Читать книгу Heart Of Evil - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 8

Ashley surveyed the expanse of the property one last time; everything was going extremely well. Children were playing and laughing, the camp looked wonderful and there were activities going on everywhere.

She headed for the house. It was time for her to become Emma Donegal and get ready for the evening’s battle.

But as she walked toward the house, she slowed, paused and looked over at the cemetery. The gate was locked.

Still, a creeping feeling of unease swept over her.

She shrugged it off; a dream was a dream. Good God, she’d dreamed once that she’d kissed Vance Thibault in high school one day, and she loathed him! She hurried on toward the house, trying to forget her unease.

Her grandfather, Frazier Donegal, was sitting on the back porch. She grinned; he looked spectacular, she thought. Frazier was eighty-three, but he showed little sign of slowing down. Today he was dressed in a frock coat, pinstripe breeches and high riding boots—a pure gentleman of the age with his full head of snow-white, a Colonel Sanders mustache and goatee, and bright blue eyes. She worried about him constantly; his health was good, but he was eighty-three.

He was really in the mood today, though, she thought. He was sipping a mint julep. He didn’t even like mint juleps.

“There you are!” he said. “I was starting to wonder.”

Ashley sat in one of the wicker rockers across from him. “Last-minute details in the stables,” she told him. “Charles Osgood didn’t want to be a Yankee.”

Frazier rolled his eyes and shook his head. “It works, you know, for the property, it works. But why on earth everyone always wants to be on the losing side, I’ll just never know. Did he finally accept his assignment?”

“He did—but Ramsay Clayton stepped in at the last minute to let him play Marshall Donegal,” Ashley said.

“Oh?”

“I don’t think Ramsay cares. It’s all play to him,” she said.

“Ramsay is a good fellow. You think he was trying to appear magnanimous in front of you?” Frazier asked.

Ashley shook her head. “There’s never going to be anything between Ramsay and me, Grampa, there just isn’t.”

He lifted his hands. “I was just asking about his motives.”

Ramsay had asked Ashley out the previous year; she had always liked him. He was a good artist, and a handsome man, but she had never felt the least bit of chemistry with him. He had accepted her wish that they just maintain a good friendship. Ramsay had been on the rebound, having broken up with his longtime lover. She wondered if she was still on the rebound—even if she had been the one who had run from Jake.

“I honestly believe Ramsay just doesn’t care,” Ashley said. “I think he’ll have fun saying, ‘Oh, Lord! I had to be a Yankee.’ No, Ramsay isn’t trying to impress me. Griffin even asked me to be his friendly companion for a dinner he had—and I said no. They all understand that the friendships we have are too important.”

“Well, then, good for Ramsay. And you—you better get dressed,” Frazier told her.

“Yep, I’m on it.”

She rose and walked into the house from the riverside.

The original architects had taken advantage of the river and bayou breezes when they had built the house. It hadn’t been changed much since the day it had been built. One long hallway stretched from the front of the house to the back, and before the advent of air-conditioning, the double doors on each end had often been kept open. The house had one unique feature: double winding staircases to a second-floor landing that led to the six bedrooms, three on each side of the house on that floor. The stairway to the third floor, or attic, where there were still two rooms that could be guest rooms or let out to renters, was on the second floor, bayou side, of the house.

Beth Reardon was in Ashley’s room, sitting at the foot of the bed and drawing laces through her corset.

Her skin was pure ebony; she was tall, regal and beautifully built. But she had chosen to get into the action. She was wearing a cotton skirt and cotton blouse and her hair was wrapped up in a bandana. She gazed over at Ashley. “Hey! Time is a-wasting, girl. Where have you been?”

“Settling an argument over who had to be a Yankee,” Ashley told her.

“Yankee. That’s the North, right?” Beth asked. Beth was from New York, and before that, her family had lived in Jamaica. Her accent, however, was all American, and none of her ancestors had been in the United States during the Civil War.

Ashley frowned.

Beth laughed. “Just kidding! Come on, I took history classes.”

“Sorry!” Ashley said.

“You should be. Let’s get you in this ridiculous contraption. So, people really churned butter in these things? No, wait—your relatives sat around looking pretty while the slaves and servants churned the butter, right?”

