Deadly Valentine (21 page)

If Buck cared for Sydney, if seeing her in the arms of another man wounded him, it certainly wasn’t evident.

Billye made a series of clucking noises, indicating disapproval. “Such a naughty thing to do.”

“The prosecutor believes Sydney’s embrace with George right in Howard’s own house was the last straw. What do you think?”

The Burgers exchanged shrewd glances.

Billye turned thoughtful blue eyes on Annie. “Howard’s a patient man. But every man has his limits.”

“Howard was a damn fool to marry her. Even if she was a sexy bitch.” Buck shoved his hands deep in his Levi pockets. “Hell, you don’t
marry
women like Sydney.”

“Men do sometimes,” Annie said quietly, and she watched her hostess. “Howard did.”

Billye’s smooth, scalpel-tailored face was untouched by emotion, but those wrinkled hands clung tightly to the chair arms. Her eyes locked with Annie’s and another bright smile curved her rose-red lips. “Howard was all alone. That’s how
that
happened.”

But plenty of married men had apparently delighted in beguiling away time with Sydney.

And Sydney was young and very lovely.

Not all the plastic surgeons, not all the lovely clothes, not all the creams and lotions and unguents can turn back the years.

Buck was at that dangerous age when a young woman’s body could bring back the excitement, if not the reality, of his youth.

“Did either of you see Sydney after the party ended?”

Their denials were quick and smooth and determined.

Annie kept doggedly on. “How about later in the night? Did either of you hear anything unusual?”

“The siren,” Billye said quickly. “I thought the general had had a heart attack. I see him out walking sometimes and his lips are blue. I expect he’ll keel over any day now.”

Buck nodded. “He’s got a bad heart. Has to take a handful of pills. Insists he’s okay.” He sighed heavily. “Damn fool won’t quit playing golf and sometimes you can’t get out of a foursome with him. Rather play with a goddam rattlesnake. Got a real mean streak. Spends half the time popping nitroglycerin under his tongue. Course, if I had to take the damn blood pressure pills
he
takes, I’d be a mean shit, too. Damn doctors don’t care whether you can screw, but I’d just as soon hang it all up if I couldn’t get it up. There’s plenty of medicines for high blood pressure besides that one. That’s probably why the old buzzard’s always in such a nasty humor.” There was a fleeting glint of sympathy in his eyes. “I’d bet the ranch that’s why he was so goddam down on Sydney. But hell, just because you can’t eat the ice cream doesn’t mean you ought to want to close up the ice cream store.”

“You don’t think it was moral disgust on the general’s part?” Annie asked.

Buck looked at her blankly. She might as well have spoken in Etruscan.

Billye translated. “Annie means maybe the general was disgusted by the way Sydney slept around and wasn’t hateful just because he wasn’t getting any.”

Buck gave an elaborate shrug. “Hell, I don’t know. I’m
not a head man. Who can say what’s wrong with that old fart! I just wish he’d stay the hell away from the club.”

Annie wasn’t interested in any more speculation about the general’s sex life or lack of it, although Buck’s conviction that Houghton was impotent made it clear that the general surely wasn’t involved in an affair with Sydney. Annie had never considered that possibility very seriously. Sydney might be loose but surely she wasn’t desperate enough to be involved with a man old enough to be her grandfather.

She tried to redirect the conversation. “Okay, you heard the siren.” She paused, then forced herself to continue. “Were you both in your bedroom?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to ask directly if Billye and Buck shared a bed. Annie didn’t have Kinky Friedman’s chutzpah.

Billye was openly amused. “You can’t imagine I put up with all his snufflings and snorings, do you?” Her smile widened. “You newlyweds. Just you wait. One of these years, you’ll have your own suite.”

Buck guffawed. “Don’t think I don’t get my share.”

Annie felt her ears redden.

“But a man wants his own room. Besides, adds a little spice to life, goin’ to a woman’s room with all that satin and lace and stuff that smells good. Anyway, Billye’s right next door. She called out to me when the siren sounded.”

Billye nodded.

Annie fled the topic. “Did you hear anything else unusual?”

Buck hesitated, drumming his stubby fingers on the chair arm. “Well,
we
didn’t hear anything else. But Marshall was on du—was up late that night. He heard something. I called the circuit solicitor, but he wasn’t interested. I guess if you’re hell-bent on springing Howard, you might want to talk to Marshall.”

