Waltz Macabre

by Mary Bowers

  When I walked up to Wanda’s front door with the laptop in its satchel, she was already there, anxiously waiting for me. I told her I had all the rest of Teddy’s stuff in my car, and she could send him out to get it. The ghost-hunting instrument box in particular was heavy. But she told me quietly that he was in a trance state and couldn’t be disturbed.

  “My neighbors have noticed him,” she added. “I was hoping to keep this quiet, but maybe I was being naïve.”

  “He’s kind of hard to miss. You know, it’s not too late to tell him you don’t need his help after all.”

  She seemed to consider it. “And you?”

  “Wanda, I already told you, I just don’t have the time.”

  “I see.”

  I, too, saw. She thought if she kept Teddy on the job, I would somehow be dragged into it too.

  “What’s the problem with the neighbors?” I asked.

  “Oh, there’s no problem, really. Clay came over. He wanted to know who Teddy was and what he was doing in my house.” She was looking toward the other mansion that loomed over her house, opposite the Carteret’s. “He’s just being protective, I guess. We little old ladies have a reputation for being easy marks, and Teddy is so handsome. I got the feeling Clay thought he was a gigolo. He’s been very helpful since Alison went missing. Very sympathetic, very concerned, always wanting to know how I am . . . .” She drifted to a stop with a puzzled look on her face.

  “Are you and Clay very good friends?”

  “N-no, we never have been. His family has always owned that house, so he was here long before George and I moved in. Cordial – I’d describe our relationship as cordial. He was good friends with Alison, though. I was beginning to think they would become very good friends. He shared her interest in photography.”

  “Was this before or after Alison came to live with you? I mean, was he interested in photography before that?”

  She shrugged. “If he was, I never knew about it. Well, I’d better get Teddy’s things and bring them into the house.”

  When I realized that she intended to bring all that stuff in by herself, I told her to stay put and went back to fetch it. She seemed disappointed that I hadn’t brought Porter, but then she didn’t know Porter.

  Teddy wasn’t in a trance. He was snoring like a moose. As Wanda tiptoed in with his messenger bag, I dropped a box of electronic research equipment onto the dresser with a bang. He cracked his eyes open, looked around all confused and misty-eyed, fixed his gaze on me and said, “When is my car being delivered?”

  “As far as I know, never,” I told him.

  “What did they say when you called?”

  “I didn’t. Call. Now that you’ve had your beauty sleep, maybe you can take care of that little thing yourself. But first, get yourself out of that bed and go get the rest of your stuff out of my car.”

  I marched out. For the record, I hadn’t felt any vibrations or sensed any presences of any kind in the little bedroom besides Teddy himself, draped over a bed that was way too small for him. The fact that he was sleeping so peacefully in a room he claimed was inhabited by a dangerous entity made me wonder about the whole enterprise.

  He never did ask about Porter.

  Wanda wanted to know if I was moving in, too, and I told her I’d be just down the street at Michael Utley’s house if she needed me. She still seemed a little disappointed, but she accepted it.

  “You have my cell phone number,” I said. “I won’t be very far away. And Teddy’s here. You’re going to be fine. Just don’t spoil him. I think a little tough love is in order. Make him fix his own supper and do his own laundry.”

  Just like Carlene, she thought I was kidding.

  How do these guys get away with it?

  Chapter 15

  That evening I walked in the front door of Tropical Breeze’s only 5-star restaurant and paused, soaking in the champagne-golden atmosphere, and most of all, the calm. The elegance. The lack of abnormal phenomena or people.

  Just past the hostess station, an assortment of well-behaved and well-dressed locals chatted amiably around the bar, and from the dining room beyond the wide, arching doorway, the tinkle and hum of dinner-in-progress came to me, as soothing as the lapping of waves on a beach.

