Southern Ghost (9 page)

Annie understood his regret, but that wasn’t what mattered now. “How did Courtney know Delia and Carleton weren’t her parents?”

“She was clearing out Delia’s papers.” He stroked his beard. “I have to wonder, you know, if Delia intended for Courtney to know. Courtney was going through her mother’s things, packing a lot of them away, boxing up clothes to give to the Salvation Army. She found a blue silk letter case in
Delia’s bedside drawer. And in it, Courtney found a letter—a letter that made it clear that her father was Ross Tarrant.”

“And her mother?” Annie asked.

“No hint. At all.”

That was all he knew.

The lawyer gave them a copy of that letter and Max added it to the file. But, when they stood to go, Max had one more question.

“Just for the record,” he said quietly, “where were you, sir, from approximately four yesterday afternoon to, say, ten o’clock last night?”

Smithson stiffened. Bright patches of color stained his pale cheeks above his beard. Then, abruptly, he nodded. “Fair enough, Darling. I was in conference with a client from shortly after four until almost six. I had a quick dinner at the cafeteria across the street because I’m on the city council and I had to be there for a meeting at seven. The meeting didn’t end until eleven-thirty.” A dry smile. “Zoning generates enormous excitement.” He reached for a pad from his desk, scribbled names and numbers on it. “You can check these.” The angry patches faded away. He reached out, gripped Max’s hand. “I’m very fond of Courtney. You’ll find her, won’t you?”

Max pushed open the gate to the St. George Inn, holding it for Annie. In the street behind them, a car door slammed. Running footsteps thudded on the sidewalk.

“You! Hey, you!”

They paused and turned.

Annie felt a swift thrill of fear, because this was a man out of control. He was young—probably her own age—the kind of person who normally would be immediately accepted, well dressed in a pale-green, crisp summer cotton suit, well groomed with short auburn hair, unobtrusively attractive with open, frank features. But his necktie was bunched at his throat, his suit jacket swung unbuttoned, a red gash on his chin from a shaving cut still dimpled with blood, his brown
eyes flared wide and wild, and his chest heaved as he struggled for breath.

“You—you’re Max Darling?” He was at the gate now, and no one existed in the world for him at that moment but himself and Max.

Max nodded and his accoster grabbed his jacket with a shaking hand. “Goddammit, where’s Courtney? I’ll
kill
you if you’ve hurt her, I swear to God I will!”

His eyes full of pity, Max stood unresisting in the young man’s grasp. “I’m looking for Courtney, too. My wife and I both are.”

Annie chimed in and that got his attention. “Listen, my husband had nothing to do with Courtney’s disappearance. She hired him to find out about her family, and we’re doing everything we can to find her. Don’t waste our time. And don’t waste your time! Do you know who’s trying to hang her disappearance on my husband? The police chief! He wants to keep everything quiet for the Tarrants. Courtney hired Max to find out what actually happened the day her real father died. We’re still trying. If you want to find Courtney, the best thing you can do is make sure the Chastain police do their work.”

Finally, he calmed down enough to listen. They took him to their suite and, while Max made coffee, they heard his story. His name was Harris Walker, and he was a young lawyer in Beaufort (Ogilvy, Walker & Crane).

He paced up and down in their suite. “I’ve known Courtney all my life. She lived next door.” The shadow of a smile. “Irritating little kid, always hanging around the big guys, wanting to do whatever we did. I always called her Skinny. Drove her crazy.” He looked at Annie with eyes that held a thousand memories, and Annie winced at his pain.

“Bullheaded when she was a little kid. Bullheaded now.” His chin quivered. “I told her that. I told her to
burn
that goddam letter. What difference did it make who her dad was? It was a long time ago. It was other people’s lives. It didn’t have anything to do with us. But she was set on coming over here. So she hired you.” He looked at Max. “Now she’s gone,
nobody knows where. What the hell are you doing about it?” He was combative again.

When Max finished an account of the past twenty-four hours, Harris scowled. “Jesus, you haven’t accomplished anything, have you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He took a gulp of coffee and banged his cup down on its saucer. “Listen, I’m going back down to the river. And I’m going to round people up. Start a real search. Goddammit, it doesn’t do any good to talk to people. We have to look.”

After Walker slammed out of their suite, Max reached for the phone. “Going to call Barb,” he said briefly to Annie.

Annie dropped into a needlepoint chair and picked up the family tree of the recent generations of the Tarrants, but she listened to Max’s conversation.

