Southern Ghost Read online

  In the third painting, a young woman, terror on her face, stared at a fog-wreathed, grim, gray Victorian house. A bloody kitchen knife was impaled in the front door. Six old-fashioned oval portraits circled the house. Each was named. The portrait at the top, labeled Pauline, was of a middle-aged woman with old ivory skin, black eyes, black hair in bangs, and a cold and unfriendly gaze. Clockwise were Sophie, plump, overrouged cheeks and blond hair piled high with too many curls; Anne, short curly black hair with distinctive wings of white at the temples and a warm smile; Elise, elegant and lovely with haunted eyes; Marthe, pleasant looking with a good-humored grin; and Rose, young and vulnerable with blue eyes and shiny brown hair.

  In the fourth painting, the skyward gleam of the Bentley’s headlights pierced the inky darkness of the night, cruelly illuminating the fatal embrace of the Bentley and the Mercedes as they arced over the side of the cliff to plummet down into the rocks and the sea below. Two men and a woman watched, transfixed. In a hollow nearby, the little boy wrapped in a man’s coat didn’t stir from his unnatural sleep, despite the noise of the crash and the frenzied licking of his face by a large mongrel dog.

  In the fifth painting, there was a strange tableau in the exquisitely appointed museum room with its array of gorgeously restored Egyptian antiquities. A young woman with dark eyes, olive skin, and a heart-shaped face framed by masses of thick black curls raised a mace as the handsome older man approached. Coming up behind the man was a figure clothed all in black with a gun held firmly in one hand.

  Generations of readers loved these gothic adventures. Perhaps she should pick out one of her old favorites and take it home to while away the empty evening hours while her husband pursued the work ethic. (Max?) Not, of course, that she had to have dinner with Max every night to be happy, but …

  Annie glanced up at the rows of cheerful mugs with the titles and authors inscribed in bright-red flowing script. She needed a mug that would brighten her empty evening. Perhaps Margaret Scherf’s first Martin Buell mystery, Always Murder a Friend. Or Annie’s favorite by Constance and Gwenyth Little, The Great Black Kanba. How about the zany humor in Lion in the Cellar by Pamela Branch? Or would her spirits improve if she spent an hour with Ellie and Ben in Mum’s the Word by Dorothy Cannell?

  “Perhaps,” wafted the husky voice, “I am somehow lacking.”

  Annie damn near jumped out of her skin. Jerking around, she gazed into limpid dark-blue eyes. “Where the he—Laurel, where did you come from? I didn’t hear the door.” Annie tried not to sound too startled and accusing, but, honestly, if Laurel didn’t stop materializing without warning…

  Her mother-in-law gave a lilting sigh. Anyone who didn’t believe sighs could lilt just hadn’t dealt with Laurel. The lucky devils.

  Her alarm past, Annie surveyed her gorgeous—yes, that was the only appropriate descriptive adjective for Laurel—mother-in-law and smiled. How did Laurel manage always to appear young, fresh, and vibrant, no matter how bizarre her get up? On Annie, the baggy tweed suit and mottled hornrims, along with a stenographer’s notebook and freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil, would have looked like a grade school librarian’s trophies from a rummage sale. On Laurel, the effect was enchanting. The horn-rims gave a piquant accent to her elegant patrician features and shining golden hair (Dammit, how could anyone look so marvelous with hair drawn back in a tight, no-nonsense bun?), the droopy tweeds fell in becoming folds against her svelte figure.

  “You see, I have to wonder if it’s me,” Laurel continued earnestly. “Annie, would you say that I am not simpatico?”

  Annie’s smile broadened to a fond grin. “Laurel, nobody would say you are not simpatico.” And also flaky, but this thought Annie didn’t share. Off-the-wall. Just one step (which way?) from certifiable. But, always and ever, simpatico—to people, to animals ranging from anteaters to dolphins to whales, to situations, to the whole damn world, when you came down to it.

  But those dark-blue eyes, so unnervingly like other eyes that lately, when business was mentioned, slid evasively away from her own … Annie struggled back to the present, determined to focus on Laurel.

  “… have always tried to be so open to experience, so welcoming. If you know what I mean?”

