Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead by Morgan James Read Free Book Online Page B

twelve-ten. I would have to hurry to be anywhere by one o’clock in the snarled Atlanta traffic. “Garland, don’t you ever call me again and say an assignment is a piece of cake. If you do, you are dead meat.”
    Garland favored me with one of his charming boyish smiles and handed me Paulie Tournay’s address.

“Love never dies a natural death…” Anais Nin
    4.
     
    The Tournay house was located on Bennett Trace, deep in Buckhead, one of Atlanta’s most prestigious in town neighborhoods. The street was unfamiliar to me, even though I had previously lived near that area of Atlanta for twenty-five years. After following Garland’s hand drawn map from Peachtree Road, Atlanta’s signature north-south byway, and winding west along West Wesley Road, then traveling Howell Mill Road through a section of much desired, and thus expensive addresses, I finally found the green and white city street sign for Bennett Trace. As I navigated the sharp right turn, I noted Bennett Trace was little more than a long narrow cul-de-sac sandwiched between a pair of two-story colonial homes. The street appeared to have been sliced from each residence’s side yard, and ended at Paul Tournay’s house, which was crouched low as though hiding behind its two regal red brick neighbors.
    Passing beneath a heavy shading of old oak trees, I stopped the car for a moment to digest the flat roofline and gray stone façade of the nineteen-fifties contemporary design. The house was a case of Frank Lloyd Wright camped out in the backyard of Gone With The Wind’s Tara , as out of sync with its neighbors as Saint Peter playing a pennywhistle. For lovers of this style of architecture the house probably exuded artistic genius. To me, it was only cold right angles hunkered down in the leaf-strewn ground. There wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen, and what remained of the overly mature azaleas grew spiky tall and sparse against the stone facade. Trust me, this was not a house of apple pie fragrances and Christmas cheer. It was easy to imagine Paul Tournay’s grandson seeing ghosts sneaking about its somber yards. I said a prayer of thanks for my warm little cabin on Fells Creek, with its cherry wood floors and friendly wrap around porch, and parked my Subaru beside a late model white Ford Explorer in the drive. An older dark blue Jag, no doubt Paulie Tournay’s gift from his grandfather, was parked nearer to the front of the house. Grabbing my purse and cradling the infamous shoebox containing the “Becca doll,” I told myself I might as well get it over with, and headed for the house.
    Tucked under a shadowy overhang, a dark grained oak slab, carved in Romanesque style with acanthus leaves framing a life sized helmeted medieval knight, sword at his side, made up the front door. I wondered if the knight meant the designer had a sense of humor, once you got past the stark exterior. When I rang the bell a gray cat tiptoed up to me from a hiding place in the azaleas to rhythmically wind her body back and forth at my feet. Just as I stooped to pet her skinny back, the door opened and Paulie Tournay reached for my jacket sleeve and pulled me into the house.
    “Come inside, quick. She runs in whenever she gets the chance. Pesky animal.” He shut the door behind us and released me. “Sorry. You must be Dr. McNeal?”
    I extended my hand and he received it with a warm open smile. “Mr. Tournay. Thank you for seeing me.”
    “Please, Paul. Not Paulie, as my mother continues to call me, just Paul,” he offered. His photographs did not do him justice. His muscular upper arms and chest defining his short sleeved, white Polo tee shirt told me why he was cast as the hunk in a daytime soap. And in the handsome face, large languid brown eyes that you really, really wanted to believe arrested my attention. His voice was at once theatrical and intimate when he spoke. “And you are welcome. Whatever dramatics Mummy dearest is up to, I’ve learned it’s best to