Walking on My Grave

by Carolyn Hart

  Billy drove with both hands on the steering wheel. He didn’t answer directly. “I’ll talk to her.”

  He swung the wheel, and the Ford turned into Ves’s driveway. Annie leaned forward as they came around the curve. She felt a whoosh of relief when she saw Ves’s red Dodge van.

  Billy pulled up behind the van. Annie scrambled out, came around the car. Billy stood by the Ford, looked carefully at the yard. But Annie was already hurrying toward the back porch. Billy caught up with her. They climbed the steps.

  Annie stopped and stared. “The back door’s open.”

  “Right.” Billy was calm. “Ves?” He lifted his voice, could likely have been heard from one end of a football field to the other.

  Silence.

  “Ves?” Annie’s voice was sharp.

  In two strides, Billy was at the back door. He knocked, a heavy thump that rattled the door, kept on knocking for a minute, possibly more, then let his hand fall.

  Silence.

  His hand came down, hovered near his holster. “Police. Hands up. Don’t move.” His voice was deep, commanding. “Police. Hands up. Don’t move.” He reached out, pulled open the screen door, gazed inside.

  Annie saw a brownish smear on the side of the door. “Billy”—she pointed—“that looks like blood.”

  “Stay there.” The order was spoken softly. He stepped inside. “Police.” If anyone was inside the house, that shout could not have been missed.

  Annie waited uncertainly on the porch. She wanted to follow him. She didn’t want to see what might be inside. She heard his progress, repeated shouts of “Police”; “Hands up”; “Don’t move.”

  She waited, hands clenched, listening to Billy’s shouts, heard his heavy steps on the stairs. He stepped out on the porch, face creased in a tight frown. “No one’s here.” He moved past her, thudded down the steps. He strode toward the van.

  Annie glanced back at the screen door. Was that blood on the frame? She reached out, then let her hand drop. This might be a crime scene though Billy said the house was empty. She must not touch anything. She hurried down the steps toward the drive.

  Billy pulled at the handle of the van door. The driver’s door opened and he leaned inside, twisted to look, was out again in a minute. Next came the garage. He slid the door up. It creaked, rose slowly to reveal a dim interior. On the left wall was a workbench, a freezer chest, bike, and a lawn mower.

  Billy crossed the concrete floor to the freezer.

  Annie tensed as he lifted the lid.

  A cursory glance. He lowered the lid.

  Annie breathed again. The freezer, of course, was big enough to hold a body. It was horrible to think in terms of a body, Ves’s body. But she had to be somewhere. Billy said there was no one in the house. He would have checked every room, the closets, pantry, bathrooms, under the beds. Everywhere. No trace of Ves, and a bloodstain on the frame of the back door.

  Billy yanked his cell phone from his pocket, tapped, talked fast. “Possible crime scene. Send Pirelli and Harrison. Bring the forensic van.”

  Annie knew he was speaking to his wife, Mavis, who worked as both the dispatcher and as a crime scene tech.

  He slid the phone into his pocket, looked at Annie. “Will you come to the house with me? You may be able to help.” He moved as he spoke.

  Annie hurried to keep up with his long strides. As they passed the fountain, she glanced at the statue and Diana’s arm drawn back and the small portion of arrow that remained.

  Billy held the door. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Annie kept her hands close to her sides.

  He stopped in the center of the hall, nodded at the small table with its bronze tray for mail. “Can you identify that purse?”

  A green leather tote bag sat on the table. The handles were attached with brass fittings. “That’s the purse Ves was carrying yesterday.” Annie pointed. “Those are her car keys.” The key ring medallion was shaped like a starfish. “If she isn’t here, something’s very wrong.” It wasn’t only the smear of blood. “Women don’t go out without a purse. If her billfold’s in the purse and her cell phone, something’s happened to her.”

  Billy pulled a pair of plastic gloves from a pocket, slipped them on. He stepped to the table, carefully eased the top of the purse apart. “Not zipped. I see a billfold and a cell phone.”

  “You’re sure she isn’t here?”

  “There is no one in the house.” His tone was grim.

