Kristi was certain she had finally begun to concentrate when she heard a soft knock at her door.
She tried to tell herself it was an irritating interruption—but she realized she was kidding herself.
She wasn’t focused at all.
Not even on the fact that now she could speak to the dead.
She couldn’t think about anything other than Dallas Wicker...it simply wasn’t every day someone like him appeared at her door—flush against her, as she’d plowed right into him.
But he was here because he considered Lachlan’s death to be suspicious. Or maybe not—just to know the truth about it. Dying because you tripped on a sidewalk did sound either completely unlucky or suspicious as hell.
She opened her door; for just a moment, she thought no one was there.
She gasped.
The ghost was back. She stared at him.
“I knocked,” he said, looking at her hopefully.
“So,” she whispered, “if I say you should go away, you’ll do so?”
He appeared to be a very disconcerted ghost. “It would, of course, be the courteous and polite thing to do. But,” he added cheerfully, “I would only come back when I wasn’t asking entry to your private space, and...well, you don’t seem to react very well. There are lots of people who would be delighted to have a conversation with me.”
“Shelley conjured you—can’t you go haunt her?”
He sighed deeply, looking downward, as if striving for patience.
“Shelley did not conjure me.” He paused, then started humming music from the old Twilight Zone television series. “You know...doors, portals, time travel, whatever.”
She blinked in disbelief.
“You’ve been here since the Civil War—but you talk about the Twilight Zone?”
“Saw the original. The owner back in the sixties—1960s, that is—loved the show. Now I like to catch up on Netflix.”
A ghost...joking? And yet, he seemed so real, and serious as well.
He went on, “I have been here—near the house, walking the streets of Savannah—since 1864, searching, praying...hoping...”
“Hoping for what?” Kristi asked.
“Never you mind—that part of life and death are my cross to bear. I must speak with you—I fear for your life now.”
“My life!” she said, stunned.
She heard a noise from the next room—number seven. The tall, blond, well-built private investigator just had to be next to her.
She reached out as if she could draw the ghost into her room, realized she’d touch nothing but air, and stepped back. “You’re invited—come in!” she told him.
He stepped through the doorway; she quickly closed her door and strode deeply into the room, over to the onetime dressing area where she kept her desk, computer and work boards.
“Why would my life be in danger?” she asked the ghost of Monty McLane.
“You loved your great-uncle Jedidiah—you listened to him. And you would go with him to see Mr. Murphy, and you were the one with them when the two old men talked and compared their notes.”
“I loved Uncle Jed,” she said simply, confused, and wondering if she was having a psychotic break of some kind. “Ian was his friend—they were of an era, comparing their notes—and then arguing history, military maneuvers and more. Of course, I cared deeply for both of them, but...they were old, and sick... Death happens. All men who live are born to die,” she said softly.
“You really are a sweet creature,” Monty said. “Sadly naive. Like Trinity.”
“I’m not naive,” she countered quickly. “I am busy. You’re welcome to haunt the house, taunt the guests...thrill Shelley to no end when she does her séances. But guess what? This house is expensive to maintain. We can’t count on the income from renting rooms to keep it all up. I really have to work!”
“You won’t need to work—and the house will fall out of the hands of the family and none of it will matter anyway, if you don’t listen to me.”
“If I listen, will you go away?”
“As much as possible.”
There was another tap at her door. She cast an evil glare at Monty McLane, warning him. “Please do not make me look like a fool. That might be the private investigator and—”
“It’s not. But you’re not going to start screaming again, or passing out on me or anything, are you?” Monty asked.
“I don’t know what—”
She broke off as she opened the door.
And then she understood.
It wasn’t Dallas Wicker—or any other living guest, for that matter—who had come to the door. It was another ghost. She knew him, of course, from his portrait on the wall by the stairs, and, in his case, from many a local history book.
This ghost was Justin McLane—revered from his part as being Lieutenant McLane, one of George Washington’s handpicked spies. He had given his Patriotic cause an incredible amount of information about troop movements and other particular details during the American Revolution—before being caught and hanged. He hadn’t left behind a declaration like Nathan Hale with his statement before his execution of “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Justin’s words had been far more personal and quite simple: “Tell my wife I love her, and tell my son that this world will be for him.”
