Ghost Moon

Page 16

Memories here were good.
She turned to walk out of the room and then paused, certain that she’d heard something. A rustling sound.
She turned back and waited. Nothing. She smiled at herself. She’d opened a window. The breeze was coming in. And right now, it smelled clean and just a bit salty.
She headed for the door again, but once there, paused once more. She’d had the oddest feeling that…
She was being watched.
She turned back.
She gave herself a mental shake.
There was no one there.
“It’s my house now, you know,” she said softly aloud. “And I will love it as Cutter did, and allow no evil!”
What a ridiculous assertion. And how bizarre to feel that someone was staring at her. It had to be the gold death-mask replica of King Tut.
But the death mask was a beautiful piece. Nothing evil about it.
She shook her head and determinedly left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.
5
Liam arrived at the Merlin house at five-thirty, just in time to see the house against the first pastel colors of the dying day.
It rose large and mysterious on the landscape, gray peeling paint and darker dormers giving it the look of something that lived and breathed.
He parked and, as he walked up to the house, he noted the open windows.
He knocked on the door and waited, then tried the knob.
It was open.
He entered and heard voices from the kitchen. He walked through the living room, noting that the floor had been swept, some of the clutter of boxes rearranged, and that it was already beginning to feel lived-in once again. He was still disturbed by the carelessness of the open door and windows.
Jonas, Katie and Kelsey were in the kitchen. They each had a bottle of beer and appeared to be happily chatting in a casual way.
Kelsey saw him enter the kitchen. He thought that her blue eyes were immediately guarded. She had been leaning on the butcher-block counter but straightened.
“The door was open,” he said. “I knocked, but no one heard me.”
“Liam!” Katie said, pleased to see him. She came to give him a kiss on the cheek. “It must be getting late, then. I’m out of here.”
“We’re going to dinner. Wouldn’t you like to come?” Kelsey asked.
“It’s a work night for me. I’ve been asking Uncle Jamie to bring someone else onto the floor so that Clarinda can take over for me more often, but Jamie isn’t a trusting soul. He keeps putting it off. He actually needs to bring in a few more people, but… Anyway, I’m going to go home and spend some quality time with David! See you all tomorrow, or later, if anyone is bored and wants to come by. Jonas, I know I’ll see you soon. ’Bye all,” Katie said and stepped around Liam.
“I’ll follow you out. And lock the door,” Liam said.
“I’m out of here, too,” Jonas said. “I’m going to go home and wake Clarinda up! She’s looking forward to a lighter schedule, too.”
“Thanks, both of you, for all the help,” Kelsey said.
“No problem. When I see you struggling, I’m your man,” Jonas said lightly.
Liam wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t make him particularly happy just then to think that Jonas lived so close to the house, he could literally see Kelsey anytime she came out the door. He should have been glad; friends should be close. Jonas was a friend.
He winced inwardly, wondering if he was seeing the man as a rival. Jonas and Clarinda had been together for years, so that was pretty foolish. Jealousy was not an attractive emotion. But he wasn’t certain he was jealous. He was uneasy. And he wasn’t sure why. He seemed to be making things up in his head.
But he had been the one to find Cutter Merlin dead, in the chair, his eyes wide open in fear.
“I’ll walk you both out,” he said lightly.
Kelsey followed him through the dining room and then parlor to lock the two out. She smiled at him, but he thought she still had a guarded look in her eyes.
“What?” she asked, when he had locked the door after the other two.
“Kelsey, you know what. Twice, I came here and people had broken in.”
She waved a hand in the air. “Liam, people knew that Cutter was dead, that the house was empty. An easy mark.”
“People know this place is a treasure trove,” Liam said.
She frowned, looking at him. “This house is my home, and I’m not going to set myself up to be paranoid to live here, Liam.” She lifted her hair, letting it fall on her neck again in an offhand manner. “Where did you have in mind to go?” she asked him.
“Nowhere—until we’ve gotten the windows closed again,” he said firmly.
She frowned, ready to protest.
“Please, Kelsey. Don’t be paranoid—do be responsible. I’ve had a lot of officers busy around here, you know, clearing out teenagers and opportunists,” he said.
“Sure. I’ll run upstairs, if you want to run around downstairs,” she conceded.
He nodded. He watched her head for the stairway, then decided to do a circle of the house himself.
