Death at the Door

by Carolyn Hart

  Annie closed her eyes, pictured gentle surf rolling to the shore. The song of the surf, soothing, encompassing, forever . . .

  8

  The peal of the phone shocked Annie into muzzy wakefulness. She swept out a hand to grab the receiver, saw fluorescent numbers on the nightstand clock. Two eighteen. No good news comes in the dark watch of the night, unheralded, destroying peace, making breath hard to find. “H’lo.” Her voice was thin, high, shaky.

  “Fire. Martin house. Two-alarm. Scanner.” Marian’s words pelted her. “On my way.”

  • • •

  Max’s Maserati squealed to a stop. A police cruiser, lights whirling, blocked the street. Firemen aimed hoses from two trucks at flames bursting from one side of the Martin house. The men were dark shadows silhouetted by distant streetlamps, lights spilling from neighboring houses, and searchlights mounted on the fire trucks.

  Max pulled up to the curb. Annie slammed out of the passenger seat. Max was right behind her when they reached the squad car. Hyla Harrison stood with her back to the house, barking into a megaphone: “Stay back. Remain clear of emergency vehicles.” Billy Cameron, unshaven, hair scarcely combed, T-shirt hanging out over his jeans, stood next to a cruiser, talking into a cell phone. His face was grim.

  Smoke flecked by burning embers swirled above the house, spiraling up into darkness. A clump of neighbors watched from the front lawn across the street. Annie grabbed Max’s arm. “There’s Marian.”

  They crossed the street, picking their way carefully past the fire trucks, and joined the reporter and somber onlookers, many in pajamas and robes. Marian lifted her husky voice to be heard above the roar of the fire and rumble of water and brusque commands. “Nobody’s seen Lucy.” She craned to see better. “That guy”—she pointed at a stocky man in Lucy’s front yard with the firefighters—“apparently he called in the alert. He lives next door.”

  Near the first fire truck, a shirtless man in boxers gestured to his right toward dark windows in the front of the house and shouted, “Lucy’s room is there. The corner one.”

  Annie felt a clutch of horror. There was no fire yet on Lucy’s side of the house. Flames poked from lower-floor windows of Paul’s study and danced on the roof above. Soon the other side of the house would also be enveloped in fire.

  Two firemen moved swiftly across the lawn, placed a ladder against the wall. Bulky in protective clothing and boots, a helmeted fireman wearing a mask clambered up the rungs. A long steel tool dangled from a strap around his left wrist.

  Annie reached out, held tight to Max’s arm. Quickly, he pulled her close. She pressed against his side, comforted by his nearness as her mind grappled with horror. Lucy had not been seen. Lucy in that house amid suffocating smoke.

  One of the searchlights moved, settled on the window, illuminating the panes and the frame. Braced near the top of the ladder, a fireman gripped the long tool and battered the window. The thuds and the crackle of shattering glass sounded over the fire’s roar and the whoosh of water. In another moment, perhaps two, the window was knocked from its frame. Carefully, heavily, the fireman clambered into the room.

  Despite the deluge of water on the columns of flame, small tongues of fire flickered across the roof, coming nearer and nearer the gaping window. A hiss marked contact between water and fire. Smoke thickened, the acrid odor souring the night air, making Annie’s eyes water.

  In the glare of the searchlight, the masked fireman looked otherworldly, inhuman when his upper torso appeared in the broken-out window frame with flames shooting skyward from the roof above him. He leaned out, yelled, “Hold the ladder steady. Unconscious woman in sling.”

  Two firemen braced the bottom of the ladder as the rescuer eased a limp body dangling from a webbed harness over the sill.

  Max’s arm was taut beneath Annie’s clutching hand. “If the roof gives way . . .” He broke off.

  The webbed harness descended in jerks and spurts and seemed to move with frightening slowness, although it was only a minute or two before the men on the ground unsnapped the harness and lifted the limp figure away from the ladder and onto a waiting gurney. An EMT tech blocked their view, but when the gurney was rolled across the lawn toward the ambulance, bumping over hoses, there was an oxygen mask clamped to the face.

  Marian was already moving. She reached the back of the ambulance as the techs slid the gurney inside. “Is she alive?”

