Heart of Evil

No one said anything for a minute. Frazier patted Ashley’s hands where they lay against his chest.



“Well, a hotel at a casino might not be a bad idea,” Beth murmured. “Ramsay might have it right.”



“I personally couldn’t afford a casino for more than a night!” Whitney said.



Ashley walked back to take her seat again. “Sounds like Ramsay’s really scared. Doesn’t sound like he could be the killer,” she said.



“Lots of killers are good actors,” Jake said.



“Crab cakes, children, crab cakes!” Beth said. They all looked at her. She smiled. “Hey, we can’t live and breathe this every second. We’ll lose our minds.”



“Beth is right,” Frazier said. “Whitney, why haven’t I ever met you? Have you ever been out here?”



“Oh, yes! On a school bus with a swarm of children, I’m afraid, but I’ve been here before. It’s a beautiful place, Mr. Donegal.”



“Frazier, please,” Frazier told her, smiling. “It’s great that you’re so kind as to respect your elders, but I am just Frazier.”



Frazier was a grandmaster at heading his house hold; Ashley seemed quiet during the meal, but Frazier and Beth drew out the newcomers. They learned, of course, that Will was originally from Trinidad, that he had been a musician and an entertainer, specializing in illusion, before he had gotten into law enforcement. Whitney had been a filmmaker, and she loved film—and the world.



When the meal had ended, Jackson nodded to Jake, and they went to the study together. Jake brought up the lists he had made during the day, along with what he had discovered or not about his defined list of suspects. Then he told Jackson about the events in the woods.



“So, Toby Keaton appeared right in the middle of the chaos in the woods?” Jackson asked.



Jake nodded. “He’ll bear further investigation. Basically, he and Hank Trebly are the only neighbors. Well, it’s a sugar plantation-slash-mill on the other side, but the two of them are definitely close enough.”



“What about the ‘Yankees’?” Jackson asked.



“Justin Binder is the only man still without a reliable alibi. He was here the night that the body was found. He didn’t leave until the police cleared him.”



“Tomorrow we’ll pay a visit to the sugar mill. And we’ll drop in on Toby Keaton, too.”



Jackson stood, ready to leave the room first. Jake hesitated a minute, and then rose to follow him. “By the way,” Jackson told him, pausing at the door.



“Yes?”



“Angela says that the house is riddled with ghosts, and half of them don’t know that the other half are around. And none of them is talkative.”



“Well, it is a plantation,” Jake said, not yet wanting to talk about Emma Donegal. “What self-respecting plantation comes without its share of ghost stories?”



Jackson studied him and nodded. “Right. Naturally. Maybe we should let the owners tell us about a few. Let’s hear what they have to say.”



They went out to the front parlor where the bank of screens was set up. Whitney and Will had created their own little viewing station, pulling a few of the big wingback chairs in front of the screens. Whitney turned, seeing him.



“Hey! I brought something of yours from the hotel that you forgot, and I can’t believe that you forgot it,” she said.



“What?” he asked, puzzled.



“Your guitar,” she said.



He raised his brows, opened his mouth and said nothing.



His guitar.



He’d never left his guitar anywhere; it was a beloved Fender.



Ashley and Donegal Plantation. They could make him forget anything.



He was surprised to see Ashley walk over to the guitar; Whitney had set it against the wall by the fireplace. She gingerly touched the case and looked at him, a nostalgic smile on her lips.



“You still have the old Fender,” she said.



He shrugged.



“Play something,” Frazier told him. “Looks like we’re all in for the night.”



“And the nights aren’t easy to get through,” Beth said.



Jake looked at Jackson, who nodded. This is just what we need.



Jake took out the guitar, sat and tuned it. He looked at Ashley. “Still play the banjo?” he asked her.



“Yes, badly,” she told him.



He laughed. “Go for it!”



She hesitated, but Frazier said, “Come on, Ashley. For the love of God, let’s have some music. We need something.”



She hurried up the stairs and returned. Jake looked at her and smiled. “‘Never Marry an Ugly Girl?’”



She nodded. They both played and he sang, and they encouraged everyone to join in on the chorus. Once they had started, they fell in together.



As if five years had never gone by.



They played Arlo Guthrie, and Cliff sang, and even Frazier did a rendition of a Frank Sinatra tune.



