Read Honeymoon With Murder Online
Authors: Carolyn G. Hart
As she came around the bend in the road, she smiled at the carroty-haired young man working on a tire in the open garage at Jerry’s Gas ’N Go. He grinned in return. He had
flirty brown eyes that admired Annie in a very grown-up way.
She fished in her memory. Henny had talked to a gas boy at Jerry’s. His name was—
“J.D.?” she inquired.
“Yeah. What can I do for you?” He squirted water on the tire and turned it, looking for telltale bubbles.
“I’m trying to find out more about Jesse Penrick, the man who—”
“Sure. I know. Got a sword in his gut. Served him right.” The water bubbled. His fingers were quick and sure as he poked in the sealant, twisted, then pulled out the tool.
“Why do you say that?”
His protruding ears flamed. “Sorry, miss.” His eyes touched her wedding band, looked infinitesimally disappointed. “Er—ma’am.” He returned the tool to its place. “A couple weeks ago somebody dumped a box of kittens in back.” His head tilted toward the inlet. “I was gonna take em home with me, after work. My mom would’ve yelled, but she likes cats. Anyway, about nine o’clock Jesse came sneakin’ by here. He was always out at night. Anyway, when I went to get the box, the kittens were dead. Somebody broke their necks, all four of ’em. Fluffy yellow kittens.” Muscles bunched in his jaw. “So I hope somebody twisted that sword in his gut, that’s what I hope.”
He pulled up the tire, bounced it on the cracked cement floor of the open garage. Sunlight spilled inside, but it took a long moment for an ugly vision to vanish.
“Did you often see Jesse?”
“I didn’t pay too much attention, but yeah, I’ve worked here a couple years and I probably saw him two, three times a week, sneakin’ by.”
“Where was he going?”
“Who knows? Someplace not too far, probably, when he walked. Sometimes he went by on his bike.”
Annie followed as J.D. rolled the tire to a jacked-up Olds. He squatted down to work the tire on the axle.
“Did he spend a lot of time in the Bird Preserve?”
He shot her a brief look of disgust over his shoulder. “Lady, he wasn’t no bird watcher.” He turned back to the wheel, shook it in place, then fitted on the nuts. “I’ve
worked here three years and never seen him go near the place, ’cept to walk by.”
“But he went in there Saturday.” She looked down the road at the white gate that marked the entrance.
“Yep. Hurried in there like he was on his way to a fire sale, then came out a few minutes later with a package.” He finished tightening the nuts, then swiveled to face her. Curiosity burned in his eyes. “And I swear he didn’t have anything in his hands when he went in.”
“But he had a package when he came out.”
“Yeah, well, it was little. Package makes it sound big. It was maybe like four inches long, a couple inches high. Wrapped in brown paper. And he was grinnin’ at it like a hog in a wallow.”
“Did you see anyone else go in the Preserve about the same time?”
He picked up a rubber mallet and pounded the hubcap in place. “I don’t know for sure.” He stood and worked the jack to lower the car. “I was kind of curious about Jesse, so I sort of kept an eye out. That pretty blond girl who lives at the Courts, she walked by, pushin’ her kid in a stroller. And the guy who grins all the time, the one who lives in the Vincent cabin, he jogged by. And maybe there was a couple of cars. But they were all on the road. I didn’t see anybody else go in the Preserve.”
The road past Jerry’s curved in tandem with the marsh, but the semi-tropical forest hid the water from view. On both sides of the dusty ribbon rose live oaks, frond-topped palmettos, southern red cedars, and slash pines. Sword-sharp yucca, wild bamboo, and poison-ivy thrived. It was a good five hundred yards before the road angled to the right to the first cottage and Annie could again see the water.
She shaded her eyes and looked across the inlet at the piers and the pink cottages of Nightingale Courts. As the crow flew or the cottonmouth swam, it wasn’t far. On foot, it seemed a long way Jesse Penrick had sometimes walked this way, sometimes putting across the inlet in his motorboat, moving, as was his custom, under cover of night.
Annie looked at the ramshackle cottage close at hand. Overgrown shrubs pressed against the cabin. The front door screen sagged on its hinges. She circled the cabin,
careful to avoid piles of leaves or debris. She had no wish to disturb the late summer retreat of a rattlesnake or cottonmouth.
There was no indication anyone had been near this place in months, perhaps years.
