Carolyn G. Hart

by Death on Demand/Design for Murder

  Time! Annie glanced at her watch. Surprisingly, very little had passed since she had blithely whistled her way to the gazebo earlier. It was only 5:35. But the tours were scheduled to begin at 6. Everything would be canceled, of course.

  Lucy still hesitated, peering anxiously around the quiet, secluded spot. “Do you suppose it’s safe? Perhaps you’d better come with me.”

  Her fear was contagious. Annie glanced, too, at the sun-glossed fronds of the weeping willows, the black, knobby, sinister cypress, the blackish water. Only an occasional rustle as some creature stirred in the reeds broke the silence. The faraway tattoo of a woodpecker sounded. “It’s safe enough. I don’t suppose there’s a mad killer lurking around to bash me.”

  The brave words echoed hollowly in her mind after Lucy’s reluctant departure. She backed away from the corpse, one step at a time, her eyes darting nervously into the thickening shadows. Every crackle of the cane, every vagrant rustle of the willow fronds made her skin prickle.

  The sound of running footsteps brought a hot surge of adrenaline. She tensed, ready to run.

  Bobby Frazier burst around the cane thicket. Skidding to a stop, chest heaving, he glared down at the sodden corpse. “So the old bitch got it. Where the hell’s Gail?” Before she could answer, he gave an impatient jerk of his head, turned, and pounded toward the gazebo.

  Annie sorted out the geography in her mind. The path past the gazebo was probably the closest route to the Prichard House.

  A siren sounded, than another. Tires squealed; doors slammed. Heavy footsteps came from the direction of the alley, and police spilled into the clearing, led by a heavyset man in a black broadcloth coat, tan trousers, and a white, wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He shot her a cold, measuring look, then approached the body.

  No one moved or spoke as he studied the scene, his thick gray eyebrows bunched, his heavy jowls puffed in concentration.

  The pond bank reflected Annie and Lucy’s struggle to pull the body to land, drifted pine needles scattered, reeds bent and trampled. The corpse lay face up, eyes wide and staring, mouth gaping. That mushy depression in the skull—Annie searched the nearby area. Then she glanced at the pond, and tensed.

  The croquet mallet—her very own croquet mallet—floated in the water a few feet from the bank.

  “All right.” The lawman’s voice was a growl, deep in his throat, like a rusty gate opening. His team swung into action: a young, sandy-haired officer shoved short stakes into the sandy soil at four-foot intervals, then began to string yellow tape, a glum plainclothesman with a gimpy leg pulled out a dog-eared spiral notebook and began a painstaking survey of the crime scene, and a red-faced detective with a beer belly lifted a .35 mm camera to record Corinne at her final rendezvous.

  The gaily colored lights strung on the gazebo roof for the tour week flickered into life, adding a garish glare to the twilight. Annie swallowed. So the lights were working. Turning them on was a duty she’d assigned to the Society secretary. Even now, bright yellow lights would be glowing in the tents. And all for nothing.

  For a moment, there was no sound other than the clicking of the camera, the occasional crackle underfoot as the men moved about. The lawman gave a satisfied grunt, and turned toward Annie.

  He walked ponderously, a bear of a man with heavy shoulders and a thick chest. His face was heavy, too, a bulging forehead, slab-like jowls, a triple roll of chins. His watery blue eyes were murky with the memory of too many crime scenes over too many years.

  Annie felt the muscles tighten across her back. When he loomed over her, the world shrank to the space between them. She heard his labored, asthmatic breathing, saw the tracery of red veins in his eyes, and smelled a sour odor of tobacco.

  “Harry Wells. Chief of police.” His tobacco-roughened throat yielded the rasping introduction reluctantly. He looked at her without a vestige of warmth.

  “Annie Laurance. I’m in charge of the Mystery Nights for the Houses and Gardens tour.”

  “What’s your story?” Those dour eyes gazed at her unblinkingly.

  Her story. The unease in her shoulders spread down her back. God, he was hostile, and she hadn’t told him anything. She started out, then realized her voice was high and rushed. She took a deep breath and controlled her pitch. When she finished, he glanced toward the gazebo, then at the pond. “You brought the mallet?”

  “A prop. It was supposed to be a prop.”

