A Premonition of Murder Read online

  “Well, just don’t act hastily,” Rose advised.

  “Oh, I won’t.” Abigail gave a girlish laugh. “Now that I know I’m not going to be pushing up daisies anytime soon, I can take my time deciding what to do with the estate. And dear fuddy-duddy old Norman cautioned me, too. He wants me to leave my will exactly as it is and not make any rash changes. But I suppose that’s the way lawyers are. Mired in the past. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” She paused and looked around the table. “You ladies have given me a new lease on life. So finish up, everyone.” She raised her glass in a toast. Her mood suddenly turned as bright and sunny as the Savannah sky. “Lucy’s made peach pie with crème fraîche for dessert, and I don’t know about you, but I plan on indulging!”

  * * *

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Minerva said a couple of hours later. “Abigail is certainly full of surprises. I had no idea she’d drop a bombshell like that.”

  “I knew she wanted to interest you and Ali in the Magnolia Society,” Rose said to me, “but I had no idea there was such a sense of urgency.”

  “She had a premonition about her own death,” Ali said softly. “How sad. I’m so glad she reached out to us.”

  We’d lingered over coffee and dessert at Beaux Reves but never managed to get inside the mansion. Now we were back at Oldies But Goodies, sitting in our comfortable apartment right above the shop. It was a large, airy living space with glossy white woodwork, creamy taupe walls, and a vintage brick fireplace with a marble mantelpiece. The décor was shabby chic, Savannah style, and my sister Ali had covered the fussy antique furniture with white cotton slipcovers. She’d made throw pillows from scraps of blue-and-white gingham, and the room looked fresh and inviting.

  I’d brewed a pot of sweet tea—another Savannah staple, I’d discovered—and placed the enameled drink tray on an old wicker chest Ali had found in a thrift store. She’d spray-painted it white, and it made a lovely coffee table.

  “How much do you know about Abigail?” I asked Minerva as she reached for a piece of shortbread. I’d quickly pulled a package of homemade Scottish shortbread cookies out of the freezer and defrosted them in the microwave.

  “Probably more than most people, but it isn’t very much.”

  “What we know about Abigail would fit into a thimble,” Rose added. “She’s very selective in what she shares with people. Most of our contact with her over the years has been about the Magnolia Society, and now that we have e-mail, we usually communicate that way. Rarely by phone or in person. I was surprised that she opened her home to a stranger for the summer. That was completely out of character.”

  “A stranger?” Ali asked.

  “A young man from the university, a graduate student, I believe. His name is Angus Morton, and she hired him to catalog everything at Beaux Reves. I suppose she thought it was time to get her affairs in order, and this would be a good place to start.”

  “She didn’t say much about the Society,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s a philanthropic group, isn’t it?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Minerva said, “it’s a nonprofit. Abigail is absolutely devoted to the idea of preserving all that is good in Savannah: our parks, our monuments, our historic places. Rose and I are on the outer edges of the group; we help with mailings, contacting city councilmen, that sort of thing. There are only a handful of the original founders left, and Abigail is one of them. They set the policies and the agenda on how the organization should move forward.”

  “It sounds almost like a secret society, “Ali offered. She plopped down on the sofa and scooped Barney into her lap. Barney and Scout are two highly pampered cats who rule the roost. They’re both rescues, and Ali adopted them as kittens from a no-kill shelter. They adore Ali, and they seem to know that she pulled them from a cage into a wonderful life.

  When I first moved in with Ali, there was a period of adjustment, but I won them over with tuna fish packed in water and organic cat treats. The way to a cat’s heart is through his stomach, as Ali always says. Barney curled against her, purring contentedly. Scout was snoozing on the windowsill, one of her favorite spots.

  “A secret society? Oh, it’s nothing that mysterious, my dear,” Minerva said. She paused. “I don’t mean to sound morbid, but I always did wonder what would happen to the Society and to Beaux Reves if Abigail passed away.”

  “Beaux Reves is a magnificent place,” I said, wishing we could have taken a peek inside.

