“Excuse me, ladies, may I help you?”
I turned to find an older man standing at the bottom of the steps.
“I’m looking for Kissie McClain,” I said.
He slid a hammer into a tool belt. “You’re about ten hours too late. She pulled out of here this morning.”
“She moved?”
“To Nashville.” He gave a wide grin. “That little girl is taking her talent to the city where dreams become reality. Before long, you’ll hear her tunes on the radio, mark my words.”
“Did she give you notice?” Tinkie asked.
“Wasn’t necessary. She was one of the best renters I’ve ever had. She got a golden opportunity and she had to take it. No hard feelings from me.”
This was more than coincidence. Kissie didn’t just skip off to Nashville. She’d been opposed to gambling everything on Music City for a second time, and she also had no money. “Did she say what kind of opportunity?”
“No, she didn’t. But it must have been a good one. She took most of her furnishings to Goodwill and packed her clothes in her car. She barely had room for her guitar.”
“Did her boyfriend go with her?” Tinkie asked.
He pursed his lips. “With young people today, who knows? Now did you want to see the apartment?”
We did, but after a quick look around, we accepted there was nothing to be learned. Kissie and her convenient opportunity were gone and there was nothing left to tell us the story of her circumstances.
21
Backing out of the driveway, Tinkie seemed lost in thought. We headed west, toward downtown and the river. I didn’t ask where she was taking me, because I had no idea what to do next.
“Where did Kissie get the money to move to Nashville?” she asked.
“Moving is expensive. She left a paying gig here, for what?” I had my own set of questions.
“Do you think she and Jerome are together?”
It was strange the Leverts’ housekeeper and gardener, both with access to the Levert estate and the sisters’ secrets, had decamped. Briarcliff was experiencing a domestic crisis, on top of all the others.
“Do you think Kissie really went to Nashville? And Jerome? Did he just vanish?”
I could tell Tinkie was worried something unfortunate might have happened to the housekeeper and possibly the gardener. “We can check on Kissie in Nashville, but it will take too long. I don’t even know where to begin with Jerome.”
“He isn’t missing. Eleanor knew he’d left.” Tinkie clenched the steering wheel.
“You still think he’s the horseman?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think. I just know once Monica is returned, I want them both arrested.”
I couldn’t disagree.
Tinkie cruised by the insurance company and the bank, but nothing looked amiss. My mind kept worrying the matter of Jerome and Kissie, both gone.
“Hello, darlink!”
I looked around me at the shady Natchez street flying past.
There was the sound of snapping fingers, and I saw the most beautiful blond woman perched on the hood of Tinkie’s car as we drove along Franklin Street. She wore a flowing gown with layers and layers of beautiful teal material that came together in a drop-dead V, centered with a bodacious diamond brooch. The neckline plunged to an inch above her navel. Full breasts peaked dangerously at the edge of the material, swaying as if they meant to spring free at any moment.
I couldn’t say anything. Tinkie drove as if the woman weren’t there. And she wasn’t—except in my head. I was on the receiving end of another visitation for my haint.
“I’m a wonderful housekeeper, Sarah Booth,” the blonde said. “Every time I divorce, I keep the house.” Her laughter tinkled inside the car like little drops of joy. Jitty was on another rampage. The woman she emulated was iconic and familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on her.
“Who are you today?” I didn’t have to speak aloud. In fact, if I talked with Jitty, Tinkie would think I’d lost my mind.
“You know me from your childhood. You and your parents watched reruns of my sister’s very popular TV show. Don’t ever go to television, Sarah Booth. You’re meant for the big screen. I kept telling Eva that, but she wouldn’t listen. She played a farmer’s wife.” She laughed. “My sister, on a farm. Now think about that ludicrous image, darlink.”
“But the show was a success.” I remembered Green Acres. Eva Gabor on a tractor in rubber boots. Hysterical comedy in the 1960s.
