Southern Ghost

Chapter 1.

Had he lived to be an old man, Ross Tarrant's face, stripped of every vestige of youth and joy, would have looked much as it did in that last hour: brooding pain-filled eyes deep-sunken, grayish skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones, finely chiseled lips pressed hard to prevent a telltale tremor.

Slumped wearily in the battered old morris chair, a man's chair in a man's retreat, he stared at the pistol, horror flicker­ing in his eyes like firelight against a night sky.

The sound of the motor reached him first, then the crunch of tires against the oyster shells.

The door was locked.

But it was no ultimate defense.

Ross knew that.

As the throb of the engine died and a car door slammed, Ross reached for the gun.

"Ross." A commanding voice. A voice he knew from child­hood, from crisp winter mornings when the men zigzagged across a field and lifted shotguns to fire at the flushed quail.

The gun was heavy: So heavy. Ross willed away the un­steadiness of his hand.

He was Ross Tarrant.

His mouth twisted bitterly.

Perhaps not an officer and a gentleman.

But he was Ross Tarrant, and he would not shirk his duty. At the first knock on the door, the gun roared.

Chapter 2.

Sybil Chastain Giacomo would always catch men's glances and inflame their senses. Especially when the unmistakable light burned in her eyes and she moved sensually, a woman clearly hungering for a man.

Always, it was a young man.

But, passion spent, the latest youth sprawled asleep beside her, Sybil slipped from beneath the satin sheets, drew the brocaded dressing gown around her voluptuous body, and prowled restlessly through the dark house, anger a hot scarlet thread through the black misery in her heart.

Chapter 3.

Despite the fitful gleam of the pale April moon, Tarrant House was almost completely hidden in the deep shadows of the towering live oaks. A wisp of breeze barely stirred the long, dangling wisps of Spanish moss. A single light shone from a second-story window, providing a glimpse of plastered brick and a portion of one of the four huge Corinthian col­umns that supported the elegant double piazzas and the pedi­ment above.

Pressed against the cold iron railing of the fence, the young woman shivered. The night pulsed with movement—unseen, inimical, hostile. The magnolia leaves slapped, like the tap of a woman's shoes down an uncarpeted hall. The fronds of the palmettos clicked like ghostly dice at some long-ago gaming hoard. The thick shadows, pierced occasionally by pale moon­beams, took the shape of hurrying forms that responded to no call. She stood alone and alien in a shrouded, dark world that knew nothing of her—and cared nothing for her. The scent of magnolia and honeysuckle and banana shrub cloyed the air, thick as perfume from a flower-strewn coffin.

"Ohoooh!"

Courtney Kimball drew her breath in sharply as the falling moan, tremulous and plaintive, sounded again; then, her eyes adjusted to the night, she saw the swoop of the owl as it dove for its prey. One moment a tiny creature moved and lived; the next a scratching, scrabbling sound signaled sudden death.

But nothing could hold her gaze long except the house, famed as one of the Low Country's loveliest Greek Revival mansions, home for generation after generation of Tarrants.

The House.

That's how she always thought of it.

The House that held all the secrets and whose doors were barred to her.

Courtney gazed at the House with unforgiving eyes.

She was too young to know that some secrets are better left hid.

Chapter 4.

The tawny ginger tom hunched atop the gravestone, golden eyes gleaming, muscles bunched, only the tip of his switching tail and the muted murmurs in his throat hinting at his ex­citement.

The old lady leaning on her silver-topped, ebony cane ob­served the ripple of muscles beneath the tom's sleek fur. She was not immune to the power of the contrast between the cat, so immediately alive, and the leaf-strewn grave with its cold, somber headstone.

Dora Chastain Brevard stumped closer to the monument, then used the cane's tip to gouge moss and dirt from the letters scored deep in granite.

ROSS CARMINE TARRANT

January 3, 1949—May 9, 1970

Taken from His Family

So Young

in a

Cruel Twist of Fate

As she scraped, a thumb-size mouse skittered wildly across' the grave. The cat flowed through the air, smooth as honey oozing from a broken hive, but he was too late. The frantic mouse disappeared into a hole beneath the roots of a huge cypress. The feline's tail switched in frustration; then, once again, he tensed, but this time, despite the glitter in his eyes, the cat didn't pounce.

The sluggish, slow-moving wolf spider, a huge and hairy tarantula, would have been easy to catch.

But the ginger tom made no move.

Did the prowling cat know that the slow-moving arachnid possessed a potent poison? Or was it merely the ever-present caution of his species, the reluctance to pounce upon an unfa­miliar prey?

The cane hissed through the air.

Miss Dora gazed without expression at the quivering re­mains of the spider. She wished she could as easily dispose of the unexpected communication that had brought her to this mournful site.

Chapter 5.

Max Darling whistled "Happy Days Are Here Again" as he turned the Maserati up the blacktop toward Chastain. He was looking forward to the coming meeting with more excitement than he'd felt in a long time. In his mind, he heard once again Courtney Kimball's intriguing voice, young but self-pos­sessed, a little breathy, very South Carolina.

He walked into the new waterfront restaurant and his spir­its rose when vivid eyes sought his in the mirror behind the bar. The young woman who swiftly turned and slipped down from the stool and walked to greet him, a graceful hand out­stretched, would capture attention anywhere.

Max was assailed by a mйlange of immediate impressions: remarkable blue eyes, a beauty at once apparent yet elusive, a projection of confidence and dignity. But, paramount, was her intensity.

Her first words caught at his heart.

"I need you."

Chapter 6.

Annie Laurance Darling put down the telephone at the front desk of Death on Demand, the loveliest mystery bookstore this side of Atlanta, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Whichever, she had only herself to blame.

Who was always exhorting her husband to apply himself, to work hard, to devote himself to duty?

She, Annie Laurance Darling. Although, in truth, she had eased off recently, ever since Max began to avoid talking about his office. She had stopped asking about his cases or lack of them, concerned that she might have hurt his feelings with her well-meant admonitions to hew to the course. She hadn't pasted any helpful dictums to his shaving mirror for at least a week. (Amazing—and soul-satisfying to strivers—the encour­aging mottoes intended for underachievers: The early bird gets the worm. Little by little does the trick. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame. Under the influence of poverty or of wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate. . . .)

Obviously, however, her efforts had not gone unap­preciated; witness the call she'd just received from Max. So now that Max was involved in a case, how could she complain?

"Dammit, Agatha, you'd think he could arrange work for office hours!" Annie slammed her hand down on the counter­top.

The sleek black cat atop the bookcases devoted to Agatha Christie lifted her elegant head to stare with unblinking am­ber eyes at Annie. (Was it simply coincidence that the cat considered these particular shelves to be her own or were there matters involved here beyond ordinary human understand­ing?)

"And what's so confidential he can't even tell his own wife?"

Annie heard the hurt in her own voice. And what was so urgent, so important that Max had called to say he wouldn't be home for dinner—and not to wait up for him tonight. She glanced toward the front windows. She'd just put up the CLOSED sign and was tallying the day's receipts while waiting for Max to walk down the boardwalk from Confidential Com­missions, one of the more unusual businesses on the South Carolina resort island of Broward's Rock. Annie always thought of Confidential Commissions as a modern-day equiva­lent to the good offices performed by Agatha Christie's detec­tive of the heart, Mr. Parker Pyne. Max rather liked that analogy, but he was also quick to point out that he was neither a private detective nor a practicing lawyer, but merely a consultant available to those with problems outside the ken of the licensed professionals.

It had become a happy ritual, the two of them coming together at the close of the business day, each with much to tell. At least, she always had much to tell. But this week Max had said even less than usual. In retrospect, she realized he'd been quite closemouthed, merely observing that things were picking up at the office. Of course, Annie'd swept right on with her reports, how Henny Brawley, her best customer, had sent a postcard from England to report on her tour of Shrews­bury Abbey, the home of Ellis Peters's incomparable Brother

Cadfael ("Annie, I actually saw the small altar to St. Winefride!"), and how busy it had been in Death on Demand—"Would you believe a busload of clubwomen from Charleston?"—since Ingrid Smith, her chief assistant, was bedridden with a spring flu.

Annie felt deflated, a suddenly empty evening ahead. Max hadn't even said where he was going. Dusk was falling, and soon the air would cool sharply. Nights could be shivery in the spring despite the reassuring harbingers of the new season: the call of the chuck-will's-widow, the rachet of swamp frogs.

"I wonder if he has his sweater with him?" Her voice seemed to echo in the empty store.

Agatha yawned, a nice equivalent to a human shrug, then rose, stretched, and dropped to the floor to pad lightly down the central corridor toward the back of the bookstore.

Annie followed, pausing to alphabetize several titles in the Romantic Suspense section: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, Danger in the Dark by Mignon Eberhart, Widows' Plight by Ruth Fenisong, Alive and Dead by E. X. Ferrars, and The Clue of the Judas Tree by Leslie Ford.

"Max was so abrupt, Agatha. And abstracted." She put the latest title by Elaine Raco Chase face out. "Like he was talking to a stranger."

Agatha waited imperiously atop the coffee bar, which of­fered customers a different blend every day (Annie's favorite, of course, was Kona) served in mugs bearing the names of famous mysteries and their authors. Annie offered Agatha a fresh serving of dry food, received an unequivocal feline glare in response, and quickly reached for a can. Agatha did not tolerate frustration well. It was wise, Annie had decided after applying Mercurochrome to numerous scratches, to satisfy Ag­atha's needs, wants, and desires promptly. And, if she thought hard about Agatha, she wouldn't mull over that odd, unsatis­factory call from Max.

As she emptied half the can into Agatha's bowl, she re­marked conversationally, "I have to hand it to you, Agatha, you're one of a kind."

And so, she thought with admiration, were the tales of tangled lives and thwarted passions created by the authors

featured in this month's watercolors. As Agatha contentedly ate, Annie concentrated on the pictures on the back wall over the fireplace, the better to avoid other thoughts.

In the first painting, a slender young woman in a night­gown and housecoat stood midway between the living room of the playhouse, where flames flickered in the fireplace, and the indoor swimming pool. She stared in horror at the body lying next to the pool, so close, indeed, that one arm dangled over the side. The dead woman was middle-aged and expensively dressed. Her heavy blond hair, usually worn in a coronet braid, spread loose on the tiles.

In the second painting, the gully was choked with vegeta­tion, honeysuckle and wild grape, dogwood and redbud, flowering shrubs and looping vines. A small area, down one side of the gully, showed the effects of many trampling feet, the grasses bent, vines torn away. An attractive middle-aged woman watched in dismay as a younger woman reached to­ward a blood-spattered clump of Spanish dagger to pick up a black satin ribbon with an old-fashioned Victorian gold locket. The locket's front decoration was a spray of lilies of the valley, the stems and leaves made up of tiny encrusted emer­alds, the bells of pearls. A bowknot of rubies tied the spray of flowers.

In the third painting, a young woman, terror on her face, stared at a fog-wreathed, grim, gray Victorian house. A bloody kitchen knife was impaled in the front door. Six old-fashioned oval portraits circled the house. Each was named. The portrait at the top, labeled Pauline, was of a middle-aged woman with old ivory skin, black eyes, black hair in bangs, and a cold and unfriendly gaze. Clockwise were Sophie, plump, overrouged cheeks and blond hair piled high with too many curls; Anne, short curly black hair with distinctive wings of white at the temples and a warm smile; Elise, elegant and lovely with haunted eyes; Marthe, pleasant looking with a good-humored grin; and Rose, young and vulnerable with blue eyes and shiny brown hair.

In the fourth painting, the skyward gleam of the Bentley's headlights pierced the inky darkness of the night, cruelly illu­minating the fatal embrace of the Bentley and the Mercedes as they arced over the side of the cliff to plummet down into the rocks and the sea below. Two men and a woman watched, transfixed. In a hollow nearby, the little boy wrapped in a man's coat didn't stir from his unnatural sleep, despite the noise of the crash and the frenzied licking of his face by a large mongrel dog.

In the fifth painting, there was a strange tableau in the exquisitely appointed museum room with its array of gor­geously restored Egyptian antiquities. A young woman with dark eyes, olive skin, and a heart-shaped face framed by masses of thick black curls raised a mace as the handsome older man approached. Coming up behind the man was a figure clothed all in black with a gun held firmly in one hand.

Generations of readers loved these gothic adventures. Per­haps she should pick out one of her old favorites and take it home to while away the empty evening hours while her hus­band pursued the work ethic. (Max?) Not, of course, that she had to have dinner with Max every night to be happy, but...

Annie glanced up at the rows of cheerful mugs with the titles and authors inscribed in bright-red flowing script. She needed a mug that would brighten her empty evening. Per­haps Margaret Scherf's first Martin Buell mystery, Always Murder a Friend. Or Annie's favorite by Constance and Gwenyth Little, The Great Black Kanba. How about the zany humor in Lion in the Cellar by Pamela Branch? Or would her spirits improve if she spent an hour with Ellie and Ben in Mum's the Word by Dorothy Cannell?

"Perhaps," wafted the husky voice, "I am somehow lack­ing."

Annie damn near jumped out of her skin. Jerking around, she gazed into limpid dark-blue eyes. "Where the he—Laurel, where did you come from? I didn't hear the door." Annie tried not to sound too startled and accusing, but, honestly, if Laurel didn't stop materializing without warning . . .

Her mother-in-law gave a lilting sigh. Anyone who didn't

believe sighs could lilt just hadn't dealt with Laurel. The lucky devils.

Her alarm past, Annie surveyed her gorgeous—yes, that was the only appropriate descriptive adjective for Laurel—mother-in-law and smiled. How did Laurel manage always to appear young, fresh, and vibrant, no matter how bizarre her getup? On Annie, the baggy tweed suit and mottled horn-rims, along with a stenographer's notebook and freshly sharp­ened No. 2 pencil, would have looked like a grade school librarian's trophies from a rummage sale. On Laurel, the effect was enchanting. The horn-rims gave a piquant accent to her elegant patrician features and shining golden hair (Dammit, how could anyone look so marvelous with hair drawn back in a tight, no-nonsense bun?), the droopy tweeds fell in becoming folds against her svelte figure.

"You see, I have to wonder if it's me," Laurel continued earnestly. "Annie, would you say that I am not simpatico?"

Annie's smile broadened to a fond grin. "Laurel, nobody would say you are not simpatico." And also flaky, but this thought Annie didn't share. Off-the-wall. Just one step (which way?) from certifiable. But, always and ever, simpatico—to peo­ple, to animals ranging from anteaters to dolphins to whales, to situations, to the whole damn world, when you came down to it.

But those dark-blue eyes, so unnervingly like other eyes that lately, when business was mentioned, slid evasively away from her own . . . Annie struggled back to the present, de­termined to focus on Laurel.

". . . have always tried to be so open to experience, so welcoming. If you know what I mean?"

Annie deliberately turned her thoughts away from Laurel's five marriages. And why, after so many trips to the altar, was Laurel persisting in not marrying their neighbor, Howard Ca­hill, who would be such an attractive father-in-law, so stable, so respectable?

". . . so disappointed when Alice didn't come."

It was not the first time in their acquaintance, which wassurely long in content if not in time, that Annie was left staring at Laurel in hopeless confusion.

Alice?

Who was Alice? Had they been talking about someone named Alice?

"Alice?" she murmured uncertainly.

"Oh, my dear." A wave of a graceful hand, the pink-tinted nails glossed to perfection. "Certainly you know all about Alice."

Alice Springs? Alice in Wonderland? Alice Blue Gown? Annie pounced on the latter. "Alice Blue Gown?" she pro­posed hopefully. It was just offbeat enough to be the answer.

But Laurel was pursuing her own thoughts, which, under­standably, could well occupy her fully. Annie had seen the day when Laurel's thoughts had occupied many minds more than hers. But it was better not to dwell upon the past. Though that period—the one with saints—had held its own unique charms. It was at moments such as this, indeed, that Annie herself was likely to call upon the excellent advice of Saint Vincent Ferrer. (Ask God simply to fill you with charity, the greatest of all virtues; with it you can accomplish what you desire.) Annie surely needed heaps of charity in order to attain pa­tience, a definite requisite for an amiable relationship with her mother-in-law.

". . . thirteen times backward. I know I did it right. I was counting." Laurel gnawed a shell-pink lip in perplexity. "An­nie, do you suppose I could have miscounted?"

"Certainly not," Annie assured her.

Palms uplifted, despite the notebook and No. 2 pencil, Laurel exclaimed, "Then it's quite beyond me! Because Alice definitely didn't come."

Annie decided to explore this cautiously. "You were ex­pecting her?"

Her mother-in-law dropped the notebook and pencil on the nearest table, opened her carryall, and pulled out a sheaf of Polaroid pictures, the bulky self-developing camera, and sev­eral road maps. "It just came to me—you know the way things do"—an enchanting smile—"that it would be so useful

to take photos on the spot. And, of course, if anyone should be there, how wonderful to be able to show skeptics. Seeing is, as someone once said so cleverly, believing." The golden head bent over the pile of photographs. "I'm marking the exact date and time on the back of each picture. It's easy as pie with the tripod and one of those clever electronic controls—so magical, just like the television remote—so I can be in the pictures, too." She beamed at Annie and handed her a photograph.

Annie was halfway to a smile when she felt her face freeze. Oh, God. It looked like . . . Surely it wasn't . .

"Laurel." Annie swallowed tightly and stared at the photo of‑

. . really, one of my better pictures. Of me, don't you think?"

—Laurel gracefully draped on a marble slab atop a grave, chin cupped in one hand, smiling wistfully toward the camera.

"It would have been quite perfect if Alice had come." She stepped close beside Annie, and the scent of violet tickled Annie's nose. "See. There's her name. That's all they put on the slab. Just 'Alice.' "

"Alice," Annie repeated faintly. "She's dead?"

"Of course she's dead!" Laurel exclaimed. "Otherwise," she asked reasonably, "how could she be a ghost? And it would have been so convenient! It would be so easy to visit her often. It's a delightful trip from here to Murrells Inlet, and the All Saints Cemetery is lovely, Annie, just lovely. So many people have seen Alice after circling her grave thirteen times back­ward, then calling her name or lying atop the slab. I did both," she confided. A sudden frown. "Perhaps that was the problem. Too much. But"—a winsome smile replaced the frown—"I took some lovely notes." She patted the notebook in satisfaction. "I do intend to devote a good deal of space to Alice. After all, it's such a heartrending story, a young woman in love, separated from her beloved by her family because they thought he wasn't suitable, spirited away from her beloved home to school in Charleston. One final night of gaiety at the St. Cecilia Ball, then stricken with illness and when they brought her home, they found her young man's ring on thepale-blue silk ribbon around her neck, and her brother took it and threw it away, and while she was dying and delirious she called and called for the ring. Is it any wonder," Laurel asked solemnly, "that Alice is often seen in her old room at The Hermitage or walking in the gardens there? Everyone knows she's looking for her ring." A gentle sigh, delicate as a wisp of Spanish moss. "Ah, Love . . . Its power cannot be dimin­ished even by the grave."

If there was an appropriate response to that, Annie didn't know it, so she tried to look sympathetic and interested while glancing unobtrusively toward the clock.

Of course, anyone attuned enough to subtleties to seriously expect to communicate with ghosts wasn't likely to miss a glance at a clock, no matter how unobtrusive.

"Oh, dear, I had no idea it was so late. I must fly." Swiftly, those graceful hands whipped the photographs, camera, and maps back into the embroidered carryall. "My duties are not yet done for the day." Laurel backed toward the storeroom door, smiling beneficently. "Give my love to dear Max. I know you two would adore to have me join you for dinner, of course you would, but I do believe that mothers, especially mothers-in-law, should remember that the young must have Their Own Time Together. I try hard not to forget that. Of course, with my commitment to my Work, it's unlikely that I should ever be underfoot." Laurel had backpedaled all the way to the storeroom doorway. "I do believe my book shall be quite unique. It's just a scandal that South Carolina's ghosts have yet to be interviewed. Can you believe that oversight? All of these books are told from the viewpoint of the persons who saw the ghost and I ask you, should they be featured just because they happen to be present when a ghost comes forth—that's a good term, isn't it"—the doorway framed Laurel's slender form for an instant—"perhaps that should be my title, Coming Forth. Oh, I like that." She was out of sight now, but the throaty tone, a combination of Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, and wood nymph, carried well. "Do have a delightful dinner, my darlings." The back door opened and closed.

It seemed awfully quiet after Laurel was gone.

Annie, of course, had had plenty of time to call out and say Max wasn't coming home for dinner tonight and she and Laurel could drop by the Club.

