Deadly Valentine (27 page)

The next two bios were shorter.

Annie spread the sheets out on the table, glanced at the clock—she needed to hurry—and scrawled, as fast as she could, the questions that had to be answered.

Annie’s pencil stopped, scoring the sheet. For Pete’s sake! Eileen Houghton was trying her damnedest to get involved. Why? How had she put it? “The general and I are appalled at the obvious miscarriage of justice which is occurring.”
Why should she be so exercised over Howard Cahill and whether he was in jail? Maybe the answer to that was blindingly simple. Maybe Howard, who had swept Laurel off her feet, was equally attractive to another middle-aged woman. This one with an old, unpleasant husband. Annie wrote:
Does Eileen have a secret passion for Howard? Did she want to see him single, hoping that she too would be widowed before long? Does she envision going from the General’s Wife to the Wife of the Chairman of the Board?

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Annie said aloud. Dorothy L. took that as an invitation and leaped into her lap. Annie scratched her behind the ears. Suddenly that two o’clock appointment with the general’s wife looked enticing indeed. She checked the time and hurried on to the next question.

Annie shook her head in frustration and circled Joel’s name with question marks. The teenager obviously intended to do as his father ordered and keep quiet. Maybe the only way to find out the truth was to confront George Graham.

She gathered up the bios and her list of questions, put them in a neat stack, and jumped to her feet. Time to talk to the General’s Wife.

A
NNIE REACHED THE
Houghtons’ dock first. The lagoon looked like pea soup under the unseasonably warm sun. The sawgrass along the shore rippled in the springlike breeze. A pileated woodpecker—Annie’s friend From Wednesday morning?—drummed cheerfully against a gum tree. Annie walked out on the pier and the row of sunning cooter turtles on a fallen red maple limb flopped into the green-scummed water one after the other as neatly as if choreographed. Half submerged near the bank was an old blackish log—then Annie saw the wide, flat snout and two obsidian eyes watching her intently. She stepped back a pace. “Honey,” she called, “it’s yours, all yours.”

The toasty feel of the sun against her skin reminded her that summer was just a dream away. The wind-rustled grass, the soft liquid call of Carolina doves, and the erratic splash-splashes in the water evoked the coming lazy, hazy days of summer, when Annie could sit in the shade of an umbrella and read the latest books—except when she was busy at Death on Demand, ordering, shelving, and selling. But this scene was hypnotic, a siren song that threatened to lure her away from the world. That was why the residents of Scarlet King had bought homes here, of course.

She walked to the end of the pier, shaded her eyes, and surveyed the pine-rimmed shore. There was the Cahill pier and a glimpse of the gazebo. The next house, of course, was her own. At the end of their pier, Max’s cheerful yellow raft moved languidly on its line. Annie could see only a portion of the house. The rest was screened by the pinewoods that separated their place from the Cahills’. But this vantage point afforded an excellent view of the Grahams’ garages, Joel’s apartment, the pool cabana, and the gingerbread top of the Victorian mansion. The Burgers’ imposing Tudor house appeared fortresslike on their cleared, bare-bones grounds, which looked desolate amid the thick undergrowth and pinewoods of the other properties. The nearest house, as the jackdaw flew, was that of Dorcas Atwater, on the other side of the fourteenth green from the Houghtons’.

Annie’s eyes strained. It was hard to see into that undergrowth-choked backyard. Brief flashes of light glittered beneath the canopy of a weeping willow. Was it the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off glass? Annie strained to see.

“An excellent view.” Her voice was smooth, almost oily.

Annie turned to face Eileen Houghton, who looked every inch a general’s wife this afternoon in a Cambridge wool gabardine suit and blue patterned blouse with an ivory background. She was rather formally dressed for a meeting on a pier, but, of course, she’d been to a hospital board meeting that morning. In the soft glow of the sunlight, her round face had a healthy glow beneath the sleek gray-blond coronet braid. She looked younger than her age, except for the grim set of her lips, which emphasized the deep lines on either side of her mouth. “I wanted you to see for yourself,” she continued in that unctuous voice. “The distances across the water are very short indeed.”