“Eva never stopped pointing out what a success her show was.” Jitty flipped a fur boa around her neck. The wind caught it, sending it streaming behind her. “She never tired of telling everyone she was the successful sister, the star, the one who brought home the bacon—even if it meant sharing billing on a stupid television show with a pig.”
The sibling rivalry of the Gabor sisters had begun to bore me. “Why are you riding on the hood of Tinkie’s Cadillac?” I asked.
“Look closer, Sarah Booth.”
I leaned toward the front windshield. Tinkie stuck out an arm and pushed me back into the seat. “What the hell is wrong with you, Sarah Booth?”
“Nothing,” I managed to mumble.
Jitty laughed. She tapped on the window. “I like you. You can call me Zsa Zsa. All of my friends do. It’s just my sisters I have to watch out for. Beautiful women are always the most dangerous. Keep that in mind.”
“What do you want?” She was straining my brain.
“In order? Number one on my list is a baby for the Delaney womb to carry. Number two is a husband for the last Delaney, a—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give it a rest, Jitty. I’m doing everything I can.”
“Who the hell is Jitty?” Tinkie asked.
My head swiveled from Jitty on the hood to Tinkie and back to Jitty, who had begun to fade! “Damn it, get back here! This is no time for your pranks!” I said, obviously aloud, because Tinkie looked shocked.
“Sarah Booth! Sarah Booth!” Tinkie jabbed me in the ribs. “What in the world is the matter with you? You’re talking crazy, about to drool on yourself, and you’re acting like you want to climb through the front window of my car.”
I’d been so deep in my imagined conversation with Jitty / Zsa Zsa I’d lost sight of the real world. We were still on Franklin Street, the river to our west. This was one of my favorite parts of Natchez, with historic homes and elegant trees—Barthelme should have been hanged from one, along with the other thieves and rascals of the nineteenth century. I’d lost my place in present-day time. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Where should we go?” Tinkie countered.
“Let’s get a burger.” My watch showed 4:40. Time moved too slowly while we waited for the kidnapper.
“A hamburger?” Tinkie’s tone said it all.
“I’m only human. I have to eat. What else should we do for an hour and forty minutes? We’re hamstrung until the call comes in. I eat when I’m nervous.” Cranky wasn’t pretty when I wore it, but waiting was never my best activity.
“Kissie and Jerome have taken a runner. And you’re slipping in and out of reality and worried about a hamburger. You are making me a crazy woman.” Tinkie slowed the Caddy and pulled off the street in front of Turning Pages Books. I could see the shop owner stocking a shelf. The instant her back was turned, a beautiful Westie jumped on the books and tumbled them to the floor. Ah, everyone is a critic. I slumped down in the seat.
“We should go back to Briarcliff and wait with Eleanor.”
Tinkie put words to action and sped down the tree-lined Natchez streets.
“Wait!”
Tink startled so badly she slammed on brakes with enough pressure to send me into my seat belt. My right breast was permanently crushed.
“Don’t do that!” she said with some heat.
“Sorry. We need to find Barclay.”
Tinkie looked at her Rolex. “It’s four forty-five. We have to meet Eleanor.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled with that.” Tinkie searched her briefcase-purse for her cell phone.
A car behind us honked, and Tinkie eased into a parking spot down the street as she talked. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I felt a jolt of dread. Gunny, his badge shining in the late afternoon sun, walked toward us.
* * *
“Why Chief Randall, you do look handsome in that uniform.” Tinkie oozed pleasure at the unexpected arrival of the very buff policeman. His dark uniform pants were tailored to a fare-thee-well, and his shirt stretched across well-developed pecs. He lifted dark glasses to reveal irises a deep forest green. None of this did a single thing to make me feel less threatened.
“Ladies.” Gunny eyed me like I carried a disease. I had the sense his presence wasn’t an accident. The man had tracked us down like rabid dogs. And he meant to make us bark.
“We’re on our way to help Eleanor with a chore,” Tinkie said. “Why don’t you come out with us and have a big ol’ bourbon? Eleanor keeps the best liquor.”
