Something Wicked (26 page)

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 irritable 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.”

“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?”

“I’ve never suspected Henny.”

He was impatient. “I know. That’s just an example. I mean, by a stretch of the imagination, Henny could just possibly have managed physically to commit the crime, although we certainly don’t have a motive for her. But the probability is small. You have to consider the odds.”

Following Max’s reasoning would put Hugo Wolf low on the suspect list, and Annie didn’t buy that at all. “Hugo is smart. I can see him figuring this out, then committing the murder so that it would look difficult for him to be guilty.”

“Well, he is a cool customer,” Max conceded.

Annie began to get that old familiar mouse-in-a-barrel feeling. “Hmm. I understand what you’re saying,” which was kind of a white lie, “but it seems more important to me to figure who’s most likely in terms of motive.” She picked up the pen and made her own list.

Max pointed at the last line.

“So what motive do they have?” Annie asked. “Carla didn’t like him, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. And Henny doesn’t appear to have any motive at all. Besides, I’m sure Carla didn’t hide the gun in your condo, so that clears her, and I’d just as soon suspect myself as suspect Henny.” She grinned. “Oh, that Henny. She’s trying like a beaver to break Sheridan and Harley’s alibi, and she’s getting nowhere. Now,
they
both have juicy motives.”