Don't Go Home

by Carolyn Hart

  Annie didn’t turn to look. She knew the voice and the sniffs. “Hello, Warren.” Warren Foster was the kind of person who couldn’t be avoided in a small town. In his early thirties, though his fussy manner made him seem older, he lived on inherited money. He was ubiquitous on boards, at charity events, never missed a meeting of Friends of the Library. He knew everyone and absorbed gossip, innuendo, and outright slander with the delight of a connoisseur. His pale green eyes roved every gathering as he looked for hints of discord, acrimony, lust, or fear.

  “Now, now, Annie, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. This may be the most exciting evening our little island has enjoyed in a long time. You may have missed the best part of the show, a delicious riff on foreplay. I’ve been watching them come and go for quite a while. Nervous as cats on a hot sidewalk.” Sniff sniff.

  Warren Foster moved nearer, leaned to murmur in her ear.

  Annie’s nose wrinkled at the heavy scent of peppermint.

  “Joan’s hopped up and down a half dozen times. Leland sits there and looks after her and I’ll bet a penny to a farthing—”

  Weedy Warren Foster was tall and a little stooped. Ever since a summer at Oxford, he’d affected day cravats (even Warren wouldn’t dare an ascot with a tweed jacket) and sprinkled Britishisms with abandon: mum for mother, biscuit for cookie, bonnet for hood. From the corner of her eye, she noted the day cravat was a deep purple, his shirt gray, and thought longingly how nice the cravat would look stuffed between his thin lips or tied around his long, thin nose, possibly muting those inevitable sniffs.

  “—he knows all about her fling. Husbands can sense these things. At least that’s what I’ve been told. As for Eddie Olson”—a slight shudder—“he’s as appalling now as he was in high school. I avoided meeting him in a hallway. What a brute. Looked at me like I was a palmetto bug. But I didn’t know until I read the book that he was the one who hurt Michael Smith. I knew he was sullen that Michael beat him in tennis. Never a good idea to beat someone like Eddie. Of course, he relished football. Physical, you know. Star turns for bullies. I didn’t go to football games, my dear. Savagery, that’s what football is. Everyone said, ‘Oh well, too bad, these things happen.’ Eddie still has that tough-guy glare but he’s restless tonight, too. He can’t stand still for long. First he’s here, then there.” Sniff sniff. “Then there’s poor George Griffith.” The light high malicious voice was regretful. “He used to be much better looking, but he’s let himself go. A definite potbelly. Cute on pigs and babies. Someone should tell—”

  “Oh golly, Warren, I see a customer I need to say hello to. Excuse me. Good to see you.” She didn’t want to spend another instant listening to that soft trickle of venom, but Warren’s patter was a harsh reminder that she wasn’t alone in connecting islanders to Alex’s book. At least Warren hadn’t mentioned Marian.

  She strode firmly away, skirting those who had yet to take seats, until she reached a favorite customer, SueLee Douglas. “Margaret Maron’s new book will arrive next week. Do you want me to hold a copy?”

  They chatted for a moment, then Annie edged nearer the gazebo, though she made no effort to make eye contact with Marian, whose thin face was turned toward the steps.

  Near the steps, the TV reporter shrugged her shoulders impatiently. Her photogenic face was abruptly not quite so lovely, perfect brows drawn in a frown, lips pressed together. She glanced at her watch. Likely the crew intended to film a portion of Alex Griffith’s talk, then leave to catch the nine o’clock ferry back to the mainland.

  Annie looked at her watch. Five minutes after eight. Abruptly she made up her mind. Maybe it wouldn’t matter but she was going to find Alex Griffith, try to stop him. She knew she had to move fast. Maybe Alex was waiting for the lights to dim, intending a dramatic entrance up the center aisle.

  Annie was painfully aware of Marian’s hunched figure a few feet away. Annie knew that she was helpless to prevent misery for Marian. Nothing stopped an avalanche. But she could try. She started toward the far side of the terrace.

  The TV reporter, who had forgotten to smile, huffed, moved with a grim face, dark hair swinging. In two long-legged strides, she reached Rae Griffith. The reporter’s gestures were clear. One bright nail tapped the wrist with a watch, a slender hand swept toward the gazebo.

  Annie had no difficulty imagining the cool, modulated tone as the reporter pointed out they had a ferry to catch, and where was the speaker?

