Southern Ghost (20 page)

The Mt. Zion Baptist Church glistened in the early-morning sunlight. A cemetery adjoined the church, the plots beautifully cared for. The frame church had recently been repainted and was a dazzling white. The frame house on the far side of the church also sparkled with fresh paint. White and red impatiens grew in profusion in the front bed. Crimson azaleas flamed along the side of the tiny house.

Annie pulled into the shell drive. The slam of her car door sounded shockingly loud in the placid morning quiet.

As Annie approached, the front door opened. An imposing woman stepped out onto the porch. Her dark face held neither welcome nor hostility. Tall and slender, she waited, her hands folded across the midriff of her starched cotton housedress.

“Mrs. McKay?”

“Yes’m. You must be Miz Darling. Miss Dora called, said you were coming.” She didn’t smile. Her face was grave and thoughtful.

Annie recognized strength of character. Lucy Jane McKay
would do what she thought was right—and the devil take the hindmost.

Annie was straightforward. “There’s a girl missing—and it’s tied up with what happened a long time ago—to Judge Tarrant and to Ross.”

Lucy Jane looked at her searchingly. “Miss Dora says this girl is the daughter of Mr. Ross and Miss Sybil.” A slow shake of her head. “Miss Sybil—even then she was too pretty for any man to resist, but I thought it would all come right. Mr. Ross, he could handle her—nobody else ever could.” A faint, slightly possessive smile touched her lips. “Mr. Ross—he was a fine young man, a strong, fine young man.” She nodded. Her decision was made. “You’re welcome to come in, Miz Darling.”

The living room was small but cheerful, and it shone from loving care. The gingham curtains were freshly laundered, the wooden floor glistened with wax, the red-and-white braided throw rugs were bright and clean. The smell of baking hung in the air.

Annie sat in a comfortable easy chair and accepted a cup of coffee and a fresh cinnamon roll.

Lucy Jane poured Annie’s coffee, then sat on the sofa, her posture erect, her dark eyes somber.

“Did Miss Dora tell you what we learned last night?” A bite of cinnamon roll melted in Annie’s mouth.

“Yes’m.” Lucy Jane clasped her dark, strong hands together. Her face was troubled. “I always knew something was wrong—bad wrong—that day. I’d been in my quarters. It was afternoon and I was reading my Bible until time to go in the kitchen and set to work on dinner. I’d just looked up at the clock, to make sure time wasn’t getting away from me, when I heard the shot. It was two minutes after four. I didn’t know what to do. I know the sound guns make and there was no call for a gun to be shot off. Not that close. I went to my window and looked out and I saw Mr. Ross running across the garden toward the house. That relieved my mind. I knew Mr. Ross would take care of it, so I went back to my rocker. But pretty soon doors slammed and cars came and went. I went to see
what was happening and Mr. Harmon met me at the kitchen door and told me to be fixin’ food for all the family to come, that Judge Tarrant’s heart had given out and he was dead.” She pursed her lips, then burst out, “I knew there was more to it because Enid—she was the maid—she came to me the next week and showed me this charred bundle of clothes. She said they’d belonged to the Judge, and she’d found them out in the incinerator. I told her to hush her mouth and I would see to it. I gave the clothes to Mr. Harmon, and he told me he’d take care of everything. By then the funerals were over, and it had been in the papers how the Judge died from a heart attack when he heard the news about Mr. Ross’s accident with his gun.” She looked across the room at a table filled with framed photographs. “Mr. Ross never had an accident with a gun. Mr. Ross, he was always careful. He did things right.” She smoothed her starched cotton skirt. “I knew it was wrong, all these years, and now the past has come due—and Mr. Ross’s daughter is lost and gone. I tell you, Miz Darling, I feel low in my mind.”

“You can help,” Annie said quietly.

“Now? What can I do?” She was not so much reluctant as uncertain.

“Talk to me about the Tarrants.” Annie held her gaze. “You knew them, really knew them. Tell me who was angry, who was afraid, who was threatened.”

