Something Wicked (24 page)

And, apparently without seeing any significance to her question, he artlessly revealed he’d been in his workshop ever since coming home from the morning session at the school. He shook his head dolefully. “To think while I was immersing
myself in pleasure that such horrible things were happening.”

He reiterated his horror, concern, perplexity, and so on with touching earnestness as he walked Annie back to her car. His last words, before she pulled away, were, “Now, Annie, I’ll do anything I can to help. Call on me at any time.”

As she pulled away, she glanced in her rearview mirror at his substantial, respectable figure. Eugene was certainly not her picture of a murderer.

But, she reminded herself, like everyone else on her list, Eugene was also an accomplished actor.

The Hortons’ rambling wooden house was in one of Annie’s favorite developments. Here along the seaward side of the island, all the streets were named for butterflies—Swallowtail Circle, Monarch Drive, Viceroy Lane, Queen and Zebra streets, Sulphur Road. The Horton house was on Painted Lady Lane. The island is home to more than two hundred species, but these are some of the most abundant. A butterfly fan, Annie knew how to find her favorites because each family likes only certain flowers. Monarchs prefer milkweeds, swallowtails opt for sassafras, bay, and magnolia, viceroys lurk by willows, queens hover over butterfly weed, zebras cannot resist passionflowers, and sulphurs hustle to wild peas. Painted ladies, Annie knew, take their pleasure with thistles. Butterflies have a great deal in common with mystery fans, who are drawn only to their particular favorites, be they cozies, thrillers, romantic suspense, science fiction, hardboileds, softboileds, or historicals. She grinned as she pictured Henny Brawley with monarch wings, hovering over the comedy-caper shelves.

The Horton home was a typical two-hundred-thousand-dollar Broward’s Rock house, built on several levels with lots of two-story glass panes, projecting porches, and assorted bay windows. The distinction of number six Painted Lady Lane was its landscaping. Ninety-foot yellow pines embraced the house. Artfully distributed patches of wildflowers created a natural garden, bright with redroot, cattails, yellow leopard’s bane, purple bachelor’s button, and blue hydrangea.

A single car was in the two-lane drive. Annie parked behind, the Lincoln Continental. As she slammed her car door, Janet hurried around the side of the house. She wore a sun hat, dark glasses, dirt-stained shorts, and a terry-cloth top. She carried a trowel. Her outsize gardening gloves made her arms look foreshortened. Despite the shadow cast by the hat and the opaque glasses, her expression of stricken disappointment was unmistakable. Then it was gone, replaced by a stiff and not especially welcoming smile.

“Annie.” She stopped by the edge of the drive and waited.

They stood in a pool of mid-afternoon heat. The drone of bees in the honeysuckle and the singsong of the katydids reminded Annie of lazy summer afternoons when there had been nothing more important to do than decide among reading the latest Victoria Holt, or taking a swim, or pedaling leisurely to Cole Drugstore for a cherry phosphate. The easy cadence of summer made an odd backdrop to her own sense of urgency and Janet’s palpable unease.

“I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute?”

“Yes?”

“Is T.K. here?”

“Why? What do you want with T.K.?” Janet demanded sharply. “Look, I’m sick of everybody going after him. He hasn’t done
anything.
He wouldn’t shoot anybody. It’s absurd.” Her voice rose with each sentence.

Oh, but he might have, my dear,
Annie thought,
and you know it, too, that’s why you’re so frightened.
Once again, she felt uncomfortably enmeshed in other lives, other emotions. Her own quest, to clear Max, was central to her, irrelevant to others. But she must take time to understand and respond, or she’d receive no help at all.

She made her voice soothing, reassuring. “God, I know, Janet. Posey’s such a
fool.
And somebody hid a gun in Max’s condo, so Posey’s still questioning Max.”

“A gun. The gun that killed Shane?” She reached out and grabbed Annie’s arm, and the rough fabric of the gardening glove pressed unpleasantly against her skin.

Annie stared at the suddenly animated woman. Was this an artful performance, guaranteed to project innocence?

“Is it the gun that killed Shane?” Janet cried again, her grip tightening.

