Revenant (9 page)

We were both listening to the music as the waiter put our food on the table. I ordered another drink while Mitch asked for sweet tea. The pork was tangy and sweet, absolute perfection, but I was more interested in my drink. I kept glancing for the waiter as I forced myself to eat.

“Carson, there's a psychologist in Biloxi. He's good. He's had success with helping people stop drinking.”

Anger was my first reaction, but I tamped it down. “I don't want to stop drinking,” I said. “Alcohol blurs the edges enough that I can stand it. Why would I give that up?”

“You aren't a real drunk, at least not yet. You still take responsibility for your actions. But you're killing yourself. It's just a really slow way to suicide.”

“The biggest part of me died with Annabelle. I'm just trying to anesthetize the last quivering hunk.”

His hand moved across the table and covered mine. “It won't do any good. As I said, the instinct to survive is too strong. Go ahead and decide to live, Carson.”

When my drink arrived, I finished that one and didn't order another. We listened to the music and talked between songs. Mitch talked about running and his love of movement, of covering ground. I listened and realized that there was nothing in my life I loved more than drinking. For a moment, the abyss yawned before me. Fear, for myself and what I was doing, crept up my spine. “If you're ready, I'd like to go home,” I said.

He didn't argue. He paid the tab, refusing my offer of Dutch. On the drive back to my house, he talked about the changes along the coast, keeping the conversation light and casual.

When he pulled in the drive, I didn't give him a chance to walk me to the door. I got out, thanked him for dinner and rushed up the steps. Once inside, I locked the door and leaned against it. I wasn't trying to lock Mitch out. I wasn't afraid of him, but he'd pulled off a scab, and my wound was bleeding. I hurried into the kitchen.

My hand was shaking as I reached for the bottle of vodka under the kitchen sink. When the phone rang, I yelped, causing the cats to scatter from around my feet.

I answered with a hello.

“Carson, are you okay?” Daniel's warm voice was like a familiar touch. Spanish had been his first language, yet his English was impeccable. He retained the rhythm of Nicaragua.

“I'm fine. I just got home.” My heartbeat had quickened to the point that I sounded short of breath.

“I've called twice. I was getting worried.”

I leaned against the counter. Chester twined between my legs, purring and demanding attention. Miss Vesta would not lower herself to such antics. She sat on the arm of the sofa watching me with golden-green eyes.

While I held the phone with one shoulder, I opened a can of their favorite cat food. I tried to follow the vet's instructions on dry food, but sometimes a treat was in order. Chester rewarded me with a lick on my ankle, and Vesta ignored me.

“I'm okay, Daniel. The job…it's been hectic.”

“I heard about the murders.”

I wondered if Dorry had called and told him, but I didn't ask. I hated it when I felt that they were talking about me behind my back. “I feel for the families.”

“Is this a good idea?” he asked.

“I don't get to pick and choose what happens that I cover,” I said, a little angry. “I'm working. That's a step up, right?”

“The story was excellent. Dorry faxed it to me.”

“Yes, Dorry would do that. She can manage four children, keep a perfect house, bake cookies for the neighborhood's underprivileged, pacify Mother and tend to my business. She's amazing.”

There was a silence. “You make it impossible for anyone to care about you, Carson. You drive us away.”

My fingers closed around the neck of the vodka bottle. I gripped it so tightly my knuckles whitened. “Why are you calling?”

“I'm going to León for a few weeks. I didn't want you to try and call and not be able to find me.”

The town he spoke of was on the Pacific side of Nicaragua. It was an old town with a beautiful cathedral. There were lavish homes with courtyards and servants. Clubs and restaurants lined the square, and at night the sweet breeze blew in off the ocean. León was a city of smiling white teeth, cigarettes, long hair blowing in the breeze and salsa. The things that were not available in León were reliable telephones or mail. Daniel would, effectively, be out of touch. The damage from years of war had been extensive, and there'd been no money to repair the infrastructure.

“How long will you be gone?” I felt him slipping away from me. Nicaragua was his heart home, the place he loved. Though Daniel had been born in Miami, he yearned for Nicaragua. He loved all of it—the volcanoes and coffee-bean plantations, the fields of rice and the pounding surf of the Pacific.