It wasn't, of course, that she didn't want to tell anybody (and especially not Laurel?) not only that Max wasn't coming home, but Annie didn't have any idea where he was.

Or with whom.

The South Carolina Low Country has many charms—a seduc­tive subtropical climate with a glorious profusion of plant life including flower-laden shrubs, lush carpets of wildflowers, and seventy-five-foot loblolly pines, abundant wildlife ranging from deer to alligators, and an easy-paced life-style character­ized by graciousness and the loveliest accent in all of America —but the coastal road system, once off the interstates, is not one of them. The narrow two-lane blacktops curve treacher­ously through pine groves and skirt swamps, affording few chances to pass.

Max leaned out the window of his Maserati, straining in vain to peer around the empty horse trailer bouncing behind an old Ford pickup. Every so often he glanced at the clock in the dash. Events had conspired against him. The ferry was late leaving Broward's Rock. He'd chafed at the delay; then, once on the mainland, he'd realized he'd better stop for gas. Laurel was in the habit of borrowing his car and this time she'd returned it with the gas gauge damn near a dead soldier. The little country gas station, perhaps not a good choice, had been jammed. He wondered if the attendants were selling drugs on the side or maybe the crowd had something to do with the cerise cabin festooned with streamers advertising "Tanning Booths." So much for bucolic innocence.

Every minute lost made Max more frantic, even though he was sure the deaths Courtney Kimball had asked him to inves­tigate were exactly what they appeared to be, just as he'd told her in the report he made yesterday. When he'd concluded, she'd asked sharply, "You didn't find anything out of order? Anything at all?" He'd spent several hours in dusty records atthe county courthouse, studying files from the coroner's office. They confirmed the information he'd found in old news sto­ries. That's what he told Courtney. She looked at him, her eyes dark with unhappiness. "There has to be a way—" She broke off, seemed to acquiesce, paid his fee. He'd thought that was the end of it.

Until the call this evening, the shocking, incomplete call. Words tumbled over each other, frantic and incomplete: "Help . . . got to have help . . . the cemetery . . . Ross's grave . . . oh, hurr—" And the line went dead.

He'd dialed her number.

No answer.

Ring after ring.

And now, this damn truck—impatiently, he swung out the nose of the sports car, then yanked hard right on the wheel.

A Mercedes blazed past in the facing lane, horn blaring.

Fuming and chafing, his eyes watering from the pickup's bilious exhaust, Max finally found clearance to pass. The speedometer needle raced to the right. That broken cry, ". . . oh, hurr—" Help? What kind of help? The fear in her voice spelled danger. The Maserati plunged forward, born to race.

Annie's hands gripped the telephone like a vise, but she had her voice under control. Just barely. "No, Cynthia, none of Max's sisters are in town."

Cynthia waited for amplification.

Annie smiled grimly and uttered not another word.

"Oh, well." A sniff. "I just thought it had to be one of Max's sisters when I saw him at that wonderful little restau­rant in Chastain Monday. You know, the new one with the Paris chef. Especially since the girl was blond and gorgeous."

Blond and gorgeous.

"And I was so surprised not to see you there." A saccharine laugh.

"A business lunch is a business lunch," Annie said lightly, all the while envisioning excruciating and extensive torture suitable for the middle-aged owner of the gift shop around the

corner whom Max had rebuffed at the annual merchants' Christmas party. Cynthia had been snide ever since. "Besides, I've been tied to the store since Ingrid's been sick."

"Oh, that awful spring flu . . ."

Annie doodled on the telephone pad—Cynthia's pudgy, beringed hand took shape. With a flourish Annie added an upward swirl of flame from matches jammed beneath the fin­gertips.

It was fully dark by the time the Maserati screeched to a stop beside the church. Max grabbed the flashlight from the car pocket, then flung himself out of the car. He thudded toward the massive bronze gates of the cemetery. As he shoved them open, the car lights switched off behind him.

The golden nimbus of light from the nearest street lamp offered scant illumination, succeeding only in emphasizing the shifting mass of darkness beneath the immense, low-limbed live oaks with their dangling veils of Spanish moss. The nar­row cone from the flashlight wasn't much help. Beyond its focus, the crumbling headstones, many awkwardly tilted by roots or undermined by fall torrents, were dimly seen patches of grayness. Leaves crunched underfoot. A twig snapped sharply. Max stopped and listened.

"Courtney? Courtney?" he called softly. "Miss Kimball?"

Palmetto fronds clicked in the freshening breeze.

A bush rustled, and the thick sweet smell of wisteria en­veloped him. The lights of a passing car swept briefly across the graveyard.

A raccoon scampered atop a marble burial vault.

An owl in a live oak turned glowing eyes toward him.

He looked down and took a reluctant step forward. A silky strand of Spanish moss brushed his cheek, as gauzy and insub­stantial as a half-forgotten memory.

The swinging arc from the flashlight illuminated a cloth purse, half open, lying on the leaf-strewn path next to the Tarrant family plot. The beam steadied. It was an unusual purse with pink and beige and blue geometric patterns. The day he'd first met Courtney Kimball, she'd placed it on the bar when she opened it to reach inside for her checkbook.

The policeman's head swiveled around at the muted roar from the television set flickering in the corner of the station house, then swung back to face Max. "Home run." His stolid voice was surly.

Max was damned if he was going to apologize for inter­rupting a man obviously more interested in Braves baseball than a missing woman.

"Look." Max didn't try to keep the urgency out of his voice. God, how much time had passed? He'd called out for Courtney Kimball, searched as well as he could in a dark landscape that swallowed up the fragile beam of his flashlight, then, grabbing up the purse, he'd run to the nearest house and asked the nervous woman shielded behind a chained, partially open door for directions to the police station. It had taken another six minutes to get here. And now, this dolt wanted to watch a damn ball game. "We need to get men out there to—"

"Cemetery at St. Michael's, right?"

Finally, finally. "Right."

The policeman—his name tag read SGT. G. T. MATTHEWS-fastened faded blue eyes on Max. "Let's see your driver's li­cense, mister."

"Oh my God, this is a waste of time. We've got to—" "License, mister." Matthews stuck out a broad, stubby hand, palm up.

Time, time. Everything took time.

Max clenched his fists in frustration as Matthews labori­ously wrote down the information from the license.

When the sergeant finally looked up, his gaze was still skeptical. "Okay, Mr. Darling. Let's see if I got you right. You had a date with this woman—this Courtney Kimball—in a graveyard."

"Not a date. A business engagement." Even as he spoke, Max knew how odd that sounded.

"Oh, yeah, excuse me. A business engagement back by the mausoleum with the broken palm tree. I believe that's what you said." Narrowed eyes now. "Mighty peculiar place to con­duct business, Mr. Darling."

"I suppose there was something Ms. Kimball wanted to show me at the Tarrant plot." Max tried to keep his voice level, his temper intact. "She was scared. She called me and she was scared as hell. The call broke off. I don't know why or how."

The policeman rubbed his nose. "No phone booths at the cemetery. If she was scared, needed 'help,' why didn't she tell you to come where she was? Why the cemetery?"

"I don't know." Max spaced out the words. "But she did. I came as fast as I could, but when I got there, all I found was her purse, flung down on the path. Now, what does that look like to you?"

"Looks like the lady lost her purse," the sergeant said mildly. He held up a broad palm at Max's fierce frown. "Okay, okay, we'll check into it. We'll be in touch, Mr. Darling."

Max almost erupted, but what good would it do? With a final glare at the uncooperative lawman, Max turned away. He banged out of the station house and slammed into his sports car. He hunched over the wheel. What the hell should he do now? Obviously, it was up to him. Would it do any good to check Courtney Kimball's apartment? Max didn't feel hopeful.

But it was better than nothing.

That took time, too. He had Courtney Kimball's address, but he didn't know Chastain. He didn't find any help at the nearest convenience store or at the video express, but an el­derly woman walking two elegant Afghan hounds finally came to his assistance.

"Oh, you're very close. That's still in the historic district. The half number probably means a garage apartment. Turn left here on Carmine, go two blocks, turn right on Merridew, young man. It should be in that block."

It was.

A street lamp shone on a bright-white sign: THE ST. GEORGEINN. A lime-green dragon lounged upright against the crimson letter S, his tail draped saucily over a front paw.

Max hurried down a flagstoned path past a shadowy pond to the back of the property and an apartment upstairs over the garage. No outside light shone, but lights blazed inside and there was a murmur of sound. Voices?

Max took the outside stairs two at a time, relief washing through him. Maybe it was going to be all right. Maybe it was a lost purse, just like the cop suggested. After all, Max had been late—though not that late—but Courtney Kimball was a driven woman. Certainly in the brief contact they'd had, Max had recognized a strong will. There was, in Courtney's single-minded concentration on the Tarrant family, a chilling sense of implacability. Just so did the narrator seek to find the secrets of the House of Usher.

At the top of the stairs, he realized two disturbing facts at the same time.

The door was ajar.

The voices, impervious to interruption, flowed from a tele­vision set.

Max knocked sharply. The door swung wide.

The voices—amusing light chatter from an old movie—continued unabated, as unreal as a paper moon, masking the absolute quiet of the unguarded apartment.

Max stepped inside. "Courtney? Courtney, are you—" Disarray.

A hasty search had begun. Cushions littered the floor. Desk drawers jutted open. Papers spewed from a briefcase tipped over on a coffee table. But across the room sat a Chippendale desk, its drawers closed, and through an open door, Max glimpsed a colonial bedroom, the four-poster canopied bed neatly made, the oxbow chest undisturbed.

A search begun. A search interrupted?

He called out again.

The flippant voices from the television rose and fell. If Courtney Kimball was here, she couldn't answer.

Chapter 7.

Annie recognized him at once and knew his arrival meant trouble.

Chastain Police Chief Harry Wells wasn't a forgettable man, not from his slablike face to his ponderous black boots, now solidly planted on her front porch.

Wells hadn't changed a whit since she'd last seen him. His wrinkled black jacket, white shirt, and tan trousers were just as she remembered. The crown of his white cowboy hat was as smooth and undented as a river-washed stone, and his rheumy, red-veined eyes surveyed her like a hangman measuring rope.

Annie didn't hesitate. "What do you want?" she de­manded.

Dislike flickered in his eyes. Dislike and a flash of mali­cious pleasure.

Annie braced herself.

"I'm investigating a disappearance in Chastain, Miz Dar­ling." Wells's words had the lilting cadence of South Carolina, but even that glorious accent couldn't mask the threat in histone. "Your husband's involved. I want to know about this woman he was meeting." His eyes clung to her face, greedy for her response.

The blows were so rapid, Annie felt stunned and sick. Woman.

Chastain.

Disappearance.

Max.

Only the adrenaline flowing from the shock of Wells's un­expected appearance kept her on her feet.

That and hot, swift, unreasoning fear.

"Max! Where is he?" She gripped the door for support.

"He's safe enough." Wells's voice scraped like a rusty cem­etery gate. "Right now he's in the county jail. Under arrest as a material witness. Who was she, Miz Darling?"

When she didn't answer immediately, the burly police chief leaned forward. It was, she remembered, a favorite trick of his, using his commanding height to intimidate. His sour breath swept over her. "So you didn't know about her. Well, that doesn't surprise me, Miz Darling. I understand she's good-lookin'. A mighty cute blonde. The kind a man would go a far piece to keep his wife from finding out about. Thing is, those kind of women get insistent, say they're going to tell the man's wife—"

Later, Annie was proud of her quickness because she under­stood in a flash: Wells was going to accuse Max of an affair and blame the disappearance of this woman—what woman, oh Max, what woman?—on Max's determination to keep the truth from her. But despite the shock, there was an immedi­ate, elemental response too deep for words. Annie couldn't know the truth of anything—except Max would never injure a living soul.

Not Max.

Never Max.

She clapped her hands to her hips and thrust out her chin. "Get real, Wells." Her voice dripped disgust. "Max had a business engagement this evening. If some client's in trouble, if something's happened to her, it's because of the problem she

brought to him. And no, I don't know what that is. Or who she is. Or care. I run a bookstore, Chief, and I don't try to work two jobs. Max takes care of his own business. But I'll tell you this, you're wasting your time talking to me. Did you say she's disappeared? Then you'd better get back to Chastain and start looking for her—and listen real hard to what Max has to tell you." With that she turned and marched back into the house.

Wells started to follow.

Annie yanked her coat out of the front closet and scooped up her purse from the hall table. "Nobody asked you in," she snapped, facing him in the doorway like an outraged terrier staring down a mastiff, "and I'm leaving."

"Now wait a minute, Miz Darling." He backed out onto the porch, his face turning a choleric purple. "If you won't cooperate with lawful—"

"You don't run a damn thing on Broward's Rock." She slammed the door. "If you try and detain me, I'll file the biggest lawsuit for illegal restraint you've ever seen." She marched down the steps, heading for her Volvo. "See you in Chastain, Chief."

By the time a sleepy magistrate agreed to release Max on his own recognizance, there were no more ferries to the island. They found a motel, The Pink Flamingo, on the outskirts of Chastain. As the door shut behind them, Annie glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Almost three A.M.

"The sorry bastard."

Annie knew who Max meant. The brief drive from the jail had consisted of one furious diatribe by Max.

Max gave her an exhausted, despairing look. "God, Annie, this is a mess."

"We'll handle it." She reached out to take his hand.

He looked down abruptly and smiled, the first smile she'd seen since he'd been ushered out of his cell.

Annie smiled in return. This was Max, her Max. "Tell me." He gave her hand a hard squeeze and nodded, then dropped

wearily into the bedroom's sole chair. Annie propped up some pillows on the lumpy bed and curled up to listen. It didn't take long to tell: the original assignment, his report, tonight's phone call, the purse at the cemetery, Courtney's apartment.

He popped up and began to pace the small confines of the motel room, the old wooden floor creaking beneath him. "I started looking for Courtney. It didn't take long to be sure she wasn't in that apartment. I was heading for the phone to call the cops when this voice yelled, 'Hands up,' and I turned around to look into the barrel of the biggest damn gun I've ever seen. It was my old friend, Sergeant Matthews." Scowl­ing, Max flung himself down again in the chair. "So I guess I've got to give the Chastain cops some credit. Matthews brushed me off at the station, but he did come to check Court­ney's apartment. Of course, he won't listen when I say that's what I was doing, too. Hell, no. He decides I'm 'acting suspi­ciously' and there's evidence of a crime scene—did he think I trashed the damn place? So I wind up in jail. And I'm the one who got the cops stirred up! Can you believe it?" His voice rose in outrage. "Anyway, it was about an hour later that Wells lumbered in."

"Chief Caligula," Annie said resentfully.

That brought another brief smile, quickly gone. Max's eyes narrowed. "Here's where it gets interesting." A speculative note quickened his voice. "Wells asked why I was meeting 'the missing woman' in the cemetery."

Annie rolled to a sitting position and slipped her arms around her knees.

Max leaned forward. "Now, listen closely, Annie. I'm go­ing to tell you exactly what I told Wells. Okay?"

"Sure." She didn't understand her role yet, but Max obvi­ously had something in mind.

Max's tone was formal. "On Monday, I received a call from a woman who subsequently identified herself as Courtney Kimball. She inquired about the kinds of projects undertaken by Confidential Commissions."

Max had chosen his words carefully in dealing with Wells. The sovereign state of South Carolina has very particular re‑

quirements for the licensing of private detectives, several of which Max could not meet (two years of work in an existing licensed agency or two years as a law enforcement officer), and Max was not licensed to practice law in South Carolina, which eschews reciprocity with other states (South Carolina has no intention of making it easy for retired lawyers from other climes to pick up some pocket change). Wells would dearly love to nail Max for acting illegally in either capacity. The chief still harbored resentment against both Annie and Max from their encounter several years ago during the Chastain house-and-garden tour mystery event that turned to murder.

"I told Wells how I explained to Ms. Kimball that the objective of Confidential Commissions was to provide infor­mation and solace to those in the midst of trying times." A bland enough statement that nowise, Max would protest, could be equated to the investigative efforts mounted by pri­vate detectives or the counsel proffered by practicing attor­neys. "I made it clear that Ms. Kimball asked me to do a historical survey, and I was happy to be able to advise her that I would do my very best to be helpful."

Annie grinned. She wished she could have seen Wells's face.

"I met her Monday at La Maison Rouge in Chastain. She asked me to do two things—"

Annie held up her hand and reached for her purse. When she had a pad and pencil in hand, she nodded for Max to continue.

"One. To find out every possible detail in regard to the deaths of Ross Tarrant and Judge Augustus Tarrant, both of which occurred on May ninth, 1970, in Chastain.

"Two. To determine all the persons living in or present in any capacity at Tarrant House on Ephraim Street in Chastain on May ninth, 1970."

Max's eyes gleamed. "Up to this point, Wells just listened. No expression, of course. I've seen faces at Madame Tussaud's that looked more alive. Until"—Max struck the chair arm sharply—"I mentioned the Tarrants and Tarrant House. All of a sudden, it was different. Damn different. Wells picked up acigar and lit it, taking his time. He looked at me through a haze of smoke and asked—and here's exactly what he said, Annie—'Who the hell is Courtney Kimball?' He didn't ask me a damn thing about the Tarrants or whether I'd found out anything about their deaths or the people at Tarrant House that day. Oh, no. All of a sudden, he wanted to know about Courtney. That's when he turned hostile and started making cracks about me and my 'relationship' with her, saying I'd be a lot better off if I told the police what had happened to her and stopped trying to create some kind of mystery. Not having slept entirely through Criminal Law, I decided to stop being so damn helpful to the constituted authorities and refused to say another word. So Wells dumped me in jail—"

"And came to the island to see how much I knew."

Max looked at her with startled eyes. "I hadn't stopped to figure out how you turned up with the magistrate. I called you and there wasn't any answer so I called Howard Cahill and asked him to get his lawyer for me." Then the import of her words struck. "Did the sorry bastard imply I was having an affair with her?"

Max's outrage made Annie feel warm and cossetted. "Don't worry," she said blithely. "I told him you had a business engagement with her."

Max's grin made him look like Joe Hardy (all grown up and sexy as hell) after a winning touchdown. "That's telling him." But the grin didn't touch the dark core of worry in his eyes. He smacked his fist in his palm. "The hell of it is, Wells is concentrating on me. Nobody's doing anything about Courtney."

Annie heard the anguish in his voice. A business engage­ment, she repeated to herself. That's all that it was. Max was here now with her, loving her. That didn't mean he couldn't be concerned about others.

Courtney Kimball.

Wells wanted to know who the hell she was. Annie made a wreath of question marks around Courtney's name on the pad. Frankly, Annie shared Chief Wells's interest. But she had an‑

other question that mattered even more to her. "Max, why didn't you tell me about this assignment?"

Her charming, unflappable husband looked, in turn, sheep­ish, uncomfortable, and embarrassed.

Very un-Max responses.

Annie tried to keep on breathing evenly.

As if it were just a casual question.

"Well"—it was the closest to hangdog she'd ever seen him —"you kept encouraging me to get involved in an interesting case, and, the thing about it is, I didn't want to get your hopes up that I was into something big. When I finished checking on the Tarrants, everything looked on the up-and-up so I decided not to mention it at all—since it didn't amount to anything."

Dark-blue eyes looked at her mournfully.

Once again, Annie didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, but she knew one thing for certain: Never again would she exhort Max to work harder.

"Max, I'm never disappointed in you. And," she added a little disjointedly, "it certainly has turned into something."

The worry was back in his eyes, but it was okay now. Now she could ask, "Who is Courtney Kimball, Max?"

He ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "The hell of it is, Annie, I don't have any idea."

"Then I think," Annie told her husband gravely, "we'd better find out."

Annie was glad she wore her hair short, but, even so, without a dryer and using the motel soap (no shampoo), she was certainly going to look totally natural, as in moderately un­kempt. It didn't help to pull on yesterday's clothes. The pale-yellow cotton pullover was okay, but the madras skirt looked like something Agatha would happily have nested in. Max had slipped out early. His goals were to buy shaving cream, razor, toothpaste, toothbrushes, et cetera, and to call his secretary, Barb, who would activate the answering machine at Confiden­tial Commissions and take over at Death on Demand in In‑

grid's absence. Max won Annie's heart anew when he returned with coffee and a biscuit with sausage for her. The coffee was acceptable, although not, of course, on a par with that at Death on Demand or at the Darling house on Scarlet King Lagoon.

He also brought in a file marked "Courtney Kimball." Annie took the thick manila folder and looked at him in surprise.

