Wilmington, NC 03 - Murder On The Ghost Walk

gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here?"
    Sara Beth Franks whirled around. "I might ask you the same thing, Ashley Wilkes," she retorted haughtily.
    "I . . . I left some personal items here. The police said I could pick them up."
    "Well, you left the door standing wide open." Sara Beth glided away from the organ and moved around the room, brushing the furniture with her fingertips and leaving trails in the dust. The mirror reflected her progress, two flaming redheads.
    Sara Beth always did look like a gypsy. Abundant, bright wavy hair was bound at the nape of her neck in a scrunchie then spilled over her shoulders. She designed and made her own clothes I'd been told, a cross between a peasant and a Bohemian. Her skirt was made of a crinkly orange fabric, cut in triangular shapes so the hemline dipped into points. An almost shapeless jacket in olive green covered her plump bosom. Her arms and hands were strong and unusually long for her body, and she wore at least a dozen rings on her fingers.
    As I drew nearer, I saw her topaz chandelier earrings were almost a true match for her eyes. Her white skin seemed incandescent, as if candles burned within , and it stretched tautly over her sharp features.
    Sara Beth was driven by some deep, inner resentment. I had never heard her say a kind word about anyone. But she was immensely talented, and her oil portraits and watercolors of coastal scenes hung on the walls of Wilmington's most fashionable living rooms.
    Melanie and Sara Beth had gone to high school together. They had been eight years ahead of me in school, and for a grade-schooler that was light years.
    "I have every right to be here," Sara Beth said.
    There was something troubling about Sara Beth--scary even. I was beginning to wonder how smart it was to be alone with her.
    She waved a white hand in the air. "This should have been my home. I should have been the one to live here with Reggie, not Shelby." She lifted her chin and shot me a challenging look, as if she dared me to disagree. "Reggie was in love with me, you know. Never her."
    Tell me more, I wanted to say. "Then his murder must be really rough for you."
    She continued to mope about the room as if she were in a trance. "My heart broke when I thought he'd left town without me. If I had known the truth, that he was actually dead, I think I might have killed myself too. Now, well ...
    "I followed him to Europe, you know, or at least I thought I was following them, that first Christmas when they were supposed to be in Paris. I know Paris well. But I never found them, even though I checked the better hotels. Now we know why. Poor Reggie had never left this house."
    She lowered her gaze to the floor as if she could see through it and into the rooms and walls below.
    Behind her, tall windows overlooked the tangled garden. The skies had grown quite dark. Funny, only an hour ago, the sun had been shining brightly. Now the sky looked stormy.
    "Were you and Reggie lovers when he died?"
    "Of course, we were lovers," she cried. "We were lovers since we were sixteen. No one could separate us. I was the love of his life, before he met that awful Mirabelle. No one's happier than I am she's dead." She stopped at the organ and thumped the keyboard soundly, punctuating her declaration.
    "Mirabelle? Reggie and Mirabelle? But she was at least ten years older than he."
    Sara Beth regarded me with a contemptuous glare . She ducked her head. She and her reflection continued their ghostly tour around the ballroom. "Oh, Ashley, you are so naive. For a young man of twenty-two, a beautiful woman in her thirties is irresistible. She was gorgeous then, even I have to admit that. And she knew things. Reggie was smitten. He was obsessed with her."
    I scarcely breathed. I dared not move for fear I'd break the spell. "Then what happened?" Why hadn't Melanie told me any of this? She must have known.
    Sara Beth stopped pacing abruptly and threw herself on the organ bench. "Mirabelle broke his heart, that's what she did. My poor Reggie! She married someone else, and my darling Reggie married Shelby on the rebound."
    I took a step toward Sara Beth, cautiously, not wanting to distract her. "Then why didn't he marry you?" I asked softly.
    She pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and began to cry into it. "He should have married me."
    I moved closer and placed a hand on her shoulder, expecting her to shake it off. When she didn't, I sat down next to her.
    She was talking freely now. "I