Unhallowed Ground by Heather Graham Page A

or less abandoned once more, before finally being then purchased by Mrs. Emily Douglas, who had eventually sold it to Sarah.
    What she wanted to do was hunt down the truth behind the rumors, to see what was smoke and whatwas fire. She knew how to dig through old records—she had a master’s degree, after all—and the historical library was very good, so she didn’t expect to have too much trouble.
    The first thing she came across were a number of blueprints showing the changes that had taken place in the house over the years. She was immediately grateful to the person who had put the kitchen in at the turn of century—one of the Brennan clan—and even more grateful that the house had been built from the start with full plumbing and bathrooms. Electricity had gone in during 1904.
    None of that seemed to have anything to do with the bones in the walls, other than the fact that she discovered that nothing had been done to the walls in the library where the corpses had been found—not on record, at least—since 1857, when some cosmetic work had been done after a fire had damaged the plaster. Of course, then as now, people had often done whatever they wanted to inside a house, despite codes and regulations. These days St. Augustine had a very strict historical preservation policy, but even so, and even by those who honored it when it came to the exterior of their houses, inside work was generally at the discretion of the owner.
    The guilty mortician must have been one of the MacTavishes or the Brennans, since it was highly unlikely that an outsider could have sauntered in with a string of bodies and walled them up. Now all she had to do was find the criminal in question.
    Sarah glanced at her watch and realized that an hourwasn’t nearly enough to finish her digging. It was time to return to work.
    She left the library—a historic building itself—and headed back to the museum. On her way, she saw that flyers had been posted everywhere.
    Have you seen this woman?
    The picture was of the missing local girl, Winona Hart. She was smiling and bright-eyed in her photo, a beautiful young blonde whose innocence and zest for life had been captured by the photographer’s lens.
    Sarah felt a tightening in her heart, and she wished there was something she could do to help find the girl, but she doubted that a master’s in history qualified her to be of much help in a missing persons case.
    But…
    Caleb Anderson was here to search for another woman. Could the two disappearances be related? She wished she knew more about the psychology of crime. Would a serial killer hang around a city like St. Augustine so he could kidnap and most likely kill two women a year apart?
    She realized that she was still staring at the picture. It was one thing to read about the girl in the paper, see a grainy photo and impersonally hope for the best. Now, looking at such a lifelike image, she felt as if she had somehow become involved. Those big bright eyes seemed to stare at her. Winona was so young, so pretty, and so full of life and laughter.
    She was surprised when she reached out to touch the picture, as if she were actually reaching out to touch Winona Hart’s face.
    And she was even more surprised by the electric sizzle that streaked along her arm when she made contact with the paper.
    “I’m so sorry,” she caught herself saying aloud. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t know how I can possibly help you.”
    Then, feeling like a fool, she looked around and hurried down the street, walking quickly now, since her lunch hour was definitely over.
     
    A year ago, the usual had all been done. Jennie Lawson had made a cell phone call to her mother when she had landed. That was the last call she had made, though her cell records and voice mail showed a long list of calls coming in, from her mother—growing more frantic with each message—and various friends who had hoped to make it to St. Augustine to meet up with her. The friends all had alibis;