Deadly Valentine (9 page)

Laurel gasped. “Sydney dead? But she was fine when—” A sorrowful shake of her golden head. “What a tragedy. Poor dear girl. Oh, I must go to Howard.”

“Mother, wait a minute.” Beneath its blond stubble of beard, Max’s face tightened with worry. “Where have you been?”

“Round and about. Hither and yon. But that is of no moment.” She took a deep breath and refused to meet his eyes. “My dear, if what Annie says is true, you are wasting time. You must contact the authorities. And I shall go inform Howard.”

“Oh no,” Max said. “That’s the last thing in the world you should do. After the way you and Howard ogled each other at the party tonight, to have the police find the two of you together now would be a disaster.”

Laurel drew herself up to her full five feet two inches. “I find that statement to be beneath contempt. Of course I
shall go to Howard. It is my duty. As Saint Scholastica made abundantly clear—that lovely moment in her last meeting with her brother, Saint Benedict, when she called upon God to prevent Benedict from leaving. Benedict felt he could not spend a night absent from his monastery, but almost immediately the most enormous tempest erupted!”

At their noticeable lack of response, Laurel deigned to draw the moral. “Human relationships are so much more important than petty rules of behavior.” She turned on her pink heel and sped toward the stairs.

“Annie, Annie, catch her!” Max yelled as he flung himself toward the closet and clawed for warm-up pants and a top.

Annie obediently started toward the doorway, then stopped. “What do I
do
when I catch her?”

The wail of a siren drowned out Max’s vigorous response.

The police chief of Broward’s Rock flicked a switch, and three battery-powered lights hummed to life, casting a sickly glow over the gazebo steps and the small group gathered close by. Frank Saulter gave a satisfied grunt and scrambled up from his knees. He directed one more troubled glance at Sydney’s body, her blood-spattered, creamy skin a muddy sulfur in the yellowish light, then cleared his throat and looked into the frowning face of her husband.

“Sorry to ask you to remain here, Mr. Cahill. For right now, I’m the only man here. I’ve got a call in to my assistant, and he should arrive soon. Until then I’ll have to ask you and”—Saulter’s eyes skipped over the gathering—“and everybody else at the scene to stay here.”

“Certainly.” Cahill stood as if at parade rest, feet apart, hands clasped behind his back. He still wore his tuxedo, but his shirt was tieless and open at the throat. He didn’t look toward the gazebo, but stared somberly at his dusty shoes, ignoring them all. Laurel was just close enough to the unmoving—and unmoved?—widower to be grouped with him. Annie longed to shake those pink-clad shoulders until Laurel’s perfect teeth rattled like castanets. Did she deliberately want to attract Saulter’s attention? But it would only
underscore Laurel’s proximity to Howard if Annie and Max tried to separate Laurel from him now.

As Saulter rapidly sketched the crime scene, Annie’s eyes were drawn again and again to the sundial and the young man who leaned against it. He stood with his back to the gazebo. Annie recognized him at once—the almost handsome man with a face as lovely and vacuous as Albert Campion’s, the man who had said viciously, “One slut deserves another,” and made Sydney cry. He rubbed his head as if it hurt. No doubt it did, considering how much he had apparently drunk earlier. Occasionally he shot a furtive look toward Howard, then nervously brushed at his thin mustache. Who was he? Why was he here? She shot a glance at her watch. The party had broken up after the raucous march. That was almost two hours ago. He, too, still wore his tuxedo.

As for the other occupant of the clearing, what was he doing here? How did he have the nerve to come onto Howard Cahill’s property after his behavior at the ball? General Houghton’s burning dark eyes devoured the crime scene, returning time and again to Sydney’s body. His cadaverous face, clipped iron-gray mustache, and balding head with a thick blue vein pulsing in his right temple belonged in a Count Dracula horror flick. A pistol butt stuck out of the right pocket of his tattersall robe. One wrinkled hand rested on the pistol butt, the other on his ebony cane. General Houghton cleared his throat peremptorily.

“Be glad to pitch in, Chief. Came because I heard a cry for help. Can set the time exactly. One oh eight—”

Cry for help. With a shock, Annie realized Houghton was talking about her. She opened her mouth, then closed it. There would be time enough when Saulter took their statements.

