Murder Sends a Postcard (A Haunted Souvenir)

by Fifield, Christy

  We passed the city limit, turned north on a county road, and spotted the brick gateposts that marked the entrance to Bayvue Estates. They guarded the entrance to an unfenced swath of bare land with a single paved road leading away from the highway.

  There weren’t many estates, just two model homes surrounded by empty lots. And there wasn’t a view of the bay either.

  A tall magnolia tree, its base hidden beneath fallen leaves and waxy white blossoms, stood in front of one house. The rest of the front yard, overgrown with tall grass, gave the new construction an air of defeat and abandonment. The only sign of human occupation was a midsize sedan parked in the driveway.

  The paving petered out a few yards beyond the model homes, the remainder of the streets in the development nothing more than graded dirt paths wandering between the vacant lots.

  I pulled the truck up next to the sedan, and we clambered out with the bags of food. As we approached the front door, it swung open and Bridget called out a greeting, as though she had been listening for our arrival. She had changed from her suit and stilettos into a pair of fashionable jeans and a casual tank top that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

  “Hi,” I answered. “We brought a cold supper, since it’s too hot to cook.” I nodded to Karen. “Bridget, this is my best friend, Karen Freed. If you’ve listened to WBBY since you’ve been here, you’ve probably heard her newscasts.

  “Karen, this is Bridget McKenna.”

  Karen managed to shift the grocery bag to her left hand and extended her right hand to Bridget.

  “I’m that evil woman from up North,” Bridget said with the same warm smile I’d seen the day before. “Glad to meet you.” She glanced over at me. “And yes, I have heard her on the radio.” She held the door for us. “Come on in.”

  I waved away Bridget’s offer to take my bag and followed her toward the kitchen with Karen right behind me. As we crossed the two-story-tall entry, I took in the marble floor and the view across the broad living room to the backyard.

  Without landscaping, the backyard looked even more desolate than the front. I could imagine what it might look like if a professional landscape architect had been able to finish the job with native grasses, flowering bushes, and tropical plants.

  Bridget led us through the empty dining room and into the kitchen. Speckled black granite counters topped honey-colored wood cabinets. Glass doors, meant to display china and crystal, exposed empty shelves. A six-burner gas range under a top-of-the-line microwave–range hood combination dominated one wall, and a three-door refrigerator stood within easy reach of the butcher-block-topped central island. I could see where a big chunk of Back Bay’s money had gone.

  Next to the deep farmhouse sink, a roll of paper towels stood on end by a cheap toaster and coffeemaker, which seemed out of place in the high-end kitchen. They were the only things that looked as though they had been used.

  “Cold supper sounds like an excellent idea,” Bridget said as we unpacked the bags and laid out plastic boxes and bowls on the island next to a collection of plates and silverware. “Food first?” she asked. “Or would you rather have the grand tour?”

  I didn’t wait for Karen’s answer. “Tour first.”

  We stuffed the food into the nearly empty refrigerator, battling the door that closed on us the minute we let go of it.

  “It needs to be leveled,” Bridget said. “It’s on my to-do list.”

  Karen shot her a quizzical glance.

  “The bank wants to liquidate as soon as possible, to get our money back out. They asked me to evaluate the property—get an appraisal if I need to—and see what it will take to unload the houses and the empty lots.”

  Bridget led us through the house. Upstairs, a huge master suite opened to an expansive balcony running along the entire back of the house, and overlooking the barren backyard. Windows in the master bathroom surrounded the jetted tub set on a ceramic-tiled pedestal, and shared the same view.

  Karen let out a low whistle. “Could have been gorgeous,” she said, “if the yard was finished.”

  We saw two smaller bedrooms on the second floor with a Jack-and-Jill bathroom between them. In the shared bathroom there were no faucets or towel bars, and the vessel sinks still had manufacturer’s stickers on the outside.

  In the closet of the back bedroom, one wall had been lined in cedar, and a stack of planks on the floor looked as though the carpenter had left at the end of the workday and never come back. Which, I suppose, was pretty close to the truth.

  Back in the central hallway, the door to the hall cabinet sagged open. Karen had pushed it closed as we walked past, but it had swung open again. Either the house had a ghost, or the cabinet door had been hung improperly. I suspected the latter. On the other hand, I had some firsthand experience with ghosts. I was convinced Uncle Louis sometimes did things like that just to mess with me.

  Back downstairs Bridget showed us the home office with its own entrance around the corner of the house from the front door. It was a room full of built-in dark oak cabinets and bookcases, tucked behind the soaring entry.

  Karen eyed the office appraisingly. “Nice setup for someone who works from home,” she said. “A lawyer, or an architect. Something like that.”

  In contrast to the open plan, huge windows, and light colors of the rest of the house, this room had a cozy, private feel to it. It was my favorite room in the house, one where I could have happily settled down and filled the shelves with books. But as we left the room, I noticed how uneven the textured finish of the walls looked.

