Читать книгу Copper Lake Secrets - Marilyn Pappano - Страница 8

One, two, three, four …

Counting in her head, Reece Howard moved thirty-eight steps along the ancient brick wall, then counted out another six before reaching the gate recessed into the wall. She counted a lot, but only steps. She’d done it for as long as she could remember—which was only fifteen years with any clarity, a little more than half her life—but who knew why? Maybe she was obsessive-compulsive with that lone manifestation. Maybe she was just freaking nuts. Maybe, her boss suggested—teasingly?—she simply liked numbers.

If that was the case, then she must really like the number thirty-eight. That was as high as she went. No more, no less.

It was a warm October afternoon, and Evie Murphy was keeping her regular appointments in the courtyard of her French Quarter home. Evie was many things to Reece: friend, confidante, counselor, advisor. Officially her title was psychic, and she was very good at what she did, but even her talents had limits.

Evie was waiting at a wrought-iron table and chairs near the fountain. Playing in the grass a few feet away were Jackson, her four-year-old son, and Isabella, her two-year-old daughter. Eight-month-old Evangeline was asleep on a quilt in the nearby shade.

“Aunt Reece!” Jackson flashed her a wicked smile, the very image of his father, and Isabella wandered over, looking around with anticipation. “Puppies?”

“I had to leave the puppies at home today, sweetie. Next time I’ll bring them, okay?” Reece slid into the chair across from Evie, who was looking calm and serene and beautiful. Not in the least like the dark, mysterious “Evangelina” who told fortunes for tourists in the shop that fronted the house.

“How are you?”

A lot of people asked the question, Reece reflected, but few put the sincerity and interest in it that Evie did. She was the only one Reece answered honestly. “Terrible. I had the dream again last night. I woke up soaked in sweat with all three dogs staring at me as if I were possessed. And I didn’t remember a thing except that it had to do with my time at that place.”

She’d used the same words in a recent conversation with her mother, who’d scoffed. Your time in that place? You spent four months with your grandparents in a beautiful Southern mansion, and you make it sound as if you were incarcerated. Really, Clarice.

“Your dreams got worse when your grandfather died. Maybe he’s sending you a message.”

“Like what? I’m next?” Reece retorted. The response startled her, both in its content and vehemence.

Evie’s gaze steadied on her face. “Why would you think that?”

Good question. Why would she think that Arthur Howard wanted her dead? Besides those months she’d spent in his house, she hardly knew the man. When she tried to picture him, she couldn’t bring his face to mind but only images: large, hulking, menacing. And numbers: one, two, three, four …

And fear.

“Damned if I know,” she replied to Evie’s question. “I look at pictures of him, and it’s as if I’ve never seen him before. He’s just this blank in my memory.” A large, menacing blank.

“You have a lot of blanks in your memory.” Evie touched her, her hand warm and grounding. “How many people know what happened that summer, Reece? Three? Maybe four? Your grandfather’s death made it one less. If you ever want answers …”

Go to Fair Winds. Ask your questions.

They’d had the conversation before, but the idea of returning to Copper Lake, Georgia, to the Howard ancestral home on the Gullah River, tied her stomach into knots. Maybe she didn’t really want to know. Her mother was convinced that the best thing she could do was forget the past and move on in the present.

Of course, her mother—Valerie—wasn’t the one missing three months of her life, or facing the nightmares, or so full of resentment and distrust that every potential relationship became a burden too cumbersome to manage. Reece was twenty-eight years old, and her only real friends were Evie and Martine Broussard, her boss, and they made it easy for her. They didn’t ask for too much; they understood her as much as anyone could.

Much as she loved them, she wanted more. She didn’t have grand dreams, but she wanted to fall in love, get married and have children. She would like to make a difference in someone’s life, the way her father had made a difference in hers. She would like to be a part of something special, something she’d had in the years before Dad’s death had taken it from her: a family.

She wanted, she would like … she needed. Answers.

“Ah, Evie, I swore I’d never go back there again.”

“You were thirteen.”

“I didn’t even go back for Grandfather’s funeral.”

Evie echoed the words Reece had only thought earlier. “You hardly knew the man.”

