The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage at Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about the place for the past six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club like that in an old church!
The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown grave sites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.
Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.
Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about the earthly remains of the long dead.
Not the newly deceased.
At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. That was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archaeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s one night a month as long as she could remember.
When she’d seen him enter today looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch, and she’d sat with him so she could try to calm him.
“Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them.
Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert personally. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.
Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.
“I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find a body. Still, John Shaw worked with the dead all the time—the long dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.
But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.
He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently murdered.
“I was—I am—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built Saint Paul’s to accommodate folks farther north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built Saint Augustine’s for those a little north of Saint Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, until about seventy-five years ago, there was an entrance to the catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground outside, so most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves. Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart, and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”
He sipped his scotch again and looked at Kieran intently. “You’re not to say a word, not yet. The police...they asked me not to speak about this until...until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents is living, but she must have family...” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome!”
Once again he picked up his glass and swallowed the scotch in a gulp.
Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.
She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.
She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. It had all started as they danced around each other following a diamond heist. They were both assigned to the case, but Kieran’s involvement had been more than a little complicated. They’d progressed to each having a dresser drawer at the other’s apartment, and were now talking about moving in together.
While she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, but that hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.
And trusting her beloved brothers to behave wasn’t easy. They were never malicious; however, their ways of helping friends out of bad situations weren’t always the best.
Then again, she’d met Craig because of the Capeletti diamond and Danny’s determination to do the right thing...
And because of some criminal clientele.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to John, assuming that Craig had come to see her.
The door was still open; he stood in a pool of light, and her heart leaped as she saw him. Craig was, in her mind, entirely impressive, tall and broad-shouldered, with extraordinary eyes that seemed to take in everything.
But he had not, apparently, come to see her.
He greeted Kieran with a nod, held her shoulders for a minute—and then offered her a grim smile as he gently set her aside so he could move past her.
Something was up. Craig spent his free time here with her and her family. Her friends, coworkers and the usual clientele all knew that Craig and Kieran were a couple.
Today, however, there wasn’t even a quick kiss. Craig was being very official.
He was heading straight to the booth where John Shaw was seated.
Kieran stood there for a minute, perplexed.
Jeannette Gilbert had been killed, but as a local woman her death should’ve remained a matter for the New York City Police Department, not the FBI. And John Shaw had left the body less than an hour ago.
Why would Craig be here so quickly? And more to the point, why was the FBI involved?
She didn’t get a chance to slide back into the booth and find out what was going on; she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.
Her brother Kevin was next to her. He was a striking man—in anyone’s opinion, she thought. He was tall and fit, with fine features, dark red hair and deep blue eyes. They were twins, and it showed.
“I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“Sure,” she said.
“Not here. In the office,” he told her. To her surprise, he glanced uneasily at Craig, whom he liked and with whom he was pretty good friends.
Kevin whirled her and headed her down the entry aisle toward the bar, and then to the left and down the hallway to the business office. He peered in, as if afraid their older brother might be there, since it was, basically, Declan’s office.
He closed the door behind them.
“She’s dead, Kieran! She’s dead!” Kevin said, looking at her and shaking his head with dismay and anxiety.
She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t be talking about Jeannette Gilbert—no one knew that she’d been found at the church yet, not according to John Shaw.
Her heart quaked with fear. She was afraid he was talking about an old friend, or a longtime customer of the pub.
Someone he cared about deeply.
“Kevin, who?” she asked.
“Jeannette.”
She frowned. “Jeannette Gilbert?”
He nodded.