Annie remembered the slender blonde holding her little boy high in the air as he laughed down at her.
Maybe Emily Kemp would testify at a divorce and custody hearing. Annie underlined her name and added the printout to those she’d read.
Max’s voice boomed from his office. “So what harm will it do to let us know about the contents of the attaché case?”
Annie glimpsed Max through his open door. She did love to see Max work. Although he approached any labor with the enthusiasm of a cat plunging into water, it really did show him off at his best. As he hunched over the desk, he was marvelously attractive, dark blue eyes flashing, jaw firm, voice steady. He was too wholesome-looking with his thick blond hair, bright eyes, and regular features to be Humphrey Bogartish. Then she had it: Dick Powell in Murder My Sweet.
Unaware of her scrutiny, her beloved barked in a rapid staccato (Sergeant Cribb couldn’t have done it any better), “We’re investigating Mrs. Raines’s disappearance here, too, and that’s a critical piece of evidence.”
Annie smiled fondly. Really, she must make it a point, subtly, to encourage Max to work. Ah, the responsibilities of a wife!
And, thinking of work—
BILLY JOHN CAMERON. Twenty-six. Bachelor. Lives at No. 5, 316 Spanish Alley Road. Eldest of seven children. Native of Beaufort. All-state wrestler, heavyweight class; fullback, high school football team; president, student council; Eagle Scout.
High school coach: “Super athlete, team leader. And a hell of a nice boy.”
Two years at Armstrong State College, majoring in law enforcement. Faculty adviser: “Serious student. Steady. Dependable. Not the brightest, but he gave it all he had.” Joined Broward’s Rock police department 1982.
Scuba diver, triathlete, hunter.
Owner of island sporting goods store: “An all-around sportsman, tough, capable, determined.”
And, Annie wondered, a murderer?
Billy was big enough, strong enough. Why had it taken him so long to respond to the call from the checkpoint guard? But then, why not? When off duty, his time was his own. He could have been out for a midnight swim or a late walk along the shuttered main street. Spanish Alley Road was a narrow, unpaved street behind the bowling alley. An old antebellum house had been divided into apartments. It would be about a mile and a half walk along a dusty road to Nightingale Courts. If Billy wanted to avoid notice, he would walk rather than drive for his late night visits to Mavis. Was he there Saturday night?
Annie swiveled. Max was still on the phone. She understood his involvement with Betsy’s disappearance and the consequent tie-up of the phone line at Confidential Commissions, but it was time for her to cast out a net, too.
The rain splashed unrelentingly against the front windows of Death on Demand. Inside, the bookstore had a greenish-grey tone, and the gloom made it a fit repository for tales of crime and woe. She passed the table stacked with Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent—could you believe a first novel?—and hurried down the central aisle, noting titles in passing: The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie, The Spy Who Barked in the Night by Marc Lovell, and The Woman in the Moon by Donald Lehmkuhl. Some of Ingrid’s favorites.
Annie shrugged out of her raincoat and draped it, dripping, on a chair by the table nearest the coffee bar, then turned to face an accusatory stare from flaming amber eyes.
“Agatha, love, I’m sorry.”
The cat’s tail twitched. Once.
“Sweetie, don’t be hostile.” Annie reached out to pet the silky fur. She was able to yank her hand back just in time to avoid being bitten.
Agatha turned her head away, and her tail rippled like Blackboard’s whip. She could not have evinced her unhappiness any more clearly had she announced in ringing tones, “You’ve gone off again and left me for hours and hours. One piddly serving of salmon, hours ago, counts for nothing. I’m bored, hungry, and absolutely furious.”
Annie put down the printouts she hadn’t yet read on the coffee bar, then stepped behind it and bent down to open the refrigerator. It wasn’t smart, of course, to let a cat bully you, but Agatha had a very strong personality, and the only way to get past this contretemps was to offer something especially tempting.
Cream?
Bologna?
Mince pie?
More salmon?
