The Gallery of the Dead (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 3) (5 page)

“I’m the new production assistant,” she said. “I’ll be trying to keep things from going sideways.” Her hand was warm and soft, and rather pleasant.

There had been some speculation that Teddy would hire a bimbo. Not so. He had obviously chosen a professional person, one who was competent, pleasant, open and friendly. I began to feel sorry for her, but she probably knew what she was getting into.

“Edson Darby-Deaver,” I told her. “Paranormal investigator.”

There was no actual laughter, but looks were shared and comments were stored up for later.

“
Skeptical
paranormal investigator,” she said, giving my hand a little squeeze and letting it go. “We’ll just see if you can keep a lid on Teddy.”

“Faint hope,” I said dismally.

There were the clicks and flashes of cell phone cameras, and I could almost feel myself being sucked up into cyberspace and pasted onto virtual walls.

“We may also have our hands full with Carmilla,” she said.

“Did he really hire her? I saw on the website that there were rumors, but I was hoping they weren’t true.”

“They are. He’s been trying to sign her for ages. I hear she never goes out of character.
That’s
going to get old fast. At least she has a reputation for being a loner. Maybe between meetings she’ll go rest in her coffin and leave us alone.”

“Have you seen Teddy today?”

“Nope. Haven’t reported for duty yet. We’re not actually having our first production meeting until tomorrow morning, when everybody else gets here, but I thought I’d come in early and scope out the town. I love wandering around all the little shops, and I especially love resale shops.” She struck a little pose. “I always find something great to wear.”

I studied her attire. It was improbable, but somehow, it looked good on her sporty little figure. She wore a gauzy, embroidered blouse under a lacy vest, very short cut-off jeans (nice legs), and purple sandals that were held on her feet by minimal straps. Her toenails were painted a lively green. An embroidered patchwork sack hung from her right shoulder, and a long metallic necklace which it is beyond me to describe hung around her neck.

One never knows how to express oneself when suddenly called upon to criticize a lady’s ensemble. I swept her with what I hoped was an intelligent, critical look, nodded seriously, and said, “Very nice.”

They tittered.

“Thanks. I built my whole wardrobe at resale shops. And you should see my apartment back in Jersey. I think ‘eclectic’ about sums it up, but it’s got personality, if I do say so myself. Not one thing really matches another, but it all
blends
. I love little towns like this one,” she said, looking around at the smiling faces of proud Breezers. Then she looked back to me. “Do you live here, Ed?”

“No, on Anastasia Island. It’s part of St. Augustine, just north of here.”

“Oh yeah. I flew into Jacksonville, rented a car and drove down. I went across your island along the way.”

“You drove right past my house, then. I live in a little gated community called Santorini.”

“I remember it!” she said. “Greek-style houses, right?”

“Yes. It’s a nice little neighborhood.”

“You’ll have to invite me down for a walk on the beach some time.”

“Of course. It would be a pleasure,” I said. The birdlike titters continued, but one expects this. Ladies love a little friendliness between people of opposite sexes, though there was somewhat of an age difference and our relationship was going to be strictly professional. Still, women love a happy beginning, and they love a happy ending even more. I believe this accounts for the popularity of romance novels and many overwrought television dramas. Not that Lily and I . . . .

I realized that I had been gazing at her, abstracted, and the women crowding around us realized it at the same time. When I reached down for my messenger bag with a bit too much energy, they laughed.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you over at The Royal Palm later,” she said.

“Oh? Are you staying there tonight?”

“Misty said she could put us up a night early. I understand you’re not spending the night at the B&B?”

“I live just half an hour away. I’ll be more comfortable at home, and of course, I have to transcribe my notes.”

“I see. And where’s Porter?”

“He’s being boarded at Orphans of the Storm until we need him,” I said, angling my head at Taylor.

“That sounds pretty bleak,” she said.

Taylor gathered herself up. She can be feisty, especially about Orphans, so I quickly intervened.

“No, Lily, I’ve given you the wrong idea. The shelter is a beautiful place. Porter won’t mind a bit. He loves everybody there, and it’s set in a wild spot on the river where he has plenty of room to run around and snap at things. Taylor, here, runs the shelter.”

“Oops.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” Taylor said, settling her feathers again. “I’ll have Angie bring him into town when you’re ready for him. Not that anybody is ever really ready for Porter. Anyway, I’ll be glad to get this over with. Angie’s been useless since Teddy’s been back in town.”

“Oh?” Lily said. “Who is Angie, and why is she useless?” There was something there, a note of I-don’t-know-what in her voice that made me nervous.

Taylor didn’t seem to catch it. “Angie is my receptionist. She was Porter’s handler when Teddy did his episode of
The Realm of the Shadows
there last year. She’s got a little crush on him.”

“She’s got a
big
crush on him,” Florence said from across the room.

“Right,” Taylor said. “A big one. But it’s his own fault – he fussed over her a lot when he was here last time. Took her out for dinner. Flirted. You know Teddy.”

