Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “Chief, please. I keep remembering her, how aloof and formal she was. She didn’t try to be friends, you know. But she must have been so hungry for people to know. That’s why she was in the players. She was a wonderful carpenter, did you know that? She could make or fix anything. But who was she? Why was she all alone? What had happened to her before she came here? Chief, I have to find out.”

  He sighed. “I’ll probably end up in jail right alongside Max. I will for sure if Posey ever finds out I’m feeding stuff to you.” He took a deep breath. “But I honest-to-God don’t think Max could ever kill anybody, not in cold blood. Now, I’m not so sure about you, Annie, but I’d bet on old Max. So,” and now his tone was brisk, a to-hell-with-Posey tone, “the sister’s name is Mrs. Whitfield Cherry.” And he gave Annie the address and phone number in Atlanta.

  “The Cherry residence.” The voice was soft, Southern, and female.

  “May I speak to Mrs. Whitfield Cherry, please?”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  Annie hesitated. Her own name would mean nothing to Carla’s sister, and, at this time, Mrs. Cherry would be loath to talk to strangers. “Please tell her that a good friend of her sister Carla needs urgently to speak to her.” If that weren’t quite true, she did hope to help track down Carla’s murderer—and perhaps that could count as friendship delayed.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  As she waited, Annie glanced around her living room, at her softball trophy atop the nearest bookcase, and she thought of all the good beer and fun players she’d known. And there was a snapshot of Ingrid among the many tacked to her bulletin board. Such a good friend, with her understated comments and staunch support. Her friends, many of them older, in the Altar Guild at St. Mary’s. The friends she’d made in the Broward’s Rock Merchants Association. Her tennis chums at the Island Hills Country Club. So many friends. And there, in the center of the board, smiling at her with a glint of devilment and his incomparable air of insouciance was Max, the best friend of all. Poor, poor Carla.

  “Hello.” The voice was clipped—and angry.

  Annie was startled, but she began her spiel. “Hello. I’m Annie Laurance. I live on Broward’s Rock and—”

  “I don’t know what you think you can gain from calling, but I want to make it very clear that we aren’t going to give you any money at all. And if you try to bring some kind of palimony suit, we’ll fight it every step of the way—and we have plenty of money to do it.”

  Annie had expected distress, perhaps a voice numb with grief, but not anger. “I don’t—” she began.

  The receiver slammed into the cradle.

  So, there was a story there all right. But how was she going to get it?

  Annie riffled through the computer printout, and reread the brief section on Carla:

  Carla Morris Fontaine. B. 1951, Atlanta, Georgia. B.A., Vassar, 1972. Taught Latin September 1972 to March 1976 at St. Agnes Secondary School in Atlanta. Opened art gallery, Broward’s Rock, April 10, 1976. Lives alone. Active in Broward’s Rock Players. Apparently no close friends of either sex. Pleasant, but aloof. Not a mixer.

  Palimony. Images floated in her mind, none of them savory. Wasn’t that when a party to a sexual liaison tried to get money or proceeds from an estate on the basis of a long-term relationship not recognized by law?

  Mrs. Whitfield Cherry had broad-jumped to a conclusion. The conclusion was wrong, but suddenly Carla’s life, her loneliness, her aloofness, began to make some sense.

  Annie made several more calls, before she tracked down Mrs. Harriet MacKenzie.

  “Mrs. MacKenzie, I understand you were the headmistress at St. Agnes in the seventies.”

  “Yes.” The voice was cultured, cheerful, and friendly. “What can I do for you?”

  “Have you heard of the murder of Carla Fontaine?”

  The pause was prolonged. “Yes. What a tragedy for the Fontaines. Are you a friend of Carla’s?”

  This time, Annie decided to avoid any possibility of a misunderstanding. “My fiancé and I knew Carla through the community theater here on Broward’s Rock—and that’s why I’m calling you. The police have arrested Max, that’s my fiancé, but I know the evidence against him has been manufactured. And I wanted to talk to you about Carla. I think it’s very important to find out everything I can about her past.”

