Southern Ghost Read Online Free Page B

that sounded.
    “Oh, yeah, excuse me. A business engagement back by the mausoleum with the broken palm tree. I believe that’s what you said.” Narrowed eyes now. “Mighty peculiar place to conduct business, Mr. Darling.”
    “I suppose there was something Ms. Kimball wanted to show me at the Tarrant plot.” Max tried to keep his voice level, his temper intact. “She was scared. She called me and she was scared as hell. The call broke off. I don’t know why or how.”
    The policeman rubbed his nose. “No phone booths at the cemetery. If she was scared, needed ‘help,’ why didn’t she tell you to come where she was? Why the cemetery?”
    “I don’t know.” Max spaced out the words. “But she did. I came as fast as I could, but when I got there, all I found was her purse, flung down on the path. Now, what does that look like to you?”
    “Looks like the lady lost her purse,” the sergeant said mildly. He held up a broad palm at Max’s fierce frown. “Okay, okay, we’ll check into it. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Darling.”
    Max almost erupted, but what good would it do? With a final glare at the uncooperative lawman, Max turned away. He banged out of the station house and slammed into his sports car. He hunched over the wheel. What the hell should he do now? Obviously, it was up to him. Would it do any good to check Courtney Kimball’s apartment? Max didn’t feel hopeful.
    But it was better than nothing.
    That took time, too. He had Courtney Kimball’s address, but he didn’t know Chastain. He didn’t find any help at the nearest convenience store or at the video express, but an elderly woman walking two elegant Afghan hounds finally came to his assistance.
    “Oh, you’re very close. That’s still in the historic district. The half number probably means a garage apartment. Turn left here on Carmine, go two blocks, turn right on Merridew, young man. It should be in that block.”
    It was.
    A street lamp shone on a bright-white sign: THE ST. GEORGEINN . A lime-green dragon lounged upright against the crimson letter
S
, his tail draped saucily over a front paw.
    Max hurried down a flagstoned path past a shadowy pond to the back of the property and an apartment upstairs over the garage. No outside light shone, but lights blazed inside and there was a murmur of sound. Voices?
    Max took the outside stairs two at a time, relief washing through him. Maybe it was going to be all right. Maybe it was a lost purse, just like the cop suggested. After all, Max had been late—though not that late—but Courtney Kimball was a driven woman. Certainly in the brief contact they’d had, Max had recognized a strong will. There was, in Courtney’s single-minded concentration on the Tarrant family, a chilling sense of implacability. Just so did the narrator seek to find the secrets of the House of Usher.
    At the top of the stairs, he realized two disturbing facts at the same time.
    The door was ajar.
    The voices, impervious to interruption, flowed from a television set.
    Max knocked sharply. The door swung wide.
    The voices—amusing light chatter from an old movie—continued unabated, as unreal as a paper moon, masking the absolute quiet of the unguarded apartment.
    Max stepped inside. “Courtney? Courtney, are you—”
    Disarray.
    A hasty search had begun. Cushions littered the floor. Desk drawers jutted open. Papers spewed from a briefcase tipped over on a coffee table. But across the room sat a Chippendale desk, its drawers closed, and through an open door, Max glimpsed a colonial bedroom, the four-poster canopied bed neatly made, the oxbow chest undisturbed.
    A search begun. A search interrupted?
    He called out again.
    The flippant voices from the television rose and fell.
    If Courtney Kimball was here, she couldn’t answer.

Chapter 7.

    Annie recognized him at once and knew his arrival meant trouble.
    Chastain Police Chief Harry Wells wasn’t a forgettable man, not from his slablike face to his ponderous black