Nightwalkers cr-4 Page 13

  "Sounds like a wet-brain to me," he said.

  "Agreed, but I'm not the running type. Makes my feet hurt."

  "Personally? I'd probably want to go a round or two with him, too. Professionally? Your people are right. You're all alone, way behind the power curve, and there's nobody like a slate-eye for cold planning. You haven't closed on that land deal yet, have you?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, then, you won't have lost anything, except maybe your earnest money. Put your dogs in that new Suburban and get out of there. This evening. Go somewhere totally illogical. It might just be that you and Glory's End just wasn't meant to be."

  His mention of the plantation surprised me. "You think there's a connection?" I asked.

  There was the slightest hesitation before he answered. "That place," he said and then stopped for a moment. "That place has a bloody history. Some folks around here believe it's cursed, starting with the feud between the two families, and then what happened at the end of the War. It seems to attract blood violence."

  "Kind of like I do," I said. "Maybe we're well suited after all."

  "Your call, Lieutenant," he said. "And if you need po-lice, we'll come anytime you dial 911. But my advice? Get out. Get away from this guy. Regroup, and then see what's what."

  Regroup, I thought. Everyone wants me to regroup. "All good advice, Sheriff," I said. "Tell me, what does one wear to afternoon tea at Laurel Grove?"

  "Oh, my," he said. "Aren't you the social climber. Is Ms. Hester Lee going to be pouring?"

  "Don't know."

  "Well, assuming yes, let's see. Gray wool trousers over polished riding boots. Long-sleeved, formal shirt, with ruffles. A narrow black ribbon tie and a satin waistcoat. A dark gray thigh-length afternoon jacket, gray gloves, and a walking stick. Don't forget your top hat and your calling cards. If you need to carry, it will have to be a derringer in your boot top."

  "Unh-hunh."

  "You did ask."

  "Jeans won't hack it?"

  "That's a big N-O. Or, better yet, take a rain check on the tea party. Tell them you simply have nothing to wear. Get the flock out of there. Your psycho-ghost doesn't sound like a tea drinker to me."

  I thanked him for all the advice and said I'd think about it. Then I called the guys back at the office and reported what the sheriff had said. They waited for me to say that I was going to follow the consensus. I reminded them that consensus was not my style. That got me a chorus of oooohh's, and one of them did a passable reprise of the whistle from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. No respect. I decided to go to tea.

  I hate tea.

  High tea at Laurel Grove was just about as surreal as encountering the major in the moonlight. I showed up promptly at five, wearing a blue blazer, a long-sleeved business shirt with tie, and gray slacks. I hadn't had a tie on in a long time. It felt like a noose, or a slave collar. Mrs. Johnson greeted me rather formally at the door and escorted me to the drawing room to the right of the main hall. There was another drawing room behind closed doors, on the left-hand side of the hall. A large formal staircase went up and around the entrance hall. There were two doors giving access to the middle landing, and then another flight of stairs to the actual second floor.

  The house inside was absolutely locked in the time warp. Heart-pine floors were polished with what smelled like real beeswax. The carpets were oriental and thin from decades of use. There were unlit candles everywhere on tables and in wall sconces, and the furniture was covered in slipcovers and antimacassars. There was a small fire going in the fireplace, although it was easily sixty-five outside. A large if plain chandelier hung in the main hall, filled with candles. There were dozens of dark portraits on the walls, mostly of Lee ancestors, I assumed.

  The ladies were in position when I arrived. That's what it looked like, as if they'd been set up as stage props in a Civil War movie. Ms. Valeria was dressed all in white, and Ms. Hester, whom I was meeting for the first time, was all in black. I was sure there was significance to the color scheme but didn't know what it was. The sheriff had been right: There was a silver calling card tray right next to the drawing room entrance. Unfortunately I was fresh out of calling cards. Mrs. Johnson showed me into the room, bowed slightly, then left.

  "Mother, may I present Lieutenant Cameron Richter?" Valeria said. She did not stand up but continued to sit in the large chair with her back straight as a ramrod.