“Two weeks.”

“It should be beautiful there now.” March would be dry.

“I'll telephone you when I get back.”

“Thanks for calling, Daniel.” I wanted to beg him to come to me. If I asked, he would. All he needed was one word. I couldn't, though. I could not give him even a half measure of what he needed, what he deserved.

There was a long silence as we both thought about other goodbyes, ones where we'd clung to each other with whispered promises of reunions. I could almost feel his long fingers combing sensuously through my hair, feel his heartbeat beneath my ear as I pressed against him. He smelled of starch and sunshine. Parting had been physically painful, for both of us.

“Take care of yourself, Carson,” he said and hung up.

The cats were finished eating. I took the vodka bottle to the sofa and sat holding it. It was round and solid in my hand, something permanent that was always available. I got up and put it under the sink and signaled the cats to bed with me.

T
hat night I dreamed of slow drops of blood falling onto the weathered wood of a pier. The wood was thirsty. It drank and drank. I was the wood. I ached for more, focused only on the next falling drop and the pale, three-fingered hand from which it fell. And then the dream changed. I was walking in the meadow behind our home in Miami. It was a spring day. The azaleas that Daniel had insisted on planting along the white vinyl fence were blooming a vulgar fuchsia. Annabelle was hiding in the flowers, laughing. She ran from bush to bush, her laughter a ripple of merry notes. She loved the vibrant color of the flowers, and I teased her by saying they were too loud, too bright.

In the blink of an eye, she disappeared. My heart clutched with dread. Then I heard her giggle.

“Mama,” she said. “Find me.”

“Come on out, silly. We have treats for Bilbo. Let's go find him.”

“Mama!” Annabelle's voice changed. There was fear in it. “Mama!”

I looked around the bush, but she wasn't there. I crawled under it, now a huge, gnarled azalea with black branches and deep, leafy secrets. My daughter was gone.

“Mama! Please find me. I'm lost!”

I tore into the leaves and branches with my hands. I hurled my body into the shrub. “Annabelle!”

“Oh, Mama, I don't like it here. Come and get me.”

“Annabelle!” I screamed her name. I fought against the shrub, but suddenly there was nothing. I clawed the air above my bed, and I awoke, panting and sobbing.

Moonlight streamed through the wooden blinds of the window, crossing the bed with bars of gentle light, yet no prison could be constructed of stronger bonds. I put my head in my hands and waited until I could stand. Then I got up and changed my T-shirt. It was soaked with sweat. Instead of going back to bed, I went to the screened porch and sat on the swing. Chester joined me, curling his warm yellow body against my bare thigh.

The night breeze was laden with wisteria. Olfactory melancholy. I was haunted by my dream. It was composed of different elements but contained the same emotion of many I'd had before. My daughter was lost and needed me, and I couldn't help her.

The swing creaked on the chains, and I pulled Chester into my lap. He was the more forgiving of the two cats. Vesta had rules, and they changed with each location. She could be stroked on the back in bed, but not in a chair. The swing was still undetermined territory. When she hopped up beside me, I risked running my hand down her spine and she purred.

“I can't drink enough anymore to stop the dreams,” I told them. “Six drinks used to do it. My liver won't last another year at this rate, and I still won't be able to sleep.”

Chester licked my hand with a rough tongue. I was sweaty from the dream, and I recalled that primitive man first caught deer by pissing on a rock. The deer came up to lick the salt from the dried urine, and the men jumped on them. Salt was necessary for the survival of all mammals. Alcohol for a number of others.

I thought about a drink, but it was getting close to dawn. The sky to the east was just faintly brightening. I curled on the swing and rocked with the cats, trying hard not to think of my daughter.

My porch faced south, the yard sloping down to the water. Big oaks shaded the centipede grass that looked like a gentle green swell in dawn's first light. At one time there had been picnic tables and party paraphernalia close to the water. Those had been cleared away after I bought the place. I wasn't exactly a party girl these days. I watched as the sun struck the first sparkles along the gray water, turning the bay to a sheet of silver. The sky awoke with a brush of peach overtones. Soon it would be a cloudless blue, pale and serene.

