Deadly Valentine (5 page)

“Unmerry as all hell, Laurel.”

“Such a waste,” Laurel murmured. “Life is meant to be enjoyed. By everyone. As Saint Francis de Sales so aptly remarked, ‘A sad saint would be a sorry saint.’”

Annie’s response was so immediate and so strong that it surprised her. She hadn’t realized what an impression Dorcas Atwater had made the last time she’d seen her. “Not sad. Mad. Mad as a scalded cat.”

“How
interesting
. How unusual.”

Once again Annie felt a quiver of surprise at her mother-in-law’s uncanny ability to go to the heart of the matter. Dorcas’s attitude
was
odd, and this had never before occurred to Annie.

What was Dorcas mad about? Because her husband died? Surely that was a strange reaction.

“Laurel, you’re right. That’s weird. And
she’s
weird. Dorcas used to be pretty, in an inbred sort of way. A pale face, bony like a horse, and light blue eyes. But stylish, always wearing the latest thing. Not anymore! I saw her last week when I was jogging on the path around the lagoon, and I hardly recognized her. Stringy hair, almost all gray. No makeup and a ratty housedress. She looked like something out of a Ruth Rendell novel.”

“Surely not typical of your neighbors,” Laurel observed.

Annie felt called upon to defend the sartorial splendor of the residents rimming Scarlet King Lagoon, and, before she knew it, she was deep into a good old-fashioned gossip about her neighbors.

“Lord, no. Now look. To the left of the Atwater house.” Annie pointed across the lagoon at a blaze of lights. Enormous baseball-park lights topped poles at six points in the backyard, throwing the entire lawn into clear, sharp relief. “That’s where the Burgers live. Billye Burger goes to the kind of shops where you have to have an appointment! She wears Bill Blass originals. Billye always looks like she just got out of the beauty shop and dropped by Cartier on the way home. And her husband is the kind of Texas Rich you read about in D. R. Meredith’s
Murder by Impulse
and
The Sheriff
and the Branding Iron
. He’s the reason it’s so hard to get into the compound. I mean, I don’t like to call it a compound, but that’s what it is. You know how wild everything is, the undergrowth pruned just enough to keep it from killing the trees. Vines and ferns and shrubs everywhere. You’d have to have a machete to hack your way to any of these houses, except by road or along the lagoon path. The gate’s to keep out strangers. Buck Burger was a criminal lawyer who made enough enemies to make Al Capone nervous. And enough money to have a home here and another in Dallas and I think one in Aspen.”

Laurel gazed with interest at the starkly illuminated landscape. “That’s the yard with the watchman.”

“Watchman?”

“Yes. Rather a large man. And
not
charming. I encountered him when I took a walk this afternoon.”

A watchman. Why did the Burgers have a watchman? Annie had lived in the Scarlet King compound for a whole week and been unaware of this interesting fact about her neighbors.

“I didn’t see Mr. Burger,” Laurel added.

“You didn’t miss much.” Annie brushed away an invisible cloud of no-see-ums and thought irritably that enough was enough with the screwy weather. They shouldn’t have to put up with gnats in February! “He’s loud, vulgar, overbearing, and thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

“Vulgar,” Laurel repeated. “No, no.”

“Oh yes he is,” Annie insisted.

“I’m sure,” Laurel said brightly, leaving Annie confused. “Such variety. That next house?” she asked. Her tone indicated disbelief.

Annie grinned. “The architect must have grown up in a modern tract house and been reacting against it ever since. Have you ever
seen
more gingerbread?”

“Only dear Hansel and Gretel,” Laurel said cheerfully.

“The oddest part is that the owner isn’t a Mother Earth nut or an old lady. It belongs to a dentist, George Graham, a
GQ
yuppie.”

“Not
a dentist, thank heaven.”

Annie ignored this comment. Laurel really wasn’t making sense tonight.

“A yuppie,” she said firmly. “Fortyish, blandly handsome. The toothpaste ad type.”

“So apropos,” Laurel observed. “You are so descriptive, Annie.”

Annie ignored that comment, too, and continued doggedly. “Drives a Mercedes, of course. Plays tennis. Jogs. And has a young, second wife, Lisa. And a teenage son, Joel. He drives a jeep.” Annie didn’t add that Joel paid a little too much attention when she jogged by their house. She enjoyed admiring glances; she didn’t enjoy lascivious looks. “Lisa drives a Mercedes, too. And plays tennis and jogs.” Annie tried not to sound tart, but she had a natural sympathy for first wives. Though certainly Agatha Christie was a prime example of how betrayal in a first marriage, though heartbreaking at the time, could lead, ultimately, to a second, much happier union. Perhaps the first Mrs. Graham was grateful for her release.

