Dead Man Talking

  Chapter 32

  “Wh — what? Wh — who? U — us?” I stammered. “Huh-uh. No way. We’ve flirted with arrest for interfering in a police investigation too much already. No way in hell are we gonna actually steal evidence!”

  “We’ll give it back.” Granny slid toward the side of the mattress, and Twila helped her to the floor.

  “Granny’s right,” Twila said. “There’s no choice, with Jack refusing to cooperate.”

  I glanced at Twila. “You can’t be serious about sanctioning this. We can’t steal that head, even if we do plan to return it.”

  “Katy’s in jail,” Twila reminded me. “Charged with murder.”

  “But — ”

  “Weren’t you listenin’?” Granny asked. “Jack said he was takin’ that head to Campton’s for the night. Storin’ it in one of them body coolers ‘til they can send it on to that place they use in Garland to do them autopsy things.”

  “So?” I questioned. “And no, I wasn’t paying much attention. The roaring in my ears made it impossible for me to focus on anything but that damn dangling case!”

  “Campton’s,” Granny repeated. “My granddaughter, Maxine Campton, was the JP who came out and declared Bucky dead. An’ she and her husband, Claude, run Campton’s Funeral Home out there on the edge of Jefferson.”

  “You can’t ask your granddaughter to risk her position and business,” I insisted.

  “Watch me." Granny walked over to the bedside phone.

  “Wh — who’s going to handle the damn thing?” I protested. “Not me!”

  “We’ll worry 'bout that when we get there." Granny picked up the phone.

  “Yeah, like we worried about who’d handle it once we found the darn thing!”

  “Come on,” Twila urged, joining Sir Gary at the door. “Let Granny make her arrangements. You need a break from this situation for a while.”

  I needed a permanent break from this situation, but that wasn’t going to happen. Katy depended on us. I held Trucker’s leash tightly and made sure the fireplace was solidly latched while Granny punched in numbers on the phone. Then I released the dog to stay with Granny and followed Twila and Sir Gary down the hall to the Blue Room. Behind us, Granny’s faint “Hello” negated any hope that her granddaughter wouldn’t answer — and that we’d have to pass on Granny’s plan.

  In the Blue Room, Twila motioned me to a chair in front of the fireplace. Someone had laid kindling and logs in the grate, and Twila took a wooden match from a silver case on the mantle and struck it against the bricks. She touched flame to kindling, and the fire crackled with small flames, which spread into a cheery blaze — a definite contradiction to my mood. The visage under the shelf — on the body of the doll — the sack dangling from Jack’s hand —

  Twila sat in another lounge chair. “Let’s talk about Sir Gary’s problem. Take our minds off Bucky and let the thoughts calm down and soak in our subconscious. We probably won’t be able to go after the head for a couple hours or so.”

  “It’ll take Jack a while to store it and get out of our way." I clapped my hand over my mouth and surged to my feet. “I can’t believe I said that! No way! We can’t steal evidence!”

  “We’re only borrowing it, Alice,” Twila said in a placid voice. “Sit down.”

  I sat, but not because she told me to. My unsteady legs were glad to be relieved of my body’s weight. “Twila, we’ve done a lot of things together in our lives. Things we probably should have been arrested for. But this...this —”

  Twila ignored me and turned to Sir Gary. “Would you like to sit?” she asked.

  “I’m fine." He leaned against the fireplace. “However, we discussed my predicament earlier and came to no conclusions.”

  “Alice may have a new perspective. Why don’t you repeat what you told me?”

  Sir Gary nodded. “It’s not much more than she already knows. I recall being with a woman — not my wife, as I told Alice — during the last moments I can remember about my life.”

  I leaned forward. Maybe Twila was right and I needed a different path for my thoughts for a while. “Tell us who she was. It may mean something.”

  “I doubt it,” Sir Gary said. “I was breaking off the relationship. She had an offer of marriage, to a decent man. I wanted her to accept the proposal and have a good life.”

  “Instead of guilty liaisons in out-of-the way rooms,” I added.

  “That was part of it,” Sir Gary conceded.

  “I wonder if there truly was another man in her life?” Twila asked. “Sometimes women will make up a story like that to see if jealousy spurs a reluctant lover into committing himself.”

  “There was never any question of my leaving my wife,” Sir Gary denied. “And yes, there was another man. My brother.”

  Twila cocked her head attentively. “You didn’t mention him.”

  “It seems we get disrupted now and then from our discussions. It was my older brother, James. The one who inherited the title. He’d lost his wife in childbirth, along with the child, his first. He came to visit me as he worked through his grief and ended up staying several months. Lucinda, my wife, liked him quite well and never complained about him being with us so long. In fact, I believe James’s company was good for Lucinda, since he was quite kind to her. I, on the other hand, had trouble being in my wife’s presence.”

