Laughed 'Til He Died

by Carolyn Hart

  “Good morning, officer. Everything going all right?”

  “Just fine, ma’am. I’m keeping a close eye on everything.”

  Emma nodded approval and strolled around the side of the building. She stopped to watch a vigorous volleyball game. The middle hitter on the north side spiked the ball into the opposite court for a kill. As a player darted out to pick up the ball, Emma held up a hand. “Your attention, please.” Her deep voice was at its most stentorian.

  Obediently, the players turned to look.

  “Your game can resume in a few minutes. However, I need assistance. I’m here on behalf of Miss Jean.” Emma would have hotly insisted that she spoke accurately. Any effort made to solve the murder of the Haven board member would benefit the Haven and therefore its director, so Emma’s actions were being taken on behalf of Jean Hughes, whether she knew it or not. That her listeners would assume she came to them as an emissary from Jean Hughes simply demonstrated how easily a statement could be misconstrued. “Which one of you is the best tree climber?”

  Every player immediately claimed to be best.

  Emma nodded gravely. “I see. Since all of you are equally expert, it will have to be a matter of chance. I am thinking,” she glanced over the possibilities, “of a number between one and twenty. Whoever comes nearest will win.”

  The numbers rang out.

  Emma immediately pointed at a tall, skinny teenager who hadn’t yet grown to fit his huge hands and feet. “You win. What’s your name?”

  “Craig.” His sunburn couldn’t compete with the flush that stained his face at what was clearly unaccustomed attention.

  “Very well, Craig. Follow me.” She pointed toward the woods behind the stage. “The rest of you can come, too. But mind now, only cheers, no jeers.”

  At the edge of the woods, she arranged the players in a semicircle. “All right, Craig.” She pulled a pair of gardening gloves from her capacious purse. She handed them to him. “I don’t want you to leave any fingerprints as you go.”

  Craig’s blue eyes glowed as he pulled on the gloves.

  Emma pointed. “Climb that magnolia.” The magnolia was huge, with several limbs low to the ground. Clusters of blooms scented the air. “Look for signs that someone has recently climbed the tree: scuffed bark, bent limbs, snags of thread. Be careful not to disturb any markings you see.” She glanced toward the stage, judging distance. “When you get up about twenty feet, hunt for anything that might be left in the tree. If,” and now she was emphatic, “you find anything, anything at all that doesn’t belong in a tree,” her voice grew louder, “do not touch it. Shout down to me, and I will tell you what to do.”

  Craig scooted up the tree with ease.

  A dark-haired girl folded her arms in disdain. “Who’d hide something in a tree?”

  Leaves rattled above them. “Hey, lady,” glossy leaves framed Craig’s face as he held aside a thick branch to peer down, “there’s a twenty-two rifle stuck in the crook between two branches.”

  Chapter 10

  The white-haired old lady’s softly wrinkled face was a picture of gentility and kindness. She beamed at Annie. “I’m visiting my granddaughter and I am so excited to find your store. I just can’t get enough of books like these.”

  Annie beamed in return. She picked up the first book, expecting perhaps one of Susan Wittig Albert’s Cottage Tales from the Beatrix Potter series. Her eyes widened as she added up the total for Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman, Shadows in the White City by Robert W. Walker, Down River by John Hart, Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara, and Five Shots and a Funeral by Tom Fassbender and Jim Pascoe. As she bagged the books, she took another quick glance at Whistler’s mother. The old dear probably drank her whiskey neat from a shot glass.

  In the lull that followed the departure of granny-who-likes-’em-rough-and-tough, Annie leaned on the counter and absently doodled on a Death on Demand scratch pad with a logo of a silver dagger with a drop of blood at the tip. Agatha jumped up and batted at her hand.

  Annie reached out cautiously to pet her mercurial cat. “Sometimes you’re nice and sometimes you’re not.” Niceness held sway for the moment. Agatha remained quite still, head lifted to be stroked. Annie petted as she glanced at her not-so-aimless drawings, a row of cups each bearing the facsimile of a face. Yet Laurel had emphasized how stricken Tim Talbot appeared shortly after the murder of his stepfather. But as Agatha’s namesake once observed through Tommy Beresford in Partners in Crime, “Very few of us are what we seem.”

