Southern Charm (10 page)

Shocked or not, Sandra plowed on. "Really? Cut you slack? What about me? I've been busting my ass in every way possible to help get this business going. How about a little appreciation?"

"This was a bad idea from the start." Max wanted to stop talking, wanted to rebuild the wall that crumbled around him, but he couldn't fight the momentum. The words kept spilling out of him. "If it weren't for your ability to see all the damn ghosts, you could be off doing something you really want to do instead of being stuck in my office all the time."

"That's it right there, isn't it? My ability. You want to play this off like it's all about me being around all the time, that I'm crowding you, but the truth is that you resent the fact that you need me. You hate it that without me, you don't have a business."

Drummond coughed and said, "I don't think I should be here now. I'll come back later."

"You stay still," Sandra said and Drummond obeyed.

"I'm trying to do right by us," Max went on, his face flushed and his brain trying to find a way out of this mess of an argument. "I screwed up in Michigan ... "

"You sure did."

" ... and I'm trying to make up for it. But having you scrutinize everything I do all day long isn't helping."

"I don't scrutinize."

"It sure feels that way."

Shaking his head more to himself than anyone else, Drummond floated between the couple. "Look, you two, we have a case to solve and a painting to find. That means time is a bit of a problem. So save the fight for when you're at home. We've got work to do."

"Fine with me," Sandra said. "Drummond and I have things to do."

"Fine," Max said. "I'll go see Melinda Corkille."

So, despite his decision never to do so, Max found himself in his car heading toward Melinda Corkille — alone.

The familiar drive performed its usual trick of pumping up Max's nerves. He already was fuming over fighting with his wife. But the closer he got to the Corkille house, the more his mind jumped from Dr. Connor and Terrance Hull to Sandra and Drummond, all the time dancing away from (yet sneaking glances at) memories of Melinda Corkille's naked back as she seductively stepped towards her bedroom. He had to calm down. A spat with the wife coupled with a seductress like Melinda only meant trouble. By the time he pulled into the Corkille's driveway, his hands were sore from tapping out every song the radio played.

She was out. Her car was gone, and a brown, dented Ford sat in its place —
Super-M Maids
printed on the side. Max blotted the back of his sleeve against his sweating forehead.

The front door to the house stood ajar while the sounds of vacuum cleaners and country music drifted outside. Max scanned the surrounding area — nobody watching. He hadn't trespassed since the Stan Bowman case last year, the same case that connected him to Hull and Connor and a whole mess of trouble. Max noted the irony as he stepped from the car and slinked toward the front door.

Though his heart pounded with adrenaline, a sense of relief washed over him. At least he had avoided meeting Melinda again. By comparison, this should be easy.

Standing in the open doorway, Max leaned in and listened. The twanging music came from his left — probably the kitchen. The vacuums whined away upstairs — not a place he wanted to visit. Most important of all, no sounds came from his right.

He took off his shoes and walked across the gleaming, hardwood floors in his socks. When he reached the room with the red sofa, he took a few gulps of air and looked around. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Just an average, filthy-rich living room. No desk, no papers, no bank statements.

"Of course not," he whispered. He could hear Drummond in his head —
This was the room she brought you to. Why would she let you spend time in a room with anything important in it?

"But she's arrogant," he said. He bent over to look closer, going over the same pieces he had seen before — the same pictures, the same furniture, the same paintings, the same plants.

The door.

His head snapped up, and he stared at the narrow door with the plant in front of it. On his prior visit, he had assumed it was a broom closet. But she had him sit opposite the door, as if challenging him to see it, to ask about it.

No. I'm just reading into this.
But what if ...

Making sure none of the maids were coming his way, he pulled the heavy plant to the side and opened the door. It led down a tiny hall and opened into an art studio — an art forger's studio.

In one way, the windowless room could have been an artist's studio. Canvases, paints, and brushes all had their special spots. An easel with a cloth-covered painting dominated the middle of the room. Two smocks hung on hooks to the side of the entrance, and several bulbs hung from the ceiling.

However, the room also looked unlike a typical artist's studio. On the wall opposite Max, he saw a utility sink next to a kitchen counter and a small refrigerator. On the counter were bread, a potato, coffee, tea, olive oil, gelatin, and flour. Max opened the fridge to find eggs and milk. A stove book-ended the counter and stacked on it was a pestle and mortar, two ice trays, a scale, some plates, detergent, and various papers and boards.

Max rummaged through the counter drawers. He found quills, numerous old pens, bottles of ancient inks, and sepia. One drawer had been filled with brushes stained in ink, charcoal, chalk, and other dried mediums.

And the key detail, the one Max knew he noticed only from spending time learning from Drummond — no dust. This art forging studio was still being used. It was possible Melinda had followed in Howard's footsteps, but that did not seem likely. Melinda came off as too selfish to apply herself to the years of study required for such a thing. Of course, the alternative had yet to penetrate Max fully. He knew curses and witches were real, but to accept that somewhere in this mansion rested a two-hundred year old criminal, pushed Max's sense of the world further than it had ever gone before.

"Only one way to be sure."

Max slipped his shoes back on and walked into the kitchen. He made sure to use heavy steps, the kind that echoed throughout such a large house. One maid, a blonde girl no more than eighteen, stood on a stepstool and scrubbed at food caked across the inner face of a microwave. When she saw Max, she stepped down and wiped her hands.

"Excuse me," Max said with a disarming smile.

"Who are you?" the girl asked, lacking all the Southern friendliness he had come to know.

"I'm sorry," he said, and put out his hand. "I'm Trevor Denton." He had no clue where that name came from but did not question himself either. "I'm Ms. Corkille's personal assistant."

