Max stepped to the first window and looked out again into the murky light. “Anyone coming from Miss Dora’s or the back of the garden or the servants’ quarters would be visible to you.”
“Sure,” Whitney agreed. His answer was ready, but his tone was still abstracted. Then he spoke more briskly. “Thing is, I didn’t see anybody at all, so let’s drop it. Okay?”
“Whitney, this is a very serious situation.” Miss Dora poked her head at him, like an irascible turtle. “You must tell us what you saw. Don’t you understand, you could be in danger!”
Something flickered in his eyes, but he just shook his head. “Aunt Dora, don’t worry about me. I don’t know anything that has to do with the Judge’s murder. Look, I was out here, out of the way. The first I knew there was a problem was when Ross slammed into the garage, white as a sheet, the gun in his hand.” He paused and genuine sorrow touched his voice. “God, to think he blew his brains out for nothing!”
Or was it, Annie wondered, simulated sorrow? Had Ross been manipulated by an older brother he trusted? She said briskly, “Of course, there’s another reason you might not have seen anything out the windows.”
“What is that, young miss?” Miss Dora demanded.
Annie’s eyes locked with Whitney’s. “You wouldn’t have seen a thing—if you weren’t here.”
Whitney’s face hardened. “If I killed the Judge, that’s what you’re saying. No. I didn’t do it. Why the hell should I?”
Max went right to the point. “Jessica Horton.”
For an instant, Whitney’s shock was naked—the widening of his eyes, the quickly indrawn breath, the sudden stillness.
But only for an instant. Then, he shrugged. “Horton,” he mused. “Jessica Horton. I don’t think I—oh.” The dawn of phony remembrance was almost a caricature. “Oh, yes, of course. She was killed in a plane crash a few years ago.”
Dead men—and dead women—tell no tales. Obviously, that was Whitney’s conclusion.
“Your father was furious that you got involved with Jessica when the firm was representing her husband in a divorce action against her,” Max persisted.
Whitney’s lips curved in a smug smile. “Really? That’s very interesting. I don’t know a thing about it.”
Charlotte stood stiffly in the doorway of the gardening shed, too upset to even try to hide her uneasiness and fear. Her chin quivered, and her voice shook. “I can’t stand this. It’s all so awful, so dreadful.”
“But why are you afraid, Charlotte?” Miss Dora peered at her with troubled eyes.
“The gun,” she whispered. “Someone took the gun. Why?”
Leaves skittered in a tiny dust devil near them. The wind soughed through the limbs of the live oaks and magnolias. The storm could not be far away. The dark sky lowered over them. The shed behind Charlotte was as dark as a cave.
Annie shivered. Charlotte’s fear was contagious. The woman was consumed by terror.
“The best way to be safe is to tell us all you know,” Max urged.
“But I don’t know anything!” Charlotte wailed. “If it weren’t for the gun being stolen, I’d think you were wrong, that there must have been another shot, that Ross killed the Judge like we’ve always thought. But the gun—” Frightened eyes stared at them.
Max looked at the rose-laden arbor that stood between the shed and the back of the house and then at Charlotte. “Could you show us where you were that afternoon, what you were doing?”
Like a sleepwalker, Charlotte stepped inside the shed. She switched on the light and turned to the worktable. She was clearly visible through the open doorway. But when Charlotte faced them, it was obvious she would have seen nothing. The arbor blocked her view.
Just to be sure, Annie asked, “Did you see or hear anyone go past, just before four o’clock?”
Charlotte shook her head. “I wasn’t looking toward the house. I was snipping and cutting, working on the flowers for the hall table and for the dining room. If anyone passed by, I didn’t notice.”
“Charlotte”—Miss Dora was getting good at blunt questions—“did you know that Whitney was in trouble with the Judge?”
“Whitney? Why, that’s silly. The Judge thought Whitney was wonderful.”
Did she really believe this, Annie wondered, or had the passage of time dimmed her memory of the Judge’s strained relations with his older sons?
Annie would have challenged her, but once again Max caught her eye. Annie chafed at the restraint. Charlotte may have thought her young husband was wonderful; it was pretty clear Augustus Tarrant didn’t share her vision. But Max was right. There was no point in raking up long-ago escapades to trouble Charlotte now.
