Deadly Valentine

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Once again, Annie was in the library of the Cahill mansion, but this time she faced Howard instead of his son.

  He stood in front of the desk, his face remote. “Hello, Annie. Mrs. Gaffney said you needed to see me.” His olive skin had a grayish cast. He looked unkempt, his chin marked by a red cut where he’d shaved that morning, his dark hair ill combed, his suit jacket and trousers wrinkled. He didn’t ask her to sit down.

  Annie went straight to the point. “Where’s Laurel?”

  He wasted no words either. “I’m not a damn fool, Annie.”

  “She’s not here?”

  “No, definitely not,” he said crisply. His blunt-featured face mirrored impatience.

  Annie couldn’t refrain from a sigh of relief.

  For just an instant, Howard’s face softened. “You’re right, of course. She wanted to come.” He looked inquiringly at Annie. “She never counts the cost, does she?”

  “Not when she cares.”

  “I wish—” The brightness seeped from his face, leaving it once again weary and depressed. His voice was again cool when he continued. “Don’t worry. I won’t permit Laurel to place herself in any worse situation than she already faces. I made that clear to her this morning.”

  Annie’s immediate thought was that Howard Cahill had a very imperfect understanding of Laurel. Howard wouldn’t “permit” Laurel to do something? Oh, he had a lot to learn.

  Howard began to walk toward Annie, and she knew she was on her way out.

  “It’s very good of you to come on her behalf,” he was saying, with finality. “I hope someday the circumstances will be different.”

  Annie knew she was treading on dangerous ground, but she spoke up anyway. “You could easily change the circumstances.”

  He stopped, looked at her warily. “Oh?”

  “Tell the police the truth. About Carleton.”

  His dark eyes bore into hers. “What about Carleton?”

  “Have you talked to him?” she asked impatiently.

  The lines in his face deepened. “Yes.”

  “Didn’t he tell you what happened that night?”

  “I have no comment at all to make about that night. Nor will Carleton. Ever.” The words were harsh, clipped, final, and Howard’s dark eyes glittered with fear.

  Annie was shaken.

  Howard Cahill was a man struggling with terror. He was deathly afraid that Carleton was the murderer.

  Wasn’t he?

  The cookie jar held only five more peanut butter cookies. Annie was starving, her adrenaline still pumping from her encounter with Howard Cahill. What a mess. And what could she do about it?

  She ate the cookies in a rush but forced herself to leave two. It was hell to face breakfast without a peanut butter cookie.

  But the little spurt of good feeling engendered by the cookies did nothing to alleviate the turmoil in her mind.

  Howard, fearing for his son.

  And Carleton, after his talk with his father, without doubt even more afraid that his father committed the murder.

  Annie sat down at her table and poured another cup of coffee. Did this mean she could with no question cross both from her list of suspects?

  Not on your life.

  Either could be guilty and running a double bluff. Annie sighed and looked at the bios. Surely somewhere in all of this information lay the key to Sydney’s death. She glanced at the clock. Almost two. She wanted to finish the bios before her meeting with Eileen Houghton. And surely Laurel would arrive soon. Annie would insist upon a frank, serious, realistic discussion of the present situation.

  Sure. And the alligator in Scarlet King Lagoon wanted a tutu to celebrate May Day.

  Annie grabbed the next bio.

  LEROY WILLISTON (BUCK) BURGER—b. 1925, Del Rio, Texas. Joined USMC 1942. Lied about age. Served South Pacific. In landing party Iwo Jima. Purple Heart. Mustered out sergeant first class. BA Texas A&M, 1949. LLB Baylor University, 1952. Order of the Coif. Assistant DA, Dallas, 1952–57, DA 1957–63. Established Burger and Associates 1963. Handled both criminal and million-dollar divorce cases. Involved in numerous well-known controversies. Reputed to be man to hire when it didn’t look like there was any way out but jail. Hard-nosed trial lawyer. Gave no quarter, asked none. Phenomenal 89 percent success rate. Licensed to carry a gun for self-protection. Involved in shoot-out San Marcos court house 1972 with divorce client’s husband. Burger wounded right leg, shot assailant dead. “Drilled him right between the eyes,” a deputy said admiringly. Enjoys flamboyant life style. Owns five-acre estate in Dallas, peacocks and llamas on lawns, hunting lodge down in hill country, ski lodge in Taos, house on Broward’s Rock. Poker player, rides, hunts, fishes, scuba dives. He and his wife, Billye, have five children, all grown and married, and nine grandchildren. Although Buck has reputation as womanizer, has been married to Billye for almost 37 years. In own fashion, devoted family man, often flying in whole clan for holidays. All three sons avid sportsmen, often join father in fall for deer hunting.

