by Mary Bowers
“And this is your private bath,” Jeralyn said, opening a door at the left side of the tapestry.
“I guess I’d better put Bastet’s litter box in there,” I said thoughtfully. “Unless you have a better place.
“I’ll take care of it. It’ll be nice to look after a pet again. And don’t worry about the cat food. I’ll have Cox bring it straight to the kitchen. His wife will probably love feeding her.”
Horace Moon’s interpretation of the Scottish castle hadn’t extended to the bathroom fixtures, thank goodness. I walked in and took a look around. It had an arrow slit, which let in a surprising amount of light, and a smaller version of the antler chandelier. The other fixtures were circa 1911, with a huge claw-foot tub on a platform two steps up. To the side of it, below the platform, was a shower with no door or curtain. The showerhead was like a sunflower, about a foot across, with a pipe leading up to it that had sprayers all along it. Still, with no curtain I suspected my showers were going to be very quick and very cold.
There was a fireplace just the other side of the wall from the one in the bedroom. Edwardian ideas about bathrooms were very generous, and the chamber was large enough for several couples to dance in. Unlike the bedroom, it had no area rug to soften the impact of the stone floor. The throne, so to speak, was shaped like an actual throne and had been gilded. It was sitting on a platform one step up, waiting for the coronation. That was going to make me feel ridiculous, but at least I had my own private bath. I hadn’t been sure just what to expect.
“Want me to help you unpack?” Jeralyn said as we went back into the bedroom.
“No, but stay a while, if you can. I don’t know anything about these Moons. How did you get mixed up with them? And why, with your degree, are you working as a secretary?”
She smiled and settled herself on a small bench in front of a lavish vanity. The table and bench were fussed and frilled with complicated carvings and spindles, and the vanity top was fine white marble with thin gold streaks. The little bench that Jeralyn was sitting on had a thick, red cushion.
“Mr. Moon hired me while he was staying in the castle this past Christmas. He had fired his last secretary on the spot, when he caught him smoking in the butler’s pantry, just outside the dining room.”
“But . . . how did he even know about you? And you took the job? Just like that?”
“Oh, you know how it is with college grads. Lots of debt, no good jobs around. You take what you can get.”
She was mooning around over the top of the vanity and fooling with the angle of the speckly tilt mirror, and being altogether too nonchalant. I sat down on the bed facing her and said, “The ones who can’t get jobs are the ones with degrees in Early Babylonian Love Songs or something. Accounting? Come on, Jeralyn. This is Taylor you’re talking to.”
“Well . . . it’s complicated. Mr. Moon has a couple of sisters, Maxine and Fawn. Maxine has never married, but Fawn was married to State Representative Hixon.”
“Oh, right. The congressman who just passed away.”
“Right. They had two children, a daughter and a son.”
I smiled. “And this son of theirs – he’s a nice guy? Good looking?” She gave me a pretty little sideways look. “How did you meet him? The Moons don’t like to rub shoulders with us common folk. Oh, I get it! You knew him before Oliver Moon fired his secretary and that’s why you applied for the job?”
“Not exactly. I’d worked for Oliver before. He brought some paperwork with him to work on while he was here for the Christmas before that. Something in a quarterly report made him suspect there was funny business going on with his investments, and he wanted to have an audit by an outside accountant. I was fresh out of college then and working at my first job in an accounting firm in Jacksonville. He insisted on having a CPA sent to the castle to work under his direct supervision. It sounded like he was going to be the client from hell, and the firm was gearing up for tax season and didn’t want to spare anybody, but they also didn’t want to blow a chance to get the Moon family account. So they sent the low man on the totem pole: me. It turned out there was nothing funny going on with the trust, but while I was here I met the rest of the family. Including Ryan.”
“And I’m guessing that after that Christmas, Ryan began to be more enthusiastic about coming to family gatherings here at the castle.”