"Barb's terrific. I called, and she brought it over on the first ferry. Said to tell you to relax, she'd take care of everything at the store and get some chicken soup to Ingrid, too. Now"—he was brisk and organized—"I want you to dive into that file. Maybe you can find something I missed."

Annie put the folder down. "What about you?"

"I'm going to get some answers out of the Chastain cops. Whether they like it or not."

As the door closed behind him, Annie almost called out. But Max would surely be careful. The chief was a tough antag­onist. She took the file and her coffee and settled in the chair. The file contained:

The Tarrant Family History

Guide to the Tarrant Museum

Copies of several newspaper stories on the deaths of the Honorable Augustus Tarrant and his youngest son, Ross, on May 9, 1970.

Photographs of Ross Tarrant's grave and of the urn containing the ashes of Judge Tarrant.

A photograph of Tarrant House.

A monograph on Tarrant House.

Photographs of Judge Tarrant and Ross Tarrant.

A list of persons likely to have been in Tarrant House on May 9, 1970.

Annie started with the photographs.

Judge Augustus Tarrant, in his black judicial robe, looked sternly down from the bench. His was an aloof, ascetic face, somber gray eyes, a high-bridged nose, hollow cheeks, a

pointed chin, firm, pale lips pressed tightly together. There was no vestige of warmth in his gaze.

Annie would not have wished to be charged with a crime in Judge Tarrant's court.

This was a formal studio portrait.

There were almost a dozen newspaper photographs. Annie particularly studied two of them. One showed a smiling Judge Tarrant—it could have been a different man—handing a tro­phy to a teenage girl. The congratulatory smile softened that stern face. The caption reported: Judge Augustus Tarrant presents the Class of 1969 valedictorian, Serena Michaels, with the National Honor Society trophy. In the second photograph, Judge Tarrant, unspeaking, head high, was pictured brushing through a crowd of reporters and photographers on the courthouse steps. The caption reported: Judge Augustus Tarrant declined to comment as he left the courthouse after giving the maximum sentence possible to David Wister Marton, a longtime friend and former state representa­tive convicted of bribery. In a nonjury trial. Marton was judged guilty of accepting money from the Lumont Construction Company in return for achieving passage of legislation favorable to the company.

So the Judge was not a good old boy.

Good for the Judge.

Tough shit for Marton.

The photographs of Ross Tarrant were much more appeal­ing. Annie studied the lively freckled face—a blond cowlick, merry blue eyes, an infectious grin—and realized her own lips had curved in response.

She thumbed through a sheaf of photographs: Ross astride a chestnut jumper at a horse show with a group of girls wav­ing and calling to him; Ross, one of five sunburned happy faces on a tip-tilted catamaran just beyond the surf; Ross with his arms around two pretty girls, one dark, one fair, both laughing up at him; Ross in tennis shorts and shirt standing on a scuffed clay court, holding his racquet like a rifle. In a formal studio portrait, Ross wore full cadet regalia and stared straight into the camera. But wasn't there just the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth and a dancing light in his blue eyes? Over the years and the gulf that could not becrossed, she felt a sense of loss that she'd never known him. She would have liked him.

Annie replaced the photographs and picked up the copies of the news stories from the Chastain Courier.

Prominent Family Loses Father,

Son in Double Tragedy

The Honorable Augustus Tarrant, 63, suffered a fatal heart attack Saturday after learning of the death of his youngest son, Ross, 21, in an apparent shooting accident.

Harmon Brevard, Ross's grandfather, found the body of The Citadel senior at the fam­ily hunting lodge on Deer Creek in late afternoon. After calling authorities, Brevard went to the family home, the well-known Tarrant House, to inform the family.

Judge Tarrant collapsed upon hearing the news. The family physician, Dr. Paul Rutledge, was immediately summoned, but the jurist died before he could be hospital­ized.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

The father and son were members of one of Chastain's oldest and most influential families. Tarrants have played prominent roles in Chastain

and in the history of South Carolina since Mortimer Tar­rant arrived in Chastain in 1735. Family members have led efforts to preserve historic sites in and around Chastain.

Judge Tarrant was the son of Nathaniel Robert Tarrant and Rachel Wallace Tarrant. He was born in 1907. A 1928 graduate of The Citadel, he re­ceived his law degree from the University of Virginia. In 1937, he married Amanda Bre­vard of Chastain. Judge Tar­rant served in the Circuit Solicitor's office from 1931 to 1936. He joined his father's firm, Tarrant & Tarrant, in 1937 and practiced there until the outbreak of World War II. Judge Tarrant served in the in­fantry during the War, rising to the rank of lieutenant colo­nel. He returned to private practice until he became a cir­cuit judge in 1950.

Ross Tarrant was born Jan. 3, 1949. An outstanding stu‑

dent at Chastain's Wellston School, he was an honor stu­dent at The Citadel and would have been graduated this spring.

Judge Tarrant is survived by his wife, Amanda, and two sons, Milam and his wife, Julia, and Whitney and his wife, Charlotte.

Annie sighed. What heartbreak. Two in a family lost the same day. Poor Amanda Tarrant. Her husband and youngest son dead with no warning, no preparation.

Tragic, yes. But what in that family tragedy prompted a young woman to hire a private detective twenty-two years later? (Annie called a spade as she saw it. She didn't have to pretend about Max's occupation, no matter how Max avoided the appellation of private detective.) Why did Courtney Kim­ball hire Max? Who was Courtney, and why did she care about the deaths of Judge Tarrant and his youngest son?

Annie carefully reread the article, then skimmed the other news stories and the formal obituaries. The facts remained the same. The only additional information concerned funeral ar­rangements.

She studied the newspaper photograph from the May 12, 1970, Chastain Courier. The mourners wore black. They stood beneath umbrellas in a slanting rain among a gray and cheer­less sea of tombstones. A veiled woman leaned heavily on the arm of a young man.

The caption read: The family of Judge Augustus Tarrant and Ross Tarrant bade them farewell Monday at graveside rites in St. Michael's Cemetery. The judge's widow, Amanda, walks with her oldest son, Milam. Also pictured are Mrs. Milam Tarrant, Mr. and Mrs. Whitney Tarrant, and Mr. and Mrs. Harmon Brevard.

Annie concentrated. Mr. and Mrs. Harmon Brevard? Oh, of course—Amanda's parents, grandparents of Ross, Whitney, and Milam.

The veil hid what must have been the grief-ravaged face of Amanda Tarrant. Her son Milam had the stolid look of a man enduring great pain. His wife's face was white and pinched. Whitney Tarrant frowned, the kind of frown a man makes to hold back tears. His wife, Charlotte, pressed a hand againsther mouth. Harmon Brevard stared grimly at an open grave site. His wife touched a handkerchief to her eyes.

A sorrowing family.

Annie riffled through several more stories and found noth­ing that changed the import of the initial report.

She returned the photographs and clippings to the file and picked up The Tarrant Family History and Guide to the Tarrant Museum, both cream-colored pamphlets with crimson print­ing. A yellow tab on the outside of the history carried an inscription in Max's handwriting: Received from Courtney Kim­ball.

Annie looked through the Guide to the Tarrant Museum. She was startled when she realized the museum was housed in former slave quarters toward the back of the Tarrant grounds. Wow, this was Family and History in capital letters, although it was clear, despite the obviously biased introduction by Mrs. Whitney Tarrant, its founder, that the museum housed some interesting and valuable collections, including playbills from early traveling shows. The Orphan or the Unhappy Marriage was presented in 1735, shortly after its initial production in Charleston. In 1754, a traveling troupe put on A Bold Stroke for a Wife, The Mock Doctor, and Cato. The museum housed the personal letters of Hope Tarrant, who spent her life opposing slavery and was one of the earliest to speak out in South Carolina, along with Angelina and Sarah Grimke. Copies of many of the various Chastain newspapers from 1761 to 1815 were featured. (Three had belonged to Tarrants, of course.)

Annie put down the guide reluctantly. A hodgepodge, yes, but such an interesting mйlange from the past.

The Tarrant Family History was also written by Mrs. Whit­ney Tarrant. Was she perhaps a trifle obsessive? Annie skimmed the introduction: . . . distinguished family from the outset of Mortimer Tarrant's arrival . . . the author's aim is to provide ensuing generations with a record of bravery, devotion to duty, and honor . . . gallantry both in war and peace . . . exemplary conduct which can ever serve as a shield in good times and bad. . . .

The introduction was signed by Mrs. Whitney Tarrant and dated September 14, 1987. In parentheses following the date,

it read: Marking the two hundred and fifty-second year of the Tar­rant Family in Chastain, South Carolina.

Annie raised a blond brow. My, aren't we proud of our­selves! But she turned to the first page and dutifully began to read.

"Chief's not in." Sergeant Matthews's pale eyes returned to the papers on his desk.

Max leaned on the doorjamb and drawled, "No doubt he is leading a posse in search of wrongdoers even as we speak."

The sergeant looked up, blinked once, then ostentatiously began to straighten the papers before him.

"Any trace of Courtney?" The drawl was gone.

Matthews ignored him.

Max crossed the brief space to the desk in two strides, leaned over, and knocked sharply. The papers quivered.

Sergeant Matthews's head jerked up, and his pink cheeks deepened to tomato. "You want to go back to jail?"

"Jail?" Max exclaimed. "Jail? In law school, I must have missed the section where it's against the law to undertake polite intercourse with the properly constituted authorities of a municipality."

As always, the magic reference worked. Max almost felt a moment of shame and wondered anew at the undeserved defer­ence paid—even if grudgingly—to anyone possessing a law degree.

"The chief'll be in around ten."

"That's all right. You can help me." Max's tone was brisk. "What progress has been made in the search for Courtney Kimball?" At Matthews's look of dogged resistance, Max con­tinued crisply. "I want everything that's part of the public record."

He knew damned well the sergeant wasn't certain what constituted a public record.

Max didn't enlighten him.When Annie closed the cream-colored pamphlet, she knew with certainty that Mrs. Whitney Tarrant was not going to be a bosom chum. Annie was willing to bet that Charlotte Tar­rant was extremely serious, extremely humorless, and quite boring. The Tarrant Family History resounded with grandilo­quence: the Tarrants were not only a leading Family, but they always "enjoyed prominence in Society even among their own kind." Of course, in Texas, Annie's place of origin, it mattered most how a man conducted himself today, not where he came from or who his family was. In fact, it was still not considered mannerly to ask where people came from, a harkening back to the days of the Old West when a man might not be exactly eager to reveal his past. Now, as then, it was the present that counted.

However, there were glimpses of the past that not even Charlotte's labored prose could trivialize.

The heartbreak when five daughters—Anna, Abigail, Ruth, Margaret, and Victoria—were lost to yellow fever in 1747.

The loss of a younger son, Edward, his wife, Emily, and their three children in a storm at sea when he was taking them to safety in Philadelphia as the Revolution began.

With her husband, Miles, gone from Chastain to serve in Sumter's army, his wife, Mary, sallied forth to oversee the outlying plantations. Mary managed a bit of work for the Revolution as well, smuggling papers or food, information or boots, whatever the moment required. Her devotion to her infant nation was repaid with grief: Miles perished in a British prison camp just two weeks before the end of the war.

But happier days were to come. The land overflowed with plenty when Tarrant rice was sold in every market at home and abroad and wealth poured in. Oh, the dances and the convivial dinners when nothing was too grand for guests. These survi­vors of war and deprivation embodied in their lives the ideals for which they had fought. Of first importance was a man's honor.

The code of chivalry was understood:

A man's word was his bond.

A woman's name was never uttered except with respect. A promise, whether wise or foolish, must be kept.

A man must always be prepared to fight for his name, his

state, or his love.

Tarrant men died in duels in 1812, 1835, and 1852. Mi­chael Evan Tarrant was seventeen years, three months, and two days of age when he bled to death "near the great oak on the bluff above the harbour after meeting in combat in an open field." Another, Roderick Henry, shot his own gun into the air, refusing, he said as he lay dying, to permit another man to make him into a murderer.

Tarrants had survived or been felled by warfare and pes­tilence. Then came fire. Tarrant House, the first structure on the present grounds, burned to the ground in 1832. All were rescued from the inferno except Catherine, the mistress of the house, a victim of paralysis. Catherine was tragically trapped in her bedroom on the second floor.

A daughter, Elizabeth, defied her family and eloped with a young man from Beaufort. Her father wanted her to marry an older widowed planter. The breach between Elizabeth and her family was never healed.

South Carolina on December 20, 1860, was the first of eleven states to secede from the Union.

Four Tarrant sons perished in The War Between the States: Philip, twenty-five, at Fort Beauregard in one of the earliest engagements; Samuel, twenty-two, who drowned trying to run the blockade; and William, nineteen, of yellow fever at Manassas. The second son, Robert, twenty-four, was a gradu­ate of West Point, who served in the Union Army. During the third year of the War, he made his way through the lines to come home as he'd heard his sister Grace was ill with typhoid. His father, Henry, home with a wound suffered at Chancel­lorsville, met him at the door and refused him entrance. They struggled. Robert was stronger and he pushed his way past to go upstairs to his sister's sickroom. There was a gunshot. Rob­ert fell on the stairway landing, mortally wounded. A dark stain marks the top step, and no manner of scrubbing has ever been able to remove it. During the long war years, the womenof Tarrant House cut up curtains to make clothes, tore down the copper gutters, which were melted and used for torpedoes, took in sick and injured soldiers and nursed them back to health or buried them. But one by one came the news of the deaths of the sons of the house. Henry Tarrant did not recover from his wound, though some believed he died of a broken heart. His widow, Emma, and their remaining son, Thomas, by guile and wile, despite the loss of all the outlying planta­tions, somehow managed each year to pay the taxes and so were able to hold onto Tarrant House.

Quiet years followed after the War. Then in 1895, Nathan­iel Tarrant wed a wealthy young woman from Detroit. One son, Peter, was disowned in 1920, his name never spoken. It was said that he ended his short life in Paris, a painter. He was Augustus Tarrant's older brother. Augustus had three sisters. Two, Sophie and Catherine, were lost in the great flu epidemic of 1918. His other sister, Abigail, scandalized the family by going to work for a newspaper. She married a foreign corre­spondent in 1933 and for almost a decade letters with exotic stamps arrived at Tarrant House erratically. She was killed in the bombardment of Singapore in 1942.

Annie felt awash with tragedy. Certainly, the death of Ross Tarrant in a gunshot accident and the Judge's demise were part of a long chain of bloodshed and sorrow.

And why had any of this mattered to Courtney Kimball in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Ninety-Two?

The wooden front porch was painted white. A green wooden swing hung at one end. Wicker chairs were interspersed with potted ferns. The white paint of the frame house glistened and had almost certainly been recently applied. Although con­verted now from a private residence, the St. George Inn was an excellent example of the typical Chastain house: freestanding on a large lot among magnificent oaks, a two-story, frame construction on a brick foundation. Wide porches across the front extended around the sides, and huge bay windows rose from floor ro ceiling.

Beyond the screen door, the front door was open wide, as it had probably stood in good weather for two hundred and fifty years, to take full advantage of the prevailing southeasterly breezes.

Max poked the doorbell beside a smaller sign with the insouciant dragon.

"Come in," a woman's deep voice ordered.

Max obeyed, stepping into the dimness of a wide hall floored in gleaming heart pine. The wallpaper, green, dark brown, and rose, pictured Greek ruins amid trees that looked vaguely like eucalyptus.

Through a door to the right, a remarkably large woman rose from behind a delicate Chippendale desk. Smiling, she walked toward Max. "I'm Caroline Gentry. Welcome to the St. George Inn. How may I help you?"

Her voice was a rich contralto. It matched her size—almost six feet—and bulk. She had large, expressive brown eyes in a heart-shaped face and dark-brown hair in a tidy coronet braid. Garbed in some kind of loose-flowing black dress, she stood as straight as a statue.

Max introduced himself. "I'd like to rent a room for myself and my wife for several days, if you have a vacancy."

But Mrs. Gentry was staring at him, her eyes suspicious. "I saw you," she said abruptly. "Last night. When the police came to my garage apartment."

He met her gaze directly. "That's right. I came here to look for Ms. Kimball. She is a client of mine—and she didn't show up for an appointment."

"In the paper this morning, it said she'd disappeared. So why do you want to come here? Why do you want to stay at my inn?" She folded her arms across her solid midriff.

"Because I don't intend to leave Chastain until I've found her." Max's eyes never wavered. "I don't care how long it takes. And here's where she was staying. Maybe I can learn something from that, from you."

"I don't know anything about her. I'd never seen her before in my life until she came here Monday." Her deep voice was angry."Did she tell you anything—"

"I showed her the apartment. That's the only time I ever talked to her. If I'd had any idea she was going to get in trouble, I'd never have let her in. This kind of publicity can ruin an inn. I've already had three cancellations since the paper came out this morning. A wedding party."

"Mrs. Gentry, the sooner we find Ms. Kimball, the better off you'll be. Give me one of those cancellations."

It hung in the balance, but finally, grudgingly, she nodded.

Max had one more question as he filled out the registration. "Do you know why Ms. Kimball came here? Why she picked this place to stay?"

Her dark eyes were unreadable, but the moment stretched until Max knew there was an answer. He waited, scarcely daring to breathe.

She picked up the registration slip, then said abruptly, "She said Miss Dora told her to come here. Miss Dora's—"

Max nodded, completed the sentence. "Miss Dora Bre­vard."

He and Annie first met Dora Brevard when Annie put together the mystery program for Chastain's annual house­and-garden tours one spring.

Miss Dora, who knew everything there was to know about Chastain. Max felt a stirring of hope.

By the time Annie finished reading the monograph (also au­thored by Charlotte Tarrant) on the history of Tarrant House, she had a good understanding of how to make tabby for foun­dations (a combination of oyster shells, sand, and a lime ob­tained through the burning of oyster shells), the popularity of Corinthian capitals, and the reason for the ever-present pine­apple motif (pineapples indicated prosperity and hospitality). As far as she could tell, the important point about Tarrant House was that it had stood in all its Greek Revival glory on that lot since 1840, and was one of the few homes in Chastain still in the hands of the original family.

But, shades of Laurel, if she could be permitted that phrase,

Tarrant House did have a very interesting background in ghosts.

Background in ghosts? Of ghosts?

Annie was unsure how to say it.

Laurel would know.

The telephone rang.

Startled, Annie knocked over her almost—but not quite empty—Styrofoam cup.

The phone continued to ring as she bolted to the bath and grabbed up a face towel to mop up the coffee, saving The Tarrant Family History from desecration.

Another peal of the phone. Was Max once again being permitted a single call?

"Hello." She tried to sound in command, ready for any­thing.

"Dear Annie."

God, it was Laurel. Which was almost spooky. Except surely there was an obvious and rational explanation. Laurel must have called Barb, Max's secretary, to track them down. However, Annie would have remarked upon the coincidence of Laurel calling at the precise moment Annie was thinking of her, but Laurel's words riveted her attention.

"You are feeling beleaguered! That is evident from the strain in your voice. My dearest, I have called to offer my services and I shall come. Even though it will require an am­bulance. I cannot—"

"Ambulance! Laurel, where are you? What's wrong? What's happened?" Annie moved the file away from the damp spot on the desk.

"A minor contretemps." For once, the throaty voice lacked its usual йlan, verging indeed upon embarrassment. "I am in Charleston, surely one of the loveliest cities of the world and filled with the most hospitable, charming people, most of whom are quite sophisticated about the specters in their midst, such as dear young Dr. Ladd at the house in Church Street and the rattling wheels of Ruth Simmons's coach on Tradd Street. I am confident that all true Charlestonianswould agree that it is permissible to resort to deceit when obdurate personalities thwart reasonable goals."

"Laurel"—Annie said it gently but firmly—"in words of one syllable, what happened?"

Shorn of elaborate circumlocution, Laurel's recital boiled down to trespassing late at night upon posted property, enter­ing a condemned building, tumbling down ramshackle stairs, and severely spraining not one, but both ankles. "I quite fail to understand the exceedingly unpleasant response of the property owners, who have refused to cooperate with psychical researchers despite the fact that a most delightful and ener­getic ghost is reputed to have lived there. At least, we are almost certain this is the right house. The story goes that a little girl, Lavinia, came there to live with two old aunts after her parents died. Lavinia enjoyed the third floor—I was on the third floor when I fell—such a long way down—and one day as the poor child ran up the steps, she was surprised to hear running steps beside her. Well, the long and the short of it is, though she never saw anyone, Lavinia realized the steps be­longed to a ghost, whom she called Pinky. Now, Lavinia and Pinky had such fun together. They danced and ran and skipped. But, as happens to us all, Lavinia grew up—and she met a young man in whom she was very interested. Of course, the first thing she did was to tell Pinky—and I'm sorry to report that Pinky was most jealous, and now instead of dancing feet there were ugly stamps. Temper, you see. And he rapped angrily on the walls and tossed objects about." (Obviously, despite the name, Pinky was a boy ghost.) "But Lavinia was in love. Finally, when Pinky's temper didn't improve, Lavinia told him to go away and never come back.

