Carolyn G. Hart

by Death on Demand/Design for Murder

  “Oh. Wow. And I suppose she said it in all seriousness?”

  “Oh, yes, but she meant it quite kindly. Not like Corinne.” She glanced back at the Prichard House. “What amazes me is how sweet Gail is. And Corinne tries to run her life, too, of course. If Gail doesn’t get free of it, she’ll end up warped, just like Leighton. But I don’t know of anything short of death that will stop Corinne.” She drew her shoulders in, then turned away from the mansion. “Well, let’s see. Shall we go left or right? The McIlwain House is quite lovely. It was restored by Lucy Haines.”

  “Restored?”

  “It was a boarding house from the early thirties until she bought it about twenty years ago. Of course, it doesn’t have family pieces, but she has purchased some very fine antiques, many of them authenticated to some early families. She inherited a great deal of money from a bachelor brother, and she’s really enjoyed working on the old house. It is an example of absolutely lovely symmetry. At one time, it belonged to some distant cousins of hers, so I suppose it’s family in that sense.”

  Annie looked across the lush sweep of the Prichard lawn. Through the low spreading limbs of live oaks, she glimpsed portions of the exquisite Georgian mansion. “A boarding house. That’s hard to believe.”

  “Oh, my dear, if it weren’t for the Historical Preservation Society and very hard work by its members, we would have only a handful of old houses still standing. You see, this part of town—” her wave encompassed the McIlwain, Prichard, and Benton houses “—has long been encroached upon by the commercial. Over in the next block, past the alley, it’s all commercial, although much of it is old, dating at least to the 1840s. Doctors’ offices, lawyers. And the library is on the corner directly behind the Historical Preservation Society. That makes it very convenient for Lucy.”

  An orange WE-RENT-IT truck rattled into the circular drive, jolted to a stop by the buffet tables, then grated screechingly into reverse.

  Annie gave one look, leaped down the remaining steps, and hurtled toward the truck, yelling, “Stop. Stop!”

  The truck shuddered to a standstill not more than three feet from the yellow-and-green DETECTION TEAMS CONFERENCE tent.

  Panting, she reached the cab. The driver squinted down sourly at her. “Yeah?”

  “You just about knocked down the tent. Do you have the tables?”

  “Gotta get ’em close enough to unload, lady.”

  “You’re within three feet—and they won’t do us any good without the tents. Put the long conference tables in the black-and-white striped tent and the round tables in the other tents.”

  Edith joined her. “Now you’re all hot again.”

  “It’s all right.” She looked around. “You know, I’m almost afraid to say it, but it’s taking shape.”

  And it was. Order was emerging out of chaos. Black and gold balloons tied to the open front gate bobbed in the gentle afternoon breeze. Similar clumps of balloons marked the entrances to the Benton and McIlwain houses. The truck driver and several helpers were efficiently unloading and setting up the tables in the proper places. Servers were unloading food from the caterer’s two pink vans.

  And Max was industriously arranging the Death on Demand display in the Police Headquarters tent.

  Her spirits zoomed. Suddenly, nothing seemed difficult. She beamed at Edith. “I’d love to see the other houses with you, but I’d better check with Max. How about tomorrow?”

  As they parted, Annie called over her shoulder. “Would you bring Rhoda to the police tent?”

  Yes, it was all falling into place. She might even begin to have fun. Especially if she could avoid Corinne.

  Max stood a few feet back from the card table. As she joined him, he shook his head solemnly. “Why just one card table? We need a lot more space.”

  We. What a nice word it was.

  “We’ve got t-shirts, bookmarks, and the posters.” He threw up his hands. “There isn’t room for the posters.”

  “You’re right.” She looked around and waved energetically at the rental employees. “Hey, bring one of the long tables over here.”

  “Terrific,” Max crowed. “We can hang the t-shirts around the edges, then use the t-shirt boxes to prop up the posters.” He opened a box and held up a t-shirt.

  A throaty laugh, like the gurgle of an overfed pigeon, sounded behind them. When they turned, Sybil read the legend on the t-shirt. “Let Me Haunt Your House. Oh, God, that’s wonderful. Save one for me.” She spoke to Annie, but her eyes devoured Max, who was proving a theorem she vaguely remembered from basic biology, something about living plants bending toward the source of light. If Max leaned any farther forward, he was going to topple on his handsome nose.

