A Slaying in Savannah (15 page)

I winced and shuddered, rubbing my arms to bring some warmth back into them. I considered turning back, but up ahead I saw what appeared to be a dim line of light, and decided to check out its origin. I advanced another ten feet or so, my body crouched over and my eyes on the ceiling to ensure that no beam or other protuberance would knock me silly before I reached my destination. That’s when my toe caught on something and sent me sprawling forward, my knees slamming painfully against the floor. The flashlight went flying from my hand and I extended my arms to keep from going facefirst into the cement.

“Gorry!” I exclaimed. It’s an old Maine expression meaning just about anything you want it to mean. Tears stung my eyes as the pain from my injured knee reached my brain. I got to my feet and groped for the flashlight, which hadn’t gone far. I picked it up and shone the light on my knee, now oozing blood. I also looked at what had caused me to trip. It was a length of heavy, rusted chain coiled into a pile.

I pulled a handkerchief from my sweater pocket and used it to stem the blood. For some reason I wasn’t cold anymore. I looked back down the tunnel and decided that the shaft of light was closer than the stairs leading back to the house.

When I reached the light, I saw that it came from beneath a door at the top of a flight of stairs similar to the ones leading down from the house. I grimaced as I went up them and reached a small platform. I directed the light at the brass doorknob and grasped it. It turned, but the door wouldn’t open. I tried again, and again. No luck. Then I heard a sound from the other side of the door. A voice. A man. I balled my right hand into a fist and rapped with my knuckles. Harder now. Another voice, this time female. I was about to use the flashlight to more loudly announce my presence when I heard the sound of a sliding bolt. The door opened a crack, then wider.

“Careful,” Samantha Grogan commanded. “Don’t disturb the wires and equipment.”

“Mrs. Fletcher,” Artie Grogan said, sounding as surprised as if he were looking at someone who’d been dead for ages. “What are
you
doing here?”

My nonresponse was, “I fell.” I shone the light on my wound.

“Good gracious,” Artie said. “Come in and—”

“Don’t upset the equipment,” his wife repeated, ignoring my bloody knee.

I carefully came through the door, deftly navigated the maze of wires attached to their meters, and realized I was in the kitchen of the guesthouse in which I’d stayed on previous visits. Holding the handkerchief against my knee to avoid dripping blood on the floor, I limped to the nearest seat, a hard black straight-backed chair hand-painted with little red and yellow birds.

“How long have you been down there?” Samantha asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A half hour maybe.”

“We were monitoring our equipment,” Artie Grogan said. “We do it every hour whenever we feel there’s an unusually strong spirit presence somewhere in the house or on the property. The meters indicated an especially strong field within the past half hour coming from the tunnel.”

“You’re aware of the tunnel,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Grogan responded.

“Have you been down there yourselves?” I asked, taking a peek at my damaged knee and pleased to see that the bleeding had stopped. My handkerchief, however, was a wet red mess.

“Of course we have,” his wife snapped, extricating a memory card from a camera, labeling it and tossing it on a pile of other cards. “There isn’t a corner of this property that we haven’t personally visited. We’d be derelict in our duties if we didn’t.”

“Of course,” I said, having had enough with her. “If you’ll excuse me.”

I went to the sink, rinsed out my handkerchief, squirted it with dishwashing soap, and washed off my cut, gasping at the sting of the soap on the open wound.

“Do you want me to find some first-aid cream?” Samantha asked, finally recalling her manners.

“I think it will be fine for now,” I said and started for the door leading to the gardens, beyond which sat the main house.

Artie followed me outside. “We’d like to know what you saw down there,” he said.

“I’m sure nothing that you haven’t seen,” I said.

“The aura coming from the tunnel is always powerful,” he said, walking beside me toward the house, “but today is unique.”

I forced a laugh. “Maybe your meters are especially sensitive to mystery writers from Maine,” I said.

“No. No. It was more than that. I mean, we’ve been in the tunnel when the meters were on, so it wasn’t just you.”