“The Judge and Whitney quarreled that morning,” Max said.
“I don’t believe that!” Her lower lip jutted out. “Who said so? I’ll bet I know. Enid! Enid’s trying to cause trouble. That wretched woman has always hated all of us. She’s such an ingrate, after all the Judge did for her. I’ve never understood why she’s so hateful.”
Annie stared at the older woman’s suddenly spiteful face. No, Charlotte didn’t understand Enid’s anger. Even if Enid’s fury at poverty and second-class treatment were explained, Charlotte wouldn’t—with the myopia of her background: white, prosperous, landowning, and steeped in a mystic past garlanded with heroes—have understood.
“I wouldn’t believe a word Enid says,” Charlotte said harshly.
Lucy Jane McKay stared somberly at the ruins of the Tarrant House Museum. “Ashes to ashes,” she murmured. “I don’t rightly know what’s right or wrong, but it’s a bad thing to drag the dead out of their graves. Leave the dead to themselves.”
“That might be the thing to do,” Max agreed quietly, “but we must find out what happened to Courtney Kimball.”
Thunder exploded with an earthshaking roar. A sheet of brilliant white lightning cut a jagged rent in the black clouds. Wind spurted against them. Leaves and dust swirled in the heavy air.
The former Tarrant cook lifted her face to look up at the storm-freighted sky. The wind flattened her dress against her. She spoke above the growing clamor of the wind. “It’s wrong that a young girl should be taken away.” She turned to Annie. “On the telephone, you asked me about Miz Amanda and Miz Julia. I don’t know the truth of it, but that morning the Judge told Miz Julia she would have to leave Tarrant House and take Missy and go back to her parents. I saw Miz Julia’s face. It was … so pitiful.”
Thunder crashed nearby, followed immediately by a cascade of sheet lightning. Julia, clutching a shabby umbrella, huddled on a wooden bench near the back wall in a shady glen surrounded by azaleas. She looked up blankly as Miss Dora, followed by Annie and Max, ducked beneath overreaching branches of vivid crimson-flowered shrubs.
Miss Dora planted her cane firmly on a stepping stone. “Julia, why didn’t you go to lunch—the day the Judge was murdered?”
“Lunch?” Julia fingered the tassel to the umbrella. “I don’t know. I wasn’t—I suppose I wasn’t hungry.”
“What did the Judge say to you?” Annie asked.
Julia worked the umbrella tassel between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. Her face was slack. The dark smudges in the hollows beneath her eyes gave her an abandoned, neglected look. “He was so angry. Amanda tried to tell him—and he wouldn’t listen.” She spoke in a rapid, dull monotone, never once looking up. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I came out to the garden, and I dug and dug. Later, I went back and there was a hole”—her hands spread until they were two feet apart—“and I dug it.” Surprise lifted that monotone for an instant. “I dug it. Maybe I thought I could dig my way to China—anywhere. Anywhere but home. I wasn’t going to go.” Now she did look up. Her voice was suddenly childlike, but her face was older than time. “I wasn’t going to go. No matter what happened. I’d already decided that.” A quirky half-smile tilted her lips. “Everyone’s so ugly about Milam. But he promised me. He said Missy and I didn’t have to
go.”
Max leaned forward. “Go where, Julia?”
“Back … home.” A shudder racked her thin body. “I couldn’t do that. If I did, then Missy—” Tears welled in her eyes. “Everything was always good for Missy. Nothing ugly ever happened to her. We all loved her. And Milam did, too. But the right way. The right way.”
The three of them looked at her in silence. Max crouched on one knee by the bench and took Julia’s hand, quieting the spasmodic quiver of that hand working the tassel. “Your father—” Max’s voice was gentle. “It wasn’t right, was it?”
Those dark, pain-filled eyes stared at Max, then tears began to streak her cheeks. “Not Missy.” Her voice was hoarse. “I would have died first.”
Max loosened his grip and reached into his pocket. He handed his handkerchief to her.
She took it and held it tight, but made no move to wipe away the tears. “Not my baby.”
Annie and Miss Dora leaned closer, straining to hear that soft, agonized voice over the rustle of the leaves, the whipping of the branches, the growl of thunder.
