by Carolyn Hart
A clank from inside. A chain being unloosed?
The door eased open, then was pulled wide. “Annie.” Ves’s tone was surprised, uncertain.
Annie was blunt. “You left because you thought I didn’t believe you. I believe you.”
Ves’s lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “I live on Sunshine Lane, but you’re the first ray of sunshine I’ve seen today. Come in.”
Annie stepped into a hallway with a gleaming heart pine floor. Stairs rose old and straight ahead of her. The hallway held a marble-topped side table. Mail lay in a bronze tray. A mahogany grandfather clock sat against the back wall. To the right was a drawing room with a shabby Queen Anne sofa, two Chippendale side chairs, a fireplace with an Adam mantel. To the left was a small dining room with a long table and a glass-door cabinet filled with china.
The door closed. Ves’s green eyes might have held a trace of tears. “Thank you for coming. My brother would have said you’re a good Joe. Funny expression, isn’t it? But it meant a lot to him. And to me. A good Joe.” She stood by the door, gave a quick shake of her head, like a terrier coming out of a pond. “What changed your mind?”
Annie kept her gaze steady. “I’ve been looking over a friend’s collection of mystery quotes: Unlikely melodrama is the likeliest to happen of anything in the world. That’s why I’m here.”
Ves’s look was peculiar, probably as peculiar as Jerry North’s when his ditzy wife, Pam, made the observation in Death Has a Small Voice by Frances and Richard Lockridge.
Annie flashed a grin. “I can do lots of quotes. Not just mysteries. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.”
Ves’s face was transformed, a mixture of delight and amazement. “Quod in communi, est dimidium malum.” She reached out a thin hand, gripped Annie’s elbow. “This calls for a celebration.” Talking fast though still moving with a jerky pained gait, she guided Annie down the hallway. “Our dad taught Latin at the high school. Did you know Ves is short for Vesta? She was the goddess in the temple who was keeper of the flame. I shortened it to Ves before I was five, and trust me I’ve avoided flames ever since. My brother arrived with a mop of red hair and that’s why he was named Rufus, ‘red haired’ in Latin. Dad was irrepressible. Rufus and I could spout Latin quotes like some kids do baseball statistics. Alis volat propriis. One of my favorites. She flies with her own wings.” She pushed through a swinging door into a bright kitchen, waved Annie to a seat at a maple table in a bay window overlooking the garden. “I have coffee, but how about some egg nog, my own recipe, left over from the Death’s Head Feast.” At Annie’s startled look, she gave a bark of laughter. “More about that anon, as a good Latin scholar would say. I’ll bring egg nog with coffee for a chaser.”
Ves brought cut glass glasses filled with egg nog and two blue coffee mugs. Annie picked up a crystal glass with golden contents, took a taste. Egg nog could be too sweet, too heavy. This was perfection, and Annie was sure the nutmeg was fresh.
Ves eased into the opposite chair. She, too, took a deep swallow of egg nog. “When in doubt, drink egg nog, and you’ll know life is good. That’s a quote, too, but nobody famous. My mom was convinced homemade food and drink made any burden lighter.” She sipped the egg nog, gazed at Annie. “I’d like to halve my trouble. And”—her face clouded—“I’ll feel better if someone else knows what I’m thinking. Just in case.” The final sentence was somber. She took a deep breath. “I mentioned Rufus, my brother. A good man. A very good and kind man. After college he went to New York. He was a trader.” Her voice was vague. “I don’t know what he did exactly, but he made a lot of money. He married fairly late, almost forty. He was quite a bit older than I. It’s odd how nice men have a tendency to marry bitches. Gretchen was and is a class A bitch. Gorgeous if you like packaged blondes, always coiffed, sleek as a rat’s fur, in my view, never wearing just a dress, always a designer whatever that might as well flaunt a price tag. A tinkling laugh that might have been cute when she was five. She produced an heir, but Curt is lazy on his ass.” She gave Annie a quick smile. “I’m telling you my family history because everything’s tied up with Rufus. He moved back to the island after he retired.”
Annie nodded. She remembered Rufus Roundtree, a big man with a round face, a thatch of red hair salted with white, a booming voice, and a personality that overwhelmed a room. He’d plunged into everything on the island and been generous with donations to the library, the island rec center, the historical society, the art league, and the community charity drive.
“Rufus had a wonderful time. I’m glad about that. He invited me to live with him in his beach mansion, but I’ve lived in the family house forever. It’s home. I don’t have a lust for luxury. Anyway, it was grand having him on the island. He died last year.”
