Murray grabbed her shoulders, vehemently shaking his head.
Claire pulled away from him, and started walking away from the house.
Jonah looked at Kristi and grimaced with a shrug. “Guess she doesn’t want any of our spectacular breakfast this morning. Well, well, go figure. Here comes the famous Mr. Brentwood, running after her, and running after him, the lovely Miss Lacey Knox. Maybe I’d best go down and warn Genie when she comes in that we may not need her to do too much cooking!”
* * *
Shelley Blake never saw Dallas as she hurried over to the pit, going past the circling tape and warning cones and letting herself down into the hole.
Dallas waited, and then came and stood over her.
“Shelley?”
She was so startled that she twirled in the hole, tripped and fell on her rear.
“Um—Dallas, hey!”
“Shelley, what are you doing? This was roped off for a reason—it’s dangerous, and Dr. Horvath wants to get back in before it’s further disturbed.”
“I was... I was summoned here—I was summoned here by Trinity. She appeared before me, right as I was waking up. And she told me that I must go to the gravesite.”
“Shelley, you do know that I don’t believe a single word of that, right?” he asked.
She gasped, indignant. “Whether you believe or not has nothing to do with it being the truth. Trinity—she told me to come here. She said that Kristi, in particular, is continually trying to make Monty McLane into a good guy when he was a jealous killer. I needed to get in here and find proof—I mean, there could be something. A rebel bullet beneath her bones.”
Dallas hadn’t seen Kristi yet, but he heard her as she walked over to the hole to join them.
“Shelley, come on, you grew up down here. Whatever bullet you might find wouldn’t mean anything in the least. It was Christmas of 1864—by then, soldiers were picking up whatever they could find on the battlefield. Rebel gun, knife, bullet, Union gun, knife, bullet. Wouldn’t mean a thing.”
Shelley frowned. “Well, no, I mean, by then the Union was winning. I mean...if there was a Confederate knife in here...a Union soldier wouldn’t be carrying a Rebel soldier’s knife!”
“If he found it on the battlefield, he sure as hell might be carrying it,” Kristi said. “Shelley, please, I don’t mind your acts. I know that Carl and his crew are very grateful. But you must stop this. I’m really sorry, but it’s my yard—and my pit in my yard, that my ancestor came out of.”
“Out, Shelley,” Dallas commanded.
“Yes, but if I found—”
“Found what?” Kristi demanded.
Shelley shook her head. She looked agitated—and nervous. “Oh, never mind. You’re right. It’s your yard and your hole, and no matter what facts hit you, you’re going to believe what you want to believe.”
“Come out, Shelley,” Dallas repeated, more sternly.
She let out a sound of aggravation and then grimaced. “Um, give me a hand, please?”
Dallas reached down to help her out.
She took his hand; he pulled her up easily enough.
Shelley dusted herself off. “I’m only trying to help,” she said.
“Shelley, we have a woman who spent her life studying medicine and anthropology coming back. Let her help, please,” Kristi said.
Shelley nodded, and sighed and looked at Kristi hopefully. “May I stay for breakfast?”
“Sure,” Kristi told her.
Shelley went in, and Kristi turned to Dallas. “I was just talking to Jonah, and he was upset—he’s been upset since we found Trinity. He’s more upset now—says that he should have put it together. Jedidiah and Ian had been talking about something groundbreaking that could change history. Then Eliza disappeared, and everyone started talking about her. It was all forgotten. Jonah doesn’t know for sure that Ian was supposed to be meeting with Eliza. Now, it seems, he’s starting to put things together. And Ian was working with Jedidiah on whatever it was that was going on.”
“We’re getting closer. I have to get showered and to the autopsy—we don’t know yet how Eliza was killed.”
“But she was killed,” Kristi said sadly.
“Yes, but you have to think of it this way—she wanted you to find her. Kristi, you did. Now—” he paused, glancing up at the house “—I have to go to that autopsy.”