  Dinner with Michael at Thirty-Nine, a posh place that I manage to get to about once for every 30 feed-me-quick-I’m-hungry meals at Don’s Diner. Tonight, we would relax over glasses of wine, make our selections from the menu whenever the spirit moved us, and we would eat slowly. The waiter would not be a wisenheimer, (at least not while on duty). Nobody would rush up and tell me their problems and expect me to solve them.

  When I met Michael at his house, he gave me that smile and told me to get dressed, and I didn’t even ask why. That smile always means something good. As we stood waiting to be seated at Thirty-Nine, I felt the whole confusing day slide off me like a heavy coat, leaving me light and cheerful in my best silky dress.

  We got my favorite table, a little two-seater adjacent to the large, mullioned window that made the restaurant look like a British pub from the outside. There was a posy of whispy lavender flowers in a crystal vase, framed with baby’s breath and fresh from somebody’s hothouse, sitting on a real linen tablecloth. I never got the point of the wineglasses and chargers that they take off the table as soon as you sit down, but they made the whole room sparkle, and for once I was ready to accept that maybe that was reason enough.

  Michael ordered the wine, and when the waiter was gone, we smiled.

  Then he spoiled everything.

  “I spent the afternoon in my grandfather’s law library,” he said. “I managed to dig up some information on Garrison Carteret’s career as a lawyer in New York. It seems he did go there, after he left Phoebe.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked disappointed, and remembering that he was only doing the research because I’d asked him to, I had to apologize. “I’m sorry, but can’t we just have dinner and forget about the Carterets for a while?”

  He agreed, but not happily, and I found myself reintroducing the Carterets sometime after we’d finished the salad course, just to be fair to him.

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that.”

  His feelings were still hurt, and it took a few more back-and-forths to get him going. When he finally did, he was off and running. I remembered his distaste for the whole situation at breakfast the day before, and was a little surprised at the change in him. He’d been hooked. It was a true melodrama, and he was human enough to be absorbed by it.

  After a while, I managed to figure out why, and asked him, “Do you think that skeleton Carlene found has anything to do with it?”

  He paused, building up steam. “It’s the same timeframe, Taylor. Whoever that was, he must have been buried out there at about the same time Barclay Lodge was murdered.”

  “It doesn’t follow that it’s connected in any way. It can’t be Lodge. His family must have buried him. The mystery man could have just been a tramp.”

  “In those clothes?”

  “Oh? I didn’t see the clothes, remember? I didn’t get close enough.”

  “There was a pocket watch. A nice one. Most of the clothing had rotted away, but there was a tailor’s label that had survived almost intact, and I thought I recognized the name of the firm. Then I remembered, my grandfather had used the same tailor. No tramp was going to be wearing Terreverde & Sons.”

  His excitement was growing.

  “Can he be traced through the company’s records?”

  “I did a quick check at City Hall. They went out of business in 1936. I’m sure their records weren’t preserved, but I’m trying to trace the Terreverde family anyway.”

  I nodded pensively. My pasta dish was delivered and I sat there for a moment admiring it. I intended to savor every bite, but at the same time, I was going to have to relive the crimes and passions of Garrison Carteret and manage to look as if I were more interested in that than my food. By th
e time Michael finished, I actually was.

  Garrison Carteret showed up in the New York State Bar Association’s listings as a family law practitioner in the summer of 1930, a year after he deserted his wife. Michael’s grandfather had acquired the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory of 1931, but for some reason, Carteret wasn’t listed there. Skipping around between musty old books and the Internet, Michael managed to find three references to Garrison Carteret, Esq. as a practicing lawyer in New York City, but it seemed that by 1940, he’d given up, closed his practice, and at some point, had actually been arrested for vagrancy. And then, Michael hit pay dirt.

  “My grandfather created a file on him.”

  My last bite of pasta had had a lovely chunk of mushroom in it, and was particularly buttery, so it took a moment to notice him staring at me, waiting for a reaction, replay my ear-memory of his last sentence and quickly swallow before I could say, “What was that?” Not because I didn’t know what he’d said, but because I didn’t believe it.

