Writ on Water

by Melanie Jackson

MacGregor tsked. “That’s a darned shame. While you are here you can make use of the gardens. I have lots of roses that need picking, if that’s what you fancy.”

  “Perhaps Rory would dislike it,” she demurred, thinking of his hostility if she descended into his place of work with pruning shears in hand.

  “Nonsense!” MacGregor waved a large hand. “The two of you are clearly beaux-esprit. Besides,” he added ingenuously, “they are my gardens. Rory has his own hothouses down the road a spell. He won’t care as long as you don’t dig anything up.”

  Chloe doubted that Rory would share his father’s opinion of their spiritual kinship, so she declined to commit herself to any definite project. There was also the fact that she was there to do a job—one that would likely include all the fresh air, plant life, and sunshine she could stand.

  “We’ll see. My job is likely to keep me very busy. Roland says that your cemetery is a large one.”

  “Indeed. But there are actually two of them. One for the family and one for the slaves. I’ll need pictures of both. I am afraid that they are rather overgrown and it may take some time to clear the brambles away from the stones in the slave cemetery. You could be here for weeks.” The words were apologetic, but the tone gleeful.

  Chloe didn’t know what to make of his attitude. Maybe he was planning to harass his son by making him clear the brambles. That would be childish, but it was fine with Chloe. She had no desire to do it, and she got paid a regular wage however long the project took to complete.

  MacGregor added: “That will also give you time to visit your kin. Roland said you had family here.”

  Chloe damned Roland as an interfering fussbudget.

  “I did have, but Mother and her only cousin passed on several years ago. My father’s family is from Georgia.” And no way was she going to see Gran, no matter how close they were geographically. Pigs would ice skate in hell before that happened.

  “I’m so sorry, my dear.” And MacGregor did look sorrowful.

  “Don’t be,” she heard herself say. “The loss isn’t recent. And anyway, she is always with me, at least in spirit.”

  MacGregor’s eyes widened, but before he could speak Morag came shuffling back into the room, carrying a tray with a tall glass of frosted lemonade. Chloe realized how thirsty and tired she actually was. Perhaps dehydration and the lack of sleep were causing her to make up things.

  “Thank you.” Chloe shivered as she sipped her tart drink. It was delicious. “This is wonderful. It’s very sultry today.”

  Morag permitted herself a slight softening of the lips before tottering back out again. Chloe wondered if MacGregor had had her vocal chords cut.

  “Old trout,” MacGregor muttered darkly, and then smiled again. Chloe felt like she was getting mental whiplash trying to keep up with her client’s moods. “Well, drink up, my dear, and we’ll show you to your room. I can tell you about your job after you have had a chance to rest. This is going to be quite an experience for you, I promise.”

  MacGregor sat back in a show of relaxation, but some barely contained excitement kept him twitching and tapping his heels on the rug. As she expected, he was completely unable to settle down, and he bounded to his feet a few seconds later. Granny Claire would say that he had ants in his pants.

  “All done with that?” he asked. “Then we’ll show you upstairs. You’ll want to rest for half an hour, but then we will talk some more.”

  Chloe swallowed her drink quickly and rose with some difficulty from the depths of her own chair. She guessed that the we he referred to was actually poor old Morag, and she was proved absolutely right in that assumption when MacGregor tugged on the bell pull and the long suffering woman shuffled back into the room.

  Chloe scooped up her camera bags before Morag could get to them. MacGregor frowned at her, but mercifully didn’t comment as they made their way back into the hall.

  “You go with Morag and have a little rest. It will just be the two of us at dinner, so don’t bother dressing. We’ll eat early. In the meanwhile, you just make yourself at home.” He smiled benignly and waved as she slowly ascended the broad stairs at the shuffling pace set by the housekeeper.

  “Thank you, I will.”

  Chloe shook her head. MacGregor Patrick didn’t fetch drinks or climb stairs, not even for the protégé of his oldest friend. But he had, as Roland predicted, welcomed her into his house, family affairs, and opinions with open arms.

  It was going to be an interesting job. She had MacGregor Patrick’s word on it, and around here, she was certain that his word was law.

