by Jana DeLeon
It appeared that Sissy was writing about an event that had happened months or weeks before that was just now coming back to haunt them. But what event had happened in the graveyard? Justine stared out the window, lost in thought. The night Franklin murdered Marilyn, only those two died. She sucked in a breath. Not the child! Was that it? Had Franklin murdered Marilyn’s child before Sissy could send him away? Had Marilyn put a curse on Franklin over the grave of her deceased child?
Lightning struck just outside the library window and thunder boomed a split second later, causing her to jump. She felt the room vibrate from the blast and the lights immediately snapped off. She rose from her chair and looked out the library window. The rain blew in sheets across the courtyard, already creating narrow channels in the landscaping bed outside the library. Poor Brian must have gotten caught outside in the downpour.
Movement across the courtyard caught Justine’s eye and she squinted into the storm, trying to determine what was out there. Surely Brian hadn’t gone across the courtyard to the caretaker’s cottage. She watched for a couple of seconds and was just about to decide she’d seen something blowing in the wind, when she saw it again. And this time there was no confusion.
The white-robed figure stood on the far side of the courtyard behind the fountain. Justine didn’t see the glowing red eyes this time, but she couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that the figure knew she was there and was looking straight at her. She knew the smart thing to do was to back away from the window and pull her gun out of her backpack, but she found herself rooted to that spot, almost as if her shoes were nailed to the floor.
She stared at the figure, praying it didn’t come any closer, and at the same time wanting desperately to know what it was and what it wanted. After a couple of seconds, the figure lifted one arm and seemed to point east. Justine looked east, but couldn’t make out anything but a wall of cypress trees that covered the swamp. The caretaker’s cottage and storage shed were north of the house, not east, and Justine knew of no other outbuilding that the old caretaker had identified as part of the estate.
She looked back to the figure, but it was gone. Pressing her face against the window, she strained to see across the courtyard, to make out where the figure might have gone. She’d only looked away for seconds. How had the figure disappeared completely? Even in the storm, the white robes would glow in the dim light. If the figure was in her line of sight, she would be able to see it.
A burst of lightning lit up the entire courtyard and she quickly scanned every inch of it. There was nothing outside any longer.
Justine backed away from the window and tried to collect her thoughts. Deep in her bones, she felt the figure was trying to tell her something. But what could be out in the swamp?
She glanced down at the table and froze. The graveyard!
Because of the remote location of the estate, Franklin Borque would have built a family cemetery somewhere on the property. Even though she had no proof at all, Justine was certain she’d find that cemetery east, in the swamp where the figure had pointed. And the cemetery might contain the information she was looking for. A way to trace her lineage.
Her mind whirled with thoughts. She had to figure out how to get out of laMalediction without setting off an alarm. She wasn’t about to tell Brian that the ghostly figure had appeared and pointed her into the swamp. Brian assumed the figure was a person with nefarious intent. He’d insist she was walking into a trap and forbid her to go.
And Justine thought the figure was…what?
She didn’t actually know, or she didn’t want to admit that for the first time in her life she might actually believe that some things were not of the living.
BRIAN STRUGGLED to pull off his mud-caked boots outside the kitchen entry into laMalediction. The door led straight out of the kitchen and onto the lawn, but contained no awning, so the rain pelted him as he yanked the heavy boots off his feet. By the time he stepped inside the kitchen he was soaking wet.
“You’re marring the pristine floor.” Justine’s voice sounded from the doorway.
“Ha. Yeah, I might create a layer of mud in that dust with all the water I’m shedding.”
“Don’t move,” Justine said. “I’ll be right back with some towels.”
Brian wiped the water from his forehead and eyes, and a couple of minutes later Justine returned with towels from the upstairs bathroom. “Thanks,” he said as he ran the first one across his head to remove the water from his short hair.
“Guess this is one of those times when it pays to have a military cut,” Justine observed. “Was everything okay outside?”
“Everything looked fine. I was hoping I’d beat the storm, but man, it came up fast. John told me the storms seemed to appear at once, but this is still more than I imagined.”
Justine nodded. “I think it’s because of the swamp. You can’t see the skyline much beyond the cleared part of the estate, so the storm’s right on top of us before we know it.”
“Makes sense.” He smiled. “I guess everything has a logical explanation, even the things that happen here.”
Justine didn’t answer immediately. “We can only hope.”
“Don’t tell me this place is getting to you already?”
“No. Not the place, but a combination of Olivia’s dreams, the stories in the journals and something floating outside in a downpour in the middle of the night is enough to make you wonder. I mean, I’ve never come out and said that certain things don’t exist, but I’ve never seen proof of them, either.”
Brian considered her words. “I see what you mean. I’m certain Olivia’s telling the truth about her dreams, but I can’t think of another explanation for them than that she’s somehow dreaming the past.”
Justine nodded. “Especially when you consider that she’s been having those dreams her entire life, but didn’t find out the story of laMalediction and Marilyn Borque until recently. It makes even a skeptic wonder, more so when you have as credible a person as Olivia.”
