Southern Ghost (31 page)

Julia Tarrant, a tomato-colored kerchief capping her dark hair, knelt beside a prepared bed, setting out pink and white impatiens from the waiting flats. Absorbed in her task, she
looked young and almost happy, her lips parted in a half-smile.

Annie wished she could slip away and leave Julia adrift in private dreams.

But Courtney Kimball was missing. The Judge had been murdered. Ross was tricked out of life. Amanda fell to her death.

Annie steeled herself and stepped forward. Her shoes crunched on the oyster shells.

Julia’s head whipped around. Any illusion of youth or happiness fled. Her face was fine-drawn and pale, the eyes dark pools of pain. Slowly, as if weary to the bone, she pushed up from the ground, leaving her trowel jammed upright in the fresh-turned dirt. Stripping off the encrusted gardening gloves, she stood waiting, looking vulnerable and defenseless in her too-large, faded work shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and earth-stained sneakers.

“Mrs. Tarrant. We met at Miss Dora’s—”

“I remember.” What might have been a flash of humor glinted in her sad eyes. “It hasn’t been all that long ago.” There was an element of graciousness; she would ignore the boorish assumption that she had been too drunk to recall, if Annie would.

There was graciousness, too, in her shy smile. “Shall we sit in the gazebo, Mrs. Darling? It’s very cheerful.”

As they settled opposite each other in recently painted, white slatted wooden chairs, the kind Annie always associated with a boardwalk along a beach, Julia ineffectually rubbed her hands against her pants. “It’s hard to garden without getting muddy even when you wear gloves,” she confided. Then she looked at Annie, her gentle gaze as direct and open as a child’s. “You want to talk about the Judge, don’t you?”

“Yes, please.” Annie wished with all her heart that the Judge was all she had come to talk about.

Julia pulled off her kerchief and fluffed her hair. “I never liked him.” She looked quickly back at Annie. “Does that shock you?”

“No.” Annie’s answer was truthful. “He must have been a difficult man to live with.”

Julia stared down at her dirty hands. “I never felt that I ever really knew him. He was … so distant. Among us, with us, but never one of us. It was as if some kind of invisible wall stood between him and the rest of us.” She looked out at her lovely garden, but her vision was focused in the past. “He was perfect, you know.” She spoke softly, sadly. “So we all had to be perfect—and we weren’t. Whitney’s afraid. He’s always been afraid. He can’t do so many things. Charlotte hides behind the Family. I don’t know why. But there are so many things I don’t know. Charlotte feels bigger, better because her last name is Tarrant. I wish—I wish I could take comfort there. But it doesn’t matter.” She gave a tiny, revealing, melancholy sigh. “Nothing matters very much to me.” She shaded her eyes and looked out at the shimmering colors of the flowers and shrubs. “It’s better,” she said simply, “when I’m outside, when I can smell the fresh earth and feel the sun on my face. I feel a part of everything then.”

“Did loving Amanda make you feel a part of everything?” It was the hardest question Annie had ever asked.

Slowly, Julia’s worn face turned toward Annie. Once again that bruised look darkened her eyes. She sat so still in the big white wooden chair, she might have been a part of it. She said, “Everyone loved Amanda.”

Annie, hating every minute of it, said gruffly, “Someone saw you and Amanda.”

Julia was silent for so long that Annie thought she wouldn’t answer. But, finally, her eyes evading Annie’s, she spoke softly, like the wind sighing through a weeping willow. “False witness. That’s what you say when people lie, isn’t it?”

Annie shifted uncomfortably, steeling herself. “Was it a lie?”

Julia’s lips trembled.

The coos of the doves sounded a mournful requiem, and the sharp thumps of a red-cockaded woodpecker were as loud as drums beating a dirge.

“What do you want me to say?” Julia asked. “You’ve made
up your mind, haven’t you? Just like Judge Tarrant made up his—and it didn’t matter what Amanda or I said to him.” Tears glistened in her eyes. She swallowed, then said jerkily, “Have you ever—”

Annie leaned forward to hear that thin, tormented voice.

“—walked into a room and looked into someone’s eyes and thought, ‘I love you. I love
you
!”’

That poignant cry touched Annie’s heart. And she understood. Yes. Oh, yes, she understood. A few years ago, she had walked into a room and a young man—blond with tousled hair and the darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen—had looked at her and smiled and she had been swept by a passion that would shape her life forever.

