A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (9 page)

I strolled in the direction I’d taken once before, planning to walk up the path to the cherry orchard. I plodded along the roadside, long grass brushing the legs of my white cotton pants. The road was empty, the air breathlessly quiet except for my footsteps and a creaking noise made by one of my sandals.

I reached the end of the wall and started up the path, Mount Ventoux hazy and blue on my left. I’d thought the walk would invigorate me, but I was wrong. I felt more sluggish at every step. By the time I’d started down the slope toward the wooded knoll I was thinking a nap would have been a better pastime.

The orchard was still, the pale, unripe fruit gleaming beneath motionless leaves. I surveyed it for a few minutes, then turned away. My exercise period was over.

On the way back, I had a strong impulse to find a place in the shade and sit down to rest. Part of it was probably my disinclination to watch Ross and Vivien billing and cooing back at Mas Rose. When I reached the wooded knoll, I turned off the path.

I stopped at the edge of the bushes. In truth, the spot wasn’t terribly inviting. Although it was shady, the ground was only sparsely covered with grass and didn’t look comfortable. Then I saw a patch of red in the midst of the trees.

I stood still, trying to make out what it was. It was equally still, lit by a dapple of sunlight coming through the covering leaves. My breath was making an inordinate racket in my ears. I ducked under low branches and entered the glade.

Brown leaves crackled under my feet as I ducked branches and made my way toward the red patch. The light was subdued, and there was a woody, dusty smell. I reached a small clearing and saw the red object—a bandanna, spread over a bush as if to dry. Hanging beside it, better camouflaged, was an olive-drab canteen. And parked behind the bush, all but hidden, was a black motorcycle.

My hands were perspiring. I said, tentatively, “Hello?
Bonjour?”

No answer.

I approached the bush, leaves and twigs snapping noisily under my feet with each step. The motorcycle was a Yamaha, and a black helmet with a smoked-plastic face screen dangled by its strap from the handlebars. The bandanna was the usual Western-style handkerchief, red with a white pattern. On the border was the legend, in white script resembling a lariat, “Bingo’s Buckaroo BBQ.”

I wanted to get out of there. The atmosphere had a sinister edge. The motorcyclist might be crouched nearby, watching me. I pushed my way out and hurried back to the path.

I felt safer when I was over the rise and could see Mas Rose. Admittedly, I was spooked, although riding a motorcycle, even parking it in the woods, wasn’t illegal in France. The cyclist and his canteen and his “Bingo’s Buckaroo BBQ” bandanna would probably be gone tomorrow, on the way to the Cote d’Azur.

Ross was alone on the blanket when I returned, lying stretched out with an arm crooked over his eyes. At my approach, he half-sat and squinted up at me. “How was your jaunt into the countryside?”

I didn’t feel like mentioning the motorcycle. “Fine. Where’s Vivien?”

“She thought she’d gotten enough sun.” He picked up a glass containing the dregs of a Bloody Mary and waved it temptingly in front of me. “Want a drink?”

My nerves were jangling. “Sure.”

“Coming right up. Wait here.” He got up and walked to the house, picking his way across the stones in his bare feet. I sat down on the blanket, feeling worn out and, despite my hat, dazed by the sun.

He was back in a few minutes with two Bloody Marys. He stopped a couple of yards from me and said, “You look wonderful there. ‘Woman in a Straw Hat.’ ”

I struck a pose, and he said, “No kidding. The sun on the gold straw and the irises in the background. Your hair is a great shade of auburn.”

I’d have to tell Caspar, my colorist at the Institut de Beauté. “Thanks.”

He approached and knelt down to hand me my drink. “Long, straight nose,” he said, studying my face. “Gray eyes. Almost prim, but the mouth makes the difference.”

I moved my head. “Stop it.”

“Don’t turn away.” I looked at him again, and he said, “I could almost draw you. Just a sketch. I almost think I could.”

He wouldn’t joke about that. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Save me,” he said.

We stared at each other. His skin was pink from the sun, with a swarm of new freckles over the bridge of his nose. I was aware, without looking at it, that a drop of perspiration had slid down the side of his neck and into the hair on his chest. My lips moved, but I had no idea what I was about to say.

His eyes dropped. He smiled wryly and drew back to sit beside me. He said, “God. Mad dogs and Englishmen, eh?” and reached to click his glass with mine. “Cheers.”

