Dead Man Talking

by TM Simmons

  Chapter 35

  I dropped in reaction, but kept my eyes open, in fear that Tildy would turn the pistol on one of us next. Granny raised that walking stick with an ease I wouldn’t have thought possible for someone her age. She thunked the end of it down on Tildy’s wrist, knocking the pistol loose the same moment Jack tackled Tildy and she went down with a screech of mingled pain and rage. She grabbed for the pistol, but Granny flicked it away with her stick.

  I scrambled backward like an upside-down crab as Jack wrestled with the deranged woman. Trucker roared and surged forward, looking for an opening to protect Jack. Granny stood over them, walking stick raised, waiting for an opening to whack Tildy again. Twila thrust the cooler into my arms, and I instinctively grasped it as she hurried over to Granny. Miss Molly leaped on top of the cooler, back arched, tail flicking. Her tail caught me in the mouth, and I swept her down beside me, her claws dragging across the lid and me spitting out cat hairs.

  “Let Jack handle it,” Twila said to Granny. “You’ve already helped enough.”

  “I’d like to get one more crack in,” Granny said, but Jack and Tildy rolled away from her in the grass and shells. I’d never seen a woman with that much strength against a man.

  Jack ended up on top at last, pinning Tildy’s arms over her head and shouting, “Behave yourself, damn it! You’re under arrest!”

  “Hmmm,” Granny mused. “Wonder what he’s chargin’ her with. Shootin’ a ghost?”

  Tildy bucked and twisted, trying to bite Jack’s arm. At least she had her clothes on this time, a pair of jeans and T-shirt, my jacket, a wicked pair of pointy-toed cowboy boots. Her heels beat the ground. She didn’t say anything intelligible, just screamed bloody murder.

  Then she successfully bit Jack, and he jerked in reaction. She twisted loose and aimed a kick at his crotch. Lucky for Jack, he anticipated the blow. He jerked back, then lunged on her again, swung her around, and pushed her head into the grass, garbling her screams.

  “Get me something to tie her with!” he demanded.

  “We don’t have anything with us!” I yelled back.

  Twila crouched and opened her satchel. “Yes, we do." She drew out a loop of gold tassel that I recognized as curtain braid, a souvenir from one of our adventures. As she hurried over to help Jack, I clutched the cooler in my arms so tightly the foam cracked. Hastily I set it down, noticing that Miss Molly claws had opened a gap as I’d dragged her off the top. I secured the lid, then glanced around for Sir Gary and Bucky.

  I stared at the two ghosts. Sir Gary sat on the ground now, Bucky with an arm around his shoulders, his doll head bent close to Sir Gary’s handsome face. I knew neither one of them had been shot — they were already dead. But something was definitely bothering Sir Gary. He rubbed his eyes and shuddered, then cupped his face in his hands.

  Concern on her elderly face, Granny started toward Sir Gary, and I joined her. Keeping a close eye on Bucky, since I’d never been this close to him, I knelt in front of Sir Gary while Granny hovered over us. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “He says he ‘members,” Bucky told us when Sir Gary didn’t answer. “Don’t know what he ‘members. Tildy was shootin’ at me, so I wasn’t listening real close. S’pose she still ain’t forgive me for not payin’ her child support.”

  “You didn’t pay for your young’uns?” Granny growled. “Ain’t right!”

  “I was meanin’ to,” Bucky whined. “That’s what it was all about.”

  Sir Gary dropped his hands and blinked. “I...I...she didn’t mean it." His voice was so soft I could barely make out his words.

  “She sure did,” Bucky said. “Tildy don’t shoot lessen she means to kill.”

  “How on earth did she recognize you?” I asked Bucky, the question in my mind overriding the concern I had for Sir Gary.

  He shrugged, the doll head wobbling as though losing its grip. I inched backward as he said, “Woman knows her man.”

  Sir Gary rubbed his eyes. “My sight...I can’t see. That’s how it happened. My own death. It wasn’t deliberate. She only meant to scare me. To show me how angry and hurt she was. I didn’t think she would actually pull the trigger of the dueling pistol.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Concentrating so hard on Sir Gary, I’d lost track of what was going on over across the maze. But when Twila and Jack moved in to join our group, I looked over to see Tildy nowhere in sight.

  “We laid her back down the path,” Twila said in response to the question in my eyes. “Don’t worry. She’s not going anywhere trussed up like that and tied to one of the bushes. We gagged her, too.”

  Bucky chuckled. “Tildy ain’t gonna like not bein’ able to talk.”