  “I doubt if I can be very helpful. I knew Carla as a teaching colleague and not very well at that because of the difference in our ages.” The desire to end this conversation was very apparent in the brisk finality of the statement.

  “Tell me, Mrs. MacKenzie, is St. Agnes on the quarter or semester system?”

  “The semester.”

  “And how does the spring semester run? From January to May?” Annie waited tensely.

  “Why, yes.” She was puzzled, but unsuspecting.

  “Will you tell me why Carla quit teaching in midsemester?”

  This time Annie knew she’d rung the bell. The silence was absolute.

  “Please, Mrs. MacKenzie. I promise I won’t spread this information around, but I think it is relevant to what happened here.”

  “How can it be?” The woman’s voice was troubled. “This was an incident that happened years ago. What could it have to do with Carla’s death?”

  “Carla was involved with someone here—and I think you can tell me whether her lover was a man—or a woman.”

  The seconds ticked by, then Harriet MacKenzie sighed. “I hate talking about it. Miss Laurance, do you promise you won’t repeat it unless absolutely necessary—and I don’t intend to give you the name of the student.”

  “So Carla was involved with a student?”

  Another weary sigh. “Yes. A very outstanding girl. And, of course, her family was wild, absolutely wild, when they found out. But do you know, Miss Laurance, I always suspected that the girl made the advances, then told some of her friends simply out of malice, and that it was Carla who was victimized. This girl went on to marry several times, and I’ve heard rumors of other entanglements. I always felt she took advantage of Carla, not the other way around. But, of course, Carla was older; she should have known better. I had no choice but to ask her to leave.”

  “And Carla’s family?”

  “Carla’s family.” The former headmistress’s tone was noncommittal, then she said quietly, “It’s hard not to be judgmental, Miss Laurance. And, of course, it’s always so easy to see the other person’s faults. But I’ve always felt that Carla’s parents were so self-righteous, so obsessed with appearances, and so terribly cold. They felt that she had disgraced them, because the story went the rounds, you know. Everyone knew.” A small laugh. “Of course, not literally everyone, but everyone who mattered to the Fontaines.”

  “So Carla left town, came here, and opened her gallery. Did they never have anything more to do with her?”

  “I don’t know about that. I think Carla had income from a trust fund. I never heard of her being back in Atlanta, but I can’t tell you for certain.” Mrs. MacKenzie hesitated, then said, “You won’t tell them I told you, I hope.”

  “No. I don’t see any reason to talk to them.”

  The retired headmistress heard the disdain in her voice. “It is a tragedy for everyone, Miss Laurance. And perhaps you are wrong, perhaps none of this has anything to do with her death.”

  “To the contrary, Mrs. MacKenzie, I’m afraid it has everything to do with it.”

  Carla was distraught because her lover had betrayed her. Did this mean she was upset because a woman she loved had been involved with Shane, and that she had murdered him and expected Carla to maintain silence? That would be enough to destroy Carla’s faith in her lover, wouldn’t it? So Carla put Valium in her whiskey, but her lover—the murderer—didn’t know that and came to kill Carla.

  What a muddle of crossed purposes and broken dreams.

  But how had Carla known that her lover was the murderer? What had Carla seen? And who had been her lover?
>
  There were only four other women at the theater the night Shane was shot: Cindy, Janet, Henny, and Annie herself. Obviously, it wasn’t Henny.

  Cindy. Nothing in Cindy’s demeanor ever indicated the least bit of interest in her own sex. She was so vigorously lustful about Shane that it seemed unlikely.

  Janet. Janet still seemed to Annie the acme of middleclass respectability, a woman who had slipped into an affair with Shane and was bitterly regretting it and hating even more his involvement with her daughter.

  Annie shook her head in bewilderment.

  As she considered Janet’s and Cindy’s involvement with Shane, Annie remembered anew just how loathsome Shane had been. Carla had despised him. That was clear, right from the first day of rehearsal, from her occasional glance of distaste, her incredulous disgust when he didn’t even recognize the most common quote from Macbeth.