  “Max, this is Mrs. Giacomo, a member of the Board. Max Darling.”

  Sybil was already past Annie and a scant inch from her quarry. She held out both hands, magenta-tipped nails today and yet another array of gems, two rubies and a winking diamond surrounded by a glint of emeralds. “Max Darling.” If her voice went any lower, it would slither on the ground. “I want you to come over here in the shade and tell me all about yourself.”

  “I know he would just love to do that,” Annie said sweetly, “but he’s promised to go get our victim for us.” She eyed him sternly. “The CPR doll.”

  Max shot a fascinated glance at Sybil, then grinned lopsidedly at Annie. “Sure. I was just on my way. Mrs. Giacomo, I’ll look forward to visiting with you later.”

  As he moved off toward the parking lot, Annie and Sybil exchanged measuring glances. Each understood the other perfectly.

  “I’ll be sure and save a t-shirt for you, Mrs. Giacomo. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go strew clues.”

  Annie crouched in the gazebo, peering at the floor. It was a little on the order of playing Hide the Thimble. Clues must of necessity be in plain view, but not so obvious they bleated. She yearned for the skill of E. C. Bentley, who was a master of slipping unremarked clues into his narratives. She’d stuck the croquet mallet into a clump of reeds by the pond, the handle clearly visible. But it was more difficult in the gazebo. She twisted to look toward the steps. The detection teams would be limited to a view from the steps. Couldn’t have them stepping right into the gazebo, or they would mess up some of the clues. And the red herrings, of course.

  She opened her clue box, lifted out the crumpled handkerchief with the initials SAG marked in red ink in the right-hand corner, and dropped it near the bench.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Her head jerked up.

  Bobby Frazier, the broken-nosed, abrasive reporter, glared across the placid green waters of the pond at Gail, who stood framed by the dangling fronds of the willows, looking ethereal, vulnerable, and anguished.

  Neither saw Annie, still on her hands and knees in the gazebo. Before she could reveal her presence by clearing her throat, Gail replied, “I saw your car. I knew you’d be here.”

  “Right. I work for a living.”

  The girl jammed her hands into her skirt pockets and looked at him sorrowfully. “Money’s awfully important to you, isn’t it?”

  “Is that what your aunt told you?”

  “She told me—” She pressed one hand hard against her trembling mouth.

  “Did she tell you I’d called? And called back all week?”

  “No.”

  “The last time I called, she said you never wanted to see me again.”

  Tears began to slip unchecked down her face. “Just tell me—is it true you took a check?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

  She turned and thrashed blindly up the path.

  He stared after her. “Goddammit it to hell,” he said harshly. Head down, face working with anger, he lunged past the gazebo, following Gail.

  In the gazebo, Annie sighed. If anybody wanted her opinion, and no one was clamoring for it, she thought she detected the fine Italian hand of that good old monster Corinne. Shaking her head, she arranged the rest of th
e clues: the initialed handkerchief, a Turkish cigarette stub, a crumpled note with no salutation that read ‘I can’t come.’ Her last item was an old boot filched from Max. Carrying the clue box, empty now, she paced to the edge of the pond and artistically mashed the boot into the muddy bank. On her way back to the tents, she glimpsed Gail and Bobby on the path behind the Prichard House. They were deep in conversation.

  Annie stepped back to admire the five posters, displayed against the backing of the t-shirt boxes. Fabulous. Nobody could pass by those colors without a second look. She only hoped she’d ordered enough—The thud of running steps cut across the expected background noises, the low chatter of women’s voices, the clang of oyster shells being dumped into the ovens, the muted hum from the crowds wandering Ephraim Street. Annie whirled, her pulses racing. Something was wrong.

  The running man pounded up the marble steps of Prichard House to the immense front door, and the hammering of his frenzied knock echoed across the lawn. Everyone paused to look his way, the docents, the workmen for the rental company, the catering staff, Annie. And Corinne, who had just appeared, walking up the drive from the gate at Ephraim Street.

