Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evie (11 page)

Max opened the car door for her, then put his hand on her arm to stop her from getting in.

“You okay?” he asked. “Really okay?”

Except for his fingers curled around her arm, the world had gone stone cold. Where he touched her was the only place on earth that mattered. It was difficult to concentrate on mere words when all she could think of was how alive and warm she felt standing a heartbeat away from a man she was growing more attracted to by the minute.

“I’m confused, worried, admittedly scared half to death, looking for murderers behind every parked car and flower pot. I’m a little tattered around the edges, but I’m functioning.” Gazing up into his eyes, she said, “Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it yesterday, thanks for saving my life. Again.”

A second ticked by, then another. Whatever he’d been about to say, he changed his mind. Without a
word, he released her and stepped back. “Here come the others,” he said sharply. “Get in. Put on your seat belt.” Before she turned away from him, Evie saw his mouth flatten into a hard line.

Well, she thought, feeling a little twinge at Max’s sudden change in demeanor. If you don’t want my peaches, then don’t shake my tree.

For the next four miles, Evie glared at the back of Max’s head, hoping he’d see her reflection in the rearview mirror and realize she was upset.

You don’t save a woman’s life, she thought, buy her a Coke, subtly rub her leg with your own, listen to her speech of gratitude, then turn away and frown. It could gi
ve a lady a complex. And she al
ready had enough complexes for five lifetimes.

The body of water they were looking for was a small cove off Puget Sound that offered campsites, a boat dock and small marina, Lola’s
Quik
Mart, a gas station, and Dave’s Bait and Tackle.

While Dabney and Lorna took on Lola, Max and Evie headed for Dave’s
. With any luck at all, retriev
ing the clues would simply be a matter of asking the right person
…
who apparently wasn’t on duty that day, because when the four met back at the car fifteen minu
tes later, they were each empty-
handed.

Evie sighed. “This could be the wrong place,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really thought we’d find something here.”

Max leaned back against the fender of his car and crossed his arms over his chest, the dark glasses he’d slipped on making it impossible to tell where he was looking. However, if the prickly heat Evie felt on her skin was any indication, he was looking at her.

Dabney and Lorna decided to go down to the marina to see if anybody was on board any of the small sailboats. On a Monday morning in July, several of the slips were empty, but a few boats remained to rock and tilt in the dark green water, pulling against their moorings whenever a speedboat zoomed by farther out on the water.

“What’s the name of that book again?” Max asked, sunlight glinting off the dark lenses of his glasses.

Kicking a pebble with the toe of her shoe, she said,
“The Lady Takes No Prisoners
.”

“Well,” he drawled, raising his arm, “there’s a boat down there called
The Lady
—”

Evie sucked in her bottom lip and followed the line of Max’s outstretched arm and pointing finger. Before he’d finished his sentence, she took off at a dead run.

Within seconds he was beside her, laughing, grabbing her hand tightly in his, racing with her down the crunchy gravel path toward the docks.

Together, they jumped a short log fence and maneuvered around several boulders, bumping into each other as they tore onto the wooden wharf like two kids running across an open field. Running together toward Clue Number Three.

Chapter 11

D
ear
D
iary:

I h
av
en’
t
written to you for a
lon
g
time.
M
y mother
died,
and
I didn't know how t
o
t
ell you i
t
. I
t was the worst day of m
y life and I stayed in my room for days. The
lady
policeman told me she died of a
n
O
D
. They asked me if I understood and
I
said yes, because I wanted to
go to my room and cry. E
ven though Mommy wasn’t home sometimes,
I
still loved her.
R
igh
t
after she died, I stayed with some people who were nice to me. Yes
terday a man named Thomas came t
o
t
ake me away with him.
H
e
says he lives on an island,
h
e
says I’ll
have my v
ery
own
bu
t
ler.
That sounds
ok, but
I
would
rather still
be
with
my
mom.

E
vangeline—a
g
e
11

E
dmunds either had a key or knew where one was hidden. The elegant, thirty-five-foot Beneteau Oceanis 352 hadn’t been broken into, but somebody had been aboard recently.

Max crouched in front of a countertop. Dust patterns on the tile showed that objects had been moved, and there were bits of damp mud on the galley floor.

