Deadly Valentine (30 page)

Annie saw it in a glance. Their patio couldn’t be observed
from the Cahill, Houghton, Burger, or Graham properties. And it hadn’t been the general on his morning perambulation because he had passed by more than a half-hour after Sydney finally left.

But straight across the lagoon was the Atwater house.

“Dorcas Atwater.” Annie said it aloud. For some reason, a vision of Agatha flashed into her mind, Agatha with her eyes blazing, emitting a growl that rivaled the Daytona 500.

Max frowned as the message came on. “We are unable to answer the phone right now.” He almost hung up, then caught the start of a new message. “Max, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Going to talk to Dorcas Atwater. Listen, Laurel’s okay.” Max tensed. “She’s out in the middle of the lagoon. Meditating. See you in a little while.”

Meditating? It
sounded
innocuous. Actually, it sounded delightful. Laurel in the middle of the lagoon.

Max replaced the receiver, straightened his desk blotter, and began to hum. Time to go home. Annie would be there soon. And tonight the special at the club was mulled-down shrimp served piping hot over grits, a low-country specialty, a mixture of cooked bacon, onions, brown sauce, and shrimp. Annie loved it!

As the sun dropped behind the pines, the temperature rapidly chilled and Annie was reminded that it was still February. She shivered and wished she’d grabbed a sweater. As she hurried along the darkening path, a fetterbush quivered and a black snake flashed deeper into the undergrowth. Annie bolted ahead. She knew it was harmless, but there was something in her that didn’t like a snake. Her pace redoubled when a little ground skink darted across the path. She burst out of the woodlands onto the Atwater grounds just as a water turkey flapped past.

The house huddled in darkness as it had the evening before.

Annie’s eyes adjusted to the deep dusk, and she could discern the pitch of the roof, the darker masses of azalea bushes, the ghostly grayness of the pier.

A red dot glimmered for an instant among the shifting
shadows in a grove of willows. A faint sour smell of cigarette smoke drifted on the light night breeze. Annie recalled the flashes of brightness that afternoon as she and Eileen surveyed the lagoon. Binoculars, no doubt.

Dorcas was there. Hidden in the shadows. Spying. Morning and night. And telling tales.

When she wasn’t paddling about the lagoon in the dark reaches of the night.

“Mrs. Atwater.” Annie’s voice rang out angrily. Oyster shells crackled beneath her feet as she strode up the path.

The cigarette glowed brightly, subsided.

The mournful cry of a loon wavered in the chill night air.

The cigarette flared again and then a bright brief arc traced its path into the water.

Annie’s neck prickled, but she kept on going. When she reached the willows, she could discern a figure slumped in a deck chair behind a screen of trailing branches.

“Mrs. Atwater, you were spying on us Tuesday morning, I don’t like being spied on.”

“I wasn’t watching you. I don’t care about you.” A simple statement of fact, utterly convincing. “I was watching the slut.”

Annie didn’t need to ask who Dorcas meant.

A heavy sigh. A thin hand fumbled wearily in the pocket of the terrycloth robe. Dorcas put a cigarette in her mouth, fumbled again. A click. In the flash of the lighter, lank hair framed dull eyes, flaccid cheeks, the downturned gash of a mouth.

“She’s dead.” There was the faintest hint of satisfaction in the toneless voice.

“And you’re glad, aren’t you? Did you kill Sydney? Did you row back across the lagoon that night and find her in the gazebo and beat her to death?”

The cigarette glowed. Dorcas inhaled deeply, blew out the sour cloud of smoke. “I could have, couldn’t I?” A little high giggle began, then trailed away. “But I never thought about her being dead. I always thought about her surrounded by males, ready to pounce. That’s what men are. Animals. Hanging around women like her. She was—” Vile words spilled out in an ever increasing tempo, her voice
hoarsening. She went after every man. Every one of them. She killed my husband.” She peered up at Annie. “You never knew Ted, did you? He was—I always thought he was wonderful. But he wasn’t, was he? Everybody laughs, you know, about Ted. It isn’t funny. It was ugly. So ugly. Ted died and it didn’t matter to her. She just kept on going, every man she could find. Old, young, it didn’t matter to her. Not if they could screw. She would have had your man, too. You don’t need to think she wouldn’t.”

Annie didn’t bother to answer that. Her trust in Max would only underscore Dorcas’s betrayal. Instead, she demanded, “Why did you tell the police about Tuesday morning? Are you afraid they may start to wonder about you? And what you were doing on the lake the night Sydney was killed?”

