Something Wicked

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Had she accomplished anything in her afternoon forays? Her mind felt buffeted: Arthur’s fear of exposure, Sam’s blind ambition, Eugene’s absorption in a life other than his own, Hugo’s arrogant lust for success, the tragic unravelment of the Horton family, Burt’s willingness to jettison anything and everything for himself or the players, Carla’s unhappy love affair … It was as dismal a list of miseries as any found in a Mary Collins novel.

  Annie finished the sandwich and tried to decide what she’d learned. Any of them could have hidden the gun in Max’s condo. She frowned. Except Carla. Unless that final angry shout had been a masterpiece of guile, Carla believed Annie was lying about Max’s predicament. If Carla had hidden the gun, that certainly wouldn’t be her response. Unless, of course, she was acting—but Carla was too drunk to act. Wasn’t she? Or had that entire episode been staged? Slowly, Annie shook her head. No. Carla was drunk. So, scratch her from the list of possible gun hiders.

  A full afternoon of work and only one name stricken from the list.

  Annie felt a moment of panic. She’d spoken so grandiloquently to Jed McClanahan, blithely instructed him to get Max out of Posey’s clutches while she herself single-handedly uncovered the identity of the murderer. She wasn’t one step forward that she could see. And now it looked like the only remaining hope was the faint possibility that something on Shane’s boat would point to his murderer.

  It wasn’t much to look ahead to.

  But it was all she had.

  She squared her shoulders. Eve Gill would be raring to go.

  Max leaned back in the straight chair, his arms crossed on his chest, one loafer-shod foot draped casually over the opposite ankle. But his good humor was beginning to fray. Posey was such an ass. And so obsessed with Max as prey.

  “And how can you explain the presence of the murder weapon in your home, Mr. Darling?” The pudgy forefinger waggled a scant foot from Max’s nose.

  This question, or some variant of it, had been hammered at him for much of the afternoon. Max had given up trying to reason with Posey. Instead, he watched Posey and Jed McClanahan, who marched right alongside the big circuit solicitor, matching florid phrase for florid phrase.

  “My client,” McClanahan intoned, and it was an impressive noise from a little fellow whose balding head came level with Posey’s elbow, “has the constitutional right to remain silent. And I object to this continued flood of verbal abuse as unwarranted harassment. The writ of habeas corpus extends from sea to shining sea, Mr. Posey, and we shall not be deprived of its protection.” The scrappy lawyer rolled up his shirtsleeves, but he looked not so much like Clarence Darrow at the Leopold-Loeb trial as the “before” model for a bodybuilding course. Even Donald Lam would outweigh him.

  Posey shook his head like a bull irritated by a gnat. “Do you deny, Mr. Darling, that you showered this morning in your bathroom?”

  Pleased at a fresh question, Max opened his mouth—

  McClanahan leapt to his side, a tatty leprechaun to the rescue. “My client has no comment. No comment.” He bent to Max and whispered, purveying a strong scent of hair spray and bourbon, “Can’t tell where he’s going with that one. Don’t say a word.” McClanahan needed a shave and his blue eyes were bleary, but, right now, he was having a hell of a good time. He gave Max a manly cuff on the shoulder.

  Max looked from the combative McClanahan to the apparently inexhaustible Posey, and decided he’d had enough, both of the prosecutor and of the best criminal lawyer in the United States of America. (Where had Annie found McClanahan?) It was time to get some legal counsel that would put an end to this farce, although he hated to hurt the little guy’s feelings. But Max had no intention of spending the night in the Beaufort County jail, and it was long past dinnertime. And worse than his occasional hunger pang was the bubbling uneasiness when he thought about Annie.

  Because he knew his Annie. She was stubborn, hot-tempered, determined—and on his side come hell or high water. She would batter down all opposition in her efforts to free him.

  Unfortunately, that meant she was now hot on the trail of a clever and merciless killer, who was quite pleased to deliver Max up as murderer-in-chief.

  Max rose. Posey and McClanahan swiveled to look at him.

  The phone rang.