“The Tarrants.” A smile transformed Lucy Jane’s face. “Young Mr. Ross, he had a sense of humor, he did. Did you ever hear tell how he made a family shield? I suppose you know how prideful Miz Charlotte is, always talking about past glories and all the fine things the Tarrants have done and seen—and rightly so. Lawyers and doctors and preachers and good women keeping families going. Oh, there are many stories to tell. I used to hear the Judge talk to the boys when they were little, telling them about mighty battles and such. But Miz Charlotte, she riled Mr. Ross, and one day when he was home for the weekend from school, he and Miss Sybil were in the library giggling fit to kill. When they came out, they put this big poster up on the landing of the stairs, where nobody could
miss it, and it was like those shields that knights of old carried. Above the shield, Mr. Ross had written
THE TERRIFYING, TERRIBLE TARRANTS
, and in each part of the shield, he’d drawn a huge hairy tarantula, and down below, he’d printed,
THE FAMILY CREST—TARANTULAS RAMPANT.
Course, it made Miz Charlotte mad as everything. She said he was making fun of the family, and Mr. Ross kept insisting he thought it was a lovely shield, very appropriate, probably the very name Tarrant came from tarantula, and that made her madder still.” She chuckled, then slowly the laughter died away. “And not two weeks later, he was lying dead in his grave in St. Michael’s. Just a boy.”

Annie felt a prickle of horror: Ross Tarrant, having fun with his heritage and so soon to sacrifice himself for his family’s honor.

“The Family.” Annie shivered though the swath of sunlight spilling from the east window touched her with warmth. She drank more of the strong, hot, chicory-flavored coffee. “Tell me about the Judge.”

“Mr. Augustus.” If there was no great warmth in Lucy Jane’s voice, there was ungrudging respect. The Judge apparently had earned great respect. Had anyone ever loved him? “He came to dinner every Sunday with his parents when I first came to Tarrant House. After his folks died, that’s when Mr. Augustus and Mrs. Amanda moved in with their two little boys. Mr. Ross was born there. He was such a beautiful baby, blond curls and blue eyes, and always happy. Mr. Augustus was real strict with the boys. He expected them to do just so. I know it’s a fact—I raised three boys and a girl—you have to expect a lot from children if they’re to grow up right. But somehow, the Judge expected—” Her eyes were troubled. “—my heart told me he expected more than mortal boys could give. Even Mr. Ross. I don’t know if I can rightly explain. I always thought the Judge never saw them—Milam and Whitney and Ross—as flesh-and-blood people. He saw them as … Tarrants.”

“What else would you expect?” Annie asked.

The older woman nodded impatiently. “Yes. But they were Milam and Whitney and Ross, too. They had to pick their
own way. That’s it,” she said firmly, “that’s where it all went wrong. He never could see any way to be but the way the Judge believed a Tarrant should be—someone important and proper, the kind of men Chastain would look up to. That was real important to the Judge, to be looked up to.”

Annie thought of the photograph of the Judge on the bench. The photographer, of course, had stood in the well of the courtroom, shooting up.

A stern judge. A demanding father.

“You see,” Lucy Jane reflected, “Mr. Whitney, he couldn’t quite do the things the Judge wanted and so he got in the habit of getting his friends to do his schoolwork for him. And his mamma, she protected him when the school found out and called. Miz Amanda never told the Judge. And once, when Mr. Whitney was in law school, there was trouble about a paper. I know his mamma went and talked to the dean and it all worked out. I think it was the next year that Mr. Harmon—that was Miz Amanda’s daddy—he gave a big scholarship to the school.” Lucy Jane’s smile was dry. “You know how folks can work things around in their minds sometimes to where what happened didn’t happen quite the way it was thought and so everything turns out all right.”

Annie knew. It wasn’t only beauty that depended upon the eye of the beholder. Funny how money could magically alter circumstances.

“Then when Mr. Whitney married, he picked a girl he thought the Judge would like, ’cause she cared so much about the old times and families and who married who. Miz Charlotte”—the cool, thoughtful eyes betrayed no emotion—“she cares more for dead-and-gone people than she does people here today. That’s why Miss Harriet ran away. Miz Charlotte never would pay the child any mind. And Mr. Whitney, he was too busy with horses and golf and cards to notice. And when Miss Harriet acted up worse and worse, they just packed her off to school, and one day, when the school wrote and said she’d run away from there, Miz Charlotte was so busy with one of her history groups, she hardly took it in. Mr. Whitney sent Miss Harriet money when she took up living out in California even
though Miz Charlotte said they shouldn’t have anything to do with her until she started acting like a Tarrant should.”

