Honeymoon With Murder (11 page)

“My dear, have you received a little
hint
perhaps of where Ingrid is?” A breathless pause, intense anticipation.

“Uh.” Max scratched at the back of his neck. “Uh, no. Can’t say that I have.”

Laurel sighed breathily. “I suppose you haven’t yet reached that plane. And I’m afraid Ophelia and I have demanded too much of our contacts. Ophelia’s faculties seem to be
blocked.”

Max wasn’t persuaded that Ophelia, as he recalled the tubby, turbaned woman, possessed any notable faculties at all, so he wasn’t terribly surprised. However, to keep the conversation away from himself and Annie, he would gladly have discussed the conjugation of Swahili or the impressive swimming abilities of the marsh rabbit (seven hundred yards when pressed), so he said in hearty sympathy, “Laurel, that’s a damned shame.”

“I
knew
you would understand,” Laurel chirped. “So,” she continued with brisk, satisfied assurance, “you’ll get me a key to Ingrid’s cabin.”

Max shoved the lever and his chair snapped upright. Somnolence fled, replaced by intense concentration. “Mother, that’s a Crime Scene. No admittance. You could get in a lot of trouble.”

“If I had a key and said I was picking up something Ingrid had told me—”

“No. Absolutely and positively and definitively, no.”

“Maxwell, sometimes you act just like your father—and that man was no fun at all!”

The connection broke with a bang.

Max glowered at the buzzing receiver. A confrontation between Laurel and Posey didn’t bear thinking about it. Somehow he had to make it clear to Laurel that access to Ingrid’s cabin was absolutely impossible.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to make any proposition clear to Laurel when her brain—that elusive, quicksilver, horrifyingly original organ—was focused on an objective.

The receiver buzzed like an angry wasp.

And dully, but with increasing volume, someone knocked on the locked front door of Confidential Commissions.

Annie stared helplessly at the blue eyes brimming with tears.

“Please, please don’t tell anyone. If it gets into the papers, if Henry finds me—oh God, he’ll take Kevin away.”

Annie sat beside the crying woman on the tiny room’s single sofa. The cushions were worn and lumpy, but neatly mended. A wicker chair with chipped white paint was the only other furniture. The room would have been depressingly dismal except for the scattering of brightly colored blocks, toy cars, and empty margarine containers, strung together with a bright red thread. Crayon drawings, random splotches of color, decorated the walls. The smell of modeling clay mingled with those of freshly ironed cotton, Clorox, and Jell-O.

Mavis Beeson leaned closer and grabbed Annie’s arm. Long, cherry-red nails jabbed painfully into her wrist. “You got to
listen
to me. I promise I’ll never see Billy again. I promise, oh God, I promise, but please don’t let Henry find out!”

“Was Jesse going to tell Henry?”

The question, sharp as a stiletto, cut through Mavis’s hysteria. Her hand fell away from Annie and slowly rose to clutch at her throat.

“Oh, no, no. We had it all worked out. He promised me—”

“Mavis, Jesus God, keep your mouth shut!”

Billy Cameron’s shout exploded in the tiny living room. He stood in the kitchen doorway, filling it, and furious brown eyes blazed at Mavis. From the bedroom, Kevin’s voice rose in a frightened wail.

Billy’s usually pleasant face was almost unrecognizable, it was so distorted with fury—and fear. “She’s worse than
telling a cop,” he stormed. “Don’t say a word—or they will take Kevin away, for God’s sake.”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Kevin’s scream choked off into sobs.

Mavis looked at Annie with sick horror, then jumped up and ran to the bedroom. She reappeared, clutching the terrified little boy. “It’s all right, honey it’s all right. Mommy’s here.” She stared at Annie, and said again, “Mommy’s here,” and her voice broke. Helpless tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Mommy, Mommy,” the little boy wailed.

Billy reached them in two strides, pulling the girl and baby into his arms. He glared defiantly over their heads at Annie. “Last winter, I was on the road right outside Chastain. This girl with a baby ran out onto the highway, and in the headlights I could see her hair streaming in the wind. I knew she was scared, from the way she ran. Something bad had happened. I stopped and got them in the car. They were both crying, and she had blood running out of her ear where her husband had hit her, and the kid’s arm hung funny. I brought them home here to Broward’s Rock. Where they could be safe. I helped her get a job at the five-and-dime, and she’s taking care of Kevin real good.”

