Carriage House 01 - The Carriage House by Neggers Carla

Author:Neggers, Carla [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Shared-Mom
ISBN: 9781426828898
Google: _UpRlvez8-EC
Amazon: 0778323978
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2001-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

The cellar again produced nothing. No skeleton, no evidence one had been snatched, no sign of an intruder, not even anything to suggest what Tess had actually seen the other night that her mind had transformed into a human skull.

She wasn't surprised. She sat with Susanna out on the kitchen steps, drinking the last of her soda. Susanna had arrived while Harl and Dolly were still playing tic-tac-toe, and he'd sent her down to the cellar with Tess and Andrew. They were all back on the other side of the lilacs now-Andrew, Harl and Dolly. Tippy Tail and kittens were asleep in their box in the bathroom. Tess could almost delude herself into thinking all was well, but her instincts said otherwise.

Susanna took a long drink of her soda and pressed the cold can to her cheek. "The way I see it, you have four scenarios. One, there was no skeleton. That's the option we all like best, no matter how embarrassing to you. It's the one the police will fly with until they have reason not to. Two, there was a skeleton, but it's a ghost. That's probably our second-best option. People'll believe it or they won't. It doesn't matter. It's a ghost, and that's that."

"Why would a ghost turn itself into a skeleton?" Tess asked reflectively, her own soda untouched.

"Why wouldn't it? Ghosts are ghosts. They do their own thing." Susanna leaned back against the step above her and stretched out her long, lean legs. "Third option, there was a skeleton, and it's some poor bastard from a million years ago."

"My nineteenth-century horse thief theory."

"Or Jedidiah Thorne didn't die at sea."

Tess nodded since it was a scenario she'd considered herself. "But who'd care enough to steal his remains?"

"His descendants might. Maybe they know something we don't about how he died and want to keep it their little secret."

"It doesn't wash with what I know about the Thornes. They're not exactly North Shore bluebloods who want to protect the family name. Jedidiah was already convicted of murder." Tess sighed, hating discussing something so real and potentially tragic as a dead body buried in her cellar in such a clinical fashion. "The important thing isn't what I want, it's learning what the truth is."

"You know the fourth scenario," Susanna said.

"Ike."

"Yep. That's the one no one likes. He ends up dead in the carriage house cellar. Whoever buried him there doesn't realize you own the place. You pop up here, push comes to shove, they slip in and dig him up."

Tess didn't want to give this fourth option any credence. She set the soda can on her knee and watched the condensation on the outside drip onto her jeans. "Someone should try to locate him."

"That would be the thing to do, yes."

"One would think his sister-"

"One would."

Tess glanced at her friend. "If there was a skeleton down there and someone stole it last night, I could have put myself in a dangerous position by saying I saw it. I should have pretended I didn't see a thing.

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