Ghost Walk

by Laurel Pace

  Still, Richardson Whyte had sailed with her father. If the tiny yacht pin had any connection to their mutual interest, perhaps the album would yield a clue to its exact nature.

  Dani hurried to her desk and flicked on the pharmacy lamp, the better to scrutinize the fading snapshots. She had examined the album twice before she was willing to admit how thoroughly her grief-stricken mother had purged all remnants of the sailing team. Only one picture of Richardson and Dani's father remained, two then-youthful faces in a group posed on what appeared to be the terrace of a resort hotel or a country club. Dani squinted over the black-and-white photo and quickly realized the futility of trying to pick a minuscule pin out of the grainy shot.

  Only the shimmer of water in the picture's background drew her back for another look. It wasn't such a long shot to assume that the men had been photographed at their yacht club; they were dressed in the deck shoes and scalding-white ducks of yachtsmen. Dani studied a third man among the assembly, trying to place the vaguely familiar boxy jaw and aquiline nose. Theo Boynton, Rebecca's fiance, would have been in diapers, not cotton ducks, when this snapshot was taken, but his face bore a startling resemblance to the hawklike countenance in the picture.

  "Powell Boynton!" Dani exclaimed aloud. Of course, it was him, Theo's father! He had been a pallbearer at Richardson's funeral and had known her father as well. Based on the picture, Dani felt almost certain the senior Boynton had either been a member of the sailing team or would know quite a bit about it.

  Closing the album's cracked leather cover, Dani pushed back from the desk. Now, at least, she had something to go on, a thread, however tenuous, that might lead to the significance of Richardson's gift to her. She would phone Powell Boynton first thing in the morning and arrange to talk with him as soon as possible.

  She must be very tactful in her approach, Dani reminded herself as she changed into a nightgown. Chances were the poor man, like Bea Lawes, had already been thoroughly grilled by the police. She need only remind herself of how Ken McCabe's probing had irritated her to empathize with Powell Boynton.

  The thought of McCabe resurrected a host of conflicting feelings in Dani, but the threat of another sleepless night prompted her to take action. She had managed to unearth a lead regarding the elusive pin. By comparison, getting information about Ken McCabe should be a cakewalk.

  Seated on the side of her bed with the phone in her lap, Dani thought for a few minutes. What were the names of the restaurants where McCabe had worked in Florida? One had been The Sandpiper; she was sure of that. Another was called Coconut Joe's; no one could forget such a corny name. And Duffy's, she thought exultantly; that was the third place. Armed with pencil and paper, Dani dialed Panama City's information.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't show a listing for Duffy's."

  Dani bit her lip. Perhaps she hadn't gotten the name right, after all. Rather than go through a litany of Snuffy's-Tuffy's-McGuffy's with the long-distance operator, she decided to try Coconut Joe's. Her misgivings eased slightly as she noted the number. As soon as she had jotted down the listing for The Sandpiper, Dani tapped the receiver's button and then dialed the number. She had to listen to a Muzak version of "Let It Be" while she waited for the restaurant manager to come to the line.

  "You need a reference for someone named Ken Mc-Cabe?" The manager sounded dubious. "I'm sorry, but no one by that name has worked here. But then, I've only been in this job for the past three years. He could have tended bar before my time," the woman added encouragingly.

  "Thank you anyway." Dani felt her heart sinking as she clicked the button and then dialed the remaining number on her notepad.

  "M-C-C-A-B-E, you say?" Coconut Joe's manager spelled the name after her. "Nope, sure haven't heard of him."

  "Could he possibly have tended bar before you started working at Coconut Joe's?" Dani felt obligated to ask.

  The man guffawed as if she had just cracked a hilarious joke. "Lady, l am Coconut Joe!"

  Chapter Five

  Patience had never been Ken McCabe's strong suit, and this morning, his personal supply of the virtue was running even lower than usual. Every minor irritation—a shaving nick, a broken shoe lace, a stalled tour bus blocking Market Street—had seemed the work of a perverse demon, calculated to frustrate him when he had the least time to waste. And Ken had felt as if he had been counting the moments since hanging up the phone after Dani Blake had called last night.

