Bride of the Tiger Read online

  “I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! They, I mean in Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies—not the new body. But then…opening a decaying coffin and finding… Jeannette Gilbert! And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at my site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students here. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was….”

  John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair, and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.

  Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys—and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.

  Jeannette Gilbert. Media princess. The model and actress had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging kidnappers for her safe return.

  At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release, her agent and manager, Oswald Martin.

  Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette, dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—gold-digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.

  In the past few weeks the “celebrity” magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that, but only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor—struggling his way into TV, movies, and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones!—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge.

  While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.

  Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.

  It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.

  Now, Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it seemed evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.

  Not that she any of the facts other than that Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb, but it was unlikely that Jeannette Gilbert had crawled into an historic coffin in a lost catacomb to die of natural causes.

  “It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my silly young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to us, those of us who were working. I was there for hours while they grilled me. And now…now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double-shot of single malt scotch to swallow in a gulp.

  He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.

  It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.

  After all…

  He’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.

  The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was on the other side of the block from Club Le Vampyre.

  The whole situation, aside from the grief of a young woman’s untimely death, was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro during the week. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family—belonging to a distant great-great uncle—from the mid-nineteenth century. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.

  So, while Declan actually managed the pub and made it his life’s work, she was employed by doctors Fuller and Miro, Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. And they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.

  The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage regarding Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about it now and then for six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club! Like that! In an old church!

  The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown gravesites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.

  Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.

  Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about very old gravesites.

  Because they were old—they were the earthly remains of people who’d lived—and died—long ago.

  Not the newly deceased.

  At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. Kieran was among the first to find out; that was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China, very well. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s Pub one night a month as long as she could remember.

  When she’d see him looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch—and she’d sat down with him so she could try to calm him down.

  “Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them…

  Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.

  Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.

  “I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find others dead. Of course, John Shaw hadn’t known the woman, he did work with the dead all the time—the long-dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.

  But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.

  He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently
murdered.

  “I was—I am!—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built St. Paul’s to accommodate folks further north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built St. Augustine’s for those a little north of St. Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, there was—until about seventy-five years ago—an entrance to the catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground area outside, most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves… Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”

  He sipped his scotch again and looked at her intently. “Kieran, you’re not to say a word, not yet. The police…they asked me not to speak about this until…until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents are living, but she must have family…” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome—ghastly!”

  This time, he didn’t sip his scotch. He swallowed it down in a gulp.

  Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.

  She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.

  She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. They were talking about giving up their current situation, in which they each had dresser drawers at the other’s apartment, and moving in together.

  But while she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, which hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.

  And trusting her beloved brothers to behave wasn’t easy. They were never malicious; however, their ways of helping friends out of bad situations weren’t always the best.

  Then again, she’d met Craig because of the Capeletti diamond and Danny’s determination to do the right thing…

  And because of some criminal clientele.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured to John, assuming that Craig had come to see her.

  The door was still open; he stood in a pool of light and her heart leapt as she saw him. Craig was, in her mind, entirely impressive, tall and broad-shouldered, with extraordinary eyes that seemed to take everything in.

  But he had not, apparently, come to see her.

  He greeted Kieran with a nod, held her shoulders for a minute—and then offered her a grim smile as he gently set her aside so he could move past her.

  Something was up. Craig spent his free time here with her and her family. Her friends, co-workers and the usual clientele all knew that Craig and Kieran were a couple.

  Today, however, there wasn’t even a quick kiss. Craig was being very official.

  He was heading straight to the booth where John Shaw was seated.

  Kieran stood there for a minute, perplexed.

  Of course, Craig was FBI. But a local woman had been killed, and, no matter how famous she’d been, it should’ve remained a matter for the NYC police department. And John Shaw had left the old church-now-screaming-hot-night-club less than an hour ago.

  Why would Craig be here so quickly? And more to the point, why was the FBI involved?

  She didn’t get a chance to slide back in to the booth and find out what was going on; she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around.

  Her brother Kevin was next to her. Kevin was a striking man—in anyone’s opinion, she thought. He was tall and fit with fine features, dark red hair and deep blue eyes; their coloring was the same. They were twins, and it showed. She loved her brother and she felt that acting was the perfect career for him. Like all of them, however, he worked at the pub when he could.

