Southern Ghost (8 page)

The Maserati picked up speed. “It’s like there’s some kind of conspiracy to keep me from finding out anything about Courtney. But at least I got the name of her family lawyer out of Matthews.” Max honked at a scrappy-looking black pickup nosing out of a side road. “Honest to God, doesn’t anybody down here know what a stop sign’s for?”

Absently, Annie defended her adopted state. “I’ve seen some pretty lousy driving on the back roads of Connecticut.” But she was puzzling over Max’s information. “A lawyer? Why a lawyer? I mean, usually the cops direct you to a parent or a husband or brother or somebody in a family. Why a lawyer?”

The Beaufort law offices of Smithson, Albright & Caston occupied a—what else?—antebellum buff brick home. (The tasteful bronze plaque noted that the Franklin Beaumont House was built in 1753.) Six Corinthian pillars supported three piazzas.

A chestnut-haired receptionist smiled a sunny welcome as they stepped into the enormous hallway that divided the house.

“I called earlier.” There was no mistaking the intensity in Max’s voice. “Please tell Mr. Smithson that Max Darling and his wife are here to talk to him about Courtney Kimball.” Under one arm, Max carried the file that Annie had studied at the motel.

At the mention of Courtney’s name, the young woman’s smile fled. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. She kept her voice even, but curiosity flared in her eyes. She led them swiftly up the paneled staircase to the second floor and paused to knock on white double doors. She opened the right-hand door. “Mr. Smithson, Mr. Darling is here.” As she stood aside for them to enter, she stared at them openly. Annie could feel that avid glance as the door closed behind them.

A slender man in his early sixties with a silver Vandyke beard rose from behind an enormous mahogany desk and hurried toward them. His patrician face was somber, his eyes fearful. “Courtney—is there any word?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir,” an equally somber Max replied.

“I had hoped…” The lawyer paused, pressed his lips together, then held out his hand to Max. “Roger Smithson.”

“Max Darling. My wife, Annie.”

“Please.” Smithson gestured toward a pair of wing chairs that faced his desk.

When they were seated, the lawyer returned to his desk; then, still standing, he stared down at them, his face intent, suspicious. “On the telephone, you claimed that Courtney hired you.”

Max met the penetrating gaze with equanimity. “Courtney hired me on Monday.” He opened the folder and drew out a slip of paper. He rose and handed it to Smithson.

“That’s Courtney’s signature,” the lawyer acknowledged gruffly after a moment. Handing the paper back, he pressed a hand to his temple, as though it throbbed. He looked old and weary. “I talked to the authorities in Chastain this morning.
They found Courtney’s car late last night at Lookout Point on Ephraim Street.”

Annie knew that area well. The graveled lot on the point afforded a glorious view of the swift-running, silver river beneath. Across the street from Lookout Point was the squat, buff-colored Chastain Historical Preservation Society, which Annie had good cause to recall with clarity. She’d had her first encounter with Miss Dora there when she’d come to Chastain to plan a mystery program for the annual house-and-garden tour, a mystery program marred by murder. Rising along the river were some of the stateliest old homes in Chastain, including Tarrant House and Miss Dora’s home.

“And Courtney?” Max asked eagerly.

Smithson gripped the back of his desk chair. “The car door was open.” The lawyer swallowed once, then said starkly, “There are bloodstains in the car. On the front seat, the driver’s side.” His voice was impassive, but the hand on the chair whitened at the knuckles. It took a moment before he was able to continue. “But not a great amount”—he faltered—“of blood.”

“Bloodstains…” Max’s face tightened. It was bad enough to find an abandoned purse. Worse to investigate a ransacked apartment. But blood … Max took a deep breath. “No trace of Courtney?”

“None.” Smithson’s face was gray. He pulled out the chair, slumped into it. “I warned Courtney not to go to Chastain.”

Annie looked at him sharply. “Why? Did you think something would happen to her there?”

His head jerked toward Annie. “God, of course not. I would have stopped her somehow, if I’d had any idea. It never occurred to me she would be in danger. But I know—I think lawyers know better than most—that stirring up the past is a mistake. People don’t expect it. They don’t want it. But to have Courtney disappear—I never expected that.”

“What did you expect?” Max watched him closely.