“Yeah, I know Teddy.” That I-don’t-know-what was getting more intense.

“So,” I said quickly, “Porter is having a grand old time running around with the other dogs at the shelter and getting the star treatment.”

“And charging up his psychic energy,” Lily said with mock seriousness.

“Trampling the flowers, more likely,” Taylor said.

“Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Lily,” I said formally, “and I look forward to working with you.”

“Same here, Ed.”

I nodded to the room in general. “Ladies.”

I left them.

As the shop door fell to behind me, a terrific babbling broke out in the shop, and I moved along quickly down the sidewalk.

From the Journal of Edson Darby-Deaver

I went into The Bookery and a cool sense of relief flooded over me. It was quiet and dark and genteel inside, with a billion words waiting patiently for a human eye to bring them to an inquisitive mind. After the colors, noise and energy of Girlfriend’s, it was like setting a foot into heaven.

I entered with rising optimism; I was far more likely to get real information out of Barnabas than Florence. She’d probably paste my business card into a memory book and forget all about calling Nancy.

Barnabas Elgin came to me out of the shadows of the bookshelves, his usual serene self, and having seen me first, he began with, “Edson, I
am
sorry. You know I don’t like to deny anything to friends, but as I explained to That Person, I am not interested in having my ghostly companions removed from the premises.”

“And I honor that wish,” I told him, wiping my glasses, which had fogged up on my escape from Girlfriend’s. “Nothing could compel me to deprive you of your, ah, friends. We’re after Misty now.”

“Ah, yes. I heard. She will welcome you. Of course, she has no ghostly companions, or I would have counseled her to get to know them before ridding herself of them. You remember Ishmael?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, reaching down to tickle the Siamese cat’s chin, which he had lifted for me royally. He’s a handsome cat, rather large, with intelligent blue eyes. He once had been named Starbuck, but Barnabas had gone off that name. Apparently the cat agreed with him, because he started answering to the new name immediately.

“Then how can I help you, old friend?” Barnabas said.

“I need information on the suicides at Whitby House in . . . .” I consulted my notes.

“The first in 1915, followed by another on the same date in 1917. Yes. I believe I can help you,” he said, going to the door and flipping the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” I said hastily, though in fact, I did.

“Closing the shop is never an inconvenience. My grandfather’s newspaper was founded in 1931, long after the suicides, so we must rely on other sources. My great-grandfather was the founder of this book store in 1910, just five years before Miss Cassandra threw her life away. He would have known such a prominent family as the Whitbys, and he kept meticulous journals. Shall we retire to the attic?”

“I’d be honored.”

Ishmael preceded us.

There is no elevator in the 3-storey building that Barnabas owns and rarely leaves. We went up the back stairs, past the landing with the door to his apartment, and on up to the open floor of the attic.

Having the same square footage as the other two floors, the attic was huge, but clean, organized and pleasant. There were windows in all four walls, and the one facing Locust was large, fan-shaped, and went from floor to ceiling. That window faced south, and gilded the room with afternoon sunshine.

Barnabas brought me across to a long mahogany table with three green-shaded desk lamps spaced along it and invited me to sit. Ishmael levitated to the table and curled up, gazing at me through half-closed eyes.

While I waited, I set up my digital recorder and got out note-taking supplies. Barnabas went to a fire-proof safe and opened the door. Inside were shelves of leather-bound volumes. He ran his finger along a row of matching books, selected two, spoke to them as if they were living persons, and held them to himself as he returned to the table.

“Here we are,” he said, setting them down and turning on the lamp nearest me. He sat beside me. From a drawer in the table, he took out two pairs of white cotton gloves, donning one himself and handing the other to me.

I had done years of research among various archives, and I put the gloves on without question. The oils in our skin can be injurious to old documents. I applauded his dedication to caretaking his family’s histories, and wondered for the first time what his own history would say, because unquestionably he kept a journal of his own.

He opened the first quarto volume on the table and paused for me to observe the flyleaf.

“May I photograph?” I asked.

“Please.”

I brought my digital camera close and took a picture of the page that read, “Being the Journal of Barnabas Elgin, Jr., Citizen Chronicler of the City of Tropical Breeze, in the State of Florida, United States of America.” Then on the next line, neatly centered in the author’s flowing Copperplate: “Containing A Record of the Year of Our Lord 1915.”

“Will you turn the pages?” I asked quietly.

“No. You may.”

“Thank you.”

I turned the pages until I reached early March, then couldn’t resist glancing at a page before turning to the event I was looking for in April.

“
The strawberries are arriving from the farms to the west, and are very welcome as the first taste of summer,”
he wrote.
“The orchardmen hereabouts are worrying over the new canker that is so much afflicting our citrus crop. Some of the brightest scientific minds at the University are dedicated to eradicating it before it can spread across the state.”

