“Obstacle?”
Poised in the kitchen doorway, Laurel sighed gently. “Mr. Posey is so averse to reason, isn’t he?” She glanced down at the sweater. “There is so much to do,” she murmured. “But surely I can find the time. I know, Annie, I’ll talk to Mr. Posey.” She nodded decisively, and her soft, golden hair rippled like sun-kissed water.
“Oh, my God, no.” Annie heard the horror in her voice. She took a deep breath. “No. No, Laurel. I appreciate the offer. I do indeed. It is marvelous of you, but I believe it will be best if I talk to him. As you say, you, uh, have so much to do.”
“That is true.” The fine brow crinkled pensively. “Yes, that’s true. Well, then, I will leave it to you, my dear.” She smiled warmly. “I know you will do your best. And not lose your temper.” She lifted a hand in farewell. “Until tomorrow, Annie dear.” And she was gone, leaving only the haunting scent of lilac behind her.
The whispers were fairly low, but a faint undercurrent of bonhomie and scotch lifted them on the night air.
“Good night, Henny. Good hunting.”
“Good night, Max. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Most fun I’ve had in years. Maybe we both missed our calling. We’d make a swell pair of second-story men.”
“Just like Raffles?” Annie inquired icily as she stepped out of the shadow of a palmetto to stand squarely in front of the two cat burglars on the dusty, moonlit road.
“Annie.” Henny didn’t sound the least chagrined. “You’ll never guess what we were doing—”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Annie mused. “Picnicking? Canvassing voters? Trading chili recipes? Or perhaps something socially relevant. Planning a day-care center for working mothers?”
“Now, Annie,” Max cajoled.
Henny patted Annie’s shoulder. “Something tells me you two have a lot to say to each other. See you in the morning. Reveille at six. Tallyho,” and she trotted off into the night toward the Tent City.
She left behind a bottomless pool of silence.
“I thought I’d do a little more checking,” Max said vaguely, after a while.
“It was somewhat disconcerting to find you missing from your cot,” she replied crisply.
Max was quiet for a moment, then, his tone distinctly suspicious, he asked, “And what, my love, were you doing, roaming about at this ungodly hour?”
“A little checking,” she retorted, trying hard not to sound defensive.
He began to laugh. After a moment, she did, too.
Each took a step toward the other, then a businesslike throat clearing arrested their movement.
“Heard rustle in the bushes over this way,” Madeleine whispered hoarsely, obviously making a best effort to speak quietly. “Sorry to say, it’s after hours, you know. Camp rules, you understand.”
Which rather put a damper on further conversation.
The newlyweds gave each other a last fond farewell glance, then melted into the night. To the Men’s Side and the Women’s Side, of course.
Monday morning
Annie lifted her steaming mug of coffee in a cheerful breakfast salute to her mate. “At least the coffees good.” It smelled wonderful. But breakfast coffee always did, even if she hadn’t brewed it from one of her favorite grinds.
“I will admit to quite pleasant breakfast interludes,” Max said agreeably, “but I can’t be quit of that communal tent soon enough.”
Their paper plates, with the remnants of the Tent City breakfast (charred bacon this morning), rested on the pier beside them. Up at what Annie considered an obscenely early hour, they’d exchanged good morning nods from their respective spots in the shower lines (Men’s and Women’s, of course), then met at the chow line and carried their plates to the end of the middle pier.
Annie gulped down the rest of her coffee and wriggled impatiently. “I wish the search teams would get started. I can’t wait to get into Jesse’s cabin,” and she rattled Ingrid’s keys in the pocket of her skirt.
Max started to reiterate the protest he’d sounded throughout breakfast, but his bride cut him off.
“Nope. It has to be done. And I can do it. Don’t you have any confidence in me? After all, nobody caught Laurel and me in Ingrid’s cabin last night.”
“Yeah. But that was the middle of the night, and this is broad daylight.”
Actually, it was a murky morning, she thought, but refrained from saying so, heavily overcast, and the gun-metal-grey water had a sullen glitter.
“I’ll be a lookout,” Max said determinedly.
