by Karen Harper
They were grateful for the sunny weather. But humidity hung heavy in the air like a sponge ready to be squeezed, so Nick had the air-conditioning on despite the midmorning hour. Heck had stayed behind to work on other assignments, although he’d drive over to join them if she could set up any interviews today. Nick said he was certain Jasmine would agree to talk but he didn’t want her to be recorded in any way. That way, if she was indicted, whatever she’d said to Claire could not be subpoenaed.
“Win Jackson is knowledgeable about a lot of things,” Claire told Nick. “No problem getting him to talk about anything and everything.”
“He’s very talented. But, just remember, you said that’s one way suspects can avoid answering the real questions.”
“I haven’t asked him any real questions. And verbosity is only a tip-off if the person usually speaks in fewer words. There are tests for that, but it usually scares people from acting naturally. Anyway, I’m doing interviews, not interrogations, and I think I built some good rapport with him. He said he’d be willing to do an interview this evening. ‘Anything to help Jasmine,’ as he put it.”
“He does know a lot about this area.”
“Do you know anything about some sort of little museum the estate manager, Neil Costa, runs?”
“Win mentioned that? It probably has about six visitors a year, mostly classic movie experts like Win himself. Costa’s so-called museum focuses on the old series of movies tied to Creature from the Black Lagoon, which was actually filmed on this stretch of river.”
“You’re kidding! I’ve heard of that oldie, but—really? From the sixties?”
“Fifties, I think. I’ve only looked inside his place once. Francine was willing to let him use the old kitchen block area just down a covered walkway from the house as long as he didn’t put any signs up on the property. He advertises in local papers and draws in a film fanatic from time to time.”
“But that means strangers could have come on to the estate.”
“Right. The police are aware of that, but Costa says no one unusual came the day of Francine’s death, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“How old is Neil Costa? Was he around when the movies were made?”
“No. I’d say he’s early fifties. He had a relative—an uncle, I think—who worked on the movie set of a couple of the films, so he has inherited some memorabilia, movie posters, the monster’s suit, stuff like that. Costa comes off almost like a displaced English butler, but he’s been the estate manager for years. Still, he’s obviously got a strange side.”
“Don’t we all? Including his friend Bronco Gates?”
“Yeah, they’re both Florida crackers, as people used to call them. But once again, I don’t mean to color your thinking.”
“I’m just trying to get a fix on those two before I talk to them. Don’t worry, I’ll form my own opinions, and I’ve been through too much to be easily shocked.”
“I’m counting on that.”
Their gazes met and held a moment before she sighed and looked out her side window across the fields at the line of dense trees clinging to the twisting river. “It does seem like another world here. From seeing Win’s photos, I assume Shadowlawn will be set back in those trees?”
“Right. When you see the detail in his pictures, remember that’s the detail he knows about this region.”
“I saw no people in his photos.”
“You’re right. Jasmine once called the photos ‘Florida Gothic’ with Shadowlawn as the foreboding, crumbling castle. Then her mother scolded her for saying the mansion was crumbling. But no, he’s refused to do portraits for years—family and wedding photos—and he could make a mint doing that. I’m glad you two hit it off because he obviously doesn’t get along with some people.”
“Jasmine?”
“He seems to.”
“Seems is a really big word. Did he with Francine?”
“See, you’re interviewing me again. Why don’t you hit Jasmine and Win with that since you’re talking to them today?”
“I thought I’d let her do most of the talking without establishing a Q and A atmosphere with her. I’d like to at least start out that way—with all of them.”
“Next turn in the road, and we’re there,” he said, pointing. “It’s a narrow drive that goes a ways in before you see the house.”
She leaned forward in anticipation. As they turned in between the remnants of a rusted iron fence, the creamy white pillars and facade of the mansion emerged through the screen of large live oaks. The drive was paved only partway back and became a dirt road that must have been here from the beginning. Taken last month yet timeless, Win Jackson had said of his photo of the house and river.