She returned to the road and followed it to the second cabin. It was in good repair, and the yard was well kept. A webbed hammock hung on the front porch, a bicycle was casually propped against a palmetto, an empty bait box was left open to air. The mailbox read in faded brown letters
VINCENT
, but Alan had inked his name on a strip of adhesive.
She knocked at the front door, but, of course, there wasn’t any answer. Alan would be at the gallery, keeping everything running and wondering, no doubt, if his job would soon end, and worrying, with more than an employee’s concern, what had happened to his boss.
Annie paused at the foot of the steps to look toward the inlet. She was tempted to borrow Alan’s motorboat and scoot across the water, but, sighing, she turned to go the long way around.
She was dripping by the time she reached the Courts, but pleased with her outing. She felt now that she had a good grasp of the geography and a better sense of Jesse’s environs.
She headed for the middle pier and had it all to herself this morning. At its end, she dropped down and pulled her notebook out of her purse. She gave one last survey to her surroundings, the pink cabins, the glittering corrugated roof of Jerry’s Gas ’N Go, the two cabins across the water. Then, shading her eyes, she flipped through the pages. The tide was coming in, the water sucking and swirling around shell-encrusted legs of the piers. Two dolphins sported out in the sound, jumping and curving, the sun glistening on steel-colored skin.
By the time she finished her careful review of all she’d seen and heard these past two days, the sun was high in the sky. Annie tapped thoughtfully with her pen on a fresh sheet, then, swiftly, she made a final list:
Ingrid and Jesse quarreled early Saturday morning.
Jesse’s corpse barefoot.
Jesse’s boat taken.
Adele saw Jesse in the Gas ’N Go phone booth Thursday night.
Shirley May Foley found the remnants of a fire behind the Gas ’N Go Sunday morning.
Jesse visited Shangrila Travel Agency Saturday morning, got brochures on the
Queen Elizabeth II
. Looked in the window of the Piping Plover Gallery and dropped by the Oldsmobile agency.
A wedding ring hung from Jesse’s dog tags.
Jesse went into the Bird Preserve about four
P.M.
Saturday, came out a little later carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper.
Ophelia saw Jesse late Thursday afternoon, sitting and smoking his pipe at the end of the middle pier. He was still there after dark.
Adele saw Jesse in his boat late Wednesday night, and he had an ugly, satisfied smile on his face.
The blackmail file at Jesse’s cabin, with its information on Duane, Adele, Mavis, and Tom. Jesse’s cabin had been searched (as had his pants pockets).
Unidentified telephone call to Jesse at Parotti’s bar Saturday night. It made him angry and he left immediately.
Betsy Raines not on return flight from San Francisco on Monday. Last seen there Thursday. Attaché case empty of $220,000.
Despite its red hair, body of middle-aged woman in Savannah National Wildlife Refuge definitely not that of Betsy Raines. No caesarean scar.
Jesse priced new motorboats on Friday.
Ingrid smelled pine just before she was attacked.
Ingrid screamed when Duane whispered her name.
Annie leaned back against a prickly piling heavy with the scent of creosote. Although it was just mid-morning, she knew it was going to be a hot one, much like last Thursday, when the thermometer recorded a toasty ninety-three degrees in late afternoon.
And this was where Jesse Penrick had sat.
Waiting for what? Looking for what?
Jesse was a night prowler but on Thursday he’d settled on this pier for hours in the late, hot afternoon.
A night prowler, abroad with nocturnal creatures, owls, raccoons, and cotton rats, skates, dogfish, and ghost crabs, night hawks, foxes, and wild boar.
But Thursday afternoon, despite the blazing heat, the night prowler settled in the sun for a panoramic view of Nightingale Courts, the inlet, Jerry’s Gas ’N Go, and the opposite bank.
A panoramic view—
Annie jumped to her feet. She walked so quickly she was panting by the time she reached the back of Jesse’s cabin. She gave a swift look around, used Ingrid’s key and slipped inside.
The garbage was even smellier this morning, with the heat and the continuing passage of time. She found a stack of old newspapers in the broom closet and put several on the floor, then carefully tipped over the pail and let the garbage slide out.
Coffee grounds. Crusts of moldy rye bread. Banana peels. Last week’s
Gazette
. A discarded undershirt. An empty shaving-cream can. A buttermilk carton. Three empty frozen-food packages. An empty fifth of Jim Beam. An unappetizing mess of rotting apples.
