A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (7 page)

He shrugged. “Nothing. Just he wasn’t nearly as bad a guy as you might have heard. But now he’s in the graveyard, who’s going to stand up and say so?” He left, closing the door softly behind him.

After I’d taken it in, I wrote, on my yellow legal pad, “‘He wasn’t nearly as bad a guy as you might have heard’ —Pedro Ruiz.”

I drew a box around the words. What kind of person had Carey Howard been? A supercilious shit who cared only about being in the right place at the right time, a tightwad who wouldn’t pay for Blanche to go to Avignon, or not such a bad guy after all? A
People
magazine story lay on top of my pile of clippings. I glanced over it. Here was big-eared Carey at prep school, bow-tied Carey in his Wall Street office, tuxedoed Carey at his first wedding, newly divorced Carey dancing at a nightclub. Here was mature, smiling Carey at Vivien’s side. He had a bland, good-looking face gone slightly jowly, crinkly hair receding from the brow, deep smile creases. He didn’t look like an awful person, but neither did he look like somebody you’d jump at the chance to meet.

It wasn’t my business to pass judgment on Carey Howard. It was my business to write a book telling, in Vivien’s words, what Vivien had to say.

I turned on the typewriter, punched the recorder’s “play” button, poised my fingers over the typewriter keys. I heard Vivien’s recorded voice say, reluctantly, “Yes, we might as well get started.”

REPORT OF A QUARREL

That night, after dinner, I got an uncontrollable urge to call Kitty. I needed to hear an unguarded voice, the voice of someone unreservedly happy to hear from me. The phone, on a table at the foot of the staircase, was for once not in use for Vivien’s legal maneuvers. I punched in Kitty’s number and perched on the bottom step, waiting for her cheerful, “Hello.”

The “Hello,” when it came, didn’t register on the “cheerful” scale.

“Kitty? Is that you?”

“Georgia Lee. For heaven’s sake.” If there was an attempt at warmth or animation, it was feeble.

“What’s wrong?” I paused to imagine the worst. “Is Twinkie all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s right here.”

“Then—”

“Georgia Lee, remember my cosmetics story?”

“The one about the colors based on vegetables?”

“Right. Celery eye gleamer, eggplant blusher, radish—”

“I remember.”

“Remember how I slaved on it for weeks?”

I had a vague recollection. “You really worked hard.”

“I got a proof of it today. It’s
unrecognizable.
They
butchered
it.”

Although I felt my own troubles dwarfed a butchered cosmetics story, I waxed sympathetic. “How awful!”

“I can’t deal with it anymore. It’s not worth it to—”

She went on and on. Only with difficulty did I shoehorn in, “I got another one of those letters. Two more, in fact.”

“Letters?” She sounded puzzled.

“Anonymous letters, Kitty. Don’t you even remember?” I hadn’t really intended to raise my voice.

“Oh— right. Oh,
no!”
I was almost sorry I’d added to her distress. “What are you going to
do?”

“At the moment, nothing.” I glanced around. I didn’t see anybody, but lowered my voice anyway. “A lot is going on beneath the surface here. I’m trying to figure it out.”

“Why does everything have to be such a
mess!”
Kitty wailed.

I hadn’t pictured a conversation where I was trying to make
her
feel better. To strike a happier note I said, “You’re having a good time with Twinks?”

“Great.” Kitty still sounded wan. “She did the most adorable thing yesterday. You know my jacket with the gold buttons?”

“Sure.” The jacket also had epaulets, lavish braid trim, linebacker-size shoulder pads, and cuffs and lapels a yard wide.

“I’d left it on a chair to take to the cleaners, and she pulled off two buttons. We found one in her food dish. The other one hasn’t turned up yet.”

I remembered the buttons. Heavy gold, embossed with some sort of design. Undoubtedly irreplaceable. “God, Kitty, I’m so sorry. I’ll pay—”

“Don’t be silly. It was darling.”

I was more than ready to end this pick-me-up phone call. I told Kitty I’d be in touch, she told me to be careful, and we said good-bye.

Not nearly as restored as I’d hoped, I went to see if the rain had stopped so I could take my evening stroll before bed. Marcelle was loading the dishwasher. She left her task when I walked in and followed me out the back door.

