by Anne George
“Her name is Millicent Weatherby. She’s resident manager at Gulf Towers where I have a condo.”
Officer Andrews looked up from her writing. “Fairchild’s wife?”
“Yes. You know Fairchild?”
“Sure. He’s one of the head honchos in the Polar Bear Club. Bunch of old fools get naked and go swimming every winter, freeze their balls off. Get arrested every time because their wives call and tell us when they’re going. Scared they’re going to have a heart attack. That’s his wife?” She motioned toward the water.
We all nodded.
“I think I’ve talked to her.” She turned and screeched, “Buddy! You get the marines?” We all jumped.
“They’re out of the boat,” he answered. “They’ll be here in a few minutes in the van.”
“Well,” Lisa Andrews said, “I guess there’s no hurry. Why don’t y’all sit down and make yourselves comfortable?”
We sat and looked over the darkening harbor. Lisa Andrews went over and joined the three men who were huddled around Millicent’s body.
“What,” Frances wondered, “if someone got killed in the dunes and it rained.”
“You’d have to wait on the Marine Patrol,” Mary Alice said.
“My tail hurts,” I said, but nobody was paying any attention.
In June, twilight lasts a long time, but we were about to run out of light when the Florida Marine Patrol officers finally made it over the dune.
“Where the hell you been?” Lisa Andrews called when she spotted them.
“Home eating supper,” one of them said.
“You probably shouldn’t have! Wait till you see this!” Lisa Andrews sounded gleeful.
“I think I hate that woman,” Sister said. “Don’t you hate women like that, Mouse?”
“Women like what? My tail hurts. I may need to go to the emergency room.”
“You know. Trying to act tough.”
“Maybe she is tough,” Frances said. “Women in her position have to be, have to develop a tough veneer.”
“The guidance counselor has spoken,” Mary Alice said.
Frances began to cry. “I think I better just go home tonight. I wasn’t expecting the vacation from hell.”
Haley put her arms around her. “It’ll be all right as soon as we get away from here, won’t it, Aunt Sister?”
“I’m sorry, Frances,” Sister said. “I’m just upset.”
“I’m in pain,” I said.
“Ladies?” A large man with thinning hair and a round, babyish face had walked up. He was dressed in the uniform of the Florida Marine Patrol. “I’m Lieutenant Major Bissell. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Please hurry,” Mary Alice said. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
He smiled. “I’ll make it quick as I can.” He took out the usual notepad and pen. “Your names?”
We supplied that, our addresses, where we were staying in Destin, and why we were there.
“I’m going to the writers’ conference, too,” he said, beaming at Sister. By now it was so dark, he had had to turn a penlight on to see his notepad.
“Good,” Sister said. “I’ll see you there. Now, tell me, would I be breaking one of your laws if I made a quick trip back in the dunes?”
“I think it would be all right.”
“Just don’t get wet,” Frances called as Mary Alice climbed up through the sea oats. I could tell I was going to have to keep these two apart.
“Lisa says you knew Mrs. Weatherby, the victim.”
“We’ve known her for years,” I said. I explained that she and her husband had the condo next to Sister’s.
“I knew her, too,” Lieutenant Major (what kind of a title was that?) Bissell said. “Destin’s still a small town in the wintertime.” He flicked his pen off and on with his fingernail. “She showed me some property in the new development. It’s beautiful, but too rich for my blood.” He cleared his throat. “She was a nice lady.”
“Lieutenant Major Bissell—” Haley began.
“Just Lieutenant. Major’s my first name. Confuses everybody, including me.”
“Lieutenant Bissell, I saw Mrs. Weatherby’s body. I know you have a murder case on your hands.”
“I think we’re safe in saying she didn’t die of natural causes.”
I remembered what Sister had said about Millicent’s throat and shuddered.
“Well, who’ll tell Mr. Weatherby about it?” Haley continued. “Is there some policy that you have to be the ones to do it?”