Just as determinedly, she said, “Waste of brainpower. You go on down to your office. With the info from the rental applications, you’ll be able to put together dossiers on everybody. Then we’ll really be in business.”
He was finally persuaded, but gave her several rather endearingly worried looks over his shoulder as he walked down the pier. Annie waved encouragingly; then, as he disappeared from view, she drew her knees up to her chin and contemplated Nightingale Courts.
Despite the lowering sky and the telltale droop of most of the searchers, Annie felt a surge of energy and confidence. The searchers were discouraged, of course, because they’d found no trace of Ingrid, but Annie, banking on Henny’s analysis, felt that every passing hour was further proof of a well-planned and brilliantly executed abduction.
From her vantage point at the end of the pier, she studied Nightingale Courts, all the cabins, the central area where the canvas tent snapped in the freshening wind, the honeysuckle-laden arch, the mailboxes—
Her glance riveted on the rank of silvery mailboxes, and she felt a prickle of excitement at the back of her neck.
The mailboxes—and premeditated murder.
Annie jumped to her feet. She looked across the inlet, at Alan Nichols’s cabin, at another weather-beaten cabin midway between Nichols’s and Jerry’s Gas ’N Go, then back to the semicircle of Nightingale Courts.
And knew that Jesse Penrick’s murderer had been within this area on Saturday morning when Ingrid and Jesse quarreled. Because it had to have been that quarrel that prompted the murderer to carry the unconscious Jesse to Ingrid’s cabin and kill him there.
She bent and yanked up her purse and pulled out the notebook in which she’d sketched down her impressions of the Crime Scene. Flipping to a clean page, she drew the Courts, the inlet, its piers, the gas station, and the cabins on the opposite bank.
Annie studied the results.
Her investigation was beginning to coalesce. Until now, her progress had been almost aimless, like the fictional PL’s of her acquaintance, from the Continental Op to Philo Vance. She’d wandered from cabin to cabin, trying to find out who hated Jesse Penrick, seeking to discover what his neighbors knew about him, searching for motives. But this map focused on a specific area and the persons who might reasonably have been within its boundaries early Saturday morning.
Her hand flew across the page:
SATURDAY MORNING
Possible observers of Ingrid’s confrontation with Jesse:
1. Tom Smith
2. Mavis Beeson (And Billy Cameron?)
3. Adele Prescott
4. Duane Webb
5. Ophelia Baxter
She looked speculatively across the water. One cabin was obviously unlived in, and Jerry’s Gas ’N Go wouldn’t have been open yet, plus the clerk couldn’t see the mailboxes from behind the cash register. The only vantage point would be from behind the store.
But Alan Nichols could see these piers from his place.
So, she nodded and wrote:
6. Alan Nichols.
7. Yellow tank top [whom she’d glimpsed when she’d arrived Saturday morning in response to Laurel’s summons].
Oh, yes.
8. Laurel.
And to cover all possibilities, she’d ask Madeleine to announce that anyone who had been in the vicinity of the Courts that Saturday morning was requested to contact Annie.
But it was numbers 1 through 6 that held her attentio
n. Maybe the murderer had been too clever, using Ingrid’s fuss with Jesse, because it narrowed the possibilities from practically anyone on the island to a very few. Whether that idiot Posey would listen to this reconstruction or not, Annie felt confident she was on the right track. Now she had a starting point.
She gnawed on the pencil for a moment, then finished with a flourish:
CONCLUSIONS
The murderer put Jesse in Ingrid’s cabin because of the Saturday morning quarrel.
The murderer could count on Ingrid being absent that evening because Annie and Max’s wedding had received extensive coverage in the Gazette, right on a par with the hot pennant races. It was downright disgusting how Laurel had charmed Vince Ellis, the Gazette publisher. But as Norma Gold would have caustically observed, what else could you expect from a filthy little beast? Ergo, Ingrid’s cabin was the perfect dumping ground for a corpse.
That meant the murder was already planned as of Saturday morning.
Which indicated that the motive for murder lay in some action of Jesse’s prior to Saturday. So, dear Henny—as Bulldog Drummond, Tish Carberry, et al.—was wasting her time with her detailed investigation of Jesse’s actions on Saturday. Oh well, the poor dear couldn’t be expected to score every time.
