Southern Ghost

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Seven. Whitney Tarrant, 46, senior partner of Tarrant & Tarrant. Primarily a business getter for the firm. Reputed to be lazy, easily bored, petulant. Difficult to deal with. Plays golf several times a week. He and his wife, Charlotte, are among the social leaders of Chastain, entertaining several times a month. One child, Harriet Elaine, reportedly living in Venice, California.

  Eight. Charlotte Walker Tarrant, 46. Author of The Tarrant Family History. House proud and family proud. Very active in the Chastain Historical Preservation Society. Masters bridge player. Collects antique plates. Considered an authority on Low Country history. Reputation for snobbishness. Enjoys golf, horseback riding.

  Max checked the clock. “We’d better get ready to go.”

  Annie put the notepad on the coffee table. “I wonder what Miss Dora has up her bombazine sleeve?”

  As they walked swiftly through the dark streets, the shadows scarcely plumbed by the soft gold radiance of the old-fashioned street lamps, Annie clung tightly to Max’s hand. For comfort. Because she kept seeing young Harris Walker’s stricken face. Where was he now? Did he still carry hope in his heart? Or was despair numbing his mind?

  Max strode forward like a gladiator eager for combat. When he spoke, it sounded like a vow. “I don’t know how or when, Annie, and it may not happen tonight, but I’m going to rip this thing open, no matter what it takes.”

  She looked up at him, Joe Hardy mad as hell, his handsome face grim and intent.

  “Lies, lies all over the place.” He bit the words off. “Was there anything in the police report about Ross quarreling with his father that afternoon? No. Not a word. Not a single word. Just a bland statement. ‘Subject found dead of a gunshot wound at the family hunting lodge at shortly before five in the afternoon.’ Have you ever heard of anybody going hunting alone at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon?”

  What Annie knew about hunting could be summed up in one word: nothing. So she just murmured a noncommittal “Hmmm?” and hurried to keep up.

  “As for the autopsy report—body of young, white, healthy male, a bullet wound to the right temple, evidence of contact from powder burns, powder residue on the right hand. That doesn’t spell accident to me.” They turned the corner onto Ephraim Street. The river, dark and quiet, ran to their right. “But if it was suicide, why not say so?”

  “The Family,” Annie said with certainty, taking a little hop. There was a pebble in her right shoe, but now was not the time to deal with it. She tried to avoid limping. “Can’t you imagine how upset everyone would be? And in a small town like this, people would keep it quiet. But suicide doesn’t jibe with the letter Amanda Brevard sent to Courtney’s mother. Amanda wrote that ‘Ross was not guilty.’ Not guilty of what? Not guilty of suicide? Does that mean that he was murdered? Or was it an accident, after all?”

  Max shook his head impatiently. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  They passed three of Chastain’s oldest and loveliest homes, which Annie had come to know well when she provided the mystery program for the annual house-and-garden tours. Next came the Swamp Fox Inn, now under new management. It had been freshly painted. Annie glanced from the former tabby fort that served as the headquarters of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society across the street to Lookout Point, where Courtney Kimball’s abandoned car had been found. No lights bobbed on the river tonight.

  A single dark figure stood at the cliffs edge, staring out at the swift river.

  “Max.” She heard the tightness in her voice.

  At his glance, she pointed across the street.

  Max’s stride checked. “Walker,” he said quietly. Abruptly, he reached out and wrapped a hard arm around her shoulders and held her tight for a long moment.

  Annie understood.

  Max gave one more look toward the river, then said brusquely, “Come on.”

  This was where Ephraim Street dead-ended. They curved left onto Lafayette Street. The river curved, too, but here it was hidden behind the houses on Lafayette Street. Now the beautiful homes were to their right. The river—and the path where Amanda Brevard had fallen to her death—ran behind the elegant old houses. They passed Chastain House, with its remarkable Ionic columns and gleaming white pediment. It blazed with lights. Annie frowned at the luxurious classic Bentley in the drive. So Sybil Chastain Giacomo was in residence. Annie’s hand tightened on Max’s arm.

  He mistook the pressure and slowed, looking down.

  Annie pointed at the next home. “There’s where Miss Copley lives.”

  Then they reached Tarrant House, huge and dark behind its enormous bronze gates.