“Actually, in our family, everyone worked. And I think that everyone had to sweat when churning butter. Most of the time, the plantation mistress had to work really hard.”

“Supervising?”

“And making soap and doing laundry and all the rest,” Ashley said. “Well, maybe if you were really, really, really rich you just sat around. We were rich, but not that rich, and if we’re ever going to be rich again, it’s up to you, since I can barely boil water.” Beth had come to work at Donegal as the chef less than a year ago, determined to make the restaurant one of the most important in the South.

“Anyone can boil water,” Beth assured her. “And you cook okay. You’re not great, but, then, you are one hell of a storyteller. Step into the skirts already, I’m dying to see this show.”

Arranging the layers of clothing that constituted the formal dress of a Southern plantation mistress took some time. They both laughed over the absurdity of the apparel that had been required in Louisiana despite the heat and the humidity. Ashley told Beth, “It’s worse for the guys. The authentic uniforms are wool—those poor little puppies just die out there.”

“Well, honey, I think I’m glad that I’m the unpaid help for this shindig, then,” Beth told her, grinning.

“Cotton like this—it’s nothing. And I do love the bandana! Poor Emma.”

“Yes, it really was poor Emma,” Ashley told her. “Lots of the soldiers left journals about what happened at the battle. It was only after the war that the rumors about Emma having killed her husband got started. It’s as if someone wanted to sully her name. Of course, nothing that we can find was written about her having been charged with the crime.”

“But it was a different time. Maybe she did the unthinkable. Maybe she took a lover. Maybe even, God forbid, he was a Yankee or a carpetbagger!”

“Maybe,” Ashley agreed. “From all the family lore, she loved her husband, she was devastated when he died, and she managed to hold on to the property and raise her children here, even though the South lost and carpetbaggers did sweep down on the South. Carpetbaggers were even more despised than Yanks,” she explained. “They were the people who weren’t fighting for a cause—their cause was just to prey off the vanquished and get rich.”

A few minutes later, Ashley was ready, and they headed back to the porch that faced the river. A crowd had already gathered, since the schedule for the day was printed out on brochures that attendees could pick up at the entrance to the property. A high-school student, seeking extra credit in history, was usually given that job.

Ashley came out to stand next to her grandfather, looking out over the property as she could see it from the back porch. Bright tape in blue and gray cordoned off the areas where the reenactors would move during the events, though they no longer went into the cemetery for the moment of Marshall Donegal’s death and the tactical retreat of the two surviving Union soldiers.

She found herself staring at the cemetery off to her left again. An odd tremor washed over her, but she quickly forgot it and looked at Frazier.

“Nice crowd today,” he said quietly. Ashley squeezed his hand.

The small band—posing as the military band that had been part of Marshall Donegal’s cavalry unit—launched into the haunting strains of “Dixie.”

Frazier Donegal began to speak midway through, giving an excellent history lesson. He didn’t shy away from the slavery question, admitting that cotton was king in the South, and sugarcane, and both needed workers. The citizens of the South had not invented slavery; many had clung to it whether, in their hearts, they accepted the injustice or not. Few men like to admit they were wrong or cruel to their fellow human beings. And they had hardly been magnanimous when it meant they would also lose their livelihood. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was history. Then as now, prejudice was not something with which a man was born—it was something that was taught. He spoke with passion, conviction and sincerity, and a thunderous round of applause greeted his words; he would have been a great politician, Ashley thought. Except that he had never cared about politics; he had always cared about people.

The first roar of close fire sounded from the stables area, and people screamed and jumped. It was all sound and black powder. There was no live ammunition at the reenactment.

The Yankees, mounted on their horses, rode in hard from the east, dismounting at the stables to use the buildings as defensive positions as they began their attack.