We stood on the stoop under the overhang of the roof. Rain was spitting and the wind was high. Not walking weather. Marcelle took a cigarette from her apron pocket and lit up. In the glow from the kitchen I saw a crease between her dark eyes, a hard set to her chin. She inspected the tip of her cigarette and said, “Madame, is everything all right here?”

Good question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean with— them.” She jerked her head to indicate the house and its occupants.

“Why do you ask?” When in doubt, act evasive.

“Because” —she dropped her voice, although we were speaking French, and nobody else could understand her— “I heard them quarreling this afternoon.”

A lover’s spat between Vivien and Ross, perhaps. “You heard—”

“Madame Howard and Monsieur Pedro.” She crossed her arms as if daring me to dispute, which I immediately did.

“Pedro? Are you sure it wasn’t Ross?”

A vigorous nod sent her black curls flying. “Absolutely sure.” She leaned toward me. “I was dusting the upstairs hall this afternoon. I passed Madame Howard’s door, and I heard them. I heard her.”

“What was she saying?”

As soon as I asked, I realized the stupidity of the question. Marcelle couldn’t understand English. She shrugged and continued, “I could hear a man also, but not so loud. I didn’t want to seem to be listening, so I moved down the hall. I was about to go downstairs when the door opened and Monsieur Pedro came out.”

I was at a loss. “I guess they had a disagreement.”

“She was crying, Madame. I heard her when he opened the door.”

Rain sprinkled my face. I dabbed at the cold drops and said, “Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so. I moved into the alcove by the window. I didn’t want him to see me, you know? I felt afraid.”

“When did you say this was? What time?”

“Perhaps three-thirty or four.”

I’d been downstairs in the kitchen, talking with Ross. Later, Pedro had come to my room offering cocoa. He’d said he was going to make some for Vivien. First reduce her to tears, then make her cocoa so she’ll feel better. I thought back over dinner. All of them had seemed as normal as they ever did.

Marcelle went on, “So I’m asking you, Madame, if something is wrong.”

Marcelle probably didn’t know these people had been involved in a murder case, and I hated to think how she’d react if I told her. I said, “Madame Howard and I are working hard on a difficult book. She’s nervous about it. That’s all, I expect.” I knew I didn’t sound confident.

“I see.” Marcelle didn’t sound convinced, either.

The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle cut through the noise of the wind. That was unusual. The road had almost no traffic. It got louder, then receded as the cycle whizzed by. In seconds it was gone, and we said good night.

LES BAUX

I saw the motorcyclist the next day, after we returned from Les Baux.

The weather had cleared. At breakfast Vivien kept up a stream of chatter, her eyes hectically bright. She turned to Blanche. “How did you sleep? Better?”

Blanche was listlessly pulling apart a croissant. “Not really.”

“Did you take one of the pills? You know Dr.—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like to take pills.”

“You know the doctor said to take them if you had trouble sleeping.”

Blanche turned away from her mother with an air of detachment. Ross said, “The poor children in China would really like to have those pills, Blanche.” Blanche smiled at him, and I saw a moment of communion pass between them.

Vivien paid no attention. She got up and walked to the window. “It’s so beautiful today. Aren’t you glad the rain has stopped?” She turned and proclaimed, “We can’t possibly work when it’s this beautiful, can we, Georgia Lee?”

She gave me a look of winsome pleading. I was the mean slave driver. I was sure this evasion had nothing to do with the weather. I began, “I don’t—”

“Oh, we can’t! Let’s go somewhere. Where should we go, Blanche?”

Blanche, her eyes on her plate, shriveled. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Of course you know. You’re always reading the books. Where did the troubadours go?”

Blanche bit her lip. She looked up and said, “Well—”

So it was decided. We were off to Les Baux.

Although I wasn’t pleased at Vivien’s ditching work, I was elated to have a chance to see one of Provence’s most famous sites, the ruined medieval stronghold touted in the guidebooks. Maybe the getaway would do everybody good.

We took off within an hour. Ross drove, Vivien beside him in the front seat, while Blanche and I shared the back. It seemed understood that Pedro wasn’t invited. Although Blanche was as quiet as usual I thought she looked strange, almost feverish. When Vivien asked her to fill us in on Les Baux, Blanche didn’t seem to hear. Vivien said, “Wake up, Blanche,” and Blanche opened her guidebook and read aloud the history of the bloodthirsty lords of Baux, a quarrelsome tribe given, so legend had it, to throwing their captives off the promontory where the castle stood. Troubadours had indeed frequented the place in the thirteenth century.

