Миранда Джеймс - Fixing To Die

Slowly she let the tension drain from her body as she focused on relaxation. As eager as she was to search for a secret door into the French room, she hoped Benjy didn’t hurry back from feeding the pets and retrieving his laptop.

She let her gaze wander around the room again, and as she observed the areas that needed tidying, she thought again about strangers handling her things. She reminded herself about the disposable gloves and told herself to let it go.

Focus on where that door might be instead .

She could see herself and Benjy examining the wall between the bathroom and the French room, their hands feeling their way, looking for signs of a mechanism of some sort.

Hands feeling their way .

She sat up suddenly, her feet sliding off the ottoman. We might destroy fingerprints or other evidence by touching everything , An’gel realized. Steinberg would not be happy with her for doing so.

But if we have disposable gloves, it wouldn’t be that different from the police doing the same thing .

A knock at the door roused her, and she called out, “Come in.” She expected Benjy to walk in, but instead it was Marcelline.

“Miss An’gel, I need to talk to you about something.” The housekeeper hesitated in the doorway.

An’gel could see that Marcelline was worked up about something. “Please, come on in. Tell me what’s troubling you.”

Marcelline closed the door slowly behind her. An’gel indicated the room’s other chair, and Marcelline sat on the edge, back stiff, hands clasped together.

“Go ahead,” An’gel said. “I’m listening.” Marcelline seemed to be debating with herself over whether to confide in An’gel, or so the woman’s expression led An’gel to believe.

“I’ve got to tell someone,” Marcelline said, “and I don’t rightly know how to tell Miss Mary. I know who that woman is. At least, I think I do.”

“What woman?” An’gel asked. “Are you talking about Alesha Jackson?”

Marcelline nodded. “Yes, her.” She hesitated again. “I think she’s Miss Mary’s cousin.”

CHAPTER 28

Whatever An’gel might have expected Marcelline to tell her, it definitely wasn’t that Mary Turner and Alesha Jackson were related to each other. She quickly grasped the situation, however, because of her knowledge of the family history.

“Mary Turner’s grandfather, Marshall Turner, is also Alesha Jackson’s grandfather. Is that what you think?” An’gel asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the housekeeper said. “You’ve been knowing this family a long time, Miss An’gel, and you know how Mr. Marshall was. Couldn’t keep his hands off a woman he wanted to get ahold of. Thank the Lord he died about nine or ten months after I started working here. By then he was getting sick, and he didn’t bother me.”

“I know all about Marshall Turner,” An’gel said wryly. She wasn’t going to tell Marcelline, but she’d had her own run-in with the lecher. He had never made that mistake again, An’gel recalled with great satisfaction. In fact, after she’d gotten through with him, he had stayed away from her like she had the plague. “Who was the woman involved?” An’gel asked.

“A real pretty black lady that worked for Mrs. Turner for a while. I didn’t know her because she must have left a couple years before I started working here. Anyway, she came up to the back door one day when I was just coming out to bring in the clothes from the line. She asked to speak to Mr. Marshall. Now, this was when I’d only been here maybe a couple of months, so Mr. Marshall was still around. I asked her into the kitchen, and I went to find him.”

“Did she tell you her name?” An’gel asked.

“Oh, yes,” Marcelline replied. “She told me she was Arletta Jackson. Mrs. Lonnie Jackson. She stressed that part, that she was married, I mean, but she said to tell Mr. Marshall it was Arletta Kemp asking for him.”

“Did Mr. Marshall talk to her?”

“He talked terrible when I told him, bad words I’d never even heard before. He was in the library by himself, and he swore me up and down that I wouldn’t tell Mrs. Turner about this. I promised, although I know Mrs. Turner got to know about it later. He wasn’t too good with hiding things from her.”

“Do you know what Mrs. Jackson wanted to talk to him about?” An’gel suspected she knew exactly what Mrs. Jackson and Marshall Turner talked about, but she needed to hear it from the housekeeper.

“I did, but I didn’t do it on purpose,” Marcelline said. “I wasn’t the type of girl who tried to find out everybody’s business, but when you overhear things, it’s not your fault.”

“No, I suppose not,” An’gel said. “Go on.”

“Mrs. Jackson had a little boy, she said, just turned two years old, and she was asking Mr. Marshall for the money he promised her for their son. That’s exactly what she said, their son .” Marcelline shook her head. “That was the first I heard tell of Mr. Marshall getting his women pregnant, but I sure wouldn’t be surprised if there’s others out there besides that boy and Miss Mary’s poor dead father.”

An’gel wouldn’t be surprised either, although she figured it was more in the late Marshall Turner’s style to pay the woman in question to get rid of the baby. Lord, what a nasty man he had been, she thought in distaste.

“What happened after that?” An’gel asked.

“I reckon Mr. Marshall gave her some money,” Marcelline replied. “I never saw her again, not even after Mr. Marshall died. I’ve been trying to remember what she looked like. I kept getting a funny feeling I’d seen this Alesha Jackson somewhere before, and I finally figured it out. She must be that Arletta Jackson’s granddaughter. She’s not old enough to be her daughter.”

“Thank you for telling me about this,” An’gel said. “I won’t say anything to Mary Turner either. First, of course, the relationship would have to be proven, but a blood test can do that. Ms. Jackson may not want anyone to know she’s related. I don’t really think it would bother Mary Turner all that much, you know. She heard about her grandfather and his behavior, and she’s smart enough to know there could have been consequences, shall we say, of the old goat’s philandering.”

“Maybe so.” Marcelline looked doubtful. “But I had to tell you in case it was this Alesha Jackson who caused Nathan’s death.”

“At the moment I don’t know what her motive might be,” An’gel said. “But all the angles need to be considered. This is certainly an unexpected one.”

“I reckon her being that lady’s granddaughter might account for how she knew about me being married,” Marcelline said. “I was still wearing a ring back then, and I remember Mrs. Jackson saying something about it now. Something like it might not protect me. I knew what she meant, of course.”

“I wonder if Mrs. Jackson is still living,” An’gel said.

“Don’t see why not,” Marcelline said. “She wasn’t all that much older than me at the time. She’d be maybe seventy-five now.”

“I’m going to be talking to Alesha Jackson later, and I’ll see what I can find out about all this,” An’gel said. “You leave it to me.”

“Thank you, Miss An’gel.” Marcelline rose to go. “I won’t say anything to anybody about it.”

“Good. Now, I’ll have to tell my sister about it,” An’gel said. “She and I always discuss things like this.”

“Don’t matter to me,” Marcelline said. “I’ll be going now. Got to start working on something for dinner tonight.” She left the room, obviously relieved to have shared her burden with someone else.

An’gel was inclined to believe that Marcelline was right, that Alesha Jackson was Arletta Jackson’s granddaughter. That fact would certainly explain Alesha Jackson’s interest in Cliffwood. An’gel had never really bought into the idea that the so-called psychic had heard the spirit of Cliffwood calling to her. She didn’t believe the woman had a psychic bone in her body, now that Marcelline had exposed her. Her grandmother could easily have told her about the people at Cliffwood and about meeting the young Marcelline. It wouldn’t have taken much work for Alesha Jackson to find out details about the current inhabitants. The two maids who did most of the heavy cleaning could well be the source.