Emily's Ghost (31 page)

She stopped and turned the
full force of her fury on him, tucking her chin down like a bull
before the charge. "You've got a hell of a nerve! I'm trying to fit
you in my life the best I can, and you're wrecking it! Do
you
understand?
You're destroying my relationship with this man!"

"Ye wouldn't even know the
bastard if it weren't for me!"

"I knew him when you were
just a glimmer in Kimberly's eye! And things would've moved right
along in a normal way if it weren't for
you!
The least you could've done was
prove to him you exist. I mean, this is idiotic! You nearly kill me
to show me who and what you are, and all Lee gets is a burned-out
light bulb. What am I supposed to do with
that?
I don't blame Lee at
all.
I blame you, Fergus."

"Fine! Ye want me to go
back there and blow Millie's computer records to smithereens? Hey,
make my day! What do I care if yer pal never submits another bill
to Congress? I'm off to do yer bidding!"

"No! No, no, no," she
cried when he disappeared. "Come back here, you! Right now!" she
screamed. The rain was streaming down her face; her wet hair clung
to her cheeks and neck; and her cotton skirt was plastered against
her legs like a big wet washrag. "Right now, I said!" she yelled at
the top of her lungs.

There weren't many
pedestrians on the street at that hour on a Sunday in the rain. But
the ones there were, well dressed and tucked under sturdy black
umbrellas, edged closer to the buildings, giving her a wide
berth.

Fergus suddenly
reappeared, cool, dry, and invincible.
"Now
what?" he sneered. "Ye want me
to spell out his name in lights across the downtown
sky?"

She stood there in the
middle of the sidewalk, looking like a drowned cat. "He's important
to me, Fergus. Don't you understand that? Can't you see I'm in love
with him?"

She saw him recoil, as if
she'd landed a blow to his solar plexus. It was a hit, a palpable
hit. He stood there, flushed and oddly appealing, his green eyes
intense and stricken. She could hear his agitated breathing, see
his chest rise and fall under his brown corduroy vest. For the
first time since she'd known him, she forgot completely that he was
a phantom.

"What difference can that
make?" he said at last. "He's not in love with ye."

Now it was her turn to
recoil from the blow. Fergus was a ghost, with knowledge she could
never hope to have on earth. He must know if Lee was or wasn't in
love or could or couldn't ever get that way.

"If he loved ye he'd
believe ye, ye simpleton," Fergus added in a growl. "If ye were
mine, I'd accept yer every word as God's own. If ye said the moon
was hot, I'd believe ye. If ye said ye could fly, I'd believe ye.
If ye said ye could pluck a mountain and drop it in the sea, I'd
believe ye. Ye're
not
mine," he added in a voice hoarse with indignation, "and I
still believe every blessed word ye say."

The rain was falling more
gently now, and it mixed and ran with the tears on her cheeks.
"Fergus ... I'm sorry ..."

"Nothin' to be sorry
over," he said stoically. "The young ones have an expression, don't
they? 'Life's a bitch, and then ye die.' As near as I can tell,
life's a bitch, and then ye die, and then life seems to be a bitch
all over again." He laughed bitterly.

She held out her hand to
him, forgetting completely that he couldn't possibly take it. To
her astonishment a passerby, an elderly man in a dark green
raincoat, pressed a five-dollar bill into her open palm. "Take
this, child," he said. "There's a shelter not two miles from here.
You can catch the bus at the corner. Never give up hope. Things
will get better. There are people all around you who
care."

He hurried on his way, and
when Emily turned around, Fergus was gone. She felt more destitute
than ever.

The feeling stayed with
Emily through the next morning as she set out early for Newarth
City Hall. It didn't help that it was still raining. Rain was
depressing. Rain was slow going. The dull slip-slap of the
windshield wipers kept time to her mood while she tried to sort
things out.

Even though she'd told
Fergus she didn't blame Lee for not believing her, she
did
blame Lee. And even
though she'd accused Fergus of wrecking her life, Fergus had now
become a necessary part of her life.
In
other words, I lied. Or I'm hopelessly confused.

At this point she had no
idea where she stood with either Lee or Fergus; her emotional life
was truly a shambles. Maybe that's why Hessiah Talbot's murder
suddenly looked so appealing; it, at least, was a problem with a
solution. Fergus was right. It was time to stop hemming and hawing
and trying to work Lee into the equation. It was time to
just do it.

Emily spent the next hour
and a half in the dreary basement of Newarth's City Hall poring
over old taxpayer rolls. She had her fingers crossed that Hattie
Dunbart's memory was as sharp as her tongue. If Hattie's uncle Eric
really had found the necklace in his father's house, then either
Mayor Abbott was the murderer, or -- less likely -- he'd been host
to the murderer. Granted, it was circumstantial evidence, but
circumstantial evidence was better than no evidence at
all.

She ran her finger down
the 1892 list of taxpayers:

"Abbott, Alfred; Abbott,
Carl; Abbott, Francis;
Abbott,
Henry.
Here we go," she murmured to
herself at the battered oak table she was sharing with a couple of
paralegals.

"Oh, no." Henry Abbott's
address at the time of his suicide was listed as "Talbot Manor."
"Oh,
no."
This
was not exactly an interesting twist. This was a cruel and
diabolical open end. If Henry Abbott had actually bought and lived
in Talbot Manor, then she had not only all the Abbotts to consider
-- God knows, there were enough of them in the 1892 Newarth
directory -- but the whole damn Talbot entourage as
well.

She remembered from the
trial accounts that several Talbot cousins were staying at the
manor at the time of the murder, not to mention the usual suspects
that Fergus had rounded up for her: the large staff, the itinerant
peddlers, even the parish priest who played a game of whist on
occasion at the manor. Add to that all the mill employees who
must've trafficked through the place.