“Win said this place is a treasure, and it is,” she whispered as details became more distinct. They drove through the tunnel of trees with their tresses of Spanish moss shifting in the warm breeze. French doors with open, dark green shutters appeared between each pillar on the ground floor and the second level. Under the roof were dormer windows she had to lean forward to see.
“There’s an old ballroom upstairs, now an attic,” he told her. “And, so I’ve been told, the distant sound of music and dancing feet some nights.”
“Oh, great. Remind me not to do any interviews here at night. But what a beautiful place. From a little farther back, the mansion almost looked like a person peering out with those dormers for eyes and that filigree railing like a stubborn mouth. But those pillars, like teeth or fangs then.”
“The place does cast its spell. You can see where it got its name with all the shadows and shade. The river’s just on the other side, and those buildings off that way are the old kitchen block and the ruined slave quarters.”
She shuddered from a chill, despite the heat that hit them when they got out of the car. “Of course, it was a working plantation with slaves once,” she said. “For cotton?”
“Indigo, but I’ll let Jasmine fill you in on all that since she’s promised you a tour. There she is now.”
A petite but voluptuous woman came out onto the front entrance and waved. She wore a long black skirt with a handkerchief hem in what looked like layers of chiffon. Her long, swept-back hair was blond, almost white, as she stepped out into a flash of sun. Until Claire came closer to her, she would have sworn she was a young girl, but no, her years sat heavy upon her posture and face, so that first impression must have been a fleeting glance, a trick of light and shade.
“Nick,” Jasmine said and stood on tiptoe to kiss both his cheeks and hug him. He hugged her back. She had a lace handkerchief in one hand, and her eyes looked swollen and red. “Claire,” she said, extending her hand to Claire’s good one as a strong floral scent wafted from her. Heavy, heady—could it actually be the aroma of jasmine perfume?
“Welcome to Shadowlawn,” she told Claire. “I can’t tell you how grateful we—all of us—are for your help. Please come in. I would love to show you around and I have some iced tea inside Neil fixed and left for us before he went into town. He takes such good care of me now just as he did my mother. Please,” she repeated, “come in.”
Claire’s mind snagged on the words we. All of us. Perhaps Jasmine meant others on her staff like Neil Costa, even Bronco Gates. But, in this ambience of the place, Claire couldn’t help thinking the we included the imaginary ghosts.
* * *
“So what do you know about this Nick guy your mom is with?” Jace asked Lexi as they walked out on the long Naples pier midmorning. Despite the early hour, it was a busy place with fishermen casting their lines over the railing and tourists strolling on the sand beach below. Hoping for scraps, pelicans hovered overhead or treaded water as several fishermen cleaned their catch.
“Well, Mr. Nick is tall—taller than you,” Lexi said, stopping to lick her ice cream cone. “But he, like, kind
of bent down to talk to me. That’s when he said Drew was wrong to throw the snake at me and Jilly.”
“Did he already know about that or did you tell him?”
“I told him. Daddy, maybe you can meet him if you want to know about him. I think he’s rich or something like that. And I heard Aunt Darcy tell Mommy he’s a ladies’ man, so I think he’s already married to someone. I wish you and Mommy were still married.”
She put her free, sticky hand in his. Thinking how Nick Markwood had evidently stooped to his daughter’s height, Jace sat down on one of the wooden benches and lifted her next to him. He bent close. Kneeling for him wasn’t easy anymore, not since his high school football injury, let alone years of rigorous navy demands. The damn thing sometimes stiffened up on long flights.
“You know,” Jace told her, “I might just drive up north to see your mommy before I have to head back out west. I’ll have to talk to Aunt Darcy about exactly where she is.”
“But she’s working. Talking to people to help Mr. Nick, that’s what she said. But I got her phone number right here, wrote it down, see? The hotel number, ’cause I got memor—memorized her cell number.”
