Conch Shell Murder

by Dorothy Francis

  “I’m sorry, Diane, but I don’t know the woman’s name.”

  Again Katie regretted touching on subject matter that fragmented Diane’s composure. “Mr. Addison, will you outline the terms of Alexa’s second will, the unsigned document?”

  “It was a simple will. In essence she left one dollar each to her husband, her daughter, her grandchildren, Tyler Parish, and Mary Bethel. She left the bulk of her estate to the Key West Preservation Group.”

  “One dollar to family and friends?” Katie asked. “Was that intended as an insult?”

  “She certainly was unhappy with her family when she decided to change her will, but she acted more in anger at the circumstances concerning her health than as an insult to anyone. Had she left these people nothing, one or all of them might have tried to break the will, claiming she was mentally incompetent and had forgotten them.” Mr. Addison shoved his chair back. “Unless you have more questions, I feel there’s nothing additional I can tell you, my ladies.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Diane said. “Please send me your bill.”

  “This one’s on the house, Diane. I’m happy to assist you. It would pleasure me to see Alexa’s murderer meet justice.”

  “I appreciate your help, Mr. Addison,” Katie said, “but one more thing. Would you request a copy of the police report of the murder? You could get it more easily than I.”

  “Yes. I’ll request it and I’ll mail it to your office. Please feel free to call on me again if you have further questions.”

  “Thank you.” Katie stood and she and Diane left the office.

  SEVEN

  As they stepped back outside, Katie avoided Diane’s eyes, but once they were inside the car, Katie took her hand and met her gaze. “I’m so very sorry you had to hear all that. Had I known what was coming, I’d have arranged to talk with Addison privately.”

  “I needed all that info,” Diane said. “It explains many things about Mother’s relationship with Mary that I’ve wondered about. And as for Dad…” Her voice trailed away. “I’m surprised that he had or has a paramour, yet why should I be? I doubt that he and Mother had slept together for years. Only a true ascetic would put up with that sort of situation.”

  “I’ll have to learn her name,” Katie said.

  “Of course. But right now, why don’t I drive you to see Mother’s office? Would that be the next step to take?”

  “Is this a convenient time for you?”

  “Yes. You’ll need to see the scene of the crime sooner or later, so why procrastinate?”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Diane drove the short distance through Old Town and on to the marina along horse and buggy streets so narrow they made it a challenge to avoid fender-to-fender encounters with tourists who drove their self-contained houses on wheels as if they owned the island. When they reached the marina, Diane parked in the slot marked ALEXA CHITTING. Beneath the bold letters and in smaller print were the words: “Don’t even think of it.”

  “This must be hard for you, Diane. I’ll make it brief.”

  “You needn’t hurry. I’m trying to make peace with myself concerning Mother’s death. Little by little I’m succeeding.”

  They sat in the car for a few moments viewing the scene. Screaming gulls and pelicans soared on the trade wind like animated kites above the blue and white marina structures that comprised a city within a city. On past the hotel area, Katie could see an outdoor café and bar, a ship’s store, and rental kiosks which offered ten-speed bicycles, mopeds, and wind surfers. A marina spelled big business.

  A breeze carried mingled smells of salt air and orange juice, diesel fuel and coffee, hemp rope and cinnamon rolls. They watched the motley group who had been attracted to the area—tourists, marina patrons and employees, and local Conchs who chose to sun themselves on Chitting benches that overlooked the boardwalk and the sea. Knowing that a murderer had struck only a few feet above this halcyon scene sobered Katie and left her feeling wary and vulnerable.

  “Mother and I weren’t close,” Diane said as they sat there. “Everyone knows that. I suppose our estrangement was as much my fault as hers.”

  “You needn’t talk about it. I know it’s painful.”

  “You’ll hear about it from others once you start probing. I’d rather you heard it from me. And I want you to know right off that I was at a city council meeting during the time of the murder. So was Rex Layton. Beck might as well forget the mayor as a suspect. Rex presided at the meeting, and I have lots of people who will vouch for his presence—and mine.”

