He paused for a moment, breathing hard as he rested on the shovel. His ears were ringing. Maybe it was from the shotgun blast, but he kept thinking that he heard the sound of glass breaking over and over again. It was terrible. He wished it would stop.
But really, the glass was nothing—just a thing. It didn’t matter, because no one would understand it. Nothing mattered except finishing his task. He had to put the wicked one back into the ground and then leave before it grew light. After a while, he’d forget. Many times he had done things for his father, his uncle, and for the rest of the family. He always managed. He would triumph this time too. And no one would ever know about his mistake except the ghosts, and they were righteous spirits who would never bear witness against him.
Trapped inside another nightmare, Chloe whimpered and twitched as shovels of dry earth rained down on her. She was bleeding to death from a horrible wound and wanted to scream for help, but was afraid that if she opened her mouth it would be filled with soil and she would choke on clots of grave dirt. Soon she was too weak to scream or move. And in a few minutes the air ran out and then there was nothing.
Murder is a mistake—one should never
do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.
—Oscar Wilde
Chapter Five
“If you are calling for the corpse of MacGregor Patrick, he’s over here,” a familiar but unusually grim voice said.
Chloe ventured further into the darkened library and saw a well-known pair of large, grubby work boots protruding from under the desk. Rory Patrick stood over his horizontal father, broad hands planted on narrow hips. MacGregor was snoring softly, but other than the gentle whistle passing between his parted lips, he might have been posing for an effigy to grace his sarcophagus—supposing he decided to have a decorated sarcophagus as well as a pyramid, which seemed a nearly inevitable conclusion given his heritage and outsized ego.
“What happened?” she asked, curious but unalarmed since Rory was so calm. Frankly, she felt worse than MacGregor looked.
“He had a duel with Misters Beam, Walker, and Daniels. I think he won, but it must have been a close contest.”
Chloe walked around the desk and saw the dead soldiers lying on the floor. She whistled softly and nudged an empty whisky bottle with her toe.
“I haven’t seen anyone in a ménage a quatre with Jimmy, Johnny and Jack since college—and they had to use a stomach pump to save the poor fool who tried it. Alcohol poisoning. Those bottles weren’t all full, were they? Should we call for an ambulance or something?”
“No way.” Rory smiled nastily and, mirroring her own action, nudged MacGregor with the tip of his loafer. He wasn’t as gentle. “A stomach pumping might spoil a really prime hangover, and some doctor would likely give the old sot some pain pills for his head. No, this time I’m going to let him suffer through the aftermath without medical interference.”
“I suppose he will have a really bad hangover. Maybe—”
“Bad as the day after a hurricane, if there’s any justice in the world. It may be just the thing to cure him of this binge drinking. Nothing Doc Emerson, Morag, or I can say seems to make any difference.” Rory forgot himself and actually sounded concerned. “This is probably Claude’s doing. I bet he tried to get MacGregor drunk enough to cough up the twenty grand he needs. MacGregor is the soul of generosity, but absolutely hates being hounded for money.”
As though recognizing his name, MacGregor snorted loudly, rolled his head, and then resumed his soft snores. His color was rosy rather than gray, but Chloe was still worried. Even with Claude’s help, if the bottles had been full, there could be enough booze inside this old man with his weak heart to kill two males half his age.
“Do you want some help getting him to bed before you leave?” she asked finally, deciding that this was Rory’s call to make. He was in the best position to judge what MacGregor needed.
“Bed?”
“Rory!” she scolded, genuinely shocked. “You aren’t going to leave him on the floor, are you?”
“I suppose not. Morag might fuss about vacuuming around him. And she might call the doctor.” Rory leaned down and grasped MacGregor by the front of his flannel shirt. He hauled him more or less upright. Some dead oak leaves and a few sprigs of crushed mint floated to the floor. Rory dusted his parent off with his free hand, muttering: “I wonder what the hell he was doing last night. He changed before dinner, didn’t he?”
