Sugarplum Dead

by Carolyn Hart

  “Come on.” Annie was brisk. “Let’s put this stuff back. Then we’ll take a look at your mom’s car.”

  Max dialed. Unlike their home phone, the Confidential Commissions phone number showed up as Unavailable on caller IDs. It would be interesting to see if Kate Rutledge answered. He and Annie always ignored Unavailable calls, Annie singing as she waltzed past the phone, “I’m Unavailable, that’s what I am…”

  “Hello.” Kate Rutledge’s voice was smooth and self-possessed.

  “Miss Rutledge.” Max had spent a year abroad at Oxford during his college days and he was enough of a natural mimic that he had no trouble with a British accent. He also raised the pitch of his voice just slightly. “I’m calling from the Tourist Board. We make an effort to follow up on visitors to the island. You visited Bermuda during September and stayed at the Southampton Princess. Were your accommodations satisfactory?”

  “Very satisfactory.”

  “Did you choose the American Plan or the European Plan?”

  “The American Plan.”

  “And your traveling companion, Dr. Swanson—”

  She interrupted immediately. “I had no traveling companion.”

  “No? That isn’t the information I have here.”

  “Who is this?” Her tone was sharp.

  Max kept his voice high and accented, but the tone changed. “An interested party, Miss Rutledge. I’ll be back in touch.”

  He hung up. Too bad he wasn’t standing beside Kate Rutledge. He was willing to bet she was dialing the Evermore Foundation right this minute.

  Happy’s car was unlocked. Rachel stood stiffly by the driver’s door, staring at the front seat. Rolls of Christmas paper poked out of a plastic grocery sack. Annie peeked into a Belk’s sack: two sweaters and a pair of Guess jeans. She shielded the contents from Rachel’s eyes, but Rachel was gazing forlornly at the Christmas paper. Annie made herself a promise. She’d wrap these gifts for Rachel and put her mom’s name on the cards. She made sure there was nothing more in the sack, folded it shut. She began to scoot out of the seat. “I don’t think—” Then she saw a scrap of paper on the floor.

  Annie bent over, picked up the scrap, which turned out to be a cash receipt for fifty cents. The date was yesterday. The time, two-twenty-four P.M. The place, the Lucy Kincaid Memorial Library.

  Annie felt a surge of triumph. Here was the first confirmation of the elaborate theory built on Happy’s conversation with Wayne. She backed out of the car and turned to Rachel, ready to share the discovery.

  But Rachel was looking toward the back door. Alice Schiller hurried down the steps. “Rachel, Annie.”

  Rachel backed up against the car. “I don’t want to talk to Aunt Rita again. I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Annie wasn’t sure whether Rachel meant her mother’s murder or the plan for the funeral. But clearly, the girl was upset. Annie took a step forward, tucking the receipt in her skirt pocket.

  In the late afternoon sun, Alice’s face looked weary. One eyelid flickered in a tic. “I’m glad I found you. I suppose you know there’s been no luck in the search for the papers. Wayne says maybe there weren’t any papers.”

  “Mom said there were.” Rachel’s voice rose.

  “It’s all right.” Alice reached out, patted Rachel’s thin shoulder. “Perhaps your mother meant she had information that only she understood. I know we were all hoping to find something. Now, we’re going to have an early light dinner.” She looked at Annie. “Of course, we hope you will eat with us.”

  Annie had already made up her mind. “Thanks, no. I need to run home and get some things for tonight and see my husband.” And make one other stop on the way. Her fingers touched the receipt in her pocket.

  Alice smoothed back a strand of dark red hair. “Will you be back in time for the séance?”

  Rachel raised her hands as if to ward off a blow. “I can’t do that.”

  Alice slipped an arm around her thin shoulders. “Of course not. I’ve already told Marguerite that Annie will represent you. It’s quite all right, Rachel.”

  Rachel grabbed Annie’s arm. “You’ll watch him, won’t you? Annie, make him give himself away.”

  As she drove, Annie called home. No answer. She checked her watch and left a message. “I’m stopping by the library, but I’ll be home in a few minutes to pick up some clothes. Let’s have dinner at Parotti’s. I’ll meet you there at six. I’ve got lots to tell you.”

