by Carolyn Hart
“Oh, please, come say hello to Mother. She’ll want to thank you.” He took her firmly by the elbow. Obviously, if he wasn’t a chip off the macho block, he was still a take-charge guy. No doubt learned at Papa’s military knee.
Chuck maneuvered Annie slickly through the assorted groups, pausing every so often to toss quick introductions: “…my son Alan, my daughter Cathy. That’s my wife over there, Judy. My sister and her family. And my brother, Rip…” Faces swirled in Annie’s mind.
They fetched up beside the sofa.
“Mom, this is Annie Darling. From the church. She just brought a bunch of casseroles.” Chuck clapped her on the shoulder and turned away. Annie couldn’t have felt lonelier if she’d been on top of the Empire State Building and the last light in New York City had twinkled out.
Father Cooley looked up, his pink-cheeked face creased in a welcoming smile. “My child,” he murmured.
Mrs. Hatch was an older replica of her son. Or, of course, it was the other way around, Annie thought confusedly—a long narrow face, elegant like a high-class horse, brown eyes but these were red-rimmed and dazed, a thatch of short curly brown hair frosted with gray, and a tremulous smile. “You are so kind.” Her light, soft voice wavered. “Everyone has been so kind.” She reached up, held tight to Annie’s hands.
Bubble gum on a shoe didn’t even come close. Lower than a snake’s belly, that’s what they said in Annie’s native Texas. She qualified.
“Of course,” the wavering voice said, “you’re that young lady on the library board.” An odd pause. “Bud was having some trouble there. People weren’t up to snuff, he said. But I’m sure he didn’t mean you. Please, come sit by me.” She patted the cushion next to her. Father Cooley nodded in approval.
Annie sank onto the daffodil-yellow couch, wished she could disappear at will like the rowdy ghosts in Topper.
Mrs. Hatch clung to Annie’s hand. Her hand was hot and dry. “We haven’t been on the island long. I’m not involved the way I used to be.” The widow’s voice was vague.
Father Cooley patted her shoulder. “It’s hard coming into a new community.”
According to Mrs. Wentworth, service wives were supposed to blend smoothly into a new environment with each duty station.
“I hadn’t had a chance to meet many people.” Mrs. Hatch stared across the room, but her gaze was empty and unfocused. “So many people have come by and brought food. Everyone is so kind.”
Annie felt an odd prickling down her back, that hot hand and that wandering gaze.
Father Cooley looked as satisfied as a well-fed pigeon. He could count on his parishioners. He cleared his throat. “Yes, Ruth. You were telling me about Bud—”
Ruth Hatch shivered. She dropped Annie’s hand, pressed her hands tightly together. “Bud was strong.” She spoke clearly, but tonelessly. “He always got what he wanted.” Her red-rimmed eyes moved to the priest’s face. “Until now. Isn’t that remarkable?”
Father Cooley’s plump face drooped with concern. “My dear, such a dreadful moment. But we will recall Bud as he lived. That’s what matters now.”
“Bud.” A musing tone. “How to describe him.” She looked away from the priest. Her eyes were no longer vague. They were somber and deep with remembrance. “He’d want us to say that he always did his best. And he expected everyone else to do the same.”
“But what would you say?” Annie wanted to demand. Instead, she watched that narrow, contained face.
“Bud always ran a tight ship. I remember the time”—her eyes were no longer vague—“when the housing office at Leavenworth approved our moving on the post. Bud figured out we’d been slipped ahead of some officers with earlier AD dates, so he went straight to the major in charge and told him. That meant we didn’t get housing on post for another six months and we were cramped in a tiny little one-room walk-up apartment with the boys and I was pregnant. But Bud followed the rules. And there was the time he found the boys smoking on a Scout camping trip—”
“Talk about a sore butt!” came the call from across the room. Chuck stepped close and picked up the story. “Dad was frosted. I’m surprised Rip and I lived through that one. Not only demerits but six weeks under house arrest. Dad put—”
Annie scarcely listened to the rest of the story, she was looking over a wall of photographs: Bud and a young bride ducking beneath the upheld swords of other fresh-faced young officers, Bud straight and handsome in his dress blues, Bud in the cockpit of a single-engine plane, Bud and his wife with the children between them, Bud in a major’s uniform in an alien street with pedicabs and VW taxis and “Saigon” written across one corner, Bud standing tall while his wife pinned on his general’s insignia, Bud deep-sea fishing. But not only Bud, of course. There were many pictures of the kids—growing up, dances and ball games, awards assemblies and camping trips, high school and college graduations, then weddings and babies. Pictures, pictures, pictures.