  The telephone rang. Annie glanced at Caller ID, lifted the receiver. “Hi, Marian. Who’s your favorite mystery writer?”

  Marian gave an impatient whuff. “This is no time for a survey. Rita Mae Brown. I can’t get enough of Mrs. Murphy and Pewter.”

  Annie shook her head. Marian was one tough broad who covered murders with a quip and a curse. So she couldn’t get enough of Brown’s detecting cats. Go figure.

  “Not to interfere with literary matters, but I’m in a rush. Max gave me some good info this morning. I always do payback. He must be out picking daisies. I got no answer at Confidential Commissions or his cell, so when you see him tell him I picked up an interesting nugget at the cop shop. I checked the crime reports and guess who called in a little while ago about a ‘burglary,’” Marian’s tone was skeptical, “of a forty-five pistol plus a box of bullets? Neva Wagner. She claims somebody broke a lock on the bottom drawer of Booth’s desk. Doesn’t know when. Admits they don’t keep the house locked. Could have been anytime. No one had been in his office since Friday night until she went in this morning. So now we got a missing forty-five and a found thirty-two. Interesting, right? Thought Max would want to know. Got to see a woman about a cat. Joke.” The connection ended.

  Annie suspected that Max had checked his Caller ID and chosen not to answer and interrupt his time with Jean Hughes. She made quick notes on her pad. Max would be very interested, but maybe she was most interested of all. Once she had been assured that Tim had shot at his targets with a twenty-two but Booth died from a larger-caliber bullet, Tim’s desperate flight had puzzled her.

  A black paw whipped through the air, knocking the pen from her hand. Clicks and clacks marked Agatha’s progress down the center aisle with the pen. Annie didn’t mind. She had finished writing. She looked at her questions:

  1. What caliber gun caused Booth’s death?

  2. Why was Billy refusing to reveal information about the murder weapon?

  3. In the clearing, when Tim was asked about the gun, was he thinking about the forty-five stolen from his stepfather’s desk?

  4. Shooting at cups with Booth’s image obviously meant that Tim hated Booth. Why?

  5. Max seemed convinced that Click Silvester was murdered, too. Was there a connection between Tim Talbot and Click Silvester?

  “A version of cat lacrosse back here. I think Agatha’s winning.” Ingrid sounded amused. “Do you need your pen?”

  “She can keep it. Ingrid, there’s someone I need to see. Do you mind if I leave again?”

  Running the bookstore alone on a July weekend afternoon was akin to being the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.

  Ingrid’s response was quick and good-humored. “Not a problem. But maybe you can bring me back a Dr Pepper. I know we’ve got fancy fruit teas, but I have low tastes.”

  “…PLEASE ASK Darren to call Max Darling.” Max gave his cell number, then hung up. It was never very satisfactory to leave recorded messages. Max’s face folded in a frown. He’d keep calling. Maybe Jean could suggest the names of Darren’s friends. Maybe Click’s “secret” role in the program was irrelevant. Maybe Click died in an accident. Maybe not.

  Max picked up the PI report Jean Hughes had brought. He skimmed background information, Booth’s hometown, college degrees, success as an entrepreneur in Atlanta. The personal information held his interest. Ellen became involved with an aspiring writer she’d met in a playwright group at a local b
ookstore. Shortly after the Wagners divorced, the writer moved to New York. By himself. Ellen’s best friend said that Booth gave him a hundred thousand dollars to drop her. She said, “Booth was such a rat. He didn’t care about Ellen, but he was furious that she’d leave him for someone else.” They had been married for fifteen years. Neva was Booth’s secretary. She was a widow with a nine-year-old son. Booth and Neva married a year after his divorce was final. Ellen Wagner lost custody of her daughter after she was charged twice with DUI. The PI picked up a news story about injuries suffered by Booth’s stepson in an all-terrain vehicle accident on a Pigeon Mountain trail. An investigating officer indicated Booth had urged his stepson to go faster and the boy lost control. The vehicle rolled, resulting in a concussion, a cut on his face that required fourteen stitches, and a crushed leg.

  The phone rang. Max looked at Caller ID. “Hey, Larry.”