Reece offered her last feeble excuse. “I have to work.”

“As if Martine wouldn’t let you off at a moment’s notice.”

Tension knotted in her gut. All these years, her refusal to return to Fair Winds had been a source of anger, frustration and more than a few arguments, but it had been a constant. Valerie had wanted to spend Christmases there; Reece had refused to go. Grandmother had invited them to Mark’s wedding; Reece said no. Grandfather had unbent enough to ask her personally to attend Grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration. Reece had stood her ground.

Valerie thought she was childish and melodramatic—ironic insults coming from the woman who embodied both. Grandmother thought she was stubborn and selfish. And Grandfather had told her that her father would be ashamed of her.

Not as much as he would be of you, she’d retorted before slamming down the phone. She believed that wholeheartedly. She just didn’t know why.

She was tired of not knowing.

Across the table, Evie was waiting patiently. If something bad would come of a trip to Georgia, surely she would sense it. She warned people of danger; she helped them make the right decisions. If she thought Reece should go …

Reece huffed out a sigh. “Okay.” Then … “I don’t suppose you’d want to go with me.”

“And leave Jack alone with the kids? His idea of day care would be sticking them in a holding cell while he interviewed suspects.” She squeezed Reece’s fingers. “You can call me anytime day or night, and if you need me, I’ll come.”

A knot formed in Reece’s throat, and she had to work to sound casual. “At least you didn’t say, ‘And take my kids to a haunted house.’“

Her brows drew together. Yes, she had a psychic advisor; yes, she worked in a shop that sold charms, potions and candles to true believers. But ghosts, haunting her father’s childhood home? The mere thought should make her laugh, but it didn’t. It felt … like truth.

“A place that old, that was worked by slaves, is likely to have a few spirits, but generally they won’t harm you.”

Maybe. Maybe not. It was impossible for Reece to know what she feared about Fair Winds and her grandparents without knowing what had gone on during those months she lived there.

Grimly accepting, she got to her feet. “All right. I’ll go. But if something happens to me while I’m there, Evie, I swear, I’ll haunt you for eternity.”

Evie stood, too, and hugged her. “I’d enjoy it, sweetie. Now, I’m serious—if you need anything, you call me.”

“I will.” Though, as she hugged Jackson and Isabella goodbye, she acknowledged she lied. Fair Winds was an evil, forbidding place, and she wouldn’t expose these kids’ mom to that for anything, not even to save herself.

It was a quick walk from Evie’s to the building that housed Martine’s shop on the first floor and both her and Martine’s apartments on the second. When she walked in, the faint scent of incense drifted on the air, sending a slow creep of calm down her spine. The tourists browsing the T-shirts and souvenirs glanced her way, and she automatically flashed them her best customer-service smile as she passed through to the back room.

“I suppose you’re going to ask me to take care of those mutts of yours while you’re gone.” Martine’s back was to Reece as she collected specimens from the bottles and tins that lined the shelves behind the counter. Some customers thought she had a sixth sense, maybe seventh and eighth ones, too, but Reece knew there were mirrors discreetly placed along the tops of the shelves.

“My puppers are not mutts.”

Martine sniffed. “What’s their breed? Oh, yeah, Canardly. You can ‘ardly tell what they are.”

“And they love their Auntie Martine so much.”

Another sniff before she turned, laying ingredients on the counter. “When are you leaving?”

“What are you, psychic?”

“iPhone and I know all.” Martine’s wicked grin was accompanied by a nod toward the cell on the counter. “I’ll have everything you need in an hour.”

Everything included charms, amulets, potions and notions. Reece couldn’t say from personal experience that they would ward off evil or work to keep her safe, but they sure as hell couldn’t hurt. “Then I’ll leave in an hour and five minutes.”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” Martine asked drily.

The answer was a surprise to Reece, as well, but she knew if she put off her departure for even one day, the dread and anxiety that were tangled in her gut would just keep growing. The drive would give her plenty of time to think of all the reasons this was a bad idea; no use giving herself additional time to wuss out.

“I wish you could go in my place. Grandmother hasn’t seen me in fifteen years. She might not notice the difference.”