“I don’t drink on duty. What’s going on at Briarcliff?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Tinkie was all blue-eyed innocence.
“Cut the crap. Eleanor’s been dodging me for two days.” Gunny was nobody’s fool. “Why are you two still in town? The insurance company paid out. Eleanor cashed the check this morning. I figured you’d be done with the Levert sisters and back in Zinnia.”
“We’re tying up some loose ends.” He made me uncomfortable, and it didn’t help that I couldn’t see his eyes because of the dark sunglasses he’d put back on.
“Four million is a lot of money for two middle-aged women to have lying around a big ol’ haunted house.” His grin was disparaging. “Why did Eleanor cash the check and walk out of the bank with the money?”
The way he said it made my skin twitch. He knew way too much about the Leverts’ business. I gave Gunny another visual once-over. He was a handsome man in a wrapped-too-tight kind of way. His torso short, his legs …
“I believe the sisters know how to handle their money,” I said easily. “Gunny, how long have you been in Natchez?”
“Five years.” He frowned at the change in topic. “What’s the sudden interest in my career?”
Tinkie gave him a slow smile. “Allow a girl her indulgences. Sarah Booth and I have a bet. She says you worked in Memphis, but I say you spent some time in the North.” Tinkie was quick on the uptake.
“Then you’d win the bet. I put in five years at the Cincinnati PD before I took this job.” He tapped the car door. “Eleanor should put her money somewhere safe, and I don’t mean the vault in Briarcliff. She’s a sitting duck for a robber … or worse.”
He sauntered to his car and drove past us.
“What was that all about?” Tinkie asked.
I didn’t answer. I borrowed her phone and dialed Cece. When her voice mail prompted, I said, “Check the Cincinnati PD for an Albert Randall. I specifically need to know if they have a mounted unit and, if so, was he a member. Thanks!”
“Saint Francis in a flock of vultures.” Tinkie had followed me straight to my conclusion. “Gunny could be our midnight cowboy. His body type fits the photos.”
We hadn’t gone two blocks when the phone rang. I answered.
“Sergeant Albert ‘Gunny’ Randall was not only on the mounted unit, he was one of the trainers,” Cece said. “He was highly respected as a law officer and an equestrian.”
We had our answer. “Thanks, Cece. You’re the best.” I hung up and relayed the info to Tinkie.
“Why would Gunny pretend to be the ghost of Barthelme Levert?”
“I don’t have a definitive answer.”
“Shall we pick up Barclay or not?” Tinkie asked.
Barclay would serve a purpose. “Let’s find him. If we have him with us, he can’t make trouble. Besides, if we’re standing on the bluff with Eleanor, it might be good insurance to have a compatriot in the house. A fallback. A witness to whatever transpires.”
“You’re smarter than the average bear, Sarah Booth.” Tinkie flipped down her visor as she angled toward the golden flow of the Mississippi River. Again I was struck by the water’s placid appearance, but I knew beneath the surface, the currents were treacherous.
* * *
Barclay was surprisingly complacent. We found him at the Eola, and he got in the Cadillac without a complaint or even a question.
“Are you okay?” Tinkie asked him.
I rode in the backseat so I could watch him. His brow looked like a thundercloud. Heathcliff, in the flesh.
“The whole thing with Millicent is unreal. She was going to help me, and now I’ll never know how. She was my cousin.” He seemed bemused by the blood tie. “We have to find her body. We can’t just leave her out there for the bugs to eat.”
Tinkie drove and talked. “Eleanor has agreed to call the police as soon as Monica is returned. She’ll admit to insurance fraud. Chances are, you’ll end up in the catbird seat, Barclay. For right now, the only thing we can do is get through this ransom exchange.”
“That night in Bennator’s, you and Marty Diamond almost tied up. Why?” I was curious if Kissie was the source of their animosity.