  Ms. Hester looked to be in her early seventies, although it was hard to tell. As Cubby had said, they were both well preserved. There was a definite resemblance between mother and daughter, but the femininity had long ago drained out of Ms. Hester's face. I was reminded of that sepia-colored picture of the last empress of China, with her rigid hair, dark, almost black eyes under penciled brows, squared shoulders, and white, bony hands. Cubby had said she rode daily, and she certainly looked fit.

  "Welcome to Laurel Grove, sir," she pronounced in a refined southern accent. "Please do sit down."

  There was one chair that obviously had been positioned for me, and I sat down. There was an empty, slightly larger chair to Ms. Hester's immediate right, and I wondered if the major was going to join us. I noticed the portrait hanging over the fireplace. It displayed a handsome young man dressed in what looked like a cavalry uniform, and I wondered if it was an early portrait of the major.

  "Mr. Richter was a policeman, Mother. He was a lieutenant in the sheriff's office, down in the city. Now he is retired."

  "Are you retired, Mr. Richter?" Hester asked. "You seem much too young to be retired."

  "Retired from active police work, Ms. Hester," I replied. "I run a company down in Triboro that does investigations work for private individuals."

  "Ah, so then you are a private detective, is that it?" She was speaking as if she were going through the motions, asking about me and my work but not really very interested. Valeria had an idle smile on her face, as if she were waiting for the real fun to start.

  "In a manner of speaking, yes. We do investigation work for people who're unwilling to wait for the police to get around to it, or who are dissatisfied with what the police have already done."

  "I see," she said. There was a clattering noise from the main hallway, and Hester frowned. Apparently the tea cart was supposed to make a more stealthy approach. She gave Mrs. Johnson a disapproving look when that worthy rounded the corner with an eighteenth-century wheeled tea trolley, complete with a silver tea service and the smallest cookies I'd ever seen. Mrs. Johnson ignored the look, which told me that there was probably something of a long-standing guerrilla war going on between the domestic and the madam of the house.

  After we went through the one-lump-or-two drill, Hester asked me what I planned to do with Oak Grove plantation. I told her, while trying not to spill any tea from a cup that seemed to be made from a single eggshell. I hate tea in all its forms, which meant that I would be trying to balance a full cup for the duration of the call. I used the word "preserve" liberally, as Carol had suggested.

  "Do you know, Mr. Richter," Hester said, "that there are many connections between Laurel Grove and Oak Grove? I do not approve of the new name, as you may have noticed. I believe it's rather like renaming a ship, which, tradition has it, invites bad fortune."

  "I'm very new here, Ms. Hester," I said. "The history is what it is, I suppose. I wouldn't presume to rename it again."

  She nodded at that. I think she liked that I-wouldn't-presume part.

  "I've noticed that the gates have been returned," she said. I then explained about Carol Pollard and how she was going to help me with the project.

  "Valeria here knows quite a bit about that house, Mr. Richter," she said when I was finished. "She took care of Mrs. Tarrant for some years, and of course Valeria was born and grew up here on the plantations."

  Ms. Valeria was studying her tea while Hester launched into a recitation about how long the Lees had been here and how much Valeria knew about all that rich and immensely interesting history. She was sp
eaking almost as if her daughter were either somewhere else or an item being offered for sale at an auction. I took it all on board, slowly recognizing that Hester was, in a way, shopping her daughter to the new bachelor in the neighborhood. I almost laughed when I figured it out, until I caught a subtle warning glance from Valeria. I realized then that I really was a player in a carefully staged scene and that Valeria expected me to do my duty and humor the old lady. Patience Johnson had retired to the main hallway, where she sat in a hall chair, hands crossed in her lap, the servant in waiting. How does she do it? I wondered.

  "I look forward to learning a great deal from Ms. Valeria," I said when Hester finally ran out of steam. "Carol Pollard has warned me that the restoration project will take some time, years probably."

  "Do you already know what you want to do with the house?"