“Yeah, I know that one, too,” he said and watched his darling girl—he could see Claire in her and that haunted him—pull a folded piece of paper out of her shorts pocket. She gave it to him and he opened it. ST. AUGUSTINE BAYFRONT HILTON it said in Claire’s bold printing, and then a phone number. He studied it, then gave it back to Lexi.
“You’re right, she’ll be working,” he said, “so I’m not sure if I’ll go. But I’ll tell you this. Next time I’m here, I’m going to take you and Mommy to Disney World, if you can talk her into going, okay?”
“Okay! Yeah!” she cried and almost lost the scoop of chocolate ice cream out of her cone. “Will you fly us there in your plane? It’s not as far as Singing-poor, is it?”
He smiled and pulled her baseball cap down over her eyes to her nose. “No, not that far. Better finish that ice cream before it falls out, and we have to let the pelicans eat it.”
“Oh, they don’t like that, but the ants do.”
Jace didn’t like it that Claire had gone off to a fancy hotel with Nick Markwood. And, though he promised Lexi they’d go to the Sun-N-Fun Waterpark Lagoon tomorrow, he just might drive north again the day after that.
* * *
Claire was in awe of the interior of Shadowlawn mansion. The place obviously needed serious restoration, but it was a time warp with fabulous antiques like a rosewood piano with a shelf for oil lamps, and a massive mahogany dining room table. Cypress wood trim from trees that once lined the river now edged the hand-painted, twelve-foot-high ceilings. Despite the humidity outside and even without the iced tea with mint crushed in the bottom of the tall glasses Jasmine served them, Claire thought the sixteen-inch-thick exterior walls of stuccoed brick kept the rooms amazingly cool.
“They knew what they were doing in the 1830s when this was built,” Jasmine told Claire as she gave her a tour. Nick was on his cell phone in the library since there was no Wi-Fi here for his laptop. “Would you believe out by the back—in the original part of the house,” Jasmine went on, “the walls were made with a mix of mud, deer hair and Spanish moss, and they’re still standing strong?”
Her voice still seemed husky, as if she had a cold or had been shouting—or maybe crying.
“It’s a real treasure, as Win Jackson put it.”
“Did he? Yes, he would. The staircases are unique, three of them which were each built in different eras and have a history lesson of their own. I’ll tell you before Dr. Win Jackson lectures you on that.”
Ah, there was an edge to her voice, an attitude about Win. But he’d seemed so pro-Jasmine. Interesting, but Claire knew she’d stepped not only into the long-ago past, but the recent past that had somehow led to the death of this mansion’s matriarch—and now she was talking to the next in line of Montgomery women, one who didn’t have a daughter or heir to bequeath the place to.
“There’s another staircase outside, around that way,” Jasmine said, gesturing, and wafting out the heady scent she wore. “It was built very early because the Spanish, when they held this area, used to tax staircases inside the house. Tricky and excessive government taxes, so what’s new, right? It’s one reason Mother wanted to donate this place to the state, but I thought—and still think—that private ownership with carefully controlled public visitations are best for Shadowlawn. But if the state didn’t take it on, with all the money they’d have to put into it, I just couldn’t imagine it going up for auction. I’m sure Nick has told you Mother and I disagreed on that.”
“He mentioned it.”
“But it doesn’t mean I wished her ill,” she said, rounding on Claire. For a moment, the muted tones and calm demeanor changed. An explosive temper perhaps? “I didn’t!” she plunged on. “But,” she added, more quietly, “I’m sure you will discern that for yourself. Now, this interior, hidden spiral staircase,” she said, opening a door in the dining room, “could be used by the family privately, or servants—slaves, though I hate that part of the house’s heritage. The thought of that is as bad as the voices here,” she said, indicating the upward reach of the winding staircase before she closed the door on it.
“The voices?”
