White Elephant Dead (18 page)

Slowly, the old woman nodded. “You see, each theft occurred while a party for a particular charity was in progress—”

“It could have been any guest, couldn’t it?” Annie didn’t see a trail leading to Janet Pierce.

“There are numbers of parties throughout the year. I find it curious,” Adelaide said, “that the thefts all occurred during parties planned by Janet.” She smoothed the rose and cream arm of her chair.

“Why would she do it?” Annie demanded. Stealing valuable jewelry from the hostess of a charitable bash would take incredible nerve. The possibility of being caught was surely great. If caught, the scandal could not only wreck her marriage, it would send her to jail.

“I have worked with Janet quite often the past few years.” Adelaide’s soft voice was thoughtful. “I have seen darkness in her eyes, the unhappy droop of her mouth. And once, it was after that sapphire bracelet was taken from the Riordan house—”

Annie had forgotten about that one.

“—I observed that the thief had to be someone very prominent socially, which made me wonder if there might be sickness involved, a compulsion of some kind. Janet said very sharply that she doubted that was the case at all, that
probably the thief simply did it for the thrill, the kind of thrill some people take from sky-diving or mountain climbing. I think”—Adelaide’s tone was suddenly firm—“that she was describing herself.”

Annie felt like someone working on a puzzle, thinking the pattern was coming together, then finding another handful of pieces in the box with different shapes and colors. Was it possible that Lynn Pierce’s death, so similar to Arlene’s, was purely and simply an accident?

“In any event”—Adelaide’s bright eyes sharpened—“there’s a rather grand party tonight at the Pierce home, a fund-raiser for the Art Center. The Pierces have a number of out-of-town guests. I’ve known one of them for years, Wilma Shaw. Wilma grew up here and loves to return. Wilma lives in Coral Gables. She always travels with her jewelry. One of her necklaces was made in Spain from gold sent back by Cortés. It is her favorite and I know she’ll have it with her.”

Annie stared at her hostess. “Wouldn’t it be incredibly reckless of Janet to commit a robbery in her own home?”

“That,” Adelaide said gently, “would be the point, wouldn’t it?”

Annie’s picture of Janet Pierce, a little piece here, another piece there, was changing. Maybe Max was right and Dave and Lynn Pierce had had the world’s greatest marriage. Maybe Adelaide was right and Janet was a wounded spirit. Maybe Janet was venting her jealousy—there’s no way to compete with a ghost—by risking everything for a glow of excitement.

And, of course, for money. The jewelry was undoubtedly worth great sums, even sold to unscrupulous buyers. Was that how Janet became a blackmail victim? Did she offer stolen goods to a woman who made money from secrets?

The pieces seemed to fit.

Annie looked in admiration at her genial hostess. Was there a buccaneering glint in Adelaide’s eyes? How else had she ever tumbled to Janet’s secret?

Adelaide smiled. “I shall find the party tonight quite interesting.”

Louella Kendall snapped the last green bean. “The doctor saw no call to do anything.” Her wrinkled face folded into tight lines.

Max watched a grackle, iridescent feathers shining, retrieve bits of bean from the sandy ground.

“I don’t know the rights and wrongs.” She shook the bowl. “I always try to keep my patients alive, but sometimes it’s real hard. Sad for them, sad for their families. I do my best for them.” Her mouth thinned. “I knew that Kathryn Girard was up to no good. Always running to sit with the dying ones. That’s not natural, is it? She couldn’t wait, that sly look in her eyes. I finally told her to leave old Mrs. Campbell alone. Poor old thing would be so upset after Kathryn had been there. Once she was crying so hard and I asked her should I get her son and she said she just hated remembering, that she had to stop thinking about it. I told her best way not to think about things is to close the door on it, whatever it is. That’s when I told Kathryn to leave her alone.”

Another grackle darted near. “Did you tell the doctor how Kathryn upset Mrs. Campbell?”

The brown eyes flashed. “No, sir. I can run my own floor. Always have, always will. I told that woman not to go in Mrs. Campbell’s room again. And she didn’t.”

