Deadly Valentine

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Max felt an instant’s qualm, then realized he needn’t worry. Laurel had arrived only Tuesday morning. There certainly wasn’t time for—He skirted the thought and asked quickly, “Her? Do you have any idea who Sydney was talking about? Either the man or the woman?”

  “No. Oh, I knew she was sleeping with somebody new. The signals were always the same. This time she went on and on about how fresh it all was until I stopped listening. She was always really coy about it at first. You can bet the guy was stressing how this was just a great, wonderful secret love between the two of them. Of course, they never want their wives to know. Sydney was such a fool. But I knew she’d eventually tell me who he was. She always did when the guy dumped her.”

  “This call was Monday night?” On his legal pad, Max sketched a double bed with intertwined question marks.

  “Yes. I … Look, she was so upset. Do you suppose she found her husband in bed with somebody?”

  Max tensed. So that idea had occurred to Susie, too. But he was almost certain he’d unearthed everything there was to know about Howard Cahill. And there was no hint that he was romantically involved with anyone. Until he met Laurel Tuesday morning. But that was Tuesday morning.

  “Do you think it would have upset her that much, if she thought Howard was involved with another woman?”

  “Oh, yeah.” A wry laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure it would have. Like I say, I don’t know what the deal was, but she was more upset than I’d ever heard her.”

  Max wrote on his pad: How could he make love to her?

  Yes, Susie Dunlap had heard something different in Sydney’s frenzied call.

  This time Sydney wasn’t being dumped; this time Sydney was being duped. Would she have been that upset at the duplicity of a lover?

  He thought out loud. “You’d think she was used to being pushed aside.”

  Susie’s voice was decisive. And sad. “A woman like her never gets used to it. Poor old Sydney. She was such a sap. I mean, she always thought she was in love.”

  Max didn’t ask what Susie thought. He knew damn well she never confused sex with love. He glanced once again at a familiar picture. God, how good it was when the two were one.

  Unaware of Max’s exposure to influences she certainly would not consider benign, Annie followed the massive, distinctly nonbuderish back through the baronial entrance hall with its heavy carved-stone beams, dark parquet flooring, and hand-troweled stucco walls to a massive arch that opened into a magnificent drawing room bursting with old-world color, from the wine-red Aubusson carpet to the enormous blue and gold sixteenth-century Flemish wall tapestry to the ornately figured purple, cinnamon, and maroon gros-point Louis XV beechwood chairs.

  Billye Burger rose from one of the chairs. “Thank you, Marshall.” Her nod to the giant was dismissive. She flowed gracefully toward her guest. “Annie, it’s so good to see you.” Her speech was quintessentially Texas rich, a lilting southern undertone beneath a light, social, impervious patina. Her lips curved in an automatic smile, but shrewd blue eyes studied Annie thoughtfully. As always, her improbably blond hair was piled high on her head in an elaborate beehive. Her black and white pebble print silk dress made Annie feel like a peasant misplaced from the fields, although she’d been rather pleased with her khaki skirt and shell-pink blouse when she’d dressed that morning. The double strand of pearls at Billye’s throat had the unmistakable sheen of the finest Majorca could produce as did the matching earrings. A diamond ring that glittered like a glacier in the midnight sun was set off by an ivory bracelet with a gold lion’s-head inset. A matching gold pin, the lion in full stride, rode on her collar. Rubies served as eyes for the king of beasts.

  “I feel so bad I haven’t been over to see you, welcome you to our lovely retreat.” Her embrace, one perfumed cheek grazing Annie’s, was as light as the brush of a monarch’s wing. Her comments flowed on, relentless as a river of honey, as she directed Annie to a sofa with alternating bands of rose and taupe fabric. She dropped into one of the gros-point chairs and beamed at her guest.

