Ghost in Trouble (2010)

by Carolyn Hart

  Diane clasped her hands beneath her chin. “I don’t know what I’d do without Laverne.” Her voice quivered.

  “I suppose when you face a big problem, or a fear, she is able to seek James’s counsel.” And gouge more money from you.

  Diane’s eyes looked huge and her face was wan. “Usually.”

  “I hesitate to speak.” Have I ever uttered a less accurate statement? “And, of course, we are strangers.” How much easier it is to confide in someone who is not a part of your world. “But I sense that you are in great distress and you aren’t sure how to proceed. Maybe I can help.”

  Diane’s fingers hooked around the big beads of her costume pearl necklace. “I can’t tell anyone. I hope James will tell me what to do. Truly, Jimmy didn’t mean—” She broke off, clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “That’s all right.” I made a reassuring sound. “Kay’s told me about Jimmy. She understands how upset he was.”

  Her eyes grew enormous. “How did Kay know?”

  “Kay’s a marvel.” My tone was admiring, though, of course, I deserved the kudos. However, I am selfless in carrying out my duties.

  Diane’s delicate features suddenly set in a mask of anger. “I thought Margo heard Jimmy. Well, she can’t pretend she wasn’t mad at Jack, too. I know what happened years ago. She never got over Jack dropping her, and Shannon running after Jack made Margo furious. But she shouldn’t have told Kay what Jimmy said.”

  “I’m sure he can explain everything when I talk to him. Is he here this afternoon?”

  “Somewhere.” Her voice was faint. “He’s researching a paper for one of his professors. He’s worked hard this summer.” There was a trace of defensiveness in her voice. I wondered if her background had been less privileged than that of her husband. Perhaps she thought even rich kids should have summer jobs.

  “That’s wonderful. Certainly it will be important to have his views of his uncle in the book.”

  “The book.” She looked as wilted as a chrysanthemum corsage left out in the sun. “Please, don’t put in what Jimmy said. He didn’t mean a word of it.”

  “Let me see what I have.” I delved into a shabby straw purse and pulled out a notebook. I flipped past a few pages, peering intently. “Of course, comments often get garbled when they are repeated. Jimmy said something to the effect that he intended to push Jack?” I ended on a questioning note.

  “He didn’t threaten to push him.” Diane’s denial was vehement. “If Margo said that, she should be ashamed. It was Saturday afternoon and Jimmy was upset about Shannon and how she was chasing Jack. Jimmy said the next time he saw Jack, he was going to knock him flat. But Jimmy came to dinner and he and Jack didn’t say a word to each other, so that shows Jimmy was only blowing off steam. He would never hurt Jack. That’s how boys talk. Boys make a lot of noise and don’t mean anything serious. Everybody knows Jack fell. His death was a terrible accident.” There was terror in her eyes.

  Kay was sure Jack had been murdered.

  So was Diane.

  I would have enjoyed exploring the subtleties of the white bedroom. Wherever I looked, I saw unusual decorations: a photograph of a polar bear on an ice floe with brilliant blue sky the only note of color, an ivory miniature of the Taj Mahal at sunset, a framed Alençon lace bridal handkerchief with the intertwined initials CKH, an all-white spiral seashell in an alabaster box lined with red velvet, a lustrous white costume pearl necklace dangling from a red coral branch. Instead, as soon as the door closed after Diane, I became invisible and followed her.

  In the hallway, I hovered near the frescoed ceiling, white clouds shot through with gold against a blue sky. Diane stood at the landing, her head turned to look up toward the third floor. She shuddered and whirled away. She hurried downstairs, her shoes thudding on the steps as if she could not go fast enough.

  I dropped by the Phillipses’ suite. Laverne lay back on a chaise longue, a magazine loose in her lap. Alone, all pretense of imperiousness was gone. Her heavily made-up face sagged, lines of uncertainty and foreboding pulling at her lips. She lifted a shaking hand to massage one temple.

