Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (12 page)

Taryn read through the letter three times before picking up
the phone and calling Matt.

She’d had a night full of bad dreams again. Once again she’d been in a locked room, dark and dusty and cramped. A small beam of light had shone through a tiny hole but the miniature ray was only enough to be mocking. She’d thrown herself against the sides that closed in around her and cried, scratching at the wood until she felt her fingernails break and her fingers bleed. Nobody had come to help her.

When she’d finally woken up, drenched in sweat, she’d turned on every light in the house. Then she’d sat in the living room for hours, just flipping through the television stations, one channel after another.

And then the letter came.

Matt picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?” Taryn thought he sounded distracted. She figured she must have caught him on his way out the door and felt guilty about bothering him with more of her problems.

“Hey, you got a minute?” she asked.

“Yes, for you. What’s up my queen?” As a child she’d pretended she was the Queen of Sweden, having no authority on the Swedish royal family, or if there even was one at all.

“I got a letter from that attorney up in New Hampshire,” she replied. “Aunt Sarah’s house?”

“Everything okay?”

Taryn sighed; the piece of paper still caught between her fingers. “There was a storm and some damage from trees. He gave me an estimate to have it fixed, but I can’t afford it. I don’t have any money. I don’t know that I will ever have that kind of money.”

“How much do you need? I’ve got some,” Matt replied casually.

Taryn was mortified. “Good Lord, Matt, I wasn’t calling you for money. To be honest, I thought I might want to just go ahead and sell it. I can’t get it fixed and I don’t want to let it sit there and fall into ruin.”

The idea made her miserable, though. She’d loved her aunt, possibly one of the only people in her family who’d ever understood her, other than her grandmother. Sarah had been a bit of an enigma. She was her mother’s sister, a woman who rarely socialized and lived in her big old farm house alone in the “New Hampshire wilderness,” as Taryn’s father referred to it. Taryn hadn’t seen her in years but had fond memories of visiting her aunt as a child. She’d meant to return as an adult but put it off year after year until she’d received the letter from the attorney, informing her of her aunt’s death and how she was sole inheritor.

Sarah had died a year ago, but Taryn still hadn’t been up to the house. A property manager was taking care of it and it had been winterized while vacant. Now she knew it was time to do something about the place, though. The idea of letting it go, of having nothing of her family’s that belonged to her, bothered Taryn greatly. No bank in their right mind was going to lend her any money with the kind of job she had, though, so a loan was most certainly out. The only thing she owned was her car and it was on its last legs, so to speak.

“Let me think about it,” Matt said at last. “I might be able to come up with something.”

“I think I should go up there and at least look at it,” Taryn replied. “See what all has happened to it myself. Maybe it’s not as bad as he made it out to be.”

“I think it would be good for you to visit her house and get some closure,” he agreed.

Taryn realized with a start that she desperately needed that connection with her family. It was ironic that she spent her time chasing ghosts and visiting graves of people she’d never known and yet had done virtually nothing about her own family member’s passing.

“I’ll look at some airline tickets and see if I can’t take some time off,” she replied. “You want to fly up there with me?”

“It depends on when you go,” Matt said. “We’re kind of knee deep in this project at the moment, and I just don’t want to go off and leave my students right now. They have a good grasp of what we’re doing but they’re not there quite yet–not where I’m comfortable with them being.”

Taryn had to laugh to herself. Matt’s “students” were only a year or two younger than him and yet he’d always acted older and wiser than everyone else. It was both charming and annoying.

“I’ll call you later,” she said. “I’ve got to get out of the house for a little while and try to work. I think I’m going to be done in about two weeks if all goes well.”

“Alright. I’ll be here. I love you!” he sang cheerfully.

“Um, you too,” she replied awkwardly.

Matt, not caring so much
how
she said it as long as she did, happily hung up on his end.

Taryn had never been great at telling anyone how she felt. Her parents were aloof and distant when they were alive and for the majority of the time her connection with her grandmother had allowed them to communicate without the use of words. Now, twisting the ring on her finger that belonged to the woman who’d mostly raised her, Taryn could feel her eyes swimming with tears.

“I wish you were still here,” she murmured aloud the words that she thought at least a dozen times a day.

Ivy House
was starting to accept her, Taryn firmly believed it. It might not be rolling out the “Welcome” mat for her, but it wasn’t slamming doors or breaking glass in her direction anymore and that was an improvement.

“So what’s your secret?” she asked loudly, dipping her brush into a smudge of blue on her palette. “What do you guys want from me?”

“Are you talking to your paint or your canvas?”

Taryn recognized David’s voice at once and looked up and smiled. He moved with an almost unnatural grace, light as a feather despite his height and muscles.

“To whatever will answer me I guess,” Taryn replied, smiling.

David walked up to her and studied her work. “Nice! You
do
have a talent for this.”

“Well, that’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she joked. “So what brings you here?”

“Just trying to walk off some steam,” he replied, shaking his head.

She could see the flashes of frustration in his eyes and winced. “Bad day?” she asked sympathetically, thinking of the attorney’s letter.

“I don’t know. You at a stopping point or anything? I could use a friendly ear.”

She really
wasn’t
at a “stopping point” but had so few friends that she hated to turn down a request for something that might momentarily offer her companionship, even if it was artificial.

It took her a few minutes to wrap everything up and cover her canvas but soon they were walking along the path by the river, dodging bicycles and sweltering tourists.

“So what’s up?” Taryn asked when they came to a bench and he motioned her to sit. The marsh spread out before them, lush and green. Once again Taryn was struck by the vividness of everything on the island.