“Did Kathryn ask a lot of questions when Mrs. Campbell died?” Max tried to keep his tone casual.

“That woman! It just showed how fake she was. She was out of town when Mrs. Campbell died. And when she got back, she didn’t say a thing when I told her. Bored, she was.” Louella smoothed back her sleek hair. “That was a long night. The family had been there and gone home. Thought she’d rallied. But she took a turn for the worse. Dr. Burford came at once. He’s a good man. A good doctor and a good man. He’d known old Mrs. Campbell for a long time
and he sat there beside her as she slipped away, held her hand. No, Kathryn Girard didn’t care at all about Mrs. Campbell. That wasn’t why I sent her packing. It was old Mr. Yates. Not”—she sniffed—“that she spent any time in
his
room. Oh no, why bother with an old man who was suffering so, frozen in his body like a mummy in a tomb, but still alive, his eyes begging you to help him and there wasn’t anything we could do and his daughter-in-law spent so much time, talking to him, holding his hand and then she’d come out in the hall and cry. No, Kathryn didn’t waste a minute with him, but as soon as he died, she—” Her lips clamped together.

Max knew he needed the right words, the perfect words. Louella Kendall knew her place. The doctor was in charge. But the floor belonged to her. Max said briskly, “That’s when you told her not to come back. What did she do?”

Louella’s eyes burned. “Some things you don’t talk about. That nurse’s aide, I gave her what for, running around saying the plug was pulled out on old Mr. Yates’s respirator. That was nonsense. You don’t keep the machine going after a patient dies.”

Max understood almost as if he’d been there, and certainly Kathryn Girard had understood. “Kathryn must have been very interested in what the nurse’s aide said. I imagine she asked the aide who had been in the room with him just before he died.”

Louella stood, shook out her apron. “Isn’t anybody can say Ruth Yates didn’t do her best for her husband’s daddy. It broke her heart to see him like that.” Her old eyes were sad and troubled. Like she’d told Max, she didn’t know the rights and wrongs and the doctor hadn’t said anything.

A
nnie looked at the happy-face sack in the passenger seat as she braked at the stop sign for Red-Tailed Hawk. She could go home and have a glass of skim milk. Max always urged her to drink skim milk. He said studies proved that people who drank skim were healthier than those who drank whole milk. Annie said she could do a study proving that people who ate chocolate were happier than people who didn’t. She opened the sack, sniffed. Hmm, what an interesting smell. Or she could go by the hospital and check with Henny about the Campbells and Little Theater. Or—

The car turned right. Annie was familiar with automatic writing on Ouija boards as described by Mary Roberts Rinehart in
The Red Lamp
, but not automatic driving. Apparently she had listened more closely to Max’s end of the conversation with Laurel than she’d realized. Now that she was so near, it wouldn’t hurt to nip up Red-Tailed Hawk and see where Mark Stone’s car skidded off the road.

A half mile ahead, she slowed and peered to the right
up Marsh Tacky Lane. In midafternoon sunlight, the dusty gray road curved into dimness beneath overhanging branches of live oaks and magnolias. Intermingled tire tracks were the only reminder of Thursday night’s crush of cars and searchers.

About twenty yards past Marsh Tacky, Annie saw a crumpled mass of ferns in the east ditch. Annie turned and stopped. Putting on her hazards, she hopped out and walked to the ditch. Oh yes, there was a gouge from a right front tire. It appeared that Stone had gunned his motor trying to get back on the road.

Annie looked toward Marsh Tacky Road. Stone had a clear view from here. If he’d gone into the ditch just as Henny turned right and if he’d stayed there until Annie and Max arrived, there was no way anyone could have left Marsh Tacky without being seen by Stone.

