Red-and-blue lighting had been designed to cast eerie shadows over the graveyard that stretched to the side and the rear of the mausoleum.
Music began to play, macabre funeral music. It drifted around the tombstones and decaying mausoleums of the dead. The late-October breeze, shifting the fallen leaves, only added to the effect. “That’s your stage set,” Grace said cheerfully. “So to speak. When you see one of the guides directing a group, you just take a walk around the tomb. Don’t crack any smiles. And don’t touch anyone and don’t let anyone touch you.”
“Got it,” Mo assured her.
She took her position leaning against the tomb. She could hear screams from inside the mortuary, so she knew it had all begun. As she waited, she looked across the burial ground.
A man sat atop one of the tombstones, casual and smiling. He was dressed in Revolutionary garb and resembled Major Andre. He appeared to be amused by the evening as he watched the other ghosts take their places.
She’d thought the Andre character was supposed to be in the mortuary, in the historic ghost area.
And then she understood that she wasn’t seeing an actor; the ghost of Major Andre was sitting on the tomb.
A sound left her throat, and she started forward, ready to speak to him.
He turned and the amusement fled his face as he stared at her. He whispered something, lifting one hand.
There was a strange expression on his face.
As if he’d realized she was alive, just as she had realized he was dead.
His lips seemed to form a single word. She couldn’t hear him across the distance, but she thought the word was a name.
Lizzie.
A light waved across the path that wound through the small burial ground. People were coming, laughing, jumping and shrieking as they passed another of her coworkers.
Major Andre was gone.
The crowd came closer. In her long white gown and veil she eased around the corner of the mausoleum and began her slow walk.
A startled scream told her she’d been seen. And appreciated.
The night wore on, and periodically she continued her ghostly walks.
She kept looking for what seemed to be the fun-loving specter of Major Andre.
He did not reappear.
*
When the cell abruptly cut out, Aidan asked Purbeck to send the closest patrol car, afraid something was happening that needed immediate action. When he and Sloan arrived at the club, the two patrol officers were at the back of the room—enjoying the show. They were obviously embarrassed, stumbling a little in their speech, but told Aidan that they’d found the manager and all the girls, and everyone was fine. They’d explained to the employees that they’d come in response to an anonymous call and that they were there to make sure everyone was all right.
“Nothing’s going on, Agent Mahoney,” one officer said.
“We checked everyone who was supposed to be working today, from the girls to the waitstaff and the bouncers,” the other uniformed officer told him. “All accounted for.”
While Aidan was getting info from the officers, Sloan had gone off to meet with the manager. Timothy Bolton was a man of about forty who’d clearly been in the business too long. He didn’t so much as blink when topless girls went by, didn’t even seem to notice.
Grinning inwardly, Aidan realized he didn’t quite feel the same. Many of the showgirls here were stunning.
He could appreciate their beauty objectively, but he felt a little...numb. These women were definitely attractive and sexy, yet he wasn’t particularly stirred by any of them. The face that appeared before him, in his mind, was that of Maureen Deauville. He remembered the wariness she had often shown toward him—his own fault—and he remembered her as she stood on the hill, looking down when they’d found the woman’s head on another effigy. She had seemed like an ancient goddess standing there, or a long-ago queen saddened by the depravity of the people in her kingdom.
Mo Deauville was different. The kind of different he didn’t need. He’d already been transferred into a unit that dealt with the unusual, and that was enough. More than enough.
“You’re welcome here, Agent Mahoney. The second crew told me you were in the other night, too. I’d really like to help you. This is terrible. Not only that, it’s going to hurt every business out there—especially the ‘haunted’ venues, you know.” Aidan could see that Debbie had gone onstage. She was evidently fine.
He turned to Bolton, pulling his smartphone from his pocket and bringing up the newest likeness Jane Everett had created—the one that was being shown on the news.
“We’re still looking for our Jane Doe,” Aidan said.
“A John Doe I could probably help you with more,” Bolton responded dryly.
“But what about this woman?”
He handed his phone with Jane’s image of the dead woman on the screen to Bolton. The man’s face immediately paled. “Wendy,” he managed. As Aidan had assumed, Debbie hadn’t told anyone at the club, certainly not her bosses.
“You do know her.”