White Elephant Dead

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Annie scrabbled for a pad and pen, didn’t find them. But she could remember the two names Miss Dora gave her. One she knew well, Edith Cummings, reference librarian at the Lucy Kinkaid Memorial Library. The second she knew casually, Adelaide Prescott, an old and very rich lady.

  “Tell Adelaide I send my best.” A whispery laugh. “Ask her if she remembers the night we slipped away from the cotillion.” Annie had a quick vision of two young ladies in white dresses sweeping across a terrace. Did the waiting swains have an early Model T or was that night’s adventure begun in a buggy?

  A tiny cough. “Well, every dog has its day, young lady. Never forget that. As soon as you obtain this information, call me. And tell Max I’ll be bringing him some salami. Very unusual. Spiced with cloves. Tasty.”

  Annie hung up the phone and poked Max. She didn’t intend to be the only person awake at this forlorn hour. Besides, she couldn’t wait to tell him about his salami. It was illegal to bring it through customs. But no sniffing beagle would be a match for Miss Dora.

  Annie sprinkled raisins on her papaya, contemplated the sugar bowl.

  Max averted his eyes and reached for the coffeepot. “More?” he asked.

  Annie nodded. Her hand swerved away from the sugar bowl. Not that she was intimidated. It was simply a judgment call. “Why is it clever when a chef combines unusual foods and disgusting when hoi polloi do it?”

  “If you have to ask…” Max murmured, filling both their cups.

  They grinned at each other companionably, Annie took an ostentatiously large bite, and Max munched his buttered English muffin toasted with grated cheddar, crumbled smoked bacon and a dash of honey.

  Annie popped up, retrieved the leather photo album she had liberated from Kathryn Girard’s carry-on, and placed it beside her plate. She slipped into her place, added a few more raisins and opened the album, to be confronted once again by the unexciting view of the Broward’s Rock harbor.

  Max glanced at the album, but didn’t bother to comment. Instead, he flipped open his small notebook. “Miss Dora’s ideas aren’t half bad,” and he began to write, then paused. “Didn’t Emma give you the sheet with the pick-up addresses on it last night?”

  Mostly Annie remembered suffering voracious pangs of hunger. But yes, at some point, Emma had said something about going home and printing out the list but the list didn’t make sense.

  Annie pressed her fingers against her temples. “I’ve got it!” She’d left her purse on the hall table last night before their bike foray, since even well-dressed cat burglars rarely carry purses. Annie dashed into the hall. She returned with the list, scanning the addresses. “I see what Emma meant.”

  Max took the sheet, read the list, then frowned. “Annie, this can’t be right.”

  “Max,” she replied with the authority of Monica Quill’s Sister Emptee Dempsey, “if Emma Clyde says this was the route assigned to Kathryn Girard, this was the route.”

  “But only one address is inside the resort gate and to go there, Henny would have turned left, not right.”

  “I know.” The guard at the gate told Max that Henny turned right. So where did that leave them?

  Max rumpled his thick blond curls. “I don’t get it. And if Garrett ever sees this list, he’ll claim that Henny wasn’t following Kathryn, that they must have arranged a meeting.”

  “On Marsh Tacky Road!” Annie threw up her hands. “That’s crazy.”

  Max tossed the list onto the kitchen table.

  Annie plopped back into her seat and picked up her spoon. She looked again at the album, slowly turning the pages. The album’s bland nature scenes were the most boring damn pictures. But Kathryn Girard didn’t have a single other photograph in her possession. So why these, why, why, why?

  The phone rang.

  Annie grabbed the cordless. “Hello.”

  “Annie, my sweet.” Laurel’s husky voice brimmed with energy and good humor. “I’ve just popped by the hospital. Dear Henny is sleeping. I left the dearest flower card.” There was an expectant pause.

  “A flower card!” Annie wondered for a moment if she’d overdone the note of rapturous interest.

  Max’s dark blue eyes, so reminiscent of his mother’s, looked suddenly wounded.

  Annie flashed him a sweet smile.

  “I propped the card up by Henny’s water carafe. They aren’t permitting the flowers—and there are so many of them—in the room just yet. The nurse said absolutely not without the doctor’s approval. And the nurse! Annie, she is Nurse Adams, actually Hilda Adams. I find that a wonderful, meaningful coincidence—”

  Even Annie had to admit the long arm of coincidence sometimes occurred. Nurse Hilda Adams was a sweet-faced, spunky heroine in several mysteries by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

  “—and I impressed upon her how important it is to protect our dear Henny. I gave her a card, too. Henny’s card is elegant and simple, periwinkle for friendship, morning glory for affection, and dogwood for durability.” Another expectant pause.

  Annie saw dark blue eyes regarding her intently. So, all right, Max felt his mother needed encouragement. Actually, Annie felt precisely the opposite, but in every happy marriage there are many compromises. “And Nurse Adams’s card?”