  Max dug a pair of golf gloves out of his bag. He picked up the sheet of paper from the printer, reread the message:

  HAPPY LAURANCE KNEW. SO DO I.

  He folded the sheet (one carefully eased out from the middle of a new package of paper) and placed it in a file folder. He picked up the telephone directory, found Kate Rutledge’s address. Hmm. She lived not far from Laurel in a house on Marsh Hawk Lagoon. A bike trail ran conveniently near that lagoon.

  Edith Cummings yanked at her curly black hair. Her bright dark eyes were pools of concentration. “I know. Oh God, I can almost see it.” She whirled away from the bank of computers (all three of them) and paced across the hardwood floor to the Information Desk. Her face sagged like a lugubrious bloodhound. “Yesterday. We had a rush of users. Old Man Fulton was here and he’s a case. Wants to stay on the damn machine all day. I keep telling him it’s a max of thirty minutes per customer as long as anybody’s waiting. It’s after school, there are always about six high school boys lurking near him and I know what the hell they’re all looking at, but life’s short and I am not their mother. Or Old Man Fulton’s, either. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Happy Laurance. She came in about two and had to wait, but she asked me to show her how to call up newspaper archives. I went through it a couple of times and I got her started.” Edith’s face scrunched. “What was it? What the hell was it?” Suddenly her eyes flew open, her hands splatted together. “I got it, I got it! The Reno Gazette-Journal.”

  Annie stared at her blankly.

  The supreme satisfaction eased out of Edith’s gamine face. “So what’s the problem?”

  “The Reno Gazette-Journal,” Annie repeated slowly. “As in Nevada?”

  “You got it.”

  “I don’t suppose you know what year…”

  “Annie”—Edith’s tone was dangerously pleasant—“I deal with hundreds of questions every day. Be grateful for what you got.”

  On Friday nights at Parotti’s every seat was taken. The jukebox (a real one, circa 1950) flashed red and green. Old songs (“Night and Day,” “The Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “Sentimental Journey”) could scarcely be heard above the blare of conversation, the chink of dishes, and the scrape of chairs on the hardwood floor. Since Ben’s marriage, the sweet-scented wood shavings were used only near the bait coolers. Fortunately, the smell of the latter was almost overborne by barbecue smoke and beer on tap. Their booth was the last in the line before the swinging doors to the kitchen, adding the clang of pans and shouted orders to the general noise.

  “Nevada?” Max speared a clam fritter, dipped it in the red sauce. “I don’t get it.”

  Annie took a spoonful of the succulent baked oyster casserole. Honestly, what did Ben’s wife put in this dish? Was that a hint of Parmesan cheese? “I don’t, either. I mean, what’s Reno? Gambling. Golf. Shows.”

  Max chewed. “A long time ago that’s where people went to get divorced. Before divorce got easy everywhere.”

  Annie wondered if Laurel had dissolved some unions there, decided it might not be politic to ask. “So who’s divorced? Besides Happy.” Certainly Happy should know where her own marriages had ended, and what would her marital history have to do with Emory Swanson? Annie put down her fork with a bang. “Marriage! Maybe Emory and Kate got married in Reno!” It was also an easy place to get married, everywhere from a casino to a roadside chapel.

  Max took a bite of the garlic mashed potatoes. “That makes some sense. We know—or think we know—that Happy wanted a listing from the v
ital statistics section in a newspaper. That limits it to a birth, a death, a marriage license, a divorce filed, a divorce granted.”

  Annie finished, regretfully, her portion of oyster casserole. She drank her iced tea (apricot-flavored). “Does Ben have those funny beers? You know, orange and petunia and whatnot?”

  Max looked horrified and clutched his bottle of Beck’s. “Surely not.”

  Annie grinned. “I wasn’t suggesting he add them to the menu. It’s just that everything’s changed so much since he got married.”

  Max gazed across the packed room. “Not down deep. He always had great food. Nothing ever really changes, Annie. Ben was a spiffy guy waiting to happen.”

  Annie felt a sudden chill. Max’s lighthearted comment could be viewed as either wonderful or awful. “Nothing ever really changes…” She repeated the words slowly. If you stripped a heart to its core, discarded the externals, the bedrock would be bared. That’s what they needed to do, look past the externals, discover the heart willing to do evil.

