Southern Ghost

Max caught her in time. "Be careful, Annie. Watch where you step. There will be plenty of snakes out."

Annie repressed a shudder. She knew she should reverenc all God's creatures, but who could love a venomous pit vir

She was glad she didn't have a video of their progress. Their careful, considered footfalls (rattlesnakes always have the right-of-way) were in stark contrast to the continued wild movements of their arms and hands as they tried to deflect the scores of starved or insanely bored insects.

The horde of biting bugs pursued them as they hopped from one remnant of the bridge to another to cross the stream. The buzzing cloud whirled around them as they hurried through the now thinning stand of pines. They came out onto a huge expanse of grass, covered with the vivid shades of spring wildflowers, the brilliant yellow of Carolina jessamine, the maroon of purple trillium, the bright red of crossvine. They'd reached the savannah, and there before them was the Tarrant hunting lodge.

Weathered wooden steps—the third sagged alarmingly—led up to a shallow porch. Although the paint had long ago peeled away, the square box building, well built, was still in good repair. As Max unlocked the front door, Annie did note a broken pane in the window on her left. She wondered how Miss Dora had obtained the keys. From Whitney? Yes, more than likely. She couldn't picture Milam here. She vainly swat­ted another mosquito and hurried inside as Max opened the door.

Max turned on the flashlight.

Annie followed the sweeping beam of light across the sin­gle room: a rough-hewn fireplace with an open hearth, scat­tered chairs, a pinewood table, a sink, cupboards on one wall, and dust. Dust on the floor, dust on every surface, cobwebs on the walls.

A mournful, dreary, deserted room, musty and dank. How long had it been since human voices had sounded here?

Max moved away, checking the windows and the back door.

Annie stood near the chair next to the rock fireplace. For the first time, painful as an unexpected blow, she felt the reality of Ross Tarrant's death. She stood very still, staring at the darkish upholstery. That irregular, barely visible, long-dried stain

What would he feel now, if he knew about his daughter and the desperate search for her?

A man who lived and died that passionately would move heaven and earth to find his missing daughter.

"Max," Annie said abruptly, urgently, "let's hurry."

Enid Friendley studied them thoughtfully. Close-cropped, graying hair framed intelligent, wary eyes and a resolute mouth. She had an air of brisk confidence tinged with impa­tience. After a moment, she glanced at her plain gold watch. "I can give you twenty minutes."

In the immaculate living room, she gestured for them to take the couch, upholstered in plain blue linen. Enid sat in a straight chair, her posture excellent. The modern light-oak furniture was as angular and spare as its owner. No curtains. Pale-lemon blinds were the only window covering. No knick­knacks broke the smooth expanse of the ocean-green, glass coffee table. The room was as cool and unrevealing as their hostess and her quietly tasteful but unremarkable black skirt and white, high-necked cotton blouse.

Perceptive dark eyes watched Annie. "I've seen enough old furniture to last me a lifetime." Her tone was dry. "Where I grew up, we were lucky to have one real chair. Of course, the covering was ragged and the springs poked through. Cast off. Somebody hired my father to haul it away." Again, pointedly, she glanced at her watch.

Annie didn't need to look at hers. It was almost ten. Time raced ahead. The hours had piled up since Courtney Kimball was last seen, three days ago. Annie leaned forward impatiently as Max quickly described their mission.

Enid's face remained impassive. Even when Max mentionedthe bloody shirt she had brought to Lucy Jane so many years ago.

". . . so we're hoping you can help us, Mrs. Friendley. We need to know what you saw that day and what you know about the Tarrants. But to begin, did you—"

Enid lifted a hand. She wore no rings, and her fingernails were trimmed short and unpainted. "Just a minute, Mr. Dar­ling. I'll talk about that day and the Tarrants. I don't have anything to say about anything that happened later." She paused.

Annie looked at her, puzzled.

But Max nodded in instant comprehension. "Certainly, al­though I'm confident at this point that no one would accuse you of acting as an accomplice after the fact. After all, you were merely an employee following the directives of your su­perior. You had no reason to suspect that a crime had been committed."

The small, dark woman considered it, her suspicious eyes probing his face.

Annie had the feeling it could go either way. Enid Frien­dley would have no compunction about showing them the door. But perhaps she liked what she saw, or perhaps she, too, wanted to know the truth of that deadly Saturday. Whatever the reason, she finally nodded, grudgingly.

"All right. What do you want to know?"

"Have you seen or talked to Courtney Kimball?" Max didn't try to keep the eagerness from his voice.

Annie ached for him. He still felt responsible because he hadn't reached his young client in time.

"Wednesday afternoon," Enid said briskly.

Annie tried not to get excited, but this was as close as they'd come to Courtney Kimball in three days of searching. Wednesday afternoon!

"I was at work—we had two hundred chicken potpies due at the County Horticultural Building—that's out at the fair­grounds—by five o'clock. She insisted she had to talk to me. I told her straight out I was too busy. She didn't want to take no for an answer. You can tell she's always had her way." The

resentment of a lifetime crackled in the words. "So I'm not surprised when you say she was Sybil and Ross's girl. It's in her blood." A meager smile curved her lips in reluctant trib­ute to the kind of personality that sweeps the world before it. "I couldn't help but kind of like her, bright, smart, brash—and pretty, very pretty. Yes, I can see Ross Tarrant in her face, now that I know. He was always the handsomest one. The best of the bunch. He saw me as a real person—talked to me about going to college and what a difference it could make in my life. I couldn't believe it when he killed himself. The only thing I could figure was that Sybil had thrown him over, and he took it too hard. Sybil's the kind of woman—and that was as true twenty years ago as today—who lives from her heart. That will hurt you pretty bad. She broke down at the funeral. I thought it was a guilty conscience. Anyway, that girl Court­ney's got Sybil's wild streak, I can tell you that. I saw it in her eyes. Not afraid of the devil himself." She pursed her lips. "Maybe she'd have been better off if she'd had the sense to be afraid."

"What happened?" Annie urged.

"I don't put up with sass. Not from anybody. White or black."

Annie didn't doubt her for a moment.

"When she saw I meant what I said—I wasn't going to fool with her right then—she kind of laughed, and gave a shrug, and said, 'So you're upfront about things. Then answer one question for me and I'll leave. Of all the people who were at Tarrant House when Judge Tarrant and his son died, who can I trust?' " There was grudging admiration in Enid's dark eyes. "Not many people ever get around me. She did. I didn't have an extra minute to spare. Eliza Jones had called in sick. Proba­bly her son'd beat her up again. My best driver had the mumps. Thirty-four-year-old man with the mumps! I was busy six ways from Sunday. But I took the time. I told her, 'Not a single one of them." I told her if she wanted help from someone in the family, old Miss Dora was the only one I'd put any stock in. Then I shooed her out the door and went back to my chicken pies."

Had Courtney tried to contact Miss Dora on Wednesday? Obviously, she hadn't succeeded. Otherwise, Miss Dora would have told them, Annie was certain. But she made a mental note to check with their employer when they met her at Tar­rant House in the afternoon.

"What time was this?" Max asked.

"Just after two. I was keeping a close eye on the time, I can tell you. I deliver on time. And I did on Wednesday."

Was that pride of ownership? Or was Enid Friendley trying to show she was too busy to have been involved in Courtney's disappearance?

Annie attempted to sound casual. "So you made your deliv­ery around five. What time did you leave the fairgrounds?"

Enid took just an instant too long to answer. When she did, her words were clipped. "I finished the cleanup, still two short in my crew, about nine o'clock."

Max gave her his most charming smile.

There wasn't a quiver of response on Enid's face. Annie wondered if Max felt a bit as though he'd smashed headfirst into a brick wall.

Undaunted, Max continued good-humoredly, "I suppose that like every business in the world, there's always some crisis —major or minor—in completing a job. Did you have to get back to your kitchen for anything?"

Once again, her response was just a beat too slow. "One dessert carrier was left behind. I went back for it, but returned directly to the fairgrounds."

Annie was pleased that Max let it drop. It was obvious that Enid read the newspapers and knew when Courtney had last been heard from and equally obvious that Enid had been away from the fairgrounds at about that time.

"You didn't see Courtney again?" Annie asked.

Enid bristled. "No. Why should I? I didn't have anything to do with her disappearance. You can look to the Tarrants for that."

"We are," Max said soberly. "As for the Tarrants, what can you tell us about the day the Judge was murdered?" Enid smoothed her unwrinkled skirt. "That day . . . It

was a lovely day, soft and warm. It smelled good, spaded-up dirt and honeysuckle and wisteria and pittosporum. I didn't usually work on Saturdays, but I'd had the afternoon off earlier in the week." Her narrow face was sleek and satisfied. "I'd enrolled for the summer session at Chastain College." She darted a quick glance at them. "If you've found out much about Judge Tarrant, you'll know he often helped students—poor people—to go to school. He gave me the money to start college. Actually, that was the last week I was to work there. But, because of what happened, I stayed on for a few weeks, after the funerals, to help with packing things away. That kind of thing. But that Saturday I was there, catching up on the ironing. So I was in the laundry rooms behind the kitchen." She scowled. "I hated being a servant." Her voice was controlled but Annie heard the resentment, saw it in the flash of her eyes. "Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, scrubbing up after people like they were kings and I was a slave, all for barely enough money to buy a little food. And people so proud of themselves. The Tarrants. The kind of people who bought my people, bought them like a broom or a shovel and threw them away when they couldn't work in the fields." Now those slen­der brown hands were laced tightly together. "I started in Tarrant House, but I'll tell you this"—she lifted her chin—"I could buy Tarrant House now. I wouldn't want it, but if I did, I could buy it." Her eyes were cold. "People so proud of themselves, so used to telling people like me what to do. So high and mighty, but they had their secrets, all of them. The Judge—I wonder what all his fine friends would have thought if they could have seen the pictures he kept locked in the wooden box in his room." She flicked a glance at Annie. "Not the kind of pictures you'd know about—women tied up. And other things." Dark amusement glinted in her chilly eyes. "Such a high and mighty man. Just goes to show, you know, that white hair and a gentleman's face don't mean much. The next week, after the Judge died, I saw Miss Amanda slip out of the house with that box. She burned it up." Enid gave them a challenging glance. "Makes you wonder about the Judge. Doesn't it?"

"Pornographic photographs that he kept locked up?" Max asked innocently. "How did you happen to know about them?"

Just for an instant, Enid's face was utterly unreadable. Then she shrugged her slim shoulders. "One day I found the key on the floor near the closet." She lifted her chin defiantly. "I was curious. I'd noticed that locked box sitting up on his dresser when I dusted. It didn't hurt anything for me to look inside. I'll tell you, it was a shock. I was an unmarried woman. I'd never seen anything like that. I shut that box up quick as I could and put it and the key on his bedside table." Now she laughed. "I'd like to have seen his face when he found them there. I'll bet that gave him an almighty shock." The amuse­ment slipped away, replaced with derision. "The big folks in the big house weren't quite so wonderful, you see."

"Folks," Annie repeated. "Were there others—besides the Judge—who weren't wonderful?"

Enid didn't hesitate. "He was a stern taskmaster; she spoiled them."

It was clear to Annie who Enid meant: the Judge and his wife, Amanda.

A brooding, faraway look settled on Enid's thin face. "Is it any wonder they grew up all twisted? They tried to stand tall for their father, but Amanda was sly and cunning and they learned that, too. Whitney always looked to her to fix things when they went wrong for him. And Whitney's wife—she sucked up to the Judge from the day she first set foot in that house. Going on and on about the Tarrants and how wonderful they were." A deep and abiding hatred burned in her eyes. "She didn't talk about Godfrey Tarrant, who beat a slave with his whip until he died—and do you know what for?" More than a century and a half's worth of anger sharpened her voice. "Because the slave—he was only seventeen and his name was Amos—lost one of Godfrey's precious hunting dogs."

"That's dreadful," Annie cried.

"That's dreadful!" Enid mimicked. "It is, isn't it?" Her eyes blazed. She took a deep breath, then spoke more quietly. "And that Milam's a queer one. He liked to hurt things, did

you know that? On Sunday afternoons, I could take some time for myself. There's a pond not far from the bluff. Twice I watched him throw those heavy round balls—stones that they used for ballast in the sailing ships, you can find them every­where—at the geese. He threw real well. Each time he hit two or three of the geese, hurt them. He didn't kill them. He watched them suffer. His face . . . it was all smooth and empty. He just watched." A tiny shudder rippled her shoul­ders. "The geese hurt, you know. They hurt real bad. I was behind a willow where he didn't see me. After he left, I killed them. If I hadn't—" She pressed a hand against her lips for a moment, then said very low, "My grandmother died of cancer. She hurt so bad. Nobody—not a bird, not an animal—nobody should have to hurt like that."

"What did you do about it?" Max demanded.

"Do about it?" She stared at Max in disbelief. "What could I do about? Enid Friendley's word against a Tarrant?" She gave a mirthless chuckle. "You didn't grow up black in Chastain, did you? But you want to know something?" Her voice rose. "I grew up better than any one of them. I sure did. I know how to work and make my way and not a single one of them can do that. They're hangers-on, clinging to a family name and to money someone else made. And more than that"—she struck a small fist against an open palm—"I may not have succeeded with my marriage, but I'm a woman and I know how a woman's meant to love. If you could see your faces! You don't know what I mean, do you? And you think you know so much about the Tarrants. So high and mighty, the Tarrants. Well, you just ask Julia Tarrant about the woman she loved."

When neither spoke, Enid continued angrily, "I saw them, whether you want to believe it or not! It's an old house—a house that's probably seen more living than you'll ever even know about—and when you walk down the hall on the second floor, there's a board that gives and when it does, sometimes the door to the southeast bedroom swings open, nice and easy. The Judge was home unexpected. I think it was that Thurs­day. He came up the stairs, walking fast. I was in the hall with a load of sheets in my arms and that door came open and I sawthem, Julia and Amanda, and they were in each other's arms. I saw them, and so did the Judge."

Milam's wife and his mother?

"Well, don't you suppose—" Annie began.

"I don't suppose nothing," Enid snapped. "I know what I saw. And the Judge, he was right behind me." She jumped up. "Cover it all up if you want to. It's no skin off my nose. But if you really want to know the truth—if you really want to find out what happened that day—you'd better talk to Julia." Enid's eyes glinted maliciously. "If you can ever find her so­ber."

They argued all the way to Wisteree.

"Max, I don't believe it!" Annie recalled Julia on the night of Miss Dora's dinner party, frail, heart-shaped face, smudged violet eyes, the eyes of a child who knows no one cares.

Max gave her such a kind and gentle look that she blinked back tears. "I am not naive. I know all about that kind of thing."

His kindly nod undid her.

She exploded. "Dammit, Max, stop treating me like I'm twelve. I'm not dumb. I just think it, would be weird—" She paused.

Max was nodding.

"Weird?" she asked.

