Death Walked In

by Carolyn Hart

  He walked up to Annie. “Officer Douglas Thorpe.” His voice was surprisingly soft for such a big man. He flipped open a notebook. “Your name?”

  He was polite, but he was a moon-faced stranger. “I know Billy’s out of town. Who are you?”

  His eyes narrowed. Maybe in his experience, innocent residents weren’t on a first-name basis with the police chief and his staff and certainly he hadn’t seen any evidence of a relationship with Officer Harrison. “Officer Pirelli isn’t available at the moment. I’m working for the department on a temporary basis. Now, miss, what’s your name?”

  Annie answered questions and tried to decipher the mutter of voices in the living room.

  Max crawled to the end of the porch. He took a chance, hoping the fog was thick enough to hide him. He rose and went over the railing and dropped to the ground. In an instant, he was running low to reach the cover of pines. He took his time, darting from pine to pine. He eased his way to the front of the house. The Corvette was within twenty feet, but there was no more cover. He was almost certain his assailant was long gone.

  Almost.

  He bent, picked up several pinecones. He threw one hard toward the front piazza. It landed with a resounding smack. Max lobbed another and another.

  A crow squawked. Magnolia leaves rustled in a gentle breeze. Nothing else broke the silence.

  Running in a crouch, Max plunged into the open, raced to the car, slammed inside. As he opened the car pocket, his eyes scanned the surroundings. He yanked out the cell phone, saw the signal for missed messages, punched 911.

  “Broward’s Rock emergency center.” The woman’s voice sounded oddly breathless.

  “This is Max Darling. I’m at the Franklin house. Nine Bay Street. I surprised an intruder in the house. When I gave chase, someone shot at me. I’d like for an officer to come and check out the house with me.”

  There was an instant of shocked silence. “Oh, golly, Max, this is Lana Edwards.”

  Max had a swift memory of a plump retired teacher whom he knew from the Haven. She taught chess.

  “I’m helping out while Mavis is gone. There’s nobody available right now.” Her voice was hurried and excited. “We already have an emergency—a lady shot—and the department is shorthanded. Lou had an emergency appendectomy and he got an infection and he’s still in the hospital. They just called in for the crime van and I tracked down Frank Saulter and he’s on his way to drive the van…”

  Max knew the former chief, now retired, didn’t mind being called on. Odd to have a woman shot and another shooting in the same morning and the department short-handed. When Billy headed off to Disney World, he would never have expected a rash of crime in sleepy February.

  “…so you can see we’re stretched pretty thin. I’ll send someone out as soon as I can. Oh, dear”—her voice climbed—“are you hurt? I can come and get you.”

  Max was confident now that his attacker was gone. Probably the gunshots had been intended to prevent pursuit, not harm him. “I’m fine. I don’t think the shots came near me. I’ll drop by the station and make a report after I take a look inside the house.” He was already distancing himself from that shocking moment when shots exploded. He was puzzled by the attack. Bringing a gun when breaking into an empty house seemed extreme and shooting it when discovered even more extreme.

  “Let me see…Yes, that’s what I thought,” Lana continued artlessly, very likely unaware as a substitute that dispatchers never revealed details of investigations or police response. “I checked the map and the house with the shooting is very close to you. If someone shot at you, maybe it’s connected, especially since the call came in from Annie.”

  Max felt as though a giant hand had grabbed his heart and squeezed. A woman shot? A call to 911 from Annie? Annie should be at the store.

  Max fought disbelief. “Annie?”

  Lana Edwards was quick to answer. “She called a little while ago. She found a lady shot in a house on Calliope Lane. It runs northeast from the Bay Street dead end. The woman died while Annie was on the phone, but the ambulance and police—”

  Max turned on the motor, gunned the car, and careened down the drive.

  Officer Thorpe wrote with painstaking slowness. “So your husband’s secretary called you and you came over here?” He frowned. “Why?”

  Annie pointed at the house. “A woman from this house telephoned my husband’s office this morning and asked to speak to him. He was on his way out and didn’t take the call. She continued to talk to my husband’s secretary and finally she said she’d put something in our house—”

  He glanced at his pad. “You live on Scarlet King Lagoon.”

