The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,8
gotten themselves jammed in the pantry and—just—panicked?”
“You really don’t believe them, do you?”
“I’m just hoping they’re wrong—and you’ll tell me so.”
“I’m curious.” He leans against the banister and folds his arms. “How old are you, Ellen?”
She blinks. “Excuse me?”
“I just like to know the age of anyone helping me out.”
“I’m helping out? Twenty-six. You look older than your website. Does being around dead people”—she puts her chin up—“do that to you?”
“No, it’s more being on the road all the time. And yes, you’re helping, thank you. Who do we have in the photos, here?”
“The original owners. The timber family.”
“Serious and healthy-looking.”
Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Augustus Lambry, sitting in their great peacocked wicker chairs, a century and more ago. Standing behind them, stiff in their collars, their handsome sons and their dutiful daughters. All of them posing in the rolling garden, bare of arbors and rose bushes then because the roses hadn’t been planted yet. And off in the distance the smoke rising from the family’s mills. But no pictures of the workers inside them. Just smoke dancing in the air over their heads, as if the white puffs came out of the Lambrys’ imaginations and nothing more.
“Would you like to go right to the pantry, Mr. Pratt? Or up to see where Alice died? I thought maybe she would be, you know, the best candidate?”
“She would be. But was she the only person to meet her end in this house?”
“I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I ought to tell you I’m still a little new to this area. So I don’t always know the things the old-timers do. But I can find out anything you need.”
“Then let’s find out. Do you mind making a note?”
She takes out her device.
“Find out,” he says, peering over her shoulder, “who else might have died at this address. At any point before, during, or after the house was built. The constable can help with that, or county records. And let’s start by you showing me the house exactly the way you showed it to the Danes. In this direction?” He walks through the carved archway, brushing it with his bull’s shoulder, into the west parlor, the Red Parlor. “Very nice. Who did all the watercolors?”
“Alice did. She loved to paint, they say.”
“Did she sell to anyone?”
“She didn’t need to. She had the Lambry money. Or what was left of it. And she liked keeping to herself. She liked going down to the beach to paint. She took care of the roses. She spent a lot of time in the garden. They say.”
Pratt has stopped to study one of Alice’s seagulls flying through a storm. Wings slicing through the air, its shape like a heart cut in two.
Ellen opens the parlor’s heavy drapes. “Some of what I know about this property my broker told me. She has a string of offices along the coast. Very successful. But I’m the lead on this house. I know all the stops and views.”
“What did you tell the Danes here?”
“Well, I said, from this room, you get this wonderful northern exposure and the best views of the garden, all the roses, camellias, rhododendron, poppies. When I was readying the listing, I spoke with Mrs. Fanoli, who docents at our Botanical Garden, to be sure I was getting all the details right. She said some of the rose vines are exceptionally old—you can tell by the way they’ve twisted and thickened around the arbor. Now, if you look this way,” she says, moving over to the next window, “you can see all the way up the hill, toward St. Clements Church. There, past your car. That’s Evergreen, our cemetery.”
“Yes. I took a quick peek in before I came.” But Pratt goes on staring at the garden. “Those yellow roses. I’m curious about them. One nicked me as I came in.”
He remembers. Good. I’m glad.
“They’ve gotten a little wild. Sorry. I should have noticed. Alice had a man who used to help her tend the garden, Manoel. But things have gone a little south since she died. I’ll call him and have him tie back the creepers.”
“I’d like to know what kind of roses those are. See if you can find out from your contact at the Botanical Garden.”
“Are you thinking they’re somehow important?”
He rubs his thick wrist near the silver band, his weapon, his protection, my enemy. “We’ll see. Keep going.”
I follow, keeping close. Studying, reading them to find signs of things they can’t read themselves. It’s my