Read Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 Online
Authors: Dead Man's Island
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Henrie O (Fictitious Character), #South Carolina, #Women Journalists, #Fiction
Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (33 page)
O
ne fact was evident.
Trevor Dunnaway had struck down Burton Andrews.
But, as we spun our theories during that helicopter ride, I was never fully satisfied with our reconstruction of the crimes.
It made sense, yes.
But there were still loose ends.
Who had destroyed the
Miranda B.?
Certainly there was no rational reason for Trevor to have marooned himself on the island.
I asked Roger to hire the private detectives. I set them to work scouring the county for purchasers of dynamite, especially those who had bought only a few sticks.
It was easier than I’d expected.
Frank Hudson, who’d taken me over to Prescott
Island the day I arrived, claimed he had bought the dynamite to rid his land of some tree stumps. Ultimately, a jury didn’t believe him, especially when the sheriff’s office did excellent work in identifying some flotsam from the explosion that the storm had deposited inland and a forensic chemist testified that the
Miranda B.’s
porthole had been damaged by a dynamite blast. Testimony underscored Hudson’s intense hatred for Chase Prescott and how Hudson believed his family’s island had been stolen by Chase.
So the explosion was separate from the murders. The explosion was the act of an angry, vengeful man who had spied an opportunity to repay the Prescotts for taking what Hudson saw as his own, Dead Man’s Island.
That simplified the equation. I thought that would satisfy my niggling sense that something was off-key.
And I was delighted when the news broke that Enrique’s arrest had smashed a powerful smuggling ring. Enrique had removed a shipment of cocaine from the
Miranda B
. when it went in for its annual overhaul. He had had the drug shipment on the island. When the hurricane was imminent, he had hurried to the servants’ quarters to get the shipment.
Chase had been clever but not clever enough to realize that his longtime employee had used the
Miranda B
. to smuggle huge quantities of cocaine. Later investigation revealed that Enrique owned a mansion in Bolivia and that the garage at his by-no-means-modest home in Miami harbored a Jaguar and a Rolls-Royce.
Rosalia wasn’t implicated. Roger helped her obtain
counseling and a new life where Enrique or his agents would never find her.
At my direction the private detective investigated everyone, so I learned all about Betty’s family: her daughter, Mary, who had lost her job at the jeans factory and had no health insurance and couldn’t pay the bills when her little girl, Alice, became severely diabetic with all the treatment and expense that entails.
Betty desperately needed money to save the life of her only grandchild. And for years she’d resented Chase’s treatment of Carrie Lee Prescott. So she had found it easy to meet secretly with Jeremy Hubbard and provide all those damning and quite true stories about Chase and his family for the unauthorized biography that had created such nasty headlines.
That should have answered all my questions. But still …
Perhaps I’ve covered too many stories, asked too many questions. Deep inside I knew it wasn’t over. Yet. For me.
Not even when I finally came homes, more than a week later. I walked into the house and realized this was how it had begun for me.
Coming home, and a telephone call.
And there on the bed were my pictures of Richard and Emily. I gave a little salute to Richard’s portrait, a good one that recalled his broad, open face, reddish-brown hair, and green eyes. And that familiar crooked grin.
I dropped my suitcase and carry-on and picked up the photograph of Emily.
The phone rang.
My heart lifted as I recognized her voice. “Hello, love. Yes, I’m glad to be home.”
Emily had a lot of questions about my ordeal.
I answered so carefully.
Too carefully.
“Mother, what’s wrong?” My daughter has an uncanny way of sensing when I’m not being absolutely open with her. She is utterly ruthless in prizing out the truth. “Mother, are you all right?” A definite note of suspicion.
“Of course. Just a little frustrated. I’m behind. I need to get started on the new book—and I don’t even have an idea yet.” I carried the phone outside and settled beside the pond. Sunlight splashed on the portrait I still held.
“Oh.” Her relief was evident. “You always feel that way in the beginning. The book will come.”
There’s nothing quite so irritating to an author as a family member’s easy confidence that, of course, the book will come.
I snapped, “It’s like trying to chip an idea out of concrete. Nothing’s coming!”