  Annie felt that she was advancing into a swamp and the muddy bottom sucked at her feet. “Right now we do. But we are redoing an old house—the Franklin house—and it’s about a half mile from here.” As she spoke, she realized it might be much less as crows flew.

  Thorpe looked bewildered.

  “Anyway,” Annie kept going, “that’s why Barb called me. She thought if Mrs. Jamison had hidden something in the Franklin house, we should find out about it.”

  “What could she have hidden there?” He sounded skeptical.

  “I don’t know. I hoped to find out.”

  “Did you?”

  “She’d been shot. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t.”

  His eyes narrowed. “She didn’t let you inside?”

  “No. When no one answered the door and I saw the lights on in the living room, I looked in through the window. She was lying where she is now. I saw”—Annie’s voice wavered—“her fingers move. The front door wasn’t locked and I went right in. I called nine-one-one. She tried to speak and I couldn’t hear her so I ended the call.”

  “What did she say?” The pen was poised over the pad.

  Annie remembered a whisper of sound, scarcely heard and ended mid-breath. “…griff…” “It sounded like ‘griff.’”

  “‘Griff ’?”

  “I think so.” She strained to remember. Definitely a gr and surely she’d heard an ffff sound.

  “Maybe a name. Griffin? Or maybe ‘grifter’?”

  “I don’t know.” Annie wondered if anyone today ever used that old-fashioned name for a petty crook.

  Thorpe glanced toward the living room. “Any cops in her family?”

  “I know nothing about her, Officer.”

  His glance was speculative. “Yeah. That’s what you say.”

  Annie almost made a sharp reply, but cautioned herself to be patient. The officer didn’t know her.

  The crime van pulled up behind the cruiser.

  Dust rose as Max’s Corvette arrived at the same time and skirted both the cruiser and the van to slide to a stop in the front yard right by the porch. Max piled out of the car and ran toward the porch.

  Officer Thorpe reached for his gun.

  Annie grabbed to catch his arm. He jumped away to avoid her touch. “Keep your hands away, lady. Don’t touch anything.” Now his gun was free and trained between Annie and Max.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Max kept on coming.

  “Max, stop!” Annie yelled.

  Thorpe held the gun steady. “Hold it, buddy. This is a crime scene. The lady’s hands have to be tested.”

  Frank Saulter reached the steps. “It’s okay, Doug. I’ll take over.” He casually stepped between Thorpe and Max. “Come on out to the van, Annie. It will just take a second. I’ll run the GSR test.” Frank was lean and wiry with sharp features and a sallow complexion. He was a little grayer and more stooped than when he had been the island’s chief cop.

  Thorpe looked at Frank. “You know these people?”

  “Small town, Doug. Sure. They’re okay, but Annie won’t mind if we follow procedure.”

  As they walked to the van under Thorpe’s guard, Annie realized Frank intended to test her hands for gunshot residue. Thorpe was just doing his job.

  Max ignored Thorpe. “Frank, listen, I need to te
ll you—”

  Thorpe broke in, “Stow it for now, buddy. Let’s get her hands done then you can chitchat.”

  Max looked thunderous.

  Annie gave a tiny head shake, murmured, “Hey, it’s okay.”

  Max frowned. “I’d say nothing’s okay right now. What’s going on? What are you doing here? Who’s the dead woman?”

  Thorpe didn’t interrupt this time. Instead, he listened intently as Annie explained about Barb’s call. She realized he was making sure her account to Max agreed with what she’d told him. As she talked, she held out one hand, then the second for the swabs.

  Max looked bewildered. “She hid something in the Franklin house?”

  Annie felt bewildered, too. Was the house chosen because it was unoccupied? “That’s what she told Barb.”

  As Frank finished testing, two more cars arrived, Dr. Burford’s shabby mud-spattered black sedan and Barb’s bright yellow Neon.

  Dr. Burford stalked past them, shaggy gray hair uncombed as usual, face drawn in a dark frown. He was the island’s revered general practitioner, chief of staff at the hospital, and medical examiner. He worked seven days a week, fighting death with the tenacity of a cornered tiger. He loved babies and hated murder. He gave them a short nod, his mind focused on the body that awaited him.

