Conch Shell Murder

by Dorothy Francis

  Before Rex arrived, a nurse served a light supper, and Katie ate every bit of it to prove that she was well and feeling fine and could just as well be home.

  When Rex arrived, he carried something in a nest of tissue paper. “Flower shops are closed, so I picked this up from a vendor at Mallory. The street types don’t gift wrap.”

  She smiled at him as she unwrapped a polished scallop shell hanging from a silken cord. “A necklace! It’s lovely, Rex. Thank you.” She allowed him to slip it over her head and around her neck, conscious all the while of the observing eyes of Sgt. La Rosa.

  “You can go out for a walk,” Rex said. “I asked at the nurse’s station. All you have to do is sign a checkout sheet. We can find a place that’s protected from the wind.”

  She signed out, Rex slipped a sweater around her shoulders, and they left the hospital. The cool air felt invigorating after the warmth of her room, and they had almost circled the building before she noticed La Rosa trailing them at a discreet distance, head drawn into his jacket like a turtle.

  “No privacy,” she said. “No privacy at all.”

  “Who needs privacy?” Rex pulled her into a sheltered el then wrapped her in his warm embrace, taking care not to hurt her injured arm. They kissed deeply, molding their bodies together as they relaxed against each other, unmindful of the cold.

  “Katie. Katie. I was so worried about you. You could have been killed.”

  “Elizabeth is a rotten shot.”

  “I’m glad.” He kissed her again. “Look, when you get out of here, we’ll celebrate the fact that you’re still alive.”

  “I’m getting out tomorrow morning. I won’t let them hold me any longer.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “At the office.”

  “Give me the key and I’ll leave it in the hospital lot for you. Or maybe I should pick you up and drive you home.”

  “I don’t know what time they’ll spring me. You know doctors! I’d really appreciate knowing that my car is here.”

  “Done. Then we’ll have lunch at my house. Your choice of menu. What’ll it be? I’ll cook.”

  “How about conch chowder and onion rolls?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On Sunday morning Katie had a slight temperature and the doctor delayed her dismissal for another day. She called Rex with the wretched news.

  “I’m sorry, Katie. But I’m glad they’re taking good care of you.”

  “But our lunch…I want out of here.”

  “I would have had to cancel anyway. Dad phoned from New York. I have to fly up this morning and…talk about a business deal. Let’s make it dinner tomorrow night. I’ll be back sometime late afternoon and I know you’ll have been dismissed by then.”

  She sighed deeply. “Fine. Have a good flight.”

  “Oh, by the way, Diane will park your car near the back door of the hospital and bring the keys up to you. I’d do it myself, but I’m catching an early flight.”

  “You’re a doll. Take care in New York.” She eyed his sweater lying on her bedside chair. She would take it to him tomorrow.

  A day. A whole day to hang around the hospital with nothing to do. Although cold wind still chilled the island, Diane arrived with a garden bouquet and her car keys during afternoon visiting hours. Beck Dixon telephoned to wish her well. Babcock relieved La Rosa, and they played gin in the late afternoon. Babcock won.

  Elizabeth Wright still roamed at large. The fact made Katie uneasy. She retired early, but she lay thinking, thinking. If the police were right, if Wright hadn’t murdered Alexa Chitting, then who had? Reluctantly she admitted that she lacked the facts necessary to prove her case against Wright. Her evidence was circumstantial, merely conjecture.

  She ran the suspects and their alibis through her mind once again, like the credits at the end of a movie, trying to remember what each person had said, how each had acted. Po. If he had been able to slip from the bar to deliver a rosebud, he could also have taken time to kill Alexa. Randy Dade. Maybe the bridge accident hadn’t delayed him as long as he said. Mary Bethel. She had a key to Alexa’s office. She had no strong alibi. Shadows against a window shade would count for little in the eyes of a prosecuting attorney.

  She let her attention linger on Mary. She could have returned to the marina and entered Alexa’s office unquestioned by the dockmasters or by Alexa. Nobody would have been surprised to see her there. But she had no proof that Mary had returned to the marina that night. None at all.

