by Carolyn Hart
“I feel bad for people who have their names dragged—”
“Samuel’s in trouble.” Max’s jaw had an unaccustomed tilt.
Annie sighed. She looked into those watchful blue eyes. She started talking.
Max listened and wrote in his precise, exceedingly legible hand. Even upside down, she could read his list:
Sharon Gibson—what’s her connection to Hatch?
Edith Cummings—afraid for her job? And her son?
Ned Fisher—was he going to be booted as director?
Toby Maguire—was he really drunk?
Jonathan Wentworth—what kind of danger did he envision from Hatch?
Gail Oldham—what did Hatch want her to do? And why was she furious?
David Oldham—he was mad enough to kill. Did he?
Max reached for the cordless.
Annie reached across the table, caught his hand. “Wait. I’ll tell the chief. But give me today. Let me see what I can find out. You know he won’t have any luck with these people. He wants us to see what we can find out.”
“Yeah.” Max’s voice was thoughtful. “He came to us because of these kinds of things that he couldn’t possibly know. That’s fair enough, Annie. But we’ll give him a full report tonight.”
Tonight. Less than twelve hours from now. “There’s lots for you to find out, too. Samuel had the gun. Why was he over there by the willows?”
It always came back to Samuel and the gun.
“Right. That’s important.” Max drew a gun, overlaid it with a big question mark.
Annie finished the bowl of papaya and sipped her coffee. Mmm. So good. Colombian, always her favorite for breakfast.
What was Samuel having for breakfast? Kids always wanted Cokes. But did he have any appetite this morning? Annie remembered Samuel’s face as Saulter and Billy escorted their prisoner to the car. Scared. Scared to death. Sick-scared, his eyes huge and wild.
Annie put down her coffee cup. Of course, if Samuel shot the general, that’s how he would look. But if he hadn’t shot the general, he was suffering the helpless agony of the wrongly accused.
It was up to her and Max to find out the truth. Even if the face of a murderer turned out to be one they knew well.
The faces flashed through her mind:
Sharon Gibson’s smile was infectious. But she hadn’t smiled much lately. Sharon worked hard for the community chest drive and sang in the choir at church. She’d glared at Hatch in the grocery, yet the general appeared not to know her.
Gail Oldham was bouncy and pert but sometimes recently, when she thought no one was looking, the pertness seeped out of her face and her big green eyes stared forlornly into the distance. She and Annie had met playing tennis. They often played singles. Gail had a wicked backhand. But she could be distracted if a hunk played on the next court.
She and Max often played doubles with the Oldhams. Intensely competitive, David Oldham fought for every point. David served harder to Max than he did to Annie.
Edith Cummings was a superb librarian. Ned said Broward’s Rock was lucky to have her. Bigger systems often tried to hire her, but she wanted to stay on Broward’s Rock because she thought it was a great place to raise a kid.
Ned Fisher had infused the Lucy Banister Kinkaid Memorial Library with enthusiasm and good humor. He got to know the patrons and was especially encouraging to the kids, all the kids, rich and poor.
Toby Maguire was reclusive. Annie had only seen him a few times and that was unusual on an island with a total population around 1,600. She knew of him, of course. He was Ned’s companion and he was an artist. And—a late piece of knowledge—he played the piccolo. He was also a very big man, which was surely neither here nor there, since Hatch had been shot, not strangled. But wouldn’t it take great strength to topple the vase at the library? Or merely excellent leverage?
Jonathan Wentworth was urbane and charming, and apparently knew Henny Brawley a good deal better than Annie had realized. He had warned Henny not to cross Hatch. He insisted Hatch could be dangerous. Dangerous? That seemed a strong word. And why was Wentworth so adamant with Henny? How well did he know the slain general?
Yes, Annie knew some people who didn’t like Bud Hatch.
Including Henny. Last night Henny was one of the quiet onlookers who watched Saulter and Billy take their prisoner away. But Henny didn’t come to the Kinnon house.
Henny, who’d always loved a mystery, Henny who’d read more mysteries than Annie and the rest of her customers combined, Henny who fancied herself the equal of Miss Marple, Miss Silver and Miss Seeton, not to mention Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Sam Spade—where was Henny?