  “Turned out not to be, didn’t it?”

  She didn’t like his words, or his tone.

  “That’s hardly my fault,” she shot back.

  He didn’t bother to answer, merely stared at her.

  “Look, she was dead when—” She broke off at the sound of approaching voices. Oh, God. She hadn’t had time to wonder about Lucy, but she should have expected this.

  “There’s no mistake, Leighton. Please, you shouldn’t—”

  “Hurry, John.” Leighton Webster came around the gazebo, his hand tight on Dr. Sanford’s arm. “You’ll see, Lucy, Corinne’s just fainted. That’s all. John will take care of her. No one would—” His deep voice rumbled to a stop. He stopped in mid-stride. Behind him were Lucy, whose face held no shock, and Gail, clinging tightly to Bobby’s arm.

  Everyone watched Leighton’s approach in profound, stricken silence: Lucy, Sanford, Gail, Bobby, Annie, the police, and newly-arrived Max, Edith, and Roscoe, who had hurried around the cane thicket, drawn by the wail of the sirens and the inevitable groundswell of rumor already sweeping across Chastain.

  But Leighton was oblivious to them all. He stared down at the crumpled figure of his wife, his face frozen in puzzled disbelief.

  “Corinne?”

  “Leighton.” Lucy touched his arm, and then gently tugged, but it made no more impression than sea spume against volcanic rock. He stumbled forward and would have torn through the restraining yellow tape, except for the fresh-faced young officer who stepped between him and the barrier. “Sorry, sir. This is a crime scene now, and no one may enter.”

  Slowly, his stricken brown eyes settled on the detective’s face, focused there. “We can’t leave her. She’s … We can’t leave her there.”

  Chief Wells could move his bulk with surprising swiftness. “Mr. Mayor, I’ll take care of Mrs. Webster. You can’t do anything for her now. Go on back to the house. I’ll come and talk to you as soon as I can.”

  Mr. Mayor. The note of deference was unmistakable. Wells did everything but pull on his forelock, and Annie’s sense of isolation increased. Nobody demanded to know Webster’s story. Mr. Mayor? My God, the interlocking power structure in this town was nothing short of incestuous. Did the Websters run everything?

  Leighton’s dazed face was gray-white with shock. “Harry, who did this? What happened to her?”

  “Nobody knows.” The massive head jerked in Annie’s direction. “She raised the alarm. Claims she found her dead.”

  Leighton swiveled, looked at her. “Miss Laurance.” His gaze swept the gazebo, and understanding moved in his eyes. “The house tours.”

  “We’ll cancel them.” Lucy spoke briskly. “We’ll take care of it, Leighton. Please don’t worry—”

  “Cancel?” He shook his large head slowly, then with determination. “Oh, no, we mustn’t do that. Corinne wouldn’t want us to do that.”

  “Of course they must be canceled. They should never have been started,” Miss Dora hissed. “Strangers tramping through our lives. I told everyone they were a mistake—and look what’s happened—murder.”

  Annie stared at the wild eyes, the straight silver gray hair, the old twisted mouth working with excitement. Where had she come from? No one had seen her arrive, darting swiftly in those high-top shoes, her cane making no sound on the soft ground.

  She lifted the ebony stick, pointed the silver tip at Annie. “Ask her about murder. She knows all about how to kill. Maybe she likes to kill.”

  “Oh, now, wait a minute.” Max strode toward Annie, reached out and grabbed her hand. “T
hat’s damn silly.”

  “But we never had murder until she came.” Miss Dora’s head jerked and the black feather on her hat vibrated.

  Everyone was staring at Annie, everyone but Max, who slipped a firm arm around her shoulders and glared angrily at Miss Dora. The watching faces looked inimical in the rose and yellow glow from the string of lights atop the gazebo.

  Miss Dora rocked back and forth. “Cancel them. Yes, cancel them. Or a murderess will move among us tonight.”

  The hoarse chant had the sound of madness, but Miss Dora’s eyes were as shiny and hard as new minted pennies.

  Lucy cleared her throat. “Aunt Dora, you’d best go in now. It’s getting late. We will cancel the evenings, of course, but Miss Laurance certainly can’t be held responsible for this dreadful accident.”