  “Goldenrod for precaution, lavender for distrust, oleander for wariness.” A deprecating laugh. “Each of us must contribute as we can.”

  “Laurel, that’s wonderful. I honestly don’t know how you do it.” Annie had no intention of defining the wonderfully vague pronoun.

  “Oh my dear, how sweet of you.” Was the emphasis on ‘sweet’ overlong? “I worked quite late. I’ve a dozen or so cards with the same striking message.”

  Annie didn’t wait for the pause. “Yes?” she asked encouragingly.

  Laurel’s husky voice dropped, soft and eerie as a waterfall in a cavern. “Basil for hatred, columbine for folly, and rhododendron for danger.”

  Danger. Annie said quickly, “Laurel, be careful. Be very careful.”

  But the connection had already been broken. Laurel was not one to forgo a dramatic finale.

  Annie punched off the phone. “I forgot to tell you last night. Emma recruited your mom to survey the area near Marsh Tacky Road.”

  Max shot her a quizzical look. “On the theory that if Laurel’s knocking on doors, she won’t be disrupting Emma’s fine-tuned investigation under way at the club?”

  Annie grinned. “Actually, I think you do Emma a disservice. She said your mother…” How to put this tactfully? Perhaps there was no way to completely report Emma’s comments. “Was eager to help clear Henny.”

  “Well, of course Mother’s always willing to help out. And she may find out something helpful.” He pushed away the computer printout of Kathryn Girard’s donation route. “Certainly more helpful than this.” He picked up his notebook. “Okay. We know that list doesn’t work. So where did Kathryn go last night? Why? What did she pick up? What did she see?”

  Annie slapped the album shut and dragged widespread fingers through her curly hair. The album might as well have pulsed out invisible gamma rays, she felt so certain it held a secret. But no matter how many times she looked through it, the blah contents didn’t change.

  Max glanced up. “You resemble a snowy egret looking for a mate.”

  Annie smoothed her hair. She wasn’t going to talk about the album, since Max so obviously dismissed it as unimportant. As for Miss Dora’s suggestions—

  She said abruptly, “You’re starting at the wrong end.”

  Max looked surprised. “Annie”—his tone was gentle—“that’s where it all began, with Kathryn heading out in the van, and somewhere between the Women’s Club and Marsh Tacky Road, she got killed. Something had to have happened—”

  Annie held up both hands like Jaqueline Girdner’s Kat
e Jasper quelling a group of fractious Marin County dwellers. Max stopped short, looking a trifle affronted. Okay, maybe traffic cop hand gestures were overkill. But she said firmly, “No. Stop. Wait.”

  Max put down his pencil and looked attentive, as courteous as Charlie Chan listening to a witness.

  “It’s not where she went. It’s why she went.” Maybe she did owe something to yesterday’s memory of Detective Duff. Or maybe it was the result of a mélange of impressions, the heavily impressed sentence on the pad at Kathryn’s shop, the stolen folder, a gunshot in the night, too many names for one face, an album that defied explanation. Whatever, Annie pushed back her chair, and fluffed her hair, truly resembling a snowy egret as she paced. “It begins with Kathryn. Yes, I know we have to find out where she went, who she saw, but Kathryn’s the key, Max. Who was she? Why did she live in such a weird way? Why is that apartment so bare? Who is Miriam Gardner? Why were her bags packed? Where was she going?”

  Max waved his hand in dismissal. “Sure, we’ll go into all that. She was flying to Mexico City. As for her apartment, she was probably just an odd loner. I know you thought she might be into something crooked, stolen antiques or paintings or jewelry. But apparently the only thing taken from her place was a folder out of the briefcase. And the most important fact is that her bank account was that of a small and not very successful merchant.” He whipped open his notebook, read off modest balances for the past six months. “Don’t you see? Even a small-time crook should have more money than that. And Billy said there was about three hundred and sixty dollars in her purse. And there wasn’t any money in the briefcase—”

  Annie interrupted, “Maybe it was money that was taken. Maybe that’s what the intruder came for.”

  Max shook his head, not quite with the patronizing air of Leslie Ford’s Col. Primrose. “In a folder? Nobody carries money in a folder, especially in a folder in a briefcase that had to be carried through airport security.”

  “Another bank account,” Annie said feebly.

  Max folded his arms, looked as complacent as a Lillian Jackson Braun cat. “And where’s the checkbook?”

  Annie’s fingers twitched. Max was lucky she didn’t have the homicidal impulses so prevalent in Pamela Branch books. She was beginning to feel like Tuppence Beresford when Tommy was trying to leave her out of the action in N or M? And she was so sure she was right. So, okay, maybe she was going on intuition, but unlike Ariadne Oliver, she had the inexplicable album.

  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.