by Ghost Night
“I’ll walk you around,” he said.
“All right, thanks.”
They passed through a little walkway. It led to the back. There was nice foliage along the way, but the inn was basic, just some rooms over a storefront. No charming tables and chairs outside, no pool, nothing but access to the rooms.
Sean knew that it was filled with spring-breakers and bachelor and bachelorette parties.
“I’m surprised you chose this place,” he told her. “It gets awfully loud.”
“I wanted the loud,” she said.
“Oh?”
“And the activity—cops around most of the time, lots of people at all hours.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked her, frowning and setting his hands on her shoulders.
“No, I’m not really afraid. But I like people and noise.”
He nodded. “All right. But you do know my sister well, so it seems. She owns the house we grew up in, though I’m living there now and Katie has moved in with David. Both places are huge. You’re on the project now. You’re welcome to come stay at either.”
“Thank you.” It seemed there was a slight tremor in her voice. “I thought I should stand on my own until we get going with this.”
“Your choice,” he told her.
“Thank you.” She looked at him for a long moment. He found that he really was in love with her eyes. Other assets as well, but her eyes…
The moment grew awkward. He pulled his hands away and shoved them in his pockets. “All right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”
“Actually…” she began, and then hesitated.
“Actually, what?” he queried.
“Well, I am your assistant, and a writer. I have a list of interview questions. I wrote them up, assuming you’d be interviewing an expert on the pirate era, and with Pirates in Paradise gearing up, it seemed to make sense. And Marty is amazing. I mean, it’s your project, you have your own questions, and once Marty gets going, but…”
“I’ll take your questions,” he told her.
“I’ll be right back,” she told him. She turned the key, entered the hallway and ran up the stairs. She returned within a minute flat, an envelope in her hands.
He grinned. “You are on the ball,” he told her.
“I swear, we’re good at what we do. I’m good at what I do. Honestly.”
“I believe you.” He cleared his throat. “I’m still waiting to hear back from Jaden and Ted.”
“Of course. Um, well, see you then.”
The door was still ajar. He opened it for her, and she entered the hallway. He watched as she ran up the stairs. The door closed behind her, and Sean pushed it so that it would close firmly and lock. He turned away and headed for his own place.
He barely knew her.
If he’d admitted it to himself, that didn’t matter. He wanted her to be everything that she seemed. He wanted to know more about her. Everything.
Two people had died. Maybe a third.
And the mystery was intriguing. The only way to really understand it, to try to figure out what could have happened, was to follow the same trail.
They would do so.
Two boats.
He’d make sure that Vanessa was on his.
And that Jay Allen wasn’t.
That night, it was the heads.
Vanessa was sound asleep, and the world was pleasant and dark, and then the darkness began to lift. She was walking along the shore, and it was beautiful, pristine white sand, the ocean in all its glorious shades of aqua and blue, light and deep. She heard the sound of the waves and felt the sand and the pleasant wash of the waves over her toes.
And then she reached them. Georgia’s head, with her arms in front of her, stuck out of the sand, and Travis’s head, his arms in front, as well.
“Vanessa, see! I told you I wasn’t lying!” Georgia said angrily.
“And I don’t play bad practical jokes on people,” Travis said. “Why didn’t you all look for me, why did you just assume I was being an ass?” Travis demanded.
“Oh!” Georgia said. Her arms moved in the sand with the exclamation, and she pointed down the shore. “They were having champagne. They were celebrating. And they all got mad at me! Then Carlos…”
“Then Carlos what?” Vanessa cried out.
“Carlos…Carlos…” Georgia said. “I don’t know. Come help me. Oh, wait. I can’t get out of here. I have no legs. I have no torso. Why didn’t you believe me, Vanessa, why didn’t you believe me?”
“Be careful. They’ll get you, too,” Travis warned. He blew a lock of his hair out of his eyes. “They’ll get you, too.”
