Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (10 page)

Obviously, he took this hobby—though I made a mental note not to call it that—seriously.

So I said mildly, “You and Churchill, hmm?”

He gave a tiny shrug, but he made no disclaimer.

It was another reminder of how long ago our paths had parted. For many years now Chase had been treated by those around him with great deference. Wealth can have many drawbacks, but perhaps the greatest is the separation of its possessors from ordinary human give-and-take. It was clear that Chase sincerely believed he was quite special indeed.

“I paint all morning, then I come back to the house about twelve-thirty for lunch. After lunch I get in some work. There’s always work. About four I round up Miranda and maybe go for a sail, maybe play some pool. That’s when we don’t have guests. When we do, she always has tea ready about four-thirty.
I come or not, depending on whether any of them are important.”

That summed up that.

He continued, oblivious to my sardonic amusement. “I finish up in my office. Read, relax. We have dinner about seven-thirty. And so goes another day on Prescott Island.” His tone was easy; his eyes were not. “So what do you propose for today?”

I
told Chase what I wanted to do.

His look was quizzical. “You’re taking that twenty-minute blackout seriously.”

“So should you.” I didn’t smile.

I could read his thoughts: a little bit of irritation at my taking charge, then a rueful realization that, after all, he’d invited me aboard.

In any event, he capitulated. “All right. Come along.”

At the French doors leading into his and Miranda’s suite, he knocked on the door, then opened it. “Miranda? I’ve got company.” He held the door and nodded for me to enter.

Miranda put down her makeup brush and half-turned from her dressing table. Her pretty heart-shaped face was utterly blank, but her eyes were dark with deep unhappiness. She was dressed for tennis.

Obviously, I was about as welcome as the bogeyman in a child’s dream.

Chase must have been aware of her displeasure, but he chose to ignore it. “I’m giving Henrie O a look at how I spend time here on the island. For the book.”

She gripped a red headband. “But you always spend the morning at the point. By yourself.”

“So I’m doing things a little differently today. It isn’t every day we have a world-famous author visiting us.”

The room was beautifully decorated. The four-poster was huge to fit modern taste but in the graceful Chippendale style. The painted walls looked like green linen. The bedspread and wall hangings were light in contrast, a cream background for twining clusters of ivy.

“Oh.” It was almost a pitiful breath of sound. “Yes. Yes.” She turned back toward the mirror, blindly picked up a tube of lipstick. I knew tears brimmed in her eyes.

“Here’s my bath, Henrie O. This way.” Chase was either oblivious to his wife’s pain or totally uninterested.

Two bathrooms opened off either side of the bedroom. His and hers. I didn’t care what impression it made on Miranda, but I walked into Chase’s bath and examined the shower. I turned it on and off.

At the lavatory I opened the medicine cabinet. Chase used a single-edge razor. I picked it up, unscrewed it, took the blade out, and inserted a new one.

Chase stood in the doorway, watching with eyes
that were half-amused. As I stepped toward him, he said, too low for Miranda to hear, “Dear God, do you think the bastard might smear anthrax germs on my shaving blades?”

“The point, Chase, is that we—and most especially you—must not take anything for granted.”

I was glad to see when I stepped back into the bedroom that Miranda was applying eye shadow. But she did so with a hand that trembled. A spot stained her cheek. She gave a little cry and reached for a puff to scrub away the errant mark.

She didn’t respond as we said good-bye. Her back was rigid. As we stepped onto the patio, I glanced at Chase. If he was worried about the state of his marriage, his face gave no sign of it. Perhaps I had succeeded in making my point, and he was concentrating on what an enemy could have accomplished in that twenty minutes of darkness.

In fact, as we walked toward the pier, he surveyed the gardens with a quick, nervous intensity as if he’d never seen them before.

That was all to the good.

I took the lead on the path that plunged into the thick tangle of semitropical woods.

I walked slowly.

