Die Job Page 6

  Her anger and moodiness seemed out of proportion. I’d expected her to be worried about Braden, but her reaction seemed a bit off. I eyed her profile, noting the way she gripped her lips together and tugged at a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “What’s wrong, Rach?” I asked.

  “My best friend is, like, sucked into a black hole in his brain, and you ask me what’s wrong?” She hurled the remains of her shake at a metal trash can, but missed, splattering strawberry goo across the sidewalk and into the street. Drawing in a quick breath, she started to run, arms pumping hard, black hair flopping against her shoulders.

  Depositing my cup in the trash, I jogged after her, not trying to catch up with her, but wanting to keep her in sight. She didn’t run long. After only two blocks, she wrapped an arm around a light pole and spun around it, sinking to the ground. As I stopped a few feet away, I asked myself, What would Mom do?

  I, of course, had been a delightful teen, helpful, courteous, and happy all the time. I never obsessed over acne or feeling fat. I never sobbed my heart out when Hank flirted with another girl or my best friend, Vonda, deserted me for a whole week to hang with Stephanie Matejka. I never overreacted to a bad grade or imagined slight. Hah! I remembered Mom’s technique for kicking a little sense into me and Alice Rose when we let our moods or hormones get the better of us.

  “Enough, Rachel,” I said in as unsympathetic a voice as I could muster. “Stand up, blow your nose, and tell me what the heck is eating at you.”

  She looked up, surprised at my tone. Sniffing, she dug in her jeans pocket for a tissue and scrubbed at her tear-stained face. I held out a hand, and when she took it, I hauled her up.

  “Let’s sit.” I pointed to a bus stop and we settled on the bench with its back advertising a local Realtor. The red metal bench had a woven look to it, with holes for water to drain through. “Talk to me.”

  She fixed her eyes on mine and bit her lip. Finally, she said, “I’m not sure Braden’s fall was, like, an accident.”

  “What?”

  She pounded her fists on her thighs. “See, I knew no one would believe me!”

  “Wait a minute.” I held up a calming hand. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. Why don’t you think it was an accident? Did you see something?”

  She didn’t answer; instead, she shoved a hand into her pocket and came out with a crumpled piece of paper. As she smoothed it out, I could see it was an article torn from a newspaper.

  “Did you see this?” she asked. “It was in today’s Brunswick News.”

  I shook my head and she passed it to me. “Depressed Teen Injured during Ghost Hunt,” the headline read. I glanced at Rachel, but she had her head bowed, her hair a dark curtain obscuring her expression. Scanning the brief article, I read that “Braden McCullers, eighteen, suffered head and other injuries in a fall at the Rothmere mansion near St. Elizabeth Saturday night. He was taking part in a school-sponsored field trip to scientifically dispute the presence of a nineteenth-century ghost in the antebellum home, according to Merle Kornhiser, principal at St. Elizabeth High School. Police sources are calling the fall an accident but say the teen had a history of depression. He remains in intensive care.”

  I folded the page carefully along its creases, playing for time. Newspaper articles and TV reports about teen depression flashed into my head. I thought I knew what was troubling Rachel. “Are you afraid Braden tried to commit suicide?” I finally asked.

  “No! But that’s what people will say. And it’s not true. He told me about his depression when we were dating. Not many people know. He was taking antidepressants and was involved with a study to, like, test a new drug.”

  A bus slowed but I waved it on. Belching diesel smoke, it picked up speed. The fumes drifted around us and I coughed. “If you don’t think it was a suicide attempt, then what—”

  “He was worried about something this past week.” She plucked at the metal strands of the bench seat with a fingernail. “But not in a sad kind of way. He wasn’t worried about himself. He said he knew something and was wondering if he should intervene.”

  “Knew what? Intervene how?”

  “I don’t know!” She flung her head up and her eyes, worried and defiant, met mine.

  I hoped Rachel was making a mountain out of a mole hill, but she clearly needed someone to take her fears seriously, so I did the best I could. “What, exactly, did he say?”

