by Carolyn Hart
Annie took a deep breath, bit the bullet. Okay, these were the possibilities:
Henny shot Hatch.
Henny was protecting someone.
And there was only one person that could be.
As Annie gunned the Volvo, thunder exploded like the rumble of artillery wheels on cobblestones. Rain pelted the windshield.
Chapter 7
“I can’t remember everybody I saw.” Ned Fisher’s tone was just this side of petulant. His face glowed tomato red from too much sun. He pushed back his chair, clumsily rose. He turned away from Max to look out the graceful Palladian window. Rain sheathed the glass, hiding the festival field. “I’ve got a computer class scheduled in a few minutes.”
“You were looking for Toby last night.” Max said it casually, as if it didn’t mean much, simply a statement.
Fisher swung around. The glow of the sunburn emphasized dark circles beneath strained blue eyes. His shave was uneven, a patch of stubble near the jawline, a red nick on his chin. Even for Saturday at the library, his dress was casual, a wrinkled pink-and-white-striped shirt and age-whitened jeans. No suspenders. The jeans sagged around his thin waist. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now I’ve got to—”
“Edith Cummings was looking for him, too. She said you asked her to hunt for him. My wife and I offered to help. Annie heard the piccolo. I figure you did, too.” Max rose. He stood in the way to the door. He didn’t make a big thing of it, but he folded his arms and looked immovable.
Ned Fisher clenched his fists. But he wasn’t looking at Max. He stared down at the floor as if he saw a pit ringed with fire. “Goddamn. What do you want out of me? Yeah, I was looking for Toby. That bastard”—he stopped, gulped—“Hatch was a first-class bastard, man. But Toby, he wouldn’t kill anybody. Not since ’Nam. He saw too much killing there. He hates killing. His best friend, he was sitting next to him and the VC blew his head off. Do you know what that does to a man?”
Max didn’t have an answer. He’d never faced the draft, hadn’t seen his friends die in a guerilla war no one could win. The sixties meant music to him and funny clothes to wear to costume parties.
Fisher leaned against his desk. He looked down at a picture of Toby Maguire in swim trunks—massive shoulders, a chest matted with silvered black hair, tree-trunk-thick legs, grinning as he threw a Frisbee high above golden sand. “He was supposed to play his piccolo at the festival. Three piccoloists doing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ to introduce the band. When they were practicing Thursday, the general came up and ordered them off, said only real soldiers could wear uniforms. Like Toby was some kind of fag scum who didn’t know about war. Toby was wild.”
Max looked at the picture, at a big man on a happy day. “So he got drunk and came after the general yesterday. Edith Cummings alerted you. You took him home, but later he was gone.”
“I found him last night,” the librarian said quickly. “Just a couple of minutes before somebody shot the general.” Fisher’s gaze was steady, Boy-Scout earnest. “I took Toby to my Jeep, told him to wait. I was heading back toward the bandstand when Hatch keeled over.”
“Where was Toby?” Max had a clear picture of the terrain in his mind, the bandstand on the north end of the field, the forest preserve to the west, the stages and booths to the south and beyond them the parking areas, the redbud trees to the east bordering the back of the library. He glanced toward the opaque window and wondered about Miss Dora’s artworks. Had anyone retrieved them?
“The sound of a piccolo carries a long way. Especially when you blow it hard.” Fisher rubbed a finger along the rough streak of stubble on his jaw.
The piccolo had squealed, like a creature in pain. Max had heard it in the parking lot, though he’d not understood its significance then.
Fisher flung his left arm, pointed northwest. “Paths curl all through the preserve and around it and by the lagoon. Toby was way over on the west side of the water, sitting on the end of an old pier, blowing his heart out. He wasn’t anywhere close to the bandstand when”—he stopped, added jerkily—“when I found him.”
Max left it alone. If he had to place a bet, he would wager Fisher didn’t find Toby Maguire until after the shooting and then hustled him to the Jeep. Max wasn’t willing to grant either of them an alibi.
Instead, Max said, “Let’s get back to the people close to the stage, Ned. That’s what matters.”
