Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “Annie.” She stopped by the edge of the drive and waited.

  They stood in a pool of mid-afternoon heat. The drone of bees in the honeysuckle and the singsong of the katydids reminded Annie of lazy summer afternoons when there had been nothing more important to do than decide among reading the latest Victoria Holt, or taking a swim, or pedaling leisurely to Cole Drugstore for a cherry phosphate. The easy cadence of summer made an odd backdrop to her own sense of urgency and Janet’s palpable unease.

  “I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is T.K. here?”

  “Why? What do you want with T.K.?” Janet demanded sharply. “Look, I’m sick of everybody going after him. He hasn’t done anything. He wouldn’t shoot anybody. It’s absurd.” Her voice rose with each sentence.

  Oh, but he might have, my dear, Annie thought, and you know it, too, that’s why you’re so frightened. Once again, she felt uncomfortably enmeshed in other lives, other emotions. Her own quest, to clear Max, was central to her, irrelevant to others. But she must take time to understand and respond, or she’d receive no help at all.

  She made her voice soothing, reassuring. “God, I know, Janet. Posey’s such a fool. And somebody hid a gun in Max’s condo, so Posey’s still questioning Max.”

  “A gun. The gun that killed Shane?” She reached out and grabbed Annie’s arm, and the rough fabric of the gardening glove pressed unpleasantly against her skin.

  Annie stared at the suddenly animated woman. Was this an artful performance, guaranteed to project innocence?

  “Is it the gun that killed Shane?” Janet cried again, her grip tightening.

  “It’s being tested, but obviously it is. It’s a twenty-two and why else would anyone hide it in Max’s place?”

  “So Posey thinks Max did it!” Sheer joy rang in her voice. “Then he isn’t after T.K.!” Tears began to roll down her cheeks, from behind the opaque glasses. She jammed the trowel into a baggy pocket, dropped Annie’s arm, then slipped off her gloves and wadded one to use as handkerchief. “Oh, my God, I’ve been so frightened. Annie, I’ve been terrified!”

  How Annie might feel hadn’t yet occurred to her.

  When the sniffles began to subside, Annie asked, “Is T.K. here? Or Cindy?”

  The tears started again. “We were going to have lunch, and Cindy wouldn’t come down. When T.K. said she had to, she ran out of the house and slammed into her car. Then T.K. cried. Oh, God, he cried, and when I tried to tell him he shouldn’t even care, he left, too. And neither one’s come back all afternoon. Oh, Annie, everything’s just gone to hell!” Janet raised her splotched, tear-streaked face. “I hate Shane more dead than I did when he was alive.”

  The short drive from the Hortons to the harbor reminded Annie just how small the island was, and how quickly any of her suspects could reach the condos. The harborside was jammed, and she pulled into one of the last parking spaces. It was a little early for dinner, even for the young families, but the hot-dog and ice-cream stands were busy, children raced to the far side of the marina to climb up into the lighthouse, and all the shops were open. She poked her head into Death on Demand. There was a crowd here, too, at the cash desk. Normally, it would have thrilled Annie to see all those books en route to new admirers. She scanned the titles—The Spy Who Got His Feet Wet, The Villains, The Rosary Murders, and I Should Have Stayed Home. Her eyes telegraphed a question to Ingrid, who soberly shook her head, then mouthed, “But Laurel—”

  Annie hastily backed out and started up the boardwalk. So, no word on Max. God, what was the best lawyer in the United States of America doing? (She refused to permit her mind to entertain any thoughts at all on what Laurel might be doing.)

  So far she hadn’t eliminated anyone from this deadly sweepstakes. Any of them could have hidden that gun in Max’s condo.

  Two teenagers on skateboards careened past her, barely escaping a tumble over the heavy chain to the docks below. Annie looked out over the water. Sweet Lady rode quietly at her mooring. What exactly had Shane taken to the boat Tuesday? It was going to be damn disappointing if she went to all the trouble to board the boat illegally and found nothing but a stinking bait box. But he wouldn’t have loaded bait for a midnight sail.

  The sun was a fiery ball on the western horizon, gilding the boats a mellow peach. Nine o’clock. That’s when she’d make her move.

  She suddenly felt very tired, tired and more than a little afraid. If the gun checked out, Posey had physical evidence. But the gun couldn’t have Max’s fingerprints. She knew that. And that would be a strong argument that he hadn’t hidden it. Besides, no one but an idiot would hide a murder weapon in his own house. Surely McClanahan was even now making that argument. Jesse Falkenstein would.