“By the way, Artie, I tripped over chain down there. Yours?”

“Chain? I don’t remember a chain. No, not ours. Are you suggesting that—?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” I replied, “except a hot bath and some antibacterial ointment for my knee. Good seeing you.”

He stopped walking, and I was aware that he continued to watch me limp up to the house and through a back door. I immediately acted on my intentions. I ran a hot tub and soaked in it before getting into a robe and ministering to my knee. Content that the wound was superficial, I dressed and headed off for dinner with Dr. Warner Payne.

 
“Quite an experience,” Dr. Payne said after I’d recounted my afternoon in the tunnel. I had told him my tale over a glass of white wine. The doctor had a bourbon and water.

“One I can do without repeating,” I said. “How well do you know the Grogans?”

“Not well at all. Their pseudo-science amuses me, but each person to his own madness. Why do you ask?”

“No special reason. But I know now that the guesthouse is connected with the main house by that tunnel, which means that anyone could have entered and left the house by way of it.”

He nodded. “Wanamaker Jones’s murderer,” he said flatly.

“Possibly. I know it happened forty years ago, but do you happen to remember anything about that night that could point me in the direction of who might have killed him?”

He sat back and smiled. “My memory’s not as keen as it once was, but I happen to have that evening clearly in mind. I suppose you don’t easily forget a New Year’s Eve when someone is gunned down in cold blood as part of the festivities.”

“I know I wouldn’t forget it,” I said.

He was about to recall that fateful evening when a couple came to the table to greet him. I’d noticed that he was the recipient of numerous waves from people at the bar and at other tables. Payne was well-known, and I assumed beloved, after all those years of providing compassionate medical aid and advice to Savannah’s residents. He introduced me and they chatted for a moment about the upcoming parade.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, Dr. Payne. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“No wonder you like coming here,” I said. “You’re obviously a popular fellow.”

“If you live long enough, you get to meet just about everyone,” he said. “Now, where were we?”

“You were about to give me your recollections of the night Wanamaker Jones was killed.”

“Ah, yes. As you know, it was New Year’s Eve. Savannah likes to party, as you’ll see tomorrow. That holiday was no exception.”

 
The New Year’s Eve party at Tillie’s house was as grand and festive as all the previous ones had been. Tillie was known as a gracious hostess, and invitations to her parties were zealously coveted. A six-piece Dixieland band provided spirited music throughout the evening, augmented by a singer imported from New Orleans for the occasion. More than a hundred guests took part in the festivities, and the champagne flowed freely. By the time the countdown to midnight and the New Year had begun, many partygoers were drunk, which provided a few problems. Some inebriated guests took the opportunity to embrace and, in some cases, fondle female objects of their desire, which prompted a few arguments and threatened fistfights between husbands and overeager male celebrants.

It was close to two in the morning when Tillie made it known that the festivities were officially over—at least for the majority of guests. Earlier in the evening, she’d quietly asked a select few to stay after the others left, which she often did at her parties, bestowing VIP treatment on those she favored. Included in that privileged group were Wanamaker Jones, Dr. Payne, Roland Richardson III, Judge Frank O’Neill and his sister, a pastor from the church Tillie attended now and then, and Tillie’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law. In addition to the hostess and her guests, three members of the household staff were on hand. The regular staff had been augmented to handle the demands of such a large gathering. A bottle of rare aged bourbon was produced and served in snifters by a uniformed black man to the remaining guests, some of whom settled in the drawing room, their sighs mirroring their fatigue at the end of a long, spirited party.

 
“Tell me about the group that stayed on,” I said after Dr. Payne had set the party scene for me.

“As I recall,” he said, “the pastor, whose name was Brad-ford Penny, promptly fell asleep in his chair.” He chuckled. “Pastor Penny was well-known around Savannah as having a direct connection with the devil—devil-rum, that is. At any rate, the mood was subdued, especially in contrast to the noisy, sometimes raucous goings-on earlier in the evening.”

