The Haunted Heart: Winter (15 page)

“For the record, I replaced the garbage
disposal unit at my old place.” With Alan’s help. Funny how long
ago that seemed.

“I think the memory of that turns him faint
with horror. Anyway, his other worry was that there was no suitable
kitchen. Apparently you’re an excellent cook when you want to be,
which makes me think we might be able to work out some kind of
trading goods for services. My handyman skills are up to the
minute.”

“Maybe,” I said grudgingly. I still felt hot
and uncomfortable at these revelations. It probably would have been
better not knowing. “I love my parents, but sometimes…”

Kirk chuckled. “They seem like nice people.
You’re clearly their fair haired boy. My old man took off when I
was nine. I never saw him again. As for my mother, I don’t think a
single day went by we didn’t fight when I was growing up. I
couldn’t get away from home fast enough. I joined the army when I
turned eighteen and I haven’t been back since.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.
Underneath his brusque exterior, Kirk was one of the kindest people
I’d ever known. How did someone like that come from a background
like his? My mom talked a lot about nature versus nurture, but it
seemed to me Kirk had both against him.

A high pitched voice was yelling behind us.
Kirk stopped in his tracks. I turned. Daphne trotted down the
uneven walk, calling to us.

She reached us, flushed and out of breath,
and handed over a scrap of paper. “Maryann Kleinpeter. She mans the
front desk here the days I don’t. Her mother, Violet, used to work
for the Whitakers.”

“Is she still alive?”

Daphne looked briefly exasperated, “Yes,
she’s still alive. You do seem determined to put all of us over
thirty in our graves!”

Kirk laughed. I ignored him. “Is she willing
to talk to us, do you think?”

“Willing to talk your ear off, if I know
Violet. You give Maryann a call. You’ll hear some stories, I
guarantee you.”

* * * * *

“That was a sad day,” Violet Gallot said,
smiling faintly as Maryann topped off our glasses of sweet tea.
“The saddest day in the history of Bellehaven House. Everything of
real value went on the auction block, including old John James
Whitaker’s bed. To this moment I remember that bed. It was enormous
and kinda shaped like a ship’s galleon.”

Kirk choked on his tea, though that might
have been the sugary sweetness of it. It was certainly the sweetest
tea I’d ever drunk. It was served with warm corn bread which was
fantastic.

Maryann and her mother lived in a little
white house on a shady street in St. Francisville. Coral and pink
azaleas lined the porch. A faded sign planted in the tidy, green
lawn urged reelection for Mayor Billy D’Aquilla. The wreath on the
front door was twined with red, white, and blue ribbons. The inside
of the house matched the outside for neat-and-orderliness. The
furniture had been repainted many times, and there was an abundance
of craft project décor: wall stencils and cornice boards and slip
covers.

Violet continued, “But there were just two
elderly maiden aunts left in New Orleans, and what were they going
to do with that great old house and all its furnishings?”

Maryann said, “It’s a sad story, but it’s a
common one in these parts.” She was about Daphne’s age, blonde and
plump and cheerful. Her mother was probably in her early eighties,
smaller, thinner, darker. Her white hair was bobby-pinned; a purple
flowered scarf tied turban style around her head. Also, she was
blind, but we’d been talking a little while before I realized it,
Violet was so good at functioning without sight.

“How long did you work at Bellehaven,
ma’am?” Kirk asked.

“From the time I was a little bit of a
thing,” Violet said. “I started as a chamber maid when I was
sixteen. I moved up to parlor maid, then head house maid. Of course
by then there were only three of us left.”

I said, “So in 1933…”

“Violet would have been a gleam in her
daddy’s eye,” Kirk said.

Violet laughed. “Not quite, but close
enough. My Auntie Corinne was housekeeper at Bellehaven for forty
years. She got me my position there when I left school. So I still
might be able to help you with your questions.”

“Do you remember the mirror my uncle
purchased that day at auction? Very large with a heavy gold frame
carved with flowers and fruit and a basket.”

Was there a lull in the conversation? I
wasn’t sure. It felt like the space between the struggle for
breaths. A suffocated kind of pause.

Violet laughed uneasily, “There were a lot
of mirrors sold that day.”