  Annie was willing to bet those were boisterous outings. She picked up the next sheet.

  BILLYE JO KURTH BURGER—b. 1932, Abilene, Texas. Well-to-do rancher’s daughter, apple of his eye. Billye shopped in Dallas at Neiman-Marcus high school days on. At Baylor, fraternity queen, yearbook beauty. Young men courted her from first day on campus but moment she met Buck Burger, future decided. Married end her freshman year. Billye glories in femininity, but, reflecting ranch background, excellent horsewoman, first-class shot. In her thirties she took up tennis, still plays twice a week. An intense competitor. As one of her opponents said, “Why, Billye’d rather die than lose. I’ve seen her come back and win when she’s down five games. Playin’ on clay on a July afternoon!”

  Annie felt an instant kinship. It was something Max would never comprehend, that do-all-or-die attitude of the committed tennis player. Why Max wouldn’t even play tennis on a July afternoon, pointing out, he thought quite reasonably, that it was hot.

  She placed Billye’s bio atop Buck’s. Max’s research confirmed Annie’s judgment; the Burgers were imperious, aggressive, and tough as a West Texas boot.

  And Sydney’s killer had to be tough as they come.

  Which brought her to the only live-in employee in the compound, the Burgers’ houseman-watchdog.

  JIM TOM MARSHALL—b. Amarillo, Texas, 1946. Joined army at 18. Two tours Vietnam. Discharged sergeant first class 1970. Won division heavyweight wrestling title twice. Worked for Acme Security Dallas 1970–72. Hired as watchman/bodyguard by Buck Burger 1972. Belongs local bodybuilding club. Never married. Lt. Col. Richard Gonzales: “Born soldier. A crime he had to get out of the service. I don’t give a damn what a man does on his own time when he can soldier like that.” Walt Melton, owner Acme Security: “Tough son of a bitch. Light on his feet. Mix it up with anybody.” When asked about sexual preference, Melton asked, “You think anybody’s gonna get on Jim Tom’s case? Man, he’s six foot two in his socks. So he likes guys. I didn’t give a damn and neither did Buck. You want to feel safe, you’re lucky to find somebody like Jim Tom. Buck wanted the best bodyguard in the business; he got him.” Was Jim Tom the kind of gay who hated women? “Oh, hell no. He’s no nut. He doesn’t care about women any way at all.”

  No wonder Marshall had been immune to Sydney’s charms. But Annie wasn’t quite ready to dismiss the bodyguard from her list of suspects. Just how far would he go, how much dirty work would he do for his employer? Would he lie to protect Buck Burger?

  She glanced at the clock. Just time before her appointment with Madame General to finish up with the Graham bios.

  GEORGE BRUCE GRAHAM—b. 1943, Reston, Va. Second son career government official. BS Washington and Lee, DDS University of Virginia. Track and field athlete in college. Served three years U.S. Army, Ft. Dix, N.J., captain, medical corps. Married Kathleen Murray 1969. One son, Joel, b. 1971. Established practice on Broward’s Rock 1971. Active United Fund Drive, Chamber of Commerce, Red
Cross, Men’s Dinner Club, Broward’s Rock Runners Club. Divorced from Kathleen 1984. Joel in mother’s custody but returned to island as high school junior after mother’s remarriage to engineer based in Norway. Married Lisa Wetherby 1985. No children. Was involved with Sydney before she married Howard. Embrace in alcove at party suggests continued involvement.

  The next two bios were shorter.

  LISA WETHERBY GRAHAM—b. Columbia, S.C., 1957. Youngest of four daughters. BA University of South Carolina. Worked summers as waitress on Broward’s Rock. Joined Binton and Associates Public Relations after graduation. Member Broward’s Rock Runners Club. Consistently places in top ten her age group in 10K races. Ranked tennis player. Married George B. Graham 1985. No children.

  JOEL MURRAY GRAHAM—b. 1971, Browards Rock. Senior Broward’s Rock High School. Moderate discipline problem. Suspended one week forging doctor’s excuse for unexcused absence. C average. Three tickets for speeding in last year. Not active in school sports, but committed mountain climber. Skilled at rappelling. Enjoys scuba diving.

  Annie spread the sheets out on the table, glanced at the clock—she needed to hurry—and scrawled, as fast as she could, the questions that had to be answered.

  HOWARD CAHILL—Beneath his mask of self-control, how did he really feel about Sydney’s infidelities?