The librarian hunched his shoulders. His eyes never left Max’s face.
“Please try to remember everyone you saw.” Max pulled a small notebook from his pocket. “I know it was dark, but you were hunting for Toby. You must have looked hard everywhere you went.”
Fisher shoved a hand through a long tangle of hair. “Christ, man, it was packed. And so what if somebody was there—”
“The shots came from behind those willows. Look, Ned, Samuel Kinnon’s going to jail if we don’t find something else for the police to look at.” Max swiftly sketched the festival ground.
Ned Fisher pulled out his swivel chair, slumped into it. “Samuel’s a good kid. He started coming here for computer lessons when he was just in ninth grade. He’s damn good. Course all the kids are.” A faint grin. “They could all be librarians when they grow up. Yeah.” His voice was weary. “I didn’t think about Samuel.” His head jerked up, flouncing his hair on his shoulders. “It wasn’t Toby. Okay? You got that?”
“I got that.” Max finished his map, tore it out, placed it on the desk in front of Fisher. He pointed to the clump of weeping willows. “Somebody stood there and shot Hatch. You were in that area, looking for Toby. And later, you took the names of the people who were sitting near the willows. Who did you see?”
Fisher glanced at his watch. He frowned, reached for his phone, punched in an extension. “Rosalie, take my computer class for fifteen minutes. Okay?” A pause. “Put up a sign. Say you’ll be back at ten-fifteen. Thanks.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said firmly. He picked up the map, stared at it, then jabbed with a stiff finger. “Okay. The shot came from there but anybody could get to the trees from right in front of the bandstand or by skirting along behind the concessions or two or three different ways through the forest preserve. So I don’t know what the hell it means to say somebody was seen near the bandstand.”
“It’s a place to start. It would be easy to get behind that clump of trees if you were close to the stage. Somebody showed up with a gun last night. This was planned. Don’t you think that person got as close to the stage as possible? And,” Max repeated stubbornly, “it’s a place to start.”
Fisher crumpled the map, tossed it on his desk. “Hell, I don’t know everybody the general knew.”
“You know some of them.” Max was insistent. “And you know who was crossways with him on the library board. And if we don’t find out who shot the general, Samuel’s going to go to jail.”
Fisher rubbed his face, pulled his hand quickly away from sore skin. “You’re serious? You really believe Frank will arrest Samuel?”
“Samuel could be on death row.” Max’s face was somber.
Fisher’s tone was harsh. “So you want me to finger everybody I saw who might have it in for the general?”
“Right.” Max held Fisher’s gaze.
The librarian shoved his chair back, popped to his feet. He glared at Max. “I don’t like this.”
“Ned, I’m not going to blab everything I hear to the police. But I have to know what was going on. If you tell me something and that person didn’t have anything to do with Hatch’s murder, no one will ever know we talked. Okay?” Max kept his eyes away from the clock. Fisher was due at his computer class in nine minutes.
The librarian opened a drawer, pulled out a jar of sunburn ointment, gingerly spread the cooling salve on painful skin. He closed the jar, dropped it in the drawer, pushed the drawer shut. The click sounded loud in the waiting silence.
The thick white paste looked like misapplied clown makeup, but there was
nothing entertaining about Fisher’s grim face. He took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, the little I know. And none of it was big enough to cause a murder. I only knew the jerk because he was on the library board. He came on board this spring. He treated it like a fiefdom from day one. He and Henny Brawley squared off right from the first. Strong women were probably tops on the general’s hate list. At first I kind of got a kick out of it, but it got old real fast. I’d always liked board meetings. We’ve got a great library and there’s so much good to talk about”—for an instant his face lightened and eagerness glinted in his eyes, then he sighed—“but the meetings turned into verbal swordplay. Probably been fun if you were Ambrose Bierce or Alexander Woollcott. ‘He damned his fellows for his own unworth, And, bad himself, thought nothing good on earth…’ ” A quick look at Max. “ ‘There is less in this than meets the eye.’ Anyway, it was no damn fun. But Henny Brawley wouldn’t shoot a man because he was a pain in the ass on a board, would she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There was some darker stuff, too. Gail Oldham and Hatch were crossways big-time. It wasn’t the festival. It was something personal…”
Very personal, Max thought. The kind of personal that could lead to murder.
