Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

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.

"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.

O'Toole grabbed an old rake handle and ran it around over the dirt floor. Tess glanced back at Andrew, her eyes as pale a blue as he'd ever seen. "It's not there." She sounded tense, not relieved. "I was so sure…"

She pushed deeper into the cellar, pointing, squatting herself and searching. Andrew watched her, not the police. She was in control of herself, surprised and tense at finding nothing. Alvarez and O'Toole expanded their search, scanning the rest of the cellar with their high-powered flashlights.

There was no skeleton. No skulls, no bones. Nothing.

"Maybe someone snatched it," Tess said. "Maybe that was what the noise was."

The two cops weren't going there. "It's an empty, run-down, old house with a bad reputation. It was your first night here, you were down here alone under difficult circumstances…" Alvarez shrugged. "Are you sure it was a human skull you saw?"

She sighed. "Yes."

"But that doesn't mean that's what it was," he said.

"No, you're right, it doesn't, especially under the circumstances. That's why I didn't say anything right from the start-I wasn't sure myself."

They came out into the laundry room. O'Toole's color was better. Alvarez said, "There's not much more we can do at this point. I'm sorry. If anything changes, let us know."

"Fair enough. Thanks."

When they got back to Andrew's house, Harl was still on the porch with his pick and shovel. Andrew figured his cousin wouldn't rely on a police search of the cellar. He'd have to take a look himself before he'd be satisfied.

Tess, still pale and edgy, finished up with the police. After they left, she said without looking at Andrew, "I should get along back to Boston."

"Not so fast." He pulled out a chair at the table on the porch. Harl had put out two beers. Andrew opened one and set it on the table in front of the chair. "Sit."

Harl tilted back in his chair and eyed Tess, who looked ready to bolt. "I wouldn't argue. I've seen that look in his eyes before, about two seconds before he hit a guy over the head with a beer bottle. Five stitches."

Andrew gritted his teeth. "Harl."

"It's true."

"It's not true. He didn't need five stitches, and it was self-defense."

Harl shrugged. "So's this."

With a groan of frustration or confusion, or both, Tess swooped down onto the chair. Her body was rigid. She crossed her arms on her chest and sat at the very end of the chair, as if she'd spring up and out of there any second. She leveled her pale blue eyes on Andrew. "I know I should have mentioned the skeleton sooner."

"Yeah, no shit," Harl said.

Andrew stayed focused on Tess. "Why didn't you?"

"Because I'd intended to check the cellar myself to make sure before I told anyone. I didn't want to upset people or end up looking like an idiot if it was nothing. When Davey and my father showed up and didn't find anything, I decided to wait until morning and bring a friend." She didn't flinch at his hard gaze. "I procrastinated."

"Now what?"

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall, exhaling, suddenly looking tired. "Now? I don't know. I guess it's more likely I didn't see anything than someone slipped into my cellar while I was at dinner and stole human remains. It's easier, and more logical, to believe what we heard was just the bulkhead catching in the wind."