He winced and tightened his grip on her shoulders. “All right, here’s what I think. Something terrible happened here years ago. Maybe that housekeeper, Martha Tyler, conned people into believing she had some kind of power, like the tricks Marie LeVeau used in New Orleans. She would listen. She would get people to tell her things they didn’t even know they were telling her. That way, she could tell one heartbroken woman that there was nothing she could do to help, then tell another that she could help her win the man of her dreams. She would have mixed her potions and convinced people of their efficacy, and maybe she even had a certain power of her own. But, she couldn’t have been working alone.”
“Brennan,” Sarah said. “Brennan was working with her. She worked for him, not Cato—he was the one who brought her here. He got here ahead of the Union occupation, and old Mr. MacTavish needed money, so he took him in as a boarder. And then Brennan talked MacTavish into using the house as a funeral parlor. MacTavish would have been willing to do anything to survive the war and save the house so his son could inherit the old mansion when he returned. But MacTavish died, and when Cato finally came back from the war, Brennan was already established in his house. There were all kinds of ways for the carpetbaggers to keep a man from reclaiming his property. And with Eleanora missing, and then the other women, the accusations would have started—fed by Brennan, no doubt—and eventually Cato MacTavish must have had enough, and he left. Brennan was a nasty man—his own daughter wrote about how much she hated him. She stopped writing, though, and I don’t know what happened to her, but a son inherited this place. I don’t know where he came from. Maybe he was born later, or maybe he was fighting with the Union army when his father and sister moved down here.” She paused, staring first at him, then sadly down at the trunk and its pathetic contents. “If this is Eleanora, how did the line go on? How can you be his descendent?” she asked.
“Either she had a child before she died and someone managed to hide the fact and get the child out of the city—or he went on to find a wife when he left St. Augustine,” Caleb said. “You were the one who discovered the connection—what did the records say?”
“They didn’t say anything. There was no mention of a wife, just the reference to his son being named Magnus. And then his son’s family and so on.”
“Where and when did Cato die?”
“In Virginia, in 1901.”
“So why is he back here?” Caleb asked.
“Aha!” Sarah said.
“Stop it. Please. If we tell Jamison that a ghost is leading us around—and I’m not admitting or denying that fact—I guarantee you, he and everyone else will call us crazy,” Caleb said.
They stared at one another for a long moment.
Then she smiled slowly. “You wear dust well,” she assured him.
He grinned and pulled her close, his expression grave as he said, “Thank you for the compliment, but I have to go see Floby and then bring him out here. Let’s get showered and dressed before we do anything else.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she told him.
A few minutes later they stepped into the shower together. Sarah looked at him and said, “You know, our world is going to go crazy again when the media finds out that we’ve discovered another corpse in this house.”
“I know,” he said.
“We might want to spend a little more time…just us, before everything goes to hell,” she said somberly.
He nodded and pulled her into a tight embrace.
Water. Heat. Steam. Slick bodies in close proximity, and a feeling that every second now was unique…precious.
Eventually they stepped out of the shower and got dressed.
Eleanora and Cato had been in love, their relationship cruelly ended, Caleb thought. And now, together, he and Sarah were going to exonerate Cato and put Eleanora to rest at last.
It wasn’t until Caleb called Will and asked him to come over to Sarah’s, then headed out of the house, that he realized he might have discovered the remains of his own great-great-great—however many greats—grandmother. It was a poignant thought, and surprisingly painful.
“I’ve gotten back some of the tissue samples,” Floby said from behind the desk in his office.
“Right. You said the victim had taken some kind of a hallucinogenic drug?”
“Nature’s own,” Floby said. “Yaupon holly—and poppy seeds.”
“Poppy seeds? You mean opium?”
“More or less. An extract from the seeds.”
“And yaupon holly?” Caleb was thoughtful for a minute. “Isn’t that one of the ingredients in the black drink a number of Native Americans—including the Seminoles—use in their rituals?”
“Exactly,” Floby told him.
“So was she high enough that she was hallucinating?” Caleb said.
“Given how she ended up, let’s hope she was very high and seeing beautiful sights,” Floby told him.
Caleb nodded. “Okay, now I need you to come with me back to Sarah’s place. I want you to see something before we call anyone else in.”
“Oh, God. You’ve found another body,” Floby said, staring at him.
“A woman. In a trunk in the attic,” Caleb admitted.
Floby shook his head. “What is it with you and corpses?” he asked. “I just wish you could find Winona Hart—alive.”
“I wish that, too,” Caleb assured him.
“Have you called Jamison?” Floby asked.