The Haunting of Josie (17 page)

“I think you’re right.”

“Say hello to Josie for me. Bye, Marc.”

As soon as he set the phone down, Josie said intensely, “If you don’t
tell
me—”

Marc reached for her hand and smiled apologetically. “Sorry, love. It just kind of…floored me. It seems you were right after all. Luke didn’t kill himself.”

He reported Tucker’s findings, including the quote from Colin Andrews’s suicide note. “Tucker says he’d take it public, and I agree. God knows if we have enough proof to convince anyone other than the family—but at least we’ll know the truth.”

“I’m glad Luke didn’t kill himself,” Josie said. Then a thought occurred to her. “You know…if I had written a Dear John letter, and right afterward my former lover killed himself, I think I’d probably feel guilty. Very guilty. Maybe that’s what Luke wants us to do—tell Joanna she didn’t drive him to suicide.”

“Yah,” Pendragon said.

Marc looked at the cat, started to comment, and then apparently thought better of it. He looked back at Josie. “I’m game if you are. How do we find out if someone named Joanna lived around here fifty years ago—and might be here now?”

Josie considered that a minute, then smiled. “We call the nearest church and have a chat with the minister.”

Marc returned her smile. “You’re brilliant. No wonder I love you so much. Where’s the phone book? Or—do they list churches in phone books?”

“It’s over there on the lower shelf of that table. And, yes, they list churches. In the Yellow Pages,” she told him dryly. “Another sad comment on the times we live in.”

“I don’t know,” Marc said philosophically as he went to get the phone book, “maybe it’s just efficiency.”

“The watchword of modern times,” she murmured.

Marc grinned at her and said, “You call. A woman looking for another woman is much more likely to meet with cooperation; I could be an exhusband or a serial killer.”

“Or a salesman,” Josie offered more prosaically.

“Almost as bad…”

They had debated: call first, or just appear? Either way could be argued, and was, but it was already mid-afternoon and both of them wanted to meet Joanna. Just appearing won out over calling, mainly because there was too much to explain over the phone, and seeing—especially seeing Marc—might prove the easiest way to broach a difficult subject.

So they got into Marc’s BMW and set out for Blue Meadow, a thriving Thoroughbred horse farm a few miles away that was in the process of being sold.

The minister Josie had reached on her third try had been elderly and very helpful. Of course he remembered Joanna Canfield and her fine husband, Roger. Why, hadn’t he baptized their little girl—goodness, it must have been more than fifty years ago? Roger had been wounded in the war, and they’d moved away afterward because…yes, because he hadn’t been able to ride anymore and couldn’t bear being around the horses. His brother had run the place, and after that a nephew, and, yes, he remembered now that he’d heard the Canfields were getting out of the horse business. Selling the place, what a shame. Why, yes, Joanna had been in church last Sunday, so good to see her again. She’d come back to say good-bye to her daughter’s birthplace and perhaps claim a few mementos. Then she would be returning to California, where she’d lived all these years even after her husband had died….

Blue Meadow was indeed a thriving place, with neat white fences and, even this time of year, green pastures. The long driveway was straight between two such pastures dotted with horses; Marc took a fork that led to the sprawling house rather than stables, and when they reached it, he parked three car lengths behind a huge moving van.

As they got out of the car Josie murmured, “If we’d waited much longer, we might have been too late.”

Marc nodded agreement and put a hand at the small of her back as they went up the walk. They had to dodge a moving sofa, human legs staggering beneath it, then found themselves peering through the open double doors into a foyer.

“Excuse us?” Josie called.

A slim woman of about thirty appeared, her jeans faded and blond hair caught back with a ribbon. She looked at the clipboard she carried, then at them, clearly harassed.

“If you’re selling something—” she said warningly in a friendly but beleaguered tone.

“No,” Josie replied, sticking with Marc’s theory and doing all the talking. “We’ve obviously come at a rotten time, but—is it possible for us to speak to Mrs. Joanna Canfield?”

The blonde was frowning as she looked at Josie, a faintly puzzled where-have-I-seen-you-before expression in her blue eyes. But then she smiled. “Sure, I guess so. Come on—she’s probably hiding out in the sunroom; it’s the only place the movers haven’t gotten to yet.”