  • • •

  Annie wrinkled her nose, but the smell of smoke clung to her even in the antiseptic waiting room. “Why don’t they tell us anything?” Annie paced back and forth in front of the now untenanted desk. She wondered if there was anything more dismal than a hospital emergency room at three o’clock in the morning.

  Max spoke quietly, though they were alone in the cheerless room. “Maybe they don’t know anything yet.”

  Minutes passed and Annie’s hope waned. It was another half hour before a door opened on the other side of the counter. A tired-faced nurse walked toward them. “Are you here for Lucy Ransome?”

  Annie clasped her hands together. “Yes.”

  “Next of kin?”

  Annie spoke before Max could utter a sound. “Yes.”

  The nurse was matter-of-fact. “She’s stable. Smoke inhalation but the doctor expects a full recovery. She’ll be in intensive care probably until midmorning. You can check back then.”

  Annie gave a whoosh of relief.

  • • •

  The front door of the Gazette was locked, as might be expected, but light spilled through the windows of the newsroom. The street lay silent and deserted in the darkness.

  Max pulled out his cell, swiped. “Hey, Marian. We’re at the front door . . . She’s conscious and in intensive care . . . Yeah. Thanks.” He dropped the cell in his pocket.

  When the door opened, Marian stood back for them to enter. She, too, smelled of smoke. Her gray sweatshirt and pants sagged. She was pale without makeup. Her hair stuck out at odd angles. She jerked a thumb. “Just finished the story. I’ll add in the update on her condition. Want some coffee and stale doughnuts?”

  They settled in the dingy break room. Marian rustled through a drawer. “Got some instant from Starbucks.” She punched the microwave and in a moment slid a mug of hot water to each of them, flipped narrow thin packages across the table.

  Annie reached for the sugar bowl. Normally she drank coffee unsweetened. Right now she wanted any extra jolt of energy she could find. She hesitated when her fingers encountered a sticky film on the outside of the bowl, but this was no time to be squeamish. Marian pushed an oblong box without a lid toward them. There were three glazed doughnuts and one tired-looking chocolate long john. Max shook his head, Marian snagged a glazed, and Annie picked up the long john.

  Marian dipped the doughnut in coffee, ignored drips onto her sweatshirt, took a bite, spoke in a mumble. “Arson. Like that’s a surprise. Fire Chief pretty sure it was gasoline. I hung around as they started the investigation. Nasty smell. When stuff burns, all kinds of noxious stuff gets crisped. Like vinyl flooring. Fire started in three spots. They found melted remnants of one-liter pop bottles and even a few scraps of rags that had been stuffed in the necks. A garden window was pushed up, screen pulled off. The arsonist got inside, splashed gas around, then tossed in a lighted rag from outside. That’s why the damage was spotty. The whole thing could have gone up if the bottles had been made into what we used to cheerily call Molotov cocktails. Anyway, flames spread from the desk to a chair that had sat beside the desk—”

  Annie remembered the black leather wing chair that sat to the left of the person behind the desk.

  “—and the Oriental rug in front of the desk. Amazing what they can figure from what looked like a blackened mess to me. That whole side of the house is unstable. Smoke goes up, of course. That’s why Lucy was unconscious when they got to her.” Marian rubbed one
temple. “Jesus, I’m glad she’s going to be all right.” In her dark eyes was the horror of unintended consequences.

  Annie reached across the table, touched a tense arm. “It might have happened anyway. Lucy was telling people what she thought. She wasn’t going to quit.”

  “Yeah.” Marian wasn’t convinced. “Maybe. But my story spelled it out.”

  “It was the study that was destroyed.” Max’s tone was thoughtful. “If somebody wanted to shut Lucy up, the fire would have been set on the other side of the house.”

  “Maybe the objective was to destroy the study.” Marian’s dark eyes still held horror. “But everybody knew Lucy lived there, that she was asleep upstairs. The arsonist didn’t give a damn if she burned, too?”

  Annie reached for the copy of yesterday afternoon’s Gazette lying open on the table. She turned a page, tapped the photo of the black leather wing chair. “If we’re right, whoever came that night and made it look like Paul Martin shot himself sat in that chair. The light on the table next to the chair was on the next morning. Lucy said Paul was sitting at the desk. He wouldn’t turn on that light unless he was expecting a guest. Lucy and I figure the murderer had a glove in one pocket and wriggled a hand into the glove just before pulling the gun out to shoot Paul. That means there could have been some prints in the study, maybe on the chair.”

