Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Sam led the pack. “What’s the deal? Have you heard anything? When can we rehearse again?”

  Vince pointed at the police signs. “It may depend on when they release the auditorium.”

  Sam began to pace. “They can’t stop us forever. This isn’t Russia.”

  Annie moved a few feet away. She couldn’t decide whether to be utterly disgusted with Sam or to appreciate his honesty. Obviously, to him, the only importance of Shane, dead or alive, was in relation to Sam’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. But did he have to be so appallingly single-minded?

  Hugo arrived next. His icy gaze touched each person briefly. Annie felt chilled. Just so might the judge have surveyed the assembled houseguests in Christie’s And Then There were None.

  The Hortons and Burt came in together, with Carla a few steps behind.

  Sam stood on tiptoe to attract Burt’s attention, but before he could open his mouth, Hugo announced brusquely, “Okay, here we are. Where’s the law?”

  Burt rubbed irritably at his high-bridged nose. “I presume the authorities are en route. I haven’t had a chance to contact all of you, but, for right now, I’m suspending rehearsals at least until Sunday. We’ll plan on opening Tuesday night, although I’ve alerted the Mousetrap cast—in case we have complications.”

  Hugo’s rugged visage cracked in a humorless smile. “Life as a euphemism. You mean, if they arrest a cast member who can’t be replaced.” He glanced at Janet, then Max.

  “Not very goddam funny,” T.K. said levelly.

  Sam bounced up and down on his sneakered feet. “Not to worry, everybody. Keep calm. Keep happy. Let the cops worry about Shane. Remember, girls and boys, Solomon Purdy’s coming. He’s looking for a director.” Then, he added hastily, “And actors, actors, too, all the time. We have a shot at Broadway, boys and girls—”

  “Who gives a damn about Solomon Purdy. Or you,” T.K. exploded. “Goddamn, Shane gets bumped off, and all you can think about is yourself. And everybody knows you’re through. You’re washed up, a has-been.”

  Sam whirled on him. “I guess you’re all upset about the murder? Sure you are—when he was screwing your wife and your daughter, I guess you just feel real—”

  T.K. lowered his head like an enraged buffalo and charged. Sam ducked behind Carla. Annie and Max lunged forward, grabbing at T.K. Vince Ellis wrote furiously in his notepad.

  Burt held up his hands and yelled, “Stop it! All of you, stop it!”

  On this note, the doors opened and Saulter and Posey walked in.

  You could have cut the atmosphere in the Broward’s Rock High School auditorium with a carving knife and served it at an Addams family tea. To say the attendees of this reunion looked glum would be a masterpiece of understatement. The only cheerful face belonged to Brice Posey, who stood downstage center to orchestrate the reenactment, pitching his voice so it carried clearly to Vince Ellis in the first row. Posey had shed his pinstripe coat, retained his vest. Patches of sweat stained the underarms of his blue oxford cloth shirt.

  “Take your places.” And Posey planted himself at downstage right, arms folded.

  They started with Teddy’s appearance (and Eugene was superb) from the Brewster cellar in Act II and stopped at the point when Teddy was supposed to enter, bugle in hand, early in Act III. It was a ragged performance. Having Posey’s portly body stolidly onstage throughout didn’t help anyone’s concentration.

  Posey looked inquiringly at Saulter, who held a stopwatch in his hand.

  “Thirty-two minutes, eight seconds.”

  Sam yawned, frankly bored. Burt spoke in his precise voice. “That doesn’t allow for the delay before the start of Act Three. We had a mix-up on some props that slowed us down. I’d add at least six minutes.”

  “Forty minutes,” Posey boomed. “Now, what time was it when Petree made his last exit?”

  After a good deal of discussion, the best estimate was approximately ten o’clock.

  “So the murder occurred,” Posey intoned portentously, “between ten and ten-forty.” He gestured for everyone to come onstage, then stared searchingly at each person in turn. The cast members returned his gaze warily. Only Henny, a bizarre Abby in her bright dress, seemed undaunted.

  Posey took a deep breath. Saulter, apparently forewarned, opened a notebook and waited.

  “Where were you between ten and ten-forty last night?” Posey shouted at Arthur.

  Arthur jumped, swallowed, and nervously smoothed the lock of dark hair from his eyes.

