Death on Demand (16 page)

“Nice,” he commented laconically as they drove past one imaginative home after another: a modernistic two-story gray house built on four levels, the highest flat-roofed and topped by a deck; a modern version of an antebellum mansion, with slender Doric columns supporting two verandahs; a California Mission stucco in the palest of pinks. “My God—”

Annie laughed. “This is the one that drives the local homeowners crazy, but it’s the natural outgrowth of not being able to have your cake and eat it, too. The zoning laws here are very particular about how many square feet,
maximum height, things like that. But the local board very proudly fixed it so that there could be ‘imaginative variety with artistic integrity.’ They said they didn’t want everything to look alike like Hilton Head, where all homes are built of wood and weathered to a natural gray.”

The Porsche crept to a halt as Max craned for a better view. It was a two, no, three, could it be four stories? The building materials alternated between chrome, bronze, and quartz. Rooms thrust out at eccentric angles, and the whole was topped with a thirty-foot round tower of gleaming aluminum.

“I’d like to meet that owner,” Max breathed.

“So would everybody else. It was built by Marguerite Dumaney.”

He whistled softly. The aging Hollywood star’s name was legendary. Checkout counter tabloids had whispered in recent years that she was a female Howard Hughes.

The Porsche moved ahead, curved around a bend, and arrived at the entrance to 603 Cormorant Road.

This home was, quite simply, lovely. Perfectly suited to the landscape, it was constructed of the unassuming native pine, softly weathered to a dusky gray. But it still had an unmistakable aura of elegance. The three-story entryway had a glass panel running from ground level to the roof beside the nine-foot front door. Beautifully tended beds of white-topped asters, tall goldenrod, and camphorweed fronted the path.

As she got out, Max gave her a thumbs-up. Then he called after her, “Remember—keep at least two feet from each subject, don’t hesitate to use the mace, and make sure they know I’m waiting.”

Emma Clyde wore a pink-and-white seersucker skirt and blouse and looked like summer candy. She was surprised to see Annie but gracious. Her lips, carefully painted a bright coral, parted in a smile, but the smile didn’t reach her cornflower blue eyes.

“How nice of you to drop by, dear.” A pause. “You know, I do write in the mornings.”

They stood in the main entryway. The green and gilt terrazzo floor glinted in the flood of morning sunshine
through the roof-high glass pane. Water fell musically from a corner fountain, artfully constructed to look like a miniature Hawaiian waterfall. Sprays of orchids filled crimson-and-gold Chinese vases. Annie remembered reading about Emma’s prize collection of orchids. Shades of Nero Wolfe.

“I’m sorry to intrude, but I had to see you.”

It was like being a kid and going up to the top of a slide that rivaled the Empire State Building. She felt that same mixture of utter exhilaration laced with fear. Was this how The Saint felt when he began an exploit?

“You
had
to see me?”

“You see, I really don’t know what to do,” Annie began.

Emma waited, blue eyes alert and calculating.

“Elliot sent me the material he was going to use Sunday night.”

Emma continued to wait. She might look like summer candy, but she emanated an unyielding, icy solidity. The entryway had seemed warm and sunny when Annie first began. Now she felt as if she’d stepped into a deep freezer.

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Why ask me?”

“Some of the information concerns you.” Did she intend to stand there like a sphinx all morning? Damn the woman, why didn’t she react?

Emma’s face looked like a mud mask in a beauty salon.

One more try. “Look, Emma, I don’t want to go to the police with this. I thought if you could explain it to me, I wouldn’t reveal the information about you. After all, surely what Elliot wrote can’t be true.”

“Of course, it isn’t true,” Emma responded. “The Coast Guard ruled it was an accidental drowning.”

So that was it, the death of her second husband. What was it Max had picked up from the man who ran the bait shop? Rumor had it that Enrique Morales was secretly meeting a Cuban girl.

“Did the Coast Guard know about the Cuban girl?”

If it seemed chilly before, the atmosphere dropped to glacial in the elegant foyer. The soft splash of the waterfall was the only sound for a long moment.

Emma asked harshly, “How much do you want?”

“Want? Oh no, Emma, I don’t want money. I’m just trying to understand what happened.”

“It’s all in the Coast Guard report.” Emma’s voice was clipped. “Ricky and I had a few drinks after dinner at the Sans Souci Club. When we came back to the boat, he said he wanted to stay on deck for some fresh air. I went below to bed.”

“You didn’t hear anything? A splash? A cry for help?”

“As I said, we’d had a few drinks, and I’d worked hard that day. I was tired. I fell asleep immediately, and I didn’t realize anything was wrong until the steward brought my breakfast. I asked him to call Ricky for me, and he came back and said his cabin hadn’t been slept in.”

So they didn’t share a cabin.

Emma had asked the steward to call her husband. Why didn’t she call him? Was it because the very rich avoid all possible exertion? Or was it that she knew his cabin would be empty and wanted to get the search under way?

“Why did you want to talk to him so early in the morning?”

For just an instant, that smooth mask shifted. No one had ever asked her that question.

Annie knew then, just as surely as if she’d seen it happen, that Emma Clyde came up behind her non-swimmer husband on the early morning of Sunday, October 16, and pushed him over the low railing to drown.

“I wanted to talk to him about some investments.”

On Sunday morning?

Her immediate assumption that Annie had blackmail in mind seemed to indicate she was accustomed to blackmail. But Elliot must have had more than suspicion if he were blackmailing Emma: Blackmail had to be based on more than speculation. There had to be a threat, something concrete Elliot had learned that could cause the investigation to be reopened, perhaps lead to a murder charge against Emma.

“The steward must not have been aboard that night.”

“That’s right.”

“Did he normally have Saturday evenings off? What about the rest of the crew?”

“Only the steward and the cook remain aboard when we are anchored. I’d given them the evening off because Ricky and I had plans on shore.”

“But the steward didn’t go ashore, did he?” Here was
Elliot’s source, the steward or the cook. Someone heard cries or saw Ricky and Emma on deck together. Elliot had found a witness to the murder of Enrique Morales.

Emma didn’t change expression, but there was a sudden relaxation of tension. Annie’s question must have revealed that she didn’t possess the critical piece of information.

“It’s always heartbreaking when such a dreadful accident occurs. Isn’t it, dear?”

Those shrewd blue eyes dissected Annie now, probing, weighing.

The silence between them was ugly, freighted with unspoken meanings.

“I’m sure you know exactly how I feel. And how upsetting it is to be the subject of vicious gossip. You, of all people, should understand that.”

It couldn’t have been plainer if she’d shouted it. Emma saw a special kinship between them. Emma believed that she had pushed Ambrose Bailey to his death.

Annie clenched her hands. “Does everybody think I killed my uncle?”

“Hell, no. That’s just her guilty conscience in action.”

“She meant that everyone was talking about me.” Annie felt as if something slimy had touched her. She had been so happy on Broward’s Rock, confident of her place in her own version of St. Mary Mead. Instead, smiling faces hid ugly suspicions. The reality was a Ruth Rendell world.

As the Porsche ran beneath the interlocking branches of the yellow pines, Max reached over and squeezed her hands. “Don’t let an old battle-axe upset you.”

“I thought I had a lot of friends on Broward’s Rock.”

“You do. Lots.”

Annie recalled the sensation seekers at the shop yesterday, and Chief Saulter. “Who?”

Max scrambled. “Ingrid Jones. And Ben Parotti. And Capt. Mac. Me. Look at it. Your very own four musketeers.”

She knew who pictured himself as D’Artagnan. She managed a bleak smile.

“That’s a girl. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Come on, you’re one up, not Emma Clyde. You got a lot out of her, and what you got is damn interesting.”

She twisted in the seat. “Max, this changes everything. Elliot must have been a blackmailer.”

The Porsche slowed for a stop sign, and Max turned back onto the main road. He glanced at his map and drove past the harbor shops off to the right, then followed the curve of the island to a sign pointing to beach houses. He turned right on Blue Magnolia. As he braked, he said abruptly, “No, that can’t be right.”

“Why not? I’d bet my first edition of
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
that Emma’s been blackmailed.”

“What’s the point of blackmail?”

“You pay to keep someone quiet.”

“Right. But Elliot was going to stand up and reveal all to the world—or at least to the Regulars.”

Annie got out of the car slowly. Then she poked her head back inside. “Maybe this was Elliot’s fancy way of putting on the pressure for a bigger payoff.”

She mulled that over as she walked up the oyster-shell path, then she brought herself in hand. She’d better play this next interview better than the last.

A battered station wagon stood in the drive. The zinnias in the front bed were choked with weeds and the weeping willow beside the porch desperately needed a trim. Yesterday’s newspaper rested unopened next to an empty bait bucket, which still smelled like chopped squid.

Her reception this time was warm if puzzled. Chunky Hal Douglas, unshaven, wearing a soiled t-shirt and torn tennis shorts, offered coffee, beer, or a drink. Unlike Emma’s elegant home, Hal’s was furnished with happenstance furniture, a shabby maple sofa, mismatched easy chairs, and a card table in one corner stacked with old magazines,
Geo, Esquire, Playboy
, and
Omni.
He tried frantically to straighten the litter as he led her to the den, sweeping a pile of newspapers onto the floor and grabbing up a damp beach towel, tennis shoes, and a racquet.

He was boyishly friendly, and she hated going into her spiel. What a way to kill a friendship. How do investigative reporters manage? The thrill of power had to outweigh the human need for approbation. A trade-off.

Annie took a deep breath. She’d be as forthright as Dagliesh. “No, Hal, thanks. Nothing for me. Actually, I hate to be here.”

That was true.

His round face compressed into a worried frown. “What’s wrong? Can I help you? Is that cop bothering you?”

“That’s the problem. And the thing is, I’ve got some information that could get him off my back, but I
hate
to give it to him.”

“Don’t hesitate, Annie. You can’t protect anyone in a murder investigation.”

Every kind word he uttered made her feel more like a louse. Another word and she would turn tail and run, but if she didn’t see it through, she’d find herself in the island jail with the centipedes and roaches.

Annie blurted, “Elliot mailed a copy of his talk to me.”

Hal’s open face abruptly looked a good deal less pleasant.

“I don’t want to tell Saulter the stuff about you. I thought maybe you could explain it away and then I won’t have to.”

For the first time, she realized how big a man he was—tall, powerfully put together, with bearlike shoulders and arms. He was maybe twenty pounds overweight, which gave his face disarming roundness. He might be soft, but he was clearly strong. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her skirt and gripped the oblong, two-inch container of mace.

“I don’t want Kelly to know.” He lifted those massive hands and rubbed his bristly jowls.

“I can understand that,” she murmured.

Hal lifted his head, his eyes intent. “Does anyone else know?”

Careful, Annie.

“Just Max.”

He whirled around, stepped toward the mantel. One hand swept out, knocking off a half dozen books. When he turned back to face her, he was breathing heavily.

She braced herself. If he took one step toward her, she’d pull out the mace. Surreptitiously, she flicked off the safety guard.

“Goddammit.” Hal spoke jerkily. “She left town. That’s all there was to it. Lenora left town.”

“People said you’d been fighting.”

His head wobbled on its thick neck. He no longer looked like everybody’s nice guy. He looked like a fighter
who’d taken one punch too many. “Elliot got that wrong, the sorry bastard. There wasn’t anybody to see. We were at the cabin in the mountains. No neighbors for miles, but she’d been into town a lot, picked up guys, like she always did. I went fishing, and, when I came back, she was gone. No note. Nothing. Some bastard came by and got her.”

There was nothing good-humored about that pudgy face now. It was twisted with remembered pain and hatred.

“You say Lenora went away. Surely you’ve heard from her since then?”

Hal smoothed out his face, evened his breathing. “No reason for her to get in touch. I’d told her, one more man and we were through. One more and that was it.”

“Where was the cabin?”

“Near Tahoe.” He moved restlessly, rubbed his hands against his thighs.

“Have you ever told Kelly any of this?”

“I don’t want Kelly to know.” There was a plea in his eyes. “And it doesn’t matter, not for the two of us. I got a divorce in Tijuana. I’m all finished with Lenora.”

“Where did you meet Lenora, Hal?”

“What the hell difference does it make?” Hearing the edge in his voice, he said, “In St. Louis. At school. But what difference does it make? It’s all over with her.” He forced an ineffective smile. “Annie, this was all no big deal. And it’s been over for ages.”

“Sure, Hal. I just wanted to hear it from you, not the way Elliot had written it.”