Trace Their Shadows (19 page)

“Uncovered anything of interest?” she asked.

Martin stood up and gave her a friendly smile. “Glad to see you again, Miss,” he said. He nodded toward the tarp. “You can see what we’ve found so far. There’s some brass buttons and a brass belt buckle. Some glass beads, too.”

Brandy and John squatted beside the canvas to peer down at the pathetically few remnants of Eva Stone’s clothing. They had been rinsed and lay drying in the feeble morning sun, a few yards from her burial site. Brandy tried to suppress the grisly memory of the skeleton.

Leaning forward, she inspected the cache. The number of greenish buttons surprised her. She counted ten. “These must have gone all down the front or back of a dress,” she said. A piece of corroded metal might once have been a buckle. Beside it, a cluster of beads caught the light and, through the dull film that coated the surface, shone a soft blue. But Brandy looked hardest at the pinkish scrap of material. The witness Charlotte who saw the ghost said it wore something white at the neck, and then something red.

“Funny thing,” Martin said, tipping back his hat and scratching his head with one hand. “These things weren’t found where we expected to find them.” He gestured toward the area where stakes marked the site and dimensions of the bones. “They weren’t where the skeleton was. We found them over here, a good distance away and all bunched together.”

“What do you think that means?” John asked, rising.

“Well, to put it bluntly, it looks like the dress wasn’t on the victim when she was buried.”

Brandy wondered about a possible rape, impossible to prove now. She turned to another concern. “There’s been a lot of rumors about unusual sightings here,” she said. “Anything interesting to report in that line?”

The deputy paused, then looked directly at Brandy, his eyes troubled. “I’ll tell you, Miss, after last night, I’ll be glad to be finished with this job.”

Before she could ask more, the trowel wielded by the other officer clanged against metal. The man bent forward, peered at the soil, then exchanged his small tool for a spade. Under the cypress tree the Commercial reporter perked up and ambled over. Carefully the deputy inserted the sharp blade under an encrusted object, lifted it up, and laid it on the tarp.

It took Brandy a minute to recognize what it was, but John’s eyes were immediately alert. Rusted through in several places and stained black, lay a long, thin tube–like bar, flared at one end like a shoe–horn and pointed at the other like a chisel.

“Don’t see many of them anymore,” the deputy with the spade said.

“It’s what we were looking for, all right.” Martin dropped his trowel and knelt beside it. “Any blood or hair would’ve disappeared long ago. But this would’ve done the job.”

“Of course,” said John. “As the weapon, it makes sense.” He turned to Brandy. “You’ve got another piece of your puzzle.”

And then Brandy finally realized what she was seeing. She remembered that the yard man changed a tire before Eva disappeared, that the tools came from Grace Southerland’s trunk, that Ace Langdon claimed he returned them to the floor of Grace’s back seat. She was looking at the crucial tool——the tire iron.

At that moment around the corner of the house came the tall figure of Sylvania Langdon in a flapping shirt and a pair of loose–fitting slacks.

Deputy Martin stepped forward. “We need to let you know what we’ve found here, Mrs. Langdon.” She halted in her stride and glanced down sharply at the twisted piece of metal. “Looks like a tire iron,” he went on. “We believe it was used to change a tire the afternoon the young lady disappeared.”

“I know nothing about that,” Sylvania answered quickly. “I only heard about the flat tire later. I know nothing about Eva Stone’s actions that day until the maid called for help.”

“We think it was after you heard the maid that someone killed Eva Stone,” the officer said.

John edged toward his great–aunt. “We were on our way to see you,” he said. “We just stopped in the yard first to speak to the deputies.”

“They’re certainly here all right,” she said, waspish. “All over my property. Even had me down to the Sheriff’s Office! That was humiliating.”

John ignored her remark. “I came to say I’m sorry I didn’t get your permission before I investigated the boat house. But you were gone.”

Her keen gray eyes glared down at his arm. “Next time I warn you, maybe you’ll pay attention.”

Tactfully the officer turned away and began helping his companion put away their tools. When the reporter from the Commercial produced a notebook and began asking questions, Martin referred him to a spokesman at the Sheriff’s Office. John and Brandy walked beside Sylvania toward the house.

