Death Walked In

by Carolyn Hart

  The headline was big and black:

  MURDER CLAIMS ISLAND REALTOR

  Annie scanned the story. It was amazing how much detail Marian Kenyon had included even though she’d had to work against a quick deadline. There was a portrait shot of Denise Cramer, photos of the Grant house, the Franklin house, and Gwen Jamison’s home. A boldface sidebar read:

  Is there a deadly triangle on Broward’s Rock? See artist’s rendition page 3.

  Annie flipped to page 3. A bright red isosceles triangle was turned on its side with the base perpendicular. A black skull marked each end of the base with a third at the tip.

  The caption was worthy of a 1930s radio serial:

  Death stalks the island. Should residents beware the sinister happenings that have occurred at three residences which form a perfect triangle?

  Skull 1 marks the home of Gwen Jamison whose body was found Wednesday morning.

  Skull 2 marks the residence of Geoffrey Grant which was the site of a high-dollar theft of gold coins Monday night. Island Realtor Denise Cramer was found bludgeoned to death Friday morning in a cottage on the grounds.

  Skull 3 marks the unoccupied but refurbished ante-bellum Franklin house where the stolen Double Eagles reputedly are hidden, accounting for several attempts to break into the house. Gunfire has erupted though there have been no injuries. An armed guard is now on duty at all times.

  Police officials are discouraging any visits to these sites.

  Annie reached for the phone. She wondered if it would faze Marian if Annie suggested that the next issue might as well dub the houses the Bermuda Triangle of the Low Country and be done with it. She doubted Marian would feel an iota of shame. In fact, she was likely floating on a cloud of self-approval. Her husky voice would proclaim, “It’s the new journalism, baby, up close and personal. Get ’em in the gut.”

  The phone rang.

  Annie glanced at caller ID. Miss Pinky’s Pantry. Miss Pinky, aka Paula Paine Pratt, was the proud proprietor of a combination tea shop and secondhand store crammed with antiques, collectibles, and dusty old books. Miss Pinky, as might be expected, was always garbed in pink, fluffy, frothy, filmy masses of pink. Her white hair had a pinkish tinge, she chirped in a high sweet voice, and never, never, never had an unkind word to say. She also had a shrewd gleam in her eye, likely the inheritance from a Yankee trader forebear who’d landed on the island shortly after the Civil War, married a local girl, and never left. Woe betide any outlander who thought Miss Pinky could be gulled. Smiling sweetly, she was famed for coming out the better in any trade.

  Annie smiled as she lifted the phone. “Hi, Miss Pinky.” The old dear had a passion for Patricia Wentworth titles and was eagerly replacing some of her tattered copies with the new editions now coming out.

  “Oh, my dear, it always gives me a moment’s pause when I phone and before I can say a word I’m already known. It almost smacks of the occult though I know it’s just more of that connectedness they are always telling us about. I swear the next thing you know we’ll all have to wear implanted chips that tell more than we want anyone to know. Why, now they can identify you by taking a picture of your eye and they say it’s even better than a fingerprint. I for one would like to go back to the days when they didn’t have records on us that go six ways from Sunday. But of course it’s such a help to historians, though everyone says digital cameras are a bane. How can you make a scrapbook or have a box of old pictures when everything’s on a silly little disk? But it’s history that worries me now.”

  Annie was smiling. Miss Pinky was in vintage form. “History is troubling you?” Annie wondered what aspect of history was causing Miss Pinky’s distress.

  “It’s been my experience and quite often a source of profit to me,” the high sweet voice was confiding, “that there is always something behind a flurry of interest in a particular subject. Mark my words. If I get several calls for an early silver coffeepot by Samuel Kirk of Baltimore, I know one must have sold on eBay for a huge sum. Or if that film actress who built that mansion on the south end of the island calls and asks for a Hepplewhite armchair made before 1790, you can take it to the bank that one of her neighbors just found one in Charleston. This morning I received an inquiry from Maggie Owens. She owns the Silver Horse in Chastain.”

  Annie sipped her coffee, remembering the collectible shop on Ephraim Street. Its proprietor was a lean woman who favored turtlenecks and jodhpurs and who indulged her passion for horses with the largest collection of horse memorabilia in the Low Country.

