Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost

by Hope McIntyre

  “They’ll bleed you white!” he said with a grim smile. “Anyway, now I’ve made up my mind to do it, I shouldn’t let anything get in my way.There’s a story I really want to tell in this book and I’m not getting any younger. If I put it off any longer, I’ll never do it. Besides”—he turned away from me—“it’ll help take my mind off all of this. Every second I’m alone, I start thinking about Sean. I know I have to mourn but I also know that someday I’m going to have to get past this. The truth is, if you’d agree to start work on the book, you’d be helping me”—he hesitated and looked away for a second—“more than you could possibly know.

  “Now what can I get you?” He stood up suddenly and I could see he was embarrassed at having shown me how needy he was.

  “Nice cup of tea, coffee? I’ve got a secret stash of Bourbon bis-cuits and Jaffa cakes in the kitchen, or maybe you’d like a Marmite sandwich? We can pretend we’re back in London.”

  “That would be great,” I said, “but there’s something I don’t quite understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re talking like I already have the job and I know my agent

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  has already been discussing terms but don’t you want to ask me a few questions before you make up your mind?”

  “I’ve already made up my mind,” he said, smiling now. “Don’t worry, I did my homework.They gave me your name and just like with Bettina, I checked you out too. I called a few people back in England and I liked what I heard. You did an old girlfriend of mine.” He mentioned the name of an actress whose lifestyle book I had helped put together a couple of years ago. “She said you’d be perfect, that you’d be very good for me. And as I just said, I want to get on with the book but look, if you’re having second thoughts, I’d understand completely. Wouldn’t blame you for a second.”

  I’d been having second thoughts, all right. And third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. Driving through the woods to his house had terrified me. What if the killer came back one night after the police search had been exhausted and Detective Morrison had pulled his men from the area to work another crime? What if I had to work late here with Shotgun and then drive home alone?

  Did I really need this job? It wasn’t as if Bettina was still in the running as my rival so what did I have to prove?

  But having met him, I knew that I had to tell Shotgun Marriott’s story for him for a very simple reason.

  I liked him.

  He interested me. I wanted to know how he had managed not to become just another aging rocker, desperately trying to hang on to the image of his glory years. I liked his style. He was wearing a beautiful pale blue linen shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up to the elbow, and a pair of well-cut beige corduroys resting gently on his slim hips with the help of a brown leather belt, Italian and expensive, I guessed, like his shoes. He was a man approaching sixty making no attempt to disguise his age yet he looked both elegant and relaxed.

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  I wanted to know about his marriage to the control freak I had met at the Old Stone Market. I wanted to know what his son had been like and why they had led such a separate existence way out here on the East End of Long Island. I wanted to know what had really happened that night a groupie had been found dead in his bedroom and I was sure when he had spoken about “a story” he

  “really wanted to tell” he was referring to this.

  But most of all I wanted to know about him. I realized with a start, having spent only a few minutes in his company, that I wanted to help him.

  “I’d love to do your book,” I said. “I can start whenever you want.”

  “That’s fabulous!” The slight frown on his face, the only visible sign of the considerable strain he was under, disappeared for a second and he smiled at me in obvious relief. “That really is incredibly kind. Now, follow me to the kitchen while I go and make us a pot of tea.This way.” He guided me through an archway. “The kitchen’s a bit of a trek, I’m afraid. Thank God, the detective’s gone although I fear he’ll be back—and sooner rather than later, I expect. Do you know what his first question was for me when I’d identified Sean’s body? Why do they call you Shotgun? My son’s in the morgue, killed with a bullet from a shotgun, and he has to ask that.”

  Of course, now that he’d brought it up, I too was curious to know why he was called Shotgun.

  “Well, I’m afraid it was because I was a pretty good shot in my youth and the rest of the band found this out,” he said, reading my mind. “They used to unearth details of what they called my posh background and taunt me with them. So when our then manager said we had to come up with a better name for me than Kip Marriott—too wet and weedy for a hell-raising rock ’n’ roll singer apparently—we went for Shotgun. I liked it because it had

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  a kind of bluesy feel to it, you know, like Sonny Boy Williamson or Muddy Waters but our manager felt it had sexual connotations and there was a good publicity angle there.”

  And did it? I wondered.

  “Anyway, I’m afraid I let Detective Morrison have the sexual version.” He made a face to show what he thought of Evan Morrison. “I rather felt he was the type to appreciate it.”

  We had arrived at the kitchen and I was astonished. It was a bit like standing in a dungeon in which someone had placed an industrial-size stove and state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances and flooded them with pools of recessed lighting. Hanging above the stove, a row of copper pans cast a reddish-brown metallic glint over the area. Several pewter tankards were lined up on the granite countertop.The floor was old flagstones and the walls behind the rows of glass-fronted cabinets also appeared to be stone.

  The overall effect may have been a touch gloomy, and I’m never very comfortable in those minimalist kitchens where absolutely nothing is left out on the surface, but it was certainly dramatic. I was wondering where the wooden shelves Dumpster was making were going to go when Shotgun pulled open a tall stainless-steel door to reveal a walk-in larder complete with wall-to-wall pine racking. The way the items were stacked floor-to-ceiling reminded me of Franny’s store. Long planks of pine were propped against the far wall, evidence of Dumpster’s industry.

