Ghost Ups Her Game

by Carolyn Hart

  It was as disconcerting as confidently stepping off a curb and plunging into an abyss. Melissa could not be George’s wife. There are many responses to a husband’s intense physical interest in another woman. Amusement is not one of them.

  Melissa pushed back her seat. The metal leg tips scraped against cement, a sharp screech, startling both George and the woman next to him. George looked up irritably. ‘Lis, why can’t you ever relax?’

  ‘We all have different interests.’ Her tone was suggestive, a quick side glance at the other woman, whose face was suddenly blank. ‘I’m going out to dinner. With a friend.’ Emphasis on the noun. ‘See you later.’ She whirled and moved fast across blue tiles.

  There was silence at the table until a door slammed shut on the terrace. The young woman abruptly rose. ‘I’ve a portfolio to examine.’ Her voice was soft and she spoke in slightly accented English. A French accent.

  George was on his feet, looming over her. ‘Don’t go, Camille. Please.’

  ‘I am meeting a student in my office at six and I must prepare.’

  ‘On Friday night?’ He sounded bewildered.

  ‘I must see students when the time works for them.’ She shook her head. ‘I must do the right thing. I feel a duty.’ She shot a glance at the large two-story structure with its bank of windows. And she too moved fast across the tiles, sandals making a quick snap of sound.

  Again a door into the house closed.

  George scowled. ‘Damn.’ His voice was low and hard. He turned and strode toward the pool, dived into the water, scarcely making a ripple.

  I stood there at a loss. I’d come into the house, a beautiful house that would always make visitors welcome, in search of a murderer. The sun was hot. The splash as George’s body arched in a butterfly stroke was such an ordinary midsummer sound.

  George swimming to burn off anger, Melissa saying somewhat defiantly that she was going out to dinner with a friend. An exotic young woman with a French accent. There were odd currents swirling around the three of them. But I had no sense of the sinister. I looked toward the house. Somewhere in this house, I hoped to find answers.

  On the second floor, I heard a squeak. I followed the sound down a long hall with an Oriental rug runner. At the far end, a door was open. I looked inside. A faded blonde in her fifties with a pale face dominated by a large nose sat in a desk chair, staring at a computer screen. Light blue eyes, cold eyes, read swiftly. Her lips pursed in a frown. She shook her head, swiveled, reached for a cell phone. She swiped, tapped, held the cell to listen. ‘Hey Fran, Alice Harrison. So you’re working late, too. I thought I might catch you. I’ll be glad when we get this wrapped up. I need the papers you filed re the Cosgrove land. Can you send that to me?… Great. Thanks.’ She ended the call.

  I studied her for a moment. Alice Harrison. She had been at the Kirk table at the banquet and she left the ballroom.

  She glanced at her watch, turned back to the computer, clicked several times. The screen went dark. Her work day was likely done.

  In the hallway, I saw closed doors on either side. Bedrooms. I moved through the nearest door.

  Such a tidy room. Not too large. A guest bedroom perhaps. A red-and-blue patchwork quilt covered the bed, a brass bed with shiny finials. An end bench was covered in a lovely fabric with a rose pattern. There was room for a bedside table and lamp. A single bookcase rose on one side of a window, an easy chair upholstered in a quilted material on the other. Near the door were a small desk and a table. Several penciled sketches lay neatly in the center of the table, a raccoon’s face, a hawk against a morning sky, a skinny pigtailed girl in a T and shorts playing hopscotch. I moved to the desk.

  It didn’t take long to find what I wanted. A red passport with the emblem of France on its cover yielded the name of Camille Elise Dubois. I picked up a blue leather diary, opened it and saw elegant flowing script. In French. My French extends to s’il vous plaît and merci. I returned the diary. If it became necessary, a search warrant and a French speaker could investigate Camille’s thoughts.

  I didn’t want to think about the low odds that the police would ever confiscate the diary and read the contents. Yet I believed the killer came from this house, the killer was at the banquet, and so was Camille Dubois.

  I imagined Sam shaking his head. So she was at the banquet, so she left the table. So?

