by Carolyn Hart
Annie nodded impatiently.
Pamela fished out a gallon-size plastic Baggie. Clearly visible beneath the clear plastic covering was an old-fashioned fan, bright red with a verse in white: “Speak low, if you speak love.”
Annie managed not to hyperventilate. In fact, she would later recount to Max with pride her immediate response, which she attributed to a lifetime of reading detective fiction. With only a millisecond of hesitation, she reached out and grabbed the fan. “Oh, someone found it! I’m so pleased! Max told me he’d lost it at the club and I was simply heart-broken. Pamela, I’m so sorry. It has nothing to do with the mystery of the general’s locker. Terribly sorry. I know how exciting it is to think one has found a clue.” The brilliance of her smile was simply a reflection of her desperation. “But I will be forever and always in your debt. This fan”—Annie touched it to her cheek—” has the most tender memories for me. Dear Max gave it to me on our first wedding anniversary. To commemorate—oh, well, that is simply too personal, too intimate. But you have saved my heart from a grievous wound. God bless you.” Annie bussed the bewildered Pamela soundly on both cheeks. And fled.
As she ran down the hall, the fan tight in her hand, she had a goal.
Laurel.
Chapter 4
Annie’s cell phone rang.
“De——Hello.” Some habits were hard to break.
“Annie.” There was a hiss, then a crackle.
Annie smiled. “Hi, Max. Where are you?” She braked quickly for a mother duck marching across the dusty road, followed by—Annie counted—eight, nine, ten downy baby ducks, their light blond feathers glistening in the sun. “Be careful, Mom,” she called as the car scooted past.
“What did you say?” There was the slightest edge of wariness in Max’s voice.
“Your mother!” Annie exclaimed. “Max, we’ve got to do something. Lord knows what she’d up to. But I can tell you that the general is not a man to cross.” Annie turned onto the main island road, Gull Circle.
“What does Mother have to do with the general?” He sounded confused.
Quickly Annie related Pamela Potts’s tale from the Whalebranch Club. And how she, quick-witted Annie, had divested Pamela of the fan. “And if that isn’t a damning piece of evidence, what is?”
“Evidence of what?” Max had the familiar defensive tone he often assumed when they discussed Laurel.
“Breaking and entering. Just like at the library.” She made each word distinct, then jammed on her brakes. How had she managed not to see the cement truck lumbering along ahead of her? Maybe cell phones weren’t such a good idea. She vowed to be extra vigilant. But she didn’t punch the power button. “Look, Max, yesterday she was hiding in the ladies’ room at the library—”
“Laurel would have absolutely no reason to push that vase off.” Max sounded utterly confident. Almost. “I’ve never heard her mention the general. Besides, she isn’t mechanical. She’s—”
The rest of his sentence was lost in a roar of men’s voices.
“Max, where are you?”
“Umm.” Another shout went up.
“Max?”
“The Men’s Grill at the Whalebranch Club. I’m not a member,” he said quickly.
“Neither is Laurel,” Annie said darkly. “The Men’s Grill?”
“Well, actually there’s a big-screen TV and Tiger Woods just hit a birdie on the fourth green at—”
Shouts. Yells.
“I thought you were looking for Samuel.” Annie slowed to edge onto a traffic circle, which the island had created to emulate its upscale neighbor Hilton Head as traffic increased, and switched lanes to veer off onto Night Heron Drive.
“No luck. I came out here because he has a friend who caddies, but he hasn’t seen him either. That’s why I called. At the library yesterday, did you talk to Samuel?”
Annie had a quick memory of Samuel diving out of the way of her car and his grim expression. She’d thought then it was because of her driving skills. In light of the plummeting vase, she wasn’t certain. But the memory included the dark, old-fashioned coupé—
Annie jammed her brakes again. The car slewed a little sideways.
“Annie. Annie?”
“Miss Dora,” Annie said loudly.
“Not Miss Dora. Samuel!” Max sounded as frustrated as she’d felt earlier with Pamela Potts. Was there a message here? Annie devoutly hoped not.
