Murder Walks the Plank

by Carolyn Hart

  Nellie clapped her hands together and bracelets jangled. “That’s our Barb.”

  Max had a little difficulty picturing bouffant Barb with her penchant for hot pink in the Colorado mountains, but hey, a park ranger? Of course.

  Max stopped in front of Nellie’s desk. His smile slid away as he looked past her at closed double doors. Cherrywood, also, with oversize ornate bronze knobs. “Nellie”—Max nodded toward the private office—“I need to talk to Wayne.” Reed had to be warned that a merciless killer might want to be certain Reed never told what he knew.

  Bracelets tinkled as she reached for a pen. “I’ll take a message, Max. He’s in conference.”

  Despite his law degree, Max had never practiced law, but he knew the lingo. In conference covered everything from intense work to afternoon delight to postprandial naps. “This can’t wait. Tell him I’m here about Meg Heath’s murder.” Max was determined to see the lawyer. “Tell him his clients are under suspicion.” That should get Reed’s attention.

  Her eyes widened. “Murder? Mr. Reed said it was an accident.”

  Max pointed at the intercom. “Give him a buzz, Nellie, please.” Max rehearsed his message: Two people were dead, probably by the same hand, and another murder had been attempted. Reed could rest on privilege if he wished, but he would be well advised…Abruptly Max realized that Reed’s secretary had made no move to speak to the lawyer. Max jerked his gaze from the doors to the desk.

  Nellie’s thin face puckered with worry. “I can’t buzz him. Mr. Reed’s a bear about not being bothered when he says he’s in conference. He most specifically told me”—her voice was anxious—“that he wasn’t to be disturbed under any circumstances this afternoon.”

  Max was not prone to presentiments. In fact, he wouldn’t have known a presentiment if he fell over it except for explication by Annie in regard to the conventions of the gothic novel. Ill-defined apprehension, according to Annie, was an art form when practiced by Mary Roberts Rinehart, one of America’s earliest crime novelists and at one time the most highly paid author in the country. Annie would have insisted that the sudden uneasiness in his intestines was exactly what a beleaguered heroine might experience when creeping down the cellar steps to explore that loud bang. Max dismissed the feeling. He was simply irritated, and he had no intention of being thwarted by Wayne Reed.

  “I understand. I’ll take care of it.” He strode around her desk.

  Nellie’s chair squeaked as she pushed it back, clattered to her feet, calling out, “Max, wait, no. He’ll be furious!”

  Max was already banging at the huge double doors. “Wayne, Max Darling here.” His hand dropped to the knob, tried to turn it. He jolted to a stop. The knob was unyielding, the door immovable.

  Frowning, he swung toward Nellie, who stretched out a hand in appeal. One part of his mind registered that Reed certainly had his secretary cowed, but that didn’t matter now. “Do you have a key?”

  She blinked in surprise. “It’s locked?”

  Max tried the knobs, rattling them hard, then banged again with both fists. “Hey, Wayne, open up.” Finally he stepped back, glared at the door. If Reed was there, surely he would have responded, quite likely in a tearing rage if Nellie’s reaction was any barometer. If he wasn’t there…Once again uneasiness swept Max. Okay, okay. If he wasn’t there, he was out and about. No big deal. There had to be another exit. He’d simply not bothered to tell his secretary he was leaving.

  But Max moved fast, propelled by that insidious, indefinable sense of wrongness. He hurried to the office door, flung it open, stepped into the hall. Yes, there was another door halfway down the hall. Max strode down the hall, tried the knob. Locked. How about…He reached the end of the hall and the back exit. He pushed outside into the afternoon heat. Stairs led down to a dusty alleyway. Max thudded down the steps, moved to a back window of the lawyer’s office. He hesitated for only a moment, then pushed at the window. To his surprise, it moved up easily. He stood very still, listening to the matter-of-fact sound of Wayne’s voice: “…and in the first instance, the court has made it clear that…”

  The bike path crossed Painted Lady Lane. Rachel stopped in the shade of a huge magnolia, looked to her right. There was no sign of Cole. Painted Lady Lane curved in a lazy S to meander to a dusty dead end, a desolate, down-at-heel street with a modest past and little future. Rachel remembered her disdain the day she’d ridden her bike to see the place where That Woman lived. She couldn’t believe Pudge would consider living on an ugly street like Painted Lady instead of staying in Annie’s nifty tree house where owls and cardinals and ruby-throated hummingbirds hung out, so close you could see the shine of their feathers. Her judgment had been swift and merciless. That’s why Sylvia was chasing Pudge. She wanted to live in a nicer house.