Neither Lola at the grocery store, Dave at the bait shop, or anyone else they’d spoken to had seen the distinguished butler or the distinctive psychic, so it was likely they’d boarded early that morning, and not all that long ago, either, since the cabin door had been left unlocked. Had the butler fled when he saw them coming, or had he left the door accessible on purpose?

“Here it is!” Evie shouted from the captain’s cabin. “Clue Number Three, under the mattress. I knew ‘flat on your back’ meant something.”

“Sure means something to me,” Max mumbled as he ducked his head and entered the small cabin, which was mostly wall-to-wall bed. When Evie turned toward him, he plucked the envelope from her fingers.

She glared at him but made no effort to pluck it back. Too bad, he thought. He would have enjoyed tussling with her in a room that was made up mostly of a big bed with walls around it.

With the blade of his pocketknife, he sliced through the seal and opened the envelope. Lorna and Nate, seeing them run toward the boat, had followed and now crowded in behind Max, their eyes expectant, their hands empty. If their clue was on
The Lady,
they hadn’t found it yet.

Max unfolded the paper.

I told the kid behind the soda fountain to gimme a cuppa joe, and make it quick. He didn’t say nothing, but he had that look about him that said he was too good to be slinging hash to slobs like me
…
that he
was more than just a pretty boy in a greasy apron
behind the counter at the five-
and-dime.

T. E. Heyworth, 1954

The Last Straw

Max handed the note to Evie. “Ring any bells?” He watched as h
er eyes moved over the typewrit
ten lines on the page. Her brow furrowed and she nibbled absently on her bottom lip. Finally, she shook her head and said slowly, “None. I have no idea what this means.”

It took another fifteen minutes of searching, but Lorna and Nate final
ly came up with their clue, hid
den inside a sea chest.

Max rubbed his chin with his thumb. “According to these two clues,” he said, “our paths are about to diverge. Heyworth has used quotes from two different books, which probably means we split up.”

After several calls to the Tacoma Public Library and the larger bookstores in the area, they decided to admit defeat and head back to the car. “The books are too old,” Evie said. “Thomas may have written forty mysteries, but they weren’t what you’d call classics.”

“You mean they sucked,” Max offered.

“I think the word you were obviously searching for, yet failed to find, was
uncomplicated
,” she challenged. “Thomas’s books wer
e meant for the average reader.
”

He sent her a look of exasperation. “Yeah, if the average reader hadn’t dropped all his crayons under his high chair.”

She slipped her hands into her jeans pockets and settled her butt against the fender of his car. In the midday sunshine, her hair gleamed like burnished copper. The freckles on her nose gave her that sweet, alluring, kissable country girl, ro
l
l-in-the-hayloft look. He slid his dark glasses into place so he could look his fill without her suspecting he was imagining putting his hands wherever his eyes roamed—and they roamed just about everywhere.

“Libraries and bookstores aren’t going to have them,” she said. “
We’ll have to go back to the li
brary at Mayhem Manor. I wouldn’t be surprised if Edmunds and Madame Grovda have to do the same thing.”

“Like a cat that’s been chased high up a tree,” Nate said solemnly as he shoved his glasses up on his nose. “We’ve all bee
n stymied by Clue Number Three.
”

“Temporarily
stymied, Tennyson,” countered Max. It seemed
Dabney
had gotten a little too wrapped up in his role, and for some reason felt the need to spew rotten poetry at the drop of a hat. “I thought you were the kind of poet who didn’t rhyme so much. Perhaps you should go back to free verse.”

Nate narrowed one eye on him. “Whether I rhyme or no
t depends wholly on the spot…
uh, I’m in.”

Next to him, Lorna covered her mouth with her fingertips and made a choking snort-giggle sound, but the look in her eyes was one of pure adulation.

“It’s gonna take a while to get back to the isle. While the sunshine
is glowing, we’d better get go
ing.” Apparently reveling in Lorna’s admiration, Nate smiled like he’d just been credited with the second coming of
Beowulf.

As Max opened the car door for the snickering Evie, he looked over at Nate, “Know what I think? Your poems really stink.”

Nate opened the door for Lorna and said, “My poetry’s fine. You’re simply a slime
…
uh, ball.”

