Deadly Valentine (33 page)

Her words hung in the air. Slowly everyone looked at Lisa.

Including George.

Her chin rose defiantly. “Oh now, wait a minute. Not me, ladies and gentlemen. I had nothing to do with any of it. I told George if he wanted to screw that bitch to go right ahead, and I went into the bedroom and locked the door. And I stayed there all night!”

Annie was surprised to hear her own voice. She hadn’t intended to take part. But just like Pam North, she couldn’t keep quiet. This was Laurel’s show and she fully intended to let Laurel stew in the juice of her creating. But—“Billye and Buck Burger don’t share a bedroom. Their bodyguard swears they didn’t leave the house that night, either of them. But they could have. And somebody was out on the lagoon in a boat.”

Billye gripped her husband’s arm.

Doggedly, Annie added, “Buck likes ladies. Sydney had a new love. A wonderful new love she’d found …”

Annie stumbled to a stop.

A new love. A
fresh
love.

Oh Lord, of course. It was so obvious. Sydney’s lyrical descriptions to her friend, Susie, about this wonderful new and fresh love. And Joel liked married women.

Laurel took up the slack. Her voice was gentle. “Now Dorcas, it’s time for you to tell what you know.”

Annie looked at that puffy, tortured face.

Dorcas wandered about the lagoon at night, unable to sleep. She was up early in the mornings, too, so she knew about the general’s surveillance of his neighbors.

But Dorcas said he was a night-blind old fool.

New love.

A boat crossing the lagoon after midnight on Tuesday.

Married women.

“I can’t believe he’d go to bed with
her,”
Sydney had wailed to the unresponsive answering machine of her friend.

Laurel still prodded Dorcas. “What did you see the night of the murder?”

Dorcas huddled in her chair and shook her head belligerently. “I hated her, I tell you. She got what she deserved!” She stared at the floor, refusing to look at Laurel.

“Did Joel?” Laurel asked.

“I don’t blame her,” Dorcas mumbled. “Oh God, women are hungry, too.”

Annie saw the sudden comprehension in Henny’s eyes.

“Oh,” breathed Annie softly.

Laurel nodded in satisfaction and gestured toward her. “And now Annie is going to give us the identity of the murderer.”

The funny thing was, Annie knew!

So many bits and pieces:

Sydney’s never-ending search for love.

Sydney’s penchant for long and intimate conversations.

Sydney’s artless prattle to each new love about her old love.

Sydney’s distraught message on her friend Susie’s answering machine when Sydney found her new love in bed with somebody else.

A message on Monday night.

What Sydney knew, the world would soon know.

Sydney was killed on Tuesday night.

The valentine because the killer knew her weakness.

The gazebo late at night because it was remote from the house.

Annie stood and joined Laurel behind the card table which Henny had set up in lieu of a lectern.

“Everyone needs love,” Annie said quietly. “No one more so than Sydney. She looked for love with every man she met. Old or young. Joel”—Annie ached at the pain in George’s eyes—“Joel was young and hungry for experience and a long way from truly loving anyone. But Sydney, as always, clothed this encounter, as she did them all, with
romance. So she was devastated when she found Joel in bed with someone else.”

George Graham hunched forward, watching Annie.

“Joel told me he liked married women. Women,” she repeated. “So he was involved with another married woman. Who could it be?” She looked from one to another and listed them, one by one.

“Lisa Graham. Billye Burger. Dorcas Atwater. Eileen Houghton.”

Lisa Graham’s dark curls quivered as she shook her head once, sharply.

Billye Burger’s smooth face remained unwrinkled and impervious, a tribute to the surgeon’s skill, but her large blue eyes sought her husband’s and her rosebud lips curved in a perfect O as she mouthed, “No.”

Dorcas Atwater hunched in her chair, her face slack. Her dull eyes never left Annie’s face.

Eileen Houghton slowly stood. “I won’t stay here and be insulted.” She looked every inch a general’s wife, as usual. Just as if she were on her way to a tea in a white cotton and linen sweater with hand-embroidered roses and a cotton dirndl skirt with a tea rose pattern.

Annie looked at the four women. “One of you became involved with Joel, using him as he was using you. A fair trade, perhaps. Sex for pleasure. No commitment made, none needed. The two of you shared a liking for danger, for chance taking. But Monday afternoon Sydney broke in on the two of you. If Sydney, for all her promiscuity, had been sophisticated, if Sydney had not always believed in love, it wouldn’t have mattered. Oh, perhaps a sting to pride. But nothing more.

“But that wasn’t Sydney.”

Annie’s eyes locked with those of the killer.

“You knew Sydney would talk. Her tongue was as loose as her morals. She always talked. To her hairdresser. Everyone knew of her affairs. And
if your
husband found out—”

George Graham gave a deep animal grunt of rage and pain and hurtled from the couch, fists doubled. “You killed Joel! You killed Joel!”

It took Max and Saulter both to stop him, push him back to the couch and down.

The killer stood, twin spots of red in her smooth cheeks the only sign of strain.

“I deny any involvement.” Her blue eyes glittered. “You can spin every fantasy you like. But you don’t have any proof.”