Would the Judge have been pleased with his daughter-in-law’s total acceptance of Tarrant mores? Had he been pleased long years ago?

“How did Mrs. Charlotte and the Judge get along?” Annie pictured two faces, the lean, harsh, ascetic face of the man on the bench, the earnest, self-satisfied face of Charlotte.

Lucy Jane gave a mirthless chuckle. “Thing about the Judge, he was no fool. Ever. He saw through Miz Charlotte easy as pie, the way she simpered up to him, always wanting to talk about the Family and how much it meant to her and Mr. Whitney. The Judge, he knew Mr. Whitney didn’t care a fig about the family. All Mr. Whitney ever wanted was to get along.”

“And Milam?” Annie asked.

“Mr. Milam. He’s a case, he is.” But there was no admiring tone in her voice as there had been for Ross. “Lucky thing for him the Judge didn’t live to see how he’s turned out.” She rose gracefully and brought the coffeepot to refill Annie’s cup. “Course, it’s plain as the nose on your face what Mr. Milam’s up to. He wants to make people mad. Every time somebody here in town gets huffy over the way Mr. Milam acts or dresses, Mr. Milam’s pleased as punch. One more time he’s thumbing his nose at his daddy. If all he wanted was to be an artist and live like some artists do, he could pack up and go where folks like that is a dime a dozen. But that isn’t what Mr. Milam wants.” She sipped her coffee. “Even after all these years, Mr. Milam’s angry with the Judge.” She looked at the mantel and another set of photographs. “Sometimes young people get jealous when they see people in big houses having everything, but I always told my children that living in a big house can be a hard row to hoe.”

Annie was struck not only by her wisdom but by the undercurrent of sympathy in Lucy Jane’s voice. Annie was willing to bet few persons exhibited such charity toward Milam Tarrant, who seemed to have a genius for raising hackles.

“What about Julia?” Annie asked.

“Poor, little Miz Julia.” Her voice was almost a croon. “So sad a lady.” There was steel in her voice when she spoke next. “I do fault Mr. Milam there. He shouldn’t have married, just to marry. But the Judge, as far as he was concerned, a man wasn’t grown unless he married.”

It was elliptical to be sure, but Annie thought she understood and she felt even sorrier for poor, damaged Julia than she had before.

“So Milam didn’t really care for her.” Annie didn’t phrase it as a question.

“Poor Miz Julia. Like a little shadow when she came to live at Tarrant House, and then—for a time—she was happy as could be. She loved her baby to pieces. Miss Melissa. Pretty little Missy. That child brought sunshine to Tarrant House. She made everybody smile. The Judge, too. Even Mr. Milam loved Missy. That was before Mr. Ross died. But when he and the Judge died, that was when Miz Julia’s face was all pinched and white again.” Lucy Jane reached out and touched the worn Bible that lay on the table beside her chair. “It didn’t take more than a few days after the funerals for her and Mr. Milam to move out to the plantation. I know Miz Julia was never happy with Mr. Milam, but then I don’t think she expected to be happy. And she still had Miss Melissa. It was when the baby was lost—almost the same time as Miz Amanda—that Miz Julia almost grieved herself into the grave—it might have been happier for her if she had.”

“So Milam and Julia had a little girl.” Annie frowned, picturing the family trees and remembering Charlotte’s sharp insistence that her daughter Harriet was the only Tarrant grandchild. “What happened to Missy?”

“She fell in the pond.” Lucy Jane didn’t elaborate.

So the beloved baby died. That certainly made Julia’s present-day misery easier for Annie to understand.

Julia Tarrant. She had been in Tarrant House the day the Judge was murdered. But why would she murder her father-in-law? “Did the Judge like Julia?”

Lucy Jane carefully set down her coffee cup. She looked out the window at the neat graveyard plots, many garlanded with
flowers. She didn’t look at Annie. “I don’t think”—was she picking her words carefully?—“that the Judge ever understood Miz Julia.”