Laurel was already swinging about to look on the other side of the lagoon. Obviously, the Grahams didn’t fascinate. Second marriages (and third and fourth and fifth) were nothing new to Laurel. She peered into the darkness.

“Can’t see the other two houses from here. Too many pines. The farthest one,” Annie pointed toward dense pinewoods across the pond, “was the original home on the property, antebellum. It belongs to a retired general and his wife. Second wife.” Might as well be accurate.

“A general.” There was a note of fondness in her voice. One of Laurel’s husbands had been in the military.

“Nasty old coot. Glowered at me the other day when I jogged by. Guess General Houghton thinks the whole path belongs to him.” It had been no ordinary glower. Annie wouldn’t quickly forget those dark, burning eyes or the pulse that throbbed at the temple of that ancient bald head. “Don’t see how his wife stands him.” Annie paused. “Second wife.” Not that Eileen Houghton was all that young. Early fifties, probably. Attractive enough in a matronly way. Annie realized that she and Billye Burger were in the minority as first wives. For all that it mattered. “Eileen used to be
a nurse or something like that, so I guess she knows how to put up with impossible people.”

“Annieee! Laurel!” Max’s tenor boomed from the patio.

“Coming,” Annie called happily. And so what if she had to go to Sydney’s party. She would have fun. She always had fun with Max.

As they hurried back toward the house, Laurel asked urgently, “The last house, the other one we can’t see. Is that where we are going to the party?”

“Yes. The Cahills.” Annie avoided mentioning Sydney’s name.

Laurel didn’t know it was verboten. “Sydney Cahill?”

“Yes.”

“A beautiful young woman. But so sad.”

Annie didn’t think Sydney was the least bit sad. To her mind that was on the order of describing a blood-lusting pit bull as playful. “Sydney’s—” Annie took a deep breath. She didn’t want to get into it. She walked faster. There was Max on the terrace, absolutely gorgeous in his tux.

Laurel kept pace. “Sydney’s husband. I suppose he’s older?”

“Another second marriage,” Annie said briskly. “A disastrous one, from all I hear. Howard’s first wife died and he fell for a pretty body. He’s handsome as all get-out, in a rugged way. And rich. Sydney lucked out.”

“Party time,” yodeled that cheerful tenor.

Annie waved a greeting.

“Disastrous,” Laurel said cheerily.

Annie detected a note of satisfaction, but dismissed it. After all, why should Laurel care about Howard Cahill’s marriage?

Max acted as tour guide as they took the lagoon path to the Cahill property.

“The name of the compound is taken from the lagoon, Ma. Scarlet King Lagoon.”

“What a romantic name!” Laurel exclaimed.

It wasn’t that Laurel’s romanticism irritated Annie, but she felt honor bound to be factual. “The lagoon’s named for some snakes that live there.” To be fair, she grudgingly
added, “Nonpoisonous. And pretty, if you like snakes. A red nose and yellow bands set off by black.”

The path angled away from the lagoon, passed a charming gazebo, and wound into the gardens.

Laurel beamed. “I’m sure Saint Francis would be enchanted. He loved
all
creatures. And so should we.”

For the first time, Laurel’s preoccupation with saints began to worry Annie. She had no desire to find all God’s creatures welcomed to her new house. There was no telling how far Laurel would go when in the grip of a new enthusiasm. She opened her mouth to warn Laurel about consorting with snakes, because the island hosted four poisonous species, cottonmouths, eastern diamondback rattlers, timber rattlers, and copperheads, but Laurel spoke first, her tone tinged with awe. “What a
remarkable
house!”

Laurel rarely evinced amazement, but Annie understood. The Cahill mansion evoked a stunned response from even its most worldly visitors, which would certainly include Laurel. (Annie was convinced that “worldly” was quite an appropriate description of her mother-in-law, though perhaps Max might not appreciate some of the nuances involved.)