  When she thought of Tyler Parish, she shuddered. Having a guard at her door didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. Parish scared her. She needed to know more about him. Who were his friends? Where did he hang out in his spare time? Maybe Bubba could help her with those details.

  She felt chilly as a grim thought knifed through her mind and a cold rain pounded against her windowpane. She remembered how hot she had been hiding in Elizabeth Wright’s closet and wished she had some of that warmth now. Sitting up, she reached for the blanket on the foot of her bed and pulled it over her shoulders. How good it felt.

  A nurse opened her door, and a shaft of light from the hallway fell on the chair where Rex’s sweater lay—the same sweater she had worn beside his pool, the same sweater she had worn on their walk around the hospital grounds, and the same sweater she had worn the night a wave had drenched them on the pier.

  As she thought of the cold outside and the warmth of the sweater, a hunch flashed into her mind. A sweater. The hunch grew into a revelation. She sat up and pounded her pillow. How had she missed it before? She forgot about Tyler Parish and concentrated on the sweater and on the bullet in the wall hanging and on the conch shell that had announced Alexa Chitting’s birth—and her death. She knew what she had to do the minute the doctor dismissed her from the hospital. Mentally she thanked Diane for bringing her car to the back door.

  To her surprise she slept well that night. She rose early the next morning. Her arm still hurt, but her mind blanked out the pain as she began to put her plan into effect. Sometime during the night, the guard had changed. La Rosa sat outside her room. She closed the door and dressed in the denim outfit, wishing she had her khaki clothes instead. This time she carefully fastened the miniature tape recorder to her bra. When she opened her door again, she heard a news announcer’s voice drone from La Rosa’s radio.

  “…Elizabeth Wright has been apprehended in the alleged shooting of Detective Kathleen Hassworth.”

  La Rosa snapped off the radio and looked at her. “As soon as you’re dismissed, I’ve orders to escort you to headquarters.”

  “The idea gives me a real thrill.” She had to act quickly. Now would be her only chance. If she waited, Mac would return to find the Chitting case still unsolved and to find her in jail on Elizabeth Wright’s B and E charge. She couldn’t face such ignominious failure. She knew who had killed Alexa Chitting, but again her evidence was circumstantial. She had to get a confession if she hoped to put the murderer behind bars.

  Finding ballpoint and paper in her shoulder bag, she wrote a note to La Rosa, dropped it into her skirt pocket, then laid her bag on the bedside chair. She waited. During the heightened activity in the hallway when the nurses changed shifts, she approached the sergeant, smiling and jingling some coins.

  “I’m dying for coffee.” She thrust the money at him. “Would you get me a cup? There’s a machine downstairs in the family waiting room.”

  La Rosa yawned and patted his paunch. “All right. I could use a cup, too.”

  “I’ve got more change.” She shook more coins from her purse. “Be my guest.”

  Once the elevator door closed behind La Rosa, she snapped on the bathroom light, turned on a faucet, then closed the door. How long would it take someone to realize she wasn’t inside washing up? She draped Rex’s sweater over her arm, hid her bag under it, and slipped from the room. Avoiding the elevator across from the nurses’ station, she dashed down the stairway at th
e other end of the hall, then forced herself to walk as she left the building. Once outside, she ran to the police car parked at the curb and stuck her note to La Rosa under the windshield wiper before she sprinted to her own car and drove to her office.

  Her key jammed in the lock and she swore as she removed it and reinserted it more carefully. Racing to her file cabinet, she unlocked the bottom drawer and grabbed her gun, loaded it, and dropped it into her skirt pocket. Guns. She hated them.

  Had La Rosa missed her yet? She needed time. Dashing back to her car, she drove to Chitting Marina and took the elevator to Alexa’s former office. Good. Mary was there. Katie activated her tape recorder then knocked.

  “Katie Hassworth, Mary.”

  “Come in.”

