The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [144]
“Certainly not,” Annie assured her.
Palms uplifted, despite the notebook and No. 2 pencil, Laurel exclaimed, “Then it’s quite beyond me! Because Alice definitely didn’t come.”
Annie decided to explore this cautiously. “You were expecting her?”
Her mother-in-law dropped the notebook and pencil on the nearest table, opened her carryall, and pulled out a sheaf of Polaroid pictures, the bulky self-developing camera, and several road maps. “It just came to me—you know the way things do”—an enchanting smile—“that it would be so useful to take photos on the spot. And, of course, if anyone should be there, how wonderful to be able to show skeptics. Seeing is, as someone once said so cleverly, believing.” The golden head bent over the pile of photographs. “I’m marking the exact date and time on the back of each picture. It’s easy as pie with the tripod and one of those clever electronic controls—so magical, just like the television remote—so I can be in the pictures, too.” She beamed at Annie and handed her a photograph.
Annie was halfway to a smile when she felt her face freeze. Oh, God. It looked like … Surely it wasn’t …
“Laurel.” Annie swallowed tightly and stared at the photo of_____
“… really, one of my better pictures. Of me, don’t you think?”
—Laurel gracefully draped on a marble slab atop a grave, chin cupped in one hand, smiling wistfully toward the camera.
“It would have been quite perfect if Alice had come.” She stepped close beside Annie, and the scent of violet tickled Annie’s nose. “See. There’s her name. That’s all they put on the slab. Just ‘Alice.’”
“Alice,” Annie repeated faintly. “She’s dead?”
“Of course she’s dead!” Laurel exclaimed. “Otherwise,” she asked reasonably, “how could she be a ghost? And it would have been so convenient! It would be so easy to visit her often. It’s a delightful trip from here to Murrell’s Inlet, and the All Saints Cemetery is lovely, Annie, just lovely. So many people have seen Alice after circling her grave thirteen times backward, then calling her name or lying atop the slab. I did both,” she confied. A sudden frown. “Perhaps that was the problem. Too much. But”—a winsome smile replaced the frown—“I took some lovely notes.” She patted the notebook in satisfaction. “I do intend to devote a good deal of space to Alice. After all, it’s such a heartrending story, a young woman in love, separated from her beloved by her family because they thought he wasn’t suitable, spirited away from her beloved home to school in Charleston. One final night of gaiety at the St. Cecilia Ball, then stricken with illness and when they brought her home, they found her young man’s ring on the pale-blue silk ribbon around her neck, and her brother took it and threw it away and while she was dying and delirious she called and called for the ring. Is it any wonder,” Laurel asked solemnly, “that Alice is often seen in her old room at The Hermitage or walking in the gardens there? Everyone knows she’s looking for her ring.” A gentle sigh, delicate as a wisp of Spanish moss. “Ah, Love … Its power cannot be diminished even by the grave.”
If there was an appropriate response to that, Annie didn’t know it, so she tried to look sympathetic and interested while glancing unobtrusively toward the clock.
Of course, anyone attuned enough to subtleties to seriously expect to communciate with ghosts wasn’t likely to miss a glance at a clock, no matter how unobtrusive.
“Oh, dear, I had no idea it was so late. I must fly.” Swiftly, those graceful hands whipped the photographs, camera, and maps back into the embroidered carryall. “My duties are not yet done for the day.” Laurel backed toward the storeroom door, smiling benificently. “Give my love to dear Max. I know you two would adore to have me join you for dinner, of course you would, but I do believe that mothers, especially mothers-in-law, should remember that the young must have Their Own Time Together. I