Fixing to Die

by Miranda James

  “I hoped the spirit would remain and try to communicate with me.” The medium motioned for the sisters to precede her down the stairs, and An’gel and Dickce turned and walked down. Mrs. Pace said, “She did not, despite that momentary hesitation. I feel sure she will eventually.”

  Once they’d reached the first floor, An’gel turned to face the medium and asked, “You believe the spirit is female?”

  Mrs. Pace nodded. “Yes, I do. That was definitely a feminine energy that passed through me. Now, if you will excuse me, ladies, I really must find the kitchen. After that experience, I need food and drink to renew my energy.”

  Dickce pointed the way to the kitchen, and Mrs. Pace strode purposefully down the hall. An’gel waited until the medium was out of earshot before she turned to her sister. “What did you think of that? Performance? Or an actual supernatural episode?”

  “At first I thought it had to be real.” Dickce shrugged. “Her expression when she stopped and then suddenly sat down hard on the stairs, well, she seemed utterly surprised. But if this is her business, then I figure she must be quite an accomplished actress.”

  “You were standing nearer the stairs than I was,” An’gel said. “Did you feel any cold?”

  “No.” Dickce frowned. “I was several feet away from where Mrs. Pace was on the staircase, so I don’t suppose there’s a reason I would have felt anything.”

  An’gel wasn’t so sure. Could the spirit—if indeed it was a spirit—hold its essence so close as not to be felt more than a few inches away from the person it enveloped? If only they had a trustworthy authority on these things that they could consult. She dredged her memories to come up with a name but couldn’t.

  Maybe there was an expert in Natchez. Mary Turner might know, An’gel thought, and decided to ask her soon. Surely, given the fact that Natchez was alleged to be so haunted, there had to be someone around who was knowledgeable.

  An’gel shared these thoughts with her sister, and Dickce nodded. “Excellent idea. The only things I know about the occult are what I’ve read in fiction.”

  “Yes,” An’gel said. “Me, too, since we read many of the same authors. Too bad we can’t call up Carolyn Haines or Charlaine Harris to ask them their opinions.”

  “Or Carolyn Hart,” Dickce added. “I love her ghost series, and at least her ghost is nice.”

  An’gel laughed. “They’d probably think we were crazy if we did manage to find their phone numbers and called them up out of the blue, asking for advice.”

  Dickce giggled in response. “I’m sure they’d be nice to us, but you’re right, they might wonder how we got loose long enough to get to a phone.”

  An’gel felt better after this brief interlude of humor. She had begun to feel somewhat oppressed by the burden of the task they had agreed to take on. Chasing ghosts, at my age. She almost snorted at the thought, but when a friend needed help, what could you do?

  “What next?” Dickce pulled An’gel out of her reverie. “Keep looking through the house?”

  “Yes,” An’gel replied, though she had already begun to tire of the search.

  The front doorbell interrupted them before they could continue their survey.

  “Should we answer it, do you think?” Dickce asked.

  “Probably best to let Mary Turner or Henry Howard do it,” An’gel said, “in case it’s someone looking for a room. Let’s go back in the library and look further.”

  She turned to head toward the library, with Dickce behind her, and the doorbell sounded again. “Certainly impatient, whoever it is.” An’gel paused. “Maybe we should answer it. I don’t think anyone else is coming.”

  The caller began knocking on the door, sounding louder and louder with every strike. An’gel frowned, annoyed at the person. She strode toward the door and swung it open to confront the caller.

  A young woman, her hand raised to strike again, pulled back in time to avoid hitting An’gel, who noted the woman’s petulant expression without sympathy. There had been no reason she could see for this person to bang on the door like a drunken sailor.

  “Good afternoon,” An’gel said, her tone barely civil to her own ears. “May I help you?”

  The young woman, who An’gel judged to be in her mid-twenties, had attractive features, though at present marred by a scowl.

  “You can stand aside and let us come in,” the young woman said, her tone haughty. “You look a little old to be the housekeeper, you know.”

