Southern Ghost

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “But Ross didn’t kill his father.” Sybil’s tone was bewildered. “You know that. So why would Ross leave a note confessing to a murder he didn’t commit? Why would he kill himself when his grandfather came to the lodge?”

  “Because he was determined to accept responsibility for his father’s murder.” Miss Dora said it quietly.

  Annie shivered. She could not even imagine what would have propelled Ross Tarrant to make such an awful sacrifice.

  Sybil swept a hand through her thick black hair. “That’s crazy. Ross was never crazy. Don’t you see, Uncle Harmon had everything wrong—”

  “Oh, I understand,” Charlotte said in a rush, her words tumbling eagerly. “Amanda! It had to be Amanda! She and Augustus had quarreled, I know that. It must have been Amanda!” She looked from her husband to her brother-in-law. “Don’t you see? That explains everything—Ross came into the house and found his mother in the study with Augustus. Maybe she was still holding the gun. Of course he would take it from her and send her upstairs and then he would run with the gun. Maybe he was going to hide it. And when he got to the lodge, he realized that the police would come and even if he said he did it, his mother would step forward and confess. But if he died—then why would she speak out? His death would protect her.”

  They all stared at Charlotte.

  In Miss Dora’s bright, dark eyes, there was grudging respect.

  Sybil blindly sat down and stared sightlessly at the cold fireplace. “Ross loved his mother. Oh, my God.”

  Whitney cleared his throat. “I can’t believe Mother would—but if Ross didn’t shoot the Judge, why else would he kill himself? Oh, Christ.”

  “Not Amanda,” Julia murmured blearily.

  “My conclusion”—Miss Dora thumped her cane—“is that Charlotte perceives correctly one aspect of that dreadful day: Ross Tarrant indeed took his own life late on the afternoon of May ninth, 1970, and can be adjudged a gallant and honorable and loving son. I have no doubt but that some scene such as that envisioned by Charlotte did indeed occur; Ross was convinced of his mother’s guilt.”

  “So this bloody little exercise of yours, dear Aunt Dora, has been for naught.” Milam grabbed his half-full tumbler from the table and lifted it. “On behalf of your grateful and admiring family,” he said furiously, “may I thank you for this scintillating evening of civilized entertainment—and for Christ’s sake, don’t invite us next time.” He downed the whisky, slammed the glass onto the table, and turned to his wife. “Come on, Julia.”

  “Milam, my inquiry is merely beginning.” Miss Dora responded imperturbably, indifferent to his sarcasm. “Surely you understand that I would not call you here tonight merely to reopen wounds. Were Amanda the guilty party, there would be no need for an inquiry. But Amanda was not guilty. Ross was in error, an error which proved mortal for him and which has caused enormous pain and anguish on the part of those who loved him.”

  Milam glared at Miss Dora. “What the hell do you have up your sleeve now?”

  “Mother didn’t do it.” Whitney’s relief was enormous. Then, his shoulders sagged. “But, God, that means we don’t know who killed the Judge.”

  Miss Dora reached out to take Sybil’s hand. “I am afraid, my dear, that the road you travel is to be more difficult still. I know that you have courage. Will you join me in a journey filled with travail?”

  “Nothing worse could happen to me than has already happened,” Sybil said dully, the muscles in her face slack from misery.

  Miss Dora gave Sybil’s hand a quick squeeze, then loosed her grasp. “You will need all of your strength, my child.”

  Annie stepped closer to Max. It was comforting, in the midst of this puzzling—no, frightening—exchange, to be close to the most reassuring person she’d ever known. But even Max, his brows drawn in a tight frown, looked uneasy. What next, for God’s sake?

  “I don’t understand.” Charlotte’s voice rose querulously. “What does Sybil have to do with any of it?”

  Miss Dora ignored Charlotte’s question, but she gave her full attention to Charlotte. “You are an intelligent woman, Charlotte, intelligent, perceptive, responsible.”

  Charlotte accepted the accolade with a complacent nod, and some of the strain seeped out of her face.