  Rachel bit her lip. Her hands tightened on her handlebar grips. She could go home, change into her swimsuit, bike to the beach. Bobby Higgins was always funny. His freckled face would be splotched with zinc oxide, he’d have his baseball cap on backward with only an occasional wiry red curl escaping, his trunks would sag so far down they’d half cover his knobby knees, and somehow, without saying a word, eyes wild, arms akimbo, knees turned inward, he’d have them all rolling in the sand they’d be laughing so hard. Sun, sand, sea. Fun.

  She wanted to turn her bike and fly away up the path, leave this shabby street, never see these trashy houses or Cole Crandall again. He would sneer at her. She knew he would….

  Abruptly she remembered the look on his face, the way he’d hunched his shoulders. Slowly she turned her front wheel a little to the right.

  He’d laugh at her.

  The idea of ridicule froze her in place. Then, not allowing herself to think, she grabbed her cell phone from her backpack. She punched the code for Annie’s cell. She was disappointed when voice mail picked up. But it didn’t matter. She’d leave a message. Once she committed herself, once she told Annie what she was going to do, well, she’d have to do it. She took a deep breath. “Annie…” The words spilled out fast before she could change her mind.

  In the Heath drive, Annie cast a look back at the fairy-tale house shining in the sun, the expanse of glass bright as sunlit diamonds and just about as pricey. Emma had said she liked money as a motive. It looked as if Emma was going to be right, as usual. Or if not precisely on point, too close to quibble. Jenna Carmody and Jason Brown must have been shocked and appalled and furiously resentful when Meg informed them that there would be no great wealth for them, that, in fact, Meg intended to oversee the return of all Heath’s estate to his estranged son, Peter. Jenna saw her mother’s decision once again as an abandonment of her and Jason. Had Jason been as hurt as Jenna by Meg’s turning away from them to a man who’d discarded her so many years ago? Or for Jason was the prospect of losing his comfortable status the primary offense? Claudette’s anger might be twice as strong. She not only foresaw losing money that she had expected to receive and to which she surely felt entitled, but perhaps even worse, she saw Meg’s willingness to jettison Duff’s estate as the ultimate rejection of the man Claudette had loved for so long.

  The late afternoon heat pushed against Annie as she hurried toward the parking lot. Earlier she’d walked to the house, uncertain whether her quarry was Jenna, Jason, or Claudette. She felt no nearer the solution. But of them all, perhaps Claudette was the strongest, most determined personality.

  Annie reached the car, quailed at the thought of sitting on the equator-hot leather seat. She started the motor, turned on the air-conditioning, and escaped to the shade of the live oak to let the interior cool. Her thoughts tumbled: Jenna, Jason, or Claudette, Claudette, Jason, or Jenna. One of them, it had to be one of them.

  She pulled out her cell phone, turned it on, began her jig to avoid the no-see-ums. Three beeps signaled messages. She ignored the beeps. Should she call Billy first or Max or Emma? Emma’s grid of the excursion boat was looming large in Annie’s mind. If anyone had spotted Jason, Jenna, or Claude
tte near the deck where Pamela went overboard, that would be important now, very important. Before she could make up her mind, the phone rang. A punch. “Hello?”

  “Annie.” Max’s cell crackled, usually a signal he was in his car, something about radio waves on the island as she imperfectly understood it. “I talked to Jason and found out—”

  She broke in. “I know. Meg was going to give the money away.” Annie had a quick vision of Meg Heath, gay, imperious, hewing to her own vision of what was right, quite willing to let the devil take the hindmost. Annie could almost hear Meg’s throaty laughter. But this time when Meg followed her own desires, this time had the price been steeper than she had ever imagined? Meg had lived her life blithely impervious to the anger or disagreement she engendered. But this time everybody was furious. And someone was mad enough to kill.

