The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  The sun slanted lower. Soon, he would reach the St. Elmo city limits. The last landmark before that was the mouth of the canal that connected the Big Cypress River and the bay. Maybe he should turn back, Josh thought as he reached the canal and its rearing steel drawbridge. Then he remembered seeing boats berthed in a makeshift marina half a mile or so up the estuary. He turned beneath the bridge up the dark brown canal.

  The canal was wide, lined to the water’s edge on either side with trees trailing Spanish moss. After a few minutes Josh saw ahead a rickety complex of docks at which half a dozen boats were moored. Overlooking it in a clearing on the bank was a shack with a Live Bait sign nailed to the front door.

  He recognized the Southern Star before he saw the name. Somehow, in the glimpse he’d gotten as the boat had swung away from Murphy’s, he’d taken in the narrow blue stripe around the hull, the flash of blue-and-white curtains at the windows. Pretty fancy boat, Josh thought. Curtains and all. He rode past just to be sure, but he knew he could’ve picked it from among fifty. He cut his motor and drifted in.

  The landing, as far as he could tell, was deserted. There were no boat owners working on their crafts or sitting out with a beer in the fading light. Josh checked the Live Bait hut. The door was fastened with a rusty padlock. Then he walked down the dock to the Southern Star.

  His tentative call of greeting brought no response, so he jumped to the deck. Glancing around, he walked swiftly to the steps down to the entrance of the cabin. The door stood open.

  The light inside was dim, filtered through the curtains. He slid them back and looked around. On one side of the enclosure was a counter with fishing gear and a bottle of Southern Comfort and two glasses on it. On the other was a bunk, its rumpled sheets trailing. A fishing reel had unwound, its line making a wavy pattern across the floor. It trailed through a spray of dark spots.

  The wheel was forward. He checked the chart compartment and found a map of St. Elmo-St. Elmo Sound, but no indication of who the boat’s owner might be.

  He returned below and began to search in earnest. The red ice chest contained nothing but a half inch of water in the bottom. The cupboard beneath the sink yielded three Cokes. The kitchen drawer harbored various implements of cutlery and a pack of Luckies. He cursed under his breath and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  He had started to cross the cabin to check the storage area beneath the bunk, when his foot slipped. Cursing again, he looked down and saw that the spray of dark spots on the floor was now a long smear. He bent, touched it, and rubbed the fluid between his fingers.

  The back of his neck went stiff. He wiped his hand on his shirt pocket and looked around. Then he headed for the door.

  He was standing on the edge of the dock when he saw something floating. It was submerged a few feet below the surface of the murky water, yet suspended, twisting with the vagaries of the current. Josh knelt. It was a blurred white figure. The figure, he saw, was entwined in a net—a cast net with its circumference lined with lead weights to make it sink. One side of the net had caught in a crack where the wood of the piling holding the dock had split, and it hadn’t sunk.

  Josh’s mouth filled with fluid. He choked it down and looked again. The figure caught in the net was not, as he had been trying to tell himself, a large fish or a sodden pile of clothing. Dark hair wafted around what was unmistakably a woman’s head. A hand floated free. At any moment, a boat might come by. Its wake would wash her loose.

  As he watched, the dark shape of a catfish swam up and nuzzled at her fingers. Josh’s body shuddered repeatedly, but, unwilling to leave a trace of his presence, he managed not to vomit.

  After a few minutes, he got weakly to his feet, drenched with sweat. What he had to do, and do right now, was get away.

  12

  A Telephone Call

  The throb of the Island Queen’s engine was fading, and inside Trulock’s Grocery & Marine Supply the only other sound was of Lily’s broom scratching the wooden floor. She had turned off the fan so it wouldn’t blow the dust, and heat had crept slowly into the room.

  Overall, it had been a pretty good day. The after-school candy business had picked up again now that the fall session had started. That almost, but not quite, made up for the exodus of summer people who rented cottages on St. Elmo Island or the beach. This year she must have sold nearly a dozen red tin pail-and-shovel sets over the summer, half of them to perspiring parents whose wailing child had just remembered his own set, back home in Atlanta.

