Bonefire of the Vanities (18 page)

I checked my watch. It would be nine o’clock in Hollywood. There was a chance Graf was home. I dialed.

His voice mail picked up, and I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed. “Graf, I’m in a place where I don’t have access to a phone. Tinkie and I should be home in a day or two. Please don’t worry. We’re fine. It’s a … well, sort of a spa. Anyway, we’ll talk. Good luck with the movie. I miss you. And I love you, too.”

I hung up and called Coleman.

“Well, you took your sweet time calling,” he said with a hint of anger. “I was about to find a reason to storm the walls of Heart’s Desire.”

“Sorry, we can’t use a phone. I’m sneaking this call in, so don’t fuss anymore. I don’t have time. Tinkie and I are fine. Marjorie
and
Chasley are here. This is a very strange place, but I haven’t seen anything criminal.”

“What do you and Tinkie hope to accomplish?” The good humor was restored to Coleman’s voice.

“I thought Marjorie might be in danger. Like the Westins might try to force her to sign over her money and then bump her off.”

“And do you still worry about that?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know, Coleman. I can’t tell if they’re con artists or worse. But we’re working on it. Tammy and Cece have been out here—”

“And both have reported to me and Oscar. Graf was about to have a conniption, but Oscar filled him in.”

Great. I’d worried my fiancé again. Not my smartest move. Nothing to be done now, since I’d let Graf know I was fine.

“Sarah Booth, are you okay?”

“Sure. We’re having a séance at midnight.”

He chuckled, and the sound reminded me that outside the walls of Heart’s Desire were vast stretches of cotton fields and the September heat of the Delta. The sterile atmosphere of Heart’s Desire had pushed the lushness of the soil and the crops right out of my head, but Coleman’s voice brought it all back. I was only five minutes away from the land I knew and loved. The Delta was all around me.

“You watch yourself.”

“I will.” I hung up and put away the phone. For a moment I lingered in the library. I loved the smell of books. I went to a shelf and picked up a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. Flipping open the book, I found an inscription to Sherry.

“Beware of the lure of the damned.” No signature.

I returned it to the shelf and slipped back to the room. It was twenty after eleven, and I wanted to be prepared for the upcoming séance.

At precisely midnight, we left Marjorie’s suite and gathered with the other guests in the foyer. Brandy arrived last, with Chasley in tow. She took one look at Tinkie’s caftan, turban, and bejeweled earlobes and gritted her teeth. I’d tried to warn Tinkie and Marjorie, but no, they were determined to be fashionistas.

“I really didn’t expect Chasley to attend tonight,” Marjorie said. For the first time all evening, she sounded worried.

“This is what he’s here for,” Tinkie told her. “It’ll be okay. There’s nothing he can do to stop you from talking to Mariam if she’s willing to talk.”

Chasley seemed to sense his mother’s unease. “I hope after tonight you’ll realize how foolish you’re being. Mariam isn’t going to go
woooo
and finger me for killing her. I didn’t do anything, Mother. I’m here to beg you to give me a chance. You dislike me, yet you don’t even know who I am.”

“What did happen the day Mariam drowned?” I asked gently.

“I don’t owe you an answer about anything.” Chasley rounded on me. “If you’re responsible for getting her to believe this insanity about Mariam, I’ll see that you’re charged with something. You’re sucking money off my mother, providing services she doesn’t need. Convincing her of things that aren’t true. You’re a parasite.”

Tinkie moved up to join us so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to respond to Chasley. “We’re going to find out the truth of what happened to Mariam. About the time I start to think you deserve a chance, you act like a horse’s ass. Now let your mother do what she feels she must to clear this matter up.”

Chasley leaned close to Tinkie, his lips grazing her cheek as he whispered, “I don’t know how two parlor maids gained so much influence over my mother, but when this is over and done, you’ll be out on your ear, that cat will be in a shelter, and my mother will be in a home with psychiatric attention. She’s trapped in a delusion, and I intend to get her help. Whatever your game is, you won’t benefit financially.”

Did he really think we were harming Marjorie? “We’re trying to protect your mother. She believes contacting Mariam will resolve some serious issues for her. Whether it will or won’t isn’t up to me. Or you. This is her call.”

“If you care so much for my mother, you’ll convince her to seek professional counseling. She’s been living alone for years now, wandering around a mansion, shunning company. Her life is a misery and this latest obsession of spirits is not in her best interest.”