Ashley went on to introduce herself as Emma Donegal. She told about the beginning of the war, and how her husband, Marshall Donegal, famed for his exploits in the Mexican-American War more than ten years earlier, had returned to the military, raising a cavalry unit for the Louisiana militia that would be ready to join the Confederate army at any time. But federal forces were always spying in Louisiana. It would be the Union naval leader, David Farragut, a seasoned sailor, who would assault New Orleans and take the city in 1862, but before that time, Union forces snuck down regularly to survey the situation and report back on the Confederate forces guarding the city. The battle at Donegal Plantation began when the federal spies who had participated in the bar brawl rode swiftly to the plantation in uniform, hoping to engage the Confederates before they could summon more men. At Donegal Plantation, however, four of the spies died at the hands of the small Confederate force to be found there, and the only Confederate casualty was Marshall Donegal himself, who had succumbed to the onslaught of the federals, killing three before falling in a pool of his own blood. She explained that history longed to blame her—Emma Donegal—but she was innocent. Truly, she was innocent! The world hadn’t changed that much; people loved to talk, and everyone wanted there to be more to the story. There simply wasn’t. She and her husband had been married thirteen years; they had four children they were raising happily together. She was heartsick at her husband’s death and survived her grief only because she had to keep food on the table for her children.

Of course, she knew the story like the back of her hand. She told it well and was greeted with wild applause when she pointed across the yard. “There! It all begins!”

And thus began the round of shots that made the expanse of land between the stables and the house rich and ripe with black powder. The federals had been traveling with a small, easily maneuvered six-pound howitzer, and in their attempts to seize the property, they sent their bronze cannon balls sailing for the house and ground. In fact, they had missed. At the time, their attempts to use the small cannon had done little but rip up great chunks of the earth. Today, it caused the air to become heavy with black powder.

“The Confederates had to stop the attack before the barn, stables and outbuildings could be set afire,” Frazier Donegal announced from the porch, with a microphone, his voice rich and deep and rising well above the screams and shouting.

Though there was no live ammunition, the small fight clearly taught onlookers just how horrendous it must have been for men in major battles. As the Confederates and federals fought here with guerilla tactics, Ashley asked the crowd to imagine thousands of men marching forward side by side, some of them able to reload three times in a minute. The carnage was terrible. The Civil War was considered to be the last of the ancient wars—and the first of the modern wars.

The defenders split, most of the men rushing the stables from the front. But the Yankees had come around the other side, and in their maneuvering they escaped the body of men they had been determined to fight. One of the attackers was killed at the stables; the others made it around to the cemetery, attempting to use the old vaults as shields. But Marshall Donegal had come around the other side, and while his men were held up, he met up with the attackers at the cemetery.

The fighting originally ended inside the cemetery, but now they ended it just outside, the only difference from that day to this. First, the crowd wouldn’t be able to see any of the action if it occurred there, and, with that many people tramping through, historic funerary art could be destroyed. And so, Charles Osgood, as Marshall, brought down several of the enemy and perished, brutally stabbed to death by bayonets, in front of the gates. The two surviving federal men—Justin Binder and Ramsay—raced toward the stables, whistling for their mounts. They leapt atop their horses and tore for the river road.

Frazier announced, “And thus did the fighting at Donegal Plantation come to an end.”

They said the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the band played “Dixie” and then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” After the burst of applause that followed the last song, people began to surround the actors—who had remained in the battle positions where they had fallen—as they came to their feet, and they all seemed to disappear into the crowd as they were congratulated, questioned and requested for picture-taking opportunities. Then, at last, the crowd began to melt away, and the sutler began to close down his shop.

Darkness was falling in earnest.

It had been a tremendous success; standing on the porch and watching the crowd ebb, Ashley told herself that she’d been an idiot, letting a dream get to her.

But, as she looked out, it seemed that the plantation was covered in a mist again.

It was the remnants of the black powder from the guns, she told herself.

The mist bore a reddish color. Bloodred.

The sun had set in the west; it was due to the dying of the day.

Whatever the explanation, the entire scene was eerie.

A breeze lifted, and she had the odd feeling that somehow everything had gone askew and changed, and she had somehow entered into a world of mist and shadow herself.

“Well, old girl,” Frazier said quietly, smiling as he set a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Another wonderful day. Thank you for all your hard work on this.”

