The Perfect Ghost (26 page)

I found myself marching across the hills back to the Big House, pointing straight for the small office with the mechanical shades where I stopped directly in front of the wall of framed pictures and confronted the framed Malcolm genealogy. I ran my index finger over the glass, tracing elaborate curlicues. So many famous actors, but the family had run to daughters in Ralph’s generation. A girl, Jennifer, who had died as a child, that’s where Jenna’s name must come from, then Ella, who bore James Foley. Ralph’s third sister, Lydia, a much-married actress who had enjoyed a Broadway vogue as a grande dame, had died childless.

Harrison Malcolm, Garrett’s grandfather and a renowned actor, had not been a wealthy man. Academically rather than commercially minded, he’d run Cranberry Hill as a sort of run-down theater school on a chunk of land too stony for crops and ill-placed for cranberries. Harrison begat Jennifer, Ella, Ralph, and Lydia, all gone now. I reviewed the chart.

Ralph, the commercially minded one, had enlarged the estate, buying more and more land from his neighbors. He’d taken advantage of the natural rock bowl to create the Amphitheater. Legitimate stage had been his passion, but he’d done movies for money late in life, when his hawk nose and plummy vowels made him a natural villain.

Garrett didn’t want his bloodlines or childhood to dominate the book. His work was the focus, his films and plays. But I couldn’t help speculating about the family in whose house I lived. Had Harrison willed Cranberry Hill exclusively to his son, Ralph, trusting their husbands to provide for his daughters? The tradition of leaving the land to the eldest male might run in the family. Primogeniture as well as love for the Bard of Avon might have figured in Ralph’s will.

Bereft of ornamentation, the family tree tapered rather than widened. James Foley had mentioned an ex-wife. I found her name, Katherine, but either she and Jamie had no children, or the chart had been framed prior to their birth. I reviewed and deconstructed the scene at the beach, trying to decide whether it was evidence of a homoerotic, a homosexual, relationship. Had I witnessed caresses or high-spirited locker-room play? Had I miscontrued, misunderstood? If I’d viewed the same scene in a movie, unguided by focus, angle, film score, its meaning would have been ambiguous, a matter of interpretation.

Was Brooklyn Pierce one of the reasons Jamie’s marriage had ended? Part of the reason he’d received so little land? I doubted it; actors of all people were tolerant. But Ralph had wanted a troupe of actor-sons.

James Foley had mentioned how close he’d come to inheriting all the land. I wished I could see the exact terms, the precise wording of the Shakespearean will written by Ralph Malcolm.

I touched Jenna’s name on the chart. Lucky, lucky Jenna, sole fruit of the illustrious tree. With so much at stake, there would be contingencies, in case something happened to lucky Jenna. James Foley must be listed as a fallback, an alternative. If the lawyer who’d set up the generation-skipping trust hadn’t insisted on a change in language, Jenna, not a “Sonne of my Body,” but a daughter, could have been disinherited. I considered the lawyer’s business card in the Bloomie’s bag. Amory Russell’s firm was located in New York. I doubted they concerned themselves with Massachusetts estate law, and Jonathan seemed certain that you’d spoken to Russell about ghosting his biography.

Back in my pink and gold room, I replayed the tape in which Garrett talked about his father. I could almost hear the quotation marks when he spoke of “Ralph’s Shakespearean Will.” I smiled at the portentous quality of the rolled r’s, the invisible caps, the implied italics as he intoned Ralph’s reluctant change from “Sonnes of My Body Lawfully Issuing” to “Heirs of My Body, et cetera,” and then it came to me.
Heirs of My Body.
Would you have made a note of that, and if you had, would you have used shorthand, so that the note read: HMB?

JFLY: James Foley. 2nd BST BD: Second-Best Bed. HMB: Heirs of My Body. I was following your path, but I wasn’t yet sure where the path led.

CHAPTER

thirty-nine

The more I considered it, the likelier it seemed: There would have come a night when you worked late, sipped wine over dinner, chatted long after the meal. Garrett would have offered a fat Cohiba cigar from the box on the side table, and you’d have downed a snifter of brandy while you smoked. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for Garrett to say the hell with it, don’t drive tonight, there’s plenty of space in the house.