“And you can be with us, just heads, talking heads, sitting in the sand,” Georgia said.
“We have arms,” Travis reminded her.
“Yes, we have arms,” Georgia agreed, and they both waved their hands in the air.
“Be careful, Vanessa, be careful, you need the truth, or you can join us…heads and arms and hands, hands and heads…here, in the sand.”
“In fact,” Travis said, “you need to come closer and closer….”
She awoke with a start. She was shaking, clammy with sweat. She inhaled on a deep breath and wondered if the nightmares would ever stop.
It was day. She glanced at the cheap alarm on the bedside table. Almost 9:00 a.m. She would get up, walk down to the Internet café, read some e-mails and drink lots of coffee. A shower would be wonderful, so wonderful now.
She ran her hands over the bed as she pushed herself from it. She frowned as her hands went over something gritty.
Sand.
She jumped out of the bed. There were a million explanations for it. She’d spent the day diving. There was dirt and sand everywhere.
The pile on her bed was pristine and white.
With a shout of irritation, she whisked it off the bed and to the floor, and hurried into the bathroom.
There were tons of explanations….
Yeah, right. The explanation, ridiculous and horrible, that came to her mind was simple and sad. Georgia and Travis were haunting her. They blamed her for not doing more. They…
They needed the truth, justice, closure.
Somehow, she had to give it them.
Before she became nothing more than a head and arms in the sand herself.
6
One o’clock rolled around and Sean, Jay and David went to film at Marty’s place. Marty told them that they didn’t need to pay him for an interview on his love of pirates and the sea, but they insisted and he shrugged it off. He seemed pleased enough to meet Jay, and he was more than helpful as they set up for the shoot in his eclectic house. When they were set, Sean did the questioning, admitting to himself that the questions Vanessa had written were excellently phrased and led Marty quickly in the right direction.
David filmed, Jay was recruited for lighting, and Marty was assured that it didn’t matter if he made mistakes or wanted to go back, it was fine. The footage would be edited.
It went well. Marty was a natural showman, and if any man looked like an old pirate, it was Marty. He talked about the early days of Key West—the very early days, when the Calusa Indians were around, through the Spanish period, the English period, the Spanish period, and then the days when Florida—and Key West—became a territory of the United States. He knew his piracy and could trace it through the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds—and he could even tell hair-raising tales of modern-day piracy.
Sean led him to talking about the attack on the Santa Geneva, Mad Miller and Kitty Cutlass.
“Ah, well, there’s a story!” Marty said, his eyes blazing. “Mad Miller was born and bred on the island, just like his paramour, Kitty Cutlass. Kitty was a saloon girl, right on Duval Street, and let me tell you, they were rough places back then, shacks, they were. Some say she was a sweet girl gone bad, and some say she was born pure evil. Mad Miller was working a rich man’s merchant vessel when he turned it around and made her a pirate ship.
