Murder Makes Waves

by Anne George

  “What makes you say that?”

  Lolita wiped her face generously on the dishcloth. “God, Mrs. Hollowell, I’m so scared.”

  Her nervousness was contagious. “Is this something you should have told the Marine Patrol and haven’t?”

  “I’ve got two kids, Mrs. Hollowell. I can’t afford to get involved in anything.”

  The schoolteacher in me wanted to tell her that she couldn’t afford not to. But I kept my mouth shut. Fortunately, she decided for herself. She got up, went to the counter where her purse was, and brought it back to the table.

  “Here,” she said, unzipping the side compartment and taking out a large gold earring shaped like a turtle. I recognized it instantly as one of the pair Millicent had had on the night we saw her at The Redneck.

  The kitchen door opened and Fred stuck his head in. “Just wondered where you were.”

  “I’m here.”

  “So I see.” The door closed. Lolita had clamped the turtle between her palms and her skin color was fast approaching that of her hair.

  “It’s okay,” I assured her. “I know what it is. We saw Millicent wearing them.”

  Lolita put the earring back in her purse. “It was in the office by the door. The door was unlocked and a chair was turned over.” She grabbed the dishcloth again. “It’s my fault. If I’d gotten to work on time, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  The sight of the earring had shocked me. For a moment, I had seen it dangling again against Millicent’s shoulders. And now I was suddenly angry at the woman sitting before me for withholding this important evidence. Highway 98 is heavily traveled. If Millicent were forced from the office, surely someone would have noticed something amiss, something they might have passed off as inconsequential unless they knew what had happened.

  “What should I do?” she asked the towel.

  “You know what you have to do,” I said calmly, pushing back my chair. I started toward the door, but anger got the better of me. I turned. “Call Major Bissell at the Florida Marine Patrol right now, Lolita! If you don’t, I will!”

  So there!

  I nearly ran over a woman who was coming into the kitchen with some dirty plates.

  It was easy to spot the supernovas. Sister was bending over brushing at her shoe with a paper napkin. I grabbed her by the arm. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Believe what?” She didn’t look up.

  “We’ve got to find a bathroom or somewhere we can talk.”

  “What about?”

  “Just follow me.”

  “Why? Berry and Fairchild have just come in.”

  “Okay, suit yourself. But I just found out something very important about Millicent’s murder.”

  “There’s a bathroom right down the hall.” Sister led the way.

  “Okay,” I said, perched on the side of the tub, “you remember Lolita? The saleswoman in the Blue Bay Ranch office?”

  “Sure. She has green hair.” Sister looked in the mirror. “Lord, I hope it’s the fluorescent light making me look like this.”

  “Well, listen,” I said, and told her what had happened in the kitchen.

  “She’s got the earring in her purse now?” Sister sat down on the toilet and frowned. “How come she told you?”

  “Because she was desperate to tell someone. Maybe I look like the type of person who would know what to do.”

  “Hmmm. And you told her to call Major Bissell?”

  “I told her if she didn’t, I would.”

  “Do you think she will?”

  Somebody knocked on the door. “Just a minute!” Sister called.

  “She has to,” I said. “If Millicent was abducted from the Blue Bay office, there could be fingerprints. Or somebody could have seen them leaving.”

  Sister gazed up at the ceiling, which was papered in a Laura Ashley print, small pink flowers that coordinated with bouquets of the same flower on the wall. Definitely not a bachelor’s choice. Whose? Emily’s? Millicent’s?

  “What are you doing?” I asked finally.

  “Thinking.” She propped her feet on the tub. “Millicent didn’t go to the grocery for tomato juice. She came here to Blue Bay to meet her lover.”

  “You don’t meet your lover early in the morning. God forbid.”

  Sister continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “She met her lover in the office and they had a quarrel.”

  “A lover’s quarrel.”

  “Exactly. She was giving him money, and she was getting suspicious that that was all he was interested in. So she told him farewell.”

  “Farewell.”

  “Isn’t that what I said? Quit repeating what I say, Mouse. Anyway, Millicent said no more money, lover, and goodbye.”

