P Deutermann - Nightwalkers

I let the rest of the mutts out when I got back and then took that nightcap that had never made it to the porch down to the swing set by the pond. The resident owl greeted me from across the still water, and Kitty whoofed back at it. We hadn't had owls in Summerfield, and I wondered what she thought it was. Then she whoofed again, and I turned around to look. There, along the driveway, came Valeria, carrying a tiny handbag over one arm, a small lantern in one hand, and a dainty parasol in the other. She looked like a ghost coming soundlessly down the gravel drive, dressed all in white. I stood up as she approached the swing-set.

"Ms. Valeria," I said in greeting.

"Mr. Richter," she murmured. "May I join you, sir?"

"Absolutely," I said. "Should I go in and get another glass?"

She sat down primly in the long swing and said that that would be very nice. I was back in a flash. She had put the parasol down now that she was under the canvas cover of the swing and safe from the evening dew. She was sitting back, her long black hair in a twisted coil over the front of one shoulder and her legs out in front of her, barely touching the ground. That's when I noticed what she was wearing: It was a long-sleeved dress made of what looked like layers of thin white gauze that reached all the way to her ankles. In terms of womanly flesh on display, it was modest in the extreme, except for the fact that sometimes, if the humidity is just right, gauze clings. That old rule about less being more applied in spades, as every aspect of her decidedly lush body was on perfect if circumspect display in the starlight. I felt guilty about even looking, especially considering the earlier part of the evening. We clinked glasses, and I waited to see what she'd come down for. At that moment I would have been content to just sit there and look at her.

"Cubby informs us that you wished to confer?" she asked. The royal "we" came through loud and clear.

I said yes and then told her in broad terms about the events across the road of the night before, and how the major issue had been resolved. I admitted that I was worried they might want me to find accommodations elsewhere and said that I'd completely understand if that was the case.

"Nonsense, Mr. Richter," she said. "You are now the rightful owner of Glory's End?"

"Actually, not yet. I've put down some earnest money, and we're waiting for a survey and a title search."

"A title search? I heard Mother mention that. What is it, exactly?"

I told her.

"How interesting," she said, sighing. "Mother's right. Defining the legal title to Glory's End may be more than you bargained for, Mr. Richter."

"So people keep telling me," I said. "I keep wondering why."

She was silent for a moment, but then she answered me. "A title search sounds like a history of power," she said. "An effort to identify those with the power to claim and hold a property, as opposed to those who either can't or who lost it."

"Or sold it," I reminded her. "Ownership of property is not always about a power struggle between the strong and the weak."

"It is here," she said, "and in most of the South, I would expect. The Recent Unpleasantness was all about property."

"I thought it was about slavery."

"Precisely," she said, sipping some Scotch and then exhaling in pleasure.

Whoops, I thought as I caught her meaning. Good thing Cubby wasn't around.

"In any event," she said. "It is outrageous that someone would come onto your property in the middle of the night with guns and vicious dogs and expect you to just run away. Of course you would fight back. We would do the very same, I assure you."

"I guess I have to warn you, this isn't over. In police parlance this guy is known as a ghost, as in someone who comes back to haunt you because you took some law enforcement action against him. I believe he'll keep trying until one of us is in the ground."

"Ghosts are nothing new to this part of the county," she said with a wry smile. "There have been people living, loving, fighting, and dying around here for three hundred years. Of course there are ghosts. What's one more?"

"Well, I'm relieved. The cottage will be a perfect base of operations, but I'll try to keep any real warfare across the street."

"Do not do that on our account, Mr. Richter," she said. "We have weapons in the house, and anyone who tries conclusions with either of us will find out why the Recent Unpleasantness took four valiant years to resolve."

"Not to mention the major," I said, not wanting to point out how the Recent Unpleasantness had been resolved, with the utter destruction of southern society and all its many twisted mores.

"Indeed," she said.

Our glasses were empty, so I did the honors. She managed her whiskey very well, without any signs of intoxication.

"Must you stare so, Mr. Richter?" she asked, again with just a hint of a smile.

"You are quite a sight in the starlight, Ms. Valeria. That dress is-something." I felt weird-an hour away from Carol Pollard, and this very strange woman was turning me on. Plus, she was absolutely doing it on purpose.

She arched her back slightly, finished her Scotch, and then stood up in front of me. She ran her hands down the opposing sleeves of the dress, smoothing the fabric while tightening it at the same time across her front. "This dress," she said, continuing to run her long, elegant hands over the fabric, "takes about an hour to get right. There are forty-eight buttons on the back alone, can you believe it? Velvet buttons, which are difficult to manipulate. One requires help, you see."

I almost hadn't noticed, but she'd moved directly in front of me and close enough that I could catch a trace of her perfume. She definitely wasn't wearing lilac water tonight. Then she did a graceful pirouette, extending the hem of her dress out with one hand while placing her other on her hip. The extension of all that fabric rendered her body in a lovely silhouette. She executed another one, and then I realized she was moving away from me now, out into the lawn in front of the swing set, not dancing exactly but just wheeling to the soundless memory of a waltz somewhere back in time.

"Come calling, Mr. Richter," she said from about thirty feet away as she turned to go back up to the house. "I've lots to show you."

"Count on it," I replied, trying not to squeak. That's the thing about the country: When it rains, sometimes it pours.

We met the sheriff in his personal office at ten, as requested. Horace Stackpole, Pardee, Tony, and I sat on one side of his conference table. Frick and Kitty guarded the underside of the table at the end nearest the doughnuts. Sheriff Walker had all three of his detectives present. Horace had gone to school with one of the detectives, so we had an immediate in with the gold shields.

In addition to the D's, their Major Crimes boss, Captain Hildegard Hapsburg, was in attendance. She was built like the proverbial fat lady of the opera, lacking only the winged helmet. She viewed us outsiders with deep suspicion. I wondered idly what would happen if she showed up in a German customs hall with that last name.

I was still thinking about the night before when Tony had first arrived. He'd given me a couple of speculative looks, but I pretended not to notice. In the world of boys and girls and the games they play, Tony is a player. I didn't doubt for a moment that he knew something had happened. If he only knew.

"Dearly beloved," the sheriff began. "We are gathered here in the presence of edible doughnuts to figure out how to save Lieutenant Richter's butt from being shot off by a person or persons currently unknown. Lieutenant, how's about you start off with a five-minute summary of what's happened so far, up to the point where we got involved."

It took ten, but the sheriff was indulgent, seeing as I didn't make anyone look at slides. The detectives were a mixed bag. The two older white guys, maybe five, six years from hanging it up, listened dispassionately, their faces displaying the permanent skepticism that comes from a few decades of listening to people lie to them. The third detective, an attractive black woman in her late twenties, was taking notes and listening very carefully. When I said I was finished, she raised a hand and asked a question, which is when I realized that her notepad contained a whole list of questions. Captain Hapsburg was also taking notes, but so far she hadn't said anything at all.