Death by Surprise (Carolyn Hart Classics) (23 page)

I picked up my pen and made a series of heavy dark XXXXXs across the face of my pad. Nothing, it all came to nothing. But pettish scrawls on a legal pad weren’t going to help Kenneth. Grimly, I tried again. What did I know?

Francine Boutelle was alive at six.

Grace came at six, paid, left.

Then came Travis or Priscilla, I was uncertain in what order.

I picked up the phone and dialed Grace’s. Travis was wary.

“I don’t admit to anything.”

“Travis, stuff it. Just answer two questions, yes or no. When you came to a certain apartment Wednesday night, did you see a shoe box sitting on the desk?”

“A shoe box?” I could tell from his tone he thought I was crazy and that convinced me he had not seen Grace’s shoe box or the fifty thousand it held.

“No, sis, I didn’t see a shoe box.” He was relaxed now, amused. I wasn’t a threat.

“Okay. One final question. Was the room in disarray? Did it look like it had been searched?”

He was cautious with this one, uncertain of its meaning. “Yes,” he said finally.

“Thanks, Travis.”

I hung up and wrote quickly on my pad, for his answers clarified the order of appearance.

Grace at six.

Priscilla at six-forty-five.

Kenneth at seven.

Travis next.

Me. Then Harry.

If I accepted everything I had been told, the shoe box was gone when Priscilla came. But the manuscript and tapes were there.

The last puzzled me. Why? Had the murderer been frightened away before grabbing up the manuscript and tapes? Maybe. But it would be pretty dumb to kill someone to hide certain facts then leave, for the police to find, a manuscript containing the blackmail material. Panic? Somehow, I didn’t think the hands that had so skillfully and mercilessly dropped a scarf around Francine’s neck and pulled it inexorably tight would be prone to panic.

I pushed up from my desk, began to pace.

Try another tack. Think of the night from Francine’s point of view. She had gone to a lot of effort, organizing that night. She had arranged for her victims to come, one after another, bringing pay-off money. If she had lived the night, she would have been rich. Grace brought and left fifty thousand. Priscilla, Kenneth, and Travis all came with fifty thousand, but didn’t, of course, leave the money because Francine was dead.

But Francine didn’t live the night. She died sometime between six and seven. That we knew as a fact because the tape recorder came on at seven o’clock. It recorded Kenneth’s frantic effort to loosen the scarf, Travis’s arrival and cautious survey, and my coming and Harry’s.

If only the murder had happened after seven, then it would have been captured on tape. It was bad luck that the murderer had chosen an earlier time . . .

I stopped walking, pressed my fingers against my temples. Grace’s money . . . seven o’clock . . . no record from six to seven . . . no record from six to seven . . .

My chest ached. I tried to breathe, tried to think beyond the enormity of that statement, no record from six to seven.

It all fell into place, all the odd-shaped pieces that hadn’t quite fitted the puzzle. It was quite simple and perfect and sickening.

I sank into my chair. My mind pulsed with thoughts and conjectures and guesses, but they all came together. Now everything made sense. I knew how Francine Boutelle knew so many facts about the Carlisles. I knew why Kenneth was the goat.

Francine had made a very basic mistake. She had trusted the wrong person. Death must indeed have been a surprise.

The objective of the killer had been two-fold, to be freed from Francine and to injure the Carlisles. The murderer had succeeded absolutely—and there wasn’t a vestige of proof that I could offer. It would be my word against the killer’s.

But there must be a way, now that I knew . . .

The phone rang. It was Kenneth and he was upset. “I want you to talk some sense into Megan.”

“What’s wrong?” I was impatient. I didn’t have time for this.

“I want her to go to Laguna, stay with her folks. I’m afraid for her.”

“Why?”

“A man called here last night. He spoke in a thick German accent. He asked Megan to report to the hospital, there had been an emergency, a bus load of people hurt on the edge of town and they were calling in volunteers to help. Megan went, but it was a hoax.”