It went on for about forty-five minutes, and then Jake drew off his strap and set the Fender down. “Hey, let someone else do the entertaining now. Ashley, tell them some of the ghost stories about the place that have some merit.”



“Oh, well,” she murmured.



“There’s Marshall Donegal, of course,” Frazier said. “The poor fellow must be turning in his grave at all this.”



“What about Emma Donegal?” Whitney asked.



“Wasn’t she accused of having killed her husband and somehow covering it all up with—‘the Yankee did it!’”



Ashley spoke up indignantly. “That’s not true at all, and I don’t know where that story got started. There were several diaries kept by the men who survived, and the surviving enemy even told the story the same way. Emma was innocent.”



“Ah, well, I thought she was supposed to haunt these halls.”



“Maybe. She died here,” Frazier said. “By then, of course, her daughters were married and her son had children.”



“Where did she die?” Whitney asked.



“She was in the Jeb Stuart room,” Ashley said.



Jake started; that was something he hadn’t known. And it was strange, of course, because he’d always stayed in that room when he had been a guest at the plantation. He lowered his head quickly. Did Emma appear to him because she felt she knew him?



“There was a fellow who had a heart attack before a reenactment and died in the stables,” Cliff offered. “I swear, now and then I think I see a shadow out there.”



“Marshall Donegal supposedly guards the plantation in death, just as in life,” Frazier told them. “I’m sad to say, in all my days, I’ve never seen a ghost.”



“Have you ever felt one?” Ashley asked him.



He grinned. “Lots of times. I believe that there are spirits here, spirits of the past, of happiness and of trauma. But if we have ghosts, they’re here to guard us, to watch over us. There’s nothing evil at this plantation,” he said firmly.



Ashley spoke slowly. “There’s nothing evil at the plantation,” she repeated and looked around. “But the living can certainly be evil. Do you think that…sometimes people create evil where there was none, because they believe that it existed in the past, and they encourage it in the present?”



“There’s a lot of that going around,” Jake said. “Take prejudice, for example, and the old hatreds people never let die. But, yes, Ashley, people can certainly perceive a wrong and turn it into a personal vindication. And it’s possible that’s what happened here—either that or someone’s personal agenda. Who would benefit if this plantation went down? If we can’t find discover why anyone would have hated Charles—or gone after Ramsay Clayton—we have to find out who wants to see you go down like a sinking ship.”



“No one,” Ashley said.



“No one that you realize,” Jackson told her.



Beth ended the evening by rising. “I’m going to bed. And, may I say, I’m delighted to have you all in the house!”



Night again, darkness, and the hour growing later.



Jake stared at the ceiling.



He remained disturbed at finding Ashley in the woods, though he wasn’t sure why. It seemed apparent that they had all frightened each other.



Was that all that it had been?



Ashley had been up a tree. Well, she had heard Toby Keaton. Toby had said that he’d heard commotion—Ashley. And then him—and then Cliff riding behind him.



Screw it.



He couldn’t sleep. He rose and walked to the double doors that led to the wraparound porch. It occurred to him that a gymnast could easily figure out a way to enter the house by means of the porch. The house did have an alarm system, but, as Frazier had said, it was a bed-and-breakfast. They catered to the public. The doors were seldom locked, so it was doubtful that the alarm was often activated.



Out on the balcony, he stared at the night. The moon was now up, its light was shining down with a benign glow. He looked to the cemetery, at the ghostly and beautiful tombs.



And he looked toward Ashley’s room, and then started, because, as if he had willed her there, she appeared on the balcony, encased in her gossamer white robe.



She looked his way.



He smiled.



“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.



“Neither could I.”



They stared at each other as heartbeats went by. She kept her distance.



“Your friends are very nice.”



“We’re a good team.”



“Whitney is a doll.”



“She’s like a little sister.”



“Ah.”



He laughed. “Really.”



She walked to the railing, looking out as he had done.



“The river looks so peaceful tonight—and beautiful in the moonlight.”



“Not so great when you’re in it,” he said.



“True. The police have the rifle and the bayonet at their forensics lab?”



He nodded. “They crawled all over the property today, too. I didn’t think that they’d find anything, once we—you—had already found the weapon.”