Carolyn G. Hart (21 page)

“I
’ve never been into true confession,” he said drily.

“What counts is now. Today.” His dark blue eyes met hers directly.

Dear Max.

“I want to tell you. I know I don’t have to.” She couldn’t quite resist reaching out to touch his cheek. “Let’s go over to Indigo Beach.”

She directed him to a rutted sandy lane.

Low hanging vines scraped the top of the Porsche as Max eased it around a fallen palmetto. He cringed for the paint job. “They could use a little machete work down this way.”

Resurrection ferns laced the branches of a spreading live oak, and cinnamon ferns flourished beside a pond to the left. The undergrowth suddenly erupted with a flurry of movement, and a dusky gray white-tail deer plunged
fleetingly across the narrow track to disappear into a thicket of bayberry.

A fallen southern red cedar blocked the track twenty yards short of the beach. They left the car and walked over the hummocky, sandy ground to a narrow boardwalk, half-covered by drifting sand.

Head-high sea oats, October brown, rippled in the onshore breeze. Nutgrass and sandspur rustled knee-high. As they stood at the top of the dune and looked over the littoral at the gentle surf, a ragged line of cormorants passed overhead. They walked down the dune to the flat-packed gray sand along the water’s edge.

Annie reached down and touched an eddy of warm water.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Max insisted. “I know everything I need to know about you.”

“I want to tell you.” She frowned, picking her words. “Elliot must have talked to Richard.”

Max was silent.

“I’ve never told you about Richard. It was right after I got out of school. I was living in Dallas and working as a model.” She turned and began to walk up the beach, and Max paced with her. “Richard is a banker.” She laughed. “That’s not fair, really. I know there are all kinds of bankers, but Richard is like all of their worst qualities rolled into one. He is extremely cautious, extremely careful. He believes there are rules for every situation. We were engaged.” She shook her head in self-surprise. “Actually, I can’t believe now that I ever considered marrying him. Richard is extremely nice, extremely handsome, extremely … dull.”

“Dull,” Max repeated. “At least, you’ve never called me dull.”

“Never. Anyway, Richard and I were engaged. Then a very old friend called me. She was in real trouble. She asked me to come to Santa Fe with her and not to tell anyone. So I told Richard that I had to leave town immediately, and that I would be back in a week.

“He wanted to know why. I told him I couldn’t say.” Annie winced at the recollection of the acrimonious dispute that followed. “Richard wasn’t pleased. But I lost my temper, told him off, and went. A week later, when I got
back, I wouldn’t tell him why I’d gone, or what I’d done.

“Three days after that, he showed up at my apartment, and he was livid. He had a report from a private detective. It said that Anne McKinley Laurance entered a private nursing home on Sunday evening, gave birth to a son that night, and was discharged the following Wednesday.”

“Your friend used your name.”

“Do you know, that never occurred to Richard? He demanded to know how I’d hidden my pregnancy, since he knew damn well he hadn’t gotten me pregnant, and who the hell was I sneaking around with?”

Max raised one blond eyebrow. “Is his bank on the FDIC worry list?”

“No, Richard is very bright about numbers.”

“But, thank God, not very bright about people.”

“That’s what Elliot found out. The baby was immediately given up for adoption.”

“Why did it have to be so secret?” he asked.

“You are perceptive, aren’t you?” She bit her lip.

“You don’t have to tell me any more.”

“No, I want to tell you because I know what I did was illegal. You see, Emily was married. That wasn’t the problem at all. She had hidden the fact she was pregnant from her husband. You have to understand, her husband was the oldest son of one of Texas’s most powerful families—and a kind of crazy mean family, too. She didn’t know it until she married Quentin, but his father controlled all of them, and I mean that literally. Everyone in the family kowtowed to that horrible, domineering old monster. It was just like Mrs. Boynton in
Appointment With Death
. Quentin and his sister both used cocaine. Their mother was an alcoholic. It was just an awful way to live—and all Emily could think about was getting her baby—the only grandchild—into a safe,
normal
family. So we went to Santa Fe, and she went into a clinic using my name, and three days later I signed the adoption papers to a wonderful couple who had wanted and prayed for a baby for years.”

She half-turned and looked out over the surging green water. “I’ve always been so glad I did it. Emily and Quentin were killed in a plane crash a year later, and that
little baby would have been swallowed alive by Quentin’s father.”

“Good for you,” Max said warmly. At her look of surprise, he said almost roughly, “Richard may have been a damn fool, but I’m not, Annie.”

“You don’t care that I was a party to—I don’t know what to call it. Fraud? Conspiracy?”

“I think you’re wonderful. I’ve always thought so. I’ll always think so.” He couldn’t quite resist adding, “Even if I don’t have a serious job—like a banker.”

They stopped at Death On Demand en route to Kelly Rizzoli’s. Max insisted there was plenty of time before the ferry left to organize what they’d learned and then interview Kelly. He reached out to pat the glossy black head of the stuffed raven in the entryway.

“What’s his name?”

“Edgar, of course.”

Ingrid greeted them wearily. “Everything’s okay. I think the rush is over. But I sold $689 worth. And you’re out of Christianna Brands.” She patted the stack of receipts proudly. Her eyes darted solicitously from Max to Annie before she added reluctantly, “Chief Saulter’s been by twice, looking for you, and Mrs. Brawley phoned three times.”

Bad news and good news. Annie stepped close to give Ingrid a hug. “Let’s close up for now. And don’t worry, Ingrid, Max and I are working on it.”

Ingrid’s face brightened. “Like Pam and Jerry North.”

Not quite, but Annie wouldn’t have minded a martini. Although that might be the final blow, after the mint juleps and beer.

Ingrid put up the Closed sign and locked the front door as she left. “I’ll open up in the morning.”

Did she think Annie would be in jail?

Max made himself comfortable in the largest wicker chair with the softest pillows.

“It’s time to organize what we have.” He propped a yellow legal pad on his knee.

Annie wandered restlessly around the store: the coffee area, the exhibit of watercolors, the central corridor with
the soft gum bookcases angling away, the cash desk, Edgar with his glossy feathers and sightless eyes.

Sanctuary. That’s what Death On Demand had been for her in the days following Uncle Ambrose’s death. She’d always been so happy here, felt so safe. Had Saulter come by to arrest her? Carmen Morgan had thought the arrest would come tomorrow. How much time did she have left? The clock in the tall Queen Anne walnut case next to Edgar read 3:07. Time, time, she was running out of time.

She whirled around and started down the central corridor, then paused abruptly, her eyes on a level with the top shelf of the True Crime section, which held all the works of Uncle Ambrose’s favorite author, Clark Howard. Howard, a 1980 Edgar winner for his short story “Horn Man,” wrote everything well—short stories, novels, television and movie scripts, and nonfiction crime books.

Annie stared at the books until the titles scrambled in her mind.

They were losing sight of the most important fact.

“Max!” she yelped. She veered to her right, tangled with a fern, and slid to a stop beside his chair.

Agatha erupted from the base of the fern next to Max, stared reproachfully at Annie, and shot toward the dimness of the coffee bar.

Annie flapped her hands at Max’s sheaf of paper. “What did you do with the stuff you put together on everybody when I was being bopped at Elliot’s?”

Max riffled through his stack and pulled out several typewritten sheets. Annie grabbed them.

“We’ve got to fine-tooth-comb this stuff and see who’s connected to a killing that Uncle Ambrose was investigating. Don’t you see? It all goes back to Uncle Ambrose. That’s important, not this penny-ante stuff like Capt. Mac and his paternity suit.”

“First, we have to organize our material.” Max looked extremely judicious, a non-eggshaped Hercule Poirot.

Annie didn’t dignify this with an answer. Instead, she grabbed the dossiers. Quickly, she scratched out a list of people and places.

As she studied her chart, she felt her first qualm. On the surface, not a single one of these people had any connection with Uncle Ambrose’s famous cases. But she didn’t know enough about the three cases Uncle Ambrose had been investigating.

Fifteen minutes later, her hand cramped from note taking, she put down the phone.

Max came up behind her and reached down to massage her tight shoulders. “What did you plug into? Today’s devotional?”

“The crime reporter at the Atlanta
Constitution
. His name’s Sam, and he asked me out for a drink the next time I get to Atlanta.” She swivelled around to look at the clock face. Oh, God, 3:22. Here they sat, Max scribbling another damn list and she trying to forge some link between Uncle Ambrose’s missing manuscript and the suspects. And, darn it, nothing was working out.

Max bent over to look at her work.

“Nothing,” she said bitterly. “Oh, obviously he was on the right track, but there isn’t anything to link those crimes to anybody here.” She ticked them off on her fingers: “Alden Armbruster stepped into his Lincoln Continental to drive to work. He turned on the motor and kerboom. There had been labor trouble at the plant (they made plating for artillery shells). They suspected Alden Armbruster Jr., who had made a recent trip to Miami, where he could easily have purchased the plastic explosive used to blow up the car. No fingerprints. No proof. Case never closed. Alden Armbruster Jr. lives and presumably thrives in New York City. No other suspects, and nobody here could be Alden Armbruster. The Vinson suicide: Amalie Vinson, the tire heiress, was found one June morning in her Waikiki penthouse, dead of a cocaine overdose. Could be accident. Could be suicide. There was a note. A scrap, actually. The classic—
I can’t go on
. As any-fool knows, find a written regret to an invitation, tear it artfully, and you have a picture-perfect suicide note. Worked beautifully in
The Moving Finger
. Chief suspect—her third husband, Bobby Kaiser, who doesn’t live on Broward’s Rock. Finally, the Winningham case. Cale Winningham, heir to a tobacco fortune, was known as a brutal, spoiled womanizer. Somehow, he’d married a nice girl, Sheila
Hammonds. In the middle of a November night, Winningham killed her with a shotgun. His story was that they’d had trouble recently with prowlers. A month before, they’d been robbed. He heard a noise, got up, crept out into the hall, shouted, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ There was no answer, so he blasted. When he turned on the light, there was Sheila. He was devastated. He married another woman two months later. But Winningham didn’t live long to enjoy his new wife. They were killed when his private plane crashed on takeoff a few months later. The FAA found sugar in the gas line. So Cale Winningham can’t be on Broward’s Rock. Unless he’s a ghost.”

Annie shoved her hands frenziedly through her hair. “Dammit, there’s no link to Broward’s Rock.”

Max held up his legal pad. “Here’s what really matters.”

Max’s list:

1. Emma Clyde gave Ricky a shove. Who saw the dirty deed? Check the Coast Guard.

2. Hal Douglas’s wife ran around on him. According to Hal, she also ran out on him. Where is Lenora Harris Douglas?

3. Jeff Farley beats his wife. Would he or Janis kill to keep Jeff’s brutality a secret?

4. Fritz Hemphill is apparently trigger-happy, with a past he was determined to keep buried. What did his ex-wife know?

5. Capt. Mac keeps his mouth shut. Did he hide anything more dangerous than a paternity suit?

6. Carmen Morgan knew about the Sunday evening session. She knew that everyone there would have a motive for shutting Elliot up. Does Carmen inherit? Where was she Sunday night?

7. Kelly Rizzoli. Elliot said she played some nasty tricks. What were they?

Max reached for the telephone.

3:33. She tugged Max’s sleeve and pointed at the clock.

He covered the receiver. “Plenty of time,” he soothed, as he dialed.

Agatha moved like a black shadow, jumping up to the top of the counter. She looked at Annie with her deep yellow eyes.

“What do you think, Agatha?”

The cat made a soft, throaty sound.

“If you could talk, you could tell us who came in here Sunday morning.”

Agatha began to clean her face, licking her right paw daintily, then scrubbing furiously at her cheek.

Annie reached out, petted the silky fur, and tilted her head a little to listen to Max.