  “So delighted you and Max have joined us here at Scarlet King.” Billye didn’t permit a frown to crease her perfect skin—Annie wondered how many times she’d resorted to plastic surgery—but her mouth pursed with distaste. “Of course, everything’s so hideous now, with this dreadful crime.” A sober shake of her head left the lacquered hair undisturbed. “Marshall said you wanted to see Buck and me about a neighborhood matter? Why, I bet that you and that handsome husband of yours are trying to figure out who killed Sydney. Am I right now?” Her shrewd gaze didn’t match her arch tone.

  Annie admired her skill. Without abandoning a scintilla of her social manner, Billye had cut through to the bone. Which prompted Annie to alter her plan. Her chattery approach to Lisa Graham wouldn’t work here.

  “In a way,” Annie replied, with, she hoped, a convincing appearance of frankness. “Certainly, if Chief Saulter were in charge of the investigation, we wouldn’t interfere. But the circuit solicitor from the mainland has taken over, and it looks like he’s convinced that Howard murdered Sydney.”

  Her hostess fingered the shiny golden lion at her throat. “You don’t think so?” Her tone was neutral at best.

  Annie looked at her in surprise.

  Unabashed, Billye gave the daintiest of shrugs. “Husbands do so often kill wives, you know,” she drawled. “I can’t tell you how many times Buck defended some fellow who’d had enough.” Her perfect rosy lips twitched a little in amusement. “There, now, I’ve shocked you. A young girl like you, just married. Believe me, honey, a man may tomcat all he likes, but he won’t put up with his wife in somebody else’s bed for one minute. Not for a second.” She smoothed her shiny blond coiffure. “At least, not in Texas.”

  There was more than a germ of truth in that one, Annie knew.

  “So you believe Howard’s guilty?” Annie asked slowly.

  A delicate sigh of regret. “I don’t see how anything else figures.” There was honest bewilderment in the honeyed voice. “All this insinuation in the paper about Sydney slipping away to an illicit rendezvous and being killed by her lover. Why, you and I know that’s nonsense.” Billye shook her head slightly. “Poor Sydney. Men couldn’t get away from her fast enough once they’d satisfied themselves. I mean, face it, honey, all she had was her body.”

  The soft-spoken words hung in the air between them like the mournful echo of faraway church bells.

  Poor Sydney. Poor, poor Sydney.

  But where did that leave them? If a lover didn’t pen that valentine, then who hated Sydney enough to send a siren song to summon her to death? Her husband? Or had Howard followed her to the gazebo and struck her down in a jealous fury?

  Annie glanced at the garlanded cupids adorning a gilt mirror frame that hung on the wall behind Billye. “Howard had put up with it for a long time, from all we’ve heard. But you and Buck knew them well, didn’t you?” She paused, took her courage in hand, and asked, “Did Buck like Sydney?”

  There were no lines on Billye’s marble-perfect skin to crease in a smile, but a subtle change of musculature indicated amusement. “Why, he sure did, honey. Buck’s all man. I guess you can tell that, as well as any woman. But let me tell you something, he’s my man.”

  “So you’re sure Buck never was involved with her?”

  Billye leaned back comfortably in the regal chair; now her smile was wide. “I didn’t say that, honey. But you can ask him for yourself.” She looked toward the archway. “Come on in, honey. Annie and I’ve been worryin’ over what happened to Sydney.”

  Buck Burger made even a Tudor archway seem small. And there were, Annie decided, no flies on Buck when it came to male pulchritude. He wasn’t, by any means, her ideal (as in young and blond and well built with dark blue eyes), but Buck’s skin-tight Levi’s and smooth-fitting yellow cotton knit crewneck emphasized muscles and lots of them in all the right places, despite his sixty-odd years. His body was in better shape than his face. Broken blood
vessels splayed his heavy cheeks with tiny rivulets of red and his brow and nose and chin were simian-blunt under thinning gray hair.

  “Why, hello there, Annie. Sure good to see a neighbor. We’ll have to have a little drink to celebrate.” His red alligator cowboy boots glistened in a shaft of sunlight from a west window as he moved toward a sideboard. The ruby ring on his hand flashed as he picked up a diamond-bright Waterford crystal tumbler and reached toward a row of decanters. “What’ll you have, sweetheart?”

  Billye, with a born hostess’s perception, saved her from answering. “Now Buck, I imagine Annie’d rather have tea or a spritzer.”

  “Tea, please.” Annie flashed an appreciative smile as Billye pressed a button.

  Buck’s huge hand closed on a matching cut glass decanter. He poured a tumbler almost full. “Good enough. You ladies pick your own poison. As for me, I’ll have some Texas tea.” His chest rumbled with laughter. He held out the glass for Annie to see. “Bourbon,” he amplified.

  A slim, dark, uniformed maid appeared in the archway.

  “Iced tea, Elena, for Mrs. Darling and me.”

  Buck settled heavily in the beechwood chair opposite Billye’s. He propped his boots on a Queen Anne bench with a travertine inset and drank down half the glass. “Now, Billye, Annie”—he wiped his lips with the back of a hand—“it’s much too pretty a day for you sweet ladies to be talking about depressing things.” It was, even for Buck, an exceptionally inane comment, but Annie wasn’t fooled into dismissing him as a rich buffoon. The gaze he fastened on her, as he lifted the tumbler again, was canny, pugnacious, appraising, and not the least bit stupid.

  Annie started to simmer. Did they think she was an idiot? Max was always reminding her that honey captured more bees than vinegar. But sometimes she didn’t give a damn. Like now.

  “From what Billye says,” Annie said crisply, “I gather she didn’t mind that you had an affair with Sydney.”

  For a split instant, the hand holding the tumbler paused in middescent and bloodshot green eyes widened. Then another deep rumble of laughter sounded. “My, it sounds like you ladies really let down your hair.”

  “Did you have an affair with Sydney?” Annie pressed.

  Buck finished off his drink, then glanced good humoredly at Billye, who smiled at him approvingly. “Why, I don’t want to disappoint my wife. If she said so, why I guess it’s so.”

  The maid entered with a silver tray and huge old-fashioned glasses filled with crushed ice and tea. Slices of lemon and orange and sprigs of mint decorated the rims.

  “Sugar?” Billye asked, only of course it sounded like “shugah.”

  Annie shook her head and damned the social proprieties. Every time she felt close to ferreting out something useful, she was offered tea. And she felt abruptly that this interlude had been expertly stage-managed.

  It was as fake as any Holmes pastiche.

  Only in Noel Coward comedies did husbands and wives indulge in pleasant nattering about infidelity.

  Unless Billye and Buck Burger inhabited a totally different emotional plane than she and Max.

  But they might.

  So she didn’t know what she believed. What she heard. What she saw. Or what she felt.

  Was there uneasiness in Buck’s apparently placid gaze? Did pain lurk behind the shrewdness in Billye’s eyes?

  Annie put down her tea untasted. “You didn’t even care?” she asked Billye softly.

  That carefully and artfully tightened new-old face showed no emotion, but the no longer young hands lying in Billye’s lap, fingers laden with gold and diamonds, were rigidly immobile. Yet her voice still flowed like Texas honey. “Of course I cared about poor, dear Sydney.”

  It was, Annie felt confident, a willful misunderstanding.

  “But you have to understand that Buck and I had nothing to do with any of it.”

  It was a declaration. Annie wondered if it might also be a prayer.

  Annie lifted her glass again and welcomed the cold, sharp, fresh tea. It almost washed away the ugly taste in her mouth. “So neither one of you saw Sydney after the party?”

  “Nope,” Buck said. “Last I saw of poor old Sydney, she was smooching it up with George.” He started off with a mournful headshake, but it didn’t last long. A wicked light shone in his eyes and his meaty shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. “The general really knows how to stick it to a man. Jesus, what a show.”

  If Buck cared for Sydney, if seeing her in the arms of another man wounded him, it certainly wasn’t evident.

  Billye made a series of clucking noises, indicating disapproval. “Such a naughty thing to do.”

  “The prosecutor believes Sydney’s embrace with George right in Howard’s own house was the last straw. What do you think?”

  The Burgers exchanged shrewd glances.

