Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Till Death Do Us Part by Patricia Hughes

Granny Grace couldn’t stop my sister’s wedding, but she did succeed in postponing it: she died. Despite Savannah’s histrionics, Grandpa refused to put his mother on ice while he jetted off to give away his eldest granddaughter into connubial bliss. So instead of flying east for New York nuptials, I headed west to pay my final respects to Granny.

Donner House presided over its acreage with nothing but a single tree to block its view of grazing cattle and pumping wells. I had no sooner climbed the steps than I had the first indication that this trip was going to be even more bizarre than usual: an icy hand touched my shoulder. I know that sounds like something Nana Nelle might say, but that’s what it felt like. I decided I was overwrought.

Nana greeted me warmly. “It’s high time you got here, Dallas.” (Mother had this thing for naming daughters after the place where she met their fathers. I’ve always been grateful she didn’t meet Daddy in Bull Head City or Buffalo.)

“It’s nice to see you, too, Nana.”

“Do something with your sister!”

I would have preferred an easier task, like teaching ballet to a longhorn.

Savannah had locked herself in what used to be her bedroom and was doing her best to get into the Guinness Book of Records for nonstop bawling. I had raised my hand to knock when Savannah screeched, “That old goat planned this! She didn’t have to die now!”

While it’s true Granny was dead set against the marriage, I had difficulty believing we should take that literally. I lowered my hand without knocking, turned, and walked into Granny’s room instead.

Granny’s belongings lay where she’d left them. I fingered a ball of yam from her knitting basket. A tear slid down my cheek.

“Well, it’s nice to know someone cared!” A voice behind my back startled me. “I knew I could count on you, Dallas,” said a young woman swathed in a fringed red chemise with matching headband and beads nearly down to her knees.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I spent a good portion of my life in here.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Really, Dallas! Don’t you recognize your Granny Grace?”

My Granny Grace? I was deciding what to do about this psycho when she said, “All right. If you must see.”

Right before my eyes she shifted into the shape of the old woman I had known. My knees didn’t take time to shake. They simply folded me ungracefully to the floor.

“Now, Dallas, you can’t possibly be afraid of your great-granny.” She faded, then popped back as the flapper. “Much better. Looking twenty-one again is the best part of being dead.” She floated up and hovered over the desk. “This is grand! Nothing hurts!”

I pulled myself to my feet. “How come you’re not knocking on the Pearly Grates, looking for Great-grandpa Rhett?”

“All in due time.” She dropped into a more normal position. “First, we have to do something about Savannah. She’s about to marry a reprobate.”

“It runs in the family. Why are you so excited about this particular one?”

“He’s a St. James.”

“A very prominent family, not to mention filthy rich.”

“Filthy’s the word all right. That’s how the old man made it — bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, and a few other rackets to boot. I’ll die before I’ll see a St. James in this family.”

“You did.”

“Don’t sass your elders.”

“Savannah is determined to marry Langston St. James. Just because his great-grandfather was a crook doesn’t mean he is.”

“Trust me. That polished veneer is covering the same sleazy genes. We’re going to stop this wedding.”

We? I didn’t like the sound of that. “Granny, it’s been very nice seeing you so... ah... young and spunky, but I’d really rather remember you the way you were. Savannah never listens to me anyway.”

“Not so fast, Dallas. I’ve been checking out this ghost stuff.”

“You always did keep up with the times.”

“Some of it is very liberating, but it has drawbacks. You pretty well have to be attached to something — a house, a person, something. I’ve latched onto you.”

“Me?”

“There’s no reason to haunt the house. It’s not going to the wedding.”

I ran a mental check of acceptable reasons for my not going either. It didn’t take long; death or the intensive care unit. Being kidnapped by terrorists was just a maybe. Anything less I would hear about until Mother’s dying breath.

Mother had completely rescheduled the wedding before the intended groom arrived for the funeral. (She is frightfully efficient at whatever she does except choosing husbands.) Of course, Savannah took full credit. She’d managed a complete metamorphosis for Langston’s benefit.

Overall, Granny was pleased with her official sendoff to the Great Beyond, even though she’d opted not to go, but her mood darkened when we returned home. She was bobbing around trying to dump Langston’s drink in his lap, but her hand passed right through it. Obviously, only I could see her.

The epitome of confidence, Langston stood tall, tanned, and muscular. Sex appeal oozed from his pores — so slick I was amazed he could stand up, let alone that Savannah could hold onto him. He was buttering Mother and Nana Nelle like a stack of flapjacks, and they were getting all syrupy.

