Honeymoon With Murder (14 page)

“Food line opens at six-thirty. How’s your investigation coming?”

“Lousy. Nobody knows anything about anybody.”

Henny considered the problem. “And, of course, you can’t ask the neighbors because that’s who you’re trying to find out about, the good people who live at Nightingale Courts. Max, of course! Get their rental applications.”

“Their what?”

Henny laughed wryly. “Ah, the rich,” she observed kindly enough. “The very rich. I don’t suppose you’ve ever filled out a rental application?”

Actually, he had his business manager in New York handle that sort of thing. When he’d come to Broward’s Rock, the mention of his line of credit and accounts in Morgan Guarantee Trust seemed satisfactory.

But Henny was plowing onward. “We of the lower classes, my dear, have to reveal everything but the name of our grandmother’s shrink to rent property from the monied classes. Find out who owns Nightingale Courts.”

It took Max only two more phone calls to make that discovery. When he was told, he didn’t bother to write the name down. He managed a polite thank-you, then stared glumly at his legal pad. Of course, it came as no surprise that Nightingale Courts were part of the holdings of Harley Edward Jenkins III. After all, Harley was CEO of Halcyon Development, Inc., which had built the resort end of the island. Unfortunately, he and Harley were not exactly on friendly terms, not since Max had refused, on behalf of Confidential Commissions, to do a spot of photography for
Harley. Harley wanted a nice set of photos of a business opponent with a woman other than his wife. To sweeten a deal, as Harley had ingenuously put it. Max’s refusal and his subsequent assessment of Harley’s character had not made for cordial relations.

No. Harley wouldn’t dream of letting Max see the rental applications for Nightingale Courts.

Max straightened the papers on his desk, turned off the light, and hurried outside. But he didn’t go directly to his car for the drive across the island to Nightingale Courts and the Tent City. And dinner, so to speak.

Instead, he walked thoughtfully by the closed offices of Halcyon Development, Inc.

There was more than one way to skin a cat.

Sunday night

Later, Annie would wonder at her obtuseness, her lack of antenna. After all, as an ardent reader of Had-I-But-Known novels, from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s first.
The Circular Staircase
, to Mignon G. Eberhart’s fifty-ninth,
Three Days for Emeralds
, she should have been equipped to pick up on portents.

Apparently not.

Perhaps the root cause was her absorption in her own plans, for plans she had. Be that as it may, the ultimate outcome, she felt certain, probably shortened her lifespan by a good ten years because of the strain to her heart and nervous system.

As is common in the literature, it all began so innocently.

After dinner and a rousing pep talk by Madeleine, the search volunteers gathered around a campfire, well banked with a circle of earth, for a gospel sing and hot chocolate. Henny, with conspiratorial nods and beckonings, rounded up a motley group, which she briskly shepherded to the middle pier. She lifted a hurricane lamp to light the way as the last reddish streaks from the setting sun emphasized the swiftly falling darkness and the soulful strains of “Amazing Grace” floated across the water.

Laurel still wore her plain oatmeal robe and sandals. In the flickering beam of Henny’s lamp, Max’s mother looked about sixteen and fey. Annie wouldn’t have been suiprised to see her glide over the wooden planking of the pier without touching a board. Her hands were clasped in a
sweet attitude of supplication, and her smooth, aristocratic features were uplifted.

Ophelia Baxter trotted along on Laurel’s heels. She, too, wore a plain oatmeal robe, but there the resemblance ended. The tubby psychic looked like a blob of unformed ice-box cookie dough. The sprigs of chartreuse hair that escaped tonight’s purple turban glistened almost as brightly as the bioluminescent zooplankton, Nocticula, glowing eerily at the water’s edge.

Max, of course, was grousing about the food. “Fried chicken! Can you believe
fried
chicken! Don’t they know about the American Heart Association’s diet guidelines? And green beans swimming in grease from that ham hock. And what was that thing they called fatback?” He shuddered.

“I thought it was
especially
good,” Annie rejoined.

“Real women eat real food,” Alan said supportively, his arm brushing her shoulder.

In the intermittent light from the lamp swinging in Henny’s hand, Annie couldn’t see Max swelling like an irritated toad. But she could sense it.