  Annie deliberately turned her thoughts away from Laurel’s five marriages. And why, after so many trips to the altar, was Laurel persisting in not marrying their neighbor, Howard Cahill, who would be such an attractive father-in-law, so stable, so respectable?

  “… so disappointed when Alice didn’t come.”

  It was not the first time in their acquaintance, which was surely long in content if not in time, that Annie was left staring at Laurel in hopeless confusion.

  Alice?

  Who was Alice? Had they been talking about someone named Alice?

  “Alice?” she murmured uncertainly.

  “Oh, my dear.” A wave of a graceful hand, the pink-tinted nails glossed to perfection. “Certainly you know all about Alice.”

  Alice Springs? Alice in Wonderland? Alice Blue Gown? Annie pounced on the latter. “Alice Blue Gown?” she proposed hopefully. It was just offbeat enough to be the answer.

  But Laurel was pursuing her own thoughts, which, understandably, could well occupy her fully. Annie had seen the day when Laurel’s thoughts had occupied many minds more than hers. But it was better not to dwell upon the past. Though that period—the one with saints—had held its own unique charms. It was at moments such as this, indeed, that Annie herself was likely to call upon the excellent advice of Saint Vincent Ferrer. (Ask God simply to fill you with charity, the greatest of all virtues; with it you can accomplish what you desire.) Annie surely needed heaps of charity in order to attain patience, a definite requisite for an amiable relationship with her mother-in-law.

  “…thirteen times backward. I know I did it right. I was counting.” Laurel gnawed a shell-pink lip in perplexity. “Annie, do you suppose I could have miscounted?”

  “Certainly not,” Annie assured her.

  Palms uplifted, despite the notebook and No. 2 pencil, Laurel exclaimed, “Then it’s quite beyond me! Because Alice definitely didn’t come.”

  Annie decided to explore this cautiously. “You were expecting her?”

  Her mother-in-law dropped the notebook and pencil on the nearest table, opened her carryall, and pulled out a sheaf of Polaroid pictures, the bulky self-developing camera, and several road maps. “It just came to me—you know the way things do”—an enchanting smile—“that it would be so useful to take photos on the spot. And, of course, if anyone should be there, how wonderful to be able to show skeptics. Seeing is, as someone once said so cleverly, believing.” The golden head bent over the pile of photographs. “I’m marking the exact date and time on the back of each picture. It’s easy as pie with the tripod and one of those clever electronic controls—so magical, just like the television remote—so I can be in the pictures, too.” She beamed at Annie and handed her a photograph.

  Annie was halfway to a smile when she felt her face freeze. Oh, God. It looked like … Surely it wasn’t …

  “Laurel.” Annie swallowed tightly and stared at the photo of—

  “… really, one of my better pictures. Of me, don’t you think?”

  —Laurel gracefully draped on a marble slab atop a grave, chin cupped in one hand, smiling wistfully toward the camera.

  “It would have been quite perfect if Alice had come.” She stepped close beside Annie, and the scent of violet tickled Annie’s nose. “See. There’s her name. That’s all they put on the slab. Just ‘Alice.’”

  “Alice,” Annie repeated faintly. “She’s dead?”

  “Of course she’s dead!” Laurel exclaimed. “Otherwise,” she asked reasonably, “how could she be a ghost? And it would have been so convenient! It would be so easy to visit her often. It’s a delightful trip from here to Murrells Inlet, and the All Saints Cemetery is lovely, Annie, just lovely. So many people have seen Alice after circling her grave thirteen times ba
ckward, then calling her name or lying atop the slab. I did both,” she confided. A sudden frown. “Perhaps that was the problem. Too much. But”—a winsome smile replaced the frown—“I took some lovely notes.” She patted the notebook in satisfaction. “I do intend to devote a good deal of space to Alice. After all, it’s such a heartrending story, a young woman in love, separated from her beloved by her family because they thought he wasn’t suitable, spirited away from her beloved home to school in Charleston. One final night of gaiety at the St. Cecilia Ball, then stricken with illness and when they brought her home, they found her young man’s ring on the pale-blue silk ribbon around her neck, and her brother took it and threw it away, and while she was dying and delirious she called and called for the ring. Is it any wonder,” Laurel asked solemnly, “that Alice is often seen in her old room at The Hermitage or walking in the gardens there? Everyone knows she’s looking for her ring.” A gentle sigh, delicate as a wisp of Spanish moss. “Ah, Love … Its power cannot be diminished even by the grave.”