Langston eased the conversation over to state politics, all the while feeling out Grandpa’s political clout. “We’re going to live here in Texas. I love the fresh air and open spaces.”

I opened a window. The heavy odor of crude oil tinged with the sour, weedy scent of manure tumbled off the breeze. Savannah slammed it shut. “We’re going to live in Austin.”

Open spaces? I suppose everything is relative.

“Although,” she continued, “I don’t know why. I think we should live on the East Coast.” Occasionally Savannah has a good idea.

“I want Savannah to be near her family. Besides,” Langston chuckled, brushing back his sunbleached hair with a well-manicured hand, “following our wives has become a St. James tradition. My brothers are scattered all over the country. We still manage to stay close.”

“And politically active,” I added. Alarms buzzed in my head. Langston’s father remained extremely influential in New York, while all his brothers had married heiresses from politically prominent families in different states — California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio. “Your relatives might add up to a lot of electoral votes.”

“Dallas!” Savannah glared at me. Mother’s mouth fell open, Grandpa frowned, and Langston fell silent. Nana just looked puzzled and ate another chocolate.

“That’s my girl,” beamed Granny. “Go for it.” Instead I took my drink out on the porch. Langston followed — on what pretense, I’m not sine.

He grinned. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“Do you think there’s a chance that’ll happen?”

“You’re a possibility thinker. Maybe I picked the wrong sister.” He moved closer.

“You’d best stick to the pretty one.”

“You look pretty good to me.” He moved closer still I backed away. “Aren’t you concerned that I might talk to Savannah?”

“Not especially.” Smugness danced through his eyes and curled up on one side of his lip.

“I guess not,” I said. “You do seem to be one of those critters that can come out lookin’ like a stallion when he’s just acted like a jackass.”

I tinned and headed for my room. From the corner of my eye I saw Langston’s drink jerk and splash him. Granny was getting better.

Traveling across country with a ghost puts a new perspective on everything. First of all, it’s somewhat unnerving to be walking around with someone no one else can see, and it can be embarrassing if anyone catches you talking to thin air. Furthermore, one learns things one might prefer not to — like who had a cardiac on the plane last month and is still flying around looking for his luggage, or who was murdered in the bed you’re sleeping in and doesn’t know she’s dead. I changed rooms twice.

Unlike the sprawling cities of Texas, New York stacks its inhabitants on top of each other. Below, in its concrete canyons, the populace ebbs and flows in rushing rivers of uncertain current. Langston rode those elements smugly buoyed by wealth and power, certain that everything would go his way as usual.

I was getting claustrophobic, and Granny was driving me crazy. “You have to help me, Dallas!”

“I’ve already talked to Savannah. It didn’t do any good. Why don’t you go haunt her instead of me?”

“I tried that. She neither sees nor hears me. Your mother and Nelle think he’s wonderful, and your grandfather’s caught up in the idea of political empires. I thought I raised him better than that.”

“Doesn’t Savannah have a right to make her own mistakes?”

“If she were standing on a track with a freight train coming, wouldn’t you push her out of the way?”

“Probably. Then I’d get hit by the train, and she’d yell at me for mussing her hair and makeup.” I was losing patience, and I had never understood the depth of Granny’s concern. “Why are you so worried about this marriage, anyway? It’s not going to last any longer than her first one, and if you really want to see Langston get what he deserves, just wait and see what Savannah does to him during the divorce.”

Granny disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

I didn’t see much of her for the next couple of hours, but I did find my mascara in the toilet and my red underwear flapping in the breeze from the balcony railing.

St. James Enterprises had just moved into a sparkling new skyscraper. Nana Nelle had already toured that, oohing every step of the way, but she had also taken an interest in the demolition of the old St. James Building. Grandpa wriggled out of taking her to see it by assigning me the task. That shouldn’t have been so bad. I rather like old buildings, but traipsing around one with an unwilling ghost is not my idea of a good time.

The old St. James Building was fenced off from the public, so Nana and I stood on the sidewalk peering through the fence.

Nana stared intently. “Isn’t that interesting?” she remarked as she always does when she hasn’t the foggiest idea what she’s talking about.

I was disappointed. Instead of the stately old edifice I had anticipated, the building was one of those soulless Art Deco monstrosities. Actually it wasn’t exactly soulless.

