A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (19 page)

Alexander’s room was at the top of the house, tucked under the eaves, off a landing with a skylight. His door was ajar. Another closed door probably led to the attic proper. Except for the skylight, the renovation hadn’t reached this high. The walls of his cubicle were rough wood, in contrast to the spanking whitewash below, and the furniture consisted of a narrow bed and a small pine dresser with a wavy mirror. The one window was uncurtained, and outside it rain poured from the overhanging roof. There was no closet, but as far as I’d seen Alexander’s wardrobe consisted mainly of T-shirts. What clothes he had, I saw, were wadded in an olive drab duffel bag lying in the middle of the floor. Also on the floor, in a corner, was his helmet with the smoked-plastic face shield. The army surplus canteen I’d seen in the woods hung on a knob of the dresser. Crumpled on top of the dresser, next to an imitation-leather shaving kit containing a squeezed-out tube of Crest and some disposable Bic razors, was the familiar “Bingo’s Buckaroo BBQ” bandanna.

I poked around. Empty dresser drawers. Easier to scramble everything into the duffel. Nothing under the bed except a stray sock. My venture had yielded proof of Alexander’s terrible housekeeping, but nothing else so far. I pawed through the faded jeans, T-shirts, jockey shorts, and socks in the duffel once more, and this time I noticed stitching on the inside of the bag. I lifted the duffel and, lo and behold, discovered a rectangular zipper compartment on the side of the bag opposite the opening.

Some investigator. I unzipped the zipper. Stuffed inside the compartment was a wad of papers. Before going through them I tiptoed to the door and looked out. All quiet. I sat on the floor to give my find a quick once-over.

The first item of interest was an airline ticket folder. The typed itinerary stapled neatly inside the flap said Alexander had flown from Kennedy airport in New York City to Nice, France, a week ago. The ticket itself said the same.

I leafed through the flimsy pages. Where was Alexander’s flight to New York from San Francisco? If he’d gone to New York at all, wouldn’t it have been to change planes before taking off for France? But San Francisco wasn’t mentioned on the ticket or itinerary.

Laying the ticket aside, I came up with a couple of creased and spotted takeout menus—one for Luigi’s Pizza on West Fourteenth Street and one for Hunan House Chinese Restaurant on Seventh Avenue, both in New York City. Then I found some sheets of loose-leaf paper covered with letters and numbers, possibly calculations, but I didn’t have time to try to figure these out. Mixed in with the calculation sheets, also on loose-leaf paper, was this: “Meet you on Houston Street Thursday, usual time,” with an illegible scrawled signature.

I thought I heard the phone ring down below, but I couldn’t be sure. I found Alexander’s passport, a story on marketing techniques torn from an airline magazine, and a photocopied clipping from
The New York Times
about Senegalese peddlers selling counterfeit merchandise on the streets of New York. I was shoving the papers back in the compartment when I saw an envelope crumpled in the bottom. I fished it out and straightened it. The envelope was sealed but not postmarked, and it was addressed to me here at Mas Rose. I’d first gotten a letter like this in Paris, before my first trip to Provence and my first ghostwriting job.

Suddenly I madly, desperately, frantically wanted to get out of here. Keeping the letter, I replaced everything else and zipped the zipper. Then I heard the door to the staircase open. Alexander was on his way up.

There was nowhere to hide in the tiny room, and I couldn’t get down the stairs without being seen. As his footsteps started up I rushed out on the landing. The only hope was the other door, the one to the attic. I pushed against it, praying it wouldn’t be locked. It gave, and I slipped through it into darkness.

GOOD NEWS

I stood there, not breathing, listening to Alexander turn the corner of the staircase and go in his room. I didn’t dare move, for fear of making noise. I could barely make out shapes— boxes, some shrouded furniture, a wire birdcage. The envelope was still crushed in my hand, the anonymous letter Alexander had decided not to send. Perhaps he’d realized they weren’t working, and he’d have to come over and apply pressure in person.

He was moving around in his room. Unless he missed the letter I didn’t think I’d left traces of my presence. I shifted my weight. How long would I have to stay here in the dark?

The merciful answer came almost immediately. I heard Vivien’s voice calling, “Alex! Alex!”

“What is it?” he replied.