“We usually do. Why?”
“We all know Fairchild very well, especially my aunt. I know it’ll be hard, but I think it should come from us.”
What a wonderful child I had raised. When Sister got back from her trip to the sea oats, it was all settled. The lieutenant would go with us, but Mary Alice would be the one to break the news of Millicent’s death to Fairchild.
“You volunteered me to tell Fairchild?” It was too dark to see the expression on her face, fortunately. She was quiet for a moment and then sighed. “Well, so much for having to pee.”
He knew when he answered the door, when he saw all of us, including Lieutenant Bissell, when Mary Alice held out her arms. He had had a similar visit when his first wife Margaret centered the utility pole on Highway 98.
“Millicent?” he asked, the blood draining from his face. “What happened?”
“She was killed, Fairchild,” Sister said.
He looked confused. “But the lights are still on.”
“She didn’t hit a utility pole, Fairchild. We found her body on the beach.”
“Millicent drowned? She never went near the water.”
Sister looked imploringly at Lieutenant Bissell, who stepped forward and suggested that we all go in and sit down. Just at that moment, the elevator opened and Eddie and Laura Stamps, the couple who live in the apartment on the other side of Sister’s, got out. Like Sister, they had owned their apartment for years, but they had retired and moved from Atlanta three years ago to become permanent residents. In their mid-sixties, the Stampses both had the tanned, extra crispy skin of people who spend most of their time on golf courses and boats. They stopped when they saw us standing at Fairchild’s door with Lieutenant Bissell.
“Patricia Anne? Mary Alice? Is something wrong?” Laura asked.
“It’s Millicent,” I said. I remembered that Millicent had been her close friend and I couldn’t say the next words.
Laura walked toward us with Eddie trailing her. “What about Millicent?”
Haley answered the question. “She’s dead, Mrs. Stamps.”
Laura’s hands flew to her chest. “Dead? Millicent’s dead? Where’s Fairchild?”
“Here I am, Laura.” Fairchild’s voice was shaky and frail. Lieutenant Bissell backed up so the Stampses could get through the door to Fairchild. They both embraced him.
“What on God’s earth?” Eddie Stamps asked. “What’s happened?”
Fairchild shook his head. “She drowned.”
“Get out of the hall, everybody,” Sister demanded. “This is like playing sardines.”
We all followed her except Frances, who told me she was going to go find the aspirin, maybe a Valium, maybe several of each, and headed next door.
Fairchild and the Stampses sat on the sofa and the rest of us gathered around. There was a half-played game of solitaire on the coffee table, and a Gilligan’s Island rerun was playing loudly on TV. Lieutenant Bissell reached for the remote and turned it off.
Sister leaned forward. “Fairchild, Millicent didn’t just drown. She was killed. We found her body on the beach at the end of Holiday Isle. That sandbar down there where all the herons are.”
“Millicent was killed?” Fairchild still looked puzzled.
“You mean murdered?” Eddie Stamps asked.
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Bissell’s voice seemed to boom in relief that the word had finally been spoken. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, God
!” Laura put her head in her hands, and Eddie put his arms around her shoulder. A large man whose white hair drew a perfect circle around a tanned scalp, his arm seemed heavy on her thin shoulders.
“Excuse me,” Fairchild said. He got up and made a dash for the bathroom.
Laura began to sob. “We were going to see if Fairchild and Millicent wanted to go to dinner.” Eddie’s fingers tightened on her arm.
“Let’s get out of here, Mama,” Haley whispered to me.
I looked around Millicent’s living room. This morning she had walked into this room and allayed Fairchild’s fear; it would never happen again. Suddenly, the fact that she had not come home last night loomed as an important piece of information that Fairchild would have to tell the lieutenant.
“Lieutenant,” I said, “you don’t need us for anything, do you?”
“I’ll need to talk to you later.”
“We’re going next door, then.” I looked at Mary Alice who had reached over and was moving a red four to a black five on the solitaire game. “Mary Alice?”
