Honeymoon With Murder (24 page)

“Annie, want some more coffee?” Barbie asked.

Coffee. Her stomach rumbled. Abruptly, Annie realized she was famished. She glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. No wonder. She’d missed lunch.

“We missed lunch,” Annie exclaimed.

Barbie looked at her in disbelief. “Miss lunch? We
never
miss lunch. Max had just finished eating when you called from Beaufort. Do you mean you haven’t had a bite?” Barbie was a thirtyish blonde with an
ample
figure, who spent her spare time at Confidential Commissions clipping recipes from
Southern Living
and listening to George Jones, Hank Williams Jr., and Randy Travis. She immediately rose to the challenge. “Don’t worry. There’s lots left,” and she hurried into the room that held the small refrigerator, microwave, and coffee apparatus. Her voice wafted back to Annie. “Chicken scallopini with peppers and potato-broccoli vinaigrette. I can heat it up in the microwave. And would you like a glass of Chablis?”

Annie cast a bemused glance toward Max’s open door. Did he eat that kind of lunch every day? It scarcely seemed American. And who cooked it? Barbie?

But it all smelled so appetizing. Max might be on to a good thing. She was just finishing when Barbie caroled, “Phone for you, Annie.”

“I hate snakes—real snakes and human snakes.”

There was an odd twist to this accent. Annie couldn’t quite place it. Obviously, it was English mastered as a first language, and yet there was a Latin rhythm to it.

“I’m furious. Everyone is trying to thwart me. But I intend to prevail. At least, thank God, I didn’t have to take an airplane to get to Beaufort!”

Annie made the connection. Captain José Maria Carvalho Santos da Silva, of Brazil, who hates airplanes, snakes, and women in pants. Henny.

“Why are you in Beaufort?”

“I’m at the morgue. Waiting for clearance to see that woman they found in the Refuge—Annie, why didn’t you tell me she had red hair?”

The hideous picture flashed in Annie’s mind. She drew in a breath. “Oh God, Henny, how could anyone tell?” The hair, dark from its immersion in water, had been plastered close to the battered skull. At the morgue, they must have dried it, which created other images she didn’t want to pursue.

“Red hair. For God’s sake, didn’t you even think of Betsy?”

Gratefully, Annie supplanted her grim pictures with a memory of Betsy at a Fourth of July Low Country Cookout, her bright hair glistening in the sunlight, looking up and laughing as she talked to Alan beside the pool at the Palmetto House.

Annie felt her patience eroding. “Henny, Betsy’s in California. Three thousand miles from here.”

The Brazilian accent fell away. “I hope so, Annie. I hope so.” A pause. “I’ll soon be able to tell you.”

Annie replaced the telephone with an exasperated head shake. Henny was going to regret this foray. Carrying her dishes to the kitchen area, Annie rinsed them and hurried back to her chair and the printouts.

Annie remembered the slender blonde holding her little boy high in the air as he laughed down at her.

Maybe Emily Kemp would testify at a divorce and custody hearing. Annie underlined her name and added the printout to those she’d read.

Max’s voice boomed from his office. “So what harm will it do to let us know about the contents of the attaché case?”

Annie glimpsed Max through his open door. She did love to see Max work. Although he approached any labor with the enthusiasm of a cat plunging into water, it really did show him off at his best. As he hunched over the desk, he was marvelously attractive, dark blue eyes flashing, jaw firm, voice steady. He was too wholesome-looking with his thick blond hair, bright eyes, and regular features to be Humphrey Bogartish. Then she had it: Dick Powell in
Murder My Sweet
.

Unaware of her scrutiny, her beloved barked in a rapid staccato (Sergeant Cribb couldn’t have done it any better), “We’re investigating Mrs. Raines’s disappearance here, too, and that’s a critical piece of evidence.”

Annie smiled fondly. Really, she must make it a point, subtly, to encourage Max to work. Ah, the responsibilities of a wife!

And, thinking of work—

High school coach: “Super athlete, team leader. And a hell of a nice boy.”