  “So”—it was a hard-edged, jolting demand—“why haven’t you called the police to offer them information about Courtney Kimball?” Miss Dora’s obsidian eyes surveyed Charlotte like an alligator eyeing a succulent cottonmouth.

  Charlotte’s mouth moved, but no words came. Pudgy fingers clawed at her necklace.

  If the atmosphere of the room had been tense before, now it was surely electric.

  An odd wheezing sound emanated from the old lady.

  Annie looked at her in concern, then realized Miss Dora was amused.

  “Cat have your tongues, all of you? You know who I’m talking about, each and every one of you. The young woman who’s opened this all up again—she’s the reason we’re here tonight. And she’s the reason I won’t let this drop until we know the truth. Because one of you”—there was no laughter now on that wizened parchment face—“one of you may have taken another life—and this time I won’t tolerate it. Do you hear me?”

  “Who?” Sybil asked. “What are you talking about, Miss Dora?”

  “Pretty girl.” Julia wavered unsteadily. “Came out to Wisteree on Monday. Told her how nice Amanda was. Her grandmother.”

  Spots of color burned in Charlotte’s cheeks. “Nonsense. She showed me a copy of that letter Monday, too. For all we know, she found a letter from Amanda to her mother and copied the handwriting. I don’t care what kind of heiress she may be, that doesn’t mean we can let her make up stories about us. There is only one Tarrant grandchild, our daughter, Harriet.”

  Julia giggled. “And Harriet doesn’t give a damn.” At Charlotte’s enraged glare, Julia tried to stifle her little hiccups of laughter. “Don’t care. It’s true. Want truth? Bet you don’t even know where Harriet is.”

  “Harriet will come home someday. And no impostor is going to take her place,” Charlotte said stiffly.

  “I don’t understand any of this.” Sybil looked from Charlotte to Miss Dora. “Who are we talking about?”

  Whitney intervened impatiently. “Christ, Sybil, don’t you ever read the newspaper? The girl who’s disappeared, the one who claims Ross was her father.”

  Every muscle in Sybil’s body hardened. She stood for an instant as if turned to stone, but her eyes, wild, shocked, stunned eyes, huge and imploring, clung to Whitney. “Her father!” Abruptly, as if launched from a catapult, she was across the room, clutching her cousin’s arm. “A girl who says Ross was her father?”

  “That’s what she said, Sybil.” Pulling free of Sybil’s grasp, Whitney glanced toward his wife, then continued defiantly. “Attractive young woman. Though I suppose that’s neither here nor there. She claimed to have a letter from Mother saying that Ross wasn’t guilty, that no matter what anyone should say, Courtney should know that her father was innocent. She gave me a photocopy of the letter—” He looked briefly at his wife. “It sure looked like Mother’s handwriting, but everyone knows Mother wasn’t herself—before she died.”

  “Courtney.” Sybil’s voice shook. “When was she born?”

  “How in the world should we know?” Charlotte said irritably.

  “When was she born?” Sybil cried desperately.

  “December twelfth, 1970,” Max said quietly.

  “December twelfth…” Tears spilled down Sybil’s cheeks. “December twelfth—oh, Jesus, they lied to me. They lied to me! They said she was born dead. Oh, God, I heard her cry. I told my father I heard her cry, and he said I was wrong. He said it was another baby. Oh, God, they took my baby away from me.”

  As the front door of Chastain House closed behind Sybil, Max took Annie’s hand. They walked in silence down the broad steps and along the moonlight-dappled drive toward the street.

  “How could t
hey?” Annie tried hard to keep the tremor from her voice. She didn’t succeed.

  Max slipped his arm around her shoulders. “It was a different day, a different age. And this was a conservative family in a small town.”

  She repeated it. “How could they?”

  “Her father dead; her mother seventeen and unmarried.” Max took a deep breath. “Annie, they thought they were doing the best thing for the baby and for Sybil.”

  “God.” Annie stumbled to a stop and looked back toward the Greek Revival mansion. “Max, will she be all right? Shouldn’t we stay?”

  “She didn’t give us a choice,” he said dryly.