“I think I’ll stay a while, see if Fairchild’s going to be all right.”
“Okay. If you need us just holler.”
“All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe in there,” Haley said as I closed the door behind us. She shuddered. “I knew exactly how Fairchild felt when he opened the door and saw us standing there with the policeman. We didn’t have to say a word. He knew, just like I did with Tom.”
I nodded.
“And then when he found out she was murdered!” Haley began to cry.
“Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go see if Frances has taken all the aspirin and Valium.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t see her, Mama. Who would have killed Millicent like that?”
“God knows, honey.” I led my weeping daughter into Sister’s condo where my best friend sat on the sofa with an afghan over her head. “Frances?” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Saying my mantra and freezing.”
“Why don’t you turn the air conditioner up?”
“You mean down?”
“Whatever. So it’s not so cold.” I’ve never figured out if that’s up or down.
“I did turn it down.” Frances’s voice was muffled. “I think I’m in shock.”
“No you’re not,” Haley said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not. I know what shock’s like.”
Lord! “I’m going to make some hot tea,” I said. I went into the kitchen and put the water on to boil. Then I reached up in the cabinet, took down a bottle of bourbon, and put it on the tray with the tea cups.
“Did you take any Valium?” I asked Frances as I brought the tea to the living room.
She lowered the afghan. “No.”
“Then pour a slug of this into your tea. And you, too,” I said to Haley.
“It’ll taste awful,” she said.
But Frances was already lacing her tea with the bourbon. “I had an aunt used to do this.”
“So did I,” I said. “A toddy for the body.”
“And another aunt drank paregoric.” Frances sipped the tea and made a face.
“One of my great-aunts did,” I said.
“Which one?” Haley asked.
“Aunt Ida. You know, Haley, the one who got hurt when the fish hit her on the head. Came right through the window. Nobody would have believed her if her brother and his wife hadn’t been standing there. A three pound big mouthed bass. Whack, right on the side of her head. Knocked her cold.”
“Where did it come from?” Frances draped the afghan around herself like a cape.
“Best they can figure, a little twister sucked some of the fish from the pasture pond. There were several out in the yard just flapping around.”
Haley poured some bourbon into her cup and held it up. “To Aunt Ida,” she said.
“To all the Aunt Idas,” Frances said. “Bless their hearts.”
By the time Fred called, we had each eaten a sandwich, and we were in the middle of a three-hand bridge game that none of us could concentrate on. He sounded very excited about the Metal Fab merger. Everything was going to be great, better than great. Check and see if any of the condos in the building were for sale.
“Ha,” I said, and didn’t tell him about Millicent Weatherby. What I told him was to be careful, that I loved him.
I had just hung up when Mary Alice came in. We all wanted to know how Fairchild was.
“Dr. Harris down on the second floor came up and gave him a sedative,” she said. “Laura’s called some people and they’re beginning to come in. Bless her heart. She’s so upset, I thought we were going to have to get the doctor to give her something, too.”
Mary Alice looked tired. “How about a toddy for the body, Sister?” I asked. “And I’ll fix you a sandwich.”
“Thanks, Mouse.”
“Did Lieutenant Bissell ask Fairchild any questions?” Haley wanted to know.
“A few. He was very nice. He’ll get around to being tougher, though. Poor Fairchild.”
“I wonder where Millicent spent last night,” I said from the kitchen. “Who she spent the night with.”
“You know what puzzles me?” Sister said. “She had on the same clothes, the same clothes she had on at the Redneck and this morning. Now wouldn’t you think if she had slept in that outfit like she said, that she couldn’t wait to take a shower and change? Millicent was meticulous. She certainly wouldn’t have gone to work in those clothes.”
“Seems to me that after a night like that she would have just gone to bed and caught up on sleep.” Haley said.
Mary Alice sighed and propped her feet on the coffee table. “I told Major about the clothes. He made a note.”