"Silence. No more companionable footsteps. Pinky was gone. Lavinia—such a kindhearted girl—tried to coax him back, promising they would always be friends, even though she dearly loved Kenneth and they were going to marry. But Pinky didn't return.

"It was a lovely wedding in the front parlor. That night she and Kenneth came upstairs to her room for their honeymoon. That was the custom then. When they were ready for bed,

Kenneth turned down the oil wick and all of a sudden there were great raps and stamping and clothes flew about. Kenneth jumped out of bed, turned up the wick, and looked about in astonishment. Pinky yanked on Kenneth's nightshirt. It was then that Lavinia explained to her bridegroom about her ghost. Kenneth was as aggravated as could be. Lavinia tried to persuade Pinky to be a good ghost and, finally, she laughed and said they'd just have to put up with it, that's all they could do. And so, they began their new life together. The three of them."

"Three," Annie said ominously, "is a hell of a crowd." "Oh, I rather thought Lavinia was a dear—making room in her life for everyone."

Annie wasn't going to pursue this conversation. As far as she was concerned, conjugal frolics definitely were limited to two. She almost said so, then decided to get to the heart of the matter.

"Both ankles?"

"I am prostrate. However, nothing shall keep me from Max's side when he is in need. As soon as I talked to Barb this morning—my dear, she's having such fun at Death on De­mand, playing with Agatha and reading—my duty was clear. I shall order an ambulance immediately and come to Chas­tain." Rustlings of an uncertain nature sounded on the tele­phone line. "So difficult to keep one's papers in order when confined to bed. But now I have paper and pen. Where are you in Chastain?"

"Oh, Laurel"—and if ever Annie had sounded heartfelt it was at this moment—"I cannot tell you how your devotion to duty touches me and how much it will mean to Max, but clearly it is your responsibility to stay in Charleston. Don't you feel that it was meant that you should have an uninter­rupted period of quiet to ponder the wondrous information you have collected and perhaps to make a substantial start upon your book?"

"Can you dear young people cope without me?" Laurel obviously had her doubts.

"Laurel"—Annie felt as if she had been inspired—"weshall call upon you, yes. But not to come here. After all, we are in communication at this moment, even more closely than those who have gone before communicate with we who have come after." Even if she had to say so herself, this was an especially nice touch. "We shall call you daily and share our investigation with you and you will be able to provide leader­ship and encouragement."

Laurel's satisfied murmurs were as liquid as the call of mourning doves. They parted with mutual protestations of affection, respect, and good intent.

Annie was grinning as she returned to her papers. Funny, the way Laurel had phoned just as Annie reached the part about the ghosts of Tarrant House. For a split instant, Annie felt the sting of guilt. Wasn't it heartless not to share that surely fascinating information with their own intrepid ghost-seeker? But there would be ample opportunity during the calls aimed at keeping Laurel safely in Charleston.

Besides, right now, Annie was more interested in flesh­and-blood Tarrants, especially those who had been in Tarrant House the day Judge Tarrant and his youngest son died.

Annie picked up that list.

PERSONS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN IN

TARRANT HOUSE

MAY 9, 1970

Judge Augustus Tarrant, 63 Amanda Brevard Tarrant, 52 Harmon Brevard, 73

Ross Tarrant, 21

Milam Tarrant, 28

Julia Martin Tarrant, 26 Whitney Tarrant, 25

Charlotte Walker Tarrant, 25 Dora Brevard, 61

Lucy Jane McKay, 48 (Cook)

Enid Friendley, 39 (Maid) Sam Willingham, 44 (Butler)

May 9, 1970. A traumatic day for the Tarrant family. How would those still alive remember those hours?

Nineteen-seventy. Annie was six years old. She didn't know now how much she truly remembered of that spring and how much she had learned in later years. But there were words that still struck a chill in her heart and would forever cast a shadow in her mind.

Kent State.

That was 1970 to Annie. She remembered her mother star­ing at the flickering black-and-white television, tears running down her cheeks.

8 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

May sunlight sparkled through the open French doors on the ruddy richness of cypress paneling. But neither shining sun nor gleaming wood dispelled the cool formality of the study, musty leather-bound books, crossed swords above the Adam mantel, a yellowed map of early Chastain framed in heavy silver. The room echoed its owner, the books precisely aligned, the desk top bare, the sofa cushions smooth. Judge Augustus Tarrant toler­ated disarray neither in his surroundings nor in his life—nor in the lives of his family.

The Judge sat behind the desk as he sat behind the bench, his back straight, his shoulders squared. He scowled at the newspaper. This kind of rebellion couldn't be tolerated. What was wrong with some of these college administrators, giving in, listening, talking? As for closing campuses, that was surren­der. It was time to face down the mobs, time to jail those dirty, violent, shouting protesters. Burning the flag! Refusing to serve their country! Who did they think they were? He wished some of them would come before his court.

You had to have standards.

Standards.

Amanda's face, her eyes red-rimmed and beseeching, rose in his mind.

Chapter 8.

Max knocked again. "I can't believe she isn't here." He rattled the huge brass knob. "It's not even nine o'clock yet. Where can she be this early?"

"Out looking for a fresh supply of eye of newt," Annie suggested as she pressed against the screen to peer into Miss Dora's unlit dining room. "Or simply disinclined to answer the door."

"We'll come back." He said it aloud and a little louder than necessary for Annie to hear.

If the old lady was inside, listening . . . Annie sup­pressed a shudder. She couldn't think about Miss Dora with­out remembering embittered old Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, a withered old spinster living among the dust and decay of her broken dreams.

The cordgrass in the salt marsh rippled in the breeze. Fiddler crabs swarmed on the mud flats. The exquisitely blue sky

looked as though it had never harbored clouds, though the evidence of March rains remained in overflowing drainage ditches on either side of the asphalt road. Thick, oozy-green algae scummed the stagnant water.

Annie welcomed the rush of the mild spring air through the open windows of the Maserati. There was an aura of decay and stagnation about Miss Dora's house, a sense of secrets long held and deeply hid. Had Courtney Kimball knocked on that door? What would have brought her to Miss Dora? Had Courtney stood on that porch, young and alive, intent upon her own mysterious goal only days before? Annie shivered.

Raising her voice to be heard over the rush of wind, she asked crisply, "What about next of kin?"

"The sergeant got real cagey there." Max fumbled in the car pocket, retrieved his sunglasses, and slipped them on.

Annie admired that familiar, so-handsome profile, thick blond hair now attractively ruffled by the wind, the straight nose, firm chin, good-humored mouth. A mouth now tight with worry and irritation.

The Maserati picked up speed. "It's like there's some kind of conspiracy to keep me from finding out anything about Courtney. But at least I got the name of her family lawyer out of Matthews." Max honked at a scrappy-looking black pickup nosing out of a side road. "Honest to God, doesn't anybody down here know what a stop sign's for?"

Absently, Annie defended her adopted state. "I've seen some pretty lousy driving on the back roads of Connecticut." But she was puzzling over Max's information. "A lawyer? Why a lawyer? I mean, usually the cops direct you to a parent or a husband or brother or somebody in a family. Why a lawyer?"

The Beaufort law offices of Smithson, Albright & Caston occu­pied a—what else?—antebellum buff brick home. (The taste­ful bronze plaque noted that the Franklin Beaumont House was built in 1753.) Six Corinthian pillars supported three piazzas.

A chestnut-haired receptionist smiled a sunny welcome as they stepped into the enormous hallway that divided the house.

"I called earlier." There was no mistaking the intensity in Max's voice. "Please tell Mr. Smithson that Max Darling and his wife are here to talk to him about Courtney Kimball." Under one arm, Max carried the file that Annie had studied at the motel.

At the mention of Courtney's name, the young woman's smile fled. "Oh, yes," she murmured. She kept her voice even, but curiosity flared in her eyes. She led them swiftly up the paneled staircase to the second floor and paused to knock on white double doors. She opened the right-hand door. "Mr. Smithson, Mr. Darling is here." As she stood aside for them to enter, she stared at them openly. Annie could feel that avid glance as the door closed behind them.

A slender man in his early sixties with a silver Vandyke beard rose from behind an enormous mahogany desk and hur­ried toward them. His patrician face was somber, his eyes fearful. "Courtney—is there any word?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir," an equally somber Max re­plied.

"I had hoped . . ." The lawyer paused, pressed his lips together, then held out his hand to Max. "Roger Smithson." "Max Darling. My wife, Annie."

"Please." Smithson gestured toward a pair of wing chairs that faced his desk.

When they were seated, the lawyer returned to his desk; then, still standing, he stared down at them, his face intent, suspicious. "On the telephone, you claimed that Courtney hired you."

Max met the penetrating gaze with equanimity. "Courtney hired me on Monday." He opened the folder and drew out a slip of paper. He rose and handed it to Smithson.

"That's Courtney's signature," the lawyer acknowledged gruffly after a moment. Handing the paper back, he pressed a hand to his temple, as though it throbbed. He looked old and weary. "I talked to the authorities in Chastain this morning.

They found Courtney's car late last night at Lookout Point on Ephraim Street."

Annie knew that area well. The graveled lot on the point afforded a glorious view of the swift-running, silver river be­neath. Across the street from Lookout Point was the squat, buff-colored Chastain Historical Preservation Society, which Annie had good cause to recall with clarity. She'd had her first encounter with Miss Dora there when she'd come to Chastain to plan a mystery program for the annual house-and-garden tour, a mystery program marred by murder. Rising along the river were some of the stateliest old homes in Chastain, in­cluding Tarrant House and Miss Dora's home.

"And Courtney?" Max asked eagerly.

Smithson gripped the back of his desk chair. "The car door was open." The lawyer swallowed once, then said starkly, "There are bloodstains in the car. On the front seat, the driver's side." His voice was impassive, but the hand on the chair whitened at the knuckles. It took a moment before he was able to continue. "But not a great amount"—he faltered —"of blood."

"Bloodstains . . ." Max's face tightened. It was bad enough to find an abandoned purse. Worse to investigate a ransacked apartment. But blood . . . Max took a deep breath. "No trace of Courtney?"

"None." Smithson's face was gray. He pulled out the chair, slumped into it. "I warned Courtney not to go to Chastain."

Annie looked at him sharply. "Why? Did you think some­thing would happen to her there?"

His head jerked toward Annie. "God, of course not. I would have stopped her somehow, if I'd had any idea. It never occurred to me she would be in danger. But I know—I think lawyers know better than most—that stirring up the past is a mistake. People don't expect it. They don't want it. But to have Courtney disappear—I never expected that."

"What did you expect?" Max watched him closely. "Perhaps some unpleasant surprises. That's what I told Courtney. To expect unpleasant surprises. I told her she was a

stubborn little idiot if she went to Chastain. And now . . ." He rubbed his eyes roughly.

"Why did she go?" Annie asked gently. "What was so important, so urgent, so critical that she felt she had to go there?"

He stared at the two of them with reddened eyes. Finally, abruptly, he nodded. "I tried to tell the police this morning, but they wouldn't listen. They said they had a suspect." The lawyer's eyes fastened on Max. "They said Courtney was run­ning around with a married man." For an instant, his gaze narrowed. "They're talking about you, aren't they?"

Max nodded impatiently. "Sure. For the same reason they wouldn't listen when you tried to tell them why Courtney came to Chastain. They don't want to hear anything connected with the Tarrant family."

"The Tarrant family." Smithson said it without warmth, indeed with anger. "Old sins cast long shadows. I don't know, you see, what the truth is, I don't know what happened or why —but I know part of it and I can guess part of it."

He leaned forward, looked at them searchingly.

It was very quiet in the elegant office, an office, Annie thought, that had rarely contained so much raw emotion, an office more suited to low-voiced, gentlemanly conferences, to the planning of wills and the ordering of estates. A pair of dark blue Meissen urns decorated the Adam mantel with its delicate stuccoed nymphs and garlands. The central panel of the mantel showed a fox hunt. A law book was open atop an Empire card table that sat between huge windows with jade-green damask drapes. A handsome mahogany secretary was open. A fine quill pen rested beside a filled cut-glass inkstand, as if waiting for a country squire to take his place to write in his plantation records. Cut-glass decanters sat on a Chippen­dale sideboard. A cut-glass bowl on Smithson's desk held jelly beans.

"All right." His voice was crisp now, decisive. "I'll tell you what I know with the understanding"—he paused, his eyes still probing theirs—"with the understanding that finding

Courtney takes precedence over everything else. Is that a deal?"

"That's a deal," Max said quickly.

Smithson smoothed his beard and leaned back in his chair. "Very well. I have to go back some years. Twenty-two years. At that time, I represented the Kimball family, as had my father and my grandfather before me. Carleton Kimball and I were at the university together. We were boyhood friends before that. Carleton married my cousin Delia. A happy mar­riage. But there were no children. Both Delia and Carleton were only children. Not even nephews and nieces to love. They wanted children desperately, but finally, they didn't talk anymore about when children would come, and the years were slipping away.

"That was the situation in 1970. In December of that year, Carleton and Delia left town rather abruptly in mid-month. I saw them the evening before they departed. And I will tell you, as the father of five children, that the possibility my cousin, then in her early forties, might have been nearly full-term pregnant never occurred to me. I was astonished when Carleton and Delia arrived back in Beaufort just before Christ­mas with Courtney."

His face softened in remembrance. "They were enormously proud of their new daughter. Through the years, I tried several times to talk to Carleton about Courtney, but he always cut me off. He was a genial man, but this was one topic he would nor discuss. The last time I brought it up, a few years before his death, I told him that if any question ever arose about Courtney's parentage, it would he important to have adoption papers to prove she was indeed his daughter at law. He an­swered simply, 'Courtney is our daughter.' Their wills specifi­cally provided for Courtney to inherit the bulk of the Kimball estate, which was considerable. And, finally, after time, I didn't think about it anymore. Carleton died when Courtney was seventeen; Delia died this March. Courtney came into her inheritance. There were no other surviving relatives."

Max went straight to the point. "You don't believe she is the Kimballs' natural daughter."

"No." A glint of humor. "Germaine, my wife, was preg­nant too many times. It's there, the way a woman carries herself, the look in her eyes. But, more than that, Carleton and Delia were both big people. He was well over six feet, Delia must have been at least five seven. Tall and big. And dark. He had swarthy skin and Delia was olive skinned. They both had coal-black hair and dark-brown eyes."

"Oh, I see." Max turned to Annie. "Courtney's slim and small boned and very fair skinned with blond hair and blue eyes. Like Laurel."

Annie shrugged. "Brown-eyed people can have blue-eyed children. It's rare, but the gene for blue eyes is recessive and it does happen. And lots of children and parents don't look at all alike."

The lawyer was quick to agree. "Oh, I know. We have a redheaded son and there hasn't—officially—been a redhead in the Smithson family in two hundred years. Germaine gets a bit touchy about the usual kind of jokes people make. So yes, it could be. But that isn't all. That isn't even most of it." Smithson absently straightened his perfectly aligned desk blotter. "There's a matter of personality. Do you have chil­dren?"

"Not yet." Max flashed an ebullient glance at Annie.

Her eyes narrowed. Not yet. She wasn't ready yet.

"Hmm. Well, let me say simply that heredity can't be denied." Smithson glanced at the row of photographs on his desk.

"That's for sure," Max said emphatically. "I have three sisters."

Annie could appreciate the wealth of emotion in Max's voice. Certainly only heredity could account for Deirdre's penchant for marriages (four to date), Gail's devotion to causes (the only California mayor to parachute into the midst of a North Carolina tobacco auction with a sign declaring SMOKING Kills), and Jen's free spirit (Bella Abzug with beauty). And they all knew whence sprang these militantly unconventional attitudes.

Annie usually forced herself to avoid lengthy contempla‑

tion of this subject. After all, Max wasn't spacey. But some times, his dark-blue eyes were uncannily like those of Laurel. . . .

"Environment can play a major role," Annie said deter­minedly, quashing the thought that she was whistling in the dark.

"Certainly," Max agreed. But he didn't look at Annie.

The lawyer nodded slowly. "Yes, that's true. But the core of personality—Carleton and Delia were both extremely serious, extremely intense. Carleton was an excellent tax lawyer, cau­tious, conservative. He enjoyed Double-Crostic puzzles. He collected train memorabilia. He wasn't an outdoor man or a sportsman. He was not well coordinated. Delia was interested in family history. She collected snuffboxes and china plates. She never engaged in a sport in her entire life."

"And Courtney didn't fit?" Annie asked.

The lawyer looked at her appreciatively. "Precisely. Now, I want to be clear. Carleton and Delia adored Courtney. She was the delight of their lives. But they always seemed fairly aston­ished by Courtney and her enthusiasms." He reached for one of the silver-framed photographs on his desk and turned it toward them. "This is my youngest daughter, Janelle. Janelle never saw a dare she didn't take, either. She and Courtney were inseparable growing up. They won the state junior doubles championship in tennis two years running. They both played field hockey. Watching Courtney play field hockey al­most drove Delia and Carleton mad with worry. She broke her left arm one year, a collarbone the next. Courtney plays to win. She loves jumping." He looked at them doubtfully. "Horses." They nodded. "And she has a stubborn streak. If anybody tells her she can't do something, well, that means she'll try doubly hard to do it. She was suspended for two weeks her senior year because she climbed to the top of the town water tank and attached the school flag to it." He returned the photograph to its place.

Annie was just a little surprised at the admiring light in the lawyer's eyes.

He reached into the cut-glass bowl for a handful of jelly

beans and popped several in his mouth. He pushed the dish toward them, but they shook their heads. He continued, a bit indistinctly: "Courtney was an excellent student, both here and at the university. She majored in archeology, got her pri­vate pilot's license, and spent summers at digs in Peru. Delia and Carleton never enjoyed traveling outside the United States. They always worried about the water, the political situ­ation, and the food. But they were never able to say no to Courtney. They never understood her, but they loved her. And when Courtney has an enthusiasm, it's like a spring tide, there's no holding her back. She lives every day as if it were the most glorious, the most exciting, the most wonderful day in the history of the world."

The light in his eyes died away. "I'd never seen Courtney subdued until last week. I thought the child was sick when she first came in. She didn't give me a hug, the way she always had. She just walked to that chair"—he pointed toward An­nie's chair—"and sat down and looked at me, as if she'd never seen me before, as if everything here was strange to her. She had smudges under her eyes, as if she hadn't been sleeping well for some time. She looked straight at me and, without any preliminaries, said, 'I want to know the truth about my parents. My real parents.' "

He pushed back his chair and strode to the fireplace. For a long moment, he gripped the mantel; then his hands fell away and he turned toward them, anguish in his face. "I couldn't tell her! God, I couldn't tell her—and she was so sure I would know, so certain that all she had to do was ask me—and I had nothing to give her. I should have made Carleton tell me."

Annie understood his regret, but that wasn't what mat­tered now. "How did Courtney know Delia and Carleton weren't her parents?"

"She was clearing out Delia's papers." He stroked his beard. "I have to wonder, you know, if Delia intended for Courtney to know. Courtney was going through her mother's things, packing a lot of them away, boxing up clothes to give to the Salvation Army. She found a blue silk letter case in

Delia's bedside drawer. And in it, Courtney found a letter—a letter that made it clear that her father was Ross Tarrant." "And her mother?" Annie asked.

"No hint. At all."

That was all he knew.

The lawyer gave them a copy of that letter and Max added it to the file. But, when they stood to go, Max had one more question.

"Just for the record," he said quietly, "where were you, sir, from approximately four yesterday afternoon to, say, ten o'clock last night?"

Smithson stiffened. Bright patches of color stained his pale cheeks above his beard. Then, abruptly, he nodded. "Fair enough, Darling. I was in conference with a client from shortly after four until almost six. I had a quick dinner at the cafeteria across the street because I'm on the city council and I had to be there for a meeting at seven. The meeting didn't end until eleven-thirty." A dry smile. "Zoning generates enor­mous excitement." He reached for a pad from his desk, scrib­bled names and numbers on it. "You can check these." The angry patches faded away. He reached out, gripped Max's hand. "I'm very fond of Courtney. You'll find her, won't you?"

