“Sorry, Giselle. Landed too late to disturb you.”
“Was your car waiting for you? No dents?”
Paul laughed. “Yes, Giselle. You can tell Harry that his buddy seems to have driven all the way down from New Jersey without so much as a speeding ticket. He also washed the car, cleaned the inside and left it sitting beside the airstrip with the keys under the fender in the magnetic case.”
Giselle gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven. I had visions of Kevin doing a Thelma and Louise somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
“He even left me copies of his gas charges on the front seat. Very responsible young man. Tell Harry I’ll send both him and Kevin a bonus.”
“Have you decided to give up this madness and come home where I can look after you?”
“You’re already looking after two teenage sons and a husband. I’m fine on my own.”
“Humph,” Giselle said. The sound came out with a Gallic flavor. Giselle spoke both English and French without accent, but her wordless expressions still sounded more French than English. “You don’t belong down there. What good is it going to do? You won’t find anything. That Paul David Delaney is dead, assuming he is the right Paul David Delaney.”
“Oh, he’s the right Delaney—my honorable father, pillar of society, richest man in the county, the man who married and abandoned my mother and then killed her when she found him.”
“I know you and Maman believed that, but you could be wrong. The detective said a serial killer or someone could’ve picked her up along the way. You don’t even know for certain whether she even met your father after she went down to Memphis.”
“Tante Helaine, your mother, never believed that my mother was murdered by a stranger at the precise moment she was due to confront my father, and neither do I. Too big a coincidence. No, he killed her all right. I’ve always known it in my heart. I had no way to check it out before.”
“No one has ever found her body….”
“That’s another thing. I want to find what he did with her, give her a decent burial if that’s possible.”
“After thirty years? What would be left to identify? Besides, you can’t bring a dead man to justice.”
“Well, I want someone to pay. I want to rub the noses of every living Delaney in the muck of what Paul Delaney did. I want them to admit in public that my father was a murderer.”
“The present generation had nothing to do with it. Anyone who might have known about it is long dead.”
“The present generation benefited from my mother’s death. Why should they live out their lives thinking their father was a paragon? I promised Tante Helaine I would expose him, and I will. Let them deal with the truth for a change.”
“Then go tell the son what you suspect, who you are. He’s your half brother, after all.”
“And have the entire clan circle the wagons? No, until I have incontrovertible proof that my father killed my mother, proof that would convince a jury, nobody down here is going to know I have any connection with the Delaneys. Now that I own the family home I have the perfect cover story—it’s natural to want to find out the history of an old house. These people will fall over themselves regaling me with anecdotes. The Delaneys were the most important family in the county. Trey Delaney is still one of the richest men. Certainly he owns the most land. I’m really looking forward to meeting him.” He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but Giselle knew him too well.
“You should never have promised Maman you’d avenge Aunt Michelle. You want to destroy the Delaneys for Maman, but in the end, I think you are the one who will suffer. The kind of hate my mother carried around corrodes like acid. It ruined her life, and in the end I think it contributed to her death. I know you’re still angry that you can’t fly big jets any longer, but don’t transfer your anger to the Delaneys. That’s a whole different issue.”
Paul laughed. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Giselle. I don’t blame the Delaneys for that. Nor for the fact that Tracy walked out on me because she couldn’t take looking after an invalid, nor for the pain in my shoulder. I blame them because I grew up without either a mother or a father.”
“Stop it! Maman and Dad loved you like a son.”
“Of course they did. And I loved them both. But having your aunt and uncle take you in isn’t quite the same thing as growing up with the man and woman whose genes you carry. In my case I didn’t even know who’d donated half of my genes until a few months ago.”
“I have a very bad feeling about this. Not for those Delaneys, but for you.”
“Who said revenge is a dish best eaten cold? After thirty years it’s damned near frozen.”
“What if you like them? The ones who are left, I mean?”
“I’ll try not to let that happen. If it does, I’ll deal with it.”
“Please call me every night or e-mail me. I want to know everything that’s going on.”
“I promise. I love you, Giselle. Regards to Jerry.”
“Good night, mon frère.”
He put the phone back in its cradle and lay back on the bed.
“Scamoglio,” he said, and laughed. “Who knew?”
At least Ann was enthusiastic about something other than Botox injections in her forehead. He turned the sound up on the TV, moved to the floor and began the exercises to stretch and strengthen his right shoulder and arm. He must be getting better. The tears from the pain didn’t begin to run down his cheeks and into his ears for a good five minutes.