Granny Grace popped out of the sidewalk. “Dallas, I apologize for questioning your instincts. Monty knows everything about Langston and his cronies.” My instincts? Monty?

I distanced myself from Nana Nelle and everyone else that I could and whispered through my teeth, “What are you talking about?”

It turns out that Monty was an old business associate of Mickey St. James. The grand old patriarch had personally put six slugs into Monty and saved him for posterity by burying him under the foundation of his brand-new office building. Brand-new some seventy years ago.

“Monty just can’t bear to leave without a proper burial, so he’s still here. And guess what else, Miss Smarty?” said Granny. “He said the corpses are still piling up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then go find out.”

Granny disappeared, and Nana waddled over. “They absolutely will not let us in, Dallas. We might as well go back to the hotel.”

“Uh, not yet, Nana. Come over here and look through this little gap.”

She complied. “What am I supposed to see?”

“Why, the beauty of the stark symmetry. Look at the parallelism of the windows.”

“Oh yes,” she nodded. “That’s very interesting. They’re all so... so...”

“Rectangular,” I supplied.

By the time even Nana could be stalled no longer, Granny Grace had piled up enough dirt on the St. James family to challenge Everest, and Langston was burrowing right through the middle of it. Granny filled me in back at the hotel. Most of it had to do with underhanded business deals and political power plays — no surprises — but some of the things Granny told me were unsettling.

“Now do you see how dangerous these people are?” said Granny.

“They do seem to have an abnormally high number of close associates who are in poor health and prone to either accidents or suicide.”

“I knew you couldn’t hatch swans from buzzard eggs.”

“Savannah won’t believe it. There’s not one shred of evidence. Besides, I’m not sure it would make a difference. Savannah’s not that smart.”

“Did you know Langston had been married before?”

“No. And I don’t think Savannah does. That’s something we can use.”

“Not really. He’s smooth enough to talk his way out of that little oversight. They were only married forty-eight hours before the inappropriate little thing was found floating in the family pool. The family wasn’t happy with his selection.”

“I don’t think Langston’s going to be so happy with his selection when the knot is tied and his perfect mate reverts to the real Savannah.”

“She’s definitely not as docile as he thinks.”

“And worse — I remember telling you to wait and see what Savannah does during the divorce, only I no longer see him tolerating the damage a messy divorce would inflict on his debonair image. On the other hand, he could perfectly play the handsome, bereaved widower, harvesting a substantial sympathy vote from yet another unfortunate tragedy.”

“Dallas, you have to push Savannah off that track. She hasn’t got the good sense to see the train coming.”

“True. But logic or fear won’t work with Savannah. You have to go straight for vanity.” I thought awhile. “Maybe we should attend Langston’s bachelor party.”

We soon learned that the St. James men don’t give parties. They have orgies. Lots of women and very few clothes attended.

My job with the caterer cost me two hundred dollars, plus I didn’t get paid. I did get pinched, poked, and tickled.

The faster the drinks were poured, the louder the music. Langston didn’t recognize me. The red wig did the trick. Of course, the quantity of booze he consumed worked in my favor, too.

Langston was nuzzling a voluptuous blonde with a pout on her face. “You have to understand, Bunny,” he slurred. “This wedding doesn’t have to change anything between us. It’s a political thing.”

I proceeded to discreetly snap a few shots with my itsy-bitsy camera that fits in my pocket. Discretion is easy when one’s subject is so drunk he can’t see beyond his nose — or the navel he’s stuck it in.

“Come on,” said Granny. “I found out which boudoir is reserved for the guest of honor. Bring the tape.”

The challenge was not so much getting into the bedroom unobserved as it was getting through the crowd without having my clothes ripped off.

“Hey, sugar. Put that tray down, and I’ll show you a real good time.” A hand reached out and grabbed my arm.

“No way.” Another hand pulled me in the opposite direction. “The lady is with me.”

Being haunted has its moments. Granny slipped an ice cube down the front of the trousers of both ardent admirers.

I finally made it to the bedroom and slid a small tape recorder under the bed. “I’ve got to get back to the party. Granny, you stay here and operate this thing. They can’t see you.”

“All right.”

“And, Granny, no funny stuff. Inanimate objects are not supposed to move. If you start horsin’ around, you won’t have anything to show Savannah. Just turn the recorder on at the right time.”

“Humph!”

At that moment the door opened. Langston and Bunny stumbled in. Bunny’s giggle trailed into a frown when she saw me. “Who are you?”