  “Maggie wanted a copy of A History of the Franklin House by Miss Agnes Merton, the very one you bought a few weeks ago. She offered me a substantial sum for it. She said she had a customer come in Friday morning who was desperate for the book. That waved a red flag because I had an inquiry about the book this week. This morning I read yesterday’s Gazette. When I saw that triangle, I knew I had to call you.”

  Annie no longer felt comfortable and mildly amused.

  “I heard that Gwen Jamison hid those stolen coins in the Franklin house and you’d been having all kinds of trouble there, so folks wanting to know all about the Franklin house may be up to no good. Now I don’t go around talking about my customers. Least said soonest mended. And a mote in my eye may not be a beam in yours. And maybe it’s nothing more than somebody putting two and two together and thinking they might as well skim the cream as anybody else.”

  Annie looked toward the bookshelf where the slim gray volume was tucked. She held tight to the receiver. “Who’s hunting for the book?” And for a fortune in coins. Was it going to be this simple? Would Miss Pinky in an instant tell Annie in a breathy, dithering voice the name of the figure who’d moved unseen leaving death behind?

  “She looked like she’d traveled a long road when she came into the shop. That was Thursday afternoon. By that time there wasn’t a man, woman, or child on the island who didn’t know there was a fortune somewhere in the Franklin house. She asked me to try and find a copy, said she was collecting books about old island houses and she needed that one.” Miss Pinky’s sniff was delicate as a cat’s sneeze. “I could have told her she didn’t have me fooled. I taught first grade for thirty years and I can tell you that when a body’s eyes skitter like a marionette’s jerky foot, there’s not a word of truth being said. I told her I didn’t have a copy on hand but I’d see if I could round one up. Then I got that call from Maggie. I asked her if Rhoda Grant was the customer and she’d asked me to hunt for it and no sense in both of us…”—Miss Pinky’s words danced in Annie’s mind—“…online…who else would know better that those coins…maybe trying to help out her husband…”

  Somehow Annie thanked her and ended the conversation and all the while she fought bitter disappointment. For a moment, she’d thought the answer was at hand and hoped to take a name—the name—to Officer Harrison.

  Rhoda Grant. It would do no good to call Officer Harrison. No matter what Rhoda’s motive in seeking the history, she was not on the island Friday morning when Denise Cramer was murdered, that was certain and definite. Now Annie knew what Rhoda had done off island. She had canvassed the antique and secondhand and collectible stores in Chastain, seeking a copy of The History of the Franklin House. She hadn’t taken the ferry Friday morning to leave behind the pressures of theft and murder, she had hurried to the mainland seeking information about the Franklin house. If she discovered the hidden cache, what was her intention? To restore the coins to her husband and deliver a murderer’s name to the police? Or was she working for her own advantage, seeking the coins for their value?

  Annie hurried to the bookcase. She lifted out the thin little book with its pebbled gray cover.

  Chapter 17

  Max pumped another quarter in the parking meter. He resumed his slow stroll up and down the street. The state flag, a palmetto and silver crescent against a blue field, and the Stars and Stripes hung above the broad double doorway of the courthouse.

  He hoped he’d made the r
ight decision to stay outside and have Kerry and Barb speak to Posey unaccompanied. Without Max there, Posey was more likely to listen. Max reached the corner, turned back. He picked up his pace when the doors opened and Kerry and Barb came out. He felt a shock of disappointment. Kerry moved as if she were old and sick. Barb clung to her arm for support.

  Max met them at the bottom of the steps. “Did you see Posey?”

  “He accused me of lying.” Barb’s voice shook. “He said I was trying to protect Ben. He said Geoff made it clear Ben was guilty.”

  Kerry’s eyes looked empty and lost. “They found bloodstains in the well behind the seat of Ben’s MGB. Posey said it was top-notch police work that they found the stain. Thorpe used a dog to smell around the property including the cars parked on the east side. The dog pawed on the door of Ben’s car and whined. They got a search warrant. The dog sniffed in the seat then poked his head in the well. They used a special light and found a blood smear. Posey’s convinced Ben had blood on his hands and he cleaned them up and hid the cloth there until he had a chance to get rid of it later, but the blood was so dark he didn’t see the smears. If lab tests show the blood matches Denise’s, they’re going to charge him with murder. Posey said the poncho protected his clothes but his hands got bloody.”

