“Cyanide.” Annie had just picked up her coffee cup. She put it down again. “Oh, my God.”
“Yeah.” The pencil beat a frenzied tattoo. “They figure she invited somebody to have a glass of sherry while she put the bite on them. She must’ve decided she could get more than the $5,000 from Leighton.”
“Oh, hell yes,” Max exclaimed. “That makes all kinds of sense. Idell went after the murderer and threatened to tell Wells unless she were paid off.”
“Money’s all she ever talked about,” Annie agreed. “Money and what a tough time she was having meeting her expenses.” She pictured that fat face, the spriggy orange hair and protuberant, greedy brown eyes. “Blackmail.” Only this time, Idell’s reach had far exceeded her grasp. “She must have contacted the murderer, made an appointment for Wednesday night.”
“But the murderer brought cyanide, not money,” Max concluded grimly.
Bobby jammed the pencil so hard against the table-top that it snapped, then he stared down at it in surprise. “Stupid bitch. And I should have known. I should have taken Wells by the scruff of his goddamned neck and insisted he talk to her.”
“Why? You had no reason to guess she was onto the murderer.”
“She called me Wednesday, asking about the reward, how it was going to be handled, what a person would have to do to get it. I rattled it off, then I came down on her, asked what she knew. She backed off, said she was just curious, one of her guests had asked her. I thought that was phony, but I was busy, had a deadline, so I said oh sure, give us a call anytime. But I should have kept after her.”
“You didn’t go to meet her?”
There was an instant of stiff silence. Bobby stared at Annie. “No.” He spoke carefully and distinctly. “I did not meet her.”
“I didn’t mean—” She flushed and started over. “I saw you at the Mystery Night, and since it’s just next door …”
“I was looking for Gail.”
Max poured fresh coffee for all of them. “Did you find her?”
“Yes. We had a nice talk.” He sounded like a high school principal describing a Kiwanis luncheon, but the muscles in his jaw were rigid.
Annie squashed a desire to tell him to come off it. She realized more and more that she lacked the finesse needed to inveigle answers from sullen, angry, or frightened people. If only she had the suavity of John Appleby or the unassuming, quiet manner of Father Bredder.
Max, however, excelled in finesse. He propped his elbows on the table and smiled with the blandness of Lord Peter Wimsey. “Is Gail doing okay? What did she have to say?”
“Oh, she thanked me for the stories in the Courier, said they were well done. I thanked her. You know, we became acquainted when I did a series on the programs and outreach of the Prichard Museum. She’s a very knowledgeable curator, and she’s done an outstanding job with limited resources.”
Oh, my God, Annie thought. Next he’d list her degrees and publications. She’d had enough.
“When did you fall in love with her?”
His head jerked up; he glared at Annie. “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re friends, that’s all.”
“Then why did you tell her it didn’t matter whether she had any money, that you were going to keep on seeing her no matter what her aunt did?”
“As friends,” he reiterated stubbornly. “That’s all.”
Understanding exploded in her mind, like Fourth of July fireworks. “So Gail didn’t have any reason to kill her aunt. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Right. It’s absurd to even think so. It’s laughable, a gentle girl like Gail.” But he wasn’t laughing, and Annie knew that a frightful scene lurked in the dark corridors of his mind: Gail and Corinne, a quarrel, a burst of white-hot anger, Corinne face-down on the path, Gail standing there, a mallet in her hand.
Behind the tough newsman facade, fear for Gail ate at him. He tried to hide behind bluster. “Any idea Wells has about Gail, it’s crap. That’s all. Just crap.”
As much to distract him as anything else, she said, “I guess they’re sure about the autopsy report?”
Frazier looked at her blankly.
“Was it really cyanide that killed Idell?”
If possible, Frazier looked even grimmer. “Yeah. Cyanide of potassium.”
“That ought to clear Gail. How could she possibly have access to cyanide of potassium?”
