“I don’t know,” Liam said. He was curious. He wanted to see her. It had been a long time. Other women had come into his life, and other women had gone. She was the only one who had ever teased his memory in absence. “I don’t know,” he repeated with a shrug.

And he suddenly prayed that she had become a Valley girl, that she would stay away and that whatever cursed the Merlin house, human or other, would never touch Kelsey.

The next night, it was a dinner of shepherd’s pie that he had to leave. It had just arrived, and the call came from the station.

It was Jack again.

“Lieutenant, I know you found kids last night, and I can’t believe they’re back, but we’ve just gotten another call. This time it was from a tourist who is staying at a bed-and-breakfast across the way. He saw lights on at the Merlin house, and he’s certain he heard a scream.”

Liam set his fork down. “There are lights on because I had an electrician out. The lightbulbs are all new. I left a light on inside the living room, and one on the front porch.”

“Sir, the lights are coming from an upstairs bedroom. The lights didn’t bother Mr.—” Liam could hear papers rustling as Jack checked his notes “—Mr. Tom Lewis, from New York City. What bothered him is that he could swear he heard a scream.”

“All right. I’m going out,” he said.

He slid off his bar stool. He’d been alone thus far that night, though Katie was working her Katie-oke, and he knew that David would be in soon. Clarinda had taken his order and delivered his food. She came by as he stood. “I take it you’ll be wanting this reheated when you get back?”

He smiled at her. “Yep, thanks.”

“The Merlin house again?”

“Yep. What made you say that?”

She grinned at him. “You don’t usually leave your dinner for drunks on Front Street.”

He nodded, thanked her and assured her that he’d be back.

On the street, he looked for Bartholomew, but he didn’t see the ghost, who usually hovered near or around him. It disturbed him to realize that he wished that Bartholomew was around.

He wondered if he should call for backup, but decided that he would be able to see in the house that night, and he wanted to move in quietly himself.

So thinking, he parked out on the road and walked onto the property.

When he reached the house, he moved quietly up to the porch. When he touched the front doorknob, he carefully twisted it and once again found it open. He pressed it inward carefully, remaining as silent as he could.

To his surprise, he heard conversation coming from the kitchen. “Look, none of this stuff is worth stealing. I thought we could find some small thing that would bring in a few bucks, something that no one would notice, and maybe sleep a few nights in a place that wasn’t a hellhole,” someone said. “But there’s nothing. We’re going to take a shrunken skull? There aren’t even any amulets or anything on that ragtag excuse for a mummy. And guess what? I don’t like this place! It’s creepy and scary. That damned door opened as if the house was sucking us in!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is a house—that’s all there is to it. Things are things. The dead are dead, and I don’t know about you, but I’m certain there’s got to be something that doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds and can be sold easily,” said a second speaker. “He’s supposed to have all kinds of jewels, diamonds and so on.”

“You know what? You’re wrong. This is bad. I don’t feel good about taking anything out of this place. It may be cursed, you know?” said the first voice.

There seemed to be a slight hesitation between the two; Liam almost moved forward, but then the second speaker said, “All right, so the house is…weird. Creepy. We look fast, we get out—fast. Hey, I was always kind of close to old Merlin. Ran errands and stuff. He owes me, honestly. So, nothing creepy will happen if we’re just careful about taking what we need, and not robbing the place blind.”

It was enough. Aware of his gun in its holster beneath his light cotton jacket, Liam stepped forward, walking casually into the kitchen.

The first man, with scraggly blond hair and a scruffy face, let out a startled yelp.

The second one spun around as if he were ready to pounce on the threatened danger; he saw Liam and backed down.

Liam knew them both.

The scruffy blond was Gary White, a guitar player who wasn’t bad, with a voice that, likewise, wasn’t bad. He could get work. Thing was, while he wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t good. That meant he didn’t work all that often, but he was still convinced that he’d get rich one day, that he’d be discovered in Key West. His last name fit him—his hair was so bleached out by the sun, it was platinum, nearly white.

