by Ann Cook
“But it must’ve been Grace who tried to do me in at the garage,” Brandy said. “She was researching something at the library the day I interviewed her at her apartment. I expect the subject was carbon monoxide poisoning. She also used a computer at her condominium.”
Morris stopped writing. “We think she cased your place Friday afternoon, while you were both at work, and left the note. The neighbor heard a car. A clever plan. It might have worked, except for your dog.”
Meg should be here, Brandy thought. Meg and someone else.
Blackthorne avoided Brandy’s eyes. “Today I was on my way to see Grace myself when I spotted you,” he said. “By then Syl and I both believed Brookfield had killed Eva. I thought Grace must know the truth, and you were going to worm it out of her. I wanted to convince her not to talk to you——or else convince you to give up the investigation. By then, I was desperate. It would break Syl’s heart if the whole town learned Brookfield had murdered that girl.” He dropped his head. “I called a friend from the guard shack and got in just in time to call the ambulance.” Sylvania smiled again. “The first thing he did right, I’m afraid.” She patted him on the arm. “But he did it all for me, mistaken though we both were. And that’s the end of it.”
A deep voice spoke from the rear. “So my father didn’t murder my mother, after all.” Weston Stone had appeared in the doorway and signaled to Steve. Steve must’ve called him, Brandy realized. He had more right to know the whole story than anyone else.
“The worst your father did was try to protect the girl he was engaged to,” Brandy said. “Lots of men protect the women they love.” Even women they don’t, she thought sadly, remembering John. “Your father never knew you existed.”
Ace Langdon cleared his throat. “I can confirm some details. When Miss O’Bannon didn’t show up at the cocktail hour today, I phoned the Beacon office. Mr. Tyler told me what had happened, and I thought, ‘No problem. I’ll just go over to the hospital to see her.’ I’d remembered something that might clear me. I called the Sheriff’s Office, too.” He paused and ran well–manicured fingers through his gray mane. “After I put the tire iron behind the front seat, I saw Eva walking toward Grace’s car. That’s the last time I saw her. That’s why I didn’t talk to her, and why I went back to the house and played billiards instead.” When his eyes caught Sylvania’s gaze, he looked away.
“That puts the two of them together at the crucial moment,” Brandy said.
“I ought to get a medal for living in that house at all,” Ace muttered. “I dare anyone else to stay very long in my room on the third floor, let alone on the fourth. I bolted my door, I can tell you that.”
Morris ignored Ace’s last complaint and turned to Brandy. “Why did you make appointments this afternoon with Mr. Langdon and Mr. Blackthorne? And why did you wind up at Grace’s getting your head bashed?”
She lifted her chin and winced again. “I meant to tape Grace’s reaction to my costume and to what I said. I was going to share the recording with everyone involved——including Detective Morris.
“After I got to know Grace a little, I decided she tended to be paranoid. She was suspicious and watchful. I noticed it at the flower show, the condominium, and the funeral. She thought people picked on her. A psychologist told me that people like Grace can function perfectly well most of the time, but they have unstable spells. That explained the frequent trips with Mabel to Canada. And the fact that Brookfield had hired Mabel for so many years as Grace’s companion. The psychologist also told me that paranoid patients can mistake someone in the present for a supposed enemy in their past.”
Steve spoke up again. “Therefore the dress.”
“If I was going to force a confession, I had to trigger that paranoia. Grace was already beginning to see me as her persecutor. Perhaps I could become Eva Stone and meet Grace in a place like the one where she last saw Eva. The lake shore was perfect. I wanted to phrase every word carefully, so she could associate it with Eva Stone as well as with me. I told her I had bad news about Brookfield. I imagine Eva said about the same thing.
“I liked the irony of disguising myself as Eva. Grace had pretended to be Eva, too. I thought Grace would give herself away when she saw me, and I’d get her on tape.”
She grinned and motioned to her bandages. “But I didn’t intend to sit in a car with her, like Eva did. When it began to rain, I had-n’t much choice. My memory of what happened next is still awfully dim. I didn’t expect her to have a hammer in that wretched knitting bag.” She looked back at Steve. “I hope your equipment wasn’t smashed.”