The Maserati coasted to a stop at a ramshackle gate. A

weathered sign dimly read WISTEREE PLANTATION.

"I'll get the gate," Annie muttered, hopping out. As she swung the gate wide—despite its unkempt appearance, the gate had recently been oiled and it swung open fast and with­out a sound—she continued the debate as the Maserati rolled forward between ivy-twined stone pillars. A stone pineapple sat atop one, a partial stump on the other. "Everybody dumps on Julia. It's damned easy to accuse her of just about anything. She's white meat." Annie pushed the gate shut. She hurried to the car and climbed in. She hardly took time to admire the enormous live oaks that marched along either side of the shell

road. "Take a look at her accuser. Enid Friendley may be a model of independence and an accomplished businesswoman, she's also small-spirited and she has a mean mouth. Maybe we ought to look at how she went to college. Did the Judge send her because he wanted to help her—or did she take his money to keep quiet about that locked trunk?"

Max reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. "Okay, be Julia's champion. But remember, Annie, someone did shoot Judge Tarrant and that someone caused Ross's death, as surely as if they pulled the trigger that day at the hunting lodge. And the murderer's face is going to be someone you know­Milam, Julia, Whitney, Charlotte, one of the servants, Lucy Jane or Enid. Maybe Miss Dora. Maybe even Sybil. And that person knows what happened to Courtney Kimball."

The Maserati crunched to a stop in front of an old Low Country house that showed signs of neglect. A shutter hung askew on the second story, and paint flaked from the slender Doric columns supporting the sagging portico. The stuccoed walls were a faded, dusty rose, the shutters a dingy white. It was not a house that looked happily lived in. An arm was broken off one of the slatted wooden porch chairs. Weeds sprouted in the shell drive. Unpruned live oaks pressed too near, turning the air a murky green.

"Not Sybil," Annie exclaimed as they climbed out of the car.

They started up the broad, shallow steps. Max said gravely, "It could be. What if Sybil already knew she was pregnant that day? What if the Judge found out about Sybil and Ross's planned elopement and threatened to tell her parents?"

What might Sybil have done? Annie had seen Sybil fiercely angry, so she knew the answer to that one—anything was possible.

"But Sybil didn't know about Courtney, Max. I'd swear to that! And there's no way she would have hurt her own daugh­ter."

"If she had," Max said it so low Annie almost couldn't hear him, "she would act just as she has—the distraught, vengefulmother. She hasn't been a mother, you know. How much does she really care?"

The porch was gritty underfoot. Twisted wires poking out of a small dark hole marked where there was once a doorbell. A tarnished metal knocker was in the center panel of a truly majestic entrance door. Above curved an elegant multipaned Palladian window, the panes streaked with dust.

Max rapped the knocker against its base.

Annie pictured faces now so familiar: Sybil, gorgeous and self-absorbed, a woman careless of her reputation, a beautiful creature accustomed to satisfying the desires of the moment; Whitney, a blurred reproduction of generations of Tarrants, his aristocratic face weak-chinned and unimposing; unremark­able, respectable clubwoman Charlotte, more interested in dead Tarrants than live ones; Milam with his earring and ponytail, showing an almost childish eagerness to flout soci­ety's conventions, but that could be a clever way to hide much darker, more sinister impulses; alcohol-sodden Julia clinging to dignity, but no matter how much she drank she couldn't hide the aching emptiness in her eyes; Lucy Jane, who so clearly knew something she didn't want to tell; waspish Enid, proud of her hard work, resentful of the Tarrants, and eager to drag them down; tiny, wizened Miss Dora—after all, they had only her word that she'd been in the garden with Ross when the shot that killed Augustus Tarrant rang out.

The front door to Wisteree Plantation slowly opened.

4:01 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

Chapter 19.

The Judge looked up eagerly as the French door opened. But—disappointment caught at his heart—it wasn't Ross, coming to say he was wrong. But Ross couldn't have meant what he said! Not Ross. As for the other, the matter was closed. "Yes," Augustus said brusquely, "what is it?"

His visitor spoke very quietly. "You've always been so rea­sonable and I hope—"

"Reasonable! 0f course I am. But the right decision, once made, is final." It was as impersonal and abrupt as a ruling from the bench.

Those were the last words of the Honorable Augustus Tar­rant.

The Judge's soundless oh of shock was lost in the roar of the gun.

Annie's nose wrinkled at the waft of acrylic from the paint-streaked rag in Milam's hand. He stood squarely in the door­way, blocking their entrance. In his stained, ragged sweatshirt and faded Levis, a calico bandanna bunching his scraggly hair out of the way, he looked like a working painter—and, at this moment, he looked damned irritated.

"Fuck. You two again."

Annie didn't have to look to know anger glinted in Max's eyes.

"Is painting this morning more important than Courtney Kimball's life? Or your father's murder?" Max demanded sharply.

Milam heaved an exaggerated sigh. "All right, all right. If I blow you off, you'll snivel back to Aunt Dora—and I don't want the old devil to leave her money to a home for abandoned cats. Be just like her. So, what the hell do you want now?"

"The truth." Max looked beyond Milam into the shadowy hall. "Is your wife here?"

"Julia's not in the house," Milam said indifferently. "She's out in the garden somewhere." He gestured vaguely toward the back.

"I'll go find her," Annie offered.

"Suit yourself." Milam started to close the door. Max said quickly, "I want to talk to you, Milam." Another exaggerated sigh. Milam shrugged. "Let's get it

over with." He turned and started down the hall.

Max gave Annie a meaningful glance as he pulled open the door to follow Milam.

Annie understood. Max wanted her to take advantage of Milam's irritation. She'd find out a lot more if she talked to Julia alone.

As the door closed behind Milam and Max, Annie hurried down the steps and followed the oyster-shell path around the house. The unkempt appearance of the house didn't extend to the grounds, once beyond the uncontrolled grove of live oaks. She stepped out of the murky light beneath the moss-spangled oaks into a gardener's paradise. The perfumed scents of well-tended banana shrubs and mock orange mingled with the headier smells of honeysuckle and wisteria. There were no weeds among the golden-rimmed iris or carnelian tulips. Be­hind the house, glossy ivy cascaded down a brick wall. Annie pushed open a gate and stopped, dazzled by beauty. Azaleas, camellias and roses, hibiscus, lilies and Cherokee rose, lilac bignonia, Lady Banksia rose and purple wisteria rimmed or climbed the garden walls in a riotous explosion of colors that shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight. The central pool was dominated by a bronze cornucopia that had aged to the soft green of emerald grass in an Irish rain. Water spilled out to splash down softly in a gentle, cheerful murmur. Behind the fountain, a weathered gazebo offered a shady retreat. The loveliness of the scene was almost beyond bearing; the sense of peace, healing.

Julia Tarrant, a tomato-colored kerchief capping her dark hair, knelt beside a prepared bed, setting out pink and white impatiens from the waiting flats. Absorbed in her task, shelooked young and almost happy, her lips parted in a half-smile.

Annie wished she could slip away and leave Julia adrift in private dreams.

But Courtney Kimball was missing. The Judge had been murdered. Ross was tricked out of life. Amanda fell to her death.

Annie steeled herself and stepped forward. Her shoes crunched on the oyster shells.

Julia's head whipped around. Any illusion of youth or hap­piness fled. Her face was fine-drawn and pale, the eyes dark pools of pain. Slowly, as if weary to the bone, she pushed up from the ground, leaving her trowel jammed upright in the fresh-turned dirt. Stripping off the encrusted gardening gloves, she stood waiting, looking vulnerable and defenseless in her too-large, faded work shirt, loose-fitting jeans, and earth-stained sneakers.

"Mrs. Tarrant. We met at Miss Dora's—"

"I remember." What might have been a flash of humor glinted in her sad eyes. "It hasn't been all that long ago." There was an element of graciousness; she would ignore the boorish assumption that she had been too drunk to recall, if Annie would.

There was graciousness, too, in her shy smile. "Shall we sit in the gazebo, Mrs. Darling? It's very cheerful."

As they settled opposite each other in recently painted, white slatted wooden chairs, the kind Annie always associated with a boardwalk along a beach, Julia ineffectually rubbed her hands against her pants. "It's hard to garden without getting muddy even when you wear gloves," she confided. Then she looked at Annie, her gentle gaze as direct and open as a child's. "You want to talk about the Judge, don't you?"

"Yes, please." Annie wished with all her heart that the Judge was all she had come to talk about.

Julia pulled off her kerchief and fluffed her hair. "I never liked him." She looked quickly back at Annie. "Does that shock you?"

"No." Annie's answer was truthful. "He must have been a difficult man to live with."

Julia stared down at her dirty hands. "I never felt that 1 ever really knew him. He was . . . so distant. Among us, with us, but never one of us. It was as if some kind of invisible wall stood between him and the rest of us." She looked out at her lovely garden, but her vision was focused in the past. "He was perfect, you know." She spoke softly, sadly. "So we all had to be perfect—and we weren't. Whitney's afraid. He's always been afraid. He can't do so many things. Charlotte hides be­hind the Family. I don't know why. But there are so many things I don't know. Charlotte feels bigger, better because her last name is Tarrant. I wish—I wish I could take comfort there. But it doesn't matter." She gave a tiny, revealing, mel­ancholy sigh. "Nothing matters very much to me." She shaded her eyes and looked out at the shimmering colors of the flow­ers and shrubs. "It's better," she said simply, "when I'm out­side, when I can smell the fresh earth and feel the sun on my face. I feel a part of everything then."

"Did loving Amanda make you feel a part of everything?" It was the hardest question Annie had ever asked.

Slowly, Julia's worn face turned toward Annie. Once again that bruised look darkened her eyes. She sat so still in the big white wooden chair, she might have been a part of it. She said, "Everyone loved Amanda."

Annie, hating every minute of it, said gruffly, "Someone saw you and Amanda."

Julia was silent for so long that Annie thought she wouldn't answer. But, finally, her eyes evading Annie's, she spoke softly, like the wind sighing through a weeping willow. "False witness. That's what you say when people lie, isn't it?"

Annie shifted uncomfortably, steeling herself. "Was it a lie?"

Julia's lips trembled.

The coos of the doves sounded a mournful requiem, and the sharp thumps of a red-cockaded woodpecker were as loud as drums beating a dirge.

"What do you want me to say?" Julia asked. "You've madeup your mind, haven't you? Just like Judge Tarrant made up his—and it didn't matter what Amanda or I said to him." Tears glistened in her eyes. She swallowed, then said jerkily, "Have you ever—"

Annie leaned forward to hear that thin, tormented voice. "—walked into a room and looked into someone's eyes and thought, 'I love you. I love you!' "

That poignant cry touched Annie's heart. And she under­stood. Yes. Oh, yes, she understood. A few years ago, she had walked into a room and a young man—blond with tousled hair and the darkest blue eyes she'd ever seen—had looked at her and smiled and she had been swept by a passion that would shape her life forever.

Julia's hands gripped the little kerchief, clutched it as if it were a lifeline. "That's how I felt about Amanda." The kerchief twisted in her hands. "But it wasn't wrong." She stared at Annie piteously. "It wasn't wrong, I swear it."

"What was the Judge going to do?" Annie gripped the arms of the garden chair so tightly her fingers ached.

Those bereft eyes slid away from Annie's. "The Judge?" Julia's voice was as empty as an abandoned house. "I don't know. I'm sure we could have persuaded him."

"Persuaded him to do what?" Annie pressed.

"I don't know." It was the cry of a cornered animal. "I don't know. And what difference does it make now, after all these years?" She stared down at the crumpled kerchief in her fingers, then slowly smoothed it into a wrinkled square. "No one ever loved me except Amanda and Missy." It was a simple statement of fact. Not forlorn. Not angry. The anguish and rage had long since been spent.

Annie blinked back sudden tears. But it was too late to cry for Julia and Amanda. And much too late to cry for the Judge.

Softly, urgently, she asked again, "What was the Judge going to do?" Because that was the nub of it.

Julia lifted her chin defiantly. "I do not know what you are talking about."

Milam slouched on the worn couch, his legs thrust out in front of him, his paint-spattered arms spread wide on the upright cushions. This was not a living room that would be included in books describing the fine homes of the South. Old newspa­pers and magazines littered every tabletop, rested in stacks on the chairs and floor. The furniture was undistinguished, bland: rounded easy chairs and divans that could be found in count­less department stores from Savannah to Pascagoula. The drapes must have been there for years, they were so faded, the green fronds of the weeping willows barely visible against the dulled lime background. The grime of many seasons dulled the windowpanes; handprints smudged the once-white panels of the doorways. Milam looked neither better nor worse than his frowsy, down-at-heels surroundings.

So far, Max hadn't succeeded in ruffling the painter's nonchalant attitude. He tried again, his words sharper. "You admit you were angry, so how can you say you didn't have any reason to kill your father?"

"Look, Darling, I didn't want him dead. I wanted—" For the first time, Milam's voice wavered. "—I wanted him to love me. When he died, I felt empty, like somebody broke me open and all the stuffing spilled out. There wasn't anything out there, no direction to take. All those years I tried to get his attention. God, the things I did to get his attention. And it was always the same, those cool gray eyes would look me up and down and I always felt dirty. That's because he thought I was dirty. I can see that now. Whoever killed him, killed something inside of me. I don't know what exactly. But I was getting over it. Because of Missy. My life started to come together, because of her. I might have been a good artist, a really good artist. Missy was like a perfect spring morning. Have you ever had a little girl--a beautiful little girl—look up at you like you're God? She was so sweet and funny and kind. She loved everyone. Me. Her mother. Old people. Kids. Black. White. Everybody. And she woke up early one morn­ing and went downstairs and outside and she walked into the pond—I found her floating there. And nothing's ever worked,since then." He balled the stained rag and flung it across the room, his face as empty as a broken heart.

"He was going to make Amanda leave," Annie insisted.

Julia shook her head in slow, stubborn negation.

Annie would have sworn to it. She felt, at this point, that she knew Judge Tarrant only too well—implacable in resolve, immovable in judgment, untouched by human appeal. Oh, yes, she could see it all. Amanda would have to go, sent away from the only home she'd ever had as an adult, away from her children and her infant grandchild. What kind of panic had seized Amanda?

And how had the Judge threatened his daughter-in-law Julia? "What did he say to you?"

Julia huddled in the big white wooden chair. She wouldn't look at Annie. She simply said over and over, "Nothing. Nothing."

"Then why were you crying that day?"

"I don't know," Julia said dully. "I cried a lot of days."

That was as much as Annie could bear. She couldn't stay here and badger this wretched woman. She had learned enough to know that murder may have moved in Julia's heart. Wasn't that enough for now?

But there was one more question she had to ask. "Mrs. Tarrant, the fire at the museum . .

She didn't have to finish.

