Dead By Midnight

by Carolyn Hart

  “Oh God.” Tommy turned and thudded down the steps and hit the uneven ground, running fast down the central path.

  Kit looked out into the garden at the glimpse of cottage beyond a sweep of azaleas. “Elaine said for us not to come down. But maybe she needs to know what’s going on. I’ll talk to her, too. I don’t care what the police think, Elaine would never, never hurt anyone.” She frowned with a swift, bitter intensity. “Look, on the road that runs by the cottage. There’s another car. People are awful. Driving by, coming up Elaine’s road like we were animals in a zoo. They’re the animals.”

  Annie recognized Max’s dark green Jeep. It made a U-turn and was soon out of sight, dust rising behind the back bumper. He wasn’t a curiosity seeker. Max was setting out on the search she had asked him to make. “Kit, I’m sure there are things the police don’t know.” She spoke calmly, hoping to encourage Kit. “Can you tell me about Tuesday morning? Did you see your father at breakfast?”

  Kit’s thin shoulders hunched. “Just for a minute. I wasn’t very hungry. I ate a bowl of cornflakes.”

  “Was he just as usual?”

  Her mouth twisted. “I guess so. This summer he acted like we were all strangers. He never wanted to talk about things. She had him jumping through hoops. She didn’t want Dad to have anything to do with us.”

  Annie had no doubt that she was referring to Cleo. “I understand he was worried about money.”

  “Because of her.” Kit’s voice bristled with anger. “She resented us. Dad always encouraged us. Or he used to. Tuesday morning, I tried to talk to him again about my trip. I came downstairs and he was sitting at his desk and he looked really tired. But I was running out of time. I have to get my tickets by next week. He told me he wasn’t in a position to help. I told him—” She broke off, choked back a sob. “I told him I hated him and now he’s dead.”

  Annie spoke gently. “That doesn’t matter now. People who have died understand who loved them. What’s important is that you did love him.”

  “I went up to my room and I was pacing back and forth.”

  “Did you have your door open?”

  Kit nodded. “And the windows.”

  “Did you hear any noise?”

  “That leaf blower. It was driving me crazy. I shut the windows because the leaf blower made so much noise. I was trying to work on my laptop.”

  “When you shut the windows, did you see anyone in the garden?”

  “No.”

  “What other rooms overlook the garden?”

  “Our rooms are right in a row, Tommy, Laura, and me.”

  “Had your father quarreled with anyone recently?”

  Her narrow face was instantly wary. Was she thinking of her older sister or perhaps her brother or even Pat Merridew? She spoke in careful, measured words. “Nothing big. That I knew about.” Suddenly her gaze narrowed. She stared out into the garden.

  Annie looked, too. Richard Jamison came around the stand of cane. He walked with his head down, hands in the pockets of khaki shorts. His dark brown hair was cut short. He walked like a man deep in thought, head bent, steps slow.

  Kit’s voice shook. “I told the police about him.” She pointed toward Richard, her face accusatory. “That big officer, the captain, he listened like it didn’t amount to anything. But I know it was wrong. I saw him looking at her just a few days ago. He wanted her. She looked at him and it was like I was in a bedroom with them. Then she turned away. But I know what I saw. That evening after dinner, he went out on the terrace. I went after him. I asked him if Dad knew he had the hots for Cleo. He laughed and said he always admired good-looking chicks but he didn’t make it a practice to seduce married women. He started to move away and I said it looked like she was hot for him, too. He stopped and shook his head, said that wasn’t true. He said I didn’t need to worry, he was going to leave next week.”

  Richard reached the path to the house. He looked up, saw Kit and Annie, came to a stop.

  Kit drew in a sharp breath. “I thought he was wonderful. He’s been everywhere around the world, the kind of life I’d like to have. Dad called him ‘little buddy.’ Dad said Richard had always been his favorite cousin. How could he care about her?” The harsh pronoun exuded venom. “She’s awful. She always has been.”

  Kit whirled away, slammed into the house.

  Annie walked down the steps toward Richard.