  Posey picked it up, then began to frown. “What the hell… I don’t see what concern it is of yours, Miss Fontaine, but yes, Mr. Darling is being questioned about the murder of Mr. Petree, and we did find the murder weapon in his—” Posey’s face darkened. “What do you mean we couldn’t have? We did. The ballistics—” He paused, then interrupted harshly, “Sounds to me like you’ve had a little too much to drink, lady, and I don’t need to talk to you about Mr. Darling or the case!” He slammed down the phone.

  He turned toward Max. “You got another lady friend, Darling.”

  Max smiled complacently.

  “The broad that did the sets. Carla Fontaine. Not making much sense.” He cleared his throat. “Now, as I was saying…”

  Max started walking.

  He ignored Posey’s bellow and his lawyer’s caution, pausing at the door only long enough to announce, “Arrest me, or I’m leaving.”

  Then he hurried down the hall, worry nipping at his heels. What was Annie up to? There was no telling what she might be doing—and what kind of danger she might be facing.

  Fortunately, the Merchants Association of Broward’s Rock liked the romantic look, opting for a string of varicolored lights that twinkled around the harbor at night, glowing a warm pink, yellow, and aqua, and providing only faint illumination. There was good, strong, piercing light, of course, at several points around the docks, but the far end of the harbor—where Sweet Lady rocked at anchor—was mercifully dark. Another plus was the cloudy night. A minus was the water, which only fish would consider comfortably warm.

  Annie executed a steady breaststroke and knew she’d give a curious porpoise heart failure if they came face-to-face—because she lacked a face. The soggy wet wool of a moth-balled ski mask clung to her skin and tickled her nose, but she was dark from head to foot, wearing the hood, a long-sleeved navy cotton pullover, and black rayon slacks. She paused, treading water, at the harbor entrance. Another twenty yards to Sweet Lady. She remembered Max had once told her she swam like an accountant tallying debits. Fast and stylish she might not be, but she got there.

  She wasn’t even breathing hard when she reached the side of the boat away from the harbor lights. She put a hand on a barnacled dock piling and silently tred water. The boats anchored nearby were dark and empty, the only sounds the slap of water against the hulls, the squeak of mooring lines through bow chocks, and the mournful resonance of Willie Nelson on the harbor sound system.

  Annie eeled up over the stern like a frogman in an Alistair MacLean thriller to flop facedown on the deck.

  No alarms. No shouts. No problem.

  But when she had her breathing under control, a sound raised the hair on the back of her wet neck. Something was scratching behind the closed hatch. It took every ounce of will not to bolt upright and jump right back into the water.

  Somebody or something was in Sweet Lady’s cabin.

  Well.

  She swallowed hard, pulled her waterproof flashlight from her pocket, knowing full well it lacked pizzazz as a weapon since it was rubber-sheathed, and yanked open the hatch before she could dwell any longer on the possibility of facing a killer, armed only with the tiny light.

  The flurry of movement startled her enough that she switched the flashlight on briefly, just long enough to see the luminous eyes and magnificent gray coat of an immense Persian cat. Her thumb jammed down the switch. Darkness descended again. She waited for her heart to stop hammering. Just a cat, she kept saying to herself, just a cat. But why a cat on the sailboat? Did Shane always keep a cat here? Was the cat an intruder who’d been accidentally trapped?

  She heard the click of the cat’s claws as he descended the steps to the cabin. An irritab
le meow wafted up to her.

  Only a cat, she reminded herself firmly, and edged down the companionway. Once in the cabin, she flicked on her flashlight again. The cat twirled around her ankles. Obviously, he recognized a cat person and just as obviously he was no stranger here. The flashlight beam passed over a plastic bowl that held water and another that was empty. Clearly, her furry companion wanted food.

  The light from the flash danced over the bunks, the galley, the door to the head, then returned to the port bunk, which held a collapsible rubber life raft, a plastic cat-carrying case, and a blue vinyl gym bag. A very suggestive trio. A man in a hurry, and all the accoutrements of flight stowed aboard his boat.

