Ghost Walk

by Laurel Pace

  Ken shook his head. "I'm going with Dani to the yacht club tomorrow morning, but I won't mention any of this to her."

  "I know Richardson would have appreciated your discretion," Derek assured him.

  Privately, Ken promised himself that he would take pains to shield Dani from such troublesome knowledge, if for no one's sake but her own. She had lost not only her natural father to a horrible tragedy, but also the man who, however limited their contact, had assumed the role of surrogate father in her life. To reveal Richardson's painful secret now would be an exercise in pointless cruelty.

  HE HAD BEGUN TO FEEL protective toward Dani. Ken was not ashamed to admit that development to himself the next morning as he sat beside her in the van, content to leave the driving to her. Not that Dani was the helpless sort of woman who collapsed at the first whiff of stress—quite the contrary. In fact, she would probably bristle if she knew he intended to watch out for her, Ken reflected, glancing at her determined profile. Still, they were on a trail that could lead to a murderer. As the trained security professional, it was his job to stay alert—for both of them.

  In spite of such somber considerations, Ken felt himself relax as the road wound through dense pine barrens, opening occasionally to reveal salt marshes that bordered the coast. He was accustomed to staying wound tight as a spring, coiled for action; it was a novel experience to ease back in the bucket seat, let his eyes half close behind his sunglasses and simply listen to Dani's animated narrative. There was something very sexy about her low voice, at once soft and resonant. For a fleeting moment, Ken wondered what it would sound like reduced to a whisper, at night, alone with her. He quickly caught himself and snapped to attention in his seat.

  "What do you suppose Stephen Lawes was up to?" Dani frowned, swerving the van slightly to avoid a raccoon huddling on the edge of the road.

  Ken considered her question for a moment. "I don't know. Nothing, maybe. You said the actors in the Joshua Parr vignette had been assigned to other reenactments, if they wanted to be. Assuming Lawes falls into that category, he could have had a perfectly legitimate reason to be waiting outside the director's office."

  Dani shrugged as she flipped the turn signal. "I guess I may be trying too hard to link him with this awful business. Given Bea's fanatical devotion to Richardson, it does seem rather farfetched that her son would wish him any ill. But there's something that bothers me about Stephen Lawes all the same." She glanced at Ken before wheeling the van onto a single-lane road prominently designated Private. Access Limited To Members Of The Breakers Yacht Club.

  "Think they put that sign up for our benefit?" Ken remarked, eyeing the palmettoes that pressed the edge of the road like a row of sentries.

  Smiling drily, Dani slowed the van as the road opened onto a sweeping vista of the yacht basin. "Don't worry. I'm accustomed to using the service entrance. I'm a caterer, remember."

  Ken chuckled. "Good thing you reminded me, since I'm supposed to be your helper today. How did you get into this business in the first place?"

  Dani pulled into the visitors' parking area and killed the engine."As the saying goes, it's a long story, but I'll tell you sometime," she promised.

  Ken climbed out of the van and stretched his legs, taking the opportunity to scan the club's impressively landscaped grounds. Dozens of sleek yachts dotted the rim of the sparkling blue cove, while a cultivated green sward spread from the marina to the clubhouse. With its white gingerbread woodwork and soaring turrets, the imposing building reminded Ken of a lavishly iced wedding cake.

  Despite her wisecrack about using the back door, Dani went straight to the curving steps leading up to the clubhouse veranda. An attendant in crisply starched white coat and trousers greeted them cordially and then hurried to announce their arrival. Dani managed to wink at Ken just before Paul Crawford, the club's social director, appeared in the door.

  "Miss Blake, what a pleasure to meet you!" The man beamed behind his horn-rim glasses as he pressed Dani's hand. Apparently, the name Blake still carried enough currency at The Breakers to guarantee its bearer a warm welcome.

  "I've been looking forward to talking with you, Mr. Crawford, but first, I'd like for you to meet my assistant, Ken McCabe. Planning functions is one of Ken's specialties," she added, with a trace of mischief that entirely bypassed Crawford.

