Ghost Shadow

Danny looked pale suddenly. “I—I—”

“You say that I was under suspicion, right?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” He was lying; he was lying out of kindness, so it seemed.

“Do you remember what really happened?” David asked.

“What do you mean, what really happened? I wasn’t working either day. You were working for me, don’t you remember?”

“Of course, I remember that. But what do you remember?”

“Not much, man.”

“What did you do the night of her murder with your free time?”

Danny thought a minute. “I had a few drinks at one of the joints on Duval. And I was down at Mallory Square. Then I went home. I woke up the next morning when I heard all the sirens—I was living in an apartment on Elizabeth Street back then. I came outside and saw the cops and the M.E.’s car over at the museum and walked over.”

“Did you see Tanya at all that night?” David asked.

“No…yes! Early. Well, it was late afternoon, I guess. Around five. I saw her down in one of the bars. I talked to her, I think. Yes, I did talk to her. I’d heard she was leaving town, and that things had kind of faded apart between you two. She said she had a few people to see that night, and that she’d be taking a rental up to Miami, and flying out from there the next day.”

“So, five o’clock. Where?”

Danny shook his head. “I think…maybe, yeah! I was toward the south side of Duval. It might even have been Katie’s uncle’s place.”

“Thanks, Danny,” David told him. “Did you tell the cops that at the time?”

“I’m sure that I did,” Danny told him. “Why?”

“Because her killer has never been caught,” David said.

“Right,” Danny said.

“Well, good to see you, and thanks again,” David told him.

“Sure thing. Sure. And I really can’t give you an ice cream?”

“No, but thanks,” David told him.

He waved to Danny and left.

Five o’clock. If Danny was right, Tanya had been at O’Hara’s at five o’clock on the Saturday night she had been murdered.

And Danny hadn’t seen her again.

Important, if it was the truth. If he wasn’t covering up.

For himself.

Or for someone else.

It was Danny’s story then, and it was Danny’s story now. He had seen Tanya at five. Sometime in the next few hours, she’d been murdered, and sometime after that—certainly after midnight, after the museum had closed—she had been laid out in place of Elena de Hoyos.

David had returned for the first tour the following morning.

Had she been laid out just for him to find?

The answer to that question might be the answer to her murder.

“People aren’t really to be found at the cemetery, you know,” Bartholomew said. “Well, most people. The thing is, of course, that most of us move on. And we remain behind only in the memories of those who loved us. Or hated us. Well, usually, people move on. Okay, okay, well, sometimes you can find people wandering around a cemetery, but…Well, that’s because they have to remain because…Wait, why am I remaining? Oh, hmm. I think it may be because of you. But I digress. You will not find Craig Beckett in this cemetery. He was a good man, and his conscience was clean. He’s moved on.”

“I know that he’s not in the cemetery,” Katie said.

“Then…why are we here?” Bartholomew asked.

“You don’t have to be here,” she said.

“No, I don’t have to be here. But you do not behave with the intelligence you were granted at birth. Therefore, I feel it is my cross to bear in life to follow you around,” Bartholomew told her.

“Hey! I am not your cross to bear, and I do behave intelligently,” Katie said, shaking her head and praying for patience. “It’s broad daylight. There are tourists all over the cemetery.”

“But why are we here?”

“Whether the person is here or not—and, of course, I don’t begin to assume that Craig Beckett’s soul would be in his worn and embalmed body in his tomb—I just like to come. It’s beautiful, and it’s a place where I can think. When other people, alive or dead, are not driving me right up the wall.”

“What is it you need to think about?” Bartholomew demanded.

“Craig. I just want to remember him. Could I have a bit of respectful silence?” she asked.

The Key West cemetery was on a high point in the center of the island. In 1846, a massive hurricane had washed up a number of earlier graves and sent bodies down Duval Street in a flood. After that, high ground was chosen. Now, many of the graves were in the ground, but many more were above-ground graves. Tombs, shelves and strange grave sites dotted the cemetery, along with more typical mausoleum-type graves.

It was estimated that there were one-hundred-thousand people interred at the Key West cemetery, in one way or another, triple the actual full-time population of the island.

Katie did love the cemetery. It was just like the island itself, historic and eccentric, full of the old and the new. There were Civil War soldiers buried here, there was a monument to those lost aboard the Maine and there were many graves with curious sentiments, her favorite being, “I told you I was sick!”

Craig Beckett was in a family mausoleum that had been there since the majority of the island’s dead had been moved here. One of the most beautiful angel sculptures in the cemetery stood high atop the roof of the mausoleum, and tourists were frequently near, taking pictures of the sculpture. When the Beckett family had originally purchased their final resting place, the cost had been minimal. Now such a structure, along with the small spit of ground it stood upon, would cost in the mid-to-high hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“There she is!” Bartholomew said suddenly.

“Who? Where?” Katie asked.

“The woman in white,” Bartholomew said. “There, where the oldest graves are.”

Bartholomew was right. She was standing above one of the graves. Her head was lowered, and her hands were folded before her.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Bartholomew said.

“I don’t think she wants to talk,” Katie said. “Bartholomew, you should wait.”