Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (21 page)

“So she was a suit?”

“Totally.We always thought it was hilarious that my band was called the Suits. And of course the druggy flower power didn’t come along until the late sixties. Early on she slotted in okay because everyone had boring jobs by day and went to sophisticated nightclubs at night. The class barrier collapsed and it became fashionable to be working class. Angie’s Yorkshire accent was a plus.”

“She sounds like she’d have been a big success in the eighties.”

“Oh, she was—the nineties too. She was dot-comming it all over the place before we’d even heard of it. Poor Sean. He barely saw his parents for the first ten years of his life—Angie was at the office all day and I was away on the road or in the studio. But look, I’d better tell you about the early days, when the marriage first started to go wrong.”

“When did you actually get married?”

“Not till 1980. At Chelsea Register Office in the King’s Road.

It was all over in a few minutes.”

“Why then?”

“Sean was born. Angie wanted to make him legit. So did I, as a matter of fact. It was important to me even though things were already pretty bad between us.”

“Because Angie never participated in your career? Never came out on the road with you?”

“Actually,” he said, “she did in the beginning. That was part of the problem. When I began to hit the big time, she really tried.

She gave up her office job—whatever it was at the time, I forget, working for an accountant or something equally boring to me—

and she insisted on coming on the road.”

“And she hated it.”

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“Absolutely right. She didn’t fit in at all. She was so straight.

There was me with my hair halfway down my back, a shark’s tooth hanging off my ear, wearing a snakeskin waistcoat over my bare chest and high-heeled boots and God knows what else. And she’d be sitting there at the side of the stage in her tailored frock and her cardigan and pearls and an Alice band and little black shoes with grosgrain bows on them. It was a fucking joke. I mean, I was like a reptile.” He grinned. “I smelled foul most of the time, all that sweating on stage. And there were all those hangers-on.We were never alone. Angie’d be sitting up in bed in our hotel room in Birmingham or Sheffield or wherever with the cocoa she’d ordered from room service, and there’d be people passing out and sleeping on the floor beside us. Not that we did much sleeping. Sometimes I didn’t get any kip for as long as forty hours.”

“So she gave up and went home and you drifted apart.”

“Don’t write her off too soon.” He wagged a finger at me.

“What you have to realize about Angie is that she’s tough. Much more than I am. She loved me. She was in it for the long haul and she found a way to deal with it and
that’s
where it all began to fall apart.”

I noticed that talking about this period, he was getting quite animated. His accent was slipping into the Mockney mixed with a mid-Atlantic inflection that he normally presented to the outside world.

“Angie decided it was a question of if you can’t beat ’em, join

’em and although she’d always steered clear of it before, now she began to take speed to stay awake. Dexedrine. And she drank.

Rum and Coke. Scotch and Coke.Vodka neat. She was an out-of-control lush before I’d even realized what was happening. It was—” He paused and turned away from me. “It was pitiful,” I heard him say softly.

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I waited for him to go on.

“I put her in rehab. It was for her own good, of course, but I have to admit that I just didn’t want to deal with her. I was pretty strung out myself. I’m lucky I’ve never had a problem, but I was living a pretty wild life.”

“Did she resent you doing that?”

“At first. But she got her act together.When she got clean she went back to work. She got
her
career in finance off and running.”

“And she stayed clean?”

“More or less. We began to live separate lives. We came together in London whenever I was there—and it was wonderful.

There was this incredible bond between us despite the fact that our approach to life was totally different. But I fucked it up.”

“How come?”

“The usual way. You have girls screaming at you every night that you can have them whenever you want, what are you going to do? It got lonely on the road.”

“Groupies?” I’d finally brought it up.

“Actually, no.” He shook his head. “I didn’t go in for groupies much whatever people said. I just found myself girls to keep me company. Girls I could talk to.There had to be some intelligence there.”

“But there was a groupie in your bed—that night—in London?”