  Despite his unexpected promotion in the Moveable Feast's organization—or more precisely, because of it—Ken made an effort to stay in the background while the social director escorted them through the clubhouse's various gathering rooms. The last thing he needed was to throw an inept monkey wrench into Dani's well-oiled presentation. And she was doing a masterful job with Crawford, asking questions she obviously knew the man would love to answer and complimenting him on the well-run facility- Only when they had adjourned to the sprawling terrace did she breach the topic of the pin.

  "I happened across an old photograph of my father the other day that could have been taken from this very spot." Dani braced her hands on the white balustrade and gazed out at the vessels moored along the shore. "I imagine the club has changed a lot over the years, though."

  "Not as much as you might think, at least not in the fifteen years I've been with the club." A look of avuncular interest played on Paul Crawford's sun-pink face as he joined Dani at the rail."Time marches on, of course, but we at The Breakers pride ourselves on maintaining tradition. New boats are still christened with ceremony. We always open the regatta with the boats sailing up the waterway in formation. Some of the teams have even passed their jerseys down through the generations, father to son, for good luck, I suppose." Dani turned, seating herself sideways on the rail to face Crawford. "What about insignia, caps, medals, things like that?"

  Ken suspected that only he picked up on the tension masked by her light, conversational tone.

  Crawford smiled, taking the question in stride. "You must be thinking of those little stickpins the teams used to wear."

  Ken imagined a tremor passing the length of the balustrade between Dani and him. "Stickpins?" She deserved a medal of her own for managing to sound so ingenuous.

  Crawford nodded, narrowing his eyes against the shards of sunlight reflected off the water. "Each team had its own special pin. They were really quite unique. The head would be in the shape of a yacht. The name of the boat was cast in gold and attached to the pin by a little chain. Sadly, that's one of the traditions that's fallen by the wayside in recent years. But I'm sure your father had one," he added delicately.

  Dani's eyes followed the terrace floor's intricate brickwork pattern. "I wouldn't know. You see, I never learned much about my father's involvement with the club." Ken realized that she was not feigning the hesitancy in her voice.

  Seasoned socializer that he was, Paul Crawford looked decidedly discomfited by the awkward turn their conversation had taken."Well now, your father was a member a little before my time, so I don't suppose there's much I can tell you. They took his team's boat away shortly after I accepted this position."

  Dani looked up. "Who took it?"

  Crawford blinked nervously, as if he feared she held him personally responsible for the yacht. "Why, one of the team members did. Mr. Whyte, God rest his soul. The yacht was registered in his name at that time. He thought the boat was bad luck, but as far as I know, it's still docked at his summer home up on Trumbull Island."

  To her credit, Dani managed to prolong the conversation for a decent length of time, asking Crawford about the club's policy regarding outside caterers and mentioning several well-publicized events she had catered in the past. Ken did his part by reminding Dani to leave some business cards and urging Crawford to refer members to Moveable Feast. Not until they were safely inside the closed van did they dare discuss the pin.

  "I knew it!" Dani smacked the dashboard triumphantly. "That pin must have been of tremendous sentimental value to Richardson. So much for Detective Butler's theory that it belonged to the murderer!"

  Infectious as Dan
i's excitement was, Ken felt bound to play devil's advocate. "We still don't know why Richardson gave it to you."

  "No," Dani conceded as she cranked the engine."We still have a puzzle, but we've just acquired a few extra pieces that I think may be critical to constructing the whole picture. We now know that the pin was Richardson's and that it harks back to the sailing team he and my father both belonged to."

  Ken adjusted the seat, stretching his legs as far as the van's compact cabin would permit."What I wouldn't give to have a look at that boat!"

  The van jolted slightly as Dani braked at the end of the private road. "Why don't we, then?"

  "You mean pay a surprise visit to Richardson's summer house? But do you even know where it is?"

  "No, but Trumbull Island can't be that big." She gave him a brash look that made Ken grateful they were both working on the same side.

  "Let's go for it." He gripped the edge of the seat, steadying himself as Dani swung the van onto the road. They drove for several minutes without talking, and Ken guessed Dani, like himself, was mulling over the intriguing yet fragmented clues that had turned up. "You know, we've stumbled onto a lot of connections with sailing—even the Joshua Parr legend is woven around a sea captain."