  I bypassed Diane’s suite and the unoccupied guest rooms. Jimmy Hume wasn’t in his room. At the other end of the hall, I entered Evelyn’s suite. The impress of her personality was everywhere, from Stickley furniture to art-glass windows to Mission-style lighting to a vibrantly warm still life by Helen Clark Oldfield. The oil painting in an understated white frame hung by itself in the center of a cream stucco wall. On a teak table rested a silver-handled magnifying glass. How much did Evelyn see when she held the oversize glass close to the canvas? Perhaps a dim mélange of Oldfield’s rich colors. Was possession of beauty enough in itself to give her pleasure?

  Downstairs, Margo worked in the kitchen. Her face was pinched in thought. She looked dour. Evelyn Hume sat at a piano in an alcove off the living room, her expression remote, her hands forceful as she played a polonaise. Ronald of the white shoes was not in any of the ground-floor areas, nor did I find Jimmy Hume or Shannon Taylor.

  I stood in the central hallway. I almost materialized to go to the kitchen when I decided to look over the grounds. The sound of a steel guitar led me over a row of poplars. Below was a sparkling swimming pool in the shape of a T and a cabana.

  Green-and-cream-striped awnings provided shade. Jimmy Hume lounged on a cushioned deck chair. He wore swim trunks, but they appeared dry, and a laptop was propped on his knees. The music thrummed from speakers mounted on the cabana. I floated behind him, read over his shoulder.

  …and the oil-bearing layers are reminiscent of a sponge, in that…

  I moved to the other side of a hedge and swirled present as Francie the Frump. My soft-soled flip-flops made no sound as I strolled around the greenery and crossed the deck. “Hello.”

  He looked up in surprise, but put aside the laptop and came to his feet.

  I appreciate good manners. He was also a hunk, dark hair thick on his tanned chest, flat stomach, powerful legs, and the good looks of the Hume men.

  “May I help you?” His voice was youthful, but confident. Millions in the bank have a way of instilling confidence.

  “I’m Francie de Sales, Kay Clark’s assistant. I wondered if I might visit with you for a moment.” I pushed up the granny glasses and endeavored to appear innocuous. Of course, that is always a challenge with red hair, despite a lack of makeup.

  He closed the laptop and gestured toward a white wrought-iron table and chairs. When we were seated, he looked at me inquiringly, but said nothing. He reminded me of a long-ago movie actor, Montgomery Clift.

  I explained in a diffused and rambling fashion that I was gathering material for the book about Jack’s life. I leaned forward, pen poised above an open notebook, my expression earnest and slightly dim-witted. “I hope you will describe your uncle’s last few days. I understand you had a difficult exchange with him the day he died.” I made my tone confidential and sympathetic.

  His face twisted in a frown. “So who’s mouthing off about me?”

  “My sources are confidential.” I sounded regretful. “Of course, that’s why I am asking you. Everyone deserves to defend themselves.”

  “There’s nothing to defend.” He was clearly angry. “I tried to talk to Jack and he blew me off.” There was depth of pain in Jimmy’s anguished eyes. “He treated me like I was a stranger.”

  I felt an instant of connection with Jack Hume. That final day a powerful force had driven him. Something mattered terribly to him, mattered so much he couldn’t take the time to understand his nephew’s distress.

  I was also touched by Jimmy’s misery. There was grief in his eyes as well as anger. “Did you want to talk to him about Shannon?”

  “Jack blew her off, too. I’d never seen her so upset.” Jimmy was gruff. “I didn’t want her hurt, not like that. She had a big-time crush on him and he made her feel like a silly fool. I knew all along that Jack wasn’t serious about her, but he shouldn’t have dumped her like
that. I was going to tell him he was a jerk.”

  “Is that why you threatened to knock him flat the next time you saw him?”

  Jimmy’s jaw jutted. “Yeah. I would have. After dinner, I was going to make him pay. I went up to the balcony.”

  I looked at him in a confused fashion, but there was no confusion in my mind. “Let me see. I thought he fell down the balcony steps. If you went that way—”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I was inside. I came up the interior stairs.”

  I observed his handsome face. I liked him. I wasn’t sure I believed him.

  “I went through the ballroom and out to the balcony. He wasn’t there.” Jimmy looked half sick. “If I’d gone down the steps, I guess I would have found him. Instead, I went back into the house.”

