Page 38 of Dirty Valentine (A J.J. Graves Mystery #17)

“Almost every day. There was one in my apartment on Monday night when I came home from class. I didn’t even open it. I threw it away. They always said the same things.”

“You had dinner with Thomas Whitman on Monday night?” Jack asked.

She turned her head slightly so she was looking out the single window in her hospital room, the rain pouring down the glass like tears.

“Professor Whitman was one of my undergrad professors at KGU, and he gave me a recommendation for the master’s program at Georgetown.

He was obsessed with the founding families in this area.

He liked to talk about how his ancestors and mine had probably shared drinks at Dorothy Roy’s Tavern in Port Royal.

He always asked questions about my family, wanted to know if I remembered any history or had any records my parents had left me. ”

“So that wasn’t the first time you’d met for dinner?” I asked her.

Her voice was sleepy and monotone, her eyes barely blinking. “We’d get together on and off. Whenever the mood struck him or he’d found some thread in his research.”

“You had a sexual relationship?” I pressed.

“Like I said, off and on.”

“Walk me through Monday night when he came for dinner,” Jack said.

“I…I don’t remember much,” she said. “My head hurts. It feels like my skull is being crushed.

“You had dinner?” I asked. “Did you cook or order takeout?”

“I cooked. Chicken and rice. We had some wine.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t the kind of guy who would normally stay the night, but when we finished dinner neither of us was feeling well. I’m not the greatest cook I guess. He left and I went to bed.”

“What time was that?” Jack asked.

“It was before nine,” she said. “I just remember everything being hazy and feeling kind of nauseated. I just wanted him to leave so I could be sick in peace. It was almost noon when I woke up the next day. And there was a letter on my nightstand.” She shuddered visibly.

“I tore it up and flushed it down the toilet. Then I turned on the TV and I heard about Thomas. I didn’t understand any of it, but I knew it was somehow tied to the letters.

To Bridget Ashworth. Thomas always asked about Bridget.

” Her voice got so soft I could barely hear her next word. “Obsessed.”

“Did you call anyone? Go anywhere?”

“I was supposed to have a meeting with my advisory board about my thesis,” she said. “I called my advisor and cancelled. Told him I was sick.” She licked her lips, but it didn’t seem to help with the dryness and I handed her the cup of water next to her bed with a straw so she could drink.

“When I came out of the shower there was another letter on my table. I could smell the scent of it before I even walked into the room. It said the same thing all the others did—that the house was calling me home and I had to face what my family had done.”

Jack and I exchanged glances. “So you went to the house?”

“I had to.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I was so tired of fighting it. Every night the dreams got worse. I’d wake up choking, feeling dirt in my mouth, stones on my chest. I could hear her voice—not in my ears but in my bones.

She said if I didn’t come home, she’d bring the house to me.

And then yesterday morning, I woke up with graveyard dirt on my feet and dried herbs in my hair. I didn’t remember how they got there.”

The room seemed to grow colder as she spoke. I remembered Evangeline mentioning the stolen herbs—belladonna, mandrake root, graveyard dirt from Bridget’s burial site.

“When I got to the house,” she continued, “All the lights were on. Every single one. But I haven’t been there in months. The front door was open, and there was a trail of rosemary and something else—the smell was strong again, like someone had poured a bottle of the scent across the threshold.”

“What happened when you went in?” Jack’s voice was steady, professional, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.

“The herbs led upstairs to my parents’ room.

Their things were arranged on the bed—my mother’s jewelry, my father’s watch, their wedding photo.

And in the middle was another letter, surrounded by a circle of that graveyard dirt.

” She closed her eyes. “It said my blood could end this. That I could be the sacrifice that balanced the scales. That Bridget would accept me in place of the others.”

“Did you see who left it?”

“I started to leave, but then I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned…” She shuddered. “The hallway was full of smoke. Not regular smoke—it was greenish, herbal. And in the smoke, I saw eyes. Red eyes, like coals. Dressed in black, face covered.

“I heard my mother’s voice,” Judith whispered.

“She said she was disappointed in me. That I’d failed the family by not accepting my role.

Then the voice changed—became something older, harder.

Like stones grinding together. It said Bridget had been patient for three centuries, but patience has limits. ”

“How did you escape?” I asked.

