Sarah Booth Delaney

by Sarah Booth Delaney 01-06 (lit)

  I cruised along the highway toward Magnolia Place and pulled down the lane to Lawrence's cottage. I loved that driveway. In the gray morning light, the huge oaks seemed tinted with melancholy.

  The big yellow tabby sat on the front porch and meowed as I got out of the car. He held his ground when I knocked at the red front door.

  When Lawrence didn't answer, I knocked again, a bit louder. I checked my watch; I was on time. The cat pawed at the door, demanding entrance. Inside, several other cats called out, strange eerie yowls that sounded like babies in distress. The yellow tabby answered them, a deep, guttural cry that made the skin along my spine tighten.

  "Lawrence! Mr. Ambrose!" I knocked harder.

  Yellow cat threw himself against the door.

  I tried the knob and hesitated when it turned easily in my hand. All I had to do was push it open and walk inside. Lawrence Ambrose was the most gracious man I'd ever met. Still, he wouldn't appreciate an invasion of his privacy. I'd never actually met another SIGOOS (Southern Intellectual Gentleman of the Old School), but I understood instinctively that privacy would be a number one priority.

  I cracked the door and called out again. As my eyes adjusted to the dimly lighted room I saw the cats sitting on the back of the sofa. They were motionless, silent, watching me. I had a sudden, vivid recollection of a photograph I'd seen once in some travel magazine, probably in the dentist's office. It had been taken in Egypt. Great cat lovers, the Egyptians. The photograph was of a dead person—the corpse guarded by his cats.

  The exact Tightness of that image froze me at the front door. Three cats sat on the back of the sofa. Feline soul guards. The yellow cat bolted into the house and ran to the sofa. He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared on the armrest. With great aplomb he took his seat in the gloom of the still shuttered room. They all faced the interior of the house.

  Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, and I recalled that Willem had been the only smoker. But often after a few drinks, inhibitions loosened and good intentions fled. Almost everyone in the world was a partially reformed smoker.

  "Lawrence!" I forced myself forward, walking past the living room and deeper into the darkened house. The dining table had been cleared and the party food put away, but there was no sign that Lawrence had begun to prepare our brunch.

  "Lawrence!" No answer. "Mr. Ambrose!" I called. Perhaps he'd heard about Cece and gone to her house to visit her. But surely he would have called to cancel our date.

  Beyond the dining room was the kitchen, and I went there. Wineglasses were drying in a rack, the only indication that there had been a party the night before. On the sideboard were two highball glasses, both dirty. I sniffed them. Bourbon. Not too difficult to deduce when a Jim Beam bottle was nearby. Glancing in the sink I saw a broken glass. Beside it was a pool of blood. Splashes of red spattered the yellow tile backwash and countertops.

  It was an old-style house and a kitchen door gave on to a small, dark hallway which undoubtedly led to his bedroom and bath.

  "Lawrence," I called, moving into the darkness. Something brushed against my leg, and I almost screamed before I recognized the yellow tabby.

  "Meow," he cried. "Meow."

  He darted forward. My eyes had adjusted to the light and I saw the foot and leg, sprawled at an odd angle. Feeling along the wall I found the light switch and flipped it up.

  Lawrence was propped against the wall. His left hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, his pale eyes staring straight ahead but unseeing. Beside him was the telephone, the receiver lying in a pool of blood that seemed to have spread over a large portion of the hallway. I'd never seen so much blood in my life.

  The cat nuzzled at his foot as if begging him to get up.

  I didn't know what to do. For a long moment I stood there and tried to force my brain to work. It looked to me as if Lawrence had been cleaning up the last of his party when he cut his hand on a glass. He'd obviously been trying to call someone when the blood loss became too great and he died.

  As I tried to think what I should do next, I wanted to slide down to the floor beside him and simply sit. I held back the urge to panic. There was no hurry now. Death had robbed time of all importance. My only task was to act sensibly.

  The night before, Lawrence had been fine. But death was like that—striking suddenly and without warning. I knew from personal experience. My parents had been driving through the long flat stretches of the Delta where oncoming traffic could be seen for miles. They'd been laughing and talking when a drunk plowed into them. In an instant they were dead.

  I knelt down and tried to console the crying cat. He kept batting at Lawrence's leg. I noticed there was a froth of blood on Lawrence's lips. Staring at his pale profile, the high aristocratic nose and the thick white hair, I felt tears threaten. It was ridiculous. I'd met him twice. But the sense of loss was real and not something I could deny. It was hard to explain, but I felt I'd been robbed.

  Perhaps it was that motivation that made me linger in the semidarkness of the room with a corpse guarded by four cats. I didn't want to call 911. It came to me suddenly. I knew what I needed to do. Before strangers touched him, I wanted a friend at his side. I unplugged the line to his phone and found another one in the kitchen.

  "Madame," I said when she answered. "It's Sarah Booth. There's no gentle way to say this. Lawrence Ambrose is dead."

  I expected the genteel sound of sniffling. I was completely unprepared for the shriek of rage that echoed from the phone and made the cats on the sofa stand up, arch, and spit.

  "That bitch murdered him," Madame cried. "I told him she was treacherous. Don't touch anything. I'm on my way."

  The phone went dead in my hand.

  I took a seat on the porch in one of the rockers and waited for Madame's arrival. Whatever official action needed taking, it would be best to let Madame do it.

  I heard the crunch of wheels in the lane and looked out to see her oyster-colored Chrysler. She jumped out of the car, brushed past me with a tiny bleat of grief, and rushed into the house. I softly closed the door on her sobs.

  The sky had dropped lower, it seemed, a pervading grayness that made my bones pop and crackle as I paced the front porch and tried not to hear the wrenching sounds of Madame's grief. The spike of truth that came to me was sharp and painful. Narrow, narrow is the view of a self-absorbed person.

  Perhaps I had known her too long as the dance instructor who tolerated no foolishness or excess in her students. Dance was a discipline that required exactness. Lawrence, in his enthusiasms and generosity of spirit, was the antithesis of that.

  I had seen only the contrast between the two, and not the emotion. It had never crossed my mind until that moment, her grief audible in the still morning, that Madame was in love with Lawrence. I'd seen it at his party and failed to call it by name. The way they'd communicated with looks, the regard they held for one another. His hand on her elbow, guiding and protecting; her concern for him. She had loved him for a long, long time.

  It hadn't occurred to me that people of their generation still participated in romantic love. Had my parents not died when I was a child, perhaps I might have had a pattern for love through the ages. Now I found myself alone and too aware of the consequences of love as I sat out on the porch of the cottage staring down the moss-draped drive of old oaks and into the gray Delta that was both my home and my heritage. The first flakes of snow began to fall.

  It seemed a long time before Madame came out. When she did, the cats followed.

  "I called the police," she said. "That bitch won't get away with it."

  I nodded as if I agreed. Loss is often followed by fury. It is part of the process.

  "She murdered him. I don't know how, but she did."

  I wasn't certain he was murdered, but I was positive who Madame was pointing the finger at. "Is it possible he had an accident? Maybe when he cut his hand his heart gave out."

  Madame's eyes were black chips of flint. The Indians used the hard
est stones and deer horn to make tiny arrowheads for bird hunting. They might have used her eyes.

  "Lawrence's heart was perfectly healthy. The old fool guarded it like Fort Knox. No fatty buildup and no romantic damage, at least none recent. It wasn't his heart that killed him. And no one dies from a cut hand."

  I didn't want to argue with her. We stood side by side watching the snow fall. The flakes were big, piling down on top of each other. Beautiful. In a short time the Delta would be transformed.

  "Last night Lawrence had a sudden change of heart. After the party had broken up, I stayed to talk. I finally made him see the truth and he told me he was canceling the book deal with Brianna." Madame's slender hands gripped the porch railing. The flesh was red from the cold but the knuckles were white with tension. "She didn't want to write about his life. She wanted to write a scandalous tell-all and reap the financial rewards of smearing Lawrence's name. She wanted to pick scabs and poke at scars. She's a greedy bitch. She'll try to go ahead with this book, but I won't let her."

  Her assessment of Brianna was right on, but there was an edge of something else in her voice. "If Lawrence is dead, can she still write his life story?"

  "She'll try," Madame said. Pushing off the rail she began to pace back and forth on the icy porch. "She'll try. You can count on that. She has the legal right to try. And she claims she has signed papers, a few tape recordings, ridiculous things like that. But she doesn't have any of the real facts—unless she stole them. Lawrence was smart enough not to trust her at all. And she'll never get anything else. I'm certain Lawrence named me executrix of the estate, and she hasn't counted on that."

  I wasn't sure how effective that role would be in stopping Brianna, but I didn't say anything. Madame needed to vent her rage and sorrow. I could listen.

  "She honestly thinks she can murder him and go back to New York to write her book. Well, she's wrong about that. Very, very wrong. She'll go to prison if I have anything to do with it."

  "This will all work itself out," I said in an attempt to soothe Madame. She was chugging up and down the porch like a locomotive. All I needed was for her to stroke out on me.

  "Listen, Sarah Booth." Madame took a seat in one of the rockers and began to fumble in her purse. She drew out a checkbook and wrote. She tore off the check with a flair and handed it to me. "Cece said you get ten thousand a case." She pressed the check into my hand. "There's ten. I want you to prove that Brianna Rathbone killed Lawrence."

  I took the check and held it as if it were dangerous. "What if I can't prove it?" I didn't have the nerve to ask what if it wasn't true. It wasn't that Brianna wasn't capable of almost anything to push her own agenda. I just didn't see how she could have cut Lawrence's hand and held him down until he bled to death. And why would she kill off the source for all material for her book? It didn't make good sense.

  "I don't care how you do it, just do it. Last night, Lawrence finally understood what I'd been trying to tell him. Brianna didn't care about the truth. She cared about money. He gave her the key to the kingdom, and she was about to destroy everything Lawrence held dear. She had no respect for his past or his future. She didn't have any New York connections and that Sam Rayburn is a tabloid opportunist masquerading as a producer. That's what Lawrence finally understood last night. That's why he told her he was pulling out of the book. That's why she killed him."

  Madame had given me a motive. Sort of. "But you said she could still publish the book anyway."

  "True, but it would be unauthorized. The other point is that the publishing world will be fascinated by Lawrence now that he's dead. Alive, they didn't have time to read one of his proposals. Now that he's dead, they'll fall at his feet and fawn over what a talent he was."

  Sad but true, too. A corollary motive. The book would sell like hotcakes because Lawrence was dead.

  "I'll get a copy of the autopsy report," I told her as I heard the approach of sirens.

  "There are things missing from his house," she said.

  The abruptness of her tone startled me. How could she tell? The place was jammed with paintings, sculptures, drawings, books, plants—artistic endeavors of every kind. Everything looked neat and orderly to me. "What things? How do you know?"

  "Whoever was with him after I left took his journal, a scrapbook of clippings ..." Madame's gaze slid down and away, "and the manuscript. He always kept them locked in a cabinet and they're gone. Maybe you can find some clues inside." She bent down and scooped up the yellow tabby cat. "If only Apollo could talk."

  If only, I thought. As the sheriff pulled up, I dutifully went back inside the house for one final look. Someone had cleaned up after the party and things seemed to be in perfect order. But how would I know?

  I heard Madame speaking with Coleman Peters outside. She told the sheriff that she believed Lawrence had been murdered, but she didn't mention Brianna's name. I noticed a slip of folded paper at the edge of the sofa and picked it up. I was about to read it when the door opened. Instinctively I tucked it into my coat pocket.

  Coleman and a young deputy I didn't know came into the house. For a few seconds they gazed at Lawrence in silence.

  "He was that writer, the one who had the fling with Ginger Rogers," the deputy said with a proper note of awe in his voice.

  "He was a wonderful old man," Coleman responded, his brow furrowed as he began to examine the body.

  "I heard he could dance like—" The deputy stopped at the sound of Madame's sniffling. "Sorry, ma'am."