“And nothing is going to happen to me here—I’ll make sure I stay around a group. Even if every guest goes out, Genie, Sydney and Jonah will be here.”
“I’ll have Angela come over here, and if, at some point, you decide to go back to the Murphy house, make sure you stay together.”
“What about the pit?”
He hesitated; his work made trust a hard thing to come by.
“We’ll leave Jonah watching it. After all, he was watching it last night.”
Kristi nodded. She smiled grimly. “I missed you last night.”
“And, I promise, I missed you.”
She could have said a lot more; things were happening—bodies were literally coming out of the ground. But she didn’t know how long Dallas would be in Savannah.
Or even if they’d both be alive when all this was over.
The thought crept unbidden into her mind. She forced a determined smile. “Well, get to that autopsy. We need to know the truth. I’ll be in the kitchen, helping.”
“With your purse?” he asked her, indicating the handbag over her shoulder.
“I have the Emory Huntly book in it. I’m doing what you said—where I go, it goes.” She hesitated and said, “I should have started in the middle—I’m just getting to Sherman’s March to the Sea.”
When they went in, Jonah was in the back room, and he addressed Dallas cheerfully. “Thank you, Mr. Wicker—I have now enjoyed some sleep, and so, now, I promise, I will stay awake for my vigil.”
She left them and made her way to the kitchen. Genie was just coming in the side door.
“Hi, early bird—I hear you had tremendous activity last night,” Genie said.
“Everyone knows already!”
“There were dozens of pictures up of the cop cars, the ambulance from the morgue, cops right in front of the Murphy place—and they all said that a dead woman had been found, unidentified officially as yet, but presumed to be Eliza Malone. Dozens of friends called me, knowing that Jedidiah and Ian had been friends, and that I work nearby. You know—news. Gossip. Travels faster than the speed of light.”
“Yeah. Okay, so—what am I helping you make?” Kristi asked her.
“Eggs Benedict with a Southern flair—we’re doing them on biscuits.”
Sydney came in soon after; coffee was brewed, biscuits set in the oven as the two of them threw questions at Kristi. She dodged answering as much as she could.
Dallas popped his head in to say that he was going. As soon as he was gone, the questioning began again.
“I wonder that she didn’t... Well, dead things and dead people...smell,” Sydney said. “Not to be disrespectful.”
“She was buried beneath logs and charcoal. I guess that Ian never went to the basement, and Jamie wasn’t home enough to get down there much, either. They had to move a lot of wood and charcoal to get to her,” Kristi told them. “And it was a basement, and...” She paused, shaking her head. “I don’t know,” she told them.
When the food was finished, she made a plate to take out to Jonah. Angela arrived as she was doing so; when she returned to the house, Angela was being avidly questioned by Genie and Sydney, and Shelley had joined the conversation.
Shelley was trying to convince her that Trinity had been appearing before her for years, and continued to haunt her, often in dreams.
Angela listened politely.
Kristi picked up a tray to bring out to the back parlor; Granger and Ja
net Knox had come down, and both greeted her and said that the food looked wonderful. “I thought Lacey would be down by now,” Granger told his wife, his tone irritable.
“I—I don’t know where she is—sleeping, or she went out.”
“If she’s asleep, she can get up. The breakfast is half of what we pay for,” Granger said.
Janet watched with distress as Granger went up the stairs. She saw Kristi watching her and gave her a big smile. “She needs to be here,” she murmured.
Kristi didn’t answer. Murray Meyer came down the stairs soon after Granger went up them, asking about coffee just as Sydney brought out the big pot.
Sydney addressed Shelley enthusiastically. “Now, we should have another séance—not that Trinity is free. I’m sure she’d speak right through you!”
“Oh, she would, I’m certain!” Shelley said.
Kristi winced and lowered her head. Murray Meyer was looking at her; he smiled, as if understanding her misery at the concept of another séance.
“I think that with things happening as they are, another séance may be just a bit premature—especially since Carl is thinking about doing something a great deal more in-depth—and which may require a bit of work from you, Shelley,” Murray said.
