"I can't imagine." Edy examined the book. Several additional photos had also been cut. "I don't remember this. Dammit, I'm afraid I'm going to have to have a talk with Johnny. These old albums aren't paper dolls."
The book was magic. Time was forgotten as I leafed through the pages. The casino was even more wonderful than Beverly had described it. I could see how such a summer would capture the hearts of four young people.
I'd lived in New York, hoping for just such a life. Now I saw that with the passing of the forties, true glamour had disappeared from this country. I had missed my era.
"That's my great-aunt," Edy said, pointing to a dark-haired woman in an exquisite gown. She had her arms around Lawrence and Tennessee. "That's how I knew about the communist thing. She joined up, too. It almost got the casino shut down, and she was sent out to Missouri, along with her younger sister. They met and married brothers, and that's how my branch of the family got there."
"Sisters marrying brothers. It sounds terribly romantic."
"A double ceremony, yeah. It was romantic, except both of their husbands were drafted and killed in the war. They were both left widows with a kid in the oven."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't think Aunt Kate even knew what a communist was. After her husband was killed, she became more politically active. And more radical."
There was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, and we paused as a short, wiry man brought up a tray of desserts and coffee. As soon as he set the tray down, Edy poured us all a cup and we sat back. The bread pudding was delicious. Johnny squeezed into the chair with his mother and we ate in silence.
"Delicious," I said. "Bourbon sauce made with George Dickel?"
Cecil smiled. "Maker's Mark. Similar in a sauce."
We all laughed and I felt the tension begin to drain from my neck and shoulders. Outside night had fallen, but in the glow of the old lamps that gave the wooden walls a warmth, I felt that time had stopped. Still, I needed to go home. I had only a few more questions.
"Did your family stories include any other activities of Lawrence and his friends. Anything that might make someone want to silence him?" It was a hard question to phrase delicately.
"Is it a book or a murder you're working on?"
She was one smart cookie, and I liked her chutzpah. "Both."
She shook her head. "The whole communism thing became a joke, you know. America, home of the free. In the forties it was a crime to be red, but not today. So what? And they were kids. I'm not certain they were anything except opposed to the concept of human beings slaughtering each other."
She put her finger on Lawrence's picture. "He was a great writer. We have a collection of his books here. He sent them even when he was in Europe. Sometimes we have a literate hunter who wants something to read, and I loan him a book."
I had a terrific thought. "Why don't you turn this place into a museum?" I sat forward with a flush of excitement. "Look at it." I swept my arm around. "Everything is perfect. You could still keep it a lodge, but it could also be a museum. You could get state and federal grants."
Her eyes widened. "Do you think?"
"I'm not certain, but it wouldn't cost anything to check it out. And all of this could be preserved. This is a page from the past, a place where people could come and see what it was like. You could hire young people to bring it to life."
I saw the idea catch fire in her eyes. She leaned forward and gripped my hands. "Thank you," she said. "Dinner is on the house."
Though I tried repeatedly to pay for the meal, Edy adamantly refused. She and Johnny and Cecil hugged me and walked me to my car. They watched as I started to leave. Except the car wouldn't start. It didn't even make a sound. It was as if the spark of life had been stolen from it.
Cecil opened the hood and looked at the engine, then closed it again. "Fancy motor. I wouldn't even begin to tamper with it. I'd do more damage than good."
"It was running fine." Stomping my foot, which is what I wanted to do, wouldn't do a bit of good. I was stranded.
"Johnny and I heard a car." Cecil's face was thoughtful. "Kids come to the parking lot to look at the lake, usually they're up to romance, not making trouble."
Great. Vandals. That was all I needed. At nine o'clock in the evening, there wouldn't be a garage open anywhere nearby. Chances were I'd have to go to Clarksdale to find a Mercedes dealer.
"You'll have to stay the night," Edy said, more delighted than disturbed by the turn of events. "As it happens, we have a vacancy."
I shook my head as I got out of the car. "I don't have any clothes or anything."