  “Tim.” Corinne’s clipped, cool voice overrode the thunderous rapping. He stopped, one fist upraised, then swung around and clattered down the steps. He loomed over her, basketball-player tall, but thin to the point of emaciation. He had a mop of soft chestnut hair that curled on his shoulders.

  “You can’t take my stuff. You can’t do it.” His huge hands gripped her shoulders. “You can’t do it, I tell you.”

  “Let go of me.” Her tone was imperious, contemptuous.

  His hands fell away. His Adam’s apple juggled in his throat. “My stuff—all stacked up, ready to be boxed. Who said you could send my paintings away?”

  “I am the director of the Prichard Museum. The disposition of our holdings is my responsibility—and I’m responding to a request from some sister museums for a traveling exhibit. You should be pleased, Tim. Your work will be on view across the Southwest for several months.”

  “We’ll see about that.” There was nothing sexy or soft about Sybil’s voice this time. She faced Corinne with the intractable expression of Daddy Warbucks guarding a mound of gilt-edged bonds.

  “I’ll kill her. I swear to God I’m going to kill her.” A sob hung in the painter’s throat.

  Sybil turned and slipped her arm around him, and it was oddly touching, the young, almost frail, too-tall young man with his soft, curling hair and the voluptuous, lusty woman. “It’s all right, Timmy. Don’t be upset.”

  “But she’s—”

  “No, she won’t. I promise you. I’ll get your paintings for you.” Sybil looked over her shoulder, her face tightening like a leopard’s upon attack. Her voice hung in the air, husky and penetrating as the warning rasp of a foghorn. “You haven’t heard the last of this, Corinne,” and then, gently, she steered Tim toward the street.

  Corinne looked after them, a faint flush staining her porcelain-perfect cheeks.

  Annie could have turned back to her display. The others dotted across the lawn were picking up the tempo of their interrupted activities. But Annie had had enough. “Do you eat babies, too?” she inquired.

  Corinne turned toward her slowly. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. Obviously, you like to take candy away from babies.”

  “Museum policies are not your concern. You are hired solely to provide entertainment—and clearly that was a mistake.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Annie turned back to her display. Behind her, she heard the scrape of Corinne’s shoes as she crossed the crushed oyster-shell drive toward the booth.

  “What are those hideous things?”

  Corinne was looking at the five posters. Her eyes briefly touched each. The blond man in the gray suit kneeling by a body in a long black overcoat. The naked young woman sitting in the highbacked teakwood chair. The question in the bruised face of the man standing over the body in the beach cabana. The yellow jeep hurtling toward the big man with light eyes. The man with the gun bursting into the cult scene. Disgust was clear in the pinched line of her mouth.

  “Copies of watercolors hanging in my bookstore,” Annie said furiously. “I run a monthly contest. The first person to figure out the author and title represented by each painting wins a free book—and free coffee all month. If it’s any of your business!”

  “Get them out of here.”

  “Over my dead body, lady. Or yours.”

  11

  Annie shifted Resuscitation Rhoda from one shoulder to the other. Dressed in the rather voluminous folds of a lavender cotton eyelet dress suitable for a 1937 tea party, the rubber dummy was fairly heavy, but as soon as she, or rather the victim, Matilda Snooperton, was in place on the floor of the gazebo, everything would be done.

  Everything?

  Oyster shells crunched underfoot. A touch of spring coolness wafted out of the long shadows thrown by the live oaks. The air smelled of sun-warmed grasses, pond water, and iris. The serene calm soothed away the last vestiges of her fury with Corinne. By God, she wasn’t going to let that poisonous woman ruin the Mystery Nights for her. She’d worked too hard to let that happen. No, she was going to be calm, cool, and collected and enjoy the evening. Which was almost upon her. Had she overlooked anything?

  She ran through the list in her mind, checking off item after item. Yes, this was the last task. Perhaps there would be time for her and Max to repair to her room at the Swamp Fox Inn and savor a Bud Light from the cooler she had thoughtfully iced and brought with her. She paused and looked up at the twelve-foot cane stalks, permitting herself a moment to relish her own cleverness. What a quintessentially perfect spot for The Scene of The Crime, isolated yet romantic. She would give pride of place only to the misty, pine-shrouded finger of lake in Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.

