The next message was from his uncle just asking him to call back.
He did so. Still, he didn’t learn much. His uncle just wanted him to come to the bar. Sean told him it would take him about forty-five minutes, and Jamie said that was fine, just to come.
“So what’s up?” Bartholomew asked.
“Going to the bar, that’s all,” Sean said. He was curious. Jamie wasn’t usually secretive.
“Can you keep a hand on the helm? Bring her straight in?” Sean asked Bartholomew as he brought up the anchor. Securing it, he added, “Jeez, am I crazy asking you that?”
Bartholomew looked at him with tremendous indignation.
“Really! That was absolutely—churlish of you! If there’s one thing I know, it’s a lazy man’s boat like this!”
Sean grinned. “I’ll be in the head in the shower for about fifteen minutes. That’s all you need to manage.”
“It’ll be great if we pass the Coast Guard or a tour boat!” Bartholomew cried.
Sean ignored him. He just wanted to rinse off the sea salt—his uncle had him curious.
He showered, dried and dressed in the head and cabin well within his fifteen minutes. In another twenty, he was tying up at the pier.
Duval Street was quiet.
As he walked from the docks to O’Hara’s, Sean mused with a certain wry humor that Key West was, beyond a doubt, a place for night owls. He was accustomed enough to working at night—or even partying at night—but he was actually more fond of the morning hours.
“What do you think Jamie wants?”
Sean heard the question again—for what seemed like the tenth time now—and groaned inwardly without turning to look at the speaker. Imagine, once he had wanted to see the damned ghost!
Oh, he could see Bartholomew way too clearly now, though when he had first come home to Key West—hearing that David Beckett was in town and worried for his sister’s safety—he had come with his longtime fear for Katie’s mind. She had always seemed to sense or see things. But that had been Katie, not him.
Bartholomew had apparently wanted to be known, though at first he proved his presence by moving things around.
Then Sean had seen him in that damned chair in the hospital room. Now he could see the long-dead privateer as easily as he could see any flesh-and-blood, living person who walked into his life.
He cursed the fact.
He had never believed in ghosts. He’d never wanted to believe. In fact, he’d warned Katie not to ever talk about the fact that she had “strange encounters” or had been “gifted” or “cursed” from a young age. The majority of the world would think that she should be institutionalized.
He wasn’t pleased that he saw Bartholomew. Now he had the fear that he would one day wind up institutionalized himself.
And he was far from pleased that the dapper centuries-old entity had now decided to affix himself to Sean.
“I will not answer you. I will never answer you in public,” Sean said.
Bartholomew laughed. “You just answered me. Then again, we’re hardly in public, you know. I think the whole island is still asleep. Besides, you’re a filmmaker. An ‘artiste!’ People will happily believe that you are eccentric, and it’s your brilliance causing you to speak to yourself.”
“Right. Don’t you feel that you should go and haunt my sister?” Sean asked.
“I believe she’s busy.”
“I’m busy,” Sean said.
“Look, I’m apparently hanging around for something,” Bartholomew said. “Others have gone on, and I haven’t. You seem to be someone I must help.”
“I don’t need help.”
“You will, I’m sure of it,” Bartholomew said.
Sean kept walking.
“So what do you think he wanted?” Bartholomew persisted.
“I don’t know,” Sean said flatly. “But he wanted something, and that’s why I’m going to see him.” He cast a glance Bartholomew’s way. The privateer—hanged long ago for a deed he hadn’t committed—was really quite a sight. His frock coat and stockings, buckle shoes, vest and tricornered hat all fit his tall, lean physique quite well. In his lifetime, Sean thought dryly, he had probably made a few hearts flutter. Sadly, he had died because of the death of the love of his life, and an act of piracy blamed upon him. However, after haunting the island since then, he had recently found a new love, the “lady in white,” legendary in Key West. When they filmed their documentary, Sean meant to make sure that he covered Bartholomew’s case and those of his old and new loves.