How did Martine make a snort sound so elegant? “Oh, sure, we look so much alike. Maybe the woman’s gotten deaf, blind and stupid in addition to old.”

Reece grimaced. Though they were about the same height and body type, she was light to Martine’s dark: fair-skinned and blond-haired. Having lived all her life in Louisiana, Martine had a pure and honeyed accent, while Reece’s frequent moves had left her with a fairly nondescript voice.

“Okay.” A sickly sigh. “I’m going to pack and tell the puppers that Auntie Martine will be taking care of them. They’ll be so excited.”

As she slipped through the rear door and trudged up the stairs, she wished she could dredge up a little excitement.

But all she felt was dread.

Thin streaks of moonlight filtered through the clouds to silver the landscape below, glinting off the stick-straight spears of wrought iron that marched off into the distance on both sides of the broad gate. Spelled in elaborate curls and swoops was the plantation name: Fair Winds.

Though this night there was nothing resembling fair about the place. Trees grew thick beyond the fence. Fog hovered low to the ground. No birds sang. No wildlife slipped through the dark. Silence reigned inside the wrought iron.

Jones had been in town for two days and had found plenty of people willing to talk. They said the place was haunted. Strange things happened inside those gates. On a quiet night, wailing and moaning could be heard a mile away.

This was a quiet night, but the only sound drifting on the air came from the dog beside him. Jones laid his hand on Mick’s head, scratching behind his upright ears, but it didn’t ease the quivering alertness that had settled on the animal the instant he’d jumped from the truck and scented the air.

Mick would rather be in town at the motel or, better yet, back home in Louisville. He liked traveling; he went with Jones on most of his jobs. But he didn’t like spirits, and here, there be ghosties.

It was his father’s voice Jones heard in his head, a voice he hadn’t truly heard in fifteen years. His father was loving and generous and good-natured, but he wasn’t forgiving. He nursed a grudge better than the meanest of spirits. His two middle sons were dead to him and always would be.

It appeared that Glen really was dead.

Absently Jones rubbed his chest as if that might make the pain go away. He’d been cold inside since he’d heard the news that everything Glen had owned in the world had been found buried under a pile of ancient brush outside Copper Lake. Clothes, books, driver’s license, money, photographs, hidden no more than thirty yards from where Jones had last seen him. Maybe Glen would have gone off without his books or his license, even without the clothes or the money, but not without the photos of Siobhan. He’d been crazy mad in love with the girl, had intended to marry her. He never would have left her pictures behind.

And it was partly Jones’s fault. All these years, he’d thought Glen was doing the same as him, making a life for himself that had nothing to do with family tradition. All these years, he’d been wrong.

Jones had rushed through his last job when he’d heard the news, then driven straight through from Massachusetts to Georgia. He’d had hours to come up with a plan, but after two days in town, he still didn’t have one. All he’d been able to do was think. Remember. Regret.

Had his life been worth everything he’d given up? Doing what he wanted, being what he wanted? If he hadn’t gone along with Glen, would his brother still be alive?

Their granny had been big on fate. Things happened as they were meant to, she’d insisted, and he’d been eager to share her belief. After all, that absolved him of responsibility. So he’d broken his mother’s heart; it hadn’t been selfishness but fate. He’d turned his back on the life his family had embraced for generations because fate had meant him to. He’d denied his heritage and lived for himself because that was the cosmos’s plan for him.

But had fate decreed Glen should die before his eighteenth birthday?

Jones didn’t think so. Someone else had made that determination, and he wanted to know who.

He figured he already had a pretty good idea of why.

Beside him, Mick gave a low whine. His ears were pricked, his tail stiff, his rough coat bristling. He was staring through the gate at the mists that formed, swirled, then dissipated, only to re-form a few steps away. Ghosts, essence, imprints—whatever you called them, Jones believed in them. His work took him to centuries-old houses all around the country, and every one housed at least one spirit. He didn’t bother them, and they returned the favor.

Mick whined again as an insubstantial form separated from the shadows of the live oaks that lined the drive and stepped into the moonlight. Jones’s jaw tightened with annoyance. Who would have expected the elderly and recently widowed owner of Fair Winds to be out haunting the place at nearly midnight?

