Southern Ghost Read online

  ". . . 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 back­ward, 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 thepale-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 atthe 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 a
nd 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 glowing 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."

  "Not a date. A business engagement." Even as he spoke, Max knew how odd that sounded.

  "Oh, yeah, excuse me. A business engagement back by the mausoleum with the broken palm tree. I believe that's what you said." Narrowed eyes now. "Mighty peculiar place to con­duct business, Mr. Darling."

  "I suppose there was something Ms. Kimball wanted to show me at the Tarrant plot." Max tried to keep his voice level, his temper intact. "She was scared. She called me and she was scared as hell. The call broke off. I don't know why or how."

  The policeman rubbed his nose. "No phone booths at the cemetery. If she was scared, needed 'help,' why didn't she tell you to come where she was? Why the cemetery?"

  "I don't know." Max spaced out the words. "But she did. I came as fast as I could, but when I got there, all I found was her purse, flung down on the path. Now, what does that look like to you?"

  "Looks like the lady lost her purse," the sergeant said mildly. He held up a broad palm at Max's fierce frown. "Okay, okay, we'll check into it. We'll be in touch, Mr. Darling."

  Max almost erupted, but what good would it do? With a final glare at the uncooperative lawman, Max turned away. He banged out of the station house and slammed into his sports car. He hunched over the wheel. What the hell should he do now? Obviously, it was up to him. Would it do any good to check Courtney Kimball's apartment? Max didn't feel hopeful.

  But it was better than nothing.

  That took time, too. He had Courtney Kimball's address, but he didn't know Chastain. He didn't find any help at the nearest convenience store or at the video express, but an el­derly woman walking two elegant Afghan hounds finally came to his assistance.

  "Oh, you're very close. That's still in the historic district. The half number probably means a garage apartment. Turn left here on Carmine, go two blocks, turn right on Merridew, young man. It should be in that block."

  It was.

  A street lamp shone on a bright-white sign: THE ST. GEORGEINN. A lime-green dragon lounged upright against the crimson letter S, his tail draped saucily over a front paw.

  Max hurried down a flagstoned path past a shadowy pond to the back of the property and an apartment upstairs over the garage. No outside light shone, but lights blazed inside and there was a murmur of sound. Voices?

  Max took the outside stairs two at a time, relief washing through him. Maybe it was going to be all right. Maybe it was a lost purse, just like the cop suggested. After all, Max had been late—though not that late—but Courtney Kimball was a driven woman. Certainly in the brief contact they'd had, Max had recognized a strong will. There was, in Courtney's single-minded concentration on the Tarrant family, a chilling sense of implacability. Just so did the narrator seek to find the secrets of the House of Usher.

  At the top of the stairs, he realized two disturbing facts at the same time.

  The door was ajar.

  The voices, impervious to interruption, flowed from a tele­vision set.

  Max knocked sharply. The door swung wide.

  The voices—amusing light chatter from an old movie—continued unabated, as unreal as a paper moon, masking the absolute quiet of the unguarded apartment.

  Max stepped inside. "Courtney? Courtney, are you—" Disarray.

  A hasty search had begun. Cushions littered the floor. Desk drawers jutted open. Papers spewed from a briefcase tipped over on a coffee table. But across the room sat a Chippendale desk, its drawers closed, and through an open door, Max glimpsed a colonial bedroom, the four-poster canopied bed neatly made, the oxbow chest undisturbed.

  A search begun. A search interrupted?

  He called out again.

  The flippant voices from the television rose and fell. If Courtney Kimball was here, she couldn't answer.

  Chapter 7.

  Annie recognized him at once and knew his arrival meant trouble.

  Chastain Police Chief Harry Wells wasn't a for
gettable man, not from his slablike face to his ponderous black boots, now solidly planted on her front porch.

  Wells hadn't changed a whit since she'd last seen him. His wrinkled black jacket, white shirt, and tan trousers were just as she remembered. The crown of his white cowboy hat was as smooth and undented as a river-washed stone, and his rheumy, red-veined eyes surveyed her like a hangman measuring rope.

  Annie didn't hesitate. "What do you want?" she de­manded.

  Dislike flickered in his eyes. Dislike and a flash of mali­cious pleasure.

  Annie braced herself.

  "I'm investigating a disappearance in Chastain, Miz Dar­ling." Wells's words had the lilting cadence of South Carolina, but even that glorious accent couldn't mask the threat in histone. "Your husband's involved. I want to know about this woman he was meeting." His eyes clung to her face, greedy for her response.

  The blows were so rapid, Annie felt stunned and sick. Woman.

  Chastain.

  Disappearance.

  Max.

  Only the adrenaline flowing from the shock of Wells's un­expected appearance kept her on her feet.

  That and hot, swift, unreasoning fear.

  "Max! Where is he?" She gripped the door for support.

  "He's safe enough." Wells's voice scraped like a rusty cem­etery gate. "Right now he's in the county jail. Under arrest as a material witness. Who was she, Miz Darling?"

  When she didn't answer immediately, the burly police chief leaned forward. It was, she remembered, a favorite trick of his, using his commanding height to intimidate. His sour breath swept over her. "So you didn't know about her. Well, that doesn't surprise me, Miz Darling. I understand she's good-lookin'. A mighty cute blonde. The kind a man would go a far piece to keep his wife from finding out about. Thing is, those kind of women get insistent, say they're going to tell the man's wife—"