Ashley smiled. Her grandfather was happy. She adored Frazier, and she was always glad when he was happy. She worried about him constantly—driving him crazy, she knew. He had always been somewhat bony—though dignified! But now he seemed thinner, his cheeks hollow. He was old; but a man’s life span could be long, and she wanted him with her for many more years. Now he was smiling, basking in the pleasant glow of the day’s success.

“Come on. Let’s head into the parlor,” Frazier said. “I think we should probably be there to toast our actors and friends, eh?”

The family and some friends—including the soldiers for the day—traditionally retired to the riverside parlor for drinks and unwinding.

“You go on,” Ashley said. “I’ll be right there, I promise. I just want to see that everyone is really moving on.”

Her grandfather gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sure Beth has already put out all manner of delicious little snacks, despite the fact we told her that chips would do. I’ll go supervise my liquor cabinet,” he said, wiggling his white brows.

She grinned. “You’d better do that. Ramsay will say that he deserves your hundred-year-old Scotch for being so generous!”

Frazier pantomimed real fear and then walked on into the house. Ashley was exhausted and ready for a fine glass of hundred-year-old Scotch herself.

But she left the porch to walk around to the front for one last look. Jerry Blake, one of the off-duty officers they hired for traffic and crowd control, was still out by the road, waving at the last of the cars to get them safely on their way. She lifted a hand to him and shouted, “You coming in, Jerry?”

He waved back at her and shouted in return, “No, thanks! I’m on my way home. I have an early patrol shift tomorrow. See you, Ashley!”

A minute later, she saw him check that the day visitors’ cars were all gone. Then he headed for his own car.

The buzz of chatter from inside filled the new silence. She followed the sound to the front parlor, where the reenactors were gathering. Looking around, she had the same strange sense of time encapsulated that she had felt before; none of the soldiers had changed out of their uniforms yet, and she was still in her Emma Donegal attire. Even Beth, who had seemed to get a tremendous sense of entertainment out of the day, was still in her 1860s garb. Some of the men had cigars, and they were allowed to smoke them in the house that night. Only the beer bottle in the hand of Matty Martin, the sutler’s wife, provided a modern note.

Matty came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Why, Mrs. Emma Donegal, you do create a mighty fine party, a mighty fine party! What a day!”

“Why, thank you, Mrs. Martin,” Ashley said, inclining her head regally as a plantation mistress of the day might have done.

Matty dropped the act for a minute. “Oh, Ashley, we sold so much! And I can’t tell you how many people ordered custom uniforms. I’ll be sewing my fingers to the bone for the next months, but what a great day we had.”

“I’m so glad,” Ashley told her. She walked for the buffet with its crocheted doily and poured herself a Scotch whiskey—it wasn’t a hundred years old, but it would do. Others came up to her and she responded—so many friends, and everyone involved in the reenactment. The men bowed and kissed her hand, still playing elite gentlemen of the era.

Ramsay grinned when he was near her. “I’d say ninety percent of the fighting men never tasted a good brandy, so I’m sure glad we get to be the rich of the past.”

She smiled, and agreed. “Wouldn’t it be something if we could have Lee and Grant, and Davis and Lincoln, and show them all that the war created the country we have now?”

Griffin walked over to them, lifting his glass. “Grant was an alcoholic. A functional one, but an alcoholic. No relation, of course. My Grant family was Southern to the core. Cheers!”

“You’re a cynic, Mr. Grant,” Ashley said, inclining her head.

Griffin laughed. “Not at all. We strive for an understanding of history around here, right?”

“We do,” Ashley agreed. “And, historically, many of them were truly honorable people. Can you imagine being Mrs. Robert E. Lee—and losing a historic family home, built by George Washington’s stepgrandson and filled with objects that had belonged to George and Martha? Remember, Arlington was a home long before it became a national cemetery!”

“Cheers to that, I suppose,” Griffin said. “Whiskey, Mrs. Donegal? Why, my dear woman, you should be sipping sherry with the other wives!”

“I need a whiskey tonight!”

Ramsay and Griffin laughed, and she joined them while she listened to her guests chatting. Some of the other men argued history, too—and she saw that everyone involved in the actual reenactment had shown up. Cliff, Ramsay, Hank, Griffin, Toby and John—and the Yankees, Michael Bonaventure, Hadley Mason, Justin Binder, Tom Dixon and Victor Quibbly, along with John Martin, of course, and Dr. Ben Austin.