  Max pulled up to a four-way stop sign. A larger road intersected the dirt road that led to Elaine’s cottage. A gray shanty, lopsided from storms and years of weathering, was on his right. Sitting on the sloping porch, resting in a red rocker, was a tiny little woman in a voluminous purplish dress. To his left, a neat and tidy oyster-shell parking lot welcomed shoppers to a two-pump gas station and small cinder-block convenience store.

  Max pulled up to a pump. On the mainland, payment was required in advance. On the island, you could pump first and pay later. He removed the gas cap, filled up with regular.

  A bell jangled as he opened the door. At the counter, he looked out through the plate-glass window as he handed a twenty to a middle-aged woman with a thin mouth. “Guess you can see everyone coming and going.”

  She glanced outside without interest. “Yeah. If I cared.” Her tone indicated she found little of interest in her view, in her job, and likely in her life. She handed him a dollar and seventeen cents in change.

  “Were you working Tuesday morning?”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Why do you care?”

  “Just a bet with a friend.” His tone was easy. “A yellow Corolla came past about ten o’clock. I think it turned right, but my friend’s sure the car turned left. Do you happen to remember?”

  She picked up a pack of spearmint gum, ripped the top, pulled out a stick. “I didn’t pay no never mind.”

  Outside, Max glanced across the road at the small frame house. In a moment, he turned the car into a rutted driveway. He swung out of the Jeep and walked toward the porch.

  The old woman looked up from the Bible in her lap. Raisin-dark eyes in a wrinkled brown face studied him. “ ‘Good people bring good things out of their hearts, but evil people bring evil things out of their hearts.’ ” Her voice was as deep and calm as water in a sheltered lagoon.

  Max knew Scripture when he heard it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She tilted her head to one side, those bright eyes never leaving his face. “Are you in search of truth?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to help a woman who has been unjustly accused.” In Max’s view, designation as a person of interest qualified Elaine Jamison as falsely accused.

  The deep voice intoned: “ ‘But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ ”

  Max smiled. “Justice might get a big boost if you were rocking on your porch Tuesday morning.”

  “Sit, boy.”

  He didn’t take umbrage at the designation. He would guess she was ninety, perhaps older. He settled on the rocker beside her. “I’m Max Darling.”

  “Lula Harmon.” She rocked and the runners squeaked on the wood flooring. “I been sitting here most days. My boy don’t let me work anymore. He says, ‘Mama, you rest and read your Bible, that’s the best work you can do for me and for God.’ So if I can serve the Lord from my rocking chair, I will. ‘Learn to do good: seek justice, reprove the ruthless; defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’ ”

  A bumblebee, striking in its black-and-yellow stripes, hovered near honeysuckle on a trellis at the end of the porch. The summer afternoon murmured with the chirp of birds, the hum of insects, the rustle of live-oak leaves. Max looked into intelligent eyes, bright and sharp, despite age. He had a sense of wonder. Had Lula been sitting on this porch on this sunny day waiting for his question? He shook away the thought as fanciful, yet he could not keep the eager hope from his voice. “On Tuesday morning about ten o’clock a yellow car came this way and stopped at the intersection. Which way did that car turn?”

  Annie co
ntrasted Richard Jamison’s vigor with her memory of his older, thinner cousin. But Richard’s hair was brown and his skin tanned. He looked ruddy, outdoorsy, masculine, and attractive. Light green eyes looked at her curiously. “Hello.”

  He listened politely as she spoke, then shook his head. “I see no reason why I should talk about Tuesday morning with you.”

  Annie felt a flicker of anger. “Don’t you care what happens to Elaine?”

  His eyes narrowed. “If Elaine needs help, she can hire a lawyer. And now I’ve got things to do.”

  As he started to brush past her, Annie said sharply, “Cleo’s a widow now. Are you still leaving the island?”

  He stared at her, his eyes glinting with anger. “I guess Kit’s been spinning stories. I don’t owe you any explanation. But if it makes you feel better, lady, I never for a minute forgot that Cleo was Glen’s wife.” The muscles in his jaw bunched. “Believe it or not, I cared about Glen. I don’t know who shot him. Or why. I hope the cops figure it out. Fast.”