  Katie opened the door and faced Mary, who rose from her chair looking both surprised and irritated. “It’s all over, Mary. The police will be here in a few minutes.” She slipped one hand into her skirt pocket, gripping her gun. What if she was wrong about Mary? She had been wrong about Elizabeth.

  “Why are you barging in here this way? What are you talking about? You owe me an explanation.”

  “I’m talking about Alexa Chitting’s murder. I’ve just remembered what it was about your story that rang false. You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “You’re out of your mind. Of course I didn’t kill her. You heard my alibi. You talked with Maria Gonzales. She and Mrs. Abresco saw me at home that night. They told me you talked with them. Don’t be tedious. I’m very busy this morning.”

  “They saw your shadow. They didn’t see you because you weren’t there. You wear a wig, don’t you?”

  As if by reflex, Mary’s hand flew to her hair and she flushed.

  “Don’t deny it. In all our wind and humidity, it’s impossible to keep natural hair looking as perfect as yours always looks.”

  “What does my hair have to do with Alexa’s death?” She reached for the telephone. “I’m calling the dockmaster’s office to have you removed from the premises.”

  Katie shoved the telephone aside. “Hear me out. The police are on their way, but I want your full confession before they arrive.”

  “Confession! I’ll confess to nothing. I’ll call my lawyer.”

  “You arranged your desk chair at home to look as if you were sitting in it, placing your wig form on it and focusing the lamplight in a way that cast a shadow onto the window shade. Maria Gonzales assumed the shadow was you. But it wasn’t. You were here in this office bludgeoning Alexa with a conch shell.”

  “That’s a lie.” Her voice rose in pitch and volume. “You can never prove such a thing.”

  “Your line about the sweater gave you away.”

  “The sweater?” Mary gripped the edge of her desk, and Katie saw her knuckles grow white.

  “When I asked you when you last saw Alexa alive, you said you saw her as you left work. You told me that you slipped on your sweater and walked out the door. Those were your exact words.”

  “That’s right. That’s what I did.”

  “That may have been what you did, but you didn’t do it at five o’clock. You did it later that Monday night. Think back. Alexa died the night a cold front numbed the island. But that day Po Chitting took his grandkids swimming in the afternoon because it was so hot. It was no day for wearing sweaters at five o’clock. But that night the cold front hit. The locals bee-lined to Captain Tony’s fireplace.”

  “Many times I feel a chill. The temperature frequently fluctuates in January.”

  “But on the night Alexa died, the temperature drop came long after dark. I’m guessing that you always kept a sweater on hand here. You must have come back to the office that night, arriving in your street clothes in order not to arouse suspicion, and then changing into a dockmaster’s uniform and the wasp mask in the elevator. After you murdered Alexa, you washed up and changed back into your street clothes. Then…”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never worn a dockmaster’s uniform or a mask.”

  “I’m guessing you murdered Alexa then shucked out of the uniform and left it for the police to find. Why not? Lots of people had access to dockmaster uniforms. You changed into your street clothes which you probably had left on the balcony, then you grabbed your sweater.”

  “No. No…”

  “The dockmaster uniform must have been blood-soaked. That’s why you wore a disguise, isn’t it? Not only would it frighten Alexa, but it would also keep blood splatters off your own clothing. I’m sure you washed up in the bathroom, but are you positive you didn’t spatter some of Alexa’s blood on that sweater? On your street clothes? The police will want to check on that.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “You still have those things, don’t you? Your frugal habits wouldn’t allow you to throw out a perfectly good dress or sweater. Just one drop of blood on them that matches Alexa’s could convict you. By using DNA testing, the police can identify blood samples accurately.”

  In the next instant, Mary jerked open her desk drawer and reached for her gun.

  “Don’t do that.” Katie aimed her pistol, holding it steady in spite of her fear and the burning ache in her arm. “Drop it and get your hands up.”

  The gun thunked onto the desk, and Mary raised her hands. Where was La Rosa? Surely he had found her message by now. She wasn’t going to repeat her mistake of trying to dial the phone and keep her suspect covered at the same time. Talk. The police would arrive. Talk. Get the confession.

