Ghost in Trouble (6 page)

“Oooh.” I knew I sounded appalled. “Heaven doesn't approve.”

Kay's expression was a mixture of disdain and perplexity. “What is with my subconscious? Séances may be stupid, but I doubt they rank as immoral. I had no idea I was such a prig.”

Prig! I reached out and gave her arm a sharp pinch.

“Ouch.” Kay looked at her arm. “Maybe I need a nightcap.” She popped from the chair, walked to a wet bar. As she filled a tumbler with ice, I put another glass next to hers. With scarcely a pause, she scooped more ice. “Sure. The more the merrier. Me and my little helper.” A line of single-serving bottles included Scotch, bourbon, and gin. She poured Scotch and added club soda.

I opened a little gin bottle.

She watched as a bottle of tonic water was lifted and poured. “I loathe gin and tonic.”

“I don't,” I answered sweetly. I carried the drink across the room.

Determinedly ignoring the moving glass, Kay stalked back to the desk. “Maybe I wasn't supposed to take a break. In fact, I don't need a drink.” She turned, marched to the sink, dumped the contents of the glass, and returned to the desk. “I freaking hope when I figure out what happened to Jack, my mind gets its groove back.” She slammed into the chair.

I took a sip. The glass tipped.

She covered her eyes with one hand.

“If it makes you feel better…” I swirled back into being.

She dropped her hand and swept me with a hostile glance. “At least you're better-looking than Poe's phantasms.”

“Faint praise is worse than no praise at all.” I took another sip. “Excellent gin.”

She tapped her fingers irritably on the desktop. “Okay. I get the message. I'm missing something. Obviously, I won't be rid of you until I figure out whatever it is I haven't figured out.”

“I'll help.” I pushed a hassock near the desk, settled on it. “How did you manage to be invited to stay here?”

“I didn't know Jack had died. I kept e-mailing to no answer. I knew something was wrong. I called. It was the day of Jack's funeral.” Her lovely face was stricken. “I ended up speaking to Diane. She told me he'd fallen down the balcony steps. I kept pressing her. I suppose I sounded incredulous. She kept talking about an accident. I remembered his e-mails. I knew he'd been murdered.” She snapped her fingers. “I knew it like that. It didn't take five minutes on the phone with Diane to know she was a patsy. I told her Jack had asked me to come this week and make plans for a book I was writing about him. I asked her if I could go ahead and come, that I'd promised him about the book. She agreed.” She looked around the lovely room. “I'm in the room where he stayed on his visit. It's as near to him now as I'll ever be. What happened tonight proves I was right. Someone pushed him, and someone's going to pay.”

“Why didn't you tell the police someone tried to kill you tonight?” My tone was both sharp and puzzled. She knew and I knew she had been lured to the cul-de-sac and the vase had been pushed. Yet she'd done everything in her power to prevent an investigation. Now that I realized she suspected Jack Hume was a murder victim, I felt bewildered. “What were you thinking? What's to keep the murderer from trying again?”

Her combative, on-top-of-everything pose slipped. She lifted a shaky hand, as if to push away my words, but fear glimmered in her eyes. She knew she'd missed death by an instant. “Don't you understand? If the police questioned people, everybody
would be scared. Some of them might not be willing to say anything about Jack. He blew into town and started upsetting applecarts. Nobody would admit they'd quarreled with him or were angry with him. As long as no one knows he was murdered, they'll answer my questions. I can find out everything that's been going on.”

I was exasperated. “The murderer won't be fooled.”

She brushed back a tangle of dark hair. “That's the gamble I have to take. But it may not be a gamble now. When no investigation is begun, it will be obvious I haven't told the police anything about Jack's death. The murderer will know I don't have any idea who killed him.”

“There's a small problem with that.”

She massaged one temple. “Okay, subconscious, give me a hint.”

I didn't mind telling her and she could take my appraisal as an internal warning if she wished. “You plan to ask a lot of questions. If you start to find out what led the murderer to push Jack, you'll be at risk again. This murderer seems to like accidents. If you discover too much, there may be another ‘accident' and this time you may not survive.”

“I won't tip my hand. But someone knows something that will lead to the murderer.”

I looked at her with growing admiration. She was exposing herself to danger. She was gambling with her life. But I understood. “You must have loved him very much.”

Tears filmed her dark eyes. “For so long. And yet I always knew that we were better apart.”

“However”—I was crisp—“Heaven doesn't want you to be at risk. I have a proposition.”

Her smile was crooked. “A message from one corner of my mind to another? Damn laborious.” She clamped fingers to her temples. “Come on, mind. All together now.”

I persevered. “Go home. Leave the detecting to me. If you stay here, you will be in danger if you get too close to the murderer.”

“Hey.” She bristled with indignation. “I can't believe I heard that.” She shook her head. “I've been called a lot of things, but I've never been called a coward. Especially not by myself.” The emphasis on the pronoun was marked.

I felt uneasy about Kay's mental confusion. Perhaps she would cope better if I disappeared. I swirled away.

She didn't even blink.

I returned.

Kay's gaze was steely. “Stuff yourself back into some far crevice of my brain. I'm here and here I stay.” She spoke fast and hard. Perhaps she felt that was the only way to communicate with the part of her mind that she credited with my appearances. Her gaze never left my face. “Tonight accomplished two things. The note on my pillow and the crash of the vase prove Jack was murdered. My acceptance of the vase as an accident should reassure everyone, maybe including the murderer, that I'm here because Jack hired me to write his life story.”

I was skeptical. “He doesn't sound like the kind of man who was that self-absorbed.”