“I had that meeting with the project manager that I was telling you about,” David began.

“And I’m assuming that it didn’t go well?” Taryn prodded.

David shrugged and swept back his long hair until it fell down behind them, nearly touching the ground. “It
should
have. He said all the right things, acted in all the right ways…”

“But you don’t believe him.”

David exhaled loudly, his brow furrowing in deep lines. “Not in the slightest. Most of these companies? They don’t care about the history, about what they might be uncovering or disturbing. Sure, they make their donations to the museums, usually just for the big tax write-offs, and
claim
to be environmentalists or whatever but…I don’t know. You know those sea turtle signs you see all around here and how they tell us not to bother the eggs?”

Taryn nodded. She’d seen a lot of them on the beach.

“You know that if they were out there digging around and came across a nest of eggs they’d probably cover them up. Or else they’d throw them away instead of telling someone if they thought it would cost them an hour or two of work.”

“My, my, you’re a cynical one,” Taryn laughed in spite of herself.

David snorted. “Yeah, well, I’ve seen a lot. You know that airport over on St. Simon’s Island?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t, not really, but thought she’d go with it.

David grimaced. “When they were digging up the ground to build it they found a Native burial site and village with thousands of artifacts. Just dug them up and put them in a big pile. No official excavation was done at the time. Who knows what else could be under there. Of course, that was back before we had certain laws and regulations but still…”

“I know,” Taryn said. “I see it a lot in my work, too. They just kind of keep quiet and move on. Makes you wonder what the future generations are going to do with
our
graveyards.”

“Well, in my family we’re cremated and given back to the earth we came from,” David explained. “I like to think that’s also the environmentalist in us talking.”

“So are you going to leave now that you’ve met with him?”

David pursed his lips and stared straight ahead. She could feel a mixture of sadness, irritation, and excited energy radiating from him. It was the first time in a long time she’d met someone who felt so…alive. A small shrimp boat was gliding past them, the nets raised up in the air. It looked like a picture and Taryn had the urge to paint it. There were lots of things on the island she’d like to paint, but first had to finish the job she was actually being paid for.

“Not yet,” he replied at last. “I’ve got at least another week or two here. They just broke ground, and I want to be on hand in case anything turns up. It’s a small island and people will talk, whether they want them to or not. If I have to stay on for awhile even without being paid I will.”

Taryn appreciated his stubbornness. She also had a fairly good feel for people, though, and while she wasn’t as sensitive as she’d like to be, there was still something about David that she couldn’t put her finger on. She got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t telling her everything. “Are you expecting to find something?” she teased him. “Are you aware of something that’s there and just not sharing it with the rest of us?”

David laughed then, a full rich sound that carried through the air. “No, no, I don’t know anything right now. I swear. But I have a hunch. Haven’t you ever had one about a place?”

He turned and looked at her then, a searing gaze that made her uncomfortable. She could have sworn that he was looking
into
her and not just
at
her. Changing the subject at once, she moved on to the books she’d bought the day before and what she’d learned so far.

“And anyway,” she finished after a lengthy rambling on the early history of the settlers, “this island has seen an awful lot.”

“Well that’s for sure,” he agreed, his face more relaxed now. “Is that the book you bought?” He pointed at the edge of the volume sticking out from her knapsack.

“Yep, that’s it.”

“I’ve read it; it’s a good one.

“It’s wild to think that at one time this was almost a jungle and yet these prim and proper people were over here trying to build mansions and cultivate a proper society out of it,” Taryn mused. “We always want to turn a new place into what we’re familiar with instead of learning to adapt to what we find.”

“And then there were people who did learn to adapt and swing the other way,” David said with a glint in his eyes.

“Huh?”

“Well,” David laughed, “a long time ago when this
was
a true wilderness people were swayed to do things they might have never done otherwise. Let me see that book of yours.”

Taryn handed him the thick volume and watched with curiosity as he thumbed through it. “I know you’re not as interested in the early history of the island as you are with the later stuff, but check this out. This is from a letter Lady Oglethorpe wrote her husband in 1734:

“
Since your departure, my dearest husband, all the pigs have escaped into the dreadful wilderness about us, and we fear daily that thay will be captured and eaten by the savages.  The Chief,
 
Altamaha, and his band, are still upon the island, and yesterday he came and begged tobacco and sugar, and also demanded of me our maid servant
 
Elizabeth
 
as his wife, much to her astonishment and terror.  He was dressed in all his barbaric finery, painted and bedaubed in as many colors as the coat of Joseph, and decorated with feathers, bear’s claws, and bright colored shells, as befitted a man equipped for female conquest.  The wretched pagan has already three wives, whom he treats worse than beasts of burden, and I think this somewhat influenced
 
Elizabeth, as, had he been unmarried, the prospect of being a queen, even of the wild and savage Tuscaroras, might have moved her.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Taryn snickered, the force of the gaiety shaking her and almost making her double over. “I can totally envision that. This woman being aghast at the marriage proposal from this ‘savage’ and yet, at the same time, thinking ‘
Heeeyyy
! Maybe I’ll get to be Savage Queen!’”

David closed the book with a smirk. “People don’t change much. The lure of riches and position can sway just about anyone.”

“Boy, isn’t that the truth,” Taryn agreed, settling back onto the bench and looking out at the water again. The sun was high in the sky, the rays soaking into her skin, but instead of the heat being oppressive she felt relaxed and at peace. She’d do her best to enjoy it, no matter how brief the sensation was.