by Ann Cook
“Somebody wants me to chill out, all right. Maybe I’ll let them think I have. But I won’t give up my interviews this afternoon.” She smiled. “Anyway, you’ll have the case solved before my little feature story comes out.”
He sighed and stood up. “Stay available. And stay with people.” He glanced toward the wide doorway. “Somebody else out here wants to see you mighty bad.”
Her heart lifted. John was in the hospital. Maybe he had heard, maybe Steve or someone else in the Sheriff’s Office had told him. He might be allowed to come downstairs. But as the detective left through the open door, Brandy heard a nurse speaking rapidly, then that familiar voice again, loud. “I got to see her. She’s my fiancée. I want to know what the hell’s going on.”
Mack, of course. He’d followed her to the hospital. She lay back against the pillow and tried to look wan. If he thought she was going to stay here, he wouldn’t shadow her. She had heard Detective Morris’s warning. She would be more careful, but she would not give up on Eva Stone. Obviously she was close to some fact of enormous danger to someone. Mack would never understand, but she had to know what the sheriff’s men were finding near the boat house.
She greeted him with an exhausted smile. “I’m weak as a kitten,” she whispered. “I think I’ll be here quite a while.” He gave a nod of satisfaction. John had said she was manipulative. Maybe she’d proved him right.
A few minutes later he blundered out, not much enlightened. When the doctor looked in on her again, she persuaded him to let her go. No real damage had been done to her red blood cells, he said——thanks to her mother and a certain golden retriever.
She stepped into the rest room, changed into shirt and slacks, and stuffed the jeans from last night into a plastic hospital bag. In the waiting room she found an in–house phone and called John’s room. When he answered, he sounded restive. In the background she could hear——not the lyrical strain of the Chopin etude——but the rhythms of an evangelical preacher’s voice. Apparently a roommate had a strangle hold on the television remote. John said the doctor had just made his rounds and told him he could go. He was ready to dial his folks to pick him up. Brandy wondered if Sharon and his parents planned to drag him off to their lair.
“I’m going to your Aunt Sylvania’s this morning,” she said. “Check out what the Sheriff’s Office is finding. Even with the rain, they must be well along with the digging.” She would be in no danger with law enforcement officers around——especially if John would go. Outside the window she saw blue sky through patches in the clouds. “Want to go with me? Might as well re–visit the scene of the crime. It could be interesting.”
He paused. “I ought to see Sylvania,” he said, his voice mournful. “I need to apologize for trespassing.”
She looked at her watch. “I plan to go right away. I could drop you off wherever you say afterward.”
He might feel used again if she said Detective Morris told her not to be alone. Neither did she mention her own near miss. Time for that later.
In his room John sat beside the bed, dressed in short–sleeved shirt and jeans, his overnight bag packed, his fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. On the television screen above the two beds a disheveled girl was now shrieking and jumping up and down. Although John’s skin still looked unnaturally white, his cheeks gaunt, Brandy could see his swollen arm was a lighter purple.
He glanced down at it. “The doctor says I can handle this now with antibiotics.” He slipped the Chopin tape into his bag and handed her the player. “A life–saver when I could use it. Let’s get out of here.”
In the lobby she stopped to call her mother’s school and leave word that she had been discharged.
On the long ride past pastures, a newly planted grove, pines and palmettos, to the south side of Lake Dora, Brandy did not raise the questions about Sylvania, but John’s great aunt must know something. Why had she tried so hard to keep Brandy away? Why was she so eager to see the house destroyed when there was surely enough Able money to fix it up? Why, indeed, had her brother Brookfield built that boat house in such a hurry and then left it so promptly? Maybe because of the buried body. John might get Sylvania to talk. Brandy did decide to tell him about last night. Better he heard the account from her. She did not explain that she might have died, only that someone had——as he predicted——tried to stop her.
