Southern Ghost

by Carolyn Hart

  "What happened?" Annie urged.

  "I don't put up with sass. Not from anybody. White or black."

  Annie didn't doubt her for a moment.

  "When she saw I meant what I said—I wasn't going to fool with her right then—she kind of laughed, and gave a shrug, and said, 'So you're upfront about things. Then answer one question for me and I'll leave. Of all the people who were at Tarrant House when Judge Tarrant and his son died, who can I trust?' " There was grudging admiration in Enid's dark eyes. "Not many people ever get around me. She did. I didn't have an extra minute to spare. Eliza Jones had called in sick. Proba­bly her son'd beat her up again. My best driver had the mumps. Thirty-four-year-old man with the mumps! I was busy six ways from Sunday. But I took the time. I told her, 'Not a single one of them." I told her if she wanted help from someone in the family, old Miss Dora was the only one I'd put any stock in. Then I shooed her out the door and went back to my chicken pies."

  Had Courtney tried to contact Miss Dora on Wednesday? Obviously, she hadn't succeeded. Otherwise, Miss Dora would have told them, Annie was certain. But she made a mental note to check with their employer when they met her at Tar­rant House in the afternoon.

  "What time was this?" Max asked.

  "Just after two. I was keeping a close eye on the time, I can tell you. I deliver on time. And I did on Wednesday."

  Was that pride of ownership? Or was Enid Friendley trying to show she was too busy to have been involved in Courtney's disappearance?

  Annie attempted to sound casual. "So you made your deliv­ery around five. What time did you leave the fairgrounds?"

  Enid took just an instant too long to answer. When she did, her words were clipped. "I finished the cleanup, still two short in my crew, about nine o'clock."

  Max gave her his most charming smile.

  There wasn't a quiver of response on Enid's face. Annie wondered if Max felt a bit as though he'd smashed headfirst into a brick wall.

  Undaunted, Max continued good-humoredly, "I suppose that like every business in the world, there's always some crisis —major or minor—in completing a job. Did you have to get back to your kitchen for anything?"

  Once again, her response was just a beat too slow. "One dessert carrier was left behind. I went back for it, but returned directly to the fairgrounds."

  Annie was pleased that Max let it drop. It was obvious that Enid read the newspapers and knew when Courtney had last been heard from and equally obvious that Enid had been away from the fairgrounds at about that time.

  "You didn't see Courtney again?" Annie asked.

  Enid bristled. "No. Why should I? I didn't have anything to do with her disappearance. You can look to the Tarrants for that."

  "We are," Max said soberly. "As for the Tarrants, what can you tell us about the day the Judge was murdered?" Enid smoothed her unwrinkled skirt. "That day . . . It

  was a lovely day, soft and warm. It smelled good, spaded-up dirt and honeysuckle and wisteria and pittosporum. I didn't usually work on Saturdays, but I'd had the afternoon off earlier in the week." Her narrow face was sleek and satisfied. "I'd enrolled for the summer session at Chastain College." She darted a quick glance at them. "If you've found out much about Judge Tarrant, you'll know he often helped students—poor people—to go to school. He gave me the money to start college. Actually, that was the last week I was to work there. But, because of what happened, I stayed on for a few weeks, after the funerals, to help with packing things away. That kind of thing. But that Saturday I was there, catching up on the ironing. So I was in the laundry rooms behind the kitchen." She scowled. "I hated being a servant." Her voice was controlled but Annie heard the resentment, saw it in the flash of her eyes. "Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, scrubbing up after people like they were kings and I was a slave, all for barely enough money to buy a little food. And people so proud of themselves. The Tarrants. The kind of people who bought my people, bought them like a broom or a shovel and threw them away when they couldn't work in the fields." Now those slen­der brown hands were laced tightly together. "I started in Tarrant House, but I'll tell you this"—she lifted her chin—"I could buy Tarrant House now. I wouldn't want it, but if I did, I could buy it." Her eyes were cold. "People so proud of themselves, so used to telling people like me what to do. So high and mighty, but they had their secrets, all of them. The Judge—I wonder what all his fine friends would have thought if they could have seen the pictures he kept locked in the wooden box in his room." She flicked a glance at Annie. "Not the kind of pictures you'd know about—women tied up. And other things." Dark amusement glinted in her chilly eyes. "Such a high and mighty man. Just goes to show, you know, that white hair and a gentleman's face don't mean much. The next week, after the Judge died, I saw Miss Amanda slip out of the house with that box. She burned it up." Enid gave them a challenging glance. "Makes you wonder about the Judge. Doesn't it?"