“A welcome quiet time,” I suggested.

“Exactly.”

“Who else was in the room?” I asked.

Payne frowned in thought. “Me, of course. Miss Tillie’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law—brother to her late husband, that is.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “They were not among her favorites, but they’d brought their kids—that’s Rose Margaret and Rocky Kendall. You met them at the reading of the will. The children had been put to bed upstairs. The plan was for them to stay overnight, so Miss Tillie could hardly leave her in-laws out of our elite little group.”

“Are her in-laws still living?”

He shook his head. “They passed away some time back, within a few years of each other.”

That news was disappointing, but I hoped their children would remember something of that evening when I had a chance to talk with them.

“Did you say Roland Richardson was there? I wonder why he never mentioned that to me.”

“Probably wanted to see if you discovered it on your own.”

It began to appear that Tillie was not the only game player among her friends. Did everyone put the skills of their friends and colleagues to the test? General Pettigrew had been challenging me since I arrived. Now I learned that Richardson was being less than forthright.

“Anything else you can recall from that gathering?” I asked.

“The judge was having a tiff with his sister. I remember that.”

“Why?”

“Oh, something about her flirting with someone during the evening.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“Frank has always been a bit of a prig. After their parents died, Charmelle moved in with him. Frank was overprotective. Made it a little difficult for her to have any beaus.”

“Was Wanamaker Jones there?”

He shook his head. “I’d seen him a lot during the party, though. Wanamaker was a restless sort, Jessica, one of those men who never seem to be able to sit still for any period of time, always in motion. I suppose that contributed to his slender build, burning up calories by constantly moving about.”

“Did you like him?”

“Jones?”

“Yes.”

“I—I never really thought about him,” he offered, although I wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth. “He was charming, of course,” he went on smoothly. “No one without charm would ever have attracted Miss Tillie’s attention. He was accepted by the others.”

“Are you a member of the Forest City Gun Club?”

“Me? No. No time for that sort of thing.”

“
Were
you ever a member of the club?”

“This is beginning to sound like an interrogation.” He squirmed in his chair, his shoulders hunched.

“My apologies,” I said, “but if I’m going to meet that deadline, I need more details about Wanamaker Jones and the people who knew him, socialized with him. You said you would help.”

“Well, I knew him,” he said. “Not well, but we ran in the same circles—or at least he ran in mine.”

“How long had he been around?”

“That I can’t remember. A year or two, maybe more. You’re talking forty years ago, Jessica.”

“Okay. What about Tillie?” I asked.

“What about her?”

I could see his shoulders relax a little.

“On that night, after the party, did she sit and join you, or was she too busy playing the hostess?”

Payne laughed a little. “Tillie Mortelaine and Wanamaker Jones were kindred souls, Jessica. She was as fidgety as he was.”

“And slender.”

“And slender. She was a little bitty thing. He was a head taller. The two of them seemed to be in perpetual motion at times, light on their feet, dancing their way through life. They cut quite a figure on the dance floor, you know.”

“I didn’t know. I never saw Tillie dance.”

“Right up until the end. A few weeks before she died, she picked up again on ballroom dancing lessons at a studio in town.”

I sat back and smiled at the inspiring vision of this ninety-one-year-old woman doing the fox trot or waltz.

“Ready to go upstairs for dinner?” Payne asked.

“Yes, but before we do, tell me something about Tillie’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Now that I’ve met their children, Rose Margaret and Rocky, I’m curious about their parents. Rose and Rocky were the ones who discovered Wanamaker’s body.”

“That’s right.”

“I believe you indicated to me that the relationship between Tillie and her husband’s family was less than cordial.”

“Right again.”

“So why were the parents and their children invited to the New Year’s Eve party at Tillie’s house? This was well after Tillie had become widowed. Did she remain in touch with her deceased husband’s family despite the bad feelings that existed between them?”