“Ah, it’s hardly work, doing what I love—and communing with Trinity.”
Kristi flashed Murray a thank-you smile, and slipped out to the courtyard. Jonah was just finishing his breakfast, and gave her a broad smile.
“I can pick up after myself,” he told her.
“I know you can. I didn’t come out to pick up after you—I just came out as a way to leave the house.”
“I see,” Jonah muttered, looking past her to the back door and the windows. “Dear me, look at Shelley chatting away. How strange can that woman be?” he asked. He shook his head. “I’ve talked with Ms. Danson—she just thinks that the séance was great publicity for Carl, but I don’t think she wants to do another—she even told me that she saw Shelley moving the table. Oh, and I think I know what they were fighting about this morning. Claire and Murray.”
“Oh?”
“Murray had been saying that all this was great, but that if they didn’t get a studio in working on a full documentary, there was no sense doing it. Passion projects don’t pay. She’s all about public image—he’s all about his percentage.”
“Ah, well.”
Angela joined them out in the courtyard. Jonah greeted her pleasantly.
“Should we head over and do some reading?” Angela asked.
“Soon,” Kristi murmured. “There is something I want to keep reading...but I was thinking that I might hop in that hole and look around a little bit myself. Want to help?”
“You have a scientist coming. And it’s not like Trinity would have left a belt buckle or any metal. Why not let that Dr. Horvath do it?” Jonah asked.
“Oh, I will. It should be studied properly. I just need a few minutes.”
“I’ll join you,” Angela said.
“And, Jonah, you have been wonderful, but I know you were up half the night,” Kristi said. “You could take a nap. I’ll call you when we’re leaving.”
“All right, then,” Jonah said. He stood up and left them.
As they headed back to the site, Angela said, “He is right, although, you did find Trinity’s locket. Maybe there’s something there, but...who knows if we can find anything.”
Kristi stopped walking and looked at Angela. “Well, we may not find anything, but maybe we should let people think that we did find something.”
“Tempting fate—it could work.”
“Let’s see what we do—or don’t—find,” Kristi said.
* * *
Dallas had seen skeletal remains often enough, but oddly, there was something neat and clean about bones, even when one discovered that bullets lodged within them had ended someone’s life, or nicks indicated that they’d face the wrong end of a knife.
This was different.
“Sadly, time and circumstances always do a number on a corpse,” Dr. Perry told the crew assembled before him, consisting of Joe Dunhill, Jackson and Dallas. “As you can see...the skin over her skull is almost mummified. The stomach and wet organs seeped into the ground, and we may be analyzing the earth and charcoal and wood collected from the site.”
What had befallen Eliza Malone’s body was sad—she resembled something made for display at a horror house or for Halloween. Her remaining skin was stretched tight and yellowed; her midsection seemed to be hollowed out. In areas bone protruded; in other areas, tight, discolored flesh stretched across bone.
“Quite—something,” Dr. Perry said. “She remains, and yet, in ways, there is so little left.”
“Are you saying that you don’t know how she died?” Dunhill asked.
“Remember—cause and method,” Perry said. He hesitated, then looked at them both. “She was struck on the head, hard—right in that same area where Lachlan Plant was struck. That’s what I believe. It’s a bit difficult to ascertain, because of the condition of the skull and the brain, and the conditions under which the body was found. Her cause of death was damage to the brain—back to method. Just like Lachlan Plant, she might have fallen. More likely, she was struck with something heavy, and, as we have noted, she didn’t bury herself in a basement. So, gentlemen, I am going to call the method of death a homicide. The only other possibility is that she did suffer a fall—and perhaps Ian buried her because she died accidentally, and he feared that he might have been blamed.”
“I just don’t believe that, not with what I know of the man,” Dallas said.