“Where’s Henny?” Annie had never thought she could utter her best customer’s name with so much foreboding.
“Hmm.” For once Max’s famous empathy was on a holiday. He said absently, “Is she coming over?” He didn’t even notice Annie’s worried frown. He made a final notation and handed her the legal pad. “What do you think?”
The sheet was headed :
PLAN OF ATTACK
Obtain names of festivalgoers sitting near the bandstand.
Check out Ned Fisher, Toby Maguire.
Talk to Samuel. Where did he find the gun?
Check ballistics info.
Max pushed back his chair. “Why don’t you talk to the Oldhams and Edith Cummings and Sharon Gibson? You know them better. I’ll start with Ned Fisher. He hung around the stage most of the evening, didn’t he?” Max picked up his breakfast dishes. “How about you?”
“I believe I’ll drop by Henny’s.” Annie watched a yellow-beaked gallinule pick its way gracefully on the lily pads, intent on a floating carpet of duckweed. Direct and determined, just the way Henny used to go after clues.
“Henny.” Max looked back from the kitchen steps. “I’m surprised she hasn’t called this morning.” He stepped inside.
Annie didn’t respond. She was too worried to answer. Why hadn’t Henny called? Henny loved playing detective. She’d been known to wear tweeds and lisle stockings à la Jane Marple even in August. Wouldn’t it be great if Henny was her old self, plunging into detection in a starched nurse’s uniform with the verve of Mignon Eberhart’s Sarah Keate or in hat and gloves with the style and manner of Louisa Revell’s Miss Julia Tyler?
If wishes were horses…Which reminded Annie: Where was Laurel last night? And why hadn’t they heard anything from her?
Black clouds boiled in the southern sky. Another storm coming. Annie checked them out in the car mirror. It was a relief to turn onto the dusty gray road that wound beneath interlocking branches of live oak trees, which hid the sky. But the moisture-laden air presaging the storm was so still that the Spanish moss hung unmoving as rusted anchor chains from a long-sunk galleon.
The Volvo slowed. It wasn’t far now. Around the next bend. This was a lonesome road leading to a single gray weathered house on stilts overlooking a broad sweep of marsh. Sometimes on a soft summer evening the view from Henny’s porch included sleek dolphins nosing around the cordgrass stems for succulent minnows and mummichogs. Annie had been to oyster roasts at Henny’s. They’d planned the annual church white-elephant sale sitting on webbed chairs on the high porch. They’d co-hosted a baby shower for Billy Cameron’s wife, Mavis, and put Billy’s stepson Kevin in charge of the cookies. They’d cooked a cauldron of fudge to raise money for the local hospice.
Annie and Henny went back a long way, as bookseller and prized customer, co-workers for their community and, finally, fast friends.
Annie nosed the Volvo onto a sandy patch of ground by a clump of palmettos. The slam of her car door seemed over-loud in the heavy quiet. Henny’s 1982 black Dodge sedan was in its parking place. Her bicycle was in its rest. The front door was closed.
Annie climbed the wooden steps. They creaked, the sound intrusive. She knocked on the door.
No answer.
But there was some sound within. The dull murmur of voices. Annie knocked again, fi
rmly, insistently, determinedly, several raps past the norm.
She was turning, ready to return to the car and her cell phone when the door creaked open.
Henny stared combatively through the screen. Always thin, she usually looked elegant, sometimes in well-cut suits, sometimes in silk or linen dresses, depending upon the season. For casual clothes she liked bright colors—a crimson shirt with soaring swallows and sharply white slacks, Hawaiian prints, Malaysian batik. This morning a pink blouse jarred with orange slacks. Her silver-streaked dark hair was brushed, but she wore no makeup. Every line in her face was deep and harsh. Her dark eyes were cool and unreadable.
“I’m on the phone, Annie.” She bristled with irritation. “The phone’s rung and rung. I have to make some decisions about the festival proceeds.”
Annie said, “Look, Henny—”
Henny barreled on. “Pamela Potts is proposing that we name the reading room after the general. I’m on the phone right now.” She closed the door.