  “I am not the housekeeper,” An’gel said over the sounds of her sister’s smothered laughter somewhere behind her. “I’m a guest of the owners, if you must know.” She continued to block the rude young woman from entry.

  The stranger shrugged. “Well, how nice for you. You’re still standing in the way.”

  “So I am,” An’gel replied. “You haven’t stated your business here, and until I know why you’re here, I’m not going to move.”

  “Get this old biddy,” the stranger said over her shoulder.

  For the first time An’gel noticed a handsome blond man, probably twenty years older than the woman, standing a few feet behind his companion. He stepped forward.

  “Our apologies, ma’am,” he said, his voice husky. He smelled faintly of cigars and brandy, and An’gel decided he was well on his way to being fully lit. “My client happens to be under considerable stress at the moment. Normally she’s not this discourteous.” He stared hard at the young woman, as if willing her to apologize.

  She did not comply. Instead she tossed her head. “Truss, don’t be such a weenie. We have every right to come into this house. Part of it belongs to my family anyway.”

  The man took a breath, held it for a moment, then slowly expelled it. He smiled at An’gel. He was quite handsome, she decided, but had begun to run to seed. Probably because of his fondness for brandy and cigars. And younger women, she thought.

  “Ma’am, again I beg your pardon. I am Truscott Anderson Wilbanks, the fourth of that name. Perhaps you have heard of my family, who have been in Natchez for generations.” He didn’t wait for An’gel to reply, which was just as well because she had never heard of him or his family. “This young lady is Serenity Foster. She and her brother, Nathan Gamble, are distant cousins of Mary Turner Catlin.”

  “Thank you for introducing yourself and your client, Mr. Wilbanks.” An’gel then introduced herself and Dickce, who had hovered behind her impatiently the whole time. Once her introductions were acknowledged, she stood aside and let Ms. Foster and Mr. Wilbanks enter the house.

  “I thought I heard the front door,” Mary Turner called out as she came down the hallway from the back of the house. An’gel and Dickce moved aside to let her see the newcomers, and Mary Turner’s progress faltered. An’gel saw a grimace, quickly erased, as her hostess stepped forward.

  “Hello, Serenity, Truss. What brings you here today?” Mary Turner said, her arms now crossed over her chest. Not a welcoming stance, An’gel thought.

  Wilbanks started to speak, but Serenity Foster interrupted him. “Nathan said he was coming here this afternoon, and I’ve got to talk to him. He’s going to have to change his mind about the trust fund.”

  Mary Turner frowned. “Nathan? He’s not here now, and this is the first I’ve heard he was planning to show up here today.” From the young woman’s tone, An’gel deduced that Nathan would be no more welcome than Ms. Foster and Mr. Wilbanks.

  “This isn’t a good time for him to come bothering me yet again with the same old crazy story,” Mary Turner said, her tone becoming increasingly heated. “He’s got to get it through his head that he has no legal rights here. No one in the Gamble family does. That will probably never existed, but if it did, it’s long gone by now. Henry Howard and I are sick and tired of dealing with Nathan.”

  The name Gamble struck a chord. An’gel remembered then that her friend Jessy, Mary Turner
’s grandmother, had often mentioned the Gambles—offshoots of a younger sister of a Turner sometime in the nineteenth century—but never in a friendly or complimentary manner.

  Serenity Foster shrugged. “That’s Nathan’s gig, not mine. He’s obsessed with finding that will, and I don’t care what he does. What I do care about is him trying to cheat me out of rights to the trust fund.”

  An’gel knew that she and Dickce should politely withdraw, but she had the odd feeling that Nathan Gamble might have something to do with the problems at Cliffwood. If he had a claim against the estate, perhaps he was trying to drive Mary Turner and Henry Howard out of the house. The pertinent question was, of course, what kind of claim did Nathan Gamble have against the Turner family and their possession of Cliffwood? An’gel decided she and Dickce needed to know everything they could about this. She stood where she was and indicated to Dickce that she should as well.

