Southern Ghost

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “Pornographic photographs that he kept locked up?” Max asked innocently. “How did you happen to know about them?”

  Just for an instant, Enid’s face was utterly unreadable. Then she shrugged her slim shoulders. “One day I found the key on the floor near the closet.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “I was curious. I’d noticed that locked box sitting up on his dresser when I dusted. It didn’t hurt anything for me to look inside. I’ll tell you, it was a shock. I was an unmarried woman. I’d never seen anything like that. I shut that box up quick as I could and put it and the key on his bedside table.” Now she laughed. “I’d like to have seen his face when he found them there. I’ll bet that gave him an almighty shock.” The amusement slipped away, replaced with derision. “The big folks in the big house weren’t quite so wonderful, you see.”

  “Folks,” Annie repeated. “Were there others—besides the Judge—who weren’t wonderful?”

  Enid didn’t hesitate. “He was a stern taskmaster; she spoiled them.”

  It was clear to Annie who Enid meant: the Judge and his wife, Amanda.

  A brooding, faraway look settled on Enid’s thin face. “Is it any wonder they grew up all twisted? They tried to stand tall for their father, but Amanda was sly and cunning and they learned that, too. Whitney always looked to her to fix things when they went wrong for him. And Whitney’s wife—she sucked up to the Judge from the day she first set foot in that house. Going on and on about the Tarrants and how wonderful they were.” A deep and abiding hatred burned in her eyes. “She didn’t talk about Godfrey Tarrant, who beat a slave with his whip until he died—and do you know what for?” More than a century and a half’s worth of anger sharpened her voice. “Because the slave—he was only seventeen and his name was Amos—lost one of Godfrey’s precious hunting dogs.”

  “That’s dreadful,” Annie cried.

  “That’s dreadful!” Enid mimicked. “It is, isn’t it?” Her eyes blazed. She took a deep breath, then spoke more quietly. “And that Milam’s a queer one. He liked to hurt things, did you know that? On Sunday afternoons, I could take some time for myself. There’s a pond not far from the bluff. Twice I watched him throw those heavy round balls—stones that they used for ballast in the sailing ships, you can find them everywhere—at the geese. He threw real well. Each time he hit two or three of the geese, hurt them. He didn’t kill them. He watched them suffer. His face … it was all smooth and empty. He just watched.” A tiny shudder rippled her shoulders. “The geese hurt, you know. They hurt real bad. I was behind a willow where he didn’t see me. After he left, I killed them. If I hadn’t—” She pressed a hand against her lips for a moment, then said very low, “My grandmother died of cancer. She hurt so bad. Nobody—not a bird, not an animal—nobody should have to hurt like that.”

  “What did you do about it?” Max demanded.

  “Do about it?” She stared at Max in disbelief. “What could I do about? Enid Friendley’s word against a Tarrant?” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “You didn’t grow up black in Chastain, did you? But you want to know something?” Her voice rose. “I grew up better than any one of them. I sure did. I know how to work and make my way and not a single one of them can do that. They’re hangers-on, clinging to a family name and to money someone else made. And more than that”—she struck a small fist against an open palm—“I may not have succeeded with my marriage, but I’m a woman and I know how a woman’s meant to love. If you could see your faces! You don’t know what I mean, do you? And you think you know so much about the Tarrants. So high and mighty, the Tarrants. Well, you just ask Julia Tarrant about the woman she loved.”

  When neither spoke, Enid continued angrily, “I saw them, whether you want to believe it or not! It’s an old house—a house that’s probably seen more living than you’ll ever even know about—and when you walk down the hall on the second floor, there’s a board that gives and when it does, sometimes the door to the southeast bedroom swings open, nice and easy. The Judge was home unexpected. I think it was that Thursday. He came up the stairs, walking fast. I was in the hall with a load of sheets in my arms and that door came open and I saw them, Julia and Amanda, and they were in each other’s arms. I saw them, and so did the Judge.”

  Milam’s wife and his mother?

  “Well, don’t you suppose—” Annie began.