There were thousands of
suspects! Ever since she'd interviewed Hattie, she'd pretty much
had her mind made up. It was obvious. The mayor did it. Now, who
knew? Maybe the darn butler did it. Maybe she'd never know who did
it. And where would that leave Fergus? Once again she found herself
beating back the panic that lay so near the surface
nowadays.

She left City Hall under a
new and blacker cloud than the one dropping steady rain on her. On
a whim she drove past Talbot Manor, half intending to pop in on
Maria Salva and see how things were going. She rolled toward the
manor in first gear, but at the last minute she crept on by. The
memory of the recent fire was too fresh. She felt something of
Fergus's horror at the place now. In the rain it looked bigger,
darker, slicker: altogether forbidding.

Besides, when and if she
did go, she wanted to have the time and an excuse to stay and
snoop. She chose instead to drop in at the Newarth Library, which
was as empty as ever. She found the energetic Mrs. Gibbs in a tiny
cubbyhole just big enough to fit a card table holding a hot plate,
some cups and saucers, and a fresh-baked Bundt cake.

The librarian's tired face
lit up when she saw Emily. "How nice!" she said, and immediately
sat Emily down on a folding chair she produced. "Have a piece of my
lemon poppyseed cake. It's the closest thing to sunshine we'll see
today."

She poured strong,
percolated coffee into a cup and handed it to Emily with a thick
wedge of glazed cake. Then she dragged out a second chair and
unfolded it. "I don't like to have my coffee in the library," she
explained, easing her heavy burden onto the metal seat. "It sets a
poor example." Emily had no idea for whom.

So the two of them huddled
knee to knee in an oddly cozy way, as if they were sneaking treats,
while Mrs. Gibbs plied Emily with questions about her article on
Hessiah Talbot.

"I'm pinning my hopes on
you, dear," she insisted.
Boston
Journal
can put Newarth back on the
map.

"Mrs. Gibbs! About all
this article can do for Newarth is bring a few curiosity seekers
into Talbot Manor."

"If there
is
a Talbot Manor by
then," the librarian said darkly. "That fire was so
unnecessary
.
The whole place could've burned down. Instead of
obsessing on the plumbing, Frank Salva should be fixing up the
wiring.

"He's
a plumber, Mrs. Gibbs," Emily reminded her.

"So what? That's not the
reason the tower sits idle. The reason is," she said, lowering her
voice, "that Maria won't let Frank touch it. She won't even let
him
in
it.
I don't like to tell tales out of school, but --
well, there's something strange about that woman lately." She put
her cup back in its saucer with a decisive little clack.

Emily stabbed the next
bite of cake with her fork. "Maria did seem high-strung to me," she
ventured casually.

"Overwound and
overwrought," Mrs. Gibbs said. "I've known her for only two years,
though I've known Frank forever. When Maria came here from France,
I thought she was simply shy, you know, because she didn't know
anyone. Now I'm not so sure."

"She's not American? She
speaks perfect English."

"I think one of her
parents was American. Her name is Marie, but Frank likes to call
her Maria. It's very hard to get her to talk about her past. Or
about anything, for that matter. All I really know about her is
that she's intensely religious. I believe she was raised in a
convent during part of her childhood."

Emily was a little
crestfallen.
So much for the young, bored
wife theory.
"Well, she's living in the
perfect house, then," Emily said lightly. "The main floor is a
regular Gothic cathedral."

"Oh, she adores the manor.
Frank likes to joke that she fell in love with the house before she
fell in love with him."

"That's interesting;
somehow I thought they bought it together."

"Not at all. Frank was
doing some contract work for the previous owner, a financially
strapped young man who finally gave up and sold it to Frank
outright. Maria showed up in Newarth just before the closing. She
and Frank were married less than three months later. It was all
very romantic. At the time."

"There are no
children?"

"Oh, no; I doubt there
will be any. Some women are too independent for children, while
others are too dependent, if you know what I mean. Maria is one of
the latter. She needs to bend her will to someone, and that's not a
very good thing to do with children.
You'll
have children, Emily. I've
had children. But not Maria, no."

"Does she submit herself
so completely to Frank?"

"I'm sure she doesn't.
I've never seen any sign that she's devoted to Frank. They kind of
go their separate ways. Frank seems puzzled and hurt by it. Well,
of course there'
s
the age difference. Frank and I grew up together; he's no
spring chicken."

"Whom
does
she bend her will to, in that
case?"

Mrs. Gibbs laughed,
surprised by the naïveté of the question. "Why, I suppose, to
God."

Emily nodded. It would
explain the faraway look. "But then why did she marry Frank?" she
asked, still not convinced.

"That, my dear, is the
sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Another slice? I oughtn't to
eat it all myself; the cholesterol is wicked high. The only reason
I can think of," she continued, cutting herself another thick
wedge, "is the obvious one: She was alone in the States and Frank
offered her security. An introspective woman like her would never
have many friends. Maybe she realized that about
herself."

"There is one other
possibility," Emily began, reluctant to admit to such cynicism.
"Does Frank have much money?"

"Emily,
really.
Does Maria look
like a gold digger to you? Besides, Frank is mortgaged to the hilt.
He bought at peak; the place is probably worth less now than it was
two years ago. I half expect the Salvas to walk away from the
property and let the bank have it."

"Have we figured out yet
why Maria is so possessive about the tower?" Emily asked
blandly.

"We
haven't figured out much of anything, dear," the librarian
answered in a dry but amused tone. "You're busily pumping me for
everything you can get. But I understand. You're a newspaperwoman;
you're supposed to do that. Just make sure you write a bang-up
story about us."