  “You’ve got no call to bring your dispute with your brother here,” Mary Turner said. “This is my home, but it’s also a place of business. I can’t have the two of you screaming and carrying on with each other while we have guests here.”

  Wilbanks stepped forward and laid a hand on Mary Turner’s arm in a placatory gesture. “Serenity has no intention of creating that kind of disturbance here, Mary Turner. She simply wants to talk to her brother, who has refused recently to let her in his house.” He smiled briefly. “As her advisor, I suggested that meeting with him on neutral ground was the best approach. Cliffwood is her best chance, and she has to talk to him soon. He’s got to see sense, or she is going to lose her case for joint custody of the twins. All she needs is money to catch up on her mortgage and show the court she has a good home for the boys.”

  At these words, Serenity Foster started to cry quietly, her expression full of tragedy and loss.

  This was sounding more and more like a soap opera, An’gel thought, and Serenity Foster was now behaving like the downtrodden heroine looking desperately for help. An’gel had never trusted women who could cry on cue like that, and she was convinced that was exactly what Serenity Foster was doing.

  Mary Turner looked stricken. “I had no idea the situation had gotten that bad with your ex-husband, Serenity.” She paused, then continued in a rush, “I guess you might as well wait here and see if Nathan shows up. Y’all go into the front parlor, and I’ll go talk to Marcelline about coffee or something.” She turned and hurried down the hall without waiting for a response.

  Wilbanks took his client by the arm and turned her toward the parlor. He flashed a smile at An’gel and Dickce. “If you’ll excuse us, ladies.”

  As he led Serenity Foster away, An’gel heard the young woman mutter to her companion, “If Nathan doesn’t come through with the money, I swear I’ll kill him this time.”

  CHAPTER 9

  An’gel stared at the retreating backs of Serenity Foster and her lawyer. If she had been Mary Turner, she would have not-so-politely shown the two of them the door, custody battle or no custody battle.

  Dickce’s elbow dug into her side. “Did you hear that?”

  An’gel regarded her sister with a frown. “The threat, you mean? Yes, I heard it. What of it?”

  “Doesn’t it worry you a little?” Dickce asked. “The last thing we need is to be involved in another murder.”

  An’gel resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at Dickce. “I seriously doubt that petulant young woman is going to do anything of the kind. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Sister.”

  “We’ll see.” Dickce shook her head. “I’m getting a bad feeling about all this.”

  “That’s probably the extra piece of carrot cake you ate at lunch.” An’gel was in no mood to deal with Dickce’s feelings. She had them far too often, and most of the time they were wrong. Just figments of Dickce’s frequently overactive imagination.

  “Do you have any idea, Sister, how often I long to slap your smug face?” Dickce looked annoyed.

  An’gel paid no attention to this little sally. She badly wanted to talk to Mary Turner in private, but at the moment she didn’t see much hope of that. Mary Turner would be bound to engage in conversation with her cousin and her lawyer. She certainly wouldn’t leave them alone in the parlor if she were their hostess, and not necessarily because of good manners. That lawyer looked more than a little seedy to her.

  Mary Turner returned pushing a tea cart. She paused a moment to speak to An’gel and Dickce. “I’m so sorry about all this,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t want to have anything to do with this mess, but would you come in with me? I have a hard time dealing with Serenity.”

  “Certainly, my dear,” An’gel said. “You shouldn’t have to face this by yourself. Where is Henry Howard?” She thought it odd that he wasn’t here during a situation of this kind, when his wife obviously needed support.

  Mary Turner frowned. “He’s gone into town to the library to do some research, and then he’s meeting later on with his critique group.”

  “I didn’t know he was a writer,” Dickce said.

  “Yes,” Mary Turner replied. “He’s been working on an epic fantasy novel for several years now.”

  “I hope he’s successful with it,” Dickce said. “I mostly read mysteries and nonfiction, but I’d read his fantasy novel since I know him.”

