Waltz Macabre Read online

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Unlike the rest of your neighbors? For instance, the Carterets?”

  “I always thought they were weird. And lately, they were getting weirder.”

  “I heard that the father was getting senile.”

  “They’re both weird,” he snapped. “It was such a relief to meet somebody like Alison; somebody I could connect to. What with Wanda and her babbling about ghosts all the time, and the Carterets in the next house, running hot and cold, meeting Alison made me realize how off-center my world had gotten.”

  “Hot and cold?”

  “First they’d be friendly, making you feel like you should at least wave when you saw them, then for no reason at all, she would cut me dead. Like I’d offended her or something. And I hadn’t done anything! But Alison was like a breath of fresh air. I wanted to be with her every minute of the day. It wasn’t like we were going to start a family or anything. We weren’t exactly kids. There didn’t seem to be any reason to hurry things along. I thought I had time. That we had time. And then, time ran out.”

  “You were thinking of marrying her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she felt the same way?”

  “We never discussed it directly. But did she feel the same way I did? Yes. I’m sure of it.”

  “And that’s why you cared enough to hire Rita to investigate.”

  “I wanted her found,” he said gruffly. “I needed to know what happened to her. And now I want to know just what you and your gang of ghost-busters have planned for Wanda.”

  I eyed him steadily. “Now that Alison is gone, you’re going to take her place and watch over her mother?”

  “I’d consider it my duty to see that no elderly neighbor of mine got ripped off, but yes, I have a special interest in Wanda because I loved her daughter. What I don’t know is what your interest is in all this. Don’t think I’ve decided to trust you. I haven’t made up my mind about you, and if I hear of Wanda making out checks to you people, I’ll have the cops on you so fast you won’t know what hit you. But compared with that Ed character, and now Teddy . . . if they aren’t conmen, they’re a couple of fools.”

  I kept my temper. It’s all very well for me to call them names, but not some guy I just met. If he was just talking about Teddy, I might not have minded so much, but I’m protective of Ed. He may be eccentric, but he’s no fool. I suppose I’d stand up for Teddy, too, even though he annoys me. I don’t think for a minute he has the kind of awesome powers he thinks he has, but he’s managed to forge a career for himself in a highly competitive field, and that’s saying a lot.

  I calmly replied, “Talk to Rita. She’ll vouch for me. Has she gotten any results for you yet, by the way?”

  Warily, he answered, “I’m happy with her work.”

  “Good.” I stood up. “So we agree that Wanda’s got real-world things to worry about, not just ghosts. Teddy’s got a dog, and I’m going to get him now. With a dog in the house, nobody is going to be able to sneak up on them.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  * * * * *

  I was hungry.

  Lunch always comes at the worst possible time, when you’re in the middle of your day and it’s just not convenient to stop and scratch up some grub somewhere.

  Michael was playing golf that morning, and afterwards he always hangs around the clubhouse and gossips with the guys, so he wouldn’t be at home. I made a quick decision to stop by his house, check on Bastet, throw something edible together for myself and consume it while I booted up my computer and tried to get some work done.

  Big mistake. Victor Pacetti had been lurking in cyberspace, waiting for me, and as soon as my desktop icons were loaded, he pounced.

  Victor has become a kind of ghost in my computer. I can’t get rid of him. I don’t have the skills to do it, and neither do the kind of I.T. experts who set up shops in strip malls. Victor is world-class, and only the fact that these days he tries to use his computer skills for the greater good keeps him out of an isolation cell at Supermax.

  He’s a self-appointed guardian of the Internet and a former cybercriminal who was a person of interest to Rita Garnett before she retired from the FBI. Victor and various other unsavory types had come into my world causing trouble a year or so before. He arrived in Tropical Breeze in the flesh, so I know he actually exists, but I’ve only seen him through words on my computer screen ever since. He’s kind of a hunk, actually, the Italian stallion type, but once you get to know him, he’s more than a little scary.