  However, it was all too easy to look ahead and picture Posey’s arm-pumping assault on a jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are dealing here with arrogance. The arrogance of the very, very rich. Mr. Darling was so sure of himself, of his wealth, of his position in the community—”

  Gag.

  Annie gripped the chain between the harbor stanchions. The pleasant breeze off the water stirred her hair. Was there any point in talking to Burt and Carla?

  Yes. Talking to the other suspects was the only game in town right now. And she had to know whether they, too, had equal opportunity to secrete the gun. Turning, she looked at the plate-glass windows of Burt’s store, Stuff ’N Such. It was perhaps a two-minute walk from here to the condos where both Max and Carla lived.

  Talking to Burt was infinitely preferable to enduring the achingly slow passage of time and worrying about Max. What were they doing to him?

  Annie lifted her chin and crossed to Stuff ’N Such.

  Burt’s store gave Max the heebie-jeebies, as he once elegantly phrased it.

  Heebie-jeebies? Annie had asked.

  It was a phrase coined in the forties by an American cartoonist, whose work Max’s first stepfather had collected. To Max, it had always seemed a perfect description of physical discomfort similar to the prickle of your spine when nails screech down a chalkboard.

  She understood Max’s feelings. Stuff ’N Such was crammed from ceiling to floor with anything and everything that Burt hoped tourists might purchase, including a junky display of relics from past merchandising eras and a wondrous assortment of carved wooden shorebirds. Tins in a rainbow of colors advertised Melrose Marshmallows, Fertax Cream Mints, Necco Peach Bars, Blumenthal’s Sweet Milk Chocolate Raisins, and Bunte’s Fine Confections. An old oak icebox was opened to reveal several milk bottles from Sunny Hill Dairy and Borden’s. Shelves on an opposite wall held perhaps fifty carved waterfowl. Every shorebird imaginable was represented—a great egret, a yellow-crowned night heron, the American bittern, the wood ibis, the oystercatcher. And throughout the long narrow shop rose the cloying scent of a half dozen potpourris and several dozen perfumed candles, ranging from bayberry to root beer.

  Annie squeezed past two matrons whom it would be gracious to describe as portly, almost entangling herself in a bristly profusion of dried flower arrangements.

  Burt exuded geniality as he bent near a lanky tourist in a wildly clashing floral-patterned shirt. “Now this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As you can see, I not only have the Ivory Watch Charm ad, I actually have one of the charms.” He held up the matchbox-sized replica. “It even has the gold ring on top.” He looked past his customer at Annie, and his smile skewed sideways.

  Annie mouthed, “Can I see you for a minute when you’re free?”

  The smile disappeared entirely, but Burt jerked his head briefly toward the closed door at the back of the shop.

  In the office, Annie perched on the side of the worn walnut desk and waited. Burt came soon enough, but he stood just inside the door and didn’t sit down in the kitchen chair behind the rickety desk. “Hell of a day. You want to see me?”

  “The police found a gun in Max’s condo.”

  “That’s what I h
eard.” No offer of concern. No protestation of Max’s innocence. Nothing more than the bald reply, and an unfriendly face.

  “It’s a plant, of course.” Her tone challenged him.

  “I heard on the radio that it tested out to be the death weapon.”

  Annie tensed. For Posey to have already released that information to the media didn’t bode well for Max.

  Burt cleared his throat. “The sooner this is all cleared up, the better it will be for the players.”

  “Cleared up? What do you mean, cleared up? For God’s sake, you can’t think Max shot Shane? You know Max better than that!”

  He threw up his hands. “Somebody did it. Somebody who was there. Who am I supposed to pick? Hugo? Carla? Henny? Hell, I can’t believe anybody’d do it—but they did. And it’s up to the police to solve it. They don’t question people without reason.”

  Annie controlled her fury. There was nothing to be gained by telling Burt what an absolute louse she thought he was. Gritting her teeth, she asked, “Where did you go after you left the school this morning?”

  “My God, it’s June!” he exploded. “Where do you think I’d go? I came here. I’ve been here all day. I’ll be here until ten o’clock tonight. Now, if you don’t mind, Annie, I’ve got customers waiting and—”

  “And you need money, don’t you?” she demanded sharply.