Actually, she was surprised that Max had agreed to join this outing at all. Surprised and relieved, but, to tell the truth, just a tiny bit disappointed. After all, this
was
their honeymoon. So to speak. Why hadn’t Max suggested they slip away to her treehouse to compare the results of their investigations? It would have been much more in character than trooping out onto a dark pier, chattering about
food
. Of course, she had intended to say no to any such suggestion, because she definitely didn’t want to talk to Max tonight about what she’d learned and what she intended to do. Her thoughts on the subject were disjointed, but quite firm. She’d tell him tomorrow, after she’d accomplished her objective. If she did. She had a gut feeling that he would be opposed to her well-conceived program and would probably, in the inimitable fashion of all males, insist upon doing it himself. She didn’t mind skirting the law, but was categorically opposed to Max doing anything that could result in his disbarment. Not that he practiced law. But he
could
.

So she’d leapt at Henny’s call for a meeting, declaring
sotto voce to Max that they’d better not miss a chance to see what Laurel and Ophelia were up to. Still, it was a little disconcerting when he acquiesced without a murmur.

At the end of the pier, Annie sat with her back to a piling, Max and Alan on either side. Alan was a little too close, and his after-shave made her nose itch. She unobtrusively scooted nearer to Max, and he contentedly slipped an arm around her shoulders. Laurel stood at the pier’s edge, the offshore evening breeze molding the shapeless robe to her slim and lovely figure. Ophelia flopped down beside them, murmuring plaintively about the splintery boards.

Henny put down the lamp and faced them, her arms akimbo, reminding Annie irresistibly of Letitia Carberry, Rinehart’s irrepressible spinster adventuress who graced the pages of
The Saturday Evening Post
for so many years. There was the same aura of gallant determination and serious application which so characterized Tish Carberry from her wild ride in a runaway hot air balloon over Hollywood to her capture of a French village during World War One to her successful battle with rum runners during Prohibition.

“We shall triumph in our efforts to find Ingrid and to foil her kidnapper,” Henny began forcefully. “I have called us together for a marshalling of forces.”

Annie almost looked to see if Tish’s geriatric sidekicks, Miss Lizzie and Miss Aggie, lurked in the shadows. But no, there was only their own group, Laurel, Ophelia, Max, herself, and Alan Nichols.

Alan cleared his throat, as if reluctant to begin. Then, after giving Annie a firm squeeze on her arm, he said diffidently, “Gee, I kind of hate to throw cold water, and I’d love to help if I thought there was any point to it, but I talked to some of the searchers, and, of course, you can’t poke a stick in every foot of pond and swamp on the island, but if Ingrid was out there—I mean, if she tried to get away from the killer or something—it looks like they’d have found her by now. I mean, doesn’t it look pretty much like if somebody took her, she’s been bumped off?”

“Not at all,” Henny trumpeted, with all of Tish’s hardheadedness. “That’s—”

Support came from an unexpected and, Annie thought, probably not especially welcome quarter.

Ophelia leaned across Annie and Max to blurt, “Mr. Nichols, you are
absolutely
in the dark.” She waggled her fingers excitedly. “Without a glimmer of light!” Her high voice had a built-in whine that would have elicited an agonized “Pfui” from Nero Wolfe and immediate banishment from the office. “Ingrid lives!”

From across the water carried a resonant chorus of “May the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Henny’s fox-sharp nose twitched impatiently. She attempted to regain control. “Certainly Ingrid’s alive. Obviously, if anyone went to the trouble to abduct her, it was for a purpose. I do presume we can agree upon that? If it were a mere matter of a double murder, why kill Jesse there and Ingrid elsewhere? Also, why hide one body and not another? And, as anyone with a thinking mind can deduce, the fact that no trace of her has been found only serves to reinforce the presumption that she has been kidnapped. In fact, every hour of search that passes without her discovery only convinces me more deeply that she is being held a prisoner at some isolated location. Let me put it briefly but, I trust, cogently” (Tish Carberry didn’t suffer fools gladly):

“One. Ingrid Jones is not guilty of murder.

“Two. Therefore, she did not flee from the scene of the crime to escape the authorities.

“Three. Therefore, she was forcibly removed from the scene of the crime.

“Four. Therefore, since she has not been found, dead or alive, she is being held prisoner.”

Alan moved restively, but Henny pressed onward.