  "He was a wonderful dancer," Madame said.

  She left the room and I heard her big car start and pull away. I was left facing a curious Coleman.

  "A new case, Sarah Booth?" he asked.

  "You tell me."

  He shook his head. "No sign of a struggle but an awful lot of blood. We'll see what Doc Sawyer has to say." He put his hand on my elbow and eased me out the door. Outside, his grip tightened, halting me. "I don't have to tell you that this could get crazy. Lawrence was famous in his day. If any hint of foul play starts to leak . . ."

  "My lips are sealed," I assured him.

  "I find it a little odd that you and Rosalyn Bell are out here together with a dead man. What's going on?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure," I said, eager to make my getaway. I liked Coleman, but I didn't want to be interrogated. "If I come across something, I'll get with you."

  "Be sure you do, Sarah Booth. There's something troubling about finding you here. Something deeply troubling."

  4

  "Fetch, Sweetie Pie," I urged the lanky hound as I tossed the Evan Picone shoe down the drive. It landed under the first sycamore, a bright red splash against the blanket of new snow. Unmoved by the sight, Sweetie Pie flopped to her back and proceeded to do her doggy version of snow angels by wiggling on her back and wagging her tail.

  "Get the shoe," I ordered. She'd already eaten the mate. The dog had a distinct preference for Italian leather. I'd hoped, using her fondness for fine footwear, to teach her to retrieve. Or at least occupy her for a few moments. In her brief tenure at Dahlia House, she'd toted up a hefty price. Still, the light of joy in her warm brown eyes whenever I gave her as little as a kind word had to be weighed.

  That it was Christmas Day held no joy for me. Not even my neon wreath had been able to lift my spirits. The death of Lawrence Ambrose weighed heavily on my mind. Madame's check was still in the pocket of my coat, another burden. In my heart, I believed Madame's reaction was emotional. There had been so much blood. Lawrence must have severed a major artery and then fainted as he was trying to call for help. I determined to hold her check for a few days and then return it to her, once the anger phase of her grief had passed. The harsh truth was that Madame didn't have ten thousand dollars to waste.

  Chasing the shoe for Sweetie had made me warm and I took off my wool jacket and hung it over a tree limb. I returned my attention to the bounding hound. I had just retrieved the shoe when I saw a showy red car turn down my drive. No one in Zinnia d
rove such a car, a classic T-bird convertible. I stood up, wiping my cold, wet hands on my jeans. Sunlight had followed the snow, illuminating the solitary man in the car. I waited as the vehicle flashed red through the bare sycamores and finally come to a stop not ten feet away from me.

  Willem Arquillo stepped out, the sun catching the golden highlights in his hair. His teeth were white and perfect as he gave me a smile that made it seem as if he had anticipated this meeting for at least half his life.

  "Hola, Senorita Delaney," he said, exaggerating his accent as he came toward me, a gift from a land kissed by sun, Spaniards, and some genetic component of tall, blond gods.

  "Willem," I replied. "What brings you to Dahlia House?"

  He lifted my empty hand and brought it to his lips, then stepped back, his gaze drifting to the red shoe I held. "Perhaps I've come to play Prince Charming to your Cinderella."

  "I was playing fetch." I tossed the shoe again, but there was no sign of Sweetie. She'd disappeared.

  He took my elbow and gently began to usher me to the front porch. "Perhaps you should go inside and warm up," he said.

  His hand on my arm, even through my old green sweater, was extremely warm and supportive. Extremely. As if his fingertips had tiny little electric heaters in them whirring down to my skin. Had he said he was going to help me to the brink of hell, I would have followed his lead.

  He hadn't answered my question and I was about to ask again when I saw the dog. She came out from under the porch, a blur of black, rust, tan, and big white teeth that had everything to do with the-better-to-eat-him-with line in the fairy tale.

  "Sweetie!" I cried, thrusting myself against Willem in an attempt to save him from the hound.

  Unaware of the pending attack from the dog and responding only to the attack from me, his arms came around me, one hand landing squarely on my newly robust bust.