  He thinks we have a personal affinity of some kind. The only thing that I can see that we have in common is that we’re both vegetarians. Victor seems to think there’s so much more, and I haven’t been able to dissuade him.

  So in his own chummy way, he created a space for himself in my world the way he knows best: through computers. He planted a link in a sub-file under a “Recipes” icon on my desktop, and every now and then we chat, but not because I really want to. Sometimes it’s just to keep him friendly, sometimes it’s because I need information and I’ve run out of other resources.

  I’m never happy to see him taking over my computer just to say hi, and that day I didn’t have time for it. I had set up my laptop on the dining room table and pushed the “on” button, then waited, drinking coffee and giving the last of the macadamia nut ice cream time to get nice and soft so I could have it for lunch while I worked. It’s got protein, right? It’s food.

  But before I could even get the lid off the container, my computer screen started dripping blood (the virtual kind), really graphic gouts and rivulets, not nice, creamy dollops of cartoon blood. Through the gory mess, a spiky script demanded “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, TAYLOR VERONE?”

  I sat back and blinked, stared at the camera dot at the top edge of the screen, then made a face and typed, “And a happy good afternoon to you too, Victor, darling. How’s tricks?”

  There was a long wait, long enough for me to hope he’d realized he’d dialed the wrong number and was by then commandeering somebody else’s computer to yell at them instead of me. But no, it was me he was after.

  “Are you trying to set Rita up with some asshole?”

  I gaped at the computer screen and said, “What?” out loud. I didn’t know if he could hear me, but it didn’t matter; it was purely a burst of surprise.

  I put my fingertips on the keys and counterattacked. “What’s it to you?”

  “She’s MINE.”

  Hoo boy. Not good, not good, not good. Still, I typed, “In what sense is she yours? You haven’t seen her in person for at least a year, and as far as I knew, you were cat and mouse, not girl and boy.”

  “How do you know we haven’t been seeing one another?”

  Ooooh, really not good. While I was trying to think fast, he came back at me.

  “Just stay out of Rita’s life, and keep her away from that shithead.”

  I considered Dan Ryder a heck of a nice guy, but that probably wasn’t the time to point it out to Victor.

  I had just placed my hands back at the keyboard when my screen gave a virtual bang, the blood cleared up and my desktop was back. Victor had stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind him, in cyber-speak.

  “How rude,” I said to the computer screen, but it was pure bravado; I was sitting there shaking. I did NOT want Victor Pacetti for an enemy.

  By the time I remembered the ice cream I had to drink it out of the carton, which is difficult. Even though it’s liquid it’s still kind of thick, and it winds up all over your upper lip and on the end of your nose. I wiped it off my face with the back of my hand, still shocked over Victor’s meltdown. In the end, I didn’t get anything useful done, and I shut down my computer feeling like I was closing the door on Satan.

  When my cell phone rang, I stared at it warily, wondering if it was Victor coming back at me.

  It was Rita.

  I answered with a meek, “Hi.”

  She gushed
. Dan was such a great guy! They had run the beach together that morning, and afterward he’d made breakfast for the two of them in his beautiful little house.

  “He’s even a good cook,” she gasped. “I know I told you I wasn’t interested in dating anymore, but I have to admit it, this might turn into a really good thing. Even though he just happened to be there by accident when we drove up, I want to thank you for introducing us. Without you, I’d never have met him.”

  “Uh huh. Glad to be of service.”

  “Oh, Taylor, just listen to me going on and on about Dan when the one you’re really interested in is Teddy.”

  She caught me off-guard, but fortunately I didn’t say anything stupid, like, “Teddy who?”

  “You wanted me to evaluate his emotional state,” she went on.

  “Oh, yes. Yes I did. So what do you think? Should I be worried about him?”