  Barb skidded to a stop beside them, her eyes bright and excited.

  Thorpe glared at her. “Ma’am, this is a crime scene. No loitering permitted.”

  Max ignored him. “Thanks for coming, Barb.”

  Barb looked indignant. “Of course I came. The minute Annie called, I tried your cell. I left a message, then headed here. I couldn’t let Annie be here all by herself. It’s all my fault she’s here. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about the call.” Barb turned huge, anxious eyes toward the small frame house.

  Thorpe stepped nearer, spoke to Barb. “You the secretary?” At her nod, he began with name and address, led her through the morning call missed by Max, the gist of the conversation, and Barb’s decision to contact Annie. He wrote fast. “Yeah, I got it now.”

  Dr. Burford thumped down the front steps, face grim. He stopped beside them. “Death by gunshot. No weapon found. Victim is Gwen Jamison. Apparent murder. They asked if it could be suicide. Sure, if she ate the gun or somebody took it away, but suicides aim for the head, not the chest. Besides, Gwen would never have killed herself. She beat cancer five years ago. She wanted to see her grandbaby born. Fine woman.” His voice was weary. “Been a patient of mine since she was a little girl.”

  Frank Saulter looked grim. “I recognized the address, hoped it wasn’t Gwen.”

  Now the identification was official: Gwen Jamison, dead by an unknown hand on a foggy February morning.

  Frank sealed the samples. He closed the test kit and handed Annie a wipe to clean her fingers. As he turned to head for the house, he said softly to Annie, “Thorpe is okay. He’s a big-city cop. Cut him some slack,” and he was striding toward the porch.

  Thorpe stepped closer to Dr. Burford. “You the dead woman’s doctor?”

  Dr. Burford nodded.

  “Who’s next of kin?”

  “Two sons. Charlie and Robert. Charlie’s held a steady job ever since he was in junior high. Robert”—Dr. Burford looked bleak—“well, it will be easier to find Charlie.”

  Thorpe picked up on Burford’s tone. “What’s with Robert?”

  “Robert’s been a handful for Gwen. I don’t think he has a steady job.”

  Thorpe looked like a dog with a scent. “In trouble?”

  “Some. Nothing too bad. Drunk and disorderly. Stopped a few weeks ago and marijuana was found in his car. He swore he didn’t know anything about it. He’s eighteen now so he’s charged as an adult. He’s out on bail right now.”

  Thorpe reached for his cell. “I’ll get out a pickup call.”

  Burford shook his head. “Robert wouldn’t hurt his mama.”

  Thorpe wasn’t impressed. “Maybe Mama got in his way. Maybe she got on him about something he’d done. Sounds like he’s done plenty.” He nodded toward Barb, “According to her story the woman was worried about something, maybe hid something in their house.” He glanced at Annie and Max. “Their other house. Maybe her son stole something and she was going to try to return it.”

  Max hesitated, said abruptly, “If she hid something in the Franklin house, I may have interrupted somebody this morning who was hunting for it. I got shot at when I chased him.”

  Thorpe swung toward Max, his gaze suspicious. “Get a look at the perp?”

  “No. I heard him running down the stairs. By the time I reached the back porch, he was out of sight in the fog. I heard oyster shells crunch. The sound came from the far end of our garden.”

  “You hear a car start up?”

  Max blinked in surprise. “I didn’t hear anything after the shots.” He’d listened hard for the rustle of shrubbery, the crackle of a twig, anything to mark the approach of an armed adversary. “I’d have heard a car.”

  Thorpe looked around. “Is your place as off the beaten track”—Thorpe’s tone as he scanned the ranks of pines, live oaks, magnolias, and thick underbrush equated the location with a far desert outpost in the Indian subcontinent—“as this house?”

  “We have three acres. Mrs. Jamison’s house may be the residence closest to us.”

  Thorpe tapped his pen on his notebook. “Kind of unusual for a thief to hike to a place to break in. Now”—he sounded patronizing—“if we had a bunch of homeless bums like in the city, a thief on foot would be no big surprise. Here, I don’t think so.” He slapped the notebook shut. “You the only one at your place when this happened?” He sounded skeptical.

