It was already unseasonably hot and sultry at ten o’clock in the morning. The scent of roses and rust drifted on the restless breeze along with the scrape, scrape, scrape of a rake on stone. The same young black man Austin had seen working in the front garden of Ballineen was still at it. He didn’t seem to have made much progress against the encroaching jungle during the past month.
One of the green shutters had fallen to the grass, giving the face of the house a bare, lopsided look, like a woman missing one of her false eyelashes.
The peeling front door opened, and Carson Cashel, dressed in tight white jeans and a black-and-white-polka-dot midriff top that revealed her flat tummy and emphasized her small, perky breasts, drawled with friendly mockery, “Why, Mr. Gillespie, I do declare.”
Remembering his last trip to Ballineen, Austin said, “How was your party?”
She looked blank, then laughed. “It was a lot of fun till Cormac got thrown out for fighting.”
“What was the fight over?”
“I don’t remember now. Something to do with whether Carson McCullers was as fine a writer as Mr. Faulkner. Did you read Cormac’s stories?”
Did she know under what circumstances those stories had been delivered to him? Austin wondered, meeting her bright, mischievous eyes.
“I did, yeah.”
“Lucky thing, because I know Cormac is looking forward to talking to you.” Yes, she was definitely laughing at him. “I told that boss of yours that he was to send you and no one else.”
“Thanks.”
Austin followed her into the house. Buckets had been strategically placed down the front hallway to catch leaks near the window casements. His nostrils twitched. The place smelled strongly of dampness, cooking turnips, and ham.
“Corrie said he didn’t believe you would come back, but I knew you would.”
“How did you know that?”
“I just had that feeling.” As Carson led him down the dark hallways, she added, “I checked the cellar myself this morning, and everything seems normal. For this house. They never did figure out how poor Dom ended up down here.”
“It’s only been a month. The investigation must still be ongoing?”
“I suppose so. It sure is a mystery.”
“I hope you don’t mind my saying so,” Austin remarked, “but you seem to take Williams’s death pretty much in stride.”
“Ballineen is a very old house. A lot of people have died here.” Carson added, “Any old how, there’s no use me pretending to feel something I don’t feel. It was all over between Dom and me long before crazy Henry started threatening to kill us.”
“Crazy Henry. You mean Williams’s wife?”
“That’s right. But in fairness to Henry, I’m sure a lot of people were happy to see the last of Dom. He did have a tendency to get on your nerves. Although, personally, I think it was probably just an unfortunate accident, his landing in our cellar.”
“Is that what the sheriffs say?”
“Oh, they don’t tell us anything.”
“But it is all right for me to work in the cellar? The sheriffs have okayed it?” Austin couldn’t help that flash of suspicion. The Cashels seemed to have peculiar notions of law and order.
He wasn’t reassured when Carson chortled without answering.
A thin voice wafted from the parlor as they passed. “Is that him, honey? Is that Mr. Gillespie?”
Carson whispered, “You better look in and say hello to Auntie Eudie.”
Austin followed her into the parlor. Auntie Eudie sat in her accustomed place on the moth-eaten sofa. She wore wire spectacles and was industriously knitting what appeared to be some kind of fox-fur stole complete with merino-wool paws.
She bestowed as friendly a smile as if Austin was a longtime friend, and Austin found himself bending down to kiss her dry, wrinkled cheek. She smelled comfortably of apple-blossom talc and gingerbread. “Why, you sit down here and tell me all the news, Mr. Gillespie.”
Austin had that familiar sense of being caught in a social riptide. There was something so…alternate universe about the Cashels. It seemed easier to go with the flow than to try to fight.
He gave a brief and probably uninformative account of the weeks since he’d left Madison. Auntie Eudie listened, her bright eyes fixed politely on his face while her fingers nimbly maneuvered the glinting needles.
“You poor boy,” she said disconcertingly at the end of his dull recital. “You’re plumb tuckered out. You need a nice long vacation.”
“You do look interestingly pale,” Carson put in mischievously, leaning over the back of the sofa so that her cheek nearly brushed Austin’s.
“It’s been a long week.” Austin did his best to change the subject, but the only thing he could think of was the unfortunate topic of Dominic Williams.
