Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon (4 page)

Liam turned to look at Ricky. He was rubbing the back of his head. It appeared that the man had seen the armor and backed himself into the edge of one of the display cases on the other side of the room.

“I swear to you, it moved!” Ricky told him.

He’d called for an ambulance. Even as Ricky stood, rubbing his head, and Liam checked all around the suit of armor, they heard the sound of a siren. Help was on its way.

Ricky winced, looking sheepish. “It moved. I’m telling you, it moved.”

“It’s dark down here, and you’ve heard all kinds of rumors about this place,” Liam said. He sighed, shaking his head. “Or maybe it did move, Ricky. Maybe a trespasser was in here, hiding behind the suit of armor, and when you knocked yourself out, he got away.”

Ricky’s mouth fell open. He was young, twenty-five years old. He was a good officer. Strong, usually sane and courteous. He could break up a barroom brawl like no other.

He protested weakly. “No…no, I would have seen a person.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, Lord, Lieutenant
Beckett, please…maybe we could not mention this?” he asked hopefully.

Liam was irritated; he might have just lost his chance of finding whoever had broken in. But he said, “I’m not going to say anything—hell, I don’t want half the idiots in this city starting all kinds of rumors about haunted houses and animated suits of armor. Let the paramedics check you out. Just say you crashed into the display shelf, and that’s what I’ll say, too. It’s the truth.”

He walked out. The paramedics were exiting their ambulance with their cases in their hands.

“It’s a knock on the head, self-inflicted,” Liam said. “I think he’s fine, but check him out, please.”

The paramedics nodded and headed for the house. A patrol car came sliding up to park beside the rescue vehicle. He sent the two officers inside, telling them to secure the residence before they left.

He stepped down to the lawn and looked back at the house. He felt the presence behind him and didn’t turn.

“Did you see anything?” he asked softly.

“No, I was with you,” Bartholomew said.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t like the place, if that’s what you mean.”

“Is there anything in it? Anyone?”

“I sense—something,” Bartholomew said.

“I’m telling you, this has to do with something human,” Liam said flatly. “Maybe. I’m
human,
” Bartholomew protested.

“You’re a ghost.”

“But I was human. Evil isn’t…it isn’t necessarily human.”

Liam groaned softly. “We both know that human beings are the ones who carry out physical cruelty and injury to one another.”

“Well, we don’t actually
know
everything,” Bartholomew said.

“If I were going to be hounded by a ghost,” Liam said, “you’d think it would be one who knew a little more about eternity.”

“There’s no one in the house now,” Bartholomew told him indignantly. “No one who isn’t supposed to be there. No one
human.
”

“Someone else was in that house tonight,” Liam said with certainty.

“I think so, too,” Bartholomew said.

“And now?”

“Whatever is in there isn’t human,” Bartholomew said quietly. “So, what now?”

There was nothing else to be done for the night.

“Now? Hell, I’m heading back for a new batch of fish and chips,” Liam said. But as he walked toward his car, he hesitated. It was dark now on the little peninsula. But there were three acres surrounding the house. There was a strip of beach on the property, and near that there were mangrove swamps and bits of pine and brush on higher ground. The house itself was built up on a large slab of coral and limestone, but surrounding it were dozens of places where someone could conceivably hide, or places where one might stash a small vessel like a canoe, or…

Hell. A decent swimmer could make it across to the mainland easily.

In the darkness, someone could hide with little chance of actually being discovered. He would need a helicopter and megalights to find someone in the night.

He made a mental note to get an electrician out there in the morning.

When he reached O’Hara’s, he found Katie, David and Jamie at a table, all dining on fish and chips themselves.

“Well?” David asked curiously.

“Teenagers,” he said.

“They mess anything up?” David asked.

“They were huddled together in the kitchen, terrified,” Liam said. “They thought the shadows were coming after them.”

Katie laughed. “I can well imagine that place at night. They must have been scared out of their wits.”

“Hey, that place is frightening to an adult,” Jamie O’Hara said.

