Whipped Cream and Piano Wire

by Winnie Simpson

  “Theo Humphries is a friend of mine,” I said.

  Sissy barked a laugh. “One of my sorority sisters works for Channel 2 News. She told me that you came and rescued your friend from the scene. Still wearing her negligée when the police arrived, wasn’t she?”

  “It was a caftan,” I said, embarrassed that she’d guessed why I was there.

  “It’s pathetically obvious that your friend Theo is responsible. I can’t understand why the idiot police haven’t already put her in jail.” Sissy autopsied the bones from her fish as she spoke. From the low tenor of her voice, no one in the restaurant would think she was urging revenge on her husband’s lover.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, matching my reply to her dulcet tones and vicious remark. If necessary I could go on all night with this verbal slapfest. “Theo Humphries couldn’t hurt someone she loved as much as Cutler.”

  Sissy’s peach mouth tightened. “He was loved, as you call it, by a lot of women. Theo Humphries and her fake boobs was just the latest.” She put down her fork and twisted the napkin in her lap between her hands.

  “I’ve known Theo a long time, and believe me, those boobs are real,” I said.

  “Hmpf,” Sissy said in disbelief. Her reaction was telling. No matter how long and how often Cutler had cheated, it still rankled her.

  “Usually the police take a hard look at the spouse,” I said, trying for an advantage. “They have to be wondering about your marriage. If your husband was cheating on you, why didn’t you divorce him?”

  Sissy looked away, toward the French doors barricading the dining room from the luxuriant courtyard garden. With a sigh she pulled the napkin off her lap and wadded it up, placing it next to her plate. She was silent, apparently debating whether to answer. If she left now, I would have eaten over-mayonnaised chicken salad for nothing.

  “These women usually didn’t last long. I’d learned to bear it, and I knew he needed me. We were good partners. I was tied to him by golden handcuffs, if you know what that means.”

  “Yes. I do,” I said. You didn’t want to give up your expensive lifestyle. I refused to feel sorry for her, since she was trying to shove Theo onto the bus to the Atlanta pen. I let my answer hang in the air while I reached into the sterling basket the Swan House placed on each table, choosing a banana muffin and generously buttering it.

  By the time I wiped the last greasy crumb from my mouth, Sissy’s napkin was neatly folded by her plate, smoothed into place under her manicured hands. She gathered her purse and began to push her chair back from the table. I stopped her with a question.

  “Were you in town the day your husband died?”

  “Of course. I chaired a full committee meeting for the ball.”

  “On a Sunday?” I opened my eyes wide, feigning disbelief.

  “We’re having to work twice as hard to find donors and volunteers. People are worn out with events by this time of the year. They just want to leave town for their lake house.”

  “How long did the meeting last?”

  Sissy gave me a cold stare. “You do have some nerve. Are you asking whether I have an alibi for my husband’s murder? It was your friend who was there when he died. I suggest you remember that.” She flashed an ambiguous half-sneer, then stood up and walked away. “I believe I’ll skip dessert.”

  22

  Freddie Revealed

  After lunch with Sissy, I felt stuffed with calories and starved of answers. I returned to my condo and the blessed pleasure of high efficiency air conditioning whose thermostat is turned down below 70. In the cool quiet of my living room I flopped on the couch and pondered. While the Atlanta police were examining Cutler’s real estate deals and checking alibis, I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to figuring out who actually killed him. Sure I’d learned something about Sissy and found out more about Cutler’s smarmy business practices, maybe even uncovered his involvement in George’s death, but none of that was going to clear Theo. The pressure had to be on Mike Bristol to make an arrest soon, and Theo’s name would still be the first choice, unless there was something—or someone—who had caught the attention of the Atlanta PD. I hoped they were confirming alibis and doing the necessary groundwork to either widen the scope of suspects or eliminate some. We needed to give them an option other than Theo. I thought back to Sissy and her acknowledged distaste for the men who played golf with her husband. I was sure she knew something about their past with Cutler.

  “Vietnam,” I said out loud to myself. I did talk to myself sometime. It was a habit that had driven my ex-husband crazy, but my friends were used to it. I told myself I needed to go back to Sea Island to see if the stint in that war was the key to Cutler Mead’s death. If I left now, I’d be on the coast by sunset. Here was something that I could do while Mike Bristol worked the case in Atlanta. I threw some fresh clothes in a bag and took the elevator down to the parking garage. I turned on the radio in the car to listen to the Braves playing Montreal. Hearing the game was far better than roasting in the afternoon sun at Turner Field. The game was already underway, but being baseball, slow and drawn out, I could listen along most of the way. The Braves had won their division every year since 1995, and were headed toward a fourth consecutive title. Maybe this year we’d finally overcome the curse of the team’s collapse each fall in the World Series. Unfortunately Ken Millwood was pitching. I say unfortunately, not because Millwood isn’t a good pitcher, but because the poor guy has the misfortune to be on a Braves team with fellow pitchers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. I hoped Millwood got a win today.

  With the Braves securely in the lead, I drove and considered the men who’d served with Cutler. Freddie Somerset had been seen with the rest of Cutler’s foursome at the Seaside bar. I guessed Freddie was still on the island, living in Cutler Mead’s house, just like he’d been living in Cutler’s Atlanta house when Theo and I had encountered him. Based on the conversation Flynn’s bartender friend had overheard, Freddie knew what secret those guys brought home from Vietnam. I would have to convince him to tell me.

  I reached the swooping Torras causeway over the marshes just as the light was dimming over the coast. Theo had pointed out Cutler’s home on one of our perambulations, and I drove straight down Sea Island Drive, pulling up across the street from his address. In contrast to Theo’s more modest traditional cottage, Cutler’s Italianate villa was pretty much what you’d expect of a developer—over the top and an advertisement of what a modern builder could achieve, given a budget big enough. The villa sat on the corner, surrounded by a parade of chest high columns linked by curved iron fencing. The core of the house soared to the top of the mature Palmetto palms peeking from the backyard, each of the two interior stories probably 12 feet high. Under a Mediterranean red-tiled roof, numerous arched windows faced onto Sea Island Drive and continued around to the back of the house. Single story wings projected backwards from the front of the house deep into the lot. According to Theo, a pool and guest house hid in the back, behind a tabby wall and hedges. God forbid a Sea Islander didn’t have a pool, despite living a couple of minutes’ walk from the beach.

  I figured that knocking on the front door of the villa was a waste of time. If Freddie was here, he’d most likely be in that guest house, like he’d been in the pool house in Atlanta. I turned down the side street and parked, leaving the car to cut across thick St. Augustine grass toward the back of the house and a gate leading into the yard. I hadn’t been out of the air conditioning 30 seconds, when I slapped the back of my forearm and flicked off a dead mosquito. In the sultry air my hair was beginning to frizz. I paused to reach into my pocket for a scrunchy, pulling the curly strands up off my neck and trapping the mass of hair into a thick pony tail. Standing in the tall grass to feed my hair through the elastic band, I was sure I could feel chiggers jumping onto my ankles. My hair under submission—for the time being—I moved toward Cutler’s back gate.
The sweet smell of star jasmine clambering up a trellis floated toward me in the humid night. I approached the gate and peered over.

  Maybe it was the cloying smell of the wisteria, but something held me suspended in place, unable to make myself call out or open that gate to go into the yard. On the other side of the gate, Freddie stood barefooted with his back to me. Reflected in the shimmering light from the long rectangular swimming pool, he was crouched, his hands held out in front of him with fingers bent into claws. He jumped straight up and kicked out, landing soundlessly on the pool deck. This display of effortless martial arts wasn’t reassuring. The last time I’d encountered Freddie near a swimming pool, he’d made it clear that I was to stay away from him. My heart was beating in my throat at the memory and the fear that he could—or would—act on that threat. I wondered if Detective Bristol would make the connection with Freddie if my body were to be found floating in the marsh between Brunswick and the barrier islands.

  Freddie straightened his pose to stand upright. He slightly cocked his head, but remained standing with his back to me. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  I forced my mouth open. “It’s Ann Audrey Pickering, Freddie,” I said, with a sort of gasp.

  “Thought so.”

  “How’d you know?” My curiosity overcame my paralysis, and I had to ask.

  “Recognized the way you walk on the grass. Heard it that time you and Miz Humphries were at the house in Atlanta.”

  I recalled that when we’d left Cutler’s place in Atlanta, Theo had walked away using the step stones. In my terror after the confrontation with Freddie, I’d skipped the stones and practically run through the grass to get away from him. If Freddie was trying to spook me, he was succeeding, but I had to find out what he knew. “Do you mind if I come in?”

  He turned to face me and gestured me forward. I raised the catch, opening the gate and stepping cautiously into the backyard. I held my hands open and away from my body to show him I was harmless. As I grew nearer, he sniffed the air. Was he smelling me? I fought the impulse to turn and run away.

  “Shampoo,” he said. “Nice.”

  My mouth was dry from fear, but I forced myself to speak. “I need to talk to you,” I said. “For Theo’s sake.”

  “I can’t help you,” he said. He bent over to pick up a towel and wiped the sweat from his face.

  “I had lunch with Sissy Mead today.” I watched to see if her name would provoke any reaction, but he showed no interest.

  “Must’ve been nice.” He sounded bored with the subject, tossing the towel behind his neck and patting it dry.

  “She told me something that got me wondering.” I let that simmer for a minute to see if he’d respond. I saw his curiosity get the better of his need to ignore me.

  “You have a bad habit of wondering about things that are none of your business.”

  His oblique threat actually gave me courage. I was making him nervous, or if not nervous, at least making him defensive. There had to be a reason for his reaction. “Sissy says Cutler cared more about the men he served with in Nam than his own family. I have to wonder why.”

  “Who gives a shit about that stuff now? Cutler’s dead. She needs to move on.” He turned and started walking away. I had to stop him.

  “I’m not interested in Cutler and Sissy’s personal feelings,” I said. “I’m trying to find out who killed him. I think the answer might lie in Vietnam.”

  He turned back with a wary look. “That’s quite a leap.”

  “Maybe so, but I won’t know whether it makes sense unless you talk to me.”

  Freddie shook his head and walked toward the outdoor furniture grouped next to the pool. He straddled one of the webbed lounge chairs and lowered himself onto the seat. At least he had settled, and it looked like he might be willing to listen. I stayed where I was and watched while he squirmed around in the chaise until he appeared to find a comfortable arrangement for his long legs.

  “Okay, what d’you want to talk about?” he asked.

  I gathered my courage and made my pitch. “I think something happened while you were together in that war. Something more than just being comrades in arms. Something you and Cutler and the men he played golf with know about.”

  He grunted. “Of course something happened in Nam. Fucking shithole we couldn’t get out of. Stuff we all still dream about. Same crap as every war zone.”

  “Did you save his life?”

  “Who, Cutler? Naw,” Freddie said, shaking his head at the idea. He pulled a small knife from his shorts pocket and began to clean under his fingernails.

  His casual dismissal tore my theory to shreds. If Freddie hadn’t saved Cutler’s life, why had the man supported Freddie all of these years, even to the extent of remembering him in his will? Maybe that was the trigger that would open up Freddie. It was worth a try. “If you didn’t save his life back then, why did he leave you this house in his will?” I asked.

  “Shit.” He lurched to stand up from the lounge chair, and leaned toward me, tightening his hand around the knife. “What’re you talking about?”

  I backed up and once again opened my hands to signal that I wasn’t a threat. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the knife he held. “You didn’t know?”

  “Fuck no, I didn’t know.” The veins stood out in his neck as he spoke.

