Honeymoon With Murder

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “Who’re you to criticize?” Annie snapped at Webb. “This afternoon you said it didn’t matter a damn.”

  “Changed my mind,” he said shortly. “Goddam, can’t let some son of a bitch get away with hurting Ingrid.”

  “Mind over matter,” Laurel said huskily. “That is all that is important,” and she reached down to pat Ophelia’s turban. “But it certainly can’t do any harm for Maxwell to report on his efforts.”

  Max had yet to answer. They all fell silent, waiting, and the slap of the water mingled mournfully with the fading strains of “In the Garden.”

  “I have accumulated some information,” Max said finally, very formally. “And I have further sources to draw upon. I hope to have a dossier on everyone who lives at Nightingale Courts by tomorrow morning.”

  “You don’t want to share with us what you’ve learned so far?” Henny asked.

  “No.”

  If Annie had been alert, it would have occurred to her that Max had had all day to phone and that he would, by this point, have tapped every ordinary source. She was, however, distracted.

  “I know you will find out everything that matters,” Henny said encouragingly. “I, myself, feel strongly that it is of paramount importance to find out everything we can about Jesse’s actions in recent days. I am putting together a detailed reconstruction of his final day. It began, as most of you know, with an early morning confrontation with Ingrid. But I have discovered other very interesting facts about Saturday:

  “One. At approximately ten-fifteen A.M., Jesse Penrick entered Shangrila Travel Services on the harborfront and engaged the clerk, Karen Sommers, in conversation, inquiring about around-the-world cruises. He evinced interest in journeys departing Miami in October. He left the agency with brochures on the Queen Elizabeth Two.”

  “That’s crazy!” Webb exclaimed.

  Alan laughed. “Brochures don’t cost anything.”

  “Had he ever been to the agency before?” Max asked.

  Henny shook her head. “No record of it.” She paused and waited until they stopped murmuring.

  “Two. At approximately ten-forty, an acquaintance saw him looking through the window of the Piping Plover Gallery.”

  All eyes turned to Alan, who turned his hands palms up in a gesture of helplessness. “I didn’t see him, and I’m sure he didn’t come in. Course, Saturday’s our best day, so maybe he poked his nose in, but I sure don’t think so. And I know he’s never been a customer. I mean, Betsy’s stuff doesn’t come cheap.”

  Henny continued briskly. “From there, I don’t have any report on him until about one P.M., when he was spotted looking over the cars at the Oldsmobile dealership. I’ve tracked down all but two of the salesmen and nobody remembers talking to him.”

  “Nuttier and nuttier,” Duane growled.

  “But any out-of-the-ordinary action may be the key to his murder,” Henny said portentously “I shall continue to ferret out the facts. Now, can anyone else contribute?”

  Annie hesitated, because she wasn’t sure anything Henny’d discovered really mattered, but what harm could it do to pinpoint Jesse’s activities? “For what it’s worth, Adele Prescott said Jesse was using the pay phone outside the Gas ’N Go on Thursday night.”

  “So what?” Alan asked.

  Annie shrugged. “It’s odd, that’s all. According to Adele.”

  Duane agreed. “Yeah, that could be important. Jesse was so goddamned tight, it must have been pretty major for him to spring for a quarter. He didn’t have a phone, wouldn’t spend the money for one. Said he liked to talk to people face to face. What he really liked to do was force himself on people when they didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Like Tom Smith.”

  “Tom Smith! Oh hell, he doesn’t exist,” Max broke in.

  “Oh yes, he does,” Annie contradicted. “Cabin Seven.”

  “Of course, he does, my sweet,” Laurel trilled. “Perfectly amazing miniatures. Even commode pieces in rose porcelain for antebellum mansions. Didn’t you see his booth at the arts and crafts fair yesterday afternoon?”

  Yesterday afternoon. The afternoon of their wedding day. Could it possibly, Annie wondered, have been just yesterday?

  “Somehow I missed that,” Max retorted. It was the nearest Annie’d ever seen him come to sarcasm with his mother. “I don’t care if he’s had a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he’s an invisible man. No bank account. No insurance. No voter’s registration. No clubs, no slogans, no nothing.”

