"Nope.You're being smart. Get in your car and go."

She eyed him suspiciously. He didn't have the subtlety or patience to try persuasion, but this was giving up too easily. "What are you going to do?"

"I've got a chest of drawers I need to finish painting."

A flat-out lie, and they both knew it. There was nothing she could do. She wasn't telling him about the skeleton, not now, not here. What if it had been him she'd heard, trying to sneak into the bulkhead? He wouldn't have known she'd doubled back to lock her door. After all, what did she know about Harley Beckett? Or Andrew Thorne, for that matter.

She had no good options.

These two men had no more reason to trust her than she did them. Less. She'd lied to them. What would they think if she drove out of here and Harl went down to her cellar and found the skeleton?

At least she was well aware that kissing Andrew had no bearing on anything.

"Call me if it turns out there was someone out here," Tess said, and gave Harl her cell phone number as she started toward her car. She glanced back at him. "But it was the wind."

He said, "Tess, I have your cell phone."

"Well, damn it, give it to me."

He tossed it to her, studying her closely. "You want your mason jar back, too?"

"No, you can keep it."

Her cell phone rang in her hand. She clicked it on, and Andrew said, "Drive carefully."

She almost caved-but she couldn't tell him about the skeleton. Not here in the dark, with Harley Beckett watching her every move, suspicious, not after the scare she'd just had. She couldn't rely on instincts, not this time. She had to think.

"I will."

"I can't leave Dolly here alone, not if there's even a chance there was someone out there. Harl doesn't want to call the police?"

She lowered the phone and asked him. "Harl, do you want to call the police?"

"To do what, fix the latch on your bulkhead?"

She returned to Andrew, edging her way to the car. "He says no."

"Tess," he said softly, "what happened last night?"

"Snakes." She cleared her throat, sticking to her story even if she knew he didn't believe it, never had. She'd tell him the truth when she could, not now. "I was worried about snakes."

She climbed in behind the wheel, got out her keys, tried two before she got the right one into the ignition. Andrew hadn't yet hung up. Neither had she.

"Tess."

She licked her lips, her throat burning. "I'll be back in the morning."

Silence.

"Tell Dolly that Tippy Tail ate all the food she brought her."

She clicked off and backed out of the driveway, wondering how long it would take before he and his cousin, both or one at a time, searched her cellar. Would they wait until daylight?

What if they already knew a skeleton was there and decided to move it? What if they'd put it there? What if one had and the other didn't know about it?

She was getting carried away. They wouldn't be making such a big deal about why she'd screamed last night if they had any responsibility for the skeleton. They'd get her out of town as fast and quietly as possible, then make their move. They wouldn't invite her to dinner. Andrew wouldn't have kissed her.

What if they were suspicious of her?

Her mind was racing. She couldn't think coherently.

She pulled in to a well-lit gas station on a busy main road and called Susanna Galway.

"Susanna? Good, you're home."

"Where else would I be on a Saturday night? What's up? How's the haunted carriage house?"

Tess couldn't get a word out. Her throat was so constricted, and suddenly she couldn't seem to get any air. She made a choking, gurgling sound.

"Tess?"

"I found a skeleton in my cellar."

The words came in a rush, and Susanna sighed. "Well, damn. Human?"

"I think so."

"You think so? What do the police say?"

"I don't know, I haven't called them."

"Their number is 911. Easy to remember."

"Susanna…"

"I'm hanging up. You call me after you've talked to them."

"There are complications-"

"Ghosts, I know. And you're not sure what the hell you saw. You don't want people thinking you're a weenie or the sort of woman who conjures skeletons out of thin air. Yeah, I know all the complications. You've also got a rich eccentric who's been missing for a year. Call the police."

She hung up.

Tess stared at her dead cell phone. Then she dialed the police.

Thirteen

"Askeleton? Hell, I was hoping for buried treasure."

No one took well to Harl's dubious sense of humor. Andrew glowered at him, but Harl shrugged, unrepentant. They were all on Andrew's back porch. Harl, Andrew, two cops-and Tess. Andrew didn't think she looked the least bit contrite. She'd cleared out, called the police, and met them back here, before he and Harl had had a chance to work out who'd do the first search of her cellar. Harl took no pains to hide his flashlight and the pick and shovel he'd collected from the toolshed.

"You go on," he told Andrew now. "I'll stay here with Dolly. I've already done the dead-body-in-the-basement thing in my day."

The officers, two regular patrolmen on the small Beacon-by-the-Sea force, had already questioned them about the flapping bulkhead. Harl stuck to a recitation of the facts, without editorializing or speculating. He'd heard something earlier in the evening and investigated, discovering Tess and the unlatched bulkhead catching in the wind. Nothing else.

Andrew had nothing to report. Given the position of his house, he hadn't heard the bulkhead, or whatever it was, but had spotted Harl out back. They'd conferred briefly, and Andrew waited on the back porch with the phone in case the police were needed.

"I couldn't leave my daughter here alone," he'd said without looking at Tess.

Neither he nor Harl mentioned last night's bloody-murder scream, snakes or ghosts.

Tess led the police across his yard, taking the long way around the lilacs. Andrew followed at several paces. A skeleton. For the love of God.

"How did you manage to sleep last night after finding human remains?" the older of the two officers asked. His name was Paul Alvarez, and he had a good reputation, even by Harl's standards.

"I didn't," Tess answered.

"You'd convinced yourself it was a ghost?"

"I didn't know what I saw. I still don't. Maybe it was nothing. I hope it was nothing."

Even now, Andrew thought, she wasn't ready to commit. He could understand. The eye might see a human skeleton in the dark while the mind refused to accept it, especially in a haunted house once owned by an eccentric heir no one had heard from in a year.

"Well, let's take a look."

Paul Alvarez led the way down the bulkhead. The younger cop, Mike O'Toole, was on the pale side, looking as if he very much believed in ghosts as he and Alvarez made their way into the dirt cellar. Andrew stood in the doorway to the dirt cellar, Tess a few steps inside. She was agitated, arms crossed on her chest as if to keep herself from shaking, but spoke calmly, with determination. She pointed deep into the cellar. "It was back there, by that old bed frame."

Andrew glanced around at the cellar with its low ceilings, dirt floor, water pipes, heating ducts, old furnace, junk. Jed's carriage house had potential, but it was a money pit. What had Ike been thinking when he gave this place to Tess? Despite his many flaws, Ike wasn't the sort Andrew would expect to bury someone in a dirt cellar-or end up buried in a cellar himself like a dead skunk. That he didn't deserve.

But if it was Ike, he hadn't buried himself down here.

Andrew shook off the thought and all its implications. First things first. Maybe Tess's imagination had gotten the better of her. He wanted to be in there with shovel and pick himself, poking around in the dirt.