Chapter 1.
Had he lived to be an old man, Ross Tarrant's face, stripped of every vestige of youth and joy, would have looked much as it did in that last hour: brooding pain-filled eyes deep-sunken, grayish skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones, finely chiseled lips pressed hard to prevent a telltale tremor.
Slumped wearily in the battered old morris chair, a man's chair in a man's retreat, he stared at the pistol, horror flickering in his eyes like firelight against a night sky.
The sound of the motor reached him first, then the crunch of tires against the oyster shells.
The door was locked.
But it was no ultimate defense.
Ross knew that.
As the throb of the engine died and a car door slammed, Ross reached for the gun.
"Ross." A commanding voice. A voice he knew from childhood, from crisp winter mornings when the men zigzagged across a field and lifted shotguns to fire at the flushed quail.
The gun was heavy: So heavy. Ross willed away the unsteadiness of his hand.
He was Ross Tarrant.
His mouth twisted bitterly.
Perhaps not an officer and a gentleman.
But he was Ross Tarrant, and he would not shirk his duty. At the first knock on the door, the gun roared.
Chapter 2.
Sybil Chastain Giacomo would always catch men's glances and inflame their senses. Especially when the unmistakable light burned in her eyes and she moved sensually, a woman clearly hungering for a man.
Always, it was a young man.
But, passion spent, the latest youth sprawled asleep beside her, Sybil slipped from beneath the satin sheets, drew the brocaded dressing gown around her voluptuous body, and prowled restlessly through the dark house, anger a hot scarlet thread through the black misery in her heart.
Chapter 3.
Despite the fitful gleam of the pale April moon, Tarrant House was almost completely hidden in the deep shadows of the towering live oaks. A wisp of breeze barely stirred the long, dangling wisps of Spanish moss. A single light shone from a second-story window, providing a glimpse of plastered brick and a portion of one of the four huge Corinthian columns that supported the elegant double piazzas and the pediment above.
Pressed against the cold iron railing of the fence, the young woman shivered. The night pulsed with movement—unseen, inimical, hostile. The magnolia leaves slapped, like the tap of a woman's shoes down an uncarpeted hall. The fronds of the palmettos clicked like ghostly dice at some long-ago gaming hoard. The thick shadows, pierced occasionally by pale moonbeams, took the shape of hurrying forms that responded to no call. She stood alone and alien in a shrouded, dark world that knew nothing of her—and cared nothing for her. The scent of magnolia and honeysuckle and banana shrub cloyed the air, thick as perfume from a flower-strewn coffin.
"Ohoooh!"
Courtney Kimball drew her breath in sharply as the falling moan, tremulous and plaintive, sounded again; then, her eyes adjusted to the night, she saw the swoop of the owl as it dove for its prey. One moment a tiny creature moved and lived; the next a scratching, scrabbling sound signaled sudden death.
But nothing could hold her gaze long except the house, famed as one of the Low Country's loveliest Greek Revival mansions, home for generation after generation of Tarrants.
The House.
That's how she always thought of it.
The House that held all the secrets and whose doors were barred to her.
Courtney gazed at the House with unforgiving eyes.
She was too young to know that some secrets are better left hid.
Chapter 4.
The tawny ginger tom hunched atop the gravestone, golden eyes gleaming, muscles bunched, only the tip of his switching tail and the muted murmurs in his throat hinting at his excitement.
The old lady leaning on her silver-topped, ebony cane observed the ripple of muscles beneath the tom's sleek fur. She was not immune to the power of the contrast between the cat, so immediately alive, and the leaf-strewn grave with its cold, somber headstone.
Dora Chastain Brevard stumped closer to the monument, then used the cane's tip to gouge moss and dirt from the letters scored deep in granite.
ROSS CARMINE TARRANT
January 3, 1949—May 9, 1970
Taken from His Family
So Young
in a
Cruel Twist of Fate
As she scraped, a thumb-size mouse skittered wildly across' the grave. The cat flowed through the air, smooth as honey oozing from a broken hive, but he was too late. The frantic mouse disappeared into a hole beneath the roots of a huge cypress. The feline's tail switched in frustration; then, once again, he tensed, but this time, despite the glitter in his eyes, the cat didn't pounce.
The sluggish, slow-moving wolf spider, a huge and hairy tarantula, would have been easy to catch.
But the ginger tom made no move.
Did the prowling cat know that the slow-moving arachnid possessed a potent poison? Or was it merely the ever-present caution of his species, the reluctance to pounce upon an unfamiliar prey?
The cane hissed through the air.
Miss Dora gazed without expression at the quivering remains of the spider. She wished she could as easily dispose of the unexpected communication that had brought her to this mournful site.
Chapter 5.
Max Darling whistled "Happy Days Are Here Again" as he turned the Maserati up the blacktop toward Chastain. He was looking forward to the coming meeting with more excitement than he'd felt in a long time. In his mind, he heard once again Courtney Kimball's intriguing voice, young but self-possessed, a little breathy, very South Carolina.
He walked into the new waterfront restaurant and his spirits rose when vivid eyes sought his in the mirror behind the bar. The young woman who swiftly turned and slipped down from the stool and walked to greet him, a graceful hand outstretched, would capture attention anywhere.
Max was assailed by a mйlange of immediate impressions: remarkable blue eyes, a beauty at once apparent yet elusive, a projection of confidence and dignity. But, paramount, was her intensity.
Her first words caught at his heart.
"I need you."
Chapter 6.
Annie Laurance Darling put down the telephone at the front desk of Death on Demand, the loveliest mystery bookstore this side of Atlanta, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Whichever, she had only herself to blame.
Who was always exhorting her husband to apply himself, to work hard, to devote himself to duty?
She, Annie Laurance Darling. Although, in truth, she had eased off recently, ever since Max began to avoid talking about his office. She had stopped asking about his cases or lack of them, concerned that she might have hurt his feelings with her well-meant admonitions to hew to the course. She hadn't pasted any helpful dictums to his shaving mirror for at least a week. (Amazing—and soul-satisfying to strivers—the encouraging mottoes intended for underachievers: The early bird gets the worm. Little by little does the trick. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame. Under the influence of poverty or of wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate. . . .)
Obviously, however, her efforts had not gone unappreciated; witness the call she'd just received from Max. So now that Max was involved in a case, how could she complain?
"Dammit, Agatha, you'd think he could arrange work for office hours!" Annie slammed her hand down on the countertop.