  “Lapsang souchong or PG Tips?” he asked me.

  “PG Tips,” I said, “always!”

  He laughed. “Great minds think alike. Shortbread from Fort-num and Mason, Bourbons, or ginger nuts? I made the ginger nuts myself.”

  “Well, bring them on,” I said. “This is quite a kitchen. I almost feel like I’m standing in a castle. Tell me how you came to find such an English house out here.”

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  “I didn’t so much find it as bring it with me,” he said. “And you’ve hit the nail on the head about the castle. I grew up in one and in parts of the house, I’ve tried to re-create it. I’ve even given its name to this house: Mallaby.”

  “Did you really grow up in a castle?”

  “Well, okay, it wasn’t really a castle but it felt like one. It was a rambling slate manor on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, an old farmhouse with bits added on to it, but it had a tower at one end and there was a wide stream surrounding three-quarters of it that felt like a moat. I always thought of it as a castle.”

  “I don’t really know Yorkshire,” I said. “I grew up in London and I’ve lived there ever since.”

  “Oh, you’re a ‘townie,’ poor thing.” He was unplugging an electric kettle and pouring boiling water into the teapot. “I’m a country boy, in fact I was a nursling of the moors, filling my little lungs with the bracing air of the north wind every day. It’s probably why I’m drawn to the bleakness of the Atlantic coast here.”

  “I didn’t think the Hamptons were supposed to be bleak,” I said.

  “Try being here in February,” he said darkly, “which you mi
ght well be once you get stuck into my book. Anyway, the house—it started with the central bit. Some tycoon from Ohio built himself a folly—a Norman tower.When I first came out here to look for a place, the real estate brokers couldn’t wait to show it to me because they said it was English. Well, it was no more English than they were but it gave me an idea. I loved the isolation of the property, it was exactly what I was looking for, set way back here in the woods. I thought whatever the tycoon started, I could finish but I knew I’d never be able to re-create an old house by building it.”

  “Well, I don’t know how you managed it,” I said, “but this house really does seem old. It feels like it was built hundreds of years ago.”

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  “That’s because it was,” he said. “Instead of getting a builder I hired a structural mover.They move houses lock, stock, and barrel from one place to another. We scoured New England and I bought two houses, each over three hundred years old, and then we moved them here and placed them either side of the folly.”

  As I followed him out of the kitchen, I was happy to see the strain on his face was lifted, if only temporarily, by his enthusiasm in explaining the house’s restoration to me. In my mind, I started to plan a chapter that would deal with his experiences in putting together his house and then almost immediately I started to wonder how much control he would allow me in the structure of the book. Some subjects allowed me a free rein, others thought they knew exactly how to tell their story. Which they didn’t—

  otherwise why would they hire me?

  I heard voices up ahead of us. As we emerged from the gloom of the long corridor into the great hall Detective Morrison came toward Shotgun. He wasn’t alone. Behind him were two other cops and through the windows I could see police cars lined up down the drive.

  Evan Morrison was holding a shotgun.

  I saw Shotgun’s hands clench by his sides but his voice gave no sign of tension.

  “Detective Morrison, back so soon?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Marriott. This shotgun was found yesterday, buried in the sand on the beach just beyond your property. As you will see, it’s a Purdey.”

  “So it is,” said Shotgun. He wasn’t looking at Detective Morrison. He was staring through the open front door as if he were fixated on something at the far end of his driveway.

  “When I interviewed you the first time a few days ago, Mr.

  Marriott . . .” Evan Morrison was advancing toward him and as he did so Shotgun backed away, still without looking at the detec-

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  tive.They were performing a kind of bizarre dance around Shotgun’s hallway. “I asked you if you owned a shotgun and you said you owned a Purdey twelve bore.You showed me where you kept it, we examined it and determined it had not been fired. What you omitted to mention was that it was one of a matching pair that was made by Purdey’s for your father in 1937. When we found this gun”—he held it aloft—“naturally we ran the serial number past Purdey’s in London and when I got back just now I found they had come back to us with the details.You never told us it was one of a pair.”

  What Detective Morrison said next gave me such a shock I felt as if I had been blasted by a shotgun myself.

  “Christopher Marriott, I am arresting you for the murder of Bettina Pleshette.You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.You have the right to speak with an attorney and—”

  I had only ever heard these words spoken in the movies and I watched in horror as an officer holding handcuffs stepped forward to stand beside Shotgun, who stepped away from them with his palms held high.

  “You heard what the man said.” He whipped out his cell phone. “I have the right to speak with an attorney before you can come up with any more fantastic scenarios. If you ever think about writing fiction, Lee”—he turned to me—“book in for a lesson with Detective Morrison here. He seems to have a highly inventive streak in him.”

  He made his call, then they cuffed him and took him outside to one of the waiting cars. As I followed them in the Phillionaire’s Jeep, I watched the back of his head outlined in the rear window of the police car and saw it sink lower and lower as we drove slowly down the dirt track to Cranberry Hole Road.

