Southern Ghost Read online

  PRAISE FOR CAROLYN HART’S

  SOUTHERN GHOST:

  “This month’s class act is Carolyn G. Hart’s Southern Ghost.”

  —The Washington Times

  “A fine mystery … Cunningly plotted and contains revelations in the first third of the novel so surprising that the momentum could carry the most disinterested reader racing to the end. But Southern Ghost is much more than a clever mystery.”

  —Mostly Murder

  “There are plenty of spooky trails to follow and no shortage of wit and humour.”

  —The Globe and Mail, Toronto

  “If you like your mysteries suspenseful, with clues strewn everywhere, you’ll love this one.”

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  “A special mystery. Read it and experience a Southern haunting.”

  —Nashville Banner

  “A true modern-day Gothic … The Darling duo is as winning as ever, and the book contains a marvelous bonus.”

  —The Sun, Baltimore

  “Carolyn G. Hart’s large following will likely hail this latest Darling caper as—what else?—simply darling.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Fascinating.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “You’d have to be made of stone not to like the Darlings. … Mystery buffs will have fun with the family tree and the maps involved here. Shades of Ellery Queen!”

  —Advocate and Greenwich Time

  PRAISE FOR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CAROLYN G. HART AND DEATH ON DEMAND

  “Irresistible! Expertly written. Hart drops big names from the mystery world like murderers drop clues, and it’s all great fun. The plotting is classic perfection. Annie and Max are the most endearing new pair of sleuths since Tommy and Tuppence. More, please!”

  —Nancy Pickard, author of I.O.U.

  A LITTLE CLASS ON MURDER

  “A classy mystery with … more twists than a Low Country river … Hart’s mysteries give us some much-needed entertainment. I’ll look forward to the next one.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Mystery readers will find this series a delight. Hart is on to a good thing.”

  —The Drood Review of Mystery

  “Hart has a light touch with her characters, a fresh heroine in Annie, and a delightfully different setting.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  DEADLY VALENTINE

  “Carolyn G. Hart is the new shining star in the mystery galaxy. … Deadly Valentine [is a] marvelously plotted mystery.”

  —The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi

  “Ms. Hart is on target once again with Deadly Valentine. Annie and Max are … one of the most charming and intelligent teams in fiction.”

  —Mostly Murder

  MORE PRAISE FOR CAROLYN HART: THE CHRISTIE CAPER

  “Hart … exuberantly celebrates the centenary of Agatha Christie’s birth with a clever plot and an array of puzzles for readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Christie fans should love the trivia that fills this book. This is a great mystery with a terrific twist.”

  —Mystery Books

  “Carolyn Hart has constructed a puzzle for mystery buffs, a classic whodunit, and a loving homage to Agatha Christie—and put them into one book. All this and witty dialogue, believable relationships and an unpredictable ending, too.”

  —Mystery News

  “Carolyn Hart’s … book … provides a clever, intricately plotted story, as well as a lovely romp through the mystery world.”

  —Mostly Murder

  “Agatha Christie devotees will be enchanted with The Christie Caper, as will mystery fans who relish a wickedly clever plot sprinkled with gentle wit and beguiling characters. Carolyn G. Hart has written a marvelous tribute to her mentor.”

  —Joan Hess, author of Death by the Light of the Moon

  “A sharp and witty examination of what can happen when fans of each type of mystery confront one another … The Christie Caper is the best entry yet in Ms. Hart’s pleasurable series; eminently logical and meticulously plotted, it does justice to the Mistress of Mystery herself.”

  —The Sun, Baltimore

  Bantam Books by Carolyn G. Hart

  Death on Demand Mysteries

  DEATH ON DEMAND

  DESIGN FOR MURDER

  SOMETHING WICKED

  HONEYMOON WITH MURDER

  A LITTLE CLASS ON MURDER

  DEADLY VALENTINE

  THE CHRISTIE CAPER

  SOUTHERN GHOST

  HINT JULEP MURDER

  Henrie O Mysteries

  DEAD MAN’S ISLAND

  SCANDAL IN FAIR HAVEN

  In love and gratitude to my wonderful agent,

  Deborah C. Schneider

  Chapter 1.

  Had he lived to be an old man, Ross Tarrant’s face, stripped of every vestige of youth and joy, would have looked much as it did in that last hour: brooding pain-filled eyes deep-sunken, grayish skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones, finely chiseled lips pressed hard to prevent a telltale tremor.

  Slumped wearily in the battered old morris chair, a man’s chair in a man’s retreat, he stared at the pistol, horror flickering in his eyes like firelight against a night sky.

  The sound of the motor reached him first, then the crunch of tires against the oyster shells.

  The door was locked.

  But it was no ultimate defense.

  Ross knew that.

  As the throb of the engine died and a car door slammed, Ross reached for the gun.

  “Ross.” A commanding voice. A voice he knew from childhood, from crisp winter mornings when the men zigzagged across a field and lifted shotguns to fire at the flushed quail.

  The gun was heavy. So heavy. Ross willed away the unsteadiness of his hand.

  He was Ross Tarrant.

  His mouth twisted bitterly.

