Sugarplum Dead (14 page)

The wooden dock stretched through the marsh to the shore. Even in December, thanks to the subtropical climate, japonica, camellias, impatiens, lantana and roses bloomed in the garden. Dogwoods, azaleas and banana shrubs cascaded in tiers down to the marsh. A boxwood maze loomed dark and enigmatic between the house and a cattail-ringed lagoon. An oyster-shell path curved from each end of the colonnaded veranda, embracing a vine-covered arbor on one side of the lagoon, a gazebo on the other. The garden was as mellow as honey and as smooth as Southern whiskey.

The beauty of the garden emphasized the oddness of the house. Nothing could diminish the garish glitter of the aluminum tower or the mismatch of clashing materials, cedar and chrome and stucco and bronze and quartz and New England clapboard and glass and tile. Windows honeycombed the differing exteriors. Anything that happened in the garden or the maze or in the gazebo or on the dock could be observed from a dozen different spots within the house.

Perhaps the abundance of windows accounted for the convergence on the dock. Or perhaps, whatever had happened in the Dumaney house, Chief Garrett was the focus of all the inhabitants' attention. Everyone was there. Had they followed him to the dock like tails to a kite or robotic lemmings?

The circle of watchful faces at the end of the dock imbued the moment with menace. Annie felt menace, sharp and clear and hard as an ax head, menace directed at the man standing next to her. She slipped her arm through Pudge's. His glance at her was swift and sweet and remote.

She looked defiantly at those silent observers.

Wayne Ladson's pale blue eyes were cool and speculative, his sensitive, scholarly face hard and unfriendly. He smoothed his neat Vandyke beard.

Terry Ladson's ruddy complexion verged on purple. He held to the back of a garden bench as if the earth weren't steady beneath his feet.

Donna Farrell's pale blue blouse and simple gray wool slacks were a good foil for her icy blondness. One hand held tight to her pearl necklace as her eyes shifted uneasily from face to face.

Joan Ladson clutched a basket holding a half dozen roses. She looked like a suburban matron whose car had broken down on the wrong side of town.

Alice Schiller was almost invisible in the gloom beneath low-hanging live oak branches. Wisps of Spanish moss dangled near her. Of them all, she looked most stricken, her hands twisting together. This morning her resemblance to Marguerite Dumaney was muted, her dark red hair straggly, her delicate complexion wan.

Chief Garrett stared at Pudge, but he spoke to Max. “We're investigating a murder. We received a call at nine minutes after eight o'clock reporting discovery of a body. We arrived at eight-twenty. We have met all the members of the household except Mr. Laurance. We would like to speak with Mr. Laurance.” Garrett was well aware of the interested observers. “If you will accompany me, sir, we—”

Max took a single step forward. “Mr. Laurance will decline to answer questions until he has consulted with counsel.”

Pudge almost spoke, then shrugged.

Chief Garrett looked from Pudge to Max. “Will you assure me that Mr. Laurance will be available this afternoon for an interview? If not, I will take him into custody now as a material witness.”

“Definitely, Chief.” Max was brisk. “How about two o'clock at your office?”

At Garrett's nod, Max took Pudge's elbow. “Come on. Let's go up to the house.”

Pudge looked past Garrett at the watching faces. “Maybe they don't want me up there.”

Max said loudly, “I know you intend to help as much as you can in the investigation with what limited knowledge you have of the situation. We all hope that Chief Garrett quickly uncovers the truth.”

Annie would have liked to hug Max. He was telling the world—or at least everyone within earshot—that Pudge Laurance never killed anyone. Yet all Max knew was
what she knew, that there had been murder and Pudge had blood on his slacks and he had taken a rowboat into the Sound.

No one spoke. The watching faces held suspicion and uneasiness as she and Max and Pudge started up the dock. They were almost to the shore when a piercing voice demanded, “Why is that man free?” This voice always reached the back row. This husky, throaty, deliberate voice had thrilled millions.