  Rae brushed back a strand of silky black hair, her expression ingratiating. She said something, then quickly ducked around the reporter and walked fast toward the inn. She passed within a few feet of Marian.

  Marian’s face . . .

  Annie hurried after Rae.

  Rae was at the corner of the inn.

  “Rae,” Annie called out, starting to run, her steps loud on the terrace. Maybe Rae would help.

  Rae Griffith half turned, frowned, looked both impatient and irritated. “A little late, aren’t you? Did you change your mind?”

  Annie skidded to a stop. “I’m not here about books. I wouldn’t bring books for him ever. I’m here about people. Can’t you stop him?”

  Rae’s irritated look slid away, replaced by a mixture of regret and uneasiness. Her expressive face was suddenly forlorn, weary. “I’ve tried.” She pressed her lips together for an instant, then blurted out, “Everything’s a mess. Look, I don’t have time to talk now, the TV crew’s about to leave. I have to get him.”

  As she started to turn away, Annie talked fast. “He can make something up. He doesn’t have to hurt people.”

  Rae paused. “I’m afraid that’s what he wants to do. I told him—Oh, it doesn’t matter now.” She shook her head, started up the oyster shell path.

  Annie hesitated, then followed Rae. Annie made up her mind. She would warn Alex Griffith. Before he spoke, she was going to climb up on the gazebo steps and face the audience first. He wasn’t going to have everything his way. She had a lot of friends here tonight. She didn’t relish making a scene, but she and Death on Demand were not going to be associated with Alex Griffith. Phrases tumbled through her mind . . . can’t stand by and see cruelty . . . Griffith’s book belongs to him but people’s lives aren’t his property . . . you know what he plans, he’s told the world . . . don’t help him destroy people you know . . . get up . . . walk out . . . now . . . Then she’d sail down the steps. She hoped she wouldn’t leave alone. Some would stay and she would have made a spectacle of herself and the TV crew wouldn’t have missed a bit of it and probably the reporter would be following her, mic outstretched, asking, “What do you mean by cruelty?”

  As she came around the corner of the building, she heard a sliding door open. She reached the patio. A drape billowed out through the partially open door. Black industrial tape covered the gash in the glass made earlier in the day by the hurricane lamp. Light streamed across the flagstones. Someone had swept up the shards of brightly colored glass. A new hurricane lamp sat on the patio table.

  A strangled cry, deep, wrenching, came from beyond the partially open door. A hand with bright red fingernails gripped the drape, pulled the soft yellow cloth aside. Rae Griffith stumbled out onto the patio, eyes staring, mouth working, face ashen. “Alex. Help me. Alex . . .” She careened into the table, both hands outstretched. The new lamp wobbled, toppled on its side, crashed onto the cement. Rae shuddered and scarcely breathed the words. “Alex . . . someone hurt him . . . help . . . we need help.”

  Annie looked from her to the open doorway, took one step, another. She pulled aside the drape. She stopped, stared in shock.

  Alex Griffith lay on his back at an awkward angle on the wicker sofa, his torso twisted as if he had fallen to his left. A yellow throw pillow rested atop his face. Blood had seeped from beneath the pillow. His left arm hung limply, part of one grayish hand resting on the parquet flooring.

  Behind her came an
unsteady step. “We need to get help.”

  Annie turned.

  Rae stood just inside the room.

  Annie struggled to breathe. “I’m afraid no one can help him.”

  Rae lifted her hands to her face, began to make soft whimpering sounds.

  Annie moved toward her, gripped one arm, tried to steer her to a chair.

  Rae jerked away. “I can’t bear to be in here.” She pulled aside the drape and stepped onto the patio. She looked diminished, still with the same flyaway silky dark hair but her face sharp and pointed, her shoulders bowed.

  Annie followed, glad to be out of the room, trying not to remember with such clarity the stillness, that pillow, the blood. She yanked her cell phone from her pocket. She swiped a familiar name.

  Rae collapsed onto a patio chair. She gripped the arms with fingers like claws.

  Police Chief Billy Cameron’s wife, Mavis, answered. “Hey, Annie.” Mavis sounded relaxed. She was at home, enjoying a summer evening. When she responded to a call at the police station, she spoke formally, as a dispatcher should.

