In her apartment.
Kendall couldn’t figure out how she’d managed to invite him in when she didn’t even like him, but he was definitely there.
She lived on the first floor of a beautiful old house built in 1816, a large shotgun that provided the current owners with four rental units, two on each side of the hallway. Her door opened into the formal parlor, and the parlor opened onto a hall that passed both bedrooms, one of which she used as an office, and then ended in the kitchen and family room, both of which had been tastefully modernized. A long counter stretched across the back of the kitchen, separating it from the family room, which opened onto the courtyard. Rather than sliding glass doors, double French doors led out to a patio and yard, which had originally been the front of the house. An alley ran behind the picket fence that marked the property line, and there was still a gate; people had once come visiting by way of what was now the rear.
“Nice,” Aidan commented.
Since he was there, she had felt obliged to offer him a drink. Now he absently swirled Scotch in his glass as he stared out the back.
“It’s home,” she said.
“You own it?”
“I rent.”
“Your shop does well?”
“Yes.”
“I guess people really do come here to dabble in voodoo and the occult,” he said.
“Most people only do it for fun,” she told him.
He turned and walked back into the kitchen, where he perched on one of the bar stools.
“What about the people who don’t do it just for fun?”
She took a long sip of her own drink, vodka and cranberry. “Voodoo is a recognized religious practice.”
He lifted a hand, dismissing her comment. “I can go online and become a minister of half a dozen different religions. Doesn’t make them real.”
“Voodoo was the religion of Haiti. It’s a mix of old African religions and Catholicism. Its practitioners pray to, or through, the saints. They believe in a supreme being, in God.”
“And that they can injure a man by sticking a pin in a doll, and that a priest can bring people back from the dead as zombies.”
“Do you have a secret communication going with the Supreme Being, God, Allah, Jehovah, or whatever you want to call him—or her?” she asked.
He had the grace to smile at that. “It’s not people’s beliefs that worry me. It’s people who play off others’ beliefs.”
She shrugged. “I…don’t mean to insult you here—honestly—but I’m not sure why you’re so convinced there’s something terrible going on. Not just bones, but whole rotting bodies were floating in the Mississippi not so long ago.”
“I know. And it was a horrible tragedy.”
“We’re still picking up the pieces on a daily basis. It just takes time. Not a day or a week, or even a month or a year. It’s going to take years—plural. And a lot of commitment.”
“I know.”
“But you’re still convinced that something’s going on.” She flushed. “Besides bums living on the plantation and me not even being aware of it.”
He shrugged, and a rueful smile played across his lips as he lifted his glass to her. “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad about that. You were just two people, one of them old and dying, in a huge old house on a big piece of property. Hell, you didn’t have to be a caregiver, though I’m grateful that you were, and you sure as hell couldn’t have been a grounds-keeper, as well. So why does all this bother me? Call it a hunch. Or maybe the bone I found at the house only seemed suspicious because of the one I found earlier, by the river.”
“Bones can turn up anywhere in this area.”
“Yes, they can.”
“But…?”
“Tell me about Amelia,” he said, surprising her with the change of subject.
Kendall’s giant black Persian cat, Jezebel, chose that moment to walk in and rub against his legs, purring so loudly that Kendall could hear her from ten feet away.
She found herself almost leaping across the room to pick up the cat, silently chastising her. I guess I didn’t name you Jezebel for nothing, she thought, shooing the animal toward the front of the house as she set her down.
“That’s a beautiful animal,” Aidan commented.
“Thanks,” Kendall said curtly.
He didn’t comment on the fact that it seemed to bother her that her cat had been affectionate to him.
“Amelia?” he said.
“She was exceptionally kind to me—always. We had a bond, I guess. She was intelligent, sweet, a really fine woman. She died of cancer, though I guess the lawyer told you that.”
“She took a lot of morphine for the pain, I take it?” he asked.
Kendall nodded. “Yes,” she said warily, knowing exactly what he was implying.
“And she saw things?”
“Yes.” More wariness.