Emily's Ghost (36 page)

"But was she really all
that innocent? Listen to this again: 'Miss Hessiah Talbot, whose
late arrival only heightened the effect of her entrance, was
quickly acclaimed by all to be the belle of the event. Miss Talbot
was a vision of pure loveliness in a Paris gown of silver taffeta
trimmed in exquisite French braid. Her ensemble was crowned by an
extraordinary jewel that had the entire company, especially
les débutantes charmantes,
remarking on its striking size and color. Very soon it became
apparent to all and sundry that her dance card was quite full, and
it was even whispered that Lieutenant Dale Culver had earlier torn
away an inscribed sheet and commanded those dances for himself, on
the quite justifiable ground that he was beginning a tour of duty
the following day. The gay and dashing lieutenant shall be sorely
missed by many of the company and is wished godspeed.'

"Well?"

"Ye're reading more
between them lines than ever was intended."

"Not at all," she said,
taking a shovelful of by now soggy cereal. "I think it was the
Silver and Gold Ball that was the ball alluded to during the trial,
the ball Hessiah Talbot attended on the night of her death. It
explains why the society column was never printed."

"Why didn't they call it a
Silver and Gold Ball at my trial, then? All they said was she was
wearing a linen nightdress after some ball she'd
attended."

"To them it wasn't
important which ball. Besides, the trial coverage was bizarrely
erratic by modern standards. The reporters were more concerned
about the shocking effects of the murder on Hessiah's family and
friends."

"And crying out for my
death," he added grimly.

Emily bit her lip. "That,
too."

"Say it
was
the Silver and Gold
Ball she went to before she was strangled. What makes you so
convinced that the 'extraordinary jewel' she wore was the necklace?
It could've been an emerald coronet. It could've been a diamond
brooch. The description's altogether too vague."

"You might be right, but I
don't think so. When a guest is wearing the real thing -- say, a
pearl choker -- this writer spells it out in fawning detail. But
all the writer dares say about Hessiah's jewel is that it was
'extraordinary' and that everyone talked about its 'striking size
and color.' It could've been a lump of anthracite. This writer is
hedging, Fergus; he's being ironic."

"Ye'd know more about such
things than I. But why would the wealthiest woman in town wear a
piece of junk like that to a fancy ball?"

"Oh, for love,
unquestionably. It was a present, I'm sure of that. If only we knew
from whom."

"And why would she be
wearing it over a nightdress?"

"Also for love. Don't you
understand women at all?"

"No. I don't," he said,
flushing. "For one thing, ye don't
know
that she was wearing the
necklace when she was strangled. Maybe someone picked it up from
her dressing table and wrapped it around her neck. And here's
another thing, this Lieutenant Culver. Nobody ever mentioned him at
my trial. Shouldn't I be bothered by that?" he demanded.

"Good question. It's too
convenient that Lieutenant Culver was scheduled to leave Newarth
the day after the Silver and Gold Ball. I doubt if the police ever
bothered to track him down and question him. It sounds like half --
I assume, the female half -- of Newarth society was willing to
vouch for the lieutenant in any case. As you said yourself, the
police weren't very motivated to look any farther than
you."

"Will ye be the one who
finally runs him to ground, then?"

"I don't see how, Fergus;
we don't know a thing about him except his name and rank. It's not
as if we can subpoena the man," she said, uneasy about Fergus's
spiraling confidence in her.

Fergus jumped up from the
table and began to pace the length of the apartment. "We can't just
let him go! All yer speculating about the necklace and the ball may
or may not be, but the one thing we do know is that this military
bloke -- Gawd, they go for the uniform every time, don't they? --
tore up the lady's dance card and waltzed away the night with
her."

"That was the
rumor.
And even if it
were true, we don't know whether she was taken with
him."

"She
danced with the bastard, didn't she?
If ye're correct and this is a
crime
de passion,"
he said, perfectly mimicking
her use of the phrase, "then we'd damn well better hunt him
down."

He was so relentlessly
logical, almost primitive in his responses. The two of them may
have been simpatico lately, but their styles were completely at
odds. Emily liked to approach a problem the way she would an onion,
peeling away its complications layer by layer. Fergus grabbed the
first sharp knife at hand and brought it down hard, chopping the
thing in half.

As far as Emily could
tell, neither Lee Alden's campaign to get reelected nor her
campaign to pinpoint Lieutenant Culver's historic whereabouts went
forward in the next week. When she ran into the military, she ran
into a brick wall. The archives of the Newarth Library and
the
Sentinel
were
one thing; the archives of the United States Navy were something
else altogether. Around and around and around Emily went,
alternately calling Boston, Annapolis, and Washington. It got to
the point where she seriously considered installing a WATS line on
her phone.

Lee Alden's week wasn't
going so well either. It started off with a debate against Boyd
Strom. Boyd Strom was a rough-and-tumble self-made man, a street
fighter with no compunctions about playing dirty. He never once
bothered to address an issue. Instead, he needled Lee about his
wealth, promised everyone everything, vowed never in his life to
raise a single tax, and generally stuck to the low road. The debate
was too carefully structured to squeeze in any digs about Lee's
interest in the paranormal, but Boyd Strom was obviously biding his
time; there would be another debate.

When it was over, Emily
switched on the vacuum cleaner and went back to her rugs. "There
was no comparison between them," she said above the roar of the
Hoover. "Lee blew him out of the water."

"What, are ye nuts?"
Fergus answered in a voice just as loud. "It's Strom who talks
people's language.

"Strom was pious and
self-serving!"

