Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

“Quicker than a Texas tornado, Miss Laurance.”

  After she hung up, she stared at the receiver in dismay. Had she bought a pig in a poke? Lordy, was it catching? “Damn,” she said aloud.

  The phone rang.

  It would not be quite fair to say that, in common with white rats subjected simultaneously to a ring and a sting, she now exhibited an automatic response to the peal of a telephone bell.

  She did quiver, and her eyes flared, but she was proud to see she picked it up with a steady hand.

  “Death on Demand.”

  The macaw-sharp screech didn’t bother with salutations. “It’s clear as can be. And I’m working on it.” So, Dame Beatrice Bradley was hewing to the scent. “I’m at the Crown Shore Motel, and they aren’t going to put anything over on me.”

  “The Crown Shore Motel,” Annie repeated blankly.

  “Where Sheridan and Harley claim they spent the period during which Shane was murdered. Annie, you know your Freeman Wills Crofts. The real tip-off is an impregnable alibi. Well, just wait until I look it over. We’ll see.”

  Annie hung up, and she couldn’t help grinning. The Crown Shore Motel wouldn’t know what hit it. Well, if there was anything fishy about that alibi, Henny would soon know. She drew a snaggletoothed fish on her pad, a crouching lioness, and a fat toad, then settled in for a serious bout of thinking.

  Finally, she wrote down three conclusions:

  1. It was unlikely that further investigation of the suspects present when Shane’s murder occurred would lead to additional information. Their motives were known, and, unless someone had remained silent about an incriminating action, there was no more to be gleaned from questions about the night of the murder.

  2. The possibility of an unseen, unheard assailant from outside the school was extremely slim. Further, the two outsiders with motives (Sheridan and Harley) appeared to have an unbreakable alibi. Annie agreed with Henny that such a convenient alibi did seem suspicious, especially since the wicked widow was going to inherit an additional two million dollars.

  3. Obviously, the true motive for Shane’s murder was yet to be unearthed. (Could Celia Grant help here?)

  All of which led inescapably to the conclusion, at least so far as Annie was concerned, that a great deal more attention must be paid the victim.

  Why was Shane killed?

  Why was he killed on Tuesday night?

  Why had he changed the pattern of his life in recent months, according to Henny’s informant?

  Who was the redheaded woman with Shane at The Red Rooster?

  Why did Shane tell Cindy he was busy on the night he was killed?

  Why did Shane rush through his lines?

  Why had he loaded his boat that afternoon?

  Annie leaned against the railing that overlooked the Broward’s Rock harbor. It was chock-full of pleasure craft this lovely summer day, almost every slip taken. A magnificent yacht (Fitzgerald was right; the rich are different) had tied up the night before and tourists gawked admiringly through sparkling windows at the slim, tanned young men and women lounging in the saloon. But Annie’s eyes were focused on a sailboat at the far end of the harbor.

  So Shane spent every possible moment aboard his sailboat. And he’d carried gear aboard Tuesday. Cindy saw him.

  Cindy and Shane had often gone for midnight sails, and that’s what she’d hoped for that night, but Shane said he was busy.

  Why, then, had he carried something aboard?

  What had he carried aboard?

  Why was Shane excited and hyper at the rehearsal, champing to be done and gone?

  Annie glanced toward the well-kept marina office. As usual, the owner, Skipper Worrell, was in residence. He ran a tight marina. Only ship owners were allowed on the docks. Tourists had to stay harborside.

  He knew her, of course.

  But he wouldn’t let the Angel Gabriel board a boat that didn’t belong to him. And Skipper knew what was going on around the island. He would know, as probably every newspaper-reading cretin in the county knew, that Shane had been shot dead Tuesday night.

  So he wouldn’t let Annie board Sweet Lady.

  Annie cupped her chin in her hand and stared across the pea-green water. The harbor was shaped like a shallow horseshoe. On the spit of land to the south was the burned-out playhouse. After dark, it would be easy to slip into the water there unseen.

  Hurried footsteps clipped across the wooden verandah behind her. Ingrid called urgently, “Annie, Annie, come quick!”

  Holding hard to the telephone receiver, Annie made him repeat it.