  A shower hissed through an open bathroom door. I sniffed a carnation scent. Music blared from an iPad, loud thrumming drums and a high screech with indistinguishable words. Quite irritating. My preference? The songs of the forties and fifties. As in 1940, 1950. On my missions I hear the twang of steel guitars popular today. Trust me, earthly creatures, you don’t know music until you hear Nat King Cole croon ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon’ or Frank Sinatra plea for ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight’ or Vera Lynn’s heartbreaking wartime ballad ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

  This room, to put it kindly, looked lived in. Clothes strewn on chairs, an overflowing basket of tissues next to a cosmetic-laden vanity, a bolster propped against an easy chair. A straw hat was perched atop one end of the bolster. A window seat served as a repository for one shoe, a sack of taffy, an iPad, a jangle of beaded bracelets, and an oversize cloth purse with wooden handles.

  I opened the purse. The driver’s license, though current, was from California. Melissa’s hair was much longer in the photo and the name was Melissa Kirk Fulton. The street address was in San Diego.

  I Appeared in a generic blue police uniform and knocked on the door of a stucco house.

  A tall heavyset man opened the door. His Hawaiian shirt was wrinkled. Baggy Bermuda shorts hung near his knees. Shower shoes exposed hairy toes. He frowned. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m looking for Melissa Fulton.’

  ‘She doesn’t live here anymore.’ The door started to close.

  ‘Sir, it’s urgent that I contact her.’

  He shrugged. ‘Try her brother. George Kirk. Adelaide, Oklahoma.’

  The door shut.

  George’s room was a thoroughly masculine enclave. It was much more than simply a room. There was a living area, large screen television, two red leather sofas, a wet bar. I lifted a cut-glass decanter, removed the stopper, sniffed. Gin. The next was rum. The third, Scotch. The refrigerator was stocked with lemons, bitters, sodas. The mini-freezer held two pints of Häagen-Dazs, vanilla and strawberry. The dark cherry bedroom furniture was massive, queen-size bed, dresser, chest. Unlike his sister’s room, there was no disarray. A big closet held mostly sports clothes, only two suits, both dark. Shoes were arranged on shelves.

  I opened the top dresser drawer, plenty of socks. I picked up a pair, neatly rolled, of black dress socks. Was one pair missing? There would be no way of knowing. The crime lab could determine if the socks filled with sand and made deadly were the same brand as these.

  I came into the house looking for a murderer. I came, too, seeking a person Matt Lambert could pressure for a big sum of money. It was like watching the needle of a compass swing to true north. George Kirk was the one with money.

  I shivered, the kind of shiver that shakes you when you are desperate and afraid. This lovely house with a handsome room for a handsome man offered nothing that linked him or any of the other occupants to the murders of Matt Lambert and Nicole Potter.

  When in need, think of a saint. Saint Anthony helps find something lost. I remembered the childhood rhyme, Tony, Tony, come around, Something’s lost that must be found. St Anthony, help me. I’ve lost my way. This request might be a stretch for him, though I remembered the time I despaired of finding my car keys and I had ten minutes to get to the train station to pick up a company president the Chamber wanted to wine and dine in hopes of landing a factory. I made my plea and the keys suddenly rolled off the mantel and landed on the tile hearth with a musical clink sweet as an orchestra’s overture. I reached the station in time and the pottery factory came to town, bringing 112 new jobs.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, turned in a circle jus
t for good measure, opened them. Ahead, just to the left of the wet bar, was a door. It was as if an unseen hand gently propelled me to that door. I clutched the knob, turned. The door opened to a very fine room, a feminine room.

  I was enchanted by the room, a woman’s retreat just as the room behind me was a man’s retreat. Pale lemon walls, lime drapes, white French provincial furniture, walls adorned with framed paintings. The paintings were splashes of color, stripes, whirls, blocks, vivid, arresting, vibrant. I suppose I am partial to specifics. I like precise speech, art-deco architecture, geometrical shapes, Edward Hopper paintings, but the brightly colored paintings evoked sun-spangled days, huge waves curling to break, glittering headlights in the rain.

  I studied the paintings until the quietness of the room touched me, the sense of emptiness, a feeling that this door rarely opened, that footsteps rarely sounded on the wooden floor. The room should be a setting for an interesting woman, but heavy stillness indicated disuse. No book rested on the bedside table, no magazine lay open on a coffee table in front of the satin-upholstered love seat. The vanity surface was bare. There was no summer sweater carelessly flung on a chair.