Brandy, slogging through the wet grass beside John, spoke up first. “We couldn’t possibly have known what we would find that night. We just wanted to see what was in the boat house before it was knocked down. I’m sorry, too, for coming here without your permission.” She couldn’t resist adding, “But it’s a lucky thing we checked it out. We uncovered a brutal crime.”

“Can you think of anybody who might have known the skeleton was there?” John asked.

“As far as I know, anybody could’ve known,” Sylvania snapped. “The fact that the boat house was built in that spot was just a coincidence. I imagine the body was buried hastily. Brookfield cleared a lot of shrubbery on the land he chose for his boat house. It could’ve been buried under those bushes. It was logical to put the boat house on that spit of land where there’s a natural harbor.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about the boat house specifically?”

She halted. “Of course not. I only know that he always disliked this house after Eva Stone disappeared. He didn’t want to live here himself. After the tragedy he didn’t enjoy fishing here, and I guess hunting reminded him of it, too. It’s easy to see why he would’ve wanted to move away. On his deathbed he told me I needn’t hold on to the house, even though he left it to me. He said to get shut of it. He knew the land would be valuable. And that’s an end of it!”

Overhead clouds again blocked the sun, and the smell of rain hung in the air. When Sylvania did not ask them in, John started back toward the car with Brandy hurrying to match his stride. “I tracked down the maid who saw Eva go into the lake. I see her at two.”

“I don’t imagine she has anything to say that you don’t already know.”

She glanced up at him, hoping he wouldn’t disapprove of her second interview. Maybe he’d think it was ghoulish to interview the mourning Mrs Stone. “I’ve got another appointment later to talk to Eva Stone’s mother. Maybe she knows something we don’t.”

He did disapprove. “My God,” she said. “Can’t you reporters respect a mother’s grief?”

EIGHTEEN
 

Before Brandy’s car reached the highway, the summer rain had begun again, blurring the vague shapes of cabbage palms and live oaks along the roadside. As they neared the Dora Canal, she suggested they pull into a fast food restaurant for an early lunch before she dropped him off at his trailer. Over a grilled fish sandwich, she summoned the courage to ask John a question, one she’d wanted to ask ever since Deputy Martin admitted he didn’t like guarding the boat house site.

“While you were waiting for me Wednesday night, did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, anything that would explain the ghost story?”

Outside the wind had risen and the rain blew in gusts against the windows. She expected a raised eyebrow and a derisive laugh. Instead John rubbed his forehead with his good hand in that familiar gesture of uncertainty. At the hospital he had lost weight. Now his face looked leaner, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes unusually bright as he studied her face, as though unsure how to answer.

“At first when you left me that night,” he said slowly, “I just listened to the sound of your engine, and then I heard Blackthorne’s boat start up. I could hear two boats about the same place, and I saw two moving lights in the distance, but I couldn’t tell what was going on out there. So at first I didn’t pay any attention to the house itself. Later, everything got very still and dark. I couldn’t see into the upstairs window from where I was standing, but I guess the power of suggestion got to me.”

He gazed out at the thin, bending trunks of slash pines beside the restaurant, then set his hamburger down and stared into his coffee cup. “I thought I saw something move down on the lawn. I knew Sylvania wasn’t there, and everything was quiet next door. I never heard a car come or go. I remembered the story, of course, and I thought I saw somebody come around the corner of the house. A human shape. Then I lost it. I know the imagination plays tricks. Maybe I saw the shadow of a tree.”

His fingers massaged his forehead again. “Then quite a while before you got back, the cottonmouth came out of the water. When it slithered up on the deck and onto that beam, it got my full attention.” He moved his still swollen hand. “Remember, by then the moon was down and I was standing there alone with that skeleton behind me. Even if I believed I saw something, I’m hardly a credible witness.”

Brandy caught her breath. “But I thought I saw the same figure. Only I didn’t dare tell anyone.”

“Doesn’t prove anything. Just that two of us fell under the spell of suggestion.”

Outside the fronds of a palm tossed against the window. Brandy had the overwhelming sense of another world out there, waiting.

