Sugarplum Dead

by Carolyn Hart

  Max’s mother, with the best will in the world and flashing an absolutely enchanting smile, was capable of creating problems which would confound even Judge Judy.

  And whatever Laurel had done, word would reach even the least curious and most unsociable on the island because Gertrude Parker’s mouth never shut.

  “Laurel.” Annie pictured her mother-in-law, her fjord-blue eyes, her smooth cap of golden hair, her patrician features. You’d never think just to look at her—Well, maybe you would. There was Laurel’s otherworldly gaze. To put it nicely. Actually, loopy was an equally appropriate description. Oh Lord. What in the world could Laurel have done? A most private, delicate moment? Did Annie even want to hear what Pamela had observed? Probably not. Almost certainly not. Did she need to hear? Oh yes.

  “Annie, are you there?” Pamela spoke gently.

  “Yes. I’m sure everything’s all right.” Annie was proud of her self-command. Then she ruined it by demanding worriedly, “What’s wrong?”

  Pamela oozed reassurance. “Annie, don’t be upset. I assure you that Gertrude and I didn’t intrude.”

  “That was good of you.” Annie took a deep breath. “Now, if you could just explain….” Annie was reminded of the old vaudeville joke when an actor, greeted after a humorous skit by neither laughter nor applause, leaned over the lights and said, “And now my partner and I are going to come into the audience and beat the bejesus out of you.”

  “We were at Sea Side Cemetery—”

  Annie felt the tension in her shoulders ease. The cemetery—that didn’t sound too threatening.

  “—taking Christmas wreaths to the soldiers’ graves. And you know that gravestone with the steering wheel?”

  Indeed Annie did. It was a favorite spot to take island visitors, and chauvinist islanders considered it right on a level with the nose-up Cadillacs buried along the highway outside Amarillo. However, even the headstone’s biggest boosters admitted the island couldn’t compete with Savannah since the publication of In the Garden of Good and Evil. Still, the steering wheel headstone remained a point of pride. It was the resting place of a locally famed stock car racer. The inscription read:

  JOHNNY GO-DOG DAVIS

  JUNE 5, 1944–MAY 22, 1968

  FROM CHAMPION RACER

  TO GOD’S FASTEST CHARIOTEER

  GO-DOG, GO!

  “And Laurel was there!”

  Annie gulped coffee in relief. She hadn’t known her mother-in-law was keen on stock car racing, but what the hey! Live and let drive.

  “Pamela, I appreciate your—”

  “She was talking to Go-Dog.” Pamela’s tone was sepulchral, but even so, Annie heard the Southern intonation, “Go-o-o Dawg.”

  Annie slid off the stool, paced back and forth. “She couldn’t talk to him,” Annie said gently. “He’s dead, Pamela.”

  “Annie, I swear, it was the spookiest thing—I mean, I don’t want to insult anyone’s beliefs and I firmly support everyone’s right to approach the hereafter in whatever manner they find most comforting—”

  Annie braked the philosophical discussion. “I’m sure you do. What did Laurel say?”

  “She didn’t say anything to us.”

  Annie spoke through clenched teeth, the better to refrain from verbal assault. “What did Laurel say to Go-Dog?”

  “Oh, she wasn’t actually talking to Go-Dog. I mean, he wasn’t there, Annie.”

  Annie was proud of her measured tone. “What did Laurel say while standing by Go-Dog’s grave?”

  “She was asking him for help. She wanted him to look up someone named…I think it was Roderico or Rodolfo or something like that…and tell him to get in touch with her, that she had received the one message and now she was waiting for more, that she didn’t know what she should do about some family matters and she just knew that he and Go-Dog must have met and if Go-Dog would pass along her request she would be awfully grateful. That’s when I yanked Gertrude back into that path that runs behind the big pines and marched her out of there. But Annie, I thought you ought to know.”

  “Yes. I appreciate your telling me. Yes, we should know.” Was it possible that Laurel had finally skidded beyond the normal barriers? She had always been spacey, but there had been an earthy, solid base beneath her enthusiasms. And, frankly, a fey sense of humor that enjoyed tweaking the pompous and especially the proud.