"You can borrow some from me. We'll call the Clarksdale dealer in the morning and have it towed to the shop."
There was nothing else to do. I had to give in gracefully. At the desk I made a call to Tinkie, who agreed to check on Sweetie Pie. My hound had a doggy door, but she needed food, water, and human companionship.
Edy and Johnny had an apartment downstairs, but my room was on the third floor. It, too, looked as if it had been created in the forties and left untouched.
"Sorry about the lack of television," Edy said as she brought fresh towels and a nightgown designed for a sex goddess. There was nothing kittenish about this piece of lingerie.
"It's an antique," she said, laughing at my look. "I thought you'd enjoy the whole experience. Maybe someone famous like Lana Turner left that gown here."
My fingers slid over the rippling coral silk, and I knew it was possible that it had once graced a famous body. What fun.
"How about a good book?" Edy asked. "Not exactly the right companion for that gown, but the best I can do on short notice."
I accepted the collection of Tennessee Williams's plays she held out to me. "Thanks. Can I look through the scrapbooks some more?"
"Help yourself. I hate to do it, but I'd better turn in. We start breakfast at five, and that's our moneymaker. Cecil doesn't come in until lunch, so I have to cook."
It was a long day for her, and it was already late. "Get some rest, I'll be fine."
"There's an old record player on the second floor. We can't hear a thing in the apartment. Feel free to enjoy." She went to the door. "One more thing." Her dark eyes sparkled. "I didn't tell you about the ghost."
I had an image of Jitty, waiting at Dahlia House for me to return, and smiled. "What ghost?"
"Old man Rutledge. You'll know him. He drags a leg. He was shot in a card game by a deputy sheriff. They say he was cheating."
"And he haunts the third floor?"
"They hid him up in one of the bedrooms for a week before he died. He was only shot in the leg. If they'd gotten the doctor, he would have lived."
"Why didn't they get a doctor?"
"He didn't have any money left to pay for one. That's why he's so pissed off."
She was having a good time with me. I nodded wisely. "I'll be on the lookout for him."
She was gone, and I was left with a book, a bed stacked with throw pillows, and my own thoughts about Lawrence and his friends. Communists. It had been an age of innocence.
I wandered around the third floor, peeping into the other empty rooms. It was a big place, and very dark. The lodge itself was secluded, and Moon Lake had passed from the fancy of the rich and famous. I examined the scrapbooks on the second floor by the light of the old antique lamps. And finally, I went to bed. I had to get home to Dahlia House. I had a few questions for Madame. She should have mentioned the communist thing. It was no big deal. Lots of artists had dabbled in different political systems—and still did.
I shut off the space heater and crawled between the thick comforter into a bed heated by an electric blanket. I was going to be warm and toasty all night. When sleep finally claimed me, I was dancing a waltz with a handsome man who reminded me of Matt Dillon, the actor, not the marshal. He was quite a good dancer. Moon Lake glittered in the background as he held me and we spun around the room. We were going so fast that I grew dizzy, finally tumbling into the
blackness of deep sleep.
Step, step, step, pause. Step, pause.
I awoke with a start, my heart pounding at the noise outside my room. Edy's little ghost story came back to me with a vengeance, and I grasped the heavy comforter and pulled it to my chin. I'd turned off the room's space heater before I went to sleep. Now I could see my breath condensing in the air, a halo of silver caught in a shaft of moonlight. The storm had passed and a beautiful crescent moon hung just outside my lacy curtains. In the distance, Moon Lake glittered through the furry limbs of the cypress trees.
Step, step, step, pause.
The sound was distinctive. Someone was walking outside the bedroom doors—walking and then stopping to listen. I, who lived with a ghost, was suddenly terrified. Edy had said that in her apartment, two floors away, she couldn't hear a thing. Even if I screamed, no one would hear. And along with no television, the rooms didn't have a phone.