  I nodded, caught up in the story.

  “He grabs her.” Sister jumped up so suddenly, I nearly toppled over into the tub. “He’s furious. Cuts her throat and drags her to the water.” Sister acted this out. “Throws her in.” She turned to me. “How about that?”

  “Drags her a half mile to the water? Lord, Sister. He has to take her from the office to a boat. They go out by the jetties where he kills her and throws her in the water. I believe your words concerning the blood were something like spouting and spurting.”

  “Those were Major Bissell’s words.”

  “Well, there wasn’t any spouting in the office. I’ll bet you there’s a boat somewhere with a hell of a lot of blood on it, though.”

  “Every fishing boat in Destin.”

  True. “Okay, let’s say that Millicent’s lover, if she had one, killed her. Then who killed Emily?”

  “Someone in her condo who knew she owned a lot of rare signed first editions worth a fortune.”

  “I didn’t know Emily collected first editions,” I said, confused.

  “I need a pencil and paper,” Sister said, opening the medicine cabinet as if she expected to find some there.

  “To write all this down.”

  “You forget it if you don’t.”

  “Shit!” I opened the door and stomped out. A tall, thin man was waiting in the hall, doing the stiff-legged dance of one who is badly in need of a bathroom. “Go ahead,” I told him. “Don’t mind her.”

  “Well, it could have been that way,” Sister said as we went down the hall.

  I stopped. “Listen,” I said, “that girl in the kitchen confided something to me that doesn’t need to go anywhere but to the police. She’s scared to death that the murderer will find out she has the earring and come after her. Don’t make me sorry I told you, Mary Alice.”

  “Have I ever?”

  Lolita and I were in deep doo-doo. I looked in the kitchen, but she was gone. I hoped she was on her way to the Florida Marine Patrol office.

  “Hey, pretty lady.” Fred sidled up to me. “Come home with me and I’ll show you my CD-ROM.”

  “Okay, if you’ll twiddle with my VCR. It’s flashing 12:00 again.”

  “Be still, my heart.”

  I looked at the glass in his hand. He had switched from beer. “Better go get something to eat before you need CPR.”

  “God, I love this dirty talk!”

  “Want me to get you some food?”

  “Crab claws.” Fred smiled happily.

  “Wait right here for me.”

  Haley was at the table fixing a plate. “Your papa’s getting smashed,” I told her. “That’s not like him.”

  “I think he’s more upset about his business than you realize, Mama. Papa can’t cope with change.”

  “True.” I realized guiltily that I hadn’t talked to Fred about the details of the Metal Fab merger. I put some crab claws on a plate and added some cocktail sauce. I considered telling Haley about Lolita and the turtle earring but decided against it. Instead, I told her that Frances was on her way over.

  “She’s not going to want to go home tomorrow,” Haley said. “And I’ve got to be at work Monday morning.”

  “If she doesn’t, your papa an
d I will take you to Mobile. You can get a direct flight.” It saddened me to think of Haley leaving. “It hasn’t been much of a vacation, has it? How about we all go to The Flamingo tonight? Eat high on the hog.”

  Haley grinned. “Thanks, Mama, but I’ve got a date.”

  “Major Bissell? How come I thought you weren’t interested?”

  “He’s a nice man.”

  I certainly hoped so.

  I took the food to Fred and ordered him to eat it. Sister had Berry West cornered, Frances had come in, waved, and was already talking to Jason Marley, and Fairchild was surrounded by women. So much for the departed Millicent and Emily.

  But not as departed as I had thought. Jason Marley went over to Fairchild and they talked for a moment. Then Jason clapped his hands to get our attention and told us to freshen our drinks and come into the media room.

  “The media room?” Fred asked.

  “He’s going to show us his CD-ROM.”

  “Oh, my,” Frances murmured as we followed Jason into a room that seemed to have at least one of everything Circuit City might sell.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Jason said. Which wasn’t hard to do. Someone had placed folding chairs before a giant TV screen, creating a little theater.

  “Now,” he said when we were settled, “Fairchild and I have collaborated on this. I hope it will mean as much to you as it does to us.”

  The lights dimmed and we heard Millicent’s voice. “Fairchild Weatherby, act like you’ve got sense!” And then she was on the screen, laughing, holding her hand toward Fairchild’s video camera. “Quit, I say!” She turned and ran down the beach, a pretty gray-haired woman in a flowered bathing suit whose little skirt didn’t hide the fact that she was plump. “I’m going to get you for this,” she shouted back, and we could hear Fairchild chuckling.

  None of us had been expecting this.

  “Dear God,” Fred muttered.

  Someone left the room abruptly, slamming the door.

  Emily Peacock looked up from the very place where we were sitting, her smile wide. “Don’t do that, Jason. I’m watching “General Hospital.”

  We watched Millicent and Emily check turtle nests, picnic with Laura, go sailing. On New Year’s Eve, they partied, Millicent slimmer, blonde, radiant, being dipped by her partner; Laura, Eddie, and Emily raising champagne glasses.

  “This is tacky,” Sister whispered into my ear. “I think I’ll go outside.”

  In a few minutes I followed her, shutting the door as quietly as possible. The rain had stopped completely, and she had walked out on the Stampses’ pier and was leaning against the railing looking over the bay just as Sophie had done earlier.

  “Give me a Kleenex,” she said when I came up.

  I reached in my pocket, found one, and tore it in two. “Here.” I handed her half.

  “That was awful,” she said, blowing her nose. “I’ve got movies of all my husbands and I wouldn’t dream of showing them like that. The children get them out and look at them sometimes.”

  “Your old eight millimeter projector still works?”

  “Sort of jerky, but okay.” Sister had missed the dig. Just as well. “Anyway, there’s no way I’d invite people to a party and sit them down to watch my dead husbands, particularly if they hadn’t been dead long. Would you, Mouse? Don’t you think that’s an invasion of the dead person’s privacy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t. Jason and Fairchild, and maybe others, had obviously found it comforting.

  “Well, I think it’s tacky.”

  “It’s certainly disconcerting,” I agreed.

  “Hello, ladies.” Neither of us had heard Eddie Stamps come up behind us, and we both jumped. “Have you seen the key to my boat?”

  “No,” we said together. Then Mary Alice added, “Maybe Fairchild has it, Eddie.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Watching a video.”

  Eddie looked puzzled.

  “In the pink house,” I added.

  We watched him walk down the pier.

  “Damn,” Sister said.

  “Damn,” I echoed. We stood looking at the water, neither of us mentioning what was foremost in our thoughts, that the man on the video dipping a glowing Millicent had been Jack Berliner.

  Finally Sister said, “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Mouse.”

  There’s no telling what I would have been accused of if I had said anything.

  Chapter 16

  The sun came out during the afternoon and the trek over the stile began for the beach lovers. Fred had gone down for a long summer’s nap when we got back to the condo, and was still asleep. Haley and Frances were at the outlet mall, and Sister was coloring her hair Summer Marigold (“A New You In Twenty Minutes!”).

  “You ought to try this, Mouse,” she said, coming into the living room with her hair plastered against her head. “I was looking at your hair this morning at the cemetery and thinking it would look okay if it weren’t so gray. Here,” she handed me a plastic bottle, “there’s plenty left.”

  “Gee, thanks for your kind thoughts. But it might turn out like Lolita’s.”

  “Don’t be silly. She’s ruined her hair with chlorine. This will just make your gray look a little blonder. It’ll shine more, too.”

  “I like my gray.”

  “You’re lying.” Sister sat down and checked her watch. “Twenty minutes.”

  I was reading The Destin Log, the biweekly newspaper that keeps everyone abreast of the local news. In this issue, pictures of Millicent and Emily were on the front page. I laid it on the coffee table so Sister could see the story. “Says right here that Lieutenant Major Bissell says progress is being made in the murder investigations of the two women.”

  “Hah. He still thinks he’s going to blame it on that sweet Fairchild.” She picked up the paper and looked at the story.