Max slid behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition. As the engine roared to life, under his breath so the women in the backseat couldn’t hear, he said, “Stop with the rhymes and the poems that suck, or I’ll pull out my gun and shoot you, dumb-fuck.”

Nate adjusted his seat belt, then purposefully looked out the passenger side window.
“Some
peo
ple,” he murmured, “have no appreciation for creative genius.”

The ferry ride from Tacoma had them back in Port Henry by dinnertime, and, thanks to a quick call to the island, Earl Stanley was waiting for them at the dock with the runabout.

As soon as they hit the front door of Mayhem Manor, the four of them hurried up the stairs to the second floor, to the enormous library—the same library in which Thomas Heyworth had been shot to death.

Entering the wide double doors, Max was brought up short by a sight he wasn’t certain he’d ever see again—Edmunds the butler and a weary, disheveled Madame Grovda. They sat at one of the mahogany tables by the fireplace, huddled over a book. As soon as Max and the others entered the room, Edmunds slammed the cover shut.

“Edmunds!” Evie rushed to the butler and threw her arms around him. The man stood and pulled her into a loose hug, lowering his cheek to her hair. His skin was pale and he was in need of a shave. The lines around his eyes were pronounced, and he lowered his lids as he hugged Evie as though he needed her support or he’d drop.

Madame Grovda didn’t look much better. Her white hair stuck out in billowy tangles, her eyes were wide and glassy, she wore no makeup, and her clothing was stained and rumpled. She looked like a fairy godmother who’d been struck by lightning.

“Why did you two take off like that?” Evie choked, still hugging Edmunds. “Are you okay? Until I saw you, I didn’t realize how worried—”

“Evie,” Max interrupted. “I need to talk to these two.”

Pushing herself out of Edmunds’s embrace, she flung her arms wide as if to protect him. “You can’t arrest him. He didn’t do anything—”

“For God’s sake, I’m not going to
arrest
him,” he snapped. “For one thing, he didn’t do anything illegal. For another, this isn’t my jurisdiction.”

She blinked and lowered her arms, and he felt his
temper rise. Not b
ecause she had jumped to conclu
sions about him, but because she’d been prepared to fiercely defend somebody she loved. Would she be that passionate protecting him? If, of course, she ever loved him?

Tamping down his anger, he said, “How many clues have you collected, Edmunds?”

The butler straightened. “Three, sir.”

“Any of them give any indication who might have killed Heyworth?”

“No, sir.”

“Why’d you leave early after we had all agreed to wait until morning?”

Up until now the Russian woman had remained silent. With a hearty sigh, she pushed herself up from her chair and said, “I have made him to do it. I have the vision that tells me where to look, so we go.” Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes dampened.

“A vision?” he repeated. “Tell me about it.”

Dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from a handbag the size of Detroit, she said, “I am to come over.”

“You are too overcome?”

“Da. Yes. Is so.”

Max was sure he heard at least one window rattle and a delicate vase on the mantel crack when she blew her nose. Closing her eyes, she lifted her arms in front of her like a B movie sleepwalker.

“I am changing for the bed,
you see? I begin to feel dusty.
”

“Dizzy.”

“
Da
. Dizzy. I see it the envelope. My
Tomas,
he means for me to have it,” she insisted, her hands
still in front of her, as if she were carrying a load of invisible firewood.

“Did your vision tell you who killed Thomas Heyworth?”

She opened her eyes.
“Nyet.
”
Lowering her arms, she said, “I would speak to you in the privates?”

Max stared at her, unsure how to answer.

“I think she means
privately,”
Evie whispered against the back of his neck.

“Thanks,” he mumbled over his shoulder. “I was getting a visual on that you would not believe.” With that, Evie, Nate, and Lorna quickly moved to the far end of the room, out of earshot. Edmunds excused himself to go check on dinner.

When they were relatively alone, Madame Grovda sat once more, bit her bottom lip, and fiddled with her fingers. Finally, she said, “You are a good detective, yes? You are, how it is said, successful?”

He shrugged. “My record for cleared cases is right up there.”

