Honeymoon With Murder (29 page)

At a rear table, Adele sat ramrod straight, her face somber, her dark eyes intent on Annie.

Posey cleared his throat and opened his mouth.

Annie hastily rustled her papers. “I appreciate everyone coming this afternoon. As I told each of you on the telephone, I felt that if we had a conference, if we pooled our knowledge, we could solve Jesse Penrick’s murder.” A slight smile touched her lips. “I’ve been thinking of a book by Agatha Christie. Not the story itself, but the title, A
Murder Is Announced
. What I didn’t tell you on the telephone was that this afternoon a murderer will be announced.”

Ophelia gave a tiny gasp. Laurel gazed with bright interest at her nails, turning them back and forth to catch the light, obviously not terribly interested in her surroundings, then she flashed an
encouraging
smile at Annie. (Annie decided that she must, later, delve into her own immediate emotional response: a fierce desire to strangle
her mother-in-law.) Mavis darted a frightened glance at Billy. Adele’s expression didn’t change. Henny nodded approvingly and somehow managed to make her narrow bony face look plump, bland, and Oriental. (Charlie Chan?) Ingrid pressed trembling fingers to her lips. Duane reached out to touch her and she jerked away. Alan murmured, “Give em hell,” and lounged back in his chair.

“Ms. Laurance—”

“Mrs. Darling,” Max said firmly.

Annie ignored them both. “Why did Jesse Penrick die on Saturday night, the nineteenth of September?”

She surveyed her audience.

“Why not last Christmas, when he played a vicious trick on Mr. Webb? Why not a year ago, or two? Why not next week? Why last Saturday night? That timing is important. Just as important are the circumstances of his murder.” As Posey moved restively, she said firmly, “Let me remind you of what we know: Jesse received a telephone call at Parotti’s Bar and Bait Shop about eleven o’clock the night of his death. The call made him angry, and he immediately left. Shortly after midnight, in response to a plea for help from Ingrid Jones, my husband and I found Jesse’s body in her cabin. What happened between eleven o’clock and midnight?”

Posey broke in pompously, “The critical time period, Ms. Laurance—”

“Mrs. Darling.” Max was firm.

Posey ignored him. “—is from the moment Mrs. Jones arrived home until she made her calculated telephone call to you.” He stabbed a pudgy finger at Ingrid. “She quarreled with Jesse Penrick Saturday morning. No doubt he accosted her as she returned from the wedding festivities and the quarrel resumed. Mrs. Jones, goaded by his actions, reached up for the sword above her mantel and thrust it into a defenseless man’s chest.” His assertion ended as a bellow.

Duane Webb jumped to his feet.

Before he could launch into a defense, Annie interceded. “That, of course, is what you were supposed to think. But it leaves a few loose ends, doesn’t it? Why were Jesse’s shoes and socks removed? Why were pine needles
stuck to his clothes? How did he receive the contusion on the back of his head? These questions have answers.” She waved Duane back to his seat. “Instead of a murder resulting from a quarrel, I suggest a murder that was well-planned and cunningly crafted. We are not dealing here with a killer striking out in the heat of emotion. We are dealing with a careful, calculating, and cruel murderer.

“Here is what happened Saturday night:

“The killer, using a disguised voice, called Jesse at Parotti’s. I feel sure the murderer imitated a voice Jesse would recognize and not fear. Perhaps that of Adele Prescott.”

Adele’s head jerked up and her eyes blazed, but she said nothing.

Annie nodded at her listeners. “Yes, I’m sure that Jesse thought he recognized his caller, and it was someone he didn’t fear. The speaker, sounding like Adele or perhaps Ophelia, told Jesse that he’d better hurry home, it looked like someone had been in his cabin.

“That brought him immediately. Why? Because Jesse had something of value in his cabin, and he didn’t want to lose it. So Jesse jumped on his bike and raced home. He found his cabin dark, but he ran up the steps and inside. The intruder, waiting there, hit him from behind and knocked him out, then, quickly, searched the cabin.

“And here’s where the plans went awry, because the search didn’t yield its expected result. But time was racing on and the intruder had to hurry. Jesse had to be put in Ingrid’s cabin before she returned from our wedding reception. The intruder carried Jesse from his cabin to Ingrid’s, but had to put Jesse down on the ground until the back door could be opened. That’s when the pine needles adhered to Jesse’s clothing. Once inside Ingrid’s, the intruder put Jesse on the living room floor, and, knowing Ingrid would be home shortly, stabbed Jesse with her sword. It was then that the murderer pulled out Jesse’s pockets in a final search and even removed his sneakers and socks. But the object wasn’t found.

