“It’s just the timing of his death that intrigues me,” Caleb said. “And the fact that we found him while we were looking for Winona. I’m not saying there was a connection, I’m just curious. For the moment.”

“Interesting. All right, you’ve got Frederick Russell and the unidentified woman from the beach. Then there are two missing girls, and a houseful of bones. And we need to discover what—if anything—some or all of them, have in common. We know the unidentified woman had an opiate mixed with a hallucinogenic in her system. Russell was clean. Jennie Lawson? She’s a total mystery, other than that she and Winona look like twins. Then we have rumors about murders and disappearances from the Civil War era, bodies in the walls, and now a body in a trunk. Are we actually trying to connect everything?”

“We? You just said you were an M.E., not a cop,” Caleb reminded him.

“An intrigued M.E.,” Floby admitted. “Does Jamison know you’re trying to put all these pieces together?” he asked.

“Not yet, but he will. I just haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it yet.”

Cary Hagan opened the door to their knock, looking gorgeous even in workout clothing, the kind of fancy sweats you saw on models in pricey catalogues. The kind of clothes most people would never actually wear to work out in. But Cary was wearing them—to spend her time with a man who was a hundred years old.

“Hi, how are you guys?” Cary asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that the two of them had come by first thing in the morning. “Mr. Griffin will be thrilled to have company.”

Will was staring at Cary the way a dog stared at a juicy bone. Sarah didn’t doubt that her cousin really cared about Caroline, and she was sure it would be hard for any male not to be entirely charmed by Cary Hagan, but she had the sudden fear that he might actually start drooling. He looked positively hypnotized.

Sarah nudged him in the ribs. “Um, sorry. We’re fine. How are you—and Mr. Griffin?”

Cary just laughed. “We’re both fine, too. Come on in. He’s in the parlor, reading.”

Mr. Griffin’s house was built along the same lines as Sarah’s, and Cary led them into the parlor on the left.

Mr. Griffin, resting in an armchair, an afghan over his knees, looked up when they entered. He barely glanced at Will before fixing his gaze on Sarah.

“You’ve come to see me. Thank you. Have you learned any more about what I told you?” he asked her anxiously.

Cary, who probably heard him talk about the past all the time and was glad they were there to listen, said, “I don’t know about you all, but I need some coffee, and I’m getting Mr. Griffin’s favorite tea all set up. I’ll be right back.” With a smile, she was out the door.

As soon as she was gone, Mr. Griffin looked at Will suspiciously and spoke to Sarah as if Will couldn’t hear. “Who is he?” he asked her.

“This is my cousin, Will Perkins. He’s one of my best friends.”

Mr. Griffin smiled, seemingly satisfied.

“Mr. Griffin,” Sarah said, “we’ve discovered that a number of women disappeared here in town during the Civil War, and at least some of them seem to have been linked to my house. You said your daughter disappeared in 1928, and that she was on her way to my house when it happened. I was hoping you could tell me a little more about what was going on then, if maybe other girls went missing then, too, if maybe what’s happening now is repeating a pattern that’s played out at least twice before.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “When I heard about the skeletons in the wall, I was hoping you would find Clara,” he said softly. “Then I was hoping you wouldn’t.” He looked away for a minute. “They said that the housekeeper kept a book, the witch Martha Tyler.”

“I was asking about your daughter, Mr. Griffin,” she said gently. “Not the Civil War.”

“I know exactly what you asked me, young lady, and I’m trying to answer!” he snapped.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

Mr. Griffin rolled his eyes impatiently. “Here’s what I’m trying to explain,” he said. “Soon after Cato MacTavish left St. Augustine, there was a tragedy at the house. Brennan’s daughter, Nellie, fell from her bedroom window and died on the stone walkway in front of the house. And soon after that, the townspeople marched on the place. You won’t find this written in any book—it’s a story my father told me. They dragged the housekeeper out of the house, and they took her out to the unhallowed ground behind the cemetery wall, where they hanged her. Before she died, she cursed the house. She said that others would find her ‘book.’ And when they did, she would come back, and all the beautiful young girls would die. I didn’t believe any of it. I thought it was nothing but fodder for the tourists. But there was a different Brennan—old man Brennan’s grandson, the son of the son who’d been fighting up north during the war—who was running the old mortuary then. He had a daughter, and she had friends, including my Clara. Two of them supposedly ran off with boys their folks wouldn’t approve of, while my Clara just went out to visit her one day and never came home.” He looked toward the door, as if assuring himself that no one else was there—including Cary—then leaned closer and whispered heatedly, “The housekeeper’s book exists, and someone has it, and that’s why girls are disappearing again. Find whoever has the book, and you’ll solve the murders.”

Cary Hagan came back in then, walking as smoothly and gracefully as a southern breeze, her smile as brilliant as the sun. She was carrying a silver tray with a coffee service, a cup of tea and a plate of fresh baked muffins. “Here we are. Mr. Griffin, I have your tea right here. Oh…! I should have asked. Would either of you prefer tea?” she asked Sarah and Will.

“Coffee is great, thank you,” Sarah said.

“Anything you have is just fine for me,” Will told her.

Sarah wanted to smack him. He was fawning again.

As Cary started serving, Mr. Griffin pointed to a painting on the wall. “That’s the old Castillo, done at the turn of century. Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked. He clearly wasn’t going to say anything more about the murders. Will might be too smitten to see it, but Sarah was very aware that Mr. Griffin didn’t want to speak in front of his own nurse.

As soon as she politely could, Sarah made their excuses and dragged Will out.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked the minute they were back on the sidewalk. “Don’t you see? Mr. Griffin doesn’t trust Cary.”

“Oh, come on,” he protested, looking back toward the house. “You’re just jealous because she’s so gorgeous, so you don’t want to trust her.”

“Will! I am not jealous. I’m…suspicious.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Sarah. Some sicko is doing this. How can you possibly think that it’s Cary Hagan?”

She shook her head and started walking more quickly.

“It’s pretty obvious that she’s having an affair with Tim Jamison,” Will said, hurrying to catch up with her. “So what do you think? She ditches Mr. Griffin, lures young women with some kind of drugs, kills them, bathes in their blood or whatever—and then sleeps with the cop in charge of the case?”

“Look, I didn’t say she was guilty of anything, I just said that she was suspicious,” Sarah told him. Her cell phone started ringing and she quickly pulled it out of her pocket, expecting it to be Caleb calling to say that he and Floby were at her house.

But it wasn’t Caleb. It was Caroline.

“Sarah, can you get over to the museum quickly? Please?”

“Okay,” Sarah said slowly, wondering why Caroline sounded so upset. Caroline wasn’t a fool; if there were a real emergency, she would have called 911. “Why?” Sarah asked.

“Just hurry, please,” Caroline said. “Oh, Sarah, it’s so awful!”

“What’s so awful?” Sarah asked.

Will was staring at her tensely. “Awful?” he echoed. “What’s so awful?”