Aria in Ice Read Free Page B

Well, thanks. That rather sums it up.
Neatly and with total ambiguity.”
    He wasn’t going to tell me why he was
sneaking around the graveyard. That much was certain. I tried a
different tack. “I’m Abby Fouchet. Currently acting as location
scout for a movie company planning to rent the castle from the
Duskovas. This is Johnny Gerard, who is also doing work for the
Duskovas.”
    Johnny tensed. The Dumas second sight didn’t
kick in, but it didn’t need to. I got it. He wanted our romantic
relationship kept secret. I didn’t skip a beat. “Restoring a mural,
isn’t that right, Mr. Gerard?”
    Johnny nodded. “Precisely.” He immediately
added, “So, Mr. Lerner, as an historian, do you have any theories
as to why this graveyard only contains the dearly departed from the
Seventeen-Hundreds?”
    Lerner’s shoulders lifted until his neck
nearly disappeared into his collar. “That is interesting, isn’t it?
Veronika Duskova told me that years ago the family decided that the
original gravesite was too crowded. So starting in Seventeen
Hundred, all the deceased were interned here.”
    Something didn’t quite ring true here—like where’s the rest of the dearly—and much mor e recently—departed and is their site a bit nicer and more
refined?
    Johnny didn’t buy it either, but only asked,
“Did you find what you were looking for in the crypt?”
    “Sadly, no. There are some interesting
artifacts there, but the information I sought was not
available.”
    “Can you tell us what you were looking for?
Or is that a deep, dark secret?” I asked.
    He gazed a bit too intently up at a tree
branch that had nothing whatsoever of interest to distract him. He
didn’t answer.
    I was about to take another stab at sticking
my nose in where he obviously didn’t feel it belonged (I have no
shame when it comes to being curious) when I felt a light touch on
my right shoulder. Normally I wouldn’t flinch. But I was in a
cemetery with a man who was bent on being stubbornly and
ridiculously quiet about an old crypt and my boyfriend who was
mysteriously bent on keeping quiet about his girlfriend—me. I
jumped, whirled and prepared to beat the living fool out of who or
what was behind me.
    A woman glared at me from across a headstone
that must have been hideous long before it was smashed. Skeletal
images, flames and lost faces peeked through what was left of
marble and granite.
    She was dressed in a solid black
Victorian-style gown and sporting what my favorite contemporary
dance teacher at University of Texas had called the
” Early-Modern-Dancer-I-Have-No-Humor-and-I’m-Constipated-to-Boot ”
look. A look that comes with a hard knot at the back of the neck
hair and honest-to-God knitting needles sticking out from that
bun.
    I smiled at the newcomer. She wasn’t having
any.
    “Yoong ladee! No! No! Vy iss you in
graveyard? You must leaf now! Go! Go!”

Chapter 3
     
     
    I wrenched my gaze away from the pititful
headstones and the two men then meekly followed the Woman in Black
out of the graveyard. Neither Johnny nor Mr. Lerner followed. The
woman did not talk. I kept my own silence until we arrived at the
giant doorway about half a mile from the cemetery gates.
    “Please. Uh, could you wait just a
second?”
    She turned. “Yes?”
    “I’m truly sorry I was wandering in the
graveyard. I love history and I didn’t realize at first this must
have been a family cemetery or I never would have intruded. I was
just so devastated to see the destruction there and -sad. Since Mr.
Gerard was with me, and he said he knew you, I kind of assumed that
would be okay. Please forgive me?”
    A glimmer of softness passed over the grim
face.
    “Ach, I deed not realize Meester Gerard had
accompanied you. I wass rude. But eet iss sad, no? Hass been in
family for centuries but last two hundred years people come and
they ruin. Pleeze, do not tell my sisters I haf been here
today—yes? They get most upset when I visit this place. We