  She had been so guarded, so close-mouthed during their last encounter in the Old Exchange, Ken had never expected to bear her soft, clear voice when he picked up the phone. He had been even more startled by the bombshell she dropped in his lap. "I've discovered some disturbing information that I need to discuss with you," she had announced.

  So far, Ken's investigation of the murder had yielded little more than idle gossip and a memorably unpleasant standoff with Bea Lawes. In light of the way his luck had been going, Dani's revelation seemed heaven sent. As if to bait his anticipation even further, however, she had refused to talk on the phone, insisting that they meet the following morning in Battery Park. His brief experience with her had taught Ken that trying to bully Dani Blake was counterproductive, and he had resigned himself to her terms.

  The park facing Charleston's harbor was peaceful at this hour of the morning, the foot traffic passing beneath the embowering live oaks confined to early-rising tourists and a few nannies trundling baby carriages along the paths. As she had promised, Dani was waiting for him on a bench near the war memorial. She had worn her hair down over her shoulders; in the clear sunlight, it flowed back from her smooth brow like a swirling eddy of molten bronze. Despite his haste, Ken paused, indulging himself for a moment in the beauty of her classical profile and that magnificent hair.

  When she caught sight of him, he hurried to meet her. "I hope you haven't been waiting too long. There was a damned bus marooned in Market Street."

  Dani didn't smile, and something told Ken that the anger reflected in her hazel eyes had nothing to do with his tardiness. "Please sit down." Given her cold tone, she might as well have dispensed with the word please. She gestured, rather peremptorily, to the opposite end of the bench.

  Ken eased onto the edge of the bench, still watching Dani as if she were holding a gun on him. Whatever he had expected from this meeting, this was definitely not it.

  "All right, Ken. I know you've been lying to me and I want to know why."

  Ken swallowed hard and looked out across the rough blue water surging along the quay. How the hell did you find out?

  As if she had read his mental question, Dani went on. "I phoned those restaurants where you said you had worked in Panama City. One of them doesn't exist, and when I asked for a reference on you at the other two places, no one had ever heard of you. I suppose your name is Ken McCabe, or did you make that up, too?"

  Ken threw up his hands in exasperation. "Wait a minute, Dani! I can explain."

  Arms folded across the front of her royal blue sweater, she nodded curtly. "Please do. That's why we're here right now."

  "First of all, I really am Ken McCabe." Ken drew a deep breath and warily regarded the woman seated across from him. For all her fresh-faced beauty, she looked as unmoved as the granite statue overshadowing them. Weaseling out of this predicament with anything less than a full confession was not going to be easy. "But I'm not a bartender, at least, not by profession. When you said you'd never been to Panama City, I thought I was safe rattling off the names of a few restaurants I remembered from a vacation years ago."

  He tried to gauge her reaction while he wrestled with his own indecision. At this point, his options seemed pitifully limited. He could fabricate another cover, but it would only be a matter of time until she found him out again. Dani had already proved she was too perceptive to fall for the usual ploys. If he told her the truth, however, he risked jeopardizing his entire investigation. Looking into the appraising hazel eyes, Ken realized that regardless of the hazards, the latter alternat
ive was his only real choice.

  He studied his hands clasped between his knees, hoping that the truth would sound plausible. "I work for a company called Associated Security. I'm what they call a 'security specialist.' The night Richardson was murdered, I was supposed to be protecting him from a blackmailer."

  Dani's lovely face contracted into a horrified frown. "Blackmail? What do you mean?"

  Ken suddenly felt almost too weary to nod, certainly too stress worn to carry on his subterfuge with her any longer. "Richardson had received a threatening note a few weeks earlier, demanding a half million dollars. His friend, Derek Cannaday, had used Associated Security in his business, and I was sent in to appraise the situation."