“I told you I did some reading about this kind of thing,” she said. “When I knew I wanted to report on the ghost story, I spent several hours making notes in the library. I haven’t studied enough physics to understand most of what I read. That’s more your field. But apparently physicists don’t know why time seems only to move forward. According to the laws of physics, at least as they’re understood now, time should move backward as well as forward.” Her eyes widened. “What if occasionally something that happened in the past re–plays itself? What if time sometimes does go backward?”

“That’s absurd,” John said.

“If you don’t like that one, there’s another theory: there’s a lot dimensions besides the ones we know. Usually we don’t have a way to experience them, but sometimes there’s a shred in the fabric of our own dimension. It lets us sense what’s going on in another. Actually, the theories kind of mesh. One book says that many worlds could cohabit something called superspace at the same time, and that past, present, and future coexist simultaneously.”

His lips turned up in a wry smile. “What happened to your theory about a traumatic event impressed on the atmosphere?”

“That’s still another explanation. According to that theory, there wouldn’t be any consciousness in the thing we’re seeing. The image would be like a photograph repeated over and over again.”

He shook his head. “Like a shadow, hanging around to point to the killer? Come on. I don’t like to think vengeance is that strong.”

She frowned. “It’s all so confusing. But even I know the physical world is made up of nothing but different forms of energy.”

John shifted in his seat, more serious now. “I’ve been honest about that experience, but I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t believe all that hocus–pocus about other dimensions. I’d rather live in the world I know.”

Brandy thought of the world she had known too briefly Tuesday night. “Amen to that,” she said. But then, Sharon was in that world, too. And Mack.

After they had ducked through the rain to the car, she settled again under the wheel and waited for him to fasten his seat belt. “You’re probably right that I can’t put the supernatural element in my story. Maybe it’s just as well. It seems flippant to call what we saw a ‘ghost.’ Grace Able called it an evil presence, but it seemed more poignant to me.”

As Brandy pulled into the trailer parking lot, she glanced down at her watch. It would take at least a half an hour to reach Mrs. Hall’s Mount Dora address. “I’ll call you tonight,” she said. Maybe I’ll have something new to report from Mrs. Hall.” She didn’t mention Eva Stone’s mother again.

No sign of Sharon at the trailer, she thought, but there was always the phone.

John pulled his overnight bag out of the back seat. “I need to let the folks know I’m home. And I expect your boy friend would like to hear you’re still okay, and out of the Able family’s——”he paused——“sinister hands.” He was smiling, but perhaps she had hurt his family pride. Or maybe he wanted to remind her of her boy friend. “Thanks for the tour,” he added. “The doctor says I can drive again soon.” He ducked through the rain, then glanced back from his narrow porch. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be with people. Not to worry.” She left him unlocking his door.

But on the way to Mount Dora the wiper slashing across the windshield seemed to echo his warning. She drove past foggy outlines of trees and buildings, listening to the murmur of the rain and feeling vulnerable. Only a few people knew she was unharmed in the garage, but when she thought of the figure in the mansion’s dormer window and the shadowy form on the lawn, her fingers tightened around the wheel. Beyond the wet streets yawned that unknown world.

Brandy shook her head, as if it still needed clearing. She needed to be rational, like John. That note had been typed with mortal hands. How many of her suspects had access to a computer? Blackthorne, certainly. She saw one in his office. He had admitted he was responsible for the chase across Lake Dora. Maybe he was up to his old tricks.

Sylvania probably did her genealogy research on a library computer, and Ace Langdon dropped into the office of A & S Citrus now and then. It would have computers. Even Grace Able helped produce a newsletter. Logic seemed to get her exactly nowhere—yet.

By the time Brandy reached the outskirts of Mount Dora, the rain had been replaced by a sullen, overcast sky. She tucked a rain hood in her bag, and within a half hour was walking between beds of pink impatiens up the porch steps and knocking on the door of a trim, concrete block cottage on the east side of town.

“Brandy O’Bannon, Tavares Beacon,” Brandy said when the door opened. “Mrs. Hall is expecting me.”

The woman before her was of average height, stylishly dressed in a tailored cotton suit and hose, a shoulder strap bag slung over one arm, and plainly too young to have been an adult in 1945. Her voice was formal and guarded, as the old woman’s and the small boy’s had been yesterday.