Julia looked up, her face so defenseless, so revealing. "All those letters," she said simply. "The ones I wrote to Amanda. Just notes, really." Her mouth quivered. "I even wrote her a sonnet once." Her chin lifted defiantly. "I wanted her to know . . ." Her voice fell away until it was little more than a whisper. ". . . how much I loved her. Was that wrong? To say 'I love you'? But people would make it ugly. I thought, maybe if it all burned up . . . I watched it burn." Her eyes were puzzled. "I wanted to destroy it—all those years and years and years of Tarrants. But it didn't help. You can't burn memories."

Annie stood. She hesitated, then bent and gently patted Julia's frail shoulder. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Tarrant. About every­thing."

As Annie started down the gazebo steps, Julia called out thinly, "Are you going to tell Milam?"

It was the last question Annie would have expected. Why should Julia care?

Their marriage—Milam and Julia's—was so patently a fail­ure. Why would she care at all?

Before Annie could answer, Julia struggled to her feet. "If you don't have to tell him," she said breathlessly, "then please don't. You see . . . Milam loved his mother so much. It's the one good memory in his life. Don't"—her glance slid away from Annie's—"ruin it for him."

Their suite at the St. George Inn wasn't home, but it was the next best thing. And it was a refuge. As the door closed behind them, Annie stepped into Max's arms. She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a huge hug. She didn't—and perhaps that was most important, most wonderful of all—have to explain.

"I know," he said softly into her hair. "Poor damn devils. God, we're lucky." And he held her.

The phone rang.

Annie had never mastered the precept (illustrated with such charm in Suzy Becker's enchanting book, All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat) that it isn't essential to answer the telephone just because you're home. (As is often the case at mystery bookstores, Annie stocked a great many cat titles at Death on Demand. After all, reading mysteries and loving cats seem to go hand in paw.)

So, of course, she bolted from his arms with the same alacrity she would have shown had a boa constrictor poked a head from the jardiniere next to the telephone stand.

It was hard not to answer "Death on Demand," but Annie managed a simple "hello."

"My sweet." Her mother-in-law's greeting burbled likebubbles in champagne. "I felt sure I would be conversing with your answering machine. A mixed blessing, don't you think?"

Annie was unsure whether Laurel was indicating a prefer­ence for her or for the answering machine, but it was better not to think along those lines. It could lead to a sense of anomie, which she had quite successfully avoided ever since forswearing the kind of literary fiction written primarily by English professors for other English professors.

"But I feel as if it were meant."

Annie had a sudden vision of a graceful hand with pink-tipped nails pressed against a bosom that was always shown to great advantage in low-cut ball gowns. Not, of course, that she begrudged Max's mother the opportunity to display her un­doubted beauty, blond hair that glistened like spun gold, eyes as brilliantly sapphire as a northern sea, finely chiseled fea­tures, and a figure almost unseemly for a woman old enough to have four grown children.

"I am most concerned that you and dear Max be quite cautious in your pursuit of justice. There is so much evil in the world, my dear."

Annie managed a single intervening sentence. "Miss Mar­ple never worried about her skin when she hunted for a mur­derer."

Max, thumbing through a batch of mail left by Barb, looked across the room, a question in his blue eyes. Annie covered the mouthpiece. "Your mom," she mouthed.

Max smiled fondly and walked a few paces to settle in an easy chair with the mail. The chair was rather handily out of reach of the phone cord.

Annie realized the pause on Laurel's end was still in force. One hell of a pause, actually. It indicated, without a single word, that dear Annie was regrettably callow to refer in such graceless prose to the greatest elderly female detective of all time.

Annie attempted damage control. "Not that Miss Marple would ever have thought about it in those terms. But, Laurel, you see what I mean."

"Of course, my dear." That resonant, husky, unforgettable voice radiated patience.

Annie's gaze fastened wistfully on a pair of crossed swords above the Adam mantel. It was a good thing Laurel had not progressed on the psychic plane to mind reading.

Mercifully unaware of the images—honestly, did it make her bloodthirsty to own a mystery bookstore?—cavorting in Annie's mind, Laurel swept on. "I quite take pride in your and Max's dedication to duty. I feel impelled to point out, however, that it has been brought home to me in a most shocking manner how ugliness begets heartbreak which not even the passage of a great many years can ease. Take the grisly episode at Fenwick Castle on St. John's Island. That imposing man­sion is said to have resembled the castles in the family's En­glish holdings."

Annie felt sufficiently embroiled in present-day heartbreak without adding dead-and-gone misery to her bag of emotions, but she knew that Laurel, once launched, was quite as imper­vious to deflection as Miss Climpson when in pursuit of infor­mation for Lord Peter Wimsey.

". . . and so Ann Fenwick fell in love not only with the spirited racehorse her father ordered from England, but also with the groom who arrived with the horse. Ann was a favorite of her stern father, Edward Fenwick, who had always treated her gently and lovingly. But Fenwick lived up to his reputa­tion for anger and harshness when his daughter informed him that she wished to marry the young groom, Tony. Her father, a titled lord in England, was enraged. He swore that this would never happen, his daughter would not wed a groom. Ann protested that Tony was the younger son of a clergyman and her father could aid him in entering a profession. But Edward Fenwick, Lord Ripon, vowed he would rather see his daughter dead."

A delicate sigh wafted over the wire from Charleston. "My dear, I have loved as Ann loved."

Annie bit her tongue. It wouldn't be at all the thing to ask Laurel if Ann Fenwick had also married five times. That wouldnot be a proper filial response. Besides, Max was within ear­shot.

"It is," Laurel enthused, "as if dear Ann were here with me."

Annie also forbore to ask in which century Ann's problems occurred and whether the presence so near Laurel was moldy. And chilly. Graves did have a tendency to be both damp and moist. Especially in the Low Country.

"I feel her so near. Her tears have been mine as I contem­plate the horrible fate which awaited her. Suffice it to say—"

Did Laurel fear Annie's attention might be wandering?

"—Ann and Tony continued to rendezvous, albeit secretly, of course, because of her father's furious prohibitions. Ann tried one more time to persuade her father and was rebuffed, with equal anger. So she and Tony eloped. They found a min­ister who wed them and they set out for Charles Town." (An­nie got the clue; a long damn time ago when that city on the Ashley River still bore a double name.) "It was evening and too late to hail a boat to cross. They stayed their bridal night —I hope a glorious night—but when dawn came so did a search party headed by her father. It callously rousted out the newlyweds and placed them in a coach, with Tony bound in ropes, and set out for Fenwick Castle. When the coach arrived and jolted to a stop in the stable yard, Lord Ripon shouted for a horse to be brought. Then he ordered his men to place Tony on the steed and to take a rope, tie it to Tony's neck, then fasten it to the limb of the huge oak which Ann had climbed as a child.

"Ann, screaming and weeping, struggled with her father, pleading for the life of her new husband. Silent and grim, Lord Ripon placed a whip in her hand. Then, holding her tight, he lifted her arm and flailed down viciously on the horse's flank. As it bolted and her beloved swung by his neck in the air above her, twisting and turning, Ann gave a dreadful cry and collapsed."

"Laurel," Annie said faintly.

Max looked at her in alarm. Weakly, Annie waggled her hand that it was all right. But it wasn't all right. This dreadful

story would haunt her sleep for many nights to come. What­ever possessed Laurel to

"My dear, I know. Such nightmares I have had. But we must face the fact that evil acts create heartbreak that lingers through time. Poor little Ann never recovered. Oh, she regained consciousness, of course. But ever after, she wandered the halls of Fenwick Castle, crying out for Tony, searching for Tony. After she died, her spirit stayed. Even today, though Fenwick Castle lies in ruins, you can hear her footsteps as she paces halls that no longer exist and her mournful cry of 'Tony, Tony!' "

Annie shivered. On winter nights when rain hissed against the windows, did Sybil hear Ross's name? Or was the cry simply in her heart?

"I must say I now look forward to the day when I shall have completed my chronicle of South Carolina ghosts. As you know, dear Annie, I have never felt it my duty to wallow in tragedy. However, I—"

Actually, if Annie envisioned Laurel wallowing, it certainly wasn't in tragedy. In fact . . . Annie sternly corrected the drift of her thoughts.

"—must hew to the course as I find it, and I'm confident my insights shall be of inestimable value to you and dear Max. Ta."

Annie replaced the receiver and looked at her husband. As pleasantly as possible. "Wallowing in tragedy, but brave as hell."

"Now, Annie, you know the old dear means well." He got to his feet. "Lunchtime. Strategy time."

Annie wasn't altogether diverted, though she was ravenous. Was this the moment to point out to Max that he had a blind spot the size of Texas in his understanding of his mother, her motives and her actions? But, in this instance, maybe he had a point. Besides, how could Annie complain? After all, the old dear was in Charleston, not Chastain.

"So, trauma lingers," Max summed up as Annie concluded her report of the conversation. He put two plates on the golden oak table in their suite's breakfast room and began tounload the box lunches they'd bought en route to the inn. "Did you see the card from Henny?"

Annie rustled through the stack of mail and pulled out the postcard. She studied the Corinthian portico and baroque tower of an elegant church. Flipping to Henny's message, she read: I thought I'd died and gone to heaven—this is St. George's, Hanover Square, where Harriet and Lord Peter were wed in Bus­man's Holiday! Annie, I do wish you and Max were here. But I shall be home soon. Duty calls. Love—H.

As they raced through lunch—they had to hurry if they were going to be on time to meet Miss Dora for a guided tour of Tarrant House and its grounds—discussing whether they were prepared for the afternoon, Annie struggled to discipline her thoughts. Images whirled: Ann Fenwick's desolate cry for love and life destroyed, Julia's strangely passionate desire to protect Milam's memory of his mother, acid-tongued Enid's advice to Courtney Kimball that Miss Dora alone among the Tarrants could be trusted, a little girl waking early and hurry­ing outside to death, Lucy Jane pleating her apron and picking her words so carefully. . . .

Annie put down the last half of her sandwich. She checked her watch. Almost two. They mustn't he late to meet Miss Dora. She pushed back her chair.

Max looked across the table. "What's up?"

Annie hurried to the desk and grabbed the phone. "I need to make a couple of calls before we go." It was the first time in her life she'd ever left a smoked salmon/cream cheese sandwich unfinished. And she was hungry enough to devour a twelve-ounce T-bone. (As a native Texan, she fully subscribed to the ideal of real food for real people.) But the uneasiness that had plucked at her mind, conjuring up images of restless spirits and tragic losses, was too powerful to ignore. She had a dark vision that she desperately wanted to dispel.

Lucy Jane McKay answered on the first ring.

"Mrs. McKay, this is Annie Darling. We're still working for Miss Dora"—it wouldn't hurt to underscore their friend in high places—"and I wondered if you could give us some back­ground information on Missy Tarrant's accident."

"Missy." The older woman's voice was soft. "One of God's angels, Mrs. Darling. That's why she went home to be with the Lord so young."

Annie could see the comfort behind this rationale, but theologically speaking it didn't appeal to her. "I know that she drowned in a pond, but do you know the circumstances?"

"Oh, Mrs. Darling, it was just so sad and it goes to show the evils of alcohol that every young parent should take to heart." Lucy Jane was firm, but her voice was thick with tears. "Now, there wasn't anybody who loved that baby better than her mamma and her daddy, but they liked to stay up nights drinking too much and then they didn't get up in the morn­ings like they should. A friend of one of my girls was helping out at Wisteree is how I know what happened. Missy lost one of her favorite toys, a big brown bear she called 'Bear-Bear." How she cried and cried for him. Anyway, that last morning —it was a Sunday—Missy woke up early, but her folks didn't get up and Cathy, my daughter's friend, had a flat tire on her way out to Wisteree so she wasn't there to take care of the little girl—oh, still just a baby—like she would have usually. Missy got up and went downstairs and nobody locks doors—or did then—out in the country or in town either. So Missy let herself out of the kitchen door and she wandered down to the pond. When her daddy found her, she was floating facedown in the water and there was Bear-Bear floating beside her. No­body knows how he got there. You'd think if she'd thrown him in the water when he was lost, she would have said so. And why didn't someone notice him floating out there? Any­way, they think Missy saw him in the water and went in after him. That's how it was when they found them, Bear-Bear and Missy."

"That's dreadful," Annie cried.

"It was awful." Lucy Jane's voice was low and grieved. "It broke Mr. Milam's heart and for a long time they thought it would be the death of Miz Julia."

But it was never Julia who died. Annie tried to push the thought away. Julia's sister. Her father-in-law. Her daughter. Her mother-in-law. But never Julia.

So? Annie demanded of herself. That could be said of them all, couldn't it?

No. Not quite.

But why would Julia—and the very thought sickened An­nie's heart—murder her own daughter?

There could be no rational reason. But there might be many twisted reasons in the mind of a woman as miserably unhappy as Julia.

She passionately loved her little girl.

The same way she'd loved her sister?

Annie forced herself to pursue the phantasmagoria taking shape in her mind, a vision of a mind and heart engulfed by evil, the kind of evil Poe described with hideous clarity in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart."

"Did Missy die before Mrs. Amanda fell from the cliff—or after?" Annie demanded. She saw Max's quick, curious glance.

Lucy Jane knew at once. "About a month before. They say death comes in threes. I thought we were all finished—what with Mr. Ross and the Judge and Missy all gone within a year —but Death wasn't satisfied yet."

Annie had a ghoulish picture of a dark-cloaked figure with a grinning skull face reaching out greedy fingers of bone.

"No wonder Julia was so stricken," Annie said softly. "Mrs. McKay, why didn't you tell us about Julia and Amanda and the fact that the Judge knew about them?"

There was a long silence; then, quietly, firmly, decisively, the receiver clicked in place.

Annie stared at the phone for a moment. She didn't feel good about it, but she had her answer. Julia had denied an affair and denied that the Judge could have known. Amanda wasn't alive to answer, but Lucy Jane McKay was an honest woman. She wouldn't lie—so she wouldn't answer.

Annie looked across the room at Max. "The Judge knew. About Julia and Amanda."

Max said quietly, "Julia would know where the gun was kept."

The telephone rang. Annie's hand still rested on top of the receiver. She snatched it up, glad to be connected to the here

and now, not part of a shadowy, frightful world of imagined evils.

"Time to go." There was more than a hint of displeasure that the telephone had been answered. It was clear Miss Dora thought Annie and Max should at that very moment be en route to their rendezvous with her at Tarrant House.

As usual, Annie had to grab her temper and hold on. Now was not the time to tell the old harridan that she was rude, overbearing, and obnoxious.

"We're just getting ready to leave." It was an achievement to enunciate through clenched lips. Perhaps it was Annie's irritation that gave her the courage to snap a sharp query. "Miss Dora, did Courtney Kimball contact you the day she disappeared, last Wednesday?"

The sudden silence on the part of Chastain's most voluble and opinionated old lady caught Annie by surprise. And so did the rather odd answer that finally came.