  "Pornographic photographs that he kept locked up?" Max asked innocently. "How did you happen to know about them?"

  Just for an instant, Enid's face was utterly unreadable. Then she shrugged her slim shoulders. "One day I found the key on the floor near the closet." She lifted her chin defiantly. "I was curious. I'd noticed that locked box sitting up on his dresser when I dusted. It didn't hurt anything for me to look inside. I'll tell you, it was a shock. I was an unmarried woman. I'd never seen anything like that. I shut that box up quick as I could and put it and the key on his bedside table." Now she laughed. "I'd like to have seen his face when he found them there. I'll bet that gave him an almighty shock." The amuse­ment slipped away, replaced with derision. "The big folks in the big house weren't quite so wonderful, you see."

  "Folks," Annie repeated. "Were there others—besides the Judge—who weren't wonderful?"

  Enid didn't hesitate. "He was a stern taskmaster; she spoiled them."

  It was clear to Annie who Enid meant: the Judge and his wife, Amanda.

  A brooding, faraway look settled on Enid's thin face. "Is it any wonder they grew up all twisted? They tried to stand tall for their father, but Amanda was sly and cunning and they learned that, too. Whitney always looked to her to fix things when they went wrong for him. And Whitney's wife—she sucked up to the Judge from the day she first set foot in that house. Going on and on about the Tarrants and how wonderful they were." A deep and abiding hatred burned in her eyes. "She didn't talk about Godfrey Tarrant, who beat a slave with his whip until he died—and do you know what for?" More than a century and a half's worth of anger sharpened her voice. "Because the slave—he was only seventeen and his name was Amos—lost one of Godfrey's precious hunting dogs."

  "That's dreadful," Annie cried.

  "That's dreadful!" Enid mimicked. "It is, isn't it?" Her eyes blazed. She took a deep breath, then spoke more quietly. "And that Milam's a queer one. He liked to hurt things, did

  you know that? On Sunday afternoons, I could take some time for myself. There's a pond not far from the bluff. Twice I watched him throw those heavy round balls—stones that they used for ballast in the sailing ships, you can find them every­where—at the geese. He threw real well. Each time he hit two or three of the geese, hurt them. He didn't kill them. He watched them suffer. His face . . . it was all smooth and empty. He just watched." A tiny shudder rippled her shoul­ders. "The geese hurt, you know. They hurt real bad. I was behind a willow where he didn't see me. After he left, I killed them. If I hadn't—" She pressed a hand against her lips for a moment, then said very low, "My grandmother died of cancer. She hurt so bad. Nobody—not a bird, not an animal—nobody should have to hurt like that."

  "What did you do about it?" Max demanded.

  "Do about it?" She stared at Max in disbelief. "What could I do about? Enid Friendley's word against a Tarrant?" She gave a mirthless chuckle. "You didn't grow up black in Chastain, did you? But you want to know something?" Her voice rose. "I grew up better than any one of them. I sure did. I know how to work and make my way and not a single one of them can do
that. They're hangers-on, clinging to a family name and to money someone else made. And more than that"—she struck a small fist against an open palm—"I may not have succeeded with my marriage, but I'm a woman and I know how a woman's meant to love. If you could see your faces! You don't know what I mean, do you? And you think you know so much about the Tarrants. So high and mighty, the Tarrants. Well, you just ask Julia Tarrant about the woman she loved."

  When neither spoke, Enid continued angrily, "I saw them, whether you want to believe it or not! It's an old house—a house that's probably seen more living than you'll ever even know about—and when you walk down the hall on the second floor, there's a board that gives and when it does, sometimes the door to the southeast bedroom swings open, nice and easy. The Judge was home unexpected. I think it was that Thurs­day. He came up the stairs, walking fast. I was in the hall with a load of sheets in my arms and that door came open and I sawthem, Julia and Amanda, and they were in each other's arms. I saw them, and so did the Judge."

  Milam's wife and his mother?

  "Well, don't you suppose—" Annie began.