I tensed my body, willing myself deeper into the bed. The sounds of the steps came again, stopping one door to the left of me. Through my terror, I realized that the thing outside my door was not limping. It wasn't old man Rutledge come to spook me. Unless, of course, wounds were healed in the afterlife. That was something I'd failed to consult Jitty about.
Step, step, pause. He was right outside my door. I pulled the covers up to my nose, praying that this was all a dream.
The tap at the door was so soft I almost didn't hear it over the pounding of my heart. Tap, tap, tap. It came again.
Damn! He knew I was there.
"Sarah Booth."
Double damn! He knew my name! The whisper seemed to seep through the thick wooden door, which I had taken the precaution of locking. But what did that mean to a ghost?
"Sarah Booth, let me in."
This couldn't be happening. It couldn't. All I had to do was click my heels together three times and wake up.
"Open the damn door."
Would Mr. Rutledge speak with an accent? Suddenly I was out of the bed and at the door. "Who is it?"
"Willem. Let me in. Quickly."
I recognized his voice then and slid the thumb bolt free. I cracked the door, catching only the silhouette of a tall, well-built man. "Willem?"
"Who did you think it was, James Bond? Let me in."
I opened the door. In the soft moonlight, he was breathtakingly handsome. Not exactly Sean Connery, but a nice second choice. "What are you doing here?"
"Hunting for you," he said. "I found the manuscript."
20
The breath squeezed out of my lungs, making my heart pound harder than ever. I didn't know whether this was a result of his words or his hands on my bare shoulders as he grasped me and moved me away from the door so he could enter. He closed and locked the door behind him, as if he expected the hounds of hell to come bounding up the stairs after him.
"Where?" I asked, my mind wrapped firmly around the location of the manuscript.
He didn't answer. Instead he rushed to the window and peered outside. "You're safe here, I think."
"Where's the manuscript?" I asked again, at last getting my pulse rate under control.
"It's safe. That's all I can tell you."
It was anger this time that made my heart pound harder. "Willem, I'm not in the mood for games. You burst into my room and—"
He stood in shadow, but as I began to talk, he stepped forward to join me. In the soft glow of the moonlight I saw his face shift. His gaze swept over me, lingering and moving on, then shifting back for another taste.
"Sarah Booth," he said, a low rumble in his voice. "My God, you look like a movie star."
Ah, the power of great lingerie. Although I'm a private investigator by choice, I'm a woman by birth. I couldn't help but respond. Vanity slipped to the forefront—the low, revealing forefront—and I wished I'd had time to put up my hair in one of those loose, rumpled looks where a few tendrils slipped free. I could just imagine Willem removing the pins and allowing the weight of it to tumble down to my shoulders. Juvenile fantasy, perhaps. Inappropriate, definitely. Irresistible daydream, without a doubt.
With great reluctance I stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows. Playing with fire was fun, but Willem claimed to have found the manuscript and now he was holding out on me.
"Willem, where is it?" I meant business.
"It's safe. Very safe," he said, stepping closer. "I was worried about you. Look, you're cold." His fingers brushed my arm with electric friction. "Let me light a fire."
He'd just done that, a near case of spontaneous combustion, but I had to focus on the case. "How did you know I was here?"
"Your partner, Tinkie." He struck a match, and in the light his smile was both sexual and highly amused. He bent to light the space heater. "Tinkie was very eager to tell me all about your new business relationship and the case."
I was going to have to have a talk with my partner. She wasn't supposed to tell every Tom, Dick, or Harry where I was snooping.
"She was worried about you, too," Willem added, in a more serious tone. "This case isn't exactly what it seems." He reached out and his hand circled my wrist. Very gently he pulled me back into the pathway of light that fell from the moon. His gaze slid from my eyes, slowly moving downward, then back up to hold me for a long moment. "You're truly beautiful."
His palm tenderly caressed my cheek. "Under different circumstances . . ." He took a breath and walked over to the window where he watched the play of moonlight tipping the lake with silver.
The next move was up to me. I could go to him, touch him, and initiate the thing we both wanted. It occurred to me that having the power of a sex goddess was useless unless the goddess knew what she wanted to do with it. Suddenly I was unsure.