“It has to be you,” Annie said confidently. “You were having fun, the kind of fun you had with your first husband. You pushed the limits, didn’t you, Joel even coming to your house late at night, to your bedroom. Dorcas knew, that’s why she said your husband was night blind. Joel must have come Tuesday night—but you weren’t there. When he asked where you were, I’ll bet you admitted being out, but you claimed to have seen his father on the path. This kept him quiet for the moment, but you knew he might talk to his father at any time. So he had to die. You decided that almost at once, but you waited until Howard Cahill was back home and could be blamed. You knew that if it ever came out that you’d been involved with Joel, it would spell the end of a marriage you wanted for prestige, even though you had a husband who couldn’t—”

The general stood. In his hand was the stubby black Colt .45.

“C
OME
, E
ILEEN
!” T
HE
general was an old man. But he was a dangerous old man. Not a person in that room doubted his determination or his lethal capability. The pistol pointed unwaveringly at Laurel.

Eileen Houghton lifted a hand in appeal. “Colville, there’s no proof—”

“Quiet.” He’d barked orders for a lifetime. He would be obeyed.

Eileen eyed him warily, but she said nothing more. Saulter took a single careful step forward.

The gun swung toward him. “Stop.”

Saulter stopped.

“You.” The general waggled the gun at Laurel. “You’ll come with us. Eileen, see that she does.”

Max tensed, leaned forward.

Houghton eyed him coldly. “I never miss. The gun is pointed at your mother. If anyone moves, she dies.”

Eileen gave him yet another uncertain look, then, moving with the lithe grace of a tigress, gripped Laurel’s elbow. Laurel didn’t resist and didn’t even look concerned. It took only a moment for Eileen to shepherd Laurel to the garden room door and out onto the patio.

The general backed slowly to the door, the gun rocksteady in his hand. “If you wish to see Mrs. Roethke alive again, do not follow. She is a hostage. The purpose of a hostage is to provide security. When we reach our objective, Mrs. Roethke will be released.”

He stepped through the door and slammed it shut.

Max bounded across the floor, hand outstretched.

Chief Saulter’s chair clattered to the floor as he tore after Max, catching him at the door. “God knows it’s hard, but we have to—”

Posey peered through a window. “They’re almost out of sight now. Saulter, you go through the woods. I’ll follow down to the lagoon.”

But by the time the door opened, Max in the lead, there was the crack of a shot.

And then a second.

“So much anger,” Laurel said sadly when her breathless rescuers reached the shore of the lagoon.

The general’s first shot had caught Eileen Houghton squarely in the forehead, knocking her backward, killing her instandy.

The second shot he aimed, with deadly efficiency, into his temple.

A
NNIE COULDN’T QUITE
reach the hook over the front door of Death on Demand which supported the line of valentines. The stepladder quivered as she almost overbalanced. “Darn,” she muttered. Clambering down, she moved the ladder closer to the door and remounted the steps. This time she managed easily, and the valentines fluttered as she lifted down the line.

Agatha stood on her hind legs, one paw stretched up, entranced by this lovely and unexpected addition to her entertainment schedule. She caught a valentine in her teeth and let Annie pull her all the way down the center aisle to the coffee area.

Setting up the ladder by the back wall, it only took an instant to retrieve that end of the line.

Agatha was happily attacking the clump of line and valentines when Annie scooped her up and pressed her face against her sleek black feline’s warm silky fur. Agatha scrambled a little and draped herself over Annie’s left shoulder.

“Hey, chum, it’s great to be friends again.”

Admittedly, Agatha didn’t purr like a motorboat in a frenzy. And she lacked Dorothy L.’s other endearing trait of
throwing herself down on her back and looking up at the attendant human with an adoring gaze.

Agatha was too dignified to act in such a manner.

But Agatha was once again queen of her kingdom, undisputed monarch of Death on Demand. Annie was glad. It was no fun to be around a cat with a broken heart. Dorothy L. was quite at home in the garden room. Had, in fact, chosen a particular chair warmed by the winter sun as her very own. Finally, happiness reigned again at Death on Demand.

The front door opened. Annie looked up to see Henny approaching. Actually, she was stalking down the center aisle in high dudgeon.

So, not quite everybody at Death on Demand was happy.

Henny planted herself solidly in front of Annie, her fox-sharp nose quivering with outrage. “Do I understand that you accepted the solution to the February watercolors over the telephone!”

“Not exactly. Now look, Henny, Laurel—”

The most prodigious reader of mysteries in the Low Country exploded. “Discrimination! No question about it. Would you let me participate in the January contest through the mail? No. Said the contestants had to be here in person to participate. Calling on the telephone is not and never will be and in no manner can be considered to be the equivalent of being personally on the premises.” Henny delivered this diatribe in stentorian tones.

Annie admired her impeccable diction. She tried to say so. “Really good speaking—”

“I won’t be fobbed off with puerile compliments. I want you to know, Annie, that I consider myself defrauded.” She whirled around and pointed to the watercolors in order. “Tommy and Tuppence in
The Secret Adversary
by Agatha Christie, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in
Have His Carcase
by Dorothy L. Sayers, Nick and Nora Charles in
The Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett, Pam and Jerry North in
The Norths Meet Murder
by Frances and Richard Lockridge, and Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn in
The Bilbao Looking Glass
by Charlotte MacLeod.” She swung back to face Annie. “Am I correct?”

“Yes. Ifes, you are. But Henny, Laurel beat you to it.” Annie held up a hand to forestall another outburst. “And not by phone. Ingrid had that a little wrong. Laurel dropped by. She saw the watercolors and left a note for me.”

“Left a note here?” Henny demanded suspiciously.