  “Right. All of them kept their mouths shut about Meg’s plans, as per instructions from Wayne Reed. Jason said Reed warned them that Billy would look more closely at Meg’s death with that kind of motive on the table. Reed had every right to keep quiet about it, but I wondered if it had occurred to him that somebody might make sure he didn’t tell the police. I went to his office. He’d told his secretary not to put any calls through. I banged on his door. No answer. I yelled.”

  Annie recognized the determination in his voice. When easygoing Max made up his mind, there was no stopping him.

  “So I went around to the back.”

  Annie frowned, trying to visualize where Max was.

  “Reed’s suite is in the Black Skimmer office park. An alley runs behind the complex. I went outside and pushed up a back window in Reed’s office. I heard him dictating a brief. I yelled again. He kept right on talking. No pause. I pushed aside the drapes and swung over the sill. I still heard him. But he wasn’t in the office. Nobody was. His Dictaphone was on the desk and it was running.”

  Annie moved toward the car, slipped into the cooling front seat. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. Maybe he was listening to a tape, wanted to be sure of some citations, got a call on his cell, and left in a hurry. Or maybe”—now his voice was worried—“he heard me bang on his door and decided he better check with Jenna or Jason before he talked to me. I hope not.” Max once again felt that nudge of uneasiness. But most likely Reed was fine.

  “Anyway, Billy needs to know about all this. Maybe he can have Pirelli look for Reed. Billy’s out on the fourth hole…”

  The connection faded.

  Annie frowned. “Fourth hole?” Outrage lifted her voice. “How can he be playing golf?”

  “…found Sherman’s car sunk in the lagoon. If his luggage is in the trunk, Billy will see that the murder doesn’t figure to be the result of a holdup or carjacking. That will turn the investigation back to Meg Heath. Why don’t you meet me at the fourth hole?” The connection ended.

  Annie clicked End, saw the notice of three messages. She backed out of her parking spot and clicked the first message.

  Rachel rode fast. She wanted to get to the Crandall house, talk to Cole, and leave. She was already regretting her message to Annie. If she hadn’t promised that she would try to persuade Cole to come over with his mom Friday night, she would turn around right this minute and go faster than Lance Armstrong. Why had she been so stupid?

  The memory of Cole’s face again popped into her mind. She couldn’t banish it. Okay, that’s why she was going. She didn’t want to ask him over with his mom. She didn’t want to be around old witch-faced Sylvia. She wanted to hold on to Pudge and have everything be the way it used to be, Pudge and Annie and Max all together with her, the four of them laughing and having fun. But Annie’s invitation to Cole gave her a reason to go up to his front door and ring the bell, and when he came to the door, she would see his face and know if he needed help. That’s why she had to go. She had this bad feeling that Cole was in trouble and she was the only one who knew. Annie had helped her when things were so scary in her life that she’d not known what to do or who to trust.

  If she was wrong, and Cole just had a headache or was in a bad mood, if he came to the door and treated her like dirt, well, she’d tell him what she thought about him and his mother. She could be snotty, too. Rachel hunched over the handlebars, legs pumping. Sweat streaked her back, puddled into her socks. Dust puffed under her wheels. What a crummy street to live on. She came around a curve. There was that creepy abandoned old farmhouse, the roof sagging, the windows broken out. Probably bats nested in the attic. On this far loop of Painted Lady Lane, the only structures were the wrecked farmhouse and, a hundred yards farther on, all by itself at the edge of overgrown woods, the blue rental house where Cole lived. Paint hung in tattered shreds from the faded walls. A front shutter dangled on one hinge. The second tread was missing from the front steps. Part of the latticework that screened the space beneath the house had fallen in, leaving a dark gaping hole. Lots of lizards and spiders under there. Cole’s bike lay on its side not far from the steps.

  Rachel rolled to a stop, frowned at the bike. Cole had a nice bike. Lots nicer in its way than his house. He kept it polished and clean. There was no trace of salt rust on the pedals or the kickstand or the frame. Funny that he’d bang it down, the handlebars twisted, the front wheel sharply angled, the good-quality blue leather seat stubbed against a rotten old tree stump. A skink poked his reddish head out of the broken center of the trunk. After a frozen instant, the lizard skittered over the tilted seat, disappeared into head-high grass.