Marguerite Dumaney swept toward them in a jade-green silk robe.

H
ER UNFORGETTABLE FACE
ravaged by grief, her eyes brilliant with pain and resolve, Marguerite demanded, “How can this be?” Her tone was low and anguished. “My sister lies dead, broken and disfigured, and this man walks free?” Her hand, the nails bloodred, pointed at Pudge. “Officer, I implore you, avenge my sister.” A stark figure in a Greek tragedy could not have summoned more force.

Marguerite alive!

Annie stared, bewildered, at that dramatic figure; grief-laden, yes, but still a beautiful woman, her eyes deep pools of suffering yet burning with the fire of retribution for her dead sister. Her sister!

Pudge stumbled, stopped, shaken by her attack.

Annie whirled, seeking his face. In his sad and staring eyes, his sunken cheeks and drooping mouth, she read the truth: Happy was dead.

Happy, sweet-faced and kindly the night they met. Happy, angry and frustrated, striking out at Rachel. Happy, who tried so hard to live up to her name, avoiding conflict, ignoring trouble. Who would kill Happy?

In three long strides, Marguerite reached the dock. She flung out a hand toward dumpy, shaken Joan. “Tell him.” Marguerite pointed at Chief Garrett. “Tell him what you saw.”

Garrett lifted a broad hand. “That's fine, Mrs. Du
maney. Our investigation is far from complete. We intend to interview everyone. But for now—”

“I insist.” Marguerite's voice throbbed. “The truth must be revealed. Here. Now. Joan”—her tone was imperious—“you shall speak.” A pulse throbbed in the old actress's throat.

Garrett looked at Marguerite Dumaney uneasily, obviously displeased to have a possible witness publicly questioned, but unwilling to precipitate a stormy scene with an emotionally distraught woman who was also the sister of the victim. Annie recalled Garrett's address to the Broward's Rock Women's Club in which he pledged that the members of his force would always treat the community with concern and respect.

Joan Ladson drew in her shoulders. She glanced toward Wayne, carefully did not look at Pudge.

“Joan!” Marguerite commanded.

Wayne gave a short nod.

Joan cleared her throat. “I was down here in the garden. I love the flowers and I don't have anything like this at home.” She looked around the luxuriant semitropical garden. Her lips twisted. “I live in an apartment.” She pointed at a cluster of rosebushes. “I was cutting buds and I heard someone running.” She shot a timid glance at Pudge. “He came down the path.” She held tightly to the basket. “He was carrying something long, something wrapped in a blanket. He didn't see me.”

Marguerite lifted her chin. Her eyes blazed. “What was his demeanor?”

“That's quite enough now.” Garrett turned to Pudge. “Mr. Laurance, if you'll move along…”

Pudge looked toward the rosebushes where Joan Ladson had knelt, invisible to anyone hurrying down the path from the house. Pudge shook his head, not in negation but
in dismay, as if this were just one more problem, one more fact to toss into a churning equation.

Every face was turned toward Pudge. Alice's intelligent eyes focused on the damp patch on his slacks. Wayne smoothed his beard and glared. Terry's color improved and he relaxed his tight grip on the back of the bench. Donna gave a little shake as if removing herself from sordidness.

Annie's sense of icy despair deepened. Why didn't Pudge explain? Surely there had been a reason, a good reason, for him to run down the path carrying God knew what. And why, oh why, didn't he say that he hadn't killed Happy?

But Pudge said nothing, his face abstracted, his eyes distant, a man dealing with a problem, collating, thinking, judging. Improvising?

Marguerite's instinct for drama led her to the heart of the moment. “Let the man speak, Officer. It's simple, isn't it? Let him say whether he is innocent.” She stared at Pudge, her steely gaze unwavering. “Innocence”—the pause after the word was long, mesmerizing—“has no reason for silence.”