“Five. Therefore, when it suits her captor, she will be released or her hiding place uncovered.”

“Aw, now wait a minute,” Alan interrupted. “That’s bullshit, lady. I mean, I’m sorry, but that’s a bunch of crap. Either she’s hiding out, like that guy Posey says—”

At their chorus of dissent, he raised his voice.

“—okay, okay. You people say no way. You know her better than I do, so I give it to you. But if they haven’t found her and they’ve looked everywhere, then she’s been killed. I mean, what do you thinks going on around here?
How could somebody kidnap her and hide her so that hundreds of searchers can’t find her?”

Henny dismissed that with an impatient headshake. “Fiddle-faddle, that’s easy enough to understand. The searchers have concentrated on areas near here and along the coastline. True, they’ve knocked on a lot of doors, but if a house is closed—the owners obviously out of town, everything locked and in place—all the searchers can do is call out, look in the shrubs, poke in the weeds. Ingrid, bound and gagged, no doubt, cannot reply or escape. The searchers can’t break and enter, and as any fool knows, this island is full of out-of-the-way, hidden cabins and houses and closed-up boats. There’re a hundred places she could be!”

There was an instant’s pause. Annie didn’t know whether Alan had been overwhelmed by logic or merely overwhelmed. He did, in fact, open and close his mouth several times, but Henny was hard to refute.

Annie had no desire to refute her. She wanted to believe, too, that Ingrid was still alive. And although Alan had trouble with Henny’s logic, Annie had none. It all followed, once you were certain that Ingrid could not be the murderer, and of that Annie was absolutely, unshakably certain.

“Well, I think she’s dead,” Alan muttered.

“Oooh, oooh, no!” Ophelia wailed, “I
know
it isn’t so!”

“Even a clear glass can distort perception,” Laurel mused, still gazing up at the moon, now partially hidden by fast-slipping clouds.

“Pierload of fools. Young pup’s the only one with any sense.”

Duane Webb’s raspy snarl drowned out Ophelia and Laurel’s lighter voices.

“You behind that goddam notice?” he demanded of Henny, jamming his hands into his pockets. The lantern glow reflected off his thick glasses.

“What notice?” Alan asked, just beating Max to it.

“All the residents of Nightingale Courts are directed to report to the command tent at ten in the morning to have their fingerprints taken,” Henny said shortly. “I had Madeleine put the sign up this afternoon.”

“Fingerprints! Oooh, that’s so
criminal!”
Ophelia cried.

“One must rise above the material,” Laurel said placidly.

Duane snorted impatiently. “The last I heard, that corpulent dunce from the mainland had Ingrid ticketed as the mad slayer. How’d you change his mind?”

“Oh, I haven’t gotten anywhere with Posey,” Henny admitted irritably. “He’s positively besotted with the idea of Ingrid as an escaping murderess. No, I got on the phone with Chief Saulter, in Nuremberg, and told him all the nonsense that’s happened, and he’s called Billy Cameron and instructed him to look both for Ingrid
and
the murderer—and the first place to start is by checking out the unidentified fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

“What unidentified fingerprints?” Unconsciously, Max flexed his hands, and, worriedly, Annie tried to recall whether he’d touched the sword when they made their grisly discovery.

Henny barreled ahead. “Let’s say I have access to information that hasn’t been released. That’s the main reason I called us together. We must pool what we’ve found out.” She scanned their upturned faces. “I’ll start.

“The cause of death, after you wade through pectoral and ventricle and all that, was a stab wound to the heart by the sword found sticking in his chest. Now, this is what captured my attention: The sword handle does carry fingerprints by Ingrid—and why shouldn’t it, it belongs to her?—but there are unidentified fingerprints on the handle, too,
overlapping
Ingrid’s.”

Annie opened her mouth, then shut it. Because, for God’s sake, she knew whose prints those were. At a party Ingrid hosted in June, to celebrate the rousing success of the production of
Arsenic and Old Lace
by the Broward’s Rock Players (and there had certainly been some impediments on the road to
that
triumph), Annie had impulsively entertained one circle with her description of Circuit Solicitor Brice Willard Posey. To emphasize a point, she’d lifted down the sword from its plaque over the mantel and brandished it, exclaiming: “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword,” and been the recipient of loud applause, although on sober recollection she doubted that particular sally was deserving of acclaim.