Honeymoon With Murder (5 page)

“You’re doing fine, Billy,” she soothed. “Let’s see. You arrived, took charge”—he nodded in quick agreement—“organized search while instructing participants not to infringe upon crime scene”—he scribbled furiously—“designated citizen to maintain security of murder cabin”—he looked blank, and Annie pointed at herself. Billy bent back to his notebook—“notified higher authorities, and returned to crime scene to initiate investigation.”

Annie waited until he caught up, then proceeded. She helped him describe the crime scene, led him gently to the discovery of the apparent source of the murder weapon, then mused thoughtfully, “Why?”

Billy’s eyes were blank.

“Why with a sword? Doesn’t that seem”—she searched for the right word—“artificial?”

Billy’s brows knotted. “Like in fake?” he asked. He looked down at the body. “Not very fake. He’s damn dead.”

It was Annie’s turn to knit her brows in thought, wondering just how to explain.

“Ooohoooh! Oooohoooh!”

Annie and Billy both jerked around violently.

Standing in Ingrid’s doorway was the turbaned little woman whose chatter of black clouds had infuriated the
self-appointed leader of the search, Duane Webb. Ophelia, that’s what he’d called her.

Ophelia’s chubby face crumpled in distress. Vivid splotches of old-fashioned rouge made her cheeks look like red sails running before the wind. Mascara beaded her eyelashes and wisps of chartreuse hair peeked from beneath the edges of the turban. Chartreuse? Annie blinked, but the color remained true.

“That nasty old man. I told him wrack and ruin awaited his evil ways, and I was right.” She clapped her pudgy hands together. “The spirits know.” The frail voice dropped to a deep, almost masculine pitch. “And I am their vessel, serving at their will.”

Billy stared as if an apparition from hell had alighted at his elbow, but Annie swiftly pounced on the kernel among the chaff.

“Ophelia,” she demanded sharply, “what are you talking about? What evil ways? What’s he done—”

“I’ve come to take charge,” was the clarion call as Henny Brawley marched through the door, her dark eyes flashing, her fox-sharp nose quivering. She took in the scene at an eager glance and decisively pushed up the sleeves of her crimson warmup.

“Mrs. Brawley!” Billy’s voice was an agonized bleat.

“Don’t you worry, young man. I have come to devote myself to the investigation.”

Annie had last seen Henny at the reception, not more than a few hours ago, though now it seemed like eons. She glanced at the grandfather clock next to the whatnot. It was just past two. In five hours the sun would be up. At the reception, Henny had worn a rose silk dress flecked with ivory swirls. The pleated skirt swung gracefully as she tangoed across the floor with Uncle Waldo. And Waldo had been only one of many partners. Once she raised a champagne glass to the newlyweds and mouthed,
“Totis viribus
, my dears.” (Under duress, Max would translate the Latin:
With all one’s might.)

But neither the champagne, the vigorous rhumbas, cha-chas, and fox trots, nor the late hour seemed to have affected Henny. Not a line of fatigue marred her inquisitive, determined face.

Billy valiantly endeavored to stave off the inevitable. “How’d you know, Mrs. Brawley?”

“Police-band radio.” Henny spoke absently. Her eyes were focused on the body. “Nasty piece of goods, Jesse Penrick. But why would anyone want to kill him?” She took a deep, satisfied breath. “Should be an amusing little show. Great sport.”

Annie gave her a look of mingled exasperation and fondness. Henny really
was
a superb actress, as she had proved again in the fateful summer production of
Arsenic and Old Lace
. But her fascination and soul-deep identification with famous fictional sleuths was clearly reaching an absurd height. Henny’s jaw jutted stalwartly; there was an unmistakable aura of command. Annie had a quick mental image of Walter Pidgeon portraying hard-playing, hard-fighting, clean-living Bulldog Drummond. And dammit, there wasn’t time for theatrics. They needed to concentrate on Ingrid and what had happened in her cabin.

“Ingrid’s missing!” Annie said sharply.

Henny’s eyes narrowed. “The swine, they’ve got Ingrid! Well, they won’t get away with it!” She paced the room, darting quick glances at the oval rug and its grisly burden. “Revealing,” she barked. “Quite revealing. Clearly, Ingrid has been abducted. She is not a victim of foul play.”

Billy’s bewildered gaze followed her. “No foul play? How do you—”

The blare of a boat horn drowned out the remainder of Billy’s question.

Billy gave a frantic glance at the door, then at Henny. “How do you know?” he repeated urgently.

