Deadly Valentine (18 page)

Moving as she spoke, Annie brushed past Lisa and headed for the living room.

Lisa, after hesitating at the door, finally closed it and followed.

Annie paused in the archway that opened into the living room. “Oh, Lisa, what a perfectly lovely room.”

It was a vision of light and space. Overstuffed pastel furniture, in two distinct groupings, offered a pastoral view of the pinewoods through enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. Ferns spouted from hanging baskets and from earthenware pots. Contemporary paintings, vivid with splashes of topaz, burnt orange, and cherry, hung on three walls. There wasn’t a single piece of Victoriana in sight, despite the ornate scoria moldings on the ceiling. Maybe it was George’s first wife who had been rapturous over the 1890s. Lisa could redecorate as much as she wished, but nothing could be done about the Victorian exterior of this house.

Annie dropped into a voluptuously comfortable two-seat couch. “Whew, does this feel good. It’s hot this afternoon. I’m parched.”

The response, as Annie had calculated, was automatic. Lisa was a thoughtful hostess. “Would you care for a drink? Gin and tonic? Coke? Iced tea?”

“Tea would be wonderful.”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Alone, Annie popped to her feet and prowled, seeking a better insight into her neighbors’ lives. But even Sherlock Holmes would have been stymied by this impersonal room, luxurious but uncluttered. No family photos. No obvious mementos. She knew no more when she finished her circuit of the room than when she began. It bespoke money and quiet good taste, no more.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. Annie sped back to her seat. Lisa entered with a tray, tall crystal glasses filled with ice and tea and generous sprigs of mint.

“Sugar?”

“No, thanks.”

Now, safely ensconced as a guest, Annie set to work.

Sitting opposite her, perched stiffly on the very edge of a huge ottoman, Lisa fielded questions cautiously. According to her, the Grahams had known the Cahills for several years, but only casually. (Annie forbore to point out that
George and Sydney’s embrace in the alcove at the Valentine party had not been casual.)

Lisa forced a social smile. “We happened to get married the same year. But we didn’t have much else in common.”

“Did George have this house when you married?” Annie asked innocently. Lisa’s nod confirmed her hunch. She wondered idly what had happened to all the Victorian furniture.

“Didn’t George and Sydney play tennis sometimes?”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed, like a cat’s pupils subjected to harsh light. “Who told you that?”

Annie gazed at her blandly. “I thought I saw them together a couple of times when Max and I were playing.”

Lisa yanked off her red towel sweatband with a little more force than was necessary. Her curly brown hair popped forward, and she brushed it back. “Oh,” she said carelessly, “I suppose so. You know how casual everything is at the club. A lot of pick-up games on Saturdays.”

That’s probably exactly the kind of games that ensued
. Annie wasn’t thinking tennis. “Didn’t he ever mention playing with her?”

Lisa’s smile was controlled and distant. “Probably. In one ear and out the other when it isn’t important.”

Annie sipped her tea, and the aromatic mint tickled her nose. “Did you ever hear any gossip linking Sydney with anyone?”

Again Lisa gave Annie a probing glance, but Annie maintained her bland, friendly expression.

It was obvious to Annie that Lisa could unload on Sydney like Paul Drake reporting to Perry Mason.

Annie read it in the angry glint of Lisa’s eyes, the tightening of her coral lips.

But she didn’t.

That’s when Annie decided Lisa had indeed seen her husband’s embrace of Sydney at the party.

Lisa tossed her head, her dark curls quivering. “I really scarcely knew her.”

“Oh.” Annie sighed gustily. “Then you can’t help us out in that direction. But you and George and Joel were at the Valentine party?”

“They invited all the neighbors,” Lisa said quickly.

“Oh, of course. Did you happen to notice Sydney that night, who she talked to, that kind of thing?”

“She was like a cat in heat, rubbing up to every man in the place,” Lisa snapped.

In Annie’s experience, it was the toms who came after the tabbies, but she decided it might be damping to disagree, so she listened, with a mental apology to Agatha and Dorothy L.

Her eyes flashing, Lisa spewed the names of Sydney’s dance partners, who at one point or another included an island lawyer, the druggist, a pediatrician, the visiting tennis player, and—much more to the point if Lisa realized it—compound resident Buck Burger. Lisa, of course, didn’t mention her own husband or Annie’s, though quite obviously she hadn’t missed Sydney’s sultry attentions to them Tuesday night. And she didn’t mention Joel. An oversight? Did she consider it too unimportant—or too important?