  Dani nodded, frowning into the glare burning through the windshield. "Richardson was a sailor, like Parr. And he was murdered. Somehow, that mysterious caller's remark about the 'little drama' seems too close to the mark to be coincidental."

  Two weeks ago, Ken would never have believed that a ghost story would have been a pivotal element in any investigation he conducted. In the case of Richardson Whyte's murder, however, standard investigative procedure had gotten him nowhere. In fact, Dani Blake's hunches had yielded the only information that might legitimately qualify as clues so far. Under the circumstances, their search for an unlucky—or haunted—yacht did not seem all that ridiculous.

  True to Dani's prediction, Trumbull proved to be a tiny barrier island whose population must have sunk to the double-digit level in the off-season. While Ken filled the van's gas tank at the island's only service station, Dani chatted with the attendant, who gave her directions to the Whyte family's secluded beachfront home.

  "This place looks as if it might have a few ghosts of its own lurking about," Ken remarked after they had turned off the county road and followed an unpaved lane for a couple of miles.

  His remark had been intended as a joke to lessen the tension they both felt, but given their surroundings, neither of them laughed. Dense woods, filled with darting shadows, enclosed the road from both sides, while Spanish moss drooping from the low branches caressed the van like shredded webs. Ken felt as if they had emerged from a suffocating tunnel when the wall of palmettoes and cypresses at last yielded to low dunes speckled with sea oats.

  Richardson's rambling, blue-and-white house was just visible from the road, its upper deck jutting over the tops of the subtropical trees like the crow's nest of a clipper ship. The white-graveled drive forked around a shrubbery island, one branch leading to the house, the other down to the beachfront. At the sight of a red Mercedes convertible parked near the house, Dani slowed the van to a crawl.

  "Looks like somebody is home," Ken remarked under his breath.

  "We're not burglars," Dani reminded him, but Ken guessed the irritation in her voice stemmed from their shared disappointment. Like him, Dani had probably hoped they would find the house deserted, leaving them free to inspect the yacht unobserved.

  As they climbed out of the van and started up the walk, they could hear the yapping of a small, ill-tempered dog from somewhere inside the house. The inhospitable creature's alarm had not gone unheeded, for the front door opened a crack before Dani could press the buzzer.

  Rebecca Pope regarded them coolly from behind the screen door, while the frenzied Yorkie lunged around her ankles. As her appraising blue eyes settled on Ken, he smiled. The china-doll eyes widened, but she quickly checked her impulse to flirt, recalling, no doubt, that he was only a bartender.

  "Hi, Rebecca! I didn't know if we'd find anyone here this late in the year." Dani raised her voice to be heard over the terrier's shrill barking.

  "I simply had to get away from the city for a few days, to settle my nerves. First, Uncle Richardson, and now Theo's daddy in the hospital—" The crystal blue eyes closed momentarily on the world and its cruelties. "I'm sorry to drop in unannounced," Dani apologized. This was Rebecca's cue to say "that's perfectly all right," but she only held up one splayed hand to blow on the freshly lacquered nails.

  Dani apparently sensed that additional pleasantries would be wasted on Rebecca."I made a business call at the yacht club today, and in the course of the conversation, Mr. Crawford mentioned that the yacht my father used to sail was docked here. I've never seen the boat, and, well, I just couldn't resist the temptation to stop by and have a look at it."

  "Oh, do hush, Winston!" Rebecca glanced down at the choleric terrier. When she looked back at Dani, she seemed equally irritated with the two human beings standing on the porch. "I'm sorry to disappoint you," she said without the slightest trace of remorse, "but you'll have to talk with Theo about the yacht. Since he persuaded Uncle Richardson to let him restore the thing, he's been absolutely obsessed with that boat. He'd be furious with me if I let anyone tamper with it."

  "I have no intention of tampering, Rebecca. I just want to see the boat." Ken could tell Dani was struggling to keep her temper in the face of Rebecca's capricious refusal.