He managed to take a gunboat down and steal her cannons, then reworked the merchant ship into a fine pirate vessel with twenty guns. Now, it’s said that the early days were good days—Mad Miller would blast a merchant ship or any enemy ship to smithereens, but he’d always pick up the survivors, and he never kidnapped a soul for ransom, just left them all beached somewhere. Ah, but then the battle of the sexes began! There’s always a woman, right? In any story. Except in this story, there were two. Key West had barely become an American territory, Admiral David Porter had just begun his campaign with his Mosquito Squadron to clear out the pirates, when Mad Miller and his crew came upon the Santa Geneva. Relations with Spain were doing fine—God knew, enough Spaniards were still living here. Now Dona Isabella was a great beauty of her day. Black eyes, black hair, fair skin, white bosom and wasp waist, and she lived a fine life of society right around the Southern tip of Duval—the house is long gone now, though a fine residence still stands where it once was. She was married to Don Diego de Hidalgo, a man highly respected in his native Spain, where he chose to reside most of the time. Dona Isabella had just left Key West to return to Spain—her husband wanted her back with him—when Mad Miller and his crew lit out after her ship, said to carry great riches upon it. But it seemed that Mad Miller suddenly changed his ways—he took a number of the surviving crew captive, but it’s said that his men slashed to death those in the water who were begging to be saved. From the point of the attack—near Pirate Cut and the Pirate Cut reef—Mad Miller sailed off to his safe harbor at Haunt Island, a nearly desolate islet off South Bimini. There it’s said that Mad Miller and his crew massacred the survivors—even the beautiful Dona Isabella. Of course, much of what we suspect is theory, since no one knows what really happened. But there were rumors among other men of unsavory repute that Mad Miller had gone insane with desire for Dona Isabella and that Kitty Cutlass, in a jealous rage, had murdered her. Mad Miller then left Haunt Island, ready to attack more ships, but it wasn’t to be. He met his demise not at the end of a hangman’s noose but in the midst of the fury of the Atlantic. A hurricane came through, and Mad Miller’s ship was sunk with all aboard, and all his treasure. This is known because another ship caught in the weather made it back. The hazardous conditions prevented any type of rescue operation, and frankly, since the ship that reported her foundering was a part of the Mosquito Squadron, it’s likely that the men watched her go down with laughter on their lips—when they weren’t fighting to stay afloat themselves!”
Marty stopped speaking and looked at Sean and then David and then Sean again.
“Wonderful. You were great, Marty.”
“Yeah? Really?” Marty asked.
“Wonderful!” Jay said. He looked really pleased. “Marty, you’re so damned good, it’s going to be easy for me to appear to be the world’s most talented editor. When I’m done, you’ll see what I can do. You’re going to love the final footage.”
“I know it’s going to be good,” David said.
“One more thing, Marty. Will you do one of your sea shanties for us?”
“A privilege, boys, a privilege!” Marty said. He went for his old guitar in the corner. “Should have a squeeze box, really, but this will do.”
“Give us a chance to move the lights and the camera around a bit,” Sean said. Marty nodded happily and practiced strumming his string and tuning the instrument.
“Ready,” Sean said. “And we can film several takes, so you’re under no pressure.”
Marty grinned, strummed and sang.
“Oh, the sea, she is my lady,
E’er my lady true,
For the lady t’was my lady
Back upon the shore”
Mary strummed the last chord, set the guitar down and grinned.
“Cut,” Sean said. “Perfect!”
“Great,” David agreed.
“Should we do another, for safety’s sake?” Marty asked anxiously.
David glanced and Sean and shrugged with a grin.
“Sure, we’ve got the time, the people, and you—you’re an amazing intro, Marty,” Sean said.
Marty was pleased. He blushed. He picked up his guitar again, explained that it was an old sea shanty his father had taught him, one that had come down from old pirating days.
The next take was even better. Marty was just warming up.
They spent a while longer there, letting Marty go over a few facts and figures from history and the area, and then they wrapped it up.
While they packed the equipment, Jay asked, “Can I get started immediately on the footage, show you just what you’ll be getting?”
Sean hesitated, wondering what his problem was with Jay. Of course, he knew. Allen was close with Vanessa Loren. He was being unreasonable.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go back now—”
“Go to my place. I’ve got the equipment set up that you need,” Sean said.
Jay nodded with pleasure. “You won’t be disappointed.”
“If that comes out well enough, you’ll be wanting to take some shots at the setup for Pirates in Paradise, down by Fort Zachary Taylor,” Marty said. “Costumes, knives, swords, reproductions of all kinds. Pirate food and grog. Hey, everybody wants to be a pirate. Everybody wants to be Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, huh?”
They all agreed that Johnny Depp had done wonders for piracy, and then left the house at last. David went on to find Katie, and Sean took Jay Allen to his house, to the back, where he had his computer set up with all the software Jay might need.
And where he found Bartholomew, reading the screen—and pushing the keys.
“What the hell?” Jay murmured.
