Blood Will Tell

by Mary Bowers

  “Think it over, Ed. Of course, it would be a marriage of convenience, in the old-fashioned sense. But it might be fun to have somebody to talk to besides other paranormal researchers and hypothetical ghosts.” Before he could start debating the reality or unreality of ghosts, I said, “I gotta go, Ed, but I’m glad I called you. I feel better now.”

  “Why?” he asked heavily, and I hung up and chuckled.

  (Excerpt from The Santorini Horror, by Edson Darby-Deaver, PhD)

  Chapter 4

  Taylor’s suggestion intrigued me. I knew immediately, though, that I was on alien ground in considering an offer of marriage, even one made with the spirit of knightly purity. Afterwards, I spent an unspeakable interval of days, simply pondering. In the end, I realized I couldn’t come to a decision on my own. I needed expert advice.

  As a seasoned investigator, I knew that this was not one of those times to simply “wing it.” Unfortunately, those close at hand were, to the best of my knowledge, as inexpert as I was. I wasn’t inclined to seek out a professional counsellor, and those available on the Internet struck me as dubious. Lastly, time being of the essence, Dear Abby didn’t seem practical.

  So I looked to the men of my own neighborhood. There were three, and none was married. They were: (1) Daniel Ryder, (2) Kip Stanley, and (3) Carr Edgeley. I explored my options.

  Dan was my across-the-street neighbor, a man of murky background, but one whom I’d come to trust. Also, he had recently shown himself equal to dealing with females. He had a girlfriend, a fairly alarming woman with a background in the FBI.

  Next was Kip Stanley, a recent arrival in Santorini. He was a friendly enough fellow, but tended to be a bore. He had purchased the house opposite Frieda Strawbridge’s. It was a beachfront showplace, so presumably he was wealthy. Though I didn’t know very much about him, I suspected him of professorship: he was working on a book about Homer’s Iliad, and it was all the man could talk about. The project was an epic in and of itself, since he had been working on it for some fifteen years. He had learned ancient Greek for the sole purpose of reading whatever original texts still exist. I rest my case. Only a retired professor would do such a thing.

  Still, interested in a fellow researcher, I looked up his publications. Among them were several quite esoteric articles. For instance, one was entitled Round and Round the Round Tables of Great Britain; apparently there were many, not just the one in Camelot, which he was careful to point out, may never have existed at all. He did a confusing genealogy on Sir Gawain in a sidebar to the Tables article, and pushed him forward as a much more interesting knight than Sir Lancelot, who was only in the early poems because his name rhymes with Camelot (Kip’s theory, not mine). Or Camelot was invented to rhyme with Lancelot. Or something. After a certain point, he lost me.

  I stop short of commenting on his fascination with obscure minutiae, given my own profession.

  Finally, there was Carr Edgeley, a slight, nervous, 30-something banker type whose beach attire sat on him unfamiliarly. A dangling price tag wouldn’t have surprised me, though in fact he had been careful to remove them. He was renting the house next door to Dan’s, and was apparently recovering from a nervous breakdown. I had begun to suspect this when I called a cheery halloo one morning as we were retrieving The Record from our driveways, and he screamed. Thus, my diagnosis of the nervous collapse, which would also perfectly explain his presence in a beach community, apparently alone and unemployed. He was too young to be retired, spent no time on the beach and seemed to have no friends. His team of doctors, no doubt, had ordered him to rest. Just a theory, but I felt it was good enough to go on with.

  Of the three, of course, I settled on Dan as my advisor. I had known him in a neighborly way for years, and his relationship with the woman Rita (she of the FBI) had apparently not caused any upheavals. In the time they’d been seeing one another, no radical changes in his home décor or mode of dress had been made. I considered these to be good signs.

  As for the other two men, I would have been compelled to reject them, even if another expert had not been to hand. I had once tried to discuss the vagaries of women with Kip and he had begun to recite poetry. So he was out. And as to Carr, for all I knew the man’s fragile state had something to do with a woman. It usually does. In that case, he’d just try to talk me out of it.