A dainty Dresden clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour. Annie looked at the hands and bolted to her feet. “Oh, gosh, I’m late. I have to meet my husba——” She clapped a hand to her mouth. Lower than a stalagmite in the world’s deepest cave.
Bud Hatch’s widow looked at the wall of pictures, her eyes held by that long-ago wedding day. Tears brimmed. She looked up forlornly at Annie. “Your voice! You love him very much, don’t you? Yes, of course. Hurry to him.”
Annie was two blocks from the end of the island and the ferry dock and Parotti’s, the combination bait shop, bar and grill and ferry headquarters, when she saw the Island Bakery, one of her favorite destinations. But it wasn’t a sudden desire for raspberry brownies that caused her to yank the wheel right. An irate honk behind her made Annie wonder if maybe the island population was growing too fast. Why were people always honking at her? She swerved off the paved road onto the dirt lane, dust pluming behind her. So, yes, maybe she had neglected to signal, but was that a capital crime? She gave a regretful glance at the bakery, but she wasn’t a pig like Joyce Porter’s Wilfred Dover, so she resisted temptation. She drove a block and a half, passing small homes on huge secluded lots dotted with towering pines and blossom-laden magnolias. This was the town side of the island. These houses, mostly modest white frames interspersed among larger tabby homes, had been here years longer than the new and elegant houses on the recently developed end of the island which was reached through a gated entry. This end of the island was the site of the small shops, the grocery store, car repair, the schools, the hospital, the athletic fields. The most recent coffee for the Women’s Tennis Association had been held at 19 Bay Street, the residence of Gail and David Oldham.
The cottage was a story and a half on raised brick pillars with a covered front porch supported by slender, unadorned pillars. Huge live oaks rose on either side. The shaded front yard was almost bare of grass, but clumps of ferns flourished.
Annie parked at the end of the unpaved drive, beside Gail’s black Jeep. David drove a tan coupé. Annie felt a rush of relief. She needed to talk to David Oldham, but she didn’t want to do it in front of Gail, not with a searing memory of David’s stricken face as he turned and moved heavily away through the forest preserve.
If, at that moment, David had crashed through the brush to attack Bud Hatch, Annie wouldn’t have been surprised. She didn’t know that she’d ever been that near raw pain.
The quiet morning held no echo of that anguish, only the squawk of blackbirds, the high chut of cardinals, the constant zzz of no-see-ums. But Annie hesitated at the foot of the steps. What kind of misery was she going to encounter? The ultimate confrontation between Gail and David last night must have been fraught with bitterness.
Annie took a deep breath, forced herself to climb to the porch. If ever two people had reason to hate a man recently dead, it was Gail and David Oldham. Where were they when the shots rang out?
Annie stepped to the door, lifted her hand and rang the bell. The door was ajar. Though no lights were on, she could see a p
ortion of the hallway and a cheerful yellow-and-green braided rug.
No answer.
Annie knocked again, called out. “Gail?” She was sure she must have been heard. The house was small, a living room and bedroom on one side of the hall, dining room and kitchen on the other, a stairway to a loft which had been finished into a second bedroom. David kept his computer there.
She rattled the door, went down the front steps and around the back to the kitchen steps. She peered through a window.
No lights. No answer. No movement.
Annie felt a clutch of uneasiness in her chest. That open door. Gail’s car. And no response.
She came again to the front door, hesitantly opened the screen, pushed the door wide. That’s when she saw the note, a sheet from a square pink pad with “Gail’s Kitchen” in the upper right corner.
Annie bent down. It was hard to read because the hallway was dusky in the morning gloom.
“David—Please, wait for me. Please. We have to talk. Gail.”
