Buried Bones (32 page)

My fingers slid over the rippling coral silk, and I knew it was possible that it had once graced a famous body. What fun.

"How about a good book?" Edy asked. "Not exactly the right companion for that gown, but the best I can do on short notice."

I accepted the collection of Tennessee Williams's plays she held out to me. "Thanks. Can I look through the scrapbooks some more?"

"Help yourself. I hate to do it, but I'd better turn in. We start breakfast at five, and that's our moneymaker. Cecil doesn't come in until lunch, so I have to cook."

It was a long day for her, and it was already late. "Get some rest, I'll be fine."

"There's an old record player on the second floor. We can't hear a thing in the apartment. Feel free to enjoy." She went to the door. "One more thing." Her dark eyes sparkled. "I didn't tell you about the ghost."

I had an image of Jitty, waiting at Dahlia House for me to return, and smiled. "What ghost?"

"Old man Rutledge. You'll know him. He drags a leg. He was shot in a card game by a deputy sheriff. They say he was cheating."

"And he haunts the third floor?"

"They hid him up in one of the bedrooms for a week before he died. He was only shot in the leg. If they'd gotten the doctor, he would have lived."

"Why didn't they get a doctor?"

"He didn't have any money left to pay for one. That's why he's so pissed off."

She was having a good time with me. I nodded wisely. "I'll be on the lookout for him."

She was gone, and I was left with a book, a bed stacked with throw pillows, and my own thoughts about Lawrence and his friends. Communists. It had been an age of innocence.

I wandered around the third floor, peeping into the other empty rooms. It was a big place, and very dark. The lodge itself was secluded, and
Moon
Lake
had passed from the fancy of the rich and famous. I examined the scrapbooks on the second floor by the light of the old antique lamps. And finally, I went to bed. I had to get home to Dahlia House. I had a few questions for Madame. She should have mentioned the communist thing. It was no big deal. Lots of artists had dabbled in different political systems--and still did.

I shut off the space heater and crawled between the thick comforter into a bed heated by an electric blanket. I was going to be warm and toasty all night. When sleep finally claimed me, I was dancing a waltz with a handsome man who reminded me of Matt Dillon, the actor, not the marshal. He was quite a good dancer.
Moon
Lake
glittered in the background as he held me and we spun around the room. We were going so fast that I grew dizzy, finally tumbling into the blackness of deep sleep.

Step, step, step, pause. Step, pause.

I awoke with a start, my heart pounding at the noise outside my room. Edy's little ghost story came back to me with a vengeance, and I grasped the heavy comforter and pulled it to my chin. I'd turned off the room's space heater before I went to sleep. Now I could see my breath condensing in the air, a halo of silver caught in a shaft of moonlight. The storm had passed and a beautiful crescent moon hung just outside my lacy curtains. In the distance,
Moon
Lake
glittered through the furry limbs of the cypress trees.

Step, step, step, pause.

The sound was distinctive. Someone was walking outside the bedroom doors--walking and then stopping to listen. I, who lived with a ghost, was suddenly terrified. Edy had said that in her apartment, two floors away, she couldn't hear a thing. Even if I screamed, no one would hear. And along with no television, the rooms didn't have a phone.

I tensed my body, willing myself deeper into the bed. The sounds of the steps came again, stopping one door to the left of me. Through my terror, I realized that the thing outside my door was not limping. It wasn't old man Rutledge come to spook me. Unless, of course, wounds were healed in the afterlife. That was something I'd failed to consult Jitty about.

Step, step, pause.
He was right outside my door. I pulled the covers up to my nose, praying that this was all a dream.

The tap at the door was so soft I almost didn't hear it over the pounding of my heart. Tap, tap, tap. It came again.

Damn! He knew I was there.

"Sarah Booth."

Double damn! He knew my name! The whisper seemed to seep through the thick wooden door, which I had taken the precaution of locking. But what did that mean to a ghost?

"Sarah Booth, let me in."

This couldn't be happening. It couldn't. All I had to do was click my heels together three times and wake up.

"Open the damn door."

Would Mr. Rutledge speak with an accent? Suddenly I was out of the bed and at the door. "Who is it?"

"Willem. Let me in. Quickly."

I recognized his voice then and slid the thumb bolt free. I cracked the door, catching only the silhouette of a tall, well-built man. "Willem?"

"Who did you think it was, James Bond? Let me in."

I opened the door. In the soft moonlight, he was breathtakingly handsome. Not exactly Sean Connery, but a nice second choice. "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting for you," he said. "I found the manuscript."

20

The breath squeezed out of my lungs, making my heart pound harder than ever. I didn't know whether this was a result of his words or his hands on my bare shoulders as he grasped me and moved me away from the door so he could enter. He closed and locked the door behind him, as if he expected the hounds of hell to come bounding up the stairs after him.

"Where?" I asked, my mind wrapped firmly around the location of the manuscript.

He didn't answer. Instead he rushed to the window and peered outside. "You're safe here, I think."

"Where's the manuscript?" I asked again, at last getting my pulse rate under control.

"It's safe. That's all I can tell you."

It was anger this time that made my heart pound harder. "Willem, I'm not in the mood for games. You burst into my room and--"

He stood in shadow, but as I began to talk, he stepped forward to join me. In the soft glow of the moonlight I saw his face shift. His gaze swept over me, lingering and moving on, then shifting back for another taste.