Max pushed open the gate to the St. George Inn, holding it for Annie. In the street behind them, a car door slammed. Run­ning footsteps thudded on the sidewalk.

"You! Hey, you!"

They paused and turned.

Annie felt a swift thrill of fear, because this was a man out of control. He was young—probably her own age—the kind of person who normally would be immediately accepted, well dressed in a pale-green, crisp summer cotton suit, well groomed with short auburn hair, unobtrusively attractive with open, frank features. But his necktie was bunched at his throat, his suit jacket swung unbuttoned, a red gash on his chin from a shaving cut still dimpled with blood, his brown

eyes flared wide and wild, and his chest heaved as he struggled for breath.

"You—you're Max Darling?" He was at the gate now, and no one existed in the world for him at that moment but himself and Max.

Max nodded and his accoster grabbed his jacket with a shaking hand. "Goddammit, where's Courtney? I'll kill you if you've hurt her, I swear to God I will!"

His eyes full of pity, Max stood unresisting in the young man's grasp. "I'm looking for Courtney, too. My wife and I both are."

Annie chimed in and that got his attention. "Listen, my husband had nothing to do with Courtney's disappearance. She hired him to find out about her family, and we're doing everything we can to find her. Don't waste our time. And don't waste your time! Do you know who's trying to hang her disappearance on my husband? The police chief! He wants to keep everything quiet for the Tarrants. Courtney hired Max to find out what actually happened the day her real father died. We're still trying. If you want to find Courtney, the best thing you can do is make sure the Chastain police do their work."

Finally, he calmed down enough to listen. They took him to their suite and, while Max made coffee, they heard his story. His name was Harris Walker, and he was a young lawyer in Beaufort (Ogilvy, Walker & Crane).

He paced up and down in their suite. "I've known Court­ney all my life. She lived next door." The shadow of a smile. "Irritating little kid, always hanging around the big guys, wanting to do whatever we did. I always called her Skinny. Drove her crazy." He looked at Annie with eyes that held a thousand memories, and Annie winced at his pain.

"Bullheaded when she was a little kid. Bullheaded now." His chin quivered. "I told her that. I told her to burn that goddam letter. What difference did it make who her dad was? It was a long time ago. It was other people's lives. It didn't have anything to do with us. But she was set on coming over here. So she hired you." He looked at Max. "Now she's gone,nobody knows where. What the hell are you doing about it?" He was combative again.

When Max finished an account of the past twenty-four hours, Harris scowled. "Jesus, you haven't accomplished any­thing, have you?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He took a gulp of coffee and banged his cup down on its saucer. "Listen, I'm going back down to the river. And I'm going to round people up. Start a real search. Goddammit, it doesn't do any good to talk to people. We have to look."

After Walker slammed out of their suite, Max reached for the phone. "Going to call Barb," he said briefly to Annie.

Annie dropped into a needlepoint chair and picked up the family tree of the recent generations of the Tarrants, but she listened to Max's conversation.

"We're in a race against time, Barb, and we need more help. I've heard about a pretty good private detective in Savan­nah, Louis Porter. Hire him." Crisply, Max described Harris Walker. "Yeah, that's right. Harris Walker. I want everything possible about him—and I want to know where he was from four o'clock on last night."

Annie shivered. Surely not.

". . . and get Porter busy on the people who were in Tarrant House on May ninth, 1970. You'll find the list in the Kimball file. Okay. Anything from your end?" Max leaned back against the bolster on the four-poster mahogany bed, then immediately sat up straight. "I'll be damned. Now, that's interesting. Annie and I went by her house this morn­ing. Okay, Barb, we're on our way."

Annie put down the sketch of the family trees.

"Come on, Annie. Miss Dora has sent a royal summons."

"About time you got here." The tiny figure in the long black bombazine dress and high-topped black leather shoes was the Dora Brevard Annie recalled, without pleasure, from previous meetings. The reptilian black eyes with their flicker of intelli­gence and disdain gazed commandingly at them. Shaggy sil‑

ver hair streamed from the sharp-boned, wrinkled face. Half-gloved, clawlike hands grasped the familiar silver-headed eb­ony cane.

The old lady turned and led the way with surprising speed across the age-smoothed heart pine hall into a drawing room where time had stood still for a century. Bois-de-rose silk hang­ings decorated the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two baluster-stemmed Georgian candlesticks rested on either side of a Queen Anne gaming table. For how many generations, Annie wondered, had the table stood on that same spot? And had the golden-cream candles been there for years and years, too? A Georgian settee was to the left of the fireplace, two Georgian chairs to the right, with a soft rose Aubusson rug between. The elegant Georgian mantel shone as white as an egret's wing. It was a beautiful room.

Miss Dora sped to the nearest chair, inclined her head briefly toward the settee, and waited until they sat opposite her, for all the world, Annie thought resentfully, like children called to account by a strict headmistress.

"Well?" The sturdy cane thumped sharply on the floor.

"You wanted to see us, Miss Dora," Max prompted.

Her glittering eyes settled coldly on his face for a long moment, then she reached into a capacious pocket and, with a rustle, pulled out a square of neatly clipped newsprint and a thick-lensed pince-nez. She perched the delicate gold-rim glasses on her nose, held the clipping close, and began to read in her sandpapery voice:

but that Miss Kimball never arrived.

Miss Kimball's car, a 1992 cream-colored BMW, was found by police late last night at Lookout Point. Bloodstains were found on the front seat.

Chief Wells said Darling was held for questioning when police discovered him at Miss Kimball's apartment Wednes­day night shortly after he had reported her missing to police. The apartment showed signs of a search.

Annie couldn't take any more. She jumped to her feet. "That louse. That rat. That slimebag—"

"That will do, Annie," Miss Dora snapped. "It won't help to have a hissy fit at Harry Wells. The damage is done. Your young man is in a pack of trouble, and you both might as well get ready to face it." There was more than a hint of satisfaction in her thin voice.

Annie opened her mouth, looked into Miss Dora's pene­trating, raisin-dark eyes, and abruptly sat down.

"Good. I'm glad to see you can sometimes be sensi­ble. Now," Miss Dora cleared her throat, "to conti­nue":

Chief Wells reported that the police laboratory confirmed the stains in the car are from human blood.

Darling was released late Wednesday night on his own recognizance.

Efforts by this reporter to contact Darling, owner of Con­fidential Commissions, a per­sonal consultation company on Broward's Rock Island, have been unsuccessful.

An all-points‑

Heiress Disappears; Police Are Puzzled

A Beaufort heiress, Miss Courtney Kimball, 21, has been reported missing, accord­ing to Chastain police.

Police Chief Harry Wells announced today that a Brow­ard's Rock businessman, Max­well Darling, had an appointment with Miss Kim­ball on Wednesday night, and that Darling came to police with Miss Kimball's handbag claiming he found it at the site of their scheduled meeting,

An all-points bulletin has been issued. Miss Kimball is described as a slender, blue-eyed blonde. The missing woman is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Carleton Kimball of Beaufort, one of that city's oldest and most prominent families. The familyattorney, Roger Smithson III, declined comment today on what might have brought Miss Kimball to Chastain.

Miss Kimball arrived in Chastain last week, renting an apartment unit behind the St. George Inn. Mrs. Caroline Gentry, owner of the inn, said,

said she was in Chastain to do research on her family history."

"Oh, this is so shocking. Such a charming young woman. She

Miss Dora removed the pince-nez, folded the news clipping into a neat square, and returned both to her black bombazine pocket. She whipped the cane up and pointed it peremptorily at Max. "Why was Courtney meeting you?"

"I had undertaken a commission for her, Miss Dora." Max looked intently at the old lady. "The landlady at St. George Inn said you recommended the inn to Courtney. That means you and Courtney met. Why?"

Miss Dora's eyes sparkled. Her sudden cackle made Annie's spine crinkle.

"Not so mealymouth as you look, are you, young Max?" The cane dipped, as if in reluctant recognition that she had met her equal. "Polite enough, but nobody's fool. Yes, I can see why you might wonder. Well." Miss Dora sat upright in the prim chair, her shoulders as straight as any soldier on parade. There was a contained ferocity eerily like that of obses­sive Miss Rosa Goldfield in Absalom, Absalom!, Annie thought with a shudder, remembering William Faulkner's splendid novel of gothic passions and doom. "There's more to this than meets the eye. Much, much more."

"Do you know who Courtney's parents were?" Annie inter­jected impulsively.

The shrewd black eyes focused on Annie. "That's the ques­tion, isn't it?" And she cackled again.

"Miss Dora, you know more about Chastain than anyone." Annie felt as if she were on the verge of great discoveries. "Do you know what happened to Judge Tarrant and Ross Tarrant and—"

Miss Dora thumped the cane once, resoundingly. "Just wait, young miss. That's you all over, fly off like a flibbertigib­bet chicken trying to go after all the grain at once. That way, you end up with nothing. First things first." She pursed her lips into a tight bow. "There is evil abroad." Her whispery voice was as low and deep as water rushing through a cavern.

"I won't have any more misery. Too much misery's been vis­ited already."

The old, implacable voice hung in the elegant room like the echo of funeral bells. Miss Dora's face, crosshatched like parchment, looked for all the world like a skull unearthed from an ancient grave.

Annie shivered.

Abruptly, the tiny old lady was on her feet. The black cane swept toward them. "Come with me."

Annie and Max looked at each other in surprise as she darted out into the hall, then hurried to follow.

Miss Dora thumped down the central hallway to an enor­mous door. She pulled the silver handle and stepped out onto the back piazza.

As she and Max joined their elderly hostess, Annie's eyes widened. For a moment, she had no thought but for the beauty that lay before them. The magnificent garden reached all the way to the river, a paradise of scent and color. Delicate lavender wisteria bloomed against mossy brick walls to either side. A glorious profusion of azaleas, pink and rose and crim­son and purple and yellow and white, ran in dazzling swaths all the way to the cliffs edge.

She started when Miss Dora's wiry fingers fastened on her wrist.

"These homes along the bluff "—the cane swung in an arc to her left—"were built when the river was king. This"—her silver head jerked to indicate the wide door behind them—"was where visitors were welcomed. Oh, the excitement when the wide-bottom canoes came into view, the eagerness with which they awaited the latest news from Savannah—the price of rice, the most recent ship from England, who the governor favored, what lovely daughter would wed and whom—gone, all gone. Only the ghosts remain."

Her voice sank at the last into a husky, chilling whisper.

"Sometimes—when the wind is right—you can hear laughter and the clink of glasses and faintly—very faintly—strings from a harpsichord."

The breeze rustled the leaves of the nearby magnolia. Sud‑

denly, the sweet scents from the garden—from the magnolia and the wisteria and the banana shrub and the thick white blossoms of the pittosporum—caught in Annie's throat, choked her.

The cane thumped against the wooden porch. The cold fingers tightened on Annie's wrist. "Ghosts." Ebony eyes looked from Annie to Max. "Are they real? Or are they memo­ries? I didn't hear the cry the night Amanda died."

Was the old woman mad? Was she caught up in a family's demise, chained to memories of graves and worms and epi­taphs?

Miss Dora's mouth trembled. "My favorite niece. Such a pretty, lighthearted girl. Everyone was surprised when she married Augustus Tarrant. He was close to thirty and she a girl of eighteen. Everyone said what a fine man, what a good man. True enough. But too old to marry a young girl. And three sons so quickly. She moved through the days and years quietly. Then, it was like a second youth, that year before Ross died. Amanda bloomed. A light in her eyes, a smile on her lips. But when Ross died, the light went out and she was an old woman. I would see her in the evening, walking along the bluff. . . ." The cane pointed toward the river. "They found her body at the foot of the cliff, a year to the day that Ross died."

Miss Dora loosed her pincer-tight grip on Annie and placed both hands on the silver handle of her cane. She stared toward the river, her face wrinkled in misery. "Sometimes at dusk or early morning, fog boils up from the water. It billows over the azaleas, swirls up into the live oaks." The silver head nodded. "That's when they see Amanda, walking on the path at the edge of the bluff, dressed all in white to please Augus­tus." It was said so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for its import to register.

"They see Amanda?" Goose bumps spread over Annie.

Miss Dora's unblinking eyes never wavered. "They say her soul can't rest, that she's looking for Ross." A sudden cackle. "But he's not there, is he? Ross is in the graveyard. I went there last week and looked at a young man's grave. Twenty‑

one. Too young to die. An accident. That's what they said at the time. Well, that had to be a lie, do you know that?" She stamped the cane on the porch and started down the broad wooden steps.

Annie touched Max's arm. "Max, she's . . ."

The old woman turned, stared malevolently up at them. "I'm what, young miss?"

Annie swallowed. She couldn't have answered had her life depended on it. Was this how the second Mrs. de Winter felt when she faced the cold enmity of the housekeeper at Manderley?

But Max wasn't daunted. "Miss Dora, are you saying Ross Tarrant was murdered?"

The old lady gave an appreciative nod. "You can follow a thread, can't you? Trouble is"—another shrill burst of laugh­ter—"nobody knows the truth. But you're going to find out," and the cane pointed squarely at Max's chest. "Because Harry Wells is sniffing after you, young man. He wouldn't pay me any mind when I told him about Courtney Kimball coming here. Harry said Amanda acted real funny a few weeks before she died, everybody knew it, and he was as sure as a 'coon dog after a possum that Amanda just walked right off that cliff, driven mad by grief. He's right about one thing. Amanda wasn't herself when she wrote that letter—"

"The letter to Delia?" Annie demanded. The letter was a fact, something to hold onto in the welter of emotion and inference created by Miss Dora. The letter and Courtney com­ing here, that was what mattered. As for Amanda's ghost, who knew what kind of turmoil existed in Miss Dora's mind?

"Yes'm, that letter. Date's on it and everything. Amanda wrote it. I know her handwriting." The old mouth pursed, and she stared at them grimly. "Amanda wrote it one week before she died."

"The letter in the blue silk packet." Max was making sure.

White hair shimmered in the sunlight as Miss Dora nod‑

ded vigorously. "Saw it with my own eyes," the old lady said

fiercely. "Harry Wells can't say that letter doesn't exist. But he

won't pay it any mind, even though Amanda wrote that her

son Ross was innocent and that someday, if ever Delia told Courtney about her parents, she was to tell her, too, that `they lied about her daddy. Oh God, Delia, they lied about Ross.' " The last, the part that Miss Dora was recalling from the de­cades-old letter, was said in a high, clear tone completely unlike Miss Dora's. With a prickling of horror, Annie realized Miss Dora was mimicking Amanda Tarrant, speaking in a voice not heard since a grieving mother was found at the foot of a cliff.

"How did they lie?" Annie whispered. "Who lied? What happened to Ross Tarrant?"

"If I knew that, do you think I'd have called you here?" Miss Dora snapped. "That's for the two of you to discover." Her eyes darted from one to the other. "And you'll start here —tonight."

9 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

The neatly folded newspaper lay near the front of the desk. Judge Tarrant finished reading the plaintiffs brief and re­turned it to the file. The work of a second-rate, jackleg ambu­lance chaser. Obviously, the plaintiff had been negligent, and the mill shouldn't bear any expense for the injuries. A sum­mary judgment would answer. He lifted his head and squinted as he thought about his order. Anger still smoldered deep within, but he was a man who would never let his personal feelings distract him from his work. His cold, sunken eyes swept past, then returned to focus on the Sargent portrait of his mother, painted when she was a girl of seventeen. She wore a white organdy dress and, in her hands, held a closed pink parasol. The sudden softness in his melancholy brown eyes merely underscored the severity of his features, a long supercil­ious nose, gaunt cheeks, thin firm lips, bony chin. With that haunting sense of loss that had never left him, he stared across the sunlit study at the oil portrait above the Adam mantel. He had been only four when she died. She was a faint memory of warmth and softness and the scent of roses, a mystic sensation of safety and goodness and well-being. She had been the mother of five children but he could not—had never pictured her in a passionate, sweaty embrace.

What kind of difference might it have made to two genera­tions of Tarrants if he had seen his mother as a woman, not a Madonna?

Chapter 9.

Max didn't need to glance at his watch. He'd been sitting in the dusty, spittoon-laden waiting room of the Chastain court­house for almost an hour, waiting for His Highness, the chief, to deign to see him. He forced himself to remain at ease in a chair harder than basalt. He hated every ponderous click of the minute hand on the old-fashioned wall clock. It was late after­noon now, almost exactly twenty-four hours since that frantic call from Courtney.

Blood on the front seat of her car.

Dammit, where was Wells?

And where, dear God, was Courtney?

Annie was lousy at geometry and worse at what math teachers so endearingly call story problems. So her sense of accomplish­ment when she held up two sheets of paper, the Tarrant Fam­ily Tree in one hand and the Chastain Connection in the other, was monumental.

Because this was essential.

She and Max could easily slip into a morass of confusion if they didn't get a good sense of who was who both now and then.

Now she could see at a glance how Miss Dora figured in and why Courtney had come to see her.

Courtney knew from the letter to Delia that her father was Ross Tarrant, which made Judge Augustus and Amanda Tar­rant her paternal grandparents. Miss Dora was the sister of Ross's maternal grandfather (father of Amanda), and, there­fore, Amanda's aunt and Ross's great-aunt. It was interesting to wonder why Courtney chose to visit her father's great-aunt. Why not her father's brothers? She and Max needed to pursue this.

The laboriously drawn family charts also revealed, to An­nie's distinct amusement, that Miss Dora was related—a cousin of sorts—to Chastain's naughty lady, Sybil Chastain Giacomo, whom Annie and Max had met a couple of years ago during the house-and-garden mystery program. No wonder Miss Dora took Sybil's lustful life-style so personally. Not, of course, that Annie cared at all how attractive Sybil was to men, even to one particular blond whom Annie cherished.

Annie forced her mind back to relationships (other than carnal). After all, she wouldn't have to deal with Sybil during this visit to Chastain. In fact, Annie fervently hoped the in­credibly gorgeous mistress of another of Chastain's storied homes was at that moment far away. Far, far away. Maybe at her villa in Florence.

Annie double-checked her dates and put the sheets on the bedside table. She chewed on her pencil point for a moment, then marked a series of lines, connecting Dora to Amanda (and thereby Ross) and to Sybil.

The phone rang.

As she reached for the receiver, Annie was suddenly certain of her caller. But she refused to accept this intuitive knowl­edge as a presentiment.

". . . do hope that dear Dorothy L. is being cared for, as well as Agatha."

"Laurel"—Annie was outraged—"of course they're both fine! Barb's going by the house morning and evening to feed Dorothy L. And Dorothy L. purred like a steam engine when I went by the house this afternoon to pack a couple of suit­cases." Annie felt no need to elaborate on her packing objec­tives, which included not only clothes and toiletries, but a coffeemaker, two pounds of Colombian Supreme, and a con­tainer of peanut butter cookies. She'd stopped by Death on Demand, too, and borrowed two coffee mugs, one inscribed in red script with The House on the Marsh by Florence Warden and the other with The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rine­hart. After all, even armies maintain troop morale with food. Besides, did Laurel think she and Max were cat abusers? Who could possibly forget Dorothy L., a cat with more self-esteem than Nancy Reagan and Kitty Kelly combined. And not, as habituйs of the bookstore knew, exactly a bosom companion of Agatha, Death on Demand's resident feline. Sometimes sepa­rate maintenance is an inspired solution.

". . . surprised that I don't know of a single cat!"

Annie knew she'd missed something. Laurel knew many cats in addition to Agatha and Dorothy L. Could this be selective memory loss? What might it augur for the future? Would Laurel soon begin dismissing from her memory per­sons, as well as cats, for whom she didn't cherish an especial passion? Such as Annie?

". . . it's curious to me because they are the most em­pathetic of creatures, as we all know. Instead, there is this huge white dog, apparently not the least bit charming. In fact, he quite terrifies travelers on the road that passes by the ruins of Goshen Hill near Newberry. And has been doing so for more than a hundred years. But I simply don't understand why not a cat! However, it isn't mine to criticize the workings of the other world; it is mine simply to report, and I did think, Annie, you would find it interesting to know that Chastain is quite a hotbed of ghosts!"

Oh, of course. No ghost cats. A ghost dog. And a hotbed of ghosts in Chastain. Since most references to ghosts with which

Annie was familiar stressed the icy coldness that enveloped those in close proximity to otherworld visitants, Annie thought the term "hotbed" a curious word choice, but she had no intention of delving for the reason, ostensible or unstated.

"Annie, are you there?"