On the side table, a delicate china clock tinged the hour. Annie looked to the right. The small living room was empty. She stepped inside. A bedroom pillow was rumpled on the couch. A small plate with a half-eaten sandwich, the bread now dry and stiff, sat on the coffee table. A glass held a dark liquid. Lipstick stains marked the rim of the glass. Annie walked around the room, she peered behind the couch. Then she crossed the hall to the dining room. Nothing was out of place.
In the kitchen, a single bowl sat on the wooden table, half-filled with milk and sodden cornflakes. A cup of coffee was beside it.
Even Watson or Hastings could figure this out. Breakfast for one, no effort made to clean up.
Gail was a fanatically neat housekeeper.
Outside, a car door slammed.
Annie’s heart thudded. Her hands were suddenly sweaty. She darted to the dining room window, drew back a curtain.
No tan coupé. A green sedan was newly parked across the street.
Okay, she was scared, scared of the ominous quiet and the anger this home must have seen. She couldn’t leave until she was sure the house was truly empty. Darting an occasional glance over her shoulder, she stepped to the end of the hall. Using all of her willpower, she opened the bedroom door.
A pillow was gone, the bedspread was rumpled, but the bed hadn’t been slept in. She poked her head into the tiny bathroom. The closet door was closed. Annie felt more secure now. The closet smelled faintly of potpourri. Dresses and suits. Shoes. Nothing unexpected.
Annie left the bedroom, hurried up the half-flight of stairs. The office was neat and tidy and empty. It wasn’t until she heard her own huge sigh of relief that Annie realized how tense she had been. It was all right. Everything was all right. Or, if not all right, not dreadful. The unused bed, the pillow in the living room, the dirty dishes for one might argue distress. But not murder.
She trotted downstairs, passed the note lying forlornly on the wooden floor. She didn’t touch it. It wasn’t her business. And she’d better get the heck out of the front hallway before either Oldham returned.
As she pulled away from the curb, she twisted her head for a final look at the silent house.
Was it simply that she knew there must have been an ugly and angry confrontation between Gail and David that she found the house so disquieting? Or was her intuition signaling hard that she pay attention here?
Parotti’s was an island institution, situated right at the ferry landing. The ferry, under the autocratic command of Captain Ben Parotti, followed a schedule of sorts, but anyone who offended him could face an all-day wait. Annie and Max had always found Parotti’s a perfect spot for a delicious lunch in comparative solitude. Heaviest patronage was just before charter fishing boats cast off in the mornings or in the evenings, especially game nights. The menu featured Southern delights—fried oysters, barbecued-pork sandwiches, ribs, fried catfish, hush puppies, french fries, and beer.
Annie pushed open the heavy wooden door and plunged into the welcome dimness. The cool air smelled horrendously fishy with an underlying scent of old, often-fried grease. Max was already there, at one of the round wooden tables close to the 1940s jukebox. As soon as he saw her, he stood and smiled.
Dear Max. He never cared if she was late. His smile, so full of love and eagerness, his admiring, welcoming, God-I’m-glad-you’re-here smile, come-let-me-touch-you smile. The emotional buffets of the morning coalesced. She felt the hot burn of tears. By the time she was halfway to the table, he was across the sloping wooden floor, his arms open, his smile replaced by a searching look of concern. She stepped into his embrace, clung to him, buried her face against him.
“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay. I’m here.” His arms tightened around her. “Tell me.”
She pulled back a little, tried to brush away the tears. “It’s so awful. Mrs. Hatch and Bud. And Gail and David. And Emily and Jonathan. Oh, Max, it’s so awful. Promises, and nobody kept them. Max, I hate it.”
With one firm hand he guided her to their table, with the other he fished out a soft handkerchief.
Annie mopped at her face. “ ‘Til death do us part.’ That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” Her voice quivered. “Not ‘til I meet somebody new.’ ” Raggedly, with occasional sniffs, she described her morning. When she had finished, she looked at him forlornly.
Ben Parotti approached gingerly, a careful eye on Annie. “The missus got a cold?” he asked Max.
“A little under the weather,” Max said vaguely, then he ordered for them.