  “Why didn’t you say so when Beck suggested Rex’s name?”

  “She’d probably have said he could have slipped out of the meeting and then returned. No point in starting an argument with her. Sometimes she can be an I’ll-have-the-last-word-or-else type.”

  “Could Rex have left the meeting and then returned?”

  “Hardly. As mayor, he held the gavel. He stood right there in front of everyone all evening as he presided over the meeting.”

  “I’ll check that out later. Tell me about your mother.”

  “Mother always tried to dominate me.” Diane sighed. “From the time I was a teenager, I rebelled. We went through the eastern boarding school scene, the Ivy League college scene. After I graduated from Wellesley, she insisted that I be her business partner at the marina because I had earned my M.B.A.”

  “That surprises me.” She couldn’t imagine Diane as a businesswoman—unless she ran an antique store or an interior decorating shop. “The M.B.A., I mean, not the fact that Alexa wanted you as her partner.”

  “It galled Mother that I never used my degree. She tried to prevent my marriage—hated Randy on sight. I suppose we should have lived somewhere else, but we both love Key West. When Mother finally accepted our marriage as a hard fact of her life, she let Randy take over the buying for the marina. It could have been an ideal situation.”

  “But he hated it, right?”

  “Right. He abhorred working for her. He finally quit, and Mother ostracized him completely. I suppose you can’t rule Randy out as a suspect, can you?”

  Suddenly Katie felt on guard. Diane was right. She couldn’t count Randy out, but she refused to think about that now. She hated having to consider friends as suspects. “I’ll be talking to everyone who was close to Alexa.”

  “Of course. I should have been a better daughter. I could have pulled in my horns and done more to keep the family ties from fraying. Had I done so, there might never have been that second will—or the murder.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It’s pointless. All of Alexa’s associates are probably thinking of things they could have done that might have prevented the tragedy. Ease up.”

  “I’ll try.”

  They left the car and crossed the parking lot.

  “This way.” Diane followed a narrow cement strip until they reached a wide-planked boardwalk built on pilings above the sea. Feeling the gentle sway underfoot, Katie reached for the weathered hemp line suspended between black iron posts that served as a barrier between land and water. Here the strong smell of diesel fuel and salt air mingled as sailboats, fishing crafts, and cabin cruisers rocked gently in the maze of slips extending far into the bight.

  “Chitting Marina does a big business,” Katie commented.

  “Right. It’s usually crowded here. Many incoming captains radio the dockmaster for slip reservations much as motorists make hotel reservations, but some local boat owners rent their slips by the month or by the year.”

  They watched while a dockmaster wearing white slacks and a black sweatshirt bearing the words CHITTING MARINA helped a captain ease his craft into a slip and hook up with the electric power line. Pocketing his tip, the dockmaster looked up and smiled at Diane.

  “May I be of help, Mrs. Dade?”

  “No thanks, Ben. We’re on our way to Mother’s office for a few moments.” Turning, she led Katie to the elevator and they rode to the third floor. The slight
, dark-haired girl at the desk looked up as they entered the office. For an instant, upon seeing Diane, she sat so still she might have been a picture freeze-framed by a video camera. Then she relaxed, smiled, and stood.

  “Katie, I’d like you to meet Mary Bethel, Mother’s secretary. Mary, this is Katie Hassworth. She’s with the McCartel and Hassworth Detective Agency and she’s investigating Mother’s death.”

  Small boned and fragile looking, Mary, with her stark black dress and ebony hair and eyes, reminded Katie of a figure in one of the dainty turn-of-the-century silhouettes mounted under convex glass in Diane’s bedroom.

  After they exchanged greetings, Mary looked directly at Katie. “I suppose you want to question me.”

  “Perhaps. But not now. Today I’m here to observe the office.”

  Katie thought Mary looked relieved, but she could hardly blame her. Nobody enjoyed being interrogated about a murder.