  “You said her riding accident was your fault,” I recalled. Lord, it seemed like weeks ago that we’d talked in the Garden Room instead of just yesterday.

  Sir Gary gazed at the floor. “I bought her the mare. She loved to ride. Had been born into a horse family. I met her during a trip to a farm to furnish my own stables after my shipping company became successful enough for me to purchase a larger home with its own pond on some lovely grounds. Quite a beautiful place, and besides horses, it needed a woman to care for it.”

  I shot him a frown, and he hastily added, “But I did care for Lucinda. It wasn’t one of those matches of convenience. Until...until the accident a year into our marriage.”

  “Children?” Twila asked.

  “No. We were careful about that at first. Lucinda wanted us to have some time alone before we started a family. After our marriage, she took a deep interest in our stables. She desired to breed her own line of horses, and I had plenty of funds to allow her that joy." He frowned slightly. “Even though that wasn’t the most...womanly occupation for her time. However, I spent hours upon hours away from home, keeping the shipping business on sound financial grounds. So I had no problem with her hobby filling her free time.”

  Twila and I flashed each other a look, in complete understanding as to how we felt about his chauvinistic comment, but let it slide. “So how’d you end up buying a mare on your own?” I asked. “Wasn’t she in charge of that?”

  “I found the mare in a cargo of horses in a ship that docked at our port. Arabians. The man who’d purchased the horses died before they arrived, and the widow wanted them auctioned off. I bought the mare for looks and breeding. I didn’t think to ride her first.”

  “But Lucinda would have wanted to ride her first thing,” I mused, knowing the woman without ever having met her.

  “The mare appeared docile. She tolerated the bridle and saddle without difficulty. Lucinda was terribly excited. She thanked me profusely, allowing that the mare was perfect for her breeding plans.”

  “We’re sort of getting off the track here,” Twila reminded us. She’s not much of a horse person. But I was deeply interested in the story. I nodded at Sir Gary to continue.

  “The mare flew into a frenzy the moment Lucinda got into the saddle. Looking back, I believe it was the riding skirt. There was a breeze that day, and part of her skirt flew up and landed across the mare’s eyes. No one was holding the mare. Lucinda wouldn’t allow that indignity to her riding skills.”

  “She was thrown,” I said.

  “More than that." Sir Gary glanced up to gauge our reactions just as Granny toddled into the roo
m, Trucker and Miss Molly behind her.

  “All set,” she said.

  “We’ll talk about that in a minute, Granny,” I said gently. “Sir Gary’s explaining what happened to his wife right now.”

  Granny nodded agreeably, and I focused on Sir Gary. However, Twila politely rose and offered Granny her chair, something I should have thought of. The elderly woman limped over and took the seat gratefully, and Twila stepped behind her. Miss Molly gracefully settled on Granny’s lap and Trucker touched noses with her before he lay down in front of the fire.

  “You said it was more than just being thrown from the mare,” I prodded.

  He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. Obviously this was painful. “The mare caught Lucinda off guard, though I’d seen her ride difficult-to-handle horses before. Yes, she was thrown. But the mare didn’t quit. Screaming in rage, she pounded Lucinda with those sharp hooves, flinging her body around like a lifeless doll before I lunged forward and stopped her.”

  We waited breathlessly as Sir Gary controlled his emotions, then said, “But she was in a wicked rage. She snapped at me, reared and plunged. I had a pistol on my belt. I shot her. She fell, and I rushed over to Lucinda. It wasn’t only her body that was mangled. One side of her face had taken the full brunt of one hoof.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Granny murmured.

  “She’d been a beautiful woman,” Sir Gary went on. “But her spine was also injured and she was in a wheelchair from then on. She never rode again. She grew embittered, angry. There was no chance of children, something that she’d wanted as soon as we decided the time was right. And whenever I looked at her from then on, I was reminded of my part in her ruined life. Reminded that I deserved all the harsh words she spoke to me. Which were, from then on, the extent of our conversations. She, of course, moved into another bedroom.”

  We listened to the fire snap and crackle. The drapes were open, and beyond the window the clouds had subsided in the night sky, leaving behind a blanket of stars glowing both dim and bright. Some winked as though shadows passed across them in those mega-million light years before their light meandered through the universe for our enjoyment. A shooting star flared an arc across the heavens, drawing my gaze to Centaurus, the half-man, half-horse constellation, which Greek legend said Jupiter had placed in the sky after Hercules accidentally killed him.

  Who knew? Maybe Lucinda was up there now, free from pain and enjoying riding once more. I looked at Sir Gary, who was gazing out the window now. Our eyes met, and I knew he’d seen the shooting star.

  “You said James was good to Lucinda,” I said. “But he evidently fell in love with...what was your current mistress’s name?”

  “Current?" Twila frowned. She didn’t like straying men any more than I did.

