In the grand scheme of things, coffin theft was morally reprehensible but not on a par with red-handed murder. She thought of some of the city’s genuinely gruesome history. Under Spanish rule, executions had been carried out by the garrote. It wasn’t a particularly bloody death—not like the spray of blood that accompanied the falling blade of the guillotine—but it was a painful one. The rope around the neck was tightened twist by twist. Onlookers in the square often bet one another on how many twists it would take a man to die. Luckily that particular tradition disappeared at some point as the city burned to the ground, and went from Spanish rule to British, then back to Spanish, until Florida finally became part of the United States.
More recently, the city had had to cope with the notoriety of what they called “the murder house.” In a nice part of town, in the nineteen-seventies, two neighbors had gone at one another. Witnesses—who all mysteriously died or went mute before the trial—saw the owner of the house on the left emerge and slit the throat of the woman who lived on the right. He’d been furious with her for the insults she’d thrown at him after he’d called an animal control agency to take away the menagerie she’d kept in her yard. The murderer had lots of friends in high places, and once the witnesses disappeared, the charges against him were dismissed and he moved away. If anyone had a reason to haunt a house, it was that poor woman who had been so brutally murdered on her own front steps, but as far as Sarah knew, the people now living in the house had never experienced a single spectral incident.
In comparison, the skeletons of people who’d died naturally were nothing, even if they had ended up in the wall of her house. They made for a good story and some lively conversation, nothing else. But she did want to know the whole story of what had happened. It was her house, after all.
With that thought uppermost in her mind, she looked around and realized she’d reached the museum.
The morning traffic on I-95 heading north from St. Augustine to Jacksonville was light. Once Caleb neared the city, he took the 295 extension leading around the downtown area and toward the airport, which was north of the city center. The car rental agency he was seeking was just half a mile from the airport. When she had arrived in Jacksonville a year ago, Jennie Lawson had deplaned, waited for her luggage and boarded a courtesy shuttle for the rental agency.
Then she had driven away in her rental car and disappeared. There was no record on her credit cards of any later purchase, and the car she had rented, a silver Altima, had never been found.
He cautioned himself to be methodical, to start at the beginning and, no matter how tedious and repetitious, get the facts straight before he started trying to extrapolate his way to a conclusion.
Those were simple rules of any investigation, and Caleb always followed them.
As he drove, he tried to keep his mind on the case, but he couldn’t help it: his mind kept wandering back to yesterday, and all those bones.
They’d been the unknowing victims of a mortician’s greed, pure and simple. Another ghoulish story to add to the repertoires of the multitude of ghost tours that wound through the city by night.
Nothing to do with the real tragedies of two missing girls, at least one of them presumed dead.
Caleb wondered why the chronologically separate cases seemed linked together somehow—if only in his mind. And then there was the house where the long-dead bodies had been found. He had felt drawn to it from the moment he had seen it. A natural fondness for architecture? No, definitely something more. Something instinctive had made him stop in front of the house and study it.
Maybe instinct had something to do with his fascination with the house’s owner, as well. Sarah McKinley was decidedly attractive. But he was equally drawn by her ability to speak, and her fascination with history and people.
But he was here because of Jennie Lawson, he reminded himself. He needed to forget about the bones in the wall and get his mind back on his assignment. Jennie hadn’t disappeared into thin air. He had to find out what had happened to her.
Caleb parked outside the rental agency, strode inside and took his place at the end of the line, which at least moved quickly. When he got to the front, he asked the cheerful young woman at the counter—who wanted to offer him an upgrade before he even got out a word—if he could speak with the manager. She immediately looked crestfallen, as if she hadn’t been cheerful enough. He explained that it was about a previous rental, and she directed him to a small glassed-in office to the left. The manager rose, looking concerned as Caleb entered, but he offered a hand and introduced himself as Harold Sparks. Sparks looked at Caleb suspiciously after studying his credentials and shook his head. “The cops were all over us about this a year ago. I wish I could help, but I can’t tell you a thing.”
“Would it be possible to speak with the rental agent she saw?” Caleb asked. He had taken out his notebook, and now he looked down at the page. “Mina Grigsby.”
The other man’s jaw tightened. “She’s been through this before, too.”