“It’s being tested, but obviously it is. It’s a twenty-two and why else would anyone hide it in Max’s place?”

“So Posey thinks Max did it!” Sheer joy rang in her voice. “Then he isn’t after T.K.!” Tears began to roll down her cheeks, from behind the opaque glasses. She jammed the trowel into a baggy pocket, dropped Annie’s arm, then slipped off her gloves and wadded one to use as handkerchief. “Oh, my God, I’ve been so frightened. Annie, I’ve been terrified!”

How Annie might feel hadn’t yet occurred to her.

When the sniffles began to subside, Annie asked, “Is T.K. here? Or Cindy?”

The tears started again. “We were going to have lunch, and Cindy wouldn’t come down. When T.K. said she had to, she ran out of the house and slammed into her car. Then T.K. cried. Oh, God, he cried, and when I tried to tell him he shouldn’t even care, he left, too. And neither one’s come back all afternoon. Oh, Annie, everything’s just gone to hell!” Janet raised her splotched, tear-streaked face. “I hate Shane more dead than I did when he was alive.”

The short drive from the Hortons to the harbor reminded Annie just how small the island was, and how quickly any of her suspects could reach the condos. The harborside was jammed, and she pulled into one of the last parking spaces. It was a little early for dinner, even for the young families, but the hot-dog and ice-cream stands were busy, children raced to the far side of the marina to climb up into the lighthouse, and all the shops were open. She poked her head into Death on Demand. There was a crowd here, too, at the cash desk. Normally, it would have thrilled Annie to see all those books en route to new admirers. She scanned the titles—
The Spy Who Got His Feet Wet, The Villains, The Rosary Murders,
and I
Should Have Stayed Home.
Her eyes telegraphed a question to Ingrid, who soberly shook her head, then mouthed, “But Laurel—”

Annie hastily backed out and started up the boardwalk. So, no word on Max. God, what was the best lawyer in the United States of America
doing?
(She refused to permit her
mind to entertain any thoughts at all on what Laurel might be doing.)

So far she hadn’t eliminated anyone from this deadly sweepstakes. Any of them could have hidden that gun in Max’s condo.

Two teenagers on skateboards careened past her, barely escaping a tumble over the heavy chain to the docks below. Annie looked out over the water.
Sweet Lady
rode quietly at her mooring. What exactly had Shane taken to the boat Tuesday? It was going to be damn disappointing if she went to all the trouble to board the boat illegally and found nothing but a stinking bait box. But he wouldn’t have loaded bait for a midnight sail.

The sun was a fiery ball on the western horizon, gilding the boats a mellow peach. Nine o’clock. That’s when she’d make her move.

She suddenly felt very tired, tired and more than a little afraid. If the gun checked out, Posey had physical evidence. But the gun couldn’t have Max’s fingerprints. She knew that. And that would be a strong argument that he hadn’t hidden it. Besides, no one but an idiot would hide a murder weapon in his own house. Surely McClanahan was even now making that argument. Jesse Falkenstein would.

However, it was all too easy to look ahead and picture Posey’s arm-pumping assault on a jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are dealing here with
arrogance.
The arrogance of the very, very rich. Mr. Darling was so sure of himself, of his wealth, of his position in the community—”

Gag.

Annie gripped the chain between the harbor stanchions. The pleasant breeze off the water stirred her hair. Was there any point in talking to Burt and Carla?

Yes. Talking to the other suspects was the only game in town right now. And she had to know whether they, too, had equal opportunity to secrete the gun. Turning, she looked at the plate-glass windows of Burt’s store, Stuff ’N Such. It was perhaps a two-minute walk from here to the condos where both Max and Carla lived.

Talking to Burt was infinitely preferable to enduring the achingly slow passage of time and worrying about Max. What were they doing to him?

Annie lifted her chin and crossed to Stuff ’N Such.

Burt’s store gave Max the heebie-jeebies, as he once elegantly phrased it.

Heebie-jeebies? Annie had asked.

It was a phrase coined in the forties by an American cartoonist, whose work Max’s first stepfather had collected. To Max, it had always seemed a perfect description of physical discomfort similar to the prickle of your spine when nails screech down a chalkboard.