“We’re in a race against time, Barb, and we need more help. I’ve heard about a pretty good private detective in Savannah, Louis Porter. Hire him.” Crisply, Max described Harris Walker. “Yeah, that’s right. Harris Walker. I want everything possible about him—and I want to know where he was from four o’clock on last night.”

Annie shivered. Surely not.

“… and get Porter busy on the people who were in Tarrant House on May ninth, 1970. You’ll find the list in the Kimball file. Okay. Anything from your end?” Max leaned back against the bolster on the four-poster mahogany bed, then immediately sat up straight. “I’ll be damned. Now, that’s interesting. Annie and I went by her house this morning. Okay, Barb, we’re on our way.”

Annie put down the sketch of the family trees.

“Come on, Annie. Miss Dora has sent a royal summons.”

“About time you got here.” The tiny figure in the long black bombazine dress and high-topped black leather shoes was the Dora Brevard Annie recalled, without pleasure, from previous meetings. The reptilian black eyes with their flicker of intelligence and disdain gazed commandingly at them. Shaggy silver
hair streamed from the sharp-boned, wrinkled face. Half-gloved, clawlike hands grasped the familiar silver-headed ebony cane.

The old lady turned and led the way with surprising speed across the age-smoothed heart pine hall into a drawing room where time had stood still for a century.
Bois-de-rose
silk hangings decorated the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two baluster-stemmed Georgian candlesticks rested on either side of a Queen Anne gaming table. For how many generations, Annie wondered, had the table stood on that same spot? And had the golden-cream candles been there for years and years, too? A Georgian settee was to the left of the fireplace, two Georgian chairs to the right, with a soft rose Aubusson rug between. The elegant Georgian mantel shone as white as an egret’s wing. It was a beautiful room.

Miss Dora sped to the nearest chair, inclined her head briefly toward the settee, and waited until they sat opposite her, for all the world, Annie thought resentfully, like children called to account by a strict headmistress.

“Well?” The sturdy cane thumped sharply on the floor.

“You wanted to see us, Miss Dora,” Max prompted.

Her glittering eyes settled coldly on his face for a long moment, then she reached into a capacious pocket and, with a rustle, pulled out a square of neatly clipped newsprint and a thick-lensed pince-nez. She perched the delicate gold-rim glasses on her nose, held the clipping close, and began to read in her sandpapery voice:

Heiress Disappears; Police Are Puzzled

A Beaufort heiress, Miss Courtney Kimball, 21, has been reported missing, according to Chastain police.

Police Chief Harry Wells announced today that a Broward’s Rock businessman, Max well Darling, had an appointment with Miss Kimball on Wednesday night, and that Darling came to police with Miss Kimball’s handbag claiming he found it at the site of their scheduled meeting,
but that Miss Kimball never arrived.

Miss Kimball’s car, a 1992 cream-colored BMW, was found by police late last night at Lookout Point. Bloodstains were found on the front seat.

Chief Wells said Darling was held for questioning when police discovered him at Miss Kimball’s apartment Wednesday night shortly after he had reported her missing to police. The apartment showed signs of a search.

Chief Wells reported that the police laboratory confirmed the stains in the car are from human blood.

Darling was released late Wednesday night on his own recognizance.

Efforts by this reporter to contact Darling, owner of Confidential Commissions, a personal consultation company on Broward’s Rock Island, have been unsuccessful.

An all-points—

Annie couldn’t take any more. She jumped to her feet. “That louse. That rat. That slimebag—”

“That will do, Annie,” Miss Dora snapped. “It won’t help to have a hissy fit at Harry Wells. The damage is done. Your young man is in a pack of trouble, and you both might as well get ready to face it.” There was more than a hint of satisfaction in her thin voice.

Annie opened her mouth, looked into Miss Dora’s penetrating, raisin-dark eyes, and abruptly sat down.

“Good. I’m glad to see you can sometimes be sensible. Now,” Miss Dora cleared her throat, “to continue”:

An all-points bulletin has been issued. Miss Kimball is described as a slender, blue-eyed blonde. The missing woman is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Carleton Kimball of Beaufort, one of that city’s oldest and most prominent families. The family attorney, Roger Smithson III, declined comment today on what might have brought Miss Kimball to Chastain.

Miss Kimball arrived in Chastain last week, renting an apartment unit behind the St. George Inn. Mrs. Caroline Gentry, owner of the inn, said,
“Oh, this is so shocking. Such a charming young woman. She said she was in Chastain to do I research on her family history.”

