Top O' the Mournin' (8 page)

“It’s on account a the dead body,” said Nana.

Etienne hauled Nana’s suitcase down from the top of the heap and fired another quizzical look at me. “Dead body?”

Tilly trundled into the hall and, after a moment, stabbed the tip of her cane at a tattered pullman. “This one’s mine. Look at it, all frayed and patched. But I think of it as an old warrior who’s fought his way through a lifetime of campaigns.”

I imagined the exotic places Tilly and her pullman had visited over the years. Bora Bora. Kathmandu. The Casbah. As Etienne unloaded it off the trolley, I regarded its worn seams and scarred fabric with respectful awe. “Wow. They don’t make luggage like they used to. That suitcase has to be—what?—twenty, thirty years old?”

“It’s practically brand-new,” said Tilly. “But you have to understand, it’s been through O’Hare a couple of times.”

Nana wheeled her suitcase into the room and extended her thanks, as did Tilly, who closed the door behind them. Etienne drilled me with one of his patented police-inspector looks. “Dead body?”

“A chambermaid named Rita. She died in Nana’s room sometime today. The desk clerk claims she had a bad heart. We didn’t see any signs of foul play, so he could be right. Nana figured she’d been dead between six and eight hours.”

“How would your grandmother know that?”

“Discovery Channel.”

Frustration pulled at the fine angles of his face. “Tell me again how long you have to share your room?”

“Just tonight,” to which I reluctantly added, “unless there’s a problem finding them another room. They’re short-staffed, so…” I let him fill in the blank.

“The ladies could relocate to my room. I could move in here.” He looked hopeful for a moment before reevaluating his solution. “I don’t suppose that will look too good for you should word leak out. It could rather tarnish your professional image.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to ward off a migraine.

“I’m sure there won’t be any problem finding them another room,” I consoled. “This is just a…an inconvenience.”

He let out an exasperated sigh and cast a curious glance toward the palpable quiet of the lobby. “Did someone call the authorities about your dead maid?”

“A long time ago.”

“Odd they haven’t arrived yet. Perhaps I should offer my assistance to the desk clerk. Which room did you say the body is in?”

Uh-oh. This wasn’t good. If he involved himself with the investigation of Rita’s death, I’d
never
see him. I grabbed his forearm with both hands. “Remember when Ashley said the castle is haunted? I think she may be telling the truth.”

He paused, looking me straight in the eye. “Why do you say that?”

“There’s this legend about two star-crossed lovers searching for each other throughout eternity. People have heard unearthly wails and seen bloody footprints, and even though Tilly thinks the maid might have died because she wasn’t on a Special K diet, I think she died of fright.”

He digested this with typical Swiss equanimity. “Are you implying that you think the maid saw a ghost?”

“Tilly used to teach a course, so she’s an expert on the subject. She says this place has been haunted since the time of James I, which was”—I searched my memory for the dates when James I ruled England—“a really long time ago.”

“Over three hundred and fifty years. Close to four.”

I paused to register that. These were some old ghosts. “The expression on the maid’s face is chilling, Etienne. She looks terrified. If you ask me, she saw something so frightening, it killed her.”

“You did say she had a bad heart. Wouldn’t it be more logical to assume she died from a preexisting condition than from an encounter with some otherworldly being?”

“That doesn’t explain the wailing cries or the bloody footprints. You don’t know Tilly. She wouldn’t tell a ghost story that wasn’t authentic.”

“Have
you
heard cries or seen footprints?”

“Not yet, but we’ve only just arrived. These ghosts have been around for almost four hundred years! They’re out there.”

He smiled crookedly and feathered his fingers along my jawline. “Emily, darling, do you remember when you thought a group of seniors on your tour last year was trying to kill you?”

Just my luck. He liked animals, small children, and had a photographic memory. “I vaguely remember that.”

“Do you also recall that your fear was completely unfounded?”

Not too hard to guess where this was going. “I do not jump to conclusions. I am not an alarmist. If
you
recall, someone
was
trying to kill me, just not the person I suspected.” If our discussion grew any more heated, we’d have to jump from cybersex to makeup sex.

“I’m simply trying to caution you against getting carried away with all this talk of hauntings and ghosts. The mind can play tricks on you, darling. If you expect wailing cries, you’ll hear them. If you expect bloody footprints, you’ll see them.”