  But this…“Thanks, Pamela.” Annie clicked off the phone. Should she talk to Laurel? Or should she tell Max? After all, Laurel was his mother.

  Max’s mother. Max’s ocean-blue eyes were so much like Laurel’s, brimming with good cheer, refusing to take the world too seriously, intent upon good times. Heredity. Surely Laurel hadn’t gone bonkers. Annie refused to entertain the possibility that Laurel had been bonkers forever. No. That wasn’t true. But this graveyard soliloquy must be investigated. Did Laurel need help? If she was talking to a steering-wheel headstone, yes, she did.

  The front doorbell jingled. Annie looked up at the clock. Ten o’clock. Agatha stretched, flowed through the air to land on the heart-pine floor and then she was gone, slithering into a favorite nesting spot beneath the Whitmani fern. The fern’s raffia basket had a lopsided bulge in front, courtesy of Agatha. Agatha always disappeared when a stranger entered the store.

  Well, Ingrid would take care of everything.

  Annie didn’t bother to retrieve her red jacket from the storeroom. Max’s office was only a few steps along the boardwalk that curved around the harbor. She would likely find him immersed in Golf Digest or the Atlantic Monthly or the New York Times. The fact that he was able to keep abreast of all current affairs simply underscored, in Annie’s view, the paucity of demands on his time. Max always retorted that anyone in the service industry had to remain informed. He considered himself a member of the service industry in view of his rather unusual business—Confidential Commissions—which offered help to anyone with a problem. Confidential Commissions wasn’t, of course, a private detective agency. “Confidential Commissions,” Max would say earnestly, “strives to assist individuals who are perplexed, bewildered, bedeviled.”

  Okay, bub, Annie thought, have I got a candidate for you. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was halfway up the central corridor before Ingrid’s call stopped her; stopped her, in part, because of the peculiar, choked sound of Ingrid’s voice.

  Annie looked toward the cash desk, at Ingrid, with her eyes wide, her jaw slack, one thin hand outstretched protectively toward Annie.

  Forever after, Annie would retain an indelible imprint of her surroundings, the True Crime books to her right, the Christie collection to her left. Edgar, the sleek black stuffed raven, looked down with glassy eyes. A cardboard display case in front of the children’s mystery section held an assortment of George Edward Stanley paperbacks.

  And she would always remember her first glimpse of the stocky middle-aged man and his familiar, oh so familiar rounded face with hopeful gray eyes, mist-dampened sandy hair, broad mouth, sandy mustache flecked with gray, and spatter of freckles. He wore a yellow crew neck sweater over a tattersall shirt, chino slacks, tasseled loafers.

  The bookstore receded, the brightly jacketed books and Ingrid’s shocked face and the heart-pine floors blurring. She saw only the man standing a few feet from her. She stared into eyes that mirrored her own, at features that were a masculine version of her own. She saw the flutter of sandy lashes.

  That was the way she blinked when shocked or upset.

  He tried to speak, struggled for breath as she struggled.

  “Annie?” A clear tenor voice.

  She simply stood there. And waited.

  He stepped forward, reached out.

  She held up her hands, palms forward.

  “Annie”—there was wonder and hope and delight in his voice—“I’m your dad.”

  Two

  SHE TOOK A step backward.

  “God, Annie.” A smile crinkled the too-familiar, too-strange face, a smile that found a
ready home. This was a face accustomed to smiling. “You’re so beautiful. You were a beautiful little girl. And now…” Those damnably familiar, yet strange gray eyes filled with admiration.

  Her sandy hair, her gray eyes. And yes, her smile. She felt utter confusion.

  He held out both hands, strong hands. “I’ve looked for you for a long time, Annie.” His smile was eager, sweet, engaging.

  Sudden anger flamed through Annie’s icy calm. “Have you?” Her voice was thin and tight and uneven.

  Ingrid came around the cash desk. Annie felt Ingrid’s hand on her arm, but the touch seemed far away.