  Annie peeled off the soggy ski cap and stuffed it in a pocket, then caved in to the feline entreaties, opening a packet of dry food. The cat hunched over the bowl and began to eat voraciously. From her other pocket, Annie pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and slipped them on.

  It didn’t take long to empty the gym bag, and she knew she’d hit a jackpot:

  A change of clothing, gray slacks and a yellow knit shirt

  A roll of bills (five thousand dollars in twenties)

  A man’s travel kit packed with toiletries

  Two Delta Airlines tickets to Atlanta, departing Savannah at 7:10 A.M. June third, with a connecting flight at 9:40 to Los Angeles

  And a sheet of notepaper with a checklist and some haphazard doodles.

  In the left-hand corner was a list: cash, carrier, tickets, charts. Each word was checked off. On the right-hand side was a drawing with the descriptive phrase, abandoned lighthouse, three slash marks, the words 3 flashes and the numbers 0100. A capsized sailboat rode some waves. There was a scrawled telephone number and, finally, an unexplained, unchecked list: $1,000,000, LAX, Amer., Gate 17, 1600, 9/6/87.

  Annie studied the plane tickets. June third. Wednesday, the day after Shane was killed. So he’d had plans, all right. She looked at the manifest. The tickets were in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Bill Ford.

  Mr. and Mrs.?

  The cat leaped through the air to land on the bunk with a resounding thump. Annie’s heart lurched. She stroked her new friend, who was offended by the rubber gloves, then carefully repacked the contents of the bag, and replaced it next to the cat-carrying case and the collapsible raft. She refilled the big cat’s food and water bowls.

  Now—how could she bring the boat’s contents to Posey’s attention?

  Sea water dripped on the floor of the phone booth. It was the sole phone booth in the harbor area. Annie had no reason to suppose the line to Death on Demand was tapped, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Chief Saulter.”

  “Oh, hi, An—”

  “No names, please,” she whispered. “This is an anonymous phone call. A tip.”

  There was an instant’s startled pause, then a quick, “Are you all right?”

  “Just fine. Kind of wet and cold right now. But listen to this, Chief—Shane was up to something funny. Get a search warrant for his boat as fast as you can. This may blow the whole investigation wide open. It looks like he was planning a surreptitious exit from this island—and maybe somebody didn’t want him to go. Can you check on it?”

  “Will do.”

  She switched the Volvo heater on high, but she was still shivering when she turned up the dark, rutted road leading to her tree house. A hot shower. A cup of decaffeinated cappuccino and—

  Her car lights illuminated the dark red Porsche parked in her drive. Slewing her car to a stop, she erupted out the door, shouting, “Max! Max, where are you?”

  He met her halfway down her steps, and suddenly she wasn’t wet or cold or tired any longer. He grinned and held out his arms, obviously her same old insouciant Max. Though God knows he should have sense enough to look a little worried. In the midst of their embrace, she managed a muffled, “Max, you’ll never guess—”

  He held her at arm’s length. “Practicing for the wedding relays?”

  “Relays?”

  “Yeah, I just got off the phone with Laurel. She called you. She was sorry to have missed you but said she’ll be back in touch soon. Anyway, she and I thought it would be terrific fun to have our own version of the Olympics and …”

  Her skin glowed a cheerful pink from the hot water and a brisk rubdown. She slipped into seersucker shorts and a T-shirt, gave her hair a brisk brushing, and hurried into the living room.

  Max was draped comfortably over the wicker couch. Her heart flipped cheerfully at the sight of him, his sturdy, solid, nice body just where it should be.

  He looked up, and she saw the beginnings of distraction in his appreciative blue eyes. But not now. Now, she wanted to concentrate on murder and its nefarious handmaidens: lust, greed, hatred, and fear.

  “What do you think?” she asked quickly.

  “I think you look very, very—”

  “About the murder.” Sternly.