“Miss Dora’s car. Samuel was leaning up against it.” Annie put the Volvo in reverse. “I just spotted the car. At the Painted Bunting. I’ll check it out. Then I’m going to talk to Laurel. Max, get busy out there at Whalebranch. Talk to people about the general. See if you can pick up on any gossip about him. Bye.” She clicked the “off” button. Of course, asking Max to pick up on gossip was rather like asking a nun to go to an R-rated movie. Max had the odd—to Annie—masculine disinclination to discuss people’s private affairs. Of whatever sort.
Annie turned into the circular drive of the Painted Bunting Bed and Breakfast. The two-story white wooden house stood on brick pillars, affording a dusky, easily accessed basement. A wide piazza with slender Doric columns ran along the front and both sides. A curving staircase led up to the main entrance. A recently painted sign proclaimed: “Painted Bunting Inn, 1832.” If unwary tourists assumed it had been an inn since then, that was fine with the proprietor, a plump, jovial widow from Ohio, Olivia Barclay.
Parked in the shade of a spreading live oak was the shiny blue-black coupé Annie remembered from the library yesterday. It had to be that coupé or its twin and surely there weren’t two such old cars on the island. Annie stopped beside it. As she got out of her car, a young black man rose from a bench in the shade of a willow near a pond. He put a glass of lemonade on a rickety wooden table.
“Sam—-” she began.
“No, ma’am. I’m Samuel’s cousin, Reggie.” There was no family resemblance. Reggie was tall, skinny, and wore thick-lensed glasses.
“Oh.” Annie was standing in the sun. She joined Reggie in the shade of the willow. It didn’t help much, but it helped a little. “Hi, I’m Annie Darling. I’m looking for Samuel,” she said brightly. “Have you seen him?” No-see-ums swarmed around her. She swatted her hands futilely at the tiny little gnats with a blood lust on a par with Jack the Ripper.
“Nope. Something came up, I guess,” he said vaguely. He flapped a bandanna at the no-see-ums. “Sammie’s been driving Miss Dora. But she called my dad and asked if I could take her around for a couple of days. I’d just lost my job at the ice-cream store,” he said forlornly. “They closed down because of a new frozen-yogurt place.”
Annie would be forlorn, too. An ice-cream store sounded idyllic. It was, she decided, a true indication of character that she didn’t abandon her efforts immediately and head to the new frozen-yogurt store. She was an equal-opportunity dessert eater. Instead, she studied Reggie.
Reggie looked hot, bored, and resigned. But not the least bit worried or uneasy.
“You didn’t talk to Samuel?” she persisted.
“No, ma’am.” He wiped his face. “If you see him, please tell him I got tickets to a concert this weekend in Savannah and I sure hope he can take this job back.”
“I’ll do that.” Annie thanked Reggie and turned toward the inn.
When she stepped inside, she was thrilled to escape the no-see-ums but it was still sauna-hot. The overhead fan stirred the air enough that her damp blouse clung to her. The open doors at both ends of the hall offered another bit of breeze. The mahogany serving table in the hallway was pure Hepplewhite. The huge old grandfather clock had no doubt been built in Charleston. Her glimpse of the dining room with its Sheraton table was impressive. In fact, the B&B reeked of authenticity, but Annie felt she could happily have exchanged the picturesque flavor for some good old modern-day air-conditioning. Besides, wouldn’t a window unit circa 1950 qualify as an antique?
“Annie! How nice of you to come by. Won’t you join Miss Dora and
me for tea?” Olivia Barclay popped to her feet. Her curly dark hair frizzed in the moist heat and her cheeks were flushed.
The parlor was stifling. But Olivia’s smile was so eager that Annie managed a cheerful grin in return and forbore hauling out the fan she’d pinched from Pamela and flapping it like a shipwrecked sailor sighting rescue.
“I’d love to.” It wasn’t even a half-truth. “Hi, Miss Dora. How are you?”
Miss Dora’s black eyes surveyed Annie sardonically. “Splendid.” The old monster didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable despite the terrarium environment of the parlor, her ruched collar crisp, her sallow skin untainted by perspiration.
At least Olivia’s cheeks flamed like beets and globules of sweat trickled down her face.
“The Darjeeling is especially fine,” the old lady rasped, pouring a steaming cup.
Annie reached out, took the delicate Spode cup, tried to ignore the steam wafting toward her. Max owed her. Big-time. A week in Seattle? A remote cold cavern in Montana? Iceland?