But it was what she didn’t find that made all the difference.
Annie knew now who had killed Jesse Penrick.
Oh, yes, now she knew. But was there any way—ever—to unmask this calculating killer?
Tuesday afternoon
“Furthermore,” Annie snarled, “if you don’t show up, I’ll invite every news reporter from here to Atlanta, and when the killer’s announced, they’ll know who found him—and it won’t be you!”
She slammed the receiver into its cradle.
“Dear little hedgehog,” Max murmured.
“What did you say?” she snapped, still breathing heavily.
“Nothing, love,” he said sweetly. “Just admiring your combativeness. You know, Annie, maybe we should send you to law school. You make most D.A.’s look like cream cakes.”
“Puffs,” she corrected.
“Whatever.” He poured just-brewed coffee into two mugs. He’d chosen
One Foot in the Grave
for himself and
Killer in the Crowd
for Annie.
The phone shrilled.
Annie snatched it up. “Death on Demand. Yes, just like I told you, I’ve called everybody and asked them to be here at four. And I—” Twice, she tried unsuccessfully to interrupt, then said firmly, “No, I’m not going to tell you who did it. But I promise you, Mr. Circuit Solicitor, I know—and I even know how you can prove it.”
“Oh, you’ve forgotten the cream.” Ingrid struggled to rise.
Annie pushed her down firmly. Social niceties weren’t
important this afternoon. “You are here subject to good behavior—and good behavior means not stirring out of your chair.”
And there subject to Posey’s surly announcement that if Annie didn’t have the goods, Ingrid would go straight from Death on Demand to jail. Without stopping.
Annie, of course, hadn’t told Ingrid that. Even so, Ingrid was so pale! “Ingrid, honey, maybe you shouldn’t be out of bed.”
Ingrid lifted her chin determinedly. “I want to be here.” She looked miserably at Annie. “I have to know.”
Annie hated that pinched look of unhappiness. She bent and gave Ingrid a swift kiss on her cheek, and the bell tinkled at the front door as the first of Annie’s special guests arrived.
Annie stood beside the coffee bar, her hand resting lightly on a sheaf of papers—the computer printouts, her sketches, her copies of the information in Jesse’s folder, her notes, and her final list.
But she didn’t need them.
She surveyed the silent assemblage. It was, perhaps, one of the oddest gatherings in the history of Death on Demand.
Circuit Solicitor Posey stood with his back to the Private Investigator-Police Procedural bookcase, his arms crossed, his snoutish face locked in a scowl. Billy Cameron stood stiffly at his right. Billy determinedly did not look toward the back table where Mavis sat. Mavis’s slender fingers nervously pleated a paper napkin. Despite the cheapness of her blue rayon suit, she was as robustly pretty as a beleaguered heroine floridly pictured in an illustration to one of A. M. Barnard’s steamy tales in the 1870s (and therein lies a tale for admirers of Louisa May Alcott).
Ingrid sat stiffly between Henny and Duane at a middle table. She’d given Duane one anguished look when he joined them, then huddled in her chair, her eyes downcast. He leaned close and murmured, but she shook her head determinedly. Every so often, he looked at her in concern, then glowered at Posey. Duane looked unaccustomedly
dapper, freshly shaved and in a crisp white shirt and brown slacks. Henny tapped a pen impatiently and stared down at a legal pad. She was a vision of executive elegance this afternoon in a subtly patterned suit with a long cutaway jacket over a short, slim skirt. A sterling band, accented by black onyx insets, circled her throat. Her earrings matched. Henny looked up and their glances locked for an instant in mutual understanding.
Alan Nichols smiled at Annie from the table nearest the coffee bar. His blue blazer was a perfect fit. The scent of shaving lotion tickled her nose.
Laurel and Ophelia, both still attired in oatmeal-colored robes, occupied the other middle table. A third chair contained the largest woven carryall Annie had ever seen. Occasionally, Laurel repositioned it, ever nearer to her. Laurel’s golden hair was drawn back in a bun this afternoon, and she was the image of Grace Kelly in
To Catch a Thief
, which was odious at her age. She flashed a brilliant smile at Annie, exuding good cheer almost as visibly as a painted medieval saint with appended golden rays radiates holiness. Ophelia, as usual, suffered by comparison. Today’s orange turban, however, matched the splotches of rouge on her cheeks.