When it had happened, Craig Beckett had tried to hold his head high. He knew, of course, that his grandson was innocent because they had been together during the time it had happened-only a small window of opportunity. The museum had closed late on Friday night because there had been a festival in the city-and Craig Beckett had agreed with his fellows in the business association that his museum should remain open until midnight. David had come in with the first tour just after nine the next morning.
And Tanya’s body had been discovered.
David understood that, to many, he might well appear guilty as all hell.
But he had an alibi.
He’d been at the museum the night before, filling in for Danny Zigler then, too. But it was a small museum. It was only open for tours. There had been times between tours, people reckoned, when he might have slipped out. Or, according to others, the coroner might have been wrong. He might have left the museum and gone to quickly kill Tanya before returning home.
Think about it. Just how long did it take for a tall, muscular man to strangle the life out of a small, trusting woman?
Luckily, the coroner wouldn’t be called wrong. He insisted on the time of Tanya’s death.
And there were enough tourists to swear that David couldn’t have gone far in between the tours.
And after? David and his grandfather had stayed up until nearly four, engaged in a chess match. Then they’d even fallen asleep watching a movie in the den; his grandmother had come in to throw blankets over the two of them. By seven in the morning, the family had been engaged in breakfast. David knew many people believed that his grandparents had just been covering for him, but the one thing that gave David strength was the fact that he had been with his grandparents, and they did know that he was innocent.
Craig had tried to maintain the museum. But when everyone coming in had wanted to know about Tanya and little else about the history of the island, he had given it up at last. He had cared for the place, but he had closed its doors to the public. He had dreamed of the right time to reopen it.
Now his grandfather was gone. They would never reopen the museum. Tomorrow, he’d talk to Liam about selling off the characters. He knew many were made with fine craftsmanship and were valuable. Then work could be done to restore the house, and it would definitely be a valuable commodity.
So what the hell was he doing here himself?
He’d had to come. And he’d found himself staring at the exhibit, wishing he remembered more about Tanya and yet aware that the sight of her on Elena’s bed was permanently embedded in his memory. Nothing of the girl herself. Everything about the horror of her death.
And now, this girl, standing there staring at him, her scream just an echo in their minds.
“Who the hell are you and what in hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
The girl flushed. She was an exceptionally attractive young woman, early to midtwenties, with deep auburn hair, long and loose down her back, and, even in the muted light, eyes so startlingly hazel they seemed to be gold. Her features were cleanly cut and beautiful, and her body, clad in jeans and a T-shirt that advertised a local bar, was lean and well formed. There was something familiar about her, but he wasn’t sure what or why.
She stared at him, obviously recovering herself. Her cheeks were red at first, but then she appeared to be angry, as well.
“Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?” she demanded in return.
“What?” he snapped.
“You heard me-I asked who you are, and what in hell you’re doing here,” she said, an edge of real anger in her voice.
He stared at her incredulously.
“Are you drunk?” he demanded.
“No! Are you?”
He walked around from the rear of the exhibit to accost her. She stepped back warily, as if ready to run out of the room.
Good. He was tempted to come closer and shout, “Boo!”
He didn’t.
“I’m here because I own the place,” he told her. “And you’re trespassing. You have about two seconds to get out of here, and then I’m going to call the police.”
“You are absolutely full of it,” she told him. “I own this place.”
Again, he was startled.
“You’re wrong,” he said harshly, “and I’m tired of the joke. This place is owned by the Beckett family, and it’s not for sale-yet.”
“Beckett!” she gasped.
“Beckett, yes. The name that you see on the marquis outside. B-E-C-K-E-T-T. This museum has been the property of my family for decades. I’m David Beckett. It is four in the morning and I’m wondering what you are doing here at this time. I actually belong here-at any hour. Now, if you please, get out.” He spoke evenly, almost pleasantly. But he meant the get out.
It seemed now, after hearing his name, as if the young woman facing him had changed her attitude suddenly. She seemed to back away. I’m a Beckett. Oh, yeah, David Beckett. Person of interest! he almost shouted.
It had been ten years since he had left, determined that he wouldn’t let the past follow him, not when he was innocent, not when someone else had taken his fiancée’s life, long after she had taken leave of him.
“I’m so sorry; I should have known,” she said. “Actually, we’ve met. It was years ago, but I should have known, you do look a lot like Liam. I’m Katie-”
“I don’t care who you are,” he said, startled by his abrupt rudeness. He shook his head. “Just get out. It’s private property.”
“You don’t understand. I believe that I do own this place. I just have a few last papers to sign on Saturday. Tomorrow. Liam is, after all, Craig’s executor-okay, you both are, if I understand it right, and you’d told him to go ahead and act in his absence. Liam was ready to sell.”
David frowned.
Sell? Never. Not the museum. The museum needed to be dismantled, taken apart. He wasn’t superstitious, he didn’t believe in curses. But this place held a miasma. There was something that appeared to be evil in the robotics. The faces were too lifelike. The ones that moved didn’t jerk about-they looked like the real thing from a distance.
They invited idiots and drunks and psychotics to behave insanely. Commit murder, and leave the corpses behind, far more fragile than the imitations that might survive many decades.
David shook his head, feeling a twinge less hostile. He still couldn’t really figure out who in hell the girl was, but, at least she wasn’t a drunken tourist who had stumbled in. A Northerner, probably. Someone who had come to Key West convinced it was not only a sunny Eden, but a place to make a good few bucks off the spending habits of vacationers. But she’d said that they’d met?
“Whatever you might have thought, whatever you might have come to believe, the museum is not and will never be for sale. If it’s the house you’re interested in, it may come up on the market in a year or so,” David said flatly.
She stared at him steadily. Now it seemed that she was the hostile one. “So, you’re David Beckett, suddenly home and taking interest in the family-and the family property. How nice. Perhaps you should speak with the lawyers. I believe that the sale has gone through.”
“Look, Miss-”
“Katherine O’Hara, and don’t be superior with me, because my family has been down here as long as yours-or longer. I hope that you’re wrong, and that this sale can go through. I love what your family created. This is a beautiful place, and your grandfather and great-grandfather did such a fabulous job showing history, the simple, true and the bizarre. I don’t understand…”
Her voice had trailed as she stared at him. She looked nervous suddenly.
Was she thinking that no matter what the newspapers or police had said, he might be a murderer? A very sick one at that, setting a corpse into an historical tableau?
After all, she had said that her family had been here forever, and yes, he did know of O’Haras who were longtime residents, but…