White Elephant Dead (9 page)

Annie whirled and snatched up the album and shook it. “This matters. This has to matter. Maybe there’s a secret code on the back of the pictures.” She flung herself into her chair, opened the album, lifted the first plastic cover and tugged at the picture. But the photo was only halfway out when she stopped and stared.

“Hey, Annie!” Max reached over and poked his finger between the plastic sheets to pull out a crisp thousand-dollar bill. Max reached into the cutlery drawer and found a pair of tongs. Using a dish cloth to hold the album, he eased up the remaining sheets, then lifted each photo with the tongs. Three rows of bills were placed behind thirty photographs.

“Ninety thousand dollars!” Annie’s voice wavered between a squeak and a choke. “My God, Max.”

Even Max, insouciant, always unruffled Max, was stunned. “Damn, that’s clever. Don’t you see, Annie, Kathryn had this album in her carry-on bag. When she went through customs, the agent might open the album but the bills would be hidden behind the photographs.” He used the dish cloth to carefully polish the page that Annie had handled and the inside and outside of the album covers.

Annie appreciated her fellow cat burglar’s concern for her fingerprints. And his. But she stared at the album as if it had suddenly turned into a poisonous toad. “What are we going to do with it?”

“Nothing right now.” He tossed the album onto the counter.

“All that money,” Annie breathed. “Who does it belong to?”

“I don’t know. We can pretty safely assume Kathryn didn’t come by it honestly.” He looked at her with admiration. “You win, hands down. We were starting at the wrong
end. Now we know what to do. We’ve got to find out everything about Kathryn Girard.”

Max was pleased with the legend on the plate glass of Confidential Commissions. Beneath the firm name in gold letters, black letters invited:
TROUBLED, PUZZLED, CURIOUS? WHATEVER YOUR PROBLEM, WE ARE HERE TO HELP
. His eyes widened. The lights were already on. He reached out, turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He stepped inside.

His secretary Barb, big, blond, buxom and bright, looked up from her computer. “I’ve been here since five,” she said briskly. “I heard all about everything at mah-jongg last night. If Garrett thinks he can arrest Henny Brawley, he’s got another thing coming!”

Max wondered if Garrett was aware yet that he was trifling with an island icon.

“And Max”—Barb shoved back her chair—“you’re not going to believe this, but Kathryn Girard doesn’t exist! No driver’s license, no Social Security number, no taxes paid. She had a small bank account here in town, but she closed it out yesterday. Apparently, she always paid for everything in cash. No credit card. I’ve tried to crack the FBI’s witness protection program, but I haven’t had any luck.”

“No driver’s license?” His face was intent.

Barb was definite. “Not from the sovereign state of South Carolina.”

“That’s interesting, because apparently the police found one in her purse. It must have been a fake. Okay, Barb, see what you can pick up on this name,” and he wrote down Miriam Gardner.

Annie clicked off the phone. Thank heavens for Ingrid. Ingrid Smith Webb was not only a friend, she was the most agreeable employee in the world and she was quite willing to open Death on Demand this morning even though she wasn’t due in until noon. Annie glanced at the clock. How could it already be eight-thirty? She hurried across the
kitchen—she wanted to go by the hospital but she needed to be at the Women’s Club by nine and the thought of reporting late to Emma Clyde inspired speed—when she skidded to a stop beside the crumpled blue plastic bag from the emergency room. She didn’t want Henny’s clothes to mildew. In the Low Country humidity, damp things squeezed into plastic could develop a green film faster than Clark Kent crossing the newsroom. Annie emptied the sack: a white blouse, navy slacks, white cotton bra and panties, white cotton tennis socks, navy tennis shoes.

Holding the clothes, she clattered down the steps into the garage and turned toward the washing machine. Last night, she and Max had draped their muddy clothes across the dryer. She decided on a dark wash first. Automatically—her mind focused on seeing Henny and reporting to Emma and talking to Pamela Potts and the club auditorium filled with donations for the White Elephant Sale—Annie turned out the pockets. Nothing in Max’s, a bookmark in hers, a folded note card in Henny’s.

Annie smoothed out the card, expecting a list of wanted books in Henny’s small, neat printing. Instead, she saw a computer printout pick-up list for the White Elephant Sale. A big, dark X covered the printed addresses. Annie immediately recognized the addresses because this was the list that had puzzled her and Max. Next to the big X, four new addresses were scrawled in oversize printing, the same flamboyant, somehow impudent script that Annie had seen only last night in a single sentence deeply imprinted on the white notepad at Kathryn Girard’s store:
Women’s Club van at four o’clock Thursday
!!!!

Annie stared at the four new addresses—31 Mockingbird Lane, 17 Ship’s Galley Road, 8 Porpoise Place, 22 Sea Oats Circle—and knew she was seeing a map to murder.

Annie loved coming to Confidential Commissions. The outer office, where Max’s secretary presided with a ready smile and a sunny disposition, was fairly long and narrow
but the morning sun poured a golden swath across the heart-pine floors. Barb’s white pine desk and assorted white wicker chairs added a casual beach air. Modigliani prints on the walls were not quite as colorful as Barb with her beehive hairstyle and penchant for fiery red dresses.

Max’s spacious office featured a red leather chair equipped with everything short of a sauna, an Italian Renaissance desk fit for a Borgia and a rose and cream Persian rug Aladdin might have coveted. The glass-covered book-cases, filled with lawbooks, provided an aura of gravity and sobriety, although Max was always quick to point out that he was not practicing law (he was accredited in New York but the sovereign state of South Carolina denies reciprocity and Max had declared that one bar exam was enough for a single lifetime), nor was he a private detective (the sovereign state of South Carolina has particular requirements for that license). But, he always concluded grandly, there was no law against a man giving advice. When delivering himself of this pronouncement, he looked adorably Joe Hardyish (to Annie), his handsome face ostensibly serious, his dark blue eyes sparkling with delight. Max felt his office was a superlatively tasteful retreat which should not be expected to maintain itself on the cash flow generated by those seeking help. As he often pointed out to Annie, his industrious grandparents had acquired enough money that it would really be rather unseemly for him to add to the family fortune. Annie was rarely impressed by this argument and often suggested he close Confidential Commissions, since it usually was devoid of clients, and devote himself to good works. Max pondered this, wondering if good works included golf, gin rummy and making love to his wife.