  His answer, of course, paralleled that of all the cast members. Onstage and off. Backstage. Downstairs. In the greenroom. In the john. Out to the parking lot for a breath of air.

  And nobody quite remembered when they’d last seen Shane. Or perhaps no one cared to be linked to him during the period when the murder occurred.

  Only T.K. tried to establish total absence from below stage.

  “I don’t come on until the last part of Act Three, so I hung around out in the parking lot. A nice night.”

  Posey’s thick lips curved in a tiny, satisfied smile. “You weren’t interested in watching your wife act? She has a pretty big role, doesn’t she?”

  T.K. paused overlong before answering. “Sure, I was interested. I just happened to go outside.”

  Janet broke in eagerly. “He can see me act anytime. He just likes to be alone sometimes. And, see, that proves T.K. couldn’t have done it.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Horton.” Posey looked like a barracuda sighting a very slow-moving sea turtle. “Your defense is certainly evidence of wifely concern. But I’m intrigued. Why should I think Mr. Horton would want to kill Mr. Petree?” His voice rose disingenuously.

  Janet’s sheeplike face stiffened. “But that’s why you’re finding out where everyone was, isn’t it? Because you think one of us shot him?”

  “That’s correct. One of you.” The full voice caressed the damning word. “But why should you be fearful for your husband? Is there any reason why he, more so than anyone else here in this auditorium, should have wanted to put an end to Mr. Petree’s life?”

  Dumbly, Janet shook her head. “Oh, no, no, not at all.” Her voice was so low it could scarcely be heard.

  “It couldn’t be that you feel a little guilty, could it, Mrs. Horton?”

  “Guilty? I haven’t done anything. I was onstage most of the time.”

  Posey stamped heavily across the stage until he stood a scant foot from the cowering Janet. “Guilty about your sexual transgressions, Mrs. Horton!” he thundered.

  Bastard, Annie thought. He didn’t have to bare all this publicly. He could have talked to Janet and T.K. privately. Certainly he didn’t have to bellow it out in front of everyone—including Vince Ellis. But the reporter wasn’t taking notes now. Instead, he stared at Posey, not bothering to disguise his disgust.

  It was utterly still. Janet nervously clutched at her throat and didn’t look toward T.K. Her husband’s face was a sick putty color. He stared down at the floor, his mouth quivering.

  “Ah, yes, Mrs. Horton, guilt about your sexual transgressions.” Posey raised a finger, pointed it. Annie recognized the stance. It must be his favorite courtroom histrionic. “Do you deny you had sex with Mr. Petree? Not once, but repeatedly?”

  Annie wanted to cry out that this was indecent, brutal, vicious, but she stood as a part of that frozen circle.

  Janet’s pale face flushed crimson, then the color ebbed, leaving her gray and shaken. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe, then, with the desperate courage of a cornered animal, she screamed, “T.K. was outside! He didn’t do it. He’d never do it! And it wasn’t the way you make it sound. I didn’t … I wasn’t … He just came after me, and I was such a fool, but I didn’t care about him.” She looked past her tormentor, her china-blue eyes full of pain. “T.K., T.K.” Tears flooded her eyes, slipped unchecked down her face, smearing her makeup. “I love T.K.,” she cried brokenly.

  “Next best thing to Joan Collins,” Cindy rema
rked acidly. The teenager stood with a hand on her hip, breasts thrust forward. Annie was sorely tempted to swat her rear and stick her in a corner. “She never could tell the truth. God, she doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality. She chased Shane ’til he was sick of it.”

  “That’s enough, Cindy,” T.K. ordered hoarsely.

  Janet swung on her daughter. “Shut up, shut up, you little whore!” Not jealousy, but fear burned in Janet’s eyes. She knew full well—as did they all—that every word Cindy uttered increased T.K.’s peril.

  Posey relished every minute of it. Annie thought the salacious gleam in his eyes rivaled an X-rated film for sheer nastiness. “So Mr. Petree liked you better, did he?”

  Cindy’s smile was proud. “Sure. He laughed about her. Said she was a dry old stick. He—he was just wonderful.”

  Annie had had enough. “But you were sure ticked off with Shane that last night, weren’t you?”