It takes a good deal of care to search in dim light for traces of digging or for a vine conveniently stretched across a path. I also checked the trees.

He started to look, too.

His face was rather white by the time we reached the point.

“Wait here,” I instructed.

He watched as once again I surveyed the area,
this time paying particular attention to the sand and the stepping-stones leading to the stone platform. I wasn’t worried about the platform. It’s hard to booby-trap stone.

But the door to the storage shed was another matter altogether.

The door appeared perfectly normal. I found no wires, no sprinkling of sawdust, no sign it had been tampered with.

Still, I gestured for Chase to remain where he was. I moved back a good twenty feet, seized a baseball-size clump of oyster shells, and lofted it toward the shed.

The unlocked door jolted open as the shells split apart and clattered noisily but harmlessly on the platform.

I crossed the platform, then checked out the shed. “Okay, Chase. Everything looks fine here. I’ll return at noon, and we’ll go to the house together.”

He stood at the edge of the platform, staring at me. “You’ve certainly added a sparkle to my day, Henrie O. I can’t wait to get started on a new painting. Maybe some nice skulls. Or a graveyard in the rain. How does that strike you?”

I gave him a little salute as I headed toward the trail. “Just relax on the platform, Chase. It’s perfectly safe. More than you can say about a commuter flight or elective surgery. Think how brave Valerie is. It will buck you up.”

His laughter wasn’t altogether forced. “Go to hell,” he called after me.

I walked fast. Actually, I felt pretty good about the morning so far. Chase was safely situated, fully
alert to danger, and now I could get started on my real job—the hunt for a killer.

It didn’t take long to find everyone.

Trevor and Miranda were playing tennis. I admired their stamina. It was so humid the air felt thick enough to reach out and grab a handful. Lyle jogged around the small track, his running shoes scuffing the smooth surface, sweat staining his blue nylon shorts, his bold-featured face crimson with exertion. He was running too fast for the weather, but maybe he was used to it. Enrique knelt by a sprinkler head in the rose garden. Valerie wore a sun hat even though she sat in the shade of a honeysuckle arbor. She was painting her fingernails, her arched eyebrows drawn down in a tight frown. Not the best facial exercise for redone skin. Haskell floated on a raft in the middle of the pool, a wet towel hiding his face. In the kitchen Rosalia loaded the dishwasher. Betty was dusting in the main entrance hall. In the library Roger was stretched comfortably on a couch, reading. He gave me a friendly smile.

As I had expected, I found Burton Andrews in Chase’s study. The personality of the room—the Impressionist paintings, the weight of books, books, books, the vast collection of elegant music boxes—diminished the dapper little secretary, making him look even paler and less substantial than he was. His slicked-down hair was the color of straw. His inexpensive pastel sports shirt hung on slender shoulders. His hands were untanned and thin. Sitting behind Chase’s massive desk, he looked like a boy.

I reviewed what I knew about him. Thirty-two. Unmarried. Graduate of a community college. Finance major. He’d been working as a temp in the main Atlanta offices of Prescott Communications when Chase’s longtime secretary divorced and moved to Tahiti with an artist friend. (Now that would be an interesting story.) In the dossier Chase touted Burton’s efficiency and willingness to work long hours. There was no hint that Chase took any special pleasure in his company; this was a subordinate, a human machine expected to perform given tasks and rewarded on that basis. Burton’s salary was twenty-seven thousand a year. Not a high salary for the secretary to such a rich man. Perhaps the least attractive defect of some of the superrich is stinginess. I didn’t remember that of Chase. Had he changed? Had he permitted greed to mold him utterly?

“Good morning, Burton.”

He rose immediately. “Good morning, Mrs. Collins. What can I do for you?”

I waved him back to his seat. I am accustomed to sizing people up. Burton’s voice and demeanor were that of the perfect secretary, accommodating, respectful, attentive.

“I want a copy of
The Man Who Picks Presidents
.”

