Southern Ghost (3 page)

In the first painting, a slender young woman in a nightgown and housecoat stood midway between the living room of the playhouse, where flames flickered in the fireplace, and the indoor swimming pool. She stared in horror at the body lying next to the pool, so close, indeed, that one arm dangled over the side. The dead woman was middle-aged and expensively dressed. Her heavy blond hair, usually worn in a coronet braid, spread loose on the tiles.

In the second painting, the gully was choked with vegetation, honeysuckle and wild grape, dogwood and redbud, flowering shrubs and looping vines. A small area, down one side of the gully, showed the effects of many trampling feet, the grasses bent, vines torn away. An attractive middle-aged woman watched in dismay as a younger woman reached toward a blood-spattered clump of Spanish dagger to pick up a black satin ribbon with an old-fashioned Victorian gold locket. The locket’s front decoration was a spray of lilies of the valley, the stems and leaves made up of tiny encrusted emeralds, the bells of pearls. A bowknot of rubies tied the spray of flowers.

In the third painting, a young woman, terror on her face, stared at a fog-wreathed, grim, gray Victorian house. A bloody kitchen knife was impaled in the front door. Six old-fashioned oval portraits circled the house. Each was named. The portrait at the top, labeled Pauline, was of a middle-aged woman with old ivory skin, black eyes, black hair in bangs, and a cold and unfriendly gaze. Clockwise were Sophie, plump, overrouged cheeks and blond hair piled high with too many curls; Anne, short curly black hair with distinctive wings of white at the temples and a warm smile; Elise, elegant and lovely with haunted eyes; Marthe, pleasant looking with a good-humored grin; and Rose, young and vulnerable with blue eyes and shiny brown hair.

In the fourth painting, the skyward gleam of the Bentley’s headlights pierced the inky darkness of the night, cruelly illuminating
the fatal embrace of the Bentley and the Mercedes as they arced over the side of the cliff to plummet down into the rocks and the sea below. Two men and a woman watched, transfixed. In a hollow nearby, the little boy wrapped in a man’s coat didn’t stir from his unnatural sleep, despite the noise of the crash and the frenzied licking of his face by a large mongrel dog.

In the fifth painting, there was a strange tableau in the exquisitely appointed museum room with its array of gorgeously restored Egyptian antiquities. A young woman with dark eyes, olive skin, and a heart-shaped face framed by masses of thick black curls raised a mace as the handsome older man approached. Coming up behind the man was a figure clothed all in black with a gun held firmly in one hand.

Generations of readers loved these gothic adventures. Perhaps she should pick out one of her old favorites and take it home to while away the empty evening hours while her husband pursued the work ethic. (Max?) Not, of course, that she had to have dinner with Max every night to be happy, but …

Annie glanced up at the rows of cheerful mugs with the titles and authors inscribed in bright-red flowing script. She needed a mug that would brighten her empty evening. Perhaps Margaret Scherf’s first Martin Buell mystery,
Always Murder a Friend.
Or Annie’s favorite by Constance and Gwenyth Little,
The Great Black Kanba.
How about the zany humor in
Lion in the Cellar
by Pamela Branch? Or would her spirits improve if she spent an hour with Ellie and Ben in
Mum’s the Word
by Dorothy Cannell?

“Perhaps,” wafted the husky voice, “I am somehow lacking.”

Annie damn near jumped out of her skin. Jerking around, she gazed into limpid dark-blue eyes. “Where the he—Laurel, where did you come from? I didn’t hear the door.” Annie tried not to sound too startled and accusing, but, honestly, if Laurel didn’t stop materializing without warning…

Her mother-in-law gave a lilting sigh. Anyone who didn’t
believe sighs could lilt just hadn’t dealt with Laurel. The lucky devils.

Her alarm past, Annie surveyed her gorgeous—yes, that was the only appropriate descriptive adjective for Laurel—mother-in-law and smiled. How did Laurel manage always to appear young, fresh, and vibrant, no matter how bizarre her get up? On Annie, the baggy tweed suit and mottled hornrims, along with a stenographer’s notebook and freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil, would have looked like a grade school librarian’s trophies from a rummage sale. On Laurel, the effect was enchanting. The horn-rims gave a piquant accent to her elegant patrician features and shining golden hair (Dammit, how could anyone look so marvelous with hair drawn back in a tight, no-nonsense bun?), the droopy tweeds fell in becoming folds against her svelte figure.