  “I don’t suppose nothing,” Enid snapped. “I know what I saw. And the Judge, he was right behind me.” She jumped up. “Cover it all up if you want to. It’s no skin off my nose. But if you really want to know the truth—if you really want to find out what happened that day—you’d better talk to Julia.” Enid’s eyes glinted maliciously. “If you can ever find her sober.”

  They argued all the way to Wisteree.

  “Max, I don’t believe it!” Annie recalled Julia on the night of Miss Dora’s dinner party, frail, heart-shaped face, smudged violet eyes, the eyes of a child who knows no one cares.

  Max gave her such a kind and gentle look that she blinked back tears. “I am not naive. I know all about that kind of thing.”

  His kindly nod undid her.

  She exploded. “Dammit, Max, stop treating me like I’m twelve. I’m not dumb. I just think it would be weird—” She paused.

  Max was nodding.

  “Weird?” she asked.

  The Maserati coasted to a stop at a ramshackle gate. A weathered sign dimly read WISTEREE PLANTATION.

  “I’ll get the gate,” Annie muttered, hopping out. As she swung the gate wide—despite its unkempt appearance, the gate had recently been oiled and it swung open fast and without a sound—she continued the debate as the Maserati rolled forward between ivy-twined stone pillars. A stone pineapple sat atop one, a partial stump on the other. “Everybody dumps on Julia. It’s damned easy to accuse her of just about anything. She’s white meat.” Annie pushed the gate shut. She hurried to the car and climbed in. She hardly took time to admire the enormous live oaks that marched along either side of the shell road. “Take a look at her accuser. Enid Friendley may be a model of independence and an accomplished businesswoman, she’s also small-spirited and she has a mean mouth. Maybe we ought to look at how she went to college. Did the Judge send her because he wanted to help her—or did she take his money to keep quiet about that locked trunk?”

  Max reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “Okay, be Julia’s champion. But remember, Annie, someone did shoot Judge Tarrant and that someone caused Ross’s death, as surely as if they pulled the trigger that day at the hunting lodge. And the murderer’s face is going to be someone you know—Milam, Julia, Whitney, Charlotte, one of the servants, Lucy Jane or Enid. Maybe Miss Dora. Maybe even Sybil. And that person knows what happened to Courtney Kimball.”

  The Maserati crunched to a stop in front of an old Low Country house that showed signs of neglect. A shutter hung askew on the second story, and paint flaked from the slender Doric columns supporting the sagging portico. The stuccoed walls were a faded, dusty rose, the shutters a dingy white. It was not a house that looked happily lived in. An arm was broken off one of the slatted wooden porch chairs. Weeds sprouted in the shell drive. Unpruned live oaks pressed too near, turning the air a murky green.

  “Not Sybil,” Annie exclaimed as they climbed out of the car.

  They started up the broad, shallow steps. Max said gravely, “It could be. What if Sybil already knew she was pregnant that day? What if the Judge found out about Sybil and Ross’s planned elopement and threatened to tell her parents?”

  What might Sybil have done? Annie had seen Sybil fiercely angry, so she knew the answer to that one—anything was possible.

  “But Sybil didn’t know about Courtney, Max. I’d swear to that! And there’s no way she would have hurt her own daughter.”

  “If she had,” Max said it so low Annie almost couldn’t hear him, “she would act just as she has—the distraught, vengeful mother. She hasn’t been a mother, you know. How much does she really care?”

  The porch was
gritty underfoot. Twisted wires poking out of a small dark hole marked where there was once a doorbell. A tarnished metal knocker was in the center panel of a truly majestic entrance door. Above curved an elegant multipaned Palladian window, the panes streaked with dust.

  Max rapped the knocker against its base.

  Annie pictured faces now so familiar: Sybil, gorgeous and self-absorbed, a woman careless of her reputation, a beautiful creature accustomed to satisfying the desires of the moment; Whitney, a blurred reproduction of generations of Tarrants, his aristocratic face weak-chinned and unimposing; unremarkable, respectable clubwoman Charlotte, more interested in dead Tarrants than live ones; Milam with his earring and ponytail, showing an almost childish eagerness to flout society’s conventions, but that could be a clever way to hide much darker, more sinister impulses; alcohol-sodden Julia clinging to dignity, but no matter how much she drank she couldn’t hide the aching emptiness in her eyes; Lucy Jane, who so clearly knew something she didn’t want to tell; waspish Enid, proud of her hard work, resentful of the Tarrants, and eager to drag them down; tiny, wizened Miss Dora—after all, they had only her word that she’d been in the garden with Ross when the shot that killed Augustus Tarrant rang out.

