The Haunting of Josie

by Kay Hooper

  “Not in the real court,” she said, bitter. “Not by the law. But he was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. And he was condemned in the same court.”

  Marc touched her cheek gently. “I’m sorry about that. Really sorry. But there’s nothing you can do about it now.” He waited, watching her intently.

  It must have been a full minute before she said, “There is something I can do. I can build a case against the man who really set fire to the hotel.”

  “You know who did it?”

  Again, she hesitated, but her voice was steady when she replied. “Dad gathered information until he died. Then I took over. I was in college, but there was time. Time to study everything, all the reports and articles and court documents—and Dad’s own papers. That’s where I found the answer, in his personal papers.”

  “The answer?”

  She nodded jerkily. “The first thing I found was in his journal, a cryptic note using only a single initial to identify who he was referring to. It took time, but I eventually figured out who it was. Dad had a friend, a very powerful man with political ambitions. National political ambitions. But he had done something that could have destroyed those ambitions—left the scene of what turned out to be a fatal car accident because he’d been drinking—and he confided in Dad.”

  After a moment Marc said, “I’ve heard far weaker motives for one person to destroy another, but—it would have been his word against your father’s if it ever came out. Why wouldn’t he have been willing to chance it?”

  “I wondered the same thing, but I’ve followed his career in the last few years, and I can connect him—sometimes obscurely, but connect him—to at least three other men who seemed to have been victims of…timely arson. In each case, I believe he benefited by the removal of someone who’d been giving him trouble or otherwise had gotten in his way; either they were tangled up in the arson investigations, or else they seemed to just fade away. And I believe he likes starting fires.”

  It might have been hard to believe, but Marc believed it. Over the years he had learned that sicknesses sometimes hid behind bland or influential faces, and that even smart people sometimes did the most incredibly stupid things.

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  This time Josie didn’t hesitate. “He’s a congress-man—and not likely to go any higher because, I gather, his fellow politicians find him difficult to get along with. His name is Robert Lyons.”

  Marc didn’t recognize the name, but that didn’t particularly surprise him. “And you plan to build a case against this man? Alone?”

  “I—I couldn’t afford to hire the lawyer who handled my father’s defense to help me, but he says that if I can assemble a convincing case, he’ll take it to the district attorney in Seattle—because two hundred and thirty people died in that fire, and even twenty years later the file is still open.

  “I believe I can do it. It’s not going to be easy, because there are so many bits and pieces—newspaper articles and court documents, police reports, witness statements. But I have to try. I’ve given myself a year to try.”

  “Your ‘writing,’” Marc noted quietly.

  She nodded. “My writing. It’s what I decided to say, if anybody asked, because I didn’t want to talk about it. And because I thought it better not to talk about it. If it got out, what I was trying to do, Lyons might somehow get wind of it.” She moved her shoulders in a little shrug. “Best not to take any chances, I thought.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then said, “So this determination to vindicate your father takes up so much of you there’s hardly any room left?”

  Josie knew what he was asking. “That’s part of it. I—I haven’t thought about much else in nearly ten years. At least, not until I came here.”

  “And when you came here? What then, Josie? What now? Do you really believe you can pretend there’s nothing between us except sex?”

  Fighting against what all her instincts had tried to tell her, Josie said, “I’m not pretending. I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” His voice was quiet, but insistent. “You’re pretending that we’re having a simple little affair, that you can’t feel more for me because there’s no room left inside you to feel more. But that isn’t the truth, Josie. The truth is, you’re pretending you can’t feel because it hurts too much to feel. Because you watched your father being abandoned by almost everyone in his life, including your mother, and you swore you wouldn’t let anything like that happen to you.”

  NINE

  “THAT HURT HIM worst of all,” she whispered. “He expected his business associates to back away; rats deserting a sinking ship. But people he had believed were friends backed away, too, even after he was acquitted. Then relatives. And, finally—my mother. She didn’t run to another man, she just ran away from him. He was virtually bankrupt, with hardly anything left except my college trust fund and a few stocks. Mother…she believed it, too, believed he’d killed all those people. You could see it in her eyes. He could see it in her eyes. It was what finally broke him.”

  Marc didn’t hesitate. “Sweetheart, what happened to your father was a tragic thing, but you can’t let it cripple you. You can’t protect yourself from hurt by refusing to allow anyone close to you.”

  Josie wanted to argue that that wasn’t what she was doing, but she heard herself speaking in a faraway voice she hardly recognized as her own. “I learned the lesson. Then—and other times. There were so-called friends who looked at me strangely when they found out who my father was. There were the parents of friends when I was growing up, nice, ordinary people who didn’t want their kids near me. And there were boys who…who thought that because my father had done such a dreadful thing, that I was…somehow an easy target. That I didn’t have any feelings.

  “Remember that high-school steady I told you about? We didn’t break up because we went to separate colleges; I was accepted to his college, and that’s where I was going. But then his sister told me…that he’d gotten another girl pregnant and had to marry her. He told me it had just happened, that it didn’t concern me. He never even said he was sorry.”