But this morning, it gratified Annie’s Calvinistic soul to see the office pulsing with barely leashed energy. Barb hunched at her computer, face intent, sparing Annie the briefest of glances and giving a swift wave as a greeting.

Max was on the telephone. His blond brows quirked up in surprise.

Annie held aloft the note card she’d found in Henny’s slacks.

Max craned his neck to watch as she crossed to a map of the island. It was a rather fanciful map with a coat of arms of crossed golf clubs and a can-can line of long-toed great blue herons, but the streets were there. Annie spotted the four addresses and felt a tingle of awe.

“Yes, I’m a lawyer for the estate of Walter Grosbeek, and we’ve been led to understand that Ms. Gardner is a lateral descendant through the Menhaden family…”

Never had Max sounded stuffier.

Annie gave him a thumbs-up and grabbed a fresh legal pad from the stack on his desk. Quickly, she sketched the island, the gate to the resort, the south island loop, Laughing Gull Lane and Red-Tailed Hawk Road. All four residences were within the resort. Annie marked the addresses.

“…imperative we be able to communicate…”

Kathryn Girard set out to visit these houses, ostensibly to pick up donations. But these addresses didn’t belong on her list. She had put them there herself.

“…and that address in San Miguel de Allende? Yes”—he wrote swiftly—“thanks so much. And if she should be in contact with you, if you would be so kind as to give her our address, Bell, Bonkers and Billman, 8219 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 49424, Attention: Grisham Q. Billman, Esq. Yes, thank you for…”

Annie stared at the addresses in that distinctive, extravagant script. Kathryn Girard intended to make pick-ups, all right, but not donations to the Women’s Club. Annie pictured Kathryn standing by the bulletin board at the Women’s Club, scrawling her substitute list, then turning away with a secretive, satisfied, triumphant smile, ready to use the club van for her swing around the resort area for pick-ups that might better be described as donations to the fund for the enrichment of one Kathryn Girard. Why do people fork over money in secret? It didn’t take almost twenty-five
years of assiduous mystery reading—starting with
The Secret of the Old Clock
—to know the answer.

“Blackmail!” she exclaimed. The money-laden album, the packed bags. Yes.

Max threw her a startled look. “…your assistance.” He put down the receiver, unfurled his six-foot frame from the red leather embrace. When he stood beside her, his arm automatically curved around her waist.

Annie pointed at the revised pick-up list and at her map. “Don’t you see? That’s how Henny knew where Kathryn planned to go.”

“Why did Kathryn leave that list behind?” Max, too, recognized the handwriting, but his tone was puzzled.

“Just for the hell of it. Because she wanted to point to her victims even if nobody else ever understood the joke. She was thumbing her nose at everybody, at the club, at the people she was blackmailing.” Annie traced the line on her map to Marsh Tacky Road. “She never thought she was going to end up dead in the back of the van. She couldn’t tell anyone how clever she was”—Annie worked it out in her mind, a picture growing of a malevolent personality that had been well hidden beneath the surface charm of a woman eager to be a part of the community, a woman active in charitable works, a woman always willing to listen as others talked—“but this was a way of making a public yet covert announcement.” Annie shivered. “Max, she must have been vicious. Why else list the addresses? She was leaving, but she liked leaving behind a little goad for her victims. Some of them might very well have seen that list on the bulletin board and felt a moment of panic. I suppose she was going to enjoy that thought as she traveled. When was she flying out?”

Max bent over the table, studied the map. “Saturday morning. From Savannah to Atlanta to Dallas to Mexico City.”

Annie looked at him in admiration. “How did you get the address in San Miguel de Allende?”

“That was easy.” He was as casual as Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen solving the riddle of the disappearing toy shop. “She had an apartment in L.A. in the name of Miriam Gardner, ditto the credit card, passport and airline ticket. I figured the L.A. apartment manager might have her address in Mexico.” He made it sound quite reasonable. “But”—he looked at her quizzically—“aren’t you making a leap, jumping from these addresses”—he gestured at the map—“to blackmail?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Annie moved around his desk, pulled out a bottom drawer and fished out the cross-directory.

Max studied the map. “Drugs.”

Annie looked up the addresses and wrote the names on his legal pad:

Annie tapped the last name and address. “Drugs? Our associate rector? His wife?”

“Blackmail?” Max asked wryly.

“Blackmail.” Annie was decisive. “Think about the money in the album, Max. So much money. Supplying drugs to four people would bring in cash. But not ninety thousand dollars.” Annie shivered. “No, it has to be blackmail. That’s the only thing that makes sense.” She sighed. “People can have secrets, Max.”

It was very quiet in that serene and beautifully appointed office. Max picked up the legal pad, his face somber. “Annie, we can’t sit on this.” He ripped off the sheet and waved it. “We have to call Garrett. But…” He rubbed his knuckles against his chin.

“I know.” She paced between the desk and the wall map. “It won’t mean anything unless we tell him about the money. And how can we do that?” There was no way they could admit to their clandestine visit to Kathryn’s store and apartment without landing in real trouble.

A quick smile curved Max’s mouth. “Are you game for a little stage-managing?”

“Sure.” But after she heard his proposal, she knew she’d better be both game and damn lucky.