Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01

by Dead Man's Island

  And that’s when the scream rose, high and hideous.

  13

  The tip of Burton’s tongue stuck out between his teeth.

  I saw that first.

  We arrived at the study at the same moment and clustered in the doorway—Roger, Trevor, Lyle, and I—our flashlights aimed at the motionless figure sprawled on the floor between the desk and a bank of filing cabinets. The top drawer in the middle cabinet was pulled out.

  Betty huddled against the wall, just inside the door, trembling. “He must have been there all the time,” she whimpered, raising terrified eyes to us.

  I looked at my watch. A quarter-past ten. I’d set out to look for Miranda and sent Betty in search of Burton for the first time about an hour earlier.

  The maid pressed back against the wall. “Last time I just poked my head in the door and called. Nobody answered and it was all dark. Then I heard you calling for help, Mrs. Collins, and I didn’t even think about him again.” She looked down at the flashlight in her hand. “But this time I had the light and I saw his feet.”

  She swung the cone of light to the highly polished brown leather tassel loafers, then along Burton’s body to his face. He was lying chestdown, but his face was turned toward us, resting on his right temple and jaw. So the poked-out tongue, blood thick at the tip where he’d bitten himself, was easy to see. But this time it wasn’t a taunt. When Burton’s assailant struck him down—and the bloody misshapen swelling behind his left ear was easy enough to see—the blow had jolted Burton’s head forward and the reflexive movement of the floor of his mouth had thrust his tongue between his closing teeth.

  “Oh, God,” Trevor moaned.

  I was the first to break out of our frozen tableau.

  In a couple of strides I reached Burton. I knelt by him and with a ghastly sense of déjà vu picked up a limp hand to seek a pulse.

  Lyle followed. His flash revealed the drops of blood spattered on Burton’s downy stubble of blond beard.

  “He’s still alive.” But his pulse was slow and erratic. I wondered how far the hematoma had spread, how much pressure was being exerted on the brain. Burton needed medical care immediately.

  “If the Coast Guard comes …” I didn’t finish. Any reasonable chance of rescue had ended when the storm struck.

  Roger dropped down beside me. “Could he have fallen, hit his head on the desk?”

  I gave him a level look. “How? What do you suggest? Practicing a backward flip without a pool? Levitation gone wrong? Look at him. He’s lying in the wrong direction to have fallen and struck anything.”

  Roger’s face reddened. “I thought maybe he lost his balance, something like that.”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I swept my light in a gradually widening circle around Burton.

  Nothing is ever new under the sun, of course, but I thought this might qualify as a highly unusual means of attack, the kind of weapon that would delight even jaded police reporters.

  The slender marble statuette of Aphrodite had been flung away. A white gash scarred the gleaming parquet floor. The artwork had skidded, scoring a several-inches-long path, then lodged against the clawfoot of a spider-legged table. Blood and flesh and hair clumped on the three-inch-square bronze base.

  I remembered watching Chase’s hand close around the base of a statuette. I lifted the light, swept it across the mantel. The statuette was one of a pair. Its twin was still in place.

  But the most telling evidence of all, the most meaningful, was the unstained beige cotton washcloth, thick and fluffy, lying a scant inch or two from Burton’s polished loafers. I understood its significance immediately.

  Roger pointed at the statuette. “Oh, God, look at the blood.”

  Lyle looked instead at the still, crumpled slight figure. “Why him? Why the hell go after him? Chase, yeah, somebody might have a reason.”

  As you did, I thought, as you did,

  “But Burton? That’s weird.”

  “Yeah, somebody’s crazy, crazy as a loon.” Trevor’s self-control cracked. “Listen, don’t anybody come near me.” He was backing out into the hall. “Do you hear, don’t anybody come near me!”

  He was close to collapse, the collapse of a man who’d never in his life faced danger or horror. I turned toward him. I could only dimly see a shape behind the shaking flashlight. “Trevor, we’re all going to stay together from now on. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of one another.”