  Quite near was a white bookcase filled with photographs. I recognized the woman on the sailboat. So many pictures. Riding a chestnut mare. Playing tennis. In one photo, she arched in an overhead smash, features set in concentration. Several in evening dress, one on the arm of George, both looking at ease, she with a regal aura, he the handsome courtier. In a much younger photo, she cradled a baby with a pink bow in sparse hair. Standing at a dais. Hiking on a mountain trail.

  I looked past the bookcase into the large room. Stillness, stillness.

  I closed the connecting door to George’s room behind me, moved slowly across the planked flooring. I walked to a closet. The rods held nothing. No hangers. No clothes. The shelving for shoes was bare.

  I crossed to a lovely white desk. Ebony Nefertiti bookends braced a row of blue leather books, likely diaries. I opened a drawer. Stationery. I picked up a sheet …

  The hall door opened.

  I dropped the sheet of stationery into the drawer, eased it shut. The door panel screened the visitor from my view. And then I looked across the room at an ornate ormolu-framed wall mirror that reflected the image of Camille Dubois, auburn hair drawn back in a chignon, still that tendril across one cheek. She looked young and appealing in the chartreuse blouse and pale watermelon bubble skirt.

  The image was for an instant only. She walked into the room leaving the door to the hall open. She carried a flattish rectangle bundled in thick butcher paper. She moved without hesitation to the wall of paintings. She pulled to loosen tape, carefully removed the protective wrapping. In a moment, the painting was hung in an empty space.

  She smoothed and folded the wrapping, turned and, carrying the paper, crossed the room to the open door to the hall.

  I looked again at the ormolu mirror and watched the door close behind her.

  Like words flashing on a screen, I remembered the message I recreated from the scraps that remained from the square of paper in Lambert’s billfold:

  The door opened and I saw Ev— (Eva, Evangeline, Eve, Evelyn, Evita) take the tray. I watched the reflection in the mirror. The glass was full. She put the tray on the table. She didn’t add anything to the glass and drank all of it. This occurred March …

  Matthew Lambert

  On a March day, Matt Lambert stood here and looked into the ormolu mirror and watched the hall door open. He saw the reflection of someone bringing a tray with a full glass to the room’s occupant.

  I whirled and hurried to the white desk. I pulled out the drawer, picked up a piece of stationery.

  Evelyn Murray Kirk

  914 Comanche Avenue

  Adelaide, OK 74820

  Someone brought Evelyn a glass, a full glass, a glass she drank without adding anything to its contents. Why did Matt Lambert carry a note with that information?

  Who was Evelyn Murray Kirk?

  I walked to the desk, reached for the last of the blue leather books. Her initials were embossed in gold leaf on the cover. I flipped to March.

  The last entry was on Monday 19 March. Bold back-slanted writing, overlarge; a pen with a thick nib. Tahiti definite.

  It took only a few pages to realize this was not a personal journal, that the woman who penned these words likely dismissed as indulgent the practice of recording personal emotions. These entries reflected a full life of sports, travel, committees, finances, charitable giving. I soon figured out titles in block letters referred to paintings followed by sums, I assumed the amount for which they sold. The information was factual. not personal. She played doubles every Wednesday. She and her partner usually won, often 6–2, 6–0. On the rare occasions of a loss, perhaps a comment: Told Lisbeth to get her racket restrung. Or, Iola double-faulted four times.

  I rather thought I was glad I wasn’t Iola.

  I took away from the jottings a sense of a businesslike woman – an artist? – who was hugely generous to her community and enjoyed an active social life, dinners, luncheons, and coffees were listed. I also had a sense of an imperious woman who expected excellent effort from everyone around her. The only personal comments were mentions of letters from her daughter. All going well for Madeleine and Jimmy. Madeleine and Jimmy in Paris this weekend. Madeleine will be home over the Fourth. And once, it tugged at my heart, Looking forward to seeing Madeleine. I replaced the appointment book. I wouldn’t describe it as a journal.

  The stillness of the room made me feel cold. This was Evelyn Kirk’s room. Now the room was empty. The last entry in the blue leather book was 19 March. On a March day someone brought a tray with a full glass: 20 March.