  But she’d heard the chief right the first time. “We found a gun, Annie. A twenty-two. Right on top of some wet towels in the clothes hamper in Max’s bathroom.” Silence. “You could’ve knocked me over with a whisk broom.”

  “Somebody planted it there. The murderer put it there!”

  Chief Saulter sighed wearily. “Course, it’ll have to go through ballistics to see if it’s the gun that killed Shane.”

  “Oh, it did,” she said bitterly. “You can bet that it did. Dammit, this makes me crazy! What time did you find it—and what were you doing searching Max’s condo?”

  “Look, Annie, I can’t talk any longer. I’m calling you from my car phone at the ferry dock. I’ve got to take the gun into Beaufort—and tell Posey.”

  “Chief, I’m coming, too!”

  She flung down the phone and raced for the front of the store, calling over her shoulder to Ingrid, “Take care of everything. I’ve got to go to Beaufort.”

  She was at the front door when the familiar peal sounded again. Annie didn’t slacken speed. She was at the end of the verandah, when she hear Ingrid shouting, “Annie, it’s Laurel. What shall I tell her?”

  “Tell her … tell her the cake is … is lovely, and I’ll talk to her later.”

  Much, much later.

  Was it possible that a red wedding cake shaped like a truncated pyramid and topped by a fir sapling would satisfy Laurel?

  Oh, dammit. Annie couldn’t believe she was even thinking about the wedding with Max tied to the rails and a locomotive streaking toward him.

  She drove like Modesty Blaise, but it didn’t do any good. The ferry was pulling away from the dock as she slewed to a stop and jumped out.

  Chief Saulter raised a hand in a lugubrious farewell. He looked as jolly as Mme. Defarge.

  “Dammit, it was a plant!” Then, cupping her hands, she yelled, “What time did you go to Max’s condo?”

  The words drifted back to her across the water. “One-thirty. Why?”

  But she was walking swiftly toward the outdoor phone booth, calculating the time and reaching for a quarter. She had to make an important call.

  The booth smelled of cigarette smoke, beer, and seaweed. It took five quarters to track the world’s greatest trial lawyer to the Tell-It-to-the-Navy Bar and Grill in Beaufort.

  “You can’t keep him out of jail from there.”

  “What? What’d you say, hon?” The nail-scraping whine of a synthesizer pulsed behind the whispery voice.

  Annie shouted, “You can’t keep him out of jail from there!”

  “Sweetheart, don’t you worry your pretty head. If they arrest him, I’ll get the best bail bondsman in South Carolina and we’ll spring him in a New York minute. Now, I’m just takin’ a break for a little sustenance, then I’ll get right to it.”

  “They found a gun in Max’s condo. It’s the same kind that killed Shane.”

  “Found a gun? That might put us in a pickle, all right.” A pause. Did she hear the slosh of liquid? McClanahan burped quietly. “Now, let’s see, Miss Laurance, tell me this: Does Mr. Darlin’ ever have seizures of any kind, maybe little lapses of memory?”

  Oh, God. The music, a dreadful combination of country and acid rock, ranged into the upper decibels. A dog would’ve howled.

  Annie snapped, “No. He does not have seizures, mental lapses, emotional aberrations, or festering aggressions.”

  �
��Huh?”

  “He is, in short, Mr. McClanahan, innocent. Now, you get the hell over to Posey’s office and protect your client, and I’ll figure out what’s going on.” She slammed down the receiver, bolted out of the booth, then stood uncertainly.

  Brave words, indeed. She paced back to her car and stared out across the choppy water with troubled eyes. The ferry must be nearing shore now. Soon Posey would have the gun in his possession, the gun that a clever adversary had hidden in Max’s condo. Yes, somewhere on this lovely island a dangerous and calculating intelligence was weaving a net around Max.

  She knew only too well what it took to convict. Means, motive, opportunity—and physical evidence.

  The murderer had dropped the last one right into Posey’s grasping hands.

  When was the gun placed in Max’s condo? And how?

  Annie shook her hair back from her face, but even the ever-present sea breeze didn’t refresh her. Her mind felt like a jellyfish left behind at high tide. When, when, when?