  "I don't suppose nothing," Enid snapped. "I know what I saw. And the Judge, he was right behind me." She jumped up. "Cover it all up if you want to. It's no skin off my nose. But if you really want to know the truth—if you really want to find out what happened that day—you'd better talk to Julia." Enid's eyes glinted maliciously. "If you can ever find her so­ber."

  They argued all the way to Wisteree.

  "Max, I don't believe it!" Annie recalled Julia on the night of Miss Dora's dinner party, frail, heart-shaped face, smudged violet eyes, the eyes of a child who knows no one cares.

  Max gave her such a kind and gentle look that she blinked back tears. "I am not naive. I know all about that kind of thing."

  His kindly nod undid her.

  She exploded. "Dammit, Max, stop treating me like I'm twelve. I'm not dumb. I just think it, would be weird—" She paused.

  Max was nodding.

  "Weird?" she asked.

  The Maserati coasted to a stop at a ramshackle gate. A

  weathered sign dimly read WISTEREE PLANTATION.

  "I'll get the gate," Annie muttered, hopping out. As she swung the gate wide—despite its unkempt appearance, the gate had recently been oiled and it swung open fast and with­out a sound—she continued the debate as the Maserati rolled forward between ivy-twined stone pillars. A stone pineapple sat atop one, a partial stump on the other. "Everybody dumps on Julia. It's damned easy to accuse her of just about anything. She's white meat." Annie pushed the gate shut. She hurried to the car and climbed in. She hardly took time to admire the enormous live oaks that marched along either side of the shell

  road. "Take a look at her accuser. Enid Friendley may be a model of independence and an accomplished businesswoman, she's also small-spirited and she has a mean mouth. Maybe we ought to look at how she went to college. Did the Judge send her because he wanted to help her—or did she take his money to keep quiet about that locked trunk?"

  Max reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. "Okay, be Julia's champion. But remember, Annie, someone did shoot Judge Tarrant and that someone caused Ross's death, as surely as if they pulled the trigger that day at the hunting lodge. And the murderer's face is going to be someone you know­Milam, Julia, Whitney, Charlotte, one of the servants, Lucy Jane or Enid. Maybe Miss Dora. Maybe even Sybil. And that person knows what happened to Courtney Kimball."

  The Maserati crunched to a stop in front of an old Low Country house that showed signs of neglect. A shutter hung askew on the second story, and paint flaked from the slender Doric columns supporting the sagging portico. The stuccoed walls were a faded, dusty rose, the shutters a dingy white. It was not a house that looked happily lived in. An arm was broken off one of the slatted wooden porch chairs. Weeds sprouted in the shell drive. Unpruned live oaks pressed too near, turning the air a murky green.

  "Not Sybil," Annie exclaimed as they climbed out of the car.

  They started up the broad, shallow steps. Max said gravely, "It could be. What if Sybil already knew she was pregnant that day? What if the Judge found out about Sybil and Ross's planned elopement and threatened to tell her parents?"

  What might Sybil have done? Annie had seen Sybil fiercely angry, so she knew the answer to that one—anything was possible.

  "But Sybil didn't know about Courtney, Max. I'd swear to that! And there's no way she would have hurt her own daugh­ter."

  "If she had," Max said it so low Annie almost couldn't hear him, "she would act just as she has—the distraught, vengefulmother. She hasn't been a mother, you know. How much does she really care?"

  The porch was gritty underfoot. Twisted wires poking out of a small dark hole marked where there was once a doorbell. A tarnished metal knocker was in the center panel of a truly majestic entrance door. Above curved an elegant multipaned Palladian window, the panes streaked with dust.

  Max rapped the knocker against its base.

  Annie pictured faces now so familiar: Sybil, gorgeous and self-absorbed, a woman careless of her reputation, a beautiful creature accustomed to satisfying the desires of the moment; Whitney, a blurred reproduction of generations of Tarrants, his aristocratic face weak-chinned and unimposing; unremark­able, respectable clubwoman Charlotte, more interested in dead Tarrants than live ones; Milam with his earring and ponytail, showing an almost childish eagerness to flout soci­ety's conventions, but that could be a clever way to hide much darker, more sinister impulses; alcohol-sodden Julia clinging to dignity, but no matter how much she drank she couldn't hide the aching emptiness in her eyes; Lucy Jane, who so clearly knew something she didn't want to tell; waspish Enid, proud of her hard work, resentful of the Tarrants, and eager to drag them down; tiny, wizened Miss Dora—after all, they had only her word that she'd been in the garden with Ross when the shot that killed Augustus Tarrant rang out.