“Yes,” he said, and I noticed his hands were clenched together so hard the blood was draining out of them. “Yes, there was.”

Then, as he’d done at our last session, he suddenly got to his feet and started pacing round the room.

“I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I know I said I would, but I can’t. Not right now.We’ll have to come back to it another time.”

And that was it.

Once again I found myself driving home in a state of confu-

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sion. He’d talk for just so long and then he seemed to go into a kind of panic. I’d left the tapes lying on the sofa. He hadn’t even wanted me to go up and transcribe them as we’d agreed.

I stared straight ahead with my chin up as I approached the cabin, driving slowly along the dark stretch of road with only the blinking light of the radio tower in the dunes to guide me. My resolve broke down and I glanced in the rearview mirror, expecting to see the twin circles of two headlamps following me.

But it was pitch-black all the way. I pottered about the cabin for a little while, making myself a cup of tea and heating up a bowl of clam chowder for my supper. When I’d finished it I picked up my notepad and lay down on the bed to make yet another start on Tommy’s letter.

I got as far as “My dearest Tommy, I was devastated to hear about your losing” before I fell into possibly the deepest sleep I had enjoyed since arriving in America.

C H

9

A P T E R

P

THE BACK ROOM OF THE OLD STONE MARKET

looked extremely inviting when I walked in the next morning. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted around the room and Franny had laid out a plate of doughnuts and placed a vase of brightly colored anemones in the middle of the table.

“She make coffee shop,” explained Jesus, “she want people come in here, sit, drink coffee, be happy—and buy something.”

It made sense to me. But I could tell the minute I walked into the store that her mood did not match the welcoming atmosphere she had created. She didn’t even acknowledge me and went right on yelling at Rufus who was trying to edge his way out the door.

“Why did you have to tell him? Why? Couldn’t you have just left it where it was?”

I looked at Rufus.

“She’s talking about the bow and arrow,” he said. “She’s pissed that I told Detective Morrison about them.”

“You know about this?” she asked me.

“I was there.”

“See!” She advanced upon Rufus. “Lee didn’t go running to the police and tell them my son’s bow and arrow had been found at a construction site.” She paused for a second in her onslaught.

“You didn’t, did you?” I shook my head.

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“I didn’t say they were Dumpster’s,” said Rufus wearily. “And he was going to find out about them anyway sooner or later. I wasn’t the only one to see them.”

I had an inkling of how Franny must be feeling. She was worried sick about Dumpster and the fact that she didn’t know where he was half the time. She couldn’t even defend him anymore. She’d gone on record at the arraignment saying she hadn’t been home the nights Sean and Bettina were killed so she couldn’t be his alibi.

“I gotta go,” said Rufus and I followed him out the door.

“I had to tell Morrison. Didn’t I?” he appealed to me.

“Of course,” I said but I wasn’t really listening to him. My attention had been distracted by a car that had drawn up to park alongside Rufus’s truck. Louis Nichols, the president of the Stone Landing Residents Association, got out and went into the store but the person who had caught my attention was his passenger. It was the woman who had appeared on the beach in the middle of my mother’s commitment ceremony. She didn’t look quite the same. As she stepped out of the car I saw that her hair, which had been long and flowing as she walked along the beach, was now scraped back into a French twist. Nor was she wearing the hippie caftan I had first seen her in; she had on a crisp white shirt and jeans. Her face was tanned and weather-beaten, and up close I could see it was etched in lines that told me she was well into her fifties, but even so she was definitely what Tommy would call a looker.

She was looking straight at me but she didn’t seem to register me. She went into the store and I said good-bye to Rufus and followed her, intrigued. Louis Nichols was ordering breakfast. I noticed he followed Franny as she moved about the store doing a stock check, trying to engage her in conversation. The woman I had followed went straight to the back room and poured herself

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a cup of coffee but instead of sitting down at the table, she stood before the notice board, studying it intently. I moved up to stand behind her and saw her remove the card about the wedding dresses and slip it in her pocket. Was she someone who was interested in buying a wedding dress—or was she the person who had put the card there in the first place?