Fortunately I still had my tray. “One of the caterers,” I replied in my best attempt at a Brooklyn accent. “I was just leaving youse guys some champagne. Enjoy.”

I placed the drinks on the bedside table and left. One good thing about growing up with Savannah is that you learn to think on your feet.

By four A.M. I was stepping over half naked bodies that dozed amidst empty bottles, glasses, and the remains of food. A couple of people had thrown up. The sour stench mingled with the odor of spilled champagne and scotch bounced off the leftover anchovy dip and did cartwheels around my stomach. The real caterers were long gone. I was the only person left standing, and I had plenty of film. The sleeping duo, Langston and Bunny, looked particularly photogenic, all bared and sweetly intertwined. I even took a closeup of his fancy, dated watch.

I got some very strange looks at the all-night one-hour photo place.

“These are grand,” said Granny as we looked through the prints, “and I guarantee the tape will get her dander up.”

When we reached the hotel, we found Savannah snoring. I quietly set the tape recorder on her nightstand, spread the photos across the bed, and started for the door. “Aren’t you going to stick around to see what happens?” asked Granny.

“I know what’s going to happen, Granny,” I whispered. “You turn on the tape. You’re already dead.”

It wasn’t long before Savannah’s shrieks registered about seven point five on the Richter scale, which was nothing compared to the intensity she hit when she saw Langston. I almost felt sorry for him. Savannah’s rage was a lot to endure with a hangover as big as his ego.

At Granny’s insistence we left Langston cowering before Savannah and returned to the St. James Building to thank Monty. The edifice lay crumpled, reduced to dusty rubble. Experts had blown the old girl’s underpinnings, collapsing her safely on top of herself. I watched workmen hauling away chunks of her with heavy equipment. Granny had disappeared.

Suddenly she burst through the sidewalk. “Dallas, look!”

“Would you stop that!” I said, much too loud.

People stared. I smiled and moved aside.

“The foundation is exposed! Monty’s right there!” Granny shoved my face to the gap, leaned through the fence, and pointed. “If they’d just chip away at that corner, they’d find him.”

I tried the teeth talk again. “They’re not chipping anything, Granny. They’re knocking hell out of it.”

“They can’t do that. They’ll pulverize him. He’ll never get a decent burial.”

The workman thought I was crazy, but for a hundred bucks he didn’t care. He stopped laughing when he removed a chunk of concrete and brushed away some soil and Monty’s skull stared back at him.

That was my cue to disappear. I wasn’t hanging around to explain how a ghost told me about Monty.

All was right with the world. Mother began systematically returning wedding gifts. Granny was so ecstatic she spent most of the time bouncing around the ceiling upside-down.

In order to soothe her frazzled nerves and mend her broken heart, Savannah had gone on the would-be honeymoon cruise with Nana Nelle in attendance. That allowed Grandpa to puff his way into oblivion with all the cigars that Nana wouldn’t let him touch when she was around.

Langston dropped by to bid me farewell. (Wasn’t that sweet?) He had the strangest idea I was somehow responsible for Savannah’s current mood. He handed me a newspaper. “What do you know about this?”

“It says they received an anonymous note with words cut from old newspapers, saying that the bones in your old building belonged to one Monty McDougal.”

“It says my great-grandfather shot him.”

“Chill out, Langston. They can’t execute your great-grandfather. He’s already dead. The police aren’t remotely interested.”

“The media is interested.”

“So it seems.”

“Perhaps you’ve never realized how well I know some of your employer’s most important clients, Dallas.”

“Thanks for your concern, but not to worry. I have some great photos. If I run into cash flow problems, I can always part with a few to the National Enquirer.”

Langston paled right through his tan.

Just in case he might be worried about my physical safety, I also assured him that I had a friend who would take good care of those photos should anything unforeseen befall my person.

The next day Monty’s elderly daughter claimed his remains, and I feel certain that Monty has gone on to his reward. Granny, on the other hand, came home with me, and now she says she can’t depart for the next world from any place other than Donner House. “I might miss Rhett.”

If I ask her why she didn’t just go back with Mother and Nana and Grandpa, she ignores me.

In the meantime, life with Granny Grace is somewhat akin to taking up housekeeping on a rollercoaster. I never know when she’s going to pop up between my nose and my date’s.

I just hope that, when I finally get some time off to take Granny back to Donner House, Great-grandpa Rhett will be waiting with open arms. Otherwise I have this chilling notion that Granny just might hang around until I go through the Pearly Gates with her.