Julia’s hands gripped the little kerchief, clutched it as if it were a lifeline. “That’s how I felt about Amanda.” The kerchief twisted in her hands. “But it wasn’t wrong.” She stared at Annie piteously. “It wasn’t wrong, I swear it.”

“What was the Judge going to do?” Annie gripped the arms of the garden chair so tightly her fingers ached.

Those bereft eyes slid away from Annie’s. “The Judge?” Julia’s voice was as empty as an abandoned house. “I don’t know. I’m sure we could have persuaded him.”

“Persuaded him to do what?” Annie pressed.

“I don’t know.” It was the cry of a cornered animal. “I don’t know. And what difference does it make now, after all these years?” She stared down at the crumpled kerchief in her fingers, then slowly smoothed it into a wrinkled square. “No one ever loved me except Amanda and Missy.” It was a simple statement of fact. Not forlorn. Not angry. The anguish and rage had long since been spent.

Annie blinked back sudden tears. But it was too late to cry for Julia and Amanda. And much too late to cry for the Judge.

Softly, urgently, she asked again, “What was the Judge going to do?” Because that was the nub of it.

Julia lifted her chin defiantly. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

• • •

Milam slouched on the worn couch, his legs thrust out in front of him, his paint-spattered arms spread wide on the upright cushions. This was not a living room that would be included in books describing the fine homes of the South. Old newspapers and magazines littered every tabletop, rested in stacks on the chairs and floor. The furniture was undistinguished, bland: rounded easy chairs and divans that could be found in countless department stores from Savannah to Pascagoula. The drapes must have been there for years, they were so faded, the green fronds of the weeping willows barely visible against the dulled lime background. The grime of many seasons dulled the windowpanes; handprints smudged the once-white panels of the doorways. Milam looked neither better nor worse than his frowsy, down-at-heels surroundings.

So far, Max hadn’t succeeded in ruffling the painter’s nonchalant attitude. He tried again, his words sharper. “You admit you were angry, so how can you say you didn’t have any reason to kill your father?”

“Look, Darling, I didn’t want him dead. I wanted—” For the first time, Milam’s voice wavered. “—I wanted him to love me. When he died, I felt empty, like somebody broke me open and all the stuffing spilled out. There wasn’t anything out there, no direction to take. All those years I tried to get his attention. God, the things I did to get his attention. And it was always the same, those cool gray eyes would look me up and down and I always felt dirty. That’s because he thought I was dirty. I can see that now. Whoever killed him, killed something inside of me. I don’t know what exactly. But I was getting over it. Because of Missy. My life started to come together, because of her. I might have been a good artist, a really good artist. Missy was like a perfect spring morning. Have you ever had a little girl—a beautiful little girl—look up at you like you’re God? She was so sweet and funny and kind. She loved everyone. Me. Her mother. Old people. Kids. Black. White. Everybody. And she woke up early one morning and went downstairs and outside and she walked into the pond—I found her floating there. And nothing’s ever worked,
since then.” He balled the stained rag and flung it across the room, his face as empty as a broken heart.

“He was going to make Amanda leave,” Annie insisted.

Julia shook her head in slow, stubborn negation.

Annie would have sworn to it. She felt, at this point, that she knew Judge Tarrant only too well—implacable in resolve, immovable in judgment, untouched by human appeal. Oh, yes, she could see it all. Amanda would have to go, sent away from the only home she’d ever had as an adult, away from her children and her infant grandchild. What kind of panic had seized Amanda?

And how had the Judge threatened his daughter-in-law Julia? “What did he say to you?”

Julia huddled in the big white wooden chair. She wouldn’t look at Annie. She simply said over and over, “Nothing. Nothing.”

“Then why were you crying that day?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said dully. “I cried a lot of days.”

That was as much as Annie could bear. She couldn’t stay here and badger this wretched woman. She had learned enough to know that murder may have moved in Julia’s heart. Wasn’t that enough for now?

But there was one more question she had to ask.

“Mrs. Tarrant, the fire at the museum …”

She didn’t have to finish.