Annie stared at the blank panel. If Henny thought she could be brushed off like that, she hadn’t read her V.I. Warshawski books very carefully. No way, José.
Annie pulled open the screen, opened the door. She did hesitate for an instant. Even for old friends, this was presuming. Then she thought of Samuel and his big scared eyes. She stepped softly down the hall.
Although the cloudy sky was somber and gray, Henny’s living room still had a quality of light. The wicker furniture was snowbank white, the wooden floors golden. Windows spread across the back of the room and all along one side, so the room seemed to float above the marsh and the unending ripple of bright green cordgrass. The brightest color in the room came from the low bookshelves running beneath the windows. Every bookshelf was full. There were hundreds of books. The spines of bright jackets provided a palette of colors. A golden oak desk sat near the back windows.
Pamela Potts’s voice radiated tremendous good humor. “I’m confident this is simply the least we can do. I’ve been on the phone with the general’s friends, the men he played golf with and some of the other pilots in the Confederate Air Force, and I’ve already achieved pledges of more than ten thousand. Henny, don’t you think that’s marvelous?” The disembodied voice flowed cheerfully from the speaker phone on Henny’s desk.
Henny stopped by the desk. “Yes, Pamela, it’s very good of you. It’s a thoughtful project. I think Annie Darling would be willing to help out. Why don’t you give her a call? Thanks, Pamela.” Henny was skilled in the art of dealing with motormouths. She punched the phone and the connection ended.
“Henny—” Annie began.
Henny jerked around. “I’ve got to rush, Annie.” She bustled across the room, picked up her purse. “I’ve got a meeting of the volunteers at the hospital.”
Annie reached out, gripped a thin arm. “Henny, listen, I need your help.”
Henny was fumbling for her car keys. “I’m not taking on any projects now.”
“I’m not talking about projects, Henny.” Annie wanted to shake her, force Henny to meet her gaze. “Listen to me. We’ve got to find out who shot Hatch.”
The old Henny, the true Henny would have responded like a hound to tallyho, immediately spouting theories—a conspiracy, of course, or cherchez la femme, or watch out for the least-likely suspect—while looking up at the ceiling to denote careful thought à la Elizabeth Daly’s Henry Gamadge or donning a shapeless hat and an overlarge overcoat à la Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen or worrying about big brothers à la Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott.
This morning’s Henny snapped shut her purse. The keys clinked in her hand. “That’s for the police, Annie. Frank will take care of it.”
“Henny, you saw them take Samuel off to jail last night!” Annie clutched both arms, willing Henny to listen, to respond.
Henny pulled away. “Circumstantial evidence. That’s all they have.” She headed for the front door.
Annie was hard on her heels. “You know Posey. You know what he’s like. Henny, you have to help.”
Henny opened the screen.
Annie followed her onto the porch. “Samuel could die for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“That won’t happen. Of course it won’t happen.” Henny clattered down the steps. She was almost to the bottom when Annie said loudly, her voice brusque because otherwise she’d never get it out, “What did Jonathan mean when he said it was dangerous to cross Hatch?”
Henny froze, one hand gripping on the wooden railing. Her body tightened, drew in on itself. Even from the back, she looked diminished, small. There was a long, sickening silence with only the sounds of the summer marsh, the rustle of the saw grass, the whine of greenhead flies, the chirr of cicadas.
Henny turned, looked up. In the stark summer sun, her bony face was pitilessly exposed, her brown eyes stricken, her mouth slack. For the first time since Annie had known her, Henny looked old, old and defeated.
Annie put out her hand.
“Jonathan…” Henny’s voice trembled. “Oh, Annie, please. Leave him alone. He has nothing to do with what happened to Hatch. I know that. I’m sure of that. Annie, he’s good and decent, through and through.”
Annie felt a sting of tears. “I heard Jonathan say”—she took a deep breath—“he said you have his heart.”
Henny pressed her fingers against her face. For an instant, the pain fled and the fear. A joyous smile touched her lips. “Yes. Yes, he did. And he has mine. Annie, he will always have mine.” She swung around, stepped onto the ground.
Annie wanted to cry out for her friend, indomitable, brave, and gallant.