"Wednesday?" It was the only time in their acquaintance that Annie had the feeling that Miss Dora was at a loss. "Why do you ask?" she demanded brusquely.

"Enid Friendley talked to Courtney on Wednesday. She told her you were the only person connected to Tarrant House that Courtney should trust."

"I see." Miss Dora cleared her throat. "Well, if Enid indeed did say that to Courtney, it's a shame the child didn't call on me. Now, I wish to speak with Max."

Annie wasn't unhappy to hand over the receiver.

But Annie had the damnedest feeling. Miss Dora had lied. Why?

If Miss Dora had seen Courtney Kimball on Wednesday, why lie about it?

Miss Dora was an old woman.

That didn't mean she wouldn't cling to life, grasp it with fingers tight as talons, and do whatever she must to ward off death. Especially, perhaps, if she would die with murder on her soul.

If Miss Dora had lied about Wednesday, how many other lies might she have told?

4:04 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

Ross Tarrant clung to the doorjamb for support. "Dad!" Footsteps sounded behind him. A hand clutched his arm. "Oh, God, did she shoot him?"

"She?" Ross's voice cracked.

"She ran upstairs. Just now."

"Mother?" Ross's voice shook.

"Yes. Oh, God, what are we going to do? We have to call the police."

Ross shrugged off the hand. He ran to the desk and stared down at the gun for a long, anguished moment, then grabbed it up. As he brushed past the figure at the door, he said roughly, "Don't tell anyone you saw Mother. No one, do you under­stand?"

Chapter 20.

Tarrant House lay straight ahead, framed between the avenue of live oaks. On this cloudy, sultry afternoon, the plastered brick varied in shade from pale green to beige to misty gray, depending upon the slant of sunlight diffused through the clouds.

The-air was moist and sticky, as humid as a July day. Not a vestige of wind stirred the shiny, showy magnolia leaves. Sharp-edged palmettos stood like sentinels on either side of the house. Gossamer threads of Spanish moss hung straight and limp on the low-limbed live oaks, their beauty as delicate as the brushwork in a Chinese landscape. Purplish clouds darkened the southern sky. It wasn't storm season, but a storm was surely coming.

This house had weathered more than a century and a half of storms and stormy lives. Tarrant House had seen happiness and loss, love and hatred, plenty and famine, peace and war. It seemed to Annie—though she knew it was fanciful—that the house had a wily, watching, wary appearance, drawing into

itself in preparation for the promised winds, the coming tem­pest.

It was a day as fated for storm and death as the day Faulk­ner's Addie Bundren lay listening to the chock and thunk of her coffin being constructed.

What would this day see?

Without question, a murderer would walk the halls of Tar­rant House once again before the storm broke.

Annie wondered if she and Max would be clever enough to determine the truth of May 9, 1970.

Miss Dora appeared suddenly, stepping out from behind a hedge of pittosporum. "I've been waiting." There was, as usual, no warmth in her greeting or in the midnight-dark eyes that looked at them so intensely, as if to rake out the secrets of their souls by sheer impress of will.

But, dammit, it was Miss Dora who had lied!

Abruptly, as they looked at each other, the young woman and the old, Annie glimpsed—for an instant that seemed an eternity—a welter of emotion in Miss Dora's gaze, uncertainty and terror and a terrible resolution.

Then the moment passed. Annie was left to wonder, as the old woman lifted her stick, gesturing for them to hurry, if that glimpse of agony in those implacable eyes reflected nothing more than the turmoil in Annie's own mind. Certainly, Miss Dora gave no other hint of distress as she led the way up the crushed-shell drive, using her cane as a pointer.

"That oak—the huge one to the south—was the site of a hanging in 1862. A Yankee spy. Redheaded, they say." The old voice was brisk, matter-of-fact.

How old was he, Annie wondered, and why had he come to Chastain?

As if she'd heard the unspoken query, Miss Dora contin­ued: "Scouting to see about the fortifications and whether the harbor could be captured. Said to be a handsome young man. One of the Tarrant girls fainted at the sight, and everyone always wondered if there were more to his coming than was

said to the world."

At least, Annie thought, it had not been the girl's arm,

raised in the iron grip of an angry father, that struck the mount beneath the victim.

The scene before them darkened, the sun now hidden be­hind thick clouds. Annie looked up at the old house, at the double piazzas, at the four massive octagonal columns sup­porting the five-foot-high decorated parapet, at the four huge chimneys towering above the parapet.

"There are seventy-two windows," Miss Dora observed, as they started up the front steps. The stairway was necessary because the house was built one story above ground, supported by brick columns. A sour, musty smell rose from the arched entrances to the space beneath the house.

Cemeteries weren't high on Annie's list of places to spend time, but she felt certain no graveyard ever smelled earthier than the dark nooks beneath Tarrant House.

She was glad to reach the broad, first-floor piazza. Pompeian-red shutters framed the immense windows. An enor­mous fanlight curved above the double walnut front doors. The glass panes were clear as ice.

Miss Dora ignored the bell punch. Opening the door, she motioned for Annie and Max to enter. "Whitney and Char­lotte know we're coming. Can't say they're thrilled." She gave a high cackle of malicious amusement.

Annie stepped into the entrance hall, a broad sweep of old wood flooring with occasional rugs. An elegant French chan­delier hung from an intricate Adam plaster medallion.

So this was Tarrant House.

Annie's first impression, despite the gloom of the day, was of brightness and beauty. Archways opened off either side of the hall. A monumental grandfather clock stood near the cross hallway.

The soft rich glow of cypress, gloriously carved, dominated the drawing room, from the magnificent chimney breast and mantel to the archway decorated with surrounds of fluted Co­rinthian pilasters. Over the mantel was an oil portrait of a lovely woman with soft auburn hair and kind blue eyes. Her white ballgown was modestly cut. A pink sash curved around her waist.

Miss Dora saw Annie's glance.

"A lovely likeness of Amanda. She was," and the tart voice softened, "as good and kind as she looked. She deserved better than she got."

The dining room was equally beautiful. Other family por­traits lined these walls. The peach walls made a gorgeous background for the Hepplewhite dining table and shield-back chairs. The drapes were of ivory silk. Crystal hung in delicate swags from the chandelier. Ivory and peach predominated in the rug.

Miss Dora jabbed her cane. "Drawing room to the left, dining room to the right. A cross hall opens to the side piaz­zas. Past the stairs, the sewing room, study to the left—"

The study. Annie took a step forward. Where the Judge was shot.

"—kitchen, wash areas to the right."

Miss Dora started down the hall. She was almost past the grandfather clock when she stopped. Her body went rigid. Then, slowly, she turned to look up at the clock face.

Annie and Max looked, too.

The hour hand stood at four, the minute hand at two minutes past.

The clock was silent.

"Four-oh-two." There was no mistaking the note of fear in Miss Dora's voice. Her silver head swiveled around, her eyes darted toward the stairs. "Dear God."

"Miss Dora, what's wrong?"

"The clock—that time—that's when Augustus died." She leaned on her stick, as if, suddenly, she needed support. Her eyes gazed emptily at the clock. She spoke in a voice so low she could scarcely be heard. "The clock in my bedroom—this morning it was stopped. At four-oh-two." A shudder moved through her small frame. "What does it mean?" She looked at Annie, then beyond her. "Charlotte, have you seen?" The cane pointed at the clock.

Annie and Max turned to see Charlotte standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

Annie knew that if ever she had seen fear on a human

countenance, it was at this moment. All the color had seeped from Charlotte's plump face. She tried to speak and no words came. She turned, and the kitchen door swung shut behind her.

She was gone, but the taste and smell of fear hung in that elegant hallway.

Miss Dora stared after her. Then, slowly, an implacable calmness spread over her sharp features. "What will be, will be," she intoned. "Come."

As Miss Dora moved on down the hall, Annie glanced back. She wished she'd insisted that they look more closely at the clock. Miss Dora apparently believed some ghostly force had summoned back the time of the Judge's death. That was sheer nonsense.

Of course it was.

They passed the staircase to the upper floors, and Annie welcomed the distraction. It was an absolutely gorgeous stair­case, the elegant banister and balusters carved from rich red mahogany.

The study was a warm and welcoming room with a broad fireplace and more cypress paneling. Two walls were filled with books. Many, with leather bindings and faded gilt titles, were obviously old. The desk glistened with polish. There wasn't a smudge upon it. It may have been a desk for work when it belonged to Judge Tarrant. Today, it was part of a room for show. The only hint of anything out of the ordinary was the broken window in one of the French doors that opened onto the back piazza. The pane was temporarily replaced by a piece of plywood.

Max walked to the desk and sat behind it. His eyes scanned the room, the back piazza, and the cloud-muted flame of flowering azaleas in the garden.

A scholar's room. A retreat from the world of action to the world of ideas. How often had the Judge stood beside the bookcases to choose a volume? Dickens perhaps? Chesterton? Montaigne?

"If the gun was kept in that drawer—"

Max reached down, slid open the lower left-hand drawer.

"—and if the Judge was sitting there," Annie asked, "how did the murderer get it?"

She came around the desk to stand beside Max. But, as she looked down, her glance was caught by the porcelain clock on the Queen Anne table between the French doors.

This clock, too, wasn't running.

The hour hand pointed at the four, the minute hand at two past the hour.

Annie scarcely heard Miss Dora's comment.

"Quite a pertinent question, young miss." Miss Dora gave her a grudging look of respect.

"It certainly is." Max's look of admiration wasn't the least grudging.

But Annie hardly noticed. She pointed at the silent clock. Max's lips curved in a soundless whistle.

Miss Dora's eyes widened. "Again." The old lady touched the ruby brooch at her throat. "Dear God. It can only mean that the hour of judgment is drawing nigh."

Max said gently, "Miss Dora, don't be frightened. Some­one's playing tricks."

"I only wish that were true." Her voice was somber.

"Maybe the point is to keep us from thinking—but it isn't going to work. Now"—he pointed at the drawer—"how did the murderer get the gun? The Judge wouldn't have sat here and let someone reach into the drawer, take out the gun, and shoot him! That means the killer took the gun out of the desk earlier in the day and came into the study with it. So the murder was premeditated."

After a final lingering look at the clock, Miss Dora said soberly, "Augustus was not a fool." She stared at the desk and Annie was certain her eyes beheld another figure there. "How­ever"—and her tone was full of reluctance—"if one of his sons came in to see him—not Ross certainly after their fiery quarrel —but either Whitney or Milam and the talk led to hunting and guns, would Augustus have been suspicious if his visitor professed interest in that relic from the War and asked to see it?"

Max pushed back the desk chair. "If a man has murder in

mind, it would be a little foolhardy merely to assume that the gun was in working condition. How could he count on it being loaded?"

"That could have been determined earlier," Miss Dora re­plied dispassionately. "Besides, loaded guns are no rarity in Chastain."

Max walked toward the French doors and looked out into the garden. "Would these doors have been locked that after­noon?"

"No. In Chastain, locked doors, of any kind, are a rarity." The old lady too looked out at the garden. "So, of course, the murderer could easily have entered from the piazza."

Loaded guns and unlocked doors. And someone with mur­der in his heart. Or hers.

On the way out of the study, Annie glanced back at the tranquil room. Murder had occurred there, at that desk. Noth­ing today remained of that moment—except the time cap­tured by the silent clock on the beautiful old Queen Anne table. Annie shivered.

Her sense of horror grew as they climbed the magnificent staircase. This was a house teeming with violent memories. The bloodstain just before the landing was evident, a dark discoloration of the wood. It was obvious that the step had been scrubbed and scrubbed, but no amount of effort had washed away the last vestige of Robert Tarrant's blood. Annie skirted that uneven splotch and hurried after Miss Dora. Max gave her elbow a squeeze.

"Plenty of room up here." Miss Dora stood at the top of the stairs like a tour guide. "That door leads out to the second-story front piazza." She turned, pointed her stick the opposite way. "That door at the end of the hall goes out onto the second-story back piazza.

"There are six bedrooms upstairs." Her silvered brows drew down in thought. "It's been a good many years since I've been upstairs, but I believe the master bedroom is in the southeast corner."

She stalked down the wide hall. Annie hoped her cane wouldn't snag the carpet runner. Miss Dora rapped the knobof her cane against the door, then opened it. "Hmm, yes. As I thought. This is the master bedroom."

Annie and Max peered over her shoulder. Annie definitely felt like a trespasser as she scanned the room, home now to Whitney and Charlotte. A pair of trousers in a pants press. An ornate silver jewel case on the dressing table, the lid open to reveal a handful of antique rings with stones of opal or carne­lian or jade. A book of poetry—Longfellow—facedown on the pale gold of the bedspread, which matched the linen window hangings and the delicate background color of the Chinese wallpaper. Acanthus leaves decorated the posts of the four-poster bed. Past the half-open closet door, Annie glimpsed a row of Whitney's suits and shirts.

Miss Dora thumped her cane to the floor and gripped the silver head. "Now you've seen it. Much as it was twenty-two years ago. Let's go to the garden."

When they came out on the first-floor piazza at the back of the house, Annie felt sweat trickling down her back and thighs. What had happened to their usual crisp, clear, dry days of spring? She took a deep breath and felt as though she'd gulped mist from a sauna. The storm couldn't come too soon to satisfy her. As if in answer, lightning crackled to the south, followed almost immediately by a low growl of thunder.

"Charlotte has a green thumb, no doubt about that. Amanda would be pleased. She loved this garden." Miss Dora waggled her cane. "She spent a good deal of time working the borders toward the back wall."

In the murky light, the garden had the greenish, watery glow of an aquarium, the bright reds and pinks of the azaleas and camellias softened into smudged impressionist tints. Be­neath the scent of coming rain and freshly turned earth was the darker, angrier odor of fire. The charred remains of the museum dominated the garden, drawing the eye away from the superbly tended plantings. The garden's design—separate components scattered around the structures—was still evi­dent. Rosebushes in formal beds circled the fountain and its brick patio. Scarlet tulips formed a brilliant necklace around the obelisk. Bunches of flowering azaleas curved and flowed

around nooks and crannies with benches. Honeysuckle and bougainvillea cascaded over the garden walls. Willows ringed the pond near the bluff. An herb garden thrived near the kitchen. An arbor thickly covered with climbing roses kept the potting shed out of sight. It would be quite possible—it was planned for that effect—for several persons to enjoy soli­tude in the garden without intruding upon each other.

But the effects of the fire—the charred structure tumbled inward to create uneven heaps of debris, the trampled-down iris beds where the firemen had labored, the muddy spots where water had collected on the ground—gave the garden an aura of desolation, made even bleaker by the gray and cloudy day.

Faintly, a bell rang within the house.

Miss Dora' s pale lips tightened. "It is time," she said grimly, "for the curtain to rise."

Quickly, as if impelled by urgency, Miss Dora orchestrated the cast of survivors. In scarcely a quarter of an hour, each person was standing—if truthful—where he or she had been at ap­proximately four o'clock on Saturday, May 9, twenty-two years before.