  “He really wants to be able to write full-time,” Mary Turner said, “but of course, we can’t afford for him to. I can’t run this place by myself, and we don’t have the money to hire someone full-time to do all the things he does. If he ever manages to sell this thing and it takes off, well, that would be different.” She shrugged. “I’d better take this into my guests before the coffee gets cold.”

  “Of course,” An’gel said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  Mary Turner resumed her progress with the tea cart, and the sisters followed. When An’gel entered the room, she caught a glimpse of Serenity Foster and Wilbanks, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had company, engaged in making out on one of the sofas. An’gel cleared her throat loudly, and the two sprang apart. Wilbanks got hastily to his feet, his face red.

  “Here’s the coffee,” Mary Turner said. “Plus some of Marcelline’s wonderful oatmeal raisin cookies.” She placed the cart near the end of the sofa where Serenity Foster still sat.

  She didn’t look in the least embarrassed at having been caught in a clinch, An’gel thought. At least the lawyer had the grace to look abashed. Girls these days simply had no sense of proper behavior. Carrying on like that with a man who looked to be old enough to be her father, or almost. And her lawyer to boot. An’gel’s opinion of the girl, not high to begin with, sank even lower.

  While she and Dickce found seats on the other sofa, facing Serenity Foster and Wilbanks, Mary Turner served the coffee as if she had not observed the behavior of her two most recent guests. After passing around plates and then the cookies, Mary Turner took a seat in a chair placed perpendicular to the sofas.

  “Did Nathan give you any idea of what time he planned to arrive here?” Mary Turner took a sip of her coffee while she waited for an answer.

  Serenity Foster put down the cookie she had been about to sample and frowned at her cousin. “Not exactly,” she said. “He said midafternoon, but the way he keeps track of time, who knows? Could be ten o’clock tonight before he shows up.”

  Mary Turner did not reply to this, and a brief silence ensued. Wilbanks ended it. “These are great cookies,” he said. “I’d forgotten how good a cook Marcelline is.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her that,” Mary Turner said. “Tell me, Truss, when did you become Serenity’s lawyer? I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”

  “A couple of months ago,” he said. “Actually we’ve known each other for several years, but only recently did Serenity ask me to take over her case. Her previous attorney couldn’t seem to make any head
way on the custody issue, and she thought a fresh approach might make a difference.”

  An’gel followed the conversation with interest, and she knew Dickce was an intrigued as she was. Wilbanks had a smooth manner, and he had an excellent voice, though roughened by his smoking. She could imagine him addressing a jury or a judge. She did wonder how successful he was, however, because the suit he had on looked at least ten years old and rather worn in places, like the cuffs of the jacket. There appeared to be a button missing from one sleeve as well.

  Or maybe he spends all his money on liquor and cigars, she thought.

  “I hope you’ll be able to help her,” Mary Turner said. “I can only imagine how you must feel, Serenity, not being able to see the children as much as you’d like.”

  “It’s horrible,” Serenity responded. “That jerk is doing his best to turn them against me.” She stared at An’gel and Dickce. “Don’t you think that’s a terrible thing to do to a mother?”

  Depends on the mother, An’gel thought but did not express this aloud. Instead she said, “I’m sure it must be trying for you.”

  “Yes, it must be,” Dickce said.

  “My brother knows all this, and he’s too cheap to help me out.” Serenity stuffed half a cookie into her mouth and chewed. She hadn’t quite finished it when she spoke again. “He keeps going on about depleting my capital and crap like that, when I know there’s more than enough money for me to pay what I owe on the mortgage if only he’d turn loose some of it.”

  An’gel did not care to see people talking while they chewed their food, and she glanced away until Serenity finished speaking. When the words ceased, she looked back again.

  Mary Turner said, “For your sake, I hope you can come to some sort of compromise. Would anyone like more coffee?”

  Everyone declined, and conversation lagged again. An’gel did not feel impelled to contribute, because she and Dickce didn’t know these people. An’gel remained curious, however, to see whether there was any connection between the Gambles and the goings-on at Cliffwood. The more she and Dickce learned about the family and their claims on the Turner estate, the better.