  If only the choices weren’t so limited: Swanson, Rachel, Mike, Pudge…

  Max reached across the table, grabbed her hand. “Hey, we’ll get there, Annie.” He frowned. “I wish there was a reason for me to go to that séance tonight. But we’re lucky you can go.”

  Annie didn’t feel lucky. She hated the thought. Trafficking with the supernatural was wrong. She knew that, knew it with her heart and her mind and deep in her bones. At least Rachel would not be there. She took comfort in that and in her certainty that Swanson was a fake, that whatever happened would be created. But still…

  Max gave her hand a squeeze, picked up his beer bottle. “Here’s to the vanquishment of our foes.” He downed the rest of his beer, planted his elbows on the table. “Pay particular attention to Swanson. See if he’s rattled.” His grin was part mischievous kid, part combative antagonist. “It’s too bad we can’t see Kate Rutledge right now. I’ll bet she damn sure is rattled. First the phone call, then the letter tucked in her front screen.”

  Annie looked at him sharply. “Her front screen! What if she saw you?”

  His blue eyes gleamed. “She saw an elderly man with a beard wearing a cap and a cape.”

  “No. Not a beard.” Annie looked at him skeptically.

  He reached in his pocket, pulled out a shaggy white beard. “Confidential Commissions is prepared for every eventuality.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He laughed. “Not really. I went by the five-and-dime and bought a Santa Claus costume.” He looked abruptly serious. “I had no intention of being recognized. Now she’ll be on a lookout for a hunched-over old man with a white beard and a British accent. I hope she’s worried as hell.”

  Annie glimpsed a Max she didn’t know—a tough, unrelenting, determined foe. “Why do you dislike her so much?”

  He looked at Annie gravely. “She’s slick, attractive, like glossy china. Sure of herself. Arrogant. But underneath the attractive sheen, she was disdainful of Laurel yesterday, amused that she was distressed. That tells me she despises people who are vulnerable. Maybe it’s time she got a little of her own back.”

  But when Ben brought their check and they rose to go, Max bent down. “Annie, you don’t have to go.”

  She waited until they were outside, then she stepped into his arms. He held her tight. She took a deep breath, then stepped away. The Christmas lights wrapped around the lamp poles sparkled, spangling the parked cars with red and green.

  Max grabbed her hand. “I didn’t realize you were so upset about going to the séance. You don’t have—”

  “Yes. I do.” She squeezed his hand. She said lightly, “A woman has to do what a woman has to do.” She stood on tiptoe, kissed him, turned away. He didn’t call her back though she knew he was watching as she walked to her car. Max understood. Yes, she hated what lay ahead. She was scared and upset and unsure, but Pudge and Rachel needed her help and that was all that mattered.

  She slipped into her car. The séance would start in twenty minutes.

  Twenty-four

  THE CANDLELIGHT WAVERED as Emory Swanson closed the door. Shadows rippled across the stage, disappeared in the heavy folds of the curtain. A candle the color of rich cream sat on a gold-leafed pottery tray in the center of the small stage. It was a huge candle, a foot tall, perhaps eight inches in circumference. A faint coil of white smoke rose, swirled to nothing. The heavy scent of gardenia overlay the stale stuffiness of the small theater. In the fitful light of the candle, every face was shadowed, dimly seen. The scrape of Swanson’s chair as he took his place between Marguerite and Wayne was startling in the thick quiet. Clasping hands, eight of them sat in a circle around the burning candle. Eight of them, waiting.

  Marguerite hunched forward, eyes protruding above jutting cheekbones. Her breath rasped in her throat. With sickening regularity, a tremor swept her.

  So close their shoulders touched, Alice’s brooding face watched Marguerite. She seemed to absorb some of that recurring tremor, using her own thin body to bolster the woman beside her. The two women were so similar yet so different: Marguerite’s richly red hair long and swaying, Alice’s pulled back in a sleek bun; Marguerite scarcely in control, Alice coldly calm; Marguerite’s eyes alive with pain, Alice’s gaze intent and measuring.

  Swanson darted a swift glance at Marguerite, his hooded eyes grim.

  Annie watched him intently. Tonight there was no trace of the smiling dinner guest. His heavy face was somber, wary. He didn’t look like a man eager to trod the Golden Path.

