Bloodless

27

Francis Wellstone Jr., having donned a new suit and tie, sat in the same parlor, in the same venerable wing chair, with the same view of West Oglethorpe Avenue, that he recalled from his first visit. There were, however, a few differences of note. It was not morning, but past six in the evening; he’d been served sweet tea instead of lemonade; and his hostess, Mrs. Daisy Fayette, was in a less agreeable mood than the first time they’d met.

“Do you mean to say that he actually interrupted your segment?” Wellstone asked, injecting surprise and sympathy into his voice.

Daisy nodded, her lavender-tinged hair shaking in displeasure. A tiny cloud of powder rose from it before settling again. “I was just beginning to explain why the Montgomerie House was haunted — an eddy in the spiritual ether, caused by the murder-suicide — when he cut me off. In midsentence... and in front of everybody, with the cameras still filming!”

“I’ve heard that Betts has a reputation of being an unpleasant person to work with. But to needlessly humiliate someone who’s helping him...!” Wellstone shook his head, at the same time finding a secret pleasure in the fact that he wasn’t the only one to be recently humiliated by that bloviating dotard producer.

By now, Wellstone had taken the measure of Savannah — its history, legends, and secrets. In Daisy’s circle of southern gentility and decorum, Betts’s oafish behavior would have been dealt with in a different way, and old Mr. Fayette, if he hadn’t been moldering in the grave, might have called Betts out, fought a duel with him, over the insult. Perhaps the old ways weren’t so barbaric after all.

On the other hand, Daisy’s outrage was exactly what he’d been hoping for. After his fury over his treatment at Lafitte’s had cooled, his mind had begun working strategically again. Daisy was almost certainly ready to become a useful informant on Betts, his inside source, so to speak.

“I visited the Montgomerie House myself just yesterday,” Wellstone said, taking a sip of iced tea. “I thought it to be one of the most fascinating spots I’ve ever visited. And spiritually disturbing,” he hastily added. “Especially after reading your most informative, ah, book about it.”

“Thank you,” Daisy said.

Pamphlet, Wellstone had almost said; fortunately he had corrected himself in time. He’d tut-tut a little more, then get down to business. “I’m surprised, actually, to hear that Betts had so little interest in the Montgomerie ghosts. I would have thought it precisely the kind of thing he could work into his documentary.”

“Oh, he was interested,” Daisy said. “It was that other man who said there were no ghosts.”

“That other man?” Wellstone repeated, although he knew exactly which man that was.

Daisy nodded. “Moller. The one with all the equipment.”

“Moller wasn’t interested?” he asked.

Daisy hesitated. “No... not exactly that. He said his instruments weren’t picking up any traces of ghostly activity.”

Wellstone shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. As we both know, the house is profoundly haunted. My guess is...”

He hesitated for drama.

“What?”

“That this Moller is a quack. You must have run into them, Daisy. Someone who claims to know about the science of the paranormal but is nothing more than a showman, a fake.”

“I certainly have! You run into them all the time while doing supernatural research.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole documentary is a ridiculous charade.”

Daisy took a demure sip of her tea. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

“But... what happened when Moller couldn’t find any ghosts?”

“Betts actually told Moller to make his instruments ‘work better.’” She smiled slightly — the prickly smile Wellstone recalled from his first visit. “Moller told him that finding nothing there would make it all the more believable when they did find something.”

Wellstone shook his head sympathetically. She was going to be a gold mine of information on Betts and Moller.

At that moment, Daisy perked up. “Which reminds me!”

“What is it?”

“How foolish of me to forget! Heavens, my memory isn’t what it used to be.” Daisy stood up and walked out of the parlor. A moment later, with a swish of pantyhose, she returned.

“I was there, in the Montgomerie House... ‘on the set,’ as you say,” she told him as she sat down again. “I had just been interrupted by Mr. Betts. I was standing in the background — rather stunned, I might say — when I recalled what you said about getting a look behind the scenes.”

“That’s right,” Wellstone replied.

“I was able to get some pictures.”

“What?” Wellstone asked. This was far better than he’d expected. He had almost asked her to take a few clandestine photos, but figured it was too risky. As it turned out, she’d taken the initiative herself.

“My phone has a camera, of course.” She pulled out a late-model cell phone and showed it to him. She tried to turn it on for several seconds before realizing she was holding it upside down. Rotating it, she pressed the screen here and there, until at last she gave a little chirp of triumph.

“You said you wanted information, so I took some pictures while pretending to send emails. There!” she said, handing him the phone.

Wellstone took the phone. It showed a black screen. He swiped his finger across it, revealing a blurred, dark image. And another.

“I’m not really all that good with it yet,” Daisy said apologetically.

Wellstone swiped his way through a dozen more photos blurred by movement and out of focus. Then he came to a set where the phone, apparently, had self-adjusted for the environment. He saw a darkened corridor, two cameramen, that charlatan Betts... and some kind of cloth on the floor, covered with a bizarre array of tools and other objects. Beside it was something he was very familiar with, given his years in and out of television studios: a hard case with foam cutouts of the kind photographers and sound engineers used to protect their gear. When he zoomed in on it, he could see more items still inside the foam cradles: a jagged, lightning-shaped piece of silver; a metering device of some kind; a large box camera; a battered cross; an oscilloscope; and a piece of smoked glass.

These were Moller’s phony “tools.”

“I took pictures of his black suitcase with his equipment,” Daisy said. “Moller wouldn’t let them film inside of the case — only the equipment itself, only when it was being used.”

Wellstone suddenly realized he was gripping the phone so hard it hurt. “Daisy,” he said, “I believe you’ve struck gold.”

The elderly matron looked at him as if he’d just given her a pearl necklace. “Really?”

“Really. Twenty-four-karat gold. These photos of the equipment will be very useful.” He paused.

The memory of his lunchtime humiliation was still all too fresh — and, he realized, it had provided him with the incentive he required to investigate and write those chapters about Betts and his phony setup after all. No way was he returning to Boston until he had the goods on that mountebank Betts.

He was going to blow up those photos and study every little thing in that case, because he was sure that in there somewhere must be the key to exposing the quack. That large camera nestled in the suitcase, for example — he’d seen pictures of Moller wielding it in the past. “Would you be willing to go back to the set again?”

Her grateful look became a little worried. “But... why would I say I’m there?”

“Offer your services again, but not on camera — just to be a help, you know, with the research. You know so much. And of course you have an in with the local people that they don’t have. I’m sure you can make a good argument why you should continue helping them. Now that they’ve finished with the Montgomerie House, did they talk about what they were going to do next?”

“They mentioned shooting scenes involving the Savannah Vampire.”

“Perfect! Once I’ve made the preparations, I’ll call.” He paused. “You know, if you’re any more helpful to me, I may just have to name you coauthor.”

She blushed.

He waved the phone at her. “Would you mind if I sent these photos over to my phone?”

“Not at all,” she said, standing. “And might I perhaps warm up your tea?”

For a moment, Wellstone didn’t understand. Then he saw Daisy had walked over to a sideboard and was cradling a bottle of Woodford Reserve.

“Why, thank you, Daisy,” he said, taking his own phone out of his pocket and sitting back in his armchair. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”