And, then, for the first time since she’d awakened that night to screams, she cried.
Chapter 16
The door bell rang repeatedly as though it had a short circuit. Who the heck would be at her door at eight o’clock in the morning? Sam had left almost forty minutes ago, and Jennifer had things to do, like getting the rest of her clothes on. She would very much appreciate it if whoever it was would come back later, if at all. Maybe they would if she ignored them long enough.
The door she could ignore. Muffy, however, was another matter. She bounced up and down like a rubber ball attached to a paddle, then stopped and let out a howl as though baying at the moon. Obviously the most important of Muffy’s many and varied duties was door guardian. Unlike Jennifer, she really did want to know who was causing all that racket.
The bell sounded again, in three quick successions. Jennifer pulled on a sleeveless cotton top over her jeans and shook out her hair, which was still wet from her shower. One more ding dong and one more howl and she’d have more than a few words for whoever was on the other side of that door.
Another ding and she was at the peephole, Muffy excitedly beside her. Leigh Ann stared back at her with a face so solemn she almost didn’t recognize her. She barely got the door open before her friend pushed her way in.
“Did you see her?” Leigh Ann demanded, dumping her purse just inside the door. “Did you see Amy Loggins?” She was dressed in a long-sleeved blouse and dress slacks, obviously on her way to work.
Muffy circled both women, and after confirming it was only Leigh Ann, left to return to the bedroom, no doubt to sleep.
Jennifer didn’t even try to hide her aggravation. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard it on the morning news—about the Ashton murder—while I was getting ready for work. I had to come by and check on you, and to find out if you saw her.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got at least twenty minutes before I have to be out of here, so give it up. Did you see her?”
“Thanks for asking how I am,” Jennifer huffed.
Leigh Ann gave her a quick hug. “Oh, sweetie, I know you’re all right. You always are.”
But she wasn’t. Not really. And if she didn’t keep moving, didn’t try to do something for Mary, she wouldn’t be. But what good would it do either of them to share that with Leigh Ann?
“Amy must have been there,” Leigh Ann insisted with the single-mindedness of a guard dog whose teeth were clamped onto an intruder. “If you’re at all sensitive, and I know you are, you must have at least felt her presence in that house.”
“Leigh Ann, a woman was murdered. I didn’t have time for ghost watching. The blood...” Jennifer felt weak in the knees. She slid onto a chair and held her hands over her mouth. She couldn’t let herself think about what she’d seen, not now, probably not ever.
Leigh Ann knelt down beside her. “You poor thing. You look white as a sheet.” She disappeared into the kitchen. In a moment, she was back with a folded dishcloth soaked in cold water. “Here, put this on your forehead.”
Jennifer took it and wiped her face. “I’m all right. I’m just exhausted.”
“I know you are, and I wouldn’t be pestering you about this right now except that people who have psychic experiences tend to talk themselves out of them. If you don’t establish what happened right away, you may lose it entirely. Someone died in that house, and you were there. It’s important that we record whatever you saw now, while it’s fresh in your mind.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Jennifer insisted, “that is, nothing supernatural.”
“But you must have. It’s all in there.”
“In where?”
Leigh Ann went to the door, pulled a trade paperback book out of her purse, and thumped it soundly. “I looked it up again this morning. Amy Loggins has been dubbed Macon’s Harbinger of Death. She’s been sighted shortly before two deaths that occurred in that house, actually the only two before this book came out, that happened since her own death. I know the author is going to want to talk to you.”
Jennifer dumped the wet cloth on the table, grabbed the book away from Leigh Ann, and opened it to the place marked with a scrap of paper. Leigh Ann had highlighted a whole paragraph.