  “She can talk to her lawyer,” Jack said.

  “But the guards?” I asked, worried about interference with our ritual.

  “One of them came running,” Jack explained, “but couldn’t find us in here. I heard him, though, and yelled out to order them to watch the house.”

  Sir Gary blinked his eyes rapidly. “My sight...it’s coming back. And my memory.”

  None of us spoke while we waited for Sir Gary to continue. Somehow I knew that all of this was part of what we had set out to do. All interconnected.

  “It was the flash of the pistol that woman used,” Sir Gary mused. “I recall the same bright glare from before. It all started when we were alone in the house, except for a servant or two busy elsewhere. After my discussion with Alexa. She and I talked in the study while James saw to a loose wheel on the buggy so he could take Alexa home. I assumed we had privacy, although our discussion grew somewhat heated. Later, I realized we’d been overheard.”

  “By your wife?” I asked quietly, wondering what the pistol flash had to do with his drowning.

  “Yes. I thought she was reading in the parlor, as she did for hours on end. But after Alexa and James left, I went in search of her and found her in the Game Room, sitting at the card table with a deck of cards spread out before her. There was also a bottle of whiskey on the table, and a nearly empty glass. She’d taken to drinking, and I could smell it on her now and then, even over her perfume. But she’d been secretive about it up until that point.

  “She didn’t apologize for the glass when I looked at it. She said she was bored and that she would love to get some air. I didn’t notice anything different about her demeanor, except she appeared more composed than I had seen her in a long while. Perhaps it was the whiskey, but she wasn’t slurring her words, so I don’t believe she was drunk.

  “She was already prepared to go out, a shawl around her shoulders and a blanket on her lap. So I pushed her chair outside, where she asked if I thought it would be too much trouble to get down to the pond. I was agreeable to anything she wanted, filled with guilt and remorse after my fight with Alexa, wondering how things had gotten into such a state.”

  Bucky patted Sir Gary on the shoulder. “Women kin do that to a man.”

  Granny muffled a harrumph, but Twila nudged her to silence, as enthralled as the rest of us in Sir Gary’s tale, her face rapt.

  “I placed her near the edge of the pond and wandered a few feet away, nearer the bank. It was deep at that end, shallower on the other side. She’d purchased some swans and geese after we first moved in, and I watched them floating on the water. Then she spoke to me in a deadly quiet voice, telling me to turn around.”

  Sir Gary closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “She had one of my dueling pistols aimed straight at my chest. Besides being a horsewoman, Lucinda was a dead shot. Before her accident, she loved riding on hunts. I stared at the pistol, knowing I probably deserved whatever she had in mind, but never truly believing she would shoot me.”

  “But she did?” Twila asked. “That can’t be true. Your death was by drowning.”

  Sir Gary continued as though he hadn’t heard her. “When I looked into her eyes, I saw she had every intention of pulling that trigger. She said, ‘I have lived with the disgrace a
nd dishonor of your infidelities for too long. Now you bring your wenches into my home. And you cuckold your own brother! A man worth a dozen of you!’ Then she screamed, ‘I’ll not have it!’

  “I lunged for the pistol, but she pulled the trigger. Now I realize she only meant to scare me. There wasn’t any ball in the pistol. But the flash of gunpowder blinded me.”

  Sir Gary fell silent, then continued, “My God, I remember the pain. The horrible agony. I stumbled back...into the pond." He shook his head. “I can’t swim, you know. And there was no one there to help me. Lucinda was pinned in her chair and even had she been able to make her way back across the lawn to call a servant, it would have been too late. I could hear her cries even through my pain and struggles. But since I couldn’t see, I had only her voice to guide me toward the bank. A bank I couldn’t reach, because my water-clogged boots pulled me under.”

  “An undeliberate murder,” Twila whispered.

  “Yes,” Sir Gary replied. “She cried out how sorry she was. That she didn’t mean it. She only meant to frighten me. I assume she chose to do this down by the pond to keep the servants from overhearing, but that choice led to my death.”

  “I believe,” I said in a near-whisper, “that your confusion and wandering stem from your realization of how you hurt Lucinda. You needed to forgive her, have her forgive you. But it was too late once you turned back through the light.”

  Sir Gary nodded. “Where I need to ask for...and hopefully receive that forgiveness now, is with Lucinda. I need to go where she is.”

  “Well,” Bucky grumbled. “I ain’t likin’ the thought of bein’ on this side with Tildy still after my ass neither. Y’all give me back my head, and me an’ Gary here’ll get where we belong.”