  Max was unruffled. “Yes.”

  Thorpe pursed his lips. He glanced at Max’s hands, shrugged, and walked away.

  Max managed a dour smile. “He’s implying I can’t prove anything and maybe I made it all up. I’m surprised he didn’t call Frank out to give me a GSR test.”

  Annie wriggled her fingers. They still felt sticky. “No point in it. Whether a gun went off or not, you had plenty of time to wash your hands before you got here.”

  Max frowned. “You on his side?”

  “Nope. Just seeing it the way he does. And”—she managed a wan smile—“you’re in good company. He didn’t believe a word I said, either.”

  The fog might never have been. The pale blue sky was clear, the air warming into the sixties. Annie parked her Volvo behind Max’s Corvette near the front steps of the Franklin house. She jumped out and hurried to join him.

  Max smiled as she neared, but his eyes were thoughtful. “Maybe you should go on back to the store. Or”—he sounded hopeful—“you can help Barb round up some facts.” Barb had headed straight for Confidential Commissions with a list of questions Max wanted answered. He’d ticked them off in a no-nonsense voice, a wary expression in his eyes, proof that he was still suspicious of Mrs. Jamison’s call to his office. “We need to know more about Mrs. Jamison. I’ll look around inside.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. She was not made of breakable crystal nor was she worried about a sniper. She’d already linked Gwen Jamison’s death to the shots fired here.

  Max was worried. “If the guy who shot at me hung around, he’d have heard me leave in a tearing hurry. If he’s after something Mrs. Jamison hid here, he may have tried again to find it.”

  Annie glanced up at the lovely old plantation home and felt a ripple of fear. However, the prickle of uneasiness made her mad. She didn’t want their beautiful house, the house Max loved, to be off limits because of something dark and dangerous that left death in its wake.

  “I’ll fix that.” She turned and trotted back to her car. Quickly, she was behind the wheel and turning on the ignition. She pressed on the horn, let it blare.

  Max strode toward her.

  She stopped pushing and looked complacent.

  Max bent to the window.

  She nodded with satisfactio
n. “If there’s a bogeyman, he knows we’re here and he’ll hotfoot it away. We’ll give him a few minutes to disappear, then the coast should be—” Her eyes widened, her mouth formed an expressive O.

  Max swung around.

  A large man advanced around the corner of the house, a shiny shotgun cradled in one arm. He was ruggedly handsome with sun-bleached hair, brown eyes, and strong features. A sharp gaze raked them. He was likely in his forties and moved with easy grace as if he could walk for hours and never tire. A red-and-white-checked flannel shirt was tucked into faded jeans held up by a broad leather belt with a huge silver buckle. He walked silently on thick-soled running shoes. He was a man any woman would instantly notice. He had a faintly insolent air.

  Max moved to shield Annie. One hand behind his back made turning motions.

  Annie got it. Max wanted her to start the car. If he jumped out of the way, she could drive right at the man if he lifted the shotgun.

  The stranger’s voice was deep. “Are you Max Darling?”

  Max’s hand stopped turning, flared into a stop sign. “Yes. And you?”

  Their visitor’s pugnacious expression eased. “Hal Porter. Critters No More. You got an aggressive alligator, I’m your man.”

  Annie’s fingers hovered near the key.

  Porter, a good four inches taller than Max’s six-one, stopped a few feet away. “I’ve been keeping an eye on things here. I was in the middle of putting up a bird feeder at the Grant place.” He inclined his head toward the base of the garden. “I heard some shots. I had to get the pole set right in the concrete, then I decided to take a look. Nobody should be shooting a gun off in these woods. They’re private. There’s a bunch of company at the Grants’ this week and somebody might go out for a stroll. I heard a noise in the bushes over by the old cemetery. I gave a shout. Nobody answered. That didn’t seem right to me so I gave the cops a ring. Lady told me there’d been a shooting at the old Franklin house, but nobody could come right now. I gave her my name and said I’d check things out. I came up through your garden, but everything was quiet. Nobody’s been around until you showed up.”