  “He was a bastard,” Marc told her. “That doesn’t mean all men are.”

  “I know that. I also know that some people people…just don’t belong in relationships. Maybe it’s bad luck or bad timing, or just the way things are.”

  “Josie—”

  “It isn’t you, don’t you understand that? It’s me. I’m not capable of—of feeling things deeply. Not anymore.”

  Marc framed her face in his hands. “Sweetheart, what you don’t seem to understand is one very simple fact. I love you. I’m in your life, and I’m not going anywhere.” He smiled. “As for you not being able to feel deeply, stop kidding yourself.”

  “I’m not—”

  “My poor darling.” He kissed her, his mouth tender. “You feel more than anyone I’ve ever known. And sooner or later you’re going to have to face that. Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that none of us can stand alone. And when you do finally understand that, I’ll be here.”

  When he reached to turn off the lamp on the nightstand and pulled her closer, Josie felt her body nestle against his as if obeying the simple need for sustenance. But her mind was troubled, and it was a long time before she slept.

  If she hadn’t been able to convince herself that what she felt for him was mere desire, she had at least been able to avoid looking for a more complex and far more frightening truth within herself. But now…

  What did she feel? Desire, yes—dear Lord, yes. And interest, of course; he was a fascinating man with a sharp and active mind and a good sense of humor. And she felt a sense of…of what? Of kinship? They seemed to match each other somehow, and were content together in an easy way that Josie felt strongly was uncommon for new lovers.

  All of which meant…what?

  I love you. I’m in your life, and I’m not going anywhere.

  He couldn’t really mean
that. Could he? A man like him, who must have had women stepping on one another’s toes to get close to him, falling for a pale, redheaded schoolteacher with a notorious last name and far too many shadows in her life?

  Josie rubbed her cheek against him and felt his arms tighten around her. Odd, how safe she felt with him. Safe, really, for the first time in years. She hadn’t even thought about her gun in days; was it even still in her purse?

  She made a drowsy mental note to look in the morning, just to be sure, and felt herself beginning to drift toward sleep. He believed her father had been innocent…that was good. And he believed in the ghostly visits of his ancestor, even if he hadn’t actually seen Luke himself. That was good too.

  He loved her? Really loved her?

  How remarkable…

  “Does the name Colin Andrews mean anything to you?” Josie asked.

  Marc looked up from his study of the last few of Joanna’s letters and thought about it. “It’s vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. Why?”

  “Because, during the last few months of his life, Luke mentions this Colin several times here in his journal. He had a letter from Colin, he spent an hour or so with Colin, Colin told him—like that. It looks to me as if this Colin had dreams of being a writer, and Luke was having trouble telling him that he didn’t have much talent.”

  “Didn’t you say that Luke mentions corresponding with several young writers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then…?”

  In a careful voice, Josie said, “None of them had an appointment to come here and talk to Luke…on the evening of April fifteenth.”

  Marc sat up straighter. “What? According to the police, nobody came near this house on the fifteenth.”

  “I know. But if Colin kept his appointment, somebody was definitely here.” She scowled down at the final entry of Luke’s journal. “Dammit, if we only had one more piece of the puzzle. I wonder if this Colin Andrews is still alive.”

  “God knows.”

  Josie didn’t blame him for sounding dismayed; tracking down a man they knew virtually nothing about after so many years was bound to be a daunting task. “Somebody must have known something, or else we couldn’t have found all this stuff locked in Luke’s desk fifty years after the police claimed they turned his study upside down and inside out.”

  There was a sudden thud from a corner of the den, making them both jump.

  “Yaaah,” Pendragon announced commandingly.

  “Where is he?” Josie wondered, unable to see the cat.

  “By the bookshelves.” Marc’s voice sounded odd, and his expression was a bit wary when he got up from the couch and went over to the shelves. He bent down, whatever he was doing hidden from Josie by a chair, and then straightened with a book in his hands.

  “He knocked it off the shelf?” Josie frowned at Pendragon when the big cat jumped on the back of the chair—his chair. “That was clumsy of you, cat.”

  “Maybe not,” Marc murmured.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Marc didn’t answer immediately. Instead he checked several of the other books on the shelf, opening each and looking at the flyleaf. “Josie, where did these come from?”

  “The cellar. There was a box, all sealed up. I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought them up here. I haven’t had a chance to look through them, I just shoved them onto the shelves, but—” She frowned. “Why?”

  “He never lived in this house,” Marc said almost to himself. “But I suppose he stored things here, the way we all did. Packed them away and forgot about them.”

  “Marc, who are you talking about?”

  He came back to the couch, carrying the book Pendragon had knocked from the shelf. “My grandfather.”

  “Those were his books?”

  “Yes, according to the bookplates. And this is his journal, which I didn’t even know existed. Nor, I think, did my father know, or probably anyone else. Just one more box of junk down in the cellar, until you found it.”