  “Well, he sure had a motive. A million dollars and maybe a Jack Berliner.”

  “Nonsense. Fairchild wouldn’t lay a finger on Millicent or anybody else.” She folded the paper. “You know what I wonder? Who are the Berliners, anyway? I mean, face it, Mouse, commuting to Atlanta doesn’t make sense. And, for that matter, who is Jason Marley? We don’t know a hill of beans about him either, except he has money and likes pink.”

  “I’m sure the police know.”

  “I’m not sure the police know diddly.” Mary Alice pulled a strand of hair out, dried it on the towel and asked how it looked. It looked great, a nice golden blonde.

  “There’s plenty left for you. It’ll do wonders.”

  God forbid! In sixty years how is it that I haven’t learned a damn thing? The new me turned out as redheaded as Lucille Ball.

  “Look at this!” I moaned. “I’m ruined.”

  Sister looked over my shoulder into the bathroom mirror. “I don’t understand. It didn’t do my hair that way. Maybe you should have done the patch test.”

  A knock on the door prevented a third murder.

  “Don’t let anybody in!” I screeched. “Not until I can get to a beauty parlor and get this stuff out.”

  “A beauty parlor won’t do any good. It says on the box it won’t come out for twenty-four shampoos.” Mary Alice opened the door for Major Bissell.

  “Mrs. Crane, is it okay if I talk to you a few minutes?” he asked. “I’ve just left Mr. Weatherby, and you could save me a trip.”

  “Sure,” Sister said. “Come on in.”

  I pulled a towel over my head.

  “Mrs. Hollowell,” he greeted me. “You okay this afternoon?”

  “She’s trying to decide whether or not she likes the color of her hair,” Sister said. “It’s supposed to be Summer Marigold, the same thing I have on mine, but it’s slightly redder.”

  Major Bissell looked at me sympathetically. “That happened to my mother. If you decide you don’t like it, she went to a beauty parlor in Shalimar called Curl Up and Dye. They could probably
help you.”

  “That’s good to know, isn’t it, Patricia Anne? They sound like specialists.” Sister smiled. I might kill her yet. “Sit down, Lieutenant. What can we do for you?”

  “Mrs. Brown called. Lolita Brown? She said she had talked to you, Mrs. Hollowell.”

  “She did. She showed me the earring.”

  “Patricia Anne told me about it,” Sister said.

  “Well, I know the morning she was killed, Mrs. Weatherby came over to tell you she was okay.”

  We both nodded.

  “Do you by any chance remember if she was wearing those earrings that morning? I’ve asked Mr. Weatherby and he can’t remember.”

  Sister and I looked at each other.

  “She had on the same outfit she was wearing the night before at the Redneck,” Sister said. “The same one she had on when she was killed. An off-white jumpsuit.” She turned to me. “Did she have on earrings?”

  “I’m trying to think.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture Millicent. “Her makeup was messed up. Mascara smeared. I remember thinking she looked a mess.” I opened my eyes and looked at the lieutenant. “No earrings. I’m sure. At least not those turtles. You couldn’t miss them.”

  “Mr. Weatherby said they were a gift from Mrs. Peacock.”

  “They were both involved in the turtle watch program,” I said. “The earrings would have been a nice memento of that.”

  Lieutenant Bissell got out his notebook and jotted something down. “I know you saw Mrs. Weatherby at the Redneck Riviera the night before her death,” he said. “Can you tell me about the meeting?”

  “We’ve already told you,” I said. I didn’t have time for this.

  But Sister was cooperative. “We were surprised when we saw her,” Sister said. “She’d lost about fifty pounds and had her hair streaked a nice blonde. And she may have had a face-lift. Anyway, she looked great.”

  “She said she was meeting someone for a drink and then the Blue Bay folks were having a birthday party. Mrs. Brown told me it was for her,” I added. “And she had the earrings on. I noticed them.”

  “Do you know by any chance who she was meeting?”

  “We didn’t see who it was. We were leaving when we saw her,” Sister said.