“The police.” Her voice crackled with hatred. “I hate the police. They thought it was funny, too. The way Ted died. I’d never talk to the police. I don’t have to tell them what I did that night. I’ll never tell them what I did. I’ll never tell the police anything.”

Annie’s neck prickled again. Because she believed Dorcas Atwater. So who had told Saulter about Sydney coming on their patio Tuesday morning?

Dorcas giggled again, a high, snuffling noise. “I was watching her. And you. And I watched the general watch you. He sneaks around in the mornings, looking in windows, don’t need to tell
me
he doesn’t. Goes to bed early. I know. I watch everyone. But he has night blindness. That’s what the general has. Night blindness. Silly old fool. He’d go after women, too, if he could. So it serves him right. Silly old night-blind fool. Just a nasty old man. But all men are nasty, that’s what’s true. Ted, too. Ted.” And the giggles splintered into sobs.

Annie could have gone the other way around to go home, gone past the Houghton house, told the general she knew what he’d done.

But she didn’t.

She was, she realized soberly, as she hurried across the
bright white no-man’s-land at the Burgers, more than a little afraid of the general.

Max cupped his hands and bellowed into the darkness. “Laurel, Laurel!”

The unmistakable husky voice flowed back across the water. “Max dear, I hear quite well. How are you this evening?”

“Fine, sweetheart.” He peered into the impenetrable darkness. A thick cloud cover. No moon. Black water. “Listen, aren’t you going to come in for dinner? Annie and I are getting ready to go to the club. Mulled-down shrimp.”

Max smiled at Annie, who nodded abstractedly. Annie looked a little peaked. She must be overdoing. She’d barreled out of the woods like a bat out of hell. Certainly, they should make it a point to relax this evening. Perhaps they shouldn’t even discuss the crime. After all, everything was under control right now. He’d spotted Howard’s car in the turnaround as he passed the Cahill mansion, so he was safely home. And Laurel meditating in the middle of the pond suited Max just fine. Dampish, but so nicely removed.

“So thoughtful of you dear children to remember me. But I’m just in the
midst
of my meditations. And I’m drafting quite a lengthy petition to Saint Jude.”

Annie made gestures.

“A food cooler?” Max whispered.

“Full,” Annie retorted, succinctly.

“One cannot be concerned with base appetites at such a moment,” Laurel caroled.

Annie avoided looking at Max. She scooped up a pinecone and tossed it from hand to hand.

“Very dedicated of you, Mother.”

Annie’s left eyebrow lifted sardonically.

“We’ll check with you when we get back,” Max called reassuringly.

Annie waited until they were in the midst of dessert—Max had cheese and crackers and Annie a French pastry with shaved chocolate on top—before she told him about Saulter’s call and her confrontation with Dorcas Atwater.

She shivered. “Max, she’s really spooky. And—and scary. And terribly sad. The night of the party was the second anniversary of her husband’s death. Don’t you know how awful that must have been, to look across the water and see all the lights and hear the music? Oh Max, I can see her bashing Sydney, bashing and bashing and bashing. But,” she added fairly, “it wasn’t Dorcas who told the police. It was the general. Max, he snoops!” And she described the general’s window-watching activities, as related by Dorcas.

“The jerk,” Max said crisply, putting down his knife. His normally equable face—Annie did enjoy those dark blue eyes, that clean-cut chin, those lips—looked stern. “What’s with this trespassing? I won’t have the foul-minded old lecher prowling around my property first thing in the morning.”

“Foul-minded is right,” she retorted, and she told him of the general’s interpretation of her call on Joel Graham.

Max progressed from stern to outraged in an impressive matter of seconds. Then he paused. “In a towel?”

“Yep. And ready to drop it at the first hint of sociability on my part. Joel likes married women.”

As she said it, she and Max forgot dessert, forgot the general, forgot their vow to relax.

They both spoke at once.

“Married women!” she cried.

“Sydney!” Max exclaimed.

They looked up at the dark windows of Joel Graham’s garage apartment.

“You don’t suppose he’s already asleep?” Annie asked.

Max snorted at that and ran up the outside steps to knock at the door.

They gave up finally because there was no telling when Joel would return. Obviously, he had no real supervision.

“We can catch him in the morning before school,” Annie said reassuringly, as they walked quietly through the dark tunnel of the pinewoods toward home.