“In other words, you think I’m cuckoo.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have no gift at all for paraphrasing? I love you, Emily. I’m asking you to be wary of anything you see or hear but not attribute it immediately to castle lore. The terror you saw on the maid’s face could simply have mirrored her realization that she was suffering a fatal heart attack. I’ve seen that look on more corpses than I’d like to admit. When the forensic examination is completed, we’ll know more about how she died, but until that time, please consider the story of Ballybantry’s haunted past as myth, not reality. Can you do that for me?”

I waited a beat. “You love me?” I stared up at him. His exact words played back in my head like an old phonograph record with a stuck needle. He’d panned my ability to paraphrase and then he’d said he loved me. I was pretty sure he’d said something after that, too, but my ears had stopped working after the “I love you” part.

“Of course I love you, darling. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love you.” The sound of male voices caused him to glance toward the lobby again. “Ah. The police. I should talk to them.” He frowned at the luggage trolley. “I’ll have to draft someone into delivering the rest of the luggage for me.”

I regarded Etienne. I regarded the luggage cart. Hoisting fifty-pound suitcases off a luggage trolley wasn’t my cup of tea, but I was in love. I was walking on air. I wanted to be helpful. “I think Ashley should do it. It’s probably in her job description anyway, and you know what a stickler she is for doing everything by the book.”

A devious glint lit his blue eyes. A smile touched his lips. “I’ll have the desk clerk ring her up.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Fetch me in the morning before you board the bus. My room is the last one down the hall on the left.”

“You’re not going to eat breakfast?”

“A full Irish breakfast? Emily, darling, those things will kill you.”

I gazed after him as he pushed the trolley back toward the lobby, suddenly aware of a major oversight on my part. “Wait a minute! You have my suitcase.”

By the time I wheeled my pullman into the room, Nana and Tilly were in their nightgowns and ready for bed.

“If it’s okay with you, Emily, Tilly would like to sleep in the bed nearest the potty and I’ll sleep with you.”

I nodded distractedly, wondering how a man could tell a woman he loved her, then just walk away. Wasn’t that the kind of revelation that should be celebrated like the Fourth of July with sparklers, and wheels, and aerial spinners? Maybe Etienne knew something I didn’t know. Maybe fireworks were banned in Ireland.

My neck started to itch again as I hefted my suitcase onto a luggage rack and unlocked it. Nana stood in front of the dresser mirror attired in her favorite brown flannel nightgown, toilet-papering her head. “This brand is only one-ply,” she lamented. “Two-ply cushions my curls a lot better. Hope I don’t wake up with bedhead.” When she was done, she yelled, “Catch, Emily,” and tossed a travel-size aerosol container across the room at me.

“What’s this?” I asked, bobbling the catch.

“Weaponry. After what happened on the last trip, I wanted to be prepared, so I brought a whole arsenal with me.”

My heart thudded in my chest. “An arsenal? You mean, like Mace? Nana! This stuff is bad news! It can weaken your lungs. Damage your skin. Ruin your sinuses.”

“All’s your grampa used to claim was that it gave him a headache.”

“You used this stuff on Grampa?” I looked at Nana. I looked at the canister. I read the label. “Strawberry Shortcake Room Freshener.”

“I was gonna buy one called Florida Sunshower, but it smelled too much like mildew. There’s a canister for each of us. Remember what we learned in Switzerland. A burst of spray into the ole eyeballs will bring down a two-hundred-pound man real good, especially if he has allergies. I’m not sure if it’ll work on a ghost, ’cause I don’t know if a ghost
has
eyeballs.”

Clutching my room freshener in my hand, I crossed the room and gave Nana a little hug. “This was very thoughtful of you.”

“Think nothin’ of it, dear. Us girls need to stick together so’s we can watch each other’s back.”

Maybe this was my wake-up call. Sure I was disappointed about not being able to spend the night with Etienne, but I realized that I had a pressing duty to perform that far outweighed my desire for romantic satisfaction. I needed to watch out for Nana and Tilly. I needed to protect them from whatever Etienne claimed wasn’t out there, because if any harm came to them, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. My mother wouldn’t be able to live with me either. If anything happened to Nana, she’d annihilate me.

After Nana climbed into bed, I located my bank-supplied medical bag that was full of every over-the-counter painkiller and ointment known to man, dug my nightgown and toiletries out of my suitcase, and turned down the lights. At the bathroom door I paused to consult my watch. Okay. Any time now.

In the next instant a door down the hall banged so loudly it vibrated our walls and set all our pictures to rattling. A growl of Southern irritation echoed in the corridor, followed by hissing, sputtering, and the charge of angry footsteps toward the lobby. “My goodness,” Nana whispered from across the room. “Who do you s’pose that is?”

“Ashley.” I smiled wickedly. She was right on time.

I performed my regular getting-ready-for-bed routine, rubbed anti-itch cream that promised a “New Improved Fresh Clean Scent” onto my arms and neck, and prayed the welts would miraculously disappear before morning. I sniffed my arm, wrinkling my nose at the odor. The cream didn’t exactly smell bad. It just smelled strong, like something a desert dweller would rub onto an ailing camel. I didn’t want to think about what it had smelled like before someone had thought to improve it.

I navigated through the darkness to my side of the bed, then sat for a full minute listening to the snores of my two roommates as they wheezed and sawed like the wind section in a symphony orchestra. There was no ebb and flow. The noise was a constant clash of whistles and snorts and grunts that filled the room to bursting. And the volume was so jacked up, I guessed we were beyond the decibel level that was considered safe for humans, which illustrated an astonishing point: This castle might be old, but it had really good acoustics.

I listened for another minute before I realized there was no way I could fall asleep in this racket. Not without some help. I cracked the drapes to allow a narrow shaft of light to guide me, then located my shoulder bag by the fireplace and mined the contents for my earplugs and mini Maglite. As I closed the drapes again, I regarded the landscape that was illumined by the castle’s solitary floodlight—the moat directly beneath my window, an expanse of lawn sweeping toward the parking lot, two cars with police markings marooned in the middle of the lot. Beyond the spill of the floodlight lay an infertile, untillable wasteland, scarred by ancient stone and steeped in darkness. And as I stared, I thought I saw a ripple in the darkness. A movement amid the crags. A shadow within a shadow. Skulking. Slinking. Hovering. Watching the castle with sightless eyes.

I blinked. I couldn’t actually be seeing this. Could I?

I snapped the drapes shut and flew into bed. I needed to get a grip. I was scaring myself.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked as I pulled out a chair at Jackie’s table.

She looked up from her coffee with a long face and a half-pound of concealer under her eyes. I winced. “I know you’re on your honeymoon, but there’s probably one thing more vital to honeymooners than sex. It’s called sleep.”

“Sleep? Who can sleep with all the noise in this place?”

“Yeah, Ashley wasn’t exactly quiet delivering all that luggage last night.” I stared hungrily at Jackie’s plate, eyeing the scrambled eggs, fried eggs, potato cakes, grilled tomatoes, fried potatoes, and three different kinds of toast slathered with jam. All right! This was like the Hog Wild breakfast special offered at the Windsor City Perkins Restaurant during harvest. I pointed curiously at a shoe-leather-black object wedged between her eggs and tomatoes. It resembled a mini-Oreo cookie minus the white stuff. “What’s that?”

“Black pudding. I didn’t know what it was before I bit into it. It’s made from blood or intestines or something like that. Don’t eat it. It tastes like a hockey puck. And I wasn’t talking about Ashley’s crashing the luggage trolley into the wall last night. I was talking about the moans from someone’s sexual acrobatics. It kept us awake most of the night.”

“Moans?”

“You didn’t hear them? I thought we were the only honeymooners on the tour, but from the sound of things, somebody else was going at it until dawn. Have you seen the people on our tour, Emily? They’re all over sixty. They’re
really
old! Jeez, they must be spending a fortune on pharmaceuticals to maintain that kind of stamina. And our room is freezing. Like subzero. Is your room cold?”

I shook my head. “I was pretty toasty last night, but I was sleeping with Nana, and she tends to generate a lot of heat, especially since menopause.”

Jackie’s face lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. “Mrs. S. is on the tour? I
thought
the lady with the big handbag looked familiar, but the last time I saw your gran, her hair was blue, so I wasn’t sure.”

“She’s keeping up with the times. She scrapped the blue rinse for a silver one. Blue is out unless you’re Marge Simpson or a drummer for a rock band.”

Jackie looked around the dining room. “Where is she? I always thought you had the coolest gran. Do you think she’ll recognize me?”

I bolstered my courage and charged straight ahead. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” I said delicately. “I don’t think she’s going to understand what’s happened to you, Jack.”

“Why wouldn’t she understand? Oh, no.” Her voice became a confidential whisper. “Is it because…she has some degenerative mental disorder?”

“It’s because she spent seventy-six years in Minnesota.”

She pondered that for a moment. “Huh?”

“Minnesotans are pretty isolated out there in the middle of the country, so they stay focused on what’s important to them. Hard work. Church. Family. World Wrestling Alliance death matches. They don’t have to face too many issues outside the norm, which means a lot of seniors are clueless about issues that are fairly common to the rest of us. You were a guy, Jack; now you’re a girl. How that happens is a really confusing issue to people of Nana’s generation.”

“They’ve done a slew of documentaries on the subject. Didn’t she watch TV in Minnesota?”

“Her cable networks were pretty limited,” I prevaricated. “She watched things like the Hockey Channel, the Speed Skating Channel, the Ice Fishing Channel.”

Jackie paused, her bottom lip suddenly quivering in a pout. “Don’t lie to me, Emily. I’ve been through this kind of humiliation before. You don’t want to tell your grandmother about me because I’ve become an embarrassment to you. Admit it. You’re afraid how people will react if they discover you were married to a man who’s become a woman.”

“If you tell Nana someone is gay, she’s thinks you mean they’re happy.”

“Oh, right.”

“For
years
she had you coming out of a wardrobe instead of a closet.”

“A wardrobe? Is that like an armoire?”

“She was taught by nuns!”

“I went to a party dressed in a nun’s habit once. It’s so freaky. I’ve had this strange aversion to patent leather ever since.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Jack! Nana just doesn’t get it. But if you insist on telling her about your operation, that’s your prerogative. I’m simply surprised that you’re so obsessed with people knowing who you
were
instead of who you are.”

The expression on Jackie’s face shifted from hurt to guilt. “Do you really think I’m obsessing?” She fluttered her hands like hummingbird wings. “Of course, I’m obsessing. I always obsess. You’re right. I shouldn’t insist that people know about my sex change. It’s more important that they see me for who I am instead of who I used to be. You’re so insightful, Emily.” She squeezed my hand with heartfelt emotion. “Okay. Our little secret can remain our little secret. No need to spill the beans to Mrs. S. I apologize for questioning your intentions. But not everyone is as understanding as you, especially people in my immediate family. Talk about narrow minds.”

“That doesn’t include your husband, does it? I mean, you told him about your operation before you married him, didn’t you?”

She clutched her throat in distress, her plum nail polish the perfect complement to her dusty mauve sweater set. “Of course I did! It would have been
so
dishonest not to. How can you even ask such a thing?”

“You were pretty weepy when I saw you on the bus yesterday. It made me think something might have gone wrong on your wedding night.”

She lowered her eyes to her plate and sniffled. “You know me so well, Emily. Something did go wrong. The worst thing you can ever imagine.”

I lit on the most likely possibility. “Your husband freaked out when he saw you without makeup?” I’d heard this reaction was epidemic among bridegrooms south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

She shook her head and stuck her hand into her pocketbook for a tissue. She looked as if she was going to cry again. I hoped she was wearing waterproof mascara. “Worse than that.”

“There’s something
worse?”

She blew her nose at a decibel level that rivaled cannon fire. The sound echoed upward for three stories, filling the room and rattling the flatware. Heads turned. People stared. I smiled at the guests whose names I hadn’t learned yet and whispered to Jackie out the corner of my mouth. “I hate to tell you this, but you blow your nose like a guy.”

“I know,” she snuffled. “I haven’t mastered nose-blowing yet. I can’t figure out how to do it daintily. Being female can be a real bitch at times, Emily. It’s so restrictive. No groin scratching. No butt slapping. No belching. No spitting. How do you remember all that?”

“It’s pretty easy, unless you watch a lot of professional baseball. Getting back to your wedding night. What happened?”

“
Nothing
happened. That’s the problem.”

“Nothing? You mean—”

“I mean, I’m still a virgin!”

I sighed in commiseration. “Yeah, me too.”

“You? How can you be a virgin? You jumped my bones every chance you had when we were married.”

“Talk to my mother. It’s a long story.” As she dabbed tears from her eyes, I suddenly realized the upshot of what she’d revealed. “Wait a minute! If you’re still a virgin, does that mean you and your husband never…that before you were married you didn’t…you know…do it?”

Jackie’s eyes looked like bottle corks on the verge of popping. “Emily! I’m not that kind of girl!”

“You were that kind of guy!”

“That was different. Guys are expected to have loose morals and sleep around. I was only following the norm.”

“So what does that say about me?”

“That you were…easy?”

“WHAT?”

“Bad choice of words. You were…willing. Jeez, people get
so
freaked out about semantics these days.”

I glared at her. She cast a furtive glance around and grabbed my hand, pleading in a desperate voice. “All kidding aside, Emily, this is serious. I don’t know what to do. You’ve gotta help me.”

Uh-oh. Ripples of heat pricked my neck. “This doesn’t have anything to do with male sexual dysfunction, does it?”

“No! Tom’s not the one at fault.
I
am. He wants to do it, but…I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

She leaned across the table to within a half-foot of my face. “Everything is so new down there, Emily.” She dipped her eyes to the area below her waist. “I don’t want Tom to mess anything up. I mean, what if he’s not a perfect fit, or his aim is off, or he puts too much oomph into it. I could be ruined for life. I can’t help it. I want to keep everything intact for a while longer. I want to savor the newness. Do you think I’m being selfish?”

“You didn’t consider this
before
you got married?”

“Who has time to think about sex when you have all those bridal magazines to pore over? Do you know how many separate publications appear on the newsstand each month? It’s overwhelming. And that doesn’t include the special double issues on honeymoons and modern contraceptive techniques. Eloping didn’t help. Everything happened too quickly. I need more time, but Tom isn’t being very understanding. Will you talk to him?”

“Me? Why would he listen to me?”

“Because you’re a woman.”

“So are you!”

“But you’ve been a woman for decades longer than I have. That makes you more credible.”

“Tom—is that his name? Tom doesn’t even know me!” I regarded the Golden Irish Vacations name tag that hung around her neck, zeroing in on the surname for the first time. “Your last name is Thum? You married…Tom Thum?”

“Don’t even
think
about going there, Emily. I’ve had it up to here”—she made a slashing motion across her throat—“with the midget wisecracks. Or is it more politically correct to say ‘little people’? Of course, you say ‘little people’ over here, and everyone is looking around for a leprechaun. Anyway, Tom’s parents were sadistic wretches to name him what they did. And Tom does know you. In a sense. I’ve told him all about you. Unfortunately, that seems to be part of the problem.” She winced slightly. “I talked you up so much, he got a tiny bit jealous. He thinks the reason I don’t want to have sex with him is because I still have ‘a thing’ for you.”

“WHAT?”

“That’s why you need to talk to him. You have to convince him that you and I are no longer an item. And then you might want to explain to him the psychological reasons behind why I can’t have sex with him right now.”

I stared her eyeball to eyeball. “Are you NUTS?”

“You can do it, Emily. You’re the most clever person I know. You’ve gotta buy me some time. The success of my marriage depends on it.”

Uff da.
No pressure there.

Her facial muscles froze suddenly as she looked over my shoulder toward the doorway. “Oh, great. Don’t look now, but Miss Georgia Peach has entered the room. How often do you think she has to dye her hair to keep her roots looking so good?”

I rubbed my temples in thought. “Exactly how much time do you need to savor your new parts, Jack?”

“Do you suppose her skirt could possibly be any shorter? I have headbands that are bigger than that. And she’s wearing my sweater set! The same style. The same material. The same
color.
The bitch.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “It looks better on you.”

“You think so? You’re not just saying that?”

I watched as Ashley sashayed across the room to an unoccupied table by the buffet. “Okay, listen to me, Jack. You need to make a date with yourself to lose your virginity. Savor the newness for another couple of weeks, then on the appointed day, lose it. Write it in your day planner if you have to. The trick is, you need to give yourself permission to be indulgent with yourself, and then you need to do your thing with Tom. That way, you both get what you want. Trust me. It’ll work.”

“Like the Nike commercial, right? ‘Just do it.’” She exhaled an anxious breath. “What if Tom doesn’t go along with it?”

“You have the rest of your lives together. Will two weeks matter that much?”

“I guess in the scheme of things, two weeks isn’t so very long.” She gnawed thoughtfully on her bottom lip until she worked her plum lip liner right off. “Will you still talk to Tom?”

“No! He has no reason to be jealous of us because there
is
no us. You told him the truth. He’s simply going to have to believe you.”