Annie again faced the lagoon. Eileen Houghton stepped up beside her. The faintly peachlike scent of her perfume contrasted with the nutrient-rich odor of the water. She shaded her eyes. “It’s been just over two years.” A musing tone. “Dorcas Atwater has brooded for two years over Ted’s death. Everyone can tell you how her personality has changed. She is obviously unbalanced. When Sydney was
killed, it should have occurred to me at once. The night Sydney died was the anniversary of Ted’s death. But”—her stocky shoulders moved in an impatient shrug—“I assumed the police would do their duty. Instead, they focused at once on Howard—”

Annie looked at her sharply. Did she say his name with a lover’s care? No. There was not even a flicker of emotion on the stolid, healthy face turned toward Annie.

“—which is completely ridiculous. In fact, the police haven’t even talked to all of us and when I call, some underling asks me to leave a message and it’s much too delicate for that. I must speak to someone in authority.” Her pale blue eyes gazed at Annie without especial warmth. “You seem to have entree somehow to the investigation, so I am going to tell you about Ted Atwater. When the police know, they will surely see that the solution to Sydney’s murder is quite obvious.” A wasp zoomed close to her cheek. Eileen brushed it away. “Two years ago, Sydney rang my bell late one evening. She was hysterical. Fortunately, the general was out, attending a meeting of the Retired Officers’ Association. He is on the board, of course. Howard Cahill was out of town. Sydney was shaking and sobbing, almost incoherent, begging me to help. She thought I’d been a nurse. I went with her. Ted Atwater was dead in her bed. Obviously a myocardial infarction. Unfortunately, it had occurred during coitus. Which was readily apparent. I agreed to help Sydney. I don’t quite know why. But I did.” Her voice held an echo of self-surprise. “We rolled him in a sheet and managed to get him downstairs and into his rowboat. I dropped his clothes and shoes in, too. We removed the sheet. Sydney was no help. She kept wringing her hands and wailing and asking what we were going to do. I told her to go take a bath and go to bed. I walked back home, got our rowboat, rowed to the Cahills’, attached Ted’s boat to mine and began to row across the lagoon. I had intended, upon nearing the Atwater property, to overturn his boat. It might then look as though he’d gone out on the pond, suffered a heart attack, and fallen into the water. Of course, it was awkward that he had on no trousers or shorts, just an undershirt, but heart attack patients sometimes feel their
clothes are constricting them.” Another shrug. “It was surely better than being found in Sydney’s bed. And I thought the water—well, anyway, that’s what I intended. But the towline broke or slipped loose. I rowed about, trying to find the boat, but it was a very dark night and I had no flashlight. Then the light came on at the end of the Atwater pier and Dorcas was out there calling for him. The Burger lights were on, of course, as they always are. Buck heard Dorcas calling and he yelled to ask if she needed help. She said yes. So I had no choice. I couldn’t look for Ted’s boat any longer. I rowed home.” Annie could imagine those muscular arms, the oars slipping in and out of the water with calm regularity.

Eileen smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her skirt. “I suppose Dorcas insisted on knowing the results of the autopsy. And autopsies are so complete. Then the police returned to her the blue sapphire earring that had snagged in his undershirt. A rather distinctive earring. A circular antique silver setting. Dorcas recognized it, of course. And then she knew.” She gazed thoughtfully across the water at the uncontrolled growth in the Atwater grounds. “Interesting, the reaction of some personalities to stress.”

She said it in the same even tone she might discuss an unusual bridge hand.

Annie felt chilled, despite the silky warmth of the sunlight. “You want me to tell the police?”

Eileen’s light blond brows knitted. “I suppose they will want to talk to me. It’s just a little awkward. The general doesn’t know, you see.”

“Will he be upset?” Annie asked gingerly.

Was there the beginnings of amusement in those light blue eyes?

“About the circumstances? Oh, nothing surprises him. He would think it was all very irregular. But he would approve of my effort to shield Dorcas. He has very strong feelings about the sanctity of the home.” She glanced toward the Cahill property. “It would certainly confirm his opinion of Sydney.”

“He didn’t think much of her, did he?”

Eileen Houghton was no fool. She looked at Annie quite
candidly. “Not much at all. Thought she was a whore. But from my understanding of the force involved in the attack, I am quite certain the general was not involved. He would not have been physically capable of such an attack. With his heart condition …”