  “He’s a little weird,” Annie conceded. “It’s kind of like he’s not really there.”

  Ophelia pressed her fingers to either side of her turban. “A soul in limbo, estranged and forever alone.”

  Duane exploded. “Oh, shit, stuff it, Ophelia!”

  “Reclusive,” Henny said practically.

  Ophelia scrambled awkwardly to her feet, trembling with indignation. “Duane Webb, you just shut your mouth! Í do too know things that the rest of you can’t see. You are all blindfolded by reality, that’s what’s wrong with you. Your minds are closed to manifestations of the spirit that span the past and the future.” She paused, scrunched her eyes tightly closed and began to breathe deeply. “A black aura,” she intoned heavily, “full of greed, a warped being focused on itself. Evil. It hangs here now; it clutches at us with spectral fingers; it envelops us in a miasma that stifles the soul.”

  “Jesus, what’s with her?” Alan asked.

  “Evil so close,” Ophelia moaned. “Among us, the blackness of death.” She knelled the final word in a trembling basso profundo.

  Laurel made empathetic soothing noises.

  “Oh, shit,” Duane said wearily.

  Ophelia’s voice quivered. “You all say Ingrid’s passed to the other side, and I know she hasn’t! I know it. I held her scarf—and it smelled just like Elizabethan rose potpourri—and I pressed it to my eyes and I could feel her. She’s frightened and her head hurts. Then it faded. If I just had—”

  Laurel reached out and clapped a hand over Ophelia’s mouth. “There, there, my dear. You’ve tried too hard today.” Laurel’s husky voice invited understanding. “Poor, dear Ophelia has absolutely given her all. Trance after trance, but just not quite enough to go on.” She looked reproachfully at Annie. “I don’t believe Ingrid had worn that scarf in weeks!”

  “I don’t know—” Annie began.

  This was more than Duane could tolerate. “Stop all this bloody nonsense. It’s obscene. Obviously, Ingrid’s dead.” He glared at Ophelia. “You and your stupid trances. They aren’t real. You don’t know shit.”

  “Oh yes I do!” Ophelia rejoined.

  “If you know so goddam much, why couldn’t you save your goddam cat you were so crazy about?”

  Ophelia gaped at Duane. She gave a low moan, then lifted both hands to her face, turned, and stumbled away.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Laurel exclaimed. It was as near an expletive as she ever came. With a vexed shake of her golden head, she remonstrated gently. “My dear Mr. Webb, it is most unfortunate that you have distressed Ophelia. I’d best hurry after her. Really, everyone’s quite exhausted. Perhaps we’ll all feel better after a good night’s sleep. Good night, Annie. Good night, dear Maxwell. Good night, everyone.”

  As she wafted, with surprising speed, in pursuit of Ophelia, Annie recalled, with a pang, that she had intended to find out from Laurel just how she and Ophelia had spent the day. And what, if anything, had transpired at Death on Demand. And, of course, Annie wanted to talk to Ophelia about her artless (?) revelation of Ingrid’s quarrel with the victim, plus Ophelia’s own relationship with Jesse. And what was all this about a cat?

  In an uncanny echo of her thoughts, Henny asked sharply, “What happened to Ophelia’s cat?” Henny had four Siamese, and she claimed each was as smart as—if not smarter than—Lillian Jackson Brauns Koko.

  “Poisoned. And Jesse did it, sure as hell.”

  Annie lay tensely on her cot. It was almos
t midnight. She felt as if she’d been in this corner of the tent (Women’s Side) for hours, but actually it had been shortly after eleven when their group returned to shore from the pier. The campfire had burned down to coals, and most of the volunteers had settled onto their cots, mute and exhausted after a long day of searching.

  The good-nights among their group had been subdued and brief, though Annie had expected a little more from Max than a cheery “Nighto, sweetie. See you in the morning.” Was the soul of romance absolutely dead? Not a single lingering glance, not even a fond pat. Had one day of marriage reduced their relationship to such a state? Furthermore—and she wriggled irritably—not even Alan had expressed any desire to spend further time with her, and that was so atypical of his kind as to be remarkable. For an instant, she felt a pang of concern. Had she suddenly become a frump? But, no. Both Max and Alan had edged close enough on the pier. Well, in due time, she thought, all would be revealed. She checked her watch again. Two minutes to the midnight hour. She would wait another fifteen, just to be sure everyone was asleep.

