Tickled to Death

by Joan Hess

  “Did you ask Jillian about the security system?” I asked after she’d quit chattering about Dick.

  “She still sounded extremely overwrought when she called me earlier, and I was afraid to say anything she might construe as an accusation. She takes pride in being efficient and methodical. Dick says Jan was like that, too, although without Jillian’s abrasiveness.” She hesitated, then said, “It might be better if you ask her, Claire. I’m planning a little party to celebrate Dick’s release. As soon as I get to the lake, I’ll drive down to Anders’s trailer and invite him. It’ll give you a chance to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Don’t let anyone on the Dunling Foundation board hear you say that,” I said as I contemplated the tedious drive to the lake. I’d lost too much business over the weekend to close the Book Depot one minute early, and it was vital to my accountant’s mental as well as spiritual health that I open promptly the next morning and begin snatching customers off the sidewalk. But the case had evolved into the sort that made my nose twitch. Earlier I’d bemoaned the dearth of clues. Now I had so many I was awash in puzzle pieces, none of which fit together thus far.

  “I’ll see if I can persuade Caron to manage the store,” I said. “If she agrees, I’ll be there by six or so. I am coming home as soon as the birds have been stoned. If something happens to prevent it, I will carry a grudge far into the next century.”

  “As long as you don’t refuse to be my matron of honor,” Luanne said smugly.

  “And disappoint the next Mrs. Bluebeard?”

  The dial tone buzzed in my ear. I called the apartment, but Caron did not answer. An hour later, however, she trudged in, dressed in even sloppier clothes than the previous day. Her voice was hoarse as she said, “Allison Wade was invited to the party. I might as well pitch a tent at Turnstone Lake and dedicate my life to sorting pamphlets and pointing at ducks. As my brain degenerates, I’ll begin to paddle around the creeks and quack at the moon.”

  I struggled not to smile and made a motherly noise of sympathy before saying, “I need to leave at five. If you’ll cover for me, you can keep the profits from any books you sell until closing time.”

  “Gee, then I can buy a Jaguar just like Agatha Anne’s. If I have any change, I’ll get one for Inez, too.”

  “It might mean less time slogging through the swamp.”

  She wandered behind the paperback fiction rack to consider the offer. Every now and then I heard a desultory quack, but she finally emerged. “Will you guarantee ten dollars an hour?”

  It was a losing proposition, but I nodded and retreated to the office before she realized she could have held out for more.

  I arrived at the lake house shortly after six. The parking area was so jammed that I was obliged to park partway up the driveway, and I could hear laughter and music from the deck while I crunched my way to the house. “Hail, hail,” I muttered as I went inside and found Luanne in the kitchen. She was not wearing an apron, but there was a smudge of flour on her chin and a potholder in her hand.

  “Good, you made it,” she said.

  This seemed self-evident, so I ignored it. “May I assume Dick was released on bail?”

  “The county prosecutor argued against it because of the gravity of the crimes. The lawyer kept harping on Dick’s pristine past, his ties to the community, and his need to keep open the practice so that children can face the future with well-aligned little smiles. They finally settled on a hundred thousand. Sid cut a deal with a bail bondsman. The whole thing didn’t last half an hour.” She took an aluminum tray of bubbly little bundles from the oven and managed to set it on the stove without incident. “No, I didn’t make these,” she said in response to my cynical expression. “They were in a bag in the freezer. Jillian made them last week in case we had people by for drinks.”

  “Is she doing better?”

  Luanne began to rummage through a cabinet stocked with silver and china platters. “I thought she’d be relieved once Dick was free, but she walked right past him, not saying a word, and drove away in her own car. That was at about four o’clock, and she hasn’t been seen since then.”

  “That is odd,” I said as I watched her transfer the canapés to a more suitable serving dish. “She was very protective of him the first time I was here. Why would she give him what amounts to a cold shoulder? Are you sure she doesn’t think he’s guilty?”