  I heard her take a deep breath. “It’s possible that without this project to work on, he’d have gone into a tailspin. But now that he’s busy, I think he’s going to pull himself out of it. He seems like a healthy, well-balanced, self-assured man to me. Being jilted was a blow, of course, but I’m sure he’s going to be fine. You’ll be checking on him over the next few days?”

  “Uh huh. Yes. I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “Great. Then we’re all set.”

  “By the way, I met Wanda’s neighbor, Clay Brownlee today. He admitted that he was the one who hired you to find Alison.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes. So now we don’t have to have secrets from one another, right? We can collaborate.”

  She chuckled. “Nice try, Taylor. If my client wants you to know how my investigation is going, he’ll tell you himself.”

  I chuckled. Not with amusement, the way she had, but cynically. “It was worth a try, right?”

  “Listen, I’ve got to go. Dan and I are having an early dinner tonight, and I’m going to start my date prep by having a long bubble bath.”

  “Oh, good. Have fun. Say hi to Dan.”

  We hung up.

  My silver lining was developing a very big thundercloud. Still, I was happy for the new lovers. I hoped they would have many wonderful years together, after my life had been destroyed by Victor the Cyber Hound.

  Chapter 19

  I stared blankly out the window of the dining room for quite a while before my eyes went back into focus and I noticed that something was going on out there. Michael had returned from the golf course and was talking to a small, elderly man while gesturing around the front yard and apparently giving instructions. Just what I needed: a little comic relief. It was Tropical Breeze’s favorite handyman, poet, minstrel and harmless crank, Jasper.

  Michael glanced at the window and saw me standing there, gave me a nod, and to Jasper’s obvious surprise, turned him toward the house and started walking him inside.

  “Taylor, you know Jasper,” Michael said by way of bringing us together.

  “Ma’am,” Jasper said warily.

  “Where’s your guitar?” I asked. Jasper never howls at the moon (he calls it singing, but nobody else does) without thrumming his guitar. It’s as antique and weather-beaten as he is, but it usually sounds better.

  “Out in the truck. Want me to get it?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I think, considering what I want to discuss with you,” Michael said to Jasper, “it would be better if we went into the library.”

  “You got trees in the library? No? Then it ain’t what I’m here for.”

  Jasper is usually happy to waste everybody’s time on conversation while he’s on the clock. I won’t say he’s friendly, because you never feel like you’ve quite scratched the surface of Jasper, but he’s always ready to talk. But not that day. He was as edgy as a stray cat, and he looked like he wanted to bolt for the door.

  Michael is used to dealing with reluctant witnesses, after years in the courtroom, and he did manage to get Jasper into the office, but before he could say what he wanted, Jasper blurted, “I don’t know nothin’ about that body y’all found out there by your house.”

  We were dumbfounded. Michael and I looked at one another, first wide-eyed, then knowingly. We made a silent agreement for him to take the role of lead prosecutor, and he very firmly invited Jasper to sit down.

  Michael took his place behind his desk and Jasper and I sat facing him side-by-side. Jasper wouldn’t put his full weight into the chair.

  “Now,” Michael said, “you’ve always been an honest man, Jasper, but I believe you’ve just told your first lie. Doesn’t feel very good, does it? Why don’t you just come clean. After all, it was all a long time ago, and whatever you know is just hearsay by now. All the principals are in their graves. Whatever your father told you about it isn’t admissible in any court. It’s just something the community needs to know. After all, innocent people have borne a load of blame for too long now. That’s not right and you know it. And if you’ve heard what’s going on at The Bookery, you know that innocent people are still paying for it.”

  He sat back and let Jasper digest this. I’d never seen the old man so unhappy. He was a true child of nature and he lived happily with all of its beauty and its ugliness, too. It was all part of the majesty of the good earth, and he accepted it as a personal gift, never questioning the bad things. It was unlike him, not to be able to face up to something.

  He looked at me with a drawn, ancient face, and I gazed back placidly.

  Getting no help from me, he slumped in his chair and looked back at Michael.

  “You know who he is, don’t you Jasper?” Michael said.