  Rachel waited a moment to be sure the skink wasn’t coming back toward her, then balanced her bike on its kickstand. She skirted Cole’s bike. She was halfway up the front steps when she heard a low, hoarse call from the side of the house.

  The tour bus belched smoke. Annie poked out the nose of the Volvo, swung the wheel hard right to swerve back into her lane. The oncoming traffic whizzed past, making her progress behind the lumbering coach seem even slower. She listened to Ingrid’s message: “…so I think I know who made the whispery call yesterday. You remember, there was a call for you that I could scarcely hear. Anyway, a few minutes ago”—Annie judged the time. Ingrid’s call was logged in at 12:05 p.m. A few minutes prior to that would have been around noon—“you got a call. Young voice. Male. He was really disappointed when you weren’t here, said he needed to talk to you, that you had asked any of the guys who had been on the lookout on the Island Packet Sunday night to get in touch with you if they had anything to report. I thought this might be important. He wasn’t whispering today, so I guess he wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing him, but he sounded stressed. I gave him your cell number and I wanted to alert you that he might call. He said his name was Cole Crandall. Hope Pamela’s continuing to improve. We’ve had a lot of calls about her. I told everyone she was in Savannah at a private nursing facility. Everything’s fine here. A book club from Beaufort came by and cleaned us out of all our Joan Coggin titles, said they’d seen your review of Who Killed the Curate? in our newsletter.”

  Annie turned off the air-conditioning to block the acrid fumes from the tour bus. She noted the Tomlin family’s roadside produce stand with its mounds of squash and cucumbers and plump home-grown tomatoes and red onions and big green-and-white-striped watermelons. Their stand was less than a half mile from Sand Dollar Road. The bus then had to turn right or left. Hopefully not left, as that would be her turn to go to the Island Hills Country Club.

  The second message began: 12:09 P.M. “Mrs. Darling, this is Cole Crandall. I was one of the guys on lookout Sunday night on the mystery cruise. The lady fell from the deck I was patrolling. You asked me if I saw anything. Well, I didn’t see her. Like I told everybody, I’d gone in to get a Pepsi. Just before I went inside, I was walking toward the back of the boat and I heard a funny noise somewhere behind me, a kind of popping sound. I turned around and looked back. There was a lifeboat there. I didn’t see a soul. Anyway, after a minute, I walked on down to the end. I looked over the stern, then came back a
long the deck to the doors. It was hot, and I decided since there wasn’t anything going on outside I’d go in. Anyway, I was in line for a Pepsi—”

  Annie wished she had a big fizzy Pepsi right this minute. She could almost feel the buzz on her tongue, the sweet trickle down her throat. Maybe she’d stop at the golf snack shop, get a couple for her and Max. Oh, one for Billy, too. Heck, she’d buy a half dozen. It would be a thirsty crew winching that car out of the lagoon. The bus slowed to a crawl. It took all Annie’s willpower not to push the horn and hold it.

  “—when all the commotion started. I ran out on the deck and people were pointing and yelling. I thought they were pointing at me, then I saw her falling. She’d gone over the side right by that lifeboat. By the time they got her out of the water and into the saloon, everybody wanted to know if I’d seen her go over and of course I hadn’t. I didn’t think even once about that noise. I mean, it was just a little popping sound. I never thought of it again until yesterday afternoon when I heard it again.” His voice sounded thin. “The minute I heard it, I knew what it was. But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Stuart’s dad have been up there on that deck? And if he was, why didn’t he tell anybody? Maybe he saw something. He’s a lawyer. I thought lawyers always helped out the cops unless they’re on the other side. But I don’t think Stuart’s dad is that kind of lawyer. Like I said, I heard that sound just before I went inside. So he must have been on the other side of the lifeboat, cracking his knuckles. Yesterday afternoon—he and Stuart were fussing at each other cause Stuart wanted some money so we could go buy some CDs—”

  Annie imagined Cole’s discomfort, unwilling witness to bickering.