She stared at him. And, as she did so, she suddenly found herself frozen, torn between wondering if her psychosis was becoming very deep—or if there hadn’t always been something there. Something that made her feel the history of a place, the death of a place, and even something beautiful and safe about life. She had denied that ghosts could exist, of course. That’s what sane and rational people did.
She didn’t let out a scream and she didn’t pass out.
She took a steadying breath, then stepped back to welcome him in. “Lieutenant, join the um...party. Please.” Then she moved aside, let him in and closed the door. Looking over at Monty, she asked, “Just how many of you are there?”
“I think that the death of Lachlan Plant was the one that clinched it for me,” Detective Joe Dunhill told Dallas. “Don’t get me wrong—people do die in bizarre ways. Really bizarre, some of them. Back in the nineties, a golfer died when he got pissed off and struck a bench with his club—club broke and ricocheted back, right into his heart. Well, there’s a lesson in sportsmanship, I guess. Oh, Lord, and the truly disgusting...a woman died of an allergic reaction to having sex with a German shepherd, and in New Jersey, a guy died trying to steal clothing out of a donation bin right before Christmas—got himself stuck in it and suffocated. Ah, there’s more, plenty more—a little kid was killed at a zoo in Morocco when an elephant tossed a rock out of an enclosure. I looked up bizarre deaths—and there are plenty, I assure you. But still—a healthy dude dies from falling off a curb?”
“I agree—it sounds farfetched,” Dallas told him. He liked Joe Dunhill—the guy was young, maybe in his late twenties. He’d probably just earned his detective stripes. He was tall and lanky, with short-cropped brown hair and a lean face, gray eyes and a passionate manner. “But what did the medical examiner say? What about witnesses?”
“Go figure on this—the way his head was struck, yes, it could have happened on the curb. I don’t understand that much about the head, but the blow fell right where it caused an instant hemorrhage in the brain. Amazing, when you think about it—football players, boxers, others...they take massive blows to the head. The skull protects what’s inside. But hit the head just right? You’re gone in an instant.”
“So it could have happened that way. Accidental death.”
“It could have.”
Dallas curled his hands around his coffee mug. They were at an outside restaurant right on the Savannah River. It was a beautiful day. Tourists were wandering along the riverfront, boats were out on the water and, in the distance, there was the shore of South Carolina.
He looked at Dunhill. “How could there have been no witnesses? You’re talking the heart of the old town—there are always people walking around.”
“It happened at the crack of dawn. He was found at about 7:00 a.m. by a dog walker, who hysterically called the police. She tried to wake him—she thought that maybe he was a drunk who had one too many.”
“She moved the body.”
“You’ve read the reports.”
“I’ve read the reports—but I didn’t interview the witnesses,” Dallas told him.
“You said that plural—there was only one, and she wasn’t a witness to the man’s death. She found him, said that she tried to shake him awake—and realized he was dead. The medical examiner estimated that he hadn’t been dead long—he’d probably died about an hour before being found.”
“And no one was out—no other dog walkers, bus drivers, school kids...no one?”
“No one we could find. We know that he worked late. The gym stays open until midnight—he was the closer for the gym that night. But what happened to him when he left the gym—which is right near us now, off the river—we have no idea. There were no toxins in his body. He hadn’t been drinking,” Joe said.
“What would make you think, though, that his death might be associated with the death of an old man—an old man suffering from cancer, one who had said he was going to choose his own time of death?”
“Yeah, we were told that Ian Murphy didn’t want to go through the pain at the end. But he went out his second-floor balcony. But in his medicine cabinet, he had enough morphine to do himself in a dozen times over. Why would he jump—I mean, there was no guarantee that a fall would kill him.”
“I agree with the logic, but...what did the men have in common? And what did they have in common with the businesswoman—Eliza Malone—who disappeared two years ago, or the politician who just went missing now?” Dallas asked.
Dunhill sat back, frustrated. “I don’t know. Apparently, no one around here sees it, but...when I was a kid, my mom was friends with Adam Harrison. He was a hell of a man—donating to the church where she went, and the group there that helped out those with illnesses. My mom had Parkinson’s—Adam Harrison was big on giving. Anyway, I heard that he was with a special unit, so... I gave up on telling people that I believed something was going on. And I wrote to Adam.”
