Something Deadly Read online

  "After we get done here, I'll race you to the library."

  "You know," he said, his voice turning serious, "that might not be the worst idea in the world."

  * * *

  "Den dey bur' it buv de boneyar, out de wall. Out de holy groun', in de black eart'."

  Gary Morgan's attention snapped away from thoughts of Wendy and his lot in life. He rewound the recorder and played it again.

  Then they buried it above the boneyard, outside the wall. Out of the holy ground, in the black earth.

  Finally, after weeks of poring through tape after tape filled with tired tall tales of family doings that might have interested him as a graduate student, after hour upon hour in this chair with these headphones, cut off from Wendy and the rest of his life, finally, a solid clue.

  He pulled out a sheaf of maps, cartographical snapshots of Santz Martina at various stages in its history. It was easy to place the cemetery, across the street from the cathedral. Neither had moved since the late Spanish period, although the cathedral had been rebuilt after a fire in the late nineteenth century.

  Above the boneyard, outside the wall.

  Like most settlements of the period, Martina Town had originally been a walled village. And, like most settlements, it had outgrown its walls, torn them down, built new ones, and torn those down yet again. Today, only the east and west gates, at either end of Avenida La Media, remained. The question, then, was where was the wall in 1809, at the time of the Rebellion, at the time of Annie Black's death?

  He leafed through delicate parchments, excitement building, hardly mindful of how fragile the documents were. They were supposed to be stored in the archives at the junior college, but he'd checked them out months ago. No one else made a study of the island's history. They hadn't been missed.

  Ahh. This was probably the best source. Jamison Black's original survey, dated 1791. Black had been a sailor, a pirate, then a sugar plantation owner. What he had not been was a surveyor or a mapmaker. The coastline and cartography bore only a general resemblance to the current detailed U.S.G.S. maps. But the United States Geological Survey had access to aerial and satellite photography, GPS locators, laser measurement and computers to hash it all together. Black had relied on landmarks, paces and his sailor's eye. Still, he hadn't done all that badly, and within the relatively small dimensions of the town itself, his work ought to be accurate enough.

  Black's map had no scale, but Gary could make reasoned estimates based on the dimensions of the cemetery and the way towns grew. Houses and properties tended to extend up to a wall. When the wall came down, it was most often replaced by a street. Often enough, that street acquired the obvious name—Wall Street—as had happened in New York City, for example. But not always, and not in Santz Martina.

  The fledgling United States had claimed the island in 1815, under the treaty that ended the War of 1812. At the height of the Enlightenment, when science and reason rose supreme, Thomas Jefferson had devised a new, grid-based surveying system, to be applied throughout the new territories of the United States. Thus, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived to improve the island, they laid out the geometric gridwork of streets that still marked the old town. And, in the spirit of pure reason, the Spanish and English names for most of the east-west avenues were dropped and replaced with numbers.

  Gary's best estimate was that the old wall ran along what was now Second Avenue. Which meant Annie Black's treasure was buried somewhere north of there.

  Above the boneyard, outside the wall.

  The cemetery lay between Cathedral and Marina Streets. Cathedral Street ran along a low ridge that rose a few feet as it passed Second Avenue. On Black's map, it had ended at the wall. If Black's rough cartography were to be trusted, there had been a low hill, just outside the wall, to the northeast of Cathedral Street.

  It was at best an educated guess. Black's map might be grossly out of scale. The hill symbol might be purely decorative. And Gary might be misunderstanding the words of an old woman, taking literally what might well be mere folklore. But it was the best guess he could make.

  He took the street address from the modern map and logged on to the court clerk's computerized deed and tenant records. Out came the name.

  Cross, Margaret, D.V.M.

  * * *

  "Okay." Tim looked at Steve with distaste.

  He didn't much like Steve, who was, despite being President of the Senate, a weak-willed, spineless man. The fact was that Steve Chase held his position by virtue of his last name. It was, simply, the Chase family's turn in the rotation for Senate leadership. And that meant Tim needed Steve Chase. For a little longer, at least.

  Paying Carter Shippey to let them dig beneath his house had, in retrospect, been foolish. Tim had conceived of a better way. Routine public works projects—such as maintenance—did not require the approval of the Senate as a whole. The signature of its president was enough.

  "I don't think this is a good idea," Steve said. Steve was always saying that.

  "Why not?" Tim asked, careful to keep his voice even.

  "Look, you may think the Senate runs this island, but that's not entirely true. The U.S. government is looking over our shoulders, and if I get involved in anything shady, the FBI is going to be all over me."

  "Who said anything about shady?" Tim smothered a sense of indignation. "We're not doing anything shady. We're trying to recover artifacts of great historical importance to the territory."

  Steve's face reddened. "Then why not just hire an archaeological team? Why keep pretending we're repairing water lines? Jesus, Tim, one permit for Alice Wheatley's house I can explain. But when they start to pile up…"

  Tim couldn't believe that they had come full circle back to this argument, an argument he had thought they'd settled several weeks ago. "Jesus, Steve, don't you understand anything?"

  The comment had the desired effect. Steve was jovial, well-liked, reasonably intelligent, but as malleable as a snail without its shell. Push hard enough, and Steve caved. He always caved.

  But the task was getting tiresome.

  "We agreed to this weeks ago," Tim reminded him. "It's for everybody's good to keep this quiet. I told you, the Feds would just jump in and take it all."

  "What makes you think they won't take it anyway?"

  "They're never going to find out that we have most of it. I told you. We'll pick out the pieces that would be good for the local museum and keep the rest."

  "I don't know…."

  "The rest," Tim said impatiently, "is our finder's fee. We're entitled to it, just like when someone salvages a boat." Everyone knew about the laws of salvage on an island like Santz Martina.

  "The laws of salvage only apply at sea."

  "Right. But when there are no heirs to an estate, what happens? Who gets it? Annie Black didn't leave so much as one little baby behind her. If she had any family, they never turned up. Neither did Jamison Black's. So…it's finders keepers, Steve."

  Steve was beginning to nod. The law was on their side.

  "It's not even like she really owns the dirt under her house," Tim argued. "It's subject to the same easement as every other property on this island. All mineral deposits belong to my family."

  "You mean they belong to your father," Steve said.

  Tim bristled. He was tired of hearing that argument, too. "My father, my family. The old goat isn't going to live forever, and I'm his oldest son. He may not approve of me, but I doubt he's cut me out of the will. And he can't be bothered with every niggling detail on this island. He's too busy being banker to the world. So I'm entitled to look."

  "I guess."

  Steve was caving again. So easily, really. Tim just wished he didn't have to shore him up again and again. That weakness that Tim found so useful also made Steve unreliable.

  Get rid of him…. The thought wafted through Tim's mind. A cold shiver seemed to pass through him with it, then was gone. Later, he thought. Later he would have to get rid of Steve, but for
right now, he still needed him.

  "So we'll get the permit?" he pressed.

  "Let me think about it," Steve hedged. "You can't be digging up people's yards without their getting curious. And Abel was all over me last night about these deaths. If he catches a clue that they're in any way linked with the permits…"

  "Linked with the permits?" Steve's jaw dropped. Then he laughed. "Oh, my God, don't give me that hoodoo nonsense. The utility company has dug all over this island at one time or another. What the hell makes you think our digging is related in any way to these deaths?"

  "Well, Carter saw—"

  Tim cut him off ruthlessly. "I don't want to hear that shit, understand me? Do you really think a ghost could kill somebody? How would it do that, dammit? How? With its hands?"

  Even Steve quailed at how ludicrous that sounded. "But a curse…"

  "Dammit, there is no curse. The woman died two hundred years ago. If there was a curse, don't you think somebody would have mentioned it?"