"Oh, yes, of course, Laurel. I was merely considering the question of no ghost cats."

"My dear child"—a throaty sigh—"how like you to focus upon a philosophical aside. Your concentration here should surely be on the ghosts associated with Tarrant House."

It was difficult not to be offended. After all, it was Laurel who had brought up ghost felines or their lack, not Annie.

Annie counterattacked. "Oh, sure," she said offhandedly, "those ghosts. We know all about them. The ghostly gallop heard when the moon is full is Robert Tarrant rushing home to see his sick sister. And no amount of scrubbing has ever been able to remove his bloodstains from the step next to the landing. And everyone knows about Amanda Tarrant walking along the side of the cliff by the river."

"Oh." The simple syllable sagged with deflation.

Annie felt an immediate pang of shame. How could she have been so selfish? Poor Laurel. Confined to bed, no doubt her ankles throbbing, reduced to phone calls (although Annie did remember that Laurel had elevated this means of commu­nication to an art form), how could Annie have been so cal­lous? "But I'm sure you have a much better sense of what these appearances mean," Annie said quickly.

Laurel was never quashed for long. "Certainly there is that." The husky voice was emphatic. "And I know—because I've developed such rapport--that these spirits are tied to Earth because of the trauma involved in their leave-taking. Such heartbreak for a family. The War, of course."

Annie raised a sardonic eyebrow. Was Laurel aspiring to true southernhood by referring to the Civil War simply as the War?

"Three sons lost fighting for hearth and home, the fourth lost through a father's uncontrolled rage—and you know the

guilt and misery that must have stemmed from such an act." Her tone was funereal. "One can only guess at the kind of passions aroused that day when Robert came home—only to shed his heart's blood on the very steps he'd lightly sped up and down as a beloved child."

For just an instant, Annie experienced a wave of sadness that left her shaken. She could see the father's distraught face, feel Robert's determination, hear the sharp crack of a pistol shot.

"Laurel," she cried. "That's dreadful."

"Oh, dear Annie, you feel it, too!"

Annie looked down at the sketch pad beneath her hand. Most of the sheet was taken up by notes she'd made concern­ing the Tarrant and Chastain families. It unnerved her to see that she'd also drawn a cat with a quizzical expression, a dog with his lips drawn back in a ferocious snarl, and a stairway with a dark splotch near the landing. Dammit, she wasn't a Ouija board!

". . . so disturbing to all the family that Ross and his father had that hideous quarrel on the day both died."

"Quarrel!" The pen in Annie's hand scooted along the page as if possessed, leaving a trail of question marks. "What quar­rel? How do you know?"

"Obviously, my dear." The husky tone was just this side of patronizing. "As a competent researcher, I do seek information from those still inhabiting this earthly vale. It should be ap­parent to the meanest intelligence that I can't communicate in person with figures involved in events where the primary par­ticipants are now on the Other Side. Although one has heard of astounding success with channeling. But rather a different objective, don't you think? It was sйances in the nineteen-twenties and -thirties. But so many did turn out to be con­trived. So disillusioning for true believers. I know that Mary Roberts Rinehart—such an adventurous woman, especially for those days, nurses' training in the most arduous early days of nursing, camel journeys, rugged camping, even going to war—cast a jaundiced eye upon the results. I for one—"

"Laurel." It was not permissible to snarl at one's mother-in-law. Annie knew her tone was just short of offensive. "Who told you Ross and his father quarreled that day?" Annie's pen was poised to write.

"Why, Evangeline Copley, of course. And it does seem to indicate almost a Direction from Beyond that in inquiring about Tarrant House ghosts, I should obtain this snippet of information, which obviously is of utmost interest to you."

Evangeline Copley.

Frantically, Annie scrabbled through her sheets of notes. Who the hell was Evangeline Copley?

Annie's silence revealed her ignorance.

"A next-door neighbor to the Tarrant family. Miss Dora directed me to her." Laurel's tone was as smug as Agatha's bewhiskered expression upon consuming salmon soufflй. "Dear Miss Copley was ninety-nine last Sunday. An avid gardener. She was spraying her marigolds with nicotine—those dreadful red spiders—on that Saturday, the Saturday in question, of course, May ninth, 1970. Miss Copley heard Ross and the Judge shouting at each other! The bed of marigolds was just on the other side of the wall separating the properties. The quarrel occurred in midafternoon. Ross slammed out of his father's study and ran down the back steps into the garden. What happened after that is unclear, but I shall continue to seek out the truth from my sickbed. Not about that quarrel, intriguing as it may be to you and dear Max as you pursue earthly goals, but about the renewed activity on the supra-normal plane. Ghosts are walking once again at Tarrant House. Just last night, Miss Copley saw a figure in white deep in the garden at Tarrant House. A view, you know, from her back piazza. I hereby designate you, dear Annie, to serve as my agent on the scene. Do not let a single opportunity escape you. Seek out the events of that tragic Saturday as I shall continue to pursue the visitations that have resulted. We have here a great opportunity to demonstrate the reason that ghosts exist, and perhaps, if we learn enough—if we ascertain the truth of that day's occurrences—we shall discover whether public un‑

derstanding of a trauma rids a site of the unhappy spirit. I depend upon you. Tally ho, my dear."

Annie replaced the receiver, then stared at the mute instru­ment thoughtfully.

A figure in white deep in the garden at Tarrant House? Miss Dora, too, had spoken of that dimly seen specter. Swirling fog, the old lady had harrumphed.

Annie knew that's all it was, of course.

It couldn't be anything else.

She rose and walked to the door. Opening it, she saw that twilight was falling.

She and Max weren't due at Miss Dora's until eight o'clock. Max, of course, would be back from the courthouse soon, but it wasn't far to Miss Dora's. Only a few blocks. Turning quickly, she found a clean sheet of paper, scrawled a note, and propped it up where Max couldn't miss it.

The cat's pleasure in toying with a mouse is enhanced when the mouse lunges and twists and tries to escape. Max main­tained his casual air of relaxation as he leafed through the three-month-old Sports Illustrated, and he evidenced no impa­tience or irritation when Chief Wells's office door finally opened, more than two hours after Max had arrived for their scheduled appointment.

Wells loomed in the doorway, an unlit cigar in his mouth. He gave Max an indifferent stare and made no apology for the delay, mumbling indistinctly, "Oh, yeah. You're here. I've got a few minutes." He turned away.

Max dropped the magazine on an end table and strolled into Wells's barracks-bare office, which contained a steel-gray desk, an army cot against one wall, a shabby leather chair behind the desk, and a hardwood straight chair facing it.

"Any word on Courtney Kimball?" Max asked.

Wells sat down heavily behind the desk. He dropped the cigar stub in the green-glass ashtray. Near it was a single brown manila file folder. Wells pointed at the chair facing thedesk. It sat directly beneath a glaring light that hung un­shaded from the ceiling.

Max casually shoved the chair from beneath the light and dropped into it.

Wells's obsidian-dark eyes glinted; then he creaked back in his oversized leather chair. He absently touched an old scar that curved near his right cheekbone. "No word. You ready to tell us where Miss Kimball is?"

Max ignored that. Instead, he looked pointedly at his watch. "It's getting late, Chief. Yesterday at a few minutes after five, Courtney Kimball phoned me. Nobody's heard from her since. So far as I know, nobody's seen her since. I've always understood that if a missing person isn't found within the first twenty-four hours, the likelihood of turning up dead runs about ninety percent."

"I don't like your face, Darling. I don't like your mouth. And I don't like this setup." The chief's hard-edged face looked like a gunmetal sculpture. "We've dragged that damn river all day and into the night and all we've got are old tires and logs. It's costing the county a fortune. I don't think she's in there, Darling. Something stinks here, and I think it's you."

"Wrong again, Wells. When something dead's dug up, it smells rotten—and that's what's happening here. Let's go back twenty-two years, Wells. Let's go back to May ninth, 1970." Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook. He flipped it open. "Oh, by the way, I thought you might be interested to know that I have a new client."

Wells waited, his unblinking black eyes never leaving Max's face.

"Miss Dora Brevard has employed me." It felt like slapping an ace on a king.

Wells folded his massive hands across his chest. He'd played a little poker himself. "Miss Dora doesn't know what she's doing."

Max met the chief's pit-viper gaze without a qualm. "Oh, yes, she does. She told me to tell you, she very specifically told me' to tell you that the truth had to come out."

Wells reached for his tin of chewing tobacco, pulled out a thumb-size plug, and stuffed it in his right cheek. "Twenty-two years ago." His voice sounded like stone grating against steel. "I'd been chief for six years." His jaw moved rhythmi­cally, the scar stretching; his dark eyes were cold and apprais­ing. "I grew up here in Chastain. My people have been here for two hundred years. I know the Tarrants. The Judge was a fine man."

A grating voice giving that accolade now; earlier an old lady's whispery voice.

"A hanging judge." There was no mistaking the approba­tion and respect. "Judge Tarrant expected men to do their duty, wouldn't accept excuses when they didn't."

A fine man.

A hanging judge.

Max scrutinized that heavy, slablike face. "What really happened to Judge Tarrant?"

A flicker of what might have been a smile touched Wells's somber mouth. "That was a damn long time ago, Darling," he drawled. He was very relaxed now, his big arms resting loosely on the armrests, his jaw moving the tobacco between phrases. "Only reason I recollect anything at all is because I thought a lot of Judge Tarrant. Since it was natural causes, there was no reason for my office to be involved. You see, in South Carolina when a doctor is present at the time of death and can certify the cause of death, no autopsy is required. That was the case with the Judge. Seems that when he was told about young Ross's accident"—was there just a hint of stress on "acci­dent"?—"the Judge took bad real fast, and they called for his doctor—he only lived a couple of doors away—and he got there just before the Judge died. Damn sad situation. Since it was natural causes, I had no call to go to the house, and I had my hands full, dealing with young Ross's body. But you're all fired up to know everything about that day—a tragic day for a fine family—so I thought maybe it'd cool you down if you saw how the investigation into Ross's death was conducted. I went down to the dead files in the basement and got the folder on

Ross. You're welcome to take a look at it. There's an empty office across the hall. When you finish with this"—he lifted up the manila folder—"you can return it to the desk ser­geant." He pushed the file across the desk and stood, his craggy face expressionless, his dark eyes amused.

It was the longest speech Max had ever heard from him.

The lying son of a bitch.

The evening breeze rattled the palmetto palms and the waxy magnolia leaves, but it wasn't strong enough to disperse the sweet smell of the magnolia. The huge tree, full of fist-size blossoms, crowded the end of Evangeline Copley's back porch.

It was fully dusk now, the shrubs indistinct against the darkening horizon.

Annie knew she was trespassing. But no one had answered her knock at Evangeline Copley's house—and what could it hurt if she just slipped toward the back and took a quick look around?

Although every twig underfoot—she was carefully walking to one side of the oyster shell path—cracked as loud as a circus cannon, Annie reached the back of the house without chal­lenge.

No lights shone in the back of the house either. Annie began to breathe a little more easily, though her hands were damp with sweat.

The garden stretched before her, a jumbled mass of scented shadows. An ivied wall stretched between the Copley garden and the Tarrant grounds.

Evangeline Copley, Annie thought, is a liar.

Miss Copley certainly couldn't have seen into the Tarrant gardens from her own garden.

Stealthily, Annie crept up the back steps to the piazza. All right, that explained it—now the Tarrant grounds were visi­ble. Annie strained to see through the thickening darkness. She looked toward the river. Toward the back of the garden

rose a marble obelisk, spotted with moonlight. The wind stirred the leaves of nearby trees, making the branches creak, sounding almost like far-distant cries.

Annie felt the skin of her skull tighten.

Suddenly, with no warning, Annie smelled freshly turned earth—the unmistakable odor of a new grave, deep and pun­gent. But it wouldn't be the smell of a grave, not really. It was just a trick of the wind, sweeping the scent from Miss Copley's garden. That's all it was.

She didn't believe in ghosts. She did not. She wouldn't run away. In fact, she would go down into the garden. She walked stiffly down the steps, heading for the gate in the wall that led to the Tarrant grounds.

Annie followed the path. Shrubs rustled. Palm leaves rat­tled. She approached the gate, treading cautiously. But, of course, there was no one to hear her. Still, she slipped up to the gate and peered through the bars. The shadows were so deep now and so dark that it was hard to separate trees from shrubs. Then, she held her breath for a long moment. There was a flash of white near the obelisk. Just that, a quick flash, and nothing more. Now it was dark, all dark.

But there had been something there.

Something.

She heard a lilting call: "Amanda, are you there? Amanda?"

And another faint, high, pleading call. "Amanda? Amanda?"

Annie wanted to run, yet she had the terrified instinct that she would never be able to run fast enough. But she burst on down the path, stumbling over uneven flagstones, pushing away trailing vines. When she reached the path along the bluff, she saw the bobbing lights out on the river, and drew courage—there were people out there. They would hear if she shouted. Then, with a shiver, she realized that the lights marked the continuing search for the body of Courtney Kim­ball.

·

"Annie, what's wrong? What happened?"

"Nothing." She closed the door to their suite behind her and avoided looking at Max. She didn't believe in ghosts—past, present, or future. She glanced in the girandole-topped, gilt-framed wall mirror opposite the chintz-covered couch where Max was awash in a sea of papers. She did look a little pale, and she'd snagged some hibiscus in her hair during her pell-mell dash through the Copley garden. "I took a wrong turn coming back from Miss Copley's." It took a moment to explain Miss Copley. (Annie left out the part about ghosts; what mattered was the quarrel overheard between the Judge and Ross.) "We'll have to talk to her."

Unspoken was her firm decision to make that visit during daylight hours.

Although, of course, she did not believe in ghosts.

"A quarrel between the Judge and Ross! Annie, good go­ing." But Max was still concerned about her. "You look kind of ragged."

The phone rang.

Annie rushed to answer it, glad for the diversion.

Barb chirped in her ear. "Honestly, Annie, you do lead the most interesting life." Max's secretary sounded genuinely im­pressed. "Sara Paretsky's publisher just called to ask if you would like to have her for a signing in July, and I told her we'd love to. Then Henny's postcard came. She visited the Wood Street Police Station where Inspector Ghote arrived early for the international conference on drugs in Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock by H.R.F. Keating. Henny wrote that she's using the Mystery Reader's Guide to London by Alzina Stone Dale and Barbara Sloan Hendershott, and she says it's wonderful. Doesn't that sound like fun? I'd love to always work here—but I do have to tell you that Agatha's been in a nasty humor. I mean, I don't suppose she actually objects to being petted—"

Annie could see trouble coming. Agatha had fierce opin­ions indeed about human hands and when they were welcome. But Annie didn't want to hurt Barb's feelings.

—and I was just smoothing her coat when she flew to the top of Romantic Suspense and leveled the display—"

Annie pictured the books, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, The Simple Way of Poison by Leslie Ford, The Chinese Chop by Juanita Sheridan, and The House of a Thousand Lanterns by Victoria Holt.

"—Really, Dorothy L.'s much more appreciative."

Annie began to feel far away from the Copley garden. It always made her feel good to think about Dorothy L.'s en­chanting purr.

"But anyway, I just called to give you the preliminary report from Louis Porter. He rang up a little while ago to give me some preliminary stuff, and I thought I'd better get it right to you."

Annie covered the receiver. "Barb's got some stuff from the PI for us." She pointed at her sketch pad. Max handed it to her. Flipping to a fresh sheet, she made notes as fast as she could.

". . . and that about wraps it up. Oh, yeah, Annie, Mr. Porter said he'll fax a bunch more stuff tomorrow."

"That's great, Barb. Thank you, and thanks for taking care of the store." Annie wriggled her shoulders to loosen tight muscles.

"No problem. It's fun-except I sure wish I had more time to read. Talk to you tomorrow," and the connection was bro­ken.

Max looked at her in anticipation.

Annie took time to pour a steaming cup of coffee, then began to read from her notes:

PRELIMINARY REPORT FROM LOUIS PORTER:

One. Judge Augustus Tarrant. Died May 9, 1970, at the age of 63. Death certificate indicates cardiac arrest, signed by Dr. Paul Rutledge (died March 3, 1987). Judge Tarrant had an excellent reputation as a fair though stern judge and was considered a legal scholar. His opinions are cited even today for their clarity and reasoning. He was an authorityon maritime law as it affected South Carolina litigants. According to all accounts, he was stern, unemotional, re­served, dignified, disciplined, hardworking, devoted to his family, an excellent shot, an accomplished horseman, an avid golfer.

Two. Ross Tarrant. Died of accidental gunshot wound, May 9, 1970. Well-liked by his contemporaries, a leader in the cadet corps at The Citadel, a superior athlete. Accus­tomed to handling firearms.

Three. Amanda Brevard Tarrant. Died in a fall from the cliff path behind Tarrant House May 9, 1971. Contempo­rary newspaper reports imply suicide, hinting at her deep depression over the deaths of her husband and son the previous year on the same date. Her death was officially termed an accident by the medical examiner, Dr. Paul Rut­ledge.

Four. Harmon Brevard. Died of lung cancer July 18, 1977. Father of Amanda Brevard Tarrant, grandfather of Ross Tarrant, brother of Miss Dora Brevard. A hard-drink­ing sportsman, owner of several plantations. Ebullient, de­termined, stubborn, domineering. Once he made up his mind, impossible to sway. Good-humored unless chal­lenged.

Annie paused for an invigorating gulp of coffee. These precise, unemotional reports from Porter put everything back into perspective. These people were all dead and gone, and, despite Chastain's reputation as a haven for ghosts, Annie felt confident she wouldn't have to mingle with them at Miss Dora's gathering tonight. But that didn't hold true for the remainder of the thumbnail sketches, so she'd better concen­trate.

Five. Milam Tarrant, the oldest of Augustus and Amanda Tarrant's sons. He is 48. At the time of the Judge's heart attack, Milam was employed as a junior vice-president at the Chastain First National Bank. He resigned that post the week after his father's death and he and his

wife, Julia, and daughter, Melissa, moved out to a Tarrant plantation, Wisteree. Milam is a painter, specializing in still lifes. He has sufficient family income that he hasn't had to depend upon his paintings for income. Local artists consider him a second-rate dilettante. Since the death of their only daughter in a drowning accident, both Milam and Julia have avoided most social occasions. His relation­ship with his family is strained as he is openly contemptu­ous of his younger brother, Whitney.

Six. Julia Martin Tarrant. Now 46. Almost a recluse. Reputed to have a drinking problem. Spends most of her time gardening. Have been unable to discover any close friends.

Seven. Whitney Tarrant, 46, senior partner of Tarrant & Tarrant. Primarily a business getter for the firm. Reputed to be lazy, easily bored, petulant. Difficult to deal with. Plays golf several times a week. He and his wife, Charlotte, are among the social leaders of Chastain, entertaining sev­eral times a month. One child, Harriet Elaine, reportedly living in Venice, California.

Eight. Charlotte Walker Tarrant, 46. Author of The Tar­rant Family History. House proud and family proud. Very active in the Chastain Historical Preservation Society. Mas­ters bridge player. Collects antique plates. Considered an authority on Low Country history. Reputation for snob­bishness. Enjoys golf, horseback riding.

Max checked the clock. "We'd better get ready to go." Annie put the notepad on the coffee table. "I wonder what Miss Dora has up her bombazine sleeve?"

As they walked swiftly through the dark streets, the shadows scarcely plumbed by the soft gold radiance of the old-fash­ioned street lamps, Annie clung tightly to Max's hand. For comfort. Because she kept seeing young Harris Walker's stricken face. Where was he now? Did he still carry hope in his heart? Or was despair numbing his mind?

Max strode forward like a gladiator eager for combat. When he spoke, it sounded like a vow. "I don't know how or when, Annie, and it may not happen tonight, but I'm going to rip this thing open, no matter what it takes."

She looked up at him, Joe Hardy mad as hell, his handsome face grim and intent.

"Lies, lies all over the place." He bit the words off. "Was there anything in the police report about Ross quarreling with his father that afternoon? No. Not a word. Not a single word. Just a bland statement. 'Subject found dead of a gunshot wound at the family hunting lodge at shortly before five in the afternoon.' Have you ever heard of anybody going hunting alone at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon?"

What Annie knew about hunting could be summed up in one word: nothing. So she just murmured a noncommittal "Hmmm?" and hurried to keep up.

"As for the autopsy report—body of young, white, healthy male, a bullet wound to the right temple, evidence of contact from powder burns, powder residue on the right hand. That doesn't spell accident to me." They turned the corner onto Ephraim Street. The river, dark and quiet, ran to their right. "But if it was suicide, why not say so?"