  “He left you this house, some stock to Drew Littlefield, but nothing to the other guys in your squad who played golf with him.” I blurted it all out, hoping the information would disarm him.

  He moved closer to me. Despite my intention to stand my ground, I stepped back. He was right in my face, his yellow eyes burning into mine. My heart was hammering in my chest.

  He stared at me, looking for something. I forced myself to stand still in the face of his intense gaze. The sweat was trickling between my shoulder blades before he finally said, “You’re telling the truth.” He folded the knife and put it back into his pocket. He stepped away from me and moved toward the lounge chair.

  I sighed with relief. Now that Freddie seemed more in control of himself, I wanted to see what else he knew. “Didn’t someone inform you of the contents of Cutler’s will?” I asked. “Usually the lawyers would have contacted the beneficiaries.”

  “Haven’t been answering the house phone. Don’t have one of those mobile things.” He seemed to be considering something. “That weasel, Littlefield. He must have written that will. Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “I doubt that Drew wrote it,” I said. “Cutler would have gotten another lawyer, if he was leaving something to Drew.”

  Freddie threw his hand out in a whatever gesture. I was puzzled that he was more focused on not knowing about the bequest than on the windfall Cutler had left him. “It’s a generous gift,” I said. “This house must be worth a lot of money.”

  “Fuck Cutler. He knew how I feel about this place.”

  “This house, you mean?” I asked, shocked at his response.

  “This town, island, whatever.” Freddie waved his arms to indicate. “I asked him, when we were being discharged, ‘Why the hell do you want to live on an island off the Georgia coast?’ I knew it’d be as hot and muggy as Vietnam. We could’ve gone anywhere—a cool climate, like Michigan.”

  “What was his answer?” I asked. What I really wanted to know was why Freddie didn’t go somewhere else by himself, but I was trying to gauge Freddie’s mood before asking something so personal. I didn’t want to set him off again.

  “It was home to him. The beach and salt water marsh. Swarming with fucking mosquitoes. I hate the damn beach,” Freddie said. “Reminds me of forced R and R. Ten days to get your shit together before another push.”

  “But you ended up here anyway,” I said, trying to strike a neutral tone and keep the story going.

  “He offered me a place to stay. I was really crazy after the war. Couldn’t h
ave taken care of myself. So I came. And stayed.”

  I had a surge of sympathy for Freddie, and my view of Cutler softened. In this aspect at least, the man had shown some humanity. I decided to use this opening to follow up on the relationship between Cutler and the men he served with. “Sissy told me…”

  “And fuck her too,” he said, spitting out the words. “She knew. When she was here at the house, she knew. She said she was just coming to look at the furniture. That bitch!”

  “I don’t understand,” I said as I backed away before he lost all sense of where he was. I didn’t want to become the enemy in case Freddie was having a flashback to combat.

  He held his hands out, fingers spread wide. “Don’t you see? She’s trying to pin it on me—making it look like I killed Cutler to get this fucking house.”

  “Now maybe you can see what Theo is feeling like,” I said. I left it there, not wanting him to feel threatened. I wasn’t sure how anchored in reality Freddie was, and he was too volatile for me to predict how he might react.

  He glared at me. Neither of us spoke. The air was heavy and still, the only sound the buzz of mosquitos, but I was afraid to wave my hands around to brush them away, fearing that Freddie might think I was attacking him. Finally he said, “What the hell. Maybe you can help your friend and me at the same time. You better come inside. It’s too damn hot out here, and the bugs are eating me alive.” He waved for me to precede him around the pool. I wasn’t about to argue. He seemed to be in control of himself, but he might go off again any minute. When I turned toward the back door of the house he called out, “Not that way.”

  He came around me and walked toward the guest house that sat at the narrow end of the rectangular pool. I hesitated, and he said, “For god’s sake. If I wanted to kill you I could’ve snapped your neck or cut your throat before you got to the gate. I heard you when you parked the car.”