  At Miss Dora’s brusque command, Annie and Max had walked home with Sybil. Or tried to. Sybil had plunged ahead of them, taking a dark shortcut that she knew, and they had trouble following. But they were close behind when she stormed up her front steps, unlocked the door, and paused only to say, her face grim and stricken, “Tell them—tell them I will find her. I will. And if anything’s happened to her, I’ll spend the rest of my life finding the one who hurt her. Tell them that,” and she’d slammed the door behind her.

  Partway down the drive, Annie stopped again and looked back. Lights blazed from almost every room in the Chastain mansion. “Max, I don’t think we should leave her alone.”

  Max gave Annie a quick, hard hug, then turned her once again toward the street. “Sybil will survive this night,” he said quietly. “She’s a survivor. She has to come to terms with the most shocking revelations she’s ever faced. We can’t help her do that. No one can. But tomorrow, tomorrow she’ll see us. Because she’ll want our help in searching for Courtney.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Annie walked with him down the drive.

  The oyster shells crunched beneath their feet. The faraway, mournful whistle of a freight train mingled with the nearby hoot of an owl.

  Annie shivered. The night was cool and damp, the shadows ink dark, the rustles of the shrubbery disquieting.

  “Max?” Her voice was thin. “Do you think Courtney’s dead?”

  Her question hung in the air.

  He didn’t answer, but his hand tightly gripped hers.

  Annie felt better when they walked into their carefully appointed suite at the St. George Inn. The crimson coals from a discreet fire glimmered in the grate. The Tiffany lamp cast a warming glow over the chintz-covered sofa. The spread was invitingly turned down on the four-poster rice bed, and foil-wrapped candy in the unmistakable shape of truffles waited on the plump pillows.

  As Max put on Colombian decaf to brew, Annie picked up the envelope lying on the coffee table. It was addressed to them in Barb’s free-flowing script.

  Dear Annie and Max,

  What a day! For starters, the PI from Savannah dropped by and we have a date to go bowling tonight. Honestly, Max, do you believe in fate? He’s really neat—kind of like Michael J. Fox, that cutie, all grown up—maybe forty-something. And he’s really come up with the goods for you and Annie. I put the folders with all his stuff on your table—

  Annie looked at the stack of folders piled on the replica of a pine plantation desk near the kitchenette.

  —and I’ll fax you some more stuff tomorrow. You’ll find the fax behind the chaise longue in the bedroom. I paid a bonus to get the phone installed and turned on today. Also, I wangled about a half-dozen pictures of Courtney Kimball from friends, schools, etc. Isn’t she pretty? Gee, I hope you find her okay. But it’s scary, isn’t it? More than twenty-four hours now.

  Everything’s super at Death on Demand. Except I think maybe Agatha needs counseling. I was reading about these cats in New York and they go to a psychiatrist and maybe you could get a long-distance consultation. I’d swear that Agatha actually threatened me! I know that sounds crazy—

  Annie didn’t think so. She’d known Agatha to be in a mood.

  —but when I was fixing an anchovy pizza for lunch, Agatha jumped up on the coffee bar and tried to snag an anchovy, so, of course, I gave her a push—

  Annie could have written the rest of the scenario herself. One did not shove Agatha.

  —and I swear she growled and raised her paw at me! And, Annie, she wouldn’t get down until I put a couple of anchovies in her bowl. Have you ever had a cat give you an I-don’t-give-a-damn look and refuse to budge? Other than that—

  Annie decided she would have to instruct Barb without delay that what Agatha wanted, Agatha got. Otherwise, many unpleasant and rationally inexplicable events would occur—books randomly knocked down from displays, customer lists shredded, claw marks on collectibles (Annie’d had to knock fourteen dollars off the price of an otherwise vf copy of Murder with a Theme Song by Virginia Rath), and once—and Annie had no explanation for this—the utter disappearance of a miniature replica of the famed Edgar awarded annually at the Mystery Writers of America banquet. Annie was confident Agatha couldn’t have removed it by mouth (it was ceramic and so offered no toothholds) or by paw (she was smart but didn’t have opposable thumbs). Nonetheless, the miniature was nowhere to be found. Annie consoled herself with the thought that life did hold its little mysteries as well as its big. (Two socks go into a washing machine, one comes out; you are wearing your oldest, sorriest sweat outfit and the first person you see in the grocery is a) your priest, b) the hunk you’ve hankered to impress, c) the banker you approached for a business loan in your niftiest little black suit; late for a job interview on the fourteenth floor, you find the elevator is broken so you arrive in the office with a cherry-tomato face and a respiratory rate qualifying you to blow up the balloons at the annual company picnic.)