  The gun was found in Max’s clothes hamper. He would have showered this morning, before coming over to her tree house for breakfast. The gun must have been placed there after he’d left….

  Oh, no, she could narrow the time better than that, much better. Because no one knew Max was on Posey’s list of suspects until the prosecutor went after Max during the grim session at the high school this morning. He’d taken Max in to Beaufort shortly after eleven. The murderer must have enjoyed Posey’s attack on Max and seen a wonderful opportunity to tighten the net. That’s when the decision must have been made. After eleven. And the chief searched the condo at one-thirty. So, the gun was put in place between eleven and one-thirty. Within a two-and-one-half-hour space, someone slipped into Max’s condo with that damning evidence.

  Max’s condo didn’t run to an alarm system. (Who needed an alarm system in a community on an island that had a single security-manned entrance-exit?) A good, healthy credit card would spring the front door. Max had a ground-floor condo with front walls around an entrance patio for privacy. Might as well have laid a red carpet for the murderer. But Posey would sneer at the claim of a frame-up.

  Well, Annie had an advantage over him. She knew Max was innocent—and she knew—or could almost be certain—that one of those present at the high school auditorium that morning had put the gun in Max’s apartment. Who else knew he was being questioned in Beaufort?

  So she wanted to know the whereabouts from eleven to one-thirty of the members of that select group—and she had a few more trenchant and perhaps downright disagreeable questions to ask.

  Cole Drugstore was an enclave from the past, with its original marble-topped tables and wire-backed chairs, revolving red Leatherette stools at the soda fountain, and lazily moving circular fans. The pleasant, musty dimness held memories of yesterday. For just an instant, Annie recalled long-ago afternoons and cherry phosphates with her uncle, the founder of Death on Demand. Then she hurried down the center aisle, shampoos and shaving lotions to her right, face powder and lipsticks to her left.

  Arthur Killeen stood behind the cash register. He looked up with an automatic smile. When he saw her, the smile disappeared faster than a table full of Stephen King books at a science fiction convention. His hands pressed tightly against the counter top.

  Annie wasn’t sure just how she would approach each cast member. Should she appeal for help, mount a broadside attack, all guns smoking, or attempt a disarming ingenuousness?

  Arthur’s eyes flickered uneasily. His features looked pinched and tight. Odd. He had seemed, until now, a peripheral figure, the genial druggist who created such a diffident, appealing Dr. Einstein.

  A mystery ploy flashed through her mind, that old saw of the telegram warning, “Flee, all is discovered.”

  She planted herself determinedly by the counter. “Arthur, you’d better level with me.”

  His shoulders sagged. “It was over years ago.”

  Annie waited, her face stern.

  “It will kill her, if it comes out.” His mouth twisted with bitterness. “Goddam, he was like a pig in heat. Why the hell did he want to go after Bea? She wasn’t his type.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But maybe that’s why he did it, so he could chalk up a hit in the kind of circles he despised.” His eyes reddened. “He laughed at her, you know. Told her she was a silly fool woman who thought she was better than everybody else, and he just wanted her to know she wasn’t, then he walked out, still laughing.”

  Annie riffled through a dozen pictures in her mind, and finally, from a players’ picnic the summer before, recalled Arthur’s wife, Bea, a tiny blonde who wore her hair in a tight bun and only a smattering of pale pink lipstick.

  “Where was Bea Tuesday night?”

  “Oh, no, she’s out of it, Annie. She was in Savannah with our daughter, who’s expecting a baby.”

  So he was worried about Bea’s reputation, not the possibility that she might be a suspect.

  Or was he worried sick that Posey might sniff out the affair between Shane and his wife and go after him?

  “I guess you’re going to tell Posey.” A nerve twitched in his cheek. “You’ll do anything to help Max, won’t you?”

  “Max didn’t do it.”

  “Neither did I.” He started to turn away.

  She decided on an oblique approach. “Arthur, you want to get this cleared up as soon as possible, don’t you? I need to know where everyone went after they left the school this morning. Did you see anyone between eleven and one-thirty?”