  Cindy’s eyes narrowed, and her face hardened in remembered anger. “I don’t know what got into him. We always went to his boat on Tuesday nights, but he said he was busy. And I know he was going out that night. I saw him loading stuff on his boat in the afternoon.” She added waspishly, her face sharp and foxlike, “I figured he had a date with someone else.”

  Posey’s heavy head swung slowly toward T.K. “So how did it feel, knowing he was screwing both your wife and your daughter?” The ugly words stained the air like a poison.

  Janet darted across the stage to stand by her husband. “Leave T.K. alone. He didn’t kill Shane. He wouldn’t do it, I tell you. I know who did it. It’s all because of money. That’s what happened. I knew when they took out those policies that Shane would die. I tell you, I knew it then.”

  “Shut up, Janet,” T.K. said in a strangled voice.

  But his wife was too overwrought to hear him. “You just find out where Sheridan was last night,” she screamed at Posey. “That’s what you need to do. You don’t think she’d kill for a million dollars? And it’s two million because it’s death by misadventure. You can’t tell me he was worth a million dollars to that string of computer stores they owned. Everybody knew they were going broke. You can buy computers for a nickel nowadays! They made them and made them and half of them are just a joke. And oil’s down, way down. You just check and see how badly Mrs. Rich-and-Mighty Sheridan Prentiss Petree needed money.”

  Two million dollars. Two million dollars. Annie looked at Henny, whose lips were silently repeating the sum.

  Posey rocked back on his heels, a look of immense satisfaction on his round face. If ever anyone looked like a dissolute pig, it was Posey. “Oh, I know my business, Mrs. Horton. I know it inside out. The first thing I did was inquire about the widow, especially since I understand she isn’t a grieving widow.”

  Annie exchanged a thoughtful glance with Henny. And Annie was reminded of Charlie Chan’s famous saying, “Bad alibi like dead fish. Cannot stand test of time.”

  “That’s right,” Janet agreed eagerly. “She’s bedded every man on the damn island at least once. Everybody knows that. And she could have sneaked in here. She could have come in by the stage door—or downstairs some way, just like whoever played all the tricks. You find out where Sheridan was last night.”

  “Oh, I already have.” The tip of a pink tongue caressed his lower lip. “First thing I found out.”

  Even Janet, not-so-clever Janet, heard the lip-smacking undertone.

  “Seems Mrs. Petree was busy last night between ten and eleven P.M. Very, very busy.”

  All eyes were on him. He wallowed in the attention.

  Burt frowned, his thin mouth pursed. He made a movement, as if to intervene, then shrugged. Even the president of the players had no control over a circuit solicitor.

  “Mrs. Petree was in room one-nineteen of the Crown Shore Motel at ten P.M.—and she wasn’t alone. She was certainly not alone.”

  Obviously, it was a bombshell to most of his listeners. Sam, of course, with no attention directed at him or his play, continued to look bored and fretful.

  Eugene stared steadily at the floor. A red stain flushed his cheeks. Arthur studied Posey as if he’d just crawled out from beneath a rock.

  Janet didn’t give up easily. “It could be a fake. Some man she’s persuaded—”

  “Not just any man, Mrs. Horton. Mrs. Petree was with Mr. Harley Jenkins the Third, and he corroborates her every … movement.” His watery blue eyes had a hot sheen. “The night clerk is well acquainted with Mr. Jenkins. He saw them go into the room. And stay there.”

  Saulter’s face creased in a disapproving mask. Annie knew he was disgusted both by Posey’s salacious insinuations and by his lack of professionalism, though Posey could point to a written transcript and demand to know what he had said that was objectionable. It was, of course, all in the way he had said it. He might as well have passed around porno photos of Harley and Sheridan.

  Janet looked deflated, her thin cheeks sagging. Carla’s patrician face was ostensibly indifferent, but the revulsion was clear in her large violet eyes, while Hugo looked on sardonically. Annie would have given some zero coupon bonds for his thoughts.

  Only Cindy seemed unaffected by Posey’s performance. “Somebody sure could have come in downstairs. There are broken windows, lots of ways.”

  Posey looked at her cynically. “That’s very convenient for you to say, Miss Horton. Are you suddenly trying to protect your father, too?”

  “He doesn’t need protecting,” Janet protested.