I couldn’t imagine you sleeping in gold and pink splendor, but bedrooms lined the corridors. In any one of them, you might have left behind a tell-tale sign. You might have carelessly mislaid the microcassette Brooklyn Pierce had begged me to return.

I’d wandered the Big House before, enjoying its rambling spaciousness, but I hadn’t searched it. I’d fingered ornaments because their textures seemed to demand a caress, but I’d drawn the line at grubbing in cabinet corners while keeping furtive watch for housekeepers and maintenance staff. Now, successfully avoiding all onlookers, I investigated six different bedrooms before taking a break during which I peered out a low window and took note of the car parked below.

Beige and gold, the cruiser crouched like a waiting lion in the driveway. The shield emblazoned on the hood displayed the palindrome-like initials of the Dennis Port Police Department.

Quickly descending a flight of stairs, I crossed hallways and shot down corridors like a bullet with barely a thought for my trajectory till I arrived in the corner of the tiny room over the Great Room, marveling at my speed and lack of hesitation, thinking that if my heart would stop pounding in my ears, I’d make a better eavesdropper. Detective Snow’s voice was less distinct than Caroline’s. His words slid into one another, eliding into a strange foreign-sounding tongue. I shifted my position, inched slightly to the left, nearer the bookshelf, seeking the sweet spot, straining with concentration until the rumbling noises sorted themselves into words and sentences.

Garrett, calm and bell-like, resonant: “Sorry, I don’t remember. That would be Wednesday night?”

A noise from Snow, a grunt of assent.

“I don’t believe I saw him after our Tuesday session, but my assistant keeps my schedule if you want to check.”

“You didn’t meet with him later, for dinner or drinks? He wasn’t staying here? On the property?”

“No.”

“It’s just his neighbors aren’t sure whether or not his car was parked at the house Tuesday night.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

I missed a sentence or two after that, caught only a word here, a word there. Had the speakers moved to another location? Should I risk moving? Just as I started to take the first of three prospective steps toward the window, a complete sentence rang out.

“Was Blake working on anything else while he was here?”

A murmur from Garrett, no specific words, but a tone of demurral, disavowal.
I wouldn’t know, I don’t know
, something in that vein.

“He didn’t speak to you about any other project? Some kind of exposé?”

The next thing I heard was a rumbling squawk as though a chair were being pushed back. I imagined Detective Snow lurching unsteadily to his feet, his complexion gray and sickly.

Garrett: “Is it important? Where Teddy was on Wednesday night?”

In the burst of speech that followed, the only words I caught were “wondering why,” “that stretch of road,” “deserted,” and “that’s all.” Then Garrett chimed in with something that sounded vaguely cheerful. Snow’s response included “follow up,” and “routine.”

The clack of footsteps signaled the end of the interview, so I turned to leave the room. Remembering too well the wild panic the enclosed space had engendered when I’d eavesdropped on Garrett and Caroline, I’d left the door ajar. Darren Kalver stood like a pale scarecrow in the shadows and a faint smile played on his lips.

“Quite a view from that window,” he said when he caught my eye.

I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, no idea how he could have approached so silently.

“Yes, it’s lovely.” My face set into a sculpted mask as I waited for him to move aside so I could scuttle past. He planted himself in the doorway, watching me with speculative eyes.

Weeks ago, Teddy, I might have melted into tears at his gaze or run off like a mouse caught eating the cheese. But I was Garrett’s favorite now. A new and steely confidence ran in my veins, and I could stare down the likes of a personal assistant. The deadlock was broken by a burst of classical piano that I didn’t recognize as the ringtone of his cell until he swooped it from a pocket and tucked it to his ear.

“Cranberry Hill Theater. Garrett Malcolm’s office. How may I help you?”

He rolled his pale-lashed eyes when he heard the response. “Wayne, I’m so sorry. Yes, it was a terrible mix-up and I’m so sorry. I know. I know. Yes, you had every reason to expect the meeting as scheduled. I absolutely sympathize, and I know you need to get the documents ready, but he’s rehearsing full time, and you know how he gets.”

Kalver backed out of the doorway and shot me a look that said,
Go away and stop listening.
When I didn’t, he pivoted and lowered his voice. “Wayne, you know I’m in your corner. No, look, I did not cancel on you. I don’t know what happened and I promise I’ll try to wedge you in, but I think you should be prepared to wait till after we open. I know. I’m really sorry.”