  Annie spoke carefully, kept her voice steady. “Billy needs to come to Seaside Inn. Suite 130. Alex Griffith—the author—back on the island—is dead. I’m afraid—” Annie felt shaky. Was there any doubt? That blood . . . “—he’s been murdered.”

  “Stay on the line.” Mavis was crisp, all business. Mavis also doubled as a crime scene tech. There was the sound of brisk steps, Mavis’s muffled call. “Billy. Trouble.” Mavis’s words drifted to her. “. . . writer dead. Annie says murder. Suite 130, Seaside Inn.”

  Annie was painfully aware of Rae, huddled in a brightly striped canvas chair, staring emptily at nothing, the muscles of her face slack. How awful to sit alone, her world transformed from golden days to numbing horror.

  Billy’s deep voice was brisk. “On my way. Stay on the line.” Billy always sounded calm. The island’s police chief had grown up on Broward’s Rock, beginning as a young patrolman, moving up through the ranks. His sandy hair was now touched by silver, his broad face seamed with lines of good humor but bulldog toughness as well. “Start at the beginning.”

  She was still talking when she heard the wail of sirens. Possibly Billy had arrived. He lived not far from the inn. And likely Mavis had summoned off-duty officers to join him. Annie kept talking. She hoped Billy didn’t sense that she was parsing her words. Perhaps Billy thought her simple, unelaborated sentences reflected her status as a bystander. Famous author supposed to speak . . . didn’t show up at the podium . . . wife went to get him . . . Here was where she avoided full disclosure . . . I was coming up behind her . . . she went into the room . . . out in an instant . . . said he’d been hurt . . . went in and I knew he was dead . . .

  She said nothing about her determination to disrupt Alex’s evening. She simply reported facts. Implicit was the message that the sudden death had nothing to do with her. She was a bystander. She pushed deep inside the achy feeling that she owed Billy better. But she was torn. The law or Marian. People who could be hurt . . . And she knew nothing for a fact, only inferences drawn from a book, except for the quarrel she’d heard between Marian and Alex. The law or Marian . . . Otherwise, she was only a bystander, not involved.

  Annie held fast to that thought. She had no real connection to Alex Griffith or his wife. What she surmised, well, she was under no obligation to point fingers. Let Rae Griffith fill that role. Annie pushed away the memory of morning heat and standing on the other side of the patio wall and Marian’s husky, desperate voice.

  The fact that Annie had come to the Seaside Inn tonight didn’t involve her in anything, and definitely not an investigation. She would contribute what she knew of this evening, which was very little. She would keep her answers simple.

  “. . . so I called you—”

  “We’re here. Wait for us.” Billy ended the call.

  More sirens rose and fell, growing nearer and nearer, abruptly cut off in midsqueal. Even from this small patio at the end of the wing, she saw the flash of red lights at the far end of the wing, knew patrol cars had arrived in front of the inn. Car doors slammed.

  Billy knew his island, knew the inn, knew where to park for quickest access to a patio in the east wing. Footsteps crunched on oyster shells. Light from lampposts illuminated the walk.

  Billy Cameron was in the lead. He had not taken time to change clothes. Instead of his usual short-sleeved white shirt and dress slacks, he wore a blue polo, jeans, and sneakers. Close behind followed two officers, dark-haired, stocky Lou Pirelli and thin, angular Hyla Harrison. Lou was in casual dress. Annie didn’t know if Hyla had also been summoned from home. No matter, she was trim in her uniform: khaki blouse with her name tag—Officer H. Harrison—khaki trousers, black shoes. Her reddish-brown hair was drawn back in a ponytail, her pale, freckled face impassive, but her eyes moved back and forth, noting the partially open sliding door marred by crisscrossing black tape, the yellow drape that wavered in the breeze. Mavis Cameron and three patrolmen waited a few feet from the patio. Mavis carried a rectangular black plastic evidence case.

  Billy took in the patio at a glance, the stricken young woman in the webbed patio chair, Annie standing at her side, the partially open door with the splotch of tape, the room, the drape that blocked a view of the interior. Careful not to touch any surface, Billy edged past the drape. He was back in only a moment. Death confirmed. Murder apparent. He and his officers could secure the perimeter of the crime scene, but investigation had to await the arrival of the medical examiner and an official confirmation of death. He glanced at Hyla Harrison. “Take a quick look. Tell me if anything indicates robbery.”

