Widow's Tears (27 page)

“No, you wouldn't,” Claire said, and patted her hand. “You're stronger than that.”

“I don't know about that,” Ruby said. “I've already started letting it narrow my relationship options.” She turned to me with a repentant look. “I'm sorry about letting Ramona think I might take her up on her offer, China. I know better. She would drive all the Cave's customers away in a matter of weeks, and she'd be a terrible partner for you and Cass. She's too dictatorial. She wants to be queen of the world.”

Dictatorial
. I couldn't have chosen a better word. I let out a gusty sigh, feeling as if the weight of the world had just rolled off my shoulders. “Ruby, I am
so
relieved to hear you say that. I couldn't tell whether Ramona was telling it straight or making things up. I even thought that she might be testing to see how I would respond to the idea that she might buy into the partnership. That idea wasn't working for me, and I came because I just had to find out how much of it was true. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry,” Ruby said. “I love my sister—most of the time, anyway. But she can be very pushy when she decides she wants something. I should have told her no, right from the start.”

I was relieved to know I wouldn't be taking bad news back to Pecan Springs with me. But I still had some to deliver. “I'm sorry to tell you this, Ruby,” I said gravely, “but Bonnie Roth was killed this evening. She was shot during a robbery at the bank, just before it closed.”

Ruby stared at me, incredulous. “Bonnie!” she whispered. Her hand went to her mouth. “Not Bonnie! Oh, China, not Bonnie!”

“I'm afraid so,” I said soberly. “I went to the bank to make the deposit, yours and mine, but the drive-through islands were closed and the parking lot was full of cops and patrol cars. EMS was there, too. As soon as I saw Maude Porterfield's truck, I knew there'd been a fatality. Rita Kidder told me who it was.”

Ruby shook her head, pressing her lips together. “Did they get the guy who did it?” she asked bleakly.

“Not when I was there,” I said. “The getaway vehicle was wearing stolen plates. They got the make and model from a surveillance tape, but there must be a gazillion Ford Ranger trucks in Texas.”

“A friend of yours, I guess,” Claire said sympathetically. “I'm so sorry.” She frowned. “I wonder if it's the same gang that's been robbing the banks around here. The Fayetteville bank got hit last week.”

“Terrible,” Ruby muttered. “Just terrible.”

The silence stretched out for a long moment. Then, just as I heard the shimmering sound of that silvery bell again, Ruby spoke up, obviously making an effort to be cheerful. “Well, whatever brought you down here tonight, Claire and I are glad you came. Aren't we, Claire?”

“You said it,” Claire replied fervently.

“Thanks.” Curious, I added, “Say, what was that little bell just now? I heard it before, when I was knocking on the back door.”

“Bell?” Ruby asked innocently. “I didn't hear a bell. Did you, Claire?” She and Claire traded secret glances and Claire, wide-eyed, shook her head.

“Not I,” she said.

I laughed a little uncomfortably. “I must be hearing things.” Lightning flared blue-white outside the window. There was a smashing crash of thunder
and all of us jumped. “Listen, I don't want to interrupt anything the two of you had planned for tonight, but I hope you've got room for another guest. They're forecasting heavy rain from this tropical storm—as much as eight or nine inches in this area. I'd rather not drive back to Pecan Springs until Amanda's blown over. And I would definitely
not
like to try that steep hill in my Toyota. I don't have four-wheel drive. I'd probably end up in the creek.”

“Amanda?” Ruby looked puzzled for a moment, then threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, now I get it! That's what you meant by TS Amanda in your text message. Tropical Storm Amanda!”

“Actually, we were going to suggest that you stay all night,” Claire said slowly, trading another secret glance with Ruby. “In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to leave even if you wanted to. And not because of that hill.”

“I couldn't?” I frowned. “Because?”

There was a silence. “Because your car probably won't work,” Ruby said uncomfortably.

“I don't understand. My car was working okay when I got here. I mean, it didn't much like that hill, but otherwise it was fine. Why won't it work now?”