Annie knew Max would have several choice comments about what the contents of the refrigerator revealed about the mistress of Death on Demand and her probable cholesterol count. Agatha peered over the side of the counter. Working fast, Annie apportioned a small amount of each in Agatha’s bowl and put it beside her furry friend atop the counter.
Agatha was pleased. She was as passionately fond of both mincemeat pie and salmon as her namesake was of Devonshire cream. Annie devoutly hoped the combination wouldn’t result in a royal case of cat indigestion.
That important matter concluded, she measured Kona coffee into the pot, turned it on, then reached for the phone on the coffee bar. As the dark, delicious drops began to fall, she dialed.
“Police.”
“Billy, this is Annie Laurance. Darling.” She had almost managed her new surname in the same breath.
He didn’t answer. She could picture him at his desk, his pleasant face set, his large, powerful shoulders tensed, a massive hand locked tight around the receiver.
She saw no reason to pussyfoot around. “Billy, where were you Saturday night when your beeper went off?”
A heavy, taut silence.
She waited.
“Home.” The word thudded onto the line like ice calving from a glacier.
“It took you too long to come.” Her voice was almost regretful.
Again a silence. Finally, harshly, he challenged her. “Prove it.” The line went dead.
Annie immediately looked up a number and dialed. And was relieved that she didn’t get a busy signal.
“Hello.” The voice was so young and vulnerable.
“Mavis, this is Annie Laurance. Darling.”
“Yes, Mrs. Darling?” Not quite so frightened now.
Annie hated what she was about to do. Until she thought about Ingrid. She made her voice genial (the better to eat you with, my dear). “Mavis, what time did Billy leave Saturday night?”
Silence again, this time freighted with panic. “What do you mean?” Her thin voice wavered like a plucked string.
Annie understood that panic. If Mavis admitted Billy was there, it added to the weight of suspicion against her. If she denied it, she might lose an alibi. Worst of all, if he wasn’t there, it must have occurred to Mavis to wonder if it was Billy who stabbed Jesse and abducted Ingrid.
“I’m trying to find out whether anyone was up and about late and might have seen Jesse—or someone with Jesse.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t up late.”
“But Billy usually came on Saturday night, didn’t he? Where was he this last Saturday night?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’d told Billy that Jesse was blackmailing you? That you were paying him five dollars a week?”
A quick drawn breath and the receiver slammed into the cradle.
Annie slowly replaced her receiver, then pulled out her notebook from the stack of printouts. Leaning comfortably against the coffee bar, she flipped open the notebook, found a fresh page past the odd map she’d copied at Jesse’s, and wrote:
When did Billy leave Mavis’s cabin Saturday night?
If he was there when the beeper sounded and had been all evening, both of them are alibied.
If he had already left when the beeper sounded, did he have time to move Jesse’s unconscious body to Ingrid’s cabin and grab Ingrid before he showed up in the patrol car?
If he had already left when the beeper sounded, would Mavis have had time to move Penrick and abduct Ingrid?
Could Mavis and Billy have committed the crime together?
If Mavis committed the murder alone, would she act so nervous and uncertain about Billy?
It would depend upon just how wily and Machiavellian she was.
In any event, if either Billy or Mavis acted singly or in conjunction, there had been very little time to dispose of Ingrid.
So why hadn’t Ingrid or her body been found by the expert and careful searchers?
It argued for another principal, someone with time and a deadly scheme that included Ingrid.
Why, for that matter, was Ingrid abducted at all?
That was obvious, Holmes would have snapped at Watson. Ingrid had quarreled with the dead man. When he was murdered in her cabin and Ingrid was nowhere to be found, it wasn’t too surprising that the authorities’ suspicions would rest on her. It was, of course, the murderer’s great good luck that Brice Willard Posey was in charge of the investigation and that Chief Saulter (who knew Ingrid) was out of the country.
But that didn’t increase the limited amount of time available to either Billy or Mavis.