In the central hallway of Tarrant House, Miss Dora shrugged as the last unwilling participant straggled out the back door. "Can't prove who was where, after all this time. But only one person has reason to lie. Now, before we start"—wizened fingers scrabbled in the black reticule hanging from her left wrist—"I've some notes here." She pulled out a tiny notebook, opened it to a page of crabbed writing, and said briskly, "Amanda was in her room. Missy was asleep in the northwest bedroom—that belonged to Milam and Julia. Sam —he died about six years ago." She paused, looking pleased. "Ninety-seven and he walked two miles to church the day before he passed away. Sam was in his room in the servants' quarters. Just like Lucy Jane. Ross was in the garden. And the Judge was in the study. Clear?" she demanded.

Annie and Max both nodded and the old woman started up the mahogany steps.

Milam lounged in a wooden-slatted white chair on the second-story back piazza, a sketch pad in his lap. He didn't rise as they walked out on the piazza. He didn't look quite so much sullen as sardonic and bored. "Nice to see you keeping interested in the world, Miss Dora."

She eyed him coldly, her disapproval evident, but she made no response.

Milam tried again. "I can see it now, the parlor game to end all parlor games. Re-create the day dear old Pater died—" "Milam."

The single snapped word silenced him and brought an unaccustomed tinge of pink to his plump cheeks.

Max tried conciliation. "Milam, don't fight us. We're not the problem. The problem is what happened to your father twenty-two years ago. We need your help."

"Look, Darling, if I knew what really happened, I'd tell you. But I don't have any f—" He paused, looked at Miss Dora, then continued, "I don't know. And I don't think this afternoon will tell you anything."

"Maybe not," Max said agreeably. "Let's talk about your father."

Milam's face was still and guarded.

"And your mother." Max's blue eyes were intent. "Did you know they were going to separate?"

"I think you've been misled," Milam drawled. "That would be out of character. For both of them."

His eyes dropped. He stared at his tightly clenched hands. Annie felt a rush of excitement. Milam did know. The question was, did he know why?

"What kind of marriage did they have?" Annie asked.

Those graceful hands, artist's hands, slowly relaxed. He flicked her a derisive glance. "I was their oldest son. Not their confidant. I don't have any damned idea. They were polite to each other. Very polite. They never quarreled. What they did —or didn't do—behind closed doors, I don't know. But what difference does it make? Mother's not here to take the rap."

"If," Max said slowly, and Annie knew he wanted to be careful in what he said, "your father intended to force your mother to leave Tarrant House, would you have any idea why?"

"No."

There was no way to know whether he spoke the truth. "About your mother's fall from the bluff—"

For the first time, anger laced Milam's voice. "Wait a min­ute, Darling. Are you suggesting I gave my mother a shove off the path?"

"Somebody did." Miss Dora's gravelly tone was certain.

Milam's head jerked up. This, obviously, was an altogether new thought—and an unpleasant one—to Milam. Or was he simulating shock?

"Why?" he demanded harshly, his voice raw with disbelief. Max rocked back on his heels. "Somehow she discovered that Ross wasn't guilty—"

A sharply indrawn breath brought silence. They all looked at Miss Dora.

"If only Amanda had told me, shared—" Miss Dora gazed somberly at Milam. "I came to see her. One year to the day of your father's death. You must remember that I had not been told what happened. I knew only the story that had been made public: Ross dead of an accident, the Judge collapsing with a heart attack. Amanda and I sat in the drawing room, with tea. It was a rainy afternoon. We talked about the Judge. And about Ross. It must have been fate—or the hand of God—or of the Devil. I don't know. I said that I would never forget Ross, moving so quickly at the sound of a shot that afternoon and he himself to be dead so soon in an accident with a gun. She looked at me strangely, but I thought it was grief, the pain of remembering. She said, 'You and Ross heard a shot?' And I replied—I had no reason not to do so—I said so care­lessly, never dreaming how much harm I was doing with those words, 'Oh, yes, about four o'clock. I was at the gate. I could see Ross standing in the garden." Amanda looked quite faint. So I poured her more tea and then she thanked me for comingbut said she must go upstairs, to rest. Don't you see? That's when she realized—and then she began to think."

It could, Annie realized, have happened exactly like that. Or it could have been some other memory entirely that re­formed Amanda's picture of that day. Perhaps on the anniver­sary of the Judge's death, she remembered the click of a cane in the hall or perhaps she remembered the glimpse of a long, old-fashioned dress. . .

"You think Mother went from that to accusing someone of the Judge's murder?" Milam frowned fiercely. "That wouldn't be like her. She would have come to me or to Whitney."

"Or perhaps to Julia?" Annie asked quietly.

"Maybe." The suggestion apparently didn't bother Milam. "Or even to Charlotte, though I never thought Mother liked her overmuch."

Miss Dora was nodding, her shaggy white hair flying. "Of course. Don't you see? She did tell someone. But it was the wrong person."

"Murder piled upon murder?" Milam's lips curved down in ugly amusement. "You've been reading too much family his­tory, Aunt Dora."

Max lost patience. "You seem to think all of this is amus­ing. But you weren't laughing the day your father died. You were upset."

Milam let the pad slip into his lap and folded his hands behind his head. He looked insolently up at Max. "Sorry if I let the Family down, showing emotion and all that. But it's quite a shock, to have your little brother blow away your old man. At least, that's what I thought at the time. Believe me, it was a hell of an afternoon. I suppose I—"

"You were upset before your father died," Annie interrupted irritably. "We have it on good authority." Was it stretching the truth to consider Enid Friendley a good authority?

Milam's arms dropped. His expression smoothed out as if all thought and emotion had been wiped away with a sponge. "Do you now?" he asked silkily. "And who would that be?"

No one answered.

A sour smile stretched his lips. "Enid, probably. Well,

that's fine. Maybe so. It was a long time ago. If Enid told you that, ask her what else she knows."

"We will," Max replied. "Look, Milam, you were upset

that morning. Long before someone shot the Judge. Why?" Milam looked down at the sketch pad in his lap. So did Annie.

It was just the merest hint of a sketch. A child's face. A wispy ponytail. That's all it was.

Milam traced the outline of a delicately drawn cheek. "I don't remember. It's been too damn long ago."

When they walked—the three of them—into the downstairs laundry room, Enid Friendley watched them approach, her arms folded across her abdomen, a curious expression on her face.

"We appreciate your coming," Max said briskly.

Her unfriendly eyes remained wary. They moved from Max to Annie to Miss Dora. It was to the latter that Enid spoke. "Hello, Miss Dora."

"Enid, we need your help." Miss Dora's glance was compel­ling. "What happened that last day? Who did the Judge talk to? What did you see?"

The caterer hesitated.

"Come now." Miss Dora was impatient. "Max and Annie told me what you said about Amanda and Julia. I can't say I believe you were right, but we'll leave that for now. Tell us what you actually saw or heard."

"I know what I know," Enid said mulishly. "If it isn't true, then why were Amanda and Julia scared to death that day, quaking in their shoes? And Amanda—well, she came out of her room that morning and there was a bright-red mark on her cheek where he'd slapped her. And I can't say I blame him. Two women—" Her face wrinkled in disgust. "And later, Julia came running down the stairs and out into the garden and she looked like the hounds of hell were after her. And maybe they were! And rightly so. But they weren't the only ones upset. Milam came downstairs a little after that and hehad an ugly look on his face when he went into the study. I was still in the hall when he came out. He stopped in the door and threatened his father. He said, cold and clear, 'I won't stand for it. You don't run the world." He walked by me like I wasn't there. He left the door open and in a minute the Judge came and pulled it shut and his face was hard as the stones in the cemetery."

Milam's story.

Enid's story.

"What happened next?" Max asked.

Enid shrugged. "I was out in the kitchen to help with lunch." A look of surprise touched her face. "Funny. I hadn't thought about it for years. But he was the only one who came to lunch."

"He?" Annie asked.

"The Judge. Ate all by himself, and he was mad as a wet hen. Later, after he died, I thought he'd given his heart a beating that day sure enough. Quarreling with first one, then another. It was after lunch—oh, more than an hour—that Ross came home. From school. He wasn't expected. I was surprised when I heard his voice—and he was upset, upset as he could be. I didn't understand all of it, but he was standing in the door of the study—just like Milam—and he was saying that he wouldn't go, that it was all wrong. It wasn't till later that I knew what he was talking about." Her eyes filled with anguish. "My cousin Eddie died over there. Just three weeks before it was all over." Unquenched anger burst out. "That's when I knew the government lied to us. They said we had to be there, that if we didn't stay, didn't fight, that all those countries over there would go Communist and we couldn't let that happen, that it would be bad trouble for us. But when the war ended, nothing happened! And finally I saw it for what it was—a big lie. All those soldiers died for nothing. That's when I stopped believing the government—ever." Tears glis­tened in her blazing eyes. "They put Eddie's name on a wall. Like that helped."

To Annie, that long-ago war was the stuff of history. And here was raw pain and unhealed bitterness flowing from that

history. For the first time, Annie understood on a personal level something of the misery and anger of those days. The shootings at Kent State crystallized the emotions of many Americans, including Ross Tarrant, who made a fateful deci­sion.

"So Ross said he wouldn't go—he wouldn't die for noth­ing. Then he died anyway. And he was the Tarrant everybody loved. I can tell you, the tears in this house were for him. Not the Judge." Her voice was harsh.

"Do you think everybody knew about Ross's argument with his father?" Max asked thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes. You could have heard them from here to Bath­sheba. The Judge's voice was terrible, like a winter wind." Enid didn't even try to mask her dislike.

"It must have broken Augustus's heart." Miss Dora's face softened with pity. "Ross was his favorite—because Ross al­ways did everything right. To have Ross refuse to serve his country—I can imagine how Augustus felt."

But Annie wasn't focused on Augustus Tarrant and what­ever disappointment he had felt over his son's decision. She was studying the bitter twist to Enid's mouth, the fury in her eyes. "Enid, when did the Judge offer to send you to college?"

Enid stood still and straight, her face suddenly empty of expression.

Annie attacked. "Was it before you found the key to that special box—or after?"

Annie would have sworn there was a flash of satisfaction in Enid's eyes, but it came and went so quickly she couldn't be certain.

"I came here to help," Enid snapped, "not to take the blame." She grabbed up her purse from a table crowded with wash powders and bleach and brushed past them.

Miss Dora called after her, "Wait now, Enid. We need you."

The only answer was the slam of the front door as it closed behind Enid.

"She blackmailed him!" Annie said urgently.

"It could be," Max said grimly. "It very well could be."Whitney, his brows drawn in a tight frown, stood stiffly by a post in the garage, irritation in every line of his body.

It was a three-car garage. A dark-green Jaguar was parked in the first space, a blue Chrysler in the second. The third was empty.

Max edged between the west wall and the Jaguar, past the first window to the second. He looked at Whitney across the hood. "As you recall, you were cleaning out your car from a picnic the previous day?"

"Yes." He clipped his answer. His mouth was a thin, tight, hostile line.

Max waited.

Whitney might not be the world's best lawyer, but he wasn't stupid. He didn't say a word.

"Why don't you demonstrate what you did?" Max sug­gested.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Darling, I've had enough—" "Whitney." It was a command, punctuated by a single crack of his aunt's cane on the cement floor.

He resisted for a moment, his head down, his shoulders hunched, then, grudgingly, he stepped closer to the Jaguar. His face was sullen as he pantomimed opening the trunk, removing materials, placing them on shelving against the wall. Then Whitney walked to the rear door of the automo­bile, pretended with exaggerated motions to open it, and mimed removing and carrying more objects to the shelves. He finished and stood, arms folded, and glared at them.

Max ignored his hostility. "Let's see, you were putting things away. That brought you up and down the length of this wall which parallels the garden."

"Yes." Whitney sounded bored.

"So you passed both of these windows."

"Yes."

Max walked to the second window, past the hood of the Jaguar. He looked out, but he couldn't see the house. His view was blocked by the wooden arbor covered with climbing roses.

The arbor was obviously designed to keep the garden shed out of sight from the house.

Max pointed out the window. "Was the arbor here twenty-two years ago?"

Whitney glanced out the window. Slowly, after a glance at the shed, he nodded.

Max retraced his steps, stood by the backseat and looked out the first window. This was a different story. The entire back of the house was in full view, plus the drive along the side of Tarrant House. Max's eyes settled on the steps to the back piazza onto which, of course, opened the French doors to the study.

Max swung sharply about. "What did you see that day, Whitney, from this window?"

Whitney stared at the first window for a long time. Annie tensed. Was Whitney going to help? Did he remem­ber something?

Then, with an odd note in his voice, Whitney finally spoke. "I didn't see a damned thing."

No matter how Max went at it, Whitney stubbornly re­peated his denial.

Annie broke in. "You're lying." She saw Max's quick frown. But sweet words would do no good with Whitney, and he might as well know they weren't taken in.

Whitney ignored her, shaking his head, but his eyes had a distant, faraway look.

Annie started to speak, but subsided at Max's stern look.

Max stepped to the first window and looked out again into the murky light. "Anyone coming from Miss Dora's or the back of the garden or the servants' quarters would be visible to you."

"Sure," Whitney agreed. His answer was ready, but his tone was still abstracted. Then he spoke more briskly. "Thing is, I didn't see anybody at all, so let's drop it. Okay?"

"Whitney, this is a very serious situation." Miss Dora poked her head at him, like an irascible turtle. "You must tell us what you saw. Don't you understand, you could be in danger!"

Something flickered in his eyes, but he just shook his head. "Aunt Dora, don't worry about me. I don't know anything that has to do with the Judge's murder. Look, I was out here, out of the way. The first I knew there was a problem was when Ross slammed into the garage, white as a sheet, the gun in his hand." He paused and genuine sorrow touched his voice. "God, to think he blew his brains out for nothing!"

Or was it, Annie wondered, simulated sorrow? Had Ross been manipulated by an older brother he trusted? She said briskly, "Of course, there's another reason you might not have seen anything out the windows."

"What is that, young miss?" Miss Dora demanded. Annie's eyes locked with Whitney's. "You wouldn't have seen a thing—if you weren't here."

Whitney's face hardened. "If I killed the Judge, that's what you're saying. No. I didn't do it. Why the hell should I?" Max went right to the point. "Jessica Horton."

For an instant, Whitney's shock was naked—the widening of his eyes, the quickly indrawn breath, the sudden stillness.

But only for an instant. Then, he shrugged. "Horton," he mused. "Jessica Horton. I don't think I—oh." The dawn of phony remembrance was almost a caricature. "Oh, yes, of course. She was killed in a plane crash a few years ago."

Dead men—and dead women—tell no tales. Obviously, that was Whitney's conclusion.

"Your father was furious that you got involved with Jessica when the firm was representing her husband in a divorce ac­tion against her," Max persisted.

