Death Comes Silently (16 page)

A
s Henny expected, neither the blue Lincoln nor red Mini Cooper were in the Hathaway driveway. The Lexus, which likely had been Everett’s car, and the Corolla were still parked to one side of the double garage.

Beyond the Corolla was a small open-air lean-to with a roof. She counted four bikes parked in a metal stand. Gretchen’s killer definitely had access to a silent arrival at Better Tomorrow. Had a bicyclist thought ahead, decided an unheralded silent approach might be wise? Was there already a thought of murder? Why not? If Everett had been murdered, the need to avoid an investigation into his death was imperative.

Crimson streaks added a touch of flame to the lowering gray skies. Already the dusk of January shrouded the pines in dark shadows. Henny looked at her watch. A quarter to five. She’d timed her arrival to catch the housekeeper at the end of her work day. Henny moved swiftly to the steps and pressed the bell.

When the door opened, the housekeeper looked at Henny and said firmly, “Mrs. Hathaway isn’t at home.” The door started to close.

Once again Henny pulled open the screen door. “I came to see
you. Mrs. Hathaway said you were the person who spoke with Gretchen Burkholt at Better Tomorrow. So you are the proper person to talk to.”

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “Mrs. Hathaway said you should talk to me?”

Henny was bland. “She emphasized that you are the only person who has admitted direct knowledge of Gretchen’s call.”

Thin shoulders lifted and fell. “I suppose you’d better come in.” She held the door for Henny. Obviously, she was still at work and didn’t feel she could rebuff Henny.

They stood in the entryway. The heavy tick of a grandfather clock in a nook beneath the stairs was ponderous.

Maggie folded her arms, her elbows sharp. Her face was sharp as well, deep-set eyes narrowed, thin lips pursed.

Henny tried charm. “I don’t want to hold you. I know it’s almost time for you to leave. That’s why I hurried back. We can be quick. Just tell me about the call.”

Maggie remained cool, but, finally, she nodded toward the side table. “There’s a landline there. It’s been there for years. And in the kitchen. And one in the upstairs hall. Mr. Hathaway”—her tone tinged on derisive—“had all the portable phones removed, said they destroyed the ambience. That meant I have to race to answer, because God forbid I shouldn’t get to a call. Of course, they”—sullen emphasis—“all have cell phones.” Her sense of grievance was clear. “I was doing the windows in a bay where they keep poinsettias and the phone rang. When nobody picked it up, I had to run to get it. You’d think one of them would have bothered.”

“Who was here?”

“Mrs. Hathaway was in her room.” She spoke without inflection. “Trey was in the study, going through his uncle’s papers. There was
a phone on that desk, too. But he didn’t pick it up. Brad Milton was with him. Trey wanted new terrace paving installed. But”—she rolled her eyes—“Mr. Hathaway hadn’t agreed. Looks now like it will happen. Anyway, this woman said she was calling from Better Tomorrow and she’d found a card in the pocket of the tweed jacket Mr. Hathaway wore the day he died. She said the card seemed to explain why he took the kayak out that night. She said she thought Mr. Hathaway had added a name at the bottom of the card.” The housekeeper paused for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “She said the handwriting at the bottom was different from the rest of the card and the handwriting was the same as on the flyleaf of some of Mr. Hathaway’s books that were sent over.” The housekeeper shrugged. “It sure seemed to me she was making a big deal about the thing, matching handwriting and stuff. I could have told her nobody here gave a flip about what he wrote or didn’t write, but I’m just the help, so I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She said the card and some change and a pocketknife were on the desk in the sorting room. I wrote that down on the pad next to the hall phone. That was all I had to do. Everybody knew to check the table for messages.”

Everybody knew…

“What exactly did you write down?”

The woman spoke carefully. “I wrote: Gretchen Burkholt called from Better Tomorrow at two twelve
P.M
. She found a card in Mr. Hathaway’s clothes that explained why he went out in the kayak. She said the message on the card was hand printed in writing different from a notation at the bottom. She said Mr. Hathaway wrote somebody’s name below the message. She said the card would be on the desk in the sorting room along with a pocketknife and some change.” Maggie gave a short nod. “That’s what I wrote.”