“The rosemary smell—it was everywhere, so thick it made my eyes water. When Bridget grabbed me, we fought. I was terrified but I fought hard. Got my knee up, drove it into her ribs as hard as I could.” She demonstrated the motion weakly from her hospital bed.

“I heard something crack. She screamed and it made my blood run cold—I’ve never heard a sound like that. ”

“Then what happened?” Jack prompted.

“I was able to get loose and I ran. I could hear her behind me.” Her voice got small and terrified, higher pitched as she relived the terror in her mind. “I made it to the woods and just kept running.”

“Through the woods?” Jack asked.

“I knew those woods before I could walk. I could navigate them blind. But all night, I heard things. Whispers in voices I recognized—my parents, my grandmother. Telling me to come back. Telling me I was chosen.” She looked at us with haunted eyes.

“I’ll never forget it. And in the dark, alone, terrified…

I believed it. Part of me still believes it. ”

“Judith,” I said carefully, “you were drugged. Whatever was in those herbs made you hallucinate. The things you thought you saw weren’t real. Bridget Ashworth has been dead three hundred years. The sheriff and I are hunting a real-life human who has killed three people.”

“Not a ghost,” she said, though the statement lacked conviction.

“Did you recognize anything else about the attacker?” Jack asked. “Height, build, anything?”

Her eyes went unfocused again, as if she was sliding back into that terror. “So strong. Their hands…” She touched her throat where bruises were starting to form. “Rough gloves. Black. Everything was black except the eyes. The red eyes in the smoke.”

“Was it a man or woman?” Jack asked gently.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Her voice rose with panic. “The voice kept changing. Sometimes my mother, sometimes something ancient. Sometimes…” She shook her head violently. “I can’t tell what was real. I can still smell rosemary and dirt. I can’t escape it.”

She started rocking slightly, her arms wrapped around herself.

Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist with surprising strength, her nails digging in.

“She’s still coming. Bridget told me through the smoke.

The debt isn’t paid. The blood of the guilty must flow until the scales balance.

Six families. Six deaths. She counted them on her fingers in the smoke. ”

Her eyes rolled back slightly, and she began to recite in a singsong voice that made my skin crawl: “Whitman, Mills, Hughes, Morton, Blackwood, Lawson, Randolph. Seven who bore witness. Seven who must fall.”

Judith blinked, seeming to come back to herself. Jack and I stood frozen, neither of us sure what to say next.

A nurse appeared in the doorway. “She needs to rest now. It’s going to take a while for those drugs to get out of her system.”

In the parking lot, rain still fell in sheets that turned the world beyond the hospital into an impressionist painting—all blurred edges and uncertain shapes. Jack was already on his phone checking messages, the screen’s blue glow making his face look carved from stone.

“She’s traumatized,” I said. “Half of what she said might be hallucination from the fear and whatever was in that smoke.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “But she named seven families. Whitman’s dead. Mills is dead. She was attacked. Morton went to his sister’s. Blackwood we have in custody as a witness. That leaves?—”

“Randolph, who’s already dead. And Lawson.” I looked at him. “Your family.”

“Mom checked in earlier today,” Jack said, already starting the engine. “I’ll try calling them, but it’s nine o’clock. They usually have their phones turned off this late.”

Jack tried calling both of his parents, but true to form, both of their phones went straight to voicemail. “I can call the sheriff’s office on Martha’s Vineyard and ask them to do a welfare check.”

Once he talked to the lieutenant in charge of night shift and the situation was explained, the lieutenant assured him they’d send someone out right away and he’d get back with Jack as soon as they had information.

“We still need to figure out what parts of Judith’s testimony was hallucination and what part was reality,” I said when he hung up.

The pieces were there, scattered like broken glass, but every time I tried to put them together, they shifted into a different pattern.

Someone strong enough to overpower victims but small in stature.

Someone who knew the family histories. Someone with access to Evangeline’s stolen herbs.

Someone who could stage elaborate scenes without being noticed.

The killer was close. Had been close all along. But in the storm-soaked darkness of King George County, shadows and truth had become indistinguishable.

And somewhere out there, someone was preparing for the next act of their twisted justice.