I had no near neighbors. The property I bought was ten acres, a rare tract on the water in booming Jackson County. My house was secluded, nestled in live oaks with limbs that stretched to the ground, inviting. How Annabelle would have loved them.

When the water was a cool slate and the sky blue, I got up, made some coffee and got ready for work. I was at my desk at seven-thirty, a fact that earned no remarks from anyone.

For two hours I organized my notes, typing up interviews in case I couldn't read my own brand of shorthand later. When it was closer to ten, I went out to talk to Hank.

“I'm headed to the bridal salons,” I said. “The killer had to buy these veils somewhere.”

“Pretty tough to describe a veil,” Hank said. “I mean for a gal who never worked the society desk.”

I smiled. It was a compliment of a sort. “I can stop by the PD and see if they'll let me photograph the one found with Pamela Sparks.”

“Good idea. I'll let Brandon know what you're doing.”

I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Whatever you think best.” I walked out of the newsroom and for the first time saw a couple of reporters smile at me. Jack was right—I should have put money in the coffee kitty the first week.

The day was gorgeous. It was as if spring had jumped the coast overnight. Azaleas were everywhere in shades of pink, lavender, purple and white. Delicate white branches of bridal wreath laced the breeze, reminding me of the veil that Pamela Sparks wore. I was certain Avery was already on this, but it didn't matter. It wasn't a competition to solve the case.

I'd made a list of all the bridal salons along the coast. I used my cell to check with Avery before I left town. He had no new leads in the case, or so he said. He reluctantly agreed to let me take a Polaroid photo of the bridal veil taken from Pamela Sparks. His team had worked the salons with no results. He didn't seem to mind that I was following his footsteps.

With the photo in hand, I drove along Highway 90 to Waveland, the last Mississippi town before the Louisiana State line. The land was flatter here, the water a gentle shush against the beach. There was one bridal shop there, and the clerk said the veil looked too expensive for her to carry.

Driving east, I made Bay St. Louis my next stop. The small downtown was situated on a series of bluffs. This was the place where artists and old hippies had settled, and there was a small bridal shop with an eclectic selection of gowns. Many women swooned at the confection of a bridal gown, but I felt nothing. White was never my color. The clerk was knowledgeable, though, and she examined the photograph for a long time.

“It's an imported lace,” she said. “I doubt any of the bridal salons here will carry this. In fact, I haven't seen it around for quite some time. I'd say this was a special order, made for a particular bride because the pattern meant something to her. See, it's twining ivy, thistle and rose. Something Anglo-Scottish.”

I studied what she pointed out and saw the different elements of the intricate pattern.

“This cost a pretty penny, and from the look of it, I'd say it's antique. It could have even been brought over to this country, an heirloom, from a mother to a new bride.”

My heart sank, but I made the notes. “What about dressmakers?”

She smiled. “Rose McKay. Every bride on the coast with a specialty dress has used her. She's about eighty now, but she turns out a dress that no factory can rival.”

I took down the dressmaker's address in Jackson County, thanked the shop owner and continued to work my way east.

The bridal shops in Long Beach, Gulfport and Biloxi offered no additional leads. I went to the office and called Rose McKay. She agreed to see me at three o'clock. I had time to write my story for the day.

Hank read over the piece I wrote on the history of bridal garb and motioned me to his desk. “Brandon's gonna shit fireballs.”

I laughed. “Good.”

“This isn't the kind of story he expects from you.”

“It's the total harvest of my labors.” I shrugged. “There's nothing new on the case. To keep pounding on it would be sensationalism.”

“Well, duh! What do you think you're getting paid for?”

I laughed out loud. The sound attracted the attention of the features editor and Deedee Bridges, the society editor. She was staring at my wrinkled slacks, which were covered in cat hair.

“I have a gut feeling the veil will turn out to be important.” I leaned down and lowered my voice. “Tell Brandon I'm meeting with a wedding dressmaker this afternoon. That should add a little blue flame of Tabasco to his fireballs.” Hank was laughing when I left the newsroom.