  “I’ll be available whenever you want to talk with me,” Mary said. “I want to see Alexa’s killer caught. Alexa was a wonderful person and a perfect boss. I’d still be starving as a freelance writer if she hadn’t provided this job. I’m deeply in her debt.”

  Katie studied Mary. Could she and Randy Dade have worked for the same woman, the bitch Bubba had so eloquently described? If Mary was trying to cloak herself in innocence, she was overacting.

  “The family appreciates your carrying on with the business,” Diane said. “Katie will be in touch later. And Mary, you needn’t continue wearing those black dresses.”

  “I enjoy the dresses, and discarding them would be a waste. I think Alexa would have wanted me to continue wearing them. They were her idea.”

  Katie watched for Diane’s reaction to Mary’s patronizing tone and manner, but there was none, and she had to admit that the tailored dress matched Mary’s every-hair-in-place coiffure in a flattering way.

  Mary sat down and began typing, and Katie studied the office, ticking off the accouterments in her mind. Picture window like a giant eye overlooking the boat slips. White carpet. Walls covered in a textured white silk. White satin draperies. Black leather couch and easy chairs. She was struck by the stark black and white in this Chitting world where sea blue might have seemed more appropriate.

  The deep-piled carpet cushioned her steps as she approached the walnut desk across the spacious room from Mary Bethel’s work area. Beneath Alexa’s swivel chair rusty-brown stains marred the carpet, and blood had also splattered the wall.

  “Alexa and Mary always shared the office?” Katie glanced at Diane, who kept her gaze averted from the stains.

  “Yes. Mother liked to have Mary close at hand.” She stepped to the left of the desk and opened a narrow door. “They have a bathroom here.”

  Katie inspected the room, noting the usual fixtures one might find in any bathroom. “The police went over the room carefully, I suppose.”

  “Yes. They said they found prints from only Mother and Mary. The killer must have worn gloves.”

  “That figures.” A black-bordered Oriental carpet dominated the wall behind Alexa’s desk, and to one side of it hung a gold-framed seascape.

  “There’s a wall safe behind the painting.”

  Katie eased the frame aside. “Who had access to the safe?”

  “Mother, Mary, and Dad. Do you want it opened?”

  “Not today.” The gilt-framed seascape with the name T. Parish slanted across the lower right corner looked as if it might have been lifted directly from Alexa’s gilt-edged life, but the Oriental carpet hanging next to it seemed more appropriate for Diane’s home than for this office. Both hangings seemed at odds with the black and white office decor.

  Katie straightened the seascape, then studied the Oriental carpet with its wines, blues, greens and its black border which supported heavy fringe that hung like short-cropped hair. “A lovely piece.”

  “Yes,” Diane agreed. “Antique, of course. I gave it to Mother for her last birthday. I intended it for her home, but she preferred to hang it here.”

  “Then you weren’t totally estranged. You did converse and exchange gifts.”

  “Yes. But usually the gifts were more like unsuccessful peace offerings.”

  Katie stepped behind the desk and continued to study the carpet, touching the luxurious nap. Was it a twin to the one in her apartment? Seeing nothing unusual about the hanging rug, she was about to turn aside when she felt a slight roughness in the pile. A closer look revealed an almost imperceptible flaw in the thick nap of the black border. A bullet hole? She stepped back to the front of the desk.

  “Where’s the conch shell?”

  “The police have it. Do you need to examine it?”

  “I may ask to see it when I talk with the police.”

  “There were no fingerprints on it other than Mother’s.”

  “Who has the keys to this office?”

  “I’m not sure.” Diane turned to Mary. “Mary, do you know who has the keys to this office?”

  “Alexa had one, of course. And Po. And I have one. Each dockmaster also had a key and there was a master key in the dockmaster’s office.”

  “How many dockmasters work here?”

  “Ten,” Mary replied. “Of course, they work different shifts.”

  “So anyone having access to the dockmaster’s office would have access to the key to this office?” Katie asked.

  “Yes,” Mary said. “Alexa wanted it that way. Anything important she kept in the safe, but sometimes she needed a dockmaster to run an errand for her and sometimes the errand would require entering this office when neither she nor I was present.”

  “I see,” Katie said. “Did Alexa call on the dockmasters to do errands for her frequently?”

  Mary thought for a few moments. “I wouldn’t say frequently, but she did call on them occasionally. Alexa enjoyed delegating duties.”

  Katie wondered if she heard a note of sarcasm in Mary’s voice. “Mary, could you get me the dockmasters’ keys to this office?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, please. I’d like to examine them.”

  “Of course. I’ll go to the dockmaster’s office myself. The guys down there will know where the keys are and they owe me some favors. Excuse me, please.” She rose from her desk, closing its top drawer before she left the room.

  “Diane, could you get your father’s key to this office?”

  “Yes, of course. Will you be looking for fingerprints?”

  “Perhaps. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m looking for until I see it.”

  Katie waited until Mary and Diane were gone, then she strode to Mary’s desk and tried the top drawer. It didn’t surprise her to find it locked and she wondered what Mary had in there that she preferred nobody to see.

  Hurry. She had to act before they returned. Crossing the room, she lifted the lower right corner of the Oriental hanging. To her surprise she found no bullet hole in the wall. Examining the carpet more carefully, she touched the hole in the nap and then she felt a leather label on the back of the rug, realizing the leather had stopped the bullet. She left the bullet where it was in case she might need it for evidence later. When Mary and Diane returned, she pretended to be examining the lock on the bathroom door.

  “Here are two keys.” Mary laid the keys on her desk. “The head dockmaster will leave the others as soon as he can round them up.”

  Diane added a third key to the group, and Katie went to the desk, picked up each key and examined it carefully.

  “Do you see anything unusual about the keys?” Diane asked.

  Katie shook her head then turned aside. “I’d rather not say right at this moment.” She laid the keys back on Mary’s desk. “Thank you both for your trouble. You may return the keys at your convenience, Mary. I think I’ve seen enough for today and I appreciate your cooperation.”

  She turned to Diane. “Shall we go now?”

  Katie felt Mary’s gaze follow them from the office and she wondered if the secre
tary was watching them from the picture window. When they got off the elevator and stepped onto the boardwalk, she looked up at the office again, but no one was in sight.

  EIGHT

  After Diane let Katie out at her office, Katie considered the bullet. The police had overlooked this piece of evidence; surely they would have taken the bullet with them had they been aware of it.

  During the afternoon she made notes on things she had seen and heard at Samuel Addison’s office and at the Chitting Marina. Mary Bethel had praised Alexa and she had been civil to Diane, but Katie wished she knew more about Mary. Did the two women resent each other? According to Samuel Addison, Alexa had done everything but invite Mary into the Chitting home as a daughter.

  If the aperture in the wall hanging had been made the night of the murder, surely the killer had come armed with intent, changed his mind and substituted the conch shell for the gun. Why? Fury? Had hate of Alexa burgeoned into fury? Had the killer lost control and seized the conch shell when the bullet went astray? Surely the gun had held more than one bullet.

  When no answers were forthcoming, Katie let her mind roam to other matters. Picking up the telephone directory, she looked up a number and dialed.

  “Ty Parish here.” His voice boomed over the line. “Katie Hassworth speaking, Mr. Parish. I’m a private detective hired by the Chitting family and I’d like to talk with you.”

  “I’ll just bet you would.”

  “When could we set up an appointment?”

  “I didn’t say I’d talk to you.”

  “But I’m hoping you will. Surely you want the person or persons who killed Mrs. Chitting brought to justice.”

  “Yes, indeed. I’d like that very much. Alexa Chitting meant a lot to me in many ways.”

  “Then let’s set a time to talk. Any light you might be able to shed on the case will be a help.”

  “I’ve already talked to the police. They have a record of everything I said. Can’t you contact them? I’ve nothing more to say than what I’ve told them and I’m a busy man.”

  “I need to talk with you personally. You set the time—at your convenience, of course.”