It was a long drive, through fertile countryside and the bustling towns of Carpentras, Cavaillon, and St. Rémy. We didn’t talk much, and I gave myself up to gazing out at the sundrenched landscape. After St. Rémy, the road began to climb through white cliffs and evergreen forests. At last we rounded a curve and Blanche said in a taut voice, “There it is.”

The massive gray bulk rising before us first looked like a natural rock formation, craggy and forbidding. Only at second glance could I differentiate the towers and walls of the castle at the top. “Grim,” said Vivien with distaste. Blanche’s lips were parted, and she sat forward, staring avidly.

As we got closer I could see Blanche wasn’t going to have a lonely communion with the spirits of the troubadours. At the top we found a parking lot crowded with tour buses and people snapping pictures of one another. Far from being a spot of brooding isolation, Les Baux was a tourist mecca in spades. The picturesque stone cottages lining the cobbled streets of the ancient village housed snack bars, curio shops, pizza parlors, and boutiques purveying Provencal cotton fabric, Provencal pottery, Provencal soap, Provencal herbs, Provencal knick-knacks. I bought a straw hat with a green ribbon to shield my eyes from the sun’s increasing glare. Vivien bought a quilted purse printed with immense roses. Ross bought a Les Baux dish towel. Blanche clutched the guidebook and stared around her. It was difficult to know whether she saw today’s commercialism or the romantic panoply of her imagination.

By tacit consent, we split up to wander separately. Eating a ham and egg crêpe at an outdoor table, I mused: about the scene Marcelle had overheard between Vivien and Pedro, the anonymous letters I’d received, Blanche’s
Book of Betrayal
notebook. I felt as if I were riding a turbulent sea in a flimsy craft, uncertain whether I would stay afloat or be engulfed.

After lunch I continued to ramble, joining the crowds in the narrow streets. Eventually I came to the entrance of the Cité Mort, the ruins of the castle and its surrounding buildings. I paid the twelve-franc admission fee, passed through the small lapidary museum, and went to see where the lords of Baux had hurled their enemies from the cliff.

I emerged on a vast field of chalky, rubble-strewn stone. The glare was almost painfully intense. The ruins of the castle and outbuildings were on my left, looking as if they’d been struck by a bomb. Doorways and windows opened through half-knocked-down walls; archways and turrets emerged from piles of unformed stone. Ahead of me, white rock and sparse ground cover stretched out to a ridge. It was difficult to imagine a civilization flowering in this bleak and inhospitable spot. Dazzled by the sun, I followed a path across the plateau, past a bust of the Provencal poet Frederic Mistral and a stone cross to the cliff’s edge. Far below were tilled fields and forested hills, lines of cypress trees, straight-rowed vineyards. The contrast of the fertile plain with this arid rock was striking.

Hot wind fanned my cheek. Except for one short iron railing, there was no safety barrier. Throwing someone over would be no more difficult today than it had been for the lords of Baux. Sightseers drifted back and forth around me, inspecting the ruins or ogling the view, but in this large space there was no crush. I wandered along the edge until I’d had my fill of vertigo, then crossed back to the ruins. I was poking around the tumbling walls when I saw Blanche.

She was standing on a flat boulder projecting over the valley, and she was dangerously close to the edge. Her back was to me. Outlined against the sky, her pink shirt fluttering in the stiff breeze, she looked ridiculously slight, as if she might sail off on the next gust. Her head was bent. As I watched, she leaned forward, almost to the point of overbalancing. The thought came to me, forcibly, that she was about to jump.

I dashed forward, careening over the pebbly, uneven ground. She bent again, farther this time, and I was sure she would topple and disappear. She straightened, though, her hair tossed by the wind. I thought she squared her shoulders.

When I had almost reached her, I called, “Blanche!” She bent rapidly forward, but I lunged, clutched at her arms, and pulled her back. The guidebook sailed out of her hands and spun downward. “Are you
crazy?”
I cried.

Her face was wet with tears. A few people stared as I led her away, probably thinking I was angry with her for going so close to the edge. Back at the ruins, I sat her down on a low wall and dug in my pocketbook for a tissue. I was nearly crying myself. “God, Blanche, what were you trying to
do?”
I babbled. “Don’t do that again. Ever.”