  She hadn’t sold any pails and shovels today, but what with candy, cold drinks, cotton thread for net-mending, and lead for weights, she had done well enough. Not to mention popsicles, which were always popular when it got as hot as this. She could use more of the lime-flavored ones.

  Once again, Aubrey hadn’t shown up for lunch. What he ate down there in the swamp she couldn’t imagine, unless it was honeycomb. Before his attack, he had done half the work at the store; now he did practically nothing. Of course he was—she counted mentally—sixty-three, but that wasn’t old enough to act like you were already dead. That heart attack might as well have killed him, she thought, shocking herself.

  She swept the dust out the screen door and gave the concrete steps a quick going-over. Then she straightened the comics that drooped, dog-eared, in the round wire rack: Archie, Little Lulu, the classic of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Lily leafed through a True Love. The girls from the high school hung around drinking cokes and reading those for hours, poring over the heroes with patent-leather hair, the busty, big-eyed, tearful heroines, the kisses at the end, lovers silhouetted against a yellow moon. It wasn’t up to Lily, thank goodness, to tell the high school girls what it all amounted to.

  Those bees. Aubrey had always kept a few hives. It brought in a little extra money. She looked at the glass jars of golden liquid on their special shelf, with the sign she had lettered saying Our Own Honey. Our honey! That was back when she’d been happy that Aubrey was interested in something again. While he was off taking care of our honey, somebody had to look after their livelihood, and it looked like she had been nominated. She went to the back room to put the broom away.

  She was vaguely conscious of hearing an outboard motor, then hearing it stop, and she thought in passing that whoever it was should be getting home, because it was almost dark. She hoped it wasn’t motor trouble. When somebody’s motor cut out nearby, she often had to drive him all the way to town.

  She moved back into the store, and at the same time heard running feet pounding on the boardwalk that led from the ferry slip. The sounds stopped for a moment or two, and Lily heard harsh breathing. A moment later, a young man rushed in, slamming the screen door behind him, and stood in front of the counter, chest heaving.

  He looked about twenty-five, Lily thought, and he was dressed like a workman in filthy, stained khaki pants and a short-sleeved shirt wet with sweat. Had he been less dirty he would have been nice-looking—deeply tanned, black curls, dark eyes. He looked like he had something important on his mind.

  “Help you?” she offered, wondering what was the matter with him.

  Having run so desperately to get there, he seemed to have forgotten why. He looked at her blankly, perspiration running into his eyebrows.

  “I said,” Lily began, pitching her voice a bit louder, and at that he focused his eyes.

  “Change,” he said.

  “What?”

  He shook his head and dug into his pants pocket. He held out a limp dollar bill. “Nickel for the phone,” he said.

  Lily chuckled. “Now I see what you want.” She glanced at the cash register. “Wouldn’t you know I already locked up the cash drawer.”

  Although the young man didn’t say anything or move, simply continued to stand holding out his dollar, Lily sensed that what she had said wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He obviously would not yield to refusal. “Just hang on a second and I’ll get it for you,” she said.

  The safe, which Aubrey had insisted the
y buy years ago, was in the back room. Lily hurried to it, at the same time calling back to him, “Can’t imagine how it got this hot. ’Course, I say that every year, I reckon. Wonder if it means there’ll be a hurricane. It’s better to have this than snow, though, from all I hear, not that I ever saw snow.” She pulled at the ribbon around her neck that held the key to the safe. “You ever see snow? I mean, falling down?”

  At first, it seemed as if he wouldn’t answer, then she heard a strangled, “No’m.”

  “Me neither.” She fitted the key into the lock. “Wouldn’t mind seeing it one day, though.” The safe swung open, and from the cash drawer inside she took three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. When she turned, she saw that he’d followed her, still proffering the dollar. “This what you need?”

  He shoved the dollar at her and all but snatched the change out of her hand. Before she could blink, the screen had banged behind him. A moment later, she heard the door of the phone booth bang as well.