“It will, it will. Probably you’re still emotionally involved with that island. But the excitement’s dying down. It won’t be news much longer, then it will be easier for you to forget.”
Forget?
No, I wouldn’t forget.
I managed to divert Emily, to turn the conversation to her work.
I didn’t ever want to talk to Emily about Chase and what had happened and why.
So I suppose it’s understandable that when our
conversation ended, my thoughts turned to Chase. I sat quietly on the rustic bench, Emily’s picture in my lap, and surveyed the garden. Not my garden, of course. I have no green thumb, and I’ve never lighted long enough in one spot to invest myself in plants. But this house came with a dreamily gorgeous backyard that includes a weeping willow-shrouded pond with a rock fountain in the center.
I welcomed the September warmth, the occasional wafting past of glorious Monarchs on their way to Mexico, and the musical splash from the fountain.
And I stopped avoiding thoughts about Chase. Perhaps I’d never be free of those traumatic days until I permitted myself to grieve. Fragments of memory slipped and slid across the surface of my mind as I watched the water trickling down and around the mossy gray rocks, so artfully constructed to look like a miniature mountain range.
I thought of Chase’s unexpected telephone call and that instantly familiar voice, with its unfamiliar undercurrent of desperation.
Desperation?
Yes. Looking back, I realized Chase had been fiercely determined to persuade me to come to his island, that it was of paramount importance to him. Of course, it had all been prearranged, the guest list carefully devised so that I could play detective, identify the person who’d attempted to poison him.
He’d brilliantly played every card he’d had to enlist my aid. I suppose he knew that I’d never shed the guilt of leaving, all those years ago.
He’d subtly taken advantage of that.
A wisp of wind stirred my hair. It had just the faintest undertone of fall in it, the first hint of chill.
Like the chill that edged into my heart, remembering Chase and that phone call.
Yes, he’d played his cards beautifully. But was I surprised? I’d always known what Chase was like. Determined to win—always—no matter what the cost, no matter who was hurt, no matter …
Chase’s character.
And Burton’s character.
Burton, so terrified of being blamed for doing something wrong.
I curled my fingers around the metal arm of the bench, welcoming the warmth trapped in the iron curve.
I needed warmth because I was seeing and thinking now with a cold clarity.
I should have seen it from the very first.
One piece of poisoned candy.
Shots. Swift, carefully aimed shots.
The electricity turned off on Thursday night so that the hair dryer could not only be put in place but plugged in. That was when the killer returned to the generator and turned it back on—
to make certain that the plugged-in dryer wouldn’t trip the circuit breaker
. The near encounter with me must have been nerve-racking indeed. But I’d run to safety. So then all that remained was to go to the pool, go into the cabana, trip the breaker to that line, go outside, unplug the dryer, reset the breaker. The trial run was over. Now it was certain—once the hair dryer was plugged in—that anyone entering the hot tub would be immediately, efficiently, swiftly electrocuted; there would be
no tripped breaker to frustrate the planned electrocution.
And that was what had happened.
But another element to the plan was crucial to its success: those shots aimed at Chase. I’d sensed that—but not quite understood why.
What did the shots accomplish?
They gave me and Trevor an alibi. This was essential. Because obviously Trevor was part of the scheme.
What did Burton tell me about the shots?
There was an unmistakable ring of truth in his voice when he said, almost tauntingly, “
I didn’t see anybody shoot at Chase
.”
But after Chase’s death Burton worried about it. And he decided, because he
wasn’t
a part of the plan, that he should tell someone.
Who?
Someone in authority, obviously. Someone who could tell Burton what he should do.
Why did he choose Trevor? Not, as I had thought, because Trevor had an alibi for the gunshots. That didn’t figure at all. Burton was still close to Chase’s influence. Chase didn’t confide in Roger about business. Burton didn’t like Lyle. But Trevor—Trevor was Chase’s main adviser.
So Burton made his decision. He would tell Trevor.
That signed his death warrant.
Because Trevor couldn’t afford to have anyone know that no one had shot at Chase.
I gripped the bench rail so hard my hand ached.
Why, oh, why, hadn’t I seen it from the first?
I didn’t need an alibi. Trevor was the one to be alibied. His alibi was his price for cooperating with Chase in Chase’s dark and final plan.