Annie remembered the headline in the Gazette: ISLAND PHILANTHROPIST FELLED BY HEART ATTACK.
“I wasn’t surprised that he made me the life income beneficiary of his estate. I thought it was fair enough that I would enjoy the income and that at my death the estate would be divided equally among six people he chose. It was his money. He earned it. I’ve enjoyed not having to worry about money for the first time in my life. I know he would be pleased to know—and”—her lips quirked—“maybe he does know—how much pleasure he’s given me. I went to Cairo last month and brought back tons of wonderful curios from the Khan el-Khalili bazaar.” Her eyes gleamed. “Chess boards with mother-of-pearl inlays, bedouin jewelry, brass hanging lamps . . .” She trailed off. “But”—her voice was ragged—“if he knows how much I’ve enjoyed the money, he knows what’s happening now. I’d hate for him to know that his generosity put me in danger.” A somber look. “Last week was the anniversary of Rufus’s death. I thought it would be nice to invite the beneficiaries-to-be for a dinner remembering him. I intended to give them an accounting of the estate. Martin Ford at the bank is the trustee—he sends me quarterly updates. He and I have taken good care of the assets. I’ve had a few extravagances, but the estate is larger than when Rufus died. I took the trip to Cairo, bought a new car and a new furnace for the house, but the estate’s grown by almost two hundred thousand. If the remaindermen, as they are called in cold legalese, inherited today, each would receive about three million dollars. There are six of them: Katherine Farley, Bob Farley, Jane Wilson, Curt Roundtree, Adam Nash, and Fred Butler.” Ves’s face looked thinner, narrower. Her fingers fastened on the coffee mug, but she didn’t lift it. “They all came to dinner, plus Gretchen, Rufus’s ex, and Jane Wilson’s boyfriend. I think Gretchen was especially frosted that Curt didn’t inherit immediately and would have to wait for Ves to die. Six million for a couple of artists, no cut for his son. But Gretchen came to the dinner. It’s a dinner I’ll always remember as the Death’s Head Feast. Before that gala evening, most of the beneficiaries had contacted me, asked for money. The exceptions were Bob Farley and Fred Butler. Probably Bob knew Katherine had her hand out. Anyway, I’ve liked Fred better than the others ever since. I turned them all down. I was bland, said I was honoring Rufus’s wish that I enjoy the estate now, and they would receive their portion on my death.” Ves’s chin jutted. “The night of the dinner, we had those stiff exchanges, you know the kind. Are you watching Downton Abbey? What do you think about the plan for a new high school? Which girl-on-a-train book did you read? Have you priced lobster lately? I looked around at each one of them.” Abruptly, she pushed back her chair, came to her feet. “Let’s go to the dining room. I want to show you.”
3
Ves flicked the switch. The crystal drops of the chandelier glittered. Gray walls emphasized the ruddy richness of the mahogany table and the mauve drapes. Three Chinese plates in brass holders adorned a Hepplewhite sideboard. Above the fireplace hung an oil portrait of Rufus Roundtree, his large face genial.
Ves stood by the end chair. A silver tea urn stood on the dining room table. “There were so many of us, I put in the center leaf. I sat here with three on on
e side, four on the other.” She touched the back of the end chair nearest the kitchen door. “Fred Butler was at the other end. You know Fred—”
Annie did. He was a cashier at the bank and a steady customer at Death on Demand. Annie found customer reading choices fascinating. Fred was an inveterate reader of thrillers with swashbuckling heroes, the more derring-do the better.
“—a dumpy little guy, wispy gray hair that stands up in tufts around his face. He wears bifocals and peers at you over the rims. Rufus met him at Parotti’s. A bunch of mostly older men play dominoes at a round table in the bait section.” Her nose wrinkled. “Trust men not to mind a stink. I said that to Rufus once and he laughed and insisted a fisherman likes the smell of live shrimp or mullet better than any whiff of cologne. Rufus got a kick out of Fred, said he could surprise you when you got him talking, that his ideas might be crackpot but they put a zing in his life. Fred said almost nothing at the dinner. No repartee from Fred. Adam took up the slack, a torrent of words. He was trying to exude charm. It was wasted effort on me, I can assure you. Put Adam in a brown suit on a platform with a bottle of snake oil and he’d be right at home—senatorial good looks, a plastic face usually wreathed in a smile, a voice so deep and warm you feel like you’ve pulled on a cashmere coat. Adam spent most of the dinner one-upping Bob Farley with travel tales.