  At the stop sign, Max turned left. A right turn led eventually to the island’s small downtown and the ferry landing. Side roads offered other possible routes. But turning left, the road—Sea Oats Lane—plunged into untamed brush. Foliage crowded to the very edge of the dirt road. Trees and ferns encroached on the sandy soil. Branches interlocked as the lane narrowed. He drove the Jeep deeper and deeper into a dim and shadowy tunnel of greenery. The lane ended in a turnaround. Faded red letters on a worn wooden sign announced: KITTREDGE FOREST PRESERVE.

  A quick thought made Max jam the brakes. He stopped about five yards from the widened area that was mostly clear except for broken palmetto fronds and a portion of a broken live oak split by lightning.

  He turned off the motor. A faint path near the side curved into woods and was lost from sight. Ferns, vines, and creepers flourished. In an instant, no-see-’ums swirled through the open window. Birds chittered and insects hummed, a symphony of summer sound. Max stared at the trail. This was the Lowcountry unhomogenized, unfiltered, as raw and wild as it had been when hardy rice growers cleared the land. Death was common then, from fevers, malaria, smallpox.

  Max opened the door, studied the ground before he stepped onto a broken palmetto frond. He waved at the cloud of insects. There was nothing he could do about the wheel marks of his Jeep, which likely had obliterated previous tracks. But he had stopped well short of the turnaround. It would take a careful piece of maneuvering to turn the Jeep for his return, but he would manage somehow. He was determined to leave the turnaround as he had found it.

  He gazed slowly, carefully, back and forth across the semicircular patch of ground. He spotted tire tracks, fresh and deep in the sandy soil. He would have bet a bundle that the tracks matched the tires on Elaine Jamison’s Corolla.

  He lifted his eyes to the narrow entry to the woods. Whatever Elaine had done when she reached journey’s end here on Tuesday morning, she had not come this way to commune with nature. She had been visibly distraught when she had hurried out of her cottage. Apparently, she had thrown something into the marsh, turned away clutching a blue cloth. Then she’d driven away. Mrs. Harmon had seen her car turn onto the nature preserve road at shortly after ten, so this must have been her destination.

  Max stared at the inhospitable woods, thick and dark and deep, home to rattlesnakes and water moccasins, wild boars, cougars, and alligators. The preserve encompassed acres of wild country.

  Billy Cameron suspected that Elaine had thrown the murder weapon into the marsh. Annie saw Elaine lowering her arm. In her other hand, she held a cloth. She’d turned away from the marsh, carrying the cloth, and in only moments, her car had come careening from behind the cottage. She had driven here. If her objective had been to discard the cloth, she’d chosen a wild area where hundreds of searchers could look and look again and never find anything hidden beneath a log or thrust into a hollow of a tree or shoved deep into a thick tangle of underbrush.

  Elaine’s actions might further convince Billy of her guilt. But Max had discovered too much to stop now.

  Swatting at the insects, evading a buzzing yellow jacket, he climbed into the Jeep, shut the windows to avoid the assault of the insects, and turned on the motor. In the stifling air, sweat slid down his face. As he punched his cell, the air-conditioning began to cool the car’s interior. “Hey, Billy, I may have found something of interest to you. You remember how Annie saw Elaine Jamison leave in her car on Tuesday morning? I followed the same road. At the first four-way stop, I asked a few questions. I think I’ve found where she went.”

  Chapter Ten

  Annie stood on the boardwalk at Blackbeard Beach. The tide was out. Sunbathers stretched on towels. Sun-reclusive vacationers lounged in blue canvas chairs beneath red umbrellas. Joggers clipped along hard-packed gray sand exposed by the outgoing tide. Surfers paddled out to catch the first wave. Dolphins flashed in the sun, silver gray and lovely. Annie spotted tendrils of dark hair poking from beneath a battered straw hat at the third lifeguard stand.

  She skirted two brawny teenagers tossing a football. She came around the back of the stand. “Laura.”

  The straw hat tilted as Laura looked down. Sunglasses masked her eyes. Her face appeared rigid, cheekbones jutting, lips unsmiling. There was a suggestion of banked anger and possibly fear. “Yes?”

  “I’m Annie Darling. I—”

  “You were at the house Tuesday. You made the police suspicious of Elaine. And today”—her tone was accusatory—“you came to see Cleo.”