She wrapped fragile fingers around one of the bars on the gate. “Who are you, and what are you doing on my property?”

Mentally kicking himself for coming to the place unprepared, he slid from the tailgate to the ground, felt his wallet shift and immediately knew his approach. As he walked to the gate, he pulled the battered leather from his hip pocket and silently handed her a business card.

It gleamed white as she tilted it to read his name, then tapped it on the bar. “I’ve heard of you.”

He wasn’t surprised. The business of historic garden restoration was an insular one. Word of mouth was still the best advertising; a satisfied client was happy to pass on his name to anyone who might be in need of his services. The subject was likely to have come up at least a time or two with the owner of Fair Winds, once home to the most spectacular gardens in the South.

“I’ve heard of you, too, Mrs. Howard.” Then he gestured behind her. “Actually, more of the gardens.” It was true. Because of the time he and Glen had spent at Fair Winds, he’d always paid attention when the name had come up. He’d researched the gardens while completing his degree, had seen plans, photographs and praise lavished by guests at the house during the gardens’ prime in the 1800s.

“Humph. They haven’t existed in the fifty years I’ve lived here.”

“But they’re legendary.”

“That they are.” She tapped the card again. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re sitting outside my gate close to midnight.”

“No, it doesn’t.” He shrugged. “I’m between jobs, and I found myself in this area. I was curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, don’t you know?”

His smile was cool. “Do I look like a cat to you?”

She stared tight-lipped at him for a moment, then folded her fingers over the card. “Come back tomorrow. You can see more in the daylight.” Turning, she took four steps and disappeared into the shadows. The only sound of her passing was the crunch of footsteps on gravel that quickly faded away.

Mick whined again, and after a moment staring into the darkness, Jones faced him. “You’re just a big baby, aren’t you? Come on. Let’s go back to town. We’ve got work to do.”

When he opened the pickup door, the dog jumped into the driver’s seat and started to settle in, grumbling when Jones nudged him over the console to the passenger seat. Jones had picked up the shepherd mix at a job in Tennessee. One day he’d appeared at a stop sign, looking into every vehicle that came along before sinking back to the ground. He’d stayed there for days, growing thinner and more despondent, waiting for the owner who’d dumped him to return. Knowing what it was like to be alone and on your own and not sure you were up to the challenge, Jones had begun taking food and water to the stop sign.

On the eighth day, after he’d delivered the meal, Mick had eaten, then walked back to the house with him. They’d been together since.

He followed the hard-packed road to the highway, then turned south. Copper Lake was just a few miles away, but he and Glen had camped on Howard property for a month without going into town once.

Not that it was a bad little town. Once past the poorer neighborhoods on the north side, the town was neat, easy to navigate and excelled at small-town charm. It was home to more than a few magnificent historic houses that made him itch for a sketchpad and pencil.

If he couldn’t talk his way into Fair Winds, maybe he could drum up another job as an excuse for staying in the area awhile.

Most of the motels in town were on the lower end, with The Jasmine Bed-and-Breakfast at the high end. He’d picked one in the middle—clean, comfortable, high-speed wireless—and they didn’t object to Mick. He parked in front of his end room, let the dog do his business in the narrow strip of grass nearby, then they went inside and he booted up his laptop, calling up the file he’d put together in college and carried with him since.

Fair Winds Plantation.

The place where his life had changed. Where his brother’s life had ended. Where he intended to find the truth.

A horn blared, long and angry, as a logging truck blasted past, the winds buffeting Reece’s small SUV. Dawdling on a two-lane highway wasn’t the safest driving she’d ever done, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Every time she saw a mileage sign for Copper Lake, her foot just eased off the gas on its own.

Taking a deep breath, she loosened her fingers on the wheel and pushed the gas pedal harder. Once the speedometer reached the posted limit, she set the cruise control. There. The speed was out of her foot’s—or subconscious’s—control.

She’d spent last night in Atlanta, sleeping badly, tossing through one dark, malevolent dream after another. She was tired, her body hurt, and she had the king of bad headaches. If it were any farther to Copper Lake, she’d be physically ill before she got there.