Which further indicated that the murder was not the result of passion and didn’t occur in the heat of anger.
Annie repressed the urge to turn a self-congratulatory somersault. She was positive she had the murderer’s name on her list! Now, all she had to do was figure out which one was the culprit.
Tom Smith was weird and frightened of something. He claimed to have ignored Jesse, but if that were so, why was he afraid? Time to dig deeper there.
Mavis Beeson was terrified her husband might discover her whereabouts. But she insisted it “was all worked out” with Jesse. What did that mean?
Billy Cameron could have seen Jesse and Ingrid quarrel, or Mavis could have told him. How far was Billy willing to go to protect Mavis and Kevin?
Adele Prescott was about as charming as a Borgia and she apparently didn’t like anyone—including Jesse—very much. And she was awfully quick to ascribe motives to others (Duane Webb and Mavis). Natural venom or a clever smokescreen?
Duane Webb had reason enough to hate Jesse. But would he implicate Ingrid, who had been so nice to him?
Ophelia Baxter couldn’t wait to inform the authorities about Ingrid’s quarrel with Jesse. Was she eager to cooperate because she was hiding something? And she hadn’t said a word about Jesse killing her cat.
Alan Nichols was quick to respond in an emergency. Yet he scarcely seemed the Galahad type. He claimed to have only the most casual acquaintance with Jesse. Was that true?
The sputtering cough of a gasoline engine drifted across the water.
Annie looked up. Alan Nichols waved cheerfully from the bow of his motorboat, which rode low in the water and needed a new paint job.
She snapped her notebook shut. “Hi, Alan!” Was this serendipity?
As the boat drew up to the ladder, he gave her an admiring glance which would have made Max livid. There was something to be said for men like Alan. They certainly added a sparkle to life.
Tying up, he hurried up the ladder. “Saw you over here. I’m going out for a jog, but thought I’d check in. Anything happening?” As he came lightly over the side, he stood just a fraction too close. His chestnut hair tousled by the early morning breeze, his blue eyes bright and clear, he looked rested, good humored, and eager.
“Not a lot,” she replied lightly. “The search parties are going to try one more time.”
Alan forced a grave frown, but couldn’t disguise the admiring gleam in his eyes. “Yeah. Well, I wish I could help. But I’m going to check in at the shop, then go into Savannah to meet Betsy.”
“Oh, have you heard from her?” Annie asked.
Suddenly the frown was real. “No. No, I haven’t. But I’ve got her itinerary, and to tell you the truth, this whole goddam thing about not being able to get her at the hotel has me nervous, and I just want to be there when the plane lands and have her tell me we’re a bunch of damn fools for getting so worried and why don’t I have the shop open?” He grinned, like a small boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “She’ll give me hell, closing the store down to come in for her.”
Annie had a sneaking suspicion Betsy would be pleased, even if she did complain. Obviously, there was more in Alan’s feelings for Betsy than just the regard of an employee for a boss. For the first time, she wondered just how close they were. Alan was damned attractive.
“What are you doing today?” he asked.
Annie had quite an agenda ahead, but that didn’t include sharing her thoughts with someone on her suspect list. She said casually, “Oh, nosing around. Asking questions. Which reminds me, Alan, did you happen to see Jesse and Ingrid Saturday morning?”
“You mean when they had their dust-up?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, hell no. I was sacked out. Sorry. Why’d you ask?”
“I’m trying to find out who was out and about at that hour. I’d like to know what Jesse was doing, where he’d been.”
His eyes narrowed in thought. “Gee, hardly anybody’d be up that early on Saturday. But I’ll ask around, see if I can find out anything. And listen, when I get back from the airport, if Betsy’s game, I’ll take the afternoon off and give you a hand. Okay?”
“Sure. Everybody’s welcome,” Annie responded.
“Great. I’ll get back in touch.” He scrambled down the ladder, stepped lightly into the boat and, in a moment, sputtered back across the inlet.