They followed her through the huge and mostly empty house to where French doors stood open to admit them to a bright, plant-filled sunroom. “Visitors, Gran,” the blonde called out, and then, as an ominous crash sounded from the front of the house, added hurriedly, “Oh, damn, excuse me—” and abandoned them.

Joanna Canfield was probably in her early seventies, silver-haired and still beautiful. Slender and petite, she was casually dressed—in jeans. And looked good in them.

Boy, what Luke missed.
Josie couldn’t help shaking her head a little, but then went still as Joanna turned from her contemplation of a dwarf tree to greet them.

She had gentle, sad eyes in a milky-pale complexion with astonishingly few wrinkles. Her eyes were pale violet.

Josie, who had encountered very few people with eyes that color, felt surprise—and then more than surprise. She was almost certain Joanna’s hair had been red in her youth. And there was more, an elusive familiarity….

“Are we related?” Joanna asked immediately, her musical voice puzzled.

“No.” Josie cleared her throat. “No, Mrs. Canfield, I don’t think so.”

That was when Joanna looked beyond Josie to Marc. It might have been fifty years, but clearly she had not forgotten. Her shock was obvious. “My God,” she murmured.

Marc came forward quickly to catch her arm and ease her into a wicker chair, because it was fairly obvious she didn’t trust her legs to support her.

“We should have called first,” Josie said. “We’re
so
sorry, really—”

Joanna shook her head a little, regaining control, and waved them to two more wicker chairs. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Marc’s face. “He had no children,” she murmured.

Marc answered the unspoken question. “No, Mrs. Canfield, he had none. Luke Westbrook was my grandfather’s brother. I’m Marc Westbrook. And this is Josie Douglas.”

“I see.” She drew a little breath and then seemed to realize how odd their visit was. “But—I don’t understand. Why are you here?”

Josie glanced at Marc, then reached into her voluminous shoulder bag and drew out the ribbon-bound letters. “We…thought you’d want to have these, Mrs. Canfield. We were looking through the attic at Westbrook and—and found them.”

This, too, had been debated, in the car on the way. Keep it simple, they’d decided. Play it by ear, but there was no need to bring Luke’s ghost into it unless absolutely necessary. For all they knew, Joanna Canfield would sooner believe in fire-breathing dragons than ghosts, and there was no reason to make the lady think they were a couple of lunatics.

Joanna took the letters and held them, stared down at them. She didn’t ask the obvious, if they’d read the letters, because the answer to that was evident. Instead she asked, “How did you find me?”

“The minister at Oak Grove Church,” Josie replied. “We didn’t tell him anything except that we were trying to find you, of course.”

“Of course.” She was still gazing at the letters, one thumb smoothing faded blue stationery.

Josie plunged ahead. “Mrs. Canfield, we found some other things, too, things Marc’s family knew nothing about. Things that seemed to us…pieces of a puzzle. Luke Westbrook’s journal. And a copy of a manuscript.”

“His journal?” She looked at Josie then and shook her head. “And one of his books? I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t…Why are you telling me this? It was all so long ago.”

Ignoring the question, Josie said, “That’s what made it difficult, of course, that it was so long ago. But we think we’ve finally managed to piece it together.” Quickly, without giving the older woman time to interrupt, she explained about Colin Andrews stealing Luke’s final book, and the suicide note Andrews had left that spoke of destroying genius.

Marc spoke then, saying quietly, “I’m going to make what happened that night public, Mrs. Canfield. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to prove, but I think it’s important that family—and others who cared about Luke—know the truth. He didn’t commit suicide.”

There was a long silence and then, her eyes fixed on his face, Joanna whispered, “You’re sure?”

“We’re sure.” Then he smiled. “Did he ever tell you what the Westbrook family motto is?”

“No.”

“It’s—Never Give Up. He wouldn’t have, Mrs. Canfield. He didn’t.”

In spite of everything, Josie couldn’t help shooting Marc a rueful look. If she’d known about that motto, she might have given in to his determination with a bit less of a fuss. One did not, after all, attempt to fight a family motto.

“I promise you,” Marc said to Joanna. “He didn’t commit suicide.”

Very slowly, she returned his smile, and her lovely eyes no longer held the shadows of sadness. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“We wanted you to know,” Josie said. “And now we’ll leave you in peace.”