  In the interest of being prepared, she would spend the afternoon checking out all her equipment, and if MacGregor didn’t mind, spending a little time in his library reading up on Patrick family history. She always enjoyed a play more when she had a program with a synopsis and a list of all the characters, and something told her that MacGregor would be only too happy to supply her with the family’s illustrious if fictitious pedigree if she asked. This wasn’t a man who kept his light under a bushel—or even a fine Tiffany lampshade.

  Golden lads and girls all must,

  Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

  —Shakespeare

  An atheist is a man who has

  no invisible means of support.

  —John Bachan

  Chapter Two

  Chloe was surprised when she came downstairs in the morning and found a flannel-shirted MacGregor waiting in the breakfast parlor on the far side of the groaning board. The expanse of golden wood that was the place of pre-noon dining was so wide as to resemble an African savannah and, except for the bright shirt, MacGregor himself looked rather like the king of beasts enjoying a fresh kill. It was clear that he recalled his stated intention of showing her the ancestral manse himself. He had planned this ambitious scheme on the previous evening while showing off the many portraits in the Patrick gallery on the second mezzanine, but as he had been well into a post-prandial bottle of scotch at the time, Chloe had discounted the possibility that he would remember volunteering for what would most likely be an arduous task.

  Recalling that bottle of scotch, she walked into the parlor on light feet and looked her host over with a concerned eye. The unfiltered sunlight in the breakfast room showed the deep and numerous crow’s feet around MacGregor’s eyes. Chloe strongly suspected that they came from an over-abundance of laughter rather than long days toiling in the sun. Her host’s hands were as smooth and beautiful as the Limoges china from which he was eating. Surprisingly, he looked none the worse for the previous evening’s debauch.

  However, the morning light showed two other things that, in their own way, were disturbing. One was that the young prince of the kingdom—as MacGregor no doubt saw his son—scrubbed up nicely. She hadn’t had a chance to see Rory spruced up the evening before, as he had been away on business. This morning’s apparel made it obvious that he was not intending to spend the day on the tractor, or hiking about Riverview’s cemeteries. The fine imported linen suit clinging to his impressive form was of a sartorial grandeur appropriate for a visit to a capital city—or a date with a fashion editor at Vogue. His tidiness, far exceeding her own, was rather annoying. No man should be prettier or more put together than she was first thing in the morning. It was all she could do to resist checking her hair, which had a tendency to curl wildly in humid weather.

  The other odd sight at the table was also an expensive import, but this one was from Germany. MacGregor was having beer for breakfast, and, probably to irritate his son, he was drinking it out of the bottle. It wasn’t a sight that gladdened Chloe’s heart. MacGregor wasn’t an ugly drunk, but he was certainly an expansive one. It could make her working day an unnaturally long—and long-winded—one.

  As much as she liked MacGregor, she was glad she wasn’t his child and saddled with the job of looking after such a willful parent. The thought made her feel a little better about not being so close to her own father.

  She was allowe
d to make her visual observations in silence; the Patricks were seemingly too busy glaring at one another to notice her arrival. Feeling both mildly put out by this slight and also apprehensive of what might happen to her if the lions started to roar, Chloe stepped over to the laden sideboard and poured herself some orange juice. This didn’t look to be the kind of day that one rushed into without some liquid sunshine.

  “Good morning, Miss Chloe. A great day for a shutterbug,” Rory finally said. His voice was exceedingly pleasant, with only the slightest shading of a drawl. He didn’t rise, in spite of putting “miss” in front of her name. He also stared at her, a tidy Virtue reproving wild-haired Wantonness.

  Chloe’s ear was growing attuned to Patrick voices and she noticed right away more drawl than he’d had yesterday. It actually sounded mocking, and she felt certain that Rory was annoyed with MacGregor for hiring her. For that reason—and the suit at the breakfast table—she decided to be only marginally pleasant to him. She was sure his father wouldn’t mind.

  “Good morning, Rory. Off to see the grand panjandrums?” she asked while eyeing the various dishes. Morag—or someone—had been busy. The selection would rival a buffet at a good hotel.

