Dead Man Talking

by TM Simmons

  Chapter 8

  Sir Gary hovered on the other side of visible until Jack and most of the other bobbies departed in early afternoon. They left yellow crime tapes across the Great Room door, around the pool area, and down by the curve in the live-oak-lined drive. One bobby stayed behind to patrol the grounds, and Jack promised they’d remove the crime tape as soon as possible, but it irritated Katy to no end.

  They’d found no signs of forced entry on any of the doors or windows, no footprints, no fresh-turned earth where someone might have buried something, no clues at all beyond the unexplained tire tracks and the sword. The bobbies who examined the tracks said they were common tires from a pickup truck or SUV. Half the visitors to the plantation drove pickups or SUVs, so Sir Gary didn’t see where that information would do them a damn bit of good.

  They hadn’t found the corpse’s head.

  Sir Gary listened to the final conversation between Jack and the sheriff.

  “No doubt about it,” the sheriff said. “That dagger-pierced rose on his arm.”

  “Yeah,” Jack responded. “We picked him up once in Longview, so we got his sheet.”

  “All hell’s gonna break lose when the media gets hold of this.”

  “Let alone the row we’ll hear from the senator.”

  The two men shook hands and got into their vehicles. The sheriff drove off first, and Sir Gary started to visualize and head back into the house as Jack followed. Whoops. Jack must have been looking in his rearview mirror. He slammed on the brakes, and Sir Gary popped back into the other dimension. Jack lunged out of the car and crouched, pistol drawn. He scanned the area, arcing the pistol and following it with his eyes. Finally he stood, focused on a twin-trunked live oak, then holstered the pistol and rubbed his eyes, before he got back in the car and drove slowly away.

  In the kitchen, Sir Gary found Katy insisting to Alice that they needed lunch, which she would prepare while Alice settled in one of the bedrooms. Deciding to stay invisible — still a little miffed at Katy’s attitude toward him — he pondered the situation while Katy silently fixed a seafood salad from that pasta he couldn’t imagine would taste like anything other than cardboard. Katy added some spices and cold, boiled shrimp, and it looked more appetizing. Not that in his state he ate anything, but he had memories. Normally Katy bustled around the kitchen whenever Sue Ann, her housekeeper, wasn’t around, enjoying her meal preparations. Today her morose demeanor tugged at Sir Gary. Even though they’d had their differences lately, he hated to see Katy so downcast. He would miss her when he crossed over, but from what he’d read in Alice’s books, coming back as a spirit to visit wasn’t impossible. First, though, he had to find a way out of this half-existence.

  He hadn’t counted on that blasted murder. Even though the bobbies had combed the grounds thoroughly — he had to admit Jack knew his business — the ghost figured they might have missed something. Leaving Katy to her cooking, he glided through the Garden Room beside the kitchen, where Katy would serve the meal, on through the wall onto the grounds.

  Concentrating, he moved to the pool area where Jack had found the Confederate sword tossed beneath a bank of ferns. He’d picked it up in a surgical-gloved hand and placed it in a large, plastic bag from a stock one of those bobby crime technicians transported in a suitcase. No doubt about it being the murder weapon. Blood tinged its blade, and Sir Gary knew the tempered metal had retained its sharpness. He’d admired that weapon more than once. Besides, when that matronly medical examiner gave permission and the bobbies removed the corpse, the ghost agreed with the assessment that the sword matched the wound — not vocally, of course.

  Sir Gary stood beside the pool, trying to recreate how things happened. Someone obviously crept into the Great Room and snatched the sword after he and Katy went their separate ways. Bucky had been sneaking toward the manor house, in similar fashion to what Sir Gary had seen last week. That night the renegade had prowled clear around the house, then halted at the Garden Room door. Bucky gave up and left just about the time Sir Gary decided to run him off, probably because nothing other than a single light over the stove in the kitchen glowed anywhere, indicating Katy had long gone to bed.

  Given the climate here, mist rose from the pool water at night, especially with the heater Katy had installed. Mist mingled with ground fog, thick dark gray at times. Quite good cover for a prowler — for human eyes, anyway. Last night’s roiling mist had been especially thick. An appropriate atmosphere for a dastardly deed such as murder, he mused, even though stuff like that had been overdone in horror movies.

  He tried to see the pool area with fresh eyes, even though he’d been at the plantation for years now. Plenty of hiding places; plants and trees grew thick and lush, excellent hiding spots for someone bent on murder. Why, once a thistle grew three feet tall almost overnight, and Katy inadvertently backed into it after a swim in that teensy bikini she started wearing after he visualized. The first month or so...but he needed to pay attention here.

  Someone hid amidst the shrubbery — swooped out with the sword poised for attack — lopped the head off with scarcely a jolt against the well-honed blade. But why weren’t there any tracks? And why dispose of the head, yet leave the corpse floating in the pool, easily discoverable? Why scrub blood from the edge of the pool?

  Sir Gary glided over to the spot where Jack had squatted after one of the evidence-gathering bobbies sprayed some sort of stuff on the concrete and photographed it. Something they said would illuminate any blood spatters, even if they’d been scrubbed clean. Amazing Sir Gary, the telltale splatters appeared, their trajectory confirming Jack’s notion of how the crime unfolded. Probably Bucky didn’t even realize he’d been assassinated at first. Maybe he still didn’t, but though Sir Gary had kept an eagle eye out, he hadn’t sensed another presence.

  He wandered behind the manor house, then decided to check out the tire tracks. He didn’t have to worry about disturbing the crime scene; he wouldn’t leave any passing signs of his presence. Inside the yellow tape, he crouched and studied the area. Small patches of white plaster dotted around, left behind from the tire casts. He’d have to take the bobbies’ word about the vehicle. He didn’t see much difference in this tire track and one from the Jeep Alice drove.

  Small white rocks mixed in with the crushed oyster shells, a few disturbed, evident by the freshly-turned earth and small holes left in their former resting places. They almost looked like globs of that plaster, but the undersides were stained darker with earth.

  One of the horses whinnied and trotted over, ears pricked. He’d always had an eye for a beautiful horse, as his wife had, and animals always seemed to see him. He glided through the crime tape and murmured to the animal before he headed back, not any more enlightened about who had killed Bucky than before. And just as frustrated at this interference with his plans.