  Steve, who had held up longer than he usually did under a frontal assault, was rapidly caving again. Spoken out loud, the idea of a ghostly murderer sounded as silly as a child's bedtime fears.

  "Still," Steve said, holding on to a last shred of his dignity, "your father…I don't want him getting wind of this…."

  Tim opened his mouth, ready to give Steve a tongue-lashing for his stubbornness, then abruptly changed his mind. He would start with one more permit. Before long, Steve would be handing them out whenever asked.

  "Okay," Tim said smiling. "So we'll be discreet."

  "It'll take me a few days."

  "A few days?"

  "Listen," Steve said, his face reddening again, "I've got to go through channels or people will get suspicious. Give me some credit for knowing my job."

  "Yeah. Sure. Sorry."

  Not that he was really sorry, but over the years, he'd developed a fine-tuned sense of when to stop pushing Steve. He could wait a few more days.

  "See ya," he said, rising from his chair, smiling at Steve, who sat on the other side of the desk. "I got a boat to take out."

  It was a relief for Tim to get out of the stuffy lawyer's office that practically screamed Eastern blue-blood and into the breezy sunshine of Santz Martina. God, he couldn't understand why anyone would want to spend his life living like a mole when there was a world outside like this one.

  But he could understand the need for wealth. Wealth made all things possible, a lesson he'd learned while growing up. But he wasn't willing to become a mole to be wealthy. No, he had a better idea, one that would keep him in sunshine and champagne for the rest of his life, even if Abel did cut him out of the will.

  And the old man damn well might. Right this very minute, Roth scions and trusted associates all around the world were hastening to do Abel Roth's bidding. Tim, alone of the Roths, was doing things his own way.

  That was a dangerous precedent to set. Others in the family might get the heretical notion that their lives were their own.

  Whistling, Tim shoved his hands in his pockets and headed toward the marina. He was definitely going to show them all that he could be his own man.

  He felt a cool touch at the base of his neck, almost frigid, and he grinned into the sun. "That's what you wanted to prove, too, wasn't it, Annie? That you were your own woman. Did a damn fine job of it, too."

  He knew Annie couldn't hear him, but he liked to talk to her. Of all the people past and present on this island, he had a feeling she would have understood Tim Roth the best.

  14

  Within the walls of the great fort, the waves were nearly silenced. Standing at its very heart, Markie felt the sunlight pounding down on her, felt the way the air barely stirred. Around her the ground was nearly barren, except for the lone palm that rose high above the walls. Small tufts of grass clung in stony, unwelcoming soil, perhaps once paved beneath so that roots had little room to grow.

  It would have been an intolerable place to be on those rare occasions when the island's temperatures jumped from its average high of eighty to nearly a hundred.

  Stifling. Men accustomed to dressing for colder climes, like the British, would have suffered in wool uniforms.

  "How did they stand those uniforms?" she asked.

  "I'll show you. Come on."

  Bending, she let Kato off his leash to explore. He seemed to find dozens of interesting scents on the open courtyard—or parade ground, she supposed it was. He appeared impervious to the way the sun must be heating his black coat.

  Declan led Markie to the edge of the parade ground, where doorways yawned at regular intervals in all the surrounding walls.

  Stepping through one, Markie was hit by a cooling wind. A breezeway surrounded the entire parade ground, opening at points into rooms, some little more than large alcoves, some closed behind heavy steel doors.

  "The steel doors are where the munitions were stored," Declan said, pointing. "I think they were put in during the Spanish American War."

  "They're in amazing shape, considering the salt air."

  "Yeah." He started walking along the breezeway, peering into openings. "Maybe they fixed them during the sixties. But still…"

  "It's easy to understand why there are so few doors, though."

  He gave a laugh. "Yeah. Between termites and salt, doors would have to be pretty much optional."

  Even with the strong breeze it stirred up, the passageway seemed dark and dank. Forbidding. Any signs of habitation were long since gone, cleaned out, no doubt, when the last occupiers left.