  “Actually,” Josie offered slowly, “Pendragon found it. Or at least, he drew my attention to it.”

  They both looked at the cat, who was sitting on the back of his chair washing a forepaw.

  “Cats can’t read,” Josie stated.

  “No,” Marc agreed. “Impossible. But…he did knock a book off one of the shelves at the cottage. And it just—coincidentally, of course—happened to be Luke’s bio.”

  “Sheer happenstance,” Josie decided after a startled moment.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Woo,” Pendragon murmured contentedly.

  Marc cleared his throat and got back to the matter at hand. “Well, anyway, we have Grandfather’s journal. It’s lucky average people did more writing in those days.”

  “I’ll say.” Afraid to get too excited, she said, “He’s the one who found Luke, isn’t he?”

  “He’s the one. Cross your fingers and hope he managed to make an entry about that day….”

  They both bent over the journal, looking together as they searched for the relevant date. And it was several minutes later when Marc leaned back and looked at Josie.

  “Well,” he said, “at least now we have part of the puzzle solved. Grandfather was the one who removed the journal, letters, and carbon of the manuscript from Luke’s study. After he found the body and before he went for the police. That was rather unlawful of him.”

  Josie took the journal and reread a couple of the passages. “He believed it was suicide. Thought it was more than despondency over the writing not going well. Luke had confided in him about loving Joanna—not mentioned by name here probably out of discretion, but certainly it was her—and had asked his brother to make sure that if anything ever happened to him, nothing…incriminating would be left lying around to harm the lady’s reputation.”

  She looked at Marc and smiled a little sadly. “A different age. Or maybe you just had uncommonly gallant ancestors.”

  “A bit of both, I think.” Marc shook his head, then said, “He doesn’t say why he took the carbon, or why he didn’t happen to mention it to the rest of the family.”

  “No…but it looks like this journal goes on for a year or so after Luke’s death. Wait.” She read silently for a few minutes, then looked at Marc.

  “Got it. He found the carbon locked in Luke’s desk along with the letters and journal, and put it aside intending to give it to ‘Luke’s lady’ at a later time because he thought Luke would have wanted that—and he doesn’t seem to have had any idea that the original didn’t find its way into print. Do you think he thought it was an old manuscript? Is that possible, that he wouldn’t know?”

  Marc frowned. “Well, think about it. There’s a suicide note claiming that Luke hasn’t been able to write at all, which Grandfather might have believed to be at least partly true, burned papers in the fireplace, and no manuscript or notes on the desk. And he might not have read any of Luke’s books; according to Tucker, the families of writers often don’t.”

  “So he might not have been familiar enough with Luke’s work to recognize an unpublished manuscript. I guess that makes sense. There would have been statements from the publisher?”

  “Presumably. Grandfather was the executor of the estate, so he would have gotten them. But he probably wouldn’t have noticed one title missing from the rest. And since, apparently, the publisher hadn’t been notified that a manuscript had been finished, they wouldn’t have asked about it.”

  “I guess stranger things have happened,” Josie agreed, then read a bit more. “Um. It appears that Luke’s lady went away not long after his death, and your grandfather didn’t think she was coming back. He’d—what is this? Oh, I see. After deciding the house would be kept for the family, he had—he says ‘disposed of’—most of the furnishings. But he had Luke’s desk moved up to the attic, and he locked the journal, letters, and manuscript in the top drawer, intending to give everything to Luke’s lady if he ever saw her again.”

 
“Apparently, he never did.”

  Josie looked at Marc. “Do you suppose that’s all Luke really wants of us? That we give this stuff to Joanna?”

  “If she’s alive and we’re able to find her, you mean?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, that sounds a little thin. I mean, why would he? Fifty years later?”

  “Maybe she’s just come back.”

  “Maybe—but the question stands. It’s doubtful there’s anything in any of this important enough to remind a—an old lady of a love affair that happened fifty years ago.”

  Before Josie could admit that he was right, the phone rang. It was on the end table on Marc’s side, so she gestured for him to get it. “Besides, it’s probably your friend Tucker.”

  It was Tucker, and he was excited. “Marc, read me the first few pages of that manuscript.”

  “Read them to you?”

  “Yeah, verbatim.”

  Marc shrugged and obeyed, reading the first four pages of A Sudden Death over the phone.

  “I’ll be damned,” Tucker said.

  “What? Did you find this manuscript in print?”

  “Oh, yeah. It was published in 1945. I’m looking at a copy. And you just read me the first four pages.”

  “Then why isn’t it listed in Luke’s bio?”

  “Because,” Tucker said dryly, “he didn’t get the credit for writing it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. A Sudden Death, which you described to me in correct detail and the first four pages of which you just read to me, was supposedly written by Colin Andrews. Who, curiously enough, published only that book—though he lived another ten years.”

  “How did he die?” Marc asked slowly.