A Rose By Any Other Name Ch. 05

ALL CHARACTERS ARE ADULTS



From the beach Jack and Rose walked the path back to the house to talk with the cop who summoned them.

"You got my attention, what do you want?" Jack asked.

"I got something for you and your lady," the man said, and handed an envelope to Rose. "I'd go if it was me."

"And who are you?" Jack asked.

"Sheriff Swilley," the man replied.

"It's from Buddy's mother," Rose added, and removed her sun glasses.

"Look! What happened here was a stupid blunder, and no one wants to stir things up about it. So the lady wants to speak to you about her concerns, and how you can help her out," Swilley said. "I know Mrs. Christmas, and I'm confident she'll make you a generous offer once you know her problem."

"It's tonight at seven," Rose said. "The menu is Vichysoisse, Brie en Croute, Steak au Poivre with asparagus, Crepe Suzette with Raspberries, and a California Syrah."



"Steak with mushrooms, asparagus, cold potato soup, bread, and pancakes with fruit topping. We'll be there!" Jack said after Rose nodded approval.



"Okay! I'll scoot along then. Thanks for talking to me. Hope the gun didn't scare you too much, but I didn't wanna intrude more than necessary," Swilley said.

"What does she want?" Rose asked. "And what did he mean by stupid blunder?"

"You're the master-mind, bwana, I just tote your gun. But if I had to guess, I'd say someone is nervous about a lawsuit or trouble of some kind," Jack said.

"Maybe she wants to poison me," Rose added.



Dixie saw Buddy in the corridor outside her office and steeled herself to talk to him. "Hey! Come back here, I want to talk to you," she called out.

"What?" He asked as he stuck his head in her door.

"Get in here and shut the door!" She ordered. "Your old girlfriend is coming over for dinner tonight, and I want you gone while she's here, do I make myself clear?"

"What's up with dinner?" He asked.

"I'm gonna persuade her to leave town and stay away from you, is what," she replied.

"I think you oughta mind your own business," he said.

Dixie looked at him, "I don't want you here tonight. Is that clear enough?" Buddy got up, opened the door, and left. She felt frustrated. "He'll pull some stunt, I know it. I've got so much to do before seven!"

Dixie started up the stairs and stopped to straighten a painting on the wall. She felt annoyed even when the frame was level again. "Relax, it's not that bigga deal," she thought. Then she heard a cat meow. It surprised her. "I don't own a cat!" She looked up the stairs and saw a cat on the second floor looking down at her.

The cat meowed again. Dixie knelt and called for the cat to come. The cat ignored her, turned around, and loped away.



Dixie then marched up the stairs to capture the animal, and heard a door close somewhere but didn't see which door it was. All the doors were closed and she couldn't imagine where the cat went. "Goddamned cat," she thought.

The Christmas Mansion was enormous. Some estimated it was the largest Antebellum home ever built in the South with sixteen thousand square feet of living space under one roof. The house was built in 1830, it was three storeys high with an inhabitable attic. Two grand staircases rose from the 2nd floor to the attic. The second floor was where the formal entries were located, one on the north side, and one on the south side.

The ground floor was reserved for the kitchen, bakery, storage, offices, shops, and servant quarters. A large staircase rose from the kitchen to the second floor lobby.

The second floor was partitioned into a formal dining room, a ball room, and a library. The east and west sides of the second floor had balconies that opened off of the ballroom and library. The dining room was connected to the ballroom. The lobby went down the center to each entry.

Ten bedroom suites were located on the third floor. A corridor divided the floor into two equal halves. Two suites on the west side opened onto balconies, two suites on the east did the same. Dixie's 4th great-grandparents had twelve children. Servants slept in one of the suites.

The attic was partitioned into storage and equipment rooms. The attic rooms were lighted by dormer windows, skylites, and windows installed through the gables.

The invitation came with a card to open the entry gate. Jack swiped the card, the gate rolled across the pavement, then rolled back after they were clear.

Buddy was hidden in the kitchen, then left after watching Rose walk along the second floor lobby with the new boyfriend. They sat in the library drinking cocktails till dinner was announced, then walked across the lobby to the dining room. Dixie wanted to overwhelm Rose with the money and elegance, soften Rose before assaulting her with a proposition and offer. The first round of cocktails got mixed up, and Dixie downed Rose's drink before she realized it. The second round was right.

Dinner began with sautéed chicken paillards with herbs salad & white balsamic vinaigrette, followed by the vichysoisse; the mood was civil and relaxed till the blood started dripping from the ceiling, falling into the soup tureen. Jack and Rose didn't see it, or ignored it, while Dixie's anxiety rose like a thunderhead in the August heat. She seemed enchanted and hypnotized by the blood in the soup and the growing stain it made on the tablecloth when the blood/soup splatter flew from the tureen. Then she fled the room.

Dixie ran up the stairs to her 3rd floor bedroom and collapsed on her bed; three hours later she awoke from the sound of something in her closet. The ruckus and noise sounded like a cat, and then she remembered the cat, and tried to guess how the cat got in her bedroom. A minute later there followed a thud and the sound of cloth ripping, "A dress!"

Dixie pressed the light-switch on the lamp beside her bed. The filament inside the light bulb exploded with a pop and a flash. She reached for her flashlight, but when she found it, a hand laid upon her hand, restraining her from lighting the room. "I must be dreaming," she wondered.