  Billye turned thoughtful blue eyes on Annie. “Howard’s a patient man. But every man has his limits.”

  “Howard was a damn fool to marry her. Even if she was a sexy bitch.” Buck shoved his hands deep in his Levi pockets. “Hell, you don’t marry women like Sydney.”

  “Men do sometimes,” Annie said quietly, and she watched her hostess. “Howard did.”

  Billye’s smooth, scalpel-tailored face was untouched by emotion, but those wrinkled hands clung tightly to the chair arms. Her eyes locked with Annie’s and another bright smile curved her rose-red lips. “Howard was all alone. That’s how that happened.”

  But plenty of married men had apparently delighted in beguiling away time with Sydney.

  And Sydney was young and very lovely.

  Not all the plastic surgeons, not all the lovely clothes, not all the creams and lotions and unguents can turn back the years.

  Buck was at that dangerous age when a young woman’s body could bring back the excitement, if not the reality, of his youth.

  “Did either of you see Sydney after the party ended?”

  Their denials were quick and smooth and determined.

  Annie kept doggedly on. “How about later in the night? Did either of you hear anything unusual?”

  “The siren,” Billye said quickly. “I thought the general had had a heart attack. I see him out walking sometimes and his lips are blue. I expect he’ll keel over any day now.”

  Buck nodded. “He’s got a bad heart. Has to take a handful of pills. Insists he’s okay.” He sighed heavily. “Damn fool won’t quit playing golf and sometimes you can’t get out of a foursome with him. Rather play with a goddam rattlesnake. Got a real mean streak. Spends half the time popping nitroglycerin under his tongue. Course, if I had to take the damn blood pressure pills he takes, I’d be a mean shit, too. Damn doctors don’t care whether you can screw, but I’d just as soon hang it all up if I couldn’t get it up. There’s plenty of medicines for high blood pressure besides that one. That’s probably why the old buzzard’s always in such a nasty humor.” There was a fleeting glint of sympathy in his eyes. “I’d bet the ranch that’s why he was so goddam down on Sydney. But hell, just because you can’t eat the ice cream doesn’t mean you ought to want to close up the ice cream store.”

  “You don’t think it was moral disgust on the general’s part?” Annie asked.

  Buck looked at her blankly. She might as well have spoken in Etruscan.

  Billye translated. “Annie means maybe the general was disgusted by the way Sydney slept around and wasn’t hateful just because he wasn’t getting any.”

  Buck gave an elaborate shrug. “Hell, I don’t know. I’m not a head man. Who can say what’s wrong with that old fart! I just wish he’d stay the hell away from the club.”

  Annie wasn’t interested in any more speculation about the general’s sex life or lack of it, although Buck’s conviction that Houghton was impotent made it clear that the general surely wasn’t involved in an affair with Sydney. Annie had never considered that possibility very seriously. Sydney might be loose but surely she wasn’t desperate enough to be involved with a man old
enough to be her grandfather.

  She tried to redirect the conversation. “Okay, you heard the siren.” She paused, then forced herself to continue. “Were you both in your bedroom?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to ask directly if Billye and Buck shared a bed. Annie didn’t have Kinky Friedman’s chutzpah.

  Billye was openly amused. “You can’t imagine I put up with all his snufflings and snorings, do you?” Her smile widened. “You newlyweds. Just you wait. One of these years, you’ll have your own suite.”

  Buck guffawed. “Don’t think I don’t get my share.”

  Annie felt her ears redden.

  “But a man wants his own room. Besides, adds a little spice to life, goin’ to a woman’s room with all that satin and lace and stuff that smells good. Anyway, Billye’s right next door. She called out to me when the siren sounded.”

  Billye nodded.

  Annie fled the topic. “Did you hear anything else unusual?”

  Buck hesitated, drumming his stubby fingers on the chair arm. “Well, we didn’t hear anything else. But Marshall was on du—was up late that night. He heard something. I called the circuit solicitor, but he wasn’t interested. I guess if you’re hell-bent on springing Howard, you might want to talk to Marshall.”