Dallas was quiet.
“You think I’m seeing things that aren’t there, too, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Dallas smiled. “It’s way too early to find out. This man, Ian Murphy...if I’ve read everything right, he left no heirs—and in his will, stated that he wanted his home and belongings to go to a private historical society.”
“Yes.”
“I have tons of paperwork to read, but...what are my chances of getting in to this historical society? I’d like to find out what Mr. Murphy was doing before his death.”
“Shaving. He still had shave lotion on his face.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean immediately. I meant, I wonder if he was working on something, if he knew something, if he was researching something. Both the businesswoman, Eliza Malone, and the politician, Simon Drake, were big on cracking down on crime, right?”
“It was definitely part of Simon Drake’s campaign. And Eliza... She was loved in the community. She wanted the drug pushers away from the schools. She could have been on to something. As in, I was thinking that someone supposedly big in business—a respectable citizen—was actually the head of a group of pushers. The one making the big money. But... I could be wrong.”
“Was Lachlan Plant into drugs in any way?”
“Not at all—he was against steroids, except, of course, when absolutely necessary medically. He was always talking against the use of steroids in the gym—he gave classes on what they could do to the human body. The guy loved vitamins—and the concept of every man treating his body like the soul temple it should be.”
Dallas took a sip of his coffee thoughtfully. “Say there is something going on—let’s theorize that it’s the drug trade. Steroids, perhaps, painkillers and molly, cocaine, crack, whatever. I can see where Lachlan Plant might have been down on something he knew, if something was happening at his gym that he disapproved of—and the politician and the businesswoman might have known something. But how does Ian Murphy fall into this?”
Dunhill groaned. “I don’t know. Thing is, with Ian Murphy, I’d met the old guy, you know? He was bright as hell. And if I’d been told he’d taken an overdose of morphine, I’d have thought, well, the old guy said that he’d die on his own time, and that’s what he did. But—that fall! I just don’t believe that’s the way he would have chosen to go. So maybe he overheard something. Thing is, he was always researching, learning, debating with Old Jed...”
“And you think he might have learned the wrong thing?”
“It’s possible.”
“All right,” Dallas murmured. “Old Jed...you mean Jedidiah McLane who owned the place where I’m staying—McLane House?”
Dunhill nodded. “I know that Jedidiah died peacefully, in his sleep. His friend was there—the old guy who works at the house, Jonah Whitney. And his great-niece, Kristi Stewart. Kristi loved him—she was with him. And the rest of the household, too. He just closed his eyes. Smiled—and died.”
“But if he was such good friends with Ian Murphy, wouldn’t he have known if Murphy had found out something that suggested criminal activity?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that, too. But maybe Ian hadn’t gotten around to telling him, or talking to him. They were both old as the hills. Like I said, I could be wrong. I could wind up fired, and I do love my job. But have you ever had a hunch? Like a feeling that something is really wrong, that we’re looking at a puzzle, and the pieces just have to be put together? Almost like there’s a ghost, whispering over your shoulder, something like that? Have you ever had that kind of feeling?”
Dallas smiled. “Yeah, I’ve had that feeling,” he said. “So, you have it set up for me to have a conversation with the medical examiner?”
“Yes!” Dunhill rose excitedly. “Yes, thank you...you believe me?”
“I believe that I’ve got to start somewhere, and the medical examiner seems as good a place as any.”
“Chatham County Medical Examiner’s and Coroner’s Office,” Dunhill clarified. “It’s on 67th Street. I’ll drive.”
“You’ve gotten me here under unusual circumstances—don’t you need to report to work?” Dallas asked.
“No, my captain knows I’m seeing a private eye, and he’s not a bad guy. Thinks it’s okay if someone goes on a chase if they’re not using up resources unnecessarily—he knows I’m helping you, though, as Adam suggested, you’re just here as a private investigator—privately investigating.”
“All right then—I’ll be glad to hear what he has to say.”
“Want to hear another odd one?”
“What?” Dallas asked, frowning.