  “Where can she be?”

  A siren sounded in the distance, coming nearer.

  • • •

  Billy Cameron swerved around a bent pine, testament to the force of the wind off the sea. He heard the pound of waves before he reached the edge of the bluff. Twenty feet below, the sea roiled around rocks, hissing and gurgling as the tide went out. Of course Gurney Point has been checked earlier. Searchers covered the island from the northern tip to the marina and shops at the broad southern end. Now the sun was sinking below the western horizon, turning low-lying clouds pink and rose and coral. Volunteers came from all over the island. Boy Scouts rallied. Shops closed. All day searchers drove island roads, hiked paths, rode bicycle trails, checked lagoons. The chatter on cell phones tallied sites visited. The island was searched as well and thoroughly as possible. There was no trace of Ves Roundtree. Ben Parotti swore she had not taken the ferry. The motorboat used primarily by renters of Rufus’s mansion was secure in its boathouse. Rufus Roundtree’s house showed no sign of occupancy, doors securely locked, drapes drawn, no lights, no cars in the garage. Billy was sure every accessible site had been scoured. But water was all around them and deep lagoons and forests where no one might venture for years. As hope dwindled, as the sun slid lower and dusk turned the world dim, he came back to Gurney Point. The rocks below would be exposed. Earlier the tide had been high, waves crashing against the bluff, only the tips of black rocks visible in the foam. Now he looked down, used his Maglite, played the beam along the rocks. Once, he stopped and tensed. But that was a log lodged below, not a body. Finally, he turned away. He walked slowly, felt heavy and weighted. He’d not protected Ves Roundtree. Now he could find no trace of her body.

  • • •

  Emma Clyde, hair windblown, blue denim caftan wilted, sagged on a red leather sofa. Henny Brawley, equally fatigued, was propped against a wooden arm of a stately Victorian armchair. Henny was in her stocking feet, her mud-stained hiking boots on Emma’s front porch. Laurel was pensive, her classic features not so much weary as thoughtful. In a cane chair, she looked safari-ready in an olive top and slacks and hiking boots. Her bush hat lay on the floor beside her.

  Annie tried not to be uncharitable, then succumbed. Trust Laurel to be a spot of high fashion during a search of the island. Annie felt Max’s gaze, immediately rearranged her face. Bland was always good when glancing at your mother-in-law.

  Max’s blue eyes were amused. Annie knew she and Max were bedraggled after the long day of looking, he in a flannel shirt and jeans and boots, she in a pink sweatshirt and navy slacks and boots. Their vine-and-bramble-snagged clothing was an odd contrast to the cheerful yellow-and-blue plaid upholstery of Emma’s sofa.

  “I called ahead.” Emma’s seaside mansion was well staffed. “We’ll have food promptly.”

  As if on cue, wheels squeaked and the plump, red-faced cook, her blond curls tightly constrained beneath a chef’s cap, rolled in a stainless steel serving cart, the three shelves laden. They didn’t have to move. An assistant, a muscular teen probably working part-time to save for college, was close behind. He set up teakwood tray tables for each of them, described the offerings, served them.

  Annie was voraciously hungry. She bit into a huge French roll jammed with sliced ham, Havarti cheese, and mayonnaise. Chips served as scoops for a generous serving of guacamole. Iced tea was hugely refreshing. There was silence as they ate.
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br />   Emma took charge, as might be expected in the spacious terrace room of her home. “I dropped by the station on my way home. Billy has a command center set up in the break room. The island’s been combed, as well as you can comb a splotch of land with some impenetrable forests. I know each of us”—she looked around her terrace room—“went with different parties.” Her face softened. “Good turnout. Several church groups, Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, Rotary, Friends of the Library.” She turned her strong square hands palms up. “Nothing. So we’re left with these facts: Ves spoke with Annie at six forty-eight P.M. last night. No other calls are recorded on her cell phone. The landline doesn’t show any calls yesterday. Ves said she’d be at the police station at nine A.M. this morning. She didn’t come. Billy arrived at her house at approximately nine fifteen.” She glanced at Annie.