Who planned the island gathering?
Who was determined—always—to triumph?
Who said he would rather die than see his empire destroyed?
Who knew better than anyone that the Lloyd’s of London money would save Prescott Communications?
And who knew better than anyone how exhaustively insurance companies investigate those kinds of death claims?
So who poisoned that candy?
Chase.
Who shot the gun on the sunny point that morning?
Chase.
That’s what Burton saw. That’s what he knew.
That’s why Burton had to die. Because everything Chase did was known to Trevor. And Trevor had to agree with Chase’s desperate scheme because he was in it up to his neck in the misuse of vast sums of monies in a desperate attempt to save Prescott Communications. Trevor knew only the Lloyd’s policy would be enough to save them. There was no financing waiting in the wings. If Lloyd’s disallowed the policy on the basis that Chase’s death was suicide, not murder, all would be lost. Trevor had to have the proceeds from Lloyd’s.
So, with a high degree of efficiency and brilliance, Chase Prescott engineered his own murder. He didn’t care about the misery it would cause those
left behind as suspects. He
wanted
suspects. He wanted the hunt for a murderer to continue. It had to be murder, and Chase didn’t care what it cost either his family or his associates so long as Prescott Communications, the one thing he had loved on this earth, survived.
Now I knew.
What could I do?
What should I do?
If I made this claim, I had not a shred of evidence to back it up.
Knowledge of a man’s character isn’t enough in a court of law.
The insurance company would be delighted and would resist the claim.
But it came down to no proof.
Still, wasn’t it my duty to press to see that the truth came out?
An idealist would choose truth.
A realist would gauge whether the revelation would have any practical effect.
A leaf fluttered down onto my lap. I brushed it away from Emily’s photograph.
My lovely daughter. They say daughters are so often the image of their fathers. The slender, elegant, fine-boned face, the glossy ebony hair, a mirror image of Chase Prescott as a young man.
I’d decided before she was born that she would not grow up with a father who cared nothing for what was right.
And she had not. She’d adored Richard and admired him, and, like him, grown to be an honorable person.
It was the right decision then.
It was the right decision now.
Any mother would understand.
The world might disagree, deem my choice reprehensible.
But, for now and forever, I was determined.
The world had its story, and I would let it be. Trevor was guilty of murder, that was certain. And though he hadn’t murdered Chase, he had been a collaborator in Chase’s death. So I would let it be. Let Roger remember his father with honor; let Miranda idealize the man she’d loved too much; let Prescott Communications take on the battles against greed and pollution and social despair; let Emily remain firm in her devotion to Richard, the father she’d known.
And let me bury the ghost of a dead lover. Forever.
C
AROLYN
G. H
ART
is the author of the Death on Demand mysteries featuring Annie Darling, including
Something Wicked
, for which she won an Agatha and an Anthony;
Honeymoon with Murder
, which won an Anthony; and
A Little Class on Murder
, which won a Macavity. Hart is also the author of the Henrie O mysteries. She lives in Oklahoma City with her husband, Phil.
If you enjoyed Carolyn G. Hart’s
DEAD MAN’S ISLAND
you will want to read Henrie O’s second adventure,
SCANDAL IN FAIR HAVEN
,
available now. Look for it at your local bookseller’s.
Here is a special preview of
SCANDAL IN FAIR HAVEN….
I
DROVE THROUGH NASHVILLE
at dusk It is a city I love, elegant and southern, a city of church spires and country music tour buses, glittering new glass office buildings and treasured antebellum mansions, boot factories and insurance empires, towering oaks and ghostly gray limestone. I stopped for dinner at Houston’s, an old favorite near the Vanderbilt campus. The restaurant was jammed, as always on a Saturday night. It was almost nine o’clock when I reached my turnoff from Highway 24E some eighty miles south of Nashville.
I had no trouble finding the cabin—Margaret’s map was excellent—though it was several miles to the east and far up a rutted gravel road. Not a gleam of moonlight penetrated the canopy of trees that interlocked above the twisting lane. My headlights stabbed into the darkness, disappeared into the night.