But Annie wasn’t listening. Instead, her eyes bright with curiosity, she looked across the marsh at Nightingale Courts.
TWELVE
Monday morning
Mavis could not have been more obviously in flight had she been a cotton nightgowned, Gothic heroine sprinting down tower steps two at a time. Pushing Kevin in his stroller, she balanced one suitcase across the stroller bars and awkwardly clutched a crammed and overflowing shopping bag. A brown scarf hid her bleached hair. She wore a blue suit and high heels that sank down into the soft, grey dirt. She was skulking on the inlet side of the cabins, pausing as she reached each cabin to peer anxiously toward the central courtyard, then crossing the space to the next with a nervous burst of speed.
Annie recognized Mavis’s strategy. It was precisely what she herself had done last night, slipping behind the cabins to cut through the pine trees to the road, out of sight of Nightingale Courts.
Annie waited until Mavis disappeared into the pines, then ran down the pier. On shore, she raced for the road. She was waiting when Mavis emerged from the woods near Jerry’s Gas ’N Go. Eyes down, the young mother concentrated on maneuvering the stroller around a fallen live oak limb.
“Let me help you,” Annie offered, stepping forward.
Mavis’s head jerked up. Sheer panic flattened her face, making it almost unrecognizable. She gave a pitifully frightened noise, midway between a gasp and a squeal, and Annie thought sickly of the laboratory mice in Murder Is Pathological by P. M. Carlson.
“Don’t be afraid. I didn’t mean to frighten you. But you can’t run away.”
A pulse fluttered in the girls throat. Hopeless tears brimmed in her eyes. “If I stay Henry will find us. I know he will. Oh God, I have to get Kevin away.”
“Nobody’s going to hurt Kevin. I promise you.”
“You promise. What can you promise? You’re just like the social workers. Oh God, I hate all of you, you’re so smug and so sure of yourselves and you make promises and you can’t keep them. Tell me how you’re going to keep a man from seeing his own son! And what if that awful woman next door goes to court and talks about—talks about me. And the judge, he hunts with Henry’s daddy. Do you think he’ll believe me if I say Henry hurt me, hurt Kevin? They’ll say I’m lying, because of Billy And what if Henry gets Kevin? Do you know what people do to babies sometimes, eve
n their own babies? And I read about a lady, and she was important, educated, she was somebody, and she said her husband molested her little girl, but the judge said she couldn’t prove it, and he wouldn’t even believe the little girl. Oh, you tell me how it’s going to be all right. I’ll tell you something.” Tears poured down her face now; she struggled to breathe. “I’ll tell you something—Henry looks so nice and he can talk so nice. Oh God, nobody’ll ever believe me about Henry.”
“You can get a lawyer—”
“You aren’t listening to me! What can a lawyer do? I talked to them at the county health department once. They said I could go to the police and ask them to get a restraining order against Henry. Do you know what that is? That’s a little piece of paper. That’s all it is, a little piece of paper—and Henry told me, if I ever left him, some day some way he’d get Kevin and Kevin would have years to pay for what I’d done. Years!”
“Mommy? Mommy!” Kevin’s chubby arms reached up for her.
She knelt and put her arms around the little boy, her body wracked by sobs. He began to wail.
Annie dropped down beside them, her heart aching. “Don’t cry, Mavis. I’ll help you. I really will.”
“You can’t help. The only thing I can do is go far away and hide.”
Annie searched in her purse for Kleenex. She needed Max with his ever-ready handkerchief. But thinking of Max helped. Max would back her up. She thrust a mass of crumpled tissues at Mavis and said briskly, “Look, nothings hopeless. And I’m not going to tell you a bunch of lies. I know you’re right, the law and the courts and the police can’t keep a woman safe if a man is determined to hurt her. I know that.”
God knew that was true. She’d seen too many headlines from every corner of the nation: MAN GUNS DOWN WIFE, CHILD DEAD IN ABUSE CASE, and the sad, too-late stories: “Coworkers reported today that the victim had sued for divorce and obtained a restraining order …,” or “The court awarded partial custody to the husband, because his former wife couldn’t prove charges of cruelty …”
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