"So what? He tells 'em
what they want to hear. Ye don't know a damn thing about
politics!"

Emily banged the big
Hoover into the sofa. "You're not for Boyd Strom; you're just
against Lee Alden!"

"I'm not for either one of
'em, ye twit!
I won't be
voting!"

Stung, Emily stopped and
turned off the machine. "I'm sorry. I forgot again," she said,
distressed. "It's so hard to believe you might not be around for
the primary. Who'll watch the returns with me after all this?" she
asked in a plaintive voice.

"Probably me," he said
grimly. "If ye can't find that damn lieutenant, I might be around
till doomsday."

"Would that be so bad?"
she asked with a sad little smile. "Think of the times we'd
have."

"True. I could take a hell
of an accurate exit poll for yer paper."

They shared a quiet,
conspiratorial laugh. Emily hid her dismay over the thought of
losing him by making a production of wrapping the extension cord
around the upright handle of the Hoover.

So this is what it's come
to,
she thought.
From trying like crazy to bump him out of my life to simple
dread at the thought that I might succeed.

She leaned both hands on
the vacuum handle as if it were a high-tech walking stick. Her back
was to Fergus; she simply could not direct the question to his
face. "Fergus? Do you really have to go?" she whispered.

There was no response from
him, and in the meantime, tears had started to roll. She brushed
them away quickly, feeling unbearably self-conscious. When she
finally found the courage to turn around, Fergus was standing very
close, looking very serious. His mouth was without a flicker of
animation; his eyes had a depth that was profound.

"What's happening between
us is impossible, ye know that," he said in a voice weighed down by
pain.

"N-no, I don't know that,"
she argued, unable to look at him. "Just about everything that's
happened so far is impossible. Why should this be any
different?"

"Well, for one thing
there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do for ... to ...
with ... ye," he said with a self-conscious sound deep in his
throat.

"Naturally not," she said,
coloring. "But that's not all there is to a
relationship."

"Nowadays it seems to be,"
he said tersely.

"No, no. It really isn't
important to me. Not at all. There's a trend nowadays toward
abstinence. Really. You've read those magazines. Sex is just too
... complicated."

Yet even as she said it,
she was aware that the most natural, logical, desirable thing in
the world would be for him to take her in his arms.

Fergus saw the frustration
she was feeling. He must have, because he answered in a husky
voice, "Why are we doing this to ourselves?"

His image seemed to waver
and soften around the edges into transparent light, and then he was
gone. The effect on Emily was devastating; he'd never disappeared
in quite that way before. She had no idea what it meant; the rules
seemed to evolve and change as time went on.

Oh, God,
she thought wearily, falling onto the sofa in a
trembling heap. It was all too much. Lee Alden had done his level
best to bat her emotions right out of the park, and now Fergus, a
great outfielder if ever there was one, had leaped high, high in
the air with his glove and caught them.

****

When the call came from
the Oak Bluffs Home for the Aged, Emily was folding three weeks'
worth of laundry and was in a subdued mood; heat waves and
Laundromats did that to her. She let the answering machine kick in,
partly because she hadn't been calling the newsroom as she had
promised she would. But as soon as she heard the director's voice
recording a message, she knew something was wrong. She rang back
the number immediately; the director answered.

Emily apologized for not
having been quicker to pick up the phone, and the director said,
"I'm afraid I have bad news. Hattie Dunbart passed away in her
sleep last week. It was a very peaceful end and not unexpected. But
we'll all miss her terribly."

It was an awful shock,
like the crack of ice on a pond giving way underfoot. For all her
frailness, Hattie Dunbart seemed like the kind of woman who could
will herself to live forever, and Emily said so.

"She was determined.
Incidentally, Hattie was very taken with you. She mentioned you
several times after you left, and that's why I'm calling. She
wanted you to keep the necklace. Her exact words were 'What the
hell am I going to do with it? I have a neck like a
chicken.'"

Emily smiled, picturing
the gaudy crystal around Hattie's thin and wrinkled neck. "It'll
always remind me of her. But Hattie has a niece; shouldn't I hand
it over to her?" She did not add "eventually."

"Not at all. And I nearly
forgot. Hattie was pleased with the research you were doing into
her family history. We were going through her things -- her niece
wanted none of it -- and found a box of, oh, letters and
memorabilia, some of it dating back a way. Would you have any
interest in it?"

"I'm sure I would," Emily
answered, although it seemed to her that Hattie would have
mentioned anything relevant to Talbot Manor.

So they struck a deal
whereby Emily would go through the papers and return anything
specifically dealing with the history of Martha's Vineyard. It was
a long shot that Talbot Manor would be involved, but the next
morning Emily was on an early ferry out of Woods Hole. This time
there was no Lee Alden in a baseball jacket and Pennzoil cap to
greet her, just a crush of hot and sweaty tourists wanting to get
away from the mainland. Nor was there any sign of Fergus. Emily
wondered if he'd ever show himself to her again after their mutual
declaration of frustration.

She stood at the rail
while the ferry sliced through a dull, flat sea hazed over with the
sticky stillness of summer. It seemed a lifetime ago that Emily and
Lee had sat and talked on the foredeck. At the time all she could
think of was the fact that she'd made passionate love with the man.
The funny thing was that even without him next to her on the
foredeck, it was all she could think of.

This is not good, Emily
Bowditch. Your emotions are all over the map. Try to make up your
mind who or what it is you want in life, will you?
She watched idly as a teenage passenger held up
the standard potato chip to a flock of circling gulls. One of them
broke away from the pack, swooped down in a precision strike, and
flew off with the chip in its beak.