“That’s what we’ve always called them. Just echoes that carry at night from one floor to the other through the stairwells or the chimneys that connect the fireplaces. Owls, even bats in the attic, or the wind or weather howls a bit. Now, the third staircase, of course, the grand one at the front of the house, was built just before the so-called Civil War which we Southerners still call the War of Northern Aggression. Remember that from your high school days—if you attended school in Florida?”
“I do, though in South Florida, the war of choice is also the Seminole Indian Wars.”
Jasmine took her upstairs where there was a central hall. Downstairs the parlor, music room, library and dining room had all connected directly with no hallway. Another stunning crystal-and-bronze chandelier hung at the top of the staircase.
“I know you’ll want to see Rosalynn’s bedroom,” Jasmine said. “Why Mother made it her own after my father died, I’ll never know.”
Claire wanted to ask “Who is Rosalynn?” but she kept quiet. Like Win Jackson, Jasmine seemed to do quite well answering questions without being asked.
But as Jasmine swept open the second door in the hall and Claire stepped into a spacious room which opened only to the outside gallery, she saw Rosalynn—that is, a commanding, life-size, full-length oil painting of a Civil War–era woman. Oh, that’s right. There had been a Rosalynn in the family tree, a woman who, with the help of an English-born indigo expert, had saved the mansion from being burned by Union troops during the Civil War while the master was away fighting for the South.
And the oddest thing as Claire went closer but Jasmine stayed at the door—no, several strange things. The portrait seemed to smell of the same overpowering, sweet scent as Jasmine did, but of course, Claire knew that was her imagination. Rosalynn’s hair was pale blond, almost the hue of Jasmine’s, and there was even a slight resemblance. But the most compelling thing was that the woman’s painted eyes, staring straight out, seemed to follow her.
Claire walked to the side—yes, how had the artist done that? She turned back to Jasmine to comment and saw her own reflection in a full-length mirror with a gold frame and the portrait of Rosalynn reflected from behind.
“Yes, everyone notices that about her eyes,” Jasmine said, as if Claire had spoken. “Even if you look at the portrait in the mirror, the eyes follow you. That’s called a petticoat mirror, by the way, since women would check their skirts all around in it before going out. No flash of underskirt or ankle allowed, of course.”
Jasmine looked as if she were going back out in the hall. Tearing her g
aze away from the portrait’s reflection, standing by the huge, high rosewood bed with the carved pineapple motifs atop the four posts, Claire asked, “Is this the room where you found your mother?”
Jasmine stopped and turned back. So she was not going to tell about that?
“It is,” she said. “As I said, it was her bedroom, like the Montgomery women before her, but I can’t bear to sleep here. I’m down the hall. It’s just as she left it. I haven’t even had the strength to go through her things yet. I did have to clean the places the police fingerprinted and scrub the carpet where they had their tape around the outline of—of the body. I’m sure you read the newspaper articles, so full of sensationalism, purple prose at its best and worst.”
“Actually, I haven’t. I like to see things for myself, talk directly to the people involved.”
“There was no blood, so don’t stare at the floor. But I want to show you where Rosalynn Montgomery is now, still on the grounds. She killed herself off that gallery, right there. She’s dead and buried so it angers me to no end that people with vivid imaginations say she still walks here just because a flash of light flitters past like the bats that live around here. I’m telling you the truth on that! Rosalynn may have killed herself, but I don’t think Mother did. If I were lying, I’d say, ‘Yes, Mother was suicidal’ so I could keep the county sheriff at bay. So, doesn’t that prove I’m not guilty of harming her?”
Claire only nodded. But methinks the lady doth protest too much, a line from a Shakespeare play Mother had read them, danced through her head. Yet Jasmine’s comments about the ghost surprised her, too. The female sighted in the house and the male spirit who supposedly stalked the grounds at night were mentioned in the small booklet Nick had given her to read. And hadn’t he said that both Francine and Jasmine had seen the female ghost here? So who was telling the truth about that?