  Perhaps not an officer and a gentleman.

  But he was Ross Tarrant, and he would not shirk his duty.

  At the first knock on the door, the gun roared.

  Chapter 2.

  Sybil Chastain Giacomo would always catch men’s glances and inflame their senses. Especially when the unmistakable light burned in her eyes and she moved sensually, a woman clearly hungering for a man.

  Always, it was a young man.

  But, passion spent, the latest youth sprawled asleep beside her, Sybil slipped from beneath the satin sheets, drew the brocaded dressing gown around her voluptuous body, and prowled restlessly through the dark house, anger a hot scarlet thread through the black misery in her heart.

  Chapter 3.

  Despite the fitful gleam of the pale April moon, Tarrant House was almost completely hidden in the deep shadows of the towering live oaks. A wisp of breeze barely stirred the long, dangling wisps of Spanish moss. A single light shone from a second-story window, providing a glimpse of plastered brick and a portion of one of the four huge Corinthian columns that supported the elegant double piazzas and the pediment above.

  Pressed against the cold iron railing of the fence, the young woman shivered. The night pulsed with movement—unseen, inimical, hostile. The magnolia leaves slapped, like the tap of a woman’s shoes down an uncarpeted hall. The fronds of the palmettos clicked like ghostly dice at some long-ago gaming board. The thick shadows, pierced occasionally by pale moonbeams, took the shape of hurrying forms that responded to no call. She stood alone and alien in a shrouded, dark world that knew nothing of her—and cared nothing for her. The scent of magnolia and honeysuckle and banana shrub cloyed the air, thick as perfume from a flower-strewn coffin.

  “Ohoooh!”

  Courtney Kimball drew her breath in sharply as the falling moan, tremulous and plaintive
, sounded again; then, her eyes adjusted to the night, she saw the swoop of the owl as it dove for its prey. One moment a tiny creature moved and lived; the next a scratching, scrabbling sound signaled sudden death.

  But nothing could hold her gaze long except the house, famed as one of the Low Country’s loveliest Greek Revival mansions, home for generation after generation of Tarrants.

  The House.

  That’s how she always thought of it.

  The House that held all the secrets and whose doors were barred to her.

  Courtney gazed at the House with unforgiving eyes.

  She was too young to know that some secrets are better left hid.

  Chapter 4.

  The tawny ginger torn hunched atop the gravestone, golden eyes gleaming, muscles bunched, only the tip of his switching tail and the muted murmurs in his throat hinting at his excitement.

  The old lady leaning on her silver-topped, ebony cane observed the ripple of muscles beneath the tom’s sleek fur. She was not immune to the power of the contrast between the cat, so immediately alive, and the leaf-strewn grave with its cold, somber headstone.

  Dora Chastain Brevard stumped closer to the monument, then used the cane’s tip to gouge moss and dirt from the letters scored deep in granite.

  ROSS CARMINE TARRANT

  January 3, 1949-May 9, 1970

  Taken from His Family

  So Young

  in a

  Cruel Twist of Fate

  As she scraped, a thumb-size mouse skittered wildly across the grave. The cat flowed through the air, smooth as honey oozing from a broken hive, but he was too late. The frantic mouse disappeared into a hole beneath the roots of a huge cypress. The feline’s tail switched in frustration; then, once again, he tensed, but this time, despite the glitter in his eyes, the cat didn’t pounce.

  The sluggish, slow-moving wolf spider, a huge and hairy tarantula, would have been easy to catch.

  But the ginger torn made no move.

  Did the prowling cat know that the slow-moving arachnid possessed a potent poison? Or was it merely the ever-present caution of his species, the reluctance to pounce upon an unfamiliar prey?

  The cane hissed through the air.

  Miss Dora gazed without expression at the quivering remains of the spider. She wished she could as easily dispose of the unexpected communication that had brought her to this mournful site.

  Chapter 5.

  Max Darling whistled “Happy Days Are Here Again” as he turned the Maserati up the blacktop toward Chastain. He was looking forward to the coming meeting with more excitement than he’d felt in a long time. In his mind, he heard once again Courtney Kimball’s intriguing voice, young but self-possessed, a little breathy, very South Carolina.

  He walked into the new waterfront restaurant and his spirits rose when vivid eyes sought his in the mirror behind the bar. The young woman who swiftly turned and slipped down from the stool and walked to greet him, a graceful hand outstretched, would capture attention anywhere.

  Max was assailed by a mélange of immediate impressions: remarkable blue eyes, a beauty at once apparent yet elusive, a projection of confidence and dignity. But, paramount, was her intensity.

  Her first words caught at his heart.

  “I need you.”

  Chapter 6.

  Annie Laurance Darling put down the telephone at the front desk of Death on Demand, the loveliest mystery bookstore this side of Atlanta, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Whichever, she had only herself to blame.

  Who was always exhorting her husband to apply himself, to work hard, to devote himself to duty?

