Deadly Valentine (14 page)

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Marian bellowed, her voice rasping like a nail file. “I can’t write if—”

“Okay, okay,” Vince soothed. “Go with it. We’ll stick to the official version.” He looked at the wall clock. Three minutes to noon. “Come on,” he said to Annie and Max. “Let’s go to the coffee room. I need something to eat.”

They settled at a Formica-topped table, Vince with a Coke and a Baby Ruth from the candy machine, Annie with a root beer and a Hershey bar, and Max with a Perrier and a sack of peanuts.

Max glanced at her selection. “Temporary surge of energy,” he commented.

“I’ll take it,” she replied.

Vince drank the Coke halfway down and bit off a good third of the candy bar. “What a morning,” he mumbled,
“but we’ve got a hell of a story. Marian even managed a sidebar with ‘intimate’ details of Sydney’s life. Poor bitch. Now”—he took another bite and continued indistinctly—“what can I do for you?”

“Let us in on whatever you got from the cops,” Max said quickly.

“You mean, like extra background that’s not for pub right now?”

“Everything,” Annie urged. “And we’ll give you the inside scoop on what the crime scene looked like.”

“They’d taken Sydney to Charleston for an autopsy before we even heard about the murder,” Vince groused. “We don’t have a shot of the gazebo. We used a file photo of the house. Saulter could have called me.” Vince thought for a moment, then stuck out his hand. Annie grabbed it, then Max. “It’s a deal.”

A heavy throbbing shook the building.

Vince grinned triumphantly. “The press run. Hold on a minute, and I’ll get us a paper.”

He returned waving it triumphantly and with a dark smudge of ink across his freckled nose.

“God, look at this. Terrific, huh?”

The entire top half of the front page was absorbed by the crime. A three-column photo of the Cahill home ran in columns 1,2, and 3. Inset at lower left and right were mug shots of Howard and Sydney. A three-column headline topped the lead story.

Annie scanned the rest of the story. Nothing they didn’t know—the body to Charleston for an autopsy, the lack of a weapon at the crime scene, the short list of residents of the compound, and the to-be-expected pompous declaration by Posey:

But the zinger was the valentine clutched in the dead woman’s hand.

Annie pointed at the paragraph. “Was the valentine printed, typed, or written?”

“They were being cagey about that,” the newsman explained. “Actually, I was surprised they gave out the info at all, but Marian said she figures they want to stir up people who know anything about Sydney’s extracurricular activities.”

“The obvious implication,” Max observed, “is that Sydney went to meet a lover in the gazebo.”

“And either Howard followed and killed her in a jealous rage or the lover, for reasons unknown, did away with her,” Annie added. “I don’t suppose her secret admirer’s going to sally forth and bare his breast.”

Vince raised a bristly red eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding. Has to be a married man.”

“Oh now, how can you say that?” Annie objected. “With her winsome ways, it could be damn near any male on the island.”

“The gate. Oh, the famous gate,” Max said softly.

Which brought them back to the short list, the very short list, of residents in the Scarlet King compound.

“Except,” Annie pointed out, “for Howard’s son, Carleton, and the Graham teenager. What’s his name?”

“Joel,” Max supplied absently. He tapped the paper. “Looks to me like Posey’s already decided on Cahill. I wonder why he hasn’t charged him yet.”

Vince gulped down the rest of his Coke and crushed the can. “Let’s huddle with Marian. She can read Posey like a palm.”

Marian sank into a plastic chair like it was a hammock, shook her curly gray hair away from her face, took a cup of coffee black, and, between drags on an unfiltered Camel, assessed the prosecutor’s case.

“Dead cert Posey’s going to charge Cahill. But Posey’s got the willies. I mean, Cahill’s the Onassis of the U.S.A. Posey knows he’d better play it right. What if the guy’s innocent, for God’s sake.” She jerked her head to blow smoke away from her listeners. Marian had a dried-up face like a prune and brown eyes that glittered with intelligence and more than a little malice. “But Jesus, what’s with this stonewall routine? Baby, you don’t play that game when you’re riding with the angels. Anyway, I think that’s why Posey went public with the valentine. See, that will get the calls started, the whispers about who Sydney played house with, and, once the public gets the idea this was a roundheeled broad, they’ll figure Cahill’s guilty as hell and the pressure will build up for his arrest. That’s the way I see it.” She puffed at her cigarette; smoke wreathed her face. “And if they can find the weapon and pin it to Cahill, he’d better hire himself a street brawler of a lawyer.” Taking a final deep drag, she stubbed out her cigarette, pulled a small notebook from her pocket, and fastened hungry eyes on Annie. “Listen, the cops won’t ante much on the crime scene itself. They said the body was on the steps. Well, where? Was she going up, coming down, standing at the top. Where was the blood?”

Haltingly, Annie described what she had seen, and Marian sketched, prodding her with more questions. “Face up,
face down? On her side, back, front? Where were her hands?”

When Annie’d finished her description, she checked Marian’s sketch. “That’s right. Except her right hand was hidden beneath her right leg. It was bunched up a little bit.”

“Valentine in that hand.”