  Annie paced into the kitchen and poured another mug of coffee. She felt supercharged, a mixture of energy, determination, and intense concentration. But she also felt a quiver of worry. Something didn’t jell here. She was right, wasn’t she, about Carla? Carla was depressed to the point of suicide by the actions of her lover. And her lover had to be a woman. That was clear as clear. And her lover was the murderer.

  Cindy. Or Janet.

  Was it conceivable that Carla was involved with one of them? But it had to be, unless Annie was absolutely off target.

  Carla. It all came back to her—her likes, her dislikes, her loves and hates. Carla had seemed much as usual when they gathered at the school to hear Posey. Subdued, of course, as were they all. But she’d left there to go home and drink—

  Annie put down her coffee mug untasted.

  Carla seemed fine when she arrived at the high school auditorium Thursday morning. But after the session there, she’d returned to her condo and started to drink heavily. And it had upset her dreadfully when Annie told her the gun had been hidden in Max’s condo. Annie thought about that morning’s interrogation and Posey’s loud, obnoxious behavior. She thought about the gun being placed in Max’s apartment.

  And, quickly, like the meshing of gears, it all came together in her mind.

  There were so many pointers.

  The maliciousness of the sabotage, especially the shooting of Freddy.

  Shane’s last-minute mastery of his lines.

  The timing of the murder.

  Carla’s distress after the session with Posey at the high school.

  And it all came down to a single fact. It wasn’t what Carla saw that caused her suicide attempt—or her murder.

  16

  “Hello.” His voice was thick with sleep.

  Annie glanced at the clock and realized with surprise that it was almost midnight, but what she had to say couldn’t wait. There was no time to lose.

  “Chief, I know who the murderer is.”

  “The hell you say.” Now he was wide awake. And eager.

  Obviously, the chief cared about Max. Annie felt a warm rush of affection.

  “What’s happened? Where are you, girl?”

  “Oh, I’m here. At home. And I haven’t done anything yet. I called you first. I need your help. Now look, Chief, this is how I see it.”

  She laid it out for him, and, after a first shocked exclamation, he said slowly, “By God, it all fits … Jesus, what a bitch.”

  “Yes. I agree.”

  “To set somebody up like that! She’s a monster, isn’t she?”

  Yes. A cool, calculating, manipulative monster, feigning love, instigating murder, then brilliantly covering her tracks. Annie felt her throat tighten. And all they had against her was a reasoned judgment. Nothing concrete. Nothing to take to Posey and say, “Hey, look at this! She’s the one!”

  Chief Saulter, too, saw the problem. “Damn, I think you’re right, only I don’t see how we can ever prove it.”

  But Annie had an idea there, too.

  “It isn’t going to be easy. But, with your help, I’m going to raise a ghost.”

  She rode her bicycle through the night. Saulter had offered to pick her up, but there must be no public connection between them from this point on. As she pumped past the marsh ponds with their night sounds, the hoot of owls, the gurgle of water, the splash of scavenging raccoons and cotton rats, she realized anew how easy it was to get around Broward’s Rock. It was just a few minutes’ bike ride to any point. She would bet that was how the murderer came to Carla’s condo last night, waiting until the fall of darkness and depending upon the anonymity of a bike rider, dressed perhaps in a navy-blue warmup, a scarf, unremarkable, unremarked. When Annie reached the condos, she dropped her bike behind a sweet myrtle. Her shoes crushed fallen leaves and a spicy bay rum scent rose in the humid night air. She slipped from shadow to shadow and ran lightly up the outside steps to Carla’s door. She knocked twice, softly and quickly, and the door swung open. For just an instant, she had a hideous memory of that morning, then she reached out and gripped the chiefs strong brown hands.

  “Her tape recorder’s on the shelf above the TV.” He turned his hooded flash briefly to his left.

  That was the first requisite.

  Then she explained the second. “Can you get the postmaster to cooperate?”

  “Sure. You want to mail a tape and have it stamped with Thursday’s date and delivered tomorrow morning. Right?”

  “Yes. Otherwise the murderer will know Carla couldn’t have mailed it. Everything hinges on that.”