Now Kay massaged both temples. “Will you keep quiet? You know—or you should unless my subconscious has completely lost its marbles—that story is pure fiction. He wanted me to write a book about his camp near Lake Nakuru: Five-Star Safaris, Jack Hume, Victoria Falls specialist. So, I'm perfectly safe. I'm a nonfiction writer, specialty biographies, most recent title a biography of Jerrie Cobb. I'm telling everybody here that I need information about Jack's last days in order to write the end of the story, then I'm traveling to Kenya. I can find out everything about what happened before he died. Plus the attack on me may give some clue to the identity of the murderer.”

She drew the pad near, began to write.

• 9. The note was placed on my pillow after I went downstairs for dinner at a quarter to seven. Any member of the household (Evelyn, Diane, Jimmy, the Phillipses, and Margo and Shannon) could have put the note there. Dinner guests were the family, Alison Gregory, Paul Fisher, and Gwen and Clint Dunham. Everybody but Fisher was at The Castle the night Jack died.
  

Kay looked pleased. “I asked Diane to invite them since I understood Jack had seen all of them during his visit. Alison Gregory has a gallery and Evelyn buys artwork from her. They are also quite good friends, Alison being no dummy.” Kay's tone was dry. “The Dunhams live next door and are longtime family friends. I asked Diane to include Paul Fisher because Jack may have talked to him about the photograph someone slipped beneath his door. Anyone who was at dinner could have pushed the vase. It would be easy for either of the Dunhams or Alison to return. I don't include Paul as a suspect because I understand he wasn't in Adelaide the night Jack died. I'll check that out to be sure.”

I wasn't convinced. “Someone in the house pushed the vase. I heard a door close when I reached the balcony.”

Kay shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. If a dinner guest left the note in my room, it would be easy to hurry up to the third floor and unlock a French door on the balcony. The Castle is old-fashioned. There's no alarm system. Later, someone could have approached the house, climbed the balcony steps, pushed the vase, then escaped through the house to avoid being seen in the garden. There are many ways out of the house on the ground floor.”

I glanced again at the list. “What do you know about the dinner guests?”

She sighed in relief. “That's why you're haunting me. I need to find out whether Jack had a connection to one of them. Nobody was very forthcoming tonight. I don't suppose it escaped anybody's notice that they had all, except Paul, been at The Castle the night Jack died. The conversation was pretty stiff. Alison Gregory talked about a traveling exhibit of Impressionists at the Oklahoma City Art Museum. No matter what I asked her, pretty soon she got back to the exhibit. I learned more about Monet than I ever wanted to know. As for the Dunhams, they had very little to say. She's a blonde with exquisite bone structure. She's been beautiful all of her life. Tonight she was distant. Polite enough, but clearly wishing she were elsewhere. Her husband's big and burly and looks like he's outside a lot, a ruddy face. You would have thought the art exhibit up in the City was the most fascinating thing Gwen Dunham had ever heard about. I did manage to ask how well she knew Jack. She looked surprised and murmured she thought they'd met years ago, but her memory wasn't too clear. Her husband just shook his head.”

Suddenly Kay yawned. She looked at the clock. It was shortly after three
A.M
. She yawned again. “I've done all I can do.”

I understood. A near escape from death had sent her adrenaline sky-high. Now the adrenaline had drained away and she was exhausted.

Kay pushed back the chair, walked toward the bed, turning off lights. She kicked off her shoes, and fully dressed, she dropped onto the bed.

I think she was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

I struggled, too, with fatigue. Being in the world is physically tiring. Appearing and disappearing consumes enormous energy, though I didn't think I would get any sympathy from Kay. I rubbed scratchy eyes. Before I slept, I wanted to explore the papers left behind by Jack Hume.

The ebony box still lay open on the desktop, next to Jack's e-mails. I lifted out the contents one by one. A passport. I opened it, saw a photograph of Jack Hume. I flipped through the pages. He was indeed well traveled, visiting London and Paris several times each year as well as many of the African countries adjoining Kenya. His only recent visit to the United States coincided with his arrival in Adelaide. There was a packet of letters from Kay. I did not read them.

A thick legal document turned out to be the trust provisions of his father, John J. Hume III. A handwritten sheet in masculine writing was tucked inside along with two business cards. The sheet was the beginning of a letter to Kay. The sheet wasn't dated.

Apparently, Jack had started the letter to her, then tucked it in the legal folder, intending to finish it later. I studied the business cards. On thick white stock with black printing:

 

P
AUL
F
ORBES
F
ISHER
, E
SQ.

F
ISHER
, B
ENTON, AND
B
ORELLI
, LLC

201 W. M
AIN
S
TREET

A
DELAIDE
, OK 74820

580.333.7942

 

The second card was a soft cream with dark blue lettering:

 

A
LISON
G
REGORY

G
REGORY
G
ALLERY

104 W
ISTERIA
L
ANE

A
DELAIDE
, OK 74820

580.333.6281

 

The second card carried a brief notation on the back:
2:30
P.M
. Leonard Walker.

The last item in the ebony box was a computer printout entitled
Hume Estate Artwork.
I scanned several single-spaced pages, a list of paintings, statuary, silver, and any other artworks in The Castle. The evaluations startled me. A painting by Gainsborough was valued at $640,000. My oh my.

I checked to see if anything was tucked between the pages of the list or the copy of the estate provisions sheets.

In Jack Hume's final e-mail, he was upset because a photograph had been slipped beneath the door of his room. What photograph and where was it?

Tomorrow I would ask Kay.

I replaced the items in the order in which I'd found them. Jack Hume's letter about his inheritance indicated that no one in the Hume family needed money, making it unlikely that Jack had been murdered for his estate.

Kay was focused on what Jack had discovered in his three
weeks at The Castle that made his murder essential. Tomorrow I would try again to convince her to leave the investigating to me.