Pudge matched her stare, his equally hard. “Playing to the box seats, Marguerite? Save it for the next matinee. Happy's dead and you don't give a damn.” The hardness ebbed. Once again he looked bewildered and worried. He rubbed his eyes; then, head down, he brushed past the actress, strode up the path toward the hourse. Garrett hurriedly followed.

Max bent close to Annie, said softly, “I'll call Johnny Joe.” Johnny Joe Jenkins was a lawyer on the mainland, young, bright, quick and savvy. If anybody could keep Pudge out of jail, it was Johnny Joe. Max added, “See
what you can find out,” as he started up the path after Pudge.

Annie knew it made sense for her to stay behind. Pudge would be all right as long as Max was at hand. All right? Would he ever be all right? What had happened? Who would kill cheerful, smiling Happy? How had she been killed? Where? When? Why did Pudge have blood on his slacks? Would Garrett notice the wetness? Of course he would. Annie wished she didn't feel so cold and lost. Pudge didn't kill Happy. Of course he didn't. Surely he didn't…

Marguerite's face flushed a dark plum. The queen had not dismissed her subjects. Her elegant features sharpened. Her mouth twisted. Eyes blazing, she took one step toward the house; then, almost without pause, so smoothly the moment of anger might never have been, her face sagged into lines of sorrow. One hand clutched at her throat. “My sister. My beloved sister.” Tears welled, streaked down her face. She cried with the abandon of a lost child. “Oh, Happy, Happy.” She reached out blindly.

Wayne stepped forward, slipped an arm around Marguerite's bent shoulders, gently guided her to the path.

Terry shot a skeptical look at his brother and stepmother. Instead of following their slow progress up the north path, he took a deep breath and headed for the south path, walking fast, and was soon halfway to the house. Donna flounced after him.

Annie couldn't hope to catch Terry or Donna without calling out. She didn't want to attract any attention. But Joan had stopped at the rosebushes to pick up the clippers.

Annie knew she wouldn't have a better chance. She took two steps, then felt a firm hand on her arm. “Mrs. Darling.”

It was shocking to turn and look into that face so uncannily similar to the ravaged beauty of Marguerite Dumaney. Yet, after the first glance, the resemblance faded. Alice Schiller had no aura of power. Her makeup-bare face conveyed no passion, no presence. But the hand that clutched Annie's arm held tight.

“Will you help me?” There was an echo of Marguerite, but this voice was thin, unemphatic. In contrast to Marguerite's stylish green silk robe, Alice looked shabby in a worn purple velour blouse and faded black slacks. “I must hurry to Marguerite. She needs me.”

Annie stared into intelligent eyes now filled with concern. This woman knew Marguerite Dumaney better than any of the others and she was frightened for the aging star. Annie felt confused. Had Marguerite's impassioned attack been a performance or was it real? Obviously, Alice Schiller saw pain instead of artifice.

As if in answer to Annie's unspoken judgment, Alice let go of Annie, took a step toward the house. “I don't know how Marguerite can bear this. She counted on Happy. Always.” Alice took a deep breath. “I must go to Marguerite. But someone must help Rachel.”

Rachel! Annie felt shaken, sick. How could she have forgotten Rachel? She'd looked around the garden and seen those watching faces and never once thought about Rachel. But it wasn't until Marguerite's arrival and attack on Pudge that Annie had realized that Happy was dead. That knowledge changed everything. Pudge had no real link to Marguerite, but his link to Happy was clear. Annie had been so bound up in Pudge and his obvious distress that she hadn't grasped what Happy's death meant. Oh, Rachel, poor baby, poor baby.

“She's locked in her room. She won't open the door. She yelled at me to go away, leave her alone.” Alice
looked hopefully at Annie. “You were nice to her that night at dinner and she's talked and talked about you, called you her sister, said she finally has a sister just like she'd always wanted. Will you see if she'll let you in?”