Everyone but Charles Osgood. She couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t there. He must have been thrilled to death with the day.

“Hey, where’s Charles?” Ashley asked, interrupting a rousing discussion of Farragut’s naval prowess.

A few of those close to her quit talking to look around.

“I haven’t seen him since he very dramatically died of his wounds,” Ramsay said. “I ‘skedaddled’ right after and rode out with Justin, before we rode back to take our fair share of the applause.”

“Cliff?” Ashley asked.

Cliff shook his head. “No, I was with the soldiers who came rushing in too late when Charles was being besieged by the enemy. I thought he just stood up and bowed when everyone was clapping. I don’t remember seeing him when you and Frazier started talking … or when the band played.”

“He’s probably outside somewhere. I’ll call his cell,” Ramsay said. He pulled out his phone and hit a number of buttons.

Ashley watched him. She realized the others had already turned away and were becoming involved in their conversations again.

Ramsay shook his head at her. “No answer.”

Cliff cleared his throat. “Not to be disrespectful in any way, but maybe he met a girl and—got lucky.”

“Yeah for Charles!” Justin Binder said, lifting his glass. He was somewhat tipsy—if not drunk—Ashley thought. Good thing he was staying on the property. The others were all still playacting; they were entrenched in the past.

They didn’t want to look for someone they obviously believed was just off enjoying his own star turn. But …

“He would have wanted to be here tonight,” Ashley said stubbornly. “He was so thrilled to be taking the part of Marshall Donegal. I’m going out to see if his car is still here.”

Ramsay lifted a hand. “Sorry, don’t bother, Ashley. He didn’t drive. He came with me. I told him that I couldn’t give him a ride back since I was going to stay at the house out here for a while, but he told me he’d hitch a ride back in with someone. Said he didn’t have to be back to work until Tuesday morning and for me not to worry.”

“Gentlemen, perhaps a search is in order,” Frazier said. “A Civil War parlor game of sorts.”

They all stared at him blankly.

“Exactly,” Ashley said, relief coloring her tone. “Find the lost rebel. Beth will create a five-star private meal for a party of four, payable to the man—or woman—who finds Charles!”

“I will?” Beth said. She looked at Ashley. “Um, it will be—sumptuous!”

“It’s a lot of property to cover,” Ramsay murmured.

“We need to organize, then,” Griffin said. “It will be fun. Yankees take the cemetery side, and rebels search out the bayou side.”

“Is that fair?” Griffin asked. “If he’s still around, old Charlie would be by the cemetery, don’t you think?”

“I pick scouting detail!” Justin said.

“Yes! Let’s find Charles!” Toby said.

“I’ll check out the area around the oaks out front,” Matty Martin offered. She was watching Ashley and seemed to realize that Ashley was seriously worried. “John, you can come with me. It’s mighty dark out there, even with all the lights from the house and the property floodlights.”

“Of course, my dear,” John told her. “They should have let women fight the war,” he muttered, following her out.

Hank laughed. “Yeah, imagine, mud wrestling at its best.”

“Hank!” Cliff admonished. “War is always a serious affair.”

“Well, of course it is,” Griffin said. “War is very serious—but we’re not at war. We’re playing a game. We’re looking for old Charles. Hey, Ashley, if no one wins …”

“Well, at some point, we’ll just all have dinner,” she told them.

“Great!” Beth muttered to her. “Now I get to cook for all of them!”

“It’s good that I’ve got the bayou side!” Toby Keaton said. “Borders my property.”

“I’ll take the cemetery,” Frazier said.

“You will not. It’s dark and dangerous in there,” Ashley told him.

“Not for me, dear. It’s memories for me,” he said softly, and quickly turned away. Neither of them wanted to think about Ashley’s parents, entombed in the majestic family vault.

“Grampa, please—you need to be here as everyone returns,” Ashley said.

“I’ll take the cemetery,” Ben offered. “I’m really familiar with the living and the dead,” he added and winked. “Just give me one of the big old flashlights at the back door. I’ll be fine.”