She was the latter, I discovered with a little frisson of excitement when she sat down at the table and smiled at me, patting the bench beside her. I was a little taken aback. I had come in to get breakfast, not to socialize, loner that I was, but before I could politely decline, Franny came over.

“You two should get to know each other,” she said. “Lee, this is Martha Farrell. Martha, this is Lee Bartholomew. She’s the daughter of the woman Rufus’s dad married.”

“They weren’t married,” I said automatically.

“Yeah, well, whatever.” Franny didn’t look convinced. “But Martha, Lee here is a writer. I mean, a professional writer. She’s published, unlike most of the folks who hang out in writing groups around here and never get anywhere.”

“Like me,” said Martha, giving me a wink. “Only I don’t even go to groups. I just slave away on my own, getting nowhere.”

“Well, anyway, I just thought you guys might have something in common.” Franny was edging away. Louis Nichols had followed her to the table and was sitting down to eat his breakfast.

I saw Martha Farrell’s fingers reach out in a fleeting, stroking gesture to his hand on the table. And I noted the way he quickly snatched it away.

“So what do you write?” asked Martha.

I explained about being a ghostwriter and then asked about her work.

“I’m trying to write a novel and the truth is I need guidance,”

she said. “I have a confession to make. Franny already told me

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about you, said you often came by the store in the mornings and maybe I could run into you—you know, accidentally.”

“Ah.” I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of this.

“I was kind of wondering if you’d read my manuscript, give me your take on it. I’d pay you, of course,” she added quickly.

“I’m not a novelist,” I pointed out, “or an editor.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m desperate. I just want it read by a professional.”

It was a pretty outrageous request and I cursed Franny silently for setting me up like this.

“I saw you take your card off the notice board,” I said, stalling for time. “Why did you do that?”

“Why? Do you need a wedding dress?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows?” She had caught me by surprise with the question.

“Doesn’t sound like you’d be my best bet as a customer. Actually, I took the card down for two reasons. I’m not really selling my dresses anymore.” She made it sound as if they were her own wedding dresses. “And the other reason is a little darker. Franny said you’re going to be working with Shotgun Marriott on his book.Well, Sean Marriott’s body was found in one of my dresses and I’m not wild about anyone being reminded of the fact that I once sold them.”

“He was wearing one of
your
dresses?”

“When they pulled him out of the ocean, yes.”

Louis Nichols had been listening silently beside us. Now he finished his breakfast and prepared to leave. Martha clasped his forearm as he stood up. I noticed he looked rather uncomfortable and didn’t return the gesture. “I’ll see you later,” she said. And when he didn’t reply, “Won’t I?”

When he’d gone she turned to me.

“Do you have wheels?”

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I nodded. “Do you need a ride?”

“I don’t have a car.” She laughed. “I never learned to drive.

Where are you staying? If it’s anywhere near me, it’d be great if you could drop me off.”

When I told her she clapped her hands and said, “Yes, that’s not far away.” She lived farther along the bay.

“Yes, Sean was wearing one of my dresses,” she resumed when we set off in the Jeep.

“You were there when they pulled him out?”

“I was over by the ocean that day.There was a big storm and I love walking by the ocean when the sea’s rough and seeing the breakers. It’s exhilarating. Earlier in the day I’d been walking along the bay and there was a wedding in progress, can you believe it? They went ahead with the weather like that. I like to watch weddings and see what the brides are wearing.This was an older woman—”

“That was my mother,” I said.

She turned in the Jeep and looked at me. “You know, I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. Your
mother
getting married, you’ll have to tell me that story. Sorry to gate-crash the ceremony but weddings at the water’s edge are perfect. There’s no law to stop me walking along the beach providing I keep below the high-water mark but I’m afraid it’s got me a bit of a reputation. They say I was jilted at the altar and I go to other people’s weddings because I never had one of my own.”