  “No, just some dirt diggers.”

  MacGregor snorted and half rose from his chair in a belated display of manners.

  “Mighty high-class dirt diggers. I don’t see why you couldn’t put them off—”

  “When people fly halfway around the world to see you, you don’t put them off. You’ll simply have to make do with peasant labor today. Your serfs will be here by nine. They can fetch and carry for you as well as I can.” The drawl disappeared again and the two lions were back to glaring at each other across the damask linens and gardenia blossoms floating gently in a Waterford bowl.

  “Peasants? Peasants are poor! With the wages you pay those boys—,” MacGregor began only to be interrupted.

  “What I pay them is my affair. And I would gladly pay them double wages to not have to spend the day hacking brambles off those gothic horrors—”

  “Those are your family’s final resting places! You will show some respect—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Rory stood abruptly and threw his napkin down on the chair. It was a very nice napkin and an even nicer chair. Chloe thought that they deserved better treatment, but didn’t say so. “I’ll be back around four. You should stop drinking that swill unless you want to have a coronary while you’re hiking the snake-infested outback.”

  “—Swill?”

  “—Snake-infested?” MacGregor and Chloe exclaimed at the same time.

  “Exactly,” Rory said meanly and marched away.

  Chloe cleared her throat as his angry footsteps receded. For a man wearing soft-soled shoes and walking on the finest Aubusson carpets, he managed to make a whole lot of noise. It had to be deliberate. He had managed to be quiet as a mouse when he sneaked up on her yesterday.

  MacGregor slammed his bottle on the table and beamed at her. As the suds started to overflow the neck, he quickly returned the bottle to his mouth and polished off the offensive potation. Either the argument or the alcohol left him looking refreshed and pink as a rose.

  “One more for the road?” he suggested.

  Chloe eyed MacGregor’s flushed face and then glanced at the three empty bottles on the sideboard. Her boss hadn’t mentioned that MacGregor had a heart condition—or a drinking problem. But maybe, like the mania for ugly garden statues, this was a recent development.

  “No thanks,” she said firmly. “Actually there’s no need for you to put yourself out. I—”

  “Now, girl!” Clearly, interrupting people was a familial trait. “Don’t get in a lather. Rory just doesn’t understand that when a man’s as dry as dust he needs a little somethin’ besides coffee to quench his thirst. Anyway, my heart is sound as a bell. That quack doesn’t know what he’s talkin’ about. I’ll live to see a hundred!”

  Chloe was beginning to have some belated sympathy for Rory Patrick. Keeping his dad out of trouble must be a nearly full-time job. Chloe couldn’t have managed it. She had an attachment to her father, but it was a rather elastic one. Pushed to admit the truth, she would have to say that she was closer to her dad’s younger brother, Benjamin, who was irresponsible and unmannered, but a great deal more fun to be around. He was also more open to New Age ideas. Specifically, he believed in witchcraft, reincarnation and alien abduction. Her father didn’t even believe in God.

  “Fine with me,” Chloe answered. The boys would be there at nine to handle the hard work. They would just do a little leisurely supervising until it was time for the noon break. Surely by then MacGregor would be ready for a nap.

  “Shall we go?” MacGregor stood.

  Chloe cast a longing eye at the basket of scones and the numerous chafing dishes from which wafted alluring smells. She had enjoyed the same odors many times before, but in Riverview they were especially evocative. In a private home, this mix was the smell of good taste and old money liberally applied to already luxurious possessions. She was willing to bet the bagels were fresh and the eggs came from hens raised in palatial coops and fed baby greens and fresh corn.

  “But it’s only eight,” she objected. “The boys won’t be here until—”

  “We’ll do the family graveyard first. It’s more interesting anyway,” he said impatiently. “Grab a bun and come along. The weather is just going to get hotter.”

  He had a point. Chloe stopped sniffing, grabbed a scone, and followed her host down the hall that led to the back of the house. They were both booted in hiking shoes, and it sounded like a regiment of soldiers clomping through the confined space of the uncarpeted hallway.