“No disarray. No blood. No indication of violent altercation.” Her accent was becoming progressively more British. “Further, why leave one body and remove another? No sense. Got to make sense. The swine have taken Ingrid for a purpose. Up to us to discover why.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “And Jesse’s shoes and socks off! Mark my words, that’ll mean something.”

Billy hastily began to scrawl in his notebook.

Henny crouched by Penrick and picked up one of the dead hands, let it fall. “No signs rigor mortis. Body still warm. Obviously, death occurred around midnight.”

Annie tensed. She hadn’t even thought about the time of death. Her attention had been focused on Ingrid. But midnight! For God’s sake, that wasn’t long before Ingrid called. What was Penrick doing in Ingrid’s cabin at midnight? He was certainly not her friend. Why, they’d had a battle royal yesterday morning.

“Eyes haven’t filmed over,” Henny observed crisply. “’Course, that’s only a rough guide.”

Ophelia clapped her hands approvingly. “Oooh, you have a strong aura. A very strong aura.”

The boat horn sounded again.

Billy hurriedly made a final notation, snapped shut his notebook, and waved his arms. “Hurry, ladies. Outside now. That’ll be the circuit solicitor.”

Posey bellowed. And kept on bellowing.

“Chaos. That’s what this investigation is.
Chaos.”

The searchers were straggling back into the central grassy area. Deep in conversation with Henny, Max stood by the honeysuckle-laden arbor. His blue blazer was snagged and his slacks looked like the aftermath of a mud wallow. Ophelia tugged absentmindedly on that sprig of chartreuse hair and oohed empathetically as Posey continued to shout and Billy Cameron’s shoulders drooped lower and lower.

“Please.”

A woman about Annie’s own age, in faded jeans and a cream-colored cotton pullover, asked tentatively, “Have they found any trace of Mrs. Jones?”

Annie never thought of Ingrid as Mrs. Jones, and it seemed odd to hear the name from the lips of this young woman, who looked fearfully at the growing circle around Posey and Billy Cameron.

Annie spoke softly, too, in response. “No. Nothing yet.”

“That’s dreadful. Just dreadful. And so frightening.” She wrapped her arms tight across her narrow chest and shivered. “I thought it was safe here. On Broward’s Rock. I wouldn’t have brought Kevin here if I hadn’t thought so. And the noise and lights scare him. He won’t stay in bed.”

“Kevin?”

“My little boy.” The young woman uneasily watched the moving shadows and lights. “Somebody said the one that got killed, it’s the old man who lived there.” She pointed toward Cabin One, the only one still dark.

“Is that where Jesse Penrick lived?” Annie asked.

“Oh, my God. So it is him.”

Afterward Annie tried to remember her intonation. Was there a rush of relief? Or only shock? Or an emotion that Annie couldn’t—didn’t—quite identify? Or, more simply yet, was it very late on the morning after her wedding day, and had she been buffeted by too much strong emotion to be certain of any response?

Perhaps Annie’s lack of reply alarmed the woman. She took a step backward. “I didn’t know him. Not really.” Her face was a pale blur in the moonlight. She twisted her head, looked behind her, then said hurriedly, “I’d better get back. I don’t want to leave Kevin alone—not the way things are.” She gripped her hands tightly together. “I’ve got to get back to Kevin.” Then she darted through the shadows to the cabin near the other end of the semicircle.

Annie looked after her for a moment, disturbed. But this wasn’t the time to worry about a stranger. Not until Ingrid was found. Annie glanced toward Posey. The circuit solicitor strode up and down, his chest poked out, gesturing vigorously at Billy. Shaking her head, she started for the arbor and Max, then paused as Duane Webb stumped into the bright beams of the police-car headlights.

Webb, too, showed the effects of a desperate search. His trousers and shoes were stained black from sloshing through tannin-dark pools, his muscular arms scarred with livid scratches. There was no slur to his voice now, though it was hoarse from shouting. He ignored Posey and honed in on Billy like a buzz saw.

“Get more men. Dogs. Lights.” A muscle twitched in one cheek. “And divers.”

The circuit solicitors meaty face swelled with outrage. “Who are you?” Posey demanded.

“Duane Webb. Who the hell are you?”

“I am Circuit Solicitor Brice Willard Posey.” His voice rang across the courtyard. Did he think a voter might be hiding in the cattails? Despite the late hour, he was wearing
coat, tie, and vest. He was even more self-satisfied, overbearing, and obnoxious than when Annie had first met him. Her heart sank.