  Hyla slipped into the room.

  Billy walked to Rae’s chair. “Mrs. Griffith?” His tone was gentle. “I’m Police Chief Billy Cameron.”

  Rae looked up, her lips trembling. “Someone killed Alex. I found him . . .”

  Oyster shells crackled. Doc Burford loomed up out of the dusk, unkempt shaggy white hair, probably not combed since morning, white long-sleeved shirt open at the throat, a smear of mustard near the third button likely a reminder of a hot dog lunch grabbed in the hospital cafeteria, wrinkled black trousers dulled with age, thick-soled running shoes. He was not only chief of hospital, he also served as the island medical examiner. His heavy face was lined by years of hard work, unremitting effort to save lives. He had an abiding hatred for murder and lives cut short. Bristly gray brows drawn down in a tight frown, he looked only at Billy.

  Billy turned a thumb toward the partially open sliding door. “Inside, Doc.”

  After a nod from Billy, Mavis followed Doc Burford, careful not to touch any surface.

  Rae looked even more stricken. She kept her gaze away from the entrance to the suite.

  Rapid footsteps sounded. Annie looked toward the walk.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” The dark-haired TV reporter strode up to the patio, thrust a mic toward Billy. “We heard sirens.” Marian Kenyon was right behind her.

  Billy gave the reporter a cold stare. “Crime scene. You are requested to remain on the terrace.”

  Marian Kenyon peered around the taller woman. “Chief?”

  “No press now. Wait on the terrace. We’ll brief you when we can.” Billy nodded toward Lou Pirelli, who moved purposefully toward the TV reporter and Marian.

  Rae’s head turned. She frowned at Marian.

  Hyla stepped out onto the patio. “No evidence of a search. A man’s billfold on the dresser, along with coins and cell phone. Woman’s purse on the hall table. Mavis will check to see if the billfold belongs to the deceased and the purse to his widow.”

  “Who’s dead?” the TV reporter shouted as she backpedaled away from Lou.

  Billy ignored the question, spoke quietly to Rae. “Mrs. Griffith, as soon as we secure the scene, I’ll be with you.” He turned to Annie, gestured toward the terr
ace. “Has an announcement been made?”

  “Not yet.”

  Billy walked to the path. “Officers Harrison and Pirelli will come with me.”

  Billy, Hyla, and Lou moved fast and were swiftly out of sight, the TV reporter and Marian close behind. The patio with its embracing walls was only a few feet from the rear rows of chairs.

  There was a cessation of sound from the waiting audience and Annie knew the officers had been seen. She wondered if the earlier sound of sirens had been noticed or unheard in the crowd noise. Conversations broke off. Puzzled faces turned to watch as the obvious harbingers of something gone wrong strode onto the terrace and moved up the central aisle.

  There was the hollow knocking sound of a microphone being handled, then Billy’s voice was clear and distinct. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Griffith will be unable to speak this evening. I am sorry to report that his body was discovered shortly after eight P.M. He is apparently the victim of a homicide. It is important for us to know who was at the inn tonight. I ask everyone to remain seated until Officers Harrison and Pirelli have spoken to each of you and obtained your name and address. I’m sure everyone wants to cooperate. In addition, will anyone who feels that he or she may have information important to our investigation or any knowledge of Alex Griffith’s movements this evening please remain until an officer can speak with you.”

  Annie pictured Hyla and Lou setting about their task, impassive, professional, quick.

  Doc Burford shouldered his way past the drape, stopped on the patio.

  Billy came around the patio wall.

  Rae rose, moved toward the ME. “What did they do to him? What happened?”

  Doc Burford spoke carefully. “I can’t be certain of the cause of death until I complete an autopsy. My preliminary finding”—he glanced toward Billy—“is severe head trauma, which either stunned him or resulted in loss of consciousness. There are signs of asphyxia, which suggests the sofa pillow was used to suffocate him. The supposition is that he was struck down, toppled onto the sofa, then someone pressed the pillow against his face until he stopped breathing.” He moved heavily toward the path, looked back at Billy. “There’s a heavy, thick piece of wood, maybe a foot and a half long, at least two-inch circumference, lying near the sofa. Probably the weapon. I’ll see if I find fragments of bark.”