  They exited through a Victorian parlor draped in a plethora of red velvet swags that somehow managed to stay on the right side of tastefulness, and out onto a small stoop that had been painted white and stenciled with some sort of flowering vine pattern. Chloe would have enjoyed a lengthy ogle of both parlor and porch, but the roused MacGregor was in a hurry.

  Several paths crisscrossed under the Herculean oaks at the rear of the house, but MacGregor ignored them in favor of directness as he set a double-time pace across the groundcover and marched toward the antler hedge that encircled the manse. Chloe hesitated a moment as she stared at the half-familiar sight, then shrugged off the sensation of déjà vu and started after her host.

  They were joined on the expedition by a large black and white cat who, though walking in the master’s shadow, wisely kept well away from MacGregor’s crashing footsteps.

  “This is Roger,” MacGregor said by way of introduction. “Jolly Roger.”

  The intelligent feline looked back politely. Seeing the triangular patch of black over his left eye and the rolling gait that suggested a sailor pacing over the deck of ship during high seas, Chloe didn’t bother to ask how he’d gotten the name.

  “Hi, kitty,” she said around a mouthful of pastry. The cat blinked once at her bad manners and then ignored her. It seemed that even Riverview’s pet was superior to her, and unlike his owner, not inclined to be indulgent.

  It soon became apparent that there actually was a small break in the antler fortification as MacGregor dodged right and was suddenly swallowed up by the hedge. Roger immediately followed him into the shrubbery and likewise disappeared.

  Chloe hurried after, grateful that she wasn’t burdened with her camera equipment. Whenever possible, she liked to reconnoiter before bringing her babies out into the hostile world, and this world was certainly hostile to humans, however fecund the pretty flora around them. This hedge was more than a polite request for privacy. It was prettier than barbed wire and broken glass, but many times more fearsome. A careless fall could leave someone maimed for life or even gored to death.

  The strange, claustrophobic path through the hedgerow was narrow and went on for some distance. It eventually exited into a shady grove where the oak ceiling grew thick enough to shut out the worst of the sun. It was eeril
y still and quiet until MacGregor spoke. His cheerful voice shattered the air of peaceful melancholia, and seemed to stir up the dust and leaf mold missed by their hiking boots.

  “Slave cemetery is that way . . .” He jerked a thumb to the right. Chloe couldn’t see anything beyond a six-foot-tall pile of wild brambleberries whose upper reaches were smothered in cobwebs furred with dust and studded with catkins from the lone maple growing overhead. “The family is over this way.” MacGregor headed in the opposite direction, fallen oak leaves crunching underfoot as he moved.

  “Well, what do you think?” he continued. “Nice and quiet, isn’t it? You don’t get this kind of peace in Metairie. Tourists? What locusts! And frankly, I’ve always thought New Orleans overrated. Their grave goods aren’t that nice. And ours are every bit as old.”

  Chloe didn’t comment on his disparaging reference to one of New Orleans’s famous cemeteries. An old man had to be allowed some partiality for his family’s burial ground.

  “I think I may have a light problem,” she answered absently, staring up at the leafy canopy. “Is it all as dark as this?”

  “What?” MacGregor turned. “Oh, lights for the camera, you mean. It’s pretty much the same everywhere out here. I expect you can work it out. Roland said that you were good with this sort of thing and had some fancy new kind of camera. And we can always buy anything you need.”

  Actually, what Roland had probably said was that she was good at making do and had the patience of Job when it came to rescuing photos on the computer. She wondered how he would feel about her making unauthorized purchases for this special job. Probably not thrilled. Maybe she could blame it all on MacGregor.

  “Of course I’ll manage. I’m a professional,” she said loftily. “I have worked in some of the most famous cemeteries in—Oh my!”

  MacGregor had tugged aside a curtain of honeysuckle and revealed a bedizened granite portico with a recessed wooden gate. The wood was so old it was nearly black, and it was heavily carved with a traditional funerary pattern of inverted torches, rose garlands and laurel wreaths. Again there came a feeling of déjà vu. Sleeping Beauty’s castle would have been guarded by just such a gate, she thought, and Chloe’s heart began to flutter.