“Yeah, but a bad dream didn’t crack you on the back of the head or slash my tires. Which reminds me…” He turned and punched in a code on the alarm pad next to the kitchen door. “If an exterior door opens, a window is lifted anywhere on the first level of the house or someone opens the basement door, this alarm will sound off, and I mean loud.”
He reached for a black object on the kitchen counter that looked like a remote. “This has every alarm point noted on it,” he said, pointing to a row of labels next to a green light. “As long as that location is secure, the light is green. If the location is breached, the light turns red.”
“What about the contractors who are scheduled to come?”
“John wants me to personally escort every contractor during their tour of the house, so I’ll be able to control the alarm. Once Olivia gets all the bids, John will run extensive background checks on anyone they want to hire. We’ll deal with the actual work issues when the time comes, but that will probably take a couple of months. With any luck, you’ll find the emeralds and be back home by then.”
“With any luck,” Justine agreed.
He handed the security sensor to Justine. “Keep this with you at all times. The alarm will let you know immediately if security is breached, but this will tell you where. Get as far away from the breached location as possible without leaving the house, and I will find you. Do not attempt to investigate. That’s my job.”
“Sure,” Justine said. “I’m going to get some more work done before my battery’s dead.”
Brian nodded. “I’m going to change shirts and start working on furniture inventory upstairs. Don’t be alarmed if you hear me banging around up there.”
“No problem,” Justine said, and left the kitchen.
Brian watched her walk down the hallway and into the library and wondered again what the quiet beauty was thinking. In conversation she seemed so direct, but Brian always sensed that she was holding something back…that her mind was whirling i
n a million directions that she wasn’t about to share with someone else.
The question was, did it have anything to do with laMalediction?
JUSTINE STARED DOWN at the sensor, feeling the walls of the house close in around her. This was far more than she had expected in security. This was state-of-the-art and not anything a layman could get around without some work. She stared across the estate grounds to the swamp east of the house. So close, but yet technologically, out of her grasp. Damn it. She had to find some way around Brian’s high-tech security.
He hadn’t said anything at all about seeing the figure across the courtyard, so either he’d been in a different area of the estate or he hadn’t noticed it in the storm. Or it wasn’t really there. She shook her head, warding off that thought. It wasn’t productive. Brian saw the white-robed figure on their first night in Cypriere. The figure was real. Whether it was a real person or not was the question.
Sighing, she flopped into her chair and pulled a journal off the stack. There was no use dwelling on it now. She’d figure out something tonight and come back tomorrow with a plan. In the meantime, she needed to make some notes on her research before her battery ran out. She flipped through the pages of the journal, scanning the entries. This journal was much earlier than the others, and she tried to place the date in her time line of events. It was after Franklin left for war and before he returned, but Justine was trying to determine where it fit in the time line of Marilyn’s pregnancy.
So far, neither journal had made mention of her pregnancy, and Justine found that odd, especially as the journals were written by the pregnant woman and her personal servant, another woman. A pregnancy was just the sort of thing a woman would usually journal about, and the absence of comments put her senses on high alert that something wasn’t quite right.
She scanned the entries that Sissy wrote about gardening and her worries about the weather in the coming winter in such an isolated location. She wrote of long days of polishing silver with her mistress, or sewing in front of the firelight at night.
Justine stopped and reread a passage again. Not just sewing. Sissy specifically made mention that she was “letting out” the mistress’s dresses. Granted, everyone could gain weight, but Justine couldn’t help but think this might be the start of Marilyn’s pregnancy. The question was, how far along was she? Given the tight-fitting dresses of that era, she may have only been a month or two along; but if she starved herself or carried the baby low, she could have been several months along before showing.
She scanned the entries afterward, but no other mention of dresses or Marilyn’s size was mentioned. She flipped the last page of the journal over and stared. Something didn’t look right. Running her finger down the center of the journal, she could feel the tiny remnants of torn paper. Someone had removed pages from the journal. Certainly not Olivia, and the old caretaker had gladly turned his ancestor’s journals over for their research. So who? Were the pages torn recently or had they been missing for decades?
A thud from upstairs reminded her that Brian was working above her and an idea for circumventing the security system flashed through her mind. Several windows on the second floor had tiny balconies. All she needed was a sturdy rope and a small window of opportunity to get out of laMalediction. Tonight, she’d direct dinner conversation around Brian’s plans for tomorrow—find out where he would be working in the house. Then she’d make her exit on the other side.
She had to find the graveyard. If the child was buried there, her personal quest at laMalediction was over, even if her job for Olivia wasn’t.
BRIAN POSITIONED HIMSELF on the side of a giant bookcase to slide it from its resting spot in the center of the inside wall. When he and John had scoured the rooms weeks before, looking to close off any secret access to the house, he didn’t remember the bookcase being in that location but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there. The old house had a ton of rooms full of old, dusty furniture and there was no way Brian could remember them all. At least this bookcase was empty, which made the entire moving process a bit less cumbersome.