  The house was a study in contradictions. The kitchen was completely finished, filled with custom cabinets and high-end appliances befitting a sales display for expensive homes, the beautiful office storage units were clearly custom-fitted to the room, and the smell of new carpet still permeated the entire structure. But the upstairs hadn’t been completed, and in several places work had been done in such a hurry that it wasn’t properly finished, like the sagging closet door and faulty texturing.

  As we trooped back down the stairs, the doorbell rang. Bridget shot us a questioning glance. We both shook our heads and followed her to the door.

  It couldn’t be anyone from Keyhole Bay; no one was that ill-mannered, not even Felicia Anderson. Showing up at someone’s home—if you weren’t family, or as good as—without an invitation was considered rude, but without even calling first was ever so much worse.

  Before we reached the bottom of the stairs, the bell rang again. A fist pounded against the door, and from outside a deep voice yelled, “Marshall, are you in there? I want to talk to you!”

  The three of us exchanged a quick look. “You know who he’s looking for, right?” I asked Bridget.

  She nodded. “The developer, Andrew Marshall. But he’s never lived here. Nobody has.”

  “Yeah,” Karen said as we crossed the entry hall, “I thought they just used it as the sales model.”

  “That’s right,” Bridget answered. “They had a construction trailer out here when they started. Moved it when they had these places close to finished. That was about a week before the hammer fell.”

  She stopped at the door and took a moment to draw a deep breath. In an instant she transformed from the relaxed and friendly woman we’d been talking to into an executive with a commanding air of authority.

  All the while the pounding and screaming continued, with the addition of some rather inventive cursing that would have impressed even Bluebeard.

  Bridget took one last deep breath and opened the door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a tone that implied she probably couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

  The man paused for a second, then yelled, “Where is that thieving SOB?”

  I had been right. He definitely wasn’t from Keyhole Bay. Sixtysomething, with the ruddy face and veined nose of a longtime drinker, his pale skin br
anded him as a Northerner as surely as his bad manners did. He wore custom-tailored white slacks and a pastel golf shirt that strained across his beer belly, with an expensive and ostentatious watch clasped around his wrist.

  He stood on the porch, his head thrust forward in the challenging posture of a lifelong bully. A man with a lot of money, very little class, and no tact at all.

  I stood back and watched as Bridget carefully dismantled his air of superiority.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea where Mr. Marshall is,” she said calmly, as though she hadn’t heard his outburst. “He has no interest in this property. There is no reason for him to be here.”

  Somehow, despite the fact that the man was at least six inches taller, she appeared to look down her nose at him. “Will there be anything else?”

  “There damn well will be!” he shouted. Like most bullies, volume was one of his favorite weapons.

  “And that is?” Bridget made a show of suppressing a sigh, as though her boredom threshold had long been passed. She turned and looked at us, the gesture broad and theatrical. Taking the cue, we both shrugged elaborately.

  “I want my damned house! If he’s not here, then maybe you better be turning it over to me, honey.”

  I saw Bridget’s spine stiffen at the casual condescension in his tone, and the familiarity of his words. But she didn’t let him see it.

  “Well,” she said, her voice still controlled, her posture deliberately relaxed, and her tone deceptively cheery, “since I don’t know who you are, or why I should give you anything, particularly the house where I am currently residing, I don’t see how that is going to happen.”

  “I gave that SOB a hefty deposit on this house.” He had stopped screaming, though he was still loud. “He said it’d be ready for us to move in by the first of July. Now I get here and I find you living in my house, Marshall’s nowhere to be found, and my wife is raising hell.” He gestured toward the expensive sedan parked in the road in front of the house.

  I assumed his wife was in the car, though the tinted windows obscured any view of his passenger.

  Bridget shook her head. “You did not put a deposit on this house. This house was never for sale. You put a deposit on a house in this development. This house”—she waved her arm as though displaying a prize on a TV game show—“belongs to the bank that financed Mr. Marshall’s venture. And so does the rest of the development.”

  She stared him down. “If you have any other questions, I suggest you make an appointment to see me in my office at Back Bay Bank. You can call my secretary on Monday morning. Bring your receipts and contracts. And maybe your lawyer.

  “In the meantime, I suggest you get off my porch and out of my yard. You’re trespassing.”

  She didn’t wait for his answer.

  She shut the door in his face. She didn’t slam it, just closed it swiftly and firmly, and shot the dead bolt as soon as the latch clicked into place.

  From the porch we could hear the man continuing to yell. He pounded on the door and leaned on the doorbell for several minutes at a time.

  Bridget waited until he was getting hoarse from the shouting, and the pounding grew weaker. Whoever her visitor was, he wasn’t a young man, and he didn’t have the stamina for a sustained attack.

  As he started another round of pounding, she whipped the door open. His arm was in midstrike, and without the solid surface of the door, the momentum of his swing threw him off balance.

  For long seconds he flailed around, nearly falling in a heap on the doorstep. She just stared at him as he struggled to stay on his feet.

  Once he was stable, she looked him up and down, then spoke. “By the way, can I get your name? For my report?”

  His answer would have made Bluebeard blush, and contained several suggestions that I didn’t think were physically possible. He finally turned to leave, but stopped long enough to stare back at her.

  “You’ll pay for that.”