In the glow of my lights, the cabin had a deserted, bleak appearance, one wooden shutter hanging on a hinge, pine needles thick on the rock path. I pulled around to the side, squeezed my MG between two pines.
I was tired from the full day’s drive and the stress of Margaret’s illness and my hospital vigil. I did take time to
breathe deeply of the cool pine-scented air, to welcome the embrace of country silence, but within a few minutes I’d unpacked the car—my luggage and provisions for a week—washed my face, made up one of the twin beds, and tumbled into it and a deep, satisfying sleep.
I wake like a cat. Shifting in an instant from deep sleep to full alert.
Adrenaline pumped through me. The noise that jolted me awake—the metallic rattle of the front doorknob, the faint screech as the door swung in—was startling in the silence, but perhaps even more shocking was the sudden blaze of light from the combination living room-kitchen, illumination that spilled in a harsh swath into the bedroom.
The layout of the square cabin was simple.
The front door opened into the small living room and kitchen area. The bedroom door—which I’d left ajar when I went to bed—was to the right of the front door. I’d had no reason to close the door. I was alone in the cabin.
But not now.
There was no possible good reason why someone was inside the living room of Margaret’s cabin, between me and the only exit.
Except for the single bedroom window.
At bedtime I’d managed, with a struggle, to raise the window almost an inch for a breath of fresh cool night air. It hadn’t been easy. The window’d obviously not been budged in years.
The intruder would certainly hear if I tried to get out that way, assuming I could wrestle the window any higher, which I doubted.
That left the front door. And my late-night visitor.
I was already moving, easing over the side of the bed, grabbing my key ring with its attached Mace canister and my small travel flashlight from the nightstand.
The Mace canister? Of course. Women, old or young,
pretty or ugly, sexy or plain, are always at risk. At home. At work. In hotels. On the highway. Daylight or dark. Every woman knows it.
I uncapped the cover to the Mace, gently touched the trigger with my thumb. My hand trembled.
The wooden floor was cool beneath my bare feet. Shoes. I’d run faster with shoes.
I fought indecision and knew it was a form of panic. Thoughts, incomplete, inchoate, whirled in my mind. Shoes … door … Mace …
But first I must know who was there.
I reached the open bedroom door with only one telltale creak of the boards.
I’ve trod a good many dangerous paths in my life. I’ve learned to look hard at faces.
The old saw instructs that pretty is as pretty does. The converse is equally true. The discontented droop of a mouth, the venal gleam in an eye, the obsequious curve of lips, the angry lift of a chin—oh, yes, faces tell tales. And dangerous men have in common an air of reckless abandonment. They are not bound by any rules, man’s or God’s, and they will kill you without qualm.
I had to see the face of my intruder.
He slumped in the room’s single easy chair, his dark eyes wide and staring, focused on nothing.
His face surprised me. It was slender, almost delicate for a man. It reminded me of tintypes of Robert Louis Stevenson, oval with deepset eyes, a small, gentle mouth, a high-bridged nose. In his mid-thirties. Despite the bristly stubble fuzzing his cheeks, my intruder had a thoughtful, civilized, almost professorial look. But he appeared desperately tired. More than that, his face retained a kind of incredulous astonishment, like the single survivor of a road smash surveying the crushed cars and mangled victims.
His long, lean body sagged with despair. He wasn’t
dressed for the part of a housebreaker. He wore a glen plaid cotton shirt, stylishly pleated khaki slacks, tasseled burgundy leather loafers. But his right trouser leg was soiled, some kind of dark stain.
And I had the elusive, teasing sense that I’d seen him somewhere before. Somewhere …
Faintly a motor rumbled from the road.
He jerked upright, every muscle tensed, his pale, strained face frozen in panic.
The roar grew louder, nearer.
He scrambled to his feet.
The car rattled closer, closer. And then it was by. The sound receded.
He drew his breath in, gulped it. His hands were shaking.
I saw him clearly now in the light. All of him—including his left shirt-sleeve.
I stared at the sleeve, at the blackish substance that discolored it. It was quite different from the: stain on his trousers.
Blood.
Viscous thick blood had dried to a dark crust above the cuff.
A wound?