“Another weird way to die. A chef in China was chopping up a snake—a cobra. It’s a delicacy. Anyway, the damned thing was decapitated—and bit him anyway.”
“Reflexes, the brain being the last to die?” Dallas asked.
“Got to be some of the best revenge I’ve ever heard about,” Dunhill said. “Now, that I’m sure a man couldn’t pull off, though there was a rumor that heads fresh off the guillotine moved and even spoke. Pity—it would help if some of our dead people would speak to us.”
“It definitely helps when they speak,” Dallas muttered. “So, onward? Nothing like a sunny morning at the morgue.”
“She appears to be quite calm,” the ghost of Justin McLane informed the ghost of his great-grandson, Monty McLane.
Calm? Sure, why not be calm through one’s own crazy illusion? Kristi wondered.
“She wasn’t calm this morning—she was quite hysterical, I do assure you!” Monty replied.
Kristi stared from one of them to the other. The family resemblance was impressive, and she took a moment to be proud: her ancestors had been tall and straight-backed, ruggedly dark and handsome. They also seemed to have fine characters, though how she was judging that from such little contact with her new friends—certainly imaginary—she didn’t know. She supposed if she was creating her illusions, she’d be creating them as she wanted them to be.
Kristi spoke up, “Monty seems to think that I’m in some danger.”
“We’re concerned,” Justin said.
“Because?” Kristi asked.
The two of them looked at one another again. “At first, we rather thought it was nothing,” Monty said.
“We can be quite bored upon occasion, you know,” Justin said.
“Which makes it ridiculously easy to come up with conspiracy theories,” Monty said.
“Did they even... I mean, conspiracy theories? Did they even think of such things back...in your day? Or days? You—you never met in life. You couldn’t have.”
Monty looked at Justin and grinned ruefully. “Thank the lord—our descendent knows something of mathematics.”
“You’re quite a wiseass, if they had such a term way back when,” Kristi said irritably.
“My dear child, we do learn through the ages—in fact, the invention of the television makes us incredibly well-educated. No, we did not know one another in life. We were born and died decades apart. We met only in death,” Justin said somberly. “A tragic death for me, I’m afraid. I was never ashamed of what I did—in fact—I’m quite proud, though I’d have preferred not to have been caught. However, I was, and thus, when I found that I was between worlds, I did my best to watch over my dear wife and son. And that son came back to this very property, and in time, he built this house. The thirteen colonies were quite different from the start, so I must admit, it was not much of a surprise when war raged between North and South—and I became witness to what befell my great-great-grandson. When I realized he had remained behind as well, I was saddened by his death, but again, did my best to comfort him in that death.”
“And you’re still here,” Kristi murmured.
“As am I,” Monty added. “I have a reason, I believe.”
“He did not kill his beloved Trinity,” Justin said. “You see, here is the thing—history is always written by the victors. Now, don’t get me wrong—there were many fine men fighting and dying for the Union. The world should know now that slavery is entirely wrong—even though it does still exist in parts of the world—”
“And you know that...how?” Kristi asked.
“Television, child, television,” Justin said. He waved a hand in the air. “My point is... I tried to stop what happened to Monty... I didn’t have the power. Colonel Albert Huntington was not a good man. When he came to the house, Monty had just arrived back—and Monty was caught. Trinity screamed and cried and told him to surrender. For her, he was willing to give himself up. He tried to reach her, and Huntington—who had a fool’s infatuation for Trinity—shot at him. Except that at the same time, Trinity ran to Monty, and the shot hit and killed her. Then Huntington gunned down Monty and his father, Samuel. I think a number of Huntington’s men were horrified, but they were also afraid of Huntington—and perhaps, shamed by what had been done. And so the story went out that Monty killed his wife and father rather than see them in the hands of the enemy.”
“And I am left to haunt the place,” Monty said softly. “Without the woman I loved.”
Kristi let out a breath, still doubting her state of sanity. But whether her ghosts were figments of a pressured imagination or real—as real as ghosts could be—they were sympathetic ghosts.
And her family.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Have you seen Trinity?” Monty asked her hopefully.
“No, I have not. I didn’t see either of you until after the séance.”
“Well, we were not summoned by that silly woman,” Justin said impatiently. “We’ve been here. Maybe you weren’t ready to see us.”