  Mulling over the marriage question had been more difficult than I could have ever imagined. For days, I couldn’t think of anything else, and I was unable to work. This was serious, because the break in the shooting schedule of the blasted reality show would only be for a few weeks, and I had been hoping to complete a first draft of a treatise on Celtic folklore in Industrial Age America. I needed to make a decision in the matrimonial issue and get back to work.

  Understanding that a 54-year old bachelor with only one (recently acquired) girlfriend was not the ideal advisor on marriage, I still felt I had no other choice. At least I knew Dan. My decision made, I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  My office is in the front of my house, with a view of Santorini Drive, and I sat at my desk and tensely watched for him to return from his morning run. He’s incredibly fit, and jogs the shoreline regularly, sometimes with the girlfriend, (also incredibly fit).

  On that particular Friday morning, he returned from the beach alone, and as usual, exhausted. I hailed him from my doorway and walked across Santorini Drive toward him, asking if he had time for a discussion.

  “Sure,” he said, smiling sweatily. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m considering marriage.”

  He paused, opened his eyes as if to see me more clearly, and said, “You’re kidding.” After a brief inspection he realized I wasn’t, and he swept me into his house with a rather wild look on his face.

  “I’m hardly an expert,” he said, “but let’s talk it over before you do something rash. Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “Willa Garden.”

  He paused again, then gently said, “I see.” And the odd thing was, I felt he really did.

  “She needs my protection,” I said unnecessarily, and I proceeded down the hall towards his kitchen.

  * * * * *

  “It’s that cousin of hers, isn’t it?” he said, setting beverages down on the breakfast bar (coffee for me, ice water for himself), and hiking himself onto the tall chair beside me.

  I nodded.

  “Well,” he began, rolling the cold glass between his palms, “of all the ways to deal with this, marriage is pretty drastic, don’t you think?”

  “I believe drastic measures are called for.”

  He nodded grimly. “You may be right. I’m not happy with that situation myself. And of course, it would put a damper on Trixie,” he added with a suggestion of impishness.

  Trixie Dare was my new next-door neighbor, having replaced a thoroughly satisfactory previous neighbor. She was chillingly inclined to be coquettish – towards me! – and more than once I had had to remove her hand from my arm.

  I shook my head. “To think that mere weeks ago, my biggest problem in Santorini was Trixie. How things have devolved.”

  “Yes. Devolved is the word. You know what the cleaning lady says about Harriet, don’t you?”

  “Gretel? She’s confided a certain amount to me, but naturally she would have been more forthcoming with a man like you.” I gave him a smile that I hoped didn’t look too much like a satyr’s leer. Even women like Gretel tend to babble around ruggedly handsome men like Dan.

  “Cousin Harriet has been calling lawyers and trying to draft legal documents on her own. Gretel’s seen notes she left sitting on the desk. She’s trying to figure out how to get at Willa’s property. Something about declaring her ineligible to inherit from Frieda, since she’s not a true Strawbridge. Thank God she hasn’t got a legal leg to stand on, but it shows her real intentions. What worries me is that even if she can’t use the law to steal Willa’s money, she’ll get her to just hand it over voluntarily. Willa’s we
ak. Listen Ed,” he said manfully, turning to face me, “how serious are you about asking her to marry you?”

  “Deadly. Deadly serious. Taylor’s idea. I’d never have thought of it on my own, but now that it’s been suggested, I realize it may be the only way.”

  He was nodding pensively, and I went on, as if trying to persuade myself rather than him. “It’s not a matter of whether or not to do it, it’s a matter of working out exactly how to do it. How to present myself to Willa in a way that won’t give her the wrong idea. I need precision. You see, she doesn’t really have to marry me, per se. I merely need to achieve the status of fiancé to have standing in her life, and therefore, a rationale for placing myself between her and her cousin. I need credibility. You see what I mean?”

