Widow's Tears (13 page)

But it was what it was. Surely Ruby would understand.

“What's wrong?” Claire repeated.

Ruby shut her phone with a snap. “You name it, it's wrong,” she replied dispiritedly. “My mother is on the lam from her nursing home—again—and my sister is trying to find her. My sweet baby granddaughter has had a miserable sore throat, and she has to get her tonsils out, right away. And somebody named TS Amanda—whoever
he
is—is on his way to Pecan Springs. But China says they can handle it. They don't want me to come home. I'm supposed to stay where I am.” Feeling suddenly sorry for herself, she made a whimpering noise. “I'm not wanted.”

“I'm sorry about all that,” Claire said sympathetically. “But don't you get it, Ruby? It's not just a message from your friend China, it's a warning from the powers that arrange such things. You're not supposed to go home. You're supposed to stay right here and help me deal with this…this whatever-it-is.”

Ruby looked up. “You think?” Suddenly China's text message made a different kind of sense, like a message from the Ouija board. Important things were happening at home, yes, but China and Amy and Ramona could handle them.
Stay where you are. Don't come home.
It was as if the universe were giving her an assignment.

“I think,” Claire said definitively.

“But I don't know
how
to deal with whatever is happening here,” Ruby protested. “And to tell the truth, I've spent years trying to ignore my so-called gift. I can cope with it on a minimal level, as long as I don't take it seriously, but that's about all.”

But Claire wasn't paying attention. She held up her hand and tilted her head, listening. Now she leaned forward. “Do you hear that, Ruby?” she whispered intently.

“Hear what?” Frowning, Ruby listened. “It's just the wind.” Now that
she actually
listened
to it, she realized that she had been hearing it for several minutes—an eerie sound that constantly changed in pitch, sometimes deep and hollow, like somebody blowing across the top of a bottle, sometimes high and whining, like a child crying.

“Right. The wind.” Claire nodded knowingly. “But take a look out the window.”

Ruby went to the window over the sink and looked out. The sky wore an oddly opaque sheen and the light seemed to be fading as she watched. She could hear the wind even more loudly now, rushing past the window with the sound of a gale. But the trees and grasses stood utterly as still as if they were frozen in the peculiar light. Not a leaf or a blade was stirring.

Ruby felt the goose bumps rise along her arms. “What in the—” She left the word hanging in the air.

“Yes.” Claire joined her at the window. “Exactly. What in the world is going on here?”

“The wind—does it sound like this all the time?” Ruby asked.

“Pretty much, although it's intermittent. Sometimes I can barely hear it, other times it rattles the windows. But when I look outside, it's always dead calm. Not a breeze. Not even a breath.” She lowered her voice. “This has got to be connected with the ghost, Ruby. Get her to leave and this will stop. As long as she's here, and these noises, I can't turn this place into a bed-and-breakfast. People will stay away in droves.” She went back to the table and sat down. “I have no idea what the protocol is—how you talk to ghosts, I mean. But maybe you could find out what she wants.”

What she wants?
Ruby thought uneasily, following Claire back to the table.
Why would a ghost want anything? Would she
know
what she wants? And assuming that she wants something and knows what it is, how would I go about finding out? And then what?

But Claire was going on with even more eagerness. “Yes, that's it, Ruby.
Find out what she wants, and let her know she can't keep hanging around. The noises have to stop, too.”

“Are you sure about that?” Ruby asked tentatively. “Maybe you could advertise the place as a haunted B and B. You could tell people about this woman—that is, if you could find out who she is and something about her.” She grinned, trying to make a joke of it. “You know, like the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, in Massachusetts. I read that they have a museum and a gift shop. They even serve a breakfast that's supposed to be the same breakfast that the Bordens ate before they were murdered—their last meal.”

“Lizzie Borden?” Claire asked, frowning.

“You know. ‘Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.'”

“Good lord,” Claire said faintly. “I'd forgotten about her. But she wasn't convicted, was she?”

“No. They never found out who did it—officially, that is. But all the evidence seemed to point to her.”

Claire's eyes widened. “Ruby, you don't suppose our ghost was murdered, do you—
here
, in this house? And that's why she's hanging around here?”

“I don't have the slightest idea.” Ruby thought of the headstones in the cemetery. “I don't think there's any law that says that only victims get to be ghosts,” she added in a lower voice. “I suppose it's even possible that a ghost could be the murderer.”

“I hadn't thought of that.” Claire pulled her brows together. “You mean,
she
could have killed somebody? In this
house
?”

Ruby shrugged. “I don't see why not.”

“Let's not go there, okay?” Claire said nervously. “And as far as the idea
of advertising the haunting— Well, maybe the Borden ghosts aren't real. Maybe they're just a way to attract customers. This one is for
real,
Ruby. I don't think I could keep my guests if one of them happened to catch a glimpse of her up on that widow's walk, staring out into the distance. She is just too creepy.” Claire put out a hand. “You will help, won't you?”