“Yes, I think so.” Chloe answered with a twinge of guilt. She wasn’t terribly certain what MacGregor had been wearing at dinner last night, having spent the meal staring at her plate, but she was fairly sure it hadn’t been red and black buffalo plaid flannel. And certainly he had not been covered in pungent mint and oak leaves.
“Well, never mind.” Rory grunted as he heaved MacGregor over his shoulder and then straightened from a squat.
Chloe was impressed with the physical display. There was nothing effete about the muscles that decorated Rory’s lean body. MacGregor must have weighed around two hundred pounds, and that was two hundred pounds of flaccid flesh, which made the swift lift even more amazing.
“Let me get the door,” she volunteered.
“Thanks.” Rory paused before leaving the room. “Look, I don’t think MacGregor’s going to be up for any work in the cemetery today.”
“I wouldn’t think so!”
“Why don’t you take the morning off? Get some rest. You look beat. Later, after Claude and Isaac leave, I’ll come out to the cemetery and lend you a hand. It’s only fair after your help yesterday.”
“There’s no need for you to come,” she assured him, noticing that his face was a little flushed. “I can manage on my own. Anyway, why wait? Aren’t Claude and Isaac gone already? They weren’t at second breakfast.”
She was learning the routine. A second meal was prepared at ten o’clock when MacGregor had houseguests. Wise houseguests showed up for it because they were unlikely to get lunch, MacGregor preferring to drink that meal more days than not.
“They weren’t?” Rory shifted. His father had to be getting heavy. “Well, I’ll check on that. If they are gone and not just sleeping it off, we can go out whenever you want.”
“Okay. I’ll just straighten up in here a little,” she offered, trying to assuage her vague feelings of guilt about MacGregor’s condition. It was not her job to be his keeper; all the same, she had walked out on a man of whom she was rather fond and left him to wander into temptation.
And though it was wrong of him to have expected it of her, she felt that she had let Rory down too. That was probably why she had been having such terrible nightmares.
Rory grunted and then disappeared through the door. He didn’t climb the stairs quickly, but he didn’t pause to rest either. Chloe decided that it wasn’t just the familial ego that was fed on raw meat and megavitamins; the Patricks had hard bodies to go with their hard heads.
Chloe gathered up the empty bottles and put them in the wastebasket. There were several dead leaves on the carpet and some clots of reddish mud, but for some reason the thought of touching them bothered her, so she left them for Morag, or whoever would be in to vacuum. All that was left to see order restored was to stack a few scattered papers and put them back on the desk. She worked slowly, turning them all right side up and placing them in neat piles with squared corners, and Rory was back before she was done.
Before she could ask about MacGregor, Rory said: “I guess you’re right about Claude and Isaac. The guest rooms are empty. The beds are made up and everything, and I can’t see Claude’s car from the upstairs window. I suppose they took off real early. Maybe MacGregor paid off the whelp and then decided to drown his sorrows.”
Rory looked thoughtfully at his father’s newly tidied desk. A ledger and checkbook were sitting in plain sight.
“Good. I shouldn’t say that, I know, but anything to get them out of here is fine with me!” Chloe nudged a gaping desk drawer shut. “Let me
grab my camera bags and we can get started. I—”
The phone rang sharply, cutting her off mid-word. Even the Patrick’s possessions were guilty of interrupting her, she thought, feeling more than a little cranky.
“Here.” Rory opened the desk drawer she had just shut and extracted the giant cemetery key. He didn’t hesitate to hand it over, a gesture of trust that she appreciated. “Take this and get started. I’ll be along when I can.”
The phone rang again. Rory went to lift the receiver, and then, noticing the dirt on his fingers of his right hand, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief.
“Okay. See you soo—” The phone, of course, did not let her finish.
“Fine. . . . Hello?” Rory didn’t bark, but his greeting was far from convivial. Perhaps he didn’t have a great deal of experience answering telephones. Probably Morag did that too.