“Major Bissell?” I stuck some bread in the toaster.
“Uh huh. He’s having a story critiqued at the writers’ conference, too. I hope he doesn’t get so tied up on this case that he doesn’t get to come to it.”
“If Millicent was having an affair, maybe Fairchild did her in,” Frances said.
“Not Fairchild,” Sister said emphatically.
But I knew what Frances was thinking. Anybody is capable of doing anything if they are pushed too far. I had taken the same psych courses she had.
The phone’s ringing startled me. Haley looked up expectantly, but it was a neighbor from downstairs. That was the first call. In the next hour there were at least ten more, residents of the condo and friends of Millicent who had heard about the circumstances of her death and our discovering the body.
“I’m unplugging the phone,” Sister said finally. And she did. We watched the late news and heard that a woman’s body had been found on the beach at Holiday Isle, that identification was being withheld pending notification of the next of kin.
A woman’s body. Such cold, uncaring words. Tears stung my eyes. Millicent Weatherby, you were a good old broad from De Funiak Springs. How could you have met such a violent death?
Chapter 6
After Haley and I were in bed, we heard the elevator open and close several times. The sound brought the dream I had had the night before popping up from my unconscious. The memory was so vivid that I asked Haley if she had heard anything out in the hall the night before.
“Like what?” she asked, looking up from her book.
“Like two people arguing. One was calling the other one a stupid bitch and saying to get on the elevator.”
“You heard two people arguing out by the elevator?” She put her book down, interested. “Was it a man and a woman?”
“I don’t know,’ I admitted. “I think one was a man, but it was like a dream, a real clear one.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Haley said. “What were they arguing about?”
“I have no idea. It probably was a nightmare.” I picked up my book and began to read again. In a moment, Haley did the same. After about five minutes, though, she pushed he
r cover back and announced that she had to go make a phone call. I don’t know how long the call lasted, but I certainly knew who it was to. By the time she came to bed, I was sound asleep.
“Psst!” Sister said into my ear. “Psst, Mouse!”
I came straight up. “What’s the matter?”
“Are you asleep? I thought you might like to take a walk on the beach.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Shhh. Don’t wake Haley up.”
“What time is it?” I whispered.
“Don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“Yes, you did. It’s the middle of the damn night. What time is it? Two? Three?”
“It’s late,” Mary Alice admitted, “but I can’t go to sleep. Come on, let’s go down to the beach.”
“Absolutely not. I’m going back to sleep.” I pulled the sheet over my head.
“What’s the matter?” Haley mumbled.
“Do you want to go for a walk on the beach?” Sister asked her.
“Now?” Haley’s voice sounded confused. “What time is it?”
“God knows. “I said, uncovering my head. “Go back to sleep, honey.”
“Y’all are missing the Perseid meteor shower,” Sister said.
“That’s not until August. Go away.”
She did. I heard the bedroom door close, heard Haley’s breathing resume the pattern of sleep, heard the elevator door open and close. Shit! Sister didn’t have a bit of business going to the beach by herself in the middle of the night. I scrambled out of bed, fumbled around in the dark for some clothes, and tiptoed from the room. Sister was sitting on the living room sofa reading a magazine.
“Oh, good,” she said. “You changed your mind.”
Ten minutes later, we were walking barefooted along the great shallow sea that is the Gulf of Mexico. There were no waves tonight, simply a curling of warm water around our ankles as our feet sank into the sand. Haze haloed the lights over the stile behind us.
“Everybody on the sixth floor is awake,” I said, looking back toward the building where the four apartments were a streak of light across an otherwise dark building.
“A sad night,” Sister said. “The people in the end apartment, the one next to Eddie and Laura, may be getting ready to go to work, though. They both work for Delta Airlines. He’s a pilot and she’s a flight attendant. Maybe vice versa. Anyway, they’re real nice. Remember I told you about them, Mouse? When they moved in back in the spring?”