  “He gave me a ride home on Thursday. We stopped at the marina and walked all the way out the boardwalk in the marsh, out to where those benches are where the bird watchers like to sit?”

  I nodded. I knew the spot she meant. It was a peaceful place surrounded by cattails and swamp grasses, home to dozens of bird species. A wooden bench, with the names of many visitors etched into its boards, looked out over an expanse of marsh to where the St. Andrew Sound glinted in the distance. I liked to sit there myself at this time of year, when the tourists were mostly gone, and inhale the slightly sulfurous scent of the marsh and listen to the cries of the water birds.

  “Anyway, he recited a bit of that Donne poem, you know, the one about ‘No man is an island’? He was always doing that when we were together—saying bits of poems. He even wrote a few. And then he talked about, like, our responsibilities to each other and said he had a hard decision to make. He said that sometimes knowledge is a curse and that he felt he needed to intervene.”

  “ ‘Intervene’? That’s the word he used?”

  Rachel nodded. “Yeah, like, he said it two or three times.”

  “But he didn’t say what he was referring to?”

  “No. I asked him. He said he had a responsibility to be discreet until he’d made up his mind about what to do.”

  “And you have no clue what he was talking about? He didn’t bring it up again on Friday or Saturday?”

  “I didn’t see him Friday,” Rachel said, “and he was all jumpy last night. When I asked if he’d made a decision, just concerned-like, you know, not trying to be nosy, he told me to drop it.”

  I heard the hurt in her voice and reached over to squeeze her hand. “And now that’s he been hurt, you think this plays in somehow?” Like maybe he was dealing with something he couldn’t handle and he tried to kill himself? I didn’t say it aloud, but the thought crossed my mind.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, frustrated. “I just don’t want people saying he tried to kill himself, and I don’t see how it could’ve been an accident. He wouldn’t have gone up the stairs just for nothing. And he wouldn’t have fallen for no reason!”

  “You think there was someone else there?” I asked slowly.

  “It’s the only thing that, like, makes sense,” Rachel said. “Isn’t it? Someone or something got him to climb the stairs. And who knows what happened then?”

  Chapter Six

  BY THE TIME I STARTED BACK TO ST. ELIZABETH, HAVING failed to get Rachel to come with me, I was confused and disturbed. Traffic on the interstate flowed freely, giving me plenty of opportunity to chew on what Rachel had said. Despite Braden’s history of depression, I was inclined to agree with her that he hadn’t seemed suicidal at the ghost hunt. Preoccupied, maybe, but not suicidal. Besides, who would choose such a bizarre place to end their lives? And, throwing oneself down a couple of flights of stairs was hardly a guaranteed ticket to the cemetery, as Braden’s fall proved. Surely, anyone intent on ending his life would pick a more effective method? Without even wanting to, I quickly thought of three or four better methods.

  And an accident seemed almost as unlikely as suicide. Braden was a football player, an athlete, for heaven’s sake. How likely was it that he would trip going up the stairs or stumble coming down and not be able to catch himself on the rail or regain his balance? And why had he gone upstairs in the first place? I tried to think it through from his perspective. Rachel goes to the bathroom, leaving Braden in the parlor. He’s tired of doing EMF readings. He wanders into the hall and looks around, maybe studies some of the
paintings. Then . . . what? He hears the booms from the fireworks and decides to go upstairs to get a better view. I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. He’d have gone out the front door to see what was going on.

  I realized the speedometer had crept over eighty and eased my foot off the accelerator. Despite not wanting to be, I was more than half convinced that Rachel’s answer was right: someone else had been there. Someone being on the landing wasn’t necessarily a problem, but where had they disappeared to when Braden fell? Why hadn’t they gotten help? An itchy feeling crept up my back and I wriggled my shoulders against the seat back to erase it.