She understood Max’s feelings. Stuff ’N Such was crammed from ceiling to floor with anything and everything that Burt hoped tourists might purchase, including a junky display of relics from past merchandising eras and a wondrous assortment of carved wooden shorebirds. Tins in a rainbow of colors advertised Melrose Marshmallows, Fertax Cream Mints, Necco Peach Bars, Blumenthal’s Sweet Milk Chocolate Raisins, and Bunte’s Fine Confections. An old oak icebox was opened to reveal several milk bottles from Sunny Hill Dairy and Borden’s. Shelves on an opposite wall held perhaps fifty carved waterfowl. Every shorebird imaginable was represented—a great egret, a yellow-crowned night heron, the American bittern, the wood ibis, the oystercatcher. And throughout the long narrow shop rose the cloying scent of a half dozen potpourris and several dozen perfumed candles, ranging from bayberry to root beer.

Annie squeezed past two matrons whom it would be gracious to describe as portly, almost entangling herself in a bristly profusion of dried flower arrangements.

Burt exuded geniality as he bent near a lanky tourist in a wildly clashing floral-patterned shirt. “Now this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As you can see, I not only have the Ivory Watch Charm ad, I actually have one of the charms.” He held up the matchbox-sized replica. “It even has the gold ring on top.” He looked past his customer at Annie, and his smile skewed sideways.

Annie mouthed, “Can I see you for a minute when you’re free?”

The smile disappeared entirely, but Burt jerked his head briefly toward the closed door at the back of the shop.

In the office, Annie perched on the side of the worn walnut desk and waited. Burt came soon enough, but he stood just inside the door and didn’t sit down in the kitchen chair behind the rickety desk. “Hell of a day. You want to see me?”

“The police found a gun in Max’s condo.”

“That’s what I heard.” No offer of concern. No protestation of Max’s innocence. Nothing more than the bald reply, and an unfriendly face.

“It’s a plant, of course.” Her tone challenged him.

“I heard on the radio that it tested out to be the death weapon.”

Annie tensed. For Posey to have already released that information to the media didn’t bode well for Max.

Burt cleared his throat. “The sooner this is all cleared up, the better it will be for the players.”

“Cleared up? What do you mean, cleared up? For God’s sake, you can’t think Max shot Shane? You know Max better than that!”

He threw up his hands. “Somebody did it. Somebody who was there. Who am I supposed to pick? Hugo? Carla? Henny? Hell, I can’t believe anybody’d do it—but they did. And it’s up to the police to solve it. They don’t question people without reason.”

Annie controlled her fury. There was nothing to be gained by telling Burt what an absolute louse she thought he was. Gritting her teeth, she asked, “Where did you go after you left the school this morning?”

“My God, it’s June!” he exploded. “Where do you think I’d go? I came here. I’ve been here all day. I’ll be here until ten o’clock tonight. Now, if you don’t mind, Annie, I’ve got customers waiting and—”

“And you need money, don’t you?” she demanded sharply.

A nerve twitched in his cheek. “What’s that supposed to mean? Sure, I need money.”

“And it’s damn important to you to prevent Harley from putting in another retail store on the site of the playhouse, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. He opened the office door and held it for her, his face stony.

The wooden boardwalk was jammed now. Couples walked hand in hand; children, dogs, and bicyclists swarmed. The setting sun splashed crimson across the harbor, across sunburned faces and peeling noses. Boaters relaxed in deck chairs, gin and tonics at the ready. Strauss waltzes echoed merrily, if a little tinnily, from the harborside sound system. Annie eased through the crowd, passing the Proud Palmetto Design Shop and the Great Blue Heron Haberdashery, to stop in front of the Grand Strand Gallery.

A
CLOSED
sign hung inside the front door. A single painting, a small Klee, sat on an easel with a silver-gray satin backdrop. The lights along the walls were turned off; only the gilt frames could be seen in the dusky interior. In common with the other shops in the summertime, the Grand Strand Gallery was open until eight every evening Monday through Saturday. But not tonight. She glanced at her watch. Just after seven.