Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evie

by Marianne Stillings

  “We have a theory.”

  “How long have you had this theory?”

  “Several days.”

  She lifted her hands in a display of confusion. “Then why haven’t you made an arrest?”

  “It’s not that easy,” he said. “There’s no hard evidence, and until we can prove probable cause, we can’t do any searches or subpoena any records. The same laws that protect the innocent against false accusations are the same ones that protect the guilty. We have to work within the boundaries of those laws, or we risk losing a conviction at trial.”

  “And this person is responsible for the attempts on my life, too?”

  “Yes. Either personally or through a possible accomplice, possibly now deceased.”

  Evie stood and picked up one of the trophies sitting on the coffee table. Running her fingertip over Max’s name engraved on the brass plate, she said, “I never figured you for track. Football, baseball, maybe even basketball.”

  He stood and came around the table. “Not beefy enough for football. I played some baseball, but never won any trophies. Not tall enough for basketball. But track? I am very fast when properly motivated.”

  Taking the trophy from her hands, he set it on the coffee table.

  “Just now,” he said. “I thought there was something else you were going to ask me.” He looked into her eyes, and she slid her glance away. “Or was I mistaken?”

  Oh, sure. I’m going to blow it now by asking if you have feelings for me after a handful of days and a little sex? Only a foolish and insecure woman would be stupid enough…

  “I’m falling in love with you,” she said softly. “Do you mind?”

  He slipped his hands around her waist and kissed her. And, oh, what a wonderful kiss it was. Or would have been if she’d been able to keep her mind from wandering, wondering whether this was the kiss of death. The kiss-off. The long good-bye. It’s been swell. Hey, you were dynamite in the sack, but I gotta keep my options open…

  When he pulled back a little, he said, “Does that answer your question?”

  She gazed up at him. “No,” she said flatly. “But it will do until you come up with a better one.”

  He grinned down into her eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetheart, but we have to get to the next clue. We’ll have to finish this discussion later.”

  She nodded. “Yes. We will.”

  “Okay,” he said, stepping away from her. “We’re at the southernmost part of Puget Sound. If we’re going down one side and up the other, as you suggested, our next stop will be north of here, Port Orchard, Bremerton, maybe Silverdale—”

  “Bremerton!” she rushed. “That’s right. God, it’s been so long since I read that one. The killer was retired from the navy and he owned a bowling alley in Bremerton.”

  Max grabbed her hand and headed for the door. “I hope this clue isn’t out of our league.”

  She scowled. “Is that a bowling pun?”

  “Don’t you mean bowling pin?”

  Evie rolled her eyes. “Like the man says, spare me…”

  He pressed the button a second time, and the panel slid closed, sealing off this day’s work from prying eyes. It would be a long time, if ever, before this particular panel was discovered.

  Tugging his gloves on more securely, he looked around. Christ, but he hated doing the dirty work himself, yet ever since he killed Sam, he’d had no choice, and that pissed him off even more, because he hated having no choices.

  He’d been at it for hours, and his temper had worn threadbare. The seventh clue just had to be on Heyworth Island, inside Mayhem, but so far no place he’d thought to look had reaped him any rewards.

  And now this. Goddammit. Here he’d thought everyone was gone, but no. Well, that’s what happened when you turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d hoped not to have to kill anyone else—not that he minded the killing, but when he had to do it himself it was just so messy.

  His freshest victim already forgotten, he headed for the hallway. Mayhem was huge, three stories, a score of bedrooms, maybe more, three parlors, two offices, and an enormous library, not to mention a variety of bathrooms and other incidental rooms. However, as a kindhearted lover had once said to him ages ago, size doesn’t really matter—and in terms of Mayhem’s enormity, at least, it didn’t. He knew how Heyworth’s moronic mind worked. Tommy would have hidden that envelope in an obvious place just to taunt him. It was a mind game, pure and simple, but one he intended to win.