  Max pulled out his phone.

  Annie’s eyebrows rose.

  He gave a brief grin. “I’m not calling anybody at this hour. I’m going to text Billy.” He tapped swiftly, handed the phone to Annie.

  She looked at the blue letters and the confirmation Message Sent and read aloud: “Lucy Ransome threatened to hire crime expert. Prints available on leather chair by desk?”

  Marian studied the photo of the chair. “That chair only matters if someone killed Paul, made his death look like suicide. We think Paul intended to warn someone at David Corley’s party. It figures that Paul did exactly what he intended to do and that means his visitor was someone at the party. We need to know”—she scrunched her face in thought—“whether any of these people had ever under any circumstance been in Paul Martin’s study: Kate Murray, Sherry Gillette, David Corley, Madeleine Corley, Tom Edmonds, Frankie Ford, Toby Wyler, Irene Hubbard, Kevin Hubbard. If not, a single print anywhere in that study has to be explained.” Despite fatigue, her dark eyes gleamed. “The press conference’s set for ten A.M. I’ll have some questions.”

  • • •

  The Maserati idled behind Annie’s Thunderbird. Usually both cars turned south on the island’s main north-south road, their destination the resort shops on the marina, which included Death on Demand and Confidential Commissions. Instead Annie signaled left to head north for the small-business district near the ferry landing and Parotti’s Bar and Grill, her objective the turnoff to the hospital. She’d spoken with Pamela Potts, who was directing shifts of Altar Guild ladies at Lucy Ransome’s bedside. “I want to tell Lucy she can stay with us when she gets out of the hospital. I’ll ask if she wants us to get someone started on repairs. At least now she can be confident that the police will pay attention to what she told them.”

  Max was ready to turn right when he heard a ping. He checked the rearview mirror. No one behind him. He pulled out the cell, glanced, saw Billy’s reply to his early-morning query: Surfaces degraded by soot, smoke. Premise in question.

  Premise in question?

  Max’s eyes narrowed. Yes, his text assumed a murderer returned to destroy evidence. Why else would anyone set fire to the Martin house?

  Max swiftly made a call.

  “Broward’s Rock Police.” Mavis Cameron’s tone was formal, though, of course, she knew the identity of the caller.

  “Hi, Mavis. Max Darling. Can I speak to Billy?”

  “Chief Cameron is in conference.”

  “Will you ask him to call me?”

  There was an instant of hesitation. “He’s had a number of calls this morning. I am keeping a log for him.” Her tone remained formal.

  In other words, don’t hold your breath.

  “Thanks, Mavis.” He ended the connection. He and Annie were meeting at the ten o’clock news conference. Maybe they weren’t going to hear what they’d expected.

  He drove carefully, alert for a deer bounding out from the pines. One of the charms of the island was exuberant subtropical growth, pines and live oaks crowding either side of the road with a thick undergrowth of ferns and tangled vines. Deer, possum, wild boars, cougars, cotton rats, and raccoon thrived. The curving road was still in shadow, the sun not yet high enough to spill over the top of the loblollies. Usually the drive to the island’s southern tip wrapped him in a cocoon of peace, but this morning the final sentence of Billy’s text was a refrain in his thoughts: Premise in question. Annie’s reassurance to Lucy—that her brother’s death was surely now going to be investigated—might also be in question.

  He parked in an oyster-shell lot and strode through a slight mist. He rounded a row of palmettos. This early the boardwalk in front of the shops was empty. Most shops didn’t open until ten. Water slapped against the piers of the marina. Many slips were empty, the charter boats departing early for a day of deep-sea fishing.

  As he stepped out of the shadows, a trim, athletic figure hurried down the steps from the boardwalk. David Corley jogged toward him, jolted to a stop a foot away. The breeze from the marina tugged at his thick blond hair. He was unshaven, eyes staring. He looked as if he’d pulled on the first clothes at hand, a ragged crew sweater, navy sweatpants, and scuffed running shoes.

  David jammed a hand through his tangled hair. “I got to talk to you.”