Annie stared at the bleached-blond head pressed so tightly against his chest and tried to understand. But Annie was free and independent and treated with respect. She lived in such a sane and well-ordered world that being beaten by a man was incomprehensible.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” she asked. For God’s sake, Billy was a policeman. Hadn’t they even talked about it?

Mavis half turned in Billy’s arms. Tear-smeared eye shadow streaked her face. “Henry would kill me,” she said jerkily. “Then what would happen to Kevin? I can’t tell anybody! I got to get away. That’s what I got to do. I got to get so far away, he’ll never find us. That’s what I should have done that night, but it was so cold and Kevin was hurt.” She struggled in Billy’s embrace. “I got to get away.”

“Honey, honey, honey,” Billy crooned, holding her gently and trying to break into that circle of fear. “I won’t let him get you. I swear to God, honey, I won’t let him get
you.” He looked over her head at Annie and nodded meaningfully at the door.

Annie hesitated, then rose and crossed the barren room. She opened the door and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine.

Fragrance from an overgrown honeysuckle wafted on the breeze. The marsh stretched in glassy peace, gleaming a cheerful yellow from the wind-and tide-blown tussocks of cordgrass seeds. It was a lovely fall afternoon in the salt marsh, marred only by human misery.

Max built a steeple with his fingers. “On the face of it,” he said judiciously, “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” He managed a tight smile. He didn’t really like his visitor, there was no getting around it. It wasn’t that he was jealous, of course. But Alan Nichols was just a little too good-looking and a little too ready with his hands around somebody else’s wife.

“So you think I can relax, huh?” Alan leaned back with a sigh of relief. “Well, to tell you the truth, I thought maybe Ruth was making too much of it. I mean, what the hell. So her mother hasn’t called her yet! I guess Ruth has a goody-two-shoes picture of Betsy. And you know Betsy. She’s probably having a grand old time out there.” The lewd intent in Alan’s good-old-boy tone was unmistakable.

That surprised Max. Not because he would have expected better of Alan Nichols. He’d expect damn little from Alan Nichols. But because it didn’t fit Max’s mental image of Betsy Raines. Of course, he and Annie didn’t know Betsy well. However, the owner-manager of the Piping Plover Gallery was very active in the Broward’s Rock Merchants Association, and they’d visited with her at several meetings and seasonal parties. In her mid-forties, Betsy was a successful businesswoman. She had a good figure, a nice manner, and remarkably pretty red hair. There was nothing about her to suggest a woman on the prowl. Max raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Alan flushed and tugged at his ear. “Hell, I don’t mean to talk out of school. But I think Betsy likes to kick up her heels on business trips. You know, she’s still a good-looking
woman, and a widow. I mean, what the hell, Jack? I mean, she wouldn’t be above picking up some guy in a bar. Maybe she’s shacked up somewhere for a day or two and just forgot to call Ruth.” Alan shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know.”

His tone implied he knew damn well, but was too much of a gentleman to say so.

Alan Nichols. Gentleman. His herringbone sports coat had a nifty red line in it which was picked up by the red silk tie knotted perfectly at the neck of an impeccable button-down, pinpoint Oxford cloth blue shirt. The effect was finished off with grey worsted slacks, sleek black tassel loafers, and a heavy silver ID bracelet. Probably stood in front of a three-way mirror and admired his ass after he dressed. Max was not impressed. What Annie saw in the curly-headed pretty boy was beyond his understanding.

Alan was beaming at Max now, in a perfectly good humor. “I’m damn glad I came over to talk to you. You’ve made me feel a lot better about it. It’s silly to push the panic button just cause somebody missed a call. But I couldn’t get through to the police here. That Cameron guy. And Ruth was so upset, I figured I better do something.”

Max decided to overlook the unspoken implication that something—i.e., Max—was better than nothing. Perversely, he decided not to offer further reassurances. He glanced down at his legal pad. According to Alan, his boss, Betsy Raines, took a Delta flight out of Savannah on Wednesday morning en route to San Francisco on a buying trip for the gallery. “Did you see Betsy Wednesday morning?”

“Nope. She had an early flight, so I wished her a good trip when we closed up Tuesday.”

“So far as you know, she made the flight?”

“Oh, sure.” Alan looked surprised. “I mean, she must have. Otherwise, she’d have called or come back to the island.”

Max wrote on his yellow pad. “Where’s she staying in San Francisco?”