Annie glanced at her watch. A quarter after three. She was due at Emma’s by four. She had time to go by the hospital if she left right now. Back in the car, she clicked off the hazards and headed north. At the last minute, she veered left into Marsh Tacky. There might be something to this automatic driving. But the fact was, this mattered. When Chief Garrett heard what Mark Stone had to say, he might pitch on Henny again as murderess-in-chief, no matter Kathryn’s ransacked apartment and the album full of money and the burned-out van. Garrett could argue quite reasonably that if Kathryn was a blackmailer, one of her victims could have broken into her place and set the inside of the van on fire. Of course, he was unaware of the gunshot outside Kathryn’s store late Thursday night. Annie counted up the surreptitious entries into Kathryn’s apartment: one, the murderer; two, she and Max; three, the ransacker; and four, the unknown who arrived just as she returned the album this morning. Of course, it was always possible that the murderer had made a second visit, but it seemed more likely that visitors three and four were blackmail victims who had
heard about Kathryn’s murder and were afraid there might be some damaging information in her apartment.

Annie drove slowly up the lane, noting trampled ferns and saw palmettos with broken fronds. The road angled north, curved south, turned west. Yes, there was the place where Henny stopped. The van had parked about twenty yards ahead. Nothing in the road recalled the van with the body and the abandoned old Dodge except tire tracks and footprints, some deep in gray dirt that had been wet and was now dry and dusty.

Annie idled the Volvo near the spot where Henny had stopped. She pulled out her notebook, flipped past the last page where she had written,
Jewels
. Tapping the clean sheet with her pen, squinting in thought, she finally printed neatly:

TIMETABLE

(
Times are approximate
.)

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Annie dropped the notebook on the passenger seat. Garrett was right about one thing, even if he was wrong in focusing on Henny. More than one person was involved in all that had occurred. For starters, the murderer was at Kathryn’s when Annie and Max arrived on their bikes late Thursday night. It had to be the murderer, Annie reasoned, because of the gun and because the bullet was aimed at her. Whoever came out that door was willing to kill to escape unseen. That wasn’t just a blackmail victim.

That meant the murderer left Marsh Tacky Road—Annie looked up the sun-dappled road—between, say six-ten
P.M.
and their arrival at seven-fifteen. But, Annie figured, sooner
rather than later. The minute Henny disappeared into the park, the murderer ran, too, taking the van keys along.

The murderer reached Kathryn’s apartment between the police check and their arrival at eleven-thirty
P.M.

When did the murderer fire the van? Probably shortly after leaving Kathryn’s store.

As for Kathryn’s apartment, someone came after Annie and Max left and before Annie arrived the next morning. Someone else came Friday morning shortly after Annie. These would be the blackmail victims, who heard of the murder when the calls went out for volunteers to search for Henny. The person who arrived before Annie tossed everything about in a rage.

Annie was sure of her interpretation, but Garrett could argue the blackmail victims were equally likely to have fired the van. Would it do any good to point out that the car keys were taken from the van by the murderer? Probably not. Garrett could say there were other keys available and Annie knew that was true. An extra set hung on a hook just inside the Women’s Club office. Those were the keys Emma had brought to the police station this morning.

Annie shifted into drive and followed the curve of the road to the sign marking the entrance to King Snake Park. The murderer must have come this way, most likely riding a bike. Was it to hide any trace of a bike that the van was burned? Or was it to make sure no one could identify any of the donations?

Annie parked by the entrance. She glanced at her watch. She still had time to take a look. She walked under the arch. An asphalt bicycle path curved to her right around the lagoon. The dirt trails to the left would have been muddy Thursday night. Besides, those trails led into a forest preserve in the opposite direction from the houses on Kathryn’s list.

The bicycle path was shadowy. No-see-ums buzzed. A night heron sat immobile on the limb of a live oak. Shrubs rustled to her right. Annie froze, then breathed again when
she saw the tawny coat of a deer and a fluffy white tail. She walked quickly, waving away clouds of insects, watching carefully for snakes. There had been no one here to see a murderer’s flight Thursday evening except the inhabitants of the woods. Annie reached the far side of the lagoon. An alligator rested in the sun. Shiny eyes watched her.

The bicycle path veered to the right. Past a scrubby patch of ground, a sleek green fairway marked the edge of the golf course. Annie had played the course with Max, though her golf was of the sort that she could only play with very good friends. Or her husband. She had a penchant for losing balls, but, as she often explained to Max, only an idiot looks too far for a lost golf ball on an island teeming with snakes and alligators. The north-south fairway to the ninth hole was a dogleg to the west. The golf cart path, of course, skirted the course, beginning and ending at the clubhouse. The bicycle path wound through more woods and eventually crossed Laughing Gull Road.