And yet here she was doing her best to make the trip last.

As the road rounded a curve, a beautiful antebellum mansion appeared on the left, and Reece’s fingers tightened again. That was Calloway Plantation. According to the map she’d studied, the turn to Fair Winds was less than a half mile south of Calloway.

Sure enough, there it was, identified with plaques set discreetly into the brick columns on either side. She braked, turned onto the broad dirt road, drove a hundred feet and stopped.

Could she do this?

Evie thought so. Martine did, too. The only one with doubts was Reece herself. Hand trembling, she reached inside her shirt to lift a thin silver chain that Martine had given her. Dangling from it was a copper penny. Appropriate, she thought unsteadily, since she was outside Copper Lake and the taste of both blood and fear, according to people who knew, was coppery.

Evie’s calm, confident voice sounded in her head. If you ever want answers …

She did. Desperately.

If you need me, I’ll come.

And Martine: I’ll have everything you need.

“Except courage.” Reece’s voice was shaky. “But Grandfather’s dead. I’m not thirteen. I can handle this.”

She repeated the words in her head as she slowly got the car moving again. Tall pines grew dense on either side of the road, testament to the lucrative logging business that had taken the original Howard’s fortune and increased it a hundredfold. As far as she knew, Grandfather had never worked in logging or any other business. He’d managed his investments from his study on the first floor and done whatever caught his fancy. She vaguely remembered fishing poles and rifles and shovels, and the glare every time he’d looked at her …

Before she realized it, she’d reached the gate. It stood open in welcome. She drove through, and the hairs on her nape stood on end. Was it quieter inside the gate than out? Did the sun shine a little less brightly, chase away fewer shadows? If she rolled the windows down, would the air be a little thicker?

“Oh, for God’s sake. Valerie’s right. I am being melodramatic. It’s a house.” As it came into sight, she amended that. “A big, creepy, spooky house, but still just a house. I haven’t entered the first circle of hell.”

At least, she prayed she hadn’t.

Live oaks lined the drive, huge branches arching overhead to shade it. The house and its buildings—a guest cottage, the old farm manager’s office and a few storage sheds—sat at the rear edge of an expanse of manicured lawn. The brick of the pillars that marched across the front of the house had mellowed to a dusky rose, but there was no fading to the paint on the boards. The colors were crisp white and dark green, but still looked unwelcoming.

A fairly new pickup was parked near the cottage—silver, spotless, too high for a woman of Grandmother’s stature to climb into without help. Its tag was from Kentucky, and she wondered as she pulled in beside it if some stranger-to-her relative was visiting. The recent generations of Howards hadn’t been eager to stick around Copper Lake. Her father had left at twenty, his brother and most of their cousins soon after.

When she got out of the car, Reece was relieved to note that the sun was just as warm here as it’d been outside the gate and the air was no heavier than anywhere else in the humid South. It smelled fresh like pine and muddy like the Gullah River that ran a hundred feet on the other side of the gate.

She was closing the door when she felt eyes on her. Grandmother? Her housekeeper? The driver of the truck? Or the ghosts her father insisted inhabited Fair Winds?

Ghosts that might have been joined a few months ago by Grandfather’s malevolent spirit.

Evie’s voice again: Spirits generally won’t harm you.

Oh, man, she hoped that was true. But if Arthur Howard’s ghost lived in that house, she’d be sleeping with one eye open.

The gazes, it turned out, were more corporeal. Seated at a table on the patio fifty feet away, just to the left of the silent fountain, sat a frail, white-haired woman and a much younger, much darker, much … more … man, both of them watching her.

Reece stared. Grandmother had gotten old, was her first thought, which she immediately scoffed at. Willadene Howard had been frail-looking and white-haired for as long as she could remember, but the frailty part was deceiving. She’d always been strong, stern, unyielding, and in spite of her age—seventy-seven? no, seventy-eight—she certainly still was. She didn’t even show any surprise at Reece’s appearance out of the fifteen-year-old blue as she rose to her feet. When Reece got close enough that Grandmother didn’t have to raise her voice—Howard women never raised their voices—she announced, “You’re late.”