The second man was Chris Vargas. He was dark haired, about a decade older than Gary, an inch taller, and he couldn’t play guitar at all. He had a beat-up old rickshaw, and made money running tourists up and down Duval Street. He had a home in a tiny apartment above the garage of a house on the south side of Old Town.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Liam asked tiredly.

Gary looked at Chris in alarm. His mouth began to work. “Uh—uh.”

That was all that he could come up with.

Vargas said, “Oh, hey! We saw lights in here. We knew that old man Merlin just died. We thought we’d better check it out.”

“Vargas, you ass, I just heard you talking,” Liam said.

Chris Vargas reddened. He was a lean, lithe man in decent shape from running up and down all the time with a fair amount of weight behind him. He could probably be dangerous, under certain circumstances, Liam decided. His features were sharp, like a little rat’s. He’d been scraping for a living too long, drinking to drown his unhappiness a few too many nights.

“All right,” the man said softly. “We—we weren’t after much, Lieutenant Beckett. Honest to God. Just some little thing.”

“And you were in here last night, too, trying to scare those kids to death, huh?” Liam asked.

“No, we were not in here last night!” Gary White said, indignant. He stood straight, and seemed really hurt at the accusation.

Liam looked at Chris Vargas. Vargas stared back at him, shaking his head emphatically.

“Oh, God, we’re under arrest, right?” Gary asked miserably.

“How did you get in?” Liam asked.

Gary looked puzzled. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. “Um—the door?”

“You walked in the front door. How? You picked the lock?” Liam asked.

“No, it wasn’t locked,” Gary assured him.

Liam believed him. Gary White was just a bit too dense to be a good liar.

“Look,” Vargas said, “we just walked in because—”

“You were robbing the estate,” Liam interrupted.

“Not really robbing,” White protested. “Just…Ah, come on, Lieutenant. If you heard us, you know that we’re just…All right, so we were going to take something really little. And, hell, we’re not bad. The kids in here the other night—those little bastards have broken into other places. They don’t steal, but they smoke pot, yeah, they smoke pot up in the rooms and play with all the stuff the snowbirds leave behind.”

“If you weren’t in here,” Liam asked wearily, “how do you know about the kids?”

“Because everybody knows about the kids,” Vargas said. “Ah, Lieutenant! You know this is a small town, really. Everybody knows everything. And it’s true. I heard they got the bejesus scared out of them here. I hope it’s true. It will keep the little rug rats from causing real trouble.”

“That’s right,” White agreed solemnly, nodding at Vargas as if the two of them were the most solid citizens in the world.

Gary White must have seen something in Liam’s face. He choked slightly, cleared his throat and asked, “Are you going to arrest us?”

This whole thing was beyond absurd. Two nights in a row. First, kids. Second? Two of the denizens of the place who weren’t known for violence, who just eked out a living. If he arrested them, an attorney would have them out on bail. And what would they get for trespassing? They hadn’t stolen anything; he had arrived too soon, and, from what he could tell, they couldn’t find anything they actually wanted to steal anyway.

He thought about the paperwork.

And, to his knowledge, Gary White had never done anything to break the law that was more serious than jaywalking.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said.

They both stared at him.

“Now,” he said.

They bolted like lightning. He turned and watched them from the kitchen doorway. They had trouble opening the front door, the one crashing into the other, crashing into the door, then each other again.

Finally, they made it out.

He walked to the door himself. There was nothing wrong with it that he could see. The lock hadn’t been picked.

Someone else out there had a key.

Tomorrow he’d have to have the lock changed.

Going from the West Coast of the States to the east coast made it difficult to arrive with much of anything left of daylight, especially once daylight savings time was gone. But Kelsey had found an early-morning flight that got her into Miami around three in the afternoon. She could have taken a puddle jumper down to Key West from Miami International Airport, but she wanted to drive. Baggage claim at MIA was insane, but eventually she was ready to head out for the rental-car agency, and by four-thirty she was driving south.