“She has a right to do whatever she pleases. She isn’t harming anyone. What are you so afraid of, Chasley?” I asked softly.

His response was cut short as Brandy clapped her hands. “Sherry will join us once we’re in place and seated,” she said.

Eager to be away from Chasley, Marjorie, Tinkie, and I fell into line behind Brandy. We started down the steps to the basement like ducklings following a hen. Our only light was a candle Brandy carried, and behind us several people stumbled around in the dark.

A strange
thud, thud, thud
came from ahead of us. For some reason, it unsettled me. I’d been in the basement before and hadn’t seen anything to make such a noise, unless the air-conditioning was about to go out. Now that would be hellish in ninety-eight-degree heat.

Tinkie’s grip on my arm was bruising. “What is it?”

“Probably the AC unit.” The whole séance thing was ridiculous.

Someone behind me lurched and pushed into me, nearly knocking me down.

“I swear, if I break my neck here in the dark, I want you to be sure my ghost goes on to my reward,” Gretchen said.

“You’re headed to the hot place,” Lola countered. They burst into giggles and bumped my shoulder. I wondered if they’d be sober enough to participate.

Brandy stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs. “Holy shit.” She’d barely uttered the words, but her tone made me stop. Something was wrong.

She lifted her candle high, illuminating a scene as eerie as anything Boris Karloff might have imagined. A body lay at the foot of the stairs. The woman’s face was in shadows, but I recognized the uniform and her shape. It was Amanda. The thud I’d heard was her falling down the stairs.

“Is she alive?” Tinkie asked. She pressed against me, looking around my side.

Brandy seemed unable to move, so I eased past her and went to Amanda. I felt for a pulse. When I shook my head, I heard several gasps. Marjorie’s scream was like an ice pick in my ear. She rocked backwards into Chasley, and thank goodness he caught her before she tripped and fell.

“What was she doing in the basement?” Amaryllis’s voice sounded like she was trapped in a dream. “She works in the kitchen. She shouldn’t be here.”

“Get Palk,” Brandy commanded. “The rest of you, out of here. Now.”

“We should check the basement.” I couldn’t see anything in the candlelight. Amanda might have tripped, or she might have been pushed. “Someone could be hiding.”

“You will not do a thing except go up those stairs and care for Mrs. Littlefield.” Brandy’s voice was iron. “Palk will check the basement. The rest of you, go to your rooms and lock your doors. I have no idea what’s happening in Heart’s Desire, but I intend to find out.”

With Tinkie and Marjorie ahead of me on the stairs, I was only too glad to oblige. At the first floor, the guests scattered like leaves in the wind. Tinkie took Marjorie upstairs. I went straight to the library and the phone.

“Coleman, it’s Sarah Booth. Come quick. A young woman is dead, and I don’t know if it’s an accident or a murder.”

11

After the crime scene technicians left and the coroner removed the body, Coleman came to talk with us in Marjorie’s suite. The awfulness of Amanda’s death was like a phantom lurking at the edge of my awareness—and I pushed it away. In a house where acts and intentions were so distorted, I couldn’t accept that the young girl was dead. Only hours earlier, she’d been dragging a duffel bag across the employee parking lot. Now she was gone.

Coleman had barely gotten inside the room when Tinkie asked him, “Accident or murder?”

“We’ll have to wait for Doc Sawyer’s autopsy. I spoke with the butler, who said the basement was empty. I found a hidden exit in a room with mirrors. One of the panels moved and led to a hallway that goes into the garden.”

“Dammit! I should have checked. Brandy made us leave the basement.” I’d been in that room and never thought to examine the mirrors.

“It’s a good thing you did,” Coleman said. “If Amanda was pushed, the killer could have been hiding. If you’d cornered him or her…” He didn’t have to finish.

Still, it galled me. “Watch the butler. Palk will say whatever the Westins tell him,” I warned Coleman. “He’s a lapdog.”

Coleman was worried; I could read him. I was so glad to see him, I could have hugged him, but I didn’t. We’d managed to put our past relationship behind us, but like so many things in my life, I didn’t trust it to stay dead and buried. Example: Jitty!

I was engaged to my first love, Graf. I’d been truly, madly, deeply in love with him when I went to New York to try my hand at the Broadway stage. I don’t think either of us was grown up enough to hold a relationship together under the duress of two acting careers. At any rate, we parted, and when I came home to Zinnia, I fell for Coleman, a married man. And I mean married. He didn’t love his wife, but he was committed to the marriage.

