difficult to reach for it. She managed to get her hands around it. She flipped it open.
“Hello?”
She sensed movement and heard the fall of a surreptitious footstep. She looked up. The sound was coming from Cutter Merlin’s office.
She saw him.
Just as she heard Liam’s voice.
“Kelsey, get out of the house. Get out of the house quickly. I’m on my way,” Liam said.
She wanted to answer him.
Then the phone was slapped from her hand.
She didn’t have the power to resist.
He shouted his orders as he left the station. “No sirens. And no cars on the peninsula. No one into the house but me, and start surrounding it. He has Kelsey. If he sees us, if he has any idea that we’re on to him, she’s dead. I repeat, no sirens, and stay back! Move it, move it!”
He rushed out of the station house and to the car. He tried not to shake, knowing th
at if he did so, he’d wreck the car. He thanked God that it was a small island.
He parked at the wharf, got out of the car and started running.
He passed Jonas’s bed-and-breakfast and burst out onto the road that led to the Merlin estate. As he came to the end, he saw Bartholomew standing there, his hands in the air.
“Not the door—he’ll see you. Don’t use the door,” Bartholomew said.
“Then what? He’s got her—get the hell out of my way!” Liam cried.
“No! Follow me. Get down, follow me. ”
He began a quiet, quick jog behind Bartholomew.
On the front lawn, he nearly tripped over the body of Jonas.
He kneeled down. Jonas groaned. He was alive.
“I…saw someone. In the attic. It wasn’t Kelsey,” he said. “I thought it was you, but I wanted to be sure. I was on the porch…and then…”
“Help is coming,” Liam told him. “Hang on. ”
Jonas nodded.
“And stay down. Stay down, please. ”
Liam moved on, following Bartholomew.
To his amazement, the ghost ducked into the crawl space beneath the house. He followed the ghost.
He didn’t see it at first. And then he did.
It was a trapdoor. It had been used frequently, and gave without a single squeak.
It led to Cutter Merlin’s office.
“Give it to me, Kelsey,” he said.
She blinked, trying to focus. She wanted to lash out, strike him. She couldn’t. He had his hands on her shoulders, and she couldn’t move.
“I know you. ”
“You know me well. I was your handyman around here when you were a kid. I took all kinds of bull from your sainted family. Now, I want the reliquary. Where is it?”
He shook her. She felt her head rattle.
“I haven’t found it. ”
“You’re a liar. ”
“You killed your friend,” she said. “Why? You’re Chris Vargas. You killed Gary White, and you had him doing all kinds of dirty work for you. Why did you kill him?”
“I had to kill him. He wouldn’t give me the book. I knew that I couldn’t beat Cutter without Abel Crowley’s original book of spells. Cutter’s book In Defense from Dark Magick was too powerful for the spells that I knew. I finally learned that Abel’s spell book was talked about in Key West, Satanism, Peter Edwards, and the Abel and Aleister Crowley Connection, but Gary lied and said he couldn’t find the book. When I found out he lied and that he was keeping the book for himself—I had to kill him. I wasn’t ready for Cutter to die on the night he did. I was just continuing to scare him—leaving him clues about what I wanted—and hoping that he would finally just give up the reliquary. Things went too far that night, and he died of a heart attack. I knew, though, that he would leave you a clue. ”
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