Olivia thrust forward a silver tray with sugar and cream. Annie looked at the cream. It would cool the tea, but Annie equated cream in tea with nouvelle cuisine. Something for other people.
With a tight smile, Annie picked up the cream pitcher and splashed a jigger’s worth into the teacup. She sipped. Even lukewarm was a burden. And for once tea sandwiches had little appeal. Annie had a tantalizing vision of frozen lime-green punch, the mainstay at Texas tea parties when she was little.
“So lovely of you, Annie, to join us.” Miss Dora’s dark eyes crackled with amusement.
Okay, she could be a well-bred southern woman. Ten minutes later, deep into a discussion of Miss Dora’s charcoal drawings, Annie blurted, “Samuel’s dad is looking for him.”
Olivia Barclay’s eyes blinked rapidly. She was too polite to inquire bluntly who the hell was Samuel, but she looked avidly from Annie to Miss Dora.
“Least said, soonest mended,” Miss Dora observed as she pondered the sandwiches, apparently torn between an anchovy atop a dollop of cream cheese and chicken salad sprinkled with sliced almonds.
“Miss Dora,” Annie said firmly. She waited until the old lady met her determined gaze. “Samuel’s been your driver here on the island.”
Miss Dora’s wrinkled face drew down into an outraged frown. “I’m perfectly capable of driving.”
Annie and Olivia waited.
“An infringement of my civil rights,” she continued obscurely, “but I am helpless against the weight of the law.”
“They didn’t renew your license,” Annie said bluntly.
If malevolent scowls were deadly, Annie would have been dust. As it was, she met Miss Dora’s gaze stubbornly.
Miss Dora’s crackling black eyes dropped first. “As I told the patrolman, my foot slipped. I pressed the accelerator inadvertently. To have my license revoked—it was an affront.”
“So Samuel’s been driving you.” Annie carefully placed her cup, still almost full, well out of Miss Dora’s reach.
“Sometimes.” Miss Dora finished off the anchovy sandwich, retrieved the chicken-salad sandwich.
“He drove you to the library yesterday afternoon,” Annie continued. “You were there—you and Samuel—when the vase fell.”
“A vase fell?” Olivia exclaimed.
Annie could sum up the saga of the vase in succinct sentences which would have been the envy of Dorothy Parker.
Miss Dora downed two more sandwiches.
Olivia Barclay offered the tray with tarts and meringues.
Miss Dora smiled.
Encouraged at this evidence of good humor, Annie persevered. “The general called the cops. Why did you and Samuel leave?”
Miss Dora’s clawlike hand maneuvered the silver serving implement beneath a pecan tart.
“Miss Dora, the police are looking for Samuel.”
Miss Dora sniffed. “That Yankee. Who would listen to him?” The tart reached the plate.
“The police,” Annie said patiently. “But they’ll listen to Samuel, too. If you know where he is, tell him his dad wants him to come home. He’ll go with Samuel to talk to the police. And Max will help.”
“In Chastain, everyone knows the Kinnon family. Luther’s mother worked for my Aunt Hattie. If a Kinnon says it’s so, you know it’s true.” The words were indistinct—pecan tarts are chewy—but the dark eyes met Annie’s gaze squarely.
It was obscure, rather like trying to transliterate Nostra-damus. Annie was firmly convinced those prognostications were whatever anyone wanted them to be. But she thought she got the point.
“Chief Saulter is a good man.” Annie and the Broward’s Rock police chief went back a long way. “Miss Dora, the chief will treat Samuel fairly.”
“Even though that man claims Samuel pushed over that vase? Claims it and he hasn’t a smidgeon of evidence?” Miss Dora’s voice lifted with outrage.
“Is that why you and Samuel left so quickly? Did you tell Samuel to lie low?”
But Annie knew she’d gone too far when Miss Dora hunkered her head down in her ruched collar like a turtle spotting a cottonmouth.
Annie backtracked. “Miss Dora, if you should happen to talk to Samuel”—she kept her voice casual—“please tell him he’ll be okay with Chief Saulter. I guarantee it.”
Miss Dora put down her fork, finished the last bite of her tart, and fixed Annie with a piercing gaze. It went through to the bone, eerily reminiscent of Patricia Wentworth’s redoubtable Miss Silver appraising a client. “I have your word.”
