Southern Ghost

and him. No gun turned up. So Wells told him to stay away from Tarrant House and left it at that. But, as Walker drove off, Annie knew he was looking back at the house.

There hadn't been, of course, any resolution to the break-in. The only certain fact was that the loaded gun was gone. Not a cheerful prospect.

And she didn't share Wells's conviction that all would be well so long as he was present.

She finished her cookie, then poured the coffee and bent over to kiss the tip of Max's ear. Surely it was time to quit work for the night.

'Oh, yeah,' he said positively. But it was rather more of an automatic response than she had hoped for, and he kept right on writing on his legal pad.

Annie refreshed his mug and her own, then dropped onto the chaise longue. She yawned. 'Maybe Wells is the murderer. You know, maybe the Judge caught him out in something and the chief slipped into Tarrant House that Saturday afternoon and shot the Judge and slipped right back out. Then Ross came in and maybe his mother had got there just before him and he walked in and she was holding the gun and—'

Max finished writing with a flourish, ripped off the top sheet, and leaned over the coffee table to hand it to her. 'Here's what we need to find out.'

She looked at Max's list.MAY 9, 1970

What was Whitney doing in the garage? He claims he didn't see anyone from the garage window, so why did he look puzzled when we talked about it this morning?

Why was Amanda upset? Who might know? Why was the Judge buying her a condo in Florida?

Did Charlotte know about Whitney's involvement with the woman a client was suing for divorce? Did she know about the Judge's decision to force Whitney out of the family firm? Did Charlotte and the Judge have a dis­ agreement?

Why was Julia crying in the garden?

How upset was Milam about his father's assumptions in regard to the nature of his relationship with Joan Cran­dall?

Where was each person in the house at the critical time (approximately four o'clock)?

How could the Judge's study be approached?

What did Ross see?

The authorities described Amanda Tarrant's death as an accident, while believing it was suicide. Who was the last person to see her? What happened the day she died?

Miss Dora alibied herself when she said she saw Ross in the garden at the time of the shot. Was she telling the truth—about herself? Could she have been in the study? Ross wasn't here to say where he was.

No one could prove where Sybil was. Could she have decided she wanted not only Ross but their rightful place in Chastain? Did Sybil even then give a damn?

Annie took a bite from her peanut butter cookie. Either the sugar or the list produced a spurt of energy. With a flourish, she gave Max an admiring salute. 'Right on, Sherlock.' He had certainly winnowed through what they'd learned and come up with a succinct, to-the-point list of all the questions raised by their new knowledge.

Max accepted her tribute with an almost modest smile. 'A good detective has to discard the irrelevant.'

Was there a hint, just a hint, of complacency there? A suggestion that others (and we all knew who that would be) were bogged in minutiae, unable to ascertain what was mean­ingful?

Although Annie would never admit to competitive feelings with her live-in sleuth, she was just a tad irritated. Her eyes slitted. Grace Latham might expect to be treated like a dim­wit by Colonel Primrose; Annie wasn't having any.

Grabbing her notebook, she wrote furiously. In a moment, she ripped out the sheet and thrust it toward him.

Max studied her conclusions, which were, she would have admitted had she been pressed, not organized well in terms of time and space, but they got to the damn point. After all, what really counted in murder? Motives, of course.

MOTIVES IN THE MURDER OF JUDGE TARRANT

Whitney—To prevent expulsion from the law firm. Does Whitney have the guts? Was it the cornered-animal syn­drome? In re the torching of Charlotte's museum, was there some written evidence that could have convicted Whitney? What kind of threat would Courtney Kimball be? (Was the attack on her, no matter by whom, a desper­ate effort to maintain the facade of suicide—heart attack that had survived through the years?)

Charlotte—To protect Whitney. (If she knew about the Judge's plan to have the firm expel Whitney?) Actually, did she give that much of a damn about Whitney? Their marriage certainly didn't seem like a passionate one. What was it like twenty years ago? Beyond concern about Whit­ney, she apparently had no personal motive. And it was beyond belief that she would have torched her museum. Tarrant House and its occupants, past and present, were her only passion in life.

Milam—Anger over his father's conclusions about his spon­sorship of Joan Crandall. Was that the final blow in a longline of emotional hurts? As for the museum, no doubt Milam would have enjoyed setting it on fire.

Julia?

Here, Annie's pen had faltered. So Julia was a drunk in a bad marriage; what did that have to do with the price of apples? There didn't seem to be any reason at all for her to shoot the Judge. Hell, Julia should have shot Milam and saved everybody a lot of trouble.

'It has to be one of them,' Annie concluded. 'Unless Miss Dora's conned everybody