"The Family," Annie said with certainty, taking a little hop. There was a pebble in her right shoe, but now was not the time to deal with it. She tried to avoid limping. "Can't you imagine how upset everyone would be? And in a small town like this, people would keep it quiet. But suicide doesn't jibe with the letter Amanda Brevard sent to Courtney's mother. Amanda wrote that 'Ross was not guilty.' Not guilty of what? Not guilty of suicide? Does that mean that he was murdered? Or was it an accident, after all?"

Max shook his head impatiently. "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

They passed three of Chastain's oldest and loveliest homes, which Annie had come to know well when she provided the mystery program for the annual house-and-garden tours. Next came the Swamp Fox Inn, now under new management. It had been freshly painted. Annie glanced from the former tabby

fort that served as the headquarters of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society across the street to Lookout Point, where Courtney Kimball's abandoned car had been found. No lights bobbed on the river tonight.

A single dark figure stood at the cliff's edge, staring out at the swift river.

"Max." She heard the tightness in her voice.

At his glance, she pointed across the street.

Max's stride checked. "Walker," he said quietly. Abruptly, he reached out and wrapped a hard arm around her shoulders and held her tight for a long moment.

Annie understood.

Max gave one more look toward the river, then said brusquely, "Come on."

This was where Ephraim Street dead-ended. They curved left onto Lafayette Street. The river curved, too, but here it was hidden behind the houses on Lafayette Street. Now the beautiful homes were to their right. The river—and the path where Amanda Brevard had fallen to her death—ran behind the elegant old houses. They passed Chastain House, with its remarkable Ionic columns and gleaming white pediment. It blazed with lights. Annie frowned at the luxurious classic Bentley in the drive. So Sybil Chastain Giacomo was in resi­dence. Annie's hand tightened on Max's arm.

He mistook the pressure and slowed, looking down. Annie pointed at the next home. "There's where Miss Cop­ley lives."

Then they reached Tarrant House, huge and dark behind its enormous bronze gates.

"You could practically fit Sherwood Forest in there," Annie murmured. She slipped off her right shoe, shook out the peb­ble, and put it back on.

Max stared somberly at the old mansion. "If those walls could talk . . ."

A car passed them in a hiss of tires, turned in next door. Miss Dora's guests were beginning to gather.

Max took her elbow. They walked swiftly up Miss Dora's drive. Despite the light showing through chinks in the shut­tered windows, the old tabby mansion, deep in the shadows of a phalanx of live oaks, had the aura of a ruin, as gloomy as the burned-out shell of Thornfield. An owl hooted mournfully.

Annie was swept with dark foreboding.

9:07 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

Chapter 10.

Amanda Tarrant's portrait, made for Mother's Day, sat on her dressing table. It pictured a cameo-lovely woman with smooth magnolia skin and gentle blue eyes. Rich auburn hair framed her oval face in luxuriant waves.

Amanda reached out, picked up the frame, and stared at her image. Her eyes smeared with tears, and she turned the frame facedown. She huddled in the chair in front of the ornate rosewood dressing table in a room fragrant with the lily of the valley perfume she always wore, and, unwillingly, almost in disbelief looked in the mirror. Mirror, mirror . . . She couldn't look like that! She couldn't! Her hair in blowsy disarray, her eyes wild and filled with misery, her lips trem­bling . . . And she couldn't stop the little hiccups of distress or control the jagged rhythm of her breathing. She lifted a trembling hand to touch the bright-red mark on her cheek where Augustus had struck her. That was hideous, but worse, much worse, was the threat he had made, his voice as cold as death.

She might as well be dead.

Suddenly, the perfume she loved so much seemed overpower­ing, threatening to choke her. Striking out, she overturned the ornate crystal scent bottle. It shattered into sharp fragments, and perfume spread across the gleaming dressing table. She scarcely noticed the cut on her palm and the blood mingling with the scent.

Oh, God, what was she going to do?

Annie knew the outcome of the gathering at Miss Dora's couldn't be predicted, but her first shock came when she and Max entered the elegant, austere drawing room and Sybil Chastain Giacomo flicked her an incurious, bored glance, then focused on Max, her dark eyes suddenly alive and lusty. A quiver of a smile touched those full, sensuous lips.

Annie felt her cheeks flush. What was Sybil doing here? Sybil lived just two doors away from Miss Dora, but that, of course, was irrelevant to this evening. Or was it? Shrewd old Miss Dora never acted without reason.

But there'd been no mention at all of Sybil in any of the materials about the events at Tarrant House on May 9, 1970.

Sybil wore a green, dйcolletй gown. Very dйcolletй. She was a striking, vivid figure against the cool ivory of the walls. An aura of wildness invested Sybil's every glance and every throaty remark with a current of fascination. Her presence dominated the room. Each woman and each man was acutely aware of her flamboyant, unrestrained sexuality.

Sybil knew it, of course, knew and took some pleasure in it, although her brown eyes held a depth of unhappiness that no momentary pleasure could relieve.

Miss Dora, her ever-present cane tightly gripped in her left hand, thumped across the floor to Annie and Max. "You know Sybil."

Sybil moved closer to Max and gave him her hand. "Not nearly well enough. But perhaps we can remedy that." Sybil gave him a come-on-over-tonight-honey look, ignoring Annie altogether.

It only added to Annie's fury that Max, dammit, was en­joying every second of Sybil's high-voltage performance. It would serve him right if Annie abandoned him to Sybil for the rest of the evening. He might learn something about the old adage that those who play with matches can bloody well get singed.

But there were no flies on Miss Dora. Somehow—Annie wasn't certain how—Sybil was bypassed, and she and Max were on a circuit of the room with Miss Dora. "My young friends from Broward's Rock, Max and Annie Darling," Miss Dora announced to each family member in turn.

Milam Tarrant was minimally polite but obviously unin­terested. His long—by Chastain standards extraordinarily long—blond hair curled on his collar like that of an Edwar­dian dandy. He wore a pink dinner jacket that didn't hide a heavy paunch.

Milam's wife, Julia, smiled pleasantly but her eyes had the lost and lonely look of a neglected child. Her evening dress was old and shabby, its once vibrant black dulled to the color of a winter night sky.

Weedy, aristocratic Whitney Tarrant, whose high-bridged nose and pointed chin were replicated in the family portraits, held Annie's hand a trifle too long in a moist grip. Annie fought away the desire to wipe her fingers when they were free.

Whitney's wife, Charlotte, gave Annie and Max a brief nod and a supercilious smile. Despite her dowdy white eveningdress, Charlotte exuded the self-assurance of a woman su­premely certain of her social position.

Conversation was politely formal: the unseasonably sultry weather, concern over the safety of Savannah River water for drinking ("How can we ever feel safe with that damned nu­clear weapons production plant upstream?" Whitney de­manded), the plans for the summer regatta. Annie was glad when Miss Dora promptly led her guests in to dinner, though she heard Sybil's caustic, "No drinks first? God." The dining room was gorgeously appointed, the crimson damask curtains a dramatic counterpoint to the deep emerald green of the walls. They sat around a Hepplewhite drop-leaf table on Hep­plewhite shieldback chairs. On a Sheraton sideboard, a large Georgian silver bowl and tea service glistened in the light from the enormous crystal teardrop chandelier.

Annie was delighted that Sybil was seated as far from Max as possible. Miss Dora, of course, was at the head of the table. At the other end was Milam. Sybil sat to his left, and Max was at Miss Dora's right.

That was on the plus side.

On the minus, Annie had Whitney to her right. Was he deliberately pressing his knee against hers? She pulled her leg away. But he moved his leg, too. Annie's eyes narrowed. She remembered a request she'd heard Gloria Steinern make once in a speech: "Do something outrageous. Tell him to pick it up himself." Annie gripped her shrimp cocktail fork, dropped her hand sharply to her right, and poked.

Whitney gave a small yelp, which he unsuccessfully tried to smother.

Max looked sharply down the table. Annie spread her right hand to indicate all was copacetic, but she hoped Whitney was aware of the dark look he was receiving from her husband. She turned to Whitney and smiled sweetly. "I'm so sorry. It just got away from me."

In a very different way, Annie was just as aware of Julia on her left. Julia's thin arms were pressed tightly to her sides until the wine was served. As soon as her glass was poured, she grabbed it and gulped the wine.

Miss Dora saw it, of course. But instead of the quick con­demnation Annie expected to see in those raisin-dark eyes, there was only sadness.

Sybil ignored her wineglass and asked for bourbon.

On the plus side was the food (the shrimp fritters were beyond belief), quickly and competently served by a young maid, who watched Miss Dora with wide eyes to make certain the chatelaine was pleased.

From the first instant, Miss Dora directed the conversation, drawing out each in turn. Sybil almost looked happy as she described her visit last week to Boca Raton. "I played tennis all week, every day, all day long." That accounted for her air of vigor and health despite the haggardness in her eyes. But she drank bourbon steadily through dinner and only toyed with her food.

Milam ate greedily and there was a smear of butter on one finger. He shrugged away Miss Dora's question. "Last week—oh, nothing special." He reached for another roll. "I finished a painting." He gave her a sardonic smile. "You wouldn't like it. It's a plantation all bright and shiny and freshly painted, but when you look close you can see the maggots and snakes, and if you look very hard at the live oak trees and the strands of Spanish moss, you can see faces, some black, some white. The face of a slave girl who has no choice when the master—"

His sister-in-law gave him a look of utter loathing. "Mi-lam, it's downright tacky how you act. The Family—"

"Fuck the Family, Charlotte."

There was an instant of appalled silence.

Charlotte's pale-green eyes bulged with outrage.

Whitney's face twisted in a petulant frown. "I'll thank you not to be vulgar and insulting to my wife, Milam." There could be no doubt about Whitney's lineage—the long nose, sharp chin, dark eyes—but his was a second-rate imitation of the Judge's vigorous and commanding face. Whitney's chin was weak, and his eyes slid away from Milam's challenging glance.

Sybil threw back that mane of glorious hair and hooted with laughter. "Way to go, Milam honey."

All of these exchanges were in the cultivated, lovely accent that Annie had enjoyed hearing ever since she came to South Carolina. The smooth-as-honey voices made the rudeness even more shocking.

Miss Dora ignored the exchange. The only indication she'd heard was the slight increase in volume when she spoke. She spooned a mound of peas. "And what can you tell us about your week, Whitney?"

Uneasiness flickered in his pale-brown eyes.

Annie sipped her chardonnay and waited. Whitney must have been easy meat for teachers when he was growing up. She'd never seen anyone so transparent. It made her—and, she was certain, everyone else at the table—wonder what the hell he'd been up to. Though Whitney was such a drip, it probably didn't amount to much.

"Whitney?" The old lady put down her spoon and fixed him with a penetrating gaze.

"Uh, the usual, Aunt Dora. The office, some golf. Charlotte and I went into Savannah for the symphony." But something lurked in his eyes, eyes that wouldn't meet Miss Dora's.

The old lady looked at him speculatively.

Charlotte preened. "I'm on the Women's Committee, of course. Why, we've worked so hard to gain support for the symphony. Such long hours. Of course, I never mind the ef­fort. I'm happy to be able to—"

"Spare us, sweet Charlotte." Sybil yawned. "Good works are excessively boring when recounted. Especially by the self-satisfied doer."

Charlotte turned an ugly saffron. "If it weren't for those of us who dedicate ourselves to preserving and maintaining our glorious heritage, it would be destroyed by those to whom the past—"

"—is past." Sybil raised an elegant black eyebrow. "Grow up, Charlotte. This is the last decade of the century—the twentieth century, not, for Christ's sake, the nineteenth." She crumpled her napkin and dropped it beside her plate. "Jesus, tell me about the museum, how important it is." A wicked light danced in her eyes. "I know, let's have a special display

of chamber pots, really bring back the essence of the old South."

Miss Dora watched them, like an owl surveying rabbits.

"Our civilization will be destroyed if we don't hold onto the values of those who came before." Charlotte quivered with outrage. She lifted trembling fingers to the heavy roped gold necklace at her pudgy throat.

Milam's full mouth spread in a grin, not a pleasant one. "Civilization," he mused. "Tell me about it, Charlotte. Tell me about the slaves. Not dependents, honey. Call a spade a spade. Let's look at how it really was. Tell me about the slaves, and the poor whites, and the plantations and later the mills where little kids worked twelve-hour days. Tell me about civi­lization, dear sister-in-law."

Whitney's chair scraped back, and he started to rise. "That's enough, Milam. Shut your mouth."

"Milam. Whitney."

Miss Dora didn't need to say more. Milam looked down at the table, his face suddenly sullen. Whitney sank back into his chair.

The old lady nodded and the maid began to clear the table. "Sullee made Key-lime pie for us tonight. Now, Charlotte, tell us about your week."

The pattern was clear enough by now. But what did Miss Dora have in mind? Obviously, Annie was not the only guest who wondered. And all of the family members, except poor quiescent Julia, shot an occasional wondering glance at Annie and Max. Who were they? Why were they here? It was obvi­ous that this was no ordinary dinner party. It was almost as if they were in a class, and Miss Dora was calling upon each member to recite.

And now it was Charlotte's turn. She flounced a little in her chair, torn between exercising her anger at Milam and responding to Miss Dora. But it was no contest. "It was such an important week, Miss Dora." She smoothed her faded blond hair, and the carnelian ring on one finger glowed a rich rose. "We've raised enough money to start reconstruction of Fort Chastain. Why, you know how important it was in the

Battle of Chastain. That's where William first joined his com­pany. And at one time Henry was in command there. When it's rebuilt, we can climb to the ramparts and look out over the river—just like Henry and William."

As the maid brought dessert, Julia held up her wineglass to be refilled. When the glass was full, she downed the contents in one swift, practiced motion.

"Hot damn, Charlotte," Sybil drawled. "Won't that be the day! Climb that rampart, honey, wave that—"

Annie glanced down the table at Max. He was looking bland, but laughter danced in his eyes.

"Sybil." There was impatience more than anger in Miss Dora's voice.

Sybil shrugged.

Annie also noted that Max didn't miss the languid move­ment of that shapely figure.

Thinking of shapely figures, Annie was tempted to refuse the dessert. But as a guest . . . The Key-lime pie was so good Annie enjoyed every bite despite the charged atmosphere of the dinner party.

"All right, Aunt Dora. I'll be good." Sybil's carmine-red lips curved in an unrepentant grin. "But, just between us, don't you think it's stupid when someone whose people don't amount to a hill of beans gets so almighty excited when they connect up with an old family?" The question was addressed to Miss Dora, but its impact was calculated. Sybil's derisive glance raked Charlotte.

This time Charlotte ignored Sybil, but the flush didn't fade from her heavy face.

Miss Dora was already turning to Julia. "And your week, my dear?" For the first time, her voice was gentle.

Julia licked her lips and squeezed her eyes in concentration. "Week?" She blinked owlishly.

Abruptly, Annie realized that Julia was drunk as a lord, which made Annie wonder how much Julia'd had to drink before she and her husband ever arrived at Tarrant House.

"Oh, Julia had her usual week," Milam intervened. "She Iikes to—"

"Let Julia tell me, Milam." Miss Dora reached out a claw-like hand to pat Julia's arm.

Annie wondered if the thin woman beside her even noticed, or if she was so anesthetized the touch went unremarked.

Julia gave Milam a suddenly sweet smile. "S'funny. Came in for bulbs." She stared intently at Charlotte. "You always said okay. You weren't home. I went down to the beds near the 'b'lisk."

Charlotte understood. "Certainly, Julia. The iris beds near the obelisk." Annie didn't perceive kindness in Charlotte's response, merely the clearing up of a tidy mind.

"Last night." Suddenly Julia's eyes filled with tears. "I saw Amanda."

Someone drew a breath in sharply.

Annie looked quickly around the table.

Miss Dora's wizened face was alert.

Milam reached up and tugged at the gold stud in his left ear.

Whitney's black brows drew down in a tight frown. Charlotte's hand clung to her necklace as if it were a life­line.

Sybil's amusement slipped away, and her face held no hint of her usual spark of deviltry. "Don't cry, Julia. It's all right." She spoke gently, as if to a child.

The tears slipped down Julia's thin face, unheeded. "I tried to run after her. I called for her—but she wouldn't stay." Julia stared hopelessly at the old lady. "Why did Amanda have to die? Amanda and—"

"Come on, Julia." Milam pushed back his chair and was at his wife's side. "Let's go upstairs for a few minutes. Come on, now."

As they walked away from the table, Milam holding her elbow, Miss Dora called out, "When you come downstairs, join us in the drawing room, Milam." And to the other guests she nodded. "We shall have coffee there." She inclined her head and rose.

Miss Dora led the way, her cane a swift staccato accompani­ment to her steps. They all followed, of course, Sybil carrying along her half-full tumbler of bourbon.

The three-tiered crystal chandelier illuminated every corner of the spacious drawing room. Annie admired the lovely Meis­sen china and the elegant silver coffee service. At Miss Dora's nod, Charlotte took her place behind the coffee table to serve. For the first time that evening, Charlotte looked happy, her green eyes glowing. She served very prettily, her plump, be-ringed hands adept. Her pleasure in her role was evident.

Annie, unaccustomedly, took both sugar and cream.

Max shot her a quizzical glance.

Annie ignored him. She suddenly felt she needed every bit of extra energy possible.

Miss Dora waited until Milam and Julia slowly came down the mahogany stairs and joined them. Milam shepherded Julia to a secluded seat in a corner beside a jardiniere with a leafy fern and brought her a cup of coffee. He put it on the Queen Anne table next to her chair.

The old lady took her place in front of the fireplace, hands clasped on the silver knob of her cane, and faced her seated guests scattered about the drawing room. Annie was glad Max sat next to her on the Georgian settee.

Despite the muted richness of her rose gown, Miss Dora had a funereal air. Her ancient, sharp-featured face settled in implacable lines, eyes hooded, lips pursed, arrogant chin thrust forward.

Slowly, one by one, voices fell silent.

Miss Dora looked at each of her invited guests in turn. In a doomsday voice, she pronounced their names, clearly a roll call. "Milam. Julia. Whitney. Charlotte. Sybil."

Sybil's intelligent eyes appraised her. "You're on the war­path, aren't you? Who's in trouble? Is it Milam for attacking icons? Or maybe it's poor dear Julia who starts the day with a glass of vodka neat. Or is it Whitney for grabbing a little ass when poor Charlotte's not looking? Or Charlotte for that god-awful pretentious piece of crap she wrote about the Tarrants? She oh-so-conveniently left out all the drunks and the black sheep and especially the Tarrant who was playing both sides against the middle during the Revolution, а la the revered and very clever Ben Franklin. Or am I the one on the spot?" She flashed a wicked grin. "But you know what I like, Miss Dora. I could have brought him tonight, but this crowd's a little old for Bobby. He's a sweet young man."

"How can you be so disgusting," Charlotte hissed. "To consort with mere boys." Her pale-green eyes glistened with dislike.

"The usual term is 'have sex,' Charlotte. Although I don't suppose it's an activity you enjoy. Not high-class enough. And Bobby's nineteen." Sybil's smile would have embarrassed a satyr. "That's old enough. Believe me."

Miss Dora's eyes, dark as pitch, turned to Sybil. They were for an instant filled with pity.

Sybil saw that, too. She sat very still in the gilt Louis Quinze armchair, every trace of mocking amusement erased. Slowly she lifted the glass to her lips and drank, focusing on that physical act.

Miss Dora's eyes lingered on Sybil yet an instant longer; then the old woman spoke in measured tones. "I have called all of you here because I intend to institute a court of inquiry, prosecuted by me, into the events of May ninth, 1970."

It should have been ludicrous, the old, hunched figure, the thin, age-roughened voice, the grandiloquent pronouncement. It was, to the contrary, majestic. Tiny and indomitable, the moment belonged to Miss Dora.

The silence was absolute.

Anger.

Shock.

And fear.

Annie could feel raw emotion in that elegant room. But from whom?

Milam's heavy face twisted into a scowl, every trace of sardonic lightness gone.

The fragile coffee cup in Julia's hand began to shake. Clumsily, she put it down on the Queen Anne table.

Whitney's thin face had the look of a fox hearing the hounds.

Charlotte's social smile congealed into a blank, empty mask.

Sybil's face crumpled. She turned away and came up blindly against the mantelpiece. Both hands gripped it. She stood with her back to them, her smooth, ivory shoulders hunched, then whirled to face Miss Dora.