At the Able homestead two deputies’ cars were pulled up in the parking area. Brandy recognized the reporter from the Leesburg Commercial lounging against a long leaf pine with a bored expression, watching the two men in uniform.
All seemed quiet on Blackthorne’s side of the fence where the uprooted water lilies still lay rotting in the damp air.
The officers had strung yellow and black tape around the plot where the boat house once stood. Here the earth had been divided with cord into grids of about five feet each. The deputies knelt within them, digging methodically with trowels and throwing the dirt into screens, where it settled in moist piles and slowly sifted through into a tray below. On the lawn beside them lay a tarp, and on it the few items that had been culled from the site.
Brandy sauntered ahead of John and recognized Deputy Martin, the officer with the sandy complexion who had responded the night the skeleton was found. Apparently he had been allowed to follow up on the case.
“Uncovered anything of interest?” she asked.
Martin stood up and gave her a friendly smile. “Glad to see you again, Miss,” he said. He nodded toward the tarp. “You can see what we’ve found so far. There’s some brass buttons and a brass belt buckle. Some glass beads, too.”
Brandy and John squatted beside the canvas to peer down at the pathetically few remnants of Eva Stone’s clothing. They had been rinsed and lay drying in the feeble morning sun, a few yards from her burial site. Brandy tried to suppress the grisly memory of the skeleton.
Leaning forward, she inspected the cache. The number of greenish buttons surprised her. She counted ten. “These must have gone all down the front or back of a dress,” she said. A piece of corroded metal might once have been a buckle. Beside it, a cluster of beads caught the light and, through the dull film that coated the surface, shone a soft blue. But Brandy looked hardest at the pinkish scrap of material. The witness Charlotte who saw the ghost said it wore something white at the neck, and then something red.
“Funny thing,” Martin said, tipping back his hat and scratching his head with one hand. “These things weren’t found where we expected to find them.” He gestured toward the area where stakes marked the site and dimensions of the bones. “They weren’t where the skeleton was. We found them over here, a good distance away and all bunched together.”
“What do you think that means?” John asked, rising.
“Well, to put it bluntly, it looks like the dress wasn’t on the victim when she was buried.”
Brandy wondered about a possible rape, impossible to prove now. She turned to another concern. “There’s been a lot of rumors about unusual sightings here,” she said. “Anything interesting to report in that line?”
The deputy paused, then looked directly at Brandy, his eyes troubled. “I’ll tell you, Miss, after last night, I’ll be glad to be finished with this job.”
Before she could ask more, the trowel wielded by the other officer clanged against metal. The man bent forward, peered at the soil, then exchanged his small tool for a spade. Under the cypress tree the Commercial reporter perked up and ambled over. Carefully the deputy inserted the sharp blade under an encrusted object, lifted it up, and laid it on the tarp.
It took Brandy a minute to recognize what it was, but John’s eyes were immediately alert. Rusted through in several places and stained black, lay a long, thin tube–like bar, flared at one end like a shoe–horn and pointed at the other like a chisel.
“Don’t see many of them anymore,” the deputy with the spade said.
“It’s what we were looking for, all right.” Martin dropped his trowel and kne
lt beside it. “Any blood or hair would’ve disappeared long ago. But this would’ve done the job.”
“Of course,” said John. “As the weapon, it makes sense.” He turned to Brandy. “You’ve got another piece of your puzzle.”
And then Brandy finally realized what she was seeing. She remembered that the yard man changed a tire before Eva disappeared, that the tools came from Grace Southerland’s trunk, that Ace Langdon claimed he returned them to the floor of Grace’s back seat. She was looking at the crucial tool——the tire iron.
At that moment around the corner of the house came the tall figure of Sylvania Langdon in a flapping shirt and a pair of loose–fitting slacks.
Deputy Martin stepped forward. “We need to let you know what we’ve found here, Mrs. Langdon.” She halted in her stride and glanced down sharply at the twisted piece of metal. “Looks like a tire iron,” he went on. “We believe it was used to change a tire the afternoon the young lady disappeared.”