He placed furniture sliders under each corner of the bookcase and pressed his shoulder into the massive wood structure, pleasantly surprised when it slid easily across the hardwood flooring. When he’d completely revealed the section of wall behind the bookcase, he stopped for inspection.
Running his hands across the wall, he checked every square inch of the old wallpaper for a gap or tear—any sign that a portion of the wall moved. The surface appeared to be solid, but that wasn’t necessarily conclusive. Whoever had designed the panels had been a master craftsman. Brian had never seen such seamless work, even though he’d spent a couple of summers working for a cabinetmaker.
Time for another tactic.
He pulled out his tape measure and measured the distance from a window on the back wall of the room to the interior wall in question. Six inches. Then he went into the room next door and measured the distance from that window to the other side of the interior wall. Six inches. He lifted the window and leaned outside, extending his tape measure to the edge of the window in the other room.
Give or take an inch, the windows were two feet apart. That left one foot of space or less between the two rooms. Hardly enough for a passageway, unless one was very slight. He walked back into the other room and retrieved his notebook from the dresser. The room appeared secure, but something about it still bothered him. He flipped to the back of the notebook and opened a pouch taped to the inside of the back cover.
John had taken pictures of each of the rooms to help with the inventory. Maybe something in a photo could help him pin down the inconsistency he felt was there. He flipped through the photos until he found one with the same empty bookcase. He held the photo up next to the bookcase to ensure it was the same piece of furniture. It matched exactly.
When he stepped back to look at the wall and bookcase, he realized that, in the photo, the bookcase was in almost the exact location as it was now, but that wasn’t right. He’d moved the bookcase at least three feet down the wall to expose the area behind it. No one had authorized access to the house but him, John, Olivia and now Justine. He’d be willing to bet that none of them had moved the bookcase.
But someone had.
The question was why?
Chapter Eight
Justine polished off her plate of spaghetti and leaned back in her stool at the rental-house kitchen counter with a satisfied sigh. “That was fabulous. But oh, my God, I am going to have to run tomorrow. Since I’ve been here, I’ve eaten nothing but yummy, fattening things.” She didn’t add that the fact that the delicious meal had been prepared by a man who looked more suited to camouflage than a cooking apron invoked feelings deep within her that she didn’t want to address.
Brian studied her for a moment, and Justine got the impression he was searching for something.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, uncomfortable with his scrutiny.
He broke eye contact and shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare, but for a moment, something about you seemed familiar. I guess I zoned out.”
Justine felt her heart pound in her chest. She knew exactly what had set him off. The one and only time she’d seen Brian Marcentel before Cypriere, she’d eaten spaghetti with his family. She hastily grabbed for a piece of the pie he’d cut earlier and tried to maintain her cool. “I get that sometimes,” she said, happy that her voice wasn’t shaking. “I guess I have one of those faces.”
“Guess so,” Brian agreed and took a huge bite of his pie.
Justine relaxed a bit when it seemed that he’d dismissed the entire incident. “I can’t believe you bought pie,” she said. “Like the rest of the food wasn’t enough.”
Brian polished off another bite of pie and nodded. “I know. I’m overdue for some exercise, too. If you don’t mind, I’d like to jog at laMalediction—at least around the perimeter of the estate. I want to see if I can locate other trails that might lead to the house.�
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“Sounds like a plan,” Justine said, struggling to contain her elation. Brian was giving her exactly what she wanted—access to the outside of laMalediction. With any luck, she’d be able to spot a good entry place into the swamp on the east side of the estate. At the very least, she’d get to inspect the grounds on the north side of the estate for footprints, just in case her visitor yesterday wasn’t really the ethereal type.
“How’s the inventory going?” she asked, fishing for more information.
“Fine.”
Justine studied his face for a second, curious about his tone. It was short and dismissive, as if there was something he didn’t want to talk about. “You find any more secret passage ways?” she asked, pressing for more information.
“No,” he said, somewhat hesitantly.
“You don’t sound entirely certain.”
“Maybe I’m not. I found a bookcase that had been moved from its original location, but there’s not enough space behind it for a passageway.”
“So someone else moved the bookcase before we got here, apparently looking for something. But there’s no passageway there, and you and John sealed the existing ones, right?”
“I guess. But the first night we were in the house, everything was locked tight. I know the alarm wasn’t up, but I checked the windows and doors. They were all locked from the inside before we went to bed. Your attacker got in the house somehow.”
“Unless he was already there,” Justine suggested.
“Perhaps. But then, how did he get out and lock the doors behind him?”
“What if he didn’t? I mean, what if the basement contains tunnels and rooms that you and John didn’t discover? Someone could hide out there for an indefinite amount of time.”
“Yeah,” Brian said and sighed, his frustration evident.
Justine suddenly realized that his dismissive answer earlier had been Brian’s way of protecting her…of preventing her from worrying. “Hey,” she said, “please don’t feel like you have to keep things from me. I prefer to face things head-on. Besides, knowing everything I’m up against keeps me more alert.”