“We don't know,” Claire said helplessly. She looked at Ruby. “Do you think maybe she should try it and see?”

Ruby looked at the rain beating against the window. “I guess,” she said hesitantly. “Then we'd know for sure. If China's car works, then it must be a matter of…us. You and me.”

Claire nodded. “It would settle the question.”

“I'm sure there's a plot here somewhere,” I said, looking from one to the other. “Is somebody going to tell me what it is, or do I have to keep guessing?”

Ten minutes later, I had some of the story, or at least enough to understand that something weird had happened to their cell phones, their flashlight batteries, their car batteries, and the electricity. They were about to tell me more—something about a ghostly apparition in Victorian dress and pans clanging and balls bouncing and harps playing—but I suggested that we take a break. We could save the supernatural stuff for later.

“You might be right about my car,” I said, getting out of my chair. “I tried to use my flashlight so I wouldn't fall over something in the dark and smash our pie, but the dang thing refused to work. It would be a good idea to give the car a try, though, just so we know what's what. And I want to check my cell phone. Does somebody have a raincoat, or maybe a poncho?”

“You're not going out there alone, are you?” Ruby asked nervously. “It's dark out there, China. I don't think—”

“Then make that two raincoats,” I said. “And we'll take a lamp.”

Claire fetched a raincoat and a poncho while I covered the top of the lamp chimney with a piece of aluminum foil to keep the wick dry, and then Ruby and I dashed through the pouring rain to my car. The ground must have been pretty well saturated, because the rain wasn't soaking in. There were spreading puddles everywhere, impossible to avoid. Our errand didn't take long, and we didn't linger. Four minutes later, we were back in the house.

“You can say, ‘I told you so,'” I said to Claire, who was standing inside the kitchen door with the oil lamp. I pulled the poncho over my head and hung it on a wall peg, then bent over to unlace my wet sneakers. “The car battery is totally dead. It won't even power the headlights. My cell phone is a goner, too.”

“Well, at least it's not just us. Claire and me, I mean.” Ruby had found a towel and was drying her hair. “Which means that the three of us are here for the duration, however long that is.” She dropped the towel and
looked at Claire. “Which also means that we have to tell China the rest of the story—as much as we know, anyway.”

“The part about the ghost, I suppose,” I said, resigned. “And the harp and the ball and the dancing pans. All that weird supernatural stuff.” I thought of what I had said that morning, showing off, trying to be funny.
Bust those ghosts. Purge those poltergeists. Get rid of those ghouls
. I still wasn't convinced that we were up against something supernatural here, but I certainly couldn't explain all those dead batteries. And it was daunting to think that we were stuck in this house, miles from anywhere, in the middle of a tropical storm, with no means of summoning help and no way to leave unless we wanted to hike seven miles to the county road and hope to catch a ride to the nearest phone. My efforts to be funny didn't seem at all funny now.

“Yes,” Ruby said with a sigh. “All that weird supernatural stuff. I know you're a skeptic, China. But there are some things about the world that your mega-logical legal mind just has to learn to accept. Like the bell, for instance.”

I was wary. “The…bell?”

“It's a little brass bell on a table in the drawing room,” Claire replied helpfully. “Designed to be rung when the mistress of the house wanted something.”

“But it rings all by itself,” Ruby added. “When nobody else is in the room.” She gave me a telling look. “You heard it yourself. I know you did. Twice.”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I admit to hearing the bell, but that doesn't mean—”

“And just in case you suspect that either Claire or I rang it,” Ruby went on, “I would like to point out that the second time you heard it, we were all together in the morning room. And there is no one else in the house.” She dropped her voice. “No one
living
, that is.”

“If you say so,” I said. “But—”

“And there's the menu board,” Claire put in. “Ruby, we need to show it to her. Maybe that will convince her that we're not making things up.”

“Good idea.” Ruby took my arm and led me to the wall, while Claire brought the lamp. I saw two stoves, one old-fashioned cooking range and a smaller gas stove. Next to the gas stove was a table and a rack of pans.

I suppressed a dry chuckle. “Those are the dancing pans, I suppose.”

“Actually, yes,” Claire said. “Sometimes they bang against one another.” She glanced at Ruby. “I've heard it often. And Ruby and I both
saw
it, just this afternoon.”

“But that's not what we want to show you,” Ruby said. “It's the menu board, China. When I got here this afternoon, Claire's grocery list was written up there. But when we started to make supper, we saw that the list had been erased and
this
was written in its place.”

Claire held up the lamp. In the circle of its light, I saw that next to the rack of pans hung one of those old-fashioned menu boards that you sometimes see in funky restaurants. Something was written on it—not Claire's grocery list, I assumed. Anyway, it wasn't a list. It was phrases and words, written at odd angles all over the board in a spidery Spenserian script, the kind of writing you see in your great-grandmother's letters.

“Read it out loud,” Ruby commanded.

I leaned closer, and read what I saw. “
Crooked man
,
crooked cat
,
crooked house
. And then there are three words kind of scattered around:
roof hole clown.
” I frowned. “No,” I corrected myself. “That's not
clown.
The handwriting is a little hard to read. It's
drown.
”

Behind me, Ruby gasped. “But that isn't what we saw, is it, Claire?”

“No,” Claire said, very quietly. “When we saw it before supper, there were four words:
crooked man, crooked sixpence.
And there was a date.
That's been erased and this is written in its place.” She read the board again, almost whispering the words. “
Crooked man
,
crooked cat
,
crooked house
.
Roof
,
hole
,
drown.
”

“You're sure there's been nobody else in the house?” I asked. “Nobody in the kitchen today? Nobody could have come in while you were in the morning room and written this, for a joke or something?”

“Just Kitty,” Claire said slowly. “She's Sam's wife. He's the caretaker. She was here this afternoon. But I know I looked at the board when she was leaving, because she and Sam were on their way to Houston and she said she'd pick up the things I had on my grocery list. Bread, milk, yogurt, coffee. That was what was on the board when she left. But the next time I looked, a couple of hours later, it was
crooked man
,
crooked sixpence
. And a date.”

“We know who wrote it,” Ruby said. “It was Rachel.”

“Rachel?” I asked, frowning. “I thought Claire just said that Kitty was the only one who—”

“Rachel is our ghost,” Claire said. “Rachel Blackwood.”

To give myself credit, I did not roll my eyes. I was about to ask the logical next question—
Who is Rachel Blackwood?
—but Ruby interrupted.

“China,” she said urgently, “this is all the more weird because I have been hearing those lines in my head all day—
before
I saw them on that board. And before I saw them in a book in the nursery upstairs.” She shook her head. “I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.”

“All day?” I asked. “Starting when? Before you left Pecan Springs?”

Ruby frowned, concentrating. “No. It started when I was driving down the hill and caught a glimpse of this house, which reminded me of the title of an Agatha Christie story. Wait until you see it in the daylight, China. It really is sort of
crooked
, like the parts of it were just put together,
helter-skelter.” Her frown deepened. “And the words
crooked man
popped into my head when I saw Sam for the first time. Sam Rawlings,” she added. “Claire's caretaker. He stopped me on the hill.”

“
Crooked man
fits him,” Claire said. To me, she added, “The jerk beats up on his wife. In my book, that makes him crooked.”

Ruby was peering at the board. “
Roof
,
hole
,
drown
,” she muttered. “That reminds me of something else, but I can't think what.”

“It's from an old song,” Claire said. She began humming and snapping her fingers. “I can't remember all the words, but that nursery rhyme is the verse—
There was a crooked man
—and he's trying to fix his roof with crooked nails. The chorus is about a roof with a hole in it and everybody might drown. Or something.” She hummed another few bars.

“It's called ‘Don't Let the Rain Come Down,'” I said ironically. “Appropriate,” I added, as the thunder boomed.