  Shannon Taylor wasn’t in the house nor was she attending Evelyn. Outside, I floated above The Castle. In addition to the workshop, I saw a long building with five bays that obviously served as the garage. I caught a glimpse of white beyond a row of willows. In an instant, I stood in front of a modest frame house with a screened-in porch.

  Inside, Shannon sat on a cheerful yellow chintz sofa. She looked young and lovely in a rosebud-embroidered mauve tank top and blue chambray shorts. She held a book in her lap. The immaculate, simply furnished room was cool and quiet.

  I came nearer. The page was opened to “Nocturnal Reverie” by Anne Finch. Shannon pressed a finger against a line.

  I bent to see.

  But silent musings urge the mind to seek Something, too high for syllables to seek. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  I reappeared on the front porch and knocked.

  She was unsmiling when she opened the door. She glanced at my dowdy clothes. “No soliciting permitted.”

  Before the door closed, I said quickly, “I’m not soliciting. I’m Francie de Sales, Kay Clark’s assistant.”

  “Kay Clark.” A scowl marred her young face.

  “You can be very important in a book about Jack Hume. I understand he felt a real rapport with you.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I hope you will share what you know about his last days.”

  “His last days…” Her voice was shaky.

  “In his e-mails, he said you were very kind to him and he admired you.” I didn’t feel that was too much of a stretch. Certainly he’d told Kay how flattering he had found Shannon’s attention.

  “He did?” Her eyes lighted. “He said that?”

  How little it takes when someone hungers for even a crumb from a beloved figure.

  “He said you were gorgeous and sweet.”

  I could not have given her a greater gift. Her face bloomed. She opened the screen and I followed her into the living room.

  When we sat on the sofa, I leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone. “The hope”—I carefully avoided saying this was Kay’s hope—“is to know what he was thinking and feeling those last few days.”

  Shannon talked fast. “He was so much fun. We first spent time together at the pool. If Evelyn doesn’t need me, I can do whatever I want. I help Mom a lot, but I have a bunch of free time. We swam together and twice we went canoeing. One night I ran into him at Mama Pat’s.” She glanced at me and added, “That’s a club near the campus. I love old jazz. I go there a lot. He was there by himself, listening to the piano, having a drink. We danced to ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.’” Her eyes shone with the memory of a night and the touch of his arms and a smiling face looking down at her. Slowly, the softness faded, replaced by a dumb misery compounded of hurt feelings and puzzlement. “We had fun. I know we did. He liked me. I don’t know what went wrong. I thought maybe I’d said something, done something. It was that last weekend and I found him in the study. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered him. He looked upset, and when I asked him if we weren’t friends, it was like he didn’t even know me. He kind of shook his head and told me to go away, he was busy. I couldn’t believe he’d act like that after the way he’d held me. It wasn’t right.” There was aching humiliation in her eyes and passionate denial in her voice. “I found out he was seeing that woman next door. She’s old. I don’t know what he saw in her. But they had something going on. I heard the last thing she said to him. ‘I wish you were dead.’ I hope she feels bad now.”

  Margo Taylor cracked another egg into the blue mixing bowl. A splash of sunlight through the kitchen window emphasized lines of discontent that flared from her eyes and her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about Jack Hume.”

  “I understand you were in love with him at one time.” She pressed her lips together and clipped another egg on the side of the bowl. “He dropped you for another woman.”

  A flash of satisfaction gleamed in her green eyes.

  Her unexpected response caught my attention. I doubted that she harbored kind feelings toward the woman who had supplanted her. She could only feel pleased if in some way she had caused difficulty for her long-ago rival. I remembered Kay’s description of the photograph which she had assumed pictured Jack Hume on his graduation. Photographs of a darkly handsome boy covered a wall in the Dunham home. A photograph was missing from the Dunham wall.

  “You slipped the photograph of Ryan Dunham under Jack’s door.” I had no doubt in my mind.

  For an instant, Margo stood rigid, one hand gripping an egg. She didn’t drop her eyes to the bowl quite quickly enough to hide a quiver of shock. Then she cracked the egg with a snap.

  “Why did you want Jack Hume to see that picture?”