Or maybe he had too much experience. Perhaps he handled his catalogue orders and—but no! He wouldn’t be that rude to customers. Probably he was still worried and exasperated about MacGregor’s latest drinking spree, and that was making him short-tempered. In any event, it wasn’t any of her business, and she wasn’t going to eavesdrop on a private call.
Chloe saluted with her right fist as she left the room, then noticed that her hand was also dirty. She peered at her fingers in the gloomy light. Something brown and sticky was all over the old iron key, and unlike the Patricks, she didn’t carry a ready handkerchief. It looked like she and the Patrick funeral regalia would both need a wash-up before she handled her cameras.
Rory was off the phone by the time she staggered downstairs, burdened with the full complement of her high-tech tools. He was looking through the check register and frowning as she came through the door, but he put it aside as soon as she entered the room and came over to help her with her equipment. She gave him the freshly washed key.
“Where to? The slave cemetery is partially cleared now if you’d like to take a look.”
“I’ll wait for the guys to finish up in there. There’s plenty to do in the family plot yet. The light’s good, so I think we’ll start with one-oh-four in the gothics.”
“One-oh-four?” He was smiling, but it wasn’t his usual malicious grin. In spite of his annoyance with MacGregor and Claude, some of the previous day’s understanding and stored goodwill flourished between them.
“The chess set. Um . . . Adair and Eilidh,” she translated, showing him the clipboard that had the gridded map. “It’ll be too dark to work over there in the afternoon. I prefer to use natural light as much as possible. Flashes tend to flatten the image and—”
“Mmmrreeeoow.” A gentle paw tapped at her legs. As soon as Chloe looked down, Roger frisked over to the exterior doors and started pawing at the paned glass. It was a polite order to hurry.
“I think he wants out,” Chloe said inanely. “Maybe he knows that I’m going to the cemetery. He seems to really like it there.”
“Be patient, you stupid beast,” Rory scolded. “We’re coming. The idiot probably thinks Claude is out there somewhere. I caught him up in Claude’s room, digging through the pillows and burrowing into the sheets. I had to shut the door to keep him out. I’ll have to tell Morag to change the sheets first thing or he’ll tear them to shreds. I’ll catch up in a second.”
Chloe grimaced at the impatient feline. “Usually cats are more discriminating in their tastes.”
“They also eat mice and lizards,” he reminded her. “They aren’t that discriminating.”
The sky, once sought, was found to be almost painfully blue, but there were some cottony clouds hanging around in the southern firmament that suggested afternoon rain, Chloe thought pessimistically. And worse, there wasn’t a breath of air stirring in the leaves overhead or in the clumps of cinquefoil that clung to the shady patches beneath the sycamore tree. Hot, humid, and airless—three of her least favorite working conditions. Still, she didn’t complain. After all, she could be hot, humid, and airless in a Florida swamp with alligators circling her.
The plushy decay of humus under the trees gave off a thick, sleepy smell when they disturbed it with the deeply patterned soles of their work boots, and even the avian warblers singing in the hedge sounded lethargic. The birdsong stuttered to a complete halt once she and the cat were inside the prickly cleft and brushing the vines with her wide load of canvas totes. The cautious birds didn’t resume until the human and cat had escaped into the oak clearing on the far side.
Curious about their progress, Chloe made a slight detour toward the slave cemetery to see how the boys were getting on. The dried oak leaves crunched underfoot in an appealing manner and soon drew Roger’s erratic attention. He came frisking over to investigate.
Her feet slowed to a stop. Suddenly and unexplainably apprehensive, Chloe waited just outside the cemetery enclosure to see if any ghosts would come. She held her breath for a count of ten, but none were stirring on that hot morning. If any spirits lingered here, they had apparently been mown down with the saplings and brambles, if they had ever had the nerve to rise up in the first place. What was left behind was a sad plot that had a certain dignity, if not the beauty, in common with the family’s grander sepulchers.