“Who could have seen the message?”

“Miss Leslie comes home around two thirty.” There was no warmth in the housekeeper’s voice.

Henny tried to sound as if this were just another question. “Did you see anyone near the table?”

Maggie looked disgusted. “I had better things to do than hang around in the front hall. It isn’t up to me to tell people there are messages. They can look on the hall pad. That’s what it’s for. But when I carried my sponge and bucket back to the kitchen, I noticed the note was gone.” Her gaze was speculative. “You think someone here took the message and went to that place and killed that woman?”

Henny did not answer directly. “Gretchen was murdered because of the card in the jacket. There’s a pattern. The card Gretchen found disappeared from Better Tomorrow and the information you wrote down about the card disappeared from here.”

Maggie’s gaze fastened on the side table. “So the police would be interested to know who ripped off the sheet from the pad.” There was a considering tone to her voice.

Henny looked at her sharply. “If you have any idea who took the message, you could be in great danger.”

The grandfather clock began to boom the hour.

Maggie looked sardonic. “I’m not fool enough to go out on the bay in a kayak.” Her tone was derisive. “Anyway, I’ve told you what I know and I’m off work now.” She turned and hurried down the hall.

A
s Annie walked toward her Thunderbird, she heard a distant slam of a car door. She turned and looked past the modest frame house and across the bay’s gunmetal dark water at the Mediterranean mansion. A dark blue Lincoln was parked to one side of the house. A woman in a peach jacket moved toward a paved walk leading to the
back terrace, then stopped. She pulled back a sleeve to glance at her wrist.

Even at this distance, it was easy to see that she was upset. She hunched her shoulders, began to pace. She kept looking back toward the road. The figure seemed familiar though it was too shadowy for Annie to make out her features. According to Sheila Porter, the owners of the house were in Costa Rica. Besides, Annie knew the Carstairs, and Renee was tall and willowy.

As she watched, a green Porsche roared into the drive.

The woman hurried toward the car as it screeched to a stop.

A stocky, well-built man slammed out of the car. His white sweater was a bright spot in the gloom.

They faced each other. He stood with his hands jammed in his trouser pockets. Every angle of his body radiated anger.

The woman was talking fast and her right hand pointed at the bay.

He stepped back, shaking his head violently.

She moved toward him, a hand held out in supplication.

After a moment, he gripped her arm and they moved onto the terrace around a corner and out of Annie’s view.

They walked purposefully, which suggested they were familiar with the house. Were they guests? Perhaps they might have been at the house the night Everett drowned. Annie hurried to the T-Bird, yanked open the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel.

T
he bell played a musical stanza as Max stepped outside. “Come on-a My House” was a nice selection for a Realtor. Doug Walker was a scratch golfer, never-met-a-stranger, curly-haired blond who’d been a linebacker with the Clemson Tigers and parlayed an easy smile into a real estate career. Despite hard financial times, he’d apparently
been able to sell enough homes to—as Doug liked to put it—land on the black. He had a nice family. Annie played tennis with Janet, who was a partner in an island accounting firm.

Max hadn’t been surprised to find Doug out of the office, but when he asked if Doug had gone home, his plump, cheerful secretary shook her head. “Somebody wanted to see a listing. He told me to tell Janet—she calls the office and not his cell, just in case he’s out with a prospect—that he would be home in about an hour.”

Max hurried down the steps of the antebellum home that housed Doug Walker Realty. When he reached his car and opened the door, he gave an admiring whistle at the jade green bloom of the sunflower propped against the passenger seat. Green? It sure was. He slid behind the wheel, smiling as he picked up a sheet of orange-colored paper with a crest of—what else?—a lime green sunflower. He read his mother’s note: Seek serenity. Today affords no sunshine, but this bloom is a reminder of the color of the sea on a sunny day. “Ma”—he spoke aloud as he noted her signature with a sunflower bloom extending from the right vertical bar of an extravagantly rendered M—“sunflowers be with you, too. Thanks for a pick-me-up on a dark and dreary day.”