  “Oh, yeah, just like we took care of Chase. Somebody damn sure took care of Chase. Listen,” he said feverishly, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know who killed Chase. I don’t know anything about Burton. Hell, I was with you when the bastard shot at Chase. I don’t know a damn thing.”

  “Then you should be quite safe. Why don’t you escort Betty back to the music room, Trevor? We’ll all be along in just a moment.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” The lawyer turned and headed up the hall. He didn’t wait for Betty.

  She hesitated.

  “Go with Mr. Dunnaway, Betty. We’ll take care of everything here.” I was glad to see them go. I couldn’t watch everyone at once, and I needed to be quite certain that I didn’t miss a thing; when it came time to move Burton. The odious little man might die, but I damn sure didn’t want to give his attacker another crack at him. It wouldn’t take much: pressure on one of the carotid arteries, a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, his nostrils pinched shut….

  Someone was going to be devastated to know that Burton still lived. I wished I’d had the wit to look swiftly about when I announced he was alive. But I hadn’t.

  From this moment on I had one priority: to protect Burton.

  “When the going gets tough …” Lyle drawled. He didn’t bother to hide his disgust at Trevor’s behavior. “First thing I’m going to do when we get back to Atlanta is fire that jerk.” There was an instant of silence, then he slanted a look at Roger. “If that’s okay, boss.”

  Roger stood very still. He wasn’t smiling. His gaze locked with Lyle’s. “Yeah, Trevor’s a jerk.” He spoke thoughtfully. “Dad thought he was a hell of a lawyer. I don’t know if physical courage has to be included in a lawyer’s job description. But we’re a long way from having to worry about that right now, Lyle. Right now we need to worry about Burton and whether we can keep him alive until help comes.” He shook his head. “Burton! I can’t believe anybody’d deliberately try to hurt him.”

  Perhaps I’m cursed—or blessed—with a cynical mindset. It seemed to me that both Roger and Lyle were being more than a little disingenuous in their exclamations of surprise that the unctuous little secretary was a victim. The guilty person would be delighted to convince everyone that it must be a crazed killer, thus discouraging speculation about what Burton might have done to invite violence.

  Because I suddenly felt confident that I knew the reason behind this attempted murder.

  It all went back to the flurry of shots fired at Chase on Friday morning. I was sure of it. I didn’t say it aloud. But I would have bet a Coast Guard rescue vessel I was right.

  “As you say, Roger, we’ll worry about what happened to Burton later. Right now I want to—”

  The house shuddered, then gave a screech of agony like a living thing dismembered.

  The floor beneath us tilted.

  “Oh, Christ, the house is going, she’s going!” Lyle shouted.

  Time expands when the mind confronts mortal danger.

  It has happened to me before. Once when a guerrilla lifted a submachine gun to fire at a party of journalists; once when a hijacker grappled with a pilot and the airplane plummeted out of control; once when a gunman darted from a crowd, his pistol aimed at the President.

  Time and distance were meaningless, as if each instance would last forever.

  And this moment.

  The images in my mind and heart were always the same: Richard’s laughing face and the touch of my mother’s hands and Emily’s bell-like laughter.

  Those experi
ences convinced me that nothing matters—nothing truly matters—in life except people. Not money, not fame, not challenge, not despair, not hatred, not power—only the people who have loved you and whom you love.

  The floor stopped heaving. A last tremor rippled through the wood.

  I don’t know how long we crouched where we had fallen—yes, the jolt was that strong—before Roger spoke. “Good God, what do you suppose that was?”

  Lyle swung his flashlight toward the door.

  Water lapped over the doorsill.

  “The south wing. It’s gone.” I managed to keep my voice even, but I couldn’t keep the shock out of it though I had covered Camille and knew too well what hurricanes could do—knocking off this portion or that of a hotel, destroying one house, leaving the one next door untouched. There is a capriciousness, an unexpectedness about hurricanes that makes them that much more terrifying. “We’ve got to get back to the music room.” I didn’t tell Lyle and Roger about the snakes. Maybe we’d be lucky. At the very least we should have a few minutes before the desperate reptiles clinging to the central portion of the house found this new raw wound to enter.