“Bob was next.” Her face was suddenly rueful. “Poor devil. They never mention his accident, but you have to wonder why anybody wants to hang glide. Anyway, he did. Ka-boom. Now he can barely manage to walk and his painting arm is useless. He was a superb artist. I have several of his Low Country paintings at the shop. One I especially love, a sunny summer day and an alligator on the bank, but the alligator’s eyes are open and he’s looking at a man standing by the lagoon.” She gave a slight shiver. “Heat. Menace. Power. Danger. I look at the painting and know in an instant the alligator will attack, take the man over the edge and into the water. I hope”—her voice was thoughtful—“that having been a great painter will see him through.
“Katherine Farley was to my left. She’s one of those classic beauties, sleek black hair, patrician features, midnight eyes, though she looked haggard, not her usual gorgeous self. She wore a red-and-gold lamé dress. She kept up a pleasant stream of conversation, travel, the new book by Joyce Carol Oates, her recipe for clam chowder, the sketch she’d just finished of a loggerhead turtle in the moonlight just past the high tide line sweeping the sand with a flipper to prepare a nest for her eggs. But”—Ves sounded hollow—“all the while it was as if she and I were pantomimes in a shadowy background. Her attention was focused on her husband. Yet when she turned to him, she spoke casually. I wondered if I was the only person at the table aware of that tension.”
For Annie, the dining room was slowly filling with guests, tuft-haired Fred Butler, smooth-talking Adam Nash, crippled Bob Farley, beautiful and passionate Katherine Farley.
Ves looked at the empty place to the right. “If I were doing that honored-guest kind of thing, I should have put my nephew to my right, but Curt drives me nuts because all he does is play. I like people who work whether they have to or not. Rufus tried to fix it where he had to shape up, but Curt sponges off his rich buddies. Gretchen, my ex-sister-in-law, isn’t an heir. I called her to ask how to get in touch with Curt, and it would have been rude not to include her. Anyway, I put Tim Holt to my right. I like his get-up-and-go.” A smile. “He’s one handsome guy. Big, curly brown hair, a lifeguard in the summer. I’m not sure what he’s doing now, general handyman work. Ben Parotti uses him for some repairs.”
Ben Parotti owned not only Parotti’s Bar and Grill and the Miss Jolene, the ferry that plied between the island and the mainland, he was involved in several businesses and owned a great deal of property.
“Tim’s ambitious. I heard all about the shopping center he wants to build near the ferry landing on the mainland, how the property was available, how he was looking for backers, how much the construction would cost, the possibility of anchoring with a Winn-Dixie, and on and on and on. I already knew about it. Jane came to see me at the shop and finally—she was very diffident, I’m sure he would have been disappointed—she said she wondered if perhaps I might consider investing in a wonderful construction site. I heard her out and gave her my standard reply to all the prospective heirs: no.” Ves’s chin looked very pointed. “Rufus gave the money to me to enjoy. I intend to do so. But Jane’s a nice girl. Her mother was Rufus’s secretary and she died of cancer. I remember Jane being at Rufus’s big house with her mom during the summers, a little girl with pigtails. Now she’s grown up and grown up very nicely, pretty brown hair, a sweet face, beautifully dressed. An Escada blue print sheath dress with cap sleeves. Gorgeous. Nothing she could afford. She works at a secondhand store up the street from Parotti’s, and that was someone’s discard. Luckily for Jane most rich women are a perfect size eight, so she can enjoy finery as long as she doesn’t mind secondhand. She didn’t have much to say at dinner. Tim was talking as fast as he could to me. Curt was on her left. He ignored her and put himself out to be nice to me. Gretchen was on her best behavior, favoring me with warm smiles and approving nods when I talked to Curt.
“Gretchen”—Ves’s tone was considering—“was her usual vision of perfection. Blond hair gleaming and a face that really didn’t look much past thirty. She must spend a fortune on cosmetics. She wore a stunning short-sleeved black lace minidress. She even tried to be charming to Fred. He was on her left at the end of table, but he perched on his chair and stared at her like an urchin meeting high society. She valiantly kept trying.” There was grudging appreciation in her tone. “Very unlike her usual disdain for peasants. Believe me, I saw that in operation when she was married to Rufus. I was one of the peasants then.”
Annie pictured Ves at one end, fish-out-of-water Fred at the other, Jane’s hunk boyfriend Tim, quiet accommodating Jane, playboy Curt, and sleek Gretchen on one side, vivid Katherine, talkative Bob, and pompous Adam on the other.