  “No, no, we won’t cancel.” Leighton spoke with a dogged stubbornness. “Corinne wouldn’t want us to cancel.”

  Silence hung over the pond and the oddly assorted people standing there. A dragonfly veered away from them to skim over the dark water.

  “How can we continue?” Lucy sought out Wells. “A decision does need to be made. People must be arriving even now. The gates open in minutes.” She looked at Leighton in distress. “But you won’t want Prichard House to be on the tour. That wouldn’t do at all.”

  But Leighton was determined. Perhaps the thought of the gala helped him escape from the reality of his wife’s death—if only briefly. “It must go on. That is what Corinne would have wanted. Only the two front rooms are open, and Gail and I can stay upstairs so that will be all right. The tours last only an hour. No, I don’t want any of it canceled.”

  Edith chimed in, “Leighton’s right. It will devastate the work of the Society if we cancel.”

  “Harry, what harm can it do?” Leighton demanded. “And it meant so much to Corinne.”

  In the instant before Wells replied, even as Leighton once again insisted that the program continue, Annie surveyed the silent, watching onlookers.

  Lucy stood by the distraught widower with brooding protectiveness, giving an oddly militant cast to a middle-aged woman in soiled pink shoes and a muddy dress. Her concerned face was gray beneath her tan, making her coral pink lipstick startlingly bright in contrast.

  Gail looked shrunken. Her pale blue eyes were wide and staring, like a child who has wakened in terror from a nightmare. She averted them from her aunt’s body and clung to Frazier’s arm as she might to a lifeline in a turbulent sea.

  The young reporter scrutinized Leighton and the police chief sharply, as if listening for words that weren’t spoken. His muscular body seemed ready to spring, and there was about him the look and air of a crouched panther.

  Rouge stained Edith’s cheeks in bright patches, but her face was composed. Her white cotton pique dress gleamed fresh and crisp. Only her hands, balled into tight fists, betrayed her emotions.

  For once, Sanford didn’t appear impatient. His hawklike face jutted forward, the smooth skin and hooded eyes expressionless, the thin lips tightly compressed. Annie doubted very much indeed that the dark doctor was experiencing any emotion over Corinne’s demise. Why then did he look so wary?

  Miss Dora leaned on her stick and glowered malevolently at Annie.

  Roscoe was as suitably grave as a mortician. Every so often, he glanced up from the body to Leighton and back down again, but he said nothing.

  Annie’s eyes moved toward the body, too. How odd that so many whose lives had been affected by Corinne now stood assembled at her death. But no grief was apparent in that silent circle, except, perhaps, for Leighton’s air of inchoate puzzlement. Instead, Annie sensed a strand of tension, verging on fear, joining them together.

  “A vagrant,” Leighton said abruptly. “That’s what must have happened. Corinne startled someone, a robber perhaps, and she was struck down. We can’t let it destroy the work of the Society. It meant too much to her.”

  Annie wondered if his plea rang as false to other ears as to hers, but the police chief was nodding.

  “Be a damn mess with the crowds if they’re thrown on their own,” Wells said heavily. “Ephraim’s jammed right now. All right, open up.”

  Open up. Just like that. Didn’t anybody have any idea of the problems involved? Annie could keep silent no longer.

  “Look, I understand Mr. Webster’s feelings—and I’m sorry about the crowds, but it just isn’t possible! The gazebo—” She didn’t want to talk in terms of The Scene of the Crime. Not with Miss Dora’s malignant gaze still pinned to her. Backing up, she started over. “All the clues are in the gazebo—and Mr. Webster and Miss Prichard had agreed to play the roles of two of the suspects. I don’t think—”

  Edith stepped forward. “Of course we can do it. There are others who will willingly take their places. In Corinne’s memory, we will do it.”

  12

  WERE THESE PEOPLE CRAZY?

  Was sudden death merely a piquant addition to their mystery lust?

  Apparently so, because the Mystery Night program was a sellout despite the ripple of rumors about Corinne’s murder, and tourists without tickets were pressed against the front fence, straining for a glimpse of police and any movement near the cane thicket.

