House of Strangers

“I spent so much time restoring the proscenium arch in that old theater I didn’t much care about the weather outside. I do not want to see any more gold leaf for a while.”

“Not much of that next door at the old Delaney house.” Bernice set a dish of sliced lemons on the counter. “Be better if it collapsed on its own, except it would probably fall on the café and kill us all.”

Ann speared two pieces of lemon, squeezed them into her tea, then added a couple of packets of artificial sweetener. “Why are you so down on the place?”

“Everybody who ever lived in that mansion was miserable. Some houses are just unhappy from the get-go. You mark my words. That Frenchman has bought himself a heap of trouble.” Bernice looked past Ann’s shoulder. “Hold your horses, boys. I’ll be there with the coffee in a second.” She picked up the big pot and wended her way through the tables occupied nearly every morning by the same group of local farmers indulging in a second breakfast.

When Bernice set the coffeepot back on the warmer, Ann said, “I was happy there. Sometimes after my piano lesson Aunt Addy and I would have lemonade and homemade macaroons in the conservatory. That house is probably the reason I got into the restoration business. Every time I see an old building fallen on hard times, I just ache to make it glow again.”

“Huh. That house hasn’t done much glowing in my lifetime.”

“I hoped if it stayed on the market long enough, maybe Trey would donate it to the town for a museum. Endow it, restore it—something.”

“What does an itty-bitty town like Rossiter, Tennessee, need with a museum?” Bernice waved a hand at the walls of the café, which were hung with yellowed newspaper clippings going back nearly a hundred years. “This is as close as Rossiter gets to a museum. It’s not like that old house was built before the war.”

Ann knew the war in question was the Late Unpleasantness between North and South. Other wars were spoken of as World or Korean or Desert Storm. “I hate to admit this, but I used to swan down that staircase and pretend I was Cinderella. I dreamed about the way it must have looked all lit up for the cotillions and parties.”

“At least Trey sold the house to somebody who’s got the money to fix it up. And you got you a job close to home into the bargain. You met the new owner yet? That Frenchman?”

“Nope. Daddy’s supposed to be meeting him this morning to set up the schedule for the renovations. I might not see him for weeks if he commutes from New Jersey. And Daddy says he’s not French.”

Bernice leaned her elbow on the counter and rested her cheek on her hand. “What I want to know,” she whispered, “is why some bachelor would buy that old house in a little town like this and spend a bunch of money on it.”

Ann shrugged. “Daddy says he used to be an airline pilot. He got hurt and can’t fly big planes any longer. Maybe he’s buddies with some of the pilots who’ve redone the antebellum houses in LaGrange. He could have heard about the house from them.”

“Those pilots fly out of Memphis, so they have to live close by, and they’ve got families and more money than sense. He’s just some guy who showed up out of the blue, bought the place in five minutes and hired your daddy to fix it.” She shook her head. “I’m surprised he didn’t try to turn it into apartments or maybe tear it down and build something else—not that the town would let anybody do that to a historic property.” She nodded her head sagely. “They say he’s retired.” It sounded like an accusation.

“So?” Ann asked. “Lots of men retire early.”

“Not that early. According to Lorene Hoddle, he’s no more than thirty-five or -six. I tell you, Ann, there’s something strange about it.”

“Oh, come on, Bernice. You think he’s going to set up a crack house or a high-class bordello?”

“Hush. Anyway, Miss Ann, you and your daddy take care not to do all that work and let him skedaddle without paying you.”

“Daddy’s checked out his credit references. He’s got the money to pay us, and most people don’t run out owing the chief of police money.” She considered. “Gangsters wouldn’t set up drug operations or prostitution in a town of 350 souls, most of whom are kin and all of whom know one another’s business. Why drive way out here from Memphis to sin? And with legal gambling just south of the border in Mississippi, he’d hardly be likely to open an illegal casino in west Tennessee.”

“Well, just you wait. There’s something not right about it.” Bernice refilled Ann’s glass. “I thought he might be one of those professional decorators—you know, like Patsy’s boy Calvin that went away to New Orleans—him not being married and all, but Lorene says he seems real macho. And real handsome. Now, Ann, if you play your cards right…”

Ann laughed into her tea so hard she sputtered. “Bernice, one minute you’re convinced he’s a drug dealer, the next you’re telling me to go after the poor man. No, no and no.”

“Why not? You been divorced almost two years. You’re too young not to get married again, have some babies.”

