Eleanor’s eyes closed. “There’re dozens of old buildings all over Natchez. I could make you a list, and I will if you think it’ll help. But Monica could be a prisoner in at least sixty different places. You’d require weeks to check them all out.”
“Could you narrow the list?” Eleanor might unwittingly give us helpful information. I believed the kidnapper, singular or plural, was familiar with the Levert family. “Do you own any empty buildings?”
“We do. Our accountant keeps up with all properties, rented and empty. My brain isn’t working properly. Now, of all times, I simply can’t think clearly.” The pressure had been relentless since Monica’s abduction. Eleanor was exhausted and her body was demanding rest.
“Write a list for us. Tomorrow we can check any spaces you come up with.” Daylight would serve us far better in our quest. I wasn’t a coward by any means, but we could be thorough and quick with sunshine to help. And much safer.
“Tomorrow.” Eleanor shifted away from the mantel and almost fell.
“Try to sleep.” Tinkie offered assistance, but Eleanor righted herself and waved her away.
“Tomorrow, I’ll call the accountant and he can help me write down the locations. I doubt they’ll be helpful, but I’ll try. Whatever it takes. Monica must be saved.”
I had a question for Eleanor. “Before you go to your room, one more thing. Monica referred to the kidnapper as a ‘he,’ which jibes with what you told us about a man calling twice before. Was there anything about the voice you recognized?”
“He was so … confident. So cruel.” Eleanor shuddered
“Who is this person?” I spoke aloud, though I didn’t intend to.
“I don’t know.” Eleanor sounded as if she might cry.
“You need to eat something,” Tinkie told her. “I can whip up an omelet or something—”
“No.” Eleanor held up a hand as if warding off a blow. “I can’t eat. My stomach churns at the thought of food. I’ll go to my room. If I can catch a few hours of sleep, I’ll be able to help more.” Eleanor reached for the handgun Tinkie had placed on an end table, but I picked it up first. “I should keep this.”
Eleanor only nodded and left the room.
True to her word, Tinkie prepared a delightful omelet. After we cleaned up the kitchen and fed the dogs, we retired to our bedrooms on the second floor. I took a moment to assess the layout of the room, which reminded me of one of the suites in the old black-and-white horror movies that featured Vincent Price as a man who brewed exotic and horrible experiments in the basement of the house.
The furnishings were lush—heavy silk draperies and bed hangings on the four-poster. Wingback chairs and a sofa in front of a fireplace, unlit because of the season. A thick Oriental rug glowed with patterns of crimson, turquoise, buff, and navy. The mantel held several family photographs, and when I picked them up I realized they were old tintypes of young women, the Levert brides. Whatever else could be said for the family, the women were a handsome lot. Especially the wives of Barthelme.
But what would possess a young woman to marry a man whose prior wife had died so shortly after the wedding? A man with a history of wives who perished. Staring at the features of the women, I saw their youth and naïveté. They looked no older than eighteen at the most, wide-eyed with innocence.
During the 1800s, marriages were often arranged. Women had no say in whom they married as long as the match was considered financially sound. But how could a father and mother barter their child, their daughter, into wedding a murderer?
I returned the pictures to the mantel and prepared for bed. It wasn’t even midnight, but we had a long day ahead of us. I’d just crawled under the covers when I heard a tapping at my door. “Come in.” I knew it was either Tinkie or a raven. If it was a large black bird, I was outta there, case or no case.
“It just doesn’t make sense.” Tinkie shuffled into the room wearing Barney pajamas and big purple slippers. Her petite size allowed her to buy in the children’s department when the whimsy struck.
“What doesn’t make sense?”
She plopped on my bed. “The ride of the horseman. If it isn’t Barclay trying to shake up his relatives, what’s the purpose?”
I propped up beside her in the bed. “Do you think Jerome is exacting some type of revenge?” I told her about the love letters from Eleanor and my suspicions that Monica had deliberately busted them up. We hadn’t had much of a chance to compare notes on our activities, and since neither of us could sleep, it was an opportunity we couldn’t waste.