“And maybe we didn’t feel such a pressing need for her to see us—until lately,” Monty suggested softly.
Kristi didn’t have a chance to answer him. There was a knock at her door. “Excuse me,” she murmured, walking to the door. She hesitated before opening it, but when she turned around, the two had disappeared.
As if they had never been.
She opened the door. The young actor, Carl Brentwood, stood confidently in the hall. “I’m so sorry to bother you here, but I was hoping we could talk. Downstairs, of course. I didn’t mean to be so rude—coming right to your door. But I didn’t know how to reach you otherwise.”
She smiled. “It’s fine. We can head down to the back parlor.”
“Thank you so much,” he told her earnestly.
She didn’t want to do a televised séance, but it would probably be good for the business. Everyone loved “haunted” Savannah, and, it seemed, everyone loved a haunted house.
She looked back into her room one last time; it was empty.
She closed the door, wondering what her deceased ancestors got up to when she couldn’t see them.
“The brain is astounding. The finest ‘computer’ ever built, and such a creation that even I, a scientist, believe in God above to have made something so magnificent,” Dr. Perry, the medical examiner, told Dallas with enthusiasm.
Dallas glanced over at Joe Dunhill, who had accompanied him to the morgue. Joe’s shrug indicated that they just might get a lecture.
Despite the days since his death and the completion of his death certificate, the body of Lachlan Plant remained at the morgue; friends were getting the money together to claim the body and arrange for a funeral and burial.
From a distance, Plant looked as if he slept peacefully on the slab, as if he were the picture of health—despite being dead. The icy morgue temperature had kept him from decay thus far. He had been tall, lean and, as was expected for a fitness expert, well-built.
But close up, one could see the gray pallor of death upon him, nature’s way of claiming its own—dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
Dr. Perry shook his head, mumbling, “Shame, shame, what a fine man he was—no family, but friends aplenty.”
“And his death—” Dallas said.
“Now, in itself, the brain is incredibly fragile, and that’s why we have the human skull. Good, strong, tough piece of equipment, the human skull. It can take all kinds of blows—and still protect the brain.” The lecture began.
“Doc,” Joe Dunhill said quietly.
“Yes, yes,” Perry said, “but you’re asking about my opinion right? Or you’re asking about the facts that could lead to an opinion. So you must understand. The skull is a wonderful thing. Actually composed of many bones, all within the cranium and the face. But as wonderful as it is, the skull can be penetrated, and a hard blow often brings about death by damage to the brain itself, and by causing the brain to bounce around and take a vicious bruise. I’m using layman’s terms, naturally—”
“Layman’s terms are fine,” Dallas assured him. “But could this really have happened by a simple fall?”
“Freak accident, but yes.”
“What if someone struck him on the head—would the same damage occur?” Dallas asked.
“The injury was at the cranial base—a basal fracture forced splinters into the brain and brought about death. He was found on the sidewalk by the curb—no one saw any kind of violence toward him. Could he have hit his head hard enough falling? Yes. He was a big man. A medical examiner calls the method of death, but we also use what officers are able to tell us. I did label the cause of death as inconclusive—because yes, he could have been hit on the head. So...” Dr. Perry lifted his hands. “His death has been presumed accidental—fatality from an accidental fall. There are two things we are looking at—cause of death and manner of death. Manner of death was the blow to his head. Cause of his death? Presumed to be a fall. However...nothing in my expertise can give a pat answer to the cause for the manner of his death. I can’t rule out homicide, and I can’t say that what occurred wasn’t an accident. No matter how absurd it seems, that does seem to be the answer.”
To Dallas, a freak accident seemed on the far side of plausible.
“What about the other man?” Dallas asked.
Perry looked at Dunhill. “Another man tripped and fell on the sidewalk?”
“No, sir, I’m talking about the elderly gentleman—Mr. Murphy.”
“Ian Murphy?” Dunhill seemed honestly surprised.
“Yes, sir,” Dallas said.
“Well, the poor fellow...he jumped. I’m afraid I did rule that a suicide. Again, my responsibility is manner of death—broken to bits, I don’t need to describe it all to you—but it was widely known that he’d decided he would choose his own time to go,” he said softly.