  In spite of the challenge finding that fucking envelope posed, he was a smart man, smarter than all of them. All he needed to do was second-guess Tommy Heyworth, and hell, he’d been doing that for years.

  His stomach burned. What he should do, what he should really do, was pack it in right now, cut his losses and head for Canada. But he had a life here, a place in the community. He was well-respected, and he was loath to give it all up until he was good and ready.

  That Randall bitch. He’d still love to get rid of her. Her mere existence had screwed everything up for him. She should pay, she really should.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the small bottle of blood pressure medication. This whole fiasco was infuriating, and his health was suffering for it. Just one more thing he should make Evie Randall pay for.

  As he went into a bathroom and filled a glass with water, downing his medication, he thought about finding a way to end the game. But with the butler and that nutso Russian woman off somewhere, and the poet and the secretary gone, not to mention Galloway and the bitch, he had to wait until they all came home to roost, and then… well, wouldn’t it just be awful if they all died somehow? What would happen to the treasure hunt then? Time would run out, and he’d take control of the funds, just like he’d always planned. He’d make sure to destroy whatever clues they had found, effectively ending the game. The last clue would never be discovered. Tommy could point his dead finger straight at him and it wouldn’t matter.

  He ran his shaking hand over his meager strands of hair. This was all getting too, too complicated. He wasn’t thinking straight. He could never pull something like this off. Go back to town, grab what you can, and get the hell out.

  Setting the empty water glass back on the counter, he crossed his arms over his chest. Yes, what he needed was a good, solid mass murder.

  As his medication kicked in and he began to breathe normally once more, his gaze meandered around the room. Crystal mirror, imported Italian tile, marble floor. Such opulence was disgusting. Turning to flick off the light switch, his gaze came at last to rest on the water glass, and he smiled.

  * * * * *

  By six o’clock, they had hit every bowling alley in Bremerton. Nobody had any envelopes, and most had never even heard of T.E. Heyworth or his shitty mysteries. Max was dead on his feet, and Evie looked like she could curl up in a corner and nod right off.

  “Maybe we should head back to Mayhem,” he said as they returned to the car. “This isn’t getting us anywhere and I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  Evie slid into the passenger seat and let her head fall back against the headrest. Closing her eyes, she said, “This is Sunday night. Six days left. Three clues to go. Thomas’s original intent was for us to have fun, so he couldn’t have made the clues so hard we couldn’t follow them.”

  Max fastened his seat belt and turned the key in the ignition. A steady rain had begun to fall somewhere between visits to Barney’s Bowl ’n’ Grill on Devon Street and The Alley Katz on Meeker, leaving fat raindrops on the windshield. Flipping on the wipers, he checked out the view. Across the wide road, the naval shipyard hosted an array of magnificent vessels. Closest to the docks, an aircraft carrier lay at anchor, its sharp angles in contrast to the plump clouds rolling across the sky.

  “If Heyworth had wanted us to have fun,” Max said, frustration adding bite to his tone, “why in the hell didn’t he just hand over the money and let everybody go shopping at the Mall of America?” Turning toward Evi
e, he took in her profile, her long lashes fanned across her flushed cheeks. He reached for her, running his finger along her jawline. She rolled her head in his direction and opened her eyes. Sleepy as they were, those big blue eyes nailed him to the wall. Every time.

  “Maybe we’re in the wrong town,” she offered. “Maybe it wasn’t Bremerton.” Releasing a long sigh that must have started at her toes, she said, “I’m so tired, I just can’t think.”

  Max shifted into first and cranked the wheel, taking them out onto the busy highway. “Before we give up, let’s drive around a little. Maybe something will jump out at us.”

  For the next hour, they drove up one street and down the next until all the single-story businesses and post-WWII bungalows began to look alike.

  As he headed back down to the highway, he said, “Okay, we gave it our best shot. Might as well—”

  “There!”

  He glanced over at Evie. She was sitting straight up, her arm pointing at something on his side of the street.

  “I’ve been to that house,” she rushed. “I… my mother… we lived there when I was really little. I’m almost sure of it.”

  Max pulled to the curb and studied the tiny home. It was an old house in sorry shape, a single story, gray clapboard with a small chimney poking through the haphazardly shingled roof. The yard was overgrown with weeds, and the white picket fence that had once surrounded the miniature patch of grass was now sticks of blistered wood barely hanging together.

  Something inside Max’s heart caught, and he swallowed.

  “You lived here?”

  Her eyes still glued to the run-down cottage, she said, “We lived in lots of places. I don’t remember most of them, but I remember this one because I had my own room. The, uh, the sailors who visited my mom, they, uh…”

  “You don’t have to explain,” he said as gently as he could. “How old were you when you lived here, Evie?”

  Finally, she pulled her gaze away, concentrating on her fingernails as though they held some new fascination. “I was five.”

  He glanced back at the obviously vacant house and frowned. “Clue Number Five. You don’t think… Heyworth couldn’t have…”

  “If he did, he must have had a reason, though how he knew about this place, I can’t imagine.”

  “Do you want to wait here?”

  She shook her head as she reached for her door handle. “Nope,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m a big girl now. And if the clue’s in this house, I think I know where it is.”

  To a child of five, the house had been small. To a grown woman who’d seen something of the world, the house was too dinky to be believed. She stood in the doorway, Max right behind her, his hand on her back, warm, gentle, steady. If she collapsed into a puddle of tears, he would be right there to offer his shoulder.

  She wasn’t going to collapse, but for his gallantry, and for the many intoxicating things she was discovering about him every day, she slid into love with him a little more truly, a little more madly, a little more deeply.

  It had taken all of two seconds to pop the lock at the back door. Ignoring the general state of wretchedness in the kitchen, she moved into the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace.

  She pressed her palm against the bricks. They felt grainy and rough. Running her gaze over the eroding mess, she said, “ ‘He paced in front of the fireplace… he crumpled it into a tight ball and tossed it into the flames.’ ”

  Stepping around her, Max said, “Let me check. This masonry is old and crumbling. If the thing falls, I’d rather it fell on me than on you.” He waggled his brows. “Sometimes I need a brick wall to fall on me.”

  Evie eyed him for a moment, then said solemnly, “I suspect that’s true.”

  While she watched, Max slowly ran his fingers along the outside of the fireplace, testing each dusty brick. When his hands froze, she knew he’d found it.

  Pulling on the brick, it came away easily, revealing a hidey-hole. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and shined it inside, clearing away the cobwebs. With two fingers, he reached in and tugged out an envelope identical to the others, with Thomas’s familiar scrawl plain to see.

  Evie—I wanted you to come back here to face your demons. What once was, will never be again. I bought this house—it’s yours now to do with what you will. Your past is past. It’s time to move on, my dear.

  When she lifted her gaze to Max, he looked blurry. That was probably because of the tears brimming in her eyes.

  Okay, maybe she was going to collapse after all.

  Chapter 21

  Dear Diary:

  Tony Carrillo sits next to me during Music, and sometimes he smiles at me, but he rarely talks to me. Well today he ran up and kissed me on my cheek and then ran away so fast it’s like he was hit by lightning. Jessica and Ashley said it was because he likes me, and that made me feel wonderful. But then I saw Tony talking to some boys and they were laughing and pointing at me. I figured he only kissed me because it was a dare or something horrible like that. I know it’s because I’m ugly! My nose is too big and my freckles are horrible, and I’m just ugly! Nobody will ever want to kiss me for real!

  Evangeline—age 12

  Max and Evie had read the fifth clue a dozen times, and it still didn’t make sense.

  He hated love stories. Love stories were for dames. His tastes ran to hard-hitting crime dramas and books about how real men won the West. The kinds of stories where a fella packed heat and a gal knew her place. But for purity’s sake, for the essence of all things right and true, hell, nothing beat a good encyclopedia.

