A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) by Michaela Thompson Page A

glass. I crossed to the dresser, dripping on the braided rug, and sniffed the glass. It smelled like bourbon. Maybe Pedro had been drunk, as Ross surmised. Also on the dresser was a bottle of Old Spice cologne, a hairbrush with gray hairs in it, and a couple of boxing magazines.
    Vivien’s voice, high-pitched and anxious, called from upstairs, “Ross! Ross!”
    No answer. He must not have come in yet. I left Pedro’s room and went to the foot of the stairs.
    Marcelle finished talking and put down the phone. She said, “They’ll be here soon. What happened?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Ross!” Vivien sounded almost hysterical.
    I exchanged a look with Marcelle and ran up the stairs. Vivien was standing at the top, clutching her robe around her, her hair disheveled as if at some point she’d buried her hands in it. “What’s happened? Where’s Ross?” she cried when she saw me.
    “Outside. He— Pedro’s dead.” I didn’t know much about breaking bad news. Maybe the direct approach was as good as any.
    She looked so furious I thought she was going to attack me. “Don’t say that!” she screamed.
    I backed up a step. She glared at me. Then she grasped the stair rail convulsively and bent over it as if in pain. “Oh, shit!” she cried, and then, more softly, “Oh, Alex. Alex.”
    I heard Ross pounding up the staircase. Simultaneously, the door of Blanche’s room at the end of the hall opened and Blanche came out in her quilted white satin robe. Her face was puffy, her hair standing on end. She’d obviously just awakened. As she came toward us, Ross reached the top of the stairs. He said, “It’s Pedro, Vivien.”
    Vivien straightened. As Ross reached out to her, she drew her hand back and slapped his face. My stomach clenched at the sound of the blow. Behind me, Blanche gave a strangled cry.
    Ross shook his head as if stunned. He didn’t touch his reddening cheek. Vivien put both hands to her face as if surprised by what she’d done, and in a moment she began to giggle breathlessly. Ross glanced at me and said, “I’ll handle it.” He took her by the shoulders and guided her to her room as the giggles turned to high-pitched laughter.
    Blanche didn’t seem to be taking it in. “I was asleep. I took a pill. What’s wrong?” she said.
    “Pedro’s dead. I— we just found his body at the bottom of the bluff.”
    She rubbed her hands over her face. “I guess he jumped,” she said.
    I thought of Blanche herself, on the promontory at Les Baux. I couldn’t imagine Pedro a suicide. “Why do you say that?”
    “Because he’d lost his job.” She still sounded groggy.
    “What?”
    We were walking down the hall toward her room. She said, “Those pills are horrible. I can barely move.”
    I followed her into her room. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. I said, “What do you mean, Pedro had lost his job?”
    “My mother fired him.” A thought seemed to prod her to fuller consciousness. She raised herself on an elbow. “Do you think they’ll blame her for this, too?”
    I sat on the edge of the bed. “She’d fired him? When?”
    “Before we left for France. But he was so upset about it, she let him come with us after all, as a farewell present.”
    “Why did she fire him?”
    Blanche had lain down again, her hand tucked under her cheek. “Money,” she said, her voice trailing off in a sigh. She lay so still I thought she’d gone back to sleep. Then I saw a tear slide from the corner of her eye. “Poor Pedro,” she said.
    “Did you like him a lot?”
    She shook her head. “Not a lot. But he was there, you know?”
    I knew. In a world as damaged by upheaval as hers had been, continuity is rare and precious. Pedro had been there. Now he was gone.
    I sat beside her as she cried quietly. So Pedro had been fired. This had to be the context of the scene Marcelle had overheard. Yet Marcelle had said Vivien, not Pedro, had been distraught. Apparently, Pedro had gained the upper