  CARLETON CAHILL—Was he angry enough at his father’s remarriage—which he saw as a betrayal of his mother—to murder Sydney and attempt to place the blame on his father?

  SYDNEY CAHILL—Was Sydney a voracious destroyer of marriages or was she a sadly romantic woman seeking a love that she never found?

  DORCAS ATWATER—What turned her from an unremarkable island matron to a distraught, apparently neurotic recluse? Why did she quarrel with Sydney?

  GEN. COLVILLE HOUGHTON—For health reasons, he obviously wasn’t involved with Sydney, but from his comment the night of the murder—“People stay in their own beds, follow the rules, world’d work damn sight better”—he was well aware of Sydney’s proclivities. Just how offensive did he find her?

  EILEEN HOUGHTON—The general’s wife. No overt connection with Sydney so no—

  Annie’s pencil stopped, scoring the sheet. For Pete’s sake! Eileen Houghton was trying her damnedest to get involved. Why? How had she put it? “The general and I are appalled at the obvious miscarriage of justice which is occurring.” Why should she be so exercised over Howard Cahill and whether he was in jail? Maybe the answer to that was blindingly simple. Maybe Howard, who had swept Laurel off her feet, was equally attractive to another middle-aged woman. This one with an old, unpleasant husband. Annie wrote: Does Eileen have a secret passion for Howard? Did she want to see him single, hoping that she too would be widowed before long? Does she envision going from the General’s Wife to the Wife of the Chairman of the Board?

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Annie said aloud. Dorothy L. took that as an invitation and leaped into her lap. Annie scratched her behind the ears. Suddenly that two o’clock appointment with the general’s wife looked enticing indeed. She checked the time and hurried on to the next question.

  7. BUCK BURGER—Buck strayed off the preserve, no doubt about it, but he valued his family. Obviously, Billye kept him on a loose leash. Had her patience run out? Was Sydney planning, in a crazy romantic fashion, to make some kind of public announcement of another Great Love—and did Buck veto the plan?

  8. BILLYE BURGER—Conversely, had Billye finally had enough of Buck’s women? Was Sydney the last straw? Or had Buck, in a midlife crisis, broken the pattern and served notice he intended to dump Billye for Sydney?

  9. JIM TOM MARSHALL—A very tough fellow. How much would he do for Buck Burger?

  10. GEORGE GRAHAM—A tomcatter, on his own admission. But a man who didn’t like the even tenor of his life disturbed. Had Sydney refused to leave him alone? Was he afraid he might lose Lisa? His insistence to his son that no one had left their home the night of the murder indicated pretty clearly that someone surely had. Was it George? Or was it Lisa?

  11. LISA GRAHAM—She knew George was susceptible to other women. After all, he’d fallen for her when married to Kathleen. Was she afraid Sydney might steal him from her?

  12. JOEL GRAHAM—What did he mean when he said, “… I don’t know where the hell everybody was!” He’d tried to tell his father about “last night,” the night Sydney was murdered, but George refused to listen. Joel was worried before he talked to his father and even more worried afterward. But he insisted that he hadn’t seen anything. So what could he possibly know about the murder?

  Annie shook her head in frustration and circled Joel’s name with question marks. The teenager obviously intended to do as his father ordered and keep quiet. Maybe the only way to find out the truth was to confront George Graham.

  She gathered up the bios and her list of questions, put them in a neat stack, and jumped to her feet. Time to talk to the General’s Wife.

  Fifteen

  ANNIE REACHED THE Houghtons’ dock first. The lagoon looked like pea soup under the unseasonably warm sun. The sawgrass along the shore rippled in the springlike breeze. A pileated woodpecker—Annie’s friend From Wednesday morning?—drummed cheerfully against a gum tree. Annie walked out on the pier and the row of sunning cooter turtles on a fallen red maple limb flopped into the green-scummed water one after the other as neatly as if choreographed. Half submerged near the bank was an old blackish log—then Annie saw the wide, flat snout and two obsidian eyes watching her intently. She stepped back a pace. “Honey,” she called, “it’s yours, all yours.”

  The toasty feel of the sun against her skin reminded her that summer was just a dream away. The wind-rustled grass, the soft liquid call of Carolina doves, and the erratic splash-splashes in the water evoked the coming lazy, hazy days of summer, when Annie could sit in the shade of an umbrella and read the latest books—except when she was busy at Death on Demand, ordering, shelving, and selling. But this scene was hypnotic, a siren song that threatened to lure her away from the world. That was why the residents of Scarlet King had bought homes here, of course.