  “No problem,” he said softly. “The timing works fine. Carla could’ve mailed it late Thursday and that would account for delivery on Saturday instead of Friday morning.”

  Now, all Annie had to do was put on the best performance of her life.

  Annie drew the curtains and turned on a single floor lamp. In the dim light, she paced back and forth in Carla’s living room, glancing occasionally at the couch. She was remembering her visit with Carla, every word Carla had said, every intonation, that careful, particular, enunciated speech of the very intoxicated.

  Because Carla must have called her murderer at some point, must have telephoned and said she knew that Max was being questioned and the gun had been found in his condo. Carla must have warned that she wouldn’t be a party to a frame-up.

  Carla meant that she had reached the end of her complicity, that she intended to die, but the murderer took it as a threat and so the murderer came.

  By then Carla was sunk in her final sleep. Death was coming, but it came sooner than called. At least she hadn’t suffered.

  Carla’s voice, its sound and substance and resonance.

  Annie closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her face. In her mind, she could hear Carla: “L’il Orphan Annie. But that’s all right, folks. ’Cause she has Prince Charming.”

  She dropped her hands, opened her eyes, and crossed to the tape recorder. When she turned it on, she began to speak and it was Carla’s voice, husky and low, with its undercurrent of sadness and alienation, that hung in the quiet air:

  “I will be dead when you hear this. But you won’t care, will you? You never really cared for me at all. It was a sham, wasn’t it, when we made love?”

  Annie paused. She stared unseeingly across the night-shadowed room so dimly illuminated by the brass, onyx-based floor lamp. She let the tape roll for several seconds, because she was Carla and she was very, very drunk.

  “Cinderella came. I told you that. You hid the gun at Max’s. That was wrong. Dead wrong.” A soft, hiccoughing laugh. “Dead wrong. Just like I’m going to be. But I won’t help you do it. I was such a fool, listening to your lies, and all the while I think I knew. It’s always been the same. I love, but nobody loves me. But that’s not”—a pause and the very careful articulation of two syllables—“germane.”

  Silence again. Two seconds. Three.

  “I hated Shane.” The ghostly rendition of Carla’s voice became harsh. “I hated him. To know he had touched you—And you convinced me he’d been so dreadful to you. B
ut that wasn’t true, was it? No, you had such a long-range plan and you and I would enjoy the fruits together. What a laugh. God, what a laugh,” and the word ended in a sob.

  Carla, vulnerable, betrayed, exploited.

  “Maybe it all went wrong because we called up the weird sisters. That’s what they thought, you know, in Shakespeare’s time. If you called up the forces of darkness, they would overwhelm you—and they did. They did. Remember what the first murderer said: ‘I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Hath so incens’d that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.’ That’s how I felt, but the agony of the act won’t go away, so I’m going to sleep forever. I don’t want to keep remembering.”

  Another pause. The longest pause.

  “I don’t know why I’m sending this to you.” A brittle laugh. “But that’s a lie. I know. I’m so angry. But I still want to give you some time. Perhaps you’ll join me. That might be the easiest answer. You see, the world is going to know everything that happened. I’ve sent a tape to Annie, too. I told it all. Every ugly word of it.”

  A final pause. Annie clicked off the recorder and wiped away the tears streaming down her face.

  Annie slept restlessly. Frightful images kept creeping out from the dark recesses of her mind. Finally, she lay quietly, watching the sun edge into her room, turning the shadows to gold. Saturday morning. The tape would be delivered to the murderer about nine-thirty. As on all Saturdays, Annie would be at Death on Demand.

  Everything was in readiness, Ingrid sent to Beaufort on an errand to keep her out of harm’s way, Annie equipped with a hidden microphone, and the back door unlocked so that Chief Saulter could slip inside to hide behind the coffee bar.

  At nine-thirty, the telephone rang.

  It had to be answered, of course, though, of all days and all hours, this was the very worst time for Laurel to call. But she was, after all, Max’s mother.

  “Death on Demand.”

  The tone was upbeat, feisty, and bright. “Leave it to me, Annie. Rebecca Schwartz knows where to hang out and when. The suspect won’t give me the slip.”