  Max eased open the door to the Maserati, congratulating himself again on his forethought in parking on the far side of Jerry’s Cas ’N Go. He turned the key, the engine sprang to life, and the car crept from beneath the shadows of a loblolly pine. He drove a mile without lights, feeling his way by guess and by God up the narrow sandy road. When he was almost to the intersection with the island’s main blacktop, he flicked the lights on. The Maserati shot forward.

  * * *

  The stiff, uncooperative kickstand screeched. Annie hunkered down beside the bike in the darkest shadows of Ingrid’s carport. The night was alive with surreptitious noise and ominous movement. Her heart raced uncomfortably at each crackle in the undergrowth. Was that a footstep in the blackness beneath the pines? She listened intently, but all she could distinguish was the wind in the pine branches, the slap of water against pilings, the scurry of nocturnal animals in search of prey. Easing onto the bike, she gave the stand a sharp kick and rode behind Ingrid’s cabin across lumpy uneven ground to avoid the faint lights at the corners of the Tent City. She picked up the road as it curved away from Nightingale Courts. Pumping hard, she skirted to the far side of the Gas ’N Go, away from the single lamp that glowed above the phone booth.

  With the lamplight left behind, the road was barely discernible between the darker lines of thickly massed pines, magnolias, sweet gums, and oaks, but Annie began to relax. Actually, it was fun to be wheeling through the night, though an occasional crash in nearby thickets made her devoutly hope she wasn’t about to come face-to-snout with a feral hog.

  She didn’t turn onto the island blacktop. Instead, she crossed it to plunge onto an asphalt golf-cart path that would cut several miles from her journey. Did rats roam at night? And snakes? Her customary after-dark milieu didn’t include swamps. She bent forward and pumped harder.

  Max opened the pantry door in his condominium and smiled. After all, he’d had only the dimmest memory of this closet’s contents, but there they were, his cleaning lady’s rubber gloves. He picked them up, ignored the fact that they were somewhat sticky, stuffed them into a side pocket, then plunged back into the night. Not that he expected anyone ever to learn of his midnight foray, but an intelligent man doesn’t leave absurdly obvious traces behind. Like fingerprints.

  Not that he expected trouble.

  In fact, he felt a kind of rollicking anticipation. He hadn’t realized he had quite this aspect to his personality, this eager approach to the commission of a crime. Perhaps in another day and time (especially if he’d had financial pressures), he might have been quite successful as a Raffles. He would have to watch again his collection of old films about the gentleman crook. After all, he had a lot in common with some of those suave cinema thieves, especially John Barrymore, Ronald Colman, and David Niven. Suave, courageous, daring, devastatingly handsome, no doubt about it.

  He paused beside a sweet-scented hibiscus in the almost empty parking lot to study the dark and silent environs of the harbor shops. The two waterfront restaurants shut their doors at eleven, and the Sans Souci and Lilly Mae’s, on opposite sides of the island, were both discreet watering holes in secluded locations that closed at midnight. So only a late night stroller or perhaps young lovers might be expected to break the post-midnight stillness.

  But a man can walk his dog at any hour.

  Casually, Max strolled from the cover of the hibiscus and started toward the dark alley that ran between the shops, pausing occasionally to whistle for Fido, but keeping, however, as far as possible from the lampposts and their yellow pools of light. He was having a helluva time.

  Annie jammed the bike behind the Dumpster and slunk through the deep shadows to the back door of Death on Demand. As she tried to insert the key into the bookstore’s lock by feel (it was darker than Edgar’s sleek black feathers in this damn alley; next meeting of the Broward’s Rock Merchants Association, she was going to insist on better lighting), she heard the whee-whee-whee-whee-whee-whee-whi of someone whistling for a dog. Frantically, she probed and, finally, as the whistler neared her, made contact with the keyhole, turned it, pulled open the door and slipped inside.