Annie stared up at the house, the house with so many windows. “Poor baby.” When Annie's mother died, Annie had been only a few years older than Rachel. She would never forget her desolation, her feeling of being utterly alone, her sense of betrayal. Most of all, she had been incredulous. How could her mother be dead? How could her mother not be?

Someone should have seen to Rachel. How long had she been locked away? What did she know? Would she let Annie help? Though Annie knew better than most that nothing would ever help in one sense, but in another love always helped. She faced Alice. “I'll try. Yes, I will try. But first you have to tell me what's happened. I don't know anything, how Happy died or when or where, or who found her.” Pray God it had not been Rachel. “I have to know before I talk to her.” She needed to know for Rachel. She had to know for Pudge.

Why hadn't Pudge denied killing Happy?
Annie pushed the thought away, stared at Alice Schiller.

Alice wrung her hands and looked anxiously up the path. “I must hurry.” Her mobile face—and once again there was that echo of Marguerite's emotive brilliance—shifted, flattened, as if pummeled by shock. “This morning”—her thin voice dropped, mournful as a winter wind—“I was coming out of Marguerite's suite. The door to Happy's suite opened.” Her eyes slid toward Annie, then away.

Annie remembered once diving into a wave and coming up enmeshed in slippery fronds of seaweed and the sweaty wash of panic as she thrashed to break free. Was
this how Pudge felt? Were he and Max still in the house? There was no one down at the dock now, not even Billy Cameron.

Alice fingered the irregular chunks of turquoise in her necklace and continued to avoid Annie's eyes.

Annie knew, but she had to ask. “Who came out?”

“Mr. Laurance.” The name dangled between them. Alice cleared her throat, then spoke quickly, the words tumbling out in that thin voice. “He poked his head out first, looked up and down the hall. He didn't see me. People often don't.” She said the last calmly, without much interest. “He came out into the hall. He was carrying something. He turned away from me, toward the stairs. He looked back into the room and he shuddered. I thought perhaps he was ill. Then he reached out and pulled the door shut very slowly. There wasn't any noise at all.”

Annie listened with growing despair.

Alice hunched her shoulders. “It was so strange. The minute the door closed, he ran. I was shocked. A moment before, I'd thought he was sick. Then he ran. He reached the stairs and went down them and he was gone. I walked up the hall. When I came to Happy's door, I stopped and knocked. I was on my way to see her. Marguerite wanted her to come for breakfast.”

To push away the vision of Pudge bolting out of that room, easing shut the door, then running, Annie asked, though it scarcely mattered, “Was that usual?”

Alice nodded. “Oh yes. Marguerite needs attention, you know. Sometimes she'd ask Happy, sometimes Wayne, sometimes a guest. When she was bored with me for company.” Once again she was matter-of-fact, not resentful, simply reporting. “This morning she wanted Happy. Happy never minded. She always liked visiting.
She liked being with people. Happy…” She paused, swallowed, pressed a hand against her throat. “Everyone loved Happy.”

Annie looked at her sharply, wondering if Alice heard the absurdity in her statement. Because someone sure as hell hadn't loved Happy.

Alice continued, almost as if to herself. “Happy was so bright and sweet. Serious, you know, and perhaps a little silly. Marguerite said she wasn't very bright. But that wasn't fair. Happy adored Marguerite. She wasn't the least bit jealous, either, even though Marguerite was already famous when Happy was just a little girl. We'd come to visit them and Marguerite was always in a whirl of parties and men following her about and she wasn't more than twenty then. Happy used to stay up late at night, slip out of her room, so that she could see Marguerite come in from a dance. Sometimes I think that's why Happy was never able to find the right man. She remembered those years and Marguerite the belle of the ball. This was several years before Marguerite met Claude and he simply swept her off her feet. He was much older, you know. I'm afraid he was married at the time”—Alice's tone was defensive—“but Marguerite had to have him. Hell wouldn't rest or heaven, either, until he was hers. I have to say, though it was a wrong way to start, theirs was a love match. Marguerite adored Claