Perdition House (Bay Tanner Mystery) - Softcover

Wall, Kathryn R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312998244 ISBN 13: 9780312998240

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Retreating to her beach house with her retired judge father after the death of her husband, financial consultant Bay Tanner meets a woman who claims to be a long-lost relative and whose dangerous past threatens to destroy Bay and her father. Reprint.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Kathryn R. Wall was an accountant for twenty-five years in Ohio before retiring with her husband to Hilton Head, South Carolina. This is her third Bay Tanner mystery.

Kathryn R. Wall was an accountant for twenty-five years in Ohio before retiring with her husband to Hilton Head, South Carolina. This is her third Bay Tanner mystery.

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From Charleston To Hilton Head, Family Matters...And Murder Is Relative.

When a fifth cousin twice removed calls Bay Tanner - a young, recently widowed, financial consultant - from the Beaufort County Jail, it's no accident. Mercer Mary Prescott spent a lot of time and trouble locating Bay on the family tree, and she needs more than bail out of the relationship. What she's really after is a secret she's not willing to reveal-yet. But when Bay generously takes Mercer back to the family mansion of Presqu'isle, she finds that this distant kin comes with a lot of personal baggage-and some very dangerous pursuers. Before Bay can help straighten out Mercer's problems, the mousy young woman disappears. Now, Bay begins a desperate hunt for her "shirttail" cousin through the twisted alleys of the past, from Civil War days to a plantation called Perdition House and to one last deadly fight.

"The suspense ratchets up periodically, the characters are well drawn and unique, and the writing evokes the new South without resorting to stereotype. Best of all, Bay makes a believable and appealing protagonist." -The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The finely spun plot makes Bay's latest a taut, tasty chiller." -Kirkus Reviews

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Chapter One

I had no idea when we set up our informal inquiry agency that one of the first clients my father and I would have would be one of my own shirttail relations. Life is strange that way sometimes, or so I've found.

Mercer Mary Prescott had the relationship down pat, from each third and fourth cousin by marriage twice removed, back through an incredible tangle of ancestors, all the way to our mutual great-great-something grandmothers who were half sisters. At least I think that's how it went. She lost me somewhere after the second "great," and I decided then and there I'd just take her word for it.

It was certainly hard to believe, looking at her through the glass partition that rainy afternoon in mid-November, that we could be related by any but the most tenuous of blood connections. Huddled in the too-big orange jumpsuit that leached any remaining color from her already sallow skin, Mercer Mary Prescott resembled nothing so much as a bedraggled owl. Muddy brown eyes, magnified by a pair of functional drugstore glasses mended on the left temple with grungy adhesive tape, made brief contact with my own bright green ones, then slid guiltily away. Poker-straight hair-dirty blond in both senses of the word-was pulled back with a thick rubber band into a drooping ponytail, and her nails, on surprisingly long, tapered fingers, were bitten down to the skin.

She did have a sweet smile, or so it seemed in the one brief flash I'd seen of it when I first strode into the visitors' room at the Beaufort County Jail. The effect was ruined, however, by the yellowing, purplish bruise mottling the left side of her narrow chin. Mercer Mary Prescott had said little beyond her recitation of our common lineage, an attempt to explain, no doubt, why she used her one allotted telephone call to reach my father. About her injury she remained stubbornly mute.

"Look, Mercer," I said as she attacked her already shredded fingers. "I don't understand what else you expect me to do. I've called a local attorney, a friend of my father's, and he should be here soon. If bail is granted, I'm sure the Judge and I would be happy to help you out. You being family and all," I added with a touch of sarcasm that seemed completely lost on the child.

"Oh, no, Cousin Lydia, please!" It was the first sign of animation I'd seen out of her since she'd stopped spouting her genealogical mumbo jumbo. "I won't mind it here, truly I won't! I'll probably have a cell to myself, and the food is bound to be good. I've been in worse places."

"Recently?" I blurted out, then mentally kicked myself.

What is your problem? I demanded silently and could find no reasonable explanation for this instinctive antagonism toward my newly met cousin.

"And no one calls me Lydia anymore," I plunged on, consciously softening my tone, "at least not since my mother died. It's 'Bay' now."