  She picked up a whisk, gently whipped the eggs. Her face was set and hard and utterly determined.

  My tone was sharp. “Did you guess that Ryan was his son and want to cause trouble for him and Gwen Dunham?”

  She placed the beater beside the bowl, turned to one side to pour flour into a sifter.

  I moved to stay within her vision whether she acknowledged me or not. “Apparently your daughter made a spectacle of herself, chasing after Jack.”

  Margo combined dry ingredients with the flour in a smaller bowl.

  “Were you angry because he charmed your daughter, then dropped her? Did it remind you of what happened to you?”

  She added the dry ingredients to the larger mixing bowl.

  “If you decline to offer information, the book may contain material from others that you won’t find pleasing.”

  She paused and looked at me, her gaze level and challenging. “Have you ever heard of invasion of privacy? Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hidden from view behind crape myrtles with lavender blooms, I swirled into the elegant blouse and slacks I’d worn when I spoke with Gwen Dunham. Although I expected she’d be too upset to notice, the contrast between Francie the Frump and Bailey Ruth, aka Francie with a shopper’s paradise at her disposal, might be disconcerting. I decided Francie’s future wardrobe would be subdued, not dowdy. Subdued can be stylish. Besides, nice clothes made me feel like doing a cartwheel. The lush green grass around the gazebo looked thick and inviting.

  Cartwheels could wait. As I climbed the gazebo steps, I remembered long-ago summers and a skinny redheaded girl in the twilight, listening to the cicadas and crickets, whirling from one end of a dusty brown lawn to the other with no thought beyond that moment. It was as if those magical days would last forever.

  The air pulsed with heat, and I welcomed the shade of the gazebo. I sat in a comfortable wicker chair and watched the opening in a tall green hedge of Nellie Stevens holly trees that marked the boundary between The Castle and the Dunham property.

  Gwen Dunham came slowly along the flagstone path, walking as if she carried a heavy burden. At the gazebo steps, she stopped for a deep breath, then slowly climbed. Her face was shaded by a wide-brimmed crocheted raffia hat with a blue camo-ribbon trim that matched her blouse. Dark glasses masked her eyes. Her patrician features might have been chipped from granite.

  She walked across the plank flooring and stood
a few feet away from me, her arms folded. “How did you find out about Ryan?” Her tone was anguished. “What do you want?”

  I came to my feet and said gently, “I don’t intend to cause trouble.” Unless, and this was the qualification in my mind and heart, she had ended a man’s life to protect herself and her family.

  “I don’t believe you.” Her voice shook. “Why else did you call and say you knew about Ryan and you’d be back in touch and hang up?”

  I looked at her gravely. “I didn’t call you. Nor did Kay. Was the caller a woman?”

  “The voice was just a whisper. It could have been a man. The call came from The Castle. Just a few minutes ago.” If she’d looked desperate before, now she was frantic. “Who else knows?”

  “The person who took Ryan’s photograph knows.” But Margo wasn’t the only possibility.

  Gwen’s hands gripped each other, twisting and turning. “Where’s the picture now? Where’s Ryan’s brush?”

  “I don’t know who has the picture. The hairbrush is in a safe place, where it will stay until it is discarded.”

  “Why are you doing this? Do you want money? I’ll buy the hairbrush from you.” She talked fast, the words running over each other. “How much do you want? I’ll pay you. I’ll get the money today.”

  “I don’t want money. Moreover, I don’t have the hairbrush. Unless circumstances change”—if I didn’t have to tell Kay and Kay didn’t give the information to the police—“we won’t reveal anything to anyone.” Paul Fisher had apparently decided against pursuing the truth about the young man who was a mirror image of Jack Hume when he was Paul’s quarterback. Perhaps Paul felt that Jack’s quest was understandable when he was alive, but revelations after his death would cause heartbreak for no good purpose.

  “If you don’t want money, what do you want?” Gwen’s voice was harsh.

  “Kay and I want to understand what happened in the last few days of Jack Hume’s life. Kay has no intention of including everything she learns about Jack’s last days in her book, but she is a careful investigator. If she felt there was good reason to exclude some information, I’m certain she will.”