Max poked his head inside Death on Demand.

“Hi, Ingrid. Anything I should tell Annie?”

Ingrid, grinning from ear to ear, looked up from her book. Max admired the jacket, a dark brooch of five ravens
lying against a bright pink chrysanthemum that rested on a dark, veiled hat.
The Widows’ Club
by Dorothy Cannell.

“Tell her I’d like to turn Agatha over to the Widows’ Club as a candidate for Someone To Be Removed. That cat is deranged.” A thoughtful look crossed Ingrid’s face. “Although, to tell the truth, if Agatha hears about the functions of the Widows’ Club,
she
may apply for a special membership as a deserted offspring rather than as an ill-treated wife and Annie’d better watch out. Of course, so far as I know there’s no American branch.” At Max’s bewildered look, she relented. “Max, it’s the
funniest
book. A women’s club in England whose aim is to terminate husbands for women who choose widowhood over divorce—”

“Can’t wait to read it,” he said politely. Honestly, he was all for women’s rights, but weren’t there any limits? “I gather Agatha’s still unhappy.”

As if on cue, Agatha stalked out from behind the True Crime shelving, outrage apparent in the glitter of her amber eyes and the horizontal level of her flattened ears.

“Agatha. Good cat. Nice cat.” Max bent down and reached out.

Eyeing him warily, Agatha approached slowly, sniffed the hand, then pushed her head against it.

Max shot a triumphant look at Ingrid and began to pet the sleek, black fur.

There was the bare beginning of a grudging, tentative purr when a small ball of white fluff gamboled up the central corridor.

Agatha stiffened and glared. Her tail puffed and a venomous hiss issued from behind bared fangs.

Max, ever sensible, hastily withdrew his hand.

Dorothy L. frolicked toward him.

Agatha gave Max an “Et tu, Brute” look and fled into the American Cozy area.

Max looked up at Ingrid, who nodded unhappily.

“It’s enough to break your heart,” the clerk said softly.

Max nodded. Thwarted love was no laughing matter.

“Tell Annie I think I’ll take Dorothy L. home with me tonight,” Ingrid said. “I like to keep the bloodshed in the books.”

“Okay. Everything else all right?”

“Moving at a snail’s pace. The usual February day. Sold three of Dick Francis’s latest and a couple of Charlotte MacLeods. Oh, and forewarn Annie that Henny’s really got a bee in her bonnet this time.”

Very little light seeped through the mullioned windows of the entry hall. As Annie and Buck stepped into the gloom, Marshall appeared from down the hall in response to Buck’s call.

“Marshall, this little lady’s interested in what happened around here late Tuesday night. Why don’t you walk her down to the dock and tell her what you know.”

Marshall nodded. He held the door for her, then followed her down the steps. As the oyster shells crunched beneath their feet, they walked to the side of the Tudor mansion.

The butler’s voice was not only high and soft, it was without tonal variation. “You’ll note the open expanse between the live oaks and the house. That provides a safe corridor. An intruder can find no cover. At night, the perimeter lights are activated.”

Annie peered up at the banks of lights appropriate for a baseball park, then surveyed the immense and lovely house, its rich rose and brown hues gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. If this wasn’t an armed camp (and that was an interesting bulge beneath Marshall’s blazer), it obviously came damn close. The lights, of course, weren’t visible through the swath of forest that separated the properties. But the glow of light would be clear to anyone on the lagoon. She looked across the murky green water at the portions of the Houghton house visible through a mass of bougainvillea and tall, spiny ranks of Spanish bayonet. The thick shrubbery of the Houghton estate emphasized even more the barren Burger lawn. Not a single shrub dotted the thirty feet of sleek grass between the house and the thick cover of the pine forest.

“The lights are turned on every night?”

Marshall nodded curtly.

“Why?”

“Security.” Her muscular guide picked up speed. She followed him past the back of the house and the elaborate patio and pool. Despite his bulk, he moved lightly and silently. About midway down the path to the lagoon, without breaking stride, he pointed. “Dock.”