  T.E. Heyworth, 1960

  Door-to-Door Death

  Max shook his head as he stuffed the envelope into his shirt pocket. This one was going to take a bit of work.

  Glancing at Evie, he decided maybe she needed a bit of a break. Seeing the old house she’d lived in with her mother had hurt her, brought back a bunch of memories he was sure she’d rather have forgotten. She was quiet now, her eyes sad, maybe even a little damp.

  Pulling into a gas station, he said, “You want to use the rest room before we head back?”

  Without saying anything, she nodded and got out of the car.

  As he waited for her, he rolled the window down. The rain had petered out and the clouds looked like broken slabs of slate tossed in heaps across the sky. Boats anchored in the marina next to the shipyard tipped and rocked, their flags snapping in the salty breeze like bits of bright confetti against the bleak horizon.

  Flipping open his cell phone, he punched in his partner’s number.

  “Yeah, Darling here.”

  “You’re slipping,” Max said. “That didn’t even rhyme.”

  “Listen, Galloway, I could out-rhyme you with half my brain tied behind my back.”

  “Doesn’t leave you much to work with, does it?” He glanced in the sideview mirror. Still no sign of Evie. “Where are you?”

  At the other end of the connection, Nate crunched down on something. “We’re at a coffee shop in Silverdale. Lorna’s getting a newspaper, then we’re heading back to Port Henry.”

  “You talked to McKennitt today?”

  Another crunch, then munch, munch, munch. “Yeah,” Nate finally said. “The transmission wasn’t very clear, though. He was at the hospital because his wife’s having trouble with some guy named Braxton Hicks and—”

  Max burst out laughing and slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

  At the other end of the line, there was silence. Then, “Okay. I give.”

  “Braxton Hicks isn’t a person,” Max scoffed. “It’s Braxton hyphen Hicks. They’re contractions women get in the third trimester of pregnancy. False labor. At least, that’s what I read in a pamphlet once.”

  “You can read?”

  “Always the comedian. What’s your last clue say?”

  Max heard the crackle of paper as Nate unfolded his clue. As he read it, Max kept a lookout for Evie’s return.

&n
bsp; Nate made another crunching sound, then a slurping sound, then the paper crinkled again. “We don’t know what it means,” he said, his mouth obviously stuffed with something. “We’re hoping to take a look at the novel back at the house and see what we can come up with. I talked to Edmunds about an hour ago. They’re on their fifth clue, too, and should be back the same time we are.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Gig Harbor.”

  “How’s Madame holding out? She had any more visions?”

  Nate chuckled, then slurped. “Only of sugarplums. Edmunds said the woman has hit every pastry shop from Seattle to the Canadian border.”

  Max rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. “I’ve got to hand it to Heyworth. He sure knew how to throw a treasure hunt. This might even have been fun, if it hadn’t morphed into a search for a killer.” Leaning back in his seat, he said, “You still got the Whitney woman convinced you’re Dabney James?”

  “Into the fray we track our prey, yet take time to play along the way, and munch buffet at the cafe which is not passé but quite risqué, I hear you say—”

  “Stop!” Max ordered. “Jesus Christ, Darling. You’re like a dog with a bone. A stupid dog with a bone. So she hasn’t got any idea what happened to the real James?”

  “As far as I know, everybody thinks James is still alive, even the killer.”

  “So our suspect never met James. It’s like we thought, he hired it done.”

  “Sam Ziwicki.”

  “The late Sam Ziwicki. So, unless our guy has more than one hit man in his employ, he’ll have to do his own dirty work from now on.”

  Nate cleared his throat. Under his breath he said, “Here comes Lorna.” At the mention of the secretary’s name, his tone had changed.

  Max settled the phone against his ear. “So, how are you two getting along?”

  “Hunky-dory,” Nate said in a way that declared, Let’s just leave it at that. As Max listened, Nate greeted Lorna with a soft hello. She said something Max couldn’t quite make out, to which Nate replied, “Oh, it’s just my, uh, decorator. Always trying to furnish me with something I don’t have.”