“He has to be involved with the horse. He’s not a stupid man. He knows the animal is on the property.” She wiggled her purple-encased feet. “I feel sorry for Eleanor. She’s lost everyone, Sarah Booth. Her parents, her fiancé, and now her sister has been taken.”
I cleared my throat. “I regret I was mean to her earlier.”
“She seems sincere in her concern for Monica.”
“She does.”
“Tinkie, we aren’t hostage negotiators, and we aren’t trained to retrieve kidnap victims. She should call Gunny, but since she won’t, remember, Eleanor must make the drop. Neither of us can afford to be put in such a dangerous position.”
“I agree.”
I was surprised. “You do?”
“Absolutely. While I think the kidnapper would have already killed Monica if that was his intent, delivering the money is too dangerous. If Eleanor won’t call in the law, she needs to do it herself.”
Her response was a load off my mind, but something else troubled me. “Does Oscar know he’s cashing a check for ransom money?”
Tinkie studied her slippers. “No. I couldn’t tell him.”
“You have to, Tink. He can’t risk all that money without knowing the details.”
“The check is good, no matter what Eleanor does with the money. If Monica signs it later, great. If she’s … dead, they’ll reissue the check to Eleanor. It’s the insurance company behind the check, not Eleanor or Monica.”
Tinkie was normally the partner with the business head. She understood money far better than I do, so I couldn’t believe the sentiment she now professed. “This is wrong and you know it.”
“Oscar won’t lose the money.”
“Tinkie—”
“Eleanor said she’d make it good, no matter what. She has assets, but she isn’t liquid.” Her tone was defensive.
“What if she’s killed making the drop? What if she and Monica both are killed? And the kidnapper steals the money. Where will that leave Oscar, cashing a check with a forged signature on it?”
At last she saw reality. One side of her mouth quirked up. “You’re right. We have to handle this and protect Oscar.” She kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Sarah Booth. I mean it. You saved me from a serious miscalculation.”
Amen! “Tell him tomorrow. If he decides the risk is acceptable, then it’s fine. If not—”
“Monica may die.” Tinkie sounded as if she might cry. “We can’t let the kidnapper hurt her.”
“Whoever took Monica knows every move we make. He knew Eleanor went to the insurance company and the bank. I’m sure he knows the bank refused to cash the check, which is why the ransom demand has been delayed.”
“The kidnapper has to be local. He watches us without drawing attention to himself.”
I remembered the figure wearing night-vision goggles in the bushes outside Briarcliff. “Yes, and we need to figure out who it is. We’ve done good legwork, but we’re no closer to knowing who’s behind this than we were the first day we arrived.”
“First light. We’ll get that list of buildings from Eleanor and comb through them.” Tinkie stifled a yawn. “I’ll set my cell phone for five a.m.”
“It’s a date,” I said, crawling into the sack myself. As I settled into sleep I had one last thought. Despite my best efforts, Tinkie and I were sinking deeper and deeper into the Levert quicksand.
* * *
The weight of the covers pin
ned my body like a straitjacket, and though I struggled, I couldn’t free an arm. The air against my face was bitter cold. Someone shuffled in the dense shadows near the fireplace. A flint was struck and a spark flared. In a moment, fat lighter wood crackled as it caught fire.
I fought to sit up, but I was completely confined. “What are you doing?” I couldn’t shake the shackles of the bed or of the deep sleep into which I’d fallen. A better question arose in my brain. “Who are you?” My surroundings were unfamiliar, and panic constricted my chest as I thrashed in an effort to throw back the heavy coverlet.
“Calm yourself. There is no escape from the prison of bad choices,” a soft, feminine voice said. It came from near the fireplace, and when I finally managed to fight my way into a sitting position, I saw a female form. She wore a dress with a full skirt that touched the floor. A peculiar collar circled her neck, and her hair was bound in a tight bun.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Look into your heart. You know me.” She spoke in a lilting brogue as she approached the bed.