  Her face still drawn in perplexity, Dani interrupted. "If someone was trying to extort money from him, why didn't Richardson just go to the police?"

  Ken's sigh was laden with regret. "You know the Whytes with their old-family pride. They wanted to keep this thing quiet and settle it with as little outside involvement as possible. To be honest, though, when I saw the blackmail note, I thought we were dealing with a harmless crank. It was pasted up from letters cut out of magazines, with real melodramatic wording, just like the ransom notes you see in old movies. God, was I ever wrong!" He rubbed bis eyes, for a moment blotting out the incongruously cheerful sunlight.

  Dani had unfolded her arms and leaned forward slightly. "So you're investigating the murder now?" Mercifully, her voice had lost much of its hard edge.

  "Yeah. I persuaded Derek to let me stay on. I just can't walk away, not after what happened. It's one thing when you botch a job and people lose money, but Richardson—" He broke off, unable to bring himself to repeat the self-recrimination that by now had become a personal mantra.

  "I don't think you should blame yourself, Ken. After all, you weren't the only person who didn't take this threatening letter all that seriously. But I understand how you feel. I don't know how many times I've asked myself if Richardson would still be alive today had I gone upstairs just a few seconds sooner. Thafs why I'm determined to find out what he meant by giving me the pin."

  Ken looked up at Dani. The sharp morning light highlighted the green and gold flecks in her eyes, giving them an iridescent quality. "So you're conducting an investigation of your own?"

  She nodded, a little reluctantly, he thought, but then, they both were still testing the waters. One thing was certain: someone as bright and determined as Dani Blake would make a valuable ally, if she could be persuaded to share whatever she knew with him. Then, too, he was honest enough to admit that working with such an attractive woman would not be a distasteful task.

  "Maybe we should consider that old saw 'two heads are better than one.' I'd be willing to let you in on whatever I manage to uncover." It was a big concession, but somehow, Ken didn't think he would regret it. "And you have connections with a lot of folks in this town who wouldn't give me the time of day, some of Richardson's guests, for instance. You could get me the access I need to make progress."

  She didn't answer right away, and Ken guessed she was dealing with the same sort of quandary he had confronted. "Some of those people are my friends, Ken. I've catered parties in their homes. They trust me," she hedged. "I don't know how I would feel working behind their backs."

  "One of them might also be a murderer," he reminded her.

  Dani squared her shoulders, the better to meet the unsavory possibility head on. "You're right. Okay, I'll help you if you'll help me. Where do we start?"

  Ken was a little startled by her matter-of-fact approach. Although he loathed the chauvinistic attitude that equated female beauty with indecisiveness, rarely had he found a hard-nosed business client this resolute and ready to take action.

  "Well, I guess that depends on what either of us has done so far." In an effort to demonstrate his commitment to candor, Ken went on. "I tried to talk with Richardson's aunts yesterday afternoon. The older one, Adele, is apparently too senile to even know there's been a murder, but Sapphira, the younger, is as lucid as you or I. Unfortunately, I never got past her first line of defense. It seems Bea Lawes has taken up the protection of the Whyte family's privacy as her personal crusade. What a banshee!"

  Dani smiled for the first time during their tense conversation. "She was probably primed for you, since I had already locked horns with her that morning. I did manage a brief chat with Richardson's housekeeper. She told me what the man who called Richardson prior to the murder had said, something about wanting to talk with Mr. Whyte if he wasn't taking the little drama too seriously."

  "You think he meant the vignette?"

  Dani twisted a strand of burnished auburn hair around her finger, considering his question. "Yes, I think so. Of course, there may be no connection at all between the phone call and the murder, but after Richardson talked with that person—whoever he was—he went upstairs for some reason. I guess it's a long shot, but I'm curious to know what the caller could have meant by his comment."

  "With so little to go on, I don't think we can afford to rule out any suspicious information, regardless of how flimsy it may seem."