Liam was surprised that Jamie might have ever found anything frightening. He was a solid man with gray hair, bright eyes, and the calm confidence that made him a good man in any situation and—in Key West—a good barkeep. He could stare down any man about to get in a brawl, and if a punch was thrown, he had the brawn to walk an unruly guest right out to the street.

He’d been both a friend—and something of a parental figure to all of them.

“Cutter Merlin was born and bred right here, and he was popular with folks when he was a young man. He
was our version of Indiana Jones, I suppose,” Jamie said. “When he got older, that’s when folks started talking about him. They said that he got himself into too many places that maybe he shouldn’t have gone. It wasn’t until his daughter died, though, that folks started saying that he might have been a Satanist, or a witch. Trying to explain that wiccans, or witches, practiced an ancient form of religion that had to do with nature and that Satanism meant worship of the Devil didn’t seem to go over. After his daughter died, people said everything in the world about him. He’d signed the Devil’s book. He held Black Masses. You name it, people said it.”

“He was a nice old man, and a great storyteller,” Katie said. “I was out there a few times. Kelsey is a few years older than me, but we were in a sailing class together, and we all went to her place for a picnic after the final day. Cutter was great. He dressed up in a suit of armor, then showed us how heavy it was and why a knight needed a squire. He was wonderful.”

Jamie shrugged. “Well, you know how people gossip, and you know how rumors start. People said that his daughter died because he’d signed a pact with the Devil—and that was why Kelsey’s father got her the hell out the minute he could after his wife passed away.”

“I wonder if it occurred to people that he might have been in tremendous pain—and that he wanted to raise his daughter without her having to remember how her mother had died on the stairs. A tragic accident,” David said.

Liam hesitated, thinking about the things the M.E., Franklin Valaski, had said the day before when he had
studied Cutter Merlin’s mortal remains and mentioned the man’s dying expression, comparing it to that of his daughter.

She had fallen, but her eyes were open, her lips ajar….

And Cutter had been found with a relic in his hands and the book in his lap.

In Defense from Dark Magick.

Just what the hell had the old bastard been up to?

“I wonder if Kelsey will come back?” Katie mused. “Actually, I wonder what she’s like now. Do you think she became a Valley girl?”

“I don’t know,” Liam said. He was curious. He wanted to see her. It had been a long time. Other women had come into his life, and other women had gone. She was the only one who had ever teased his memory in absence. “I don’t know,” he repeated with a shrug.

And he suddenly prayed that she had become a Valley girl, that she would stay away and that whatever cursed the Merlin house, human or
other,
would never touch Kelsey.

The next night, it was a dinner of shepherd’s pie that he had to leave. It had just arrived, and the call came from the station.

It was Jack again.

“Lieutenant, I know you found kids last night, and I can’t believe they’re back, but we’ve just gotten another call. This time it was from a tourist who is staying at a bed-and-breakfast across the way. He saw lights on at the Merlin house, and he’s certain he heard a scream.”

Liam set his fork down. “There are lights on because I had an electrician out. The lightbulbs are all new. I left a light on inside the living room, and one on the front porch.”

“Sir, the lights are coming from an upstairs bedroom. The lights didn’t bother Mr.—” Liam could hear papers rustling as Jack checked his notes “—Mr. Tom Lewis, from New York City. What bothered him is that he could swear he heard a scream.”

“All right. I’m going out,” he said.

He slid off his bar stool. He’d been alone thus far that night, though Katie was working her Katie-oke, and he knew that David would be in soon. Clarinda had taken his order and delivered his food. She came by as he stood. “I take it you’ll be wanting this reheated when you get back?”

He smiled at her. “Yep, thanks.”

“The Merlin house again?”

“Yep. What made you say that?”

She grinned at him. “You don’t usually leave your dinner for drunks on Front Street.”

He nodded, thanked her and assured her that he’d be back.

On the street, he looked for Bartholomew, but he didn’t see the ghost, who usually hovered near or around him. It disturbed him to realize that he wished that Bartholomew was around.

He wondered if he should call for backup, but decided that he would be able to see in the house that night, and he wanted to move in quietly himself.

So thinking, he parked out on the road and walked onto the property.