  “That’s right.” It seemed long ago that she’d jounced in the passenger seat of Billy’s car to Ves’s house.

  “Billy found no one. There was a smear of blood on the frame of the screen door to the back porch. Another smear of blood—”

  Annie felt cold. More blood.

  “—was found on an overturned straight chair in the living room. Billy declined to say if there appeared to have been a struggle. The search of the island yielded no results.”

  Henny said quietly, “Remember last August?”

  Annie remembered. A birder got off trail in the nature preserve trying for a better view of a reddish egret and wasn’t looking down and stumbled over the bones of an Alzheimer patient who had disappeared two years earlier. Search parties set out to look for her as soon as she was reported missing but never found a trace.

  Emma’s square face was somber. “We have miles of thick woods. A body could lie there forever.”

  Henny massaged one temple. “Ves left behind her purse, cell phone, car keys. Her van was in the driveway. Bloodstains in the house. I’m afraid we have to conclude she’s dead. Her body could have been dumped in the remote woods or in the ocean.”

  Laurel asked quickly, “Do you know whether the police have the material Ves put together about Rufus’s estate and the dinner at her house?”

  Emma nodded. “Billy found the sheets upstairs in her bedroom, lying on the dresser.” A pause. “The bed was turned down and a cotton nightgown rested on the pillow. The bedroom light was on.”

  Henny’s gaze sharpened. “If one of those present at her house Wednesday night murdered or kidnapped Ves, why was that damning material left behind?”

  Annie tried to keep her voice steady. “Murder can’t be easy. Those smears of blood, how did they happen? Did Ves struggle? How about the overturned chair? Maybe she was hurt and ran outside. Maybe the killer came after her and caught her and put her in a car and drove away and never thought about the papers.”

  “Or maybe”—Max concentrated—“the papers were left to suggest her disappearance had nothing to do with her claims about someone trying to kill her. Maybe the killer wants everyone to think she was hysterical and anything she wrote down was unimportant.”

  Laurel’s tone wasn’t chiding; after all, she was speaking to Max, but she said firmly, “I doubt in the heat of committing murder that a criminal was quite so clever. It seems more likely the murderer, not wanting to stay there long, made a cursory search downstairs, didn’t go upstairs to the bedroom.”

  Annie thought Laurel was probably right, but loyalty kept her from agreeing. “Whatever happened, we don’t know where Ves is.”

  Emma cleared her throat. “Billy shared one other fact. A thorough search of the house, van, and garage did not reveal a gun.”

  • • •

  Annie firmly believed in the magic-carpet ability of many mysteries to plunge readers into a world they would otherwise never know, Nury Vittachi’s Singapore, Ellis Peters’s twelfth-century Shrewsbury Abbey, John P. Marquand’s China in the years leading up to World War II. She went straight to the romantic suspense section, grabbed Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. She needed comfort after a restless night spent with disturbing dreams, hurrying to Ves’s house, finding the open back door, seeing blood stark against white wood. She had woken up exhausted. She knew the right kind of book would make her feel much better. She decided to indulge herself for an hour, then she’d work on the chapbooks. She was luxuriating in the company of insouciant Amelia Peabody in Rome in 1884 when a familiar ring sounded.

  She grabbed her cell, expecting bad news. “Have they found Ves?”

  Marian’s raspy voice was matter-of-fact. “No news. Usually that’s good news. But not when you’re looking for a body. If they don’t find her in the first twenty-four hours, the odds go way down. They brought in some dogs today. Nothing picked up on Fish Haul Pier. Now they’re going around to some of the other docks. They think she left the house, by force or on her own, Monday night. Her dinner dishes are in the sink, rinsed but not washed.”

  Annie remembered the nightgown resting on the pillow. “How about the blood?”

  “It’s hers. Not much. Traces of her fingerprints in blood smeared on the doorjamb. Billy said so far as they know, no one reports speaking to her or seeing her after you talked to her Monday night. The only new fact is that she was at her shop around nine o’clock Monday night. At least her van was parked in the alley behind the shop and there were lights on in her storeroom. There’s a patrol that checks the area—”

  As a shopkeeper on the boardwalk, Annie knew all about the patrols, appreciated them though attempted break-ins were rare in winter, happened occasionally in summer.