The path curved. In the light of Max’s flash, a gray fox, a marsh rabbit clamped in its jaws, paused for an instant, then bolted into the undergrowth.

“Oh my gosh,” Annie cried, grabbing Max’s arm.

“Not a good evening to be a marsh rabbit,” Max observed.

As they walked up to their patio, a cheerful and welcoming oasis of light in the darkness of the night, Annie said determinedly, “We need to be just like that gray fox. He’s a stalker, creeping up on his prey, then pouncing. That’s exactly what we need to do.”

Of course, it is never easy to get underway with any project. So many things to do.

A last check on Laurel.

“Ma, are you
sure
you want to stay out there all night?”

“Oh, quite sure.”

“Isn’t it uncomfortable?” Max persisted.

“My dear, comfort is in the eye of the beholder. When one thinks about dear Saint Osith! Marauders attacked her monastery and cut off her head! Why, I can’t complain about a few earwigs.”

“Of course not,” Annie agreed heartily.

A delicate pause. “Of course, my sojourn might be even more effective if you and Annie should care to join me.”

Blue eyes and gray exchanged horrified glances.

“We wouldn’t dream of it, Laurel,” Annie called. “In no way do we feel that our powers of meditation are on a level with yours. Why, Max and I might even interfere with your meditation.” Annie felt a bit muddled. Was it something like radio waves?

Max was even more emphatic. “Some are called and some are not.”

Annie murmured, “And when you’re hot, you’re—” She broke off at Max’s chiding glance.

Laurel’s husky voice exhorted, “Do give some thought to our great Saint Peter, my dears.”

Annie was reluctant to ask, but she was a dutiful daughter-in-law. “Why Saint Peter, Laurel?”

“He always encourages us to persevere despite our inadequacies. Good night. God bless.”

Then Dorothy L. was insistent. Annie put down a second serving of Braised Beef Tips. “You’re too little to eat
this much. You’re going to be all stomach. Believe me, you’ll never make your way in this world if you are all stomach.”

Dorothy L. merely ate faster and purred harder.

And it took time to collect their papers and arrange themselves comfortably in the garden room. Max seemed to think it was better for them to share the wicker chaise longue. Annie popped up once to put TV trays on either side, a second time to get each of them a fresh notepad and a pen, a third time to pour cups of chocolate raspberry decaffeinated coffee, a fourth time to prevent Dorothy L. from chewing on the leaves of a poinsettia. Were they really poisonous? She dropped the kitten into Max’s lap.

Max, of course, watched Annie fondly, with that nice eagerness that presaged amatory frolics.

Annie said sternly, “Max, we have to work. You don’t want Laurel to go on trial, do you?”

A mischievous grin. “The circuit courts of South Carolina would never be the same.”

Annie settled beside him, but underscored her commitment to duty by removing his hand from her thigh and placing it on Dorothy L., who purred like a motorbike going downhill.

Max draped his arm around Annie’s shoulders.

Annie removed it and tucked a pen in his hand.

“Okay,” Max said agreeably. He poised a pen over his pad. “What’s first? Motives? Alibis?”

Annie gazed thoughtfully at the fresh notepad. “We need to start over.”

Max sighed. “Start over? It’s only Thursday night, yet I feel like I’ve spent my life with these people. I know more about them than I ever wanted to know. Howard Cahill won a welterweight championship as an amateur boxer. Sydney Cahill won a couple of thousand at bingo at the club and she spent it all hiring a private detective to try and trace her father. No luck.”

Annie twisted to look at him in surprise.

“I did not spend today twiddling my thumbs,” he said with great dignity. “After I got Laurel out of jail, I kept digging.”

Annie shuffled through the bios, found those for Howard and Sydney and added the new information.

She looked at him expectantly.

“Joel Graham. Some young guy answering to his description’s been renting a room at the Sleepy Glade Motel on Highway 278 every Monday afternoon. Lisa has a house-cleaning crew in on Mondays.”

So the garage apartment wasn’t available.

Annie wrote down
SYDNEY
and wreathed the name with question marks.

“The general is a man of very regular habits. Up at five
A.M
., oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast, walks four miles, spends an hour or so in his study, lunch, afternoon golf, an early dinner, to bed at nine
P.M
. A little surprising that your scream woke him Tuesday night as he has some hearing loss, plus he takes a sleeping pill every night.”