“Yes, Zach came in and mentioned something about it,” she said.
“They’re not scared, right? Anything else weird happening out there?” Vinnie asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing last night,” she said casually.
This morning, though, she added silently, I thought I saw a ghost.
“You know, that story about the cousins is supposed to be true,” Mason said. “So somewhere along the line, you should be hearing the neighing of horses and the clash of sabers or something.”
“The Flynn cousins shot each other,” Vinnie said. “No sabers.”
“Hey, Vinnie,” Kendall said. “Is there anything in that story about a man of mixed blood?”
“Oh, no, she’s being haunted by the ghost of the caretaker!” Vinnie exclaimed with a laugh.
“I’m not being haunted by any ghost. I was just trying to remember the whole story. I remember the part about the Union soldiers attacking Fiona, and that’s why she jumped off the balcony.”
“Fiona, huh?” Mason teased.
“That was her name, I’m pretty sure,” Kendall said. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to admit, even to the two of them, that she had borrowed the old diary from the attic.
“Well, as a matter of fact,” Vinnie said, “the caretaker’s name was Henry. And he was a man of mixed blood. When everyone wound up dead, the soldiers who had been there ran back into the city. Henry had been with the family for years, but he was a free man. And he rescued the baby—Fiona and Sloan’s baby—who was the ancestor of Amelia. And the Flynn brothers, too, of course.”
All this talk of history made Kendall think about Sheila again. Shelia and the laughing card. Death.
Sheila was dead, she suddenly thought with complete certainty.
No! Sheila was on vacation; she would be back this weekend.
The bell above the door tinkled. “Customers,” she said firmly, forcing herself away from the scary direction her thoughts had taken.
The graveyard was a mess.
Aidan, dirty, sweaty and frustrated, sat on one of the low sarcophagi and stared around.
He’d dug some pretty deep holes.
He’d found four old graves in which the old wooden coffins had completely decayed and only skeletons remained.
He was certain that the work crew, glancing over now and then from the house, must think they were employed by a complete lunatic.
He was searching for a needle in a haystack, he knew. All the skeletons he had uncovered so far had been intact.
He had refilled the graves, and in doing so, he had discovered that many of the graves had shifted. Even if there were a plan for the graveyard, something that didn’t seem to exist, it would be no help in showing him where all the bodies were. Trying to discover if the thighbone had indeed come from an old skeleton didn’t seem like a logical plan.
But even as he sat there, he kept thinking that there was something he should be discovering here.
Jimmy had said that the ghosts came out in the cemetery.
He had found what he was certain was dried blood on a gravestone.
There was something here.
What was the connection between the plantation, Kendall’s shop, the bar where Vinnie played and a girl who had disappeared?
Maybe there was no connection. Or not a meaningful one, anyway. Sure, Vinnie had walked Jenny back to where she had been staying. But another guest had verified the fact that she had changed clothes and gone out again to meet someone.
He thought about what he knew about people, what he had seen and learned over the years. He didn’t believe that Vinnie would have been quite so forthcoming if he were guilty.
Not to mention that he didn’t even know if the ten missing women whose cases Zachary had found were related.
What did he really have so far?
Two human bones—that might or might not be recent. The knowledge that at least one young woman had disappeared from New Orleans without a trace.
A pattern of disappearances most probably from the same area, a pattern that had been escalating in the last few years.
And a nightmare in which a sea of dismembered corpses clutched at him and a woman in white begged for help.
He still felt the answer or at least a crucial clue lay buried somewhere in this graveyard, but it was getting late, and he had to give it up for the day.
As he walked back into the house, covered with dirt, even Zachary looked at him strangely.
“Don’t ask,” he told his brother.
“I won’t. I’m heading into the city now to get ready for Jeremy’s deal tonight.”
“I’ll see you there,” Aidan told him.
Upstairs, he showered again and dressed for the night. He walked back down to the formal dining room and looked at the family paintings and photos on the wall. Amelia had been captured in her mature years; she was a handsome woman still, slim, with a brilliant smile and a face lined with experience.
“I would deeply appreciate if you wouldn’t haunt my dreams,” he told the woman in the painting.