"What are you really doing here, Willem?"
He turned back to face me, hesitating for an instant while his gaze swept over me, before he came forward. "I was concerned for you. Tinkie told me you were at Senator Archer's, and from there I followed you here." He hesitated. "There was another car following you, too."
My passions had cooled to a mild simmer, allowing for a trickle of blood flow to my brain. I'd been so deep in my own funk that I hadn't even thought to look behind me. Willem had followed me. Hell, half of Zinnia could have been in a parade behind me and I wouldn't have noticed. The reality of my carelessness was unnerving. "Did you recognize the car?"
"No." He shook his head. "Mississippi plates. A boxy car, the kind matrons drive."
Probably a Mississippi matron headed for groceries. No one had a reason to follow me. "Why weren't you at Lawrence's funeral?" I asked. The room was warming, but I shifted closer to the space heater. The warmth on the back of my legs was delicious.
"I was searching Harold's house. It was the only time I was certain he wouldn't come home."
While I'd been snapping pictures of the rich and infamous, Willem had been solving my case. "You found the manuscript!" My heart was racing. If I could read that book I'd be a lot closer to finding Lawrence's killer.
"I know where it is."
I felt my eyes widen. "You didn't get it?"
He shook his head. "But it does exist. I know where it is."
"Where?" I demanded.
"We can go for it together," he said. "I'll protect you, Sarah Booth. We'll retrieve it together."
I began grabbing my clothes, preparing to dress. "Did you know that Lawrence and Madame were communists? There are some fabulous scrapbooks here."
"I don't think you could honestly consider them to be communists," Willem said. "They were activists. How well do you know your history, Sarah Booth?"
"I made it out of college."
"Vague at best," he concluded. "In the summer of 1940, Europe was at war. Terrible things were happening, which Americans chose to ignore. It was inevitable that America would join the Allies, but the country was greatly divided. There was much to be gained—or lost."
It was nearly midnight, and I wasn't in the mood for a history lesson. "
Yeah, yeah, I know it took the bombing of Pearl Harbor to push us into war. Let's go get the manuscript."
"You said there were scrapbooks?"
His question caught me off guard. "Yes, on the second floor." I had my clothes in my hand.
"Let's go look at them." He took my hand, removed my clothes, and led me out of the warm room and into the freezing hall. He slipped out of his jacket, a nice leather one, and draped it over my shoulders but kept walking, heading straight for the stairs as if he'd been in the lodge a hundred times.
When he'd settled me into one of the large, overstuffed chairs, he lit the nearby heaters and sat down on the arm of my chair, his hip brushing my shoulder. "Let me get a blanket from the room," he said.
"Willem!" I was ready to get going.
He disappeared for several minutes, returning with a heavy blanket he wrapped around my legs. "Which book?" he asked.
I picked up the one I'd been looking at earlier and flipped the pages.
"I have to tell you something. A confession. The complete truth this time," he said.
My finger was on the butchered picture of Lawrence standing at the lake. As impatient as I was to get moving, something in Willem's face made me hold still.
"As I told you, my father was in Germany during the war. He was a doctor."
My stomach knotted, hoping he wasn't headed where I thought he might be going. "A doctor?"
"In one of the concentration camps."
I closed my eyes. "So this is what you didn't want Lawrence to put in his book."
"It's what my mother wished to conceal. My father did nothing wrong. Nothing. He treated the victims of the pogroms. He was a kind man, and when the war was over, he was allowed to emigrate to Nicaragua without any difficulty."
"I see." I wondered if this was a family fabrication, something that Willem had heard and wanted so desperately to believe that he'd deceived himself, or simply the truth. "Why is your mother afraid of this story?"
"There were experiments conducted on prisoners. Though my father never participated, his name was put on research papers. He never knew this. It wasn't until he was dead and unable to dispute the journals that my mother learned about this. It almost killed her."
Sarah Booth Delaney Page 48