  “You killed Alexa to insure your annual stipend, didn’t you?”

  No response.

  “Was fifty thousand a year worth a human life—the life of a friend who cared for you, educated you, provided you with employment?”

  Suddenly Mary’s face twisted into a snarl. “She owed me. Alexa only cared about Alexa. She never cared about me. Nobody has ever really cared for me. All through my childhood I was the kid with no parents—the kid who was different, and it was all Alexa’s fault. I hated her.”

  “And so you killed her.”

  “Why shouldn’t I hate her? She killed my parents and went scot-free. Everything she did for me was to assuage her guilty conscience. Her new will would have taken away my inheritance. Don’t you understand? She owed me that money.”

  “So you killed her, right?”

  “I hated her guts. I hated being her servant—for that’s all I was to her—a servant. I did her personal chores. I even shopped for the elegant lingerie she wore on her evenings with Tyler. She deserved to die. She owed me, and I killed her.”

  Mary paused, and Katie prayed that her recorder was working. The confession! She had it! She felt her heart pound as she sought more information. “And you tried to implicate Po by planting his jacket button at the murder scene.”

  “She expected me to track down replacement buttons in some obscure shop in Rome. It would have meant giving up good writing time to find a button! And she expected it of me.”

  “You’re such a small person, Mary. I wondered how you could have overcome Alexa with the conch, but it was easy, wasn’t it? First you held her at gunpoint. There was no way she could defend herself against your gun. The shot that went wild probably scared her into submission.”

  “How did you know?”

  Keeping her gun aimed at Mary, Katie backed to the wall near Alexa’s desk. Lifting one corner of the Oriental hanging, she touched the bullet the police had overlooked. “After your gunshot frightened her, you had her where you wanted her, didn’t you? You grabbed the conch to finish the job.”

  Before Mary could reply, Babcock and La Rosa rushed through the doorway, guns at the ready. Katie turned her head, and in that moment of confusion, Mary grabbed her gun and dropped down behind her desk.

  “She’s armed,” Katie shouted. “She’ll shoot.”

  “Stand back,” Babcock ordered Katie.

  La Rosa rushed forward, planting himself between Katie and Mary’s desk while Babcock quietly circled behind
the desk.

  “Raise your hands and stand up,” La Rosa said. “Now!”

  In the next instant Mary jumped up, her gun aimed at La Rosa, but before she could shoot, Babcock kicked the desk chair into her backside. As she lost her balance, he circled his left arm around her neck and grabbed her right wrist with his right hand, squeezing until her fingers relaxed and the gun fell to the carpet.

  “And there you have Alexa Chitting’s murderer,” Katie said, still aiming her gun at Mary.

  “She’s confessed?” Sgt. Babcock asked.

  “Yes,” Katie said.

  “I’ve confessed to nothing,” Mary said.

  “I’ve recorded her words on my mini-tape.”

  “They won’t be admissible in court,” Mary said. “Never.”

  Katie knew that was true, but she also knew the police would listen to the tape, that it would color their thinking and help direct their line of questioning. “Mary tried to pull her gun on me when I mentioned that Alexa’s blood might be on her sweater—the sweater she wore that night of the murder. And I think you’ll find that her gun’s the same gun that fired a bullet into the Oriental carpet hanging behind Alexa’s desk. The bullet’s still there so you can check it out. Mary fired a shot to intimidate Alexa so she could use the conch shell to kill her.”

  Babcock picked up the gun from Mary’s desk. “You may lower your hands, Miss Bethel. Anything you say now may be held against you. You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. We’ll need a statement from you, Miss Hassworth, and we’ll take you to headquarters for that.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  After a long question-and-answer session at police headquarters, the officers held Elizabeth Wright on bribery as well as assault and battery charges, and Mary Bethel for murder. They booked Katie for breaking and entering, then released her on her own recognizance. Katie drove to her office and locked her gun in the file drawer, then changed into her working clothes before leaving a note for Mac that gave the highlights of the Chitting case along with a phone number where she could be reached.