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  ON THE WAY BACK TO THE CABIN I WAS SO CON-sumed with worry about Shotgun that I paid no attention to the road. Pretty soon I had totally lost my way and eventually I found myself at the end of a spit of land with water on all sides.

  I got out of the car and went to lean against a rock on the beach.

  The sun was beginning to go down across the bay in a huge ball of crimson and for a while I drank in the breathtaking view. Normally if I stare long enough at water it calms me and enables me to empty my mind but this evening the astonishing beauty just seemed treacherous. I watched fishermen coming in across the bay, approaching the launching pad to my right, and I wondered if Sean had been tossed from a boat. Were there more bodies in these little skiffs approaching the harbor, lying in the bottom beside the catch of the day?

  Of course there weren’t! Why did I do this to myself ? Why did I always have to imagine the darkest possible scenario? To force myself to get a grip, I checked my cell phone messages.There was one from Rufus that seemed to end in midair, saying he couldn’t meet me tonight because he had to go to Riverhead to get his truck serviced and wouldn’t be back until late. He’d see me in the morning at Franny’s for breakfast at seven thirty and would I please—and then nothing. There was a very simple reason for

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  this. Now that I came to think of it, I had not recharged my bat-tery for at least two days—another sure sign I was losing it.

  The mention of breakfast made me realize that after Franny warned me off paying her extortionate prices at the Old Stone Market, I still didn’t have anything to eat for supper. It was getting dark and I’d already lost my way once so I approached a fisherman and asked for directions to the market.When I got there, Franny wasn’t around but a Latino with the soulful brown eyes of a Labrador was lurking behind the counter. He told me his name was Jesus so I pointed at myself and said “Lee Bartholomew,” and he clapped his hands in apparent delight and asked how he could help me. I remembered what Franny had said about the cooked dinners and within minutes I was driving home with a steaming aluminum foil dish containing a chicken pot pie.

  Driving back to the cabin, I was a little nervous going along Cranberry Hole Road because it was a lonely stretch and until that moment it hadn’t dawned on me just how isolated the cabin was. I was mildly comforted by the fact that Rufus was staying in the pool house just a short walk up the beach. But what about the nights when he stayed at a girlfriend’s?

  An unfamiliar light was blinking in the dark as I walked in and because I’m such a panic princess my immediate thought was that I’d set off some kind of alarm. Then I flicked a switch and saw it was the answering machine by the phone. I sat at the island and chomped away on my chicken pot pie (“I make,” Jesus had announced with pride on handing it to me and I had to admit it was delicious), while I wondered whether or not to pick up the Phillionaire’s messages. They had to be for Phil, I reasoned, because this was his retreat. Anyone wanting me would call my cell phone. But unless I passed them on, Phil wouldn’t get these messages for quite a long time.What if they were urgent?

  Procrastination was another of my special talents so of course

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  I had a shower in order to have more time to consider my options and while I was rejoicing in the force of the water pressure and the way it sweetly kneaded my shoulder muscles, the phone rang again. I heard my mother’s voice.

  “For God’s sak
e, Lee, where on earth are you? This is the second message I’ve left.”

  There was an abrupt click and she was gone before I could pick up.

  In fact both of the previous messages were for me and they were back to front. The first made me sit down suddenly on the bed.

  “Hi. It’s me. I’ve been texting you but you haven’t come back to me. I’ve just seen your mother and she gave me this number.

  Anyway, I thought I’d give you a call.”

  That was it.Tommy was never much good on the telephone at the best of times and this kind of abrupt message was typical.The idiot had probably been texting me on the mobile I’d left in London. I switched off the tape quickly. The sound of his voice was enough to make me throw a wobbly in any case but hearing it so uncharacteristically gloomy made it even worse.

  Suddenly I remembered my mother saying she had called before.

  When I turned the machine back on I had to listen to Tommy’s message again and then my mother began to speak. And speak and speak, until I began to wonder if she’d ever shut up. I wished it had been the reverse. I wished it had been Tommy who had left me a long and rambling message, using up most of the tape, and my mother who had shut up after three sentences.

  “Lee, darling.” Uh-oh, this was a bad sign. Her use of “darling”

  usually meant she wanted me to do something. “Phil gave me this number because I can’t raise you on your cell phone. You’ve turned it off or something. We’re in London, on our way to

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  Venice, and you just will not believe the state of Blenheim Crescent. It’s a complete and utter pigsty and I cannot imagine what induced you to let Cath stay here. She’s reduced the place to a kind of squalling day care center. We walked in on a gaggle of mothers and screaming babies. I just cannot imagine what Phil must have thought.”

  This was a bit rich! First of all it was my mother who had suggested Cath Clark and her boyfriend Sgt. Richie Cross, together with their baby Marcus, move into our house in Notting Hill Gate while their flat in nearby Shepherd’s Bush was being renovated. Cath and I had been friends since we were kids, growing up in the same neighborhood, going to school together. We’d always had our designated roles. I was the hopeless one—the neurotic, willful, self-indulgent one who treated Tommy badly and didn’t deserve him. Cath was the caring, responsible rock who always stood by me and gave me advice on how to get through life without alienating absolutely everyone.