“There are much easier ways—especially for a suffering elderly man. Overdoses of medicine—a lot of sleeping pills,” Dallas said.
“Maybe he was afraid he wouldn’t do the job,” Perry said. “He was alone in his house at the time. Everyone was saddened, though no one was surprised.”
“Was his house searched?” Dallas asked Joe.
Joe nodded. “We went in after the event. Thing is...the initial reaction was for first responders to head to the body, try to help, and then the patrol officers who came on had to control the crowd, had to call it in, get the ME out...”
“So, if someone had been in the house with him, they could have been long gone before the house was actually searched. And, since a suicide wasn’t unexpected, it wasn’t much of a search.”
“I came in on it late—we had to investigate because of the way he was found, but it wasn’t seen as a dangerous situation. No one thought that he might have been pushed.”
“Pushed!” Perry exclaimed. “Why would anyone push a man already dying? Ah...a mercy killing?”
“Not really what I was thinking,” Dallas murmured.
“Why the hell would anyone kill a dying man?” Perry repeated. “He would have been dead within months.”
“Maybe not soon enough,” Dallas said.
“Soon enough for...what?” Joe asked, puzzled.
“I don’t know—but we need to find out. What is the only thing you don’t leave behind after you die?” Dallas asked quietly. He turned and looked at Perry and then at Joe, who were both looking at him in confusion.
Dallas smiled grimly and said, “That which you have in the mind—in the brain, that wonderful computer you talked about. Things, papers, books—all could be stolen and destroyed. But the only way to destroy knowledge is to destroy the brain it’s in—kill the carrier.”
“You’re suggesting that Ian Murphy knew something that got him killed?” Joe asked.
“Exactly,” Dallas told him.
Kristi could well understand the star appeal of Carl Brentwood: his enthusiasm was contagious, and he seemed to really like people. He was earnest and more—courteous at every turn.
“We can be almost entirely undisruptive to the property,” he told her, leaning on the arm of a chair as they spoke, making his point. “Two cameramen with self-contained rigs including lighting, two sound people working mics at two angles. Nothing would have to be removed. Other than that crew of four, you’d have no one who wasn’t already here. I’ve already spoken with the Knox family—Kristi, they love it. Their daughter is considering a career in film, and this is flattering, of course, but she thinks that being in a video with me would help her in the future. So—”
“There’s another guest in the house at the moment,” Kristi reminded him.
“Yes, yes, and I will get his blessing. Please say yes? Here’s what I believe it can do for you—make the house the most popular inn in Savannah. Okay, one of the most popular in Savannah.”
He grinned, blond and boyish in his appeal.
She smiled tightly in return.
“A private eye may not be so happy about being in a video,” she warned.
“Oh, well, he doesn’t have to be in it—we’ll basically be filming just in the parlor, where Shelley does her séances.”
“Basically?”
“Well, if a ghost was to lead us somewhere...”
She could offer him a real smile at that.
“Trust me,” Kristi told him, “there is no great treasure hidden in the house anywhere, or buried in the basement. The family was never rich. We weren’t hiding Confederate gold or anything like that. The ghosts aren’t going to lead us to any riches.”
He lowered his head, still grinning. “I’m not after riches. But you never know. Ghosts just might lead us to...um... I don’t know, ghostly secrets?”
“You can’t go invading people’s bedrooms.”
“Never! Oh, please, Kristi—it will be just a few hours that we’re actually filming. And it could be so good!”
She glanced over at the stairway; Carl’s retinue—his agent, Murray Meyer, and his manager, Claire Danson—had come down just to the back-parlor landing.
She looked in the other direction; Jonah was there, nodding his approval.
Kristi shrugged. “Okay. I can call Shelley—”
“I’ll take care of that.”
“And you’ll make sure that it’s all right with our other guest.”
It was her house; she could do what she wanted and just tell Mr. Dallas Wicker that he’d need to avoid certain areas if he didn’t wish to become involved with the project.
“I’m assuming you’re going to have waivers—or possibly pay people,” Kristi said, looking over at Claire and Murray.
“Oh, you bet,” Claire answered for Carl.