  She felt cheated. Smoothing the dollar, relocking the safe, she wondered what on earth the rush was. Other people didn’t mind visiting for a few minutes, especially if Lily was doing them a favor by getting them change. There weren’t so many people out here at the beach, after all, that they could afford to be standoffish with one another. She heard running again and watched as the young man headed for the dock through the dusk. After all that, his phone call hadn’t lasted even two minutes.

  Without stopping to think about it, she slipped through the screen door. His motor sputtered and caught, and she saw him turn his boat toward St. Elmo. She watched him cross the water, heading for the south end of the island, and she wondered briefly if he knew where he was going. There were no houses down that way. None of her business, after all, and if he did get lost that was none of her business either.

  She went back to the store, locked it, and then, as she always did, walked along the beach for a few minutes. Removing her sandals, dangling them by the straps, she let the cooling waves slide around her ankles. As the swells spilled onto the shore, she could see a flicker of phosphorus in the water. The white sand was almost luminous in the dying rays of the sun. Lily stood still, thinking of nothing. A muscle twitched in her neck, then subsided. She turned back to see if Aubrey had come home for supper.

  13

  The Fish Fry

  That evening, as Josh was hurrying back to the island, the St. Elmo Kiwanis Club’s Candidates’ Night Fish Fry was getting under way in the city park. Long trestle tables under the pines were draped with heavy white paper. The roofless enclosure where cooking was done over camp stoves by sweating Kiwanians was surrounded by smoke and the smell of grease.

  At a Kiwanis fish fry, everyone who paid a dollar got deep-fried mullet, grits, hush puppies, slaw, coffee or iced tea. By six o’clock, the line of people fanning themselves with paper plates had reached the edge of the park. The St. Elmo mosquito-control truck had driven through the area a couple of hours before, emitting an all-but-impenetrable fog of DDT, so the insects weren’t biting too badly.

  At a right angle to the tables stood a makeshift bandstand on which Sonny Smith and his Bluegrass Boys were playing dinner music, including their version of “Sleepin’ at the Foot of the Bed,” a local favorite. Red, white, and blue crepe-paper streamers hung limply at the corners of the bandstand. Also on the bandstand, behind Sonny and his boys, were rows of folding chairs for the candidates. None of the chairs was occupied, since the candidates were mixing with the crowd and handing out cards with their names and slogans printed on them. The slogan on Snapper Landis’s card was, A Decade of Experience; Gospel Roy Mclnnes’s said, A Family Man of Integrity. Standing under a pine tree, a circle of men around him, Snapper was telling how he had headed off Gospel Roy’s efforts to get an extra spot on the program by offering to sing “The Old Rugged Cross” as the invocation.

  “I told them,” said Snapper, glancing around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, “I told them if Roy sang ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ they had to let me sing ‘Good Night, Irene.’ They moved on quick to the next order of business.”

  Roy was helping the Kiwanians’ wives put ice in paper cups and pour tea. His obvious sincerity and virtue, coupled with his wavy hair and booming baritone voice, had made half the ladies in the First Baptist choir fall in love with him. They brought pound cakes and loaves of Sally Lunn to choir practice for him, and last Christmas they chipped in and bought him a new rod and reel. “All I’m saying is, we need a man in the job you good people can be proud of,” Gospel Roy was saying, and the Kiwanians’ wives nodded and thought they could surely be proud of Gospel Roy.

  When everybody was served, Sonny Smith finished his program with a bluegrass version of “Dixie,” and he and his boys retired from the stage. After an invocation by Brother Chillingworth, the Methodist preacher, and the pledge of allegiance, the candidates—for city and county commission, for school board, for supervisor of elections—began having their say. Snapper sat in his folding chair, apparently rapt at the rhetoric. Gospel Roy adopted an attitude reminiscent of prayer, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.

  The speakers droned on, cigarettes were ground out in paper plates, and children began to whine. Lights that had been strung in the trees’ lower branches were turned on, attracting whatever insects were still alive. When the fourth candidate for county commission reiterated his final promise, it was time for the candidates for the state house of representatives to take the platform.

