“May I ask who you are? I mean, you’re standing in my house, after all.”
“You mean Agatha Foley’s house,” I corrected her. “You signed the house over to her before you left town.”
“Technicality. Now, who are you?”
“I’m Camille Shaw. I believe you know my grandmother, Alma Dreyer.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s doing just fine.”
“May I come in now?” I stepped back and let her in. She looked around the hallway. “I see she didn’t change anything.” She glanced at me. “Where is he?”
“The library.”
She started toward the library, but I placed my hand on her arm. “Forgive me for being so forward, but do you have any identification that says you’re Amelia Ashton?”
Sighing, she opened her purse and pulled out her wallet. Her New York driver’s license said “Amelia Underwood Ashton”. “You’ve been in New York all this time?”
She put her wallet back in her purse. “Could we go into the library? I’m sure he has the same questions. It will be easier to say it all just once.”
I stepped aside, letting her pass, and followed her into the library. “Who was at the door, Miss Shaw?”
“Hello, Stanley,” Amelia said.
I saw his shoulders stiffen, which I didn’t think was possible for a ghost, and he slowly turned around. “Amelia.” He couldn’t say anything else; he just stared at her.
She seemed speechless for a minute as well. I felt electricity in the air, the kind of sparks that fly between two people when they love each other. If I ever had any doubts that they had stopped loving each other, they disappeared completely. Neither moved toward the other; just stared as if they didn’t believe what they were seeing. I felt like I was watching some romantic movie about star-crossed lovers coming face-to-face after being forced apart by their families.
“Amelia, you look beautiful,” Stanley said, breaking the silence.
“You are just as handsome as ever,” she replied. “At least you haven’t aged any.”
“If it wasn’t for your grey hair, I’d believe you were still a young woman.”
She blushed. I rolled my eyes. Flirting with a ghost was a bit creepy. “Where’s that other woman?”
“You mean Aggie?” I asked.
“Yes, her,” Amelia said icily.
I looked at Stanley, who tilted his head to the left slightly. I guessed that meant I had his permission to tell her. “Aggie was found murdered this afternoon in one of the wells on the property.”
“Really?” she said. “I can’t believe it took sixty years for someone to bump her off.”
Obviously, there was no love lost between the two women. “Perhaps we should sit down, Mrs. Ashton. I have some questions for both of you, and I believe you have some things you want to tell your…” I wasn’t sure what the proper thing to call him was; I mean, he’s dead.
“…husband. I never remarried. He was the love of my life, even if he was a snake in the grass sometimes.” She sat down on the couch, the exact spot Aggie had been sitting only twenty-four hours before. Just a little creepy.
“Would you like something to drink, Amelia? I believe there is some tea in the refrigerator.”
“Tea would be nice, thank you.”
They both looked at me. “Right, I’ll get the tea. Just tell me where the kitchen is.”
Amelia got back up and led the way to the kitchen. It certainly didn’t look like a 1950s kitchen. All of the appliances had been upgraded, all stainless steel. There was an island in the middle of the kitchen, white with a butcher block top, something I wouldn’t mind having in my own kitchen. “Well, I’ll give her credit,” Amelia said, opening a cabinet and removing two crystal glasses. “She did a nice job with the kitchen, although I’m not sure I would have chosen white. Maybe pale yellow would have been better. It would make it brighter in here, more warm and inviting.”
She was right, of course, but I thought it was in poor taste to criticize a dead woman. We fixed ourselves a glass of tea and returned to the library. Stanley was sitting behind his desk with his legs propped up, staring out the window. Amelia returned to her seat on the couch, and I sat down in one of the leather chairs, as I had done the previous evening. “Well,” I said, “this is awkward, to say the least.”
“A bit,” Amelia admitted. “How are you, Stanley?”
“Same routine, day in, day out. I just wander the halls, read a book…”
“Leave the house once in a while to terrorize other people’s homes,” I muttered under my breath.
“You actually get out of the house?” Amelia said. “How do you manage that?”
“It’s not that hard, really. But it takes a lot of energy, and it takes a while to regain my strength. I don’t do it that often. Aggie brought me books from the library, which is a good thing, as it gave me new authors to discover. I particularly enjoy Clancy, Thor, Berry, Parker and especially Updike’s Rabbit series. We also get The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. I swear some of the presidents that have been running the country are idiots, except for Kennedy, although he wasn’t as good as FDR. What about you, Amelia? What have you been doing with yourself all these years? How are the children?”
I was very glad at that moment that she would be the one to give him the bad news. “Cecilia died in 1968.”
Stanley’s face crumbled. “How?”
“She was a passenger in a car that was driven into the back of another car late one night. The car she was in burst into flames before she could get out.”
“And the driver? Were they punished for killing my little girl?”
Amelia shifted uneasily in her seat. “They were severely injured and barely survived. No charges were ever filed.”
“And my son? Where is he?”
She took a drink of her tea to avoid answering. “I don’t know where he is, or if he’s still alive.”