She made a helpless little shrug. “It just happened. We didn’t mean it to. He had just gone through a quick divorce – nothing messy or anything; Ingrid was cheating, and she’s already married the guy, and Ryan figured out she only married him for his money anyway. Or for power. She thought she’d end up a senator’s wife. She was really into the Washington scene, and Ryan was just tired of it, and of her. So it was just, you know, goodbye and good luck. And I was focusing on my career. It really wasn’t good timing, but it’s not up to you to pick the time.” Her voice trailed off, and she finished with another little shrug. Then she looked toward the door and gently whispered, “Come here.”
I turned, expecting to see Ryan, and instead saw my own cat, deigning to come back into the room. Bastet ignored me grandly, went around the bed and leapt weightlessly into Jeralyn’s lap.
“Well, I like that,” I said to the cat. “I’ve always suspected you like my boyfriend better than you like me, and now you’re climbing into the laps of people you’ve never even met before. You never sit in my lap at home.”
Bastet gazed at me complacently and let her eyes glaze over in ecstasy as Jeralyn caressed the scruff of her neck. She might have been gazing at a lamppost.
“Cats are like that,” Jeralyn said. “They assume the human that feeds them must be their servant.” At that moment, Bastet lifted her body halfway and bumped noses with Jeralyn. I’d never seen her do that, even with Michael.
I huffed and pouted and put my elbows akimbo, but really, I was kind of pleased. Jeralyn’s relationship with Ryan was obviously causing heartache, and it was nice to see Bastet giving her the kind of comfort I couldn’t easily give myself. It had been years since I’d seen Jeralyn on a daily basis, and at that time she’d been a skinny teenager with only minor-league boy troubles. Now she was a fully-bloomed woman with a serious career and apparently, serious man trouble. Throwing my arms around her suddenly would’ve been awkward. So I stayed where I was on the bed and racked my brain for words of comfort that wouldn’t be lies.
Bastet continued to ignore me.
“So you did some accounting work for Oliver. And then – somehow you became his secretary?”
She focused on Bastet, telling her the story instead of me. Animals are always easier to talk to than people. Bastet angled her head up and listened.
“Mr. Moon remembered me. I guess he liked me, though I’d never have known it at the time. So when he fired his secretary, he called my firm and asked if I could be ‘assigned to him’ for the week. He claimed he had another problem that required an accountant, but when I got here I found that what he really wanted was a secretary. Anyway, the firm was still angling for the Moon account, so they sent me. By the time the week was up, Oliver offered me the job.”
“And you accepted? Because of Ryan?”
“It had been so nice being able to see one another every day. Oliver gave me a few assignments in the morning and then he left me alone most of the day. It was Christmas week, so there wasn’t much business being done. This castle is so big, and there weren’t many people here. Elizabeth – that’s Ryan’s sister – had stayed away because her son had the flu. Ryan and I had so much time together . . . it was wonderful! And nobody paid any attention to us. When Oliver offered to hire me on a permanent basis, I made a snap decision. I’d been getting fed up with the commute from Flagler Beach to Jacksonville, and the tax season before had been a nightmare for me. The firm had had me working seven days a week, on salary – meaning no overtime pay. I wasn’t looking forward to it again, and was thinking about quitting and starting my own practice down here by the beaches anyway. Ryan an
d I talked it over and decided that if being Oliver’s secretary didn’t work out, I could always quit and go ahead with my own practice.”
“Uh huh. So what’s the plan going forward? How does one go from being uncle’s secretary to being nephew’s wife?”
She closed her eyes for a second, and so did Bastet. “All I can say is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Take the job, get into the family circle, be near Ryan all the time – he lives in New York, in the same apartment building as his uncle – get everyone to accept me, and take it from there. Lately, though, it’s beginning to look more like a dead end, or even a big mistake. I’ve never met people like this before. They definitely think of their employees as a lower class of being. They talk at me without even bothering to look at me. Polite, but cold. ‘Ms. Grady, would you please see why Cook is taking so long with the coffee? Ms. Grady, would you light the fire, and then you can retire for the day, thank you. Mr. Moon will call if he needs you.’ Don’t get me wrong. Ryan’s mother is really nice, but even she treats me like I’m invisible. And his Aunt Maxine is a monster. She does everything but wipe her feet on me. And I hate New York. I guess we didn’t think it through. I’ve definitely pigeonholed myself on a different social plane from Ryan’s family. I wished we hadn’t jumped at the chance so quickly, but that week had been so wonderful, we just wanted it to go on and on. If Ryan had just introduced me as his new girlfriend, I think it would’ve worked out better. Especially now,” she added, her voice trailing off again.
“Why now?”
She gave me a defiant look, daring me to disapprove, which just made her look like a stubborn little girl. “I mean now that the congressman is dead.”
It took me a moment to make sense out of this. “You mean his father?”
“State Representative Radley S. Hixon. ‘Bear’ to his sycophants and groupies. Hizzoner the statesman, head of what he believed would be a dynasty, leading someday to the presidency. Or the papacy. Or something.” She shook her head angrily, and Bastet drew away from a hand that was caressing a little too hard. “Sorry, baby,” she murmured. “He forced Ryan to major in Political Science in college, when Ryan had no interest in politics. He even took Ingrid’s side in the divorce. He thought she was great, because she was a political animal and cocktail party warrior. Looked good in a little black dress and didn’t get too drunk at parties. Now that his father is dead, it would have been a lot easier to get the family to accept me, but now they all think of me as a servant.”
I realized that Bastet was staring at me, looking as if she were willing me to say something, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Returning Bastet’s stare, I groped through my mind and finally came up with, “Don’t worry. Ed and I are going to be here for the whole week. We’ll figure something out.” Bastet held my gaze and slowly closed her eyes and reopened them. I guess she approved.
Anyway, it seemed to have worked for Jeralyn. She perked up, getting just teary enough to make her hazel eyes shiny and bright. “Thanks, Taylor. You’re so clever. You always seem to work things out. It’s good to know we’ve got you on our side.”
This time I did get up and give her a little hug, smiling with much more confidence than I was feeling. Personally, I’d never been much good at love affairs. I’d had a few messy encounters as a young woman, and had only managed to settle down with the right guy when I was in my sixties. I didn’t think Jeralyn wanted to wait that long.
No, I seemed to be much better at murder. Now if she’d come to me and said the obnoxious congressman had gotten himself murdered and could I look into it, that I could have gotten my teeth into. But getting a snooty family to welcome a CPA-slash-secretary into the family?
Suddenly, laying the family ghosts to rest seemed like child’s play.
Chapter 4
After Jeralyn had gone, (Bastet trailed out after her and left me alone in the cold stone chamber, the little traitor), I decided to check in on Ed, but he wasn’t in his room. He was probably hauling machines of his own invention, intended to provide therapeutic intervention for ghosts, or whatever he’d brought to the party, and I decided not to hang around and get involved in the heavy lifting. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was getting close to noon. Oliver had commanded us to the table at one o’clock, so I decided to wash up and take a look around the castle.
I decided to find the dining room first, so I wouldn’t be trapped in the torture chamber or somewhere when the gong went. I fully expected a gong, and as it transpired, I was right.
The dining room, I reasoned, would be on the ground floor. I didn’t know where all the staircases were yet, and I didn’t want to get lost, so I walked back to the spiral staircase Jeralyn had showed us and started down. As I passed the second floor, I first hesitated, then moved along as fast as I could when I heard the sound of at least two women fighting. One was almost howling like a wolf, and I was going to remember that voice. It was distinctive. As women’s voices go, it was a rich bass-baritone. As I got out of range, the underdog (a mellow but shaky mezzo) seemed to be dissolving in tears.