  A nerve twitched in his cheek. “What’s that supposed to mean? Sure, I need money.”

  “And it’s damn important to you to prevent Harley from putting in another retail store on the site of the playhouse, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer. He opened the office door and held it for her, his face stony.

  The wooden boardwalk was jammed now. Couples walked hand in hand; children, dogs, and bicyclists swarmed. The setting sun splashed crimson across the harbor, across sunburned faces and peeling noses. Boaters relaxed in deck chairs, gin and tonics at the ready. Strauss waltzes echoed merrily, if a little tinnily, from the harborside sound system. Annie eased through the crowd, passing the Proud Palmetto Design Shop and the Great Blue Heron Haberdashery, to stop in front of the Grand Strand Gallery.

  A CLOSED sign hung inside the front door. A single painting, a small Klee, sat on an easel with a silver-gray satin backdrop. The lights along the walls were turned off; only the gilt frames could be seen in the dusky interior. In common with the other shops in the summertime, the Grand Strand Gallery was open until eight every evening Monday through Saturday. But not tonight. She glanced at her watch. Just after seven.

  A friendly voice called to her. “She’s not there, Miss Laurance. Maybe’s she’s sick. The shop’s been closed all day.”

  “I said three dips,” a shrill young voice objected.

  The cheerful girl behind the ice-cream stand waved to Annie and returned to her duty.

  Turning toward Death on Demand, Annie walked swiftly. Carla hadn’t been sick that morning.

  So where was she?

  Annie passed her bookstore, broke into a half run. It was only a block or so to the condos. Carla lived in the same unit as Max, on one of the upper floors.

  The bell pealed. And pealed.

  Annie kept pressing.

  Where was Carla?

  Then the doorknob rattled. Slowly, the door swung open.

  There were no lights on inside. She could scarcely see the dim oblong that was Carla’s face and the faintly darker outline of her body.

  “Annie.” Carla’s husky voice was oddly flat, but she drew out the name like a comet’s tail. “L’il Orphan Annie. But that’s all right, folks. ’Cause she has Prince Charming.” The shadowed face nodded with great dignity. “That’s right, folks. Cinderella herself.”

  Carla was very, very drunk.

  She turned away from the door, wavered, put a hand against the wall, then drew herself up and walked with drunken precision into the living room.

  Annie felt, in quick succession, anger, relief, irritation, disgust, and pity. Damn. If only she’d come here from Sam’s. Was there any point in trying to talk to Carla now? Hell, in this condition she probably didn’t even remember Tuesday night!

  Exasperated, Annie pulled open the door and stepped into the foyer. She flipped on a light. Carla paid no attention. She was walking with the eggshell particularity of a drunk through the living room to the open French windows and onto the balcony overlooking the sound. Annie hesitated, then followed. The light spilled into the living room, whose decor reminded Annie of the sand and gold of New Mexico, austere yet lovely. Annie paused at the French window.

  Carla sat down in a white wicker chair. There was a cut-glass decanter on the patio table, a half-filled tumbler beside it. She looked up.

  “You still here? Cinderella?” The sodden face twisted in a semblance of a smile. “Not fair. You have a lover, don’t you? But good girls always do. That’s right. Good girls get the love—and bad girls—” She shook her head and her straight black hair swung softly in the twilight. “I thought I had a lover. Yes, I thought I did.”

  Shit. Once again, Annie felt herself confronted by the subterranean currents in other lives, buffeted by emotions she couldn’t deflect.

  Tears slid down Carla’s face. She paid them no heed. Her hand moved out to pick up the decanter and pour the amber fluid into the tumbler. When she replaced the decanter, she misjudged the distance and the decanter rapped into the glass, then wobbled on the tabletop. She watched it intently, her brow furrowed, but it didn’t tip.

  “Carla.”

  The patrician profile turned slowly toward Annie.

  “Do you remember Tuesday night? Do you remember Shane being shot?”

  Carla lifted the tumbler and took a dainty sip. “I am not drunk,” she said clearly. “Do I remember? Hard to forget. Very hard to forget. It was strange. I felt so weird. Like the weird sisters. They always knew when dreadful things must happen—and that was the question, you know, whether they had to happen. There we all stood, and he was dead. ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’” She began to laugh. “The old boy had it down right, didn’t he? A false face. Oh, God, that’s so funny. A false face.”