It should have been absurd. It wasn’t. Annie knew she could be no more committed had she sworn a blood oath. She repressed the urge to stand at attention and said only, “Yes, you have my word.”
Annie popped to her feet, in a hurry now to flee the stifling room. Max would have to reward her for this exercise. Annie felt sure it was going to pay off. “Thanks for the tea. It’s been a pleasure. So-o-o delicious, Olivia.” It wasn’t until she stepped into the hall that another thought struck her. She turned, looked intently at Miss Dora. “Why were you there?”
“Where?” There was an innocence to the single word.
“At the library. Yesterday evening.” Why, indeed? It was the dinner hour. Surely an odd time for Miss Dora to visit.
Miss Dora cleared her throat. “Oh, just a reconnaissance. Looking for places to put my drawings.” But the old lady didn’t meet Annie’s searching gaze. Miss Dora used her cane to lever herself upright. “Ah well, time for me to get busy. Such a pleasure, Olivia.”
Miss Dora might be elderly, but she was out the door and summoning Reggie and on her way by the time Annie slid behind the wheel of the Volvo.
The old coupé spewed dust.
Annie rolled up her windows, put the air-conditioning on high. Like Hercule Poirot, she was given furiously to think.
“So dear of you, Annie, to come and see me. Such a delightful surprise,” Laurel trilled as she busied herself in her small kitchen, filling huge frosted goblets with iced tea.
Annie refused to take a guilt trip. As far as she was concerned, she and Max spent quite enough time with his mother. Time is measured by the intensity of the moment and any moment with Laurel was fraught with intensity. And stress. And bewilderment. And…
“ ‘These most brisk and giddy-paced times,’ ” Laurel intoned. “Twelfth Night,” she added kindly.
Annie took the goblet, welcoming the sharp damp cold of the glass and drank lustily. After all, wasn’t everything prone to be lusty in Shakespeare? As the icy, delicious tea revived her, Annie said, “Indeed.” And moving right along, though not with high hopes, Annie attacked. “Was Miss Dora your lookout?”
Laurel beamed at her daughter-in-law. “Dear Annie. How inventive of you. ‘If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.’ ”
“Twelfth Night?” Annie asked sourly.
“One of my favorites. Oh, how that man could write about love.” A pause. �
�And everything else.” Laurel’s husky voice was soft with awe.
Annie refused to be drawn into a discussion of Shakespeare’s literary accomplishments. Instead, she put down her glass, grabbed her purse and pulled out the fan she’d retrieved from Pamela. She spread it open. “You dropped this at the Whalebranch Club. How did you get into the men’s locker room?”
“A woman must go where a woman must go.” Laurel smoothed back a strand of golden hair and fixed Annie with a beguiling gaze.
Annie was not beguiled. “Not Shakespeare.”
Laurel’s smile was gentle. “Of course not.”
“Laurel.” Annie could hear the note of desperation in her voice. “Please, tell me what’s going on. Why did you rifle the general’s locker at the golf club? And break into his cabinet at the library?”
“A Godiva chocolate, Annie?” Laurel wafted to her feet. She was so damn graceful Annie felt like a clod even though she hadn’t moved a muscle. Stars and bars undulated as Laurel sped to the refrigerator. She returned bearing a crystal platter with a magnificent assortment of truffles.
Annie knew them all, of course. She spied the dark-chocolate raspberry truffle. Was it on a level of becoming a co-conspirator to accept the candy?
Some decisions are foreordained. It had been a long day. Short in hours, perhaps, but long in duration. Mmmm. A sense of well-being spread over Annie. After all, someday—metaphorically speaking—she would be but a pile of bleached bones. She took a second truffle.
“And so,” Laurel said cheerfully, “are you ready for the festival?”
Not even the magical powers of chocolate could assuage the sudden nibble of panic. Oh God, the books, not even yet packed! Boxes were haphazardly strewn around the storeroom of Death on Demand. The festival opened at noon tomorrow with a trumpet fanfare. The bagpipe society marched at one o’clock. Mariachi players were scheduled at two and an oompah band at six. Irish leprechauns and Cherokee braves would be serving as runners for the booths. It would be a very American Fourth.