“Come down! Now!”

Listening to his descending footsteps, I gave thanks to Vivien, whatever her reason for summoning him. When he’d gone I left the attic and hurried down to my room. On the way, I heard Vivien’s voice drifting up the stairwell. She seemed to be on the phone. “Yes! Of course I can! Give me the address,” I heard before I closed my door.

I walked to my window, straightened the envelope, and opened it. The message was, “Stop the book! This is your last warning!”

Right. My last warning. I folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and stood staring out at the rain and the view I would have loved if everything had been different.

I couldn’t stay here. I had told Blanche I didn’t want to die for her mother’s memoirs, and it was true. On this dreariest of dreary wet evenings, I had to get out.

Leaning there in moody contemplation, I saw Vivien run out the back door, dash through the rain to the shed and go in. Soon, she and Ross emerged. She was talking to him animatedly, gesturing, her hair escaped from her chignon and streaming to her shoulders. Together, they ran back to the house.

The sight of them brought a surge of heartsickness. I left the window and got out my suitcase. Pedro’s tape was still in its hiding place, and I put Alexander’s letter in with it. I took an armful of clothes from the closet and started folding.

Not long afterward I heard Vivien pass my door, calling, “Blanche!” In a minute or two I heard the two of them go by, talking.

I continued folding. Then I emptied my dresser drawers. I was leaving Mas Rose. From a safe distance, I’d tell what I knew about Alexander and let the police— the New York police, not the constabulary of Beaulieu-la-Fontaine—take it from there. If Alexander believed I was leaving because I’d been scared away, fine.

I had learned from Alexander’s papers that he was no stranger in New York. “Houston Street Thursday, usual time,” the note had read. Houston Street was in New York, the “Ho” in the SoHo neighborhood. Missy had told me Alexander made frequent trips. Now I could guess some of those trips took him to New York, and his “business” was at least partially carried out there.

I thought Alexander had killed Carey, and Vivien was covering for Alexander. The motive? Alexander and Carey had never gotten along, and Carey was making life miserable for Alexander’s beloved mother. Alexander’s frenzied efforts to stall the book supported this theory.

Why, then, had Vivien wanted to write the book, even persisted in the face of Alexander’s objections? I supposed she had indeed needed the money, and had been arrogant enough to believe she could pull it off. She had insisted on having me as a ghostwriter, I was stung to remember, when she could have teamed up with plenty of ghostwriters in New York. I had been willing to believe she wanted me because I was good, and she admired my work. Now I wondered if she had chosen me because I was so far removed from the case.

It made sense: Choose a writer who lives in Paris, write the book on an isolated hilltop in the South of France. What better way to exercise control? The scenario had fallen apart, not from poor planning by Vivien, but because the participants were half-crazy from strain.

I gathered my cosmetics from the bathroom. The plastic hollyhock Ross had given me stood in a bottle on the shelf. I considered, then took it with me.
Vivien Howard: My Story,
by Vivien Howard with Georgia Lee Maxwell, was dead. On its ashes, I have to admit, I saw rising
The Carey Howard Murder Case: The Truth at Last,
by Georgia Lee Maxwell, which might rescue me from the financial debacle I faced. But I had to live to write it.

I’d left my papers and notes until last. I leafed through the clippings one more time: Carey’s life story according to
People;
the
New York
cover of Vivien, “Carey Howard’s Dark Lady”; the
Patrician Homes
article with the photo of Carey and Vivien in front of the glowering “Nice Boy.” I had just put them away when someone knocked.

When I answered, Ross came in. He looked at the suitcase, the open door of the empty closet. He said, “What’s going on?”

“I’m leaving.”

He frowned. “Leaving? But how did you know?”

“Know what?”

The sound of the rain filled the silence between us. Ross, I noticed, was wearing the same plaid shirt and khaki pants he’d had on the first time I saw him, on the platform at Avignon. “You’d better talk to Vivien,” he said.

They were in the living room— Alexander lounging on the sofa, Blanche tense and downcast next to him. Vivien, her hair still loosened, paced on the braided rug. “There you are!” she cried, as if overjoyed to see me. “I’ve had the most wonderful news! Carey’s estate has been settled at last.”