Ben would be fine. He was a big, strapping man in his mid-forties. Besides, he’d attended funerals for both her parents and knew the cemetery well.

Ashley wanted to take the cemetery herself; that dream had to have been a sign.

No, that would be insane. Ben knew what he was doing. She wasn’t going to let a dream dictate what she did in her life.

“Okay, so where are we going?” Beth asked Ashley.

“The stables?” Ashley suggested.

“I’ll come with you and stand there, but I’m not going near the horses!”

An hour later, they had finished the actual search as best they could in the night.

Ramsay went to speak with the guests who were staying in the rooms that had been the old stables, and the Yankee contingent spoke with those in the other outbuildings. Cliff went to his office, wondering if Charles might have slipped in there to rest.

They all searched, from the river to the road, from the sugar fields to the bayou, but there was no sign of Charles Osgood. By midnight, all the searchers were back at the house.

“Ashley, really, he must be out somewhere else,” Cliff told her.

She looked at Ben. “You searched everywhere in the cemetery? There are so many paths, little roads between all the vaults.”

Ben sighed. “Ashley, I searched. But we can all take another look.”

She nodded.

“That was actually not a suggestion,” Ben said.

“It’s all right. I’ll go myself,” Ashley said.

“We’ll help,” Ramsay said, tugging at Cliff’s sleeve.

“I’ve still got the key, so I’ll come, too,” Ben said.

Ashley led the way, wondering why she thought that she’d really find Charles in the cemetery, just because she’d had a dream.

But she was determined.

Ben opened the lock on the gate, though, of course, they could have all crawled over the stone wall.

Ashley headed straight for her family tomb. The real Marshall Donegal had died there.

The last interment had been her father’s. The usual little pain in her heart sparked—it always came when

she thought about him, and her mother. And tonight, especially, she missed Jake.

There was no sign of Charles there, and no sign that he had been there.

She almost fell, she was so relieved.

The tomb glowed white beneath the gentle touch of the moon, dignified in its decaying majesty. She heard the three men calling to one another from different sections of the graveyard, and she followed a voice to reach Cliff. He looked at her. “Ashley, Charles left. Whether he was spirited away by aliens or not, I don’t know. But he isn’t here. This isn’t any parlor game, is it? You’re really worried.”

“I am. Did you go in the chapel?” she asked.

“You think that Charles is hiding in the chapel? Or kneeling down, still thanking the good Lord for the chance to be Marshall Donegal?” Cliff asked dryly.

“Please, Cliff?”

He groaned. He walked around the ell that would lead them to the chapel, in the far corner near the embankment of the river. The chapel had carved oak double doors, which creaked when he opened them. He fumbled for the light switch, and light flared in the lovely little place with its stained-glass windows, marble altar and old mahogany podium.

The place was empty.

“Happy?” Cliff asked her.

“No. I can’t help it—I’m worried,” she told him.

He just shook his head. “Come on. Let’s just go.”

They walked back to the house, where the others were still milling on the back porch—many of them having retrieved their drinks.

“So, the bastard did get lucky!” Ramsay said, laughing. “Hell, if I had foreseen that, I’d have had him play Marshall Donegal a couple of years ago!”

“I’m going to call the police,” Ashley said, looking at her grandfather.

“He’s been missing just a few hours,” Beth pointed out. “He might have thought that he said good-night to everyone. There’s so much confusion going on when the fighting ends. I mean, I thought it was amazing—it really was living history. But it’s mass confusion. I can only imagine a Gettysburg reenactment.”

Ashley realized that everyone was staring at her—skeptically. They had searched and searched, and grown bored and tired. But she couldn’t help her feelings of unease, even while they all stood silent, just staring at her.

The river breeze brought the chirp of the chickadees—her senses were so attuned to her home area that somewhere, distantly, down the bayou, she thought she could hear an alligator slip into the water. This was her home; she knew these sounds.

They were normal; they were natural. But the sounds of the darkness weren’t reassuring to her now.

“Grampa, I think we need to report this to the police,” she repeated.

“Great. He’s probably at some bar in the big city, bragging about the fact that he got to play Marshall Donegal today,” Ramsay said. “And they’ll drag him out and he’ll act like a two-year-old again.”