The reporter’s brusque comment made Annie wince. Valentines. She had a heart full of memories of valentines, silly, cute, sweet, simple, gaudy, or elaborate, but one and all brimming with vitality.

Annie knew she never wanted to see the valentine that Sydney had held so hopefully.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,” the reporter muttered. Eyes narrowing, she erased, redrew, then jerked her head at Annie. “Get down on the floor. Pretend this is the top step and this chair”—Marian jumped up, pushed her chair to Annie’s left—“this is the first pillar as you walk up.”

Macabre as it was, Annie understood Marian’s objective as soon as she took the pose. Dr. Thorndyke would have been proud of them.

Scrambling to her feet, Annie pointed at the drawing. “Oh my God,” Annie exclaimed, “I can see it now. Sydney walked up the steps into the gazebo and wham, the murderer bashed her. See, look at the blood on that pillar to her left. She sagged into the pillar and the murderer hit again and she toppled backward down the steps. She was lying with her feet on the top step, her legs and torso on a diagonal and slightly turned to the right. That accounts for her right hand being hidden from view.”

“She never had a bloody chance,” Marian rasped. “The bastard was waiting for her. Premeditated all the way.”

Max said grimly, “If Cahill killed her, it wasn’t a jealous rage. He planned it.”

“But how could Howard have reached the gazebo first?” Annie protested. She hesitated, then told Marian and Vince about Laurel’s arrival outside the library. “After Sydney started down the path to the gazebo, Laurel headed for our place. Howard caught up with her pretty quick.” Annie hauled out her timetable. “Look, Sydney probably reached
the gazebo about twelve fifty-six. If the murderer attacked her immediately, she was dead by twelve fifty-nine. Laurel said good night to Howard about five past one. So it can’t be Howard.”

“No way,” Max agreed.

Marian fished out another cigarette, lit it. “Depends,” she said, mildly for her, “if this Laurel was telling the truth.”

“Oh now,” Max began.

Marian shrugged. “Or maybe Sydney took a long walk. Wasn’t she supposed to be upset? Maybe she didn’t go straight to the gazebo. Maybe she wanted to cool down, be in a romantic mood to meet her secret admirer. Poor bitch. All it would take was a few minutes. If Howard hurried like hell, he could have got there first. Thing is, people can be mistaken about times, even though they’re sure as hell themselves. And one thing you have to remember, people lie a lot in murder cases.” Her cool green eyes studied the sketch. “Another thing. The murderer must have been inside the gazebo and facing the entrance, right?”

They nodded.

“So the first blow slams Sydney into the pillar to the killer’s right. What does that tell you?”

Vince got it immediately. “Left-handed. The killer’s left-handed.”

“Maybe,” Marian responded. “But look at the next blow. Sydney collapses backward
to her right”

“Hey, that doesn’t make any sense!” Annie objected.

“Switched hands. Weapon in the left hand for the first blow, switched to the right hand for the second blow.”

Vince frowned. “Come on, Marian, that’s too damn fancy in the middle of a murder.”

“Had to be,” the reporter said stubbornly. She blew a dribble of smoke, reflectively. “Kind of interesting. Saw Cahill play in a doubles tournament last fall. He’s ambidextrous. Doesn’t have a backhand. Switches his racket from his left to his right. Hits everything forehand. Including a hell of an overhead smash.”

If
they
had figured it out, the police lab would see the same scenario. Everything pointed to Howard Cahill. Annie
didn’t look at Max. She didn’t want to see the beginnings of doubt in his eyes.

But Max could be stubborn, too. “I don’t see it. For either Cahill or his son. Look, we’ve got some times figured out—”

But he never got to finish. The door to the coffee room burst open. An excited young man with a voice that quavered cried, “Vince, Marian, they just arrested some dame in the Cahill homicide! Somebody named Roethke!”

Max paced the prosecutor’s office madder than Travis McGee when The Busted Flush was threatened. “By God, Posey’s gone too far this time. He can’t keep her in jail. Who the hell does he think he is?” He shot a hostile glance at Posey’s university, law school, and bar certificates on the paneled wood wall behind an immaculate desktop.

“The chief investigating officer of this county, Mr. Darling,” Posey announced unctuously, as he entered from a side door. “Discharging my duties to the citizens of the great state of South Carolina.”

Posey did move just a bit quickly to put his desk between him and Max, and he glanced back to be sure Saulter was close behind.

Max turned on Saulter. “What the hell’s going on here, Frank? Have you ever heard about false arrest? By God, before I’m finished, you’ll wish you’d never heard my name.”

Annie gazed at her husband in admiration. She knew many facets of Max, but this was the first time she’d ever seen him sound like Philip Marlowe, with overtones of Perry Mason.

Saulter’s face furrowed unhappily. “Max, one of our deputies found her trying to conceal evidence.”

Posey sat down behind his desk. He was attempting to look judicious, but he couldn’t conceal his glee.

“Bloodstained
evidence, Mr. Darling. A jacket that clearly belongs to Mr. Cahill—has his initials monogrammed inside, on the right front lining—and guess what? The jacket’s all crumpled and splashed with blood. We’re waiting on the
lab report, but I don’t think it’s going to come as any surprise when the blood type matches Mrs. Cahill’s.”

Max looked at Saulter.