I hit school traffic before I got to Rose McKay's, so I was ten minutes late and walked up to the door of the old Victorian with two young girls about seven and nine. They wore the uniforms of parochial school. Mrs. McKay met them at the screened door, swinging it wide with a smile. The odor of peanut-butter cookies wafted out into the cool front porch.

She gave them big hugs. “Girls, there're cookies and milk in the kitchen. Do your homework.” As the girls skittered away, laughing down a long, dark hallway, Rose turned to me. “May I help you?”

I obviously didn't look like bridal material, nor would I pass muster as a mother of the bride. “I'm Carson Lynch with the Biloxi
Morning Sun.
”

She nodded and again held open the screen. “Come in. You're here about the bridal veil on that murdered girl.”

I followed her into a large sewing room with a small turret containing a dressmaker's dummy and the most incredible gown. I made a sound of appreciation.

“It's beautiful, isn't it? And the bride is just as lovely. She couldn't have picked a more suitable dress.” She walked to it and adjusted a tiny loop that was used to lace the sharply Veed back of the dress. “A lot of girls want dresses that outshine them. Lauren, though, can wear this dress and not be overwhelmed by it.” She laughed softly. “I've gotten grumpy in my old age. If a dress doesn't suit, I just turn the business down. I'm not going to try to fit a bride with a dress that doesn't serve her.”

I remembered then that Rose McKay was in her eighties, but I would have said sixty. She was erect and slender, her movements without the stiffness of old age.

“I've never seen a dress that lovely,” I said, remembering Dorry's dress of sleek elegance and my, much bemoaned by my mother, choice, which didn't involve lace and pearls.

She looked at me, her gaze analyzing. “I'd say you didn't bother with a wedding dress at all. Too much fuss.”

I nodded. “You'd be right. But how did you know I was married?”

“Unmarried women of a certain age have a look. Not a bad look, just different. Living with a man softens a woman. The art of compromise is what marriage is all about, and that changes a person, inside and out.” Her gaze went to the dress and beyond, out to her front yard where a huge oak tree shaded the house. “I was married once, a long, long time ago. My husband died. I had four children to raise.”

Rose motioned to an old desk with papers sticking out everywhere. She sat in one chair and indicated the other for me. When we were facing each other, she asked me a question. “What do you want to know?”

I pulled the photograph of the veil from my purse and held it out to her. She took it, adjusting her glasses. “I might have made that. Seems familiar. The lace…” Her voice drifted away as she studied the photo. “My memory isn't so good.”

I saw the age then. She studied me, and for a second, she looked lost.

“Grandmama?”

I turned to the woman who had appeared so silently in the doorway. She assessed me in a split second and knew I wasn't there on wedding business.

I introduced myself and explained, and she said she was Rose's granddaughter, Lele. The two young girls were hers.

She took the picture from her grandmother's hand, studied it, then handed it back. “Grandmama, do you remember that veil?”

Rose studied the picture as if she were trying to memorize it. “I remember it, but I can't say when or who it was for. I can almost feel that lace.”

“Do you keep photographs of your dresses?” I asked. “Maybe if we went through some records, a name would jog your memory.”

“I never kept records. Once a dress was finished and the bride wore it down the aisle, it was just a memory for both of us.”

She appeared upset. “It's okay,” I said gently. I stood and thanked her for her help. Lele followed me to the door.

“Grandmama is slipping,” she said. “She can still sew anything, but she forgets where she put things and when people are supposed to come by for appointments. She doesn't go out much anymore, so that's not a problem. But she loses time. Whole chunks of time. There's a chance she'll remember that veil. If she does, should I call you?”

I gave her my card and thanked her. I had nothing new for a story, and it was close enough to quitting time. When I pulled out of Rose's drive, I headed home, beating the traffic by half an hour.

Down the long, winding drive of my house, my own azaleas were blooming. I went outside and sat on an old bucket, my focus on the azaleas. They were huge, perhaps fifty years old, and a shade between purple and pink. Not the color of the azaleas in my dream, but close. They were quite beautiful in the fading spring dusk. I got down on my knees and looked beneath the branches. I don't know what I hoped to find there, but the gardener had been very thorough. Only old, dead leaves were piled around the base.