Bobby looked like a man who had opened a door and walked into hell. He didn’t seem to be aware of their presence for a long, agonizing moment. Finally, he said dully, “That’s a good point.” He managed a travesty of a smile. “Of course, nobody with any brains would even consider Gail.”
Except Bobby, obviously.
He drank some coffee, put down the empty cup. “Well, I’d better get back to the newsroom.” He jerked his head toward the grounds. “Now that I’ve got a picture of the Death Door.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “If you see Gail—Never mind. See you later.”
As he strode away, Max sighed. “Poor devil.”
“He thinks she did it.”
“Yeah.”
Annie looked at Max, unaccustomedly somber across the table. He looked tanned and fit, his thick blond hair cut short, his dark blue eyes alert and thoughtful. All as usual, except for the furrow of worry on his brow.
“Dammit,” he said, “maybe you should go back to Broward’s Rock.”
This was so unexpected that she stared at him, momentarily speechless. “Why?”
“Cyanide is nothing to fool with. How do we know the murderer won’t sprinkle it everywhere?”
She poked the half-eaten spongy croissant. “It might add a little flavor to this.”
“For God’s sake, Annie, be serious.”
This was such a turnabout that she couldn’t repress a grin.
In a moment, he broke into a reluctant smile. “Okay. I know. You are serious. Your virtue and your defect.”
“I don’t know who wrote that damned letter. Or who pinched some cyanide. Or who murdered Corinne and Idell. I’m perfectly safe.”
That diverted him. He jammed a hand through his hair. “That’s what we need to work on. Where could Gail get cyanide?”
“Bobby obviously has a very clear idea where she might have obtained the poison.” And she concluded thoughtfully, “If he knows where Gail could have found cyanide of potassium, that means he knows how to get it, too.”
• • •
Gail led the way up the magnificent staircase. It rose for three stories, the banisters carved at top and bottom, the railing a gleaming mahogany, the ornate fretwork glistening white. Her room was on the top floor, a bedroom and sitting room that overlooked the front gardens. A group of garden club women snapped pictures of the sweeping azaleas, with occasional furtive snaps aimed at the cane that hid the pond where Corinne died. The sitting room was papered with a mid-eighteenth century Chinese wallpaper with orange-tiled pagodas and tan mud-brick walls. Annie and Max sat on a Chippendale loveseat. It had delicate Chinese fretwork and was upholstered in tan and cream satin. Annie looked for reflections of Gail in the lovely, almost period-perfect room. An open copy of the April Vogue lay face down on the woven wicker coffee table. A modern black rocker with a Clemson crest sat beside the fireplace. A collection of miniature pottery dogs decorated half the Adam mantel. Portrait photographs sat at each end, one of Corinne, and the other of a man Annie felt certain must be Cameron, Gail’s father. It was the same strikingly handsome face, auburn hair, sky-blue eyes, but there was an air of resignation in his face and perhaps a touch of weakness in his mouth. A chairside booktable held an extensive collection of art books, along with three booklets from the Prichard Museum. The top one pictured a magnificent silver punchbowl. The cover blurb advertised historic reproductions.
Gail stood in the center of the sitting room, her feet wide apart as if braced against a storm. She wore a print dress in khaki and peony, jungle flowers bright against the tan background. The vivid colors of the dress under
scored the waxen shade of her face and the dark smudges beneath her eyes.
“I can’t believe it. Why would anyone kill Idell?”
Max spread his arm behind Annie on the sofa top. “The police think she tried to blackmail the letter writer. She’d talked to Bobby Frazier about the award being offered by Leighton. She definitely had money in mind.”
Gail’s hands curled into tight balls. “She called Bobby?”
“Yes. But when he pressed her about what she knew, she backed off, claimed she was asking for a guest.”
She looked at them doubtfully. “That’s not likely, is it?”
“No.” Annie put it bluntly. “What’s likely is that she thought she could get more money somewhere else. Instead, she got cyanide in her sherry.”
“Cyanide? Is that what killed her?” Gail sounded interested, but not threatened.
Annie had it down pat by now. “Cyanide of potassium.”
Horror dawned slowly on Gail’s face. If Bobby Frazier could have seen it, Annie thought, surely he would have realized her innocence.
Then a slimy thought wriggled in the recesses of Annie’s mind. If Gail were a double murderer, once out of anger, the second time from fear, she would have given thought to the moment when cyanide of potassium would first be mentioned to her.
“Cyanide of potassium.” She whirled away, walked to the window.
“Do you know where anyone could find it?”
Gail was silent for so long that Annie thought she didn’t intend to answer. Finally, she turned and faced them, her arms folded tightly at her waist. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s used for lots of things.”
“At the Museum,” Max suggested.
Her blue eyes troubled, she turned to him. “Yes.” She almost managed to sound conversational. “I believe there is some at the Museum. Tim uses it in electroplating.” At their silence, she continued, “You know, in making historical reproductions of things like candlesticks and punch bowls and tankards. We have an extensive line of reproductions that we make and sell through the Museum to raise money.”
Annie darted a look at Max. He was so busy suffering for Gail that he didn’t say a word. Annie didn’t believe in festering sores. A lanced boil heals.
“How did Bobby know about it?”
She swallowed jerkily. “It was last fall, when he did a series of articles on the Museum and its programs. He did a special Sunday feature on Tim and all of his talents, as a painter and engraver—and in electroplating.” She rubbed her temple as if it ached. “Tim is truly an outstandingly talented person. I believe it was that article that caught the attention of the New York gallery.” A touch of color seeped back into her face. “You see, everyone read about it. I heard so many comments, and we received a spurt of letters from people eager to know all about our line of reproductions.”
“Did the article include the information about the use of cyanide of potassium in electroplating?”
“I don’t suppose in so many words,” she admitted reluctantly. “But anyone who knows anything at all about the process would know. So anyone who read that article would realize we had cyanide of potassium at the Museum. That’s obvious.”
It was a good deal more obvious that at least three of the people who were intimately associated with Corinne Webster knew about the cyanide of potassium: Gail Prichard, Bobby Frazier, and Tim Bond.
But she was cheering with every word. “So, of course, it doesn’t mean a thing that Bobby wrote those articles. Anyone could have known.” Then her eyes darkened with pain. “Besides, Bobby didn’t have a motive. When I talked to you the other day, I gave you the wrong impression about Bobby and me. We’re just friends. Nothing more than that.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Annie exploded. “Don’t be such a fool.”
She flushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean any idiot—including Chief Wells—can see that Bobby’s besotted with you. I don’t mean he killed your aunt, but you can’t be dumb enough to believe he doesn’t care about you.”
“He told me it didn’t mean anything.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “He said—”
“Of course, he did. The boy’s trying to protect you. He’s doing his damnedest to keep Chief Wells from even looking your way. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”
Gail’s strained face reflected a series of emotions—shock, uncertainty, then burgeoning hope.
As the Porsche lunged away from the curb, Max shook his head chidingly.
“Well,” Annie said defensively, “I hate stupidity.”
“Sometimes, it’s better for things not to be quite so clear-cut.”
“Do you think he’s fooling Wells?”
“No. But he was fooling Gail.”
“So what’s good about that?”
“It kept her from worrying about him, didn’t it?”
• • •
They arrived at the Museum right on the heels of Chief Wells.
He disposed of his chewing tobacco in a silver spittoon, then turned his watery blue eyes on them.
“Aren’t you people out of town yet?”
“I didn’t know I was free to go. Besides, we have the ball completing the mystery event tonight.”
“I know where to find you if I want you,” he growled. “What’re you here for?”
Max jerked his head toward the basement stairs. “We heard about the cyanide, too.”
“Yeah, the cyanide.” His eyes lingered on Annie for a long moment. “Since you’re so curious, you can come on downstairs, little lady.”