“‘The first sighting of Amy Loggins was just prior to the death of Clarisse Ashton,’” Jennifer read aloud. “‘A neighbor’—notice, Leigh Ann, that this neighbor doesn’t have a name—‘noticed a strange glow, similar to something a lantern might put forth, flitting back and forth in the windows of the room that had once been occupied by the Civil War heroine. Ashton had been moved from her own room to avoid noise from the nursery while recuperating from her illness. That same afternoon Mrs. Ashton fell into a coma and was dead within forty-eight hours.’
“This is ridiculous,” Jennifer insisted. “Of course there were people in Clarisse’s room. The woman was obviously very ill. I hardly think they would have left her by herself.”
“No, she wasn’t. Read on.”
“‘Mrs. Ashton, recovering from surgery as a result of a chronic gallbladder condition, had been left alone in the home for the afternoon, in the darkened room, insisting she would be fine without an attendant and requesting absolute quiet while she rested. No one was seen entering or leaving the residence until the housekeeper returned at five o’clock to find her comatose.’”
Jennifer shut the book and pointed at her with it. “This is such garbage, Leigh Ann. Nobody takes these books seriously.”
Leigh Ann drew herself up and took the book away from Jennifer. “Maybe not you, but I think there’s truth in it. The incident with her daughter’s death is mentioned next.” She opened the book and began to read. “‘More than a decade later, a strange phenomenon was again noticed by a neighbor walking his dog. A fluttering of light as though a lantern was once again moving back and forth in Loggins’s room, perhaps searching for signs of Sherman’s troops as Loggins was wont to do during her life, stopped the passerby. The house was completely shut down as Mr. Ashton was away on a business trip, his second wife was on holiday in Savannah, and Juliet was attending college. Upon her return home in two weeks, Juliet would be found dead in the house, a victim of suicide.’”
Jennifer was rapidly losing patience, her bout of weakness destroyed by a surge of adrenalin. “What would a ghost need with a lantern? And if she were searching for fires in the night, I very much doubt she’d need a light of her own. I suppose the next thing you’re going to tell me is that Amy Loggins murdered Clarisse Ashton, Juliet, and now Mary.”
“Of course not,” Leigh Ann assured her. “Why would she? But I do think she knows when something is going to happen in that house, you know, like Monique’s shades who can see along the Great Curve of Time. Are you sure you didn’t see anything or at least sense her in that room?”
Jennifer grabbed up her keys and her purse, got a treat from on top of the refrigerator, and tossed it to Muffy, who had trotted back into the room as soon as Jennifer rattled the box. “Go to work, Leigh Ann.”
“Geez, I was only trying to help.”
“You want to help?”
Leigh Ann nodded vigorously.
“Then do two things for me. Drop me by the mansion so I can pick up my car, and find out who that neighbor is, the one who keeps tabs on the Ashtons. If we’re lucky, he or she may still be alive, assuming he ever existed at all.”
“How?”
“I’d say you have two avenues. Contact this...” Jennifer twisted the book in Leigh Ann’s hand so she could see the cover, “Douglas Wexler who wrote the book, or start knocking on doors.”
“Really? Like a private eye?”
“Like a freelancer who’s gathering information for an article for a newspaper or a magazine.”
“You mean you think I ought to write—”
“It’s your cover,” Jennifer told her.
“Oh, I get it.”
“But don’t go alone. You shouldn’t be knocking on anybody’s door with
out somebody with you.”
“I’ll call Teri.”
“Somehow I suspected you would. And don’t do it after dark.” Jennifer tugged her out the door.
“Where are you going,” Leigh Ann asked, “I mean, after we get your car?”
“While you’re taking care of the ghost angle, I have some flesh-and-blood people I need to talk to.”
Chapter 17
“I want to know everything you know about Mary Ashton’s relationship with Eileen McEvoy,” Jennifer insisted with her car keys still in her hand and Monique staring down at her, stone-faced, from the doorway to her house. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning. Jennifer noted a slight tremble in Monique’s hand against the screen door and a twitch in the corner of her right eye.
“Jennifer. God, you don’t know how relieved I am you weren’t hurt. But this isn’t a good time.”