“Turning off the lights, the murderer waited in the kitchen for Ingrid’s arrival. She came in, saw Jesse and ran to the phone. Before she could complete her call, the
murderer came up behind her, struck her, and carried her away, unconscious.

“The murderer had a motorboat waiting and had already hooked up Jesse’s rowboat to it. The murderer went in the motorboat to the pier behind Jerry’s Gas ’N Go, tied up, ran to the cement area behind Jerry’s and set afire some papers taken from Jesse’s. The murderer then returned to the boat and left the inlet, going far up Skull Creek to a boathouse whose owners were out of town. Tying Ingrid up, the murderer left her in Jesse’s rowboat and returned to the inlet.”

“Balderdash!” Posey trumpeted. “My dear young woman”—and the irony dripped from his voice—“how could you possibly believe such complicated nonsense?”

“It gets even more complicated,” she said agreeably. “The murderer deliberately chose Ingrid’s cabin because of her quarrel on Saturday morning with Jesse. But the murderer was far from through with Ingrid. She was not only to be a suspect, she was to be a suspect with an absurd story. So, on Sunday night, the murderer returned to the boathouse where she was held prisoner, untied her, and set her free in a rowboat.” Now Annie’s face was stern. “More than that, the murderer spoke to her—although in a whisper—and told her she needn’t be frightened.”

Posey’s eyebrows were oblique flags of disbelief. “Indeed!”

“Absolutely.” Annie looked at Ingrid, who was shaking her head in distress.

“Ingrid.” Her voice was gentle, encouraging. “Trust me now. Who spoke to you? Who whispered?”

“Annie, I don’t—Oh, Annie, please!”

Even Posey was affected by the anguish in her tone, and he looked at her thoughtfully.

“It’s all right, Ingrid. I promise. Who spoke to you?”

“It was a whisper—just a whisper—but—” She looked at the man beside her. “Duane, why did you talk to me? Why?”

There was an instant of stunned silence.

Duane Webb’s heavy face sagged with shock.

Posey gave an exasperated snort. “I’m running out of patience. You’ve rigged this to try and convince me that
Mrs. Jones is innocent. Well, I’m nobody’s fool, and I know a concocted story when I hear one.”

“Concocted,” Annie said sternly, “by the murderer.”

“Absurd, absurd,” the circuit solicitor trumpeted. “Why would anyone go to so much trouble to embroil an innocent person in a crime?”

“Why, indeed? It was that question which set me onto the right trail. Why should anyone go to so much trouble to kill an old man? Why not knock him over the head and leave his body in his own living room? Why not? Because Jesse
snooped
—and the murderer was desperate to focus attention away from that fact.” Her gaze swept the room. “I decided the answer had to lie in Jesse’s character. In part, I was right. I discovered that Jesse was not only vicious and vindictive, he was a blackmailer.”

She certainly had everyone’s attention now.

“He was blackmailing Mavis Beeson, Adele Prescott, and Tom Smith. He tried to blackmail Duane. And I discovered something more. Jesse liked to taunt his victims. He loved that extra twist of the knife. In the case of Duane Webb, he derived no money, but he caused him misery with reminders of the car accident and the loss of his family. Despite Mavis’s payment, he went ahead and painted a scarlet A on her mailbox. So Jesse wanted to have his cake and throw it in his victims’ faces, too.

“But what I found out by myself wasn’t enough. It was Henny who insisted that anything out of the ordinary in Jesse’s final days might be important. Between us, we nosed out a number of unusual actions on Jesse’s part:

“One. Jesse sat at the end of the middle pier in the heat late Thursday afternoon and into the evening.

“Two. Jesse used the telephone at the Gas ’N Go Thursday night.

“Three. On Friday, Jesse priced new motorboats.

“Four. On Saturday, Jesse picked up travel brochures on
the Queen Elizabeth Two
, looked in the window of the Piping Plover Gallery, dropped by the Oldsmobile agency, and went into the Bird Preserve and came out with a package.”

Alan shoved a hand through his curly chestnut hair. “Annie, I hate to say it, but it doesn’t add up to anything.”

Annie straightened her papers decisively. “Oh, but it does. It adds up to money. A very great deal of money.”

“Jesse didn’t have any money,” Adele snapped. She gripped her handbag and started to rise.

“Sit down.”

Adele responded to Annie’s steely tone and sank back into the chair, the beginnings of fear in her dark eyes.