  Annie felt a ripple of anger, but she kept her voice pleasant. “I’m trying to help Elaine.”

  Laura’s mouth curved down in disdain. “You sure helped her Tuesday. The cops are still mucking around in the marsh.” She lifted her head, looked out beyond the surf.

  “Do you want the person who killed your father arrested?”

  The dark lenses jerked back toward Annie. “Of course I do. It’s horrible. I can’t believe something like this could happen. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone kill Dad?”

  “For money?” Annie’s voice rose in a question. She wished she could see Laura’s eyes.

  Laura’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Has Cleo been filling you up with lies? She hates us. She always has. She probably told you that Kit needs money to go to Africa and Tommy didn’t want to go away to school and I’m broke and a parasite. She’s the one who wants money. She’s greedy.”

  “She was in Savannah when your father was shot.”

  “I don’t care. She’s still greedy.” She spoke harshly.

  “Maybe so.” Annie dropped the words like pebbles in a pond, knowing ripples would spread. “But she doesn’t inherit any of his estate. However, you and your sister and brother will be able to do what you want to do. And Kirk Brewster will be a very rich man.”

  The lifeguard’s thin shoulders tightened. She gripped the arms of the high wooden seat. “Kirk? He won’t be a partner much longer. There’s no money for him.”

  “The firm paid for a key man life-insurance policy on your father. The proceeds—five million dollars—will go to the surviving partners, Cleo Jamison and Kirk Brewster.” Annie paused. “Did you know about the policy?”

  “No.” She scarcely breathed the answer.

  “When did you last see Kirk?”

  “Not since Cleo talked Dad into firing him. I know it’s her fault. Dad told me he had to let Kirk go because the firm isn’t making enough money. I called Kirk but he said he wouldn’t come to the house, that he’ll call me when he’s found a job. I haven’t heard from him.” Laura’s lips quivered. “Kirk didn’t hurt Dad. I know he didn’t.” Her words were jerky and she struggled for breath.

  Annie shaded her eyes, stared upward. “Where were you Tuesday morning?”

  She hesitated. Finally, she said slowly, “I always sit on the upper verandah in the mornings.”

  Annie had a clear sense that she would never have admitted her presence there, but feared someone else
in the family would know the pattern of her mornings.

  Laura swallowed. “My shift here doesn’t start until one o’clock. Cleo thinks I’m lazy. She never sits around. She was too busy figuring out ways to spend money Dad didn’t have.” She radiated resentment. “I was out there from right after breakfast until Richard knocked on my door. I wasn’t”—she spoke with heavy sarcasm—“shooting my father.”

  “Did you see anyone in the backyard?” The upper verandah overlooked the garden and the cottage, though shrubbery and trees would have blocked a complete view. Nonetheless, anyone approaching the terrace would have been visible at some point.

  There was sudden stillness in Laura’s posture. She swallowed, then said quickly, “Of course not. No one but the yardman.” But there was a telltale quiver of her dark red lips.

  Annie looked up at unrevealing dark lenses. Laura had answered quickly, forcefully. Annie felt sure she was lying.

  “Thank you.” Annie took a step away, looked back. “If Elaine’s arrested, perhaps your memory might improve.”

  “I didn’t see anyone.” Laura was emphatic.

  Annie walked across the sand. At the boardwalk, she looked back.

  Laura huddled in the broad wooden chair. Even from this distance, Annie could see how tightly her hands gripped the arms of the lifeguard seat. Did she stare out to sea, watching for swimmers in trouble or was she picturing a summer-drowsy garden on the morning her father died?

  Dark eyes intent, the black-and-tan bloodhound sniffed at the gauze pad. Lou Pirelli waited patiently. He knelt near the dog, holding the pad in a plastic-gloved hand. “Should be a good smell of the Jamison dame. Swabbed the seat of her car. Had her permission. Have to say she doesn’t have a clue what we’re up to. That picked up enough scent for Durante to find which way she went—if she went this way.”

  “Durante?” Max looked at the floppy-eared, long-nosed dog.

  Lou grinned. “My grandma has all of Jimmy Durante’s old radio programs.” He whistled a bar from “Inka Dinka Doo.” “Nobody has a better schnoz than this dog.”