  He took a step forward. “Annie, I wrote and wrote. But the letters came back Addressee Unknown. I—”

  “I don’t care.” She spaced the words like barriers at a closed road. She remembered in a jumble all the Christmases when she used to pray for a daddy like all of her friends and the tears that stained her pillow and the questions she never asked her mother. She thought of scraping by and making do and going without. She remembered the years when she’d spun fantasies about her father, and she remembered even more clearly the years she’d no longer spun fantasies, when the idea of a father was remote and unreal. He had never been there for her. Never.

  She stared at him, saw his smile slip away, his eyes widen, his hands drop.

  “You walked out a long time ago.” She spoke crisply, as if to a late deliveryman, polite but firm, dismissive. “As far as I’m concerned, you can keep right on walking.”

  Eyes straight ahead, Annie moved past him, brushing against his suddenly raised arm. For an instant, her heart quivered, but she yanked open the door and plunged out into the fog. She broke into a run, her steps echoing on the boardwalk though the fog dulled the sound. Behind her, she heard a call, muffled by the fog.

  “Annie, Annie, please—”

  Annie banged into Confidential Commissions.

  Max’s buxom blond secretary looked up, a tiny Christmas wreath blinking from her bouffant hairdo. Her welcoming smile froze, then fled. She pushed back her chair. “Annie, what’s—”

  Annie was already across the narrow anteroom and flinging open Max’s door.

  Max lounged in his oversize red leather chair, holding a copy of Golf Digest, feet propped on an Italian Renaissance desk that would have looked at home in a Vatican office. A putter leaned against the desk. The in box held a dozen varicolored golf balls. The desk lamp was twisted to illuminate the artificial putting green.

  “Max!”

  She scarcely had time to see his shocked face, he moved so fast, and she was clinging to him, clinging with all her strength.

  “Annie, what’s wrong?” Instead of Max’s usual easy, amused tone, his voice was hard, the tone of a man prepared to attack whoever had hurt her. It was like watching a shaggy, well-loved Irish setter transformed to a German shepherd. Her Max, her affable, civilized, laughing Max with a glint in his eye and a grim set to his mouth.

  Annie looked up, seeing a face she knew well, handsome features and Nordic blue eyes and golden hair with the glisten of wheat in the sunlight, and a face she’d never seen, eyes steely, jaw taut.

  “It’s my father.” Her voice was still clipped and harsh.

  Max slipped his arm around her shoulders, drew her to the red leather sofa. “Father?”

  No wonder his voice was puzzled. He knew Annie’s family history as she knew his—in bits and pieces. She’d never said much about either of her parents. Why talk about things that hurt when there were always so many happy things to discuss? And, of course, Annie’s mother had died of breast cancer years before Annie had met Max. All Max knew of Judy Laurance were snapshots in albums and one studio photograph, a delicate face with sparkling blue eyes, a high-bridged nose, hollow cheeks and a pointed chin. Straight dark hair parted in the middle. The high-necked blue polka-dot granny dress had a lace collar.

  The picture didn’t reflect Judy’s grave smile or the way her eyes lit when Annie came into a room. Annie had always wished she’d looked like her mother, but she knew she didn’t with her short blond hair and serious gray eyes and round chin.

  She looked past Max, not seeing the bright modern paintings on his walls, seeing instead the figure of a stocky man with sandy hair and mustache and a round face with laugh lines.

  Now she knew where her face came from.

  She didn’t care.

  “I don’t care,” she said explosively.

  Max grabbed her hands. “Annie, what about your father?”

  “He walked in the store. Just now. I don’t know where he came from. Or why. Oh, he said he’s been looking for me. For years.” Finally there was a prick of tears. “Max, that’s not true.”

  Max squeezed her hands. “It could be true, Annie.”

  “No. You remember how you found me?” She looked into dark blue eyes that softened as he smiled.

  It was a favorite memory. She and Max had met in New York when he was involved in off-Broadway plays and Annie was an aspiring young actress fresh from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. They’d looked at each other across a crowded room and when their eyes met nothing was ever the same for either of them.

  Except Max was rich. Annie was poor.

  Max had lived in big houses all over the world. Annie had grown up in a shabby bungalow in Amarillo.

  Max dabbled. Annie flung herself wholly into any enterprise.

  Max delighted in ambiguities and prized the unexpected. Annie insisted upon order and effort.

  Max took almost nothing seriously. Annie took everything very seriously.