I felt frustrated, let down. When we’d sipped I said, “Save you from what?”

He shrugged. “Forgive the melodrama.” I didn’t answer, and he went on, “Save me from wretched fucking choices that were made long ago and that nobody can save me from, and only a jerk would be weak enough to ask, even if he were half-looped and in a bad way besides.”

“Well put,” I said.

He shouted with laughter and clapped me on the back. “What a joy it is to be around someone healthy.”

I shook my head. “I’m as sick as anybody else.”

“I doubt
that.”
He took a long swallow of his drink.

I drank, too, and felt my eyes water as the vodka slammed into my empty and overwrought stomach. To change the subject, I said, “Blanche seems unhappy.”

His eyes saddened. “She’s been miserable ever since I’ve known her.”

“When did you meet?”

“The exact same moment I met Vivien, when I went to Carey’s apartment for dinner after he’d bought ‘Nice Boy.’ The instant I saw Vivien, I was— bewitched. In my memory of that evening, Blanche is a blur.”

I was already woozy. “I think she’s in love with you.”

“Oh, Christ. I know it.” He sounded deeply disturbed.

As if on cue, troubadour music drifted from Blanche’s open window. I remembered Blanche under the olive trees, reading,
“Lovely lover, gracious, kind
—”

Ross looked up at the window and said, “I’ve even thought of doing something about it.”

I felt a spurt of consternation. “You’re attracted to her?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I thought about doing it just— to make Blanche happy.”

“How generous of you,” I said. “I doubt Vivien would want you to sacrifice yourself.”

He ignored my waspish tone. “Vivien wouldn’t mind. That’s not her style.”

I was amazed. Ross and Vivien seemed to fancy themselves among the great lovers of the decade. I had assumed insane jealousy was included among the affair’s other trappings, yet Ross was telling me Vivien would be willing for him to sleep with her daughter.
“What
isn’t her style?”

“Let me tell you something.” He pointed a finger at me. His glass was two-thirds empty. “Any man who gets involved with Vivien learns pretty soon that he’s going to play second fiddle.”

“Second fiddle to—”

“Second fiddle to the man she really loves.”

I looked at him quizzically. He couldn’t be talking about Carey Howard. “You mean Denis McBride?”

“Denis? Denis was a two-bit boozer who used to slap her around. Forget Denis.”

I had a crazed instant of wondering if yet another man were hovering in Vivien’s background, like the Mystery Man in the Brenda Starr comic strip I had adored as a child. “Well, who?
What
man she really loves?”

“Alexander.”

“Her
son?”

“Her son.”

I moved away from him, backing off from this news. “Come on, Ross. You don’t mean they actually—”

He leaned forward and patted my shoulder in a “calm down” gesture. “No, I don’t mean they actually. I mean, he’s the one for her. The one she cares about.”

Blanche had said the same thing.
They’ll always have their secrets, their bonds.
“So where does that leave you?”

He put down his empty glass and held his arms as if poised to play a violin. “Sawing away at second fiddle.” Moving his bow arm, he whistled a couple of bars of “Turkey in the Straw.”

My glass was empty, too, and all my limbs felt leaden. “Vivien was with you the night Carey was killed, right?” I said.

He lay back on the blanket. “Vivien was with me the night Carey was killed,” he said, as if by rote.

“At your place.”

“At my place.”

The music droned on. I was leaning back, my weight on one hand, and I felt his hand cover mine. His palm was damp, feverishly hot. “You made a wonderful picture,” he said. “I almost thought I could do it, for a second or two there.”

“I wish—” I said, but then I heard the motorcycle. I pulled my hand away and jumped to my feet, but by the time I got to the gate, the cyclist had disappeared down the hill.

AN INTERVIEW

My afternoon nap wasn’t too different from passing out, and I woke a couple of hours later, sweaty, hung over, and depressed. I felt threatened from all sides, not least by my own feelings. I was confused, and, unfortunately, not unmoved, by Ross’s attentions. He obviously was, as he’d said, in a bad way. Life had taught me that when a man in a bad way reaches out to a woman, the woman frequently ends up in a bad— even a worse— way herself. Which didn’t keep “Save me” from being a devilishly intriguing request.