The turnpike took her to Florida City, and she headed down U.S. 1, past the gas stations, one real restaurant and fast-food eateries to the eighteen-mile stretch of nothingness that led to Key Largo and from there south and then west to Key West.

They’d improved the road, though she still saw signs and crosses where those in a hurry had tried to pass, only to pay the ultimate price. She managed to get behind a truck towing a huge boat trailer, but she didn’t mind waiting for the passing zone.

It had been a long time.

The day was beautiful. The turquoise water glistened, the waves were gentle and calm. In a few areas, construction workers were still claiming land to widen the road and the stench of stagnant water overpowered the view, but the sight of a cormorant soaring above the water seemed to lift the stench beyond her windows, and then she was past it.

A new overpass made getting into Key Largo a bit easier and faster, and it was still daylight when she arrived. Key Largo was built up. She assumed she’d see that all the way down the Keys.

By six-thirty she had lost the daylight, and she had come to the middle Keys where there were still vast tracts that didn’t seem to have been built up much. Marathon had acquired another shopping center, but the lower Keys were still tiny and starkly populated. She slowed at the signs warning that her speed needed to be minimal in honor of the little Key deer that roamed the area, and at last, in darkness, she reached Stock Island and then drove on to Key West. Following North Roosevelt Boulevard around, she sought out the shopping plaza on the newer part of the island where the attorney had assured her he would leave the key to the Merlin house in a lockbox—a brand-new key because the police lieutenant had suggested new locks. She found the shopping center easily enough, decided she’d just stop quickly for a sandwich at a small Cuban restaurant and went to procure the key. As she punched in the number Joe Richter had given her, the door to his office in the plaza opened.

“Kelsey. Kelsey Donovan! Young lady, you have grown up!”

Joe Richter was probably about fifty. She remembered him the minute she saw him because he hadn’t changed at all. His hair was snow-white, and he had a full head of it. He was lean, a gaunt man who managed to maintain a presence and a tremendous sense of dignity.

“Joe, I remember you, of course,” she said. When she had called about Cutter’s death, he hadn’t reminded her that she knew him. But she had been distracted when she called—still wallowing in guilt.

“I was just about to leave—you just caught me. I wanted to let you know we can do a formal reading of the will anytime you like. You’re the only heir, so…Then,” he added, clearing his throat, “we do need to make arrangements for Cutter’s burial. He’s still at the morgue, awaiting your plans.”

“Thank you, Joe, for handling everything so far,” Kelsey said.

“He was my client for years, though even I had barely seen him lately,” Joe said.

“When did you see him last?”

“About six months ago.”

“That long? Was there any special reason you saw him then?”

Joe shook his head. “No. His will has remained the same since your mother died. I happened to be shopping down on Front Street, so I took a ride out. I told him he needed a maid—he said that he’d tried hiring someone once, but she’d left in the middle of the job, screaming. I guess the house isn’t for everyone.”

“No,” Kelsey agreed, smiling.

“Well, young lady, I’m going to suggest you get some help to clean the place out. It’s going to need a lot of work.” He hesitated. “Can I do anything for you now? Would you rather stay somewhere else? I can get you a reservation…Of course, you could have gotten your own reservation, if you had wanted,” he added gently.

“No, I think I need to get out to the house. Everything is actually working, right? Electric, plumbing…that kind of thing?”

“Oh, yeah, the police saw to it. All I had to do was hire the locksmith—safety’s sake, you know?”

“Sure, thank you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she told him.