"Ross," she cried brokenly. "You know how it happened, you old bitch. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. An accident. Ross and I . . ." She looked about with glazed, uncomprehending eyes. "That's when everything went wrong, and it never came right again. Never. I still don't know why he went out to the lodge. He was supposed to meet me at the bottom of the drive. I was there," she said forlornly, years of grief weighting the words. "I waited and waited—and then Daddy found me and . . ." She broke off. Sybil's bejeweled hands clenched. There was more than grief, there was anger that could never be answered, the fury at fate that had robbed her of the man she loved. Annie thought she'd never seen Sybil look more lovely . . . or more dangerous.

"I saw you and Ross in the garden that afternoon," Miss Dora said gently.

For an instant, the years fell away and Sybil looked like a girl again, young and in love and breathtakingly beautiful. "One last kiss—it was so light, just the barest touch. We thought there would be time for all the kisses in the world." The brief illusion of youth fled, replaced by the sorrow-rav­aged yet still gorgeous face. Sybil's bitter eyes raked the room. "Why couldn't it have been one of you? Why couldn't it have been Milam? Or Whitney? They aren't a quarter the man Ross was. Ross was—" She swallowed convulsively. "Oh, God, he was wonderful. Young and strong. And a man. He knew how to live—and none of you has ever lived, not the way Ross did. He could laugh and make love and ride a horse and be brave and gentle and kind and rough. Oh, dear God, what irony, what sick and puking irony that he should die and any one of you live." Years of anger corroded her husky voice.

Annie reached out and took Max's hand and held it hard. Max watched Sybil, his dark-blue eyes somber.

"How dare you talk like that!" Charlotte, her voice high with anger, her plain face livid, turned to Miss Dora. "You make her hush up right this minute. We don't have to sit here and be insulted. Why, Whitney and I—"

"You and Whitney will do as I say," Miss Dora snapped.

Charlotte looked as though she'd been slapped. Her head jerked up, her mouth opened, but no words came. Then, her shoulders slumped and her eyes fell before Miss Dora's un­bending gaze.

"Of course we will, Miss Dora." Whitney's voice was pla­cating. "But the past is past. Dad and Ross—that's been over and done with for more than twenty years. There's nothing to be gained by discussing it."

Charlotte lifted her chin. "A tragic day," she said loudly. But there was no sympathy in her voice. Annie heard instead the oily complacency of a chorus in a Greek tragedy. "A double loss for poor Amanda."

Julia buried her face in her hands for a long moment, then struggled up from her chair and moved heavily toward the sideboard, one hand outstretched for the cut-glass decanter.

Milam bowed toward his great-aunt. "What an exquisite sense of drama you possess," he drawled. His green eyes glit­tered with malice; his plump face was once again amused. "But the difficulty is, you face a dead end. No one will ever know more about that day because the principals are all be­yond this earthly vale of tears."

"I will know more." The old woman spoke with utter confidence.

Again, taut silence stretched.

"You see," the whispery voice continued, "no one has ever questioned the official version, Ross dead of an accidental gun­shot wound; Augustus dead from a heart attack upon hearing the shocking news." She smiled grimly, her ancient face an icy mask of contempt. "All of you—except dear Sybil, of course—were in Tarrant House that day. Whitney, how did you learn of Ross's `accident'?" Her voice lingered deliberately on the final word.

Whitney stood with his hands clasped behind him, rockingback and forth. He had the wary look of a man suddenly confronted with a minefield and ordered to cross it. He cleared his throat. "Grandfather told me."

Annie's mind went back to her painstakingly inked family trees. That would be Harmon Brevard, Amanda's father. "What time was that?" Miss Dora's question was rapier‑

quick.

Whitney looked confused.

"It's disrespectful to the dead." Nervously, Charlotte pleated her white chiffon skirt. "Miss Dora, this is dreadful, like pulling and picking at bones."

But Miss Dora ignored Charlotte's shrill protest. The old

lady's imperious gaze never left her great-nephew's face. Whitney moved restively. "God, it's been twenty—" "Whitney," Miss Dora said sharply.

Whitney moved restively, then glanced uncertainly toward his brother.

Annie squeezed Max's hand. How revealing! Whitney, the member of the bar, the substantial brother, still deferred to his older brother, whom Annie had supposed to be the weaker personality of the two. Or was that just society's prejudice taking over, the assumption that a lawyer of substance in a community would, of course, dominate an older, unconven­tional sibling.

Milam sniggered, breaking the silence. "May as well give up, brother dear." He fluffed the thick blond hair over his collar. "Aunt Dora always did have your number. Oh, well, I don't suppose it matters after all these years. Why not let the truth come out—"

"Milam, no!" Charlotte importuned. Panic shrilled her voice.

"Truth!" Sybil said harshly. "What truth?" In the light from the glittering chandelier, her eyes glowed a hot, deep black.

"Your sweetie pie shot himself all right." Milam's light, high voice held a sickening note of satisfaction. "Suicide in the first degree, my dear Sybil. That's why dear Papa dropped

dead—he and Ross had enjoyed a hell of a nasty little scene and—"

Hands raised, Sybil launched herself with a deep cry. Her fingernails raked Milam's face, scoring crimson slashes on both cheeks.

Milam stumbled backwards, swearing and awkwardly struggling to push away Sybil's slender, green-gowned body.

But it was Julia's drunken voice that cut through the sound and fury and brought a terrible quiet to the drawing room.

Julia stood at the sideboard, pouring brandy sloppily into a cut-glass tumbler. She plunked down the decanter and picked up the glass in her trembling hand. " 's true, Sybil. Because it was the same gun, you know. Ross took the gun that killed the Judge and used it on himself."

Sybil tore free of Milam's grip and whirled to face her distant cousin's wife. "The gun that killed the Judge? Jesus Christ, Julia, what are you saying?"

10:15 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

Whitney lifted his hand to knock at the door of the study, then let it fall. He felt, at the same time, hot and uncomfortable and cold and sick. He hadn't hurt the firm. Not really. To he thrown out, to have nowhere to go—once again he could hear his father's icy, contemptuous voice, "A lawyer's conduct must always be above reproach." Christ, hadn't he ever wanted a woman like Jessica? Whitney pictured his father's thin, merciless, ascetic face. His shoulders slumped. He turned. Blindly, he walked away from the study door.

Chapter 11.

"Julia!" Milam's voice was still high, but shorn of mockery, his tone sharp, urgent, imperative.

Julia clutched the tumbler of whisky in trembling hands and looked at her husband uncertainly. "Truth, Milam." Her voice was slurred; her mouth quivered. There was a smear of crimson lipstick on one cheek. "You said we'd tell the truth."

"Let her speak, Milam." Miss Dora stalked between them.

But he refused to look at his great-aunt. "She's upset. We're going home," and he took a step toward Julia.

Miss Dora's cane slashed upward, barring him from touch­ing his wife. "No, Milam. Not yet. Not until we know pre­cisely what occurred that day. Julia, I want you—"

Sybil flew past them both. Her strong, beautifully mani­cured hands clutched Julia's thin shoulders. Bourbon spilled down the front of Julia's dress, and the tumbler crashed to the floor. "Who shot the Judge? When was he shot?"

Julia stood helplessly in Sybil's grip. She blinked. "I tol' you. You asked me. I tol' you. Ross shot him. That's what happened, he left a note and—"

Sybil let go of Julia and in a swift explosion of rage struck the drunken woman across the face.

Julia wavered unsteadily on her feet and began to whimper. Her arms hung straight and limp. She didn't touch her cheek.

Miss Dora swung toward Sybil. "Enough. Get back, Sybil. Now."

But Sybil, of them all, was not cowed by Miss Dora. Ignor­ing the old woman, she spat at Julia, "Never! Ross never shot his father; Ross never killed himself. Never." Her voice was as deep as a lion's roar and as full of danger. "Lies, all of it, lies."

"You weren't there, Sybil." Whitney nervously smoothed his thinning hair. "What were we going to do? Nothing would bring Dad or Ross back. They were both dead; we had Ross's note. Did we want to be entertainment for the tabloids? What would that have done to Mother? Dr. Rutledge agreed. It wasn't even that hard to do. The bullet"—his voice shook—"left only a small slit in Dad's coat and most of the bleeding was internal. The bullet lodged in his chest. There was no indication at all, other than the entry wound, that he'd been shot. I helped Dr. Rutledge put a fresh shirt and coat on him, and when he was taken to the funeral home, the director was instructed to cremate him immediately."

Annie, still holding tight to Max's hand, looked from face to face.

Miss Dora, her dark, hooded eyes glittering, pursed her mouth in concentration.

Charlotte's plump face was pasty, like uncooked dough left to rise too long.

Milam banged his half-empty tumbler of whisky onto the Queen Anne table and pulled Julia into the circle of his pro­tecting arm. The bloody scratches on his cheeks were in shock­ing contrast to the flippant pink of his dinner jacket. Julia slumped against her husband. Milam took the handkerchief from his pocket and brushed at the tears on her red-splotched cheeks, then pressed it against the wet front of her dress. Bright drops of blood welled from his scratches.

Sybil's glossy black hair rippled as she shook her head from side to side. "No. You don't understand, Whitney, Ross and

I . . ." She pressed her fingers against her temples for ar instant, then, her lovely face hard and resolute, demanded, "When was the Judge shot?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Sybil, let it go." Milam glared at her. "It was a fucking mess. We did the best we could."

Annie tensed, wondering if Sybil would fly at him next.

Miss Dora, too, obviously feared another explosion. She spoke quickly, her raspy voice commanding. "Sybil, come stand by me. I promise you that we shall pursue this."

Sybil resisted for a long, tense moment. Then, with the contained ferocity of a caged tigress, she moved to Miss Dora's side. But her angry gaze probed each Tarrant in turn.

Charlotte rose and stepped forward. "Miss Dora, I beg you—"

Miss Dora lifted her voice to override Charlotte. "I assure all of you that I have good reason, which I shall reveal in due time. Now, we shall proceed in an orderly fashion." She fas­tened her icy, uncompromising gaze on Whitney. "I wish a clear, concise outline of that day's events."

Whitney once again darted an uncertain glance at his older brother. Then he said sullenly, "I agree with Milam. I don't see any point in—"

"Whitney."

Grudgingly, he began. "We didn't know what had hap­pened for a while. At least, I didn't. I was in the garage. It was about four o'clock. I heard a bang. But it didn't seem all that close. And I was on the far side from Dad's study. I heard it, but I didn't think much about it. I suppose, if I gave it any thought at all, that it was probably kids down on the river. Anyway, it must have been about ten, fifteen minutes later that Ross ran into the garage. He looked—wild. And he was carrying Dad's gun, the one Dad brought back from the war. It was crazy. He was supposed to be at school, and, all of a sudden, here he was in the garage, carrying Dad's gun. I asked him what the hell he was doing. He just stared at me as if he'd never seen me before. I can't describe that look. God, it was awful." Whitney swallowed and licked his lips. "Ross ran to his car. He was out of breath, like he'd run for miles. Therewas sweat on his face. Then he kind of mumbled, 'Tell them I've gone to the lodge,' and he jumped into the car and roared out of there like a bat out of hell."

Milam took over impatiently. "Jesus, Whitney, you never could get to the point. Who gives a damn what he looked like? Look, Aunt Dora, it's simple and stupid." There was no remembered horror in Milam's voice; he was disdainful. "Ross and Dad had a hell of a fight about three-thirty. You could hear Ross shouting and Dad had that cold, clear voice he used on the bench. You know what I mean. Like God making a judgment from on high, and sweet Jesus, you better listen. Ross should have known better. What a goddam do-gooder. So they mowed down some students at Kent State! Why should Ross put his ass in a sling? Hell, he could've graduated and gotten his commission and applied for transportation or the quartermaster corps or someplace where he wouldn't have been shipped off to Nam. If he couldn't stick that, he could've `accidentally' shot himself in the foot! Whitney and I did Air National Guard, sweeter than honey. Funny thing is, Dad wasn't fooled, but we had legally met our obligations, so he let it lie. But Dad was always so goddam proud of Ross. A cadet colonel, another in the long line of Tarrant gentlemen-soldiers. So, I thought it was pretty funny when Ross finally bucked the system. He yelled at Dad that he wouldn't serve, he wouldn't graduate from The Citadel, and if he was drafted, he'd go to Canada. So the old man about had a stroke and he told Ross he was disowned, to get out of the house and never come back. Dad said Ross had no right to the name, that Tarrants were men of honor and principle—"

"That's what Ross was," Sybil cried passionately. "Not like you and Whitney. Ross never ran from anything. He never hid. He did what he thought was right—and everyone knew that war was hideous. The day the National Guard killed those students— oh, God, they were walking to class!" A gen­eration's lament rang in her voice. "Ross brooded about what had happened all week. Campuses closed all over the country. People marched. Ross came home Saturday morning; he'd made up his mind. He was quitting. He wouldn't take his

commission. He told his father. They quarreled, but Ross was determined. That's when he met me in the garden and we planned—" Tears edged down her cheeks, streaking her per­fect makeup. "Whenever spring comes, I remember that day. We stood in the sunshine and it was warm against us and he held me and I smelled the honeysuckle and the roses. He kissed me and I ran home to gather up my things. We were leaving." She glared at them defiantly. "The car was his. He worked summers and earned the money for it and he had some money saved and so did I and we were going to run away and be married. I waited for him—and he didn't come. He didn't come." The agony of empty years and lost dreams and a crip­pled heart echoed in the simple declaration.

Charlotte stood with her arms tightly folded across her ample bosom. "Ross was always a hothead. None of it sur­prised me." She looked disdainfully at Sybil. "You know what he was like—he always had to have his own way. Spoiled rotten, that's what Ross was." Her voice rose suddenly, turned strident. "And Amanda was always on his side, against Whit­ney and Milam. As if Ross were better or—"

"That's enough, Charlotte." Whitney cleared his throat. "Point is, Sybil, Ross shot Father—"

"No. He wouldn't have." Sybil stood firm, chin lifted, and there was total certainty in her eyes and her voice. "Ross was upset, yes, but we were leaving. It was all decided. Why would he shoot the Judge? There was no reason."

"You were in the garden," Miss Dora said crisply. "You said good-bye and were to meet again—"

"In only a few minutes," Sybil cried. "Just long enough to gather up some clothes and meet him at the gate."

Charlotte smoothed her hair, her composure regained. "Ross probably went back into the house to get some of his things and the Judge saw him and told him to leave and Ross lost his temper. Ross always acted like Tarrant House be­longed to him and not the rest of us. He was crazy about the house. Maybe he decided the Judge had no right to throw him out." She shrugged. "What difference does it make? We all know what happened, Sybil."

"I don't care what you—or anyone—says or will ever say." Sybil spoke jerkily. "But I knew Ross. I knew him. He would never have shot his father—and he would never have killed himself. That was a coward's way out—and Ross was never a coward."

Miss Dora said quietly, "You are quite correct, my dear child. Ross was a brave young man. A very brave and gallant young man—but he did indeed take his own life. My brother —Ross's grandfather—went to the hunting lodge that day. The next day Harmon related to me what had happened. Har­mon told me that when he arrived—it was late afternoon by then and the shadows were thick and it was cool and quiet on the front steps—he called out to Ross and tried to open the door, but it was locked. He rattled the knob—and there was a gunshot. He ran to the back of the lodge but that door, too, was locked. Harmon took a log from the woodpile and used it as a battering ram and broke down the back door. Ross was there, sitting in the old morris chair. And he was dead. The front door was still locked."

Sybil reached out, clinging to a chair for support. Annie had never seen a woman so pale, as if all the blood and life had drained away. And, no matter what Sybil had become, Annie's heart ached for her.

"So we know—we have the word of a witness—what hap­pened to Ross." Miss Dora's face was grim. "But that does not end our quest tonight. We still must determine when—and how—the Judge's death occurred."

"No." Sybil clasped her arms tight across her body. "That's wrong, wrong, wrong. I'll never believe it. Ross was brave, I tell you, brave and—"

Miss Dora nodded. When she spoke it was directly to Sybil and her voice had a gentleness Annie had never heard. "Yes, Sybil, Ross was brave and gallant. You will understand that even better when we are done. For now, Sybil, I want you to listen. No matter what is said or done, we cannot change the past. But my hope is that we can lay to rest the misery that past has visited upon us and"—she paused and looked at each of the Tarrants and her voice hardened—"that we can prevent

evil from again warping and destroying the life of this fam­ily."

A sense of inexorable judgment emanated from the old woman, much like Miss Rosa Coldfield's unbending, almost demented determination to vanquish Thomas Sutpen.

Annie's eyes were focused on that narrow, intelligent, de­termined old face. Later, she would regret that she had not been quicker to look about the room. Would there have been a flicker of fear—or fury—on one face?

For when she did look, masks were in place: Whitney wary, Charlotte tense, Milam sardonic, Julia withdrawn.

Abruptly, Miss Dora pointed her cane at Max. "Proceed."

The silence was abrupt. All of the family members stared at Max and Annie. She realized that in the heat of their quarrels, they'd almost forgotten their presence. And now, not only did they remember there were strangers within the gate, they were shocked and enraged to have Miss Dora invite Max to take part. The Tarrants looked at Max with varying degrees of hostility and outrage.

Milam glared at Max, then turned to his great-aunt. "What business is it of his?"

"My business, dear Milam," Miss Dora said briskly. "I have commissioned Mr. Darling to assist me in my inquiry."

Annie kept her face blank, but she was irritated at not being mentioned. The sexist old hag.

Max didn't waste time. "Mr. Whitney Tarrant, when did you hear the shot?"

Whitney threw back his head like an irritated horse. "Enough is—"

"Whitney, you will cooperate with Mr. Darling. And"—a grudging addition—"Mrs. Darling." Miss Dora lifted her cane, pointing it at each Tarrant in turn. Her black eyes snapped angrily.

Milam said brusquely, "Oh, Christ, Whitney, go along. Or we'll be here all night." He walked to the sideboard, poured himself a tumbler of whisky, and picked up a fresh glass for Julia and filled it. She took it greedily and withdrew to the brocade-covered chair by the fern.

"I was in the garage. I told you that," Whitney said sul­lenly. "It was just a minute or two after four when I heard the shot."

Max turned to Charlotte. "Mrs. Tarrant?"

Charlotte glanced at Miss Dora. "I was . . . I think I was arranging flowers. Roses, white roses. The ones planted by Great-great-grandmother Tarrant. We were to have a dinner party that night. I remember I'd bought a new frock for it, and, later, I never could bear to wear that frock. I was in the garden shed."

"The time?" Max prodded.

"It was just after four." She spoke precisely, carefully. "You're sure?"

"Why, yes. I looked at my watch." There was growing assurance in her well-bred voice.

"Why?" Annie asked.

Charlotte's chin jerked up. Annie could see outrage in her eyes. Obviously, the chatelaine of Tarrant House wasn't pleased at having to submit to Max's questions, but just who the hell did Annie think she was?

"Why?" Miss Dora repeated sharply.

Charlotte lost her composure. "This is simply unendurable. I will not continue this idiotic charade—"

Miss Dora fastened her steely, implacable gaze on Char­lotte.

It was a battle of wills.

The outcome surprised no one.

Charlotte licked her lips. "I don't know why I looked at my watch. But I did. And I can swear it was just after four o'clock."

"Actually, Charlotte's right, for what it's worth." Milam sounded bored. "I heard it, too. A couple of minutes after four."

"Where were you?" Max inquired.

"Upstairs." Milam once again reached out for Julia's empty glass. He returned to the sideboard, generously refilled it, and took it back to his wife. Julia grabbed it and tipped it to her mouth. Her husband's eyes watched her sadly.

"And you, Mrs. Tarrant?" Max asked gently.

Julia Tarrant blinked, then looked toward Max. "That day—" She drank again and there was only a little left in the glass. "I'd been upstairs." Tears spilled down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away. She sat there and wept, silently.

Max looked helplessly at Annie.

"Julia," Annie said tentatively.

Slowly, the older woman turned her head. "You have a soft voice. Like Amanda."

Annie hesitated, then plunged ahead. "Did Amanda hear the shot?"

A cunning smile lifted Julia's lips, yet the tears still slipped down her cheeks. She emptied the glass, looked at it regretfully, and put it on the Queen Anne table. "Trying to trick me!" She waved a finger waggishly. "Can't trick me. I'd just heard the grandfather clock. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. So it was just after four o'clock. So loud. I put my hands over my ears." Waveringly, she lifted her hands and clapped them to her ears. Then she slid them over her face and hid her ravaged eyes. A shudder shook her frail frame. "Awful. Awful. Awful."