“GRAM, WE’RE STARTING the Delaney restoration job tomorrow morning,” Ann said as she reached for another ear of sweet corn. “It’s going to be fabulous.”
“Pass the butter to your daughter, Nancy,” Sarah Pulliam said.
“She does not need any more butter,” Ann’s mother said shortly. But she passed it anyway. “Mother, you are a great cook, but does the word cholesterol mean anything to you?”
“Hush. The girl has no meat on her bones as it is.” Sarah turned a concerned face to her granddaughter. “I wish they’d tear that old Delaney place down and salt the earth it stands on.”
“Whatever for? I love that house.”
“Ann, honey, I firmly believe that old houses take on the character of the folks who lived in them,” her grandmother said, and slid the platter of barbecued pork chops closer to Ann. “Nobody who ever lived there has been happy, starting with the Delaney who built it.”
“I know Mr. Delaney lost his only daughter, Gram, but half the people of west Tennessee lost children to the yellow fever. Whole families died sometimes.”
“He wanted a houseful of children. Adam was the only child who survived. Delaney’s poor wife had half-a-dozen miscarriages trying to get him more. Wore her out and killed her in the end.”
“Mother,” Nancy said, moving the pork chops away from Ann, “unless you’re a whopping lot older than you’ve been saying all these years, there’s no way you could know all that.”
“My mother, your grandmother, told me, Miss Nancy.She wanted to marry Adam’s son Barrett for a while. She was glad in the long run she’d missed out on him. A meaner man never lived. During the depression he foreclosed on half the farmers in Fayette County so he could acquire their farms cheap when they were sold on the courthouse steps. One of them tried to shoot him. Missed, unfortunately.”
“But the next generation was happy. Aunt Maribelle and Uncle Conrad doted on each other.” Ann said. She started to reach for the chops, but one look from her mother stopped her. “I mean, they seemed to have had a wonderful marriage. Everybody got along, even Aunt Addy.”
“You were much too young to see what was really happening. Two cats in a burlap bag. My sisters barely tolerated each other, and living in the same house didn’t help. When Daddy refused to let Addy go to the Conservatory of Music in Philadelphia, I really thought she’d die. She had real talent. She wanted to be a concert pianist. Instead, she wound up an old maid living in her sister’s house and teaching piano lessons to children like you. Daddy should have let her go.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He always said that it wasn’t seemly for an unmarried woman to live alone in an apartment or a boardinghouse, but the real reason was that Maribelle was engaged to Conrad Delaney and demanded a society wedding. Daddy couldn’t afford both.”
“So Aunt Maribelle won?”
“Maribelle always won. Mostly because it never occurred to her she wouldn’t win. You have no idea how it galled Addy to have to live under her sister’s roof all those years. And Maribelle’s marriage to Conrad wasn’t quite the blissful union she tried to make everybody believe. Anyway, that has never been a happy house, and it will find some way to make the new owner suffer, too, you mark my words.”
On the drive back to town from her grandmother’s farm, Ann absently scratched behind Dante’s ears and thought over her grandmother’s remarks. Bernice had said more or less the same thing at the café that morning, but Ann hadn’t paid much attention. However, she couldn’t dismiss her grandmother’s concerns as easily. Sarah Pulliam was supposed to be fey. People said she had “the gift.”
As far as Ann could tell, that meant her grandmother could penetrate the facades behind which people tried to hide. Ann had suffered many times as a child because her Gram always knew full well who was responsible for knocking down the rose trellis or forgetting to feed the dogs. It wasn’t second sight. It was solid knowledge of the mischief Ann was capable of.
And Gram was the only person who’d warned her she’d be miserable if she married “that Travis Corrigan.” She’d definitely been right on that score.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Paul slept later than he’d planned, stood under a hot shower to loosen his shoulder, stowed his bags in his car, grabbed a couple of sweet rolls and a paper cup of hot, bad coffee from the lobby of his motel and drove east toward Rossiter.
He’d planned to arrive before the workmen, assuming they showed up. He’d had enough experience with contractors and their crews when Giselle was remodeling her kitchen. Half the time they simply didn’t show—no excuses, not even a telephone call.
Not this morning. Overnight a large blue Dumpster had appeared outside his back door, and half-a-dozen pickup trucks festooned with equipment stood haphazardly on his front lawn. He could hear hammering and shouting before he even got out of his car. He walked up his front steps and through the open door.
A moment later he ducked as a man in overalls carrying a bundle of two-by-fours swung around the corner from the basement steps. He barely glanced at Paul.