Odd. When they had been kids, they had never thought about any kind of danger when Kelsey had forgotten her key and they’d crawled in through the broken screen in back, over the washer and dryer. Now the thought that the house was vulnerable in any way made him extremely unhappy.
He quickly secured the windows in the dining room, kitchen, laundry room and family room, and then went into Cutter’s office. He walked over and closed the one big window, securing the bolts on it. He paused, looking around the office. Even with the crates and boxes aligned between the desk and the window, there was something different about the room.
He thought about it a moment and realized that it looked lived-in. Naturally. It was where Cutter had spent most of his time.
He didn’t know why, because he knew what he had just done, but he went back to secure the window once again. He liked the room, but for some reason it gave him an uneasy feeling.
When he came out, he met Kelsey in the living room.
“All locked up,” she said cheerfully.
He tried to shake his feelings of tremendous unease, remembering that his life had not been particularly normal in the last year. His own grandfather’s death had brought David home, to answer an unsolved murder. Vanessa Loren had come to them specifically because of the brutal killing of her coworkers, and none of the mysteries had afforded easy answers, not to mention the fact that they had all been cast into extreme danger. Perhaps he had become so jaded and suspicious that he couldn’t even look at his friends with trust.
And if he kept behaving like a law-enforcement tyrant, there would be no reason for Kelsey to pay attention to anything that he had to say.
“Turtle Kraals?” he suggested. “It’s just across the bight.”
The Merlin house was on a tiny spit of land that was actually just a geographical feature of the bight. The bight was about a twenty-acre span in the bay—although the word itself came from the Old English byht, which meant bend, or a bay created by a bend. By the bight was a bigger bay, which confused many people.
The marina was close. Tourists boarded old schooners and other craft to sail in the bight.
The Merlin house still seemed remote.
“Turtle Kraals it is,” Kelsey agreed. “Shall we swim,” she asked with a grin, “or drive on over to the marina? Or walk?”
“We’ll play it lazy and drive,” he said.
In less than twenty minutes, they were seated in the restaurant.
Liam brought the gray plastic bag in with him, but didn’t mention it at first.
They both apparently knew the conversation was going to grow more serious, but they began with casual suggestions about food. “Conch chowder! I haven’t had any in ages,” Kelsey said.
“It’s good here, very good,” Liam said.
“Ah, fresh snapper. That sounds good,” Kelsey said.
“What are we having tomorrow?” Liam asked.
“Oh, everything I could think of!” she said. “They had fresh mahimahi, so I bought some fish. Ribs, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers…corn, salad, potato salad, baked beans, all kinds of stuff. A pack of desserts—you name it!”
“Well, then, snapper might be a nice choice tonight,” he said.
She nodded. Their waitress arrived, and they ordered. When the woman had gone, Kelsey stared at him. “All right. What’s in the bag?”
“Cutter’s belongings. Valaski, the medical examiner, gave them to me,” Liam said.
She didn’t reach for the bag. “Valaski,” she said softly. “He came when my mother died. I thought he was ancient then. But I was young.”
“He’s closing in on retirement. But he’s good at what he does,” Liam said. “He kept Cutter’s clothing for the mortuary,” he said.
She nodded. “He’ll have a viewing on Sunday night, and I’m having him buried in the family plot on Monday morning.”
“That’s good,” Liam said. He handed her the bag. She didn’t open it.
“Kelsey, when I found him, he was clutching the little casket in the bag, and a book titled In Defense from Dark Magick was on his lap,” Liam said.
“Oh?”
“Don’t you want to see them?” he asked. “Oh, and his watch and Masonic ring are in the bag, as well. I’m sure they will mean something to you.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
Their drinks and salads arrived. She took a long sip of iced tea, as if it were something alcoholic and might give her warmth and false strength.
He leaned toward her. “Kelsey, I didn’t want to tell you on the phone, but now I think you need to know. The reason I’m worried about you out there is because I think that Cutter… Well, I think that he was scared to death.”
“Liam, I’m not leaving the house.”
“Do you know anything about the book or the casket?” he asked her.
At last, she set her fork down and looked in the bag. She frowned. “I…think he had both for a very long time,” she said. “I remember that he used to keep the casket on his desk, and I know that the book was on one of the bookshelves.”