She snatched her hand free and gazed around the darkness. Several minutes passed in blackness and silence. She sensed a presence in the room, and finally, spoke, "Is anyone there?" And watched a female figure materialize near a window.

The form appeared to be a young woman with dark hair hanging over her shoulders, wearing a silk petticoat and a short, white robe, looking out through the window, as if expecting someone.



Dixie closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them the figure was gone, replaced by a young female in an older style dress, with long dark hair, and an older woman, like-wise dressed in the same old-fashioned costume.



The old woman sat wrapped in a sort of cloak-mantle, with her head depressed to her chest, her hands crossed on her lap, and she had no eyes.



Over the woman's shoulder a livid face materialized from the darkness, the face of a dead man, bloated with bleached seaweed tangled in his dripping hair, likely drowned, and beside this corpse a miserable, squalid child, colored with famine and fear.

As Dixie looked at the old woman's face, it changed, the wrinkles and lines vanished and became young, though hard-eyed and stony, but still young. When clouds passed across the face of the Moon darkness came upon these phantoms, as it had over the first girl standing beside the window, and they vanished, too. Dixie lost consciousness.

Later Dixie awoke with mild heart palpitations to find the room bathed with moonlight, and silent; she guessed it must be far on into the night. Then, in the darkness, a soft light began to glow.

She watched its brightness increase, and its space expand. It seemed to radiate from a central point, which gradually took form and became a tall, petit woman, walking slowly across the room. Dixie felt a slight vibration in the mattress as the apparition passed the foot of the bed and went to the further corner of the room and stopped.

Dixie had time to observe her profile and general appearance. The ghost's face was pretty, her body that of a young woman eighteen to twenty years old, with a slight figure and a dress of a dark, soft material, with a full skirt and broad sash or soft waistband tied beneath the bosom, almost under the arms; a crossed or draped kerchief over the shoulders; sleeves which fit tight below the elbow; and hair that was dressed so as not to lie flat to the head, either in curls or " bows," Dixie couldn't tell which, and couldn't determine the color of the hair or gown because of the darkness.



"Hello?" Dixie spoke to the spirit, but her words produced no effect, and the ghost stood still for perhaps two minutes.

The ghost then raised her hands, which were long and pale, and held them before her as she kneeled and buried her face in the palms of her hands, in the attitude of prayer, then vanished.

Dixie was alone in the darkness again until the full Moon came out from behind clouds and floated high in the sky, clear and calm. There was the moon; there also was the light from the lamps in the yard below.

Dixie turned to look back into the room: the moonlight penetrated it with pale, dim, and flickering light, but still it was light. The ghosts were gone. Nothing remained but the moonlight, shadows, and silence. Dixie remembered the closet.

Her eyes adjusted to the dark, she went to the closet, flipped the light switch ON, and opened the door. The cat lay on the floor, throat cut, and bled out; the wardrobe seemed okay.

Dixie sat on the edge of the bed trying to sort her feelings and organize her thoughts. She concluded she was in shock or had been poisoned or drugged or "God knows what." She went through a tornado once, and the confusion and disorientation felt similar. She had no memory of the dinner she fled from.



Jack awoke first and found the note Rose left for him. She went home to collect a few necessities. Jack went down stairs, Melissa was curled up on the sofa asleep. Her skirt hem was high up her thighs, and her camel-toe looked back at Jack through her thin panties. She opened her eyes, looked at Jack, and shut them. Jack went in the kitchen for coffee.

Melissa was gone when he returned. He went upstairs with his coffee. Melissa was lying on his bed. Jack got on the bed beside her. She opened her eyes and looked at Jack, "She said she'd share you with me. I think it's an incentive for you to stick around. That, and she knows I caught her sickness for you, but I don't wanna do it when she's home, I guess I'm just old fashioned." Jack rubbed her ass through the panties.

She was five-four, 20 years old, one hundred twenty-five pounds. Dishwater blonde hair to the middle of her back, parted on the left. Green eyes, size 2 bottom, small top.

Melissa lay on her back and opened her legs after she undressed. They kissed and necked and licked, and Jack ate her till she squirted, then she guided him in, and they traded spit and licked each other as he boned her. She didn't like rubbers and let him fill her till the empty feeling abated. Her labia formed a tight seal around Jack, and when he started to pull out she stopped him, "Not yet, please. Kiss me, Jack."

He lay with her till she pulled away from him and went to bathe. He dressed, went downstairs, and went outside. Then he went back inside to the bathroom and knocked on the door. "Come in," Melissa said.

"I'm going to the store, you need anything?" He asked.

"No," she smiled.

"I'll lock the doors on my way out. There's a gun in the drawer, here," he said, pulling a drawer out of the vanity. "It's got no safety, so be careful with it, if you need it. Come in here and let any problem you have come to you, then shoot them through the door if they try to open it. There's a cell phone in the drawer, too. Use it to call 911."

"OK!" She said.



Rose filled a few cardboard boxes with essentials to extend her stay at Jack's place. "The camel's nose is in the tent," she thought as she carried the boxes out to the garage and stacked them for transfer to her car, then she went back inside to use the bathroom.

Afterwards she flushed the toilet, washed her hands, dried them, opened the door, and saw Buddy standing there. His eyes were bloodshot and looked wet.