  Granny caught our drift and shrugged. “Man’s got needs. ‘Specially a young man. Even carryin’ a load of guilt and not bein’ able to gaze on a woman he once loved.”

  That didn’t make me much more sympathetic, even though I’d spent a lot of long, lonely nights in my own bed after Jack and I divorced. But I supposed I could understand.

  “Her name was Alexa." Sir Gary gazed at us steadily. “She and James met at a ball. And before you ask, no, James did not know Alexa and I were lovers. From what I gathered, he and Alexa weren’t waiting for the marriage bed to consummate their relationship either.”

  “She was pregnant." A dreamy look on Twila’s face indicated she’d tuned into long-gone vibes from a thousand miles way, centuries earlier.

  “No!” Sir Gary denied. “She couldn’t have been!”

  “It wasn’t yours." Twila still focused across the veil. “It was James’s child, but she wasn’t sure.”

  I surged to my feet and glanced at Granny. “How long before your granddaughter will let us into the funeral home?”

  Granny pulled a small pocket watch from her ever-present skirt pocket and opened the cover. “‘Bout another hour or so.”

  “What are you thinking, Alice?” Twila asked.

  “Katy did a genealogical search on Sir Gary. It’s probably still stored on her computer, since I’m sure she would have wanted me to see it. We might as well use the time we’re waiting productively. Katy’s computer’s in the Master Suite.”

  I led my cohorts to the Master Suite. Katy kept her computer in an early 1800s wardrobe she’d converted. When I opened the wardrobe, modern technology, mixed with the age-gone-by, graceful décor Katy achieved, appeared incongruous in the historical ambiance. Uneasy about invading Katy’s privacy, I powered the computer up and sat down at the keyboard. My band of followers gathered behind me.

  Katy hadn’t passworded her system. I clicked into the same word processing program I used and studied the folders. Easy enough; she’d labeled one “Sir Gary Gavin." I opened it and then a “Genealogy” sub-file. Her usual scrupulous self, Katy annotated several generations of English ancestors. I arrowed through until I found the ghost’s birth.

  “Look. Katy even did a little research on Lucinda. Oh, dear.”

  Sir Gary peered over my shoulder. “She died a few months after I did. Do you think the records might show what happened to her?”

  Another file probably contained the information, but I glanced at Twila, who shook her head. Assuming Twila’s psychic senses had retrieved that and her warning meant it wasn’t something Sir Gary needed to know, I evaded lying. “I don’t see anything about causes of death,” and I continued, “but Alexa and James did marry. They had four sons, and one daughter.”

  I scanned further. “Well, I’ll be. I guess you’ve got some pioneering genes in your family, Sir Gary. The descendants spread out all over the country. One of your great-great...ever how many generation greats...nieces lives here in East Texas. A nephew in New Orleans. It’s probable that Katy and I have met them over the years.”

  “I’m glad to see my family line didn’t die out,” Sir Gary said. “Perhaps having family in the area led my wanderings here. But that still doesn’t tell us what happened to me.”

  Something thumped downstairs, and we all stared at the door. “That might be Bucky,” I said. “Will you go see, Sir Gary? You can handle him better than we can right now.”

  Obediently, the ghost dissolved, and Twila murmured, “It was probably just Sue Ann dropping something. Let’s look at whatever you were reluctant to show Sir Gary.”

  I clicked on the “Causes of Death” file and paged to Sir Gary’s name. And frowned, puzzled. The information only gave the cause, not the circumstances, our quest.

  “Drowning?” Twila read. “But he was a sailor.”

  “Very few sailors back in those days knew how to swim,” I explained. “But here, look. He died in Boston, at his home. He must have drowned in the pond on his estate.”

  “Lucinda died of pneumonia." Twila pointed at the screen. “But I’d already sensed that. And it was a fairly peaceful death, from what I gathered.”

  “Good,” I said. “She had enough pain in her life.”

  I closed the file, not knowing how soon Sir Gary would return. Twila shut her eyes, concentrating, but shook her head. “I don’t understand why I can’t break through the veil and find out how Sir Gary died. I didn’t have any trouble reaching back to Lucinda.”

  “Something’s complicating it,” I guessed. “We’ll need to do a séance at some point.”

  Sir Gary materialized. “The noise was the housekeeper and her husband on the porch, repairing the windows. And your phone is ringing in your bedroom, Alice.”

  We all rushed to the Peach Room. It wasn’t the bedside phone. I opened my briefcase and grabbed my cell phone. When I answered, a voice asked, “Granny?”

  “Uh...no, this is Alice.”

  “This is Maxine Campton,” the woman said. “My grandmother asked me to call her back on this number.”

  My gang of co-conspirators lined the doorway, listening. “Maxine?” Granny asked. “I give her that number, ‘cause I didn’t know where we’d be when sh
e called back.”

  I walked over and handed her the phone.

  “Hello?" She listened for a few seconds, then said, “See you in a bit,” and disconnected. “We’re all set. Jack’s gone, and he won’t be back ‘til sometime in the mornin’.”

  I swallowed. Tried to, anyway. My gag reflex engaged as a picture of that grisly head under the shelf in the Hollow Room flashed through my mind again. A vision which Twila must have read, because she touched my shoulder soothingly. “We can go alone.”

  “No,” I said firmly...well, somewhat firmly, since one side of my mind shouted for joy at the chance of evading this journey, but the other side told me that no way in hell would I stay behind. “We’ll take one of Katy’s cars, just in case Jack prowls back past the funeral home tonight. He’d recognize my Jeep.”

  Before we left, Trucker needed to go out. Downstairs once again, I glanced out of the Garden Room windows, looking for the guards, but didn’t see anyone. Real secure security guards. But with Trucker by my side, I didn’t hesitate. I let him and Miss Molly out, then followed into the Rose Garden. With the lights gleaming and the clear sky, there weren’t many shadows to contend with.

  Miss Molly didn’t care much for an outdoors litter box, but she pranced daintily through the grass. She headed straight for the same rose bush she’d been so interested in before while Trucker did his business. A blasted peacock wandered out from behind the rose bush, spied the cat, and squawked with that eerie sound I loathed. Miss Molly raced at the bird, growling in cat and arching her back.

  The peacock spread its multi-eyed tail, which gave Miss Molly pause, since it now appeared a much larger antagonist. I grinned, proud of her when she stalked onward. The peacock scratched dirt, flinging pieces of mulch behind it, and stood its ground until the cat slinked to within a couple feet. Then it garbled one last squawk — sounded like fear to me — and half-flew, half-scrambled off across the Rose Garden and disappeared.

  Miss Molly complacently washed her fur as Trucker joined his friend. The cat finished her brief bath, rose and nosed at the disturbed mulch beneath the bush, and meowed up at Trucker. After a second, the dog started to dig.

  “No!" I rushed over. “Katy’ll have a conniption.”

  I pulled Trucker back, but Miss Molly took his place. I’d never seen a cat actually dig in the dirt, unless it was covering up leavings, but Miss Molly hadn’t done anything that needed to be covered. I reached down to pick her up — and saw the corner of the package. A plastic manuscript package, dark brown, which blended with the dirt and mulch. The animals had it nearly completely uncovered, and I brushed the rest of the dirt off and tugged it free.

  Bucky’s manuscript. He must have hidden it on the Esprit d’Chene grounds, maybe the night he was murdered. I untied the string and pulled out the first page to confirm my suspicions. A nearly illegible scrawl on yellow tablet — something an editor would send back promptly if it crossed his or her desk — but I could read it even in the dim light. And it wasn’t the formatting or preparation. The contents were what could cause a public uproar if they ever got beyond this plastic sheath.

  Something else also. I shoved my hand between the manuscript pages, but didn’t bother removing the videotape. I knew what was on that, also.

  “Jack needs to have this,” I said to my pets as I stood. They gazed up at me, and Trucker cocked his head. I blew out a resigned breath. Katy’s conniption fit wasn’t going to even compare to Jack’s when he found out I hadn’t immediately called him. No way could I get involved in another explanation just now. We had other things to do.

  Pets at my heels, I went back into the house, where I showed the find to Granny and Twila in the kitchen.

  “The manuscript you told me about when we had lunch,” Twila guessed correctly.

  Granny patted her foot. “We can talk 'bout that later. Maxine’s waitin’.”

  I stuck the manuscript in one of the lower cabinets, then brushed my hands. “Let’s go. But where’s Sir Gary?”

  “He said he’d stay here and keep an eye on Bucky,” Twila explained. “If he shows up, Sir Gary will tell him what we’re up to and, hopefully, keep him calm until we return.”

  We chose the Mercedes, both for comfort and dark windows. I found the keys on the wall hook, and Granny and Twila piled into the back seat with Trucker, crouching low, since I was afraid the guards would question us. I hoped my cover story would keep them from reporting our departure to Jack.. I put Miss Molly in front, then pushed the button to open the garage door.

  I backed the car out, and one of the guards on the porch saw us. That’s where all of them had been, I realized, helping Gabe cover up the windows. One guard strolled over, and I inched the window down slightly. “Out of cat litter. Be back in a half hour or so.”

  He turned away without reaching for the radio on his belt. Relieved, I continued down the drive as Twila helped Granny up to settle on the seat. A gate opener lay on the console, and I used it to slide the gate open. The guard there started toward us, but I called out, “Cat litter. Be right back,” and drove on before he got close. I watched in the rearview mirror as I closed the gate. He took up his post without any indication of reporting our departure.