“My research hasn’t turned up a death certificate for him,” I told her.
“You’ve been prying into our private lives?”
I pointed at Stanley. “At his request. He wants me to find his murderer.”
Amelia looked at him. “After sixty years? What does it matter?”
“It matters to me, Amelia. It’s always mattered to me. Now what about my son?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? The only child we have left and you don’t know where he is?”
“He’s a grown man, Stanley. Did you talk to your parents when you came of age?”
“Of course I did. I respected them.”
“Ha!” Amelia snorted. “You only respected them when they could be of use to you. Once you didn’t need them, you kicked them out of this house and sent them away. Just like you did us.”
“That’s not true!” he said, rising to his feet. “You slunk out of here in the middle of the night like some traveling side show! You left me!”
“Do you have any idea what it was like living with a ghost and that…that…woman? To be constantly reminded by her that she was the mother of the two things I held dear? No, you don’t. Even before you died, you had no idea what went on around here. She didn’t do any work around here. I did everything around here while she took credit for it. She didn’t have a problem reminding me she had carried them for nine months, and exactly how she got pregnant in the first place. But she didn’t love them. She yelled at them all the time. They were afraid of her. I hated her, and at times, I wasn’t too thrilled with you, either. There was no way I was going to spend the rest of my life living that way, so I left. I knew no one would question it. I was a young, beautiful widow with two grieving children. Everyone would believe that a change of scenery was the best way to heal.”
“Why did you sign the house over to Aggie?” I asked when she stopped to take another drink.
“She threatened to go public with th
e details of her long love affair with Stanley. I couldn’t let her sully the Ashton or the Underwood name, nor did I want to be publicly humiliated. The children didn’t even know the truth.”
“I think one of them did,” I said.
“What makes you say that?”
I went to the desk, found the altered birth certificate for Stanley IV, and handed it to her. “I believe your son knew, Mrs. Ashton.”
She looked at the certificate. “This explains so much,” she said, shaking her head. “He was so angry right before Stanley’s death, and his anger grew after we left. After Cecilia’s death, he withdrew completely. It was almost a year before he recovered from his injuries…”
“Wait a minute,” Stanley interrupted her. “Was he driving the car that killed Cecilia?”
Amelia nodded. “They were on their way to the state fair when the accident happened. He suffered severe burns and multiple broken bones. He had to have skin grafts, dozens of surgeries, plus months of physical therapy before he could take care of himself again. Once that happened, he left. I haven’t heard from him since.”
Stanley came around the desk and sat next to Amelia on the couch. I could tell he wanted to wrap his arms around her and comfort her, but it just wasn’t possible. “Mrs. Ashton…”
“Please call me Amelia, Miss Shaw.”
“Then please call me Cam. Would you mind answering some questions about the night your husband died?”
“I wasn’t here; I’m not sure what I can tell you.”
“Just tell me what you remember about that night.”
“It had been a long day. The children were at school all day, and I had run some errands in town. I had lunch with my mother at the country club, then I went to the library to check out a few books. I picked up the children from school and drove home. Aggie hadn’t bothered to fix any supper, as usual, so the children sat at the kitchen table while I started fixing some pork chops. Stanley called to say he was going to be late, so I told him I would leave a plate in the oven for him.”
“Pork chops, mashed potatoes and green beans,” he said. “It was delicious. I didn’t realize you did most of the cooking. You were an excellent cook.”
“Thank you.”
“What happened after dinner?”
“I got a call from your grandmother, reminding me about a meeting at her house.”
“What was the meeting about?”
“It was just our ladies’ group from church. We were planning a small social tea for Saturday to help build up our membership. I was there when the call came about Stanley’s death. I don’t remember much after that.”
“Grandma Alma said they had to sedate you because you were hysterical. Aggie said you were home within an hour. Did someone drive you home?”
“Yes, that nice young policeman, what was his name? Officer Scott.”
“Where were the children?”
“In their rooms. Stanley IV was fourteen; he was old enough to take care of Cecilia. He doted on her, thought she hung the moon. That’s why he was so devastated when she died.”
“Where was Aggie when you left for my grandmother’s that night?”
“There are two places she went: the pool hall or the bowling alley.”
“What about Ray?”
“What about him? The man was a pig; the two of them deserved each other.”
“Did you know he disappeared in 1968?”
“Are you sure she didn’t kill him?”
She was the second person to make that comment. “Aggie made it sound like they were very much in love.”
“Aggie loved herself, my husband, and money, not necessarily in that order. Ray loved his alcohol and money, which is why he stayed with Aggie. He didn’t work unless he had to.”
“Where were you last night?”
“At my hotel, the Marriott, near the DFW Airport.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Five days.”
“Five days and you’re just now coming here to see me?” Stanley said.
“I had some business to take care of first. I wasn’t even sure I was going to come out here. But I read about that retired policeman’s death in the newspaper, and I decided to come. He was a nice young man when I was dealing with Stanley’s death. He helped me make the arrangements, ran errands for me, even drove us to the cemetery for the funeral. He came by once in a while to see if there was anything we needed. I was very grateful for the kindness he showed us. It made me feel like someone cared, even if it was out of sympathy.”