“Hey, toss me that hammer, will ya?” a voice called down from the stair landing. “Right there on the tool-box—the claw with the blue handle.”
Paul looked around, found the hammer and made the mistake—one he still frequently made—of tossing it with his right hand. The pain made him suck in his breath. The hammer clattered to the staircase several steps down from the man who needed it.
“Sorry,” Paul said, and moved to retrieve it.
“Okay, I got it.” The man disappeared behind the stair railing. A moment later Paul heard the thud of the hammer against one of his balusters.
“Hey! Should you be taking that thing out? Won’t the banister fall off?”
The man reared. He was thin with graying hair and skin like old cypress left too long in the creek. “Yeah, I should be taking it off and no, the banister won’t fall down. All right with you?”
Chastened and feeling way out of his element, Paul went in search of Buddy.
He found him and a crew in the basement removing rotten joists and replacing them with good wood. Paul backed out without disturbing them.
At the rate they were going, the structural work could be done in a week. He hadn’t even talked to Buddy about any schedule, and he had no idea whether the plumbers came before the electricians or the telephone linemen or the utilities. He had a sudden longing to be sitting in his rented condo in New Jersey. But he’d sublet it.
He could take Giselle up on her offer of a bed.
No way. That house with two teenaged boys was considerably noisier and more confused than this one.
He needed an island of peace and quiet. Simply slipping out and taking up more or less permanent residence at the café next door seemed cowardly. Before the accident he’d have pitched in and at least swung a sledgehammer at the broken concrete of the parking area behind the house. Now he couldn’t even do that.
“You look like somebody’s poleaxed you.”
He heard Ann’s voice from behind him with a mixture of relief and happiness that surprised him.
A moment later Dante thrust his slobbery maw into his hand. “Next time you warn me about chaos I’ll listen to you.” He removed his palm from Dante’s jowls and rubbed it dry on the dog’s broad head.
Her gray-blue eyes danced and she grinned at him.
“You get off on this, don’t you,” he said.
“You caught me.” She turned away from him, her arms spread wide, embracing the entire house. “I adore helping old buildings spring to life again, and since I love this house, this job is pure joy.”
“It’s pure madness, is what it is.” He had to shout over the sound of at least three power saws and three or four hammers.
“Come on upstairs, it’s quieter there.” She slipped past him and then hugged the staircase wall to avoid falling through the space left by the missing posts. Dante sighed and trudged up behind her.
She walked into the back bedroom, held the door until Paul and Dante had cleared it, then shut it firmly against the noise. March had turned cool even during the day, and the caulking between the sleeping-porch windows and this bedroom left much to be desired.
“You’re going to freeze in that shirt,” she said practically, and perched her bottom on the nearest windowsill. “You still planning on staying here at night?”
He ran his hand over his forehead. “At this point, I have no idea. I’ve checked out of my motel, but I’m sure they’d take me back.”
“Work quits about five, so if you can stand the chill and the possibility of a cold shower—and if you don’t mind the occasional ghost—I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay here. Just don’t try cooking on that stove.”
“Buddy warned me about that.” He glanced at her. “What ghosts?”
“All old Southern mansions have ghosts.” She laughed. “Let’s see.” She began to tick off on her fingers. “There’s Deirdre Delaney who died in the last really big yellow-fever epidemic. She’s supposed to sit on the bottom step and cry.” She lifted a second finger. “Then there’s Paul Adam—the son of the man who built the house. It’s very confusing that every generation names the first son Paul. Fortunately each generation has a middle name starting with the next letter of the alphabet. That’s the only way to tell them apart.”
“So Trey’s real name is?”
“Paul Edward. He prefers Trey. Anyway, Paul Barrett is supposed to clank chains like Morley because he was such a nasty old miser in life.”
“People have actually seen these ghosts?”
“To hear them tell it.”
“Are those all the ghosts?”
“Not by a long shot. Let’s see. Great-uncle Conrad’s son David—he was actually Paul David, but nobody ever called him that.” She must have caught his expression because she said, “Hey, are you okay? I don’t really believe in ghosts, you know.”
“I’m not upset. Tell me about your uncle David.”
“My gram could tell you more. He died when I was pretty young, so I’m not certain how much I really remember and how much comes from Gram. I do remember that he was the sweetest, gentlest, saddest man I ever knew, when he was sober, that is. Toward the end of his life he wasn’t sober very often.”
Paul had no desire to hear about what a sweet, gentle man his father had been. He would have preferred the kind of ogre he’d dreamed of for years. He fought to keep his breathing even and his fingers from tightening into fists.