“When I heard he was dead, I was glad.” She lifted her head and glared at them defiantly. “Glad. Glad!”
For a crackling instant, Chastain House stood out against the lightning-white sky. The vivid explosion of the storm limned Sybil, too, her dark hair whipping in the freshening wind as she stood with the wild arrogance of a Valkyrie beside the gleaming bronze gates at the foot of the Chastain drive. Beside Sybil, his clothes crumpled now from having been slept in, his eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion, stood Harris Walker, his face bleak and hopeless.
“Tell us,” Sybil shouted over the crash of the thunder. “Who, dammit, who?”
4:16 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970
Just short of the end of the drive, Ross Tarrant slammed on his brakes. He sat, his shoulders heaving, gripping the steering wheel. Then, with an unconscious moan, he threw open the door and ran to the brick wall he’d climbed so many times when he was a little boy. He pulled himself up, tearing away swaths of ivy, but pulling and climbing until he could see over the top.
He hung there and looked and looked, for this was the glimpse to last him a lifetime.
Sybil stood beside the bronze Chastain gates, her raven-black hair stirred by the breeze, her lovely face lifted to the sun, her mouth curved in a smile of joy, her eyes glowing with happiness. She walked up and down in front of the gate, not anxious, but eager, so eager. Then she glanced down at her watch, cast a quick look at the suitcase on the sidewalk, and turned to hurry back up the drive.
… something borrowed, something blue …
Ross landed heavily on his feet and ran to his car.
All the long drive out to the hunting lodge, he held tight to the sprig of ivy in his hand.
Chapter 21.
Miss Dora lifted the mallet and swung at the bronze temple gong that sat opposite the silent grandfather clock.
Charlotte straightened the rose scarf at her throat. “Great-grandfather Jemson Tarrant brought it home from Ceylon. Such an interesting life he led. The captain of his own ship, of course. He was lost in a hurricane in 1891.”
The mallet swung again and again, the somber tone echoing in the hallway.
As they came—from outside, from upstairs, from other rooms—Miss Dora pointed with her cane toward the drawing room. Sybil came with white-faced Harris Walker at her side. Miss Dora looked at him searchingly, then nodded in acquiescence. Milam was the last to appear, swaggering insolently down the stairs.
Miss Dora followed him into the drawing room.
In its dramatic and scarred history, the drawing room of Tarrant House must have welcomed many unlikely visitors. But Annie felt certain that in its century and a half of existence, this Saturday afternoon gathering was perhaps strangest of all.
Chief Wells, hands behind his back, stood next to a dainty Chippendale piecrust table, dwarfing it. His white hat, the curved rim undented, rested next to a Spode clock. In deference to his surroundings, the ever-present hunk of tobacco was absent from his cheek. He glanced at Max, then at Annie. As usual, his icy dark eyes evinced no joy at seeing them.
But Annie ignored him. Her eyes kept returning to the Spode clock. It didn’t surprise her that the hour hand pointed to four, the minute hand to two past the hour.
Miss Dora, so tiny she didn’t even reach the chief’s elbow, stood beside him. But she gave him no heed. Her gaze, too, focused on the clock. Slowly, she lifted her cane and pointed at the delicately tinted china clock.
“The hour has come. I have summoned you here to conclude my inquiry into the death of Augustus Tarrant.” There was a terrible dignity in her voice. “But I am not alone. Augustus and Amanda demand justice.”
The tiny old woman looked around the drawing room.
The glistening chandelier with its brilliant pinpoints of light emphasized the gloom beyond the storm-darkened windows. Thunder rumbled almost incessantly, a reminder that nature is inimical, untrustworthy, dangerous. Annie thought of Courtney Kimball, last seen on a soft spring night receding in time, and put away her last hope for Courtney’s survival. How could they continue to believe Courtney would be found when there was no reason to hope? Three full days had passed since Max found her half-open purse flung to the ground in St. Michael’s Cemetery. The steady rumble, the rattle of wind-whipped branches, the sighing of wind through the eaves sounded a requiem. Was Courtney’s killer listening in this room? Who struck Courtney down? And why?