He didn’t move like an injured man. His left fist was tightly clenched. The instinctive tendency of an injured member is to go limp, thereby putting the least possible stress on pain-racked flesh.
Abruptly his fight-or-flight stance relaxed. The young man turned, stumbled wearily to the chair, and flung himself down.
I slipped away from the door, edged silently across the bedroom. I was wearing cotton shorts and a T-shirt, my favored garb for sleep. My suitcase and gym bag were on the floor near the bathroom. I fished out a pair of sweats
and my Reeboks. I placed the Mace canister handily on the edge of the bed, then slipped into the sweats, pulled on athletic socks and the running shoes. Maybe it took me forty seconds.
I crept quietly back to the open door. He hadn’t moved.
My husband Richard always warned me against snap judgments. But I don’t waste time, and I don’t waver between choices.
I stepped out into the living room. “Excuse me. Could you possibly be in the wrong cabin?”
I did, of course, have the Mace in my right hand, ready to spray, and I was on a direct line to the front door.
His head jerked toward me. The remaining color drained from his face. He turned a sickly hue. I thought he was going to faint.
He struggled to his feet, staring at me as if I were the first witch in
Macbeth
.
I know that at times I can be intimidating. I have a Roman-coin profile, dark hair silvered at the temples, jet black eyes that have seen much and remembered much, and an angular body with a lean and hungry appearance of forward motion even when at rest. However, surely not witchlike. Oh, the right age perhaps, but I feel that I look especially nonthreatening in baggy gray sweats and running shoes.
“Oh, my God, who are you? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins,” I replied crisply. “I’m a guest of Margaret Frazier’s. So I might ask the same of you.”
He swallowed jerkily. “A guest … oh, Christ. If that isn’t my frigging—Sorry. God.” He looked past me toward the bedroom. “Where’s Aunt Margaret?”
Aunt Margaret. Of course. That’s why he looked familiar. That aquiline nose and small, full mouth.
I slipped the keys and mace canister into the pocket of my sweats.
Craig. Margaret’s nephew. “I’m sorry to say she’s in the hospital. A heart attack and bypass surgery. But she’s …”
He wasn’t listening.
I felt a quick flare of anger. No wonder Margaret had resisted notifying him.
“I believe she is going to recover quite nicely, in case you’re interested.”
His eyes blinked. He heard my anger. It took a moment for him to make the connection. “Aunt Margaret … Oh, I’m sorry.” Blank dark eyes finally focused on me. “She’s real sick? I’m sorry.” He gave me a shamefaced look. “And I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to. Truly, I didn’t know you were here. I’m Craig. Craig Matthews.”
He lifted a slender, well-manicured hand to massage his temple. The emerald in a thick yellow gold ring glittered like putting-green grass on a sunny day.
The bloodstain ran from just above the cuff to his elbow.
He followed my glance.
There are many kinds of silence. Companionable. Hostile. Angry. Shamed. Defeated.
And frightened.
His handsome face crumpled, a mixture of horror and pain and disbelief. He shook his head. “I didn’t kill Patty Kay. I didn’t do it.” It was a husky, broken whisper. Gingerly, he touched the crusted blood with his right hand. His fingers quivered.
His denial echoed in my mind. What had I stumbled into? “I
didn’t kill Patty Kay
.” Did he say it again or did the shocking, frightening phrase simply pulse in my mind?
No wonder Craig Matthews wasn’t worried about his aunt. No wonder his demeanor was terrified.
I tensed like a runner awaiting the starter’s pistol. My
hand closed again around the slender Mace canister. Margaret’s nephew or no, if he took a step toward me …
Instead, he backed to the chair and sank into it again. Dully, he looked up at me. “You know Aunt Margaret?”
I said nothing.
He blinked, his mouth twisted in a small embarrassed smile. “Sorry. I can’t hold anything in my head. You said you were her guest. Sure.”
He was a man in shock. Talking about the price of chicken feed while the sky fell.
He shook his head, as if struggling to clear it, then once again got to his feet, as if belatedly remembering his manners. “I’m sorry. Awfully sorry. I woke you up, frightened you. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I didn’t see your car. But I didn’t look. And it was dark … I’ll leave.”
But once on his feet, he simply stood.