Said the spider to the fly, Annie thought. But they followed him down the steeply pitched stairs to the basement. The hollow echo of hammering led them to Tim, still crating his paintings. He looked at the Chief, and beyond him at Annie and Max, with no enthusiasm. “Look, I’ve told you everything I did on Monday, and I don’t see why I have to go through it again. And I don’t know anything about the old lady at the Inn.” Sweat trickled down his face and stained his paint-spattered work shirt. His chestnut curls lay limply on his shoulders.
Wells ignored his objections. “Where’s the poison?”
Tim led the way to the end of the corridor and a warped yellow door. The poster on it warned POISON. Tim unlocked the door and a heavy, sour smell of chemicals wafted out. He turned on the light. The trays and vats needed for electroplating were neatly arranged on a table against the back wall. A shelf to the right of the table held a number of bottles.
Wells found what he sought on the third shelf from the bottom, a large green stoppered bottled labeled CYANIDE OF POTASSIUM.
“Jesus Christ, there’s enough poison in that to kill every living soul in Chastain!” His heavy head swiveled toward the door. “That goddamn lock’s a joke.”
Bond looked at him in disgust. “We don’t feed it to anybody, Chief.”
“It killed Idell Gordon,” the Chief rasped.
If Tim Bond were acting, he exhibited considerable talent. His eyes went blank with shock, his bony jaw dropped. He took a step back, then said, “Hey, what the hell. Somebody’s trying to frame me.” His paint-stained hands clenched convulsively. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but nobody’s going to lay this on me.”
But Annie abruptly realized the Chief wasn’t watching Tim. Instead, those probing, hostile eyes were pinned on her.
“Tell me something, little lady.”
She tensed.
“Sybil told me you and your feller came down here and badgered Tim the other day. That’s right enough, isn’t it?”
“Is it badgering to ask a man who has a damn good motive where he was when the murder was committed?”
But Wells was intent upon his own train of thought. “Now, when you came down here, you couldn’t help but see this here yellow door with a POISON sign. Now, could you?”
22
Annie dumped the envelopes out on her bed, then stared at them in dismay. How could there be so many? She looked at her watch
. Almost four o’clock. Where had the day gone? But she knew. It had fled as they fought their way through the clogged streets (Friday featured a Fried Chicken Cook-Off, a China Painting Exhibition, and the finals in the Chastain Speedboat Classic), seeking more information about Idell Gordon, cyanide of potassium, and the whereabouts of all the suspects between 9 and 10 P.M. Wednesday evening. She’d had two more acerbic run-ins with Chief Wells and made another abortive visit to Miss Dora’s shuttered home. Now she had only a few hours before the Denouement Ball began—and she’d damned well better have a denouement in hand, or she would be attacked by a band of enraged mystery buffs. And the prizes for the five best costumes—she rummaged frantically in the bottom of the clue box, then heaved a sigh of relief. There they were, five certificates, ranging in value from $5 to $25, good toward any purchase at Death on Demand. So, all she had to do was figure out which team, if any, had named the murderer of the Sticky Wicket Mystery. If more than one had come up with the right answer, then it would come down to which team turned its answer in first. The mystery winners and costume winners were to be announced at the stroke of midnight.
She stacked the envelopes by day and felt the beginnings of panic. Could she possibly read and digest all these answers in time? It had all seemed so reasonable when she and Max planned it. But they hadn’t counted on two real murders.
Max tapped on the door and poked his head in. “Let’s go down to the Courier and see what we can pick up.”
She flapped her hands distractedly. “Tonight. I haven’t checked the entries. No time. Go ahead.”
He leaned against the doorjamb and chuckled.
She turned on him with slitted eyes. “Can’t you see?” She pointed at the four untidy stacks of envelopes. “I’ve got to read all of those.”
“Oh hell, just throw them up in the air and pick a winner.”
She glared at him, horrified. “Do you honestly think Mrs. Brawley wouldn’t catch me?”
“I guess you’re right. But relax, love, you’re a speed reader.” Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he departed.
Carolyn G. Hart Page 44