Auntie Eudie’s cheeks turned pink with indignation. “It’s perfectly clear to me that the colonel struck down Mr. Williams for sticking his nose where he had no business.”
Austin vaguely remembered her saying something along those lines the last time. “You mean you think some supernatural force killed Mr. Williams?”
Auntie Eudie looked at him over her spectacles. “Ballineen is haunted. Don’t ever doubt that, Mr. Gillespie.”
“I won’t.”
“Well, Mr. Gillespie has a mighty big job ahead of him,” Carson interjected brightly.
“That’s right,” Auntie Eudie said. “You go right ahead and start counting those bottles, Mr. Gillespie, but don’t forget to come upstairs for your meals. We’re having a proper Southern dinner for you today.”
Austin assented, thanked her, and escaped.
“Did you really read Cormac’s stories, Mr. Gillespie?” Carson inquired as they headed down the first flight of stairs to the cellar.
“I did.”
“Well, don’t you worry about telling Cormac the truth. He doesn’t mind what people say about his work, so long as they don’t disrespect Mr. Faulkner.”
By which, Austin was quite sure, she didn’t mean the faithful family retainer. He began to feel increasingly nervous about those stories.
At last they reached the cellar, which was remarkably cool, despite the heat of the day and smelled blessedly free of dead bodies and bug spray both. Austin saw no sign of crime-scene tape or anything to indicate an investigation was still in progress, so perhaps Williams’s death had been an accident.
The card table and chair were back in position beneath the giant spiderweb. Austin set his laptop case down and unzipped it.
“What did you think of Cormac’s stories?” Carson asked with sudden seriousness.
Austin glanced around. “I thought they were really well written, but I don’t know a lot about publishing or selling fiction.”
“Oh, Corrie doesn’t care about that. He means for the stories to be published after he’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
She giggled. “Dead, silly.”
“Oh.” Considering that four out of ten protagonists in Cormac’s stories had killed themselves, Austin wondered if departure was imminent. Anything he might have added was forgotten as muffled voices floated down from above.
“One more time and you won’t have to worry about your parole officer. I’ll ring your scrawny neck and feed you to the dogs.”
Parole officer? Austin stared ceilingward. “What’s that?”
Carson widened her eyes and said in a spooky voice, “Why, that’s the colonel, Austin. He doesn’t like people fooling around his wine cellar.”
“Very funny.”
Another voice, lower and indistinct, answered the first. The words weren’t clear, but the defensive tone filtered through the bricks, wood, and termites.
Carson laughed. “Naw, that’s Faulkner. And Tyrone, it sounds like. Tyrone’s Faulkner’s nephew. Great-nephew. As a matter of fact, Tyrone is going to help you out today. We thought it would go faster that way, and you won’t have to get your hands dirty.”
“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.” As a matter of fact, Austin spent a part of every year backpacking in places like South America and Australia, checking out remote wine-growing areas.
“No, I guess you’re not.” She gave him an oddly shrewd look. “Tyrone is Auntie Eudie’s project. You might have noticed him when you drove up. He’s supposed to be trimming the boxwood, although that’s always a risk because he likes to make the hedges into shapes. Animals and such. What do you call that?
“Topiaries?”
“Topiaries. That’s right.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. No, Ty’s very artistic. But that doesn’t cut any ice with Faulkner. So it’s always kind of…tense when Tyrone is staying with us, because Auntie Eudie and Faulkner butt heads over his…administration.”
“His what?”
“I guess I’ll leave you to it,” Carson announced with one of those bewildering changes of subject. She headed for the staircase. “Now don’t forget about lunch. Jeff is coming.”
Austin froze. “Jeff?” he repeated as though the concept of Jeff was utterly foreign. In some ways that was probably true.
“Sure! You remember Jeff?” She chuckled. “He remembers you.”
What the hell did that mean?
Austin must have had a peculiar expression, because Carson confided, “When I told him you were back, he insisted on coming to lunch. I think he’s partial to Auntie Eudie’s greens. What do you think?”
“So you and Jeff are still seeing each other?”
Carson giggled. “Oh Lordy. I think we’ve seen all there is to see of each other.”
Austin opened his laptop, turned it on. He was angry with himself for asking such a question—and for caring about the answer. One night. That’s all it had been. And he thought these people were crazy?
“Jeff is a PI. Did you know that? Henry Williams hired him to find Dom.” Carson seemed enormously amused at the idea that Jeff had been poking around Ballineen—literally—on a job. Or maybe it still hadn’t occurred to her that Jeff had been using her. Austin swallowed all the things he would have liked to say.
Carson continued up the rickety staircase, calling cheerfully, “I’ll send Tyrone down to you. You just tell him what you want him to do.”
“I honestly don’t need any help.”
“Don’t be silly.”
She trotted away up the stairs.
Overhead, Tyrone the Possible Jailbird Artist and Faulkner the Faithful Family Retainer continued to exchange loud pleasantries. Austin brought up the file with the Ballineen inventory.
He stared unseeingly at the list before him.
It hadn’t totally escaped him that he might run into Jeff, but he’d been fairly sure Ballineen would be a Jeff-free zone since Jeff’s purported main interest in Carson had been her connection to Dom Williams. Austin had even assumed that once that connection was revealed, Jeff wouldn’t be welcome at Ballineen. But he’d got it wrong. Jeff, it seemed, was a regular fixture at the old homestead.
What was up with that he-remembers-you business? Had Jeff told Carson what had passed between them?
No. No, if only because Jeff would never reveal that he’d been to bed with another man.
Austin rubbed his forehead tiredly. He couldn’t deal with this right now. Could not deal with Jeff. It felt as if his whole life was coming apart. If he had to run into Jeff again, he wanted it to be when he was feeling strong and successful and in control, not when he felt like a loser professionally and personally—and with the memory of this last romantic failure vivid in his mind.
Resting his face in his hands, Austin breathed quietly, trying to gather himself for the job ahead. He’d been on the move ever since he walked out of the house in Maryland. Suddenly he was exhausted.
Where do I go from here? For years he’d convinced himself he was building something, achieving something: excelling at a career he found satisfying and rewarding—and maybe even, eventually, earning the respect of the people he loved. Now he discovered that the people he loved didn’t even believe in the validity of his sexual orientation, let alone his career choice. His job was hanging by a thread. In fact, if he had any guts, he’d cut the thread himself. He had failed with Richard; he had failed professionally—
He caught motion out of the corner of his eye. A spider had dropped from the web above him and was crawling over his keyboard. Austin brushed it away, rose, and moved the card table out from under the web. He decided to postpone his breakdown for the comforts of the hotel bar that evening.
A short while later Tyrone arrived downstairs. He was about twenty, tall, and strikingly good-looking, despite the tattoos that covered both arms. He wore baggy, distressed jeans and a white-and-purple WAR GOING ON T-shirt.
“Miz Carson says you need some help down here?”
“I honestly don’t have anything for you to do,” Austin told him. The last thing he wanted was help. He wanted to stay so busy he didn’t have one spare second to think about the all-too-swiftly-approaching lunchtime and the inevitable encounter with Jeff.
Tyrone’s face fell. He’d probably been looking forward to escaping yard work in that humid heat for a while. “I could be a big help to you. I’m a hard worker, sir.”
Austin wasn’t sure he bought the puppy-dog eyes and humble expression, but he relented anyway. It was a huge task, and whether he wanted to admit it or not, he could use help—unless he wanted to spend the next month in the spider-festooned bowels of Ballineen.
“All right. You read me the labels, and I’ll check for them on the inventory list. If they’re not on the main list, we’ll add them to a separate tally sheet.”
“Thank you, suh!” Tyrone said, sounding for an instant like Faulkner at his most ironic.
In the end, Austin’s decision to accept Tyrone’s help was a good move. Not only did it halve the work involved in moving from table to shelves, but Tyrone turned out to be surprisingly charming. He asked a lot of well-founded questions about wine and winemaking, which kept Austin’s mind blessedly occupied.
“You’re an artist. Is that right?” he asked during a rare lull.
Tyrone gave him a cheeky grin. “That’s what Miz Eudie say. She should know.”
“Did you grow up around here?”
Tyrone’s smile faded. “I grew up in Atlanta. My mama used to send me to stay here to keep me out of trouble.”
“Can’t you get into trouble in Madison?”
Tyrone’s smile returned—momentarily sharkish. “If you know where to look, you can.” He picked up the next bottle and read the label.
Austin considered this as he checked the inventory list. He could see Madison might not be the first choice for a streetwise kid from Atlanta, and something told him Faulkner was probably not the most patient guardian for a teenage screwup. Not that Tyrone was a teenager anymore.
“Do you miss Atlanta?”
Tyrone offered another of those wide grins and declined to comment.
Eventually one o’clock rolled around, and Austin’s stomach began to knot with nervous dread. He wondered what would happen if he just kept working and didn’t go upstairs? They couldn’t force him to eat lunch, after all.
“What about this bottle?” Tyrone inquired, holding up a 1959 Hermitage La Chapelle. “Is this a valuable one?”
“That’s about a ten-thousand-dollar bottle of wine,” Austin said carefully. “Don’t drop it.”
“Wow! Ten thousand dollars for a bottle of wine. Looks like the Crazy Cashels are going to be swimming in bread.” Tyrone replaced the bottle with exaggerated care.
“The Crazy Cashels?” Austin inquired curiously. “Is that how people around here think of them?”
“Yeah, but they’re not so bad. You just gotta know how to handle them.” He watched Austin click on the inventory sheet. “You going upstairs?”
“Eventually.” Austin checked the time on his desktop. One twenty. His palms started to perspire. He wiped them on his jeans. Really, what the hell was his problem? He and Jeff had had a nice time together, and that was that. So, okay, yes, he would have liked to see Jeff again, and Jeff had not been averse to that. He had said Austin should call if he was ever in town again.
Yeah, that was the part that hurt. Because Jeff was also not averse to never seeing Austin again.
“When do you think you’re going upstairs?” Tyrone asked a few minutes later. At Austin’s look of inquiry, he said, “I want to know when I should take my dinner break.”
“Sorry, I didn’t think about that. You can go now.” Austin glanced at his desktop. One thirty-five. His heart sank. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
Footsteps thumped down the stairs. Cormac appeared, scowling as usual. “Were you coming up to dinner?” Austin hesitated. Cormac put in, “Or we could just have ours down here and talk?”
Austin glanced at Tyrone, who was smiling to himself as he pulled a comb out of his pocket and ran it across his stick-straight hair.
“I think we’d better go up,” Austin said, pretending not to notice Cormac’s disappointment.
* * * * *
“There you are.” Auntie Eudie greeted them as they entered the dining room. “Mr. Gillespie, you sit right here between me and Cormac.”
Austin self-consciously took his seat next to Cormac and across from Carson. A quick glance placed Jeff on the other side of the table and down one. Jeff looked absolutely unchanged, but then how changed could he be in the space of a month? His green gaze met Austin’s across the brown-and-white china. He offered his heartbreaker smile.
“Hi, Austin. So they sent you back after all.”
“Hi. Yes.”
Auntie Eudie handed Austin a large bowl of some really revolting-looking green mush she referred to as collard greens, and he was able to turn away. He made sure he stayed busy passing salt and pepper and butter and biscuits and anything else he could lay his hands on. But eventually he ran out of busywork, and when he risked a look down the table, Jeff was staring at his plate with a somber expression.
Austin’s phone rang. He apologized, checked it, and saw that the call was from Ernest. The temptation to leave the table and take the call was great, but Austin resisted.
When he glanced up again, Jeff was smiling his way. It was an oddly tentative smile.
Austin smiled politely back.
Roark, who had been eating since Austin entered the room, put his fork down and said grimly, “How much longer is this inventory supposed to take?”
“It’s going to take at least a week merely to count everything,” Austin answered. “Longer to authenticate.”
“Why?”
“You’ve probably got a thousand bottles down there. Everything from two-dollar Charles Shaw to 1959 Hermitage La Chapelle. And not shelved in any particular order that I can see. This isn’t a job you want me to rush through.”
Roark looked unconvinced on that point as he picked up his fork and resumed eating. He glowered at Austin.
A bare foot brushed lightly over Austin’s ankle. He sat up straight. Carson winked at him from across the table.
Faulkner entered the room carrying a carved ham on a platter. He lowered it carefully to the table.
“My, my, doesn’t that smell delicious?” Auntie Eudie murmured. “You’re in for some real down-home Southern cooking, Mr. Gillespie.”
“It smells great.” Austin was confident no morsel of food could possibly wind its way through his digestive tract, given the knots his stomach was in every time he looked at Jeff. Nonetheless, he bravely took some of everything and shoveled it in, washing it down with swallows of toothachingly sweet iced tea.
Afterward he remembered almost nothing of the meal itself or the conversation, although everyone seemed to eat and talk continuously. All his awareness seemed centered on Jeff, who, as far as Austin could tell, was doing his level best to charm the birds off the trees—or more likely, the moths out of the draperies.
At the end of the meal, Roark pushed his chair back and, weaving slightly, announced he had work to do.
Hopefully it was nothing that involved heavy machinery. Austin waited till Roark safely cleared the doorway before saying, “Same here. That was a wonderful lunch, though.”
Carson asked, “Is Tyrone making himself useful?”
“Yes, he is. He’s very helpful.”
“That’s nice. Maybe his last…stay in Atlanta did him some good, bless his heart.”
“That boy is badly misunderstood,” Auntie Eudie murmured, helping herself to another slice of cobbler. “You know, he’s a very talented artist.”
Cormac snorted. “I guess you can call forgery ‘art.’”
“Any sign of the Lee bottles?” Jeff asked, speaking directly to Austin for the first time since he’d greeted him.
“No. Nothing so far.” Austin’s gaze seemed to tangle up in Jeff’s before he was able to look away.
“More iced tea?” Auntie Eudie asked of no one in particular.
Austin shook his head.
* * * * *
Back downstairs, Austin found himself on his own, Tyrone still on lunch break.
He picked up the legal pad and studied it, then walked over to the shelf where they had left off. He picked up the next bottle. A 2008 Sutter Home chenin blanc. From the sublime to the ridiculous. He sighed.
From up above, the cellar-door hinges squeaked loudly, followed by the quick, light tread of someone coming downstairs. Instantly Austin’s neck muscles went so tight he thought he was going to throw his back out. He knew who it was without having to turn, but he turned anyway.
Jeff reached the bottom step, glanced casually around the cellar, and walked up to Austin. He was smiling and seemed perfectly relaxed.
“You didn’t call me.”
“Sorry?”
“When you got in last night. You should have given me a call. I would have made time to get together.”
“I’m flattered.”
Jeff’s blond brows drew together. “Why’s that?”
Austin let it go. “I got in pretty late last night.”
“Oh. Well. What time do you think you’ll be wrapping it up today?”
Illogically, as much as Austin did not want a confrontation, his anger mounted at Jeff’s easy acceptance of the situation between them. He, on the other hand, didn’t even know what the situation was. He said shortly, “I don’t know. I’m going to try and work as late as I can tonight. I want this job done as fast as possible.”
Jeff’s smile faltered, recovered. “How’s the boy genius?”
“What?”
“Your kid brother. Has he adjusted to the idea of boarding school yet?”
“He’s getting there.” Austin stared determinedly at the shelf of wine in front of him.
There was a fresh X on the dusty label of the 1959 Hermitage La Chapelle. Had Tyrone marked the bottle for some reason?
Austin scanned the shelves he and Tyrone had inventoried. There were several bottles with those small X’s. He moved to the shelves they hadn’t got to yet. No X’s in the grime and dust. Were these marked bottles wines Tyrone wanted to learn more about? Was it a coincidence that all the bottles Tyrone had marked were very valuable?
He became aware that the pause following his reply to Jeff was beginning to stretch too long.
Jeff said quietly, “You riled at me about something?”
Riled? No, Deputy Dawg, I’m not riled. Why would I be riled? Austin gave him a steady, direct look. “Me? No.”
Jeff stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah, you are. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He made himself add, “I’ve got a lot to do. That’s all.”
After an astonished second, Jeff said, “Pardon me for taking up your valuable time.”
Austin opened his mouth, but Jeff had already turned and was vanishing back up the stairs.