  Rose nodded. “That it is. We stopped by once to drop off a Christmas gift for Abigail and made it as far as the front parlor. It looked like a room in a museum! Beautiful Oriental rugs, an enormous chandelier she had imported from Paris, Impressionist paintings—”

  “I’m positive I spotted a Monet,” Minerva interjected. “It was a field of lilies, with a pale blue sky. It was lovely.”

  “You don’t suppose it was a copy?” Ali asked.

  “Never!” Rose gave a delicate snort. “Abigail believes in buying the best or buying nothing at all. That’s one of her favorite sayings.”

  “You were telling us you wondered what would happen to the house,” I gently reminded Minerva. Sometimes Rose and Minerva have trouble staying on track.

  “Oh yes, the house, sorry,” Minerva said with a little flutter of her hands. “It would cost a small fortune to keep it up, I suppose, but I wonder if Abigail has willed it to some charitable organization? She’d have to leave a large amount of money for them to maintain it, of course. Right now, she manages with a live-in housekeeper, Lucy Dargos, and an estate manager, Jeb Arnold. He’s a sort of jack-of-all-trades and lives in the guesthouse. Lucy has her own apartment on the top floor of the mansion.”

  “I’m surprised she can manage a place that size with such a tiny staff,” Ali said.

  “I think she keeps most of the rooms closed off,” Minerva added. “That’s the only way she can cope. And she hires an outside landscaping service to handle the gardens. She always says she likes to live simply, and I believe she often dines alone in front of the television. She’s a news junkie, you see,” she added with a smile. “And she loves politics.”

  “How I wish she had given you a tour,” Rose said to me. “Beaux Reves. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Beautiful dreams,” I said promptly, remembering my high school French. An odd coincidence since Abigail was preoccupied with a dream, I decided.

  “Yes, beautiful dreams,” Rose agreed. “Except now it seems poor Abigail is having nightmares. Do you think we can help her? She’s such a sweetheart, I’d like to.”

  “I’m sure we can,” Ali said warmly. “I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Dream Club for tomorrow night.”

  2

  We had almost a full house the following evening. Detective Sam Stiles was on duty and had to cancel at the last minute, but the rest of the group was there. The Harper sisters arrived first and settled onto a lavender settee that Ali had scored at a flea market. She’d draped a white crocheted throw over it, a gift from the Harper sisters.

  Rose and Minerva were quickly followed by Dorien Myers, a prickly woman in her forties whose acid tongue sometimes causes tension in the group, and Lucinda Macavy, a retired school headmistress. We thought romance was in the cards for Lucinda last year, when she developed a brief friendship with a male Dream Club member, but that relationship seemed to have fizzled out, along with his involvement with the group.

  At the moment, our membership is all female, although we’d be happy to have a man in the club if a gentleman applied. Etta Mae Beasley took a seat across from me and smiled when she recognized a plate of blueberry scones on the coffee table.

  “From my family cookbook?” she asked, her tone ringing with pride.

  “Of course,” I told her. “It’s one of our favorites.” A few months ago, Etta Mae had been convinced that a visiting celebrity chef had stolen some of her treas
ured family recipes and included them in her bestselling cookbook. There was quite a to-do. Etta Mae threatened a lawsuit, and when the chef died under suspicious circumstances at a book signing, she was briefly considered a suspect. Everything was finally smoothed over and Etta Mae is now a valued member of the group. She’s new to the field of dream interpretation, but all we ask of our new members is that they be respectful of other points of view and open to the idea that dreams really do have meaning.

  By establishing a few ground rules, we’ve managed to run a fairly harmonious group with little dissension. A couple of our members do tend to “hog the floor,” but Ali, our moderator, usually finds a tactful way to step in and redirect the discussion.

  Etta Mae looked pleased and settled back happily in her comfy armchair. Sybil Powers and Persia Walker arrived together, and Ali called the group to order. “Help yourselves, everyone,” she said. “There’s sweet tea and fresh lemonade, and a nice assortment of pastries.”