The fireplace illuminated one side of her face, and despite the red hair and voluminous dress, I recognized my haint. “Jitty?”
“Who else would come to warn you?” She was all business, in a historical kind of way. Judging by her attire, I would guess the Victorian era, but I’d never been a student of history.
“Am I in danger?” I asked.
“Are you breathin’, lass?” She snorted. “Trust no one hereabouts, Sarah Booth. Each mother’s son has his own agenda. Power and politics. Each puts his heart’s desire above anything else. The men, the women. Never believe love comes before power in a bloodline destined to reign. Lust is a tool of those hungry to rule.”
I knew who she was then. “Mary, Queen of Scots,” I whispered. The resemblance was remarkable. Whoever did hair, makeup, and costuming in the Great Beyond deserved an Oscar for this getup. “Where is the danger? Is it here, in Briarcliff?”
Jitty’s features filled with sadness. “There is no haven, save what you find in your own heart.”
“Is it Eleanor?” I asked. “Is it Jerome? Or Barclay?”
“Deception is the card, but the question is, which hand dealt it. The answer can be found in only one place, Sarah Booth. Search for it. And guard your virtue.”
“Jitty, I—” But she was gone. I looked up at the bed hangings and realized I was still beneath the spread and cotton sheets of my room in Briarcliff. It was summertime, and the fireplace was dead. The heavy tapestries of my dream room had also vanished.
“Jitty?” I couldn’t be certain if she’d actually paid me a visit or if I’d dreamed her presence. It didn’t matter. I’d been left with plenty of cryptic chunks to chew on. Like Anne Bolyne, another of Jitty’s recent incarnations, Mary Stuart had lost her head at the order of her cousin, Elizabeth, a sister queen. Like the Leverts, the royals were a complicated, and convoluted lot.
Sweetie came to the bedside to check on me. Her presence lulled me into a sense of safety, and I fell back into slumber with her warm tongue caressing my hand. I’d been asleep for what seemed like moments when I heard her toenails clicking on the hardwood floor. She left the room and went down the hallway.
At the top of the stairs, she growled. The sound, following on the heels of Jitty’s lurid warning, was as effective in waking me up as a slap. I swung my legs out of the bed as her growl deepened.
“Sweetie.” Grabbing my jeans, shoes, the flashlight, and the .38 I’d taken from Eleanor, I eased out into the upstairs hallway. Sweetie started down the stairs, growling. I followed, pulling on my pants as I went.
When we got to the first floor, she went straight to the front parlor. The sheer curtains billowed on a light breeze. The window where the intruder had entered was wide open; the new lock Jerome had installed lay on the floor. The skin of my arms prickled. Sweetie bared her teeth and growled out the open window.
Before I could snare her collar, she jumped through it and took off.
15
“Sweetie!” I called after her as I leaned out the window. She’d vanished into a blanket of fog that completely covered the grounds of Briarcliff.
Torn between waking Tinkie or chasing Sweetie, I finally dashed out the window after my hound. Someone needed to stay in the house with Eleanor. If I didn’t find Sweetie quickly, I’d call Tinkie on the cell phone in my jeans pocket.
The air was like a cool, damp soup, thick enough that it brushed my skin with an unpleasant sensation. “Sweetie!” I kept to the gravel path, moving around the house and into the rose garden. When I looked behind me, Briarcliff had been swallowed by fog. “Sweetie!”
The fog was so thick she could have been ten feet in front of me and I wouldn’t see her. “Sweetie.” I gave a low whistle. She always responded. Sweetie was loyal to the bone. “Sweet-ie.” The mist swirled and drifted around me, but no hound came out of the night.
The first warning flag went up in my brain. Sweetie had to be nearby, yet she wasn’t responding. I’d been around the estate grounds enough to know my way even in the thick fog. The flashlight I’d taken from Eleanor was all but useless—the light reflected back at me like a mirror.
Pausing for a moment, I listened to the whir of crickets and the cry of a night bird. Predator. I did my best not to let the omen creep me out. Along with the barn owl, the only noises came from the natural world, and those were softened by the fog, blurring my heightened imagination with reality.