  I didn’t have to urge the men to hurry. It took only minutes to fold a card table, gently lift Burton’s battered head, and slide him onto it. Roger and Lyle carried the table while I held Burton’s legs up and as straight as I could manage. We could only hope that Burton hadn’t suffered a neck or spinal injury. But we had no choice. We had to move him to the safest area.

  I pointed the flashlight toward the floor. It helped Roger and Lyle see their way. It helped me watch for snakes. So far, so good. But I didn’t breathe easily until we’d cautiously maneuvered our burden down the hall and into the music room and closed the door behind us.

  Lyle’s mattresses, intended for use in a desperate last-ditch effort to survive, were piled three deep along the south wall of the music room, an interior wall. Miranda, as unmoving as the dead, lay on the top mattress, securely wrapped in a cream-colored wool blanket. Valerie still sat beside her, holding a limp hand.

  Betty moved forward quickly to help. Valerie laid that slack hand on the covers and stood, looking toward us.

  Lyle hesitated, shifting his hands for a better grip. “We need to get a mattress out from under Miranda’s.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “There’s room for Burton on the top mattress. We can ease Miranda over and put him next to her.”

  It made sense. It was easier. But my objective was to keep them together. I must watch out for both at the same time.

  One of us had slammed that statuette onto Burton’s skull.

  Had Miranda swallowed that bottle of pills of her own accord? Distraught with grief over Chase’s murder or undone by guilt, it was possible, but I was in no mood to take chances.

  Betty and Valerie gently moved Miranda, snug in her blanket, to the interior of the mattress, close to the wall.

  Lyle and Roger shifted Burton onto the mattress. Fresh blood stained the ticking beneath his head. I checked his pulse. Still erratic, perhaps a little weaker. His left cheek felt clammy beneath my fingers.

  “A blanket, please.”

  Betty brought a light wool coverlet.

  As I gently drew it over Burton, I decided to make sure the head wound was all we had to deal with. I handed my flashlight to Betty and carefully eased a hand under his body and inside his blazer. I felt the crackle of an envelope in an inside pocket. My immediate instinct is always to investigate. I didn’t hesitate. I pulled the envelope out.

  The plain white envelope was full of crisp fifty-dollar bills. It was quite a stack. This was a nice sum, perhaps as much as five thousand dollars.

  Roger looked over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s probably a stash of cash from the safe. Dad always had plenty of cash with him. I guess Burton was bringing it along in case the house was completely washed away.”

  There wasn’t even a note of suspicion in Roger’s voice.

  I hoped Roger had the benefit of tough advisers when he took control of his father’s empire. Otherwise, it would be broken up and swallowed by predators faster than vultures devouring a road kill.

  Because my take on that envelope was entirely different. Burton was stealing the money. I knew it as certainly as I know that Santa’s jolly ho-ho-ho is cynically designed to make cash registers ring. Now I understood why it had surprised me to find Burton hard at work this morning salvaging files, why the episode had had a counterfeit feel. That had been his excuse, his cover, to get his fingers on cash that nobody might ever ask about. A nice, safe, cautious little crime. If the house went, who would ever know or question what had happened to the valuable contents of that safe?

  If the house went …

  I lifted my head, looked toward the boarded-over windows. Somehow they still held against the unceasing, demonic attack of the wind and rain. Water was beginning to seep inside and trickle down the walls.

  I handed the envelope to Roger.

  Without comment, he folded and stuffed it into a back pocket of his shorts. He followed my gaze and stared at the windows, listening to the banshee scream of the storm.

  A heavy thump shook the wall that once had faced the tennis courts. A good-size something, a tree limb or a drowned deer perhaps, had struck the house.

  Every eye watched the wall, but miraculously it held. Each in his or her own fashion welcomed the extra minutes or perhaps even seconds of protection afforded us from the killing storm outside. Who could hope for more?