  • • •

  Annie served mugs of coffee to the waiting trio at the table nearest the coffee bar, dark Italian roast strong enough to hike the Cinque Terre trail for Emma, cappuccino with a dash of brown sugar syrup for Henny, and seasonal pumpkin spice latte for Laurel. Annie indulged her passion for chocolate, topping Tanzanian peaberry with whipped cream and swirls of chocolate syrup. She gestured toward folders at three places. “Max’s summaries of Marian’s background and bios on the birthday party guests. And everything I picked up.”

  She glanced in the mirror and was surprised that she didn’t look an utter hag with only four hours of sleep. Makeup hid the dark shadows below her eyes and she’d chosen a vivid carmine lip gloss. While Emma, Henny, and Laurel read the dossiers and summaries and her bits and pieces of information, she drank coffee, waiting for the life-lifting caffeine-and-chocolate jolt.

  Emma flipped her folder shut, tapped the cover. “Good work.”

  Laurel was thoughtful. “Interesting that Jane had a presentiment.”

  Henny said quietly, “Last night when I read the Gazette, I almost called. I had a sense Marian’s story about Lucy and Paul might trigger trouble. Now I wish I had.”

  Annie understood. She felt, too, as if she’d not looked ahead to imagine a killer’s response. “I’m afraid the paragraph about Lucy hiring a crime expert might have caused the arson. Lucy’s lucky to be alive. I dropped by the hospital a little while ago. Lucy’s doing well, though she still coughs a lot and says her throat hurts. Pamela brewed green tea, added honey and fresh lemon, and Lucy felt better after she drank it. I told Lucy we’d find out who caused the fire.”

  Henny’s dark eyes were grave. “Do you think the intent was to kill Lucy?”

  Annie drank her delectable brew, wished she didn’t remember the hungry flames crawling across the roof of the Martin house and the choking pall of smoke. “Maybe. But the fire was set on the other side of the house from her bedroom. Maybe the plan was to destroy Paul’s study and any evidence there. But whoever set the fire knew she was asleep upstairs.” Her voice shook a little. “Knew and didn’t care.”

  Emma’s gaze was intent. “Does Billy Cameron agree?”

  Annie looked at her in surprise. “W
hat else could he think?” The connection between the Gazette story with Lucy’s claim that Paul had been murdered and the torching of the house was obvious cause and effect. “There’s a press conference at ten. We went by the Gazette after we left the hospital.”

  Henny looked relieved. “The press conference will set everything straight. In fact, Billy may be arranging for Tom Edmonds’s release right this minute. Billy will scour the island now that it’s clear he’s dealing with two murders. Still, we may be able to offer some help. Sometimes people won’t talk to the police.”

  Emma’s strong square face folded in a ferocious frown. “The guest list for David Corley’s birthday is key.” She brushed back a straggly spike of magenta-hued hair that matched her caftan.

  Laurel was emphatic. “Absolutely.”

  Annie tried not to look surprised at Laurel’s immediate grasp of the salient point. That wasn’t fair to her mother-in-law. Laurel might be ditzy. She wasn’t dim. This morning she looked—no surprise to Annie—her customary gorgeous self. Smooth hair golden as sunlit honey framed a patrician face with Mediterranean blue eyes. Stylish as always, her striped sweater was a mélange of fall colors above boot-cut gray twill slacks.

  “Given the circumstances”—Laurel nodded toward Henny—“the guests will be careful in what they say. But I always know where to find out what really happened at a party. I asked Virginia—” She looked around inquiringly.

  Annie nodded as did Emma and Henny. Virginia Taylor was Laurel’s housekeeper and she had a large extended family.

  “—and her cousin Tina works for the Corleys. I talked to Tina last night.” Laurel opened a multipatterned tote bag and pulled out a sheet of paper and a brocade glasses case. She perched Ben Franklin glasses on her nose, which made her look, to Annie’s exasperation, on the sunny side of twenty. “Tina said she was too busy serving and clearing up to pay much attention to the guests. She said Mr. Corley had way too much to drink and was loud and boisterous. Tina’s very active in her church. Missionary Baptist. She said the party had an odd edge to it. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she said, ‘Folks supposed to be having a good time sure had frowny faces when they didn’t think anybody was looking.’ Tina thought the problem might be with the hostess. ‘Miz Corley hasn’t been herself for a week or so, wandering around holding Millie. I think she was making the dog nuts, too.’”