  Without my consciously planning to, I ended up in front of Mom’s house rather than at my apartment. The light purple Victorian with the dark purple and white gingerbread had been my home until I went to the University of Georgia. When I left college after two years to go to beauty school, I’d moved back in and lived there until I followed Hank to Atlanta and began working at Vidal Sassoon. The magnolia trees with their spreading branches and glossy leaves, the hammock swinging gently, and the spacious veranda with its mismatched chairs and elephant plant stand cum table were so familiar I frequently didn’t notice them. Right now, maybe because I’d spent time in the fear-clogged and antiseptic hospital environment, I felt a rush of affection for the place. Fire ant hills and fallen pecans dotted the yard and I avoided the former and scooped up a handful of the latter as I took the walkway around the side of the house and let myself into the kitchen.

  “Mom?”

  “Up here, honey.” Her voice came faintly down the back staircase that went from the kitchen to the upstairs hall.

  Leaving the pecans on the counter, I grabbed a banana and peeled it as I climbed. I found Mom in the guest bedroom, ripping wide strips of packing tape from a roll and crisscrossing them over the window panes. She wore black knit slacks, a white tee shirt with black stars on it, and white sneakers and was standing on a step stool. She looked over her shoulder as I came in and smiled.

  “You really think Hurricane Horatio is going to hit, huh?” I asked around a mouthful of banana.

  “Well, that’s what the forecasters are saying. And it might be a category three before it hits the coast, so I think it’s best to be prepared, don’t you?”

  “Probably.” I plopped the banana skin in the trash can. Tearing some tape off the roll, I handed it to Mom. The tape didn’t keep the windows from breaking if a tree limb or flying lawn chair hit them, but it helped keep the glass from scattering all over the room.

  She stuck it on the highest window and tried to smooth out a wrinkle as I told her about my conversation with Rachel.

  “That poor boy,” she said when I finished. “And his poor parents. I’m so blessed that neither you nor Alice Rose ever had any problems like that, although I did wonder if Alice Rose might not have been a teensy bit depressed after Owen was born.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t noticed anything different about my younger sister after she had Owen.

  Mom nodded. “Don’t you remember how weepy she was, and how she kept worrying that the house was going to burn down or that Wade would get in a wreck on the way home from work?”

  I remembered; I’d put it down to her usual drama-queen tendencies. Alice Rose was an awfulizer: if one of my nephews had a rash, she was convinced it was smallpox; if her CPA business had a slow week, she knew they would lose their home.

  “Anyway,” Mom said, folding up the stepladder, “I think you should look into it, Grace.”

  “What? You do? Look into Braden’s accident?”

  She nodded. “Yes. If nothing else, it might help Rachel feel better about the incident, poor thing. Or, maybe you’ll find out that someone was on the landing and did see what happened. Knowing for sure that it wasn’t a suicide attempt would probably give the McCullerses real peace of mind. You could call John and see if the police know anything else.” She sent a sly smile my way.

  John Dillon was the special agent in charge of Region Fourteen of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, headquartered in Kingsland. Mom had a soft spot for him since he’d helped rescue me from a murderous Realtor in August. I fought to control the betraying heat that rose to my cheeks.

  “The GBI isn’t involved with this case, Mom,” I said. “It’s strictly a local police thing.” Before she could say anything else, I added, “I suppose I could go back to Rothmere and look around. And maybe talk to Glen Spaatz and a couple of the kids who were there. I’ll be out at the school this week, anyway, shaving heads for the school fund-raiser. What could that hurt?”

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK WHEN I PULLED UP IN FRONT OF ROTHMERE.

  A handful of cars sat in the small lot near the carriage house museum and I figured some off-season tourists were visiting the mansion. Crossing the oyster shell driveway, I pushed open one of the heavy oak doors and stepped into the hallway. Voices came from somewhere to my right, maybe the ballroom. The cadence sounded like a docent lecturing about the house. I stood for a moment, taking in the feel of the place. What must it have been like to own all this, to stride across acres and acres planted with tobacco and sugar? To entertain a hundred friends and neighbors in the ballroom? I could almost hear the notes of a Virginia reel if I strained my ears. To sit down to a family dinner in the glow of candlelight, waited on and pampered by servants? I made myself consider the less romantic aspects of plantation life: visiting the outhouse in all weather, dying in childbirth, women having no more rights than a dairy cow, the horrors of slavery. All in all, I’d take working for a living in the twenty-first century over the life of a nineteenth-century plantation owner.