“This might have been originally purchased
by John James himself. It would have been quite old and very
valuable, even back then.”

Violet was shaking her head. “There was a
lot of very valuable things sold that day. All the toys in the
nursery. All the dolls and the tin soldiers and the clockwork
animals. There was a gray dappled rocking horse with a white mane
and tail made of real pony hair.”

As I listened to Violet I thought two
things. First, that she was lying about not remembering the mirror.
I couldn’t imagine why she’d bother since I already knew the mirror
had come from Bellehaven. There wasn’t any concealing that. The
second thing that struck me was her talking about the nursery and
the toys. The memory of the mirror had prompted her to think of the
nursery. What connected those two things in her mind?

“More cornbread?” Maryann asked.

“No thank you,” I said. “It was great
though.”

“Yes, ma’am. Please.” Kirk held his plate
out.

“Someone needs to fatten you up, child,”
Maryann said to me. She beamed approvingly at Kirk.

We drank our tea and ate cornbread. The rain
ticked in absent and erratic fashion against the windows.

“Is Bellehaven haunted?” I asked.

Maryann laughed, but her mother looked
thoughtful. “They say you can see old John James’s sloop sailing up
the Mississippi on moonlight summer nights.”

“What about the house itself?”

Violet shook her head. “I never saw
anything. You’ll want to visit The Myrtles if it’s ghosts you’re
hunting, child.”

“I’ve never seen or heard anything,” Maryann
said staunchly.

I wondered what she’d heard. I looked at
Kirk.

He said, “John James’s line died out with
Edward, is that right?”

Violet nodded somberly. Again I had the
impression that she was waiting, listening for something.

“Correct,” Maryann said. She folded her
hands and looked expectant, awaiting the next question.

“And that was during the influenza epidemic
of 1933?”

“Correct,” Maryann said again.

Violet said nothing. She didn’t move a
muscle. I’d rarely heard such a loud silence.

“And Edward’s wife was also carried off in
the influenza epidemic?” Kirk asked.

“Correct,” Maryann replied, making it three
for three.

Violet reached for her tea, lifted the glass
without spilling a drop, and sipped noiselessly.

Kirk looked at me.

I said, “I guess that’s it then. Thank you
for all your help. We should really get going now.”

Violet seemed to still with surprise.

“While I’m thinking of it,” I began. “Is
there a college nearby? A junior college? I wanted to get some
French translated.”

“Oh lordy,” Maryann exclaimed. “You don’t
need to go to college for that. Amy Madison teaches French at West
Feliciana high school. Amy’d be happy to help. She’s a sweet little
thing. She’s teaching school right now, but she gets home around
two-thirty.”

“Amy has choir practice this evening,”
Violet said.

Maryann said, “Mama, you’re right. Well, if
you boys would like to leave your book or whatever it is. Or you
could just come back after lunch?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” I said. “It’s
actually a video on my phone. It might even be French Creole being
spoken.”

“I see,” Maryann said, looking more puzzled
than ever. “Then why don’t you boys come back later and we’ll see
if Amy can’t help you out.”

“That’s very nice of you, ma’am,” Kirk said.
“But we don’t want to put you to any more trouble. Do you have
Amy’s phone number?”

Maryann looked disappointed. “Of course!”
She rose.

Violet said quietly, “Why do you want to
know?”

“I’m sorry?” I looked at Violet.

Violet’s sightless gaze turned my direction.
“Why are you asking these questions? What is it you’re trying to
find out?”

Kirk’s dark eyes warned me to proceed with
caution, but it seemed to me that Violet wouldn’t have asked if she
wasn’t considering breaking her silence. “I want to know what
really happened to Edward and Ines.”

“Why?”

“I need to know the truth.”

“Why, child? Why would you need to know the
truth about something that ended long before you were born?”

I had to consider a couple of different
answers. Over the past few months I’d got so in the habit of
concealing the truth from those likely to use it against me that
lying had become instinct. The truth did not always set you free.
Sometimes it got you locked up. Sometimes for your own protection.
Sometimes it got you killed.

So it was with surprise and relief that I
heard Kirk’s calm, “Because sometimes you can’t move forward until
you understand the past.”