  “I think I do. You’re her knight in shining armor. You’re willing to stand with her, even if she doesn’t love you.”

  His insight was breathtaking. It brought an unexpected rush of emotion to me. I hadn’t thought of it in just that way, but he was right. It was Courtly Love, something out of fashion for 500 years, and it was the greatest love of all: the love that asks for nothing in return.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll stand by her. No matter what.”

  “Even in the face of that dragon.”

  I nodded.

  He hunkered down, thinking hard. “You’re right. This is going to be tricky. Trickier than you realize.”

  He was about to elaborate when his doorbell rang.

  I sprang to my feet, saying, “That must be Rita.”

  “No, Rita’s out of town at a conference. Sit down, Ed, we’re not finished here. I’ll go get rid of whoever it is.”

  An armed intruder would never have gotten by Dan, but a Southern Belle, naturally, would. Only a barrage of gunfire would have stopped Trixie, and things hadn’t gotten to that point yet. He stared at me over her shoulder, blue eyes popping, as the short, trim, highly painted blond slid by him and came at me, saying, “There you are, you bad boy. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Life is full of bitter irony. Only Trixie Dare would have ignored Dan Ryder and fastened onto me. I’ve tried to puzzle it out, and can only guess that she’s attracted to the celebrity of someone who occasionally appears on her television screen, even if it is on a reality show.

  I removed her entwining arm from my person and asked her what she wanted.

  Chapter 5

  Trixie’s eyes are a lovely shade of purplish-blue, and would have been sufficiently beautiful without help. Still, she couldn’t restrain herself. One gazed at the thickened eyelashes and the iridescent blue of the eyelids, and not at the pretty purple eyes.

  After a preliminary grapple, a refused offer of coffee from Dan, an accepted demand for Chablis by Trixie and a few silent, wild glances between myself and Dan, she came to the point.

  “We have got to get rid of that bitch,” she said.

  She had already had a few before arriving, I realized. I threw a subtle glance at my atomic watch and saw that it was 12:34 – technically late enough to be on her second, but I feared the current glass was the third. Her friendliness increases with her alcohol content. I moved incrementally back.

  After getting a silent go-ahead from Dan, I told her, “We were just talking about that.”

  He held my gaze and lifted an eyebrow, (“Do we mention the marriage proposal?”) and I cocked my head and scratched my ear, (“No.”).

  “Well?” she demanded. “Got any ideas yet?”

  “Actually,” I said, “we had just started. Why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking?”

  She hunkered down. “Well, I’ve already started to work on her, but I’m afraid what I did kind of backfired. I told her about Frieda’s ghost.”

  I nodded, impressed. “So you believe it too – that Frieda walks.”

  “Oh, heck no. I know you’re a pro and all, but all that stuff is horsefeathers, or at least most of it is.” She hit me with the black-fringed eyes. “Are you telling me it’s real? That Frieda Strawbridge is still in that house, walkin’ around?”

  “My earlier investigation confirmed it, at least at the time. I haven’t done a follow-up, but I don’t see why things would have changed. Frieda enjoys having a firm grip on the living world. I am not expecting her to simply go away. Willa seems content with the arrangement and has not requested an ethereal cleansing. And so logic dictates that Frieda remains. I have to admit, I watch the situation with keen interest. I would have expected violence by now. Your strategy, in my opinion, was quite sound. How did it backfire?”

  She came closer. I backed up. “I told her that while she was alive, Frieda was always telling me how much she hated Harriet’s side of the family. She doesn’t know that Frieda was dead by the time I moved in here and I never met her at all. I tried to get her worked up, fretting about the ghost of her vengeful aunt being right there in the house with her, and then I hit her with the coup de grace: ‘Harriet,’ I said, ‘do you realize that you are sleeping in the very bed that Frieda died in?’”

  “Oh, excellent point!” I told her. I hadn’t thought of that one myself. “I can only imagine her reaction. I’m shivering, just thinking of it. She was horrified, of course.”