  She rested against the closed door, waiting for her heart to stop thumping. Of course, she had every right to be in her own store, but this was not the time for interruptions. And she needed to hurry.

  She reached up and grabbed the flashlight hanging from a nail on the south wall. Flicking it on, she hurried through the storeroom, intent upon reaching the front cash desk.

  An odd, most unexpected and, frankly, unpleasant odor assailed her. What in the world could it be? Her steps slowed. She turned toward the coffee bar, circled behind it, and aimed the light down.

  No doubt about it. The smell rose from Agatha’s dish.

  A click of nails on the coffee bar announced the cat’s approach. Agatha would, of course, be interested in this peculiarly timed arrival. Annie reached up and stroked her sleek cat, then bent to survey the bowl and its contents more closely.

  Herrings.

  Smoked herrings.

  Or rather, the scraps of that meal, and not many of those.

  Agatha dropped to the floor and began to twine against Annie’s leg, purring loudly.

  Agatha had not during the day learned how to open a tin of smoked herrings. No, the only answer had to be Laurel and Ophelia.

  Annie turned the light on her pet.

  Agatha’s eyes narrowed.

  “Are you all right?”

  The purr was almost disgustingly vigorous.

  Annie picked up the bowl and dumped the remains into the sink, then reached for a spoon to push the mess into the garbage disposal.

  Agatha, moving with her customary agility, landed beside the sink, and before Annie could maneuver with her spoon, the black cat snagged a piece of redolent fish with one paw, clamped it in her mouth and fled.

  “Agatha! Agatha, come back here!”

  One of the least effective vocal exercises known to mankind is to yell an order at a cat.

  Annie closed her eyes briefly. What if Agatha nestled her morsel next to one of the expensive collectibles, such as Hesketh Prichard’s November Joe, the Detective of the Woods ($150) or S. S. Van Dine’s The Casino Murder Case ($75) or E. Phillips Oppenheim’s Chronicles of Melhampton ($125)? Agatha was very fond of nudging her way onto the shelf with the most treasured books. How she knew they were special, Annie didn’t presume to understand.

  Opening her eyes, Annie steeled herself, and, very slowly, swung the light toward the classic collection. No Agatha. So be it. She didn’t have time now to look for her furry friend. Maybe the little glutton was crouched beneath a fern completing her odd feast. She made a mental note to stock up on collectibles. The shelf looked sparser than she recalled.

  Smoked herrings for a cat. God, what else might Laurel and Ophelia have done?

  Annie scanned the shelves. Private Investigator-Police Procedural, Horror-Scie
nce Fiction, Romantic Suspense, Psychological Suspense. So far, so good. She moved up the center aisle, past Caper-Comedy and Espionage-Thrillers, and finally to True Crime and the Agatha Christies.

  A book lay open atop the True Crime section. Annie picked it up. Oh, yes, Allen Churchill’s They Never Came Back, an accounting of famous disappearances. The book opened on the section about Judge Crater. She felt a prickle down her spine. Judge Crater walked up a New York street and was never seen again. Ingrid Jones telephoned from her cabin one September Saturday night …

  Annie shook her head, snapped the book shut, and reshelved it.

  It was at the front of the store, by the cash desk, that she found further evidence of Laurel and Ophelia’s activities. On a square of posterboard, the public was invited:

  TEST

  your

  E

  S

  P

  Divine a title contained in the velvet-swathed box, and it is YOURS.

  An arrow pointed toward the reading area, the cane chair and wicker table enclave along the south wall.

  Annie didn’t attribute her immediate visceral feeling of panic to ESP. It was merely the conditioned response of a mind familiar with the possibilities in a world inhabited by Laurel.

  She found the velvet-swathed box on the first wicker table. (Where had they found the velvet?) Yanking the cloth loose, she opened the lid, turned the light onto the enclosed books and groaned.

  Melville Davisson Post, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason, the authors first book of detective short stories, $250.

  Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer: Detective, $95.

  Arthur Upfield, The Barakee Mystery, review copy, $1500.

  Robert H. Van Gulik, The Chinese Maze Murders, $310.

  Edgar Wallace, Four-Square Jane, $150.

  John Dickson Carr, The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, $150.