  "Well, safety issues first, wiring, plumbing, that sort of thing. Then a repaint inside, especially those ceilings with all the occult artwork. I want to restore it to contemporary livability without hurting the historical aspects. Like I said, it'll take years, probably."

  Hester nodded slowly. Suddenly she looked preoccupied.

  "It took more than a few years to get it to where it is," Valeria said, rejoining the conversation at last. "Some of them more difficult than others."

  "Yes, I can imagine," I said. "One of the first things I wish to do is to restore that cemetery up by the river bridge. I think those folks deserve a little more respect than an empty field."

  "Rubbish," declared Hester. "They failed in their duty. They allowed some Georgia riffraff to steal the Confederate government's historical legacy. They did not fire a single shot. They are buried exactly as they should be, as discards, to be summarily forgotten."

  "Mother," Valeria said gently, "Oak Grove will be Mr. Richter's to do with as he sees fit. We must trust in his good judgment now."

  Hester gave me a semistony look. "I would hope that good judgment is indeed the governing rule," she said. "The weight of Lee family history will be sitting squarely on your shoulders, young man."

  "Really."

  "Yes, really. In my opinion, you will hold that property in trust, and if the need arises, the Lees in this county can make your ownership of it a tenuous matter indeed."

  "In trust? I thought it was going to be in fee simple absolute. At least that's what the deed's going to say."

  There was a moment of strained silence. Hester fixed me with a stare that would have done an eagle proud.

  "A deed, sir," she said slowly, "is only as good as the provenance of the title. The title to that property is a matter of complex history."

  "I don't doubt that, Ms. Hester," I said. "That's why I'm having an attorney do a complex title search, all the way back to just before the carpetbagger era."

  "Yes," she said. "So we understand. Whatley Lee, if I'm not mistaken?"

  "Right."

  "He is a cousin, sir."

  "A good title search lawyer, I'm told. An officer of the court, and a man of principle. Is that the Whatley Lee we're talking about?"

  "Without doubt, Mr. Richter," she said, putting down her teacup. She seemed suddenly tired of all the subtext. I wasn't backing down, and I think she'd decided to try another tack at another time. Valeria, looking concerned now, switched the conversation over to the farmland across the street and what might be done with it. I asked Hester how she rented out her lands, and off we went, veering quite nicely away from the contentious subject of how the new guy was going to behave, or not. At precisely thirty minutes, the call was over.

  "It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Richter," Hester said. "Please do proceed conservatively in your endeavors to restore Oak Grove. Some parts of that estate would be better left alone. Not everything that happened there brought honor to the families involved."

  I stood up and replaced my teacup and saucer on the tray as gently as I could, hoping they didn't notice that most of the tea was still on board. "A pleasure and an honor to meet you, Ms. Hester," I said, with a bow of my head. "Please be assured that I will not do anything over there to cause either the neighbors or the history to be distressed."

  "Ms. Valeria will see you to the door, then, Mr. Richter," she said and then looked away and sipped her tea.

  Dismissed, soldier.

  We walked toward Mrs. Johnson, who had moved to the massive front door and opened it. She was standing to one side, staring into the middle distance, which I guessed was supposed to make her invisible.

  "Thank you ever so much for joining us, Mr. Richter," Valeria said when we reached the door. I was struck again by her complete poise and extraordinary posture, as if nothing could ever shake her. I considered coming out of character to ask her what the hell that had all been about, but with Mrs. Johnson right there, I just murmured some more inane your-obedient-servant pleasantries and took my leave. The door shut behind me like a vault door, softly but with definite authority.

  As I walked back to the stone cottage I marveled at how easily I had slipped into their stilted ways of speech and all the overdone formality. Ms. Hester had seemed to be sincerely in character, but I wondered if Valeria might not be on some soothing substance. Laudanum came to mind.

  The mutts seemed glad to see me when I got back from high tea. Kitty's nose was still swollen, but Frick's had come down to a small furry clot. Frack thought they were both cowards to have left the barn with the cat still alive. Frack, on the other hand, had not met said cat.