Julia looked up, her face so defenseless, so revealing. “All those letters,” she said simply. “The ones I wrote to Amanda. Just notes, really.” Her mouth quivered. “I even wrote her a sonnet once.” Her chin lifted defiantly. “I wanted her to know …” Her voice fell away until it was little more than a whisper. “… how much I loved her. Was that wrong? To say ‘I love you’? But people would make it ugly. I thought, maybe if it all burned up … I watched it burn.” Her eyes were puzzled. “I wanted to destroy it—all those years and years and years of Tarrants. But it didn’t help. You can’t burn memories.”

Annie stood. She hesitated, then bent and gently patted Julia’s frail shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tarrant. About everything.”

As Annie started down the gazebo steps, Julia called out thinly, “Are you going to tell Milam?”

It was the last question Annie would have expected.

Why should Julia care?

Their marriage—Milam and Julia’s—was so patently a failure. Why would she care at all?

Before Annie could answer, Julia struggled to her feet. “If you don’t have to tell him,” she said breathlessly, “then please don’t. You see … Milam loved his mother so much. It’s the one good memory in his life. Don’t”—her glance slid away from Annie’s—“ruin it for him.”

Their suite at the St. George Inn wasn’t home, but it was the next best thing. And it was a refuge. As the door closed behind them, Annie stepped into Max’s arms. She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a huge hug. She didn’t—and perhaps that was most important, most wonderful of all—have to explain.

“I know,” he said softly into her hair. “Poor damn devils. God, we’re lucky.” And he held her.

The phone rang.

Annie had never mastered the precept (illustrated with such charm in Suzy Becker’s enchanting book,
All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat
) that it isn’t essential to answer the telephone just because you’re home. (As is often the case at mystery bookstores, Annie stocked a great many cat titles at Death on Demand. After all, reading mysteries and loving cats seem to go hand in paw.)

So, of course, she bolted from his arms with the same alacrity she would have shown had a boa constrictor poked a head from the jardiniere next to the telephone stand.

It was hard not to answer “Death on Demand,” but Annie managed a simple “hello.”

“My
sweet.
” Her mother-in-law’s greeting burbled like
bubbles in champagne. “I felt sure I would be conversing with your answering machine. A mixed blessing, don’t you think?”

Annie was unsure whether Laurel was indicating a preference for her or for the answering machine, but it was better not to think along those lines. It could lead to a sense of anomie, which she had quite successfully avoided ever since forswearing the kind of literary fiction written primarily by English professors for other English professors.

“But I feel as if it were meant.”

Annie had a sudden vision of a graceful hand with pink-tipped nails pressed against a bosom that was always shown to great advantage in low-cut ball gowns. Not, of course, that she begrudged Max’s mother the opportunity to display her undoubted beauty, blond hair that glistened like spun gold, eyes as brilliantly sapphire as a northern sea, finely chiseled features, and a figure almost unseemly for a woman old enough to have four grown children.

“I am most concerned that you and dear Max be quite
cautious
in your pursuit of justice. There is so much
evil
in the world, my dear.”

Annie managed a single intervening sentence. “Miss Marple never worried about her skin when she hunted for a murderer.”

Max, thumbing through a batch of mail left by Barb, looked across the room, a question in his blue eyes. Annie covered the mouthpiece. “Your mom,” she mouthed.

Max smiled fondly and walked a few paces to settle in an easy chair with the mail. The chair was rather handily out of reach of the phone cord.

Annie realized the pause on Laurel’s end was still in force. One hell of a pause, actually. It indicated, without a single word, that dear Annie was regrettably callow to refer in such graceless prose to the greatest elderly female detective of all time.

Annie attempted damage control. “Not that Miss Marple would ever have thought about it in those terms. But, Laurel, you see what I mean.”

“Of course, my dear.” That resonant, husky, unforgettable voice
radiated
patience.

Annie’s gaze fastened wistfully on a pair of crossed swords above the Adam mantel. It was a good thing Laurel had not progressed on the psychic plane to mind reading.

Mercifully unaware of the images—honestly, did it make her bloodthirsty to own a mystery bookstore?—cavorting in Annie’s mind, Laurel swept on. “I quite take pride in your and Max’s dedication to duty. I feel
impelled
to point out, however, that it has been brought home to me in a most shocking manner how ugliness begets heartbreak which not even the passage of a great many years can ease. Take the grisly episode at Fenwick Castle on St. John’s Island. That imposing mansion is said to have resembled the castles in the family’s English holdings.”