“Didn’t he?” Annie glanced at the watching faces, and one of them now was wary. “Oh, I think perhaps he had his eye on a potful of money, and the first installment was in the small package he picked up in the Bird Preserve. In fact, I’m sure of it, because I spent a messy twenty minutes going through Jesse’s trash, and the funny thing is, there was no brown paper there, nothing that could be the remains of that package. If the package were unimportant, Jesse would’ve just tossed that paper away, and I would have found it. And it’s interesting to note that there are no travel brochures in his cabin. Where are they? The murderer buried them along with the brown paper on Saturday night. Why? Because it was vital that no one think of Jesse in terms of money. Big money.”

Posey’s cheeks puffed. “Mrs. Darling, do you mean to say you had the effrontery to—”

“Don’t say another word, Annie,” Max warned, hurrying toward her.

Annie flashed him a sunny smile. “Actually, Mr. Posey’s going to buy us a steak dinner, when I’m through.”

“Mrs. Darling—”

Duane Webb barked, “Nobody at Nightingale Courts has any money. And Jesse’s little game was played close to home.”

Annie nodded in agreement. “That’s exactly what everyone would think from the blackmail folders in Jesse’s cabin.”

Max clapped his hands to his head. Posey sucked in a deep breath.

Before he could attack, Annie moved swiftly on. “Yes, there are a lot of motives at Nightingale Courts.” She looked toward the back of the coffee area. “Mavis Beeson was paying Jesse to keep quiet about her relationship with a young man, not her husband.” Annie was careful not to look toward Billy. “But this wasn’t the usual story of a wife intent
upon hiding a love affair. No. Mavis’s fear is much deeper and stronger than that. She lives in mortal fear of an abusive husband, who has threatened to harm their son.”

Mavis looked fearfully at Posey.

Laurel rose, scooped up her bag, and swept toward the table. She patted Mavis’s tense shoulder reassuringly. Her throaty murmur carried clearly. “My dear child, do be of good cheer. Annie is merely circuitous. Amanda Cross, you know. You have
nothing
to be concerned about.”

Had Annie possessed a handy bludgeon, Laurel, too, would have been relieved—permanently—from the necessity of concern about anything whatsoever.

Annie continued crisply. “But Mavis is not the only resident of Nightingale Courts who had good reason to kill Jesse Penrick. Adele Prescott feared him, because Jesse, with his usual clever eye for skullduggery, had noticed an interesting pattern. Whenever Adele guarded a house for absent owners, another house on that block would soon be robbed.”

Posey’s blunt head swung toward the back of the coffee area.

Adele pushed back her chair. “I don’t have to listen to this! You can’t prove anything. Do you hear me? You can’t
prove
it.”

“Sit down.”

Adele’s face crimsoned, but, slowly she sank back into the chair.

“So that’s two of the residents,” Annie continued. “Mavis and Adele. Then there’s Duane.”

Ingrid gasped softly.

“Duane despised Jesse. Jesse struck back by reminding him of the deaths of his wife and daughter. Saturday was the anniversary of Duane’s wedding—Jesse gave him an anniversary card.”

Duane’s deep voice carried clearly “The sorry, sorry son of a bitch.”

Ingrid covered her eyes with a shaking hand.

Posey stared hard at Duane.

“And then there’s Ophelia,” Annie mused. “She would like for everyone to think she’s dithery and listens to beings from other worlds. But she has ties to this world, too. Like
many lonely people, she becomes very attached to a pet. Jesse poisoned her cat, and so she hated him.”

Ophelia pressed her arms tightly across her chest. “Evil, evil.” Her voice was low and hoarse; her eyes tightly shut. “Evil here. Among us. The concentrated beam of self burns and destroys like sun through a prism. Evil.”

Laurel wafted back to their table. “Now, now, dear, rest easy. All is well. I am in control.”

Annie didn’t take time to dispute it. “The other resident of Nightingale Courts isn’t here today,” she said briskly. Did she want to set the law after Tom Smith? He’d fashioned his own prison, hadn’t he? A solitary world confined to tiny objects of a distant past that held no pain for him. “Tom Smith is hiding from his past, and I’m sure he won’t return to Broward’s Rock until Jesse Penrick’s murderer is arrested.

“But Duane made a very clever point. As he observed, there is no big money available from any resident of Nightingale Courts. So where could Jesse have expected to obtain the kind of money that would pay for a trip on the
Queen Elizabeth Two
or a new car?”