Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon by Heather Graham Page B

She might have been almost anywhere in America, in this parking lot. This portion of the island was fairly new, created by dredging salt ponds, digging someplaces, dumping others. Once she headed down Roosevelt toward Old Town, things changed. Hospitals, restaurants, tourist shops and bars were interspersed among old Victorian buildings, and grand dames from the past sat side by side with neon lights. The Hard Rock Cafe was located in one of the old Curry mansions—in fact, it was “haunted,” of course. Robert Curry, unable to sustain the family fortune due to ill health and a lack of business smarts, had killed himself there. Also on Duval was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, rebuilt and rebuilt again—and still the haunt of a sea captain and a group of children tragically killed in a fire. Key West jealously guarded her ghosts, just as she did her bizarre history and all her citizens who had come and gone.
    Kelsey didn’t drive as far as Duval, though, turning to take Simonton down to the wharf and then turning onto the private road that led out to Cutter Merlin’s house.
    Her house.
    She hesitated a minute at the overgrown gravel drive that led out to the house. Funny—as a child, she had never thought of the house as remote.
    That night, in the darkness, the road looked like something out of a slasher film, and the house seemed to sit in a lonely jungle far from the mainland.
    It wasn’t far, she reminded herself. She and her friends had swum the distance from the house’s spit of land over to the mainland many a time. Of course, they were good swimmers. They knew the currents that could sweep by, but the eddy would keep them closer to the road, and they had learned as kids never to strike out alone. Her mother had been an amazing swimmer and diver, andshe had taught Kelsey that the biggest mistake those who knew what they were doing made was that they didn’t take common-sense precautions.
    Still, the house seemed so austere, so alone out here tonight.
    All right. So much for the swimming. She had walked in and out of town as a kid. There was nothing far or remote about the place.
    It was hers, and she had to take care of the place.
    She could wait until morning.
    That would be ridiculous. She didn’t need a hotel room. She owned a house. Even if she planned on selling it, she owned the house.
    She pulled the rental car around the side of the house, where they had always parked the family car. There were no cars there; she wondered if Cutter had stopped driving as the years had gone by. There was a lot she had forgotten to ask Joe. But she had just arrived; she’d spend time with him learning about the entire situation tomorrow.
    If Cutter had employed a maid who had run away, he had stopped hiring a gardener as well, that was certain.
    She exited the car, and was startled to feel an uneasy sense of being watched the second she did so. She looked around. She could see the lights across the tiny inlet, and the lights in the house itself. A porch light was on, and light glowed from the living room.
    Parlor, she corrected herself. Cutter had always called it the parlor. Now it would be called a living room.
    Maybe she was having a ridiculous argument withherself about semantics because she just wasn’t sure she wanted to go in.
    She had always loved the house. Her mother’s death had been an accident. She had tripped and fallen down the stairs. She might have just broken a leg, or an arm. She might have tumbled down and been fine, just bruised and shaken. But the way she had fallen…
    She had broken her neck.
    Kelsey dug in her over-the-shoulder bag for the new keys. On the porch, she discovered that there were two bolts, thus the chain of keys. She turned both, opened the door and walked on in.
    She thought that memories would come flooding back, that she might feel weepy and nostalgic, but the house was actually different. Not the house per se but the appearance of the house. When she and her parents had