Maybe she didn’t recognize her, Reece thought. Maybe she was expecting someone else. She thought of the responses she could make: Hello, Grandmother. It’s me, Reece, the granddaughter you let Grandfather terrorize. Or Nice to see you, Grandmother. You ‘re looking well. Or Sorry I missed your birthday party, Grandmother, but I thought of you that day.

What came out was much simpler. “For what?”

“Your grandfather’s funeral was four and a half months ago.”

There was nothing Reece could say that wouldn’t sound callous, so she said nothing. She walked closer to the table, knowing Grandmother wouldn’t expect a hug, and sat on the marble rim of the fountain.

Grandmother turned her attention back to the man, who hadn’t shown any reaction so far. “This is my granddaughter, Clarice Howard, who pretends that she sprang full-grown into this world without the bother of parents or family.” With a dismissive sniff, she went on.

“Mr. Jones and I are discussing a restoration project we intend to undertake.”

Reece’s face warmed at the criticism, but she brushed it off as the man leaned forward, his hand extended. “Mr. Jones,” she greeted him.

“Just Jones.” His voice was deep, his accent Southern with a hint of something else. Black hair a bit too long for her taste framed olive skin and the darkest eyes she’d ever looked into. Mysterious was the first descriptor that leaped into her head, followed quickly by more: handsome. Sexy. Maybe dangerous.

She shook his hand, noting callused skin, long fingers, heat, a kind of lazy strength.

He released her hand and sat back again. She resisted the urge to tuck both hands under her arms and laid them flat on the marble instead. Rather than deal with Grandmother head-on, she directed a question to the general area between them. “The house appears to be in good shape. What are you restoring?” Left to her, she would be tearing the place down, not fixing it up.

“You can’t judge a house by its facade. Everything gets creaky after fifteen years.” Grandmother’s tone remained snippy when she went on. “Mr. Jones is an expert in garden restoration. He’s going to bring back Fair Winds’ gardens to their former glory. Not that you ever bothered to learn family history, Clarice, but a few generations ago, the gardens here were considered the best in all of the South and the rest of the country, as well. They were designed by one of the greatest landscape architects of the time. They covered fourteen acres and took ten years to complete.”

She waited, obviously, for a response from Reece. The only one she gave was inconsequential. “I go by Reece now.”

Grandmother’s lips pursed and her blue gaze sharpened. Across the table from her, Jones was making a point of gazing off into the distance, looking at neither of them.

“Gardens. Really.” Too little too late, judging by Grandmother’s expression. The only flowers Reece had ever seen at Fair Winds were the wild jasmine that grew in the woods. Her mother had told her their name and urged her to breathe deeply of their fragrance. Not long after, Valerie had left, the emptiness in Reece’s memory had begun and the smell of jasmine always left her melancholy.

A shiver passed over her, like a cloud over the sun, but she ignored it, focusing on the stranger again. Did just Jones look like a landscape architect, or whatever his title would be? She’d never met a landscape architect, but she doubted it. He seemed more the outdoors type, the one who’d do the actual work to bring the architect’s plans to life. His skin was bronzed, his T-shirt stretched across a broad chest, and his arms were hard-muscled. He was a man far better acquainted with hard work than desk-sitting.

“Sit,” Grandmother commanded, pointing to an empty chair as she got to her feet without a hint of creakiness. “Entertain Mr. Jones while I get some papers from your grandfather’s study. We’ll let him get started, and then we’ll talk.”

Reece obediently moved to the chair, automatically stiffening her spine, the way Grandmother had nagged her that summer. Howard women do not slump. Howard women hold their heads high. Howard women—

The door closed with a click, followed by a chuckle nearby. Her gaze switched to the gardener/architect wearing a look of amusement. “That last bit sounded like a threat, didn’t it?”

And then we’ll talk. It was a threat. And even though she’d come there just for that purpose, at the moment, it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

Swallowing hard, she tried instead to focus on the rest of Grandmother’s words. She might have trust issues and abandonment issues and a tad of melodrama, but she could be polite to a stranger. Her mother required it. Her job required it. Hell, life required it. But the question that came out wasn’t exactly polite.

“So … is Jones your first name or last?”