Annie almost managed a smile. A fried-oyster sandwich for her. And lemonade, a new addition to Parotti’s menu. Max definitely was trying to make her feel good. He always looked askance when she ordered a fried-oyster sandwich, murmuring things like “Cholesterol on a bun” or “Why not go whole-hog, you unreconstructed Texan, see if he’s got lamb fries?”
When Ben departed for the kitchen, Max leaned forward in his chair. “Okay, Annie. Take it easy. You know what’s wrong?”
She took a gulp of water, icy and fresh, shook her head.
“You’ve never come face-to-face, up close, to infidelity. And it scares you.” He reached across the table, gripped her hands in his. “It scares you because you think if it can happen to someone we know—like Gail and David—and you never had any idea this was so, then you think it could happen to you.”
She stared into dark blue eyes, eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them, compelling, intelligent, loving eyes. “No, Annie. It can’t happen to you. It won’t happen to you. You remember when we first met—”
That long-ago evening at a rehearsal in a dingy cramped theater for an off-Broadway play. The handsomest, funniest, sexiest man she’d ever met introduced himself as Max Darling and he was never more than a foot away from her for all that evening and so many evenings to come.
“—I told you we were meant for each other. You didn’t take me seriously.”
She gave a small grin. “You acted like you were in a Cole Porter musical. How could I take you seriously?”
Max squeezed her hands. “I know. You said we didn’t have anything in common. You were poor. I was rich. You’d always had to work hard for spending money and to make it through college and I never held a job and went to Princeton. You were from Texas and I was from Connecticut. You were serious and I refused to be serious. And so you ran away.”
Annie nodded. It was a familiar story that Max loved to tell. How he, Galahad indeed, had pursued his lady love from the cool climes of the north to the muggy swampland of the Palmetto State and it was a good thing he had because shortly after he arrived in Broward’s Rock Annie was suspected of murder and it was only his clever sleuthing that saved her from a murder charge.
Annie was always quick to interpose that in the denouement, she saved his life, not vice versa.
They could then beam at each other fondly.
“The thing to remember”—Max was emphatic—”is that no matter how different we are, it’s the two o
f us together against the world. Annie and Max. Together. Gail and David, Jonathan and his wife, Bud and his wife—they moved apart, somehow, someway. And if you asked them and they told the truth, they know that. As long as it’s the two of us together, Annie, nobody can come between us.”
Annie took a gulp of lemonade. A sense of peace flowed over her, soothing as a serene moon-dappled sea. Together. Yes. That’s what they had to keep, no matter how much effort it took. Yes. She was full of nervous energy, driven to do and be and achieve. Max was amused, an on-looker, untroubled by society’s expectations, content to be himself without undue effort or toil. But as long as they accepted their differences, took pleasure in them, saw them as a complement, they would be okay. “Yes.” She said it aloud, loud enough to turn Parotti’s head from the bar. “Yes.”
Annie flashed the tavern owner a bright, happy smile.
Startled, Parotti hesitated, then gave a thumb’s-up.
Annie relaxed in her seat, listened attentively to Max’s report of his interviews with Ned Fisher, Toby Maguire, and Samuel Kinnon. She eagerly grabbed her sandwich when Parotti brought their meals.
Parotti bent close to Max, whispered, “Women,” gave Max a wink.
When Annie asked about the addition of lemonade to the menu, Parotti’s beak-nosed face turned a rusty orange and he muttered, “My new missus. Thought we needed some pumping up.” Other changes included quiche, she-crab soup, Key West lime pie, chintz curtains at the windows, and wildflowers in slender vases. Annie yearned to ask Parotti how the new look appealed to the regulars who dropped by either for beer and heated sports discussions or to fill their bait boxes from Parotti’s coolers chock-full of chicken necks, squid and chunks of black bass, grouper and snapper. The rank odors from that end of the room indicated the bait business still thrived. Probable Parotti had drawn a line in the sawdust: thus far and no farther. And Annie was wise enough not to comment on his spiffed-up appearance, a natty navy polo shirt and baggy white pants. He’d always looked a bit like a raffish leprechaun, favoring tops reminiscent of long underwear and stained corduroy trousers. Now he had the air of a leprechaun fresh from the men’s-wear department at Belk’s.