  Shaking off my fanciful mood, I strolled around the hall, not sure what I was looking for. I guess I was hoping that a moment of intuition would tell me why Braden climbed the stairs to the landing. I studied the oil paintings, as Braden might have, and tilted my head back to enjoy the sparkle of sunlight on the chandelier’s crystals. I avoided looking at the floor until I neared the staircase; then, I didn’t see any sign of the bloodstain. I let my breath out, not aware I’d been holding it. The old oak planks were so darkened, scarred, and stained with who knew what across the centuries that Braden’s blood had already blended with the mansion’s history. I tentatively put one foot on the lowest stair.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I jumped. The voice came from above me and I looked up to see Glen Spaatz peering over the railing, dark hair flopping across his forehead. “What are you doing here?” I countered.

  “Same as you probably.” A slight smile banished the sternness from his face. “Come on up.”

  I didn’t need his invitation. The rope that normally barred access to the stairs hung limply against the newel post, so I marched up the stairs until I was level with Spaatz on the landing. “Find anything?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Not really. I cast around up here, but I didn’t find anything out of place. Not that I know what I was looking for. Something to explain what happened, I guess. My ass is on the line here. My principal is not happy with, and I quote, ‘an incident so full of negative energy’ happening on a school outing.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for him. If I felt somehow responsible for Braden’s situation, how much worse must it be for him?

  “I was just about to check that bedroom where Lonnie went out the window.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Has Lonnie turned up yet?”

  “I don’t know.” He pushed open the door to the room and it squeaked. “If he has, no one’s told me. I did hear that they’re moving Braden out of the ICU, though. That’s got to be good news.” With a sweeping gesture, he invited me to precede him over the threshold.

  “Yeah.” And it would be even better news if he woke up. I swiveled slowly two hundred seventy degrees to take in the room. It hadn’t made any impression on me when I was trying to catch Lonnie.

  A ten by ten square, the room had the same wood floors as the rest of the house. A rag rug
added a splotch of color by a single bed with a threadbare quilt on it, and wallpaper featuring overblown roses covered the walls. A stuffed doll with button eyes and yarn hair slumped against an embroidered pillow. A walnut armoire took up most of one wall, and the window filled most of another. It didn’t look like this room had been restored to its pre–Civil War origins. Rothmere descendants had lived in the house until old Phineas Rothmere willed it to the city upon his death in the 1950s, and some of the rooms were a confusing mix of Victorian, Art Deco, and other design sensibilities. Lucy Mortimer burned to restore it all to its original splendor, but that took money. Spaatz moved to the window and threw up the sash easily. The movement sparked a memory.

  “The window was already open when Lonnie came in here,” I said. “He jumped right through it.” I thought for a moment. “Is Lonnie a good student?”

  Spaatz looked over his shoulder at me. “He’s very bright, but he’s . . . shall we say ‘unmotivated’? I don’t think his home situation is good.”

  “Bright enough to come check this place out before last night? How long has the field trip been planned?”

  “You think he cased the joint?” Spaatz turned and half sat on the windowsill, stroking his chin. “Could be. It’s been on the calendar for over a month. Had to give enough time for the kids to get their permission slips filled out and ante up five bucks each so we could pay for the bus.” Sarcasm tinged the words.

  “You know, he went out that window like a shot. Never even looked to see if the roof sloped or if there was something to hang on to or anything. I think he and his cohort—”

  “Tyler Orey. Not as bright as Lonnie—more of a follower, I’d say.”

  “I think they had this all planned out, the fog machine, the sheet, the escape route—everything.”

  Spaatz straightened. “Could well be, but where does that get us relative to Braden’s fall? Nowhere. Tyler and Lonnie were out of the picture long before Braden’s accident.”