  “My grandfather was suspicious and worried enough about the whole Wilkinson-Carteret-Lodge scandal to keep a file on it. I found it in the big safe, while I was looking to see if he’d made wills for any of the people involved. His notes are in longhand, and he had folded it up and filed away in a cardboard ‘Last Will and Testament’ folder with just the letter ‘C’ on it, as if he were hiding it but keeping it handy. What do you think about that?”

  I hesitated, dumbstruck. Then I said, “I guess it depends on what it says.”

  “That’s the maddening part. His handwriting was a little messy, the ink has faded, and he had his own shorthand characters that I’m having trouble figuring out. It was like he was just writing things down to jog his memory. The fairly straightforward parts don’t say much more than we already know, as far as the facts go. He had a regimented way of working at things, always, and this file is no exception. He captioned it with a brief synopsis, referring to Garrison Carteret as a man of good character and standing in the town. He was almost defiant about it. Remember, I told you that he clerked for my grandfather. Grandfather was mystified at Carteret’s behavior, and the more he looked into it, the more suspicious he got. He wrote down any rumors that he heard, and as time went on, he began to keep a sharp eye on Miss Phoebe.”

  “A sharp, protective eye?”

  Michael shook his head. “He didn’t trust her. He actually used the word ‘shenanigans’ in one part, and he was not a man given to slang. Also, he was very worried about young Robin. He even drew up papers making Robin a protected ward of the state, but he never filed them.”

  “Protected – from his mother?”

  “The word ‘protected’ can cut both ways.”

  “I don’t understand what that means, Michael.”

  Still, he seemed hesitant to come right out and say it. He ordered more wine, pondered a while, then said, “The citizens of the state can be called upon to protect a minor, or the state itself can be called upon to protect its citizens from a minor.”

  “Oh. Oh! But . . . I’m still not sure what that means.”

  “Neither am I. But I know who I’m going to ask.”

  “Who?”

  “Jasper Wise.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, Jasper. Everybody’s handyman? Lives out by the beach and carries his guitar everywhere . . . .”

  “I know who Jasper is. I just didn’t know he had a last name. What on earth does he have to do with anything?”

  “Probably nothing, but I’m hoping to compare whatever his father might have told him about it with my grandfather’s notes.”

  “Oh, golly! Your grandfather mentioned Jasper’s father in his notes?”

  “Bullseye. His name was Rudy, by the way. According to my grandfather’s notes, Rudy was up to his bushy old eyebrows in everything that was going on at the Wilkinson Plantation. He worked for them. I’m having him come over to my house tomorrow. I told you I wanted some work done. I’m having the yard cleaned up and a dead tree removed, and I hired Jasper to do it. In the meantime, I want you to take a look at that file and help me figure out how to approach Jasper so he won’t clam up on me. You know how he is.”

  “Yeah, I know. He never lies, but he never tells the whole truth, either.”

  I looked down at our empty plates. “I think we’re done here,” I said suddenly. “No dessert tonight. I want to see those notes.”

  “I bought a pint of macadamia nut ice cream at the Winn Dixie today.”

  “Good enough.”

  * * * * *

  We were so deep into it we didn’t even pause to enjoy the soft sea air of the star-spangled night. We put our heads down and walked over to his house like we were late for something. The sidewalks of Tropical Breeze were empty, and the houses looked snug and warm with their living room lights on and their TVs flickering. But we were too engrossed to notice, and the star-spangled night was just something to get through quickly.

  “Some of his shorthand is just the usual stuff,” Michael said as we strode along. “A delta triangle meaning ‘change.’ Initials b and d for birth and death. K for contract.”

  “Well, you’re way ahead of me, Michael. I wouldn’t have recognized those things.”

  “It’s the more layered references I think you can help with. Not the lawyerly things. The people things.”