Alan frowned. “Oh, hell. I just looked at the copy of her itinerary. I’ll have to check it at the shop and call you back. Some big-deal hotel in Frisco.”

Although he wasn’t a northern Californian, Max’s hackles rose at the “Frisco.” Laurel would stress that ignorance
can’t be helped and should never be condemned. Bully for Laurel.

“Okay,” he said crisply. “You don’t remember which hotel, but you can call me back on that. Let’s see, she was going to stay five days. That means she should return Monday. Right?”

Alan slapped his knee in relief. “Sure. She’ll be back tomorrow. Hell, I’m sorry I even came over here and bothered you.” He started to rise.

He didn’t sound especially sorry. Max gave him a short stare. Alan would always have the right words, but he came across like a used-car salesman touting a Jaguar with a Chevrolet engine. However, he had been alarmed enough about his employer to come to Confidential Commissions. Max could almost hear Annie saying, “You didn’t check up on it? But Max, I really like Betsy.” He waved Alan back to his seat.

“I didn’t mean to imply we shouldn’t do a little checking. It should be easy to locate her. For one thing, who was she going to meet? We can call some of her expected contacts and trace her movements.”

“There I can’t help you,” Alan said regretfully. “I mean, it could have been anybody. An art dealer. A collector. All I know is, she took a bundle of cash with her and intended to come back with a Picasso. That’s all she told me.”

“Cash?”

Alan lounged in his chair. “Oh, that’s no big deal in the art business. A lot of people want cash on the barrel head—and no close questions asked about where a painting came from. You’d be surprised how many collectors’ll take a painting without provenance. Naw, that’s no big deal.”

Max knew contraband art was smuggled across borders every day. It might not be the ordinary course of business, as Alan implied, but there was a lot of cash dealing. In back rooms.

Alan was shaking his head. “Sorry I barged over here. But I didn’t know what the hell to do when Ruth called. You know Ruth?”

Max shook his head.

“She’s visited here a couple of times since I started to work for Betsy,” Alan said. “A real uptight gal. Pretty cute,
but no fire. You know the kind, keeps her legs crossed all the time. And my God, what grown woman asks her mother to check in every time she makes a plane trip? That’s pretty neurotic, isn’t it?”

With the frequent near hits enjoyed by Americas airlines, which seemed a good deal more interested in being lean than safe, Max didn’t think Ruth’s anxiety was altogether unreasonable. If Alan didn’t like Ruth, Max decided he did.

“Do you have her phone number?”

“Ruth’s?” Alan looked like a lottery winner. “You mean you’ll call her? Get her off my back? Jesus, that’s swell of you, Max.”

Max managed not to snarl as they said good-bye, although it goddam well did not make his day to bring a joyous smile to Alan’s choirboy features.

He stared sourly at the telephone. But slowly his frown faded. The point was not Alan, but Betsy. Was she okay? Cheered, he rummaged in the bottom drawer for his Savannah directory and called Delta. It took two long waits on hold and three call transfers, but he finally had the information. Mrs. Raines’s ticket had been used both from Savannah to Atlanta and Atlanta to San Francisco.

Immediately after he hung up, the phone rang and Alan was on the line with the hotel (the St. Francis) and Ruth Jenson’s telephone number in Kansas City.

Max ended up on hold with the St. Francis, too, but was finally rung through to Mrs. Raines’s room. He drew happy faces on his legal pad and wondered just how he should approach Betsy Raines when she answered. With a good-natured “Hey, we’ve got the distress flags out for you back here on the island”? He winced. Even to his uncritical ear that sounded asinine. How about, “Sorry to bother you, Betsy, but Ruth’s been worried about you.” Of course, he’d gloss over any possible reason for Betsy to have missed calling her daughter, such as a liaison forged in the hotel bar. He had a sudden clear memory of a Christmas party and Betsy Raines lifting her glass in a toast and the tree lights reflecting from her silver bracelets and red hair.

The hotel operator broke in. “No answer. Do you wish to leave a message?”

“Yes. Ask Mrs. Raines to call her daughter, please.”

He’d done all he could do for now. His glance dropped to the bottom of the page and the telephone number of Betsy-Raines’s daughter, Ruth. Oh yeah, he’d better call her, tell her that Betsy had safely reached California. Then he would get back to work on the life and times of Jesse Penrick. Maybe he would yank the right string and it would lead directly to Ingrid.