“She might as well have waved a flag that said Take me,” Lisa said bitterly. “She was absolutely—”

It was then that Annie saw the shoe in the window. Although, of course, it wasn’t actually a shoe in the window. It was a reflection. Annie faced the windows. Lisa could see neither that particular window nor the portion of the hall it reflected. As delicately as Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret absorbs atmosphere, Annie shifted millimeter by millimeter until her peripheral vision encompassed the archway opening into the hall.

The tip of a scuffed sneaker was just visible in the archway. Someone was listening to their conversation, to Lisa’s denunciation of Sydney’s actions on the last night of her life.

“—out of control!” Lisa paused, her cheeks crimson.

“I felt that, too.” Annie leaned forward confidentially. “You know, she must have had some real problems.” The shoe didn’t move.

“That woman’s only problem was a bad case of nymphomania.”

Annie was careful not to remind Lisa that she had begun their little chat by pretending absolute ignorance of
Sydney’s activities. It was amazing what a little discretion could net by way of revelations. Annie was sure that if she had started off by asking about George and Sydney’s clinch in the alcove, she wouldn’t have learned a thing. She made a mental note to remind Max how much one could learn about human nature from reading mysteries.

Lisa abruptly recalled herself. She picked up her half-full glass of iced tea and drank. She added another spoonful of sugar and sipped again before saying, her voice once more perfectly controlled, “Of course, that’s what it looked like, that night. I don’t know anything firsthand.”

“Perhaps it was one of those men who met her in the gazebo,” Annie said brightly. “Now, this is so critical. Did you and George hear anything—any kind of disturbance that night? Do you think anyone could have trespassed on your property?”

Lisa paused, the glass midway to her lips. Then, slowly and deliberately, she drank the rest of her iced tea.

Annie tried hard not to come to attention, like a bird dog on point. Lisa was stalling. Why? Had they heard something? Why did that question alarm her?

Lisa placed the glass precisely on its coaster. “That night?” Her effort to be casual rang as false as Mike Hammer sipping a sherry. “Oh, I don’t think we would have heard anything—if there was anything to hear. And she wasn’t shot, was she? We watched a movie. You know how it is sometimes when you get in from a party. It’s hard to unwind.”

Hard to unwind? Annie plummeted into sleep like John Putnam Thatcher welcoming a balance sheet. With alacrity.

“Of course,” Annie replied insincerely. “Max and I love movies, too.” She didn’t add that her favorites were made before 1940. She was nutty about
Woman in the Dark
, based on the Dashiell Hammett short story and
Jamaica Inn
, drawn from the 1936 Daphne du Maurier novel. “What did you watch?”

It was painful to see Lisa try to come up with a name. “Oh, one of the police academy ones,” she said finally.

Sure, Annie thought, and I’m a little green man from Mars, too.

“They’re so noisy,” Lisa said with more assurance.

“Have you heard anything strange on other nights?”

“Oh no, no. It’s awfully quiet out here.” She was completely at ease now, her hands loose in her lap.

So her tension was directly connected with Tuesday night. What had happened in this house on Tuesday night? Annie was willing to bet a first edition (very fine) of James M. Cain’s
The Postman Always Rings Twice
, worth a cool fifteen hundred dollars, that it wasn’t a private viewing of
Police Academy
number whatever.

“You can’t think of anything that would be helpful in the investigation?”

Lisa’s apologetic shrug was perfect. “But you know”—and her voice reflected increasing confidence—“we’re so far away from the Cahills. I’d certainly help if I could. Such a dreadful thing to happen. And Howard’s so nice.”

The shoe in the hall lifted, rubbed against an ankle encased in a thick white sock.

Annie had a good idea who lurked out there.

She lifted her voice just a little. “I don’t suppose it’s true, but I did happen to hear someone say they saw Sydney with Joel at the club recently.”

“Joel.” His stepmother’s tone was thoughtful.

Annie waited patiently, giving her every opportunity to mention the interlude both she and Lisa had observed at the Valentine dance.