  “When Gannet told her he’d arrested her father, she kept insisting between sobs and hiccups that he couldn’t have killed Becca. I wanted to talk to her about it later, but she refused to unlock her door. Yesterday morning when I called to check on her, she hung up on me when I brought it up. She sat by herself at the hearing.”

  “Where was she at the time of Becca’s accident?”

  “I don’t remember anybody mentioning where she was. I know Agatha Anne and Georgiana were at Anders’s trailer earlier that afternoon. Dick was in town, as was Sid. I have no idea about anyone else.”

  “Do you think Jillian blew up the boat?” Dick asked as he came into the kitchen. He spoke pleasantly, but his eyes were definitely not smiling. “I don’t recall that her college offered any undergraduate classes in explosives.”

  It did not seem the right moment to ask about ones in electronics. “No,” I said. “I was just trying to get a clear picture of the day. I’m sure Jillian was doing whatever she ordinarily did.”

  “A clear picture of the day?” he said as he picked up a canapé, then let it drop like a tiny bomb. “Then you don’t think it was an accident any more than Gannet does. Am I your leading suspect, too?”

  “You’re patently Gannet’s,” I said, sidestepping the question. “He has a substantive case against you. If I’m going to try to disprove it, I need to know the truth. You’ve been lying to Gannet—and to everyone else, including me.”

  Luanne was too aghast to speak. Dick took a half-empty bottle of wine from the refrigerator and two glasses from a cabinet, then gestured at me to follow him. I tried to smile reassuringly at her as we left the room, but she turned her back and began to attack the canapés with ill-disguised fury.

  We went out the front door. He set the glasses on the hood of the Jaguar and wiggled out the cork. “I’ve been lying to Gannet,” he said as he handed me a glass. “And to everyone else, including not only you but also perhaps myself. But I had nothing to do with the accident—or whatever it was—that killed Becca.”

  I regarded him over the rim of the wineglass. “Then let’s talk about your story. You and Becca had an argument at a party at Dunling Lodge. What was it about?”

  “Her spending. Some bills came to the office that day, but by the time I got here, we were already late for the party. It wasn’t the best time to bring it up, but I had one drink too many and lost my temper.”

  “That doesn’t play,” I said, managing to sip wine and shake my head at the same time (my talents are boundless). “She applied for her Visa card in the hospital nursery, and she probably didn’t miss a day of shopping the entire time you were married. What had she bought that made you so angry you had a public row? A yacht? A fur coat? A small country?”

  “I don’t remember. Some jewelry, maybe.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t angry at her because you’d discovered she was having an affair with Anders?”

  “We were happily married. I was in love with her and gave her whatever she wanted. Why would she have an affair with anyone?”

  “I have no idea, Dick. I never went in for that kind of behavior when I was married, so I don’t know what motivates so-called happily married spouses to risk everything for an illicit romp.” I waited for a moment in case he had any suggestions, then continued. “Here’s an idea. What if you pretended to be enraged by the bill so that you could make it known loudly that you were driving back to Farberville. That explains why you were parked on the hill above the marina after the party. Gannet thinks you were tampering with the propane tank, but I think you were watching the Dunling Founda
tion boat. How am I doing?”

  He lifted his glass in a mock toast. “You’re doing well.”

  “Of course I am. But why would Becca risk meeting someone at the marina?” I thought it over for a minute. “She couldn’t invite Anders to your house because Jillian was there, and perhaps they felt it was risky for her car to be parked at the trailer that late. She probably thought the boat was safe, as long as they didn’t disturb Bubo.”