  “You could practically fit Sherwood Forest in there,” Annie murmured. She slipped off her right shoe, shook out the pebble, and put it back on.

  Max stared somberly at the old mansion. “If those walls could talk…”

  A car passed them in a hiss of tires, turned in next door.

  Miss Dora’s guests were beginning to gather.

  Max took her elbow. They walked swiftly up Miss Dora’s drive. Despite the light showing through chinks in the shuttered windows, the old tabby mansion, deep in the shadows of a phalanx of live oaks, had the aura of a ruin, as gloomy as the burned-out shell of Thornfield. An owl hooted mournfully.

  Annie was swept with dark foreboding.

  9.07 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

  Amanda Tarrant’s portrait, made for Mother’s Day, sat on her dressing table. It pictured a cameo-lovely woman with smooth magnolia skin and gentle blue eyes. Rich auburn hair framed her oval face in luxuriant waves.

  Amanda reached out, picked up the frame, and stared at her image. Her eyes smeared with tears, and she turned the frame facedown. She huddled in the chair in front of the ornate rosewood dressing table in a room fragrant with the lily of the valley perfume she always wore, and, unwillingly, almost in disbelief looked in the mirror. Mirror, mirror … She couldn’t look like that! She couldn’t! Her hair in blowsy disarray, her eyes wild and filled with misery, her lips trembling … And she couldn’t stop the little hiccups of distress or control the jagged rhythm of her breathing. She lifted a trembling hand to touch the bright-red mark on her cheek where Augustus had struck her. That was hideous, but worse, much worse, was the threat he had made, his voice as cold as death.

  She might as well be dead.

  Suddenly, the perfume she loved so much seemed overpowering, threatening to choke her. Striking out, she overturned the ornate crystal scent bottle. It shattered into sharp fragments, and perfume spread across the gleaming dressing table. She scarcely noticed the cut on her palm and the blood mingling with the scent.

  Oh, God, what was she going to do?

  Chapter 10.

  Annie knew the outcome of the gathering at Miss Dora’s couldn’t be predicted, but her first shock came when she and Max entered the elegant, austere drawing room and Sybil Chastain Giacomo flicked her an incurious, bored glance, then focused on Max, her dark eyes suddenly alive and lusty. A quiver of a smile touched those full, sensuous lips.

  Annie felt her cheeks flush. What was Sybil doing here? Sybil lived just two doors away from Miss Dora, but that, of course, was irrelevant to this evening. Or was it? Shrewd old Miss Dora never acted without reason.

  But there’d been no mention at all of Sybil in any of the materials about the events at Tarrant House on May 9, 1970.

  Sybil wore a green, décolleté gown. Very décolleté. She was a striking, vivid figure against the cool ivory of the walls. An aura of wildness invested Sybil’s every glance and every throaty remark with a current of fascination. Her presence dominated the room. Each woman and each man was acutely aware of her flamboyant, unrestrained sexuality.

  Sybil knew it, of course, knew and took some pleasure in it, although her brown eyes held a depth of unhappiness that no momentary pleasure could relieve.

  Miss Dora, her ever-present cane tightly gripped in her left hand, thumped across the floor to Annie and Max. “You know Sybil.
”

  Sybil moved closer to Max and gave him her hand. “Not nearly well enough. But perhaps we can remedy that.” Sybil gave him a come-on-over-tonight-honey look, ignoring Annie altogether.

  It only added to Annie’s fury that Max, dammit, was enjoying every second of Sybil’s high-voltage performance. It would serve him right if Annie abandoned him to Sybil for the rest of the evening. He might learn something about the old adage that those who play with matches can bloody well get singed.

  But there were no flies on Miss Dora. Somehow—Annie wasn’t certain how—Sybil was bypassed, and she and Max were on a circuit of the room with Miss Dora. “My young friends from Broward’s Rock, Max and Annie Darling,” Miss Dora announced to each family member in turn.

  Milam Tarrant was minimally polite but obviously uninterested. His long—by Chastain standards extraordinarily long—blond hair curled on his collar like that of an Edwardian dandy. He wore a pink dinner jacket that didn’t hide a heavy paunch.