“Very much in peace,” Joanna murmured.

Marc and Josie rose together, and Joanna looked from one to the other of them with speculation as she rose as well. “Are you two…?”

“Yes,” Marc said firmly. “We are.”

“So,” Joanna said, “Westbrook’s finally getting its redhead. The house, I mean. He always said it would.”

Josie looked at her for a moment, then said, “Mrs. Canfield, you wouldn’t happen to be missing a pet, would you? A big black cat?”

Faintly surprised, Joanna said, “Why, no, my dear. I love cats, but I’m terribly allergic. Can’t bear to have them around me. If you have one, it isn’t mine.”

“I was…just wondering,” Josie murmured.

“It’s almost enough,” she said much later that evening, “to make you believe in fate. I mean, that I’d pick this of all houses to come to; that you’d be here convalescing; and that Joanna Canfield would return home. All at the same point in time. Like…like things converging. Almost as if there was a guiding hand.”

She looked at Pendragon, on his chair, and frowned.

“Don’t even think it, please,” Marc begged her. “This whole thing has been strange enough without supposing he had a part in it.”

Pendragon opened one eye, looked at them, and said, “Yaaah,” in an affable tone. Then he closed the eye.

Josie couldn’t help laughing, but said half seriously, “If he goes away as mysteriously as he came, I’m going to convince myself he was a witch’s familiar just stopping by on his way to Halloween.”

“I’d be willing to believe almost anything by this point,” Marc told her. “Especially now that Westbrook has its redhead.”

It was a question, and Josie looked at him gravely. They had turned the lamps down low, and the firelight flickered over his handsome face and glimmered in the tarnished-silver eyes. For a moment she couldn’t say anything, and he went on in the same calm tone.

“Making Luke’s story public will be easy compared to vindicating your father. That’ll take some tricky footwork. Are you going to let me help you? After all, you helped with my family troubles. And if there’s anything I know, it’s how to put a legal case together.”

She knew what he was asking. And she knew that if she evaded the subject or put off deciding, Marc would simply wait. They would go on talking, and laughing, and making love. Tomorrow or the next day he would ask again, and if she was still not ready, he would go on waiting.

Never Give Up.

“You’ll have to go back to your practice soon,” she murmured, realizing only then, in that moment, that there had been much more room in her than she had ever guessed. Room for trust. Room for love. Room for Marc.

He shrugged. “Eventually. But Richmond isn’t that far away; I plan to spend my nights with you. And my weekends. And as many afternoons as I can manage. I love you, Josie.”

“That’s a good thing,” she heard herself say seriously. “Because I love you too.”

For a moment he didn’t move, a man fearful of breaking something precious. But then he did move, and she was in his arms.

“Thank God,” Marc said unsteadily into her hair.

“Thank Luke,” she said. And when he drew back to look at her, she said softly, “Marc, he came back from
death
to get somebody to tell the woman he loved that it wasn’t her fault he died. Once I understood that, I knew how important love is, how much we need it. I knew I couldn’t shut it out. I knew I didn’t want to anymore.”

He held her tightly for a moment, then rose and lifted her into his arms, and carried her toward the stairs.

But at the bottom of the stairs he stopped abruptly, and Josie realized he was staring toward the front parlor. She looked as well, not much surprised to see Luke there in the shadowy doorway. He was smiling at them. Then he gave a kind of bow, clearly gratitude, and faded back into the darkness.

Josie linked her fingers together behind Marc’s neck and looked at his dazed face. “I told you,” she said simply.

EPILOGUE

T
HE CAT REMAINED
until after Halloween. He stayed long enough to see them come home from an outing with glowing faces and shake rice out of their shoes. After that, however, he knew they could get along without him.

So he asked, one gray afternoon, to be let out the front door, and he thought they understood he wouldn’t be coming back, because both of them said good-bye and watched him, he knew, until he reached the pine woods. Then they went back into their nice house, with its nice nooks and crannies.

And he went on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KAY HOOPER is the award-winning author of
Sleeping with Fear, Hunting Fear, Chill of Fear, Touching Evil, Whisper of Evil, Sense of Evil, Once a Thief, Always a Thief,
the Shadows trilogy, and other novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is at work on her next book.