“It’s okay, but we didn’t need the recording. I heard Grace say you were Eva and so did John and Mr. Blackthorne, and even the guard at the gate. He came running over when he saw there was trouble. She kept babbling about how she’d finally finished the job. Said Eva wouldn’t be bothering her anymore. I expect she meant to throw that big raincoat over your body and drive out the way she did before.”
There was a movement by the door, and suddenly the room grew more crowded. Ace looked up, murmured, “No problem” in an irritated tone and moved aside. Brandy looked up eagerly, but the tall figure muscling his way across the room was not John.
“What kinda job you got, kid? Like they say in sports, you’re snakebit. Ever time I see you, you’re in the damn hospital. We got to talk.”
Brandy gave him a feeble wave. Coping with a psycho was hard enough. Now she had to cope with Mack.
TWENTY–SIX
Brandy reached for Mack’s hand. “Wait until we can talk privately,” she said.
Mrs. O’Bannon rose to give Mack her chair and turned on Brandy her severe look. “I’d better get home and feed Meg. You rest now, hear? The doctor says you’ll be in the hospital about twenty–four hours. I’ll be back in the morning.” At least the garage escapade had earned Meg her mother’s affection. His father’s lucrative car agency made her feel the same about Mack.
All but Detective Morris took the cue. Weston left, quietly talking to his newly discovered aunt. Brandy heard him say he would meet John and Mr. Greene at the Lake Dora house tomorrow afternoon. Sylvania agreed to be there. Brandy wished she could join them. Ace paused in the doorway, winked, and gave her his dimpled smile, while Mr. Tyler stretched and put his note pad back in his breast pocket.
“Tonight’s the deadline for my story,” Brandy said to him in a voice grown hoarse. “I’ve got the lead in my head. I hope it’s not too late for this week’s edition.”
Tyler lifted out the pad again. “Shoot.” Brandy dictated slowly with only a few pauses. “A murder of forty–five years ago was re–enacted by the killer at the Lakeview condominiums on Lake Harris Monday afternoon. Grace Southerland Able’s attack on Beacon reporter Brandy O’Bannon brought to a successful close the investigation into the murder of Eva Stone, daughter of Anne and the late Richard Stone of Tavares. Miss Stone’s skeleton was found recently on the Lake Dora property of Mrs. Able’s deceased husband.
“O’Bannon’s costume, which duplicated the dress and jewelry the victim wore the night of the killing, apparently triggered a latent paranoia in the murderer, according to a prominent Gainesville psychologist. Before witnesses Mrs. Able struck the reporter with a hammer in the same way that she is alleged to have struck Miss Stone with a tire iron. Sheriff’s authorities confirmed that Grace Able later confessed to the earlier crime.”
“My final notes,” she added, “are on my desk at the Beacon.”
Brandy stopped and took a deep breath. The painkiller was beginning to wear off. “I guess you’ll have to finish the story yourself. My original notes are in a notebook in my bedroom at home. The first draft with the history of the house is on the office laptop and the photos beside it.”
She had made her deadline, but John had not. He still had no buyer for Sylvania’s house.
Mr. Tyler thrust the note pad and pen into his pocket again. “The Beacon’s going to press,” he said, grinning, and strode out the doo
r.
“An editor right out of Front Page,” Brandy said fondly, then shifted her attention to the detective. “Our paper’s distributed Wednesday morning. I hope the Sheriff’s Office won’t release all the details until then. That would give Mr. Tyler a day to print. It’d be nice if he could scoop the big dailies just once.”
“I’d as soon check some things out before the briefing,” Morris said.
“What do you think will happen to Grace?”
He stroked his bristly mustache. “She’s a Signal 20, all right. A real psycho. She also took things from other apartments at the condominium. We’ve had complaints from the manager.” Brandy remembered Grace’s maid saying she had to return something that belonged to another resident. “I expect she’ll be committed to a psychiatric hospital.”
“I feel sorry for Mabel.”