  I made a drink to wash the thin taste of tea out of my mouth and went out onto the porch overlooking the pond to watch the sun go down. There were decisions to be made. I really didn't feel like running. I'd bought this place to get out of the city and start a new phase in my life, however undefined that might be. I was looking forward to doing something different, and also something that would result in a tangible achievement, something beyond the usually hollow victory over assorted bad guys. Now here came some sumbitch with a lethal grudge, two powerful Dobermans, and a desire to play Most Dangerous Game.

  So far he'd held the initiative, and if he'd taken the time to train two attack dogs, he'd also taken the time to plan this thing out. The one physical factor that was new to both of us was Glory's End. He couldn't know that ground any better than I did. Great. I guessed that we'd flounder around out there on seven hundred acres until we collided.

  An evening breeze stirred all the willows around the pond. They looked like a circle of pale green hula dancers out there as the shadows lengthened over Laurel Grove. I heard an engine start up behind the big house, run for a minute, and then shut down. Cubby must have achieved a victory over whatever it was plaguing the tractor.

  I made my decision: Screw it. I wouldn't run. I'd get Tony and Pardee to come out here and camp out in the cottage with me, while Horace put his nose to the ground. Tomorrow I would go out to the county airfield and hire a plane. If my stalker was serious about getting it on out here, I didn't have time to scout all of Glory's End on foot, but from a small plane, I could assemble a collage of aerial pictures in an hour or so. Now I needed to make a list-weapons, survival gear, personal protection vests, tactical comms, and perhaps some even bigger perspective pictures from Google Earth.

  "C'mon, fuzz balls," I said. "Don't just lie there and shed. We've got work to do."

  From four thousand feet, Glory's End still looked like a green rectangle with three large ripples in it. The one on the western edge was the ridge above the old rail line where the major kept his morning coffee camp. The ridge in the middle contained the house and outbuildings, and the last one, on the eastern side, overlooked croplands on both sides as well as the flooded quarry. The Dan River showed a slate color on the northern edge, and the Laurel Grove plantation extended along the two-lane, overlapping my property by a few miles on each side. I could see the millpond but not the cottage.

  I'd done this before, but not with the specific objective of aerial pictures. Tony and Pardee sat in the backseat
of the four-seater we'd chartered, taking the pictures, while I just studied the farm's layout from the air, trying to make a tactical assessment of where someone could be hiding. I was also looking for ambush sites, and vantage points from which one man could see a lot of ground. The topography was clearly visible, but the pilot said that as the summer progressed and the trees filled in, treetops would become the dominant feature on the ridges, and whatever crops were planted would fill in the fields.

  We circled the plantation for about fifteen minutes, and I paid particular attention to the eastern side of the last ridge, looking for signs of a coal mine. There was one area where the trees looked thinner than the rest, but nothing definitive. Then I had him fly us over to the Virginia side. I'd been wrong about the property directly opposite being devoid of habitation. There was a large plantation house, semiobscured by a dense grove of really big trees, about a half mile back from the river. The roof was gone, and it looked like there had been a fire. There were four walls, blackened wreckage inside, and four massive chimneys, two on each end. One of those had lost its top. The house was large enough for someone to hide in, but it certainly seemed thoroughly abandoned. The outbuildings resembled those on Glory's End.

  Next I had him fly downstream for a few miles past the property. I wanted to see if there were signs of an encampment or a possible base of operations for my ghost. Nothing seemed to qualify. The adjacent farm to the east had its center of operations on its eastern border, leaving an expanse of fields and woods between their house and mine. On the western side there was a vast pine plantation with no houses visible except for a few mobile homes up along the road. We flew back upstream. The barely submerged channel pillar foundations for the Civil War-era railroad bridge were now clearly visible from directly above. I pointed out the site of the train robbery and its attendant cemetery to my two associates.

  "Where's the nearest private airstrip?" I asked the pilot.

  "Private? None around here," he said. "The regional airport is that way about ten miles. The FAA won't allow any private strips within its terminal control area."