Annie put the notebook down and reached for the coffeepot. She glanced over the collection of white pottery mugs with their bright red inscriptions. Each mug was decorated with the name of a book famous in mystery fiction: Ladies in Boxes by Gelett Burgess, Philo Gubb: Correspondence School Detective by Ellis Parker Butler, Poisonous Relations by Joanna Cannan, Laura by Vera Caspary, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, The Gun in Daniel Webster’s Bust by Margaret Scherf, Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, and The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer. Finally, with a wry smile, she lifted down Suspects All by Marco Page and filled it, the better to think with. Agatha, genial now, daintily licked a paw and observed.
The telephone rang, and Agatha shot from the coffee bar, streaking toward the fern and rattan chair enclave.
An English accent this time.
“Is this Roakes Common 3206?”
So Henny expected Annie to play Cousin Toby to Tessa Crichton. Anne Morice’s feisty heroine frequently depended upon her agreeable cousin to serve as a bouncing board for ideas during an investigation.
“Toby here,” Annie replied. Experience had taught her that cooperation would shorten the call and get her back to her papers.
“I can’t believe I’m wrong.” Yes, it had to be cocky Tessa. “It seemed so obvious that the body had to be Betsy’s, when it turned out not to be Ingrid. And red-haired!” The last exclamation was accusatory.
Annie forebore to point out yet once again that Betsy was in San Francisco. No point in making Henny feel even worse.
“But there’s no doubt about it. I mean, I saw her with my own eyes.”
Annie shivered.
“Not that her best friend would have known her, if it had been Betsy. From her face. But it wasn’t, because Betsy delivered Ruth by caesarean and this woman’d never borne a child. So apparently there’s no connection. No connection at all. A wasted trip. Be back on the island as soon as possible.”
Settled again at the table, Annie lifted up the next printout from her stack.
ALAN ELLSWORTH NICHOLS. Twenty-five. Bachelor. Native Flint, Michigan. Only child. Parents divorced when he was five, reared by mother, a secretary at an Oldsmobile dealership. Ran away from home at fifteen. Worked as a busboy in Dallas. Became friendly with café owner, Mrs. Bridget Wright. Completed GED for high school diploma. Two years at community college. Left Dallas for Florida. Worked at various beach resorts as lifeguard, arrived at Broward’s Rock in 1985. Worked at Jolly Roger Beach Club, became manager in spring 1986. Became friendly with Elizabeth Raines, owner of the Piping Plover Gallery, joined gallery staff in fall 1986.
Mrs. Nichols: “Do you know where Alan is? Oh, I wish he would call me. No one ever really understood him. He’s a sweet boy.”
Mrs. Bridget Wright: “Alan Nichols? Sorry, I don’t remember a waiter of that name. Oh, the young man I helped in school. I … was disappointed in him. I’d thought he intended to work up to manager. But young people are so fickle, aren’t they?”
Cissy Womack, waitress: “Oh, Alan! He had the old lady wrapped around his finger. My God, she thought he was in love with her! No fool like an old fool. But he paid the piper for every penny, dancing with her, whispering in her ear—and he was too cute to waste himself on a wrinkled up old woman.”
There were assorted comments from beach boys up and down the coast, some envious, some critical. Annie thought Max had gone a little overboard, but she did raise an eyebrow at the last tidbit.
Reba Casey, next door neighbor to Betsy Raines: “I don’t care what my neighbors do, as long as they keep their dogs up and maintain their property. Betsy took good care of her home. Of course, we shared a common fence by our pools, so Jimmy and I couldn’t help overhearing more than we wanted to, sometimes. But I didn’t see any harm in it. After all, the boy is single and Betsy’s widowed. Why not?”
No wonder Alan wore his finest to the airport.
But it didn’t have a thing to do with Jesse Penrick. And even if Jesse at one time or another had spotted Betsy and Alan at his cabin, why should they care? As Reba Casey said, Why not?
Annie dropped Alan’s bio and picked up the next.
DUANE ALBERT WEBB. Sixty-one. Native Biloxi, Mississippi. U.S. Army, 1943–46. Honorable discharge as master sergeant. Wounded at Battle of the Bulge. Purple Heart. Bronze Star with two oak-leaf clusters. B.A. in English, University of Mississippi, 1950. M. to Mary Catharine Carew, June 12, 1950. D., Sheila, b. 1953. Reporter, Nashville Tennessean, 1950-54; Dallas Bureau Associated Press, 1954-60; City Editor, Chastain Courier, 1960-81.
She skimmed the rest of it. Nothing new. The car wreck. His wife dead. His daughter dead. His conviction. Four years for manslaughter. Served one year. His retirement to Broward’s Rock.
Bob Tibbey, publisher, Chastain Courier: “Super guy, if he was your friend. Tongue like a battering ram. Hates phonies, stuffed shirts, self-important people. A big softie underneath. Demanding boss, but his reporters respected him. He worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known. Too damn bad about the accident. He always drank a lot, but it never caught up with him. Till then.”
Hal O’Neill, city hall reporter, Chastain Courier: “He could spot a hole in a story quicker than anybody I ever knew. And there was only one way to do it—the right way. Loved to play poker and get drunk. We were all sorry as hell.”
Duane Webb. Super smart. Super critical. A fiery city editor with an arrogant, brash, give-’em-hell attitude. He’d always been half mad. Now that anger was turned on himself. And there was more than enough to spare for creeps like Jesse Penrick. But would Duane hurt Ingrid, who had been kind to him?
How angry—and how twisted by anger—was he?
Agatha leapt back atop the coffee bar and waited expectantly. Obediently, Annie stroked the silky fur.
Agatha turned twice in a tight circle, then settled on the stack of printouts, her throat quivering with a rumbly purr.
Annie absently scratched behind an ear and eased the stack from beneath Agatha to retrieve the last printout. The cat’s ears flattened, but she decided not to protest.
ADELE MORNAY PRESCOTT. Fifty-eight. Native of Charleston. Only daughter of a long-time Charleston family, whose wealth was destroyed in the Civil War. Grew up in genteel poverty, but with great emphasis on background and class. Attended Sweet Briar. In 1951, m. John Grant Prescott, a hustler from New Jersey who made a fortune in garbage disposal.
“Not too high toney,” Annie observed to Agatha, who was studying one pink pad with unblinking intensity. “But money’s money—and it takes a lot to buy mansions.”
That’s what Adele and John had done, taking over Hounds Hill, a lovely antebellum mansion on the Cooper River. For eighteen years, Adele had reigned over the refurbishment of the lovely home and enjoyed social prominence.
Annie wondered who had married whom for what. Adele for money, John Prescott for social advancement?
When and why had the marriage soured, or had it never been a love match at all?
Moses Quentin, butler at Hounds Hill: “Mrs.
Adele, she always had her own way, and all she ever thought about was antiques and buying them. She traveled everywhere, looking.”
Susan Prescott, the second wife: “I never knew her, but everyone said she was so cold. And the older she got, the less she ever thought about how she looked. She spent all her time with her social secretary, Naomi, and she never had any time for John. He won’t say much about her, but I know he wanted children, and she never would. He’s just crazy about the kids. John III is seven now and Marie is three.”
Beryl Ford, homeowner, Broward’s Rock Island: “Adele is a jewel. I never have to worry when I go off to Cannes for a few months. She’ll move in and take care of my things just like they were her own. Even though she looks like a yard worker, I don’t know of anyone else I’d trust my house to.”
The phone rang.
“Death on Demand.”
“Annie, bad news about Betsy.”
Oh, poor Max. Henny must have worried him, too. “Oh, Max, it’s not Betsy. The woman’d never had any children and Betsy’d had a caesarean.”
The silence on his end was blank. What woman?
“The body in the Wildlife Refuge.”
“What’s that got to do with Betsy?”
They sorted it out finally, but Max was still a little bemused. “Betsy’s missing in San Francisco,” he said finally. “And that’s why I called. It looks like it has to do with the money. Her attaché case, in her hotel room. It’s empty.”
Honeymoon With Murder Page 19