  Jasper was shaking his head, which surprised me.

  “But you know something about him,” I said.

  He turned his eyes to me and said, “I never knew who the man was, but I’ve known all along that my daddy buried a man out on the Cadbury estate, somebody who’d been murdered and needed burying quick in the middle of the night. And he wouldn’t have done something like that for anybody else but the Carterets. He was their man at the time, and without that family he had no living, so he did what they told him to do and then he kept his mouth shut about it.”

  Michael centered himself, thinking carefully, and I sat there feeling glad I’d handed this witness over to him. Whatever I’d been hoping for from Jasper, this blew it all away.

  Michael had his next question ready. “Just to be clear: you’re telling us that Garrison Carteret murdered somebody, and your father helped him bury the man.”

  “I’m not saying nothing of the sort. My daddy never told me who it was that died or how or whodunit. He never meant to tell me anything about it at all, but I knew. It ate at him, year after year, and when he got old and sick, he started talking about it. Not a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Just the horrors. How the night felt. Things moving in the bushes and slid by his feet. How scared he was. How he thought about the man coming back at him for revenge for putting him away like that. And then the music. That waltz she wouldn’t stop playing. He said it was always in his head, dragging along, like something dead crawling behind him. The Carterets had no right to do that to my daddy,” he said with a shaking voice. I’d never seen Jasper like that, and it moved me. “On his deathbed he was still seeing that man, tumbling down, just a black shape, not even a man anymore. It wasn’t right, getting rid of somebody like that, just shoving them down in the scrub like garbage. He may have worked for the Carterets, but they had no right to make him do that.”

  “Of course not,” Michael said soothingly. “I’m sorry to have to put you through this.”

  Jasper waved a brown and gnarly hand. “Don’t matter now. Not anymore. Send the cops to talk to me if you want to. I don’t know nothin’ anyway. Just what my daddy told me, and he was sick and raving. All I just told you is all I know. And you’re damn right,” he said, suddenly defiant. “I’m no liar. There’s the truth, to prove it. My daddy buried a murdered man and that’s all
I know. Don’t know who it was, don’t know how he was killed, don’t know anything else except my daddy didn’t kill him.”

  “Do you know when it happened? What year?” Michael asked.

  Jasper’s head sank. Very softly, he said, “Long time ago. Before I was born. Then the waltz started. Daddy wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t. That’s when she started to play it, and long after she was away to town, he heard it in his head.”

  “Around the time Miss Phoebe got married?”

  He thought about it. “Maybe. You’re thinking it’s the man her husband killed, but it isn’t. He’s resting in his family’s cemetery with a headstone over him, all proper and by the book, even if he was murdered. Barclay Lodge that was. Phoebe’s people were set on her marrying him, but my daddy said she didn’t seem broken up when he died, and then she married the man that kilt him, so that’s Miss Phoebe.” I got the impression that if we’d been standing outside, he would have spat. “Young Lodge didn’t deserve to die like that. Man of a good family. Some of them still around hereabouts. Always was good people, the Lodges.”

  “We didn’t think the body was Barclay Lodge,” Michael said. “There was another man involved in all this. Did your father ever mention a man named Cary Jessop? Could it have been him?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What are you thinking, Michael?” I asked. “That Garrison murdered Jessop before he ran away?”

  “It would explain his taking off like that. After all, I still think it’s a possibility that Jessop murdered Lodge. It would explain everything that happened afterward. Hear me out: Jessop ruins Garrison Carteret’s reputation by making him look like a murderer and doesn’t step up to say he did it, to clear Garrison’s name. Then Garrison commits his own murder – of Jessop – and goes on the run. But he has successfully hidden the body, and when he’s never accused, he tries to start his life over in New York. Only he’s haunted by what happened back in Tropical Breeze. He can’t get over it, and from then on, his life is a failure. I like it. I say the skeleton is Cary Jessop’s, and that he was the one who murdered Barclay Lodge.”