“Perhaps some unpleasant surprises. That’s what I told Courtney. To expect unpleasant surprises. I told her she was a
stubborn little idiot if she went to Chastain. And now…” He rubbed his eyes roughly.

“Why did she go?” Annie asked gently. “What was so important, so urgent, so critical that she felt she had to go there?”

He stared at the two of them with reddened eyes. Finally, abruptly, he nodded. “I tried to tell the police this morning, but they wouldn’t listen. They said they had a suspect.” The lawyer’s eyes fastened on Max. “They said Courtney was running around with a married man.” For an instant, his gaze narrowed. “They’re talking about you, aren’t they?”

Max nodded impatiently. “Sure. For the same reason they wouldn’t listen when you tried to tell them why Courtney came to Chastain. They don’t want to hear anything connected with the Tarrant family.”

“The Tarrant family.” Smithson said it without warmth, indeed with anger. “Old sins cast long shadows. I don’t know, you see, what the truth is, I don’t know what happened or why—but I know part of it and I can guess part of it.”

He leaned forward, looked at them searchingly.

It was very quiet in the elegant office, an office, Annie thought, that had rarely contained so much raw emotion, an office more suited to low-voiced, gentlemanly conferences, to the planning of wills and the ordering of estates. A pair of dark blue Meissen urns decorated the Adam mantel with its delicate stuccoed nymphs and garlands. The central panel of the mantel showed a fox hunt. A law book was open atop an Empire card table that sat between huge windows with jade-green damask drapes. A handsome mahogany secretary was open. A fine quill pen rested beside a filled cut-glass inkstand, as if waiting for a country squire to take his place to write in his plantation records. Cut-glass decanters sat on a Chippendale sideboard. A cut-glass bowl on Smithson’s desk held jelly beans.

“All right.” His voice was crisp now, decisive. “I’ll tell you what I know with the understanding”—he paused, his eyes still probing theirs—“with the understanding that finding
Courtney takes precedence over everything else. Is that a deal?”

“That’s a deal,” Max said quickly.

Smithson smoothed his beard and leaned back in his chair. “Very well. I have to go back some years. Twenty-two years. At that time, I represented the Kimball family, as had my father and my grandfather before me. Carleton Kimball and I were at the university together. We were boyhood friends before that. Carleton married my cousin Delia. A happy marriage. But there were no children. Both Delia and Carleton were only children. Not even nephews and nieces to love. They wanted children desperately, but finally, they didn’t talk anymore about when children would come, and the years were slipping away.

“That was the situation in 1970. In December of that year, Carleton and Delia left town rather abruptly in mid-month. I saw them the evening before they departed. And I will tell you, as the father of five children, that the possibility my cousin, then in her early forties, might have been nearly full-term pregnant never occurred to me. I was astonished when Carleton and Delia arrived back in Beaufort just before Christmas with Courtney.”

His face softened in remembrance. “They were enormously proud of their new daughter. Through the years, I tried several times to talk to Carleton about Courtney, but he always cut me off. He was a genial man, but this was one topic he would not discuss. The last time I brought it up, a few years before his death, I told him that if any question ever arose about Courtney’s parentage, it would be important to have adoption papers to prove she was indeed his daughter at law. He answered simply, ‘Courtney is our daughter.’ Their wills specifically provided for Courtney to inherit the bulk of the Kimball estate, which was considerable. And, finally, after time, I didn’t think about it anymore. Carleton died when Courtney was seventeen; Delia died this March. Courtney came into her inheritance. There were no other surviving relatives.”

Max went straight to the point. “You don’t believe she is the Kimballs’ natural daughter.”

“No.” A glint of humor. “Germaine, my wife, was pregnant too many times. It’s there, the way a woman carries herself, the look in her eyes. But, more than that, Carleton and Delia were both big people. He was well over six feet, Delia must have been at least five seven. Tall and big. And dark. He had swarthy skin and Delia was olive skinned. They both had coal-black hair and dark-brown eyes.”

“Oh, I see.” Max turned to Annie. “Courtney’s slim and small boned and very fair skinned with blond hair and blue eyes. Like Laurel.”

Annie shrugged. “Brown-eyed people can have blue-eyed children. It’s rare, but the gene for blue eyes is recessive and it does happen. And lots of children and parents don’t look at all alike.”