Frazier stared at Ashley and nodded. If she wanted to call the police, they would do so.

The parish police were called, and Officer Drew Montague, a nice-enough man whom Ashley had met a few times over the years, took all the information.

“You say you all saw him just a few hours ago?” he asked. Montague had a thick head of dark hair and eyebrows that met in the middle.

“Yes,” she said.

“What makes you think that he’s actually missing? Perhaps there’s a woman involved. Is he married? Look, Miss Donegal, you know that we appreciate everything that you do for the area, but … we’re talking about a grown man who has been gone just a few hours,” the officer said.

“He was proud of the role he was playing. He would have stayed,” Ashley insisted.

Officer Montague shifted his weight. “Look, I’ve taken the report, and I’ll put out a local bulletin to be on the lookout for him, but he’s an adult. An adult really needs to be gone for forty-eight hours before he is officially missing.”

Frazier spoke before Ashley could. “Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated. We’re always proud that the parish is about people, and not just red tape and rules.”

Montague nodded. “Right. Well, I’ll get this moving, then. We’ll all be on the lookout for Mr. Osgood.”

Ashley thanked him. The others had remained behind, politely and patiently waiting. Now it was really late, and once again there were a number of weary men and women—all still in Civil War–era attire—staring at her.

Officer Montague left, mollified by Frazier Donegal over the fact that he had been called out on a ridiculous mission.

“I’m sorry,” Ashley said to the others. The evening had started out as a party and turned into a search committee.

“Hey,” Cliff said, grinning, “I don’t have far to go home.”

“We’re staying in the stables anyway, kid,” Justin Binder told her. He had played a Yankee, and happily. His family hailed from Pennsylvania.

Griffin laughed and gave her an affectionate hug. “You made me sober up, which is good. I am driving.”

“Me, too,” John Ashton said. He held her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Charles is just fine. I’m sure of it.”

She thanked them all and said good-night, and they drifted away, some to the old outbuildings where they were staying, and some to their cars, parked in the lot out front and down the road.

She stood on the porch with Beth and her grandfather.

She couldn’t tell whether they thought she was being ridiculous or not, they were both so patient.

Beth gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “We still have about sixteen guests, and the household. I’ve got to get up early to whip up our spectacular plantation breakfast.”

Ashley bid her good-night. It was down to her grandfather and herself, and Frazier was going to wait for her to be ready to head off to bed.

“Something is wrong. I can feel it, Grampa,” she said.

He set an arm around her shoulder. “You know … I have an old friend. I’ve been meaning to call him for a long time—tonight seems a good time to have a chat with him. If Charles really is gone, he may be able to help us. His name is Adam Harrison. I don’t know if you remember meeting him—I see him up in Virginia and D.C. sometimes. He worked for private concerns for many years, finding the right investigators for strange situations. Then the government started calling him, and his projects were all kind of combined for a while, civilian and federal. But he’s got a special unit now, and he’s got federal power behind him on it. His people are a select group from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I’ll give him a call. We’ll get someone out here to help by tomorrow. And if Charles turns up, no harm done.”

She lowered her head. Adam Harrison. She knew the name. His unit had been involved in solving the death of Regina Holloway—it had been all over the media because she was a senator’s wife. And she knew, too, that Jake Mallory was part of that unit. She might not be a part of his world, but she hadn’t been able to miss it when she’d seen his name in the papers. She had broken off something that had been real with Jake, because he had terrified her … because he was certain that he had spoken with her father, after he had died. And now….

Now Frazier was going to call Adam. Of course, it could come to nothing. She was panicking over a missing man because of an equally irrational dream.

She looked out on the beautiful expanse of their property. The river rolling by. The moon high over the clouds. The vaults in the cemetery silent and ghostly and opalescent in the pale glow of night.

Jake, I’m so … scared.

Something was wrong. It was the oddest thing; she felt that she really understood the expression I feel it in my bones. Something wasn’t right about Charles’s disappearance, and she knew it.

It was almost as if the past had truly merged into this eerie and haunting reality, and the collision of time here was not going to go away.