“…and Jonathan Wentworth, he’s another retired military guy. Navy, not Army. Do you know him?”
“A good guy,” Max said. “He’s on the board for the animal shelter.”
“Wentworth is a gentleman.” Fisher’s voice was mocking, his smile faintly satirical. “A gentleman of the old school. Whatever the hell that means. But you know what it means.” Fisher spoke as if across a divide that he could never cross. “Wentworth didn’t like Hatch. Not at all. I don’t know why. But when a man like Wentworth won’t shake hands, that tells you something. And somehow, whenever it would have been appropriate, well, what do you know, Wentworth had something in his hands or he turned and went in the other direction or he dropped something or held the door. You get what I mean?”
Max wrote down “Wentworth,” circled the name three times. “Anybody else on the board?”
“Me. Edith Cummings.” His mouth closed tight.
Max was direct. “How were your relations with Hatch?”
“Rotten. He didn’t like gays.” Fisher looked levelly at Max. “He was going to try and get me booted as director.”
“Did that bother you?”
“What the hell am I supposed to answer, man? Sure, it bothered me. We like it here. Toby’s making a name for himself as an artist. And God knows there isn’t a better place to live in the world—barring snakes and hurricanes. But was I going to shoot the old bastard to keep my job? I don’t think so. I could get a half dozen jobs tomorrow. I’m damn good at what I do. And if I left here, I was going to sue the hell out of the old bastard and the library. Nice thing is, somebody’s saved me a lot of effort. The board meeting next week was shaping up to be a shouting match. Me. And Edith. He wanted me to fire her.”
“Could he have managed it?” Max wrote down “Edith” with a big question mark.
“The general was a handy, dandy guy.” Fisher gave a dry snort that might have been amusement. “That’s what the song said about Yankee Doodle, wasn’t it? Yankee Doodle Dandy. Hatch pranced into town last March like Yankee Doodle, ready to run everything, everybody. But he ended up Yankee Doodle dead, didn’t he?” The librarian swung around, moved to the window. “Right down there. Deader than hell.” Fisher’s voice was an odd combination of satisfaction and uneasiness.
Max joined him at the window. The rain was easing. The field was sodden now, forlorn with its aftermath of the festival, the shiny wet bandstand, shuttered booths, scattered clumps of debris.
Fisher pointed toward the forest preserve. “So you want to know who I saw near the bandstand? That’s easy. All of them. Every damn one—Gail and Jonathan and Henny and Edith. Plus Samuel. And me, of course.” He scooped up a folder, started for the door. As he passed Max, he added slyly, “And several hundred other people, too.”
“Ned!”
The librarian paused in the doorway, jerked a sharp look at Max.
“How about David Oldham? Did you see him?”
Ned’s eyes narrowed. “David? No. I don’t think so. Oh, he was around in the afternoon. I saw him talking to Gail. But I didn’t see him when I was hunting for Toby.” Ned shrugged. “Hell, Darling, give it up. There were people everywhere. And there could have been a damn regiment in the forest preserve.” He swung away.
Max listened to his footsteps clattering down the hallway. Ned was right. There were hundreds of people. People sitting, strolling, shifting from one spot to another. Fireworks. Rockets. Sousa marches.
And the fierce cry of a piccolo piercing the night, sharper than all the noises of the crowd and the firecrackers and the rockets and the band.
Despite running the Volvo’s air-conditioning at top speed—it should have cooled the car to meat-locker specifications—the temperature was both tepid and soggy. And anybody who didn’t think warm air could be soggy wasn’t familiar with the Low Country after a July thunderstorm.
Annie braked for a doe followed by two fawns. She drove slowly. She didn’t have any idea how to approach Jonathan Wentworth. She scarcely knew him. She needed the perceptiveness of Earlene Fowler’s Benni Harper or the charm of Kate Morgan’s Dewey James. Instead she was Annie Darling, bookshop owner and unintended observer of a friend’s personal moment. Jonathan Wentworth…Henny said he was good through and through. But did a man who was good through and through love a woman who wasn’t his wife? Maybe yes, maybe no, but that shouldn’t have anything to do with another man’s murder. Yet Henny was refusing to help solve Hatch’s murder—and there had to be a compelling reason why. Perhaps a terrible reason why.