In the moonlight, the Moorish influence was evident. Three-story, crenellation-capped stucco walls glistened with whitewash. Sharply pointed towers loomed at either end. A golden flood of light spilled from enormous arched windows onto the luxuriant gardens below. Annie made a mental note to bring Laurel back in the daytime when she could truly appreciate the scope of the gardens. The azaleas were beginning to bloom and by April would be in full flower, dazzling masses of pink, lavender, rose, and crimson. The plantings, like those at the famed Magnolia Plantation, were planned for year-round color. Camellias, canna lilies, crape myrtle, daffodils, day lilies, dogwood, forsythia, gardenias, hibiscus, honeysuckle, hyacinth, jessamine, oleanders, pittosporum, bougainvillea, rhododendron, and wisteria bloomed in season.

“No one can say the Yankee robber barons were the only Americans to engage in unmitigated conspicuous consumption,” Max observed wryly.

“Oh, but it’s
lovely,”
Laurel cried and she skipped ahead
of them, holding up the long skirt of her satin gown. In the pale wash of moonlight and the glow from the windows, Laurel’s smooth hair gleamed like a golden cap. As she sped along with unselfconscious and enchanting grace, she was a figure from the heroic past, a Diana, a Helen of Troy.

For the first time in her life, Annie was struck by a foreboding, a distinct sense of imminent disaster. (Generations of had-I-but-known heroines would have understood.) She reached out, gripped Max’s arm, and almost urged him to run after Laurel, catch her.

Then what?
Her practical mind intervened. Laurel had her heart set on going to the Valentine party. What could Annie say? And now it was too late to turn back. Laurel had reached the floodlit front steps.

“What?” Max asked.

Annie hesitated. The huge bronze front door swung open. More light blazoned a welcome. Laurel turned and waved for them to hurry. Other guests, the women in bright dresses, the men in tuxedos, were arriving.

“I stumbled,” Annie said. She gave her husband’s arm a squeeze and quickened her pace.

The moment passed.

The Cahill mansion was no less imposing inside, with its colorful tiled floors, enormous marble columns, hanging tapestries, ornate bronze sconces with lighted candles, and enough priceless antiques from all around the world to fill a small museum. The Cahills greeted their guests at the base of the majestic marble staircase that curved to second- and third-floor balconies. A suit of knight’s armor glinted beside the staircase. Someone had taped a bright red heart on his metal chest.

Sydney Cahill stood on the first step, her husband, Howard, on the second. Sydney was breathtakingly lovely tonight. Her raven black hair was a lustrous frame for magnolia-soft skin. She wore a long-sleeved dress of pleated ivory silk, two swaths falling from her shoulders to cross over her breasts, creating a plunging neckline. A glittering necklace, intertwined strands of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, emphasized the delicate grace of her neck.

Howard Cahill was darkly handsome, a smooth, oliveskinned
face, eyes so brown they looked black, black hair touched with silver. His face was memorable, a broad forehead, once-broken nose, blunt chin. Annie immediately decided she would have cast him as Philip Marlowe for a movie. He greeted his guests formally, with a quick nod and observant dark eyes, but without warmth. There was an aura of power about him, a reserve that forebade familiarity. Only an insensitive clod would ever clap Howard Cahill on the shoulder.

As the line inched forward, Annie glanced from the Cahills to the armor. Light from the glittering chandelier rippled off the visor, creating—just for an instant—an illusion of life and movement. Annie wondered sharply what it must have been like for the owner of that suit of mail. Damned hot and uncomfortable. The owner had been small to heft such a load, not more than five and a half feet. But dangerous. In one steel hand, supported from below by a stand, lay a mace, a heavy, medieval war club crowned by a spiked metal head. Annie shivered. What destruction had that weapon wrought centuries ago? How bizarre it was to view its killing weight on display during a night of gaiety in celebration of love. The faint sound of orchestra music from above mingled in her mind with the imagined grunts and clangs of mounted combat.

She and Max and Laurel reached the foot of the stairs.

Sydney murmured, “So very glad you could come. Everyone is gathering in the third-floor ballroom for dancing, but do feel free to wander about as you please. Howard has so many lovely works of art, and he does enjoy sharing them with our friends.” She took Laurel’s hand, but her eyes moved past Laurel and Annie to Max and fastened there with a hopeful eagerness that would have infuriated Annie, had she not been too startled by the look on her mother-in-law’s face.

Laurel glowed. Although Annie had always accorded her mother-in-law full marks for extraordinary beauty, she hadn’t realized just how lovely Laurel could appear, her lake-blue eyes filled with warmth, her perfect mouth curved in gentle wonder, her classic profile softened by emotion.