  Max proposed the second time he saw her. Annie left town.

  She did have a reason: her Uncle Ambrose Bailey’s unexpected death. But she left no forwarding address.

  “It didn’t take you any time at all.” Annie pulled her hands free, gestured energetically. “You called SMU, got the name of one of my roommates, phoned her and, presto, you came to the island.”

  “I knew you’d gone to SMU,” he said mildly.

  “He could have figured it out. Anybody can find anybody with the Internet. The point is”—now her gray eyes were deep pools of resistance—“he didn’t try. He didn’t really try.”

  Max sprawled back against the soft cushion, folded his arms behind his head. “He came to the store today.” Her husband looked at her gravely.

  She sat up stiffly. “So I should jump up and down and shout with joy?”

  Max gazed up at the ceiling. “You lost your mom.” He was silent for a moment and the office was so quiet she could hear the dull boom of the foghorn out in the harbor, a sad, forlorn, lost sound. His blue eyes swung down to meet her gaze. “You’ve been all alone. Maybe you ought to give him a chance.” Then he said quietly, “My dad was too busy working to have any time for me, too busy making more money when he had so much he could have used stacks of it for firewood. Then he died.”

  Max’s father would never walk into this office.

  Annie folded her arms. “He could have found me if he’d tried.” She was past the shock now, but resentment lodged deep inside, hard as granite. She pushed up from the couch. “I’m okay. But he’s twenty-five years too late, Max.”

  Max rose, too. When he started to speak, she reached up, touched his lips. “And we have plenty to do. With Christmas and everything.”

  Christmas, a time for families. She pushed away the thought. She wasn’t a sucker for sentimentality. Families…She clapped a hand to her head. “Max, listen, I had a phone call. Your mom…”

  Laurel walked across the dance floor toward them. Annie couldn’t help observing her mother-in-law more carefully than usual. Annie turned toward her husband, looking from Laurel to her son. What an incredible resemblance: the same golden hair, the same handsome features (or lovely, as sex decreed), the same eyes—No, dammit, Max’s eyes might, on occasion, gleam with eagerness, soften with tenderness, dance with glee, tease with amusement, but they were never spacey.

  As for Laurel
, no one, not even Max, could deny that tonight Laurel was at her spaciest. Spacey and lovely, her golden hair curled softly around her patrician face. Laurel lifted a beautifully manicured hand, the coral polish an exact match for lips now curved in a sweet (otherworldly?) smile.

  Annie shot another look at Max, then wished she hadn’t. Now was not the time to be reminded of how much Max looked like his mother. Annie didn’t want to ponder family resemblance and the fact that on this island, right now, was a man with her face, an unreliable Johnny-come-lately she never wanted to acknowledge. But acknowledged or not, her father’s reality couldn’t be denied. Just as no matter what she or Max did, nothing could change the reality of Laurel. Or the unreality….

  The band belted out “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” The Island Hills Country Club had always been an enclave for music of the forties and fifties, responding to the tastes of its members, but the recent revival of swing on college campuses had resulted in a weekly Friday night dance attended by members of all ages, not simply jiving geriatrics. Their table was near the front, so they had a good view of the dancers.

  Laurel beamed at Annie and Max. “My dears”—the husky voice was kind, tolerant—“the minute I saw you, I came straight to you.”

  Max rose. “Hi, Ma.” He grinned in his usual easygoing fashion.

  Just as if, Annie thought resentfully, nothing remarkable had occurred.

  Annie cleared her throat. “Laurel.” She spoke loudly.

  Laurel’s gaze moved to her. “Dear Annie.” As if Annie’s presence absolutely, positively topped off a day packed with glorious moments.

  Annie wasn’t deflected. “I came by your house. I called. I left messages. I need to talk to you.”

  Max was waggling a hand. She didn’t need a primer in body language to understand. Max had not taken seriously Annie’s report of Laurel’s session with Go-Dog. He had, in fact, hooted with laughter, rolled those dark blue eyes and murmured, “Good old Go-Dog. I’ll bet it made his day.” Max dismissed Annie’s efforts to contact Laurel as unnecessary. “But if it makes you feel better…”