“Her companion may be able to help her there. She’ll probably want to. She’s worked for Grace so long she’s a little addled herself.”
“Grace told me there was something evil in the house. There was. It was Grace herself.”
A buzzer sounded on the hospital intercom, and the nurse reappeared in the doorway. “Visiting hours are over,” she said. Morris nodded and followed Tyler.
Brandy sank back on the pillow, suddenly weary.
“Finally.” Mack gazed up at the nurse. “I need a few minutes more.” The woman looked at the blond wavy hair, the earnest blue eyes, and melted. “Just a few, now, really.”
Brandy took his hand again when they were alone. “It’s no use, Mack,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m not being fair to you. We’re going in different directions.”
Mack’s jaw went hard. “It’s that half–assed architect, right?”
“No, Mack,” she said truthfully. “You and I——we’ve got nothing in common. We couldn’t make a life together. You deserve the kind of woman who’ll appreciate all you have to offer. I’m not that girl.”
He pulled his arm away and dropped his head. “That’s pretty tough to take——after all the years we’ve dated, all the laughs we’ve had.”
“I promised you an answer when this case went down. This is it.” She felt her eyes grow damp. “I’m so sorry, Mack.”
He rose to his full height then, big hands on his hips. “Sorry, like hell,” he said.
Sighing, Brandy lay back and closed her eyes.
***
She sat in the back of a small boat with her father, Lake Dora glinting around them in the sunlight. He reached into the bait can. “Now you wouldn’t fish for a fresh water bass with a salt water rig,” he said, threading a worm onto her hook. “You’ve got to use the right bait for the right fish.”
She flung her line out into the water and waited for the bobber to sink.
The boat and the lake faded. With a sucking sound, Brandy sank. She was standing alone on an outcropping at the bottom of a deep well. In the darkness she clawed at the slick, narrow walls, struggling for breath. Around her feet gurgled rising water. She thought she could hear a cottonmouth’s fat body slither along the rock. Far above at the opening shone a distant patch of light. She tried to call out, but no sound would come. Footsteps echoed near the light. Then a face looked down, one with high cheekbones, dark eyes, a mustache. She tried to cry out again. Still no sound.
“Don’t come in, please,” a familiar voice said. “I’ve tried to explain. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s over between us.” Then the face withdrew.
When Brandy stifled a groan, the well slipped way. She raised her hand and felt bandages, saw a square of light from the corridor and a woman in the doorway. Brandy could make out the blonde, tousled hair, the slim figure in tight jeans. “I want to see her,” the woman said. “Just talk to her.”
Now the man moved again into the light. “Sharon, please go home. She can’t see you. She’s been hurt. We can talk later.” Heels spun around, clacked on the terrazzo floor, receded.
John moved silently into the room, leaned across her bed, and switched off the overhead lamp. “When I was in the hospital after the snake bite, I tried to tell you how I felt about you, but you kept blabbing on about Sharon and your boyfriend. I saw him leave a little while ago. He looked bent out of shape. As for me, I didn’t want to be here with all the others.” She moved her head and watched him place a tape player on the bedside table. “The only thing that seems right for you now,” he said, “is Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’” Brandy remembered its soaring heroics.
She opened her lips, but still no sound came. John kissed the one spot on her forehead that was not swathed in a circular bandage. “Life would be forever dull without you.”
She closed her eyes, warm and tingly down to her toes. Maybe she had used the right bait, after all. Then her lids flipped open. “You’re forgetting,” she murmured. “We’re not finished yet. There’s still the house, and what about the ghost?”
***
The following summer, as John and Brandy stepped out of the pontoon boat onto the pier, bromiliads sent scarlet heads shooting up under the live oaks around the Able mansion. Behind them, a crimson band marked the passage of the setting sun. In a thicket of wax myrtle at the water’s edge, a cloud of cattle egrets had settled for the evening. A black and white sign nailed to a post on the dock read HISTORIC ABLE INN AND RESTAURANT.
“I miss the ‘gator,” Brandy said.
“Probably gone farther up the shore like the ospreys, where there won’t be any more building.”