  He didn’t bother to stifle a yawn. “Annie, I’ve spent a long day, a very long day, listening to Posey bellow about nothing else. I don’t want to talk about Shane, think about his demise, or concern myself in any way with a problem which rightfully belongs to the duly constituted authorities of Beaufort County.”

  “But, Max—”

  He rose, and now the gleam in his dark blue eyes was unmistakable. “Murder has its charms,” he admitted, “but no charms to compare with yours.” He held out his arms.

  How could any red-blooded American girl resist that declaration? And Annie was patriotic to the core.

  A good evening begets a good morning. As Annie poured Max’s third cup of coffee, she gauged his humor. A-one. So—

  “I’ll bet the chief’s hot on the trail.”

  Max lifted his blond head from the morning paper. “Hmm?”

  “You know. The stuff I found on Shane’s boat.”

  “Ah, yes, in your daring swim through the perilous waters of the harbor.”

  Well, she was rather proud of her exploit.

  Max grinned and dropped the paper beside his crumb-filled plate. “Okay, sweetie. It was great.” His eyes crinkled thoughtfully. “You know, I wonder if he was running cocaine?”

  Annie carefully refrained from whooping in triumph. She’d finally lured Max back to talking about the case. She did pop up and dart into the living room to return with a pad of paper. Quickly, she sketched a copy of the sheet she’d found in Shane’s gym bag.

  “Drugs,” she repeated speculatively. Max was so smart sometimes.

  “That’s the only thing I know—besides rock music—that pays on the order of a million bucks.”

  “But if he was running drugs here, why a payoff in the Los Angeles International Airport on September sixth?”

  He took the pad from her. “Maybe the payoff is here and that’s just a reservation to go somewhere.”

  She munched on a muffin. “I thought the drug runners around here had their own operations. I mean, why would there be an L.A. connection for cocaine coming in here from Colombia? I thought the L.A. people were tied up to the pipeline from Mexico?”

  “Not being privy to the latest intelligence from the drug smugglers, I haven’t the least idea.” He shrugged and dropped the pad on the breakfast table, then swatted at a mosquito. (That was the only hazard of eating breakfast on her deck, but Annie considered fending off insects a small price to pay for the delight in watching the sun spread gold across the marsh.)

  Max drank deeply of his coffee, then sighed happily, at peace with the world. “Well, Saulter can nose around and find out.”

  Annie was a little miffed at this abrupt dismissal of her gloriously garnered information. Who had gallantly braved jellyfish and damn cold water? And it was all so intriguing, the sums of money, the airplane tickets—

  “Max, what if Mrs. Bill Ford was going to be Janet? Or Cindy? My God, talk about motives for murder!” She grabbed the pad and flapped it wildly in rising excitement.

/>   Max was unimpressed. “Look, we can imagine scenarios from here to Hollywood. What matters are facts. Let’s see what Saulter comes up with.”

  It was like being deprived of a brand-new toy. She wanted to sniff and scratch at every possible interpretation of Shane’s list. But Max had a point. “You’re worse than Sergeant Joe Friday,” she groused.

  “Actually, reason and not guesswork solves crimes,” he abjured, taking the pad, flipping to a clean sheet, and scrawling rapidly.

  She decided to ignore the implication, in order to facilitate premarital harmony.

  He handed the pad to her with a flourish. “Here’s a reasoned approach.”

  MOST LIKELY IN ORDER OF DECREASING PROBABILITY

  T.K.

  Sam

  Eugene

  Cindy

  Carla

  Burt

  LEAST LIKELY IN ORDER OF INCREASING PROBABILITY

  Henny

  Janet

  Hugo

  Arthur

  “Uhhm,” she began doubtfully.

  “Why, Annie, it’s obvious.” Max was supremely confident and just short of insulting. (It reminded her why she was not enamored of Sherlock Holmes.) “Look at it,” Max instructed. “Who had the most free time? The people on list number one. They could easily wander downstairs for a soda or go to the john, wait until nobody was noticing, and get Shane’s attention. Ergo, they are the most probable. Then flip the coin. Why would Henny, for example, who is offstage only twice, try to murder Shane during that period?”