  Annie took a deep breath and climbed the steps to the platform facing the tents. She looked out over the cheerful spring scene. Pastel hues predominated in the encroaching dusk, women in pink, yellow, and white, men in light blue, gray, or tan. It might be any church picnic or annual firm outing except for the undercurrent of nervous excitement threading the hum of voices. The lights strung in the live oak trees and suspended inside the tents glowed a soft yellow. Most of the men and women were sitting around the tables under the Suspect Interrogation and Detection Teams Conference Area tents. A few heartier eaters were in line to refill their plates with Low Country specialties. Her stomach rumbled hungrily. She hadn’t even had a bite of the Carolina trifle. She’d been hardpressed to scrub off the pond mud, change into a fresh straw-berry-and-lemon striped skirt and soft pink cotton blouse, move the crime scene to the rose arbor just east of the house, drill Max and Edith, who were pinch-hitting for Leighton and Gail as suspects, and make it to the foot of the platform only ten minutes after the mystery program was scheduled to begin.

  She looked down the path leading to the pond and wondered if Corinne still lay defenseless on the gray sandy bank, her once lovely face sunken in death, her immaculate wool gabardine dress soiled by water, mud, and blood. A policeman, scarcely visible in the growing dusk, stood guard, turning away venturesome Mystery Night participants. This was the first moment she’d had time to think about her gruesome discovery and its ramifications. That hulking police chief wanted to hear her story—and he had called Leighton Mr. Mayor. But surely he wouldn’t cast her as the murderer just because she was from out of town. Her gaze skimmed the crowd surging closer to the platform, and Miss Dora’s wizened face popped into view. Annie fought a feeling of panic as she stared into those brooding, hostile eyes. Why had the old lady turned on her? And the answer hung in her mind: because she was a stranger. Jerking her glance away, she stared down at her notes. She had so many things to remember when she made her presentation, including two gruff demands from Chief Wells. She glanced to her left. The Mystery Night suspects, most of them costumed suitably for an English house party in the late 1930s, stood in a line by the steps. They looked uneasy, their faces strained and subdued in the soft yellow light. And why not? Most of them were a good deal more concerned about the progress of the murder investigation unfolding a hundred yards to the northwest than they were the evening’s entertainment.

  A sharp voice wafted up from immediately below her. “Are you working on the real murder? Can I help?”

  Annie looked down into the fox-sharp eyes of Mrs. Brawley.

  Mrs. Brawley stood on tiptoe. “What time did it happen? Maybe I saw something.”

  “But the grounds weren’t open then. What would you have been doing?”
<
br />   For once, Mrs. Brawley appeared at a loss. Then she mumbled, “Oh, looking here and there. Interested in flowers. Irises.” Glancing down at her watch, she yelped, “It’s almost fifteen after. You must get started,” and she turned and scuttled back toward the Suspect Interrogation Tent.

  Swiftly, Annie translated. Mrs. Brawley had made a reconnaissance to get a jump on the other contestants and been prowling around the Prichard grounds. Obviously, she hadn’t seen the murder or she would be regaling Wells and the world with an embellished account. But it meant she’d cheated on the mystery program, no doubt about it. However, in the scheme of things, she didn’t at the moment give a bloody damn. Let Mrs. Brawley win. Just let this horrible, endless week be over, and then she would be free to return to Broward’s Rock and the uneventful (usually) life of a mystery bookstore owner.

  Still, it rankled. She’d gone to a lot of effort to create a neat mystery, and everybody who paid their ten bucks deserved a fair chance to win. But any attempt to disqualify Mrs. Brawley would delay the beginning of the program yet again and create an emotional tempest.

  So, she loosened the microphone from the stand. The crowd shifted in anticipation. Her gaze swept over the throng and rested for an instant on a very familiar figure, the redoubtable Emma Clyde, the most famous mystery writer on Broward’s Rock. Emma’s stiff bronze curls had a fiery tint in the fading light. She wore a lime cotton top and a multi-pleated orange skirt. Shell earrings with a matching necklace and three bracelets affirmed a spring outfit. She looked like a housewife enjoying Wednesday night bingo, except for the piercing cornflower blue eyes that even at a distance crackled with intelligence. For an instant, their eyes met and held. As always, Annie felt a quiver of unease in Emma’s presence. The woman was so damned smart. Then Annie grinned and gave a little wave. If anybody could outwit Mrs. Brawley, it was Emma Clyde.