  Because he was the incumbent, and also because the president of the Kiwanis was a buddy of his, Snapper had been allowed to speak last. Gospel Roy got up, straightened his tie, and began with, “My Friends. ”

  Before Roy was well into his introductory jokes, Sheriff Woody Malone and Cecil Banks, his deputy, appeared at the edge of the crowd. Their presence was not unusual, as any public function called for at least a brief appearance to show everyone that Woody was on the job. Tonight, though, there was a noticeable pallor on Woody’s usually ruddy face, and Cecil, a fastidious young man who changed his clothes several times a day in hot weather, was smeared with mud and his pants legs were wet to the knee.

  After a short but intense conversation with Woody, Cecil threaded his way through the tables to the bandstand and plucked at Snapper’s sleeve. Heads turned and weight shifted among the audience as Cecil and Snapper entered into a whispered conversation that was, no question about it, rude to Gospel Roy, who was trying to make his speech.

  Gospel Roy became distracted and annoyed. “If my opponent would do me the courtesy to listen, in case he has an answer to these charges ” he said, glancing over at Snapper, who was shaking his head at Cecil.

  Now, the crowd was paying more attention to Cecil and Snapper than to Gospel Roy. Heads turned to one another in inquiry, and people craned their necks toward Woody, who was standing in the back, fingering his holster.

  Gospel Roy carried on gamely in the face of this mass distraction, but nobody at all was listening to him by the time Snapper cried, “Great God Almighty!” and jumped to his feet, his folding chair clanging over behind him.

  He jumped from the bandstand and followed Cecil through the crowd, half-running. When they reached Woody, the three turned and headed through the trees, and in a moment a County Sheriff’s Department car flashed by.

  Back on the bandstand, Gospel Roy was fumbling. “I don’t know why my honored opponent has felt it necessary—” he began, when he was interrupted by Fish Arnold, the challenger for the post of supervisor of elections. Fish, a colorless individual whom nobody could imagine running for office, had been sitting next to Snapper. He got up and, with a polite nod to Gospel Roy, commandeered the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I regret to tell you Congressman Landis has had to leave. From what I overheard Deputy Barnes saying, his daughter Diana has been murdered.”

  The hullabaloo that followed consisted of shouted questions and general milling about and conjecture. Fi
sh Arnold was the central figure until it became evident that he had told exactly as much as he knew and no amount of pumping would produce further information. He then faded into the background.

  Afterward, however, when St. Elmo’s soothsayers totaled up profits and losses, they decided that two people were sure election winners as a result of Candidates’ Night. One was Fish Arnold; the other was Snapper Landis.

  14

  Family Meeting

  Four late-model Oldsmobiles were pulled up under a live oak tree in the front yard of the rambling house. Any St. Elmo resident who drove by the place, five miles or so out of town, could have made an educated guess about what was going on. “Old Man Calhoun’s got the boys out to his place,” the person might say. “Reckon they’re about ready to get the new still set up.”

  In fact, the Calhouns were working steadily on their new moonshine operation. They had a location in the river swamp, with a ditch excavated and a log frame built around it. Construction was proceeding on schedule, but the new still was not the reason Old Man Calhoun had summoned Bo, Sonny, Lester, and Purvis to their childhood home. Old Man Calhoun had other things on his mind.

  The living room at the Calhouns’, where the old man was reading the riot act to his sons, showed evidence of a fundamental difference of outlook between the old man, who had spent most of his life in the swamp making moonshine, and his wife, Miss Myrna, who was a member of the Daughters of the American Confederacy and had pretensions to culture. Gold-framed reproductions of Pinky and The Blue Boy hung on one wall; a businesslike rack of shotguns on the other. Most of the furniture was a version of French provincial designed by someone who had never been north of Macon, but the chair in which the old man sat was worn, nondescript, and obviously just right for his scrawny behind. Porcelain quail billed on the coffee table, while beneath it Deacon, the old man’s fourteen-year-old bird dog, scratched and broke wind.