“Those cupboards were made by Ian Feather,” she said, “a very famous artist who lives in Taos.” I nodded and smiled. “It took months to get them, months.”
After demonstrating that the cupboard doors actually opened, she led me upstairs to a master bedroom and bath, both of which had a bit too much brass for my taste. The quilt on the bed, though, was a beautiful geometric creation in blues and greens.
“The quilt was made in 1905 by a woman in Nebraska, a farmer’s wife,” she said. “It was in that quilt show at the art museum in San Francisco? About five years ago?”
“Interesting,” I said politely. My compassion was slipping away. I was beginning to feel restless. I have always disliked guided museum tours.
As she led me through the rest of the upstairs, lovingly pointing out skylights, alcoves, and window seats, and telling me where and how she had acquired each piece of furniture, I thought about how much it had all cost. This woman had spent more on furniture than I’d earned in half my twenty-year teaching career.
“I do love this house so much,” she said, as we trailed down the stairs again. “I’ve dedicated my life, these past eight years, to decorating it, to setting off its beauty properly.”
“Certainly,” I said, as we walked into the kitchen, “everything you have is unique.”
“Exactly. That was the effect I wanted. Everything is perfect. Just the way I wanted it.” The kitchen was basic California modern, with a greenhouse window and a center island stove top, a big fireplace, and lots of redwood and copper-all the things you see in the magazines dentists buy for their waiting rooms.
“You mentioned eight years,” I said. “Is that how long you’ve lived here?”
We were back in the living room at last. I took a long swallow of my reclaimed iced tea and sat on one of the soft couches.
“Yes. That was when I married Alan and moved in. His first wife had done the house in Victorian. It didn’t work at all.”
“Was he divorced?”
“No, she died. Years before I met him. They bought the house together. It was theirs. And then it was his. And then it was ours. And now”-she sighed-“it’s mine.”
I didn’t like sitting on the couch, after all. I felt as though it might begin to digest me. I moved to an unpadded wooden chair and placed my coaster, and then my tea, on the foot-square, red-and-white-paint-spattered table beside me. I was relieved when the table didn’t collapse.
“Now,” I said, “we need to talk about your husband’s death. Although I know how difficult that must be for you.”
She dropped her head, drawing her hand across her forehead.
“It is.”
“You say it happened in this room. I take it the intruder broke in through those doors?”
I nodded toward the French doors. The young blond man was reaching up toward the top of the doorframe with a screwdriver. As he stretched, his T-shirt rode up to expose a hairless expanse of muscular stomach.
“Yes. You find him and I’ll identify him, and we can get this whole thing over with once and for all. I saw him. I saw him running away. But the police haven’t asked me to a single lineup yet.” She made it sound like they’d neglected to invite her to tea.
“Let’s back up just a little bit, Ms. Wittles. You were here when it happened?”
“I was upstairs. I heard Alan shout, and then I heard all these terrible noises-furniture crashing, yelling-and then a gunshot. I ran downstairs, and there was this man, standing over Alan with a gun, the patio doors open, furniture everywhere, and Alan lying on the floor. The man looked at me, dropped the gun, and ran back out the door.”
A power tool whined. I followed her gaze as she looked anxiously toward the light. The carpenter was running a belt sander up the side of the door.
“Oh, no!” she shouted, waving at him, catching his eye. He turned off the sander and looked at her quizzically. “The dust is coming into the house.” He nodded thoughtfully and began to take the door off its hinges.
I turned back to Julia Wittles. “He dropped the gun? He didn’t shoot at you?”
“No. He dropped it. It was Alan’s gun. And the killer was wearing gloves. Did I say that?”
“No. And you saw him clearly enough to identify him.” She nodded. I glanced back toward the doorway. The carpenter had removed the door and was carrying it across the patio in the sunshine. Everything out there, the stones, the shrubs, the man himself, looked warm and bright. I turned back to Julia Wittles, the sad-faced woman sitting across from me in the cool dimness.
I concentrated on that face.
“Where was your husband when you found him?”
“On the rug in front of the fireplace.”
There was no rug in front of the fireplace. She anticipated my next question.
“It’s at the cleaners.”
“So what must have happened, then, is that your husband caught this man breaking in, and went to get his gun. Where did he keep it, usually?”
She pointed to a small blue desk near the patio doors. “In there, always.”
“Okay. So he grabbed his gun, but there was a struggle … ?”
“Yes, that’s what I think. There was a struggle, the burglar got the gun, and shot him.”
“The room must have been a mess,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but everything looked so perfectly tidy now, every piece just so, every rug straight and lint free, the hardwood floor mirrorlike where there was light to reflect. I couldn’t quite imagine this room tossed around.
She frowned at me, studied my face for a moment. “It was. And poor Alan, lying there.” She dropped her head into her hands for a moment, sat up straight again, and took a deep breath.
“And you gave the police a description of the man. Did they do one of those drawings from your description?”
“We tried to do that, but I wasn’t very good at it. But I’d know him if I saw him. And I’m sure you could find him down in West Berkeley, where all the bums are, down on San Pablo or Sacramento.”
“You say you think the police aren’t working on the case.”
“Oh, they’re working on it, I suppose. But they certainly haven’t asked me to identify anyone.”
“I think they’re working on it. I think there’s a plainclothesman parked across the street right now. Have they been watching the house?”
Her small mouth dropped open, her eyes widened. She stared at me. We were both silent for a moment. Out on the patio the power sander whined,
“They’re going to try to blame me,” she said, shaking her head. “Isn’t that what they always do? Blame the spouse? You have to help me. We can go down to San Pablo together. I’ll point him out to you.” She was gripping the mushy arm of her couch, her voice rising.
I was getting a pain in my right temple. I rubbed it. “Why do you think the police are after you?”
“People know we’ve been having problems.”
“What kinds of problems were you having?”
“He wanted a divorce. Did I show you the conservatory? I had it added to the house last year. Would you like to see it?”
Her eyes were pleading. She was like a lost kitten, sitting demurely, prettily, tail wrapped around her paws, hoping to please.
No, I thought. No more museum tours, no more digressions. We needed to stick to the subject, which was getting more complicated.
“Possibly later. He wanted to divorce you?”
“Yes. And make me leave the house.”
“Wasn’t it legally half yours, community property?” Had she signed some sort of prenuptial agreement?
“Yes, I suppose so, but he wouldn’t have let me have it. He would have sold it. He said it was his home, his and Marsha’s, His first wife.”
“But you’d get half the money,”
“That’s not enough. I wouldn’t get this house. I wouldn’t get enough to buy one like it.”
“Did you talk to a lawyer about all this?”
“No. No, Alan
was a lawyer. All the lawyers I knew were his friends. I couldn’t fight him legally. I wouldn’t have known how.” Her voice had risen in pitch again, high and breathless and soft. She sounded startlingly like Marilyn Monroe. Like an echo out of the past, bouncing around the room. I wanted to scream at her: Where had she been for the past three decades?
She was watching me warily. “We need another glass of tea,” she said, and fled to the kitchen with our glasses.
I got up and walked to the square of sunlight, crossed the flagstones to where the young man stood, screwdriver in one hand, a new lock in the other. The French door he’d removed rested across a pair of sawhorses.
I couldn’t even bring myself to flirt with him.
“Was there a lot of damage to the doors?” I asked.
He smiled at me. “No. Hardly any. The wood was barely marked. The burglar pried real gently until the lock gave way. Must have taken a long time. And the bolts top and bottom”-he pointed at the top of the door with his screwdriver-“they weren’t shot, so there wasn’t anything broken there. Not bad at all.”
“Thank you.”
He looked at me oddly. Yes, I thought, you’re very pretty and very charming and you have a sweet smile, and you’re not used to women staring at you dully and walking away. Sorry.
Julia Wittles was standing at the coffee table, waiting for me. The tea glasses were full again.
“Well, what are you going to do?” she demanded.
I went to the big front windows and pulled open the drapes. Then I turned on a few lamps.
“Tell me how the furniture was that night, when you came into the room.”
She pointed out various pieces and described their positions, although she said she couldn’t remember exactly in all cases. A couch was overturned. One chair was on its back near the entry door. “And some of the tables were thrown around the room, and that rug and that one were out of place.”
“And that’s how it was when the police came?” She nodded. I examined the chair that had been displaced, turning it over, looking at it carefully. I looked at the coffee table, the end tables.
“Where was this?” I asked, touching the small red-and-white-spattered table.
“Over there.” She pointed to a spot near the kitchen door, some fifteen feet away. I crossed the room and studied the floor. Then I went back to the table, took a deep, compassion-expelling breath, and gave it a good kick. Julia Wittles yelled. The table shot up, hit the floor, and skidded a few feet, coming to rest about where she had pointed. I walked over to it, gingerly, because I’d hurt one of my toes.
The floor had a new, shallow, six-inch scratch with a flake of blue paint in it. The previously pristine table now had one loose leg and one chipped corner.
She came to stand beside me. I didn’t look at her.
“I hope that wasn’t one of your favorite pieces,” I said. She didn’t answer. “None of this furniture has a scratch on it. The only scratch on the floor is the one I just made. Did you think the police were complete idiots?”
“You’re smarter than they are.”
“Even if they had called you in for a lineup, you know, you might have picked someone they knew couldn’t be guilty. Sometimes they put cops in them.”
She moved across the room, standing just two feet from me. Her eyes were red, and the fine wrinkles around them deepened as she stared into mine, trying, I suppose, to read my mind. “You’re not going to help me.”
“You need a lawyer.” And a doctor or two.
The carpenter was back at the doorframe again, reinstalling the door. She turned to watch him.
“I don’t want to do that,” she said. “I don’t like lawyers.”