Surprise—and a trace of uneasiness?—flickered in Burton’s pale eyes, but he made no comment and pulled open the bottom right desk drawer.

He stared into it for a long moment, Frowning, he leaned closer, fumbled with the files. Finally he closed the drawer and looked up. “The copy isn’t here.” He sounded genuinely puzzled. “I’ll check with Mr. Prescott. Perhaps he has it, though…”

I waited, but he didn’t finish the sentence. So I prompted him. “Though …?”

“Well, I’d be surprised if Mr. Prescott has it. He hasn’t asked for it. And it makes him mad every time the book’s mentioned.” A flash of malicious amusement gave his eyes liveliness for a moment, then they were once again unreadable. “He filed suit immediately, you know, trying to stop publication, but that didn’t work. Now there’s the libel suit. You know about that?”

I nodded.

“And about the private detective?”

I was beginning to get irritated with Chase. How many things that mattered had he failed to mention to me? But for Burton’s benefit I nodded once again, my face bland. “Oh, yes. How’s that coming?”

My answer, for some reason, reassured him. “The agency wasn’t successful in determining where the information about the family came from. But Mr. Prescott’s going to hire another agency. He’s determined to find out who leaked the personal information to that author.” The secretary looked at me sharply.

Now I got it. Burton was wondering if that was my assignment from Chase. Why should he care? Was he the informer?

My judgment was swift on that. No, he didn’t have the guts, and he wasn’t nearly nervous enough for that to be the case.

But, for some other reason, he was extremely wary about any investigation into the background of that book. I tucked that conclusion away for future
study and focused on the import of Burton’s revelations.

“I certainly don’t blame Chase for that. I know that’s what upset him the most, the realization that someone he trusted, someone close to him, had betrayed him.”

It’s an old journalism trick, making a statement that can then be attributed to the unwary person being interviewed if he/she says yes.
(Chase Prescott’s personal secretary confirmed today that unsubstantiated accusations of impropriety in the recent sensational unauthorized biography of the media magnate are believed to have originated either from Prescott’s family circle or from close business associates….)

The secretary nodded. “Mr. Prescott’s furious.” Was there just a trace of satisfaction in his tone?

“If Mr. Prescott doesn’t have the book, who might have taken it?”

“I don’t know.” He Looked thoughtful.

“When did you last see it?” I led him through a series of questions.

In sum, the book was there on Wednesday. Today was Friday.

Anyone on the island could have taken it.

Why?

To keep me from seeing it? That only figured if the person who fed the author confidential information was on the island and feared that I was there for that reason.

A stretch. But the guilty flee …

It would be critically important to the informer to remain unknown. Exposure would, at the very least, result in expulsion from the family or the business.

That could be a strong motive for murder.

“If it’s important, I can pick up another copy when I go over to the mainland on Monday.”

Burton’s offer interested me. Obviously, he didn’t care whether I saw the notorious biography. So apparently what worried him was the fact that someone would
take
it.

It didn’t worry me. It interested me enormously.

“Thanks, Burton. I would appreciate it. Now, let’s get to work. This will be only the first of many, many sessions we’ll have during the course of my research on Mr. Prescott’s biography”—I tried to sound as mellifluous and reassuring as a $200-an-hour shrink—“and today I want to focus on you.”

“On me?” His face froze in the startled-deer look made famous by a late-twentieth-century vice president.

“My practice is always to start an interview by finding out about my contact. We’ll relax and chat. When I know more about you, I can put your thoughts about Mr. Prescott into a better context.”

This is, actually, sound interviewing technique. Stay the hell away from the sensitive questions until you’ve disarmed your subject. It’s also a good way to finger a liar. Feed questions that have no bite—where were you born, where did you grow up, where did you go to school, what was your college major, etc.—then when everything’s easy and smooth, slip in a question that matters. It’s astonishing what you’ll learn. If you watch eyes and hands, you’ll never need a he detector.