  Dani looked pleased that he hadn't brushed her hunch aside as ill-founded or amateurish. "I've already thought of a way to find out more about that particular skit. The guy who's tending bar for me at the party tonight is an actor. He does TV commercials and small movie parts mostly, but I'm sure he can put me in touch with the right people connected with the Ghostwalk. Maybe if we know more about that particular vignette's content, the caller's remark will make more sense."

  For some reason, Ken liked the way she said "we." "Good thinking. What about the stickpin? Any luck there?"

  Dani released the twisted curl to shove the sleeves of her sweater up her arms. "Richardson and my father sailed together. My guess is that the pin has something to do with their team. Last night, I just realized that Powell Boynton knew both men and may even have sailed with them. Actually, I had planned to call Powell this morning."

  "I'm afraid he's out of bounds for the time being. I wanted to talk with him, too, since he was such a close friend of Richardson's. We had an appointment yesterday morning, but when I arrived at his office, his secretary told me he had suffered a heart attack only a few hours after Richardson's funeral. He's in intensive care right now, no visitors allowed."

  Dani's hand shot up to her mouth. "Oh, my God! I suppose it was the strain of everything this past weekend. Have you heard how he's doing?"

  Frustrated as they both were by the dearth of reliable informants, Ken was struck by Dani's compassion. "His condition is listed as stable, but Derek says they think he's going to pull through. In the meantime, I plan to learn as much about the other people on that guest list as I possibly can."

  Dani thought for a moment. "There's another option, as far as the pin is concerned. I could go directly to the yacht club that Richardson and my father belonged to. Of course, the pin may have nothing to do with the club, but at least I could rule out that possibility." She hesitated for a second before adding, "You could come with me if you think it would be worth your time."

  "That's just the kind of entree I've been looking for." Ken paused, his enthusiasm suddenly tempered by another consideration. "Uh, not that I want you to bend the truth on my behalf, but I'd prefer that these yacht-club people didn't know a security man was snooping around the premises. On second thought, maybe I should let you handle this one on your own," he conceded reluctantly.

  He was heartened by how quickly she protested. "We needn't announce your identity through a bullhorn. And we won't have to lie, either. You can simply come along as someone who works with me in the catering business, which is technically true. We've driven out to the club to get some ideas for parties to coincide with the regatta. I'll let them know I'm Dan Blake's daughter, of course, but we're there on business. Okay?"

  "It's fine with me," Ken was happy to agree. "You haven't kept up with the yacht club over the years?" Given Richardson's glowing acco
unt of Dan Blake's sailing prowess, he was surprised that Dani seemed so unfamiliar with the club and its activities.

  "After the accident, Mother swore she'd never set foot in the club again. She kept her word." Dani looked down at her lap, toying with a tiny leaf that had snagged on her corduroy skirt. "I was just a toddler when it all happened, but she never would talk about the club or the boat or sailing, anything even remotely connected with the accident."

  "I didn't realize you had been so young. So you don't really remember your dad?" The moment he had spoken, Ken felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop, lumbering his clumsy way onto alien turf.

  "No, I don't. When I try to recall his face, there's nothing there. Except what I've seen in pictures." She carefully brushed the little leaf from her lap, avoiding Ken's gaze.

  She looked so fragile, so alone in her sadness. Without thinking, Ken reached to gently graze her shoulder with the back of his hand. Given the nature of his business, he had conditioned himself to grapple with hard practicalities, leaving the finer emotional points for others to take care of. If his gesture had seemed awkward to Dani, however, she was too gracious to show it.

  She smiled—for his benefit, he was certain—and then straightened herself. "I'll call the yacht club today and see if we can drive out sometime this week. How does your schedule look?"

  "Open for whatever you can cook up. I need to touch base with Derek, but he's usually pretty flexible."

  "Good. I'm going to be busy with this party today, but I'll see what I can work out." Dam stood, signaling that their meeting was drawing to a close. But as she started for the street, she gave him a smile guaranteed to linger with him until their next rendezvous.