  “Perhaps he doesn’t, Mrs. Horton,” Posey agreed unctuously. “Because he isn’t alone among men with motives to kill Mr. Petree.” Posey whirled to point at Max. “Is he, Mr. Darling?”

  Annie’s heart began to thud and she knew then that, for all their differences, she and Janet were sisters under the skin when their men were threatened.

  “Yes, we all know who had the strongest motive, don’t we? Whose fiancée was throwing herself at Shane Petree? Who’s used to having his way, a rich man, who can have what he wants, when he wants it?” Posey paused long enough for every eye to be riveted on him. “Who was the Long Island Skeet Champion four years ago?” He gave three judicious nods and pointed his stubby forefinger at Max. “Mr. Maxwell Darling.”

  Annie knew it was a performance, knew that every word and gesture was calculated to arouse. She knew it, but she couldn’t stay quiet.

  “You are a champion asshole,” she announced loudly. “You wouldn’t know a motive if you fell over it. Nobody in his right mind believes I would go after Shane! Why don’t you find out who hated Shane? Somebody must have—and it wasn’t Max. Max just despised him.”

  Max rolled his eyes helplessly and made a tamping motion with his hand. But Annie charged ahead. “Why don’t you find out why the murder happened during rehearsal, and not during a performance? Where was Shane going Tuesday night? Why was he all excited? And he was! Ask anybody. And we’ve told you about the problems we had with the play. Somebody even shot the Hortons’ cat! Max had no reason in the world to want to ruin the season, and obviously the sabotage must be connected to Shane’s murder!”

  Posey’s jaws clenched. His pig-ugly eyes glared. “I’m not fooled by all the clever tricks that’ve been played. That sabotage didn’t hurt a thing. If it’s connected to the murder, Darling did it to confuse everybody. And,” he concluded triumphantly, “it may not have a thing to do with the murder. The bullet that killed that cat didn’t come from the gun that killed Petree. So, don’t think anybody’s going to play me for a fool, Miss Laurance. I’m taking Mr. Rich-and-Smart Darling into Beaufort to ask him some mighty sharp questions—and his money won’t do him one bit of good.”

  As he hustled Max from the stage, Annie remembered another of Charlie Chan’s philosophical asides. “If strength were all, tiger would not fear scorpion.” And she pictured herself as a bright red darting scorpion!

  13

  Later, when it became important, Annie would calculate the
time between the breakup of the meeting at the school auditorium and one forty-five when Saulter called her with the shocking news. But she wasn’t thinking about time as she dialed call after call from Death on Demand. She was trying to make up her mind. Did she want to hire an establishment lawyer, an advocate in a Hermès tie from a ninety-man firm in Atlanta? Or did she want a blunt-spoken F. Lee Bailey, ready to scrap in the courtroom or out of it? Her personal taste ran to colorful fictional counselors like John J. Malone, who consumed far too much rye whiskey, and Donald Lam, who had lost his license. Perry Mason, of course, was busy in southern California. The smart money would opt for Antony Maitland or Horace Rumpole, but what she would give for the likes of a Dade Cooley!

  She made a half dozen calls, culled through as many suggestions, and finally ran a whispery-voiced Jed McClanahan to earth in Columbia.

  “You’re the best criminal lawyer in South Carolina?” she demanded without preliminaries.

  McClanahan’s response was gratifyingly prompt. “Ma’am, I’m the best criminal lawyer in the United States of America.”

  On this encouraging note, she hired him to represent Max. “The circuit solicitor—the idiot—has taken him to Beaufort for questioning!” she fumed.

  “Ma’am, would that be Brice Posey you’re talkin’ about?”

  “It certainly would. Do you know him?”

  “I can say I’ve made his acquaintance, and I’m pinin’ to meet him again.” If Annie had felt uncertain, the curl of derision in McClanahan’s husky voice sealed her choice. “Now, you just relax there on the island and don’t fret. I’ll have Mr. Darlin’ back across the water before you can shake a stick.”

  Annie felt an instant’s unease. Did she really want a cliché-stuffed mind representing Max? But the deal was made. And at least he wasn’t sanctimoniously quoting Scripture like H.C. Bailey’s shyster, Joshua Clunk.

  “How long do you think it will take, Mr. McClanahan?” She doodled on the phone pad, drawing a cell window with a white hankie flapping from it.