Though there were no spirits about, Chloe still hesitated to enter the half-cleared cemetery. Something about it felt familiar and vaguely terrifying. She looked about slowly, noting that the grieving dogwoods had given in and dropped their blossoms on the humble graves during the night, and even the mighty oaks looked forlorn.
Whatever her qualms, they did not affect the cat. He apparently wasn’t put off by the skinny crosses sticking up like ancient, pathetic ribs out of the matted earth, but went straight over to the south corner where discarded brambles were tossed carelessly into a heap, and began to dig. Chloe squinted and thought she saw evidence of disturbed earth beneath the brambles and perhaps a headstone lying flat on the ground. The boys had probably had to quarry the brambles out by the roots, possibly upsetting one of the markers. She really should go in and set it back upright, but she didn’t know where the marker belonged and—
And she didn’t want to. The thought of venturing into the cemetery was raising gooseflesh on her arms and making her feel queasy. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t force herself inside the fenced enclosure.
The newly opened ground theory was proven true, while Chloe stood at the gate, dithering. Roger had slipped under the vines and taken up furious excavation in the loose soil by the prickly canes. So intent was he that he was in danger of getting his fat tail tangled in the dying brambles. Chloe warned him to stop, but she was—as always—ignored.
“Roger, come out right now or I will come in and get you!” she threatened. But it was a bluff. She didn’t want to go inside the cemetery to fetch him.
The cat began to turn in circles and then hunched down close to the ground.
Assuming he was obeying an urgent call from nature, Chloe politely averted her eyes and stepped back a pace, calling out again to the cat to come away, though she had little hopes of being attended since Roger would see nothing sacrilegious about what he was doing and was as stubborn as all the other Patricks. She continued to walk backwards from the cat’s privy excavations with eyes averted, halting only when she sensed Rory behind her.
“Any ghosts out today?” he asked, echoing her earlier notion.
“Not a one,” she said with forced cheer, even though it was eerie how he guessed her thoughts. “The boys have been busy digging up those brambles. I guess the roots went down deep. One of the markers has gone over. It isn’t a cross or a regular stela with a deep subterranean post. At least, I don’t think it is.”
Rory looked past her.
“I wonder why they did that. It would be better to use a defoliant and then burn it.” Rory snorted. “Will you look at that cat?”
Chloe lifted her eyes and saw Roger rolling ecstatically in the rich soil. She was relieved that was all he was doing.
“You’d think it
was fresh catnip in there, not grave dirt.”
As though understanding her amused words, Roger froze, let out a tremendous sneeze and jumped to his feet. He spun about once, his hackles raised in an alarming manner, and he went streaking past them toward the family plots. He was hissing at an invisible enemy inside the graveyard.
A phrase from an old malediction popped into Chloe’s head:
I do feel beneath my feet the licks of hellfire.
For one odd moment, Chloe found that her mouth was dry and her muscles were tensed as though she, too, was preparing for flight from the tiny graveyard. She turned to face Rory, trying to determine if he felt that anything was amiss.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her instead. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes,” she lied, swallowing a couple times in an effort to relieve her parched throat. The sight of her companion helped. He had rolled back his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt. He looked like the answer to a lover’s dream—provided that the lover was dreaming of a half-naked chest dusted in red-gold curls. It was enough to jump-start her salivary glands and give her overstimulated imagination something else to chew on. “I guess the heat is still a shock. I must be acclimatizing more slowly than usual.”
That was a weak excuse. The weather in Virginia wasn’t that different from Georgia.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The glance that passed over her was far from lover-like and adoring, though there was a certain sympathy in it. “Or some facsimile thereof.”
“No ghosts.” She forced herself to smile. “Maybe it was just the cat walking over those sorry graves. Or that awful Dadd painting in my room. I’ve put it away in the closet,” she confessed.
Rory looked at her for another moment.
“Emotional sensibilities must be a liability in this line of work,” he said, turning away and starting back for the family cemetery. He lowered his voice and quoted: “ ‘There must be an end to all temporal things . . . They are entombed in the urns and sepulchers of mortality.’ ”
Writ on Water Page 10