“Where will you go?” I took my hand out of my pocket. I was in no danger from this scared, disoriented young man.
“… Chattanooga, I guess. I’ve got an old friend there.”
“Do you need a friend?”
“I’ve got to talk to somebody. I’m in trouble. Big trouble.”
He’d whispered, I
didn’t kill Patty Kay. I didn’t do it
.
Yes, I thought, he probably was in a shitload of trouble.
Killers come in all shapes and sizes. And it is domestic violence that can surprise you every time.
He didn’t look like a man who’d killed a woman.
I wasn’t afraid of him.
I know when to be scared.
He glanced toward the door, then back at me. His shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what the
hell
to do.”
There was the tiniest suggestion of a plea in his voice, perhaps a flicker of hope in his eyes.
I knew what I was hearing, the tones of a man accustomed to letting someone else run the show.
I wondered when I’d been transformed from a Shakespearean witch to a succoring figure. If he were older, he would know better than to assume age renders its possessor harmless. But he was seeing me now as not only harmless but someone to help. The friend of his aunt.
I’d spent a lifetime among take-charge men. I’d butted heads with most of them. But even while insisting upon my rights and prerogatives, I’d admired their verve and spirit and, yes, the automatic masculine presumption of each and every one that by God, I’m in charge here. It is a factor that makes news pools a living hell for real reporters. The testosterone level among newspapermen beggars description. As a class, it’s also true of lawyers.
So winsome I’ll-leave-it-up-to-you types don’t impress me.
But I hadn’t spent a lifetime asking questions to be able to ignore what was obviously a life-and-death drama. And this was Margaret’s only living family, the son of her beloved sister.
He was gazing at me with pleading spaniel eyes.
It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him. Talk didn’t commit me to anything. Not a single damn thing. After all, my night’s sleep was already ruined. Moreover, I had to find out if I could help Margaret’s kin.
And, yes, I admit it, I wanted to find out what had happened to Patty Kay.
Who, what, when, where, why, how
—they pulse in my blood and in my brain. Maybe I should have them scored on my tombstone. Or,
She Came, She Asked, She Wrote
.
So that’s how it began for me.
I said, “Who’s Patty Kay?”
“My wife.”
“What happened to her?”
The dazed, uncomprehending look returned to his eyes. “I came home and—and I went in the house and called out. But she didn’t answer. I went upstairs. She wasn’t anywhere. But she’d told me to come home. I mean, I thought she had. There was this message from her. But maybe it wasn’t from her because—”
I held up a hand. “Wait a minute. You came home.” I didn’t yet know where “home” was. There was so much I didn’t know. But it was critical to keep him focused. “You looked for Patty Kay. What happened then?”
“I went in the dining room. Everything was ready for the party.” Again disbelief flared in his frightened eyes. “We were going to have a party tonight. The table was set. The china. The silver. Crystal. Perfect, the way Patty Kay always has everything. So I thought she was probably in the kitchen and just hadn’t heard me. She cooks—Patty Kay always cooks everything herself. She doesn’t believe in having it done by a caterer. She always laughs and says she’s a better cook than any caterer. And she is. So I thought she was in the kitchen and I went in there and that’s when I knew something was wrong, really wrong. Cheesecake was all over everything.”
“Cheesecake?”
“Patty Kay’s cheesecakes are famous—chocolate wafer crumbs and butter and creme de menthe and … Somebody’d taken the cake pan and thrown it up and there was stuff on the ceiling and the cabinets and the floor, and the pan with the chocolate—the one on the stove—had burned black. The smell was awful. And there was creme de menthe splashed on the floor and a whole bottle of creme de cacao emptied out too. I mean, it scared me. What the hell was going on? And Patty Kay wasn’t anywhere. Then I saw the back door was open. I wasn’t really thinking. I
started for the door, too fast I guess, and I skidded and slipped.” He looked down at his trouser leg. “Got the stuff on my hands too. The liqueur. I picked up a towel and wiped my hands off, then I went out the back door. Everything looked okay, like it always did.” His voice lifted with remembered astonishment. “The deck and the pool. And nobody was out there. That meant Patty Kay had to be in the playhouse—if she was anywhere. So I ran down there.”