I got to an area I recognized as the ground floor (the stairway continued down; I didn’t). To the left was the entrance hall, and a small chamber I hadn’t noticed when Jeralyn had brought us through. I peeked into the doorway and saw that it was a chapel. Turning around again, I walked straight into the great hall, four times the size of the entrance hall, with a gallery running all the way around overhead, supported by an excessive number of pillars. While looking like a matched set, no two pillars were exactly the same, and as I went around looking at the bases, I realized the illustrations told some kind of story. If you started at the right and went all the way around the room, you got something that might have been the story of William Wallace.
The furniture divided the room into four seating areas with a few tables and lamps scattered around. There were no plants. A few trees would have been nice, but there was no natural light. I took a close look at a lamp with a heavy, spreading shade and decided it had to be vintage Tiffany. An antiques dealer would have been staggering around, overwhelmed.
There was a gigantic fireplace on the south wall. I’m pretty tall, but the bottom edge of the mantel was over my head. The chandelier was the size of a small building, and hung midway between the first and second floors, with heavily garlanded, gilt branches and lashings of crystal swags. The effect was spoiled for me by the phony-looking electric candles spaced around the edges, but there were enough of them to adequately light the room.
I stopped and cocked my head, but the argument on the second floor seemed to be over.
Above the maw of the fireplace was an alabaster bust of a man. I walked over to it. It took a surprising amount of will to walk toward it, looking it right in the eye. It loomed, unnaturally white and eerie, with that tactile quality that alabaster has. I felt that if I touched it, it would be soft. Fleshy. And very, very cold.
Once I got close enough, the eyes were looking over my head, but I still had a sense of presence. This, I decided, was Horace Moon. Without color, I always find it difficult to fill in the shape of a statue with a live human being. I couldn’t make anything of his face, except that he had a beaky nose. I decided I was going to avoid the great room at night. That statue looked as if it could glow in the dark. At midnight, it was going to look like the top of a living man, floating in midair.
I made my feet move away from it and told myself not to be childish, but I could have sworn I felt its eyes on my back. By the time I got to the far end of the great hall, I started picking up distant sounds of a kitchen at work, and I moved toward them as quickly as I could.
There didn’t seem to be any halls on the ground floor. One room led straight into another. At the far end of a series of odd little rooms was a music room and then – finally! – the dining room.
To my left as I entered the room was a massive sideboard, looking both ornate and useful, and to my right was a large fireplace. There was no c
handelier; the walls were set with large sconces full of electric candles. And stretched across the middle of the room was a long table with a ridiculous epergne spreading its arms in the air like an agitated octopus. For a few minutes I just stood there, blinking at it. It was silver and cut glass, and probably worth more than my car, but I still say it was ridiculous.
By now I knew that the kitchen was through a doorway on the other side of the dining room. I walked across the flagstone floor, and as my footsteps became audible in the kitchen, the noises slowed down a little. Somebody heard me.
I popped my head through the doorway found myself in a butler’s pantry. Room after room after room, I thought distractedly, but I know the kitchen is here somewhere! On the other side of the pantry I finally walked into a bright, golden room, lit by modern fixtures and not feeble clusters of fake candles. There were a few windows at my right, on the south side, but strangely, the windows that would have given a beautiful view of the ocean on the east had been bricked up. A large, soft, friendly-looking lady was filling tart shells at a pastry board, looking at me and smiling.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to get in the way. I was just roaming around the castle. My name is Taylor. Taylor Verone.”
She nodded, said, “Oh, yes,” dusted her hands, walked to the counter behind her – four steps away from the pastry board – the kitchen was huge, of course – and reached up for a coffee cup. “Come on in, dear. You might as well stay here and keep me company for a few minutes; lunch is in half an hour. But you’d better get into the dining room before the old folks come to table,” she added, lowering her voice and giving me a full cup. “They won’t like the help getting familiar with a guest. My name is Carrie, but you’d better call me Cook. Cream and sugar over there.” She pointed with her chin.