Whitney's lips curved in a smug smile. "Really? That's very interesting. I don't know a thing about it."

Charlotte stood stiffly in the doorway of the gardening shed, too upset to even try to hide her uneasiness and fear. Her chin quivered, and her voice shook. "I can't stand this. It's all so awful, so dreadful."

"But why are you afraid, Charlotte?" Miss Dora peered at her with troubled eyes.

"The gun," she whispered. "Someone took the gun. Why?"

Leaves skittered in a tiny dust devil near them. The wind soughed through the limbs of the live oaks and magnolias. The storm could not be far away. The dark sky lowered over them. The shed behind Charlotte was as dark as a cave.

Annie shivered. Charlotte's fear was contagious. The woman was consumed by terror.

"The best way to be safe is to tell us all you know," Max urged.

"But I don't know anything!" Charlotte wailed. "If it weren't for the gun being stolen, I'd think you were wrong, that there must have been another shot, that Ross killed the Judge like we've always thought. But the gun—" Frightened eyes stared at them.

Max looked at the rose-laden arbor that stood between the shed and the back of the house and then at Charlotte. "Could you show us where you were that afternoon, what you were doing?"

Like a sleepwalker, Charlotte stepped inside the shed. She switched on the light and turned to the worktable. She was clearly visible through the open doorway. But when Charlotte faced them, it was obvious she would have seen nothing. The arbor blocked her view.

Just to be sure, Annie asked, "Did you see or hear anyone go past, just before four o'clock?"

Charlotte shook her head. "I wasn't looking toward the house. I was snipping and cutting, working on the flowers for the hall table and for the dining room. If anyone passed by, I didn't notice."

"Charlotte"—Miss Dora was getting good at blunt ques­tions—"did you know that Whitney was in trouble with the Judge?"

"Whitney? Why, that's silly. The Judge thought Whitney was wonderful."

Did she really believe this, Annie wondered, or had the passage of time dimmed her memory of the Judge's strained relations with his older sons?

Annie would have challenged her, but once again Maxcaught her eye. Annie chafed at the restraint. Charlotte may have thought her young husband was wonderful; it was pretty clear Augustus Tarrant didn't share her vision. But Max was right. There was no point in raking up long-ago escapades to trouble Charlotte now.

"The Judge and Whitney quarreled that morning," Max said.

"I don't believe that!" Her lower lip jutted out. "Who said so? I'll bet I know. Enid! Enid's trying to cause trouble. That wretched woman has always hated all of us. She's such an ingrate, after all the Judge did for her. I've never understood why she's so hateful."

Annie stared at the older woman's suddenly spiteful face. No, Charlotte didn't understand Enid's anger. Even if Enid's fury at poverty and second-class treatment were explained, Charlotte wouldn't—with the myopia of her background: white, prosperous, landowning, and steeped in a mystic past garlanded with heroes—have understood.

"I wouldn't believe a word Enid says," Charlotte said harshly.

Lucy Jane McKay stared somberly at the ruins of the Tarrant House Museum. "Ashes to ashes," she murmured. "I don't rightly know what's right or wrong, but it's a bad thing to drag the dead out of their graves. Leave the dead to them­selves."

"That might be the thing to do," Max agreed quietly, "but we must find out what happened to Courtney Kimball."

Thunder exploded with an earthshaking roar. A sheet of brilliant white lightning cut a jagged rent in the black clouds. Wind spurted against them. Leaves and dust swirled in the heavy air.

The former Tarrant cook lifted her face to look up at the storm-freighted sky. The wind flattened her dress against her. She spoke above the growing clamor of the wind. "It's wrong that a young girl should be taken away." She turned to Annie. "On the telephone, you asked me about Miz Amanda and Miz

Julia. I don't know the truth of it, but that morning the Judge told Miz Julia she would have to leave Tarrant House and take Missy and go back to her parents. I saw Miz Julia's face. It was . . . so pitiful."

Thunder crashed nearby, followed immediately by a cascade of sheet lightning. Julia, clutching a shabby umbrella, huddled on a wooden bench near the back wall in a shady glen sur­rounded by azaleas. She looked up blankly as Miss Dora, fol­lowed by Annie and Max, ducked beneath overreaching branches of vivid crimson-flowered shrubs.

Miss Dora planted her cane firmly on a stepping stone. "Julia, why didn't you go to lunch—the day the Judge was murdered?"

"Lunch?" Julia fingered the tassel to the umbrella. "I don't know. I wasn't—I suppose I wasn't hungry."

"What did the Judge say to you?" Annie asked.

Julia worked the umbrella tassel between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. Her face was slack. The dark smudges in the hollows beneath her eyes gave her an aban­doned, neglected look. "He was so angry. Amanda tried to tell him—and he wouldn't listen." She spoke in a rapid, dull monotone, never once looking up. "I didn't know what I was going to do. I came out to the garden, and I dug and dug. Later, I went back and there was a hole"—her hands spread until they were two feet apart—"and I dug it." Surprise lifted that monotone for an instant. "I dug it. Maybe I thought I could dig my way to China—anywhere. Anywhere but home. I wasn't going to go." Now she did look up. Her voice was suddenly childlike, but her face was older than time. "I wasn't going to go. No matter what happened. I'd already decided that." A quirky half-smile tilted her lips. "Everyone's so ugly about Milam. But he promised me. He said Missy and I didn't have to go."

Max leaned forward. "Go where, Julia?"

"Back . . . home." A shudder racked her thin body. "I couldn't do that. If I did, then Missy—" Tears welled in hereyes. "Everything was always good for Missy. Nothing ugly ever happened to her. We all loved her. And Milam did, too. But the right way. The right way."

The three of them looked at her in silence. Max crouched on one knee by the bench and took Julia's hand, quieting the spasmodic quiver of that hand working the tassel. "Your fa­ther—" Max's voice was gentle. "It wasn't right, was it?"

Those dark, pain-filled eyes stared at Max, then tears began to streak her cheeks. "Not Missy." Her voice was hoarse. "I would have died first."

Max loosened his grip and reached into his pocket. He handed his handkerchief to her.

She took it and held it tight, but made no move to wipe away the tears. "Not my baby."

Annie and Miss Dora leaned closer, straining to hear that soft, agonized voice over the rustle of the leaves, the whipping of the branches, the growl of thunder.

"When I heard he was dead, I was glad." She lifted her head and glared at them defiantly. "Glad. Glad!"

For a crackling instant, Chastain House stood out against the lightning-white sky. The vivid explosion of the storm limned Sybil, too, her dark hair whipping in the freshening wind as she stood with the wild arrogance of a Valkyrie beside the gleaming bronze gates at the foot of the Chastain drive. Beside Sybil, his clothes crumpled now from having been slept in, his eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion, stood Harris Walker, his face bleak and hopeless.

"Tell us," Sybil shouted over the crash of the thunder. "Who, dammit, who?"

4:16 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

Just short of the end of the drive, Ross Tarrant slammed on his brakes. He sat, his shoulders heaving, gripping the steering wheel. Then, with an unconscious moan, he threw open the door and ran to the brick wall he'd climbed so many times when he was a little boy. He pulled himself up, tearing away swaths of ivy, but pulling and climbing until he could see over the top.

He hung there and looked and looked, for this was the glimpse to last him a lifetime.

Sybil stood beside the bronze Chastain gates, her raven-black hair stirred by the breeze, her lovely face lifted to the sun, her mouth curved in a smile of joy, her eyes glowing with happiness. She walked up and down in front of the gate, not anxious, but eager, so eager. Then she glanced down at her watch, cast a quick look at the suitcase on the sidewalk, and turned to hurry back up the drive.

. . . something borrowed, something blue . . .

Ross landed heavily on his feet and ran to his car.

All the long drive out to the hunting lodge, he held tight to the sprig of ivy in his hand.

Chapter 21.

Miss Dora lifted the mallet and swung at the bronze temple gong that sat opposite the silent grandfather clock.

Charlotte straightened the rose scarf at her throat. "Great-grandfather Jemson Tarrant brought it home from Ceylon. Such an interesting life he led. The captain of his own ship, of course. He was lost in a hurricane in 1891."

The mallet swung again and again, the somber tone echo­ing in the hallway.

As they came—from outside, from upstairs, from other rooms—Miss Dora pointed with her cane toward the drawing room. Sybil came with white-faced Harris Walker at her side. Miss Dora looked at him searchingly, then nodded in acquies­cence. Milam was the last to appear, swaggering insolently down the stairs.

Miss Dora followed him into the drawing room.

In its dramatic and scarred history, the drawing room of Tarrant House must have welcomed many unlikely visitors. But Annie felt certain that in its century and a half of exis‑

tence, this Saturday afternoon gathering was perhaps strangest of all.

Chief Wells, hands behind his back, stood next to a dainty Chippendale piecrust table, dwarfing it. His white hat, the curved rim undented, rested next to a Spode clock. In defer­ence to his surroundings, the ever-present hunk of tobacco was absent from his cheek. He glanced at Max, then at Annie. As usual, his icy dark eyes evinced no joy at seeing them.

But Annie ignored him. Her eyes kept returning to the Spode clock. It didn't surprise her that the hour hand pointed to four, the minute hand to two past the hour.

Miss Dora, so tiny she didn't even reach the chief's elbow, stood beside him. But she gave him no heed. Her gaze, too, focused on the clock. Slowly, she lifted her cane and pointed at the delicately tinted china clock.

"The hour has come. I have summoned you here to con­clude my inquiry into the death of Augustus Tarrant." There was a terrible dignity in her voice. "But I am not alone. Augustus and Amanda demand justice."

The tiny old woman looked around the drawing room.

The glistening chandelier with its brilliant pinpoints of light emphasized the gloom beyond the storm-darkened win­dows. Thunder rumbled almost incessantly, a reminder that nature is inimical, untrustworthy, dangerous. Annie thought of Courtney Kimball, last seen on a soft spring night receding in time, and put away her last hope for Courtney's survival. How could they continue to believe Courtney would be found when there was no reason to hope? Three full days had passed since Max found her half-open purse flung to the ground in St. Michael's Cemetery. The steady rumble, the rattle of wind-whipped branches, the sighing of wind through the eaves sounded a requiem. Was Courtney's killer listening in this room? Who struck Courtney down? And why?

Whitney and Charlotte sat on the silver-brocaded Regency sofa. There was no sense of a united front against the world with this couple. They sat as separately as two people could sit. Charlotte cringed at every crash of thunder, her eyes mov­ing restlessly around the room, her fingers pulling and pickingat her rose scarf. Whitney's face was stolid and thoughtful. A fine dark stubble coated his cheeks. He looked like a seedy aristocrat who had gambled the night—and his birthright—. away.

Julia was in the room, but not a part of it. Her frail shoul­ders hunched, she gripped the sides of her armchair as if only that tight handhold kept her in place. Her smudged, lonely eyes looked into a past where no one could follow.

Milam stood behind Julia, one hand touching the back of her chair, but she didn't seem aware of him. He watched her, pain and worry in his eyes.

Sybil, her lovely face pale and haggard, paced like a lithe and dangerous animal, back and forth, back and forth, in front of the fireplace.

Harris Walker leaned against the mantel, his eyes, angry, hurt, dangerous eyes, probing each face in turn.

Lucy Jane sat in a straight chair near the archway to the hall. Her posture was regal, and her face impassive.

Miss Dora thumped her cane against the heart pine floor. "Our investigation is done."

Chief Wells shifted his weight.

Annie sensed terror abroad in that room. One of those listening was the quarry, feeling now the hot breath of the pursuing hounds, beginning to weary, quivering with desper­ate lurching fear, hunted with no place to hide.

"Twenty-two years ago Death walked in Tarrant House, setting in motion events brutal enough to sear our souls." Miss Dora's tar-black eyes touched each face. "Tonight, let us find peace."

A long, quiet silence pulsed with feeling.

"Let us," she said softly, "finally lay to rest the ghost that has haunted us since that dreadful day."

Julia's chin sunk on her thin chest. She began to shake.

Miss Dora's gaze focused on Whitney. "Whitney, what did you see from the window of the garage?" All of the impress of her formidable personality was contained in that simple ques­tion.

Whitney was not her equal; he had never been her equal.

His eyes shifted away from her. The hand he lifted to his chin trembled. "I didn't"—he paused, took a deep breath—"I didn't see anything. Or anyone."

Oddly, unexpectedly, Annie believed him. There was a ring of truth in Whitney's voice, yet, at the same time, a tone of abject despair.

What kind of sense did that make?

Miss Dora pursed her lips. Her face was as empty of expres­sion as a skull, but Annie knew she had failed. This was Miss Dora's moment. She had wielded her power—and lost.

What now?

"Very well." The arrogant voice was as confident as ever. "I would have welcomed your assistance, Whitney, but I shall prevail. I know what happened. I know who committed mur­der. Not once, but twice. This chapter must be closed. I know, and tomorrow I shall inform the authorities."to the point. "No sweat, honey. It's the hoariest ploy in the world."

Annie muttered, "Right out of Edgar Wallace."

Max bypassed a peanut butter cookie for a shiny apple. He took a bite and, between crunches, said, "Only an old-time melodrama fan would even try it. There's no danger. Chief Wells isn't my favorite cop, but he's not stupid. The security around Miss Dora at this moment is right on a par with the patrols at Kennebunkport, you can count on it."

Annie picked up two peanut butter cookies and stared moodily at the welter of papers on the golden oak breakfast room table. "Dammit, Max, we ought to know. We ought to know!"

The fruits of two hours' intensive labor lay before them. She took two bites, finishing off the first cookie, and picked up Max's motive sheet.

"Grandstanding!" Annie poured fresh coffee, but even their best Colombian couldn't warm away the chill in her heart.

Thunder crashed, drowning out Max's reply. Lightning ex­ploded, and the lights quivered, dimmed, returned to full strength. Wind-driven rain lashed against the windows.

Max tried again. "Relax, Annie. You can bet the chief has men upstairs and down at her house. He's probably in the old monster's boudoir himself, right this minute." His tone was irritated. Max, too, wasn't pleased with their aged employer's calculated indiscretion.

"Doesn't she have any confidence in us?" Annie demanded, her mood swinging from worry to fury.

Max grinned. "What do you think?"

Unwillingly, Annie grinned, too. "So, okay, she decided to short-circuit her way to a solution. She's going to be damned lucky if she doesn't short-circuit her way into the family plot at the cemetery. See how she'd like that!" Annie demanded obscurely.

Max was accustomed to Annie's thought processes. He keptMOTIVES TO KILL JUDGE TARRANT

WHITNEY TARRANT—If the Judge lived, Whitney was out of luck and out of his cushy job in the family law firm.

CHARLOTTE TARRANT—Tarrant House and the Tarrant

family were her life. And the Judge's death?

MILAM—All he'd ever asked for was his father's love. How angry was he when his father orchestrated a public embarrassment? And what was he willing to do to make certain Julia and Missy weren't sent home to Julia's par­ents?