Miss Dora removed the pince-nez, folded the news clipping into a neat square, and returned both to her black bombazine pocket. She whipped the cane up and pointed it peremptorily at Max. “Why was Courtney meeting you?”

“I had undertaken a commission for her, Miss Dora.” Max looked intently at the old lady. “The landlady at St. George Inn said you recommended the inn to Courtney. That means you and Courtney met. Why?”

Miss Dora’s eyes sparkled. Her sudden cackle made Annie’s spine crinkle.

“Not so mealymouth as you look, are you, young Max?” The cane dipped, as if in reluctant recognition that she had met her equal. “Polite enough, but nobody’s fool. Yes, I can see why you might wonder. Well.” Miss Dora sat upright in the prim chair, her shoulders as straight as any soldier on parade. There was a contained ferocity eerily like that of obsessive Miss Rosa Coldfield in
Absalom, Absalom
!, Annie thought with a shudder, remembering William Faulkner’s splendid novel of gothic passions and doom. “There’s more to this than meets the eye. Much, much more.”

“Do you know who Courtney’s parents were?” Annie interjected impulsively.

The shrewd black eyes focused on Annie. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” And she cackled again.

“Miss Dora, you know more about Chastain than anyone.” Annie felt as if she were on the verge of great discoveries. “Do you know what happened to Judge Tarrant and Ross Tarrant and—”

Miss Dora thumped the cane once, resoundingly. “Just wait, young miss. That’s you all over, fly off like a flibbertigibbet chicken trying to go after all the grain at once. That way, you end up with nothing. First things first.” She pursed her lips into a tight bow. “There is evil abroad.” Her whispery voice was as low and deep as water rushing through a cavern.
“I won’t have any more misery. Too much misery’s been visited already.”

The old, implacable voice hung in the elegant room like the echo of funeral bells. Miss Dora’s face, crosshatched like parchment, looked for all the world like a skull unearthed from an ancient grave.

Annie shivered.

Abruptly, the tiny old lady was on her feet. The black cane swept toward them. “Come with me.”

Annie and Max looked at each other in surprise as she darted out into the hall, then hurried to follow.

Miss Dora thumped down the central hallway to an enormous door. She pulled the silver handle and stepped out onto the back piazza.

As she and Max joined their elderly hostess, Annie’s eyes widened. For a moment, she had no thought but for the beauty that lay before them. The magnificent garden reached all the way to the river, a paradise of scent and color. Delicate lavender wisteria bloomed against mossy brick walls to either side. A glorious profusion of azaleas, pink and rose and crimson and purple and yellow and white, ran in dazzling swaths all the way to the cliff’s edge.

She started when Miss Dora’s wiry fingers fastened on her wrist.

“These homes along the bluff”—the cane swung in an arc to her left—“were built when the river was king. This”—her silver head jerked to indicate the wide door behind them—“was where visitors were welcomed. Oh, the excitement when the wide-bottom canoes came into view, the eagerness with which they awaited the latest news from Savannah—the price of rice, the most recent ship from England, who the governor favored, what lovely daughter would wed and whom—gone, all gone. Only the ghosts remain.”

Her voice sank at the last into a husky, chilling whisper.

“Sometimes—when the wind is right—you can hear laughter and the clink of glasses and faintly—very faintly—strings from a harpsichord.”

The breeze rustled the leaves of the nearby magnolia. Suddenly,
the sweet scents from the garden—from the magnolia and the wisteria and the banana shrub and the thick white blossoms of the pittosporum—caught in Annie’s throat, choked her.

The cane thumped against the wooden porch. The cold fingers tightened on Annie’s wrist. “Ghosts.” Ebony eyes looked from Annie to Max. “Are they real? Or are they memories? I didn’t hear the cry the night Amanda died.”

Was the old woman mad? Was she caught up in a family’s demise, chained to memories of graves and worms and epitaphs?

Miss Dora’s mouth trembled. “My favorite niece. Such a pretty, lighthearted girl. Everyone was surprised when she married Augustus Tarrant. He was close to thirty and she a girl of eighteen. Everyone said what a fine man, what a good man. True enough. But too old to marry a young girl. And three sons so quickly. She moved through the days and years quietly. Then, it was like a second youth, that year before Ross died. Amanda bloomed. A light in her eyes, a smile on her lips. But when Ross died, the light went out and she was an old woman. I would see her in the evening, walking along the bluff. …” The cane pointed toward the river. “They found her body at the foot of the cliff, a year to the day that Ross died.”