He shoved the phone angrily into his pocket. His tone changed from sugary syrup to steel as he pointed a finger at my face. “You haven’t been playing private secretary, have you?”

“What do you mean?”

“They blame me. And they ought to blame you.”

His pale flap of hair was ridiculous and his accusation so transparently unfair, I decided not to dignify it with a response.

“He’s got important decisions to make, about the future of this theater. They want to cross the t’s on the trust, but Mal postpones every damn meeting. All he wants to do is direct and act. Artists!” He uttered the word like a curse.

“Is that the conservation trust?” For a moment I thought anger would overcome his customary discretion, but he recalled his position too quickly. And mine. And sought to reestablish the balance of power.

“What are you doing up here?” he demanded.

I kept to the offensive. “When can I interview you about your boss?”

“I’m a confidential assistant. I think that precludes interviews.”

“And how did you get your job?”

“I applied for it.”

“Does the board have any say in the selection of plays?”

“The Cranberry Hill Board? Are you kidding? If they did, we’d do nonstop musicals. Malcolm keeps all the power. And if you’d let him get out of bed occasionally, he might exercise it.”

I tried to summon a withering response. Failed, edged past him, and walked steadily down the hall to the bedroom, my bedroom. I was still there, hands poised at the keyboard, when Garrett cracked the door to tell me dinner would be late. I smiled and thanked him. And waited, but he didn’t mention Kalver catching me in the act of eavesdropping. Nor did he mention Snow’s visit.

I considered bringing it up during pre-dinner drinks, but Kalver was telling some pointless story about last year’s production of
Love’s Labor’s Lost.
I thought about it during the soup course, but the stage manager and the lighting designer were reminiscing about
Hamlet
s they’d enjoyed in England and Australia, and
Hamlet
s they’d despised in Spain and Germany, and could even the best translation of Shakepeare ever be said to truly work? I speculated about it during the entire endless meal, about casually announcing that I’d noticed a police cruiser parked in the driveway and had someone neglected to pay a traffic fine? The crème brûleé was tasteless in my mouth, the coffee bitter. Garrett said nothing, I said nothing, and our silence sprouted and grew like ivy creeping up a stout brick wall.

CHAPTER

forty

With the extended deadline looming, the next morning I forced myself back to the text and attacked the twenty-ninth chapter with something approaching gusto. I had the facts, the hard, round beads of information that, correctly strung, would inform the chapter, but the rhythm of Garrett’s thoughts and actions on the occasion of his second Academy Award nomination proved stubbornly elusive and I knew I couldn’t seek guidance or clarification from the source, who’d be a bear all day, dodging between Amphitheater and Old Barn, conferring with the lighting designer, haranguing the carpenters; strictly off limits. I started over, butchered a sentence, mangled a paragraph, and found myself debating between a trip to a Chatham boutique and a return to the Cape Cod Mall. Really, my boudoir apparel was a constant joke: nudity or nothing. I didn’t own so much as a nightgown worthy of the name. I craved silk, something skimpy and erotic like the blue gown I wore our first time, the one currently encased in plastic in my bottom dresser drawer in Boston. I hungered for another brightly colored bra, a racy thong, a trousseau of foamy lingerie.

God, do you remember, Teddy, how shy I was, how frightened, how many months it took to lure me to your bed? How I hid in the closet to disrobe and ran to the bathroom afterward, carefully closing the door? How tortured I was then, how whipsawed I felt, how ignorant I remained in spite of modern advertising and skimpy clothes and archly knowing TV shows. In and out of schools and institutions, with different families in far-flung towns, I’d missed it all, the lectures on menstruation, the talks on sexuality. Everyone I knew seemed to know everything I didn’t know, and no one shared because I didn’t know to ask.

How ashamed I was of my scrawny naked body. But I learned how to use it, didn’t I?

It was more pleasant to contemplate nightgowns than brood over Garrett’s continuing silence about Caroline’s visit and Snow’s queries. A shopping trip wouldn’t take longer than an hour. To assuage any lingering guilt, I grabbed the recorder and plunked it on the passenger seat of the Focus, promised myself I’d listen to Garrett’s voice all the way there and back as well. If I listened with half my mind while letting the rest wander through lacey groves of lingerie, the click might come, the small sideways glimmer that would illuminate Chapter Twenty-nine.