  Wayne cleared his throat, but didn’t speak. He was accustomed to talking, being in charge, telling other people what to think. He gave a little shrug and crossed his feet, ostensibly relaxed. A shadow fell across one temple, giving his bearded face a leering countenance like a one-eyed pirate.

  Terry pursed his mouth, puffing his red cheeks in disdain, but his eyes probed the dark shadows at the back of the stage. He moved restlessly in his seat.

  Beside him, Joan gave a little squeal. “Oh, you scared me.”

  Donna’s thin, petulant face looked uneasy.

  Annie felt a sheen of sweat on her face, a faint nausea gathering in her throat. Alice’s hand was cool and limp. Donna’s touch was hot and dry, like a desert insect in the summer. Annie wanted to jerk her hands away, pull free of this dark circle, dash through the door to air and freedom.

  Donna murmured, “Take a deep breath.”

  Annie nodded gratefully and shot Donna a look of surprise. She wouldn’t have expected empathy from this tart-tongued, bitter woman. Annie had an overpowering awareness of the figures in that tight circle. Marguerite made an odd sound, midway between a moan and a sigh. Alice’s shoulders tightened. Donna’s hand trembled in Annie’s grasp. Joan’s short navy jacket trimmed with gold braid and long navy skirt were perfect for an afternoon tea, but her distended eyes and quivering mouth destroyed the illusion of normality. Terry’s glare was both defiant and frightened. Wayne poked his head forward, like a man unsure of the path on a dark night.

  “Peace.” Swanson’s voice was deep. “We are ready.”

  Annie would have liked to hoot and jeer, but there was a terrible gravity to Swanson’s voice as if he saw more than they, as if they were ringed by presences. She stared at him, wondered that he didn’t feel the force of her gaze. His head was bent, his eyes closed. He held up the hands clasping his. “Peace. We are ready. Peace…”

  The words rolled over them, the cadence majestic. Annie felt buffeted by emotion, waves of pain and fear, anguish and hope, anger and satisfaction, swirling around her, intangible emanations from the tight, constrained circle. She sat still as stone. If only she could identify the source. Who was so terribly frightened? Someone in this room reeked of terror. Someone had killed and fear reverberated within that mind.

  “…ready. Peace. We are—”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself.” The voice was faint and muffled but distinctive, the tone sharp but lightly ironic
. It was like hearing an echo, near yet far, of a commanding, quick, ebullient voice. There was a sudden, overpowering waft of gardenia, sweet and cloying. “There are definite limits to—”

  Marguerite screamed. Her head jerked back, she stared wildly around the dim stage. “Claude, Claude, where are you? Claude—”

  “Oh my God.” It was a keening wail. “That’s Claude. Oh my God…” Joan pulled free, came to her feet. Her chair crashed to the stage. “I want out—”

  “Hush.” Marguerite’s cry was terrible. She rose, one hand tight against her chest, wavered unsteadily. “Claude is here. Claude—”

  Annie watched Emory Swanson. She couldn’t be certain, but there was an instant when his eyes flared in surprise before his face was wiped clean of all expression. Annie was willing to bet Claude was a hell of a shock to Dr. Crystal.

  Wayne said sharply, “I don’t like this.”

  Terry’s voice was high. “That sounded like Dad. My God, that was Dad!”

  “Wait. Quiet, please!” Swanson’s deep voice cut across the exclamations.

  Wayne moved across the stage, down the steps and flipped on the chandelier. The bright white light was harsh on their eyes. “Let’s check this out.” He glared at Swanson, stalked up the steps to the stage-left curtain and pulled it open, his eyes raking up and down.

  Marguerite swung toward Swanson. She wore a dark purple dress, long and free-flowing. “Where is Claude?” Her voice was piteous. Tears furrowed her cheeks. She looked as gaunt and desperate as a mourning figure pacing a widow’s walk.

  Swanson was slow in answering. His hooded eyes went swiftly from face to face.

  Annie felt a curious pleasure. Swanson didn’t know who had rigged this performance. He was afraid to make any claim. And afraid not to. He couldn’t be sure what might happen next. If he shouted fraud, even Marguerite might wonder why. She might also wonder how he could be so certain. Swanson’s eyes were hard, but he bent toward Marguerite solicitously. “We can only walk the Golden Path in calmness and quiet. Any outburst drives—”