Barnabas’s quiet voice beside me startled me, and I turned to look at him. He seemed almost youthful, though I know for a fact that he is sixty. His salt-and-pepper hair was neatly pulled back from his face into a pony tail, and his usual mournful expression was as changed as if he were enjoying a visit with an old friend. I smiled, knowing the old friend wasn’t me, but his great-grandfather, whose written words were as alive to him as I was.

“The first suicide took place on April 10, 1915,” I said. “One hundred years ago tomorrow.” I reached for the pages and turned them until I had the right one. “It was a Saturday.” I positioned my camera again and photographed that page and the next one, then started to read aloud for the benefit of Barnabas, my recorder, and the cat, who was watching intelligently.

The top half of the page had recorded the weather (fine and dry), and reported a political conversation with the mayor. Then, in a somewhat shakier hand, he recorded the death of Cassandra Whitby.

4:00 pm as I write this, describing an event having taken place approximately one hour previous: Cassandra Whitby is dead.

It has been bruited about the town for several weeks now that there has been trouble at the Whitby home, but none could imagine it would end in such tragedy.

The child threw herself from a balcony to her father’s feet, a distance of some fourteen feet, to die before his horrified eyes. He gathered her into his arms and sent up such an agonized cry that people ran to his house from blocks away. Foolish, foolish girl! A fleeting moment of anger – the pique of a spoiled child, denied (very properly) her wish to marry a very unsuitable young man – has ended the life so promisingly begun and tenderly nurtured.

For some time now, whispers have flown about regarding Miss Whitby’s stubborn infatuation for a St. Augustinian, the son of a soldier, and a rake of the first order. I record his name here only because I do blame the man, having made promises to the girl, then refusing to marry her without a large portion of her father’s purse tucked into her pocket: he is Robert Harding. He has been the despair of his own parents, and has been cast out and reunited with his father at least two times of which I am aware. But he has a smooth face and dances well, and his hair is very golden, and Cassandra was so young. Perhaps her parents overprotected their only chick, but they also denied her nothing, and a child so indulged grows to believe she may delve into the cornucopia of life and come out with sweet grapes at every try.

“I pause to thank God again for my young Barnabas, as steady and grave at the age of fifteen as any man full grown. When the news swept the town, I went to him and asked him about the girl, she being only a year or two older than he. He only shook his head and told me, ‘She was always a pretty thing, but I never fancied her company. No conversation to her, but plenty of empty talk.’

“Mr. Whitby is beside himself with grief, quite naturally, and Mrs. Whitby has collapsed. Poor Henriette is being tended by her friends.

“I shall pray for the child. There is the barest hope that it was an accident, though only Mr. Whitby can even guess, he being the only one there at the time. Still, I hope Father Brown will assume the best, and allow her a Christian burial in sanctified ground, and I pray for a merciful God to receive her.

”In the midst of life, we are in death; and when the young precede the old into the grave, all must bow their heads and weep.”

I sat back, feeling the tragedy as if it had just happened, and not a century less a day before. The young lady would’ve been dead of old age by now anyway, but that kind of thinking has never comforted me. Such a waste. I took my glasses off and set them on the table before me, and when I turned to look at Barnabas, he was gazing blankly through the fan window.

“He wasn’t given to hyperbole, my great-grandfather.” Barnabas said softly. “Naturally I’ve read all of his diaries, but that incident has always stood out as his most grief-stricken moment, other than the death of my great-grandmother, which took him to another level altogether.”

“Eloquence?”

“Silence. He didn’t record it. An Elgin unable to write is an Elgin who is dead, either literally or figuratively. He was never the same afterward.”

We had a quiet moment, and then Barnabas inhaled deeply. “Well, I must get back to the shop. Do you wish to peruse further, find other references to the Whitbys?”

“If you don’t mind. I’ll see what he has to say about the father’s death.”

“Of course. The journal for that year is on the table here.”

“Thank you.”

He left me. Ishmael stayed, as if he’d become interested.

In the days after Cassandra’s death, details about the event had come out: the girl had waited for her father to come home one afternoon, argued with him while moving up the stairs, then made a final pronouncement before throwing herself down from the gallery. “Hetty,” or Henriette, Ephraim’s wife, had never really recovered, and died soon after.

The journal entries were nowhere near as eloquent when Ephraim died; there was an exhaustion to his reaction, as if the girl’s death had taken all the emotion he could give to the matter. Or as if it had been expected all along.

Nevertheless, I read the writings into my voice recorder and photographed everything. I would have quite a treasure trove to present to the rest of the crew at our first full-cast production meeting, and though I was exhausted, I felt a sense of accomplishment.

It was getting toward evening by the time I finished, and I still had to drive home and transcribe my notes. I would work into the night to get it done before I had to come back to Tropical Breeze in the morning. On some level I was grateful to know the time of day the tragedy had taken place: 3:00 pm. It would obviate staying up until midnight for the shoot.

But first, I decided I would stop along the way home and see if I could interview Jasper, the Whitby’s caretaker. I didn’t expect him to know much, but I like to dot the i’s. For the sake of completeness.