  For the first time since he’d appeared, I was frightened.

  Bridget didn’t appear the least bit afraid, but fury bubbled in her every word and gesture. “The worst part is, I have no idea if he’s the only one, or how many there might be. Three? Five? A dozen? Back Bay doesn’t have a record of how many deposits Marshall took, or how much they were.” She slammed her fist against the door, an echo of the man’s tantrum on the porch.

  “Dammit! I do not want to have to hire security guards again.”

  Karen looked startled. “Again?”

  Bridget sighed, and I could see her anger ebbing. “Yeah. It’s one of the hazards of the job. You’re messing with people’s money and their lives.

  “Desperate people sometimes do desperate things. Once in a while I’ve needed a little extra help getting through some of the worst situations.

  “Come on,” she said, waving toward the kitchen. “Let’s see what you brought. Confrontations make me hungry.”

  She laughed, her tone and attitude dismissing the angry bully who never did give her his name, and she led the way through the house.

  Back in the kitchen, we retrieved the food and spread it across the butcher block. As we filled our plates, I explained the various dishes to Bridget, which led to a discussion of our Thursday night dinner.

  “It started out as a way to keep in touch during the summer, when we were all really busy,” Karen said after we were settled at the small dining table tucked into a corner of the kitchen. “And then we just kept going. After a while it kind of became a tradition, and now we can’t stop.”

  Bridget looked wistful. “Sounds great to me. I travel so much I could never keep up with a schedule like that.”

  “Well, we do sometimes miss a week, if someone’s on vacation or something,” I said.

  “Like you ever take a vacation,” Karen said.

  “I do. But when you work for yourself, the boss won’t give you much time off.”

  “A real slave driver, eh?” Bridget asked.

  “Sure is,” Karen answered before I could. “She never really takes a day for herself.”

  “Not true,” I said. “We went to De Funiak—”

  “A year ago,” Karen interrupted. “And even then it wasn’t a day off. It was a treasure-hunting expedition and you bought a bunch of inventory for the store.”

  “But that’s fun for me,” I protested.

  “So, Bridget,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from my supposed obsession with work, “did you decide what you’re going to do with your days off?”

  Bridget hesitated, as though reconsidering her options. “I think,” she said finally, “I may go over to Biloxi for the day, maybe even stay over one night.” She glanced around the sparsely furnished house. “It might be good to get away from here, especially after my visitor. At least for a few hours.”

  She had a point. The house might someday be a lovely home, but right now it was downright depressing. The rental furniture was low-end commercial: a basic bedroom set, a bare-bones living room set, and the dining table and chairs. I didn’t like a lot of clutter—my apartment was far too small for tons of knickknacks or mementos—but I had books in my bookcases, pictures on the walls, and canisters on my kitchen counter.

  Even a hotel room would feel homier than Bayvue Estates.

  Chapter 6

  “BILOXI SOUNDS LIKE FUN,” KAREN SAID WHEN WE pulled out of Bridget’s driveway. “We ought to go again soon.”

  “Yeah, right,” I answered dryly. “In my copious free time.”

  “You have Julie,” she countered. “I know you can’t go in the summer, but September’s only a couple months away.”

  I pulled out of the deserted development past the brick gateposts, turning south onto the county road. Far behind me I saw a pair of headlights, the only other vehicle on what most tourists would consider a back road. Once you got off the
highway, you could travel for miles without seeing another car.

  We turned onto the highway, heading back into the center of town. The midsummer sun was just setting, and waiting crowds spilled out of restaurants onto the sidewalk, a reminder of what Bridget would have encountered in her search for dinner.

  As we drove through, I mentally tallied the number of hotels and motels with red neon signs blazing “No Vacancy.” It was a good indication of what to expect for the weekend. Near as I could tell, the town was 100 percent full.

  Tomorrow should be a busy day. Biloxi was sounding better all the time, but I’d be wishing for the crowds when business dropped off at the end of the summer and I still had bills to pay.

  It was my constant balancing act. I’d been orphaned by a hit-and-run driver at seventeen, and I felt like I’d been pretty much on my own since then. Paying the bills and taking care of myself topped my list of priorities, and had for over fifteen years. It often didn’t leave a lot of time for other things.

  I had accepted the responsibility long ago. I’d chosen to run Southern Treasures myself, and I usually preferred it that way. But it didn’t stop me from occasionally chafing under my self-imposed restrictions.

  I pulled into the parking area behind the shop and shut off the engine. “Wine?” I asked Karen as we climbed out of the truck.

  She shook her head. “After I ditched Riley to go with you, I better not,” she said. “I promised him I’d be home before it got too late.”

  I stopped at the back door, key in hand. “Home? He’s checking up on you?”

  She hesitated, and I prodded some more. “What’s really going on with you two? Really?”

  “It’s complicated,” she answered.

  I shook my head. “That’s not an answer, Freed.” As I said it, I realized something that had somehow eluded me for years. Karen had divorced Riley, but she had kept his name. At the time she had claimed it was for professional reasons: she was known on air as Karen Freed and she didn’t want to lose that identity. Now I wasn’t sure I completely believed her.