  “Hey, Max. I wondered if I could drop by and talk to you for a minute. About all this stuff that’s happened.” He sounded dazed. “I was blown away when Jean called and said she’s a suspect.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. Larry was a little slow if that hadn’t occurred to him before. However…“I’m looking into some other possibilities.”

  “That’s what she said. Anyway, I know something that maybe I should tell. I don’t want to get involved, but I’ll see what you think. I’ll be there in a shot.” A pause. “Guess that wasn’t a good way to put it. See you in a minute.”

  Max was thoughtful as he replaced the receiver. Larry sounded uncomfortable. He’d obviously been thick with Booth in recent days. Maybe he knew something that mattered.

  Definitely the PI report mattered. Max scanned the sheets and e-mailed a copy to Billy. Those bare factual bones could hold a lot of meaty resentment. As he slid the report into a folder, Max remembered Jean’s farewell words. She stood in the doorway of his office, her face bleak. “You know, even if Booth didn’t buy off Ellen’s lover, he should have felt that he got the better of her. He married Neva. He got custody of Meredith. Ellen ended up alone and drinking too much. He should have blown off Ellen like yesterday’s news. But he never forgot her. Booth hated Ellen.”

  ANNIE CAME AROUND the corner of the hallway on the second floor of the inn. The corridor was cool and quiet and empty. Sun splashed through a far window. She had a quick memory of Ellen drunkenly searching her bag for a missing gun. That moment, embedded in her mind, had existed for a slight passage of time and was forever past. Annie had a sudden, eerie wonder of what else had occurred in the hallway of this old inn that left no physical impression but whose effects reverberated through time, lovers meeting clandestinely, conversations that changed minds or broke hearts or disturbed memories, a hand lifted to knock at the door, setting that person on an irrevocable path.

  Would Annie’s knock change lives?

  She shivered. Before she could change her mind, turn and run as she wanted to do, she lifted the knocker, clacked it against its metal holder.

  The door was yanked open. “Mo—” The eagerness in Meredith’s heart-shaped face fled. Quick anger twisted her mouth. “You’ve got a nerve. If you hadn’t run to the police, everything would be all right. I hope you’re satisfied. They’ve taken Ellen off to jail. She’ll be scared. I wanted to go with her. She told me to wait, she said that she’d be back, but I know she’s scared. When you knocked, I thought she’d forgotten her key. Nobody else would come. Except you. And it’s all your fault.” Abruptly, she burst into tears and tried blindly to close the door.

  Annie held tight to the doorjamb. “I’ll help. In a way, that’s why I’ve come.” Helping one might hurt another, but murder could not be hidden. Tim’s anguished face, Meredith’s tears, which one’s pain could be eased?

  Meredith turned and stumbled away. Last night she’d looked fresh and crisp in a white cotton top and lavender shorts. This afternoon, the same clothes looked as though she had slept in them, as probably she had.

  Annie followed, closing the door. The dead air smelled strongly of whiskey. The beds weren’t made though the covers had been pulled up. Annie stepped into the bathroom, found a clean washcloth, wet it with cool water.

  Meredith stood at the window, which overlooked the parking lot and the strand of trees that bordered both the lot and the Haven. Her shoulders shook. She looked small in her wrinkled top and shorts.

  Annie gently folded the washcloth into one hand. “Wipe your face. I’ll get you some water.”

  Meredith swiped at her reddened eyes. “Can you help my mom?”

  Annie spoke with total honesty. “If you believe she is innocent, then the more we can find out about who might have killed your dad, the better it will be for her.”

  Meredith’s face brightened. “Mom wouldn’t shoot anybody. She wouldn’t hurt Dad.”

  “Why did she have a gun?”

  Meredith drew in a sharp breath. “You don’t understand. Ellen’s kind of silly sometimes. Like a kid.” The girl spoke as if she were old and understanding and awfully wise.

  Annie felt a curl of sadness and wished that Meredith could be a child, thinking about dances and boys and dresses, not guns and loss and murder and her troubled mother.

  “See, I can explain it all.” Meredith’s words were confident. “She wanted to have me home again. She got the gun because she thought it would give her courage to face Dad. Not that she wanted to shoot him. She didn’t even have any bullets in the gun. She just wanted to have the gun in her purse and pretend she was like a spy going to a dangerous meeting. Knowing she had the gun would make her feel bigger.” Meredith’s don’t-you-see-how-silly-that-was smile invited Annie to join in grown-up, kindly amusement at a child’s nonsense.