To restore self-respect, I took a long shower, washed my hair, and dressed in linen pants and shirt. To complete my rehabilitation, I decided to work for a while, transcribing my interviews with Vivien.

Transcribing tapes is laborious, exacting, and no fun. The worst part, for me, is listening to my own hemmings and hawings and inanities. Some ghostwriters avoid it entirely by handing their tapes over to professionals, but I didn’t think I’d find a secretary able to do English transcriptions in Beaulieu-la-Fontaine. Since I wanted to go over the transcripts before I returned to Paris, I was doing my own. Dolefully, but with the sanctimonious attitude of one who has planted her feet firmly on the path of righteousness, I donned the headphones and got to work.

Twilight was deepening, and I’d switched on my lamp when Pedro appeared at the door. He was natty as usual, his white shirt and slacks setting off his hair and tan. “Drinks in five minutes. You coming down?” he said.

The thought of alcohol was loathsome. “I’ve sworn off. I’m in the middle of something here, anyway. See you at dinner.”

“Whatever.” He lingered. “More tapes?”

“Right.” I was glad for the opportunity to talk with Pedro. I took off the headphones and said, “Trying to get a fix on the circumstances of the murder.”

“Yeah?” He accepted my tacit invitation to chat, coming in and leaning against the wall near my table. “What a night.”

“You were in the apartment the whole time, I understand.”

“Yeah. In my place. Watching the tube.”

I picked up a pencil and pulled my yellow pad toward me. “Do you mind telling me? Letting me take a few notes?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Sure. Go ahead.”

I poised the pencil. “You were saying, you were there the whole time.”

“Yeah. Watching the tube all night. Then around eleven I wanted a ham sandwich. I’ve got my own apartment, see, with a kitchenette, but I didn’t happen to have any mustard. I went out to the big kitchen to get some, and I saw the light on in the living room. I thought, hey, maybe Carey wants a sandwich or a drink or something. I went in to ask him, and— there he was.”

I was writing furiously. He stood watching, then said, “Why don’t you make a tape? Save yourself the work?”

I had thought being taped might intimidate him, but if he was this eager, why not? “I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I mean, I told it to the cops a hundred times. Why not to you?”

“Great.” I slipped the cassette with Vivien’s interview on it out of the recorder, put in a new tape, and pushed the “record” button. “Why don’t you start from the beginning again?”

He repeated, then went on, “I knew he was dead right away. There was blood around. His head was kind of caved in, and he was lying there very awkward-looking, like he’d been picked up and dropped. Right under the gorilla deal that was hanging on the wall.”

“You mean Ross’s art work? ‘Nice Boy’?”

“Yeah. If Carey hadn’t been dead, it would’ve been kind of comical. Like he’d been attacked by King Kong. They said he’d been there for a couple hours. Jeez. And I never heard a thing.”

“But earlier, you heard—”

“Oh, sure, I heard them scrapping. Carey and Vivien. That was before the match came on TV. But it was no big deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they scrapped all the time. They weren’t getting along too good. Carey had told me already they were getting a divorce.”

“Carey sort of— confided in you?”

He shrugged. “We’d been together quite a while, you know? I was there when he got divorced the first time around. He didn’t keep a lot of secrets from me.”

“How did you meet him?”

He chuckled reminiscently. “I was a waiter in a restaurant. Carey came in for lunch several times a week, and he always sat at my table. We’d talk sometimes, the way you do. When he and his first wife were about to split he needed somebody to look after his new place, so he asked me.”

“And it worked out.”

“Sure. Yeah. I didn’t have a family or anything, so— sure.”

“You told me he was a nice guy.”

Pedro wasn’t one for extravagant encomiums. “He was OK. He wasn’t a monster, like some people would tell you.”

The identity of “some people” was obvious. “You were around when he was courting Vivien,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What did you think about it?”

His expression became even more unreadable. “It didn’t work out too good in the end, did it?”

No argument there. I asked, “Who do you think killed him?”

He raised his eyebrows. “If I knew, I’d have told the cops.”

“Sure. But—”

“Could be somebody got in, you know? Thought they’d steal something. The doormen were out of the way and all. Somebody got in the building, broke in the apartment. Say Carey went to the can. He comes back and finds the person there, and the person panics, and whammo.”