Two years at Armstrong State College, majoring in law enforcement. Faculty adviser: “Serious student. Steady. Dependable. Not the brightest, but he gave it all he had.” Joined Broward’s Rock police department 1982.

Scuba diver, triathlete, hunter.

Owner of island sporting goods store: “An all-around sportsman, tough, capable, determined.”

And, Annie wondered, a murderer?

Billy was big enough, strong enough. Why had it taken him so long to respond to the call from the checkpoint guard? But then, why not? When off duty, his time was his own. He could have been out for a midnight swim or a late walk along the shuttered main street. Spanish Alley Road was a narrow, unpaved street behind the bowling alley. An old antebellum house had been divided into apartments. It would be about a mile and a half walk along a dusty road to Nightingale Courts. If Billy wanted to avoid notice, he would walk rather than drive for his late night visits to Mavis. Was he there Saturday night?

Annie swiveled. Max was still on the phone. She understood his involvement with Betsy’s disappearance and the consequent tie-up of the phone line at Confidential Commissions, but it was time for her to cast out a net, too.

The rain splashed unrelentingly against the front windows of Death on Demand. Inside, the bookstore had a greenish-grey tone, and the gloom made it a fit repository for tales of crime and woe. She passed the table stacked with Scott Turow’s
Presumed Innocent
—could you believe a first novel?—and hurried down the central aisle, noting titles in passing:
The Moving Finger
by Agatha Christie,
The Spy Who Barked in the Night
by Marc Lovell, and
The Woman in the Moon
by Donald Lehmkuhl. Some of Ingrid’s favorites.

Annie shrugged out of her raincoat and draped it, dripping, on a chair by the table nearest the coffee bar, then turned to face an accusatory stare from flaming amber eyes.

“Agatha, love, I’m sorry.”

The cat’s tail twitched. Once.

“Sweetie, don’t be hostile.” Annie reached out to pet the silky fur. She was able to yank her hand back just in time to avoid being bitten.

Agatha turned her head away, and her tail rippled like Blackboard’s whip. She could not have evinced her unhappiness any more clearly had she announced in ringing tones, “You’ve gone off again and left me for hours and hours. One piddly serving of salmon, hours ago, counts for nothing. I’m bored, hungry, and absolutely furious.”

Annie put down the printouts she hadn’t yet read on the coffee bar, then stepped behind it and bent down to open the refrigerator. It wasn’t smart, of course, to let a cat bully you, but Agatha had a very strong personality, and the only way to get past this contretemps was to offer something especially tempting.

Cream?

Bologna?

Mince pie?

More salmon?

Annie knew Max would have several choice comments about what the contents of the refrigerator revealed about the mistress of Death on Demand and her probable cholesterol count. Agatha peered over the side of the counter. Working fast, Annie apportioned a small amount of each in Agatha’s bowl and put it beside her furry friend atop the counter.

Agatha was pleased. She was as passionately fond of both mincemeat pie and salmon as her namesake was of Devonshire cream. Annie devoutly hoped the combination wouldn’t result in a royal case of cat indigestion.

That important matter concluded, she measured Kona coffee into the pot, turned it on, then reached for the phone on the coffee bar. As the dark, delicious drops began to fall, she dialed.

“Police.”

“Billy, this is Annie Laurance. Darling.” She had almost managed her new surname in the same breath.

He didn’t answer. She could picture him at his desk, his
pleasant face set, his large, powerful shoulders tensed, a massive hand locked tight around the receiver.

She saw no reason to pussyfoot around. “Billy, where were you Saturday night when your beeper went off?”

A heavy, taut silence.

She waited.

“Home.” The word thudded onto the line like ice calving from a glacier.

“It took you too long to come.” Her voice was almost regretful.

Again a silence. Finally, harshly, he challenged her. “Prove it.” The line went dead.

Annie immediately looked up a number and dialed. And was relieved that she didn’t get a busy signal.

“Hello.” The voice was so young and vulnerable.

“Mavis, this is Annie Laurance. Darling.”