“I know nothing about that,” Sylvania answered quickly. “I only heard about the flat tire later. I know nothing about Eva Stone’s actions that day until the maid called for help.”
“We think it was after you heard the maid that someone killed Eva Stone,” the officer said.
John edged toward his great–aunt. “We were on our way to see you,” he said. “We just stopped in the yard first to speak to the deputies.”
“They’re certainly here all right,” she said, waspish. “All over my property. Even had me down to the Sheriff’s Office! That was humiliating.”
John ignored her remark. “I came to say I’m sorry I didn’t get your permission before I investigated the boat house. But you were gone.”
Her keen gray eyes glared down at his arm. “Next time I warn you, maybe you’ll pay attention.”
Tactfully the officer turned away and began helping his companion put away their tools. When the reporter from the Commercial produced a notebook and began asking questions, Martin referred him to a spokesman at the Sheriff’s Office. John and Brandy walked beside Sylvania toward the house.
Brandy, slogging through the wet grass beside John, spoke up first. “We couldn’t possibly have known what we would find that night. We just wanted to see what was in the boat house before it was knocked down. I’m sorry, too, for coming here without your permission.” She couldn’t resist adding, “But it’s a lucky thing we checked it out. We uncovered a brutal crime.”
“Can you think of anybody who might have known the skeleton was there?” John asked.
“As far as I know, anybody could’ve known,” Sylvania snapped. “The fact that the boat house was built in that spot was just a coincidence. I imagine the body was buried hastily. Brookfield cleared a lot of shrubbery on the land he chose for his boat house. It could’ve been buried under those bushes. It was logical to put the boat house on that spit of land where there’s a natural harbor.”
“Did he ever say anything to you about the boat house specifically?”
She halted. “Of course not. I only know that he always disliked this house after Eva Stone disappeared. He didn’t want to live here himself. After the tragedy he didn’t enjoy fishing here, and I guess hunting reminded him of it, too. It’s easy to see why he would’ve wanted to move away. On his deathbed he told me I needn’t hold on to the house, even though he left it to me. He said to get shut of it. He knew the land would be valuable. And that’s an end of it!”
Overhead clouds again blocked the sun, and the smell of rain hung in the air. When Sylvania did not ask them in, John started back toward the car with Brandy hurrying to match his stride. “I tracked down the maid who saw Eva go into the lake. I see her at two.”
“I don’t imagine she has anything to say that you don’t already know.”
She glanced up at him, hoping he wouldn’t disapprove of her second interview. Maybe he’d think it was ghoulish to interview the mourning Mrs Stone. “I’ve got another appointment later to talk to Eva Stone’s mother. Maybe she knows something we don’t.”
He did disapprove. “My God,” she said. “Can’t you reporters respect a mother’s grief?”
EIGHTEEN
Before Brandy’s car reached the highway, the summer rain had begun again, blurring the vague shapes of cabbage palms and live oaks along the roadside. As they neared the Dora Canal, she suggested they pull into a fast food restaurant for an early lunch before she dropped him off at his trailer. Over a grilled fish sandwich, she summoned the courage to ask John a question, one she’d wanted to ask ever since Deputy Martin admitted he didn’t like guarding the boat house site.
“While you were waiting for me Wednesday night, did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, anything that would explain the ghost story?”
Outside the wind had risen and the rain blew in gusts against the windows. She expected a raised eyebrow and a derisive laugh. Instead John rubbed his forehead with his good hand in that familiar gesture of uncertainty. At the hospital he had lost weight. Now his face looked leaner, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes unusually bright as he studied her face, as though unsure how to answer.
“At first when you left me that night,” he said slowly, “I just listened to the sound of your engine, and then I heard Blackthorne’s boat start up. I could hear two boats about the same place, and I saw two moving lights in the distance, but I couldn’t tell what was going on out there. So at first I didn’t pay any attention to the house itself. Later, everything got very still and dark. I couldn’t see into the upstairs window from where I was standing, but I guess the power of suggestion got to me.”