  “I have to talk to you!” he said urgently.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Not here. In the office,” he told her. To her surprise, he glanced uneasily at Craig—whom he liked and with whom he was pretty good friends.

  Her brother whirled her around and headed her down the entry aisle toward the bar and then to the left and down the hallway to the business office. He peered in, as if afraid their older brother might be there, since it was, basically, Declan’s office.

  He closed the door behind them.

  “She’s dead, Kieran! She’s dead!” Kevin said, looking at her and shaking his head with dismay and anxiety.

  She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t be talking about Jeannette Gilbert—no one knew about she’d been found at the church yet, not according to John Shaw.

  Her heart quaked with fear. She was afraid he was talking about an old friend, or a long-time customer of the pub.

  Someone he cared about deeply.

  “Kevin, who?” She asked.

  “Jeannette.”

  She frowned. “Jeannette Gilbert?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “I know that, because John Shaw just told me. But he only found her a few hours ago. The police asked him not to say anything.”

  Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, John Shaw might not have said anything, but one of the workers down there—a grunt? A student? I don’t know—came out and told people on the street, and the story was picked up, and there are already media crews there.”

  She studied her brother. “Kevin, it’s terrible. A young and beautiful young woman who was very popular has—I’m assuming—been murdered. But, Kevin, I’m afraid that terrible things do happen. But…we didn’t know Jeannette Gilbert. Not personally.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We did.”

  “We did?”

  “I did,” he corrected. “Kieran, I was the so-called ‘mystery man’ she was dating! I might have been the last one to see her alive.”

  * * *

  The NYPD had been called in first; that was proper protocol, since New York City was where the body had been found.

  Jeannette Gilbert hadn’t been kidnapped in another state—and subsequently killed in New York. She’d last been seen by her doorman entering her apartment; she was a long-time Manhattan resident. She had, in fact, grown up in Harlem, a little girl who’d lost both parents and gone on to live in a household filled with children and an aunt who hadn’t wanted another mouth to feed.

  By the age of seventeen, however, she’d had an affair with a rock star.

  While the rock start denied any kind of intimate relationship with her at the time, he’d gone on to put her in one of his music videos soon after.

  An agent had picked her up and it had been a classic tale—little girl lost had become a mega-star. By twenty-five, she was gracing runways and doing cameo spots on television shows and even appearing in small roles in several movies. She was considered a true supernova.

  Because, Jeannette’s physical appearance had been called perfect by every critic out there.

  She could walk a runway.

  She had beautiful skin, luscious hair, long legs, and a body that didn’t quit.

  Craig Frasier had l
earned all this about Jeannette in the last few hours. Before that, she’d been a face he might have recognized on a magazine cover.

  But he’d made it his business to read up on her quickly.

  Because her death had suddenly become the focus of his life.

  He’d been in his office, reading paperwork from witnesses about the murder of a known pimp, when he’d been summoned, along with his partner, Mike Dalton, to Assistant Director Richard Egan’s office.

  Craig and Mike had been partners for years. Craig had been assigned a young, new agent when Mike was laid up on medical—a shot to the buttocks—about a year ago. He’d learned then how much he appreciated his partner; they knew each other’s minds. They naturally fell into a division of labor when it came to pounding the pavement and getting the inevitable paperwork done.

  And there was no one Craig trusted more to have his back, especially in a shoot-out.

  Egan, a good man himself, was hardcore bureau. His personal life had suffered for it, but he never brought his personal life into the office. He was the best kind of authority figure, as well—dignified, fair, compassionate. And efficient. He never wasted time. There were two chairs in front of his desk, but he hadn’t waited for Craig and Mike to sit down. He’d started talking right away.

  “I had a back-burner situation going on here,” he’d told them. “We’d been given information, but the local police down in Fredericksburg, Virginia, were handling the case. A girl—a perfect-looking girl, an artist’s model—disappeared about six months ago. A few weeks later, her body was found in an historic cemetery outside Fredericksburg, in a mausoleum. She’d been stabbed in the heart, then cleaned up, dressed up, and laid out in a family mausoleum. She was discovered when the family’s matriarch died, since she’d been put in the matriarch’s space. As I said, it seemed to be a local matter, and the Fredericksburg and Virginia state police had the murder. We were informed because of the unusual aspects.”