Annie nodded. She hurried to keep up and was glad to catch her breath when they walked out onto the small pier. Nearby, a great blue heron stalked snakes and snails and other tasty marine tidbits, placing his long graceful legs so carefully that not a ripple moved in the still water. At the sound of their footsteps, the heron’s huge wings moved and it lifted gracefully away into the sunset.

Only rowboats were moored at the piers. There were no speedboats, of course. A restrictive covenant in the deed prohibited them. They wouldn’t, given the size of the lagoon, have been appropriate anyway. But the lagoon was perfect for a lazy row, although Annie was leery of gracing with her presence any body of water that afforded a home to as many snakes as Scarlet King Lagoon. She wasn’t even taking into account the rat snakes that delighted in climbing trees and sunning on branches, with the nasty habit of falling into passing boats. Further, there was the resident alligator. Max judged he was at least twelve feet long. Annie had no desire for any kind of close relationship with Murphy, as Max persisted in calling him. Actually, the jogging path was as close as she intended to come to the lagoon.

“Tuesday night.” Marshall’s light golden eyes flicked toward her, then back to the lagoon. “At twelve minutes before oh one hundred hours, I heard oars shipping water.”

Oh, my God. A rowboat in the lagoon just before Sydney was murdered.

Dorcas. Dorcas Atwater! She’d been out in her rowboat toward the end of the party. What time was it then? Eleven-thirty perhaps? Dorcas could have returned. If she had and if she found Sydney in the gazebo—

“Did you see anything?” Annie demanded excitedly.

“You can’t see out from a lighted area into the dark,” he said curtly. “I ran to the bank and out onto the dock. By then the sound was gone.”

Annie tried to visualize it, Marshall making his “circuit”
and hearing the oars, the bright swath of light encircling the Burger house, the blackness of the lagoon and the forest on either side of the house. A startling revelation hit her.

“You were down here—in this yard or on the dock—at about one o’clock?”

“Affirmative.”

“Could anyone have used the path without your seeing them?” Shading her eyes from the sun, a blood-red ruby riding just above the feathery green umbrella tops of the pines, she pointed at the narrow band of asphalt winding out of the pines from the direction of the Atwater house, crossing the grassy bank that belonged to the Burgers, and curving into the pines en route to the Graham’s house.

“No way.”

But Dorcas could have come by water, had earlier come by water.

Annie turned back to the lagoon. Shadows were lengthening as the sun began to plummet in the west. Soon, it would sink out of sight behind the tall evergreens, and Scarlet King Lagoon would be dim and cloistered. Already the air was cooling and felt much more like February than false March.

“Could you tell what part of the lagoon the boat was on?”

Marshall, too, looked out across the dark water. The Cahill gazebo was just visible through a stand of weeping willows.

“Not when I first heard it.”

She picked up on that immediately. “You heard it a second time?”

“It was gone or maybe out of my hearing by the time I got down to the dock. I looked damned hard, I can tell you, but I couldn’t make out any movement on the lagoon. Thing is, anything that happens out there is off limits to us. My concern is any approach to this house. The rowboat hadn’t landed here. I knew that for sure. So I thought, What the hell, and started back toward the house. I was almost around a couple more circuits, when I heard the boat again. This time I took a side approach to our landing.”

Annie didn’t ask for a definition of a side approach, but she could imagine this tough, well-muscled man, gun in hand, moving soft-footed through the pines, ready to accost anyone docking unheralded at their pier.

“What happened?” she asked impatiently.

“Nothing. The sound faded away. I thought maybe I heard a thump, somebody walking on another pier. The lights at the end of the piers don’t really illuminate them. I decided somebody was out for a midnight row. That’s their business. Fine, so long as they don’t come here.”

“There was a scream. A few minutes after one. Did you hear that?”

It was his turn to be impatient. “Sure.”

“You didn’t do anything?”

Those light amber eyes were devoid of expression. “It wasn’t,” he said distinctly, “over here.”

Someone, she wanted to say, could have been screaming for help, for life.

But that wouldn’t have mattered to this man.

She went at it several different ways, but Marshall didn’t have anything else to add. There had been a rowboat. Coming and going. Or maybe one rowboat going and another rowboat going. Who could say? No sight of movement. No hint of origin for the boat (or boats). And he was sure nobody had crossed the Burger grounds going from or coming to the Cahills.

“Did either Mr. or Mrs. Burger come out?”