Whitney and Charlotte sat on the silver-brocaded Regency sofa. There was no sense of a united front against the world with this couple. They sat as separately as two people could sit. Charlotte cringed at every crash of thunder, her eyes moving restlessly around the room, her fingers pulling and picking at her rose scarf. Whitney’s face was stolid and thoughtful. A fine dark stubble coated his cheeks. He looked like a seedy aristocrat who had gambled the night—and his birthright—away.
Julia was in the room, but not a part of it. Her frail shoulders hunched, she gripped the sides of her armchair as if only that tight handhold kept her in place. Her smudged, lonely eyes looked into a past where no one could follow.
Milam stood behind Julia, one hand touching the back of her chair, but she didn’t seem aware of him. He watched her, pain and worry in his eyes.
Sybil, her lovely face pale and haggard, paced like a lithe and dangerous animal, back and forth, back and forth, in front of the fireplace.
Harris Walker leaned against the mantel, his eyes, angry, hurt, dangerous eyes, probing each face in turn.
Lucy Jane sat in a straight chair near the archway to the hall. Her posture was regal, and her face impassive.
Miss Dora thumped her cane against the heart pine floor. “Our investigation is done.”
Chief Wells shifted his weight.
Annie sensed terror abroad in that room. One of those listening was the quarry, feeling now the hot breath of the pursuing hounds, beginning to weary, quivering with desperate lurching fear, hunted with no place to hide.
“Twenty-two years ago Death walked in Tarrant House, setting in motion events brutal enough to sear our souls.” Miss Dora’s tar-black eyes touched each face. “Tonight, let us find peace.”
A long, quiet silence pulsed with feeling.
“Let us,” she said softly, “finally lay to rest the ghost that has haunted us since that dreadful day.”
Julia’s chin sunk on her thin chest. She began to shake.
Miss Dora’s gaze focused on Whitney. “Whitney, what did you see from the window of the garage?” All of the impress of her formidable personality was contained in that simple question.
Whitney was not her equal; he had never been her equal. His eyes shifted away from her. The hand he lifted to his chin trembled. “I didn’t”—he paused, took a deep breath—“I didn’t see anything. Or anyone.”
Oddly, unexpectedly, Annie believed him. There was a ring of truth in Whitney’s voice, yet, at the same time, a tone
of abject despair.
What kind of sense did that make?
Miss Dora pursed her lips. Her face was as empty of expression as a skull, but Annie knew she had failed. This was Miss Dora’s moment. She had wielded her power—and lost.
What now?
“Very well.” The arrogant voice was as confident as ever. “I would have welcomed your assistance, Whitney, but I shall prevail. I know what happened. I know who committed murder. Not once, but twice. This chapter must be closed. I know, and tomorrow I shall inform the authorities.”
“Grandstanding!” Annie poured fresh coffee, but even their best Colombian couldn’t warm away the chill in her heart.
Thunder crashed, drowning out Max’s reply. Lightning exploded, and the lights quivered, dimmed, returned to full strength. Wind-driven rain lashed against the windows.
Max tried again. “Relax, Annie. You can bet the chief has men upstairs and down at her house. He’s probably in the old monster’s boudoir himself, right this minute.” His tone was irritated. Max, too, wasn’t pleased with their aged employer’s calculated indiscretion.
“Doesn’t she have any confidence in us?” Annie demanded, her mood swinging from worry to fury.
Max grinned. “What do you think?”
Unwillingly, Annie grinned, too. “So, okay, she decided to short-circuit her way to a solution. She’s going to be damned lucky if she doesn’t short-circuit her way into the family plot at the cemetery. See how she’d like that!” Annie demanded obscurely.
Max was accustomed to Annie’s thought processes. He kept to the point. “No sweat, honey. It’s the hoariest ploy in the world.”
Annie muttered, “Right out of Edgar Wallace.”
Max bypassed a peanut butter cookie for a shiny apple. He took a bite and, between crunches, said, “Only an old-time melodrama fan would even try it. There’s no danger. Chief Wells isn’t my favorite cop, but he’s not stupid. The security around Miss Dora at this moment is right on a par with the patrols at Kennebunkport, you can count on it.”
Southern Ghost Page 26