Someone had opened the window at Briarcliff—either to enter the house or to spook the inhabitants. That was a fact. Sweetie was on the trail of someone, another fact. My hound wasn’t in the habit of dashing off into the night unless there was good reason.
My heart almost stopped when I realized that while Sweetie and I were pursuing one intruder, a partner could have slipped inside the house. Even now, he or she might be skulking up the stairs to attack Eleanor or Tinkie.
“Sweetie!” I didn’t want to leave her outside, but I also needed to get back to the house. I stopped to listen, but the night surrendered no secrets.
Wrapped in the dense hanging moisture and illuminated by a hidden moon, the grounds of Briarcliff had a magical quality. The sweet scent of roses, trapped in the thick atmosphere, clung to my face as I walked through the cool mist. Statues of maidens and angels loomed out of the miasma, giving me an initial jolt of fear, until I recognized them and could use them as landmarks.
I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed Sweetie had taken the path to the gardener’s cottage. Was Jerome the one breaking into Briarcliff? That didn’t make any sense, but so little in this case did. Jerome had failed to disclose so many things, including his relationship with Eleanor, a smoldering omission—and where there was smoke, there was often a conflagration.
Up ahead, I heard a faint human voice. I glanced south, hoping to catch a glimmer of Briarcliff. I felt a compulsion to go back, to protect my partner and Eleanor.
The cry came again, weak and indistinguishable. It occurred to me I was being set up. Pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I dialed Tinkie to alert her to the possibility of danger. Maybe she could convince Eleanor to call the authorities, as she should have done long before now.
To my disgust, my cell phone was dead. I’d charged it, I was certain. But there was no denying that it was useless. Technology was not my friend.
“Please!” The cry came from the woods beyond the rose garden.
The voice was male, I could detect that much, and the person sounded hurt or in danger. Even as my fingers tightened on the gun, my brain sent panicked messages warning me of a trap.
“Help! Oh, please, help!”
I couldn’t ignore the pleas. I left the rose garden behind and moved along the narrow path that cut through a wooded area. Branches damp with fog scraped my face and neck. The trees and shrubs crowded close to the path in this section. I had to move carefully or risk poking out an eye.
I thought I was headed in the dire
ction of Jerome’s cottage, but the fog was disorienting. Though I searched the distance for a porch light or some indication of the cottage, I couldn’t see a thing. The Delta’s flat cropland suffered weather like this, but generally in the fall, when a warm front smacked into a cold front and created their love child—fog. This heavy curtain of non-rain blew in off the river and swirled like the swift currents that spawned it.
I’d been walking for what felt like hours and was about to turn back, realizing I’d been played, when I heard rustling in the underbrush ahead. Sweetie or an ambush? I couldn’t tell. The poor visibility worked in my favor as well as theirs.
Stepping off the path I cut quietly through the gallberries and undergrowth toward the sound. A pitiful cry came from the soupy darkness and my hair literally stood on end. Briarcliff was a place that stimulated the most frightening fantasies. There was the sense that evil deeds from the past roamed at night. The cry coming from the woods made me want to run in the opposite direction.
Gripping the gun, I moved forward.
“Help me.” The voice was weak. “Please. I’m bleeding.”
Not twenty yards away, the mournful howl of a hound on a scent waffled through the night.
A sharp scream ripped through the woods, followed by someone crashing through the underbrush. Sweetie’s howl sounded again. She was on a hot trail.
“I’m hurt! Please help me.” The plea issued from the darkness only ten feet in front of me. Keenly aware that it could be a trap, I inched forward. More groaning ensued.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“John Hightower. The writer. Please, help me.”
I couldn’t be certain it was the eccentric writer—the upper-class British accent had slipped considerably. I inched forward, flicking on the flashlight to sweep the ground directly in front of me. At last my beam picked up what appeared to be a human form in a fetal position curled at the base of a tree. He was dressed all in black. Leather straps constricted his chest.
Bones of a Feather: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Page 16