I GOT AN ALMOST IDENTICAL RESPONSE FROM MOM and Althea when I had taken the muffins out of Vonda’s oven and driven to Mom’s. Mom was filling the upstairs bathtub with water when I arrived, so we’d have fresh drinking water and water to flush the toilets with if Horatio—God forbid—disrupted the water supply. Althea perched on the closed toilet seat, reading a styling magazine.
“Can we come to the taping?” Mom asked. “It’d be like watching a show from the inside out.” Turning off the tap, she dried her hands on a towel. Fog coated her lenses, but I could see the interest in her eyes.
“It’ll be more fun than sitting around here waiting for Horatio to hit,” Althea agreed. “There’s nothing on the TV except weather updates.” She rolled up the magazine and whapped a fly with it. “Got ’im,” she said with satisfaction.
“What’s the latest?” I asked as we trooped out of the small bathroom and headed back downstairs.
“Cat one, maybe cat two,” Althea said. “Storm surge of ten to twelve feet.”
“Not too bad, then,” I said, relieved. Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge had been somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-eight feet. “When’s it supposed to make landfall?”
“Before midnight.”
With any luck, we’d have the murderer behind bars and everyone home before Horatio hit the coast.
BY THE TIME I ARRIVED AT ROTHMERE, THE LITTLE lot was crammed full of cars and I had to park in the circular drive fronting the house, where coachmen would have pulled up their horses so their masters and mistresses could alight for a dinner party or ball. The windows glowed with light—electric, not candles—and it spilled out the open door, as I imagined it would have for those long-ago parties, but at least I wasn’t trapped in a hoop skirt. Still wearing the green denim skirt and white blouse I’d donned for my “condolence” call on the McCullerses, I had freshened my makeup—Vonda’s influence—and French-braided my hair to keep it out of the way.
Stepping out of the car, I sensed a change. Not able to pinpoint it immediately, I turned in a slow circle, noting how the wind made the topiary unicorn bow its head, and the startling whiteness of the mansion against the solid expanse of gray clouds forming a barricade to the east. I stared in awe at the dark mass foreshortening the horizon, creating a wall that cut us off from the Atlantic and from everything east of us. Lightning flickered in the depths of the angry gray and suddenly I knew what was different. No birds chirped and fluttered in the hedges, no squirrels chased each other across the broad lawn. All the creatures had fled, seeking shelter in nests or hollows, leaving a disquieting stillness. Horatio was almost here, I realized. It wasn’t waiting for midnight. If we didn’t hurry, it might strike during our staged “Interview with a Ghost.”
Stepping into the hall, I entered into a scene of controlled chaos. At least, I hoped someone had control. Huge lights blazed atop thin metal legs, looking like one-eyed insect aliens. Boom mikes hung suspended over the landing. Two large cameras, the kind I’d seen only in “The Making of . . .” extras on DVDs, squatted on tripods. Technicians scurried here and there, occasionally calling out to unseen persons down the hall. Some high schoolers, along with Glen Spaatz, Coach Peet, and what looked like a handful of parents, watched wide-eyed from the parlor to the right of the hall. So did Lucy Mortimer, dressed in full Amelia regalia. No cops in sight. If Cyril was a shy ghost, I thought wryly, trying to count the crowd, Avaline’s show was doomed before it got started.
Mom, Althea, and Vonda waved at me from the far corner of the room. Before I could make my way to them, voices sounded behind me and I turned to see Mark Crenshaw and both his parents mounting the steps.
“This is just ludicrous,” his mother said as they pushed into the hall. “Ghosts don’t talk. And even if they did, it’s got nothing to do with Mark.”
Mark, bald head gleaming in the glare of the studio lights, edged away from her toward Lindsay Tandy, who emerged from the salon to clutch his arm. She cast a nervous look up at him and he smiled reassuringly into her eyes. I wondered if she was nervous because of the impending revelations—did she suspect her boyfriend of pushing his best friend?—or whether it was proximity to his parents that made her jumpy.
“It’s no big deal, Joy,” said Captain Crenshaw, looking very military despite wearing jeans and a long-sleeved tan golf shirt. “It’s not like we were doing anything else tonight.”
“We should have evacuated days ago,” she muttered.