Darkest Journey by Heather Graham Page B

and in the 1880s the stables, paddocks and the bulk of the property had been sold off. Now, to the one side of his house, there was a housing community called Golden Acres, and to the other was a sprawling manor built in the 1890s. The Delaney family residence was two full stories, with a half-story attic above. His mother had been in love with the idea that the family had once kept horses on the property, and there were paintings of the animals all over the house.
    It was furnished as a hunting lodge might have been, with heavy wood pieces, and leather sofas and chairs. There was a large-screen television set up to work with a gaming system. His parents didn’t keep cable hooked up, but they had Netflix and could stream TV and movies anywhere in the house.
    He wasn’t sure he was going to spend enough time here to worry about entertainment, but he was glad he could connect his laptop wirelessly and see his photos on the giant screen.
    He’d taken a shot of Randy’s board, which was as impressive as promised. There were pictures of Farrell Hickory and Albion Corley as they had been in life. There were also the crime-scene and the autopsy shots, along with a fact sheet on each man estimating time of death, last meal and everything the police had put together regarding his last movements.
    The only place where the men’s timelines had crossed, at least as far as they knew, was for the special reenactment on the Journey . There was a note that a local photographer, a man named Chance Morgan, had spoken with both men about taking some shots the Celtic American Line could use for PR, but he claimed he hadn’t been able to arrange a time with either man.
    Ethan had called Morgan himself as he’d left the station earlier. Along with everyone else he was looking at, he had to consider the photographer, who was known for his photos replicating those taken during the Civil War. He’d told Randy Laurent that he’d been in Baton Rouge on the days when the murders had been committed, and he had hotel bills to prove it. But in Ethan’s mind, Baton Rouge just wasn’t far enough away to clear him. Randy had, however, verified Morgan’s claim to have been shooting stills for a local catering company.
    When Ethan had reached him, Morgan was shooting a wedding at the Myrtles, but he’d told Ethan he could see him the following day any time he wanted. They’d made an appointment for nine o’clock the next morning.
    He examined Randy’s board on the big screen. Examined it over and over again. Randy had dispassionately told him that Jonathan Moreau made a damned good suspect. He’d argued with both the dead men. Either of the men might easily have planned to meet him to discuss a new project. Jonathan Moreau knew about Civil War weapons, including bayonets. He knew the area like few other men.
    But when Ethan looked at things closely, even considering the fact Moreau was Charlie’s father and he had an emotional connection with Charlie from the past, he came to the conclusion that Randy’s reasoning was really only a lot of speculation.
    They didn’t have anything concrete. No witnesses. No physical evidence. Just two men who had died wearing reproduction uniforms, killed by a weapon that could have been a Civil War bayonet.
    Ethan turned away from the screen.
    It was tempting to believe the murders had something to do with an old grudge that led back to the Civil War, or at least someone’s interpretation of it. Even when he’d been a kid in school, there had been teachers who referred to “the War of Northern Aggression.”
    So many terrible things had happened back then. The war itself. Reconstruction. The rise of the KKK. Murder and mayhem and resentment for years and years to follow. At least in the world they lived in now equality was the law of the land, although that wasn’t always true in reality.
    You could never tell what was really going