Something Wicked (13 page)

Annie pressed her fingers against her temples. “I feel like a mouse in a fun-house barrel. My head is swimming with intimate details about people I hardly know.”

“Excellent mental discipline.” Max was unsympathetic. “Anyway, Sam needs a success.”

Annie recalled his plaintive pleas on the telephone Sunday afternoon. “I bet Sam needs cash, too,” she said dryly. “And speaking of money, what about T.K.?”

“I thought about him,” Max said agreeably. “Right from the first. He plays golf with Jenkins. But, so far as I can discover, T.K.’s got plenty of money. He’s been a member of the Million Dollar Club for years, so the money keeps rolling in.”

“Million Dollar Club?”

He grinned. “T.K. sells insurance. That means he’s sold more than a million dollars in policies. Every time an insured pays a premium, T.K. gets his cut. The insurance business is one of the money world’s best-kept secrets.”

“The first rule of money—Them that has gets. So you don’t think T.K. could be bribed by Jenkins, but he might help him out just one good old boy to another.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced. “But T.K.’s nobody’s fool. Behind that old jock facade is a pretty tough customer. Besides, Freddy was their cat.”

“Maybe T.K.’s mad at Janet,” she suggested.

“Because of Shane?”

“Exactly.”

“So he killed Freddy?” Max looked disgusted.

“We don’t know what the Hortons are like, not really. And people can do nasty things.” And she thought of Seeley’s
The Listening House
and Slesar’s
The Thing at the Door.

Max tossed the printout on the table and leaned back in his chair. “Okay. You’re so keen on a psychological profile.
You
tell
me.”

She picked up the computer sheets and skimmed the Horton bios:

T.K. didn’t need favors from Harley Jenkins. If T.K. planned the sabotage, it was purely for personal reasons, not financial. The Broward’s Rock economy was booming, and the fortunes of the Hortons right along with it.

Harley didn’t need money either—and he would never do anything to jeopardize the island’s well-being because it would directly affect his own finances. Diverted, she lowered the printout and blurted, “Nope, Jenkins isn’t behind it.”

Max looked confused. “I thought we were talking about T.K.”

If he were Jerry North, he would have understood, but she did deign to explain. “Because of Freddy.”

“Freddy? What do Freddy and Jenkins have to do with each other?” he asked wildly.

“I know Jenkins is a rat. He’s the kind of louse who probably likes to take potshots at cats, but not publicly. He wouldn’t do anything that could possibly cut the tourist flow. When the story gets out about Freddy, it will make headlines from coast to coast. It’s the kind of headline news editors
can’t resist. CAT KILLER PROWLS THEATER. FELINE DEAD ON DELIVERY. FELLED FELIX—”

“Down, girl. Maybe we can get you a job on
The Island Gazette.”

“I thought the phrasing felicitous.”

“You have a point,” he admitted grudgingly.

“So the sabotage isn’t the product of a conspiracy headed by Jenkins,” she concluded.

But Max wasn’t ready to relinquish his theory quite yet. “He’s such a clod, it probably wouldn’t occur to him what a stink a cat-killing would raise.”

“Clod, yes,” she agreed. “Stupid, no.”

Max looked mulish. “If it isn’t Jenkins, who or what is it?”

It was up to her to uphold the tradition of thoughtful,
insightful
detection. Ah, the shades of psychiatrist-detectives Dr. Emmanuel Cellini, Dr. Sarah Chayse, Dr. Paul Prye, Dame Beatrice Bradley, and Dr. John Smith.

But, unfortunately, she wasn’t teeming with insights at this particular moment. She frowned at the printout again.

Hmm. T.K. palled around with Jenkins, all right, but he was pretty much a home-by-eight fellow. “T.K. doesn’t play the ponies—or chase shady ladies?”

“Not according to Vince Ellis, who covers this island like a fog. He says T.K.’s the original family man. As Vince put it, part of a vanishing species.”

JANET KESSLER HORTON.
Annie raised an eyebrow. Vince had dug up the dope, or unloaded it, on these two, if that was where Max had obtained his information. In addition to particulars (Janet, B. 1948, graduated Emory 1969), it described her as a sentimental sap, always looking for her Rhett Butler. Until this year, her flirtatious forays had always been discreet and presumably chaste. Then she had fallen for Shane Petree with a headlong abandon rivaled only by her own daughter’s avid interest in the has-been actor.

Annie wondered briefly if the sweaty stallion had got a bit more than he had bargained for.

And she wondered, too, if Janet knew that Cindy had been spending some hot and heavy afternoons with Shane out in the bay aboard
Sweet Lady.

If either Janet or Cindy was feeling slighted by Shane or angry with the other, they could be just feline and clever enough to plan the campaign. Or it could be T.K. acting out a jealous fury.

“But all of the sabotage hasn’t been directed at Shane,” Annie observed.

Once again, she could see Max scrambling mentally for the connection. Then he nodded. “Oh, sure. If it’s T.K. If it’s one of the Hortons, it reveals some depths to their psyches that I’d sure as hell rather not plumb.”

“The person behind this is not going to be too lovable. But smart and calculating.”

“That should clear Shane.”

She understood his disdain, but didn’t quite agree. “Actually, Shane’s not dumb. He’s just lazy and absolutely egocentric.”

She scanned the information on him. Nothing much she didn’t know. A beauty boy in a series of surfer movies. A skilled bodysurfer, excellent sailor, passable at golf and tennis. Quite the lothario around the marina. Spent a lot of time pampering his body. Insatiable so far as women were concerned. Always on the prowl. But his marriage to Sheridan seemed stable. Annie wondered who had what that the other wanted. A love match, she felt sure, it wasn’t. The only surprise was his age. Forty-two. She had to hand it to the hunk; he didn’t look it.

Shane’s history primarily revealed total self-absorption. Would he plan and carry out the acts of sabotage? The annoying incidents might appeal to his warped sense of humor, but it all seemed like too much effort for him to bother.

“Okay. Not Shane,” she agreed, although their reasons differed.

That left Carla, Hugo, Arthur, and Eugene.

“Whoever is behind this
is
taking a chance,” she emphasized. “It takes a cool head, the ability to plan, steady nerves, and a compelling reason. And whoever did it has a nasty streak.” She looked steadily at Max. “How about Carla?”

“Why Carla?”

“She sure isn’t friends with anybody. Maybe she’s more than unfriendly. Maybe she’s damn hostile.”

“That might be,” Max said slowly. “You know, we’ve both tried to be friendly, and she just ignores us. I have a feeling she’s been hurt a lot, and she isn’t willing to open up at all. And something tells me that what she sees between us bothers her.”

“Maybe,” Annie agreed. “But she’s obviously hungry for companionship or she wouldn’t be active in the players.”

“Right. So we make a full circle.” Max shrugged. “She needs the players, wants to be a part of it, so why the hell would she destroy it?”

It didn’t seem likely. Annie’s eyes dropped to the printout.

Annie sighed and flipped the page. Ah, Hugo, handsome Hugo. Unlike Shane, he married his women. Presently living with his third wife, Cory Lee, in one of the showcase homes of the island. Hugo’s record was as exemplary as Shane’s was mediocre: A Charleston native, Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford, Order of the Coif at Northwestern, a distinguished career as a plaintiff’s attorney in Atlanta, long acclaimed as one of the South’s most gifted actors, recently retired to Broward’s Rock. An accomplished actor, race-winning yachtsman, celebrated hunter, scratch golfer.

As for Arthur Killeen, who was such a marvelous Dr. Einstein, nothing in his bio caught the eye.

Finally, Eugene. Myopic blue eyes and an inexhaustible supply of TR anecdotes.

Annie flung the printout onto the table. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

She reached out, touched his cheek. “I think there are more fun ways to spend a Monday night.”

Cord grass, caressed by the early evening off-shore breeze, rippled away from her like a sea of silk. Annie welcomed the distinctive tangy scent of the marsh, a combination of salt water, chlorophyll exuded from the spartina grass, the decay of fallen plants and animals, and sulfur from marsh mud. She braced her hands against the wooden railing and savored the brilliant red splash of the setting sun.

Was there any lovelier place in the world? She swatted at a no-see-um and waved away a green-head fly which had taken a deeply personal interest in the sweet aroma of her hair spray, holding firm her early 1940s pageboy. (Opening night, of course, was still a week away, but it was never too soon to start work on her hair, which had a tendency to wave upward unless sternly disciplined.) She applauded the mating antics of a male fiddler crab, busily swinging his one large claw to entice a lady crab into his burrow. A variation on
autres temps, autres mœures.
He had plenty of fellows this lovely evening. From her perch above the marsh, she could see hundreds of the crabs and hear the crackle of their feet on the mud flat. Hidden in the five-foot cord grass, a hyena cackle emitted its distinctive call. The breeze rustled the spartina grass, and for a moment she was reminded sharply of prairie wheat in Texas, where she grew up.

Then she heard the swift tattoo of a horn and the roar of Max’s Porsche. She hurried around the porch to the steps, waved, and started down. She couldn’t suppress an ear-to-ear grin. Max was obviously already into his role, slouching cockily against the red leather upholstery. He was such a marvelous Mortimer. She ran toward the car. It might not be sophisticated, but she was alight with excitement and anticipation. In only a little while, the first complete run-through of
the play would be underway—and despite everything, she just couldn’t wait!

Carla, nervous as a brood hen, made last-minute adjustments to the set. Her face was grim and pale, whether from concentration or unhappiness Annie had no idea. When Annie smiled a hello and paused to compliment the set, Carla stared at her unresponsively for a long moment, then muttered, “Glad you like it,” before turning away to check the list of props for Act I. Obviously, nerves weren’t confined to the players.

Annie admired the perfection of the Victorian setting, the statuette of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, in the niche midway up the stair wall, the two three-prong silver candelabra atop the sideboard, and the substantial William Morris chairs, then headed downstairs to the dressing area. Although no one, of course, was in costume or makeup tonight (the first dress rehearsal was scheduled for the coming Sunday afternoon, the second for Monday night, and, hurrah, the opening for next Tuesday), Burt urged everyone to get into a groove with their timing and to use the greenroom between scenes.

The only access from the stage area was down the narrow, steep, creaky stairs that opened just behind the back curtain at upstage right, which was very convenient for this particular play with its offstage cellar, where Teddy dug those useful canals and, occasionally, trenches for yellow fever victims.

The below-stage area itself compared favorably with the Roman catacombs. The corridors, which branched off in unexpected loops and jogs, were ill-lit, musty, and, tonight, redolent with fresh coffee, mold, makeup, paint, plywood, and mosquitc spray.

The greenroom opened to the right of the stairs. This was the area where actors awaited their entrances. Two sagging couches, an assortment of straight chairs, stools, and camp chairs were scattered the length of the long, narrow area. Burt had put a coffee urn on a table at the far end, along with a plate of cookies. A cooler on the floor held cans of soda.