“Bernice, I love you, but I’m not looking for another handsome man—certainly not one who’s retired, as you say, at thirty-five, and definitely not one who bought my family’s old homeplace. He’ll be my client for as long as it takes to finish the Delaney mansion, then I’m off to restore something else. I’ve got good reason to know that good-looking men tend to think the rules don’t apply to them.”

“Then find a man who looks like a boot. But find somebody before you get too old for the market. So far you’ve turned down every man who’s even asked you out since you came home.”

“I’m not in town often enough these days to date anybody. How can I have a decent relationship when I’m off on a job in Buffalo for three months, and then maybe it’ll be Chicago or some railroad town in Iowa that’s got an old movie theater they want to restore to its former glory?”

“You’re home now.”

“This will be the first time I’ve done a restoration job in Rossiter since I came back with my tail between my legs and started working for Daddy. There aren’t that many people around who can afford me or who live in houses old enough to need restoration.”

“Well, that one is going to take some time.” Bernice hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the Delaney house. “Miss Addy didn’t do a lick of upkeep on the place in the twenty years she lived there after Miss Maribelle died and left it to her.” She leaned closer and whispered, “I swear every field mouse in Rossiter had been living over there, and once Miss Addy died, they all came over here. I had to fumigate twice to get rid of them.”

“Not all of them moved. Daddy said they had to have the fumigators twice in January.”

From outside the front door came a long, low moan. It grew in intensity and pitch until it sounded as though the town had cranked up its tornado siren.

A grizzled farmer sitting with half-a-dozen friends over the dregs of his coffee sighed and peered over half glasses at Ann. “Fix that. A man’s got a right to a quiet breakfast.”

“Yes, sir.” Ann tossed two one-dollar bills onto the counter and started out.

A second low moan began to escalate. Behind her, Ann heard the assembled farmers snicker. “It’s okay, Dante,” she called to the giant mournful-looking black hound tied to a rail in front of the café. He shook the heavy folds of skin that hung from his cheeks, but he stopped howling. “Okay, boy, time to go to work.”

PAUL BOUVET had discovered on his first visit to Rossiter that the café next door to the Delaney mansion functioned as a sort of town clubhouse. He’d have to find some way to be, if not accepted, at least tolerated by the locals who ate there regularly. If his mother had come as far as Rossiter before she disappeared, someone might remember her. After all, thirty years ago there couldn’t have been too many strangers showing up in Rossiter.

He didn’t have a clue how to find out. He didn’t dare come out and ask. Nobody could know who he was or why he was here until he’d found out everything he needed to know. The private detective Uncle Charlie had hired never was able to trace his mother’s movements beyond the bus station in downtown Memphis. The trail went cold at that point and had stayed cold until six months ago.

All these years later Paul still believed he knew what had happened to her. All he had to do was prove it.

She would have called his father from the bus station. No doubt he jumped at the chance to pick her up there or meet her somewhere he couldn’t be identified. Mr. Hotshot Delaney didn’t want an inconvenient French peasant girl interfering with his life in Rossiter. She had to disappear.

So he met her, killed her and hid her body so well it had never been found.

What kind of man would do such a thing to a woman who’d loved him so deeply she’d left her own country for him, searched for him for six years and never stopped believing he loved her?

Paul had lived with the specter of his dead mother and her murderer—his father—for most of his life. It wasn’t any easier now that the murderer had a name.

The whole sordid story had to come out. His mother’s body had to be found and properly buried. Paul wanted the present generation of Delaneys to acknowledge the monstrous thing their father had done.

He wanted them to suffer as he had suffered.

He wanted them to be ashamed.

He slipped into a booth at the café, opened the Memphis newspaper and folded it in fourths as he had learned to do when riding on buses and subways in New York and New Jersey. He was surprised when the owner, a tall, handsome blond woman, set down a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “Coffee?” she said.

Apparently one didn’t ask at this hour of the morning. One simply accepted that coffee was the drink of choice.

“Uh, thank you.”

“Cream’s on the table. What can I get you?”

“Plain wheat toast and a large orange juice, please.”

For a moment she stared down at him. Then she sniffed, went behind the counter at the end of the room and disappeared into the kitchen. He glanced at the group of farmers two tables away.

In a bar in France at this hour of the morning, the farmers would be on their third coffee and brandy. These men, who looked every bit as craggy as French peasants, were mopping up the last bits of egg with their biscuits.