When he reached the house, he moved quietly up to the porch. When he touched the front doorknob, he carefully twisted it and once again found it open. He pressed it inward carefully, remaining as silent as he could.

To his surprise, he heard conversation coming from the kitchen. “Look, none of this stuff is worth stealing. I thought we could find some small thing that would bring in a few bucks, something that no one would notice, and maybe sleep a few nights in a place that wasn’t a hellhole,” someone said. “But there’s nothing. We’re going to take a shrunken skull? There aren’t even any amulets or anything on that ragtag excuse for a mummy. And guess what? I don’t like this place! It’s creepy and scary. That damned door opened as if the house was sucking us in!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is a house—that’s all there is to it. Things are things. The dead are dead, and I don’t know about you, but I’m certain there’s got to be something that doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds and can be sold easily,” said a second speaker. “He’s supposed to have all kinds of jewels, diamonds and so on.”

“You know what? You’re wrong. This is bad. I don’t feel good about taking anything out of this place. It may be cursed, you know?” said the first voice.

There seemed to be a slight hesitation between the two; Liam almost moved forward, but then the second speaker said, “All right, so the house is…weird. Creepy. We look fast, we get out—fast. Hey, I was always kind of close to old Merlin. Ran errands and stuff. He owes
me, honestly. So, nothing creepy will happen if we’re just careful about taking what we need, and not robbing the place blind.”

It was enough. Aware of his gun in its holster beneath his light cotton jacket, Liam stepped forward, walking casually into the kitchen.

The first man, with scraggly blond hair and a scruffy face, let out a startled yelp.

The second one spun around as if he were ready to pounce on the threatened danger; he saw Liam and backed down.

Liam knew them both.

The scruffy blond was Gary White, a guitar player who wasn’t bad, with a voice that, likewise, wasn’t bad. He could get work. Thing was, while he wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t
good.
That meant he didn’t work all that often, but he was still convinced that he’d get rich one day, that he’d be discovered in Key West. His last name fit him—his hair was so bleached out by the sun, it was platinum, nearly white.

The second man was Chris Vargas. He was dark haired, about a decade older than Gary, an inch taller, and he couldn’t play guitar at all. He had a beat-up old rickshaw, and made money running tourists up and down Duval Street. He had a home in a tiny apartment above the garage of a house on the south side of Old Town.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Liam asked tiredly.

Gary looked at Chris in alarm. His mouth began to work. “Uh—uh.”

That was all that he could come up with.

Vargas said, “Oh, hey! We saw lights in here. We knew that old man Merlin just died. We thought we’d better check it out.”

“Vargas, you ass, I just heard you talking,” Liam said.

Chris Vargas reddened. He was a lean, lithe man in decent shape from running up and down all the time with a fair amount of weight behind him. He could probably be dangerous, under certain circumstances, Liam decided. His features were sharp, like a little rat’s. He’d been scraping for a living too long, drinking to drown his unhappiness a few too many nights.

“All right,” the man said softly. “We—we weren’t after much, Lieutenant Beckett. Honest to God. Just some little thing.”

“And you were in here last night, too, trying to scare those kids to death, huh?” Liam asked.

“No, we were not in here last night!” Gary White said, indignant. He stood straight, and seemed really hurt at the accusation.

Liam looked at Chris Vargas. Vargas stared back at him, shaking his head emphatically.

“Oh, God, we’re under arrest, right?” Gary asked miserably.

“How did you get in?” Liam asked.

Gary looked puzzled. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. “Um—the door?”

“You walked in the front door. How? You picked the lock?” Liam asked.

“No, it wasn’t locked,” Gary assured him.

Liam believed him. Gary White was just a bit too dense to be a good liar.

“Look,” Vargas said, “we just walked in because—”

“You were robbing the estate,” Liam interrupted.

“Not really robbing,” White protested. “Just… Ah, come on, Lieutenant. If you heard us, you know that we’re just… All right, so we were going to take something really little. And, hell, we’re not bad. The kids in here the other night—those little bastards have broken into other places. They don’t steal, but they smoke pot, yeah, they smoke pot up in the rooms and play with all the stuff the snowbirds leave behind.”