Posey took a deep breath, expanding his pouter-pigeon chest to its full extent, and proclaimed, “I am assuming control of this investigation—this incredibly botched and mishandled investigation—into the death of Mr. Jesse Penrick, who has been foully stabbed in the chest with a sword in the cabin of one Ingrid Jones, who has not come forward.” Posey’s pronunciation of her name clearly put Ingrid right on a level with Lizzie Borden.

“Ooooh,” Ophelia crooned, pressing fingertips to each temple. “I should have
known
. Of course, I
did
know, but my earthly body interfered with the warnings. My psychic self, had I just permitted it full expression, might have saved them both. I saw the black nimbuses around—”

“Ophelia, stuff it,” Webb rasped. “There’s no time for your crap. My God, woman, Ingrid’s out there somewhere”—he jabbed at the darkness—“and we’ve got to find her.” He swung back toward Posey. “If you’re the honcho, get a move on. Call the governor. Get some national guard troops. We need to cover this island like a—”

Ophelia’s vine-decorated housecoat quivered like a wind-buffeted circus tent. “Now, you just listen to me! I
did
see black nimbuses. Right here this very morning when Ingrid and Jesse had that awful fight down by the mailboxes!”

The silence was sudden and absolute.

Everyone looked at Ophelia.

Henny’s dark eyes rolled upward in irritation.

Webb’s face spasmed. “Stupid bitch,” he muttered.

But it was Posey’s reaction that worried Annie. The idiot looked like a country-fair porker sighting a blue ribbon. He bounded toward Ophelia. “Now, ma’am, you’re the kind of witness we need, the kind of witness who can help us solve this dastardly crime. You are important!”

A little stunned by this sudden attention, Ophelia tugged uncertainly on that vagrant lock of chartreuse hair, then bridled importantly. “You can just take it from me,” she assured him, “the portents were
there!”

Posey’s overstuffed face curved into what he probably
thought of as an ingratiating smile. Annie was unpleasantly reminded of an alligator sighting a yapping Pomeranian.

“Now then, Miss—uh, Mrs…?”

“Ophelia Baxter.” She patted her turban coquettishly. “I live right over there.” She pointed, then giggled. “Right between Jesse’s and Ingrid’s cabins. Now, isn’t that a coincidence!”

“You live right here,” Posey repeated, with growing satisfaction. “And this very morning, the day of the homicide, you witnessed the missing woman and the murdered man”—his volume increased—“involved in a violent argument?”

The turban bobbed vigorously. “Yes, I did, and I wanted to march right down there and tell them that they were tempting Providence—because that’s what it is, you know, when the tentacles of fate extend their—”

“Goddammit to hell!” Webb exploded, his voice reverberating like the crash of surf before a November wind. “This is bloody, goddam nonsense! This deluded woman has the intelligence of a sand crab. So Ingrid told Jesse off! So what? Who the hell hadn’t? He was a disgusting, sniveling, hateful old bastard. I for one told him I’d bash his head in one of these days. And none of this matters—what matters is Ingrid! We’ve got to—”

“I know what matters,” Posey rejoined irritably. “And I’m getting to the bottom of it.” He swiveled back to Ophelia. “Mrs. Jones and Mr. Penrick quarreled violently Saturday morning?”

“Oh yes, yes, they did.” She clucked regretfully. “Now, Duane, I’m sorry to say it, and no one knows better than I what a dear, sweet person Ingrid is, and I’m really very worried about her, wandering around out there”—the beringed fingers fluttered in the direction of the salt marsh—“but we all must tell the truth, or be shamed, mustn’t we? And Mr. Posey just wants to know what happened, and I can say, because I was right here, and I saw every bit of it.”

“Tell us—in your own words—just what you saw,” Posey urged.

Despite Webb’s frequent outbursts and Ophelia’s difficulty in describing anything without copious references to
spirits, portents, vibrations, and currents, her response left Posey delighted and Ingrid’s friends distraught. The way Ophelia painted it, Annie thought furiously, Ingrid had done everything short of threatening Jesse’s life in their unfortunate morning altercation.

“Now”—Posey all but smacked his lips—“you heard Mrs. Jones say, ‘Jesse, you’re nastier than the Marquis de Sade on a bad day. I’d like to slice you up for the alligators—and I’m warning you, I’ve had all I can take!”

Annie’d heard enough. “Mr. Posey!”

His eyes slid toward her with all the enthusiasm of Hamilton Burger sighting Della Street. “Ah, Miss Laurance.”

“Mrs. Darling,” Max interjected immediately.

How dear, his bride thought, then she focused on her old and present enemy, and, with a good deal of effort, addressed him in a voice of sweet reason. There was no point in antagonizing him.