  The front door to Wisteree Plantation slowly opened.

  4:01 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

  Chapter 19.

  The Judge looked up eagerly as the French door opened. But— disappointment caught at his heart—it wasn't Ross, coming to say he was wrong. But Ross couldn't have meant what he said! Not Ross. As for the other, the matter was closed. "Yes," Augustus said brusquely, "what is it?"

  His visitor spoke very quietly. "You've always been so rea­ sonable and I hope—"

  "Reasonable! 0f course I am. But the right decision, once made, is final." It was as impersonal and abrupt as a ruling from the bench.

  Those were the last words of the Honorable Augustus Tar­ rant.

  The Judge's soundless oh of shock was lost in the roar of the gun.

  Annie's nose wrinkled at the waft of acrylic from the paint-streaked rag in Milam's hand. He stood squarely in the door­way, blocking their entrance. In his stained, ragged sweatshirt and faded Levis, a calico bandanna bunching his scraggly hair out of the way, he looked like a working painter—and, at this moment, he looked damned irritated.

  "Fuck. You two again."

  Annie didn't have to look to know anger glinted in Max's eyes.

  "Is painting this morning more important than Courtney Kimball's life? Or your father's murder?" Max demanded sharply.

  Milam heaved an exaggerated sigh. "All right, all right. If I blow you off, you'll snivel back to Aunt Dora—and I don't want the old devil to leave her money to a home for abandoned cats. Be just like her. So, what the hell do you want now?"

  "The truth." Max looked beyond Milam into the shadowy hall. "Is your wife here?"

  "Julia's not in the house," Milam said indifferently. "She's out in the garden somewhere." He gestured vaguely toward the back.

  "I'll go find her," Annie offered.

  "Suit yourself." Milam started to close the door. Max said quickly, "I want to talk to you, Milam." Another exaggerated sigh. Milam shrugged. "Let's get it

  over with." He turned and started down the hall.

  Max gav
e Annie a meaningful glance as he pulled open the door to follow Milam.

  Annie understood. Max wanted her to take advantage of Milam's irritation. She'd find out a lot more if she talked to Julia alone.

  As the door closed behind Milam and Max, Annie hurried down the steps and followed the oyster-shell path around the house. The unkempt appearance of the house didn't extend to the grounds, once beyond the uncontrolled grove of live oaks. She stepped out of the murky light beneath the moss-spangled oaks into a gardener's paradise. The perfumed scents of well-tended banana shrubs and mock orange mingled with the headier smells of honeysuckle and wisteria. There were no weeds among the golden-rimmed iris or carnelian tulips. Be­hind the house, glossy ivy cascaded down a brick wall. Annie pushed open a gate and stopped, dazzled by beauty. Azaleas, camellias and roses, hibiscus, lilies and Cherokee rose, lilac bignonia, Lady Banksia rose and purple wisteria rimmed or climbed the garden walls in a riotous explosion of colors that shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight. The central pool was dominated by a bronze cornucopia that had aged to the soft green of emerald grass in an Irish rain. Water spilled out to splash down softly in a gentle, cheerful murmur. Behind the fountain, a weathered gazebo offered a shady retreat. The loveliness of the scene was almost beyond bearing; the sense of peace, healing.

  Julia Tarrant, a tomato-colored kerchief capping her dark hair, knelt beside a prepared bed, setting out pink and white impatiens from the waiting flats. Absorbed in her task, shelooked young and almost happy, her lips parted in a half-smile.

  Annie wished she could slip away and leave Julia adrift in private dreams.

  But Courtney Kimball was missing. The Judge had been murdered. Ross was tricked out of life. Amanda fell to her death.

  Annie steeled herself and stepped forward. Her shoes crunched on the oyster shells.

  Julia's head whipped around. Any illusion of youth or hap­piness fled. Her face was fine-drawn and pale, the eyes dark pools of pain. Slowly, as if weary to the bone, she pushed up from the ground, leaving her trowel jammed upright in the fresh-turned dirt. Stripping off the encrusted gardening gloves, she stood waiting, looking vulnerable and defenseless in her too-large, faded work shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and earth-stained sneakers.