“Yes,” Devin agreed. “And you’ve got to figure that in three hundred years, someone must have fooled around and had an illegitimate child or two, or passed off her lover’s child as her husband’s. I mean, back then, there was no DNA.”
Jane laughed softly. “You mean we don’t know who was messing around with who when, and getting away with it.”
“More or less,” Devin said.
“But,” Jane pointed out, “I’m not sure that matters. Perception and belief are what count.”
A few minutes later, Jane let out a little cry. “Aha!”
“What?” Devin and Angela asked together.
“Actually, this one is kind of sweet,” Jane said. “Two of your friends can trace their ancestry back to one of your long-ago relations, in a roundabout way.”
“Who? And how?” Devin asked.
“Your old teacher, Gayle Alden, maker of pentagrams, can trace her mother’s lineage back to Mary Nottingham Beckett—sister of Margaret’s husband. And your BFF, Beth, can trace her ancestry back to Rebecca Beckett Masters, sister-in-law of Mary.”
“Hey! My turn for an ‘aha,’” Angela said.
“What did you find?” Jane asked.
Angela looked up. “I found another connection—and you’ll never guess who.”
“Who is it?” Jane asked.
“Brent Corbin and Vince Steward.”
“They didn’t even know each other until recently,” Devin said. “What’s the connection?”
“I can trace them back to a woman named Elizabeth Blackmire,” Angela said.
Devin and Jane looked at each other, and then back at Angela.
“And she was...?” Jane asked.
“She would have been the first accuser of a young woman named Margaret Myles Nottingham. Devin, the two of them had an ancestor who cried ‘Witch!’ against your ancestor. After she accused Margaret, the ‘afflicted’ girls started screaming her name, too. Elizabeth Blackmire would have sent Margaret Nottingham to Gallows Hill—if she’d lived long enough to get there.”
16
Rocky finished showing the photos to the bar staff, though he didn’t learn anything from the two waitresses that Judah hadn’t already told him, and headed to the station to meet up with Jack Grail.
“What do you think?” Rocky asked, leaning back in his chair in front of Jack’s desk. “I keep remembering the night Melissa died. He came to my house, and he was being Vince—you know, kind of a teenage jerk. But I don’t know where he was before he showed up.”
“I showed up at your house, too,” Jack reminded him.
“Yeah, you did,” Rocky agreed, meeting his eyes with a level stare.
“You were there alone till we got there,” Jack said.
“Yeah, I was.”
“I was having dinner with my parents. You can ask them,” Jack said.
“And I know I didn’t do it, so...”
“God, Rocky, do we really suspect Vince?” Jack asked.
Before he had a chance to respond, Rocky’s phone rang. It was Devin. He answered it quickly.
She was fine, she said. The three of them were still together, digging through the archives. She told him about the discoveries they had made, and he asked her if he could put their call on speaker so Jack could listen, too.
When they hung up a few minutes later, Jack looked at Rocky. “So, that’s interesting. Vince and Brent Corbin. And yet it really does look like someone was trying to set Corbin up. We searched his home, his business, his vehicle—no evidence anywhere, and not a drop of blood on his athame, so that clearly wasn’t the murder weapon. Can it really be Vince?” He looked sick. “If this three-hundred-year-old connection means anything, why would Vince set up someone he’s related to? Although I doubt he even knows he’s related to Corbin.”
“I’ll talk to him and see what I can find out,” Rocky said. “According to a bartender who has no reason to lie, Vince was there that night—and it was busy enough that he could have taken Barbara’s cell phone off her table and dropped it into Brent’s pocket without anyone noticing.”
Jack shook his head. “When we were kids, I wouldn’t have thought Vince was smart enough for anything like this, but then he went through law school, so maybe we were all taken in.... No. Can’t believe it.”
Rocky stood. “I’m going to talk to him.”
*
When they left the archives, Jane, Angela and Devin headed to her cottage. While neither agent drew a gun when they got out of the car, Devin noticed that they were alert and ready.
She sincerely doubted that anyone was just waiting around her house to attack her when she showed up, but there was still something reassuring about having two FBI agents keeping her company.
They’d been talking in the car, and she’d been interested to discover that neither woman had intended to be a “ghost hunter” or even enter law enforcement.
As they headed in so she could feed Poe, they talked about some of the other Krewe members, assuring Devin that she’d like them all.
“They’re just regular people,” Jane said