Carl just shook his head and shrugged at Kristi, implying he trusted his manager would look after those things.
“Speak with Mr. Wicker, and then let me know.” She rose and looked around her, suddenly feeling the need to be out of her own house.
“Kristi?” Jonah called to her.
“Back soon,” she said.
“Where are you going?” Jonah asked her.
“Out.”
“You see what I mean?” Joe Dunhill asked. “My superiors are good at their jobs—we have good cops here. Busy cops. We’re a good city, but we’re also not without our violent crime. It’s beautiful here—and it can also be deadly. We’ve a mix of locals and tourists, we have old hatreds and new crimes. When you have assaults, rapes and active murders to solve, an old man jumping out a window and a young one dying on a curb go the way of what seems most evident. But there’s something wrong, something just not right.”
“I agree with you—and I understand that any agency can only go as far as the investigation will lead—and in a big city, they have to move on,” Dallas said, taking a long sip of coffee. They had stopped for a quick bite to eat at a counter-service restaurant on the riverfront. “It’s often where we come in,” he said gently.
“Are you really a licensed PI?” Dunhill asked him.
“Yes. I got my license before I went into the academy,” Dallas said. “Adam Harrison sticks to the truth—and when you went to his unit for help, he thought of me.”
“Because you’re a PI?”
Dallas hesitated. Others in the Krewe had also been licensed as investigators—he just happened to know Savannah, as well.
Dallas shrugged. “All right. The police are still actively working the disappearance of Simon Drake. Who vanished in the same way as Eliza Malone two years ago—from the Johnson Square area.”
“Of course. The investigation into the disappearance of Mrs. Malone is still ongoing, as well. It’s just grown very...cold. Naturally, we’re all afraid of the same with Simon Drake.”
“So, by all appearances, Simon Drake was a politician hell-bent on lowering the crime rate in the Savannah area.”
“Yes.”
“And Eliza Malone was instrumental in forming a ‘fighting crime is big business’ coalition among the business owners and operators in the city.”
“Exactly. She had major chain hotels and restaurants and shops—as well as locals, you know, bed-and-breakfast inns, boutique owners and so on—all involved.”
“How might they relate to a young fitness expert and an old man dying of cancer?”
Dunhill shook his head, frustrated. “Hell if I know. And all of it going on in the heart of the city—right around Johnson Square. I can’t figure, but I know there’s something, and it’s just bugging the hell out of me that I can’t quite put my finger on it. Okay, I can’t get my finger close to it! But my gut is telling me that something is going on.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a business card.
Dallas already knew the name on it from the endless files that Adam Harrison had provided him—Brenda Nunez. She had been a volunteer campaign worker for Simon Drake. She’d been interviewed by the police, having been at the rally for Simon Drake on the riverfront before he had disappeared. She wasn’t a family member, and she hadn’t been a major player in his campaign; she had loved his politics.
“She’ll meet you at four o’clock at the Colonial Park Cemetery,” Dunhill told him. He rose, balling the remnants of his sandwich into the paper on which it had been served and tossing it into the trash. “Call me. I’m available anytime. Nothing official, but my superiors really know exactly what I’m doing. It’s just not—”
“On the books. Gotcha. I’ll be in touch.”
Dallas watched Dunhill leave and then stood. He threw out his own trash, and started out.
What was the thread that connected the incidents?
Or was it that there was no thread?
It was there. Somewhere. The logic of it all seemed to be missing, but... Joe Dunhill’s gut instinct was right. Something was there, simmering beneath the surface.
Dallas had a little time. He started to wander the streets, remembering that he did love the old architecture, that there was much about the city to enjoy. History entwined with more history, and the beautiful pulse of life today.
Two people hard on crime vanished. Two other people dead, bodies left where their “accidental death and suicide” had taken place.
Dallas paused, staring at the unending flow of the river.
Because the two known deaths could be given the appearance of accident and suicide...while the others could not?
He didn’t like to be a defeatist—but Simon Drake and Eliza Malone were most probably among the dead.
If they could just find the remains...
But this was a city where the Savannah River snaked through, and dense swamps were not far from the bustle and heart of the action. Lots of places to dispose of a body.
And yet this killer was possibly hiding murder in plain sight.