  She, Annie Laurance Darling. Although, in truth, she had eased off recently, ever since Max began to avoid talking about his office. She had stopped asking about his cases or lack of them, concerned that she might have hurt his feelings with her well-meant admonitions to hew to the course. She hadn’t pasted any helpful dictums to his shaving mirror for at least a week. (Amazing—and soul-satisfying to strivers—the encouraging mottoes intended for underachievers: The early bird gets the worm. Little by little does the trick. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame. Under the influence of poverty or of wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate.…)

  Obviously, however, her efforts had not gone unappreciated; witness the call she’d just received from Max. So now that Max was involved in a case, how could she complain?

  “Dammit, Agatha, you’d think he could arrange work for office hours!” Annie slammed her hand down on the counter-top.

  The sleek black cat atop the bookcases devoted to Agatha Christie lifted her elegant head to stare with unblinking amber eyes at Annie. (Was it simply coincidence that the cat considered these particular shelves to be her own or were there matters involved here beyond ordinary human understanding?)

  “And what’s so confidential he can’t even tell his own wife?”

  Annie heard the hurt in her own voice. And what was so urgent, so important that Max had called to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner—and not to wait up for him tonight. She glanced toward the front windows. She’d just put up the CLOSED sign and was tallying the day’s receipts while waiting for Max to walk down the boardwalk from Confidential Commissions, one of the more unusual businesses on the South Carolina resort island of Broward’s Rock. Annie always thought of Confidential Commissions as a modern-day equivalent to the good offices performed by Agatha Christie’s detective of the heart, Mr. Parker Pyne. Max rather liked that analogy, but he was also quick to point out that he was neither a private detective nor a practicing lawyer, but merely a consultant available to those with problems outside the ken of the licensed professionals.

  It had become a happy ritual, the two of them coming together at the close of the business day, each with much to tell. At least, she always had much to tell. But this week Max had said even less than usual. In retrospect, she realized he’d been quite closemouthed, merely observing that things were picking up at the office. Of course, Annie’d swept right on with her reports, how Henny Brawley, her best customer, had sent a postcard from England to report on her tour of Shrewsbury Abbey, the home of Ellis Peters’s incomparable Brother Cadfael (“Annie, I actually saw the small altar to St. Winefride!”), and how busy it had been in Death on Demand—“Would you believe a busload of clubwomen from Charleston?”—since Ingrid Smith, her chief assistant, was bedridden with a spring flu.

  Annie felt deflated, a suddenly empty evening ahead. Max hadn’t even said where he was going. Dusk was falling, and soon the air would cool sharply. Nights could be shivery in the spring despite the reassuring harbingers of the new season: the call of the chuck-will’s-widow, the rachet of swamp frogs.

  “I wonder if he has his sweater with him?” Her voice seemed to echo in the empty store.

  Agatha yawned, a nice equivalent to a human shrug, then rose, stretched, and dropped to the floor to pad lightly down the central corridor toward the back of the bookstore.

  Annie followed, pausing to alphabetize several titles in the Romantic Suspense section: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, Danger in the Dark by Mignon Eberhart, Widows’ Plight by Ruth Fenisong, Alive and Dead by E. X. Ferrars, and The Clue of the Judas Tree by Leslie Ford.

  “Max was so abrupt, Agatha. And abstracted.” She put the latest title by Elaine Raco Chase face out. “Like he was talking to a stranger.”

  Agatha waited imperiously atop the coffee bar, which offered customers a different blend every day (Annie’s favorite, of course, was Kona) served in mugs bearing the names of famous mysteries and their authors. Annie offered Agatha a fresh serving of dry food, received an unequivocal feline glare in response, and quickly reached for a can. Agatha did not tolerate frustration well. It was wise, Annie had decided after applying Mercurochrome to numerous scratches, to satisfy Agatha’s needs, wants, and desires promptly. And, if she thought hard about Agatha, she wouldn’t mull over that odd
, unsatisfactory call from Max.

  As she emptied half the can into Agatha’s bowl, she remarked conversationally, “I have to hand it to you, Agatha, you’re one of a kind.”

  And so, she thought with admiration, were the tales of tangled lives and thwarted passions created by the authors featured in this month’s watercolors. As Agatha contentedly ate, Annie concentrated on the pictures on the back wall over the fireplace, the better to avoid other thoughts.

  In the first painting, a slender young woman in a nightgown and housecoat stood midway between the living room of the playhouse, where flames flickered in the fireplace, and the indoor swimming pool. She stared in horror at the body lying next to the pool, so close, indeed, that one arm dangled over the side. The dead woman was middle-aged and expensively dressed. Her heavy blond hair, usually worn in a coronet braid, spread loose on the tiles.

  In the second painting, the gully was choked with vegetation, honeysuckle and wild grape, dogwood and redbud, flowering shrubs and looping vines. A small area, down one side of the gully, showed the effects of many trampling feet, the grasses bent, vines torn away. An attractive middle-aged woman watched in dismay as a younger woman reached toward a blood-spattered clump of Spanish dagger to pick up a black satin ribbon with an old-fashioned Victorian gold locket. The locket’s front decoration was a spray of lilies of the valley, the stems and leaves made up of tiny encrusted emeralds, the bells of pearls. A bowknot of rubies tied the spray of flowers.