A Widow's Curse Read Free

have to come up here, right?”
    â€œRight,” he mused. “But I don’t know.”
    It sounded for a moment as if he were consulting someone else in the room, mumbling with his hand over the receiver.
    â€œDo you want to send it to me through the mail?” I prodded.
    â€œGod no.”
    â€œWell, I have to see it somehow, if you want me to try and tell you what it is.”
    He gave out a terrifically heavy sigh. “I could take a long weekend.”
    â€œThere you are. And to make things easier, I’ll get in touch with a friend of mine in Atlanta and he’ll drive you up. You’ll both stay at my place, we’ll have an adventure, and you’ll be back in Atlanta before you can say ‘I can’t believe I wasted all that time in the mountains.’”
    â€œLovely,” he sneered. “You realize that if I hadn’t called you, I’d think this was a con.”
    â€œThe person you’ll be traveling with is a bona fide college professor with an English accent and everything,” I assured him. “Check him out, ask around all you like.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œDr. Andrews, at my university.”
    â€œHe doesn’t have to teach?”
    â€œHe’s on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule. He’ll take tomorrow off and make a long weekend out of it.”
    â€œI don’t know.” Shultz had taken his mouth away from the phone again, consulting the other person there with him.
    â€œWell”—I yawned—“decide soon. This is a whim on my part, and if you call back tomorrow, I’ll probably have changed my mind again. I may even deny that I invited you at all.”
    Â 
    I really couldn’t say why I had insisted on Shultz’s visit, but part of the thinking, obviously, was that it gave me an excuse to call Andrews.
    Dr. Winton Andrews, Shakespeare scholar at my ex-university, was the last remaining good friend I had from my academic life. In fact, we had only recently returned from being in London together. He had directed a strange new version of The Winter’s Tale, and for some reason he’d hired me to help him with the music for the production. He’d wanted authentic reproductions of folk music from Shakespeare’s time instead of courtly, composed music—though that would have been easier to come by. I’d spent weeks in research, tracing song types, mostly ballads, back as far as I could, then inferring the rest; deciding on the perfect period instruments for the job; jotting down the most feasible melodies. I’d done most of the work at home, only spent a week in London, but I was able to see the opening-night production. It was quite impressive, and, apparently, a hit. But Andrews, of course, had been preoccupied with his work and we really hadn’t seen each other in almost a year, not to relax and catch up—or drink heavily. So having him squire Shultz up to my place in Blue Mountain seemed a perfect plan all around.
    After Shultz agreed to the trip, I arranged for him to meet Andrews at the university. I called and explained the situation to Andrews in detail, and asked him to take the scenic route up to my little town—which was also the slower way by about two hours. I thought it would put Shultz in the right mood, get him used to the pace of the mountains.
    I did my part, first doing a bit of cursory research so I would have something to say to Shultz when he arrived and then, the rest of the day, dusting and airing out the bedrooms upstairs in my home, a more haunted enterprise.
    Growing up, the three of us in my family had lived out our lives in separate bedrooms. Mine was a corner room, always so crammed with books that my father, angrily, changed all four walls into floor-to-ceiling bookshelves one day when I was at school.
    â€œFill all that up!” he’d growled.
    I had, in about a week. There was only room for a double bed, an antique