  I was once a prisoner of government forces in El Salvador, along with three leftist guerrillas. We had expected to die at dawn. Indeed, we most certainly would have except for a fifteen-year-old boy who had led us to safety while our captors slept from the drugged wine he’d brought them. On that night I had felt the unmistakable touch of death’s bony fingers, on that night and during this long day.

  Waiting helplessly to die engenders a somber quiet. It pulls the muscles of the face, plants frightful phantasms in the mind, recalls to the heart a lifetime’s triumphs and failures.

  But I wasn’t going to sit here and wait to die. I still had a task—to discover Chase’s murderer and Burton’s attacker—and I intended to see it through. If I could.

  But first I looked around the room. Trevor was lying, pillows propped behind him, on the couch next to the opposite wall, just past the piano. His right arm shielded his face; he had withdrawn. I glanced from one face to another, stopped finally at Rosalia’s. She once again sat on the floor in the southeast corner of the room. Her hands held the rosary, her lips moved, her eyes were closed.

  “Rosalia.”

  She lifted her head.

  “Will you come here, please, and sit beside Mr. Andrews?”

  Rosalia hurried across the room.

  Valerie, still standing beside the mattresses, stretched and yawned. After breakfast she’d put on green linen slacks and a cream cotton turtleneck. Her golden hair was pulled up in a ponytail with a saucy green bow. Her clothes were cheerful; her face was not. Deep lines bracketed those cherry-red lips, her skin was ashen, dark shadows made her eyes huge. “I don’t have designs on the little man, but if Rosalia suits you better, that’s fine with me.” She turned and walked to the piano, slid onto the seat, and touched a key. The note was almost lost in the howl of the wind.

  I followed the actress with my eyes. No one could ever say Valerie had slow thought processes.

  Rosalia came up to me.

  “Why don’t you sit here?” I patted the mattress, next to Burton.

  The housekeeper darted an unhappy look at me but obediently took her place, perching gingerly on the mattress’s edge.

  “Would you like something hot from a thermos?”

  She started to get up.

  “No, please. I want you to stay with Burton. If anyone comes near, watch carefully. Shout if anyone tries to touch him.” I spoke loudly enough so that all in the room could hear, even over the storm.

  Rosalia’s fingers clut
ched the rosary. Her wide eyes clung to my face.

  That done, I moved to the table in front of the fireplace. It was laden with thermoses, bottles of water, and several covered plates. I poured a mug of coffee for Rosalia and for myself. I lifted the cloth from the first plate and snagged a ham sandwich. I’ve never tasted anything as good as that sandwich: the ham had a sweet-sugary Virginia-smoke taste, the mustard was just hot enough, the French bread was flaky and fresh. It took only four bites to devour the sandwich. Then I took Rosalia’s coffee to her and gulped some of mine.

  And looked around our beleaguered sanctuary.

  I was seeking a killer, a thoughtful, cunning, plan-ahead killer.

  The washcloth had told me that. The killer had grabbed it, carried it along in a pocket. The plan: to use the washcloth when gripping the statuette. There would be no incriminating fingerprints.

  The washcloth told me even more:

  That the attack on Burton was premeditated.

  That the killer was well acquainted with Chase’s study and the mantel with its twin statuettes.

  That Burton sought out the killer for a clandestine meeting.

  Further, I was confident I knew the reason for this clandestine meeting. Burton knew—somehow—who had shot at Chase.

  That person could be anyone on the island except myself, Trevor Dunnaway, and Haskell. Trevor and I were excluded because we had been together when the shots rang out. Haskell was excluded because he was no longer on the island and could not possibly have attacked Burton. (I would not think about the size of the waves now pounding the coast.)

  I looked from figure to figure in this fragile shelter against the storm and knew one was my quarry. And there was the matter of Chase’s missing gun. Why hadn’t I noticed, after the explosion, whether the jacket of Chase’s warm-up had bulged?

  The gun hadn’t been in his nylon warm-up or his blazer after he died. Chase could have dropped it into a dresser drawer when he put on his swimsuit. If so, that was fine. But it could well be that someone else had retrieved the gun after Chase died—and helped Miranda swallow pills.