“Yes, Mrs. Darling?” Not quite so frightened now.

Annie hated what she was about to do. Until she thought about Ingrid. She made her voice genial
(the better to eat you with, my dear)
. “Mavis, what time did Billy leave Saturday night?”

Silence again, this time freighted with panic. “What do you mean?” Her thin voice wavered like a plucked string.

Annie understood that panic. If Mavis admitted Billy was there, it added to the weight of suspicion against her. If she denied it, she might lose an alibi. Worst of all, if he wasn’t there, it must have occurred to Mavis to wonder if it was Billy who stabbed Jesse and abducted Ingrid.

“I’m trying to find out whether anyone was up and about late and might have seen Jesse—or someone with Jesse.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t up late.”

“But Billy usually came on Saturday night, didn’t he? Where was he this last Saturday night?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’d told Billy that Jesse was blackmailing you? That you were paying him five dollars a week?”

A quick drawn breath and the receiver slammed into the cradle.

Annie slowly replaced her receiver, then pulled out her notebook from the stack of printouts. Leaning comfortably
against the coffee bar, she flipped open the notebook, found a fresh page past the odd map she’d copied at Jesse’s, and wrote:

1. When did Billy leave Mavis’s cabin Saturday night?
   

2. If he was there when the beeper sounded and had been all evening, both of them are alibied.
   

3. If he had already left when the beeper sounded, did he have time to move Jesse’s unconscious body to Ingrid’s cabin and grab Ingrid before he showed up in the patrol car?
   

4. If he had already left when the beeper sounded, would Mavis have had time to move Penrick and abduct Ingrid?
   

5. Could Mavis and Billy have committed the crime together?
   

6. If Mavis committed the murder alone, would she act so nervous and uncertain about Billy?
   

It would depend upon just how wily and Machiavellian she was.

In any event, if either Billy or Mavis acted singly or in conjunction, there had been very little time to dispose of Ingrid.

So why hadn’t Ingrid or her body been found by the expert and careful searchers?

It argued for another principal, someone with time and a deadly scheme that included Ingrid.

Why, for that matter, was Ingrid abducted at all?

That was obvious, Holmes would have snapped at Watson. Ingrid had quarreled with the dead man. When he was murdered in her cabin and Ingrid was nowhere to be found, it wasn’t too surprising that the authorities’ suspicions would rest on her. It was, of course, the murderer’s great good luck that Brice Willard Posey was in charge of the investigation and that Chief Saulter (who knew Ingrid) was out of the country.

But that didn’t increase the limited amount of time available to either Billy or Mavis.

Annie put the notebook down and reached for the
coffeepot. She glanced over the collection of white pottery mugs with their bright red inscriptions. Each mug was decorated with the name of a book famous in mystery fiction:
Ladies in Boxes
by Gelett Burgess,
Philo Gubb: Correspondence School Detective
by Ellis Parker Butler,
Poisonous Relations
by Joanna Cannan,
Laura
by Vera Caspary,
The Riddle of the Sands
by Erskine Childers,
The Gun in Daniel Webster’s Bust
by Margaret Scherf,
Miss Pym Disposes
by Josephine Tey, and
The Penguin Pool Murder
by Stuart Palmer. Finally, with a wry smile, she lifted down
Suspects All
by Marco Page and filled it, the better to think with. Agatha, genial now, daintily licked a paw and observed.

The telephone rang, and Agatha shot from the coffee bar, streaking toward the fern and rattan chair enclave.

An English accent this time.

“Is this Roakes Common 3206?”

So Henny expected Annie to play Cousin Toby to Tessa Crichton. Anne Morice’s feisty heroine frequently depended upon her agreeable cousin to serve as a bouncing board for ideas during an investigation.

“Toby here,” Annie replied. Experience had taught her that cooperation would shorten the call and get her back to her papers.

“I can’t
believe
I’m wrong.” Yes, it had to be cocky Tessa. “It seemed so obvious that the body had to be Betsy’s, when it turned out not to be Ingrid. And red-haired!” The last exclamation was accusatory.