  The front door to Wisteree Plantation slowly opened.

  4:01 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1910

  The Judge looked up eagerly as the French door opened. But—disappointment caught at his heart—it wasn’t Ross, coming to say he was wrong. But Ross couldn’t have meant what he said! Not Ross. As for the other, the matter was closed. “Yes,” Augustus said brusquely, “what is it?”

  His visitor spoke very quietly. “You’ve always been so reasonable and I hope—”

  “Reasonable! Of course I am. But the right decision, once made, is final.” It was as impersonal and abrupt as a ruling from the bench.

  Those were the last words of the Honorable Augustus Tarrant.

  The Judge’s soundless oh of shock was lost in the roar of the gun.

  Chapter 19.

  Annie’s nose wrinkled at the waft of acrylic from the paint-streaked rag in Milam’s hand. He stood squarely in the doorway, blocking their entrance. In his stained, ragged sweatshirt and faded Levis, a calico bandanna bunching his scraggly hair out of the way, he looked like a working painter—and, at this moment, he looked damned irritated.

  “Fuck. You two again.”

  Annie didn’t have to look to know anger glinted in Max’s eyes.

  “Is painting this morning more important than Courtney Kimball’s life? Or your father’s murder?” Max demanded sharply.

  Milam heaved an exaggerated sigh. “All right, all right. If I blow you off, you’ll snivel back to Aunt Dora—and I don’t want the old devil to leave her money to a home for abandoned cats. Be just like her. So, what the hell do you want now?”

  “The truth.” Max looked beyond Milam into the shadowy hall. “Is your wife here?”

  “Julia’s not in the house,” Milam said indifferently. “She’s out in the garden somewhere.” He gestured vaguely toward the back.

  “I’ll go find her,” Annie offered.

  “Suit yourself.” Milam started to close the door.

  Max said quickly, “I want to talk to you, Milam.”

  Another exaggerated sigh. Milam shrugged. “Let’s get it over with.” He turned and started down the hall.

  Max gave Annie a meaningful glance as he pulled open the door to follow Milam.

  Annie understood. Max wanted her to take advantage of Milam’s irritation. She’d find out a lot more if she talked to Julia alone.

  As the door closed behind Milam and Max, Annie hurried down the steps and followed the oyster-shell path around the house. The unkempt appearance of the house didn’t extend to the grounds, once beyond the uncontrolled grove of live oaks. She stepped out of the murky light beneath the moss-spangled oaks into a gardener’s paradise. The perfumed scents of well-tended banana shrubs and mock orange mingled with the headier smells of honeysuckle and wisteria. There were no weeds among the golden-rimmed iris or carnelian tulips. Behind the house, glossy ivy cascaded down a brick wall. Annie pushed open a gate and stopped, dazzled by beauty. Azaleas, camellias and roses, hibiscus, lilies and Cherokee rose, lilac bignonia, Lady Banksia rose and purple wisteria rimmed or climbed the garden walls in a riotous explosion of colors that shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight. The central pool was dominated by a bronze cornucopia that had aged to the soft green of emerald grass in an Irish rain. Water spilled out to splash down softly in a gentle, cheerful murmur. Behind the fountain, a weathered gazebo offered a shady retreat. The loveliness of the scene was almost beyond bearing; the sense of peace, healing.

  Julia Tarrant, a tomato-colored kerchief capping her dark hair, knelt beside a prepared bed, setting out pink and white impatiens from the waiting flats. Absorbed in her task, she looked young and almost happy, her lips parted in a half-smile.

  Annie wished she could slip away and leave Julia adrift in private dreams.

  But Courtney Kimball was missing. The Judge had been murdered. Ross was tricked out of life. Amanda fell to her death.

  Annie steeled herself and stepped forward. Her shoes crunched on the oyster shells.