  TWELVE

  I Appeared in the shadow of a magnolia outside the public library. I chose a simple wardrobe, white cotton blouse, peach slacks, plain flats. This was no time to think about style. I moved fast, hurrying up the steps. I scarcely wanted to take time to breathe, much less Appear, but it would be much more distracting if I settled at a library computer unseen and someone noticed a mouse moving on its own. I sat at a monitor on the end of a row.

  I entered the website for the Gazette, typed Evelyn Kirk March, clicked. I stared at a three-column headline below the fold on Page One:

  GODDARD BENEFACTOR EVELYN KIRK DIES AT HOME

  There was a photograph: sleek blonde hair, an intelligent face, features not quite regular, eyes that looked, watched, observed. I recognized the woman in the painting above the fireplace in the Kirk house, the woman who steered a sailboat on a windy day taking pleasure in mastery, exhilarated by challenge.

  The news story was a tribute to an accomplished life cut unexpectedly short by a heart attack.

  Evelyn Murray Johnson Kirk, 47, died unexpectedly at her home Tuesday. A family spokesman said Kirk had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation earlier this month and was on medication. She complained of fatigue early in the afternoon and retired for a nap. She was found unresponsive at shortly after four p.m. by the family housekeeper Bess Hampton.

  A family spokesman reported that her physician, Dr Kenneth Thomas, said she suffered a myocardial infarction. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was unsuccessful.

  Evelyn Marie Murray was the only child of the late Wilhelm Murray and Katherine James Murray. She was the great-granddaughter of early day Pontotoc County oil baron Gustav Murray.

  Gustav Murray was a fabled name in Pontotoc County. Everything he touched turned to gold, black gushers in the Fitts Field, a ten-thousand-acre ranch famed for its Hereford cattle, a chain of whatever-you-need-we-have-it stores that were gobbled up by a national conglomerate in the 1980s.

  Kirk attended the University of Oklahoma and received a BFA. She was a gifted artist and was often featured in galleries in Scottsdale and Los Angeles. She was active at St Mildred’s Episcopal Church where she served on the vestry. Kirk was a generous donor to many Adelaide charities and to Goddard College. The softball field is n
amed in Kirk’s honor.

  Kirk received her master’s degree in fine art from Southern Methodist University. She spent several years at Marlboro Gallery in Pasadena. She was also a film enthusiast. Her former husband, director Holton Cramer, credited her as the inspiration for Dare Me Now, his Golden Globe-winning adventure film. They divorced in 2014.

  Kirk returned to Adelaide and opened Blue Sky, a gallery which drew visitors from around the world with an eclectic collection of southwestern art, California impressionism, and New England realism. Kirk’s paintings featured masses of bright color that one critic described as ‘formless with form’.

  Eugenia Pierson, director of the Adelaide Chamber of Commerce, described Kirk as brilliant, engaging, and inspiring. ‘Her energy level was phenomenal. She moved fast, thought fast, expected everyone to do the same. She believed promises made should be kept.’

  A friend since first grade at Hayes Elementary, Betty Wilson said Kirk was intensely competitive but everyone loved her anyway. She added, with a smile, ‘There was never a dull moment around Evelyn.’

  Holton Cramer recalled, ‘She was a fierce friend.’

  The library thoughtfully provided scratch paper and pencils by each terminal. I wrote down the names of Bess Hampton and Betty Wilson. After a moment’s thought, I added Holton Cramer, ex-husband, ‘A fierce friend.’

  Kirk was a first-rate tennis player and a singles champion in the Missouri Valley. It was through tennis that she met her second husband, George Kirk, when he became the tennis pro at the Adelaide Country Club.

  Kirk is survived by her husband, George of the home, and her daughter, Madeleine Cramer Timmons (James) of Lisbon, Portugal, and a cousin Alice Harrison.

  Services are pending at St Mildred’s Episcopal Church. The family suggests donations to a favorite charity in lieu of flowers.

  Now I knew the identity of the donor in the Kirk family. Not George. Not Melissa. The money belonged to Evelyn Kirk, the kind of wealth that flowed from early oil gushers, wealth that could provide largesse to a college, to a town, to members of her family. Likely the Outreach Office automatically invited George Kirk to the banquet and he included his sister, the visiting artist, and Evelyn’s cousin in the guest list.