“I cared about you,” Stanley said. “I loved you.”
“At the time, all you cared about was buying up all the land around here. For what? A putting green, some stables, a tennis court? For who?”
“For you and the children.”
“We didn’t want those things, Stanley! We wanted you. You never seemed to understand that. The material things didn’t matter to us. All we wanted was for you to spend time with us.”
“I…I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We tried, so many different times, so many different ways. The children left notes for you on your desk and in your briefcase. Cecilia drew pictures for you all the time.”
“I never got any of them.”
My guess was Aggie saw them first and took them. From the look on Amelia’s face, I believe she came to the same conclusion, but wisely didn’t say anything. “Do you have any proof that you were at your hotel all night?”
“What are you trying to say? Are you accusing me of killing that woman?”
“I’m sure Chief Penhall will ask you the same question, Mrs. Ashton. He’ll probably ask you where you were a few days ago when Clifford Scott was killed, too. And for your alibi the next morning when someone blew up Mr. Scott’s house.”
Stanley glared at me. “Perhaps it would be best if you left us alone for a while, Miss Shaw. My wife and I have many things to discuss.”
I stood up, put the folders in my messenger bag, slung the bag over my shoulder and walked toward the library doorway. “It would be in your best interest to talk to Chief Penhall as soon as possible, Mrs. Ashton, before he has to come looking for you.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Miss Shaw.”
“I’d like to talk to you again before you leave.” I pulled my business card out of a side pocket of my bag and handed it to her. “Give me a call tomorrow.”
“I’ll think about it. Good night.”
“Good night, ma’am, Stanley.” He nodded at me but never took his eyes off Amelia.
As I walked down the sidewalk toward my car, I pulled out my phone and called Mike. “You need to get over to the Ashton house right now,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because Amelia Ashton just showed up at the house. She’s been in the area for five days, and she hated Aggie Foley more than anything in the whole world.”
“What are you doing at the Ashton place? Have you been sticking your nose into police business?”
“I had some personal business...”
“What kind of personal business?”
“Nothing I care to discuss with you at this time.”
“Stay there. I’ll be at the house in twenty minutes.” He hung up before I could say no.
If he thought I was sticking around, he was out of his mind.
Chapter 24
Apparently Mike knew I was going to make a run for it, because he had the end of the driveway blocked by another officer. I had no choice but to turn around and go back to the house.
Twenty minutes later, he showed up. I had spent the time stewing in my car, ready to chew him out. As we both got out of our cars, he held up his hands. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said.
“You have no clue what I want to say. You’ve got a lot of nerve telling me I can’t leave, and then having a cop block me in! What gives you the right to do that?”
“Well, for starters, I’m the chief of police. I can
do whatever I want. And two, I thought Mrs. Ashton would be more comfortable if there was a woman around.”
“And you couldn’t tell me that on the phone? I’m pretty sure I would be more cooperative. Why do you always have to do things the hard way?”
“You bring out the worst in me, what can I say?” he replied as he walked toward the front door.
I reached out and grabbed his arm. “Before you go in there, you need to remember to keep an open mind.”
“About what?”
I wasn’t sure how to explain he was about to see a ghost. I mean, is there really any way to prepare someone for that? “Just trust me. Remain calm and open minded.”
He shook his head. “You are acting very weird. And why do I suddenly have the urge to get in my car and drive away?”
“Sounds great to me. Let’s go,” I said, turning toward my car.
Mike grabbed my arm and dragged me to the front door. “Nice try.” He knocked on the door and waited. When no one answered after a couple of minutes, he tried again. Nothing. “Are you sure she’s still here?”
“They’re in there.”
“They? Who else is in there?”
Whoops, did I say “they”? Ignoring him, I opened the door and walked in.
“You can’t do that. It’s breaking and entering.”
“So arrest me,” I retorted as I walked into the foyer. I could hear Amelia talking. They were still in the library. “Mrs. Ashton? It’s me, Camille Shaw. I have someone with me who wants to talk to you.”
We walked into the library to find Stanley and Amelia sitting next to each other on the couch. “Miss Shaw,” Stanley said, rising to his feet, “it is considered bad manners to enter a person’s home uninvited.”
“We did knock, Stanley.”
“My apologies then. I’m afraid we were rather engrossed in our conversation. I’m sure you understand. And who is this young man with you?”
“Chief Michael Penhall, may I introduce Stanley Ashton III and his wife Amelia?”
Mike’s eyes darted back and forth from me to Stanley. “Did I hear you correctly? Stanley Ashton III?”
“Nice to meet you, Chief Penhall,” Stanley said.
“Would you excuse us for just a moment, please?” Mike said. Turning me around, he led me back into the hallway. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t he supposed to be dead?”
Who Killed the Ghost in the Library: A Ghost writer Mystery Page 12