Henny walked swiftly to her car. She slipped into the front seat, pulled the door shut.
Annie watched her drive away, dust roiling into a dense cloud at the car’s swift acceleration.
Annie put the cash box on the coffee bar. Agatha watched with glittering green eyes as Annie opened a small can of cat food. “I know I’m late. I’m sorry.”
Agatha’s tail switched. Annie put down the bowl and narrowly escaped Agatha’s incisors. Nobody, especially not Annie, ever claimed Agatha was a good sport. That was a human concept. If Agatha could do a Speak Your Mind (which she probably often did in sharp meows), it might go something like this: Sorry, my ass. I can’t eat sorry.
Annie carried the cash box to the front, wrote a note asking Ingrid to tally the receipts. Added a P.S.: “Got to run errands. Will you see if Duane can give you a hand if it gets busy?”
Thunder rumbled. The query was nothing more than window dressing, but Ingrid was good-humored and easygoing and wouldn’t hold it against Annie that the store would be wall-to-wall with disconsolate vacationers if the storm materialized.
Annie lugged in the boxes from the festival, almost all less than a third full. She flipped open the lid to the first box, picked up Janet Laurence’s Death at the Table and was immediately hungry. And there was Camilla Crespi’s The Trouble with a Small Raise. Annie felt an urgent pang for pasta.
She put the books back, slammed the lid shut. Okay, she was dithering. That was an interesting word. Did Mr. Dithers or the word come first? If the comic strip character, it certainly proved the power of mass entertainment on culture.
A scarlet flash of pain emanated from her ankle. She didn’t even look down. “Agatha, I said I was sorry.” In the bathroom, she found an old bottle of antiseptic and dribbled some on the bright red welt.
She owed Agatha. Seeing blood reminded her forcibly and unpleasantly of Hatch crumpled to the floor of the stage and the thin, straggling rivulets of bright blood. So she couldn’t evade. She couldn’t piddle around putting up books, thinking of word origins. But she wished for the dispassion of most fictional sleuths, the emotional detachment of a detective exploring the lives of suspects who meant nothing to them. Stuart Palmer’s take-charge Hildegarde Withers treated both police and criminals like recalcitrant schoolchildren. Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Asey Mayo observed everyone with a sardonic and critical eye, i
ncluding his cousin Jennie and her husband, Syl.
Maybe it was time for another self-directed Speak Your Mind: Annie, bite the bullet.
Not that she was eager to think about bullets. Bullets reminded her of the chief’s chilling announcement: “And it damn sure wasn’t a redneck cowboy shooting off a gun to celebrate the Fourth…Two bullets within an inch of each other in the aorta.”
Annie slapped on a Band-Aid. On her way to the back door, she paused to pick up Agatha and nuzzle the back of her neck. “Henny’s a hell of a shot,” she told the elegant cat, who responded by writhing free.
Outside, Annie took a look at the sky and retrieved her umbrella from the backseat floor. She climbed into her car, then sat with her hands clenched on the wheel.
Could Henny have shot Hatch?
Yes. Physically, yes. Henny was more than appeared at first glance. To many on Broward’s Rock, she was a familiar presence, active in good works, intelligent, capable, and, some might say, ruthlessly determined. She was a widow, a retired schoolteacher, a connoisseur of detective fiction. Everyone knew that.
Only a few knew that in World War II, she served as a pilot in the Women’s Air Force Service, ferrying bombers across the country. She was one of the first jet pilots, testing the YP59 twin turbine jet fighter at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. After her retirement from teaching, she spent two years in Zaire with the Peace Corps. She’d visited every continent and backpacked in the Himalayas. She was accomplished at trapshooting. She was active in the Confederate Air Force and often went to air shows to fly her restored P51 Mustang. She tossed aside queries about her age. “As long as I can pass my flight physical, I’ll keep right on flying.”
And if anyone had ever suggested to Annie that Henny Brawley, mystery reader extraordinaire, could be present at a murder and not plunge into the chase, Annie would have said they simply didn’t know Henny.
Now she had to wonder if she knew Henny. Because the Henny she knew, the friend she treasured, would be outraged at Samuel’s arrest. Or possibility of arrest.