  If there was an appropriate response to that, Annie didn’t know it, so she tried to look sympathetic and interested while glancing unobtrusively toward the clock.

  Of course, anyone attuned enough to subtleties to seriously expect to communicate with ghosts wasn’t likely to miss a glance at a clock, no matter how unobtrusive.

  “Oh, dear, I had no idea it was so late. I must fly.” Swiftly, those graceful hands whipped the photographs, camera, and maps back into the embroidered carryall. “My duties are not yet done for the day.” Laurel backed toward the storeroom door, smiling beneficently. “Give my love to dear Max. I know you two would adore to have me join you for dinner, of course you would, but I do believe that mothers, especially mothers-in-law, should remember that the young must have Their Own Time Together. I try hard not to forget that. Of course, with my commitment to my Work, it’s unlikely that I should ever be underfoot.” Laurel had backpedaled all the way to the storeroom doorway. “I do believe my book shall be quite unique. It’s just a scandal that South Carolina’s ghosts have yet to be interviewed. Can you believe that oversight? All of these books are told from the viewpoint of the persons who saw the ghost and I ask you, should they be featured just because they happen to be present when a ghost comes forth—that’s a good term, isn’t it”—the doorway framed Laurel’s slender form for an instant—“perhaps that should be my title, Coming Forth. Oh, I like that.” She was out of sight now, but the throaty tone, a combination of Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, and wood nymph, carried well. “Do have a delightful dinner, my darlings.” The back door opened and closed.

  It seemed awfully quiet after Laurel was gone.

  Annie, of course, had had plenty of time to call out and say Max wasn’t coming home for dinner tonight and she and Laurel could drop by the Club.

  It wasn’t, of course, that she didn’t want to tell anybody (and especially not Laurel?) not only that Max wasn’t coming home, but Annie didn’t have any idea where he was.

  Or with whom.

  The South Carolina Low Country has many charms—a seductive subtropical climate with a glorious profusion of plant life including flower-laden shrubs, lush carpets of wildflowers, and seventy-five-foot loblolly pines, abundant wildlife ranging from deer to alligators, and an easy-paced life-style characterized by graciousness and the loveliest accent in all of America—but the coastal road system, once off the interstates, is not one of them. The narrow two-lane blacktops curve treacherously through pine groves and skirt swamps, affording few chances to pass.

  Max leaned out the window of his Maserati, straining in vain to peer around the empty horse trailer bouncing behind an old Ford pickup. Every so often he glanced at the clock in the dash. Events had conspired against him. The ferry was late leaving Broward’s Rock. He’d chafed at the delay; then, once on the mainland, he’d realized he’d better stop for gas. Laurel was in the habit of borrowing his car and this time she’d returned it with the gas gauge damn near a dead soldier. The little country gas station, perhaps not a good choice, had been jammed. He wondered if the attendants were selling drugs on the side or maybe the crowd had something to do with the cerise cabin festooned with streamers advertising “Tanning Booths.” So much for bucolic innocence.

  Every minute lost made Max more frantic, even though he was sure the deaths Courtney Kimball had asked him to investigate were exactly what they appeared to be, just as he’d told her in the report he made yesterday. When he’d concluded, she’d asked sharply, “You didn’t find anything out of order? Anything at all?” He’d spent several hours in dusty records at the county courthouse, studying files from the coroner’s office. They confirmed the information he’d found in old news stories. That’s what he told Courtney. She looked at him, her eyes dark with unhappiness. “There has to be a way—” She broke off, seemed to acquiesce, paid his fee. He’d thought that was the end of it.

  Until the call this evening, the shocking, incomplete call. Words tumbled over each other, frantic and incomplete: “Help … got to have help … the cemetery … Ross’s grave … oh, hurr—” And the line went dead.

  He’d dialed her number.

  No answer.

  Ring after ring.

  And now, this damn truck—impatiently, he swung out the nose of the sports car, then yanked hard right on the wheel.

  A Mercedes blazed past in the facing lane, horn blaring.