  But Ellen Wagner was no child.

  “Anyway,” Meredith waved her hand in dismissal, “she lost the gun.”

  Annie tried to sound positive. “Maybe she can give the police some idea where she lost the gun.”

  Meredith’s face twisted again in worry. “She doesn’t remember what happened. She really doesn’t remember.” Her tone was defensive. “Sometimes she has a little too much to drink when things are going bad. But the police know that Ellen and Dad,” she paused, added in halting words, “didn’t like each other.”

  Annie wasn’t willing to go there. She was not going to push this child to reveal what she did or didn’t know about her parents’ emotional turmoil.

  Annie smiled reassuringly. “Families get kind of complicated.” Banal words; heart-twisting truth. “That’s why I came to see you.”

  Meredith stiffened, her face wary.

  Annie said gently, “I need to know about Tim.” Did he kill your father? That’s what she could have asked, but she didn’t want to pose that question, not unless she felt she had no choice.

  “Tim? Why?”

  “Why did he hate your father?”

  Meredith scrubbed at her cheek with the washcloth. “Dad was never scared about anything. He always said the world belonged to those who made it theirs.” The words obviously were quoted. “He didn’t ever like for anybody to be a weenie. I got thrown from a horse at camp last summer.” There was an involuntary pulse in her throat. “When I got home, Dad said I had to keep on riding. Once every week.” There was no joy in her voice. She looked surprised. “I guess I don’t have to go anymore.”

  “Do you like to ride?”

  “I hate it. And that’s kind of what happened to Tim. We have ATVs and Dad liked to ride trails on the weekends. Last year, Tim was riding his and Dad yelled at him to go faster and he came up hard behind Tim and I guess Tim got confused. Anyway, he turned the wrong way and the ATV went off the trail and crashed. He’s had to have some operations and he has a scar on his face. He hasn’t ridden an ATV since. Dad said he had to get over it. We were going out to ride next week. Dad said Tim couldn’t be a weenie.”

  But maybe he could. Now.

  MAX PUNCHED THE number. How many places had he called in the last hour? A half dozen at least. In t
he weblike way of teenagers, each offered a likely name who might know where Darren Dubois was. As the phone rang, a knock sounded on his door. “Come in.”

  The panel swung in and Larry Gilbert stood in the doorway. Larry’s angular face looked worried. Today he was cool and crisp in a white short-sleeved shirt and tan slacks, far different from his sweaty appearance late Friday morning at the Haven.

  Max gestured for him to enter, waved at a chair, mouthed, “Be right with you.”

  Larry’s nod was agreeable.

  Max turned back to the phone. “May I speak to Johnny Sallis?”

  “You got him.” The teenage voice was very laid back.

  Larry strolled to look at an orange-and-black geometric print, his back to Max and the conversation.

  “Johnny, this is Max Darling. I volunteer at the Haven.”

  “Yeah.” Supreme disinterest.

  Johnny was obviously way too cool to be caught dead or alive at the youth center. Max quickly dangled bait. “You may have heard we had a murder at the Haven.” Johnny might not be a big fan of the police, but it would be hard to resist a murder investigation. Television’s CSI was a magnet for kids. “I’m trying to get word to Darren Dubois. He may be able to help figure out what happened. Darren was a close friend of Click Silvester. Click may have run into trouble because he knew too much.” Max realized as he spoke that Billy Cameron might be irritated if gossip began to swirl that Click’s death was no accident. Max felt a sudden determination. Maybe that kind of gossip would be a good thing. Maybe a murderer would begin to wonder how much else was known. “Darren may be in on some exciting stuff. If you see him, ask him to call me.” Max repeated his cell number twice. He clicked off the phone. He looked up to see Larry staring at him in perplexity, dark brows drawn down, brown eyes intent, bony face furrowed.

  Larry pointed at the phone. “Sorry. I couldn’t help overhearing. That sounds ominous. Have we got some kind of serious problem centered around the Haven?” He dropped into a chair to one side of the desk, clearly perturbed. “I’d already decided to call a board meeting next week with everything the way it is with Jean. But what’s this about Click?”