The truck rounded another curve, and suddenly, a blanket of bright green lawn spread out before them. The grass was patchy and spotted with clumps of dandelions, wild garlic, and silver-dollar weed. Overgrown formal beds of bedraggled-looking azaleas and camellias were planted in tiers on the gently sloping lawn, and a line of palm trees announced that they were approaching the Bettendorf family compound.
“We’re here,” Shug said, slowing the truck to a stop so she could get out and take a look.
3
Situated at the top of the gentle slope was an astonishing pale pink wedding cake of a mansion, consisting of a two-story central block bristling with vaguely Moorish-looking arches, a pair of peak-roofed turrets, and a crenelated balcony projecting over a porte cochere. This was flanked on either side by wings of only a slightly more modest design. Each was marked by a towering sentinel palm tree. The roof consisted of pale-green fired-clay barrel tiles that reminded Brooke of the frosting on a gingerbread house. The place bristled with leaded glass windows, wrought iron Juliet balconies, heavy plaster bas-relief flourishes, and curlicued ornaments. A thick green curtain of ivy crept across the fa?ade of the house, and crimson bougainvillea traced the outline of the porte cochere.
“Wow.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Shug agreed. He started the truck again, and as they drew closer, she could see that the curving concrete driveway leading up to the mansion was buckled and potholed, the pink stucco on the house was cracked and faded, and the roof sported great gaps of broken or missing tiles.
Shellhaven was slowly, inexorably crumbling as surely as a century-old layer cake.
“It don’t look like it ought to,” Shug said, his voice sorrowful. “I keep after it the best I can, but it’s only me now. Time was, half a dozen hands worked on the grounds here. One man, his whole job was taking care of the roses. There was a tractor kept the grass cut and a grove with the prettiest oranges and lemons and grapefruit you ever seen. Peach trees and pecan trees, of course. A greenhouse too, just to grow flowers and orchids for the house. All gone now. A pine fell on the greenhouse, and some kind of blight killed all the fruit trees. Just as well, ’cause these days, you can’t find nobody wants to live way over here and do an honest day’s work. Plus, Miss Josephine, she’s pretty tight with a dollar.”
If Josephine Warrick was as rich as local legend had it, Brooke wondered why she’d allowed her home to deteriorate to this extent.
“I’m sure you do the best you can, and she’s probably very grateful to have you,” Brooke said tactfully.
He pulled the truck beneath the porte cochere and pointed to the heavily carved arched double doors. “Go ahead on inside. Louette’s waiting to take you to see her.”
*
She pushed the door open and stepped inside timidly, momentarily blinded while her eyes adjusted from the harsh sunlight to the near darkness of the entry hall.
The naked bulb of a tarnished brass wall sconce dimly revealed a high-ceilinged room with black-and-white checkerboard tile floors, cracked plaster walls, and age-darkened wooden beams overhead. The crystal chandelier hanging from an ornate plaster medallion was caked with dust and cobwebs. The air was oppressively hot and damp.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed in the empty room.
“I’ll be right there,” a woman’s voice called from the darkness. A moment later, a woman she guessed was Louette bustled into the room. She looked younger than her husband, with close-cropped graying hair and a freckle-flecked, caramel-colored complexion two shades lighter than his. She had the comfortable thickness and heavy bosom of solid middle age and was dressed in a white synthetic-blend uniform.
“Miss Brooke? I’m Louette. You got here okay? That C. D. didn’t ride you too hard coming across the river today?” Her pleasant accent had a distinct singsong lilt.
“It was bumpy, but I’m here in one piece,” Brooke said.
“Well, we don’t get a lot of company these days, and Miss Josephine’s got herself all worked up waiting to see you, so I guess I’d best take you back there.”
She gestured for Brooke to follow her down a wide hallway. They passed arched entryways into what looked like twin parlors, furnished with overstuffed sofas and chairs and heavily carved tables and chests.
Louette paused outside a closed door at the end of the hall. “This used to be the library, but she can’t make the stairs no more, so me and Shug fixed her up a bedroom in here. She don’t hear so good, so you got to speak up when you talk, and she’s been pretty sick lately, so you need to make sure she don’t tire herself out. But don’t go thinking because she’s nearly a hundred years old she’s weak-minded or something. No, ma’am! Not Miss Josephine. She don’t miss a trick.”
She rapped loudly on the door, waited a moment, then poked her head inside. “Miss Josephine? You ready to see your company?”
“Is that the lawyer I sent for? Bring her in, Louette.”
*
The library at Shellhaven had been a grand room once. But now the dark mahogany paneling was dull, the draperies at the windows faded and tattered. Three walls of the room were lined with bookshelves, crammed with books and rows and rows of the distinctive bright yellow spines of National Geographic magazines. Every flat surface was littered with items; birds’ nests, sun-bleached seashells, chunks of coral, even a huge set of yellowed shark jaws. A stuffed bobcat sat on a pedestal near the window, muzzle open in mid-snarl, his molting yellow fur drifting onto the dark pine floor. A five-foot-long intact skeleton of an alligator stretched across the top of one of the built-in bookcases, and tall apothecary bottles were filled with sharks’ teeth, sea glass, and what appeared to be tiny bird skulls.
A hospital bed had been set up in the far corner of the room, partially hidden by an ornate three-panel chinoiserie screen.
A box fan whirred in one of the two open windows, doing little to dispel the heat or the scent of antiseptic soap.
The lady of the house was ensconced in a brown vinyl recliner. Brooke had been expecting a slightly diminished version of the defiant mink-wrapped, shotgun-toting heiress she’d seen in Southern Living, but the passing of years had been as cruel to Josephine Warrick as it had been to her home.
The flowing white mane was gone, replaced by a navy-blue baseball cap that did little to conceal the nearly bald head beneath it. Pale skin blotched with vivid brown liver spots stretched over skeletal cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her lips were thin and bloodless. But a pair of bushy white eyebrows arched over large, dark eyes behind oversized yellow-tinted glasses that carefully studied Brooke as though she were another museum specimen.
In the quick research she’d done, Brooke had seen dozens of photos of Josephine Warrick. She’d been a striking—if not beautiful—woman, a slender, serious-faced debutante with the short, wavy hair of the period, then a dewy-faced bride in the fifties, turned into a rangy, imposing force to be reckoned with in later years. The society pages of the newspapers in Savannah, Atlanta, and Palm Beach showed her dressed in golf togs, tennis wear, and expensive designer gowns, as well as hunting gear, standing with one foot atop a massive buck.
The woman sitting in the cracked vinyl recliner weighed less than ninety pounds and was wrapped in layers of knitted afghans and throws. An oxygen tank stood beside the chair, and a pair of thin plastic cannulas snaked toward the transparent breathing apparatus on her face.
“Hello, Mrs. Warrick,” Brooke said, after the momentary shock of the old lady’s appearance had worn off. “I’m Brooke Trappnell.” She took a step toward the chair, then stopped abruptly.
“Grrrrrr.”
She hadn’t noticed the dogs, they were so small, and nearly the same beige as the afghan.
“Grrrr.”