“No,” Joe Dunhill said. “At some point, she was snatched from somewhere around Johnson Square, and then taken into Ian’s house for burial. We know that we have a killer here, on the loose. We have to find him or her.” He looked at Dallas and Jackson and added, “Ian Murphy died after Lachlan Plant, and that would hardly allow for him to attack Lachlan on the street. This doesn’t bode well for Simon Drake. You—haven’t thought of where we might dig him up yet, have you?”
Dallas shook his head. “No, we haven’t any ideas on Simon yet,” he said. Turning back to Dr. Perry, he asked, “Wouldn’t it take a certain medical knowledge for someone to have struck two people just right for them to die?”
Perry was thoughtful. “Yes and no. There are dozens of videos out there now by doctors and psychiatrists and other interested parties that discuss the properties of the brain. A killer might have gotten lucky, too, and there might have been other factors involved in Eliza Malone’s death, such as a substance in her system, something to knock her out before being struck. She might have even been buried before death. Those tests will take some time.”
A few minutes later, they left the morgue. Dunhill asked Jackson and Dallas to come to his office, and there, they met his captain—who seemed to know exactly who Jackson Crow was and assured him he’d send in an official invitation for assistance from the FBI.
“Always believed in Dunhill. But when you’ve got nothing but hunches, no leads, nothing that resembles a clue, then you have to move on. Joe’s a good guy, knew what to do, and where to go—without really stepping on any toes.”
The captain sat in; Joe had a timeline of everything that had happened. He had lists of people interviewed, and he had a list of those who lived at or worked at the Murphy place, and at the McLane house. “Most of what we have on the guests and employees we have through the FBI files,” he said, nodding his gratitude to Jackson and Dallas. “We’ve put the cases together, and we’ve eliminated those we can’t place in Savannah.” He went on, “Our biggest dilemma is finding motive for these crimes, and thus far...we remain perplexed.”
“It may be nothing, but I’d say we might want to look into anyone with medical training, and I’m going to suggest that we hone in on Murray Meyer,” Dallas said, and exp
lained Murray’s family connection to the city. “Granger Knox, a man with political aspirations, and, although he is not my first pick, Mr. Jonah Whitney, because he was friends with Ian Murphy and Jedidiah McLane. He was certainly in the area, and had access to the Murphy house and the McLane house. Whether we’re looking at Jonah or someone else, we believe that the key to the Murphy property—and to the rooms at McLane house—were simply taken out of a drawer there and copied.”
“That causes a bit of dilemma, doesn’t it?” Joe asked. “Someone could have had access to both houses two years ago.”
“We know that all three men we’re discussing were in the city at the time Eliza Malone disappeared,” Jackson said.
“But not at McLane House,” Dunhill said.
“No,” Dallas said. “And, of course, it wasn’t necessarily a man. I believe, however, that if we’re right, and if a very able-bodied young man like Lachlan was struck, and then set in a particular situation on a curb, and if a man was hurled off a balcony, it might have taken someone with considerable strength. And someone clever enough to make sure they weren’t seen—managing to take Eliza Malone without being seen, kill Lachlan Plant without being seen and get into and out of the Murphy place without being seen. Maybe when Eliza was killed, her murderer purposely placed her in the Murphy house, hoping that if she was found, the blame would fall on Ian Murphy, or someone else who had access to the house.”
“There’s very little hope we’ll find Simon Drake alive,” Joe Dunhill said. “I’ve followed the trail over and over again—it’s not much of a trail—from where he was last seen on the riverfront, and on to the Johnson Square area. The oddest thing is that we’re talking a number of blocks, and he was seen by Johnson Square, but we’ve also had some sightings of him by the Colonial Park Cemetery—we’ve had other sightings, of course, but there are a number of supposed sightings of him. I’ve searched half of Savannah, and...people try, but we don’t know what is true and not true.”
“I’ll walk around the cemetery area and see if...anything looks as if it’s freshly dug by the city, or if there is any odd disturbance in the ground around there,” Dallas said. “We’ll head out now—and put our concentration on Mr. Drake.”
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