“You see, I have to wonder if it’s me,” Laurel continued earnestly. “Annie, would you say that I am not
simpatico
?”

Annie’s smile broadened to a fond grin. “Laurel, nobody would say you are not
simpatico.
” And also flaky, but this thought Annie didn’t share. Off-the-wall. Just one step (which way?) from certifiable. But, always and ever,
simpatico
—to people, to animals ranging from anteaters to dolphins to whales, to situations, to the whole damn world, when you came down to it.

But those dark-blue eyes, so unnervingly like other eyes that lately, when business was mentioned, slid evasively away from her own … Annie struggled back to the present, determined to focus on Laurel.

“… have always tried to be so open to experience, so
welcoming.
If you know what I mean?”

Annie deliberately turned her thoughts away from Laurel’s five marriages. And why, after so many trips to the altar, was Laurel persisting in not marrying their neighbor, Howard Cahill, who would be such an attractive father-in-law, so stable, so respectable?

“… so
disappointed
when Alice didn’t come.”

It was not the first time in their acquaintance, which was
surely long in content if not in time, that Annie was left staring at Laurel in hopeless confusion.

Alice?

Who was Alice? Had they been talking about someone named Alice?

“Alice?” she murmured uncertainly.

“Oh, my dear.” A wave of a graceful hand, the pink-tinted nails glossed to perfection. “Certainly you know all about Alice.”

Alice Springs? Alice in Wonderland? Alice Blue Gown? Annie pounced on the latter. “Alice Blue Gown?” she proposed hopefully. It was just offbeat enough to be the answer.

But Laurel was pursuing her own thoughts, which, understandably, could well occupy her fully. Annie had seen the day when Laurel’s thoughts had occupied many minds more than hers. But it was better not to dwell upon the past. Though that period—the one with saints—had held its own unique charms. It was at moments such as this, indeed, that Annie herself was likely to call upon the excellent advice of Saint Vincent Ferrer. (
Ask God simply to fill you with charity, the greatest of all virtues; with it you can accomplish what you desire.
) Annie surely needed heaps of charity in order to attain patience, a definite requisite for an amiable relationship with her mother-in-law.

“…thirteen times backward. I know I did it right. I was counting.” Laurel gnawed a shell-pink lip in perplexity. “Annie, do you suppose I could have miscounted?”

“Certainly not,” Annie assured her.

Palms uplifted, despite the notebook and No. 2 pencil, Laurel exclaimed, “Then it’s quite beyond me! Because Alice definitely didn’t come.”

Annie decided to explore this cautiously. “You were expecting her?”

Her mother-in-law dropped the notebook and pencil on the nearest table, opened her carryall, and pulled out a sheaf of Polaroid pictures, the bulky self-developing camera, and several road maps. “It just came to me—you know the way things do”—an enchanting smile—“that it would be so
useful
to take photos on the spot. And, of course, if anyone should be there, how wonderful to be able to show skeptics.
Seeing
is, as someone once said so cleverly,
believing.
” The golden head bent over the pile of photographs. “I’m marking the exact date and time on the back of each picture. It’s easy as pie with the tripod and one of those clever electronic controls—so magical, just like the television remote—so I can be in the pictures, too.” She beamed at Annie and handed her a photograph.

Annie was halfway to a smile when she felt her face freeze. Oh, God. It looked like … Surely it wasn’t …

“Laurel.” Annie swallowed tightly and stared at the photo of—

“… really, one of my better pictures. Of me, don’t you think?”

—Laurel gracefully draped on a marble slab atop a grave, chin cupped in one hand, smiling wistfully toward the camera.

“It would have been quite
perfect
if Alice had come.” She stepped close beside Annie, and the scent of violet tickled Annie’s nose. “See. There’s her name. That’s all they put on the slab. Just ‘Alice.’”

“Alice,” Annie repeated faintly. “She’s dead?”

