The Restorer

Thirty-Four

A dead tree limb had broken off and smashed through my window. Even though there had been no wind that night. Even though I’d seen the cracks before the glass shattered.

But it was the only logical explanation.

The freak accident had apparently been a wake-up call for Devlin. After helping me to drag a piece of plywood up from the basement and nail it over the opening, he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. And in the nearly two weeks since that night, I hadn’t seen or heard from him.

I told myself it was just as well. The accident had also been a warning for me, a grim reminder of the dire consequences for breaking my father’s rules. Devlin and I could have been seriously injured or even killed by flying shards of glass. I considered myself lucky for having escaped with only those tiny splinters in my back.

The timing of the accident chilled me, but perhaps I was giving Mariama too much credit in thinking she could have somehow engineered that falling tree limb. In all my ghostly sightings, I’d never before experienced a physical manifestation of an otherworldly presence, with the one exception being the garnet ring Shani may or may not have left behind in my garden.

But…this was the ghost of Mariama Goodwine Devlin. A woman who had known things. Dark things. Witch things. A woman who believed that one’s power was not diminished in death. That a spirit angered by a violent passing could use that force to interfere with the lives of the living. Even enslave them, in some cases.

After my talk with Essie, I’d been certain that Shani’s spirit couldn’t move on because she didn’t want to leave her father. But now it seemed clear that Mariama was the one who lingered, caught between her daughter and the husband she didn’t want to leave behind. Maybe Temple had been right. Devlin and Mariama’s connection was such that nothing—not time, not distance, not even death—could keep them apart.

I’d gone home that night after my dinner with Temple and dreamed about Devlin and Mariama. And lately, I’d been dreaming about them again. The visions always started the same way: Temple imploring me to join her at that open doorway. Inside, the swirling mist, the flickering candlelight, the primitive drumbeats that drove the couple’s frantic rhythm. And then Mariama would look over her shoulder and sometimes I would find myself staring back into my own eyes.

I wasn’t possessed, but I very much feared I was on the verge of obsession.

It was a good thing that real life decided to run interference. With the Oak Grove restoration put off indefinitely, financial circumstances dictated that I take on a new project. As much as I had enjoyed dabbling in the investigation—and yes, I freely admitted that now—I could no longer ignore my dwindling bank account.

I kept track of any new developments online and through the newspapers and knew that the remains excavated from the second grave had been identified. Her name was Jane Rice and she’d been an emergency-room nurse at MUSC. She was single, lived alone and by all accounts had been a caring young woman who disappeared nine years ago on her way to work one night and never been heard from again.

I filed this information away in my Oak Grove folder.

Now that I was well away from the investigation—and from Devlin—everything that had happened seemed a little surreal. The killer was still out there somewhere, but I’d found no more suspicious postings to my blog nor had I spotted a black sedan lurking in my neighborhood. As the days passed, I began to breathe a little easier because I really had no choice. The police couldn’t watch my house twenty-four hours a day and I couldn’t hibernate indefinitely.

So I had to move on.

For the past several days, I’d been working in a small cemetery about forty miles north of Charleston. It was a plain country graveyard with simple headstones and fenced-in plots. The trees had already been thinned to allow for plenty of sunlight, and I found the personal mementos and family keepsakes—dolls, toys, framed photographs and bits of cheap jewelry—that decorated the graves touching and rather charming.

The dolls reminded me of the one Devlin had placed on Shani’s grave.

I was thinking about that doll—and Devlin—late one afternoon when I felt a chill at my back and knew that someone watched me.

Twilight had not yet fallen, but I searched the landscape fearfully with my peripheral vision. When I saw no movement, no slithering dark shape at the edge of the woods, I lifted my head and scoured the countryside.

I finally spotted him beneath a live oak, in the deepest part of the shade. Gripped by an icy trepidation, I stared at him across the headstones.

Then I put away my brush, peeled off my gloves and started toward him.

He looked exactly the same as the last time we’d met. Handsome and guarded, with sunglasses shielding his eyes.

I was uneasy but not really frightened even though we were completely alone and the nearest house was at least a mile away. Devlin seemed convinced that Tom Gerrity wasn’t the murderer and I trusted his judgment. But I did not trust Tom Gerrity. There was something about him that made my stomach clench and the hair at the back of my neck lift. He wanted something. And I had a feeling it would be some time before I discovered his true motive.

I walked up to him, scowling. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

I glanced around. “I don’t see a car anywhere. How did you get here?”

“I walked up from the main road. The sign on the gate says no vehicles allowed in here. Being an ex-cop, I wouldn’t want to break the law.”

Why didn’t I believe him?

Shading my eyes with my hand, I gazed down the road.

Just past the gate, I saw the glint of sunlight on chrome. I glanced back at Gerrity. “How did you know where to find me?”

“You posted pictures on your blog. I recognized this place. I know someone who’s buried here.”

I started to ask him about that, then something else struck me. How long had he been going to my blog? Did he have a membership, a screen name?

His gaze swept the cemetery. “About time they cleaned this place up.”

“You say you know someone who’s buried here?”

“A cop. He was killed in the line of duty. His murder was never solved.”

I remembered what Devlin had said about another cop dying because of Gerrity.

“If you’ll give me a name, I’ll take special care of the grave.”

“Fremont,” he said. “Robert Fremont.”

The name sent a shiver through me, a faint ripple of déjà vu that made me wonder if I might have heard about his death on the news.

I sensed Gerrity’s eyes on me, sensed that something had shifted between us. I couldn’t explain it, but it was like a wall had toppled and I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.

“What do you want from me?” I asked softly.

“Your help.”

“Why me?”

“There’s no one else, Amelia.”

I shivered again and looked away. “If this is about Devlin—”

“It’s not. It’s about Ethan Shaw.”

My brows rose in surprise. “Ethan?”

“I need to find out what he knows about the skeleton you found in the chamber below Oak Grove.”

“Then why not go talk to him yourself?”

“He won’t see me.”

I folded my arms. “Don’t tell me. There’s bad blood between the two of you.”

He shrugged. “Not bad blood. I just don’t have the right credentials anymore.”

“I don’t have any credentials. What makes you think he’ll tell me anything?”

“What makes you think he won’t?”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “This is ridiculous. Why do you even care about that skeleton? I thought you were working for Hannah Fischer’s mother. Now that her body has been recovered, what’s your interest in this case?”

“I’m interested in justice,” he said. “And I mean to have it. One way or another.”

An alarm went off inside me. “What are you talking about?”

“Just go see Ethan Shaw. It’s all there.”

“What is? Hey!”

A million questions flashed through my head, but I didn’t call Gerrity back when he walked off. Mostly, I just wanted him to go away and take his vague premonitions with him.

But the pall he’d cast remained long after I watched him disappear through the gate.