  His long pause might mean he had no idea of the purpose behind her question, or it might mean he thought very well on his feet. Finally, grudgingly, he said, “I went to the Gazette this morning to turn in some ads for the weekend. I saw Sam down there. I think that’s—oh, I passed Hugo jogging as I drove back. He was on one of the bike paths next to the road. And Henny flashed by on her ten-speed near the bird preserve.”

  The Crown Shore Motel on the shore side of the island proudly offered a salt-water pool, in-room Jacuzzis, free continental breakfasts, and candy roses at bedtime. Jerry’s Cabins on the marsh side of the island were the flip side of the coin, and offered very damn little. Rusted window screens, sagging wooden shutters, once-a-week maid service, and a half mile walk to Jerry’s gas station, cafe, and roadside market for ice at 89 cents a bag were the extent of its amenities.

  A rusted blue bike and an ’86 Ford Falcon rental car with Georgia plates sat in the sandy ruts next to cabin seven.

  Annie knocked on the door.

  It opened at her first tap, and Sam burst out onto the wooden steps, with his finger to his lips. He softly closed the door behind him. “Tonelda’s taking a nap,” he cautioned. “Have you heard?” His voice radiated cheer, and Annie looked at him in surprise. His face blossomed with delight. Obviously, he didn’t know about the gun being found at Max’s.

  Sam was prattling on. “Listen, we’re hot. Really hot. AP called. UPI called. Cable News is sending a crew out from Atlanta. I’ve been down to the Gazette to talk to Vince. He says everybody in hell wants to know what’s going on. Murder behind the scenes. Death backstage. Annie, you’re not going to believe it, but”—he paused significantly—“the New York Times called.”

  “You’ve been to the Gazette today? Around lunchtime?”

  A look of thoughtful cunning flashed in his bloodshot eyes. “Later than that. I had to fix lunch for Tonelda. I was over to the harbor just a little while ago. Anyway,” he went on impatiently, “this story has everything, a good-looking woman, a rich man—” He paused and stared at her, apparently thinking for the first time of his audience. His eyes shifted away. He gnawed on his upper lip, then said brightly, “But look, Annie, Max has money out the ass. They won’t hold him. Even if they arrest him, I’m sure he can get out on bail in time for our opening. And it takes forever for criminal cases to come to trial. And no jury would convict him.” He shook his head in awe. “Think about the free pub!”

  So Sam did
know about the gun. Of course he would know if he’d been to the Gazette offices. Vince would be the first to learn the astounding news of a search warrant sworn out for the home of a leading citizen. Vince was probably on Max’s doorstep when the chief came out with the gun. But Sam would also know, obviously, if he put the gun in the hamper. And wasn’t his claim of having been to the harbor area after lunch a clearly feeble attempt at an alibi?

  She stared at him coldly, and even Sam must have felt the chill. He shot her a craven glance and reached inside his pocket to pull out a crumpled sheet of paper.

  “Would you take a look at this? I’m going to see how much Vince will charge to run it as an ad. What do you think?”

  She looked at it briefly.

  “What do you think?” He couldn’t disguise his eagerness. “I think it’s remarkable,” she replied dryly. It was remarkable for its insensitivity, gall, and callousness. She stared up at his plump face, with its straggly halo of thin blond hair.

  “Gee, that’s great.” Sam beamed at her. “Well, I’d better hurry, get it down to Vince. He’s about to lock up this week’s edition. I’d better hurry.” He started down the steps toward the rental car, then turned. “Uh, Annie, if I can do anything to help about old Max, you let me know.”

  She watched him thoughtfully as he backed out of the rutted drive. Sam had one aim in life, to regain his place on Broadway. She had no doubt he would scratch, bite, kick, and knife his way past any obstacle.

  But would he shoot Shane? And frame an innocent man for murder?

  She wouldn’t be at all surprised. She turned and began to pound on the weathered door.

  “Jesus, knock it off!” a high voice called.

  Annie continued to knock. Louder.

  The door was yanked open. The spiky hair drooped sideways and makeup was smudged on Tonelda’s sleep-heavy face. “What the hell do you want?”

  Annie felt a stab of compassion. What the hell did Tonelda want? What had happened in her short and obviously traumatic life to land her in this seedy cabin with a man at least twice her age? But the dark eyes peering out from mascaraladen lids looked like old stones, discouraging sympathy.