  Fuming and chafing, his eyes watering from the pickup’s bilious exhaust, Max finally found clearance to pass. The speedometer needle raced to the right. That broken cry, “… oh, hurr—” Help? What kind of help? The fear in her voice spelled danger. The Maserati plunged forward, born to race.

  Annie’s hands gripped the telephone like a vise, but she had her voice under control. Just barely. “No, Cynthia, none of Max’s sisters are in town.”

  Cynthia waited for amplification.

  Annie smiled grimly and uttered not another word.

  “Oh, well.” A sniff. “I just thought it had to be one of Max’s sisters when I saw him at that wonderful little restaurant in Chastain Monday. You know, the new one with the Paris chef. Especially since the girl was blond and gorgeous.”

  Blond and gorgeous.

  “And I was so surprised not to see you there.” A saccharine laugh.

  “A business lunch is a business lunch,” Annie said lightly, all the while envisioning excruciating and extensive torture suitable for the middle-aged owner of the gift shop around the corner whom Max had rebuffed at the annual merchants’ Christmas party. Cynthia had been snide ever since. “Besides, I’ve been tied to the store since Ingrid’s been sick.”

  “Oh, that awful spring flu …”

  Annie doodled on the telephone pad—Cynthia’s pudgy, beringed hand took shape. With a flourish Annie added an upward swirl of flame from matches jammed beneath the fingertips.

  It was fully dark by the time the Maserati screeched to a stop beside the church. Max grabbed the flashlight from the car pocket, then flung himself out of the car. He thudded toward the massive bronze gates of the cemetery. As he shoved them open, the car lights switched off behind him.

  The golden nimbus of light from the nearest street lamp offered scant illumination, succeeding only in emphasizing the shifting mass of darkness beneath the immense, low-limbed live oaks with their dangling veils of Spanish moss. The narrow cone from the flashlight wasn’t much help. Beyond its focus, the crumbling headstones, many awkwardly tilted by roots or undermined by fall torrents, were dimly seen patches of grayness. Leaves crunched underfoot. A twig snapped sharply. Max stopped and listened.

  “Courtney? Courtney?” he called softly. “Miss Kimball?”

  Palmetto fronds clicked in the freshening breeze.

  A bush rustled, and the thick sweet smell of wisteria enveloped him. The lights of a passing car swept briefly across the graveyard.

  A raccoon scampered atop a marble burial vault.

  An owl in a live oak turned glow
ing eyes toward him.

  He looked down and took a reluctant step forward. A silky strand of Spanish moss brushed his cheek, as gauzy and insubstantial as a half-forgotten memory.

  The swinging arc from the flashlight illuminated a cloth purse, half open, lying on the leaf-strewn path next to the Tarrant family plot. The beam steadied. It was an unusual purse with pink and beige and blue geometric patterns. The day he’d first met Courtney Kimball, she’d placed it on the bar when she opened it to reach inside for her checkbook.

  The policeman’s head swiveled around at the muted roar from the television set flickering in the corner of the station house, then swung back to face Max. “Home run.” His stolid voice was surly.

  Max was damned if he was going to apologize for interrupting a man obviously more interested in Braves baseball than a missing woman.

  “Look.” Max didn’t try to keep the urgency out of his voice. God, how much time had passed? He’d called out for Courtney Kimball, searched as well as he could in a dark landscape that swallowed up the fragile beam of his flashlight, then, grabbing up the purse, he’d run to the nearest house and asked the nervous woman shielded behind a chained, partially open door for directions to the police station. It had taken another six minutes to get here. And now, this dolt wanted to watch a damn ball game. “We need to get men out there to—”

  “Cemetery at St. Michael’s, right?”

  Finally, finally. “Right.”

  The policeman—his name tag read SGT. G. T. MATTHEWS—fastened faded blue eyes on Max. “Let’s see your driver’s license, mister.”

  “Oh my God, this is a waste of time. We’ve got to—”

  “License, mister.” Matthews stuck out a broad, stubby hand, palm up.

  Time, time. Everything took time.

  Max clenched his fists in frustration as Matthews laboriously wrote down the information from the license.

  When the sergeant finally looked up, his gaze was still skeptical. “Okay, Mr. Darling. Let’s see if I got you right. You had a date with this woman—this Courtney Kimball—in a graveyard.”