  “—every few hours and the officer knows her van. The alley was empty when he came back around ten. She returned home, because the van is in the drive. Her visit there may have nothing to do with anything. Billy checked and no calls were made or received on the shop phone. Here’s what I’m wondering. Ves told you she wanted to wait until morning so she could think about Wednesday night, remember where Fred sat, where he looked. How did she sound?”

  Annie could hear Ves’s staccato words. “Tense. Sharp. And”—she felt a shiver—“determined.”

  “Here’s my take.” Marian sounded sad. “She kept on thinking and she figured out who Fred saw in her yard. And then, hell, I don’t know, did she go by and see that person and get fobbed off, you’re wrong, wasn’t me, hey, we’re friends, and she decided she was wrong and came home? I think the killer gave her time to get home, then started after her. I don’t see it any other way.” A pause. “Somebody got her. I think it was one of the people at her house Wednesday night. Like I told you earlier, I don’t gossip. But with Ves missing and Fred likely murdered, Billy needs to know everything about those at Ves’s house the night Fred drowned. I told him about the jewel thefts and Gretchen. If she’s the thief, she has steel nerves. She looks rich and attractive and she’s someone Ves has known for years. How easy would it be for Gretchen to convince Ves that of course Fred hadn’t looked at her. Then maybe Gretchen showed up at the house, told Ves she’d been thinking and she was sure she knew who Fred looked at. Once she got inside . . .”

  • • •

  Max tried to appear stalwart. Wasn’t that a quality highly prized in the pages of romantic thrillers? “I concentrate better when I’m putting.”

  Annie’s gaze was affectionate and utterly disbelieving.

  He plunked his putter into his golf bag and walked to his desk chair with a grin.

  She perched on the edge of his desk, which hiked her skirt to her thighs. “I just talked to Marian. She thinks Ves remembered who Fred looked at Wednesday night.”

  He forced himself to focus on her face. “And?”

  “You were there.”

  He understood. If Fred was a fortune hunter, if Fred crept into Ves’s yard that late afternoon seeking treasure, he was innocent. If someone arrived, he likely slipped into the deep shadow of the pines, withdrew silently, probably irritated at losing p
recious time to search, time made possible by a lie at work. But he definitely didn’t want to be discovered trespassing. When Ves described the slick step and her fall, he realized instantly he knew who wanted Ves to die.

  Max squeezed his eyes together, tried to remember. Fred was the last to arrive. He hunched in a straight chair, shoulders rounded. Fred’s chair was at the end of the semicircle so Fred was half turned toward the others: florid-faced and pompous Adam, playboy Curt, suddenly expressionless Gretchen, wide-eyed Jane Wilson, mocking boyfriend Tim Holt, elegant and haggard Katherine Farley, impervious and distant Bob Farley.

  Max felt frustrated. “The answer’s there. Fred looked at one of them. His head turned, but I was watching the others. When I looked at Fred, all I saw was fear. Ves was right. He stared at a murderer. They looked at each other, and the murderer knew.”

  • • •

  Annie gently tried to move Agatha, who was inelegantly sprawled on her back on top of the copy for Henny’s chapbook. A low growl was sufficient. Annie reached for the box tied with a red ribbon and topped with an emerald bow. She wasn’t cowardly, but only a fool trifles with a growling cat. It might be cheerful to dwell for a moment in her mother-in-law’s madcap mind. There wasn’t, so far as she knew, anything she could be doing to help find Ves. It was up to the dogs to find her scent. Or her body might be in the ocean, far from discovery. There were places where currents would pull a body out to sea.

  Annie was smiling by the time she’d read several entries in Merry Musings: A dog loves you because you are you. It never hurts to ask. Each person has a story. And then she read: Always wonder why.

  Why didn’t the killer leave Ves’s body where it would be found?

  Ves had been adamant that no one had a motive to wish her dead except those who would profit when she died. Yet the lack of a body meant she would not be declared legally dead for seven years. Why remove the body?