But it wasn’t to be. It was ironic that she’d finally met someone she was interested in and he wasn’t interested in her, but that was that. He’d made his opinion of her clear, and she wasn’t about to make a complete fool of herself by throwing herself at him. She would keep on being polite, and she would never give up her friendship with his sister-in-law—or his brothers, for that matter.
She stretched, sighed and took hold of the sheets, ready to throw them back and get up to face the day.
She touched something in her bed and frowned then gasped, incredulous at what she found.
A corn husk. A single brown corn husk caught in her sheets.
2
“Jeremy?”
He looked up, and was quick to feel a surge of annoyance. Rowenna Cavanaugh. Author, speaker and historian—and advocate of the powers of the mind. Her books were popular, he knew. She wrote about places to go where strange events had been documented, abandoned prisons and mental hospitals, historic battlefield sites and the like. She never came right out and said that ghosts or anything else otherworldly existed, only that no one had proved they didn’t. She had come to town to debate paranormal possibilities with him as a way to publicize last night’s Halloween benefit for Children’s House. Their regular radio debates had been popular, and ticket sales and donations had soared.
This would be their last on-air appearance, though.
He was proud of everything he’d done to establish the local branch of Children’s House, a special home for displaced children, something he had given himself to wholeheartedly when he had left the Jacksonville police and his position as a forensic diver to work as a private investigator in partnership with his brothers. Their inheritance of the Flynn plantation, outside the city, had kept him around, along with his charity, but now the trust fund had reached a substantial amount and was being run by local agencies, and the plantation was thriving, with his older brother, Aidan, and his sister-in-law, Kendall, in residence. Zach, their youngest brother, had already headed home to man their Florida office, and as for himself…he was ready to take some time off. Head to the islands for diving that had nothing to do with work or death. Drink sweet concoctions filled with fruit while he sat on a beach.
He wanted to reply curtly to Rowenna, but he refrained. He didn’t know why she’d instantly gotten his back up.
She was a stunning woman. Her hair was nearly pitch-black, her eyes strikingly amber. Not hazel. Not brown. Amber, like gold, and shaded by ridiculously thick lashes. She was both tall and slim, but curved in every place where a woman should have curves. Her voice had a husky quality that reeked of sensuality, perfect for public speaking.
Too bad they weren’t on television. No, thank God they weren’t on TV. No one would even notice he was there, nor would they give a damn what she was saying. They would nod at anything, drooling on the floor all the while.
So what’s your problem? he mocked himself.
Their debates had been sponsored by various businesses; the sponsorship money went straight to the charity. They’d been going on for two weeks, and he felt that he knew her fairly well from a distance, if that made any sense. The distance was something he had imposed.
Maybe it all had to do with everything that had gone on out at the plantation a year ago.
Rumor said the property was haunted. At first, it had been part of the charm of the place. Now he was sick of it. He adored his sister-in-law, and no way was he going to get into a fight with her over her belief in ghosts or what she had been through out in the family burial ground. But as far as he was concerned, the bad things in this world were brought to light not because of voodoo, mysticism, ESP or any other hocus-pocus.
He believed in hard work, science, logic and intelligent investigative techniques. The work of forensic scientists combined with detectives going door to door, wretched hours in stakeouts and a mind trained to slip into the psyches of others. Those things solved crimes. A crime scene was simple. A killer always took something away with him and always left something behind. Not every case was solved, but the ones that were all got solved in the same way. The lost were found by retracing footsteps, by detecting liars, peeling away layers of subterfuge until the truth was at last laid bare.
Any psychic was simply damned lucky—and probably smart enough to detect and follow clues—to solve a murder or pick up the trail of a kidnapper.