“Oh, we do!” Adam assured him cheerfully.
“There’s a gate that leads to my little place just over there, by the stables,” Katie said. Then she paused. She could hear the dogs barking: Jerry, Ben and Mitch. They were huge Belgian shepherds, very loving to those they protected, but no one would ever dare break in at Monty Trudeau’s place. The dogs could put up such a racket when they were disturbed that could just about wake the dead over at St. Louis No. 1.
“Monty, want to let the boys out for a minute? I’d love for them to meet Adam,” she said.
She also didn’t want the man shredded to bits if the dogs made their way through the gate as they sometimes did.
“Good idea,” Monty said, nodding gravely. “I’ll get the guys.”
She thought Adam Harrison looked at his watch with a bit of impatience.
Good.
Katie was unnerved and uncomfortable, and yet she believed he’d known her father. And she was also both amazed and a bit uneasy because he knew about her strange ability.
And that her father had been able to speak with the dead, too.
He’d never told her, never mentioned it.
But then, she’d never had that ability until the day she’d been saved by a long-dead pirate. She supposed her father wouldn’t have said anything to her for the same reason she never said anything to anyone else. “Is everything all right?” she asked Adam.
He nodded. “I love dogs. Great to meet fellows who might otherwise want to chew me to pieces.”
She smiled. When the canine siblings came out, they seemed ready to accept Adam Harrison. Monty had trained them not to jump, but they raced out to gather around Katie and then to sniff at the newcomer.
“He’s good!” Monty told the dogs.
Adam leaned down to pet all three, who then began to vie for his attention.
“Okay, guys... I’ll leave the gate open, Monty. They can come and go as they like,” Katie said.
“Sounds good. They’ll have the run of both yards,” her boss said, heading to Sarah and the carriage, ready to take care of both.
Katie led Adam Harrison through the gate at the side of the stables to her little house. Giving the dogs her yard for extra room to roam in wasn’t much of a deal. While Monty’s place sat on four acres, her little house had about a tenth of that room. She loved it, though. She had found it the day she had applied for a job with Monty. And with the trust fund her parents had left her and the promise of a job to pay the mortgage, she’d been set. Monty had been thrilled she’d purchased the house. She didn’t mind looking out for things when he had to be away.
It wasn’t in any way a grand Victorian, but it had been built during the mid-1800s and offered lots of charm. A wraparound porch with wooden railings surrounded the house. Downstairs she had what had been a small parlor and music room to one side of the narrow entry hall, and another small parlor, then connected dining room and kitchen to the other side. Upstairs, there were three small bedrooms.
It was more than she needed. She didn’t have family or friends come to stay. She had cut off all ties with friends in Florida when she left. Jeremy, her closest living relation, was here.
He had his own house, a place that was a grand Victorian, in the Garden District. But Katie had gone to high school and college in New Orleans and did have plenty of friends here. While they had their own homes, Katie liked to host game nights, and she kept the one downstairs parlor as a kid-safe zone for those who now had toddlers, and it was babyproofed so they couldn’t get into anything harmful.
“Nice place,” Adam said, as she unlocked her front door and led him in.
She noted the way he looked at the house. He was probably thinking she had no alarm system and that the wraparound porch might allow entry through a dozen windows.
“It’s very safe here,” she said, as if he had spoken aloud. “And you met my alarm system. Jerry, Mitch and Ben. They would do anything for me.”
“Dogs are vulnerable, just like people,” he said.
“Ah, well... Can I get you something? Coffee?”
“Let’s just sit for a minute, shall we?” he asked.
“Okay. Yes. Sure. Let’s get to this.”
She led him into the kitchen and dining area, indicating they could sit at the table.
He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment but then got right to the point.
“It really upset me when neither we nor anyone else seemed to be able to discover the truth behind the murder of your parents.”
“George Calabria later went to trial for the murders of a couple in Orlando. There are those who are convinced he got away with murder twice.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There was another couple on the boat. They disappeared.”
“According to public record, they were nonexistent,” Adam reminded Katie.
“Right. Except they existed. I’ve said it over and over again. And I know at the time people believed I was traumatized, that I wanted to believe someone else was to blame, that I couldn’t accept George was guilty.”
“I don’t think people thought you were making it up. It was just, on record, they didn’t exist. Trying to find out anything about them was a challenge for lots of law-enforcement officials.”
“They existed.”
“So either they were murdered but thrown into the water to disappear or they did the murdering.”
“That’s my assumption, yes. I think they were the murderers because, while no one was sharing information of the investigation with a fifteen-year-old, I never let it go, and I heard they didn’t find any blood belonging to anyone other than my parents and Anita Calabria on the boat. I know forensic teams—including FBI teams—went over the boat with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Yes.”
“They were your teams, I take it?”
“Not at the time, but yes, I had something to do with it.”
“Why don’t I know you?”
“You did meet me—but you were three or four at the time.”
“Ah. Why didn’t you see more of my parents?”
“They were busy. I was busy. But I did see your dad about six months before he was killed. He was in DC for a reunion. We were able to go out to dinner together right before I dropped him at the airport to head home.” He hesitated. “He raved about you, Katie. He said you were an amazing young diver, that you might turn that love into something wonderful one day. You’d found pieces in the channels that belonged in museums over sites where wrecks had been salvaged and investigated dozens of times.”