He nodded and watched her head out to her car. She revved the engine and found herself looking around the plaza. She might have been almost anywhere in America, in this parking lot. This portion of the island was fairly new, created by dredging salt ponds, digging some places, dumping others. Once she headed down Roosevelt toward Old Town, things changed. Hospitals, restaurants, tourist shops and bars were interspersed among old Victorian buildings, and grand dames from the past sat side by side with neon lights. The Hard Rock Cafe was located in one of the old Curry mansions—in fact, it was “haunted,” of course. Robert Curry, unable to sustain the family fortune due to ill health and a lack of business smarts, had killed himself there. Also on Duval was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, rebuilt and rebuilt again—and still the haunt of a sea captain and a group of children tragically killed in a fire. Key West jealously guarded her ghosts, just as she did her bizarre history and all her citizens who had come and gone.

Kelsey didn’t drive as far as Duval, though, turning to take Simonton down to the wharf and then turning onto the private road that led out to Cutter Merlin’s house.

Her house.

She hesitated a minute at the overgrown gravel drive that led out to the house. Funny—as a child, she had never thought of the house as remote.

That night, in the darkness, the road looked like something out of a slasher film, and the house seemed to sit in a lonely jungle far from the mainland.

It wasn’t far, she reminded herself. She and her friends had swum the distance from the house’s spit of land over to the mainland many a time. Of course, they were good swimmers. They knew the currents that could sweep by, but the eddy would keep them closer to the road, and they had learned as kids never to strike out alone. Her mother had been an amazing swimmer and diver, and she had taught Kelsey that the biggest mistake those who knew what they were doing made was that they didn’t take common-sense precautions.

Still, the house seemed so austere, so alone out here tonight.

All right. So much for the swimming. She had walked in and out of town as a kid. There was nothing far or remote about the place.

It was hers, and she had to take care of the place.

She could wait until morning.

That would be ridiculous. She didn’t need a hotel room. She owned a house. Even if she planned on selling it, she owned the house.

She pulled the rental car around the side of the house, where they had always parked the family car. There were no cars there; she wondered if Cutter had stopped driving as the years had gone by. There was a lot she had forgotten to ask Joe. But she had just arrived; she’d spend time with him learning about the entire situation tomorrow.

If Cutter had employed a maid who had run away, he had stopped hiring a gardener as well, that was certain.

She exited the car, and was startled to feel an uneasy sense of being watched the second she did so. She looked around. She could see the lights across the tiny inlet, and the lights in the house itself. A porch light was on, and light glowed from the living room.

Parlor, she corrected herself. Cutter had always called it the parlor. Now it would be called a living room.

Maybe she was having a ridiculous argument with herself about semantics because she just wasn’t sure she wanted to go in.

She had always loved the house. Her mother’s death had been an accident. She had tripped and fallen down the stairs. She might have just broken a leg, or an arm. She might have tumbled down and been fine, just bruised and shaken. But the way she had fallen…

She had broken her neck.

Kelsey dug in her over-the-shoulder bag for the new keys. On the porch, she discovered that there were two bolts, thus the chain of keys. She turned both, opened the door and walked on in.

She thought that memories would come flooding back, that she might feel weepy and nostalgic, but the house was actually different. Not the house per se but the appearance of the house. When she and her parents had lived here with her grandfather, the clutter had been at a minimum. There had still been strange objects everywhere: a hundred-year-old stuffed leopard on a dais, mounted heads on the wall—none of them killed by her family, and none less than a century old—native American art, dream catchers, Indian statues of Kali and other gods and goddesses, Roman busts, wiccan wands and so on. The items had been displayed on the wall, or in etageres, or freestanding on mounts. Now…items were everywhere, boxes were everywhere, and the objects on the walls were strewn with dust and spiderwebs. Cutter’s glass-encased six-foot bookstand—which had held priceless first editions of many works—was open, and it seemed that the spiders and other crawling creatures had done their damage in there, as well. Sawdust and packing material was strewn haphazardly here and there, almost as if Cutter—or someone else—had been feverishly looking for something special among the endless supply of things in the house.

Standing there, looking around, she felt a sinking sensation. The work this place was going to require would be enormous. And yet…they had been her grandfather’s treasures. Joe Richter had his will and his detailed papers on where things should go. Only Cutter would have known what had value, what belonged in a museum, and what had been sentimental to him.