Monique was dressed but her clothes didn’t match, and she didn’t have on a drop of makeup. Dark bags puffed under her eyes. What time had she gotten the news about Mrs. Ashton? Who had called her?
“I’m not going away,” Jennifer told her, shifting her weight back and forth on her heels. “You sent me over there. The least you can do is talk to me. You owe me that much.”
Monique studied her, and Jennifer put on her best I’ll-be-here-till-sundown look.
“I’ve already been on the phone with Eileen this morning,” Monique said, holding the screen door wide for her to come in. “I’ll give you time for one cup of coffee, but then you’ll have to go.”
She ushered Jennifer into her comfortably large kitchen, which didn’t seem half as inviting as it had the night before. Monique pulled out a chair for her at the breakfast nook.
But Jennifer wouldn’t sit down. Instead she followed Monique to the cupboard and stood right behind her while she took down a can of coffee and a filter. When Monique turned, she raised her hand. “Stop it, Jennifer. You’re making me nervous. Go sit down.” Then she added, “Please.”
Jennifer obeyed, not because she had to, but because she could see that Monique was seriously rattled. She put away her keys and settled onto the wrought-iron chair, watching Monique fumble with the coffee grounds and then pour as much water on the counter as she did into the machine. She stood to help, but Monique shot her a warning glare, and she settled back down.
“I’m sorry I ever got you involved in all this,” Monique said. She sopped at the water with a dish towel and then turned on the spigot at the sink and filled the carafe with more water. Not once did she look up. “I thought Eileen was right, that Mary was incompetent. I thought her fixation on her impending death was fantasy.”
She shook her head, and Jennifer could see the muscles in the side of her neck contract. She must be choking back tears. Jennifer suspected she was out of practice at crying.
Monique cleared her throat. “I thought if Mary had a little company...She spent so much time alone in that big house since Shelby died. I didn’t mean to put you in danger.”
As difficult and holier-than-thou as Monique could be, she was fiercely protective of her friends. No one messed with them without answering to Monique, and she’d never knowingly hurt any of them.
“I know,” Jennifer said. “It’s not your fault. I talked to the woman. I went there voluntarily. I thought she was nuts, too. I didn’t come over here to bless you out. I came to get information.”
Monique flipped the switch on the coffee maker and turned, at last, to face Jennifer. “You know how complicated family relationships can be. Feuds get started over nothing and seem to escalate beyond all reason.”
Jennifer nodded. Her family had been too small to have a choose-your-side battle, but she’d heard about enough of them.
“I tried to see the good in Mary, and, who knows, if she’d been Shelby’s first wife, things might have been different,” Monique went on.
“Clarisse must have been a tough act to follow.”
“She was. We all adored her. Mary had to be jealous, she had to feel she was second best, and I was never quite sure but what the resentment toward her wasn’t based more in anger that Clarisse had died than in anything that Mary did.”
Jennifer nodded. “You felt sorry for her.”
“I suppose I did. She and Shelby seemed happy enough, at least until Juliet died. Mary was very active politically. She’d have meetings in her home. She’s tell us that the world was going to be a different place for young women like Juliet and me, that she was going to see to it. Of course Eileen was appalled, especially as Shelby let Mary have her way.”
“Why? What was Mary involved with?”
“I don’t remember, if I ever knew. At the time, I really didn’t care.”
Monique as a teenager. It boggled the mind.
“Change must be difficult for someone like Eileen,” Jennifer said, “and I imagine it was hard seeing the Ashton mansion as a seat for political gatherings.”
Monique frowned. “But it always has been. The man who built it, George Washington Ashton, was said to be a secessionist who held secret meetings prior to the Civil War. People who have money don’t just occupy their time spending it, you know.”
“So when did the feud start?” Jennifer asked.
“It had always simmered, ever since Shelby married Mary, but when Juliet died there was so much guilt to go around...that’s when it hit full force with Eileen and Mary squaring off.”