He gazed out at the thin, bending trunks of slash pines beside the restaurant, then set his hamburger down and stared into his coffee cup. “I thought I saw something move down on the lawn. I knew Sylvania wasn’t there, and everything was quiet next door. I never heard a car come or go. I remembered the story, of course, and I thought I saw somebody come around the corner of the house. A human shape. Then I lost it. I know the imagination plays tricks. Maybe I saw the shadow of a tree.”
His fingers massaged his forehead again. “Then quite a while before you got back, the cottonmouth came out of the water. When it slithered up on the deck and onto that beam, it got my full attention.” He moved his still swollen hand. “Remember, by then the moon was down and I was standing there alone with that skeleton behind me. Even if I believed I saw something, I’m hardly a credible witness.”
Brandy caught her breath. “But I thought I saw the same figure. Only I didn’t dare tell anyone.”
“Doesn’t prove anything. Just that two of us fell under the spell of suggestion.”
Outside the fronds of a palm tossed against the window. Brandy had the overwhelming sense of another world out there, waiting.
“I told you I did some reading about this kind of thing,” she said. “When I knew I wanted to report on the ghost story, I spent several hours making notes in the library. I haven’t studied enough physics to understand most of what I read. That’s more your field. But apparently physicists don’t know why time seems only to move forward. According to the laws of physics, at least as they’re understood now, time should move backward as well as forward.” Her eyes widened. “What if occasionally something that happened in the past re–plays itself? What if time sometimes does go backward?”
“That’s absurd,” John said.
“If you don’t like that one, there’s another theory: there’s a lot dimensions besides the ones we know. Usually we don’t have a way to experience them, but sometimes there’s a shred in the fabric of our own dimension. It lets us sense what’s going on in another. Actually, the theories kind of mesh. One book says that many worlds could cohabit something called superspace at the same time, and that past, present, and future coexist simultaneously.”
His lips turned up in a wry smile. “What happened to your theory about a traumatic event impressed on the atmosphere?”
“That’s still another explanation. Acc
ording to that theory, there wouldn’t be any consciousness in the thing we’re seeing. The image would be like a photograph repeated over and over again.”
He shook his head. “Like a shadow, hanging around to point to the killer? Come on. I don’t like to think vengeance is that strong.”
She frowned. “It’s all so confusing. But even I know the physical world is made up of nothing but different forms of energy.”
John shifted in his seat, more serious now. “I’ve been honest about that experience, but I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t believe all that hocus–pocus about other dimensions. I’d rather live in the world I know.”
Brandy thought of the world she had known too briefly Tuesday night. “Amen to that,” she said. But then, Sharon was in that world, too. And Mack.
After they had ducked through the rain to the car, she settled again under the wheel and waited for him to fasten his seat belt. “You’re probably right that I can’t put the supernatural element in my story. Maybe it’s just as well. It seems flippant to call what we saw a ‘ghost.’ Grace Able called it an evil presence, but it seemed more poignant to me.”
As Brandy pulled into the trailer parking lot, she glanced down at her watch. It would take at least a half an hour to reach Mrs. Hall’s Mount Dora address. “I’ll call you tonight,” she said. Maybe I’ll have something new to report from Mrs. Hall.” She didn’t mention Eva Stone’s mother again.
No sign of Sharon at the trailer, she thought, but there was always the phone.
John pulled his overnight bag out of the back seat. “I need to let the folks know I’m home. And I expect your boy friend would like to hear you’re still okay, and out of the Able family’s——”he paused——“sinister hands.” He was smiling, but perhaps she had hurt his family pride. Or maybe he wanted to remind her of her boy friend. “Thanks for the tour,” he added. “The doctor says I can drive again soon.” He ducked through the rain, then glanced back from his narrow porch. “Be careful.”