Sean reached over and pushed the escape key and then keyed in for his film system.
“You might have just said ‘move,’” Bartholomew said. “Or, more politely, ‘Bartholomew, old fellow, I need the computer now. Would you mind?’”
Sean didn’t respond.
“You’re good to go,” he told Jay.
“You’ll see, you’ll see—and you’ll want me more than you ever expected,” Jay promised, sitting down to get started.
“Go for it,” Sean told him.
“You’re not going to watch over my shoulder, are you?” Jay asked.
Leave this guy alone in his house?
“Don’t worry—I’ll be here, looking over his shoulder!” Bartholomew assured him.
Sean lowered his head to hide a smile. It was perfect. He could leave and yet know every single thing that went on in his house while Jay was there.
“Actually, no. I need to see a few friends,” Sean assured him.
“Okay, I’ll lock up,” Jay told him. “When I’m done. I’ll leave it in a ‘Marty’ file for you to find when you get back.”
“Great,” Sean agreed. “All right, then. I’ll call you if I don’t see you.”
He walked to the door. Bartholomew had taken another chair, at the table, his feet plunked upon it. He was watching Jay Allen with narrowed eyes.
When he headed for the door, Jay called him back. “You really don’t know how much I appreciate this opportunity.”
Sean nodded, and left.
With the door closed, he smiled. Bartholomew could be a true pest, an annoyance, taunting him when a response would make Sean appear to be totally insane.
But the old pirate/privateer was actually a damned good guy.
Oddly enough, a damned good friend.
Vanessa didn’t want to stay in her room at the inn, and she had been sincerely un-invited to be involved in the day’s shoot with Marty. She had decided to go explore down by the grounds at Fort Zachary Taylor, wearing a bathing suit beneath a cover-up dress, and force herself to stay calm and away from anyone with the name Beckett or O’Hara.
The main events of Pirates in Paradise weren’t taking place yet, but Vanessa learned from the first “pirate” she encountered that the booths would be starting to open the next day with eager, friendly vendors—all in pirat
e attire, of course—and that the first parties would take place that night. She was invited to come—he’d get her in free. She thanked him, said that she wasn’t sure and explored a lot of the merchandise.
At one booth, she found a beautiful display of reproduction jewelry. As she looked through the pieces she was impressed. The booth carried pen-and-ink drawings of various ships, lists of their manifests, the pirate “code of honor” and many more bills of lading and other pieces of the past, all historic copies.
She started when she looked up after studying one case to see that the picture above it was of Dona Isabella. Or at least it was a likeness similar to that which Marty had given her.
The girl attending the booth, a pretty young thing who looked to be no more than a teenager, came before her smiling. She was in a corset, skirt and big billowing blouse, with a tricorn hat perched atop her head.
“She startles everyone,” the girl said. “Dona Isabella, I mean. What a gorgeous creature—to die so sadly. Do you know the story?”
“Yes, actually, I do,” Vanessa told her.
“She’s supposed to haunt a lot of places, you know. Pirate Cut for one—a few divers swear that they’ve seen her! And, let’s see—she haunts the south end of Duval Street, where she supposedly lived. And Haunt Island, of course. I mean, what would Haunt Island be without a few haunts?”
Vanessa smiled. She didn’t want to talk about Haunt Island.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the piece in the display case that had drawn her attention. It was a jeweled pendant, a mermaid studded with various precious stones.
“Oh, this is a reproduction of one of Dona Isabella’s necklaces. Beautiful, isn’t it?” She giggled. “There was description of it in the ship’s manifest. There were always three manifests, you know. One for the ship’s owner, one on the ship and one left with the dockmaster’s office from the original embarkation point of a ship’s journey. This pendant was in the manifest—well, not this pendant, it’s a reproduction, of course—and, as you can see, Dona Isabella is wearing it in this picture, which is another copy, of an oil painting that hangs in a museum in Spain.”