“Oh, it would have been a tennis game, something like that,” Lisa said finally. “Joel scarcely knew her.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, Annie, but I have some things to do …”

Annie rose. “Of course, it’s getting late. Thanks for talking to me. If you think of anything that might help—or if any noise that night comes to you—just give me a call.”

The shoes in the hall were gone.

When they reached the door, Annie paused. “Do you suppose Joel’s home from school yet? Perhaps he heard something that night …” She let it hang.

“Oh,” Lisa’s reply was careless. “I doubt it. Joel’s always listening to that hideous loud music. But you can ask him. He has the quarters out on top of the garage. Because of
the music. It drives George crazy. If Joel’s jeep is at the end of the drive, he’s home.”

But Annie’s luck was out. As she started down the Grahams’ front steps, the jeep sped past in a cloud of dust.

Annie dialed as fast as she could.

“Confidential Commissions.” Max’s secretary always sounded cheerful and as if her mouth was full. Which it probably was. Barbie spent a lot of time cooking in the tiny little kitchen at the back of the office suite. Max never alluded to it, but Confidential Commissions didn’t exactly teem with clients on a regular basis. It was amazing what Barbie could create in what Annie considered to be less than scintillating culinary surroundings, everything from blueberry fritters to stuffed flounder rolls with citrus sauce. Of course, as far as Annie was concerned, even a kitchen designed by Martha Stewart wouldn’t tempt
her
to cook. Everyone had their interests. Annie’s was eating, not cooking.

“Hi, Barbie. Can I talk to Max?”

A definite smacking of lips. “He’s on the phone right now, Annie. Long distance. Want him to call you?”

“I’d better talk to him now. Could you interrupt?”

“Sure.”

A buzz and a crackle. “Mr. Darling, there is an emergency call for you from Tokyo. It’s about the stolen emerald necklace.”

Annie grinned. Barbie must really be bored.

In a moment, Max was on the line. “Annie? What’s up?”

“You’ve got a toothache.”

Max and Hercule Poirot had this in common, they both loathed going to the dentist. Max, of course, bore up to it better than Poirot, but not by much.

“No, no, teeth never felt better,” Max proclaimed emphatically. “If anybody needs to go to the dentist, it’s you. Probably rotting out from too much chocolate. I found those raspberry-filled Godiva starfish hidden behind the oat bran muffins. Now, I’ve got to get back to—”

Max had a thing about chocolate and its ill effects. So, of course, she’d put the starfish in an inconspicuous place. It certainly wasn’t fair to infer she’d
hidden
them. “Chocolate,”
she assured him crisply, “is the elixir of the gods. Just think, those poor Romans never had a chocolate soda. And my teeth are fine, but I don’t have time to go into town.” The Broward’s Rock business district clustered near the ferry landing. Of course, Max’s office and Death on Demand were on the other end of the island around the yacht harbor, but it wouldn’t take Max five minutes to drive to Graham’s office. “Too much is happening out here. Listen, Max.” She told him about the movie,
Police Academy
number whatever. “Get over to George’s office and pump him before she sees him and they get their story straight. Okay?”

“But, Annie, my teeth are—”

“Lie.” She hung up.

She dialed again immediately to prevent Max from calling back. They didn’t have Call Waiting at home because Annie considered it an odious invention, almost as infuriating as the American film versions of Christie novels. The British could be counted upon to do Christie right. Joan Hickson was a Miss Marple whom Dame Agatha would have enjoyed. But most American productions of Christie novels sucked. Americans seemed unable to film mysteries without being campy. She shuddered as she recalled the made-for-TV bastardization of
Murder in Three Acts
, transplanted from the English coast to Acapulco and starring Tony Curtis. There were, of course, exceptions to this blanket indictment, notably
And Then There Were None
in 1945, starring Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, and Roland Young, and
Witness for the Prosecution
in 1957, starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester.

Ingrid’s businesslike voice yanked her back to the present. “Death on Demand.”

“Hi, Ingrid. Everything okay?”

“Oh, nothing’s wrong that a cat psychiatrist might not be able to solve.”

Annie’s heart sank. “Problems?”

“I don’t suppose it’s a major problem. Unless it upsets you to have a cat stalking around like General Zaroff on a tear.”

General Zaroff? The bored hunter, created by Richard
Connell, sought the ultimate prey—man himself—in “The Most Dangerous Game,” the classic suspense short story.