  "And I'm sure after you talk with Theo, he'll be happy to let you look all you want," Rebecca cut in. "Now, if you'll excuse me, dear. As it is, I'm rushing to make a hairdresser's appointment in Charleston, and I hate being late." Still mindful of the glossy nails, she nudged the door slightly with her knee.

  "Thanks, Rebecca," Dani managed to say just before the door closed in her face.

  "Rebecca and Bea Lawes must have graduated from the same charm school," Ken remarked after they had returned to'the van. Frustrated as he knew she must be, he was pleased when Dani laughed.

  "Rebecca and I have never been best friends, even though we're the same age and went to the same college." She sighed as she steered the van back onto the dirt road.

  "So you went to Converse College, too?"

  Dani cut her eyes at Ken. "I see you've done a background check on Rebecca."

  "But not on you. Not yet," Ken added pointedly. This was such a grim business, putting people's lives under a microscope in hopes of finding a criminal germ; it was a welcome relief to engage in a little playful give-and-take with Dani. "Actually, anyone who wants to know about Rebecca Pope need only read the society pages for the past ten years. Except for a nominal job at an art gallery, Miss Pope seems to spend most her time being photographed at fashion shows and charity balls. Your life, on the other hand, would be harder to delve into, I imagine. It might require some direct questioning."

  A smile quivered on the lovely face reflected in the windshield. "Is that a friendly warning or a serious threat?"

  Ken evaded her question with a grin. "You did promise to tell me how you got into the catering business. Maybe we could work a deal. I take you to lunch today, and you tell me about yourself."

  Conditioned as he was to considering every move from all angles, Ken had never allowed himself much spontaneity, even in the meager social life his haphazard career permitted. When they had left Charleston that morning, the investigation had been foremost in bis mind, albeit one that he now had the pleasure of conducting with an extraordinarily attractive woman. He had harbored no intention of inveigling a social encounter with Dani. Still, the lunch invitation had popped out of his mouth so quickly, he realized it must have been simmering on some remote back burner in his mind. Dani looked both ways before turning onto the paved public road, but she seemed to be considering more than the sparse traffic. "You don't have to bribe me, you know, but it might be a good idea to have a bite to eat on our way back to town, if we can find a place that's stil
l serving lunch. It's already past three-thirty."

  Both of them recalled passing a roadside diner not far from the Trumbull Island turnoff. Had it not been for a weather-worn billboard touting the best batter-fried shrimp in Beaufort County, they could easily have overlooked the squat, aqua-stucco building.

  The pleasantly greasy smell of fried fish and a plaintive Randy Travis ballad playing on the jukebox greeted them as they entered the dining room. The lunch crowd had cleared out by now, leaving only a couple of older men lingering over lemon-meringue pie and coffee.

  "Are you still serving lunch?" Dani asked the waitress, who was mopping one of the tabletops with a damp cloth.

  "If we're open, we're cookin', hon," the woman assured her. "Just grab yourself a seat, and I'll be right with you."

  Dani and Ken chose a table for two next to the streaky window and immediately pounced on the menus. They had been so keyed up, both had ignored the gnawing rumblings in their empty stomachs. Ken now realized that he was famished. Apparently, Dani was, too, for she seconded his order of jumbo shrimp with hush puppies and coleslaw.

  "No pate or escargot on this menu, I fear," Ken remarked after the waitress had delivered their iced tea and paper-napkin-wrapped silverware.

  "That's fine with me," Dani assured him as she squeezed a lemon wedge over her tea. "I may serve a lot of fancy food in my business, but I enjoy simple fare, too, as long as it's fresh and well prepared. I can't stand food snobs. In fact, I'm not too crazy about any kind of snob." Ken chuckled. Little wonder that Dani and Rebecca had rarely crossed paths at their alma mater. "You were going to tell me about yourself," he prompted her.

  "The stakes have just gone up, I see." Dani smiled teas-ingly. "I thought I only had to tell you about my business in return for this lunch."

  "What if I throw in dessert?" Ken shot back. His eyes lingered on her face, enjoying the play of filtered light on her high cheekbones, the skin's delicate gradients of color, cream blending to peach with the faintest golden undertone.