"Sarah Booth," he said, a low rumble in his voice. "My God, you look like a movie star."

Ah, the power of great lingerie. Although I'm a private investigator by choice, I'm a woman by birth. I couldn't help but respond. Vanity slipped to the forefront--the low, revealing forefront--and I wished I'd had time to put up my hair in one of those loose, rumpled looks where a few tendrils slipped free. I could just imagine Willem removing the pins and allowing the weight of it to tumble down to my shoulders. Juvenile fantasy, perhaps. Inappropriate, definitely. Irresistible daydream, without a doubt.

With great reluctance I stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows. Playing with fire was fun, but Willem claimed to have found the manuscript and now he was holding out on me.

"Willem, where is it?" I meant business.

"It's safe. Very safe," he said, stepping closer. "I was worried about you. Look, you're cold." His fingers brushed my arm with electric friction. "Let me light a fire."

He'd just done that, a near case of spontaneous combustion, but I had to focus on the case. "How did you know I was here?"

"Your partner, Tinkie." He struck a match, and in the light his smile was both sexual and highly amused. He bent to light the space heater. "Tinkie was very eager to tell me all about your new business relationship and the case."

I was going to have to have a talk with my partner. She wasn't supposed to tell every Tom, Dick, or Harry where I was snooping.

"She was worried about you, too," Willem added, in a more serious tone. "This case isn't exactly what it seems." He reached out and his hand circled my wrist. Very gently he pulled me back into the pathway of light that fell from the moon. His gaze slid from my eyes, slowly moving downward, then back up to hold me for a long moment. "You're truly beautiful."

His palm tenderly caressed my cheek. "Under different circumstances . . ." He took a breath and walked over to the window where he watched the play of moonlight tipping the lake with silver.

The next move was up to me. I could go to him, touch him, and initiate the thing we both wanted. It occurred to me that having the power of a sex goddess was useless unless the goddess knew what she wanted to do with it. Suddenly I was unsure.

"What are you really doing here, Willem?"

He turned back to face me, hesitating for an instant while his gaze swept over me, before he came forward. "I was concerned for you. Tinkie told me you were at Senator Archer's, and from there I followed you here." He hesitated. "There was another car following you, too."

My passions had cooled to a mild simmer, allowing for a trickle of blood flow to my brain. I'd been so deep in my own funk that I hadn't even thought to look behind me. Willem had followed me. Hell, half of Zinnia could have been in a parade behind me and I wouldn't have noticed. The reality of my carelessness was unnerving. "Did you recognize the car?"

"No." He shook his head. "
Mississippi
plates. A boxy car, the kind matrons drive."

Probably a
Mississippi
matron headed for groceries. No one had a reason to follow me. "Why weren't you at
Lawrence
's funeral?" I asked. The room was warming, but I shifted closer to the space heater. The warmth on the back of my legs was delicious.

"I was searching Harold's house. It was the only time I was certain he wouldn't come home."

While I'd been snapping pictures of the rich and infamous, Willem had been solving my case. "You found the manuscript!" My heart was racing. If I could read that book I'd be a lot closer to finding
Lawrence
's killer.

"I know where it is."

I felt my eyes widen. "You didn't get it?"

He shook his head. "But it does exist. I know where it is."

"Where?" I demanded.

"We can go for it together," he said. "I'll protect you, Sarah Booth. We'll retrieve it together."

I began grabbing my clothes, preparing to dress. "Did you know that Lawrence and Madame were communists? There are some fabulous scrapbooks here."

"I don't think you could honestly consider them to be communists," Willem said. "They were activists. How well do you know your history, Sarah Booth?"

"I made it out of college."

"Vague at best," he concluded. "In the summer of 1940,
Europe
was at war. Terrible things were happening, which Americans chose to ignore. It was inevitable that
America
would join the Allies, but the country was greatly divided. There was much to be gained--or lost."

It was nearly midnight, and I wasn't in the mood for a history lesson. "Yeah, yeah, I know it took the bombing of
Pearl Harbor
to push us into war. Let's go get the manuscript."

"You said there were scrapbooks?"

His question caught me off guard. "Yes, on the second floor." I had my clothes in my hand.

"Let's go look at them." He took my hand, removed my clothes, and led me out of the warm room and into the freezing hall. He slipped out of his jacket, a nice leather one, and draped it over my shoulders but kept walking, heading straight for the stairs as if he'd been in the lodge a hundred times.

When he'd settled me into one of the large, overstuffed chairs, he lit the nearby heaters and sat down on the arm of my chair, his hip brushing my shoulder. "Let me get a blanket from the room," he said.

"Willem!" I was ready to get going.

He disappeared for several minutes, returning with a heavy blanket he wrapped around my legs. "Which book?" he asked.

I picked up the one I'd been looking at earlier and flipped the pages.

"I have to tell you something. A confession. The complete truth this time," he said.

My finger was on the butchered picture of
Lawrence
standing at the lake. As impatient as I was to get moving, something in Willem's face made me hold still.

"As I told you, my father was in
Germany
during the war. He was a doctor."

My stomach knotted, hoping he wasn't headed where I thought he might be going. "A doctor?"

"In one of the concentration camps."

I closed my eyes. "So this is what you didn't want
Lawrence
to put in his book."

"It's what my mother wished to conceal. My father did nothing wrong. Nothing. He treated the victims of the pogroms. He was a kind man, and when the war was over, he was allowed to emigrate to
Nicaragua
without any difficulty."