  “You’re good,” he said with what I presumed was more sincere admiration. “Very good. Actually, I drove past Anders’s trailer, but his truck was gone. Gannet’s mystery witness saw my Rover on the hill, but failed to see Becca’s convertible and Anders’s truck parked farther down the road where it comes to a dead end. But I can’t admit to him that I was there—unless I explain why. As long as I insist that Becca and I were veritable turtledoves, I have no motive to have killed her. Gannet comes from a neck of the woods where adultery used to be grounds for justifiable homicide; a few generations back, no doubt some branches were pruned off his family tree in that manner.” He sat on the fender and rubbed his temples with his free hand. “I intended to divorce Becca, that’s all. The next afternoon I called her to tell her so, but she wasn’t there.”

  “Gannet said he’d found a call on your long-distance bill. If no one was home…?”

  “I left a message on the machine, telling her my intentions. When I arrived at the house, the light was still blinking. I was rewinding the tape when the deputy arrived at the front door.”

  “Did you tell this to Gannet?”

  “A version of it, but he refused to believe I erased an innocuous message about the grocery list. I certainly didn’t tell him that I’d just threatened to divorce my wife because she was having yet another affair.”

  I hadn’t gotten that far in my theorizing. “Another affair?” I said.

  Dick sagged to the point I was afraid he would slide off the fender onto the rocks. He hooked a heel on the bumper at the last second. “I’m going to tell you something that no one else knows—except the guilty party. You’ve heard Georgiana wailing about Barry’s unidentified mistress? I’m almost positive it was Becca. I can’t tell you when or why I began to wonder, but there was something different about her—and some ill-defined sense of intimacy between the two when they were in the same room. When I dropped heavy hints, she tearfully denied it and accused me of irrational jealousy, Barry took off for Key West the next week, so I let the matter rest.” He shoved back his hair and gave me a pained look. “I wondered if I was paranoid, to be honest. Our sex life improved, if anything. She was still the gracious hostess and tireless worker. She made a conscientious effort to be friends with Jillian, who can be difficult at times. She was…”

  “Perfect?”

  “Yeah, perfect,” he said bitterly.

  “What do you know about her background? Did she grow up in Miami? Is her family there? What was her maiden name?”

  “Henridge was her maiden name, or at least the one she was using when I first met her. She grew up in one of the suburban towns in southern Florida, and her parents both died while she was in high school. There were no grandparents or siblings. She said she’d lost touch with her few remaining relatives. She always spoke of them with a hint of contempt in her voice. I don’t think she was too upset about it.”

  “What about her personal papers, like a passport or social security card?”

  “Becca didn’t even have a driver’s license when I married her. She was carrying everything in her purse when she was mugged; she’d just emptied her safe deposit box at the bank because she was moving out of the state. I suggested she write for a copy of her birth certificate in order to get a passport, but she said she didn’t want to go anyplace farther than here, where the only things she had to watch out for were birds and butterflies. She used to laugh about being mugged, but she was still deeply upset.”

  “Listen, Dick,” I said earnestly, “we need to find out about Becca’s past. Call a private investigation agency in Miami and have them dig up as much as they can. They need to find out where she went to school and where she worked afterward. Ask Marilyn Gordon for the precise date she met Becca at the airport, then have the investigators check back issues of the newspapers for details of the mugging. If there’s a mention of the hospital, they can confirm the dates she was there.”

  “She’s dead. What difference does any of that make? What matters now is for me to prove my innocence. Does it matter if Becca was a homecoming queen fifteen years ago or how badly she was beaten when she was mugged?”

  “It might.”

  “Someone from her past killed her?”

  Despite his skepticism, he deserved a straight answer. “I truly don’t know, Dick.” I slid off the fender and went inside. Out on the deck, Luanne was passing around the canapés to familiar faces. The Dunlings sat like royalty on the settee, while Georgiana and Agatha Anne were perched on the rail. Sid had cornered Anders and appeared to be demonstrating his golf swing. I eased into the party, exchanging greetings and waiting for the opportunity to have a private chat with Anders.

  Livia beckoned to me. “Isn’t it thrilling?”

  “It certainly is,” I said, glancing at her husband in hopes he would elaborate on the source of our mutual thrills. In response, he stood up and went to the bar.