“That’s the lot. I don’t hire a server when I have people for dinner. I cleared the plates. Jane offered to help. As I said, she’s a nice girl. I thanked her but said no. I took the dishes out to the kitchen, stacked them in the sink, got the dessert. When I pushed through the swinging door, everyone stopped talking. Their heads turned and they looked at me. I felt like stone. I couldn’t move. Time stopped. I started shivering.” Ves’s green eyes were enormous with a curious emptiness. “My mother always said when out of nowhere you suddenly feel scared, can’t breathe, sense darkness and danger, when you feel like that, someone is walking on your grave. That’s what happened to me when I came in the dining room with the tray that night. Someone was looking at me and seeing me dead, wanting me dead. Walking on my grave.”
• • •
“. . . and Ves stood in her dining room and saw them looking at her.” Fire crackled in the grate. Annie stood in front of the fireplace, but the warmth didn’t dispel her inner chill, the same chill she felt that afternoon when she’d seen doom in Ves’s eyes. She took a breath, knew her voice was uneven, choked. “Ves said, ‘Someone was looking at me and seeing me dead, wanting me dead. Walking on my grave.’”
Max looked at her with concern in his dark blue eyes. Her gaze moved to their guests. Each face reflected an intensity and, more, resolution. Henny Brawley, Laurel Roethke, and Emma Clyde excelled in discovering truth among lies. All three were immersed in island society with knowledge of an astonishing range of personalities from the aristocratic to the disreputable.
Max, relaxed in a plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy trousers, lounged comfortably in his red leather chair, plump white Dorothy L contentedly asleep in his lap. He stroked her smooth fur. Handsome Max, strong, powerful, gorgeously male. His dark blue eyes said, Don’t be scared, don’t worry, I’m here, I’ll always be here.
Henny projected competence, intelligence, wisdom. Silver-streaked dark hair framed
a narrow, intent face. She was elegant in a gray turtleneck, cream suede jacket, gray slacks, and ankle-high boots.
Laurel Darling Roethke, golden hair in shining ringlets, lake blue eyes slightly dreamy, had a faraway look of introspection, as if she summoned an inner muse for consultation.
Emma Clyde’s primrose blue eyes glowed. She sat with broad stubby hands planted on her knees. “I like it. I like it!” So might the Sphinx appear if garbed in a red velvet caftan: huge, imposing, solid.
Four faces turned toward Emma. Annie frowned. Max’s blond brows rose in surprise. Henny’s gaze was questioning. Laurel exuded placid understanding.
Emma was not without perception. There might have been a tiny flush in her heavy cheeks. “Not to say I am wishing Ves ill. Certainly not. But don’t you see? How often can murder be prevented?” Her spiky hair, a subdued russet tonight, seemed to quiver with eagerness.
Laurel cooed, “Quintessential Emma. Right to the point. A rapier to the heart.” A gentle smile for Annie. “Whether you realize it or not”—was there just a hint of a patronizing tone?—“you’ve come to us to winnow out a Prospective Murderer. That is the only result that will assure Ves’s safety.” Laurel’s smile was confident. “I have no doubt we shall prevail. Now, we have six heirs—”
Max interrupted. “They are actually contingent remaindermen beneficiaries.”
Emma was brusque. “They get the money. If they are alive when Ves dies. If one of them pops off before Ves, the share is divided among the survivors. We can call them heirs no matter what the proper term is.”
Laurel gave her son a consoling glance. “So well meant, my dear, so exquisitely legal, but let’s keep this simple. Six people will benefit if Ves dies. Gretchen Roundtree and Jane’s young man could also profit because of their association with the heirs. Now”—a pause to be sure everyone was attentive—“we know these facts. Each heir except Fred Butler and Bob Farley has asked for money. Ves sees no reason to disburse any sums in advance. One of those who will inherit decided to kill Ves. Last Thursday shortly before five P.M. Prospective Murderer, hereinafter known as PM, entered Ves’s house in some fashion”—a careless wave of pink-tipped fingers—“a skeleton key, an unlocked window. Old houses pose no obstacle. PM greased a step on the staircase, exited, waited, observed her arrival, likely heard her cry out, but, and this is a most interesting and curious fact, PM didn’t rush to the house immediately to clean the step. PM waited. In a few minutes an injured Ves comes outside, limps to her car. When she was gone, PM entered the house, removed the slick substance from the stairs, departed. What does this behavior tell us?”