  “Oh, heck no. She was all goggle-eyed and open-mouthed, and just when I thought I had her, she started talking about getting out a Ouija board and holding a seance to try to get in touch with Frieda and needle her a little. I couldn’t believe it! She thinks it’s interesting. No, worse – she thinks it’s fun!”

  I sagged. Then, knowingly, I nodded, unsurprised that Harriet was one of those. “Perhaps that’s all to the good,” I said. When my friends looked startled, I explained. “If we scare her out of that house, she might move in with Willa.”

  “Oh golly, I never thought of that!” Trixie said. She took the opportunity to cover my hand with her own and gaze adoringly. “You’re so brilliant, Eddie, honey.”

  “Any other ideas?” I asked, removing my hand to scratch my chin.

  She considered. “We could poison her.”

  “We just want her gone,” Dan pointed out, “not dead.”

  “Oh, we don’t have to kill her. Just make her sick enough that she decides to go back to New York and consult with her specialists. Somebody like her is bound to have specialists. And it would be easy. She’s got food allergies. Normal things the rest of us could eat would have her blowing up like a rhino and landing in the hospital. We could throw a block party or something and slip a little peanut butter into a sauce.”

  “A temporary solution at best,” I pointed out, “and potentially dangerous.”

  She took another sip of Chablis. “You’re right. And somebody as thick-skinned as her wouldn’t even take the hint. No, we’re going to have to think of something else. I think we’re going to have to leave it to you, Eddie. You’re so brilliant, I just know you’re full of ideas.”

  This time she actually placed her hand on my knee. Fortunately, I was wearing slacks, not shorts, so flesh did not meet flesh, but still.

  Panicked, I looked down at her hand and blurted, “I could marry Willa.”

  Dan, caught drinking the last of his water, seemed to get some of it up his nose. Trixie’s reaction was not so natural and graceful.

  Instead of lifting her hand, she gripped my knee with what I believe are called sculptured nails. Once embedded, they would need to be surgically removed.

  “No, really,” I babbled, “then I could protect her from her cousin. I could always be there to get between them and refuse to allow Willa to give her any of her money, because that’s what she’s after, am I right?”

  Trixie removed the claw, nails intact. “I’m not so sure,” she brooded. She took a generous mouthful of Chablis, finishing the glass, and nudged it toward Dan for a refill. “Eddie, I’m going to be straight with you. I’ve got the hots for you.” (Sweat bloomed from my every pore.) “I have since the first moment I met you. If I want to be honest, I have since the first ti
me I saw you on that show, Haunt or Hoax? I can’t figure it out.”

  “I can’t either,” I gasped.

  She maundered on as the room got hotter and hotter. “It’s not like you’re a hunk, like Dan over there, and you don’t have any bad habits at all, which would make you more fun. But you’ve got that orphan-man look about you that just makes me want to cuddle you and give you cookies. And I’ve got a feeling that underneath all that blinkiness and double-talk, there’s a hero lurking, ready to step up and protect a lady in distress.”

  “No there isn’t,” I said feebly.

  “But I’d give you up, Eddie, I really would, if I thought it’d do Willa any good. It wouldn’t. Take my word for it, honey. I’m not so sure Harriet Harvey Strawbridge is just after Willa’s money. She’s after some kind of revenge.”

  By that time, naturally, I was in a wordless, jellied state and unable to respond. Dan, though, had followed her past the cookies, and said, startled, “I think you may be onto something there, Trixie. I’ve noticed something like that, too. An anger. Even outrage.” He was looking at Trixie with new respect. Then he transferred his gaze to me. “She’s right, Ed. Drastic measures may be needed, but marriage might not be the right one. We’d better stop and think this over.”

  I felt unaccountably miffed. The roil of ideas and emotions had left me irritable and confused.

  “I’ll marry her if I darn well want to,” I declared. I rose in defiance and swept out, leaving a stunned silence behind me.