Barclay twisted so he could see me. “He hates me. He refuses to believe Kissie and I are friends. Nothing more. She put me up when I first got to town because I didn’t have money for a hotel. I told her I was a Levert, and she believed me. Even though she’s fond of the sisters, she said I deserved my inheritance. I had to clear out of her place or Marty threatened to make a scene, so she let me into Briarcliff for a couple of weeks.”
“If you didn’t have money when you came to town, care to explain how you can afford to stay at the Eola?”
Barclay straightened in the front seat. “I’d rather not, but I know you won’t let it drop.” He paused. “I’m not proud of my actions.”
He was hedging, and I caught a whiff of important information. “I think you’d better tell us.”
“My clever mother has never walked hand in hand with the truth.”
“Meaning?” I wanted to thump him the back of his head, but I refrained.
“Monica pulled a double cross on a rich man before she ended up in the Tampa area. The boat she arrived in wasn’t hers. She’d … essentially, she stole it. Took it by deception. The elderly man came out from under the spell she’d woven and realized he’d been fleeced. So he called the law and said she’d stolen his boat, a fifty-foot schooner.”
“She had a bit of her ancestor in her, didn’t she? Barthelme was a river pirate.” A week ago this tale might have shocked me, but not now. The Levert sisters were capable of any degree of theft.
“What happened?” Tinkie asked. “Was she arrested?”
“My father intervened. He knew the sheriff and convinced him not to arrest Monica. He said Monica was a confused young woman who thought the boat had been loaned to her. He made it out to be a misunderstanding.”
“And then she stayed with your father.”
“For almost a year.” Barclay’s fingers dug into the back of Tinkie’s seat. “And what she stole from him was far more valuable than a boat. She took his future. She broke his heart.”
“How does this relate to earning money?” I asked.
“John Hightower paid me for this insight into Monica’s character. Handsomely. The story of my conception brought in enough money for me to rent a room at the Eola and dress for success.”
He spoke with such bitterness I felt sorry for him. “Monica was very young then. She was, what, eighteen?”
“She’s a user. And she hasn’t changed.”
“She was just a kid,” Tinkie said. “That doesn’t make it right, but she—”
“Anyway, now you know how I got the money.” Barclay was done with the subject. “So why are you taking me to Briarclif
f?”
“We need your help.” I wasn’t certain he would go along with my plan.
“To save Monica?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I?” he asked.
“Because she’s your mother, because Eleanor loves her, because if she dies you’ll have to carry the guilt the rest of your life.”
When he didn’t say anything else, Tinkie pressed the pedal to the floorboard and we zoomed toward Briarcliff and a date with a kidnapper.
22
By the time six o’clock arrived, Eleanor was in a state of total anxiety. I wasn’t far behind her. Tinkie and I decided not to mention our suspicions about Gunny. But when it came time to call the law, we would contact the sheriff we knew to be honorable—Coleman Peters.
At five minutes before the appointed hour, I walked out the front door with my partner and Eleanor. Barclay remained in the house, watching us from a second-floor window. Hidden by the draperies, he used Tinkie’s telephoto lens on her camera and binoculars to try and pinpoint a vantage spot from which our kidnapper was spying us. We speculated the abductor to be on the Louisiana side of the river.
As we approached the bluff, all in a line, I noticed the bridge. The highest bridge in Mississippi. I knew instantly how the kidnapper had kept tabs on us. He’d rigged a camera with an extreme telephoto lens to a high beam on the ironwork—he’d have a clear view of Briarcliff and all that went on. I nudged Tinkie and whispered my thoughts.
“It’s impossible to spot the camera from here, but I think you’ve solved part of the mystery,” she said. Eleanor was too focused to heed our conversation. She held her cell phone so tightly I thought she’d crack the plastic. Very gently I touched her arm and took the phone from her. At first I thought she’d resist, but she yielded with a strangled gasp.
“Why doesn’t he call?” she asked.
“It’s only five fifty-eight. Two minutes to go.” I prayed the kidnapper was time conscious. The anguish of waiting for someone who couldn’t meet a deadline would be too much. The darkest of thoughts surfaced at such times.
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