  “Who wore the false face, Carla? Do you know?”

  But Carla only smiled.

  “Were you here all day?” Annie demanded.

  Carla lifted her glass and drank.

  “Your apartment, it’s right above Max’s. Did you see or hear anybody down there between eleven and one-thirty?”

  “Eleven and one-thirty?”

  “Somebody hid the gun that killed Shane in Max’s apartment. Would you know anything about that?”

  “Ah, no. No. That’s silly. That’s very silly.”

  “Posey may arrest Max because of it.”

  Carla put down her tumbler. She began to shake her head. “No. You’re lying, Annie. You’re lying, aren’t you?”

  Annie turned away. It was pointless. Poor Carla. She was past comprehending.

  Carla lurched to her feet and stumbled after her, clutching the wall for support.

  The last words Annie heard as she ran down the outside steps were slurred and furious. “You’re lying!” Carla cried behind her. “Aren’t you?”

  14

  When the whirring tape on the answering machine emitted only a faint hiss, Annie knew she’d heard all the messages, and there was nothing from Max, nothing from the best criminal lawyer in the United States of America, nothing from Chief Saulter. Two calls from the Atlanta Constitution, one from AP, one from the New York Times, one from Ingrid (“Annie, I can’t find out anything about Max!”), one from Vince Ellis (“Does Max have any statement for the press?”), three from Henny Brawley, and a dulcet-toned reassurance from Laurel that left Annie quivering with apprehension.

  The first time Henny called, she was disgruntled and sounded as grouchy as Bertha Cool. “All right, all right, dammit. So there’s only one way in and one way out of room one-nineteen. Thought there might have been a little money dropped into
the right hands. But—bartender a Boy Scout leader and desk clerk studying for priesthood. Don’t like to be foxed, but admit am stymied. Will continue to investigate. Over and out.”

  In the second call, the accent was genteelly British, and the voice was soft and almost apologetic. “I know if I could think of a village parallel, it would all come clear.”

  And in the third message, “Things,” Henny exclaimed sturdily, “are seldom what they seem to be. However, I see my way clearly now and, from this point forward, the guilty party shall not escape my view.”

  Annie arched an eyebrow. Actually, Henny was a bit off in the last characterization. Miss Marple engaged in thought rather than action, though, to be sure, she certainly participated actively in the denouement of A Caribbean Mystery. Hopefully Henny wasn’t contemplating any drastic moves. But she should be safe enough since she stubbornly persisted in stewing over what even she now perceived to be an airtight alibi.

  Then she listened twice to Laurel’s melodious voice: “Annie, my sweet, do you realize the ceremony is but three months away? There is so much to be done. It’s time to compare our guest lists, order the invitations and your personal writing paper, make a final decision about the color scheme for the wedding” (Was there a note of hopefulness here?), “begin shopping for your trousseau, arrange for the photography and the bridal portrait, consult with the florist—and I do have some tiny suggestions here, it’s so lovely that bachelor’s button means hope and jonquils represent affection returned, oh, there are so many possibilities.” A light shower of laughter. “But I mustn’t go on and on, I just want you to rest assured, dear Annie, that the wedding preparations are in good hands while you are preoccupied with crime. Of course, the idea of Maxwell as a murder suspect is so absurd, but with your background—the store, dear—you can scarcely be expected not to be a little bit concerned. You may free your mind of fear. I am in charge.”

  Annie flicked off the machine. She had a throbbing headache. But she had to think, keep thinking. (Only not about Laurel and the wedding. What did Laurel mean, I am in charge?) With every ounce of will, Annie refused to think further about what damage Laurel … It was essential to concentrate on finding something to help Max. She turned on every light in her tree house and wished she could find a similar switch in her mind. In the kitchen, she absentmindedly studied the contents of the refrigerator, rediscovered some pepper-speckled salami (at least she hoped it was pepper) which she anointed liberally with Dijon mustard and stashed between two pieces of rye bread. Settling on the wicker divan in the living room, she gnawed on her sandwich, which tasted a little peculiar, and drank a bottle of Dad’s Root Beer. Max would hate this repast. Dear Max. Had he had dinner? The county jail would run to ham hock and limas. Were his captors shining bright lights in his eyes and shouting at him? This possibility was always a worry for a Mary Roberts Rinehart heroine. But this line of thought was dithering.