  “Oh, dear,” murmured Livia, watching him. “He’s so very preoccupied these days. I really must think of a way to rid the yard of that nasty groundhog. Not only do the gunshots alarm me, they positively terrify whatever hikers are within earshot. Just this morning, a group in a van turned around in the parking lot and roared away without so much as taking a single step down the Mallard Trail. We’ll have an enormous crowd this weekend, naturally, and it will be chaos should Wharton break his promise and bring out his shotgun.”

  “Why are you expecting a crowd this weekend?” I asked, wondering how a certain facilitator would react should she be subjected to nonstop slogging.

  “Because of the article to appear in the paper later this week, Claire. We were just talking about it, weren’t we? I was opposed to it initially because the success of the breeding is our first concern, but Agatha Anne insisted that this is a unique opportunity for the public. She even sent fliers to church and civic groups in the adjoining counties, offering them a discount for advanced reservations. We’re going to double ticket prices for the occasion, and take the barge to within a quarter mile of the aerie. Those with adequate binoculars will have a stirring sight awaiting them. We’ll have lectures complete with slides and a tape recording of the squeaky cackle the adult eagles make when in a defense posture. You will be here for our Eagle Awareness weekend, won’t you?”

  “I haven’t made any plans yet,” I said. “It sounds as though the weekend will be profitable. Did Agatha Anne and Georgiana ever get the books straightened out on Saturday night? Caron mentioned that they’d spread everything out and were working hard.”

  “I don’t think they did,” she said unhappily. “I volunteered Wharton’s services, but they insisted that they would be finished by Friday. The Raptors Ball is so very vital to the continuation of the Dunling Foundation. If word gets out that we’re in arrears with the caterer or the florist, people will be less inclined to be generous. There are many other equally worthy organizations, although none is so dear to my heart.”

  “Does Wharton have experience in accounting?”

  “After thirty years in the military, he has experience in almost everything. His superiors were not always rational when making assignments. It’s almost a policy to disregard training and expertise.”

  “What about electronics?” I said, crossing my fingers.

  “What about it?” Wharton said from behind the settee.

  “I was just thinking about those wonderful old war movies, where everyone barked into walkie-talkies to coordinate the attack,” I said. It was inane, admittedly, but it was tough to invent anything better with a bald-headed vul
ture glaring down at me.

  “I was in communications for a time,” he said, “but we didn’t have time to play with gadgets. We strung telephone wire, installed surveillance systems, that sort of thing. Any more questions, Mrs. Malloy?”

  I excused myself and went inside to hide until I felt less like an appetizing mound of flesh. After I’d washed my face in the bathroom, I opened the door of Jillian’s bedroom. She had not returned. On the wall were photographs of her father, her mother, the two of them on a boat, and one of herself in a graduation gown. There were none of Becca.

  I began a systematic search of the entire house. The only photographs I found were of Dick, Jillian, Jan, and some of the people currently nibbling canapés. I could not recall any shots of Becca at the house in town, for that matter—only the portrait in Dick’s office. And that had been painted under protest.

  Good-byes were being said on the deck. As I went out, Wharton was helping Livia down the steps to the yard. Sid was now demonstrating his swing to Dick, while Agatha Anne watched impatiently.

  Luanne came to the door, carrying glasses and wadded paper napkins. “Did you have a chance to talk to Anders?” she asked me in a low voice.

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “Has he left?”

  “Ten or fifteen minutes ago.” She searched my face, her expression carefully neutral. “You and Dick were outside for quite a long time. Did you…discuss anything significant?”

  “You’d better ask him,” I said, unwilling to tell her that he’d further incriminated himself in my mind. “However, I’ll go by Anders’s trailer now and try to find out if he really was in Dick’s house yesterday. I don’t know how he could have gotten hold of a key, but it’s possible he was using the house for an assignation. Do we have any idea where Agatha Anne was yesterday afternoon?”