The lawyer was quick to agree. “Oh, I know. We have a redheaded son and there hasn’t—officially—been a redhead in the Smithson family in two hundred years. Germaine gets a bit touchy about the usual kind of jokes people make. So yes, it could be. But that isn’t all. That isn’t even most of it.” Smithson absently straightened his perfectly aligned desk blotter. “There’s a matter of personality. Do you have children?”

“Not yet.” Max flashed an ebullient glance at Annie.

Her eyes narrowed. Not yet. She wasn’t ready yet.

“Hmm. Well, let me say simply that heredity can’t be denied.” Smithson glanced at the row of photographs on his desk.

“That’s for sure,” Max said emphatically. “I have three sisters.”

Annie could appreciate the wealth of emotion in Max’s voice. Certainly only heredity could account for Deirdre’s penchant for marriages (four to date), Gail’s devotion to causes (the only California mayor to parachute into the midst of a North Carolina tobacco auction with a sign declaring
SMOKING
KILLS
), and Jen’s free spirit (Bella Abzug with beauty). And they all knew whence sprang these militantly unconventional attitudes.

Annie usually forced herself to avoid lengthy contemplation
of this subject. After all, Max wasn’t spacey. But sometimes, his dark-blue eyes were uncannily like those of Laurel.…

“Environment can play a major role,” Annie said determinedly, quashing the thought that she was whistling in the dark.

“Certainly,” Max agreed. But he didn’t look at Annie.

The lawyer nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s true. But the core of personality—Carleton and Delia were both extremely serious, extremely intense. Carleton was an excellent tax lawyer, cautious, conservative. He enjoyed Double-Crostic puzzles. He collected train memorabilia. He wasn’t an outdoor man or a sportsman. He was not well coordinated. Delia was interested in family history. She collected snuffboxes and china plates. She never engaged in a sport in her entire life.”

“And Courtney didn’t fit?” Annie asked.

The lawyer looked at her appreciatively. “Precisely. Now, I want to be clear. Carleton and Delia adored Courtney. She was the delight of their lives. But they always seemed fairly astonished by Courtney and her enthusiasms.” He reached for one of the silver-framed photographs on his desk and turned it toward them. “This is my youngest daughter, Janelle. Janelle never saw a dare she didn’t take, either. She and Courtney were inseparable growing up. They won the state junior doubles championship in tennis two years running. They both played field hockey. Watching Courtney play field hockey almost drove Delia and Carleton mad with worry. She broke her left arm one year, a collarbone the next. Courtney plays to win. She loves jumping.” He looked at them doubtfully. “Horses.” They nodded. “And she has a stubborn streak. If anybody tells her she can’t do something, well, that means she’ll try doubly hard to do it. She was suspended for two weeks her senior year because she climbed to the top of the town water tank and attached the school flag to it.” He returned the photograph to its place.

Annie was just a little surprised at the admiring light in the lawyer’s eyes.

He reached into the cut-glass bowl for a handful of jelly
beans and popped several in his mouth. He pushed the dish toward them, but they shook their heads. He continued, a bit indistinctly: “Courtney was an excellent student, both here and at the university. She majored in archeology, got her private pilot’s license, and spent summers at digs in Peru. Delia and Carleton never enjoyed traveling outside the United States. They always worried about the water, the political situation, and the food. But they were never able to say no to Courtney. They never understood her, but they loved her. And when Courtney has an enthusiasm, it’s like a spring tide, there’s no holding her back. She lives every day as if it were the most glorious, the most exciting, the most wonderful day in the history of the world.”

The light in his eyes died away. “I’d never seen Courtney subdued until last week. I thought the child was sick when she first came in. She didn’t give me a hug, the way she always had. She just walked to that chair”—he pointed toward Annie’s chair—“and sat down and looked at me, as if she’d never seen me before, as if everything here was strange to her. She had smudges under her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well for some time. She looked straight at me and, without any preliminaries, said, ‘I want to know the truth about my parents. My real parents.’ ”

He pushed back his chair and strode to the fireplace. For a long moment, he gripped the mantel; then his hands fell away and he turned toward them, anguish in his face. “I couldn’t tell her! God, I couldn’t tell her—and she was so sure I would know, so certain that all she had to do was ask me—and I had nothing to give her. I should have made Carleton tell me.”