  "This would make a wonderful museum," she remarked.

  "Yeah, if the Defense Department would turn it over to the Interior Department."

  "I wonder why they haven't."

  Dec shrugged. "I don't know. I'd think it was pretty much useless in these times."

  Markie nodded, turning slowly around before resuming the walk through the breezeway. "Unless you still wanted to use it from time to time for secret things."

  Which was the whole reason they were here.

  Markie let her imagination roam, wondering what the early inhabitants of this fort had been like, wondering how they had lived. Had their families come with them? Or had they come alone, maybe fifty or a hundred strong, bearing muskets or rifles and a will to hold Spaniards at bay? Or, at an earlier time, to hold the English at bay.

  Had they been much better than brigands themselves? What did they do with their time when no threat loomed?

  The tour of the rooms offered no answers of any kind, except that it was possible to stay cool within these thick walls.

  A crumbling stairway led up to the parapets. Dec took her hand in his, a comforting grip to steady her. At least that was what she thought it was, though some aching part of her suddenly wished it was far more.

  As they climbed, Kato seemed to lose interest in the parade ground and dashed after them. When he reached the top, well ahead of them, he turned around and grinned down at them, apparently pleased with himself. Then he dashed off to explore.

  Atop the walls, the view was breathtaking. The blue-green sea stretched forever, calm and sparkling under the sun. In the other directions, the forest spread, a canopy that appeared uninterrupted most of the way toward the foot of the mountain.

  "Look. There." Dec pointed.

  Not too far from the northernmost wall, she thought she spied rust between some of the branches of the trees. "What is that?"

  "I think it's the Quonset huts that were put here in the sixties. I'm not sure, but I've heard about them."

  Markie strode closer to the edge, peering over the side. "I can't tell. I guess we'll have to walk over there." But she was surprisingly loath to do it. Coming out here had been an inevitable next step, and now something she had a truly personal stake in, but she found that all of a sudden she wanted out of here. She didn't want to find whatever secrets might be hidden out there.

  She was afraid.

  She looked straight down along the wall
s and saw what appeared to be rock fences squaring off bits of ground, now filled with growth. "What are those?"

  Dec leaned over beside her and looked. "Probably the remains of gardens. If you wanted fresh food, you had to raise it. There are probably even pens for animals."

  "I guess that answers my question about what the troops did when they weren't facing an enemy."

  "They were pretty busy, actually. They not only had to feed themselves, but they had to keep their clothing in shape. So basically they were soldiers when needed and farmers the rest of the time."

  "But not in the sixties."

  "No," he agreed, his face shadowing. "Not in the sixties. Let's go check out those huts."

  She followed him, but reluctantly. Whatever uneasiness had settled over her seemed to grow with every step, until her legs began to feel leaden and unwilling to move. At the bottom, she stopped and looked around.

  Dec turned, apparently realizing she wasn't following him. "What's wrong?"

  "I…don't know." She tried to brush the feeling away, but, like cobwebs, it clung, refusing to be dismissed.

  His face expressed concern. "Would you rather I check out the huts alone?"

  "No!" The words escaped her with startling vehemence, and before she realized what she was doing, she had grabbed his hand.

  Almost at once, her face heated with embarrassment and she tried to let go of him. This time his fingers refused to yield.

  "Markie, what's wrong? Are you having a feeling?"

  How could he ask that so casually, as if it were normal? All her life she'd known it wasn't normal. And just as her sister had scared her and others, she had scared a few people herself. The sense wasn't as active in her, but at times it shocked her into blurting things that made others decide to avoid her.

  Dec would want to avoid her if this didn't stop. She looked at him, feeling a crazy mix of emotions that she couldn't express, from fear that he would want to avoid her to fear that this uneasiness she was feeling had a real basis.

  "Are you having a feeling?" he asked again. He tugged her closer, until her breasts brushed his chest; then he put his arm around her shoulders, while his other hand continued to hold hers.