  Since we’ve added a small café to the candy shop, we’re always on the lookout for new recipes and we use the Dream Club members as our beta tasters, tweaking the recipes according to their suggestions and deciding which ones will make the final cut. Then we add the item to the menu as half-price specials and gauge customers’ reactions.

  This night I served a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler that I thought was delicious but Ali felt was a little too tart, and I was eager to hear the group’s take on it. Ali argued that most people would agree that it needed a bit more brown sugar. Southerners like their sweets, she told me. I always scribble the group’s comments in a little notebook, and I thank the members for their input. I think they like the idea of being beta tasters and having plenty of free desserts to take home.

  “You’ve outdone yourself, ladies,” Minerva said to Ali and me. “I wish you’d let us contribute something. It doesn’t seem fair that you two have to do all this baking every week.”

  “Nonsense. We’re glad to do it,” Ali told her. “You’re the food judges. That can be your contribution. And besides, you bring such lovely flowers,” she added, touching a petal on one of the pale pink roses that Minerva had arranged in a hand-painted vase. “These last for days,” Ali told her. “We enjoy them all week.”

  “Then you’ve been cutting the stems on the diagonal and adding an aspirin as I suggested,” Minerva said, beaming.

  When everyone was finally settled with plates of goodies, the meeting could begin. “Minerva, Rose, Taylor, and I had an interesting experience this week,” Ali began. She described our visit to Beaux Reves and our meeting with the reclusive Abigail Marchand.

  “She had a premonition of her own death?” Sybil Powers asked.

  “Yes, and it was a terrifying experience for her,” Rose murmured. She took a cherry tartlet from the platter and sampled it. Rose takes tiny bites, like a cat, and loves to try every dessert we serve. She doesn’t really offer helpful critiques, because she seems to love them all equally and swears she wouldn’t change a thing about the recipe.

  “The poor thing,” Sybil said, shaking her head. “I wish I could have dropped in on that dream.” Sybil was wearing one of her trademark caftans, a beautiful batik in tones of peach and gold. Sybil has an unusual skill—she’s a “dream-hopper” and has the ability to “visit” other people’s dreams.

  Last week, she told us about visiting Marie Antoinette in her final hours. The unlucky monarch was about to meet her gruesome end in the morning, and Sybil visited her dream as the queen slept fitfully, her dreams as dark and threatening as the fate that awaited her. Since time and space have no meaning in the dream world, it’s possible for Sybil to slip through the ages and cross continents in her dream-hopping. I once asked her if she had ever accidentally “hopped into” a friend’s dream, and she admitted that when that happens, she leaves the dream as fast as she can. She feels it isn’t fair or honorable to intrude on a friend’s privacy, and I respect her for that.

  “So, what shall we tell Abigail as far as interpretations?” Ali said briskly. “The floor is open.”

  “Well, the first thing to do is to tell her that she may not be at death’s door after all,” Dorien said acerbically. “Most of us have had those drowning dreams from time to time, and we’re still here, aren’t we?” She looked around the group, and there was a challenge in her cool stare. “Everyone knows that it’s a classic anxiety dream; she’s probably drowning all right, but not in the literal sense. She could be drowning from some stressful situation in her life.”

  “Yes, that’s my take, as well. Drowning in problems. Going down for the third time, as they say,” Persia murmured.

  “Do we know anything about any problems in her life, her health, her finances?” Etta Mae asked. “I’m new in town and I don’t know anything about her. I’ve never even heard of Beaux Reves.”

  “Well, if you saw that place, you’d know she doesn’t have any financial worries, hon,” Dorien said harshly. “The place is like a palace, and that woman never had to work a day in her life.”

  Ali and I exchanged a look. Dorien can be downright unpleasant at times, and both of us wish she’d downplay her cynical tone. She’s a bit rough around the edges—although the Harper sisters keep insisting she has a “heart of gold”—and I suppose her own money worries make her a bit envious of someone like Abigail.