  Milam’s wife, Julia, smiled pleasantly but her eyes had the lost and lonely look of a neglected child. Her evening dress was old and shabby, its once vibrant black dulled to the color of a winter night sky.

  Weedy, aristocratic Whitney Tarrant, whose high-bridged nose and pointed chin were replicated in the family portraits, held Annie’s hand a trifle too long in a moist grip. Annie fought away the desire to wipe her fingers when they were free.

  Whitney’s wife, Charlotte, gave Annie and Max a brief nod and a supercilious smile. Despite her dowdy white evening dress, Charlotte exuded the self-assurance of a woman supremely certain of her social position.

  Conversation was politely formal: the unseasonably sultry weather, concern over the safety of Savannah River water for drinking (“How can we ever feel safe with that damned nuclear weapons production plant upstream?” Whitney demanded), the plans for the summer regatta. Annie was glad when Miss Dora promptly led her guests in to dinner, though she heard Sybil’s caustic, “No drinks first? God.” The dining room was gorgeously appointed, the crimson damask curtains a dramatic counterpoint to the deep emerald green of the walls. They sat around a Hepplewhite drop-leaf table on Hepplewhite shieldback chairs. On a Sheraton sideboard, a large Georgian silver bowl and tea service glistened in the light from the enormous crystal teardrop chandelier.

  Annie was delighted that Sybil was seated as far from Max as possible. Miss Dora, of course, was at the head of the table. At the other end was Milam. Sybil sat to his left, and Max was at Miss Dora’s right.

  That was on the plus side.

  On the minus, Annie had Whitney to her right. Was he deliberately pressing his knee against hers? She pulled her leg away. But he moved his leg, too. Annie’s eyes narrowed. She remembered a request she’d heard Gloria Steinem make once in a speech: “Do something outrageous. Tell him to pick it up himself.” Annie gripped her shrimp cocktail fork, dropped her hand sharply to her right, and poked.

  Whitney gave a small yelp, which he unsuccessfully tried to smother.

  Max looked sharply down the table. Annie spread her right hand to indicate all was copacetic, but she hoped Whitney was aware of the dark look he was receiving from her husband. She turned to Whitney and smiled sweetly. “I’m so sorry. It just got away from me.”

  In a very different way, Annie was just as aware of Julia on her left. Julia’s thin arms were pressed tightly to her sides until the wine was served. As soon as her glass was poured, she grabbed it and gulped the wine.

  Miss Dora saw it, of course. But instead of the quick condemnation Annie expected to see in those raisin-dark eyes, there was only sadness.

  Sybil ignored her wineglass and asked for bourbon.

  On the plus side was the food (the shrimp fritters were beyond belief), quickly and competently served by a young maid, who watched Miss Dora with wide eyes to make certain the chatelaine was pleased.

  From the first instant, Miss Dora directed the conversation, drawing out each in turn. Sybil almost looked happy as she described her visit last week to Boca Raton. “I played tennis all week, every day, all day long.” That accounted for her air of vigor and health despite the haggardness in her eyes. But she drank bourbon steadily through dinner and only toyed with her food.

  Milam ate greedily and there was a smear of butter on one finger. He shrugged away Miss Dora’s question. “Last week—oh, nothing special.” He reached for another roll. “I finished a painting.” He gave her a sardonic smile. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s a plantation all bright and shiny and freshly painted, but when you look close you can see the maggots and snakes, and if you look very hard at the live oak trees and the strands of Spanish moss, you can see faces, some black, some white. The face of a slave girl who has no choice when the master—”

  His sister-in-law gave him a look of utter loathing. “Milam, it’s downright tacky how you act. The Family—”

  “Fuck the Family, Charlotte.”

  There was an instant of appalled silence.

  Charlotte’s pale-green eyes bulged with outrage.

  Whitney’s face twisted in a petulant frown. “I’ll thank you not to be vulgar and insulting to my wife, Milam.” There could be no doubt about Whitney’s lineage—the long nose, sharp chin, dark eyes—but his was a second-rate imitation of the Judge’s vigorous and commanding face. Whitney’s chin was weak, and his eyes slid away from Milam’s challenging glance.

  Sybil threw back that mane of glorious hair and hooted with laughter. “Way to go, Milam honey.”