“—any event, came prepared.” The general patted the pistol. “Be glad to convoy this party to my residence. Can keep them sequestered until further notice. Rouse my wife. Hospital trained. She can escort ladies to rest facilities, if need be. Won’t permit communication.”

Saulter quickly accepted the offer. “Appreciate it, sir. No need to subject”—he looked at Howard—“everyone to
this.” He glanced at each person in turn. “Cooperate with General Houghton. I’ll be along to talk to each of you as soon as possible.”

The general efficiently placed Annie, with her flashlight, at the head of the column, then marched them single file to the lagoon where, at his direction, they turned right. Once again, the path plunged into a thick tangle of greenery, loblolly pines, live oaks, stiff waxey-leaved yaupon holly, water oaks, and clumps of saw palmettos. Annie’s flashlight made a frail assault against the deep darkness. As the pines began to thin, she could see the Houghton house, its ground floor blazing with light. As they neared the steps to the rear piazza, the back door burst open.

“Colville, where—” Eileen Houghton stopped on the top step and began to button her quilted red cotton robe, hiding her buxom figure beneath its shapelessness. Graying blond hair hung straight down to midback. Her pincushion-plump face was bare of makeup. Pale blue eyes widened in amazement.

“Bad business, Eileen.” But wasn’t there a note of satisfaction beneath the somber report? “Sydney’s been murdered. Gazebo. Authorities there, but need site for witnesses to await interrogation. Offered our library. You can see to coffee, whiskey.”

Apparently Eileen Houghton was accustomed to taking orders from her elderly husband. She nodded obediently and turned on her heel. Silently, they followed her down a broad central hallway, typical of an antebellum house, to the library.

The general gestured with his cane at the assortment of easy chairs and sofas. “Hope everyone can be comfortable. Damn awkward situation.” He cleared his throat. “Damn sorry, Howard.” Again the words were correct, but Houghton’s eyes waited avidly for Cahill’s response. Howard made none. A flush edged up the general’s sallow cheeks. He turned his piercing gaze toward the young man with the tousled brown hair. “Don’t believe we’ve met, sir.”

But it was Howard who spoke. “My son, Carleton, General Houghton.”

Annie recalled the drunken taunt.
“Tell the old man. See if I care
.” My God, she thought. Howard’s son. Sydney’s stepson.

Carleton stuck out a trembling hand.

The general pumped it briefly.

“Carleton teaches in Minnesota. He’s visiting us—” Howard stopped.
Us
. Not now. Not any longer. “He’s here for a few days over spring break.”

The general looked toward Laurel. It was one of the few times in Annie’s memory that a male, of whatever age, evinced no pleasure in that act. In fact, his eyes narrowed, though he spoke civilly. “Didn’t make your aquaintance earlier this evening, madam.” So he had at least noticed her at the party.

“My mother, Laurel Roethke,” Max said clearly. “She’s visiting Annie and me.” He cleared his throat and added forcefully, “She arrived only today. Well, yesterday morning now.”

Laurel gazed thoughtfully at the general. “Such a shame when love is thwarted. I’m sure you agree, General?”

Annie doubted that it happened often, but Houghton had no response. His dark brows drew together in an irritated frown.

“It does seem to me—and I do bring some
years
of experience to my judgment—that this tragic occurrence must be a result of one of the darker faces of love,” Laurel mused regretfully.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Carleton’s voice lacked the deep timbre and authoritative note of his father’s voice. He sounded querulous, where Howard would have been combative. His face was very pale.

Laurel smiled benignly. “So difficult sometimes for the young to differentiate between love and passion, commitment and jealousy, desire and lust. And it
does
make a difference.”

“Enough nonsense,” the general barked. The blue vein at his temple throbbed. “People stay in their own beds, follow the rules, world’d work damn sight better.”

Howard Cahill, sitting in a red leather wingback chair, ignored the comment, his face grim.

That was the extent of the conversation for an incredibly slow-moving hour. Max sat on the chintz-covered sofa beside Annie, his arm supportingly around her shoulders, but his dark blue eyes moved again and again toward his mother. If anyone started to speak, the general shook his head briskly. “No communication. Difficult, but necessary. Operational procedure, you know.”

Eileen Houghton, dressed now in gray slacks and an orchid high-necked blouse, her blond hair up in a tight coronet braid, offered whiskey or coffee. Everyone but Laurel accepted coffee.

“Perhaps chamomile tea?” she asked brightly.

Eileen Houghton brought that, too.