  Shifting Rhoda to her other shoulder, she began to whistle, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll,” as she followed the path around the cane thicket and into the grove of willows that encircled the pond. She headed straight for the gazebo, which graced a gentle rise about ten feet east of the pond. A Saran-sheathed placard, slightly tilted, had been hammered into the ground beside the steps since her last visit to the pond. Ah, Miss Dora.

  “Superstitions of the Low Country: Danger awaits the unlucky soul whose path is crossed by a rabbit. (Jimmy Carter might believe that one.) Death follows the hoot of a screech owl. Plant corn and boil soap under a waxing moon. A blue-painted door wards off ghosts. Thirteen at dinner signals death. A bird flying into a house or a mirror cracking without cause presages disaster. Never christen a child, marry, or begin a journey on Friday.”

  Climbing the steps, she scanned the gazebo’s hexagonal interior. Good. Nobody had messed with the clues. Kneeling, she stretched Rhoda out on her stomach, arms artistically outflung. She placed the railroad ticket in the pudgy, rubbery right hand, tucked the scrap of stationery with the scrawled, “I can’t come,” in Rhoda’s pocket, the edge just visible. When she stood and surveyed the scene, she frowned. That initialed handkerchief was too visible. Picking it up, she stepped closer to the railing, and dropped it in the shadows formed by the westering sun.

  What a delightfully sinister ambience, the lengthening shadows, the brooding quiet, the black, still water. Her eyes narrowed. What was that clump of sodden cloth among the reeds at the marshy edge of the pond? Had it been there earlier? Her gaze traveled out from the bunched cloth, and she saw a hand languidly floating.

  Annie didn’t give herself time to think. She moved, vaulting over the side of the railing and dropping five feet to the leaf-strewn ground, sprinting to the far side of the pond, then stumbling over knobby cypress roots to splash into the duckweed-scummed water. Her feet stirred rotting vegetation on the mucky bottom. She grabbed at the torso, then her hands recoiled at its lifeless weight. Gritting her teeth, she reached down again, fastened her hands at the waist and tugged. It was hard
work. The sticky bottom sucked at her feet. Razor-sharp reeds slashed at her skin, and sweat filmed her face, dripped into her eyes. The cloying stink of dank water sickened her. And sometime during the hideous exercise, she began to scream. She heard her own voice, high and frantic, as if from a long distance.

  The body was so damned heavy, and the reeds snagged it, holding it, impeding her. Then, blessedly, there was help, other hands, and, suddenly, they stumbled out onto the bank, and the body lifted from the water, too.

  Annie struggled to catch her breath. Lucy Haines, her face gray with shock, stared down at the sprawled figure. “Oh, my God. It’s Corinne.”

  Gasping, Annie dropped to her knees and reached to check the slack mouth for obstruction. Then her hand fell away. CPR wouldn’t help here. A concave depression, about the size of the bottom of a glass, disfigured the crown of the blonde head above the right ear. A rusty stain streaked the pond-drenched hair.

  Annie looked up at Lucy, whose wide eyes mirrored horror and the slow dawning of fear.

  “This is dreadful. Leighton … Gail. Oh, my Lord.” Her lean hands twisted together. Today, probably in honor of the house-and-garden tours, she wore a sprightly figured silk dress with pink and rose flowers and matching low pink heels, dress and shoes now stained with mud and water. The lovely spring dress was in stark contrast to her putty-colored face and the tightly twisting hands with their fresh coat of pink nail polish.

  Annie stood and repressed a shudder. “We have to get help.”

  “I’ll go call.” Lucy stepped toward the path, then turned back. “I’m sorry. You won’t want to stay here. If you go that way,” she pointed to a well-defined gray path that curved out of sight behind a screen of willows, “you’ll come to the gate into my grounds. I live next door, the McIlwain House. You can call—”

  “No, that’s all right, Lucy. You’d better go. It will save time. I don’t mind staying.” That wasn’t true, of course. She would have given anything to leave that silent place of death, but it was clearly silly to send a stranger to find a phone and make the proper calls. Time might not be of the essence, but there was no point in squandering it.