“A hoax?”

“Yes. She got to the hospital and nothing had happened and no one there had called her. When she came back out to the car, she had a flat tire. And, damn it, she didn’t call me. I had gone on to bed. She didn’t get home for a couple of hours.”

“She wasn’t hurt? Nobody threatened her or anything?”

“No, but I don’t like it. It’s damned odd.”

It was odd but not, in the scheme of things, too important. “I wouldn’t worry, Kenneth. Megan’s okay and after this, she can be more careful about responding to phone requests. But she ought to stay here. It will look odd if she leaves La Luz now. Besides, she really should show up with you tonight at the debate.”

“That’s what she says,” he agreed reluctantly. “But I don’t like it.”

I soothed him finally. I asked him to call his office staff and tell them I would be coming by and that I had his permission to talk to them.

“Sure. But why?”

“The scarf, Kenneth.”

“Oh yeah.” His voice was flat, the reminder not a cheerful one. “K.C., have you discovered anything?”

“I’m getting close, Kenneth. I have to find out a little more.”

“Sure,” he said again. I knew he didn’t, really, have much hope.

I didn’t want to tell him yet. I was sure, but the scarf was a real stumbling-block. Everything fitted, in my new picture, except the scarf.

Kenneth’s office staff was subdued, as might be expected. I asked all of them, the office manager, twelve secretaries, four paralegals and the kitchen help, to come into the main conference room.

“I appreciate all of your taking time to talk to me. I don’t know if you all know of the difficulty Mr. Carlisle is in?”

They knew. Some of them shifted uncomfortably, looked away, embarrassed.

“First, I want to make one point very clear. Mr. Carlisle is innocent.” I said it firmly and looked at each of them in turn. “That’s the most important thing to remember. Now, I know all of you would like to help him?”

Some nodded. Some murmured yes.

“Then listen very closely to what I have to say. It may make all the difference to him. First, do you know how Miss Boutelle was killed?”

One of the older secretaries nodded. “Strangled, Miss, that’s what it said in the paper.”

“That’s right,” I said approvingly. “She was strangled. But does anyone know what was used by the murderer?”

They looked at me, blank-faced. The scarf had not been mentioned in the news reports.

“Miss Boutelle was strangled with Mr. Carlisle’s white silk scarf.”

It was utterly quiet.

I tried to watch all of them at once. That isn’t easy but when you’ve spent five years watching the faces in a jury, you widen your field of vision. I saw what I hoped to see.

“Now,” I said slowly, “that sounds bad for Mr. Carlisle. And it is. The murderer planned it that way.”

They were hanging on every word now and there was one face I watched especially closely.

“The murderer deliberately used Mr. Carlisle’s scarf.”

“But Miss Carlisle, how did he do that?” a paralegal asked.

“That’s what I’m hoping one of you can tell me.”

You could have heard a mouse sneeze.

“The scarf was here Monday morning. Last Monday. Do all of you remember Monday? That was the day several of the Carlisle family members were here for a meeting. The scarf was in Mr. Carlisle’s coat pocket when he put it in the closet last Monday.” I paused, said slowly, “It was not in his pocket when he left the office Monday afternoon.”

There was an excited buzz.

“I’m hoping that one or several of you may be able to help me. I’m going to stay in the conference room after our meeting is over and I will be waiting to talk to anyone who knows anything about the scarf.” I looked directly at a plump, pleasant-faced girl in her mid-twenties.

She lagged behind as everyone began to leave. I rose and closed the door and we faced each other.

“How did you know?” Tears welled in her eyes. “I never thought . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know you didn’t,” I said gently, “and your stepping forward now proves you didn’t mean to cause any trouble for Mr. Carlisle.”

“Oh, I didn’t. Miss. It was . . . I thought it was some kind of a lark. She explained it to me that way.”

“She?” For a moment, I wondered if I could have it wrong, all wrong.

“Yes, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw her picture in the paper.”

It was all incoherent and a little jumbled, but, in essence, the girl’s story was simple enough.

Francine Boutelle had struck up a conversation with her over lunch one day in the drug store. Boutelle had expressed a lot of interest when she found out that Trudy worked in Kenneth Carlisle’s office. Somehow, Trudy wasn’t quite sure how, the conversation came around to the excitement of knowing celebrities, and Francine, though that was not the name she gave Trudy, confided that she collected things that belonged to famous people and, since it looked as if Kenneth might be going to Washington, she would like to have something of his for her collection. Something he wore. That stumped Trudy but Francine, after some thought, said what about that silk scarf he wore? If Trudy would get it for her, she would be willing to pay a nice sum. Fifty dollars or so.

Trudy was in tears by the time she finished. I assured her she wouldn’t lose her job and asked her not to tell anyone of our talk but to be ready to give her testimony to the authorities. Not, of course, that I thought such testimony from an employee of Kenneth’s would be enough to persuade Farris, but ultimately I was going to have enough evidence.

After Trudy left, I sat for a few minutes longer in the conference room. The killer was clever, cleverer even than I had imagined, still a vague and faceless creature hiding behind Francine.

How had Francine been persuaded to obtain the instrument of her destruction? Did she think the scarf would be used as some kind of evidence that Carlisle had come to her apartment, made a pay-off? Because, of course, she thought she and Mr. Wonderful would share all the money reaped from Carlisles and, at the same time, enjoy humbling the hated family.

For a moment, I felt a surge of sympathy for Francine. Then I remembered Amanda. Francine, because she had so few scruples, so little compassion, had destroyed Amanda. She had been willing to destroy anyone for her own gain. What she cannot have realized, until that last dreadful moment, was that she too was slated for destruction.

The killer, from the moment of meeting her and learning of her background, must have planned to use her to injure the Carlisles. He had not counted on Francine falling in love with him—and he was determined, at all costs, at any cost, to avoid marriage.

I was the only person in the world who knew who he was. But somewhere he must have left a trail that I could find.

I called Pamela.

She was a little defensive. “Gee, I’m sorry, K.C. I wish I had been able to come up with more. I know you need all the help you can get.”

“You’ve done a good job, Pamela. I want the name and address of Francine’s friend at the Cocoa Butter.”

“Sure. Hold on a minute.” She came back with a name and address. “I’ve been down there twice, K.C. Nobody answers the door. The neighbors don’t know and the manager of the Cocoa Butter is furious. She didn’t show up Thursday night.”

I wrote down the name, Kristy Gale, and the address in Huntington Beach. It was a fanciful name, of course, like so many girls who work in clubs. Her real name was probably Christine. I was pinning a lot of hope on Miss Gale. If she were really a close friend of Francine’s, there was the chance she had seen Mr. Wonderful. All I needed was a description.

Maybe she would be home now. I frowned. So she hadn’t shown up for work Thursday night. The news of Francine’s murder hit the late morning and early afternoon editions of papers all up and down the coast. Had Kristy Gale seen the news?

Then, more disturbingly, I wondered what she might have done. If she knew Francine’s lover, she might have called him; asked, perhaps, if he wanted to help with the funeral arrangements.

It would have shocked him, wouldn’t it, when he thought his traces were so well covered.

Traffic is always heavy on the coastal highway but I made it down to Huntington Beach in two hours. I drove too fast, driven by fear of what I might find. Then I would reassure myself. I had lived with high drama so many hours that I was losing my perspective.

I found the house, just a few blocks off the main street. The modest stucco houses with palmetto palms and tiny grass plots looked a little down-at-heel. Kristy’s house was in mid-block.

It was late afternoon. Four boys played touch football in the middle of the street. Television screens flickered in living rooms. An old man gardened next door. He stopped to watch me walk up on the front porch.