Sandspur Lane sliced inland and three homes came into view. One was very old, perhaps built around 1815. The latecomers were re-creations of Low Country architecture and they fit smoothly into their piney environment.
Annie studied the first house with an eye honed by many house-and-garden festivals. The one-story white frame was raised on low brick pillars. A single dormer overlooked a front porch with four simple Doric columns. The house was in excellent repair and its shiny white paint had been recently applied. Its nearest neighbor was a much larger house, a two-story weathered gray wood built on sturdy concrete pilings. The planked roof was painted a bright red. The third house, although clearly new, was built in the familiar Low Country boxlike design—two floors of four rooms each, divided by a central hallway, again on a high brick foundation and with a shaded piazza on the front.
A yellow road sign warned: DEAD END. The first mailbox bore the name “Wentworth.”
Annie heard a personally directed Speak Your Mind: Get your guts up.
She turned into the drive, parked, and strode briskly up the oyster-shell walk. A FOR SALE sign sat in the middle of the front yard. Shells crunched beneath her feet. A mourning dove cooed nearby. Spartina grass rustled in the gentle breeze. Her footsteps were the only human sound. She pushed the doorbell, heard chimes within. The mourning dove’s plaintive cry rose and fell, rose and fell.
Annie frowned. Hers was the only car, but there was a garage. Probably she should have called, but darned if she could think of any reason why Jonathan Wentworth should be willing to see her. Her plan was to show up on his doorstep and trust to luck and instinct and Wentworth’s good manners to get her inside.
The door opened.
“Are you here about—” Emily Wentworth looked at Annie with a commanding air. Her green eyes blinked. There was sudden recognition. She smiled. “I thought perhaps you were here about the house. But you’re the book girl. The mystery store. Jonathan always does a good job when he picks out books for me there. Come in, come in.” She held the screen door open. “Got rained off the course this morning. I have coffee on. We’ll have an old-fashioned coffee klatsch.”
Annie stepped into a shining foyer laid with bright black and white squa
res. A Chinese lacquer screen set off the dining room to the left. Emily Wentworth led the way into the small living room, filled with comfortable easy chairs and a few good pieces—an Italian fruitwood settee, a Hepplewhite shield-back chair. A Japanese silk brocade hung against one cypress-paneled wall. Two delft covered jars sat on a narrow Adam mantel over a small fireplace.
After settling Annie in a tulip-print easy chair, Emily bustled about, bringing in a ceramic coffeepot and pottery cups and a plateful of brownies. “My own special recipe. Chocolate chips and macadamia nuts.”
Annie’s nose wrinkled appreciatively as her hostess poured a cup of rich dark coffee.
Emily Wentworth perched on the edge of a matching chair, her eyes bright. She looked trim and fresh in a white piqué blouse and crisp green cotton golf skirt. “This is so cheerful. I love having coffees and teas. I did so much of that when Jonathan was in the service. I used to have tea every Sunday afternoon in our quarters and all the wives came. It was a way to get to know them. Before things changed so much. Now so many of the wives work. It’s a different world. Now how can they be good officers’ wives, if they work?”
Annie had plunged into many different lifestyles in the thousands of mysteries she’d read, from Dorothy L. Sayers’s England between the World Wars to Robert van Gulick’s exploration of seventh-century China, from Steven Saylor’s ancient Rome to Sparkle Hayter’s zestfully up-to-date Big Apple, from Alistair MacLean’s World War II adventures to Tony Hillerman’s Navajo and Zuni reservations, but not a one had given her a pointer on the mores of being an officer’s wife.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. She did know she must quickly decide whether to continue her visit under the false pretense of a social call on Emily Wentworth or baldly state her hope of talking to Jonathan Wentworth about the library board and the murder of Bud Hatch.