Millions of mystery readers love mystery bookstores, and CAROLYN G. HART has given them and the bookstore owners someone to cheer for-Annie Laurence, whose own store is the base for exciting and intellectually stimulating cases in such books as A Little Class on Murder, Something Wicked, and Death on Demand Ms. Hart lives in Oklahoma City.
HER GOOD NAME
Carolyn G. Hart
Annie Laurance Darling willed the telephone to ring.
But the undistinguished garden-variety black desk telephone remained mute.
Dammit, Max could at least call!
The more she thought about it, the more she wished that she had gone. Of course, it was undeniably true that Ingrid wasn’t available to mind the bookstore, but it wouldn’t have been a disaster to close for a few days in November. She didn’t let herself dwell on the fact that Saturday had been her best fall day ever. She’d sold cartons of the latest by Lia Matera, Nancy Pickard, and Sara Paretsky.
But there was Max, off to Patagonia and adventure. And here she was, stuck in her closed bookstore on a rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but unpack books and wonder if Max had managed to spring Laurel. Even Laurel should have known better than to take up a collection for Amnesty International in the main hall of the justice ministry in Buenos Aires! A tiny worm of worry wriggled in Annie’s mind. She knew, of course, that her husband was absolutely capable, totally in command, unflappable, imperturbable. Annie snapped the book shut and bounced to her feet. But oh, sweet Jesus, who knew what kind of mess Laurel had-
The phone rang.
Annie leaped across the coffee area and grabbed up the extension behind the coffee bar. She didn’t bother saying “Death on Demand.” The finest mystery bookstore on the loveliest resort island off the coast of South Carolina wasn’t open.
“Hello.” She tried not to sound concerned. But maybe if she caught a jet tonight-
“Maxwell Darling.” The tone was peremptory, cut-through-to-the-bone direct.
Annie’s shoulders tensed. She immediately recognized the dry, crackly voice that rustled like old paper. What did Chastain, South Carolina’s most aristocratic, imperious, absolutely impossible old hag, want with Annie’s husband?
“Miss Dora, how are you?” Annie could remember her manners even if some others could not. Annie could imagine the flicker of irritation in Miss Dora’s reptilian black eyes.
“No time to waste. Get him to the phone.”
“I wish I could,” Annie snapped.
“Where is he?”
“Patagonia.”
A thoughtful pause on the other end, then a sniff. “Laurel, no doubt.” The old lady’s voice rasped like a rattlesnake slithering across sand as she disgustedly pronounced the name of Max’s mother.
“Of course,” Annie groused. “And I darn well should have gone. He might need me. You know how dangerous it is in Argentina!”
A lengthening pause, freighted with emanations of chagrin, malevolence, and rapid thought.
“Well, I’ve no choice. You’ll have to do. Meet me at one-oh-three Bay Street at four o’clock.”
Annie’s eyes narrowed with fury. Miss Dora was obviously the same old hag she’d always been. And just who the hell did she think she was, ordering Annie to-
“A matter of honor.” The phone banged into the receiver.
Annie stalked down the storm-dark street, the November rain spattering against her yellow slicker. Clumps of sodden leaves squished underfoot. The semitropical Carolina Low Country was not completely immune to winter, and days such as this presaged January and February. Annie felt another quiver of outrage. Why had she succumbed to the old bat? Why was she even now pushing open the gate and starting down the oystershell path to 103 Bay Street?
The aged, sandpapery voice sounded again in her mind: A matter of honor.
The sign to the right of the front door hung unevenly, one screw yielding to time and weather. An amateur had painted the outstretched, cupped hands, the thumbs overlarge, the palms lumpy. The legend was faded but decipherable: HELPING HANDS.
Annie was almost to the steps of the white frame cottage when she saw Miss Dora standing regally beneath the low spreading limbs of an ancient live oak. Annie was accustomed to the gnomelike old lady’s eccentric dress-last-century bombazine dresses and ha
ts Scarlett would have adored-but even Annie was impressed by the full gray cloak, the wide-brimmed crimson hat protecting shaggy silver hair, mid the ivory walking stick planted firmly in front of high-topped, black leather shoes.
A welcoming smile tugged at Annie’s lips, then slid to oblivion as Miss Dora scowled and thumped the stick, “You’re late. The carillons play at four o’clock.”
“Carillons?”
A vexed hiss. “Gome, come. We’ll go inside. Wanted you to hear the carillons. It’s too neat, you know. The shot at precisely four o’clock. Know it must have been then. Otherwise somebody would have heard.” Thumping stiffly to the door. Miss Dora scrabbled in her oversize crocheted receptacle. “No one’s taking Constance’s character into account. Not even her own brother! Blackening her name. A damnable lie.” She jammed a black iron key into the lock.
As the door swung in, Miss Dora led the way, a tiny, limping figure. She clicked on the hall light, then regarded Annie with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. “Would do it myself.” she muttered obscurely. “But sciatica. With the rain in November,”
The parchment face, wrinkled with age, also held lines of pain, Annie almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
A Woman’s Eye Page 33