  —everything’s going fine. I put Henny’s latest postcard on top of the folders. Gosh, if some people don’t have all the luck! Anyway, hope you and Max are figuring out what happened. We had two calls today from the Atlanta Constitution and one from the New York Times and one from AP. I put out a news release that said Max was pursuing late-breaking developments and hoped for an early and successful conclusion to his investigation. Was that okay?

  Next to her flamboyant signature, Barb had penned a happy face wearing a deerstalker hat.

  “Milk?” Max asked, his hand on the small refrigerator.

  “Milk and sugar both.” Why did she still feel so cold inside?

  “Coming up.”

  He brought the coffee on a tray—this was a suite with every refinement—with the cups and saucers, sugar bowl and milk pitcher, and a plate full of peanut butter cookies.

  Annie grabbed her cup and handed Max the message. As he started to read, she said, “I hope Barb had fun bowling.”

  “Barb always has fun,” he answered absently. He settled beside her on the cushioned wicker couch, the note in one hand, his cup in the other.

  Annie picked up Henny’s postcard.

  Dear Annie,

  X marks the spot.

  Annie turned the card over and spotted a red X inked beside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  I actually stood at the very spot where Charlotte and Anne Brontë stayed when they came to London to see their publisher in 1848! They stopped at the Chapter Coffee House which was at the entrance to St. Paul’s Alley, just by St. Paul’s Churchyard. Can you believe it? In transports of joy, yours, as ever

  —Henny.

  They were both smiling as they put down the respective missives. Annie drank the clear, fresh coffee, munched on her cookie, and felt the icy core inside beginning to warm.

  Max picked up the top folder and opened it. He drew his breath in sharply, then held up, for her to see, a photograph.

  Annie put down her coffee cup. She shivered. No, the coldness hadn’t gone away.

  Courtney Kimball’s blond hair was drawn back in a ponytail. Barefoot, she wore a floppy shell-pink T-shirt, and faded cutoffs. She leaned forward to balance on the uplifting catamaran, the carefree grin on her face and the luminous shine in her eyes the essence of summer.

  “Oh, Max.” Annie’s voice broke. “We have to find her.”

 
; 11:15 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

  Charlotte gazed complacently at the gilt-framed oval mirror that hung in the hallway near the door to the study. Such a lovely mirror, though the glass now was smoky with age. There was a story that a handsome British officer had given it to the mistress, Mary Tarrant. She’d accepted with many pretty protestations of appreciation and accepted from him also a pass through the British lines, which she used to smuggle quinine to her husband in a prisoner-of-war camp. Sometimes Charlotte felt that she glimpsed another face there, brown hair peeping from beneath a dainty lace cap, high cheekbones, and a generous mouth. Charlotte smiled at her fancy and nodded in satisfaction at her own reflection, her hair drawn back in a smooth chignon, just the trace of pale-pink lipstick, no other makeup. The Judge admired restraint. Charlotte’s glance swept the hallway, the glistening heart pine flooring, the Chinese print wallpaper, the magnificent mahogany stairway, the marble bust of Homer on a black oak pedestal. The bust of Homer had been brought home from Athens when Nathaniel and Rachel honeymooned there. She brushed her finger over the cool stone. Tarrant House. She belonged here. She and the Judge held the same values. Not like Julia. Julia didn’t understand the importance of family. Julia didn’t appreciate continuity, the thrill of pouring tea from a china service brought from London for Christmas in 1762. Julia didn’t deserve to be mistress of Tarrant House. With a final approving look—the pale-blue chambray of her dress was perfect—Charlotte turned toward the study.