  Annie opened the small volume, skimmed a history of the settling of the island—“Captain Josiah Broward, an experienced planter from the West Indies, built the first plantation in 1724 and made a fortune with early crops of long staple cotton”—until she found a description of the Franklin house:

  Built in 1805, the Franklin house is an excellent example of Low Country architecture with two-story verandahs that wrap around three sides, inset chimneys, and a hipped roof. The drawing room ceiling is in pure Adam style. Its first inhabitants were Walter Franklin, his wife Matilda, and their six children, Juliet, Andrew, Carson, Harold, James, and Nathaniel. Franklin was a sea captain who was often absent on long voyages. His ship went down off Cape Hatteras in 1820. Of the children, Carson, Harold, and James were lost to yellow fever in 1809. Thereafter, their mother Matilda was often seen in the still of the night, circling their graves. This may account for the legend of the grieving lady in white, a ghost still glimpsed in the cemetery on Locke Road. The house was passed to Andrew, the eldest son, upon his father’s death. Andrew achieved great wealth as a plantation owner with rice and indigo…

  Impatiently, Annie flipped through the pages: the house served as a hospital during the War Between the States…was later sold for taxes…owned by a Northern industrialist…a gift to his daughter Rosemary upon her marriage in 1907…a portion lost to fire in 1927…. Annie continued to flip through the pages, then a passage gripped her:

  Miserly Horace Kingsley, at one time the wealthiest man on the island, distrusted banks after the failures during the great depression of the nineteen thirties. He was reputed to have built a “safe” place in the house where he kept a fortune in diamonds. There are many stories as to the disposition of the jewels. One tale has it that Horace bestowed them upon his mistress Theodora, who went to Paris and held a great salon for poets and writers. Another suggests that his wastrel son Frederick stole the diamonds and gambled away the proceeds in New Orleans. Whatever the truth and whether the diamonds ever existed, Horace Kingsley died of tuberculosis in a charity ward in Savannah. However, a secret place presumably exists as island lore recounts that the Michael McKays, who owned the house in the nineteen forties, enjoyed showing their friends the cleverly concealed hiding place. At one time, Miss Letitia Prescott, the last owner, stitched in needlework on a cushion a rhyme which pointed the way.

  Annie grabbed the phone. She called the police department, frowned when she got voice mail. Where was everybody? Probably in Beaufort or, with Ben Grant in jail, enjoying time off. That no one was on the dispatcher’s desk on Saturday morning wasn’t a big surprise since they were shorthanded and had been working extra hours. The recorded message began: “In case of emergency dial nine-one-one. The police department is open…” She wriggled with impatience. Finally she was offered a menu. She entered Harrison’s extension. “Officer Harrison, this is Annie Darling. I may have found directions to the hiding place in the Franklin house. I’m on my way there now.” Annie glanced at her watch. “It’s a quarter to ten. If I find anything, I’ll call nine-one-one.” Until she looked, she didn’t know if it were important enough to roust an officer from off duty. She clicked end, punched Max’s number. She willed him to answer. He didn’t and the call was directed to voice mail. Would he ever, ever, ever start carrying his cell instead of leaving it in the glove compartment of his car? Well, it served him right if he missed out on the excitement of finding the Double Eagles. As she walked toward the front door, she left her message. “Max, I’ve got directions to the hiding place…”

  Once again the Corvette nosed behind the Toyota on the ferry. Max put down the windows and breathed in the salty scent of the sea with a dash of diesel fuel. As the Miss Jolene chugged toward the island, laughing gulls gave their distinctive cry. Max usually enjoyed the twenty-minute crossing, but today he felt edgy and uncertain.

  The smear of blood in the well of Ben Grant’s MGB without doubt would match Denise Cramer’s. A charge of murder would promptly follow, murder in the first degree. No one goes calling with a baseball bat without premeditation.