Somewhere in elementary school I had abandoned the burden of Lydia Baynard Simpson for the sleek simplicity of Bay. The Tanner was added after a short, love-at-first-sight courtship led to nearly a decade and a half of solid marital bliss, cut short over a year ago by my husband's yet unsolved murder. Dealing with Rob's death was a daily exercise in self-control and acceptance. Some days the pain receded to a dull ache just behind my breastbone. On others ...

Mercer sat quietly, her chin dropped so low I found myself staring at the crooked part on the top of her head.

"So why did you call us then? And what are you in for, anyway?"

Maybe I would have to revise my generous offer of bail money if she'd been accused of an ax murder or something equally reprehensible. Besides, I was getting tired of badgering her. The dull afternoon was fast fading into twilight, and I didn't relish the thought of navigating the narrow, two-lane road back to Hilton Head Island on such a rainy, miserable night. I wanted out of there, family duty be damned.

"Mercer?" I tried hard for patience. "What did you do?"

"Vagrancy," she finally mumbled into her chest.

"Vagrancy? You mean you were sleeping in the street or on a park bench or something like that? Why? Where are your parents, for God's sake?"

I didn't get an answer to any of my questions, at least not then.

"Time's up, ladies." The guard was a deputy I didn't recognize, even though my brother-in-law, Sergeant Red Tanner, had introduced me over the years to many of his colleagues in the Beaufort County Sheriff's Department. This guy probably worked for the city police, who, now that I thought about it, no doubt had jurisdiction. Our county was still peaceful enough that everyone shared the same jail.

I bristled a little at his remark until I registered his soft brown eyes and realized he had meant no disrespect. Mercer Mary Prescott might look like trailer trash, but our great-great-whatever grandmothers had been half sisters, and I would demand she be treated accordingly. "Miss Prescott's attorney will be along shortly," I informed him. "He'll want to speak to his client."

"No problem, ma'am," the deputy said, as Mercer and I both rose in our chairs. I felt a rush of relief that mine was on the right side of the partition.

"I'll wait around and see about your bail," I said, looking down on my newfound relative. At just under six feet I towered over the diminutive young woman, who couldn't have been much over five feet three inches even if she stood up straight.

"Not much chance of that, ma'am," the deputy interjected, "beggin' your pardon. Judge Pinckney's up in Columbia today at some conference, and he isn't expected back until tomorrow."

Being the daughter of retired Judge Talbot Simpson, I've kind of gotten used to throwing his weight around. Crippled by a series of debilitating strokes, my father has been confined to a wheelchair for the past several years. Despite an almost pathological fear of being pitied, which has kept him housebound as well, his power remains undimmed in local jurisprudence circles. There isn't a member of the northern Beaufort County bar or bench who hasn't at one time or another shared whiskey and cigars around his poker table, or shucked oysters on our back dock, or fidgeted through one of my mother's interminable formal dinner parties. The same went for law enforcement. If my father couldn't ultimately bust Mercer Mary Prescott out of jail with a couple of judiciously placed phone calls, I'd be very much surprised.

"We'll see about that," I began, but Mercer cut me off.

"It's okay, really, Cousin ... Bay. Tomorrow will be fine. I really don't mind staying here tonight. I don't want to be a burden to anyone." She looked almost panicked at the thought of getting out of jail.

What did this poor, bedraggled child think?-that I would spring her from the slammer and toss her back out into the street? Had I made that bad an impression?

"Let's wait and see what Law Merriweather has to say," I replied, certain my father's old friend could arrange it somehow so I could just pay her fine and whisk Cousin Mercer back to Presqu'isle. Lavinia Smalls, my father's housekeeper-companion and the woman who, for
fs20better or worse, had been primarily responsible for rearing me, would bluster and shake an accusing brown finger at me, complaining about unexpected guests in the old antebellum mansion where I grew up. But in the end she would attack this problem as she did most others-with food and herbal tea and a deep compassion for those in need.

I could dump this problem on Lavinia and my father and retreat back to my beach house on Hilton Head with only a slightly muddy conscience.

Mercer Mary Prescott nodded, apparently used to taking as an order any suggestion made by someone who spoke with the least degree of authority. "Thank...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312998244
• ISBN 13: 9780312998240
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar