Adam promised, “Will do,” and hung up.
Caleb was finally about to head over to see Renee Otten when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer anyway.
It was a husky female voice. “Mr. Anderson?”
“Yes?”
“Martha Tyler gave me your number.”
For a moment, he was blank. Martha Tyler, the witch who had lived and died a hundred and fifty years ago?
Of course not, he realized almost instantaneously. Martha Tyler, the medium.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Ginger Russell. Mrs. Frederick Russell. You found my husband’s body at the bottom of the bay. Please, I need to speak with you.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, but I’m afraid I’m fairly busy—”
“Please, Mr. Anderson, you don’t understand. My husband’s death was no accident. He was murdered.”
15
The disturbed earth bothered her, but Sarah wasn’t sure why or where to go with her feelings of unease. She could just imagine calling the police to tell them that she might have found a body. When they asked her where and she said “The cemetery,” they would laugh her into the next county.
She tried calling Caleb, but he told her that he was meeting with Frederick Russell’s widow and would have to call her back. Before hanging up, he asked her if she was still at work, and she glanced around the street, nearly empty now that the tour was over. She told him no, but not to worry, she was fine, then blurted out, “I’m at church. Lots of people around.”
Once the lie was out and she’d hung up, it actually seemed like a good idea.
Okay, so there weren’t lots of people.
She was still certain she was safe in church. And there were things she could do there. Useful things.
Sarah used the fact that she was a local and owned a piece of local history to get permission to look into the church records. The Cathedral of the Basilica, dating from 1565, was the oldest house of worship in the city and had the oldest records in the United States, since the parish had been founded immediately upon the Spaniards’ arrival. But the English tended to be Anglican or Episcopalian. Trinity was founded later, in 1821, but, still, it would offer wonderful records.
Though she hadn’t come across any reference to religion as far as the MacTavishes or the Brennans went, she was pretty sure that they would have been Episcopalian, since the majority of Americans at the time had been Episcopalians.
Mrs. Hopkins, the secretary in charge of the records room, had been good friends with Sarah’s mother and was glad to see Sarah. She commiserated with her about the strange events taking place in their beloved city—and in Sarah’s beloved house.
There were several documents Sarah was actively looking for, particularly a death certificate for Nellie Brennan and a birth certificate for Magnus MacTavish, who might have been born there, out of wedlock, since Eleanora and Cato had never married—or might have been born in Virginia to some other woman entirely.
At last she found one of the pieces of information she had been seeking, buried in a long list of births and deaths in an old parish record book.
Nellie Brennan had died on May 16th, 1866. She had been seventeen years old. The old cursive script wasn’t easy to decipher, but there was a notation that she had died from a fall, just as Mr. Griffin had said.
Had Brennan killed his own daughter?
Sarah was afraid he had. Nellie had seen too much. She had known what he was doing, something Sarah was certain she knew, too.
He’d been abducting and killing young women, draining their blood for some awful, probably ritualistic, reason. He had most likely killed Eleanora Stewart first—and stuffed her body in a trunk in the attic, then moved on to other victims, some of whom had probably ended up behind the walls of the house.
His accomplice had been the witch Martha Tyler, who had helped him lure the girls with promises of love potions, then met her end at the hands of a lynch mob and died cursing the Grant house.
But she’d had a book. A book of magic, a book of spells. Spells that required human blood.
Sarah was about to give up the search when she found another entry that looked as if it could well be the other one she’d been most eager to find.
Baptized 1862, male child, Mag S, child of E.S.
Was that it? The record of Magnus Anderson? Born under his mother’s name, Stewart? S—for Stewart?
The full names—even the child’s first name—weren’t written out, as if whoever had made the entries knew the truth and wished to hide it, presumably to protect Eleanora’s reputation.
She carefully closed the record book and replaced it on the shelf. The past was falling into place, and nothing she’d found out contradicted her belief that the current atrocities were related to those of the past. But where did they go from there?