She smiled at him, a sad little quirk of her lips. Her deep-set brown eyes looked tired, the color faded. Haltingly, she said, “Madame Grovda, she
…
is not so successful as you. The psychic theory, yes, I can teach. But the practice, eh, it does not work for me all of the time.”

He waited while she twisted her fingers around the handkerchief, her head down, her white hair fluttering like feathers as she nodded to herself. “I was not always, ehm, as you see me. I was once young, beautiful.
Tomas
and I, ah, we make the love all the time. But it was not meant to be.”

Max understood, or thought he did, “So you’re after the inheritance to get your revenge on the lover who spurned you.”

Her eyes widened.
“Nyet. Tomas
did not give the spurn to me. Always, we used the condom.”

Max took a long, hard breath and held it for a moment. Finally he exhaled and said, “Not sperm.
Spurn.
It means he rejected you.”

Her eyes widened even more.
“Nyet!
It was I who give the spurn to him. He wants to marry me, but my father
…
”
Her voice trailed off and she looked as though she wanted to go sit in a corner and have a good cry. “Ah,” she sighed, slowly shaking her head. “It is so long ago. I was so very you
ng. The love, it is hard thing.
”

Lifting her troubled gaze to him, she blinked and sucked in her lower lip. With a tilt of her head, she said, “It is not for the money that I come to this place. It is to find who killed my
Tomas.
He de
serves this much from me. I come to touch the air with my heart, listen to vibrations of his life with my soul. And, I think, maybe then I will know.” She closed her eyes. “But I have failed him once more. I cannot see the face of his murderer. I am sorry, Detective. I—I am not the very good psychic.”

He studied the woman for a moment. So, Heyworth had loved her. It was difficult for Max to imagine a man like that having softer feelings, but he’d apparently had them for Evie, so maybe it wasn’t too big a stretch to imagine him having loved Ernestina Grovda, back in the day.

The old woman stood, shed of her gloss of boisterous confidence. For the sake of a man she had
loved once upon a time, she had let her guard down before a stranger, admitted her failures, bared her vulnerabilities.

Would he be so brave, he wondered, when the time came?

“It, um, it could just be, madame,” he stumbled, “that your grief has temporarily clouded your abilities. Perhaps when you have had some rest and your sorrow has passed, you’ll, uh, be able to focus again.”

She smiled weakly at him, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes.

Reaching toward her, Max took her hand between his palms, gave it a gentle squeeze, and smiled back.

A
cross the room, Evie stood alone with a book in her hand, her mind, not a million miles away, but only a mere twenty feet.

She didn’t know what they were saying, but the look of compassion in Max’s eyes as he spoke to Madame Grovda told the story.

For a badass, know-it-all, arrogant, dictatorial, cynical loner cop,
he could be a very nice man. Oc
casionally, anyway. When the spirit moved him. Like, on a Tuesday in October during a full moon when the tide was out, and he’d gotten enough sleep the night before.

Not for the first time, she wondered why he’d hated Thom
as, why Thomas had hated him. H
ad Max really abandoned his dying mother? He couldn’t have been very old when his mother had married Thomas. The next time she got the chance, she would ask him.

She turned her attention to the slim volume she held, silently reading the title.
The Last Straw.
Though it had been published fifty years ago, it was in pristine condition, having been opened only rarely. She’d first read it when she was a teenager, but in the years
since it had been placed in May
hem’s library, few guests, if any, had taken it to their rooms for a cozy night’s read. Truth be told, her beloved Thomas was a terrible writer, a fact she had been loath to admit to herself for years, and had never mentioned to him.

“What did you find?”

At the sound of Max’s voice, she looked up, directly into his eyes. Absorbed in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard Madame Grovda leave or him approach. He stood only a foot away, his hands in his pockets, a flirty smile on his lips.

Her fingers tightened around the book.

“I’ll trade you,” she said, trying to keep her emotional distance, when what she really wanted was exactly the opposite. “I’ll tell you what I found if you’ll tell me why you and Thomas hated each other so much. You go first.”

“My, my, my,” he drawled, leaning his hip against a library table. “Quite the little negotiator, aren’t we?”

“Not at all. But after the things Thomas told me about you—”

“You expected me to be some slathering, scarfaced Hun with pointed teeth, a crooked nose, and a naked
woman tossed over my shoulder.
”