“How can I help when I don't have a clue?” Ruby asked matter-of-factly. “I don't do séances. I've never tried to talk to the dead—or the undead. I don't know why the ghost would want to communicate with me.”

“Undead.” Claire shivered. “I wish you wouldn't put it that way.”

“What other way is there to put it? Anyway, how would we know if we were successful? Maybe she'd only pretend to go away and then come back later. It's not like we can ask her to punch in and out on a time clock.”

“You won't know if you don't try,” Claire pointed out. “Anyway, there's no penalty for failure.”

How do you know?
Ruby wondered, thinking of those headstones.
And what if there's a penalty for
trying? She pressed her lips together. “Honestly, Claire. I…I don't think I'm qualified. How about asking a priest? Priests do exorcisms. They say prayers and burn incense and the spirits get scared or something and go away.”

“I don't know any priests,” Claire replied. “But I know
you
. And you've seen
her
—twice now, years apart. That qualifies you.”

Ruby had to admit that it sounded reasonable, especially when she was getting messages telling her not to go home. But maybe there was another way to approach this. She picked up her glass and sipped her tea. “You said you inherited this place. How much land is there?”

“About fifteen hundred acres.”

“Fifteen hundred!” Ruby exclaimed. “Wow. That's a lot—even for Texas. Why don't you just sell it and use the money to buy another B and
B, if that's what you want to do? That way, the ghost is somebody else's problem.”

“I would if I could.” Claire sounded wistful. “But I can't. I have to live here.”

Ruby frowned. “I don't—”

“It's complicated,” Claire said. “Long story short, my great-aunt Hazel was a companion to Mrs. Blackwood, the woman who built this house. They lived here for decades, just the two of them, never going anywhere. Mrs. Blackwood died in her late nineties and left the house and her money to Hazel. The house was hers to live in and dispose of at her death. But if she went to live somewhere else, the house would be torn down and the acreage and any money would go to the church camp. The camp property adjoins this, on the north side.”

“But that was your great-aunt Hazel,” Ruby pointed out. “What about—”

Claire raised her hand. “Chapter one was Mrs. Blackwood. Chapter two was Aunt Hazel. She lived here until she died, never married, never had kids. Upon her death, she left the property to her niece, my aunt Ruth. There wasn't much money by that time—bad investments, I guess—although there was enough to repair and modernize the place. But Aunt Hazel imposed the same condition. If Ruth didn't live in this house, the house would be razed and the church camp would get the land.”

Ruby felt as if she had missed something. “Your aunt Ruth? But I thought
you
inherited it.”

“Be patient. Now we're in Chapter three, Aunt Ruth's chapter. She kept telling the lawyers she was moving out here, although I'm pretty sure she had no idea of doing anything of the sort—she was just trying to figure out a way to get around the requirement. Anyway, things dragged along for several years until the lawyers for the church camp got tired of waiting and
threatened to sue, since Aunt Ruth wasn't living up to the terms of Aunt Hazel's will. Then Ruth complicated things still more by getting herself killed in an automobile accident.” Claire sighed. “End of Aunt Ruth's chapter.”

“Oh dear,” Ruby murmured sympathetically.

Claire nodded. “Yeah, really. After Mom died, Aunt Ruth was all the family I had left. But things got complicated—legally, I mean—when it turned out that she didn't have a will. I was her closest kin, but I wasn't in a position to accept the bequest right away, because—” Her glance slid away. “Because I was…well, in rehab.”

“Oh,” Ruby said, and with this second mention of rehab, the pieces clicked into place. The long silence after Brad died. The times she had called but Claire wasn't available and hadn't returned her calls. Rehab. Addiction. It all made sense. “I'm sorry, Claire. I know you've had a difficult time.”

Claire straightened her shoulders. “My own fault, I guess. I haven't been able to get over Brad's death. Somehow, I've gotten stuck. I can't break away from the past, from Brad, from losing him. I just keep wallowing in my grief. The sleeping pills and alcohol—they're only another way to dull the pain.” She eyed Ruby. “I guess you know about that, after losing Colin. The pain, I mean,” she added, “not the rest of it. You're not the wallowing type.”

Ruby smiled a little. “Well, there are lots of ways to wallow. I haven't done pills or booze, but that doesn't mean I don't—” She stopped. This wasn't about her and her troubles, it was about Claire.

“I actually thought I was going to make it,” Claire said. “I'd been thinking of leaving the magazine anyway. I had been hired to ghostwrite the memoir of a woman entertainer. I won't tell you her name because I signed a nondisclosure agreement, but you'd recognize it. She's a big-name singer in the Texas music business. Plus I had a couple of freelance editing
projects on the desk. The trouble was, though, that I'd been taking sleeping pills since Brad's death. And I was drinking again, too. And between the grief and the pain and those god-awful bills, I was a mess. Things finally got so bad, I didn't have any choice but to go for treatment. Then Aunt Ruth got killed, and when I got out of rehab, I discovered that I had inherited this place, together with just enough money to fix it up. My career was in shreds and I didn't have a way to support myself. I'm sure you can guess how I felt.”