  She walked to the end of the pier, shaded her eyes, and surveyed the pine-rimmed shore. There was the Cahill pier and a glimpse of the gazebo. The next house, of course, was her own. At the end of their pier, Max’s cheerful yellow raft moved languidly on its line. Annie could see only a portion of the house. The rest was screened by the pinewoods that separated their place from the Cahills’. But this vantage point afforded an excellent view of the Grahams’ garages, Joel’s apartment, the pool cabana, and the gingerbread top of the Victorian mansion. The Burgers’ imposing Tudor house appeared fortresslike on their cleared, bare-bones grounds, which looked desolate amid the thick undergrowth and pinewoods of the other properties. The nearest house, as the jackdaw flew, was that of Dorcas Atwater, on the other side of the fourteenth green from the Houghtons’.

  Annie’s eyes strained. It was hard to see into that undergrowth-choked backyard. Brief flashes of light glittered beneath the canopy of a weeping willow. Was it the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off glass? Annie strained to see.

  “An excellent view.” Her voice was smooth, almost oily.

  Annie turned to face Eileen Houghton, who looked every inch a general’s wife this afternoon in a Cambridge wool gabardine suit and blue patterned blouse with an ivory background. She was rather formally dressed for a meeting on a pier, but, of course, she’d been to a hospital board meeting that morning. In the soft glow of the sunlight, her round face had a healthy glow beneath the sleek gray-blond coronet braid. She looked younger than her age, except for the grim set of her lips, which emphasized the deep lines on either side of her mouth. “I wanted you to see for yourself,” she continued in that unctuous voice. “The distances across the water are very short indeed.”

  Annie again faced the lagoon. Eileen Houghton stepped up beside her. The faintly peachlike scent of her perfume contrasted with the nutrient-rich odor of the water. She shaded he
r eyes. “It’s been just over two years.” A musing tone. “Dorcas Atwater has brooded for two years over Ted’s death. Everyone can tell you how her personality has changed. She is obviously unbalanced. When Sydney was killed, it should have occurred to me at once. The night Sydney died was the anniversary of Ted’s death. But”—her stocky shoulders moved in an impatient shrug—“I assumed the police would do their duty. Instead, they focused at once on Howard—”

  Annie looked at her sharply. Did she say his name with a lover’s care? No. There was not even a flicker of emotion on the stolid, healthy face turned toward Annie.

  “—which is completely ridiculous. In fact, the police haven’t even talked to all of us and when I call, some underling asks me to leave a message and it’s much too delicate for that. I must speak to someone in authority.” Her pale blue eyes gazed at Annie without especial warmth. “You seem to have entree somehow to the investigation, so I am going to tell you about Ted Atwater. When the police know, they will surely see that the solution to Sydney’s murder is quite obvious.” A wasp zoomed close to her cheek. Eileen brushed it away. “Two years ago, Sydney rang my bell late one evening. She was hysterical. Fortunately, the general was out, attending a meeting of the Retired Officers’ Association. He is on the board, of course. Howard Cahill was out of town. Sydney was shaking and sobbing, almost incoherent, begging me to help. She thought I’d been a nurse. I went with her. Ted Atwater was dead in her bed. Obviously a myocardial infarction. Unfortunately, it had occurred during coitus. Which was readily apparent. I agreed to help Sydney. I don’t quite know why. But I did.” Her voice held an echo of self-surprise. “We rolled him in a sheet and managed to get him downstairs and into his rowboat. I dropped his clothes and shoes in, too. We removed the sheet. Sydney was no help. She kept wringing her hands and wailing and asking what we were going to do. I told her to go take a bath and go to bed. I walked back home, got our rowboat, rowed to the Cahills’, attached Ted’s boat to mine and began to row across the lagoon. I had intended, upon nearing the Atwater property, to overturn his boat. It might then look as though he’d gone out on the pond, suffered a heart attack, and fallen into the water. Of course, it was awkward that he had on no trousers or shorts, just an undershirt, but heart attack patients sometimes feel their clothes are constricting them.” Another shrug. “It was surely better than being found in Sydney’s bed. And I thought the water—well, anyway, that’s what I intended. But the towline broke or slipped loose. I rowed about, trying to find the boat, but it was a very dark night and I had no flashlight. Then the light came on at the end of the Atwater pier and Dorcas was out there calling for him. The Burger lights were on, of course, as they always are. Buck heard Dorcas calling and he yelled to ask if she needed help. She said yes. So I had no choice. I couldn’t look for Ted’s boat any longer. I rowed home.” Annie could imagine those muscular arms, the oars slipping in and out of the water with calm regularity.