"What happened to Jenine?"

"She still works for Ms. Corkille, too. I've just been brought in to help out with a few things. It's a busy time right now."

Still cautious but softening a little, the maid said, "Oh. Okay, so what do you want?"

"Ms. Corkille asked for some papers but this is my first time in her house, and well, it's big."

The girl laughed. "Yeah. It took me a few times before I figured the whole thing out."

"I imagine so. But I'm pressed for time. I've got to get the papers to the courthouse today or Ms. Corkille will be very angry."

The girl blanched. Nobody wanted to see Ms. Corkille angry. "I can show you her office."

Up until this point, his bluff had been quite easy. With what little he knew, the maid seemed willing to believe just about any basic idea. The problem was now. Where would Melinda be hiding Howard? "No," he said on instinct. "She said they were in a different room."

"Which room? There are quite a few."

Which one, indeed? Howard Corkille would not be hidden in any common room or any room that the maids were expected to clean. "She wasn't too clear," Max finally said. "It sounded like she was driving when she called me. She told me it was another room but it wasn't one with a name like kitchen or bathroom or anything like that. Is she always like this?"

With a conspiratorial wink, she said, "Not always. Just most of the time."

"Because the last person I was an assistant for drove me nuts with these half-explained requests. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Go through every room in this mansion?"

"What kind of papers are these?"

"I don't know. They're in an envelope. Just get them to the courthouse. That's all I know."

"I wonder if she meant the Other Room."

"What's that?"

"Just a third guest room but she never wants it cleaned or even opened. We call it the Other Room because sometimes you hear things moving in there. If I believed in ghosts, I'd say that room was haunted. But, of course, that kind of thing is silly."

"Of course," Max said with a knowing smile.

"You better call her before you go in there, though. She's very strict about it."

"Thank you. I'll do that. Where is this room?"

"Upstairs at the end of the hall."

"Thanks again."

The maid offered her first flash of warmth — a slight curve of the lips.

Max found a set of servants' stairs from the kitchen and climbed up. He walked along the wide hall and listened to the upstairs maids working. They were in a bedroom on the left, and Max did not stop when he passed by. They either didn't notice him or didn't care. He was happy enough whichever way it was.

As he neared the end of the hall, his nerves reignited. The Other Room awaited just beyond a dark, wooden door. If he took too long, the maids might wonder about him — What's with the guy standing in front of the Other Room? That might lead to questions and then the whole thing would blow up. No, he had to do this now.

He opened the door and stepped in.

The Other Room was another guest room — enough space to place a twin bed, a bedside table, and a small chest of drawers on the side. One window spread sunlight into the dingy interior. The walls were covered in wallpaper from another era, brown vertical designs that hid dirt better than brighten the room. In the back corner, a Japanese tri-fold screen stood with a delicate painting of two birds on a ghostly limb. At the foot of the bed, a rocking chair faced the window. Max saw a man sitting in the chair.

"Mr. Corkille?" he said, his voice distant and inconsequential. "Howard Corkille?"

The rocking stopped and a single hand emerged from the side to gesture Max closer. When Max obliged, he saw a man hunched over, covered in wrinkles and age spots, destroyed by a lifetime over a century too long. The man peered up and grinned.

"Nice to see a different face," he said. He spoke with a sickening crackle that underscored every word.

Max's muscles refused to move. The man sitting before him frightened him as if he looked upon the living dead — not a rotting zombie from the movies, but rather a warm, fully fleshed but decrepit human being. Max feared to shake the offered hand, feared it might crumble in his grip.

Perhaps reading Max's expression, Corkille said, "Don't worry. You can't hurt me. Nothing can."

"The curse?" Max said, shaking the coarse, dried hand lightly.

"Oh, yes. I didn't believe in magic and curses and such until I tangled with the Hull family. Now, I know. When I was first put under this curse, I tried to prove it wasn't true." Corkille pulled back his sleeve to show long scars stretching from the crook of his arm to his wrist. "The skin would just seal back up. I once bought a shotgun and thought to blow my head off. It jammed. Every time I pointed it at myself, it jammed. Point it at the wall, no problem." Corkille gestured to the scattered holes in the wall. "Point it at myself — click."

"I can't imagine."

"After awhile, I stopped trying. Then I just got older and older. My body got weaker. My eyesight's remained. Thank the Lord for that. My hearing sucks. I smell horrible. Bladder control went out ninety years ago. Everything's failing little by little. But my mind won't ever go. Curses work that way, y'see. It won't let me have the pleasure of escaping any of this through dementia. I have to experience it every step. And I'm tired. I just want to die, just close my eyes and sleep forever."

When Corkille closed his eyes, Max thought he might fall asleep. He thought he had to keep Corkille talking, but with his next question, he found that Corkille was eager to talk with anybody. Isolation can have that effect.

"And you need the painting?" Max asked.

Corkille looked at his hands. "Painting was my life. I loved it since I was a boy. I remember an artist traveling through town, stopping wherever to do portraits to make a little money — that's when it all started for me. He gave me a brush and he taught me a bit. I caught the bug.

"My father was dead and my mother, she supported me. We worked hard to pull together enough money to get me schooled. And I learned to paint.

"I suppose some psychiatrist would blame it on being raised poor, would say that's why I took to forging. Maybe it's a little true. I certainly was attracted to the money and to thumbing my nose at the art world — they can be such asses. I don't know if this is true for all criminals, but for some of us, for me, there was an attraction to breaking laws. Not that I wanted to go hurting people but that I discovered a sense of freedom, a sense of invulnerability, that I've never found at any other time in my life.