  Dorien has a tarot-reading business that dropped off a few years ago during the recession and hasn’t quite recovered. She does occasional catering jobs and would love to be a personal chef, but there are a few strikes against her.

  Her abrasive personality, for one thing. It’s hard to imagine she has much in the way of customer service skills. And last year, she was briefly questioned by the police in a murder investigation. She served a catered dinner to a dance instructor who was later found poisoned. A cloud like that is hard to dispel, even though she was innocent. As Ali says, perception is everything.

  The meeting moved on to other topics. Etta Mae discussed a recent bout with “sleep paralysis,” and the group was sympathetic. Sleep paralysis is a truly terrifying experience, and it’s similar to the “locked-in” syndrome that some people have experienced after a neurological event. It’s not serious, but it’s extremely unpleasant. According to Etta Mae, she has been to several doctors about her problem. One doctor suggested it was “psychological,” which annoyed her to no end.

  “I was lying in bed with my eyes shut,” Etta Mae said, her voice shaky, “and I could hear everyone else in the house stirring. One of the kids tapped on my bedroom door and said they were making pancakes and they were waiting for me to come downstairs. I tried to open my eyes and sit up and I couldn’t move. I was absolutely paralyzed.”

  “How awful,” Lucinda murmured. “Did anyone in your family know what was going on?”

  “No, they didn’t have a clue. I heard someone say that I must be sleeping and then there were footsteps walking down the stairs.”

  “You haven’t told them about your problems with sleep paralysis?” Lucinda asked.

  “I don’t want to worry them,” Etta Mae said quickly. “The kids have enough on their plates as it is.” I knew Etta Mae was divorced and struggling to raise three children on her own.

  “What happened next?” Persia was perched on the edge of her chair, her expression rapt with interest.

  “I felt all my muscles quivering as I struggled to get up and nothing happened. And my eyelids felt like they were glued shut. I couldn’t move, but I could hear everything.” She let out a big sigh. “I hope nothing like this ever happens to me again. It was like being trapped inside my own body. I felt like I’d been buried alive.” She closed her eyes for a moment and her lips quivered.

  “Has it happened before?” Ali asked. She reached over to refill everyone’s glasses with tea and lemonade.

  “Yes. Once, the night before I had surgery. I was terribly worried about going
into the hospital and I was under a lot of stress. And the other time”—she paused, twisting her hands in her lap—“was when money was tight and the mortgage was due.”

  “Do you suppose you’re going through something similar right now? Something stressful in your life, I mean?” Rose’s tone was kind, but I knew Etta Mae might be offended if someone suggested that it was “all in her head.”

  “Well”—Etta Mae paused and licked her lips—“I suppose I am, but I’d rather not get into it right now.” She gave a little shiver as if she was trying to shrug off the memories of being trapped in her own bed. “Let’s move on to someone else. This doesn’t really count as a dream, so I suppose I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “Of course you should have,” Minerva said. “If it’s important to you, it’s important to us.”

  “Anything else about Abigail before we finish for the evening?” Ali asked half an hour later.

  “I don’t think so,” Rose said. “Except . . .”

  “Except . . .” Ali prompted her.

  “Well, I suppose it’s nothing, but do you remember what Abigail said about her dream, how she described her impending death as ‘fate’?”

  “Yes, I do,” I spoke up. “I remember she used the word ‘fate’ a couple of times.”

  “But there was another word she used,” Rose offered. “I was listening very carefully, and she used the word ‘karma.’ What do you suppose she meant by that?”

  There was dead silence for a few moments. And then Dorien said, “‘Karma’ means ‘retribution,’ doesn’t it? What goes around comes around. That’s always been my interpretation of it.”

  Rose nodded. “I suppose you’re right. ‘Retribution.’ Odd that she would use that word. That sounds as though she’s responsible for something and has to make amends. It makes me wonder . . .” Her voice trailed off and when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else, Ali stood up and thanked everyone for coming. She packed up the last of the pastries for the Harper sisters to have for breakfast the next day and the meeting ended. We had just ushered the last guest out the door when my cell chirped.