Laurel settled with her tea on an ottoman close to Howard. Occasionally, she reached out and patted his arm in gentle commiseration. When he looked at her, his haggard face softened. Annie wondered how in God’s name Max could have a mother with such a total lack of native cunning. Didn’t she understand how serious this was? Didn’t she grasp the fact that a particularly brutal murder—Annie tried not to remember the shattered cranial bones of a once beautiful woman—had taken place? And the victim had been the wife of the man Laurel was now so publicly supporting.

What was Laurel going to tell the police? Annie felt a wave of panic. Surely Laurel wouldn’t guilelessly reveal her sudden infatuation with Howard? Or admit she’d gone on a midnight foray to seek out a married man?

Would she?

Their gazes crossed. Laurel’s exuded confidence, good cheer, and reassurance with an overlay of distress for the dreadful circumstances.

Annie stared hard at Laurel, who responded immediately, of course, with an inquiring glance. There were no flies on Laurel when it came to picking up vibes. Just like Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax.

Effective communication without words was tricky. Annie inclined her head in a quick, tiny nod toward Laurel—meaning
you
—pointed with a circumspect index finger at her own midriff—meaning
me
—placed one hand conspicuously
in the other and clasped them—meaning
together—
and began to hum that old familiar hymn, a standby to generations of campers, “In the Garden.”

Laurel beamed delightedly. “How sweet you are, my dear. And so
clever
. But I came to the garden alone. We must all tell the truth, mustn’t we?”

Max stifled a groan. Carleton’s head jerked toward Laurel and his eyes had the look of a startled wild animal. Howard frowned.

“Here now,” the general said sharply. “Quiet.”

Annie would have enjoyed delivering Laurel into the evil hands of some rogue on the order of Casper Gutman, Auric Goldfinger, or Dr. Fu Manchu. So let Laurel paddle her canoe right over the dam. See if Annie cared.

Annie’s face felt hot, and she knew it probably matched the rich rosy-reddish hue of the library’s cypress paneling and bookshelves. She tried to concentrate on surveying the general’s remarkable collection of books, primarily histories of warfare from the Gallic Wars to the present, but Max kept looking at Laurel, his concern undisguised. So, despite Annie’s irritation and the grainy reel of fatigue, she forced herself to consider the possibilities.

Laurel, who was going to say God only knew what, was likely to be in a hell of a spot. The police, both real and literary, from criminal-turned-Sûreté-chief Arsène Lupin to cigar-chewing, Nero Wolfe-pawn Inspector Cramer to Wilkie Collins’s dull-witted Superintendent Seegrave, have a definite bias for the obvious. Of course, Frank Saulter knew them and knew Laurel. Still, he couldn’t help but look very closely at everyone who had been in the vicinity of the crime.

Okay, Annie thought, Max was out of it. She could swear he had been asleep when she left the house and still asleep when she returned, after finding Sydney’s body.

That left Annie, Laurel, Howard, Carleton, and the general, all of whom had been on or near the scene very early on.

Annie knew she hadn’t done it. And she knew that Laurel was innocent. Laurel might be spacey, Laurel might be
unpredictable, but Laurel could never hurt a living creature. Annie knew that without any doubt.

Would Chief Saulter know it?

Of course.

It was so obvious.

But people would talk and Chief Saulter would hear about Laurel and Howard at the party and their unmistakable infatuation.

Surely that would direct suspicion at Howard, not Laurel.

Still, Annie didn’t feel good about any of it.

Where
was
Laurel when the murder occurred? What, if anything, did she know? When it became apparent that Laurel—and Annie, too, of course—had been wandering about at the time Sydney was struck down, would that make the killer nervous?

Annie swallowed.

She knew she was tired and she’d been scared to the core, then horrified by her gruesome discovery. So maybe she wasn’t thinking too straight.

But she had a god-awful feeling that maybe she and Max had better think about this one and think hard. And fast.

Who could have killed Sydney?

Three men had been near the gazebo when death stalked.

The widower, Howard Cahill.

His son, Carleton, whose nasty comment had made Sydney cry.

The general.

And, of course, the dark grounds could easily have harbored someone unseen, someone as yet unknown. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. What about Dorcas Atwater? Of course, it was much earlier in the evening when Dorcas rowed near the Cahill pier. She could have returned. But without doubt three men had clear opportunity and must be considered as possibilities.