  Julia’s head whipped around. Any illusion of youth or happiness fled. Her face was fine-drawn and pale, the eyes dark pools of pain. Slowly, as if weary to the bone, she pushed up from the ground, leaving her trowel jammed upright in the fresh-turned dirt. Stripping off the encrusted gardening gloves, she stood waiting, looking vulnerable and defenseless in her too-large, faded work shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and earth-stained sneakers.

  “Mrs. Tarrant. We met at Miss Dora’s—”

  “I remember.” What might have been a flash of humor glinted in her sad eyes. “It hasn’t been all that long ago.” There was an element of graciousness; she would ignore the boorish assumption that she had been too drunk to recall, if Annie would.

  There was graciousness, too, in her shy smile. “Shall we sit in the gazebo, Mrs. Darling? It’s very cheerful.”

  As they settled opposite each other in recently painted, white slatted wooden chairs, the kind Annie always associated with a boardwalk along a beach, Julia ineffectually rubbed her hands against her pants. “It’s hard to garden without getting muddy even when you wear gloves,” she confided. Then she looked at Annie, her gentle gaze as direct and open as a child’s. “You want to talk about the Judge, don’t you?”

  “Yes, please.” Annie wished with all her heart that the Judge was all she had come to talk about.

  Julia pulled off her kerchief and fluffed her hair. “I never liked him.” She looked quickly back at Annie. “Does that shock you?”

  “No.” Annie’s answer was truthful. “He must have been a difficult man to live with.”

  Julia stared down at her dirty hands. “I never felt that I ever really knew him. He was … so distant. Among us, with us, but never one of us. It was as if some kind of invisible wall stood between him and the rest of us.” She looked out at her lovely garden, but her vision was focused in the past. “He was perfect, you know.” She spoke softly, sadly. “So we all had to be perfect—and we weren’t. Whitney’s afraid. He’s always been afraid. He can’t do so many things. Charlotte hides behind the Family. I don’t know why. But there are so many things I don’t know. Charlotte feels bigger, better because her last name is Tarrant. I wish—I wish I could take comfort there. But it doesn’t matter.” She gave a tiny, revealing, melancholy sigh. “Nothing matters very much to me.” She shaded her eyes and looked out at the shimmering colors of the flowers and shrubs. “It’s better,” she said simply, “when I’m outside, when I can smell the fresh earth and feel the sun on my face. I feel a part of everything then.”

  “Did loving Amanda make you feel a part of everything?” It was the hardest question Annie had ever asked.

  Slowly, Julia’s worn face turned toward Annie. Once again that bruised look darkened her eyes. She sat so still in th
e big white wooden chair, she might have been a part of it. She said, “Everyone loved Amanda.”

  Annie, hating every minute of it, said gruffly, “Someone saw you and Amanda.”

  Julia was silent for so long that Annie thought she wouldn’t answer. But, finally, her eyes evading Annie’s, she spoke softly, like the wind sighing through a weeping willow. “False witness. That’s what you say when people lie, isn’t it?”

  Annie shifted uncomfortably, steeling herself. “Was it a lie?”

  Julia’s lips trembled.

  The coos of the doves sounded a mournful requiem, and the sharp thumps of a red-cockaded woodpecker were as loud as drums beating a dirge.

  “What do you want me to say?” Julia asked. “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you? Just like Judge Tarrant made up his—and it didn’t matter what Amanda or I said to him.” Tears glistened in her eyes. She swallowed, then said jerkily, “Have you ever—”

  Annie leaned forward to hear that thin, tormented voice.

  “—walked into a room and looked into someone’s eyes and thought, ‘I love you. I love you!”’

  That poignant cry touched Annie’s heart. And she understood. Yes. Oh, yes, she understood. A few years ago, she had walked into a room and a young man—blond with tousled hair and the darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen—had looked at her and smiled and she had been swept by a passion that would shape her life forever.

  Julia’s hands gripped the little kerchief, clutched it as if it were a lifeline. “That’s how I felt about Amanda.” The kerchief twisted in her hands. “But it wasn’t wrong.” She stared at Annie piteously. “It wasn’t wrong, I swear it.”