  I understood the difference and nodded.

  When we came through the front door, I was surprised to find myself looking into the green eyes of Bastet again. She was standing there like an annoyed parent wondering what the kids had been up to.

  I addressed her directly with my arms folded across my chest. “We skipped dessert so we could make curfew. Is that okay with you, mommy?”

  She glared at the sarcasm and left me, following Michael into the library with her tail up and angry.

  “It’s here on the desk,” he told me as I entered. He’d turned on the subdued overhead lights, but he also snapped on the green-shaded desk lamp and pulled back the big, plushy chair for me. The desk, a carved maple masterpiece, was vast and solid, and this was the first time I’d seen it with a mess of paperwork on it. In the center of the blotter was a scattering of old-fashioned foolscap, and even from the doorway I could see the inscrutable “spider that crawled through the inkwell” writing that covered the pages, sometimes on both sides.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as he moved toward the door as soon as I was sitting down.

  “Bastet hasn’t had her dinner. You go ahead. I’ll be back. With ice cream,” he added, smiling.

  I took the pages in my hands, glanced through them quickly, then something in the middle of a page caught my eye and I dropped all but the one page and began to read, absorbed. By the time I’d finished, I hadn’t noticed any of the cryptic shorthand that Michael had mentioned, but when I looked back through it later, there was some. In fact, the whole document was full of abbreviations, references to facts never spelled out, and lots and lots of funny little symbols, like the delta triangle Michael had mentioned. It just didn’t get in my way at the time. Somehow, it read like a novel. No – it played out before me like a movie. I even felt I could hear the old man’s voice, dignified but troubled, worried about the impact on the community to which he was deeply committed.

  Michael’s grandfather, Michael Gordon Utley, Esq., (I’ll call him Gordon, since that’s what people actually called him) was suspicious of a man named Cary Jessop from the first. After he’d been mentioned a few times, I began to put two and two together and realized that Jessop was the man Barnabas had said something about back at the very beginning of things: the estate agent that had been either incompetent or dishonest. From the tone of Gordon’s notes, he had made up his mind that Jessop was definitely a wrong ‘un. Possibly even a murderer.

  Michael came back with two tulip glasses of ice cream and set one down next to what I was reading. I frowned at it. The pretty ice cream cup with the silver spoon set into it at just the right angle j
ust didn’t belong next to Gordon’s tale of dishonesty and death.

  “Michael,” I said as he sat down at the other side of the desk, “I think the whole community has been doing Garrison Carteret an injustice for all these years. Your grandfather made it clear there was another villain in the mix, and nobody even seems to know about him. Barnabas did, but he only mentioned him in passing, and didn’t even know the man’s name. But your grandfather knew his name, all right.” I tapped the manuscript, then sat back and looked at Michael. “I think the man who murdered Barclay Lodge was Cary Jessop.”

  “Garrison Carteret’s best friend,” Michael said.

  “Well, a friend, anyway. I get the notion from the way Gordon wrote about him that he didn’t think much of Cary Jessop. Sounds like he was more of a toady than a best friend.”

  Michael was spooning ice cream into his mouth as he nodded agreement. “I’ve never heard of Cary Jessop, even though the Lodge murder has been the subject of gossip in Tropical Breeze ever since. He seems to have been one of those hapless sad-sacks who attach themselves to successful men, and if the big man is enough of an egotist, he’ll tolerate him. Even deliberately keep him around.”

  “Just to be worshipped.”

  “Right. But if Jessop did commit the murder, there had to be some kind of a bond between them for Garrison to go along with the cover-up, knowing what it would do to his own reputation.”

  “So if Jessop is our man, he killed Lodge because he thought he was doing Garrison a favor,” I said. “Getting rid of his romantic rival for Phoebe.”

  “That would be my theory. ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ It wouldn’t exactly make Garrison innocent, but he wouldn’t have been directly guilty.”