  All of these exchanges were in the cultivated, lovely accent that Annie had enjoyed hearing ever since she came to South Carolina. The smooth-as-honey voices made the rudeness even more shocking.

  Miss Dora ignored the exchange. The only indication she’d heard was the slight increase in volume when she spoke. She spooned a mound of peas. “And what can you tell us about your week, Whitney?”

  Uneasiness flickered in his pale-brown eyes.

  Annie sipped her chardonnay and waited. Whitney must have been easy meat for teachers when he was growing up. She’d never seen anyone so transparent. It made her—and, she was certain, everyone else at the table—wonder what the hell he’d been up to. Though Whitney was such a drip, it probably didn’t amount to much.

  “Whitney?” The old lady put down her spoon and fixed him with a penetrating gaze.

  “Uh, the usual, Aunt Dora. The office, some golf. Charlotte and I went into Savannah for the symphony.” But something lurked in his eyes, eyes that wouldn’t meet Miss Dora’s.

  The old lady looked at him speculatively.

  Charlotte preened. “I’m on the Women’s Committee, of course. Why, we’ve worked so hard to gain support for the symphony. Such long hours. Of course, I never mind the effort. I’m happy to be able to—”

  “Spare us, sweet Charlotte.” Sybil yawned. “Good works are excessively boring when recounted. Especially by the self-satisfied doer.”

  Charlotte turned an ugly saffron. “If it weren’t for those of us who dedicate ourselves to preserving and maintaining our glorious heritage, it would be destroyed by those to whom the past—”

  “—is past.” Sybil raised an elegant black eyebrow. “Grow up, Charlotte. This is the last decade of the century—the twentieth century, not, for Christ’s sake, the nineteenth.” She crumpled her napkin and dropped it beside her plate. “Jesus, tell me about the museum, how important it is.” A wicked light danced in her eyes. “I know, let’s have a special display of chamber pots, really bring back the essence of the old South.”

  Miss Dora watched them, like an owl surveying rabbits.

  “Our civilization will be destroyed if we don’t hold onto the values of those who came before.” Charlotte quivered with outrage. She lifted trembling fingers to the heavy roped gold necklace at her pudgy throat.

  Milam’s full mouth spread in a grin, not a pleasant one. “Civilization,” he mused. “Tell me about it, Charlotte. Tell me about the slaves. Not dependents, honey. Call a spa
de a spade. Let’s look at how it really was. Tell me about the slaves, and the poor whites, and the plantations and later the mills where little kids worked twelve-hour days. Tell me about civilization, dear sister-in-law.”

  Whitney’s chair scraped back, and he started to rise. “That’s enough, Milam. Shut your mouth.”

  “Milam. Whitney.”

  Miss Dora didn’t need to say more. Milam looked down at the table, his face suddenly sullen. Whitney sank back into his chair.

  The old lady nodded and the maid began to clear the table. “Sullee made Key-lime pie for us tonight. Now, Charlotte, tell us about your week.”

  The pattern was clear enough by now. But what did Miss Dora have in mind? Obviously, Annie was not the only guest who vondered. And all of the family members, except poor quiescent Julia, shot an occasional wondering glance at Annie and Max. Who were they? Why were they here? It was obvious that this was no ordinary dinner party. It was almost as if they were in a class, and Miss Dora was calling upon each member to recite.

  And now it was Charlotte’s turn. She flounced a little in her chair, torn between exercising her anger at Milam and responding to Miss Dora. But it was no contest. “It was such an important week, Miss Dora.” She smoothed her faded blond hair, and the carnelian ring on one finger glowed a rich rose. “We’ve raised enough money to start reconstruction of Fort Chastain. Why, you know how important it was in the Battle of Chastain. That’s where William first joined his company. And at one time Henry was in command there. When it’s rebuilt, we can climb to the ramparts and look out over the river—just like Henry and William.”

  As the maid brought dessert, Julia held up her wineglass to be refilled. When the glass was full, she downed the contents in one swift, practiced motion.

  “Hot damn, Charlotte,” Sybil drawled. “Won’t that be the day! Climb that rampart, honey, wave that—”

  Annie glanced down the table at Max. He was looking bland, but laughter danced in his eyes.