_JuLIA—She was determined not to take Missy home to her father. Determined enough to kill?

LUCY _JANE—She was the soul of rectitude. Everyone ad­mired her. When she didn't answer the questions about Amanda and Julia, that refusal spoke volumes.

ENID FRIENDLEY—Tart-tongued, tough, tenacious. Tough

enough to blackmail? What if the Judge decided to brave the consequences and bring charges?

SYBIL CHASTAIN Giacomo—Tempestuous, wildly in love. Did she already know she was pregnant? She was ready to

run away with Ross. What if she decided that Ross wouldn't have to run—if the Judge died.

Miss DORA BREvARD--Amanda was her beloved niece, as close to her own child as she would ever have. Did Amanda tell her aunt that her husband was forcing her to leave? After all, no one knew whether Miss Dora was standing in the garden with Ross when the shot sounded. She could have been in the Judge's study.

A montage of unguarded moments whirled in Annie's mind: Charlotte's eyes suddenly shifting, Julia's tight grip on the chair arms, Whitney looking out the first window in the garage toward the back piazza, Milam standing behind his wife's chair, the click as Lucy Jane replaced the receiver, Enid's angry eyes, Sybil standing like a Valkyrie at the Chastain gates, Miss Dora gazing down toward the river and saying, oh so conversationally, "That's when they see Amanda, dressed all in white to please Augustus," Enid's tart comment about Courtney Kimball, "She's got a lot to learn."

"It looks bad for Julia." Max's voice was heavy. He pointed at the drawings spread out on the table. Annie was really rather proud of her depictions of Tarrant House and its sur­roundings.

Annie studied the map. Max had circled the numeral mark­ing Whitney's location.

"It seems obvious." His voice wasn't happy. Max, too, liked Julia. "If Whitney saw the murderer from that first window in the garage—well, it has to be Julia, Lucy Jane—or Miss Dora." He stared morosely at the map. "And Julia's the only likely one."

"What about Sybil?"

Max leaned closer. She smelled the nice scent of fresh soap. She reached up and touched his cheek and liked the prickly feel of stubble.

"Oh, yes," he agreed. "Yes, we can't forget Sybil. But why would she burn down the Tarrant Museum?"

"She didn't. That was Julia." But Annie's answer was auto‑

matic, unthinking. She was concentrating on the map—and suddenly she knew.

Oh, God, of course. Whitney looking out—and seeing no one.

All the pieces shifted in Annie's mind, clicking irrevocably into place. Tarrant House. The Judge dead. Milam and Julia and Missy at Wisteree. Missy's birthday party. The teddy bear. Amanda hearing Miss Dora's chatter and discovering her youngest son was not guilty of patricide. In her happiness at clearing Ross's name, had Amanda followed that truth through to its lethal conclusion? Or was she so elated at Ross's innocence that she'd talked too much and to the wrong per­son? Years passed, and Courtney Kimball demanded to know what happened on May 9, 1970. The history of the Tarrant Family. So much good and so much bad, but Charlotte in­cluded only the good.

"Max—"

The phone shrilled.

Annie was nearest. As she reached for it, another burst of thunder was followed hard by a sheet of lightning. It was a dark and stormy night—The familiar refrain flashed in her mind. It almost brought a smile because it was such a perfect time for Laurel to call with macabre descriptions of ghostly peregrinations. Annie wondered, did ghosts get wet? That was an absorbing metaphysical puzzle.

But the voice on the other end of the line, hoarse and strained with worry, was not Laurel's.

". . . I tell you, she's gone! I tried Aunt Dora's. She's not there. We've got to find her. She's out in the storm. She hates storms!" There was panic in Milam's voice. "She left a note."

A note. Annie tensed. "What did she say?"

Static crackled on the line.

" '. . . sorry for everything. We never had a chance, did we? But you were always kind. You hated Tarrant House, too. And you loved Missy. Don't follow me." "

Annie's hand tightened on the receiver. "Did she say where she was going?"

"No. No. Oh, God. And my gun's gone."

Annie felt a chill. "You had a gun, out there at the planta­tion? Are you sure Julia took it?"

"Yes. Because . . ." Static crackled again. ". . . this morning and now it's gone. Listen, you've got to find her. You've got to. Do you hear me? It's all your fault, coming to Chastain, meddling, scaring her. You've got to—"

Lightning exploded.

The line went dead.

"Max," she cried, "Julia's gone. She has a gun." Julia with a gun—but that was all wrong. Wasn't it? Annie had worked it out—but the face she had pictured wasn't Julia's.

The Maserati crawled, Max straining to see through a wind­shield awash with rain. A half-block from Tarrant House, the low-slung car floundered, rolled to a stop, its engine flooded by the water running hubcap-deep in the old, poorly drained street.

They battled through a nightmare world, the rain a blind­ing deluge, the wind a brutal, tearing force. Branches twisted and cracked. Old trees toppled. Thunder and lightning inter­mingled in an explosive, blinding cacophony.

In a sizzling, eye-shocking instant of light, they saw Julia's shabby car parked in front of Tarrant House.

Annie broke into a run, but Max was faster.

He pulled open the driver's door.

Annie peered past him. The car was empty.

Max slammed the door. They darted across the sidewalk and through the open gate. They began to run up the drive. The house was a blur of darkness with the faint gleam of light almost obscured by the pelting rain. Above them branches creaked and swayed.

Then, between blasts of thunder, they heard the sharp, unmistakable bark of gunfire.

The front door was locked. Max knocked and pounded and rattled the handle; then, feet skidding on the slick wetness of the drenched piazza, he and Annie flung themselves out into the night and ran around the side of Tarrant House.

And found that Death had been there first.

It was the only time Annie ever felt sympathy for Charlotte Tarrant. Her chenille robe plastered against her, her hair lank against her head, Charlotte cradled Whitney's bloody head against her breast and moaned, a low, wild, desolate cry.

It was a tableau Annie would always remember. Then movement broke the nearby darkness, and Miss Dora darted into the pale circle of light from the fixture above the back steps.

Suddenly Chief Wells was there, too, and Sergeant Mat­thews.

Miss Dora had come first. Alone. That seemed important. Annie clung to that piece of knowledge.

Chief Wells and Miss Dora knelt by Charlotte and made her loosen her grasp. Matthews swept the surrounding area with a huge flash that was puny against the rain and night.

The chief eased Whitney gently to the ground. Charlotte whimpered and reached for his limp hand.

Miss Dora caught her arm, and Annie remembered the strength in those wiry old fingers. "Come now, Charlotte. We must take shelter."

Chief Wells nodded. "Take her to your house, Miss Dora. I'll come when I can." He shouted at Matthews. "Stay with them."

It was a nightmare walk through that storm-battered garden to the open gate in the wall and up the rain-lashed path to the house next door. Max and Annie supported Charlotte between them. Every few steps she halted and tried to twist free and turn back.

But, somehow, they reached the house, wet, numb, shaken.

Miss Dora led the way to the drawing room. Water dripped from their clothes, splashing on the gleaming heart pine floor. Annie could take no comfort now in the bois-de-rose silk hang­ings or the costly Georgian furniture. Rain spotted the rose Aubusson rug.

Charlotte stumbled to the nearest sofa. She looked up, dazed. "It's cold out there." She shivered. "Whitney . . ."

Annie could imagine her feelings. Whitney was still in their garden, the cold rain washing away his blood.

Miss Dora busied about, bringing blankets and whisky. Annie helped.

A door slammed at the back. Matthews put a hand on the butt of his gun.

Sybil stormed into the drawing room.

Harris Walker was close behind. "Jesus Christ," he de­manded, "what's going on?" He jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at Charlotte.

"Who shot Whitney?" Sybil carried a crimson umbrella, now closed, but her silk raincoat was dark with rain. She strode to Miss Dora. "Have you found Julia? Milam called me."

"Julia?" Milam's voice carried from the hall, rising with excitement and hope. "Julia?" He rushed into the drawing room. His clothes were sodden. He wore no raincoat, no hat. His eyes swept the room, seeking, seeking, then his shoulders slumped. He appealed to Miss Dora. "Tell them to look for Julia. They'll listen to you."

"They are looking." Her voice was toneless. "Sit down, Milam." Her skin was waxy, and the hands tightly clasping the silver knob of her cane trembled. Her old black bombazine dress glistened like wet raven feathers. "When did you get here?"

"Just now. It was hell driving into town. A bridge was out and I had to come the long way round. They've got a barricade up at the end of the street." His eyes blinked. "I couldn't get through the police line at Whitney's. But I saw him. Is he..."

"Yes."

Milam threw back his head. "Julia didn't do it. I tell you, Julia didn't do it. She's out in that storm—" Tears glistened in his eyes.

Charlotte blazed out of her stupor. "She killed Whitney! It must have been Julia. There was a banging at the back door. I

begged him not to go downstairs, but he did—and then I heard the shot and I ran—but there was no one there but Whitney." She shuddered, her mouth quivering. "His blood. Oh, God, his blood, everywhere." Charlotte pulled herself to her feet. "Julia! You've got to catch her. She's killed Whitney —and she killed Amanda and the Judge and—" Charlotte broke off. She took a step back, but the sofa blocked her way. One hand clutched at her throat.

"And?" Julia's voice was harsh. She stood in the doorway from the hall. Her green poncho glistened, but it didn't drip. She stood with her arms folded, her hands tucked into the floppy sleeves of the raincoat.

Annie wondered how long Julia had been there, how she had avoided capture by the men at Tarrant House where Whitney lay dead.

"Who else, Charlotte?" Julia demanded. "You almost said someone else, didn't you?"

Charlotte's lips twitched. "That girl, the one who came, the one who disappeared—what did you do with her?"

Harris bolted across the room. He grabbed Julia's arm. "Where is Courtney?" It was a hoarse and maddened shout. "You're going to—"

Julia came alive, twisting free of his grasp, slipping around him, crossing the room to the fireplace. And she now held a gun in her hands and faced them all.

She looked at Harris first. "Leave me alone. I didn't hurt Courtney. I would never have hurt Amanda's granddaughter."

Harris's hands dropped to his sides. He stood very still.

Julia's hand moved, and now the gun was aimed at Char­lotte. "I want to talk to you, Charlotte. It's time now."

"Policeman!" Charlotte squealed, cutting her eyes toward Matthews, who stood in shock, his hand fumbling with the holster snap. "Do something! She's going to kill me, just like she killed Whitney!"

The poncho was too big for Julia. She looked like a lost child. Except for the gun in her hand. "It's no good, Charlotte. I was almost sure before I came tonight. Now I know. Because only you needed to kill Whitney. He didn't look through thewindow toward the back of the house. If he had, he would have seen me. And Whitney had no reason to protect me—certainly not if he thought I'd killed his father. But he didn't look through that window—"

Annie was nodding. Yes, oh, yes. That was what she had decided. Not the first window. Whitney had looked through the second window, the window with no view of the house because of the rose arbor, but a clear, unobstructed view of the potting shed.

—he looked through the other window at the garden shed —and you weren't there, were you? I thought about it and thought about it tonight and I was almost sure. You see, I started toward the house—I was going to make one last effort to talk to the Judge. I was going to tell him about my father. Not even the Judge would have sent me there—if he knew. He wouldn't have wanted my father to touch Missy. I was going to tell him—but I was afraid. I kept standing there, trying to make up my mind, then I heard a shot. I didn't know what had happened, but I was frightened. I turned and went back to the bench where I'd been. But you see, I was midway up the garden, so I would have seen Miss Dora or Lucy Jane. They had a much longer way to go. Only you and Whitney were so close to the back piazza. It was only a few feet from the arbor or the garage to the back steps. So it had to be you—or Whitney. And now there's only you."

Charlotte's eyes were wide with panic. "You're insane," she hissed. "I wouldn't kill Whitney. Never."

Julia took a step forward. "I have to know." She raised the gun, aiming it at Charlotte's heart.

Chief Wells stood in the archway, his hands loose at his sides. "Miz Tarrant, put down that gun. You can't get away."

But, Annie realized with a thrill of horror, Julia didn't care.

It was as if Julia hadn't even heard him. She took one step closer to Charlotte. "All because you are obsessed with the Tarrants. That's almost funny, isn't it? To kill and kill and kill for a house. An old, hate-filled, heartless house. That's why you killed my baby, isn't it? To be sure that someday your

daughter would be the Tarrant of Tarrant House. Harriet was born the next year. Did you know you were pregnant? You did, didn't you? So my baby had to go. Did Amanda figure that out, too? Did she know that Missy's teddy bear was left at Tarrant House, after the birthday party? Did she wonder aloud how it could have been found in the pond—where you led my little daughter? You told her Bear-Bear was waiting, didn't you? That he was swimming out in the pond and she could swim with him. Did you pick her up and throw her?" Julia's unearthly voice broke and then she screamed, a shriek of pain and anguish and bitter, unrelenting fury. "Did you throw my baby in the water?"

"Miz Tarrant—" the chief bellowed.

Julia held the gun out straight. Charlotte screamed. Then, sobs racking her wasted body, Julia turned away. The gun clattered to the floor. She walked blindly across the room, into Milam's arms.

Charlotte Tarrant struggled to regain her composure. "She's sick, don't you see? Sick. I didn't do any—" The lights flickered, dimmed, went out.

A flurry of movement sounded in the hall. Then, all at once, there was a dim and smoky shaft of light from the hall and a flickering image moved toward them. The scent of lily of the valley was almost overpowering.

Annie struggled to breathe.

Amanda Tarrant.

It was vague and pale and insubstantial but the features were those of her portrait, and high and ghostly came the cry: "Charlotte, Charlotte, I'm coming for you."

Charlotte began to back away, her hands stretched out in front of her. And then she screamed, "Amanda, no, no. Amanda, I had to kill him, I had to!"

Chapter 22.

Chief Wells tried, but Charlotte's demonic plunge through the archway caught him off guard. And then she was out of the house. They all ran after her. Even Miss Dora thumped her way out into the wild night.

Everyone except Julia and Milam.

The storm still raged. One patrolman almost cornered Charlotte near the ruins of the museum, but she ducked away into a deeper shadow.

But everyone heard her final, despairing cry as she jumped from the bluff, down, down, down into the flood-raging water below.

Harris Walker stood by the obelisk. Rain beat against him, his face full of despair.

Miss Dora came up to him. "We'll go back to my house now."

He stared down at her, his eyes empty. "We'll never know. Oh, God, we'll never . . ."

"Come along now." She jerked her head, the silver hair

plastered against the small skull, at Sybil. "Bring him. And you, too. We must close the chapter." Her eyes summoned Annie and Max.

As they entered the quiet house, they could hear the sounds of searchers near the river bluff, faint shouts, and the wail of a siren.