“Of course she’s dead!” Laurel exclaimed. “Otherwise,” she asked reasonably, “how could she be a
ghost
? And it would have been so convenient! It would be so easy to visit her often. It’s a delightful trip from here to Murrells Inlet, and the All Saints Cemetery is lovely, Annie, just lovely. So many people have seen Alice after circling her grave thirteen times backward, then calling her name or lying atop the slab. I did both,” she confided. A sudden frown. “Perhaps that was the problem. Too much. But”—a winsome smile replaced the frown—“I took some lovely notes.” She patted the notebook in satisfaction. “I do intend to devote a good deal of space to Alice. After all, it’s such a heartrending story, a young woman in love, separated from her beloved by her family because they thought he wasn’t suitable, spirited away from her beloved home to school in Charleston. One final night of gaiety at the St. Cecilia Ball, then stricken with illness and when they brought her home, they found her young man’s ring on the
pale-blue silk ribbon around her neck, and her brother took it and threw it away, and while she was dying and delirious she called and called for the ring. Is it any wonder,” Laurel asked solemnly, “that Alice is often seen in her old room at The Hermitage or walking in the gardens there? Everyone
knows
she’s looking for her ring.” A gentle sigh, delicate as a wisp of Spanish moss. “Ah, Love … Its power cannot be diminished even by the grave.”

If there was an appropriate response to that, Annie didn’t know it, so she tried to look sympathetic and interested while glancing unobtrusively toward the clock.

Of course, anyone attuned enough to subtleties to seriously expect to communicate with ghosts wasn’t likely to miss a glance at a clock, no matter how unobtrusive.

“Oh, dear, I had no idea it was so late. I must
fly.
” Swiftly, those graceful hands whipped the photographs, camera, and maps back into the embroidered carryall. “My duties are not yet done for the day.” Laurel backed toward the storeroom door, smiling beneficently. “Give my love to dear Max. I know you two would adore to have me join you for dinner, of course you would, but I do believe that mothers, especially mothers-in-law, should remember that the young must have Their Own Time Together. I try hard not to forget that. Of course, with my commitment to my Work, it’s unlikely that I should ever be underfoot.” Laurel had backpedaled all the way to the storeroom doorway. “I do believe my book shall be quite unique. It’s just a scandal that South Carolina’s ghosts have yet to be interviewed. Can you believe that oversight? All of these books are told from the viewpoint of the persons who saw the ghost and I ask you, should they be featured just because they happen to be present when a ghost comes forth—that’s a good term, isn’t it”—the doorway framed Laurel’s slender form for an instant—“perhaps that should be my title,
Coming Forth.
Oh, I like that.” She was out of sight now, but the throaty tone, a combination of Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, and wood nymph, carried well. “Do have a delightful dinner, my darlings.” The back door opened and closed.

It seemed awfully quiet after Laurel was gone.

Annie, of course, had had plenty of time to call out and say Max wasn’t coming home for dinner tonight and she and Laurel could drop by the Club.

It wasn’t, of course, that she didn’t want to tell anybody (and especially not Laurel?) not only that Max wasn’t coming home, but Annie didn’t have any idea where he was.

Or with whom.

The South Carolina Low Country has many charms—a seductive subtropical climate with a glorious profusion of plant life including flower-laden shrubs, lush carpets of wildflowers, and seventy-five-foot loblolly pines, abundant wildlife ranging from deer to alligators, and an easy-paced life-style characterized by graciousness and the loveliest accent in all of America—but the coastal road system, once off the interstates, is not one of them. The narrow two-lane blacktops curve treacherously through pine groves and skirt swamps, affording few chances to pass.

Max leaned out the window of his Maserati, straining in vain to peer around the empty horse trailer bouncing behind an old Ford pickup. Every so often he glanced at the clock in the dash. Events had conspired against him. The ferry was late leaving Broward’s Rock. He’d chafed at the delay; then, once on the mainland, he’d realized he’d better stop for gas. Laurel was in the habit of borrowing his car and this time she’d returned it with the gas gauge damn near a dead soldier. The little country gas station, perhaps not a good choice, had been jammed. He wondered if the attendants were selling drugs on the side or maybe the crowd had something to do with the cerise cabin festooned with streamers advertising “Tanning Booths.” So much for bucolic innocence.

Every minute lost made Max more frantic, even though he was sure the deaths Courtney Kimball had asked him to investigate were exactly what they appeared to be, just as he’d told her in the report he made yesterday. When he’d concluded, she’d asked sharply, “You didn’t find anything out of order? Anything at all?” He’d spent several hours in dusty records at
the county courthouse, studying files from the coroner’s office. They confirmed the information he’d found in old news stories. That’s what he told Courtney. She looked at him, her eyes dark with unhappiness. “There has to be a way—” She broke off, seemed to acquiesce, paid his fee. He’d thought that was the end of it.