“And you’ve danced that delicate line all these years.”
“I’ve tried,” Monique assured her. “I guess I favored Mary a little only because she had so few allies. Eileen is so easy to like and Mary...Well, you met her. I can’t believe she’s dead, and who is there to grieve for her? It’s so sad to die and have nobody care.”
Jennifer went to Monique, but she drew back, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
“This is really important to you, isn’t it?” Jennifer asked.
“Of course it is. Mary was family. We’ve got to find out who did this.”
How was she going to tell Monique that the feud she’d just told her about may have been the reason that Mary died? “Eileen—”
“Eileen wants to talk to you. I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“To me?” She’d come there to demand everything Monique knew about Eileen, the woman Mary Ashton seemed so certain was behind her death. She never suspected Eileen would be interested in talking to her. “I can’t. I’ll be called as a witness. Mary entrusted me with threats to be delivered to the police in the event of her death. She said they were written by Eileen.”
“I’m aware of all that, but Eileen hasn’t been charged with anything, and, from what I understand, probably won’t be. Those papers you gave the police were nothing. Besides, what could you say that could implicate her?”
A lot. Or could she? Now that she thought about it, everything Mrs. Ashton had told her would be ruled hearsay. She had no direct knowledge that Mary Ashton had ever been threatened. All she’d seen were notes that could have been written by anybody.
“I don’t think the police can force you to keep away from her. She’s a truly wonderful person, Jennifer.” High praise from Monique who hoarded compliments like discontinued china patterns.
“She may have killed her sister-in-law.”
Monique shook her head. “You’ll never convince me of that. That incident at Shelby’s funeral got blown way out of proportion.”
“What incident?”
“I’d really rather not talk about it.”
“You brought it up,” Jennifer reminded her.
“It was all a misunderstanding, I’m sure. Eileen said Shelby told her and Mary the week before he died he wanted to be buried next to Clarisse and Juliet, but Mary made arrangements to have him put to rest on the other side of the family plot, where there was space for her, and then told the rest of the family that Shelby had never said any such thing. Eileen got angry and called Mary senile, incompetent, and worse, just plain m
ean. And then Eileen demanded to see Shelby’s will, and Mary told her that he had destroyed it and hadn’t made out another one before he died. Then she added exactly where Eileen could go.”
“Whoa! So that’s where the competency question came from.”
“Right. Eileen insisted that Mary was either totally incompetent and couldn’t remember what was said or she was deliberately ignoring Shelby’s wishes. She even suspected Mary might have destroyed the will herself. She certainly couldn’t get any satisfactory answers from the lawyer’s office as to what happened to it. It seems to have simply disappeared.”
“Heavy charges. Just how angry was Eileen?”
“She’s not that kind of person, Jennifer. She’s not violent. She’s too much like her brother, Shelby. You would have liked him, too, at least when he was younger and Juliet was alive. He started to grow old the day Juliet died. If you talk to Eileen, even for a few minutes, you’ll understand what I mean. She’s one of the chairs for the Cherry Blossom festival, she’s a member of the historical society, she’s active in the arts. God, Jennifer, do you really think such a woman would commit murder?”
“We’re frequently surprised by who is capable of murder,” Jennifer told her. “If we weren’t, none of us could sleep at night.”
Monique shook her head, not in disagreement, but in despair. “I was trying to shuffle you out as fast as I could, but now I’ve changed my mind. Before you say another word to the police, the two of you need to talk. You won’t understand until you meet her in person. She’s on her way over here right now.”
Chapter 18
When Eileen McEvoy walked through Monique’s door less than fifteen minutes later, Jennifer couldn’t take her eyes off of her. If her calculations were correct, if this woman was Shelby Ashton’s older sister, she had to be in her mid-eighties. Yet she stood tall and straight, poised as though in control of every muscle in her face and body, her shoulders back, her head held high, her face timeless.
Dying to Be Murdererd Page 7