Coleman had since divorced crazy Connie, but he was the kind of man who never truly dropped a responsibility once he shouldered it. It was the thing I loved most about him, and the thing that had destroyed our chance at happiness. We were friends now—better than friends. But we were both careful to walk the line.

“Sit down, Sheriff,” Marjorie invited.

But Coleman stood while the rest of us took a seat. I could tell he was upset. Coleman took it personally when someone’s life was stolen.

“Glad to see you and Tinkie are still in one piece,” Coleman said. The September humidity had taken the starch out of the creases of his shirt, but he could still pose for a lawman poster.

“Until Amanda was killed, the only thing dangerous here was the level of boredom.” I could be flip with Coleman, and he’d appreciate my spunk.

“Did you know Amanda?” He looked from me to Tinkie to Marjorie. They gave a negative shake of their heads.

“A little,” I said. “She was a sweet girl, naïve but ambitious. I thought she left here with Tammy.” I couldn’t quite understand how Amanda had ended up in the basement—dead. “She wanted to leave Heart’s Desire. In fact, she’d packed her things and I thought she left when Tammy did.” I tried to organize my thoughts, but the sight of her corpse had completely undone me. “Amanda was kitchen help. I seriously doubt she was in on any of the deep secrets of Brandy and Sherry Westin. So why would someone kill her?”

“This might have nothing to do with Heart’s Desire,” Coleman pointed out. “We don’t know enough and we can’t jump to conclusions.”

“Something isn’t right here,” Tinkie said. She spoke with conviction, not emotion.

“Do you know anyone who might have a reason to kill her?” Coleman asked.

“She had a fight with the chef, Yumi, but I don’t think Yumi would kill her over a snack. They both made a lot of outrageous threats.” I needed to tell Coleman about Tammy’s strange dream of a falling body in a blue peignoir. The subconscious images she’d related to me had been realized, and in a way I could never have predicted. Amanda was a bit player on the stage of Heart’s Desire. Her brutal death—and I suspected she’d been killed—didn’t make sense.

Unless she’d stumbled onto something. What had she threatened to tell Mrs. Westin about Yumi?

“Have you heard anyone talking about Amanda? Other members of the staff?” Coleman asked.

Tinkie and Marjorie could offer nothing, but I had a few tidbits. “Like I said, she butted heads with the top chef. And Palk was horrible to her, but he’s awful to everyone. He’s only civil to the paying guests.”

“And people pay money to be here, amidst all of this meanness?” Coleman directed the question at Marjorie. “Why?”

“I don’t mix with the other people here, except at mealtime, when it’s required,” Marjorie said slowly. “I’m afraid I’ve been very selfish. I’ve focused on what I needed, what I wanted. I haven’t paid any attention to others. If there’s a killer here, Tinkie and Sarah Booth must leave immediately. I won’t put them in danger.”

Marjorie could come out with some startling statements. She seemed like a vain, self-involved person; then she’d reverse herself and show compassion.

“We aren’t leaving without you and Pluto,” Tinkie said. She gave Marjorie a quick hug.

“Sarah Booth, you know the most about Amanda. The forensics will tell me a lot, but you’re the best source I have at this compound.” Coleman focused his blue gaze on me. His eyes were lighter than Tinkie’s, and they could be hard as ice shards. Now, though, they reflected his genuine concern. “What kind of read did you get on the young woman?”

“I talked with Amanda for only a few minutes. She was from a little town near Vicksburg. She wanted to be a great chef. This wasn’t the job she thought it would be when she took it. She was a glorified dishwasher and Yumi is demanding. To everyone.” I struggled for facts. “I didn’t have an inkling anyone would hurt Amanda. She wanted to leave Heart’s Desire, and she’d been fired. She’d packed her things and was on her way out of here. This doesn’t make sense.”

Guilt nibbled at me. I should have made sure she left safely. She’d been so upset, and I’d been distracted by Chasley’s arrival. “Call Tammy and ask why Amanda didn’t follow her out.”

Coleman placed the call, and I had a split-second of phone envy. Strange how I’d fought against owning a cell phone and now I felt naked without one. The thin piece of technology could record conversations, take photographs, make movies … lots of handy PI tools.