  Max’s eyes narrowed. Could Ben, if he were guilty, have ended up with bloody hands? Yes. Why not throw the cloth behind the nearest bush? Possibly the cloth could be linked to him and had to be hidden for later disposal. Was the well in his MGB a good place to stash a stained cloth? Almost. He would have gotten away with it except for the police dog. Could someone else, a shadowy figure who seemed to be able to move unseen leaving death behind, have deliberately smeared a cloth with blood and wiped its grisly dampness in the well and pulled the cloth out again? It was possible.

  If so, the murderer planned Denise’s murder with care and precision and set out deliberately to create a trail to Ben.

  Why Ben?

  Ben knocked on Denise’s back door. Perhaps it was that simple. Perhaps it might have been any one of the others except that Ben was seen at the cottage.

  Was the murderer clever enough to leave a less than apparent smear and trust the police to uncover it? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If it hadn’t been found, no harm done, but the blood was found.

  There was one fact that might induce the police to look beyond the obvious. If Ben’s car had been unlocked, as cars so often were on the island, it would be possible to argue that the bloodstain had been planted just as the murder weapon had been placed in Robert’s trunk. Surely the police would see the parallel. The murderer had already demonstrated a talent for improvisation. The murderer couldn’t have known Robert would come to the Grant house Wednesday morning or that Ben would go to the cottage, but in each instance the murderer had taken advantage of circumstances.

  Everything hinged on whether Ben kept his car locked. Max opened the glove compartment and picked up his cell. Officer Harrison would know the answer.

  He had a message from Annie. Maybe she wanted to meet at Parotti’s for lunch. He punched to listen.

  Annie flung herself from the car, ran up the back steps of the Franklin house. Her slam-bang arrival was precipitous enough to startle a flock of glossy greenish-blue jackdaws from the roof. They squawked in protest as they rose and wheeled toward the marsh. She hurried to the door, key in one hand, the slim volume in the other.

  She was breathing fast when she skidded to a stop in the central hallway. The Palladian window on the landing blazed with color, spilling streaks of red and gold and violet down the steps, emphasizing the richness of the mahogany banister. Annie stared at the decorative carving of a griffin atop the newel post. The griffin was large as a crow, sharp-beaked with the head, wings, and claws of an eagle on the muscular body and hind legs of a lion.

  Gri…ff

  Gwen Jamison had made a last, desperate eff
ort. She forced dying lungs to expel the beginnings of a word: Gri…ff

  Annie took one step forward, another, touched the pointed ears, the stylized representation of feathers. She didn’t look again at the page marked by her thumb. She knew the rhyme now, would never forget it:

  Griffin stares,

  Lambs in pairs.

  Look straight,

  Count eight.

  Jiggle right,

  Hold tight.

  She lifted a hand until it was level with the griffin’s eyes. As high as her shoulder. Now she turned and faced in the direction of the griffin’s stare. She felt a surge of triumph. The griffin faced the doors to the drawing room. The doors were wide open and across the expanse of the huge room was the fireplace, the old and beautiful fireplace with its pattern of blue-and-white Delft tiles.

  At the fireplace, Annie forced herself to be patient. She looked back at the griffin and positioned herself in a straight line with him. Up to her shoulder…Her hand touched the fireplace at that level. Two blue lambs frolicked forever on the creamy tile. She counted down eight bricks. Kneeling, she bent near. Was the join without any mortar? She moved her fingers to the right end of the brick and pushed hard.

  The brick didn’t move.

  Jiggle right…

  Annie stiffened her fingers, gave the brick three sharp taps at its right end. As if she’d turned a key, the brick slid away from her fingertips, pivoting into the fireplace. The left side swung out over the hearth. With it came a musty scent. As quickly as the small space opened, it began to close, the aperture vanishing with eel-like swiftness.

  Annie gripped the open end.

  Hold tight.

  A system of pulleys or springs apparently controlled the mechanism. She switched hands, her right hand now firmly tucked around the brick. With her left, she gingerly reached into the opening. Her fingers closed on a lumpy package. She felt the slickness of a plastic trash bag and the roughness of duct tape. She was swept by amazement and dread and excitement. In her hand she held—