Within the curved lines of the tiny harbor bobbed two pontoons, a small cabin cruiser, and several motorboats.
“No story tonight,” John said. “No more sleuthing.”
On a flagstone terrace beneath the high windows of the second floor, guests were seated at wrought iron tables, sampling an appetizer buffet.
Weston Stone advanced toward them across the lawn, his hand extended. “We have a nice room ready,” he said, “on the fourth floor. I’ll have your bags carried up.”
Brandy glanced up at a dormer window, remembering the shadow that had once moved behind the glass.
“I offered her a honeymoon in a fancy Orlando hotel,” John said, shaking hands. “But she insisted on coming to your grand opening instead.”
Brandy noticed that Blackthorne’s manufactured homes were concealed by a thick bougainvillea, ablaze with lavender, where one had stood almost fifty years ago. “You’ve got a clever landscaper,” she said.
They followed Weston up a flight of stairs above the cement bays, now entrances into a kitchen, laundry, and work area, to a second floor deck, crowded with chattering couples, and entered what had been the parlor, now the dining area. Its focal point was the fireplace portrait of Brookfield Able, his stern gaze a sharp contrast to the broadly smiling face of his son. They admired the shining cypress woodwork, the re–furbished floors, the delicate egret wallpaper, the restored mantle, the Tiffany lamps.
Rising above the other diners, Brandy saw Sylvania’s tall form. She sat at a table near the staircase, beaming at Weston’s elder son, beside her the bulky figure of Axel Blackthorne.
“Curt Greene’s been generous with your time,” Weston said to John, showing them to a table below the stained glass fanlight. “Greene’s lucky to have you on his staff. I couldn’t have done the restoration without your research. As it was, it took months for crews working night and day to get this place ready for the anniversary.”
John leaned across the table as Weston moved away to greet other guests. “Aunt Sylvania says Brookfield would’ve wanted his son to have the house, but restoring it as an inn and restaurant was Weston’s idea.”
Brandy looked out at the dark rim of the opposite shore, and her voice dropped. “It’s ironic that I owe my new job to reports of Eva Stone’s ghost.”
With one hand John opened his menu. With the other he rubbed his forehead in that familiar gesture. “Let that go, Brandy,” he said. “Forget it. You got your story a year ago.”
She sm
iled then, and ordered, and tried not to look at the growing shadows on the terrace. After dinner they carried their cordial glasses downstairs to a cocktail table. A few low density lamps glowed around the outer flagstones. From speakers hidden in the cypress came the plaintive Irish melody——“it was a moment when I sensed a miss in the beat of time…”
Inside the crowd had thinned, a murmur of voices drifted from the parking lot. The deck and terrace were deserted. Weston Stone stood on the pier under a moonless sky, helping the last boat customer cast off.
“It was just about this time of night,” Brandy said. “Remember? When we found the skeleton. When I left you here.” To herself she added, when I saw the form in the window, and later on the lawn.
“Not a night I like to recall.”
The lighted boat pulled away and was lost beyond the palmettoes and cabbage palms to the east. The only movement came from the lank silhouette of Weston Stone, coiling a line around a post on the pier. A chill passed through her. She pulled her light jacket around her shoulders and took a sip from her glass, her eyes on the bougainvillea. “I thought everyone out here had gone,” she said, touching John’s arm. “There’s someone over there alone.”
“I don’t see anyone.”
“Over there…” A slender form wavered in the shadow of the hedge, dark hair stirring in the slight wind, and looked toward Weston Stone.
Brandy’s eyes widened. “My God,” she whispered. “I can see a white border below the head and a smudge of red fabric. Can’t you see it?”
The pale face lifted and turned for a moment in the terrace lights, its soft lines blurred, and then it began to fade, like the petals of a flower closing.
John’s hand folded over hers. “Nothing there. The power of suggestion.”
Brandy’s own fingers trembled and then quieted. All that remained before her were the lavender blooms of the bougainvillea.
“Get real,” he said. “You think hatred for Grace held Eva Stone here all these years?”