Simple and absolute truth.

Violet nodded to herself. Her daughter
looked curiously from her to us.

Finally, Violet said, “Let’s hear what
little Amy has to say about this mysterious translation of yours. I
can’t make promises, but maybe it is time for the dead to tell
their story.”

* * * * *

Judging by the number of trucks and cars in
the parking lot, the locals seemed to like the Audubon Café for
lunch, so Kirk and I headed over there for burgers.

“I’ve got news for Violet,” I said, as the
waitress departed after delivering our meals. “The dead are already
telling their story. What I can’t understand is why, after all this
time, anyone would lie about people who’ve been dead nearly a
century.” I watched Kirk tuck into a sourdough melt with browned
onions. How he could stuff anything else down his throat after half
a plate of corn bread was a mystery. “I think Daphne and Maryann
wouldn’t notice a ghost if it threw a sheet over their heads. But
Violet is definitely not telling everything she knows.”

“That’s not the same as lying. Some people
call that discretion. It used to be highly prized in a servant. And
a neighbor. And a friend. And maybe Aunt Corinne was all those
things to the Whitakers. Maybe Violet inherited that attitude.”

“Did people like the Whitakers think of
people like Aunt Corinne as anything but servants?”

“I don’t know. John James was a river
pirate. The Whitakers lost most of their fortune in the Civil War.
Maybe deep down they were humble folk.”

I shook my head. “They didn’t look like
humble folks in the photographs. What do you think did happen to
Edward and Ines? I’m starting to think they didn’t die of
influenza. Or if they did, there was more to it than that.”

“Yeah, I think there was more to it than
that,” Kirk agreed. He nodded at my plate. “Can I give you some
advice?”

“Don’t eat the pickles?”

“Eat your lunch. And your dinner. And your
breakfast. Eat right. Sleep right. Exercise a lot. That’s half the
battle.”

“My shrink will be thrilled to hear it.”

Kirk was unsmiling, dead serious. He took
another giant-sized bite of his burger.

I said, “There’s something about the mirror
too. Violet did recognize it from my description. I’m pretty
sure.”

Kirk chewed thoughtfully. “There must be a
family graveyard. It’s probably still part of the Bellehaven
Estate. If not, there will be a parish churchyard, church records,
that kind of thing.”

“That’s a
great
idea.”

He smiled faintly. “Of course it’s possible
the graves corroborate the official version of Edward and Ines’s
deaths. It’s likely no one but the immediate family and servants
ever knew the whole truth. Assuming there is a ‘whole’ truth. We’re
making a lot of assumptions based on our amateur interpretation of
a couple of paranormal events.”

“But doesn’t a paranormal event in itself
indicate…well, something?”

“Flynn, we don’t even know what a ghost
is
. Maybe it’s a trapped soul looking for vindication. Or
justice. Or the back exit. We’re just guessing. Is it a psychic
echo? A spiritual imprint that operates like a broken record,
replaying a certain event over and over. Is it a collective
hallucination?”

“Don’t stop there,” I said. “Maybe I’m
schizophrenic. Maybe
I’m
Ines.
Voilà!
”

Kirk, about to wrap his mouth around another
bite of sandwich, froze, eyes fixed on me. He started to laugh. He
laid the remaining scrap of sandwich on his plate.

“Glad you find it so funny.”

“Look, I’m not denying that we are dealing
with…” he glanced around and lowered his voice “…some kind of
supernatural phenomenon. We’re both on the same page as far as that
goes. I’ve seen what you’ve seen — and then some. But where we go
from here, I don’t know. Neither of us does.”

“Because we haven’t heard the whole story.
We don’t know what Ines wants.”

“We don’t know that our ghost is Ines. We
could be looking at the wrong decade. At the wrong century.”

“I
know
the woman in black is
Ines.”

He considered me. “Say it
is
Ines.
Say we learn that Ines didn’t die of influenza, she ran off with
the chauffeur or Colonel Beauregard, and everybody hushed it up.
How are you going to fix that? How are you going to set it right
for Ines? Why would Ines need it set right? Wouldn’t it be Edward
who needed things put right?”