telling her that her earnings this past quarter totaled to a nice round zero.
“All right, you’d better tell me the rest.”
He did and within ten minutes Christy had the essentials. How Laura, not for the first time, hadn’t come home last night. How her body, skull split open, had been found early this morning in the old Claiborne cemetery out along the river road.
No, Glenn didn’t know why Laura had this interest in what had once been her family’s plantation, a property now reduced to a house in ruins on a worthless scrap of wilderness. But she’d been haunting the place lately. That’s why he’d driven out there late yesterday afternoon, expecting to find her. He hadn’t, but two witnesses reported seeing him speeding away from the scene in a state of agitation. Why wouldn’t he be agitated, when his marriage had become as rotten as that crumbling house?
That was a particularly interesting portion of his story for Christy. On a personal level, anyway. Glenn was a teacher. That’s how Christy had met him. She’d been attending the University of New Orleans, training for a career in education. Her semester of student teaching had been spent in his classroom where she had learned, after coping with a herd of fiendish sixth graders, that education was definitely not in her future but that Glenn Hollister could be. Maybe. Hopefully.
But before their relationship had a chance to develop into something permanent, Laura Claiborne had come back into Glenn’s life. The Laura who had walked out on their affair several weeks earlier, but had now decided that Glenn was the man for her. And how could Glenn resist a woman so lovely, so enticing and so very pregnant with his baby?
End of episode. And, as it turned out a moment later, end of their meeting at the Café du Monde. There was a lot more information Christy needed from Glenn, but before he could supply it, his cell phone rang.
After speaking briefly to the caller, he pushed back from the table. “Sorry, Christy, but I have to leave. That was Monica’s housekeeper.” Monica being Laura’s sister, Christy remembered. “Monica is expecting me to join her. There are arrangements we have to make.”
The funeral, Christy guessed. She and Glenn agreed to meet again in the morning, then he paid the check and left.
Now what? But the answer should have been obvious to Christy, and it was. She finally had a job—thank God she had a job!—and since there were still several balmy hours of daylight left, why not begin performing it? She knew by then where she wanted to go and what she wanted to see.
Coming purposefully to her feet, she turned her back on the table and hurried away. Neither of them had touched their coffees.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, having collected her vintage Ford Escort from where she kept it parked in an alley behind her office, Christy had crossed the Mississippi to the west bank and headed up the river road.
She knew how to get to where she was going. Some memories had a way of sticking with you, especially the painful ones. Wallowing in her misery after Glenn had parted from her five years ago, she had driven out to the Claiborne plantation. Why? Who knew. Maybe because she had expected to discover in its antebellum splendor, some satisfactory explanation for why Glenn had been so dazzled by Laura Claiborne. All she had found was a lost glory.
And how about today? What did she hope to learn by visiting the scene of Laura’s murder? Probably nothing that the police hadn’t already found and claimed. But you never knew what might turn up. It was a beginning, anyway.
Five years hadn’t helped the property, other than to leave no doubt it had deteriorated beyond all hope of rescue. Christy saw that as she turned off the river road below the levee and bumped along the rutted lane. The Claibornes had abandoned the plantation in the hard times after the Civil War, selling off pieces of the land in the decades that followed. Now all that remained in the weed-choked wilderness were the family cemetery and the crumbling house surrounded by an industrial farm with its ugly storage tanks. So much for the romance of the Old South.
The grove of live oaks shading the place, and where she parked her car, was still magnificent, however. She admired its canopies of new green as she made her way to the cemetery. Better start there, she thought, even though she wasn’t fond of cemeteries.
Yellow police tape marking the crime scene had been stretched along the wrought iron fence that enclosed the plot. The tape belonged to the New Orleans homicide division. Glenn had told her, because of its considerable facilities, it had been requested by the tiny local force to handle the case. Ignoring the tape’s existence, Christy entered the cemetery and wandered among the whitewashed tombs of Claiborne ancestors. Her gaze combed the ground, as if she expected to spy a startling clue overlooked by the police. There wasn’t one, unless you counted a couple of chicken feathers blown up against the iron fence. She didn’t.
There probably hadn’t been much for the police to collect either. She remembered it had rained heavily the night Laura’s body had lain here and that would have obliterated evidence. Her gaze drifted toward the house. She considered the place.
Funny thing about gut-level instincts; when they were reliable, they could be so useful. Christy had those instincts, the kind that served a P.I. very well. Trouble was, they needed to be accompanied by the skills that only came from experience. That, unfortunately, she lacked, which meant her instincts weren’t always dependable. At the moment, however, they were urging her to investigate the house. It was just possible it might produce something other than its ghosts.
Obeying her instincts, Christy turned her steps in the direction of the mansion. It really was a pathetic sight. The soaring brick columns that embraced the house on all sides were being eaten away by time and weather. Why had Laura repeatedly been drawn here?
The front door was gone. Boards had been nailed across the gap, but the widest of them had dropped, leaving a yawning hole. Christy didn’t hesitate. Popping through the opening, she was inside the house. Or what was left of it.
Resurrection. That’s what the plantation was called, named after the resurrection fern so common in southern Louisiana. But as Christy passed from room to room, she knew that this house would never be resurrected. It was a gray shell, stripped of everything but the dust bunnies.
Gone were the marble fireplaces, the paneling and carved moldings, the chandeliers, the floor tiles and silver locks. Vandals? If so, they had made off with what must have been some pretty valuable treasures.
Even the staircase was missing and if the outline of it in the peeling plaster on the wall was any indication, it had been a grand affair. But at the back of the house she located a plain service stairway that was still intact. Hey, why not check it all out? Which is why Christy found herself climbing the flight to the second floor where things got a bit more interesting. Or uncomfortable, depending on your point of view.
From behind a door that stood slightly ajar came a rustling sound. Spooks? Mice? Or maybe she was just imagining the noise. Either way, she took the precaution of removing the Glock from her shoulder bag. Of course, getting out of here fast would probably have been the smarter thing to do, but if you were a private investigator…well, you were supposed to investigate.
Semiautomatic firmly in hand, she spread the door wide. Behind it was another narrow flight of stairs leading to the attic. Saying a little prayer, she crept up the stairway, emerging at the top in the hollow vastness of the attic.
She could have sworn those instincts had been trying to tell her something. But, of course, they couldn’t have been because there was nothing to find. No spooks. No wild-eyed lunatic leaping out at her. Not even a scurrying mouse. And she could tell because there was plenty
