Southern Ghost

Leaves skittered in a tiny dust devil near them. The wind soughed through the limbs of the live oaks and magnolias. The storm could not be far away. The dark sky lowered over them. The shed behind Charlotte was as dark as a cave.

Annie shivered. Charlotte's fear was contagious. The woman was consumed by terror.

'The best way to be safe is to tell us all you know,' Max urged.

'But I don't know anything!' Charlotte wailed. 'If it weren't for the gun being stolen, I'd think you were wrong, that there must have been another shot, that Ross killed the Judge like we've always thought. But the gun—' Frightened eyes stared at them.

Max looked at the rose-laden arbor that stood between the shed and the back of the house and then at Charlotte. 'Could you show us where you were that afternoon, what you were doing?'

Like a sleepwalker, Charlotte stepped inside the shed. She switched on the light and turned to the worktable. She was clearly visible through the open doorway. But when Charlotte faced them, it was obvious she would have seen nothing. The arbor blocked her view.

Just to be sure, Annie asked, 'Did you see or hear anyone go past, just before four o'clock?'

Charlotte shook her head. 'I wasn't looking toward the house. I was snipping and cutting, working on the flowers for the hall table and for the dining room. If anyone passed by, I didn't notice.'

'Charlotte'—Miss Dora was getting good at blunt ques­tions—'did you know that Whitney was in trouble with the Judge?'

'Whitney? Why, that's silly. The Judge thought Whitney was wonderful.'

Did she really believe this, Annie wondered, or had the passage of time dimmed her memory of the Judge's strained relations with his older sons?

Annie would have challenged her, but once again Maxcaught her eye. Annie chafed at the restraint. Charlotte may have thought her young husband was wonderful; it was pretty clear Augustus Tarrant didn't share her vision. But Max was right. There was no point in raking up long-ago escapades to trouble Charlotte now.

'The Judge and Whitney quarreled that morning,' Max said.

'I don't believe that!' Her lower lip jutted out. 'Who said so? I'll bet I know. Enid! Enid's trying to cause trouble. That wretched woman has always hated all of us. She's such an ingrate, after all the Judge did for her. I've never understood why she's so hateful.'

Annie stared at the older woman's suddenly spiteful face. No, Charlotte didn't understand Enid's anger. Even if Enid's fury at poverty and second-class treatment were explained, Charlotte wouldn't—with the myopia of her background: white, prosperous, landowning, and steeped in a mystic past garlanded with heroes—have understood.

'I wouldn't believe a word Enid says,' Charlotte said harshly.

Lucy Jane McKay stared somberly at the ruins of the Tarrant House Museum. 'Ashes to ashes,' she murmured. 'I don't rightly know what's right or wrong, but it's a bad thing to drag the dead out of their graves. Leave the dead to them­selves.'

'That might be the thing to do,' Max agreed quietly, 'but we must find out what happened to Courtney Kimball.'

Thunder exploded with an earthshaking roar. A sheet of brilliant white lightning cut a jagged rent in the black clouds. Wind spurted against them. Leaves and dust swirled in the heavy air.

The former Tarrant cook lifted her face to look up at the storm-freighted sky. The wind flattened her dress against her. She spoke above the growing clamor of the wind. 'It's wrong that a young girl should be taken away.' She turned to Annie. 'On the telephone, you asked me about Miz Amanda and Miz

Julia. I don't know the truth of it, but that morning the Judge told Miz Julia she would have to leave Tarrant House and take Missy and go back to her parents. I saw Miz Julia's face. It was . . . so pitiful.'

Thunder crashed nearby, followed immediately by a cascade of sheet lightning. Julia, clutching a shabby umbrella, huddled on a wooden bench near the back wall in a shady glen sur­rounded by azaleas. She looked up blankly as Miss Dora, fol­lowed by Annie and Max, ducked beneath overreaching branches of vivid crimson-flowered shrubs.

Miss Dora planted her cane firmly on a stepping stone. 'Julia, why didn't you go to lunch—the day the Judge was murdered?'

'Lunch?' Julia fingered the tassel to the umbrella. 'I don't know. I wasn't—I suppose I wasn't hungry.'

'What did the Judge say to you?' Annie asked.

Julia worked the umbrella tassel between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. Her face was slack. The dark smudges in the hollows beneath her eyes gave her an aban­doned, neglected look. 'He was so angry. Amanda tried to tell him—and he wouldn't listen.' She spoke in a rapid, dull monotone, never once looking up. 'I didn't know what I was going to do. I came out to the garden, and I dug and dug. Later, I went back and there was a hole'—her hands spread until they were two feet apart—'and I dug it.' Surprise lifted that monotone for an instant. 'I dug it. Maybe I thought I could dig my way to China—anywhere. Anywhere but home. I wasn't going to go.' Now she did look up. Her voice was suddenly childlike, but her face was older than time. 'I wasn't going to go. No matter what happened. I'd already decided that.' A quirky half-smile tilted her lips. 'Everyone's so ugly about Milam. But he promised me. He said Missy and I didn't have to go.'

Max leaned forward. 'Go where, Julia?'

'Back . . . home.' A shudder racked her thin body. 'I couldn't do that. If I did, then Missy—' Tears welled in hereyes. 'Everything was always good for Missy. Nothing ugly ever happened to her. We all loved her. And Milam did, too. But the right way. The right way.'

The three of them looked at her in silence. Max crouched on one knee by the bench and took Julia's hand, quieting the spasmodic quiver of that hand working the tassel. 'Your fa­ther—' Max's voice was gentle. 'It wasn't right, was it?'