She looked almost witch-like, with her bedraggled hair and wild eyes. I had never seen her so happy. “Settled?” I repeated blankly. Carey’s estate had been the last thing on my mind, though obviously not the last thing on hers.

“Yes!” she crowed. “I was frantic. I was sure they’d come around before this. Now I don’t have to do the book! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Into my stupefied brain crept a thought. Vivien was backing out. If Vivien was backing out, I didn’t have to return the money. “Great,” I said.

“I thought they’d
never
work it out, but now it’s done. My lawyers are going to fax the papers to Carpentras tomorrow.”

She was so delirious with joy that my announcement of my imminent departure made little impact on her. “You can stay the night at least, can’t you?” she pressed, but seemed relieved when I said no.

Blanche wouldn’t look at me. Alexander said, “Sudden, isn’t it?”

“Perfect timing, under the circumstances,” I said.

“Now we can go home,” Vivien said. “Oh, thank God.”

So much for Blanche’s therapeutic sojourn in Provence. I said good-bye and walked out.

Ross followed. “I’ll drive you to wherever you’re going.”

“I’ll call a taxi. There must be one.”

“In this weather? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Hadn’t I known this would happen? Anyway, it was over now. “All right, then.”

He wrestled my bags down the staircase as he’d wrestled them up when I arrived. The kitchen was empty, although a delicious-smelling pot bubbled on the stove. I had hoped to see Marcelle, to explain and say good-bye, but she wasn’t around, and I didn’t want to take the time to search her out. She’d be happy, anyway, to see her troublesome tenants leave. “Tell Marcelle I said goodbye, will you?” I said to Ross.

“I don’t know if she’ll understand, but I’ll do my best.”

He slid the door open and put my bags on the stoop. “Wait here a sec, and I’ll pull the car around.” He charged out into the downpour.

I waited, shivering in the damp chill. I heard a movement behind me and turned to see Blanche, her face taut. “It’s all over,” she said in a low voice.

“I guess so.” All I could think of to say to her was, “I hope you write more poems.”

“I wrote one.” She thrust a half-sheet of paper, torn from her notebook, into my hand. I read,

Where love abides,

Hate

Must wait.

“Thank you, Blanche,” I said, but she was walking away, and Ross pulled up with the car.

A SHORT GETAWAY

“Two questions,” said Ross as we drove away.

“Yes?”

“First, where to?”

I had so firmly decided on my destination, I thought I’d told him already. “The hotel in Beaulieu-la-Fontaine.”

“That’s a short getaway.”

Short, but convenient to the talkative Missy. “I can get a bus to Avignon tomorrow, probably. Or at least to Carpentras.”

“Listen. We’re all going to Carpentras tomorrow so Vivien can see in black and white how rich she’s going to be. We could pick you up—”

“No, thanks.”

The windshield wipers clicked back and forth, back and forth. “All right,” Ross said.

My eyes were fixed on the wetly shining road and the blackness beyond as I thought about the pot simmering on the stove back at Mas Rose. Why couldn’t I have delayed my departure until after dinner? Grand gestures always cost something.

“Question two,” Ross said.

“Shoot.”

“Why are you going? You were ready to leave before Vivien told you the book was off.”

I had expected the question. “I couldn’t do the book anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Vivien hasn’t been straight with me.” The explanation was true, if partial.

“I see.”

Conversation lapsed until we were approaching Beaulieu-la-Fontaine. I was thinking hard. “You know what?” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t think Vivien ever intended to do the book. She said she thought they’d come around a lot sooner. I could have been a ploy from the beginning, to force Carey’s family to settle.”

He didn’t answer. I said, “What do
you
think?”

“She never said so, but— it’s possible, sure.”

It was possible. Vivien probably expected a settlement before I got as far as the doorstep of Mas Rose. When it didn’t happen that fast, she’d had to play me along during the negotiations. “That’s great,” I said. “She screwed me over, and the publisher—”

“She got what she wanted, didn’t she?”

The main street of Beaulieu-la-Fontaine was barely illuminated by pale orange streetlights. The café action, if there was any, had necessarily moved indoors. Ross parked in front of the hotel and, before I could dismiss him, jumped out of the car, unfurled an umbrella, and was unloading my bags from the backseat. I trailed inside after him.