Once again, a wet, bedraggled, numbed group gathered in Miss Dora's drawing room. It was empty. Milam and Julia had gone. Revenge would not bring Missy back. But did they drive through the dark night home to Wisteree with some kind of peace in their hearts?

Annie kept hearing Amanda's voice. "Charlotte, Char­lotte . . ." But how had she known it was Amanda's? Oh, yes, Miss Dora had once lifted her own voice in imitation of the dead woman's and it had had the ring of truth.

But Amanda?

What caused that shimmering light in the hallway and that insubstantial but unmistakable apparition?

The lights were all on now, the glare almost shocking after the coal-black of the stormy night.

"We will lay our ghosts to rest this night." Miss Dora's face was haggard but composed.

Sybil pushed back her wet hair. "So it was Charlotte, re­spectable, conventional, oh-so-proper Charlotte, the keeper of the flame for the Tarrants of Tarrant House." Sybil stared at the portrait of Joshua Brevard, whose granddaughter Amanda had married Augustus Tarrant on a lush summer day fifty-five years before. "My daughter. Whitney. Missy. Amanda. The Judge. Ross. For Christ's sake, Aunt Dora, why? For that bloody goddamn house?" Eyes reddened by weeping began to fill.

"Tarrant House was the symbol to Charlotte, the symbol, the treasure, ultimately, the obsession," Miss Dora said wea­rily. "And killing became easy. When she shot Augustus, it could be said that she was emotionally distraught, overcome by the fear of losing the world that made her life meaningful, being a Tarrant in Tarrant House. But passion gave way to calculation. How hideous to imagine her slipping through thehalls to Missy's room, waking her, enticing her out of the sleeping household and down to the pond. Happy, laughing, beloved, trusting Missy."

How had Charlotte lived with that hideous act all these years? Annie wondered.

Miss Dora gripped her cane. "And Amanda had no chance, of course, once she began to question and wonder and worry about what happened to the Judge and to Ross. That's why when Courtney came to me—the night of her disappearance—with a flesh wound in her shoulder from a shot out of the bushes, I made my plan."

Harris Walker jumped to his feet, but Miss Dora made an imperious gesture. "You will listen, all of you."

If ever listeners were held spellbound, Miss Dora's audience of Sybil, Harris, Annie, and Max were.

Sybil's eyes flared. She stood absolutely immobile. Harris hunched like a sprinter waiting for the gun.

"I didn't know, of course," Miss Dora continued, "whose hand had held the gun, but I feared that Courtney's life would be in danger forever. She was raising a ghost that someone was determined to keep buried. But, you see, I was determined, too. I would not stand by and see Amanda's granddaughter lost. The resolution had to be now. And now it is, finally, ended. Charlotte's death closes the account." The old lady's face was implacable, her hooded eyes merciless. "Tonight Courtney was the avenging spirit who came for Charlotte." Miss Dora grabbed a bellpull and yanked hard twice.

Annie had seen bellpulls in historic homes, had their pur­pose explained. Could this be one that actually worked?

In answer, running feet sounded on the main staircase.

Sybil whirled toward the hall, her face white from shock.

Harris's face was transformed, despair replaced by incredu­lous joy.

"Courtney—" A lifetime of love and yearning rang in Sybil's cry.

The girl burst into the drawing room, her face alight. She stopped in the doorway, young and slim and blond and lovely,

her hands outstretched. She smiled tremulously. "Mother . . . Harris . . ."

They came together, mother and daughter, dark head and blond. Then Harris Walker slipped strong arms around them both in an embrace that brought tears to Annie's eyes.

Chapter 23.

Max leaned against the coffee bar at Death on Demand. "Come on, Agatha," he admonished the glossy black cat, "don't sulk."

Agatha ignored both Max and Annie as her pink tongue delicately lapped the milk.

Annie reached down to stroke glistening black fur, but drew back at a deep, warning growl. "Dorothy L. was glad to see us," Annie snapped. She did not go on to share with Agatha the intelligence that Dorothy L. had been equally dis­turbed by the several days' dearth of adoring Homo sapiens and had demanded almost constant attention since they'd arrived home that morning.

"I guess Barb doesn't have the magic cat touch," Annie concluded as Agatha settled on her haunches and began to wash her face while continuing to pretend Annie and Max didn't exist. "How long do you suppose we'll be in the dog­house?"

Max grinned. "Long enough to make her point."

Annie reached up and pulled down mugs (Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen and The Transcendental Murder by Jane Langton). "You'd think she'd appreciate our coming into the store on a Sunday." She poured the freshly made coffee and checked the cupboard devoted to people food. Hmmm, fresh raspberry brownies, her favorites. Barb might not be an all-time favorite with cats, but Annie appreciated her.

As they settled at one of the tables near the coffee bar, Annie looked around appreciatively. "I'm so glad to be back!" She felt as though she'd been away from Death on Demand for weeks instead of days. It made her appreciate living in a happy house, and spending her days in a congenial pursuit, notwithstanding the difficulty of enticing publishers into of­fering co-op money to help publicize author signings or the never-ending juggling of paperwork, book unpacking, and in­ventory or the despair in dealing with an industry where every publisher's ordering form differed or the other myriad tribula­tions of booksellers. She was home, and that assuredly was where her heart thrived. Especially after the time she'd just spent, immersed in an unhappy family's miseries. But perhaps now, at last, that family could look to happy days.

She gave her husband's hand a squeeze, which hardly took her fingers a jot from the most direct path to the raspberry brownies. "It's great about Courtney. I know how badly you felt." Hmm. Was there, this side of heaven, anything quite as wonderful as a mixture of chocolate and raspberry? Well, of course—but she meant food!

"I sure as hell did feel bad." Max's tone lacked its usual geniality.

Annie understood. "They could have told you," she agreed sympathetically.

"I suppose I was a chump who came in very handy, thrash­ing around Chastain, stirring everybody up." Max forgot him­self and picked up a raspberry brownie.

It was a down-in-the-dumps declaration if ever Annie had heard one.

"Now, Max. How could we have known it was a put-up job? The purse in the cemetery. The empty apartment, thedoors open, the television on. Blood in the driver's seat of Courtney's car. Why, I'll bet Susan Rogers Cooper's Milt Kovak would have fished, too."

He shrugged disconsolately and ate half a brownie. "Look, Max—"

The bell at the front door pealed.

Annie looked around in irritation. Darn it, it was Sunday. Everyone knew Death on Demand was closed, but she heard the door opening and closing, and pushed her chair back.

Then she heard, too, the quick, unmistakable tap of a cane. Miss Dora came down the central corridor.

"Thought I'd come see you." For once the bright dark eyes avoided their own.

Max's look was distinctly frosty.

Miss Dora's hat today was a dramatic purple velour with a topknot of orange feathers. Annie wouldn't have wished it on a derelict parrot. Thankfully the old lady's dress was also pur­plish, not orange. Her sallow skin wore an unaccustomed flush. "Came to explain. Not apologize. Had to do what had to be done. Told Courtney she'd have to trust me absolutely. Set her to work being Amanda's ghost." There was a touch of defensiveness in her voice. "I've seen Amanda, you know. On misty spring nights. Down there near the river. But I called her to come—and had Courtney play the role. Set the clocks at four-oh-two, sprayed some scent Amanda loved—lily of the valley." A high cackle hung eerily in the quiet bookstore. "People are such fools, believing things like that. But ghosts do walk. Their hearts hurt too much to find peace. Maybe now Amanda will be able to rest. Ross did his best and his girl is safe with her mother and her young man. A fine young man." The dark eyes looked mournfully at Annie and Max. "Lost Whitney. I'm sorry about that. Not a perfect world, but better than it was." She cleared her throat. "Want you to know I wasn't playing the two of you for fools, but I had to have help, had to get the feeling out that the hounds were loose, loping closer, sniffing, pushing, pressing."

Annie remembered Charlotte's terror. Oh, yes, Miss Dora's plan had worked, worked very well indeed.

Miss Dora held out an old gnarled hand in a black-lace half-glove. "Bury the hatchet?" she asked Max.

Max took that tiny, withered hand. "Of course, Miss Dora."

The quick, sharp cackle sounded again. "Heard about how the chief came over here to the island, started in on Annie about your girlfriend. Teach you not to be so close-mouthed next time." She gave another satisfied chuckle, then darted past them to peer up at the paintings. "Too easy," she sniffed.

Annie tried not to take umbrage, but she couldn't resist a quick retort. "If they're so easy—"

Miss Dora pointed at the paintings in turn.

"The Great Mistake by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Murder with Southern Hospitality by Leslie Ford, Sister of Cain by Mary Col­lins, Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart, and Search the Shadows by Barbara Michaels."

What could Annie say?

Annie held her breath as Miss Dora tapped toward the section of collectibles. If that old hag thought she was going to get a rare book for

The bell pealed at the front door.

For heaven's sake. It was Sunday!

Annie started up the center aisle but stopped at the sight of the speeding wheelchair. Laurel careened toward them, beam­ing. "I am so glad to be home! Much as I love Charleston. And those dear ghosts! Did I tell you about Mrs. Latham? Not that she was a ghost. Though, of course, the dear woman may be by this time. She's long dead!"

Annie gave Laurel a bewildered glance.

Her mother-in-law beamed at Miss Dora. "You're looking just lovely today, Miss Dora." She then braked beside Annie and Max and squeezed Annie's hand. "This isn't difficult, my sweet. Not even for you."

Some of Annie's bonhomie seeped away.

Max tried not to laugh.

"You see, Mrs. Latham was hired to come to Charleston to be governess to four dear little girls at Old Goose Creek Plan­tation. She was given a very nice room upstairs. Now, she lovedto read romances. And the next morning was a Sunday but she stayed in her room—that was, after all, her free time—and didn't come downstairs for devotions but cozied herself in her four-poster to read The Turkish Spy." Laurel clapped her hands. "Isn't that a wonderful title, Annie? Can't you just imagine the story? In any event, Mrs. Latham was thoroughly enjoying her story when the door to her room opened and this old lady in a black gown with a muslin neckerchief crossed on her breast and wearing a close-fitting white cap on her head glided into the room and stared, with obvious disapproval, at Mrs. Latham's book. And Mrs. Latham felt a hideously cold draft of air. Then the old woman turned, still frowning, to leave. Mrs. Latham tried to follow, but the woman receded from her and then disappeared into a wall. Well, you can imagine"—Laurel gave a sympathetic head shake—"how this upset Mrs. Latham. Why, it would upset anyone, wouldn't it?"

Annie felt constrained to murmur, "Of course."

"Dear Annie, you have such a high-strung nature. Well, I know Max is very good for you."

Annie contemplated Laurel as she might have a grinning alligator. She almost replied, "And you have so many teeth, my dear," but was afraid Max wouldn't understand. Or, worse, might understand only too well. Instead, she bared her own teeth in what she hoped resembled a good-humored smile.

Max gave her an approving pat.

Annie suddenly had an inkling how Agatha felt about un­solicited attention.

"Mrs. Latham was so upset she rushed downstairs and dis­rupted the service, pressing everyone to join her in a search for the old woman. But no one was found. Now, the truth of the matter was, those downstairs couldn't have missed seeing an intruder, but they couldn't convince Mrs. Latham that she had imagined the episode. Then, the next Sunday"—Laurel leaned forward portentously—"the mistress's brother-in-law arrived and Mrs. Latham went into shock, crying that he was just the image of the old woman she'd seen. Then everyone under­stood." She sat back triumphantly.

"They did?" Max encouraged.

Annie would have kicked him had he been close enough.

"Why, yes. It was the mistress's deceased mother-in-law, old Mary Hyrne, and the family understood at once. Mrs. Hyrne was very pious and she must have been upset by Mrs. Latham reading frivolous fiction instead of observing the Sab­bath. Do you know what?"

Annie knew it was her turn. "What?" she snapped.

Laurel wasn't daunted. "It had the most profound effect upon Mrs. Latham. Why, she never missed a Sunday service for the rest of her days at Old Goose Creek Plantation. So, you see, ghosts sometimes have a very good effect!"

"Without doubt," Miss Dora seconded.

"But I feel that I've spent enough time with those residents of another plane." Laurel gave each in turn a most beguiling smile.

"Really?" Annie perked up. Perhaps Laurel was contem­plating a trip to Addis Ababa.

"Yes. Much as I mourn their inability to be freed from this world of woe and heartbreak, I feel that I have a greater call upon my good offices."

Miss Dora's eyes glittered with amusement.

"A nunnery?" Annie muttered. Preferably one atop Mount Ararat.

A trill of delighted laughter. "Dear Annie. Such a sense of humor. No, it is much more of this world, of the here and now, and actually, very very here!"

Annie's heart sank.

"I have the most exciting news." Laurel clasped her hands to her heart. "Henny, our own dear stalwart, outspoken, pro­gressive Henny is going to run for mayor! Annie, Max!" Lau­rel flung wide a graceful hand, the pink-enameled fingernails shining. "The rallies! The campaign! The excitement! Oh, it will be a campaign such as has never before been seen on Broward's Rock!"

"Huzzah!" Then Miss Dora broke into an odd, unmusical hum. It took Annie a moment to recognize "Yankee Doodle Dandy"!

Chapter 24.

The strains of a Strauss waltz lilted on the soft summer night air. Annie accepted another glass of champagne and looked through the festive crowd for her husband. Then, she gave a good-humored shrug and drifted down the flagstoned path toward the river. It would be lovely in the moonlight.

It was a wonderful party—and such a dramatic change to see love and youth and happiness at Tarrant House. It helped wipe away the memory of that dreadful spring night. The party was fabulous, of course, as would be any celebration planned by Sybil Chastain Giacomo. And she had spared no effort or expense for her daughter's engagement dance: Japa­nese lanterns winked cheerfully throughout the grounds, a striped tent housed a superb buffet, a portable dance floor enticed eager couples, and the symphony orchestra from Sa­vannah provided the music.

Annie smiled, recalling Courtney Kimball Tarrant's vivid smile and the pride on Harris Walker's face.

She came to the end of the path and looked out at the river, shining like a silver band in the moonlight.

The bushes rustled nearby and she had the sense of another presence, a happy, cheerful presence.

Had Max . . .

She glimpsed, just for a moment, a breathtaking instant, a swift sweep of white, she smelled lilies of the valley, and she felt a welling up of happiness.

Annie smiled and whispered, "God bless, Amanda," and then she turned to run lightly back toward light and laughter.

I am indebted to the following authors for their wonderful tales of South Carolina ghosts:

Charleston Ghosts by Margaret Rhett Martin, University of South Carolina Press, 1963.

South Carolina Ghosts from the Coast to the Mountains by Nancy Roberts, University of South Carolina Press, 1983.

Southern Ghosts by Nancy Roberts, Sandlapper Publishing Co., 1979.

Ghosts and Specters of the Old South by Nancy Roberts, Sand­lapper Publishing Co., 1974.

More Tales of the South Carolina Low Country by Nancy Rhyne, John F. Blair, Publisher, 1984.