A prickly sensation teased her spine, and she looked around quickly, having the eerie feeling once again of being watched. She didn’t know how that was possible, except that…

Well, actually, anyone could be hiding just about anywhere.

She walked forward and turned on more lights. She frowned as she surveyed all the boxes and crates. She had nearly reached the kitchen when she heard someone on the porch.

They would knock—if they were legitimate.

They didn’t knock. She heard a scratching sound, and something like metal against metal.

With her heart in her throat, she went flying across the room. She reached for the poker in the stand by the fireplace and grabbed the ash sweep instead. No matter; there was no time. She flew for the light switch, turned it off and dived behind one of the boxes.

A second later, she heard the knob twist; the door was unlocked.

Had she locked it again after she came in? She couldn’t remember.

The door creaked open. She heard footsteps, and then nothing. Whoever was there was just standing, listening.

Seconds ticked by with nothing, nothing except the pounding of her heart.

Then, as if the intruder could hear that pounding, he zoned in on her exact location. The footsteps came closer and closer…

And he was right in front of her. In a second, she would be pinned in place, trapped where she crouched in fear…

She shot up, swinging the metal ash sweep. She heard a hoarse cry as the rod connected with flesh, but then it was pulled out of her hand and a body tackled her length, sending her, and him, crashing down between the boxes.

“Bastard!” she raged, struggling desperately.

Her attacker went still.

“Kelsey?”

She knew the voice. Years dissipated. She knew the voice well.

The boy had changed. The long, lean, muscled body bearing down on hers had definitely changed.

“Liam?” she breathed.

“Good God, Kelsey!” he said.

For another split second, he was on top of her, vital, tense, a mass of flesh and sinew like a brick prison wall that lived and breathed…and then he was up, reaching for her hand, hauling her to her feet.

“Kelsey!” he said again, rubbing his arm, staring at her in the shadows.

“Liam,” she said.

Then he turned away from her and walked toward the light switch, and the eeriness of the night was filled with a glow of rationality once again.

Chapter Three

It was good—and strange—to see Kelsey after so many years. The promise of great beauty that she’d always shown had come to full fruition, and the awkward, embarrassed smile she was giving Liam was nothing short of pure charm.

Kelsey had grown up. She was in a pair of rolled-up capri jeans, a soft cotton V-necked T-shirt and sneakers—she seemed as elegant as a swan. A little tremor ripped through him. Time could wash away so easily. Once, she had been the love of his young life, the seductress of an adolescent’s libido and the object of many a dream.

And she was home.

“Liam!” she said again, and laughed. “Oh, Lord, I am so sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry—I tackled you,” he told her. “I heard you were coming. I just never expected you to arrive so quickly.”

“So, what were you doing here?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “Folks have been breaking in,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I heard—Joe Richter, told me. He said the police suggested that the locks be changed and—oh!” She stared at him, her brows arching. “Liam—okay, I guess that you are the police officer who told him to get the locks changed?”

He nodded. “Guilty as charged. I’m with the criminal investigation unit. Seems a lot of crime down here has to do with brawls on Duval and drugs but we’ve also had our share of serious crime lately.”

Kelsey nodded in agreement. “I read about your cousin being cleared in Tanya Barnard’s death and the awful things that happened.” She grimaced sheepishly. “I was happy—David is a great guy. Just because I haven’t been here doesn’t mean that I don’t read. And I read a really bizarre story about murders that took place near here—out on the islands. Sean O’Hara was involved, right?”

“Sean and David were filming a documentary. They meant to go through our history of oddities and wound up following the minds of the mad. But it’s over. They finished up the filming a few weeks ago and are thinking about their next project. David has moved back—he’s living at our grandfather’s place. He and Katie O’Hara are planning their wedding now.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Katie—so, what is Katie doing these days? Cutter told me that she went up north to college, but came home.”

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