Max checked his cell as the Maserati purred into motion. No messages from Annie or Henny. But it was cheerful to know that both were only a cell phone away. He thought for a moment, texted:
Dinner at our house. Two more stops then home. Chili and cornbread.
Thanks to the microwave, any meal was possible in a hurry. While he reheated chili, the cornbread would be baking. Max was a purist. No sugar in his cornbread and not a trace of flour, either. Sometimes he gave a nod to Annie’s Texas roots and dropped in green chilies and corn.

He drove two blocks and pulled into the parking lot of a small, two-story stucco house with a red-tiled roof. Built in the thirties, the
house had a Florida flavor with plenty of arched windows affording splashes of sun in good weather. Esteban Martinez had transformed the interior into an elegant gallery, which featured paintings of the Lowcountry. Max had his eye on a watercolor of a diving night hawk silhouetted against a fiery spring dawn.

Lights shone from the uncurtained front windows. A discreet Open sign hung in a side window by the entry. Max stepped inside, enjoying the warmth. A fire crackled in a massive stone fireplace to his left.

A door at the end of the hall opened. Esteban smiled a welcome. He was tall and slender with a precisely trimmed black mustache and Vandyke beard that enhanced his resemblance to a Velazquez nobleman. He gestured to a dark leather sofa a comfortable distance from the fire. “Can I offer you a hot buttered rum on such a damp evening?”

“Not this time. But thanks. I’m here because you were one of Everett Hathaway’s pallbearers. I’m hoping you can tell me a bit about him.”

Esteban’s narrow ascetic face lost its proprietor’s bonhomie, folded into suitable graveness. “Ah, a reminder that we must treasure our days. What can I tell you about Everett?” He led the way to the sofa, settled at one end.

Max stood with his back to the fire, put his hands behind him. “Nice to be warm. I need to explain…” As he spoke, Esteban’s hooded eyes narrowed.

“Murder.” Esteban stroked his beard. “I wish I could be helpful. However, I didn’t know him well. I can describe with acuity his taste in paintings. He was a good customer. On a personal basis, I would describe him as precise, serious, perhaps a little self-important. I was actually a friend of Eddie’s. When Trey called and asked me to serve as a pallbearer, of course I agreed. However …” He shrugged.

Max was disappointed. “So you don’t know if anyone was angry with him or if he had quarreled with anyone.”

Esteban pulled at a long ear lobe, his face thoughtful. “Everett was punctilious about appointments. He was supposed to come by here at one o’clock that Friday to pick up a painting. When he had not come by two, I called. He answered and spoke almost roughly. He said he would come by next week, something had come up. He sounded distraught. I immediately asked if I could be of help. There was a pause and he made a kind of noise and then he said, ‘You’re a lucky man. You never married.’ Then he hung up.” Esteban looked regretful. “I can’t speak to whether his comment mattered or not.”

Max nodded. “It helps to have a picture of his last day. Thanks, Esteban.”

The gallery owner walked to the door with Max.

Max plunged back into the darkness, the mist damp against his face, and hurried to his car. Whether important or not, Everett’s words definitely required explanation. It would be interesting to see what Henny might have learned at the Hathaway house. Max continued to the edge of downtown, turned east on Marsh Tackie Road. It was a half mile to Brad Milton’s construction company. He pressed the accelerator, delighted in the quick response. He loved speed. As the pines encroached nearer the road, he slowed, watching for deer. Not much farther now…

He came around a curve. Light spilled from the windows of the frame structure that housed Milton Construction. A bright yellow mini electric car was parked near the steps. Brad was one of the islanders who had taken advantage of the tax rebates under TARP to essentially buy the car for free. He’d sold his old Ford and instead drove the jaunty little car with a roof, windshield, seats, and not much else. He called it his gov buggy. Looming behind the office was a
galvanized steel building for equipment. Two pickups were parked nearby.