A long rambling, two-story house backed up to the fairway with a good view of both the bicycle and golf cart paths. Max loved riding bikes and they often chose this path. It was, she realized with a shiver, made to order for a rider intent on escaping notice, miles and miles through a belt of forest, coming into open areas only to cross streets. This house was the only one near the eastern boundary of King Snake Park. A long room with ceiling-high windows overlooked a terrace and the paths.

Annie hesitated, then headed for the back door. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.

Max maneuvered the golf cart around the lagoon on the fifth hole. A short stocky man in an avocado-green shirt and white Bermuda shorts dipped his head, bent his knees and waggled his putter. Then he straightened, stepped back, knelt to peer at the undulating green. Returning to the ball, he once again, slowly, carefully, resumed his stance, paused, putted. The ball headed straight for the cup. At the last
instant, it veered to the left, rolled slowly past the cup, gradually gained momentum and tumbled into a deep sand trap.

His tall, lanky companion, russet shirt half tucked into pink shorts, marched up to his ball, perhaps ten feet from the hole, bent, stroked and the ball sped over the grass and plopped into the cup.

It took the older man three shots to get out of the trap and two more to hole the ball. His round face, always reddish, looked choleric.

Max waited in the shade of a live oak. It was not perhaps the most politic time to approach Horace Burford, M.D., whose late patients included the Rev. Alden Alcott Yates. Max waited until Burford had completed a superb iron shot that landed perfectly on the next green and his partner was in the rough trying to devise a shot around a two-hundred-year-old massive live oak. Burford was waiting in his cart when Max pulled up behind.

Burford mopped his face, glanced in Max’s cart, which was empty of clubs. “You takin’ up joyridin’, Max?” Burford was an excellent doctor and was chief of staff at the hospital, capable, bullheaded, cantankerous and smart. Godzilla could likely have given him pointers on bedside manner.

“In pursuit of you, Horace.” A thrashing in the rough heralded an attempt to shoot to the fairway. Max knew he had about forty seconds. “Horace, you’ve heard about the murder last night.”

The doctor’s white eyebrows bunched. “Damn fool cop can’t seriously suspect Henny.”

“He seriously does, Horace. But there are some other suspects now. Including Ruth Yates.” Max stared into startled blue eyes. “That’s why I want to ask you about the death of Alden Yates.”

Just for an instant, the doctor’s red, sweaty face was immobile. Then, flapping his orange bandana, he barked, “Alden Yates suffered a series of strokes and he died of heart failure.” Cold eyes stared at Max. “Anybody who says differently will see themselves in court for slander. That in
cludes you. Now, if you’ll kindly leave me the hell alone, I’m playing golf, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”

Annie admired the red-tiled terrace bordered by camellias, Japanese quince and masses of blue and white impatiens. Everything about the house bespoke loving attention to detail, from the carefully edged flower beds to the baskets of ferns hanging from beams in a screened-in porch to bright green shutters and carefully trimmed ivy. On the first floor, a series of long, tall windows provided a magnificent view from a huge clubroom.

A low brick wall marked the end of the property. Terra-cotta vases filled with marigolds graced corner pedestals. The bicycle path ran on the south side of the low wall. The golf cart path skirted the west side of the wall. Annie walked swiftly. She was turning into a central walkway of the wide terrace when she paused, frowned and returned to the path. At the far west end of the wall, where the path curved into a swath of trees bordering the fairway, a vase leaned to one side.

So, all was not quite perfect. That made the house suddenly seem more approachable. Annie always felt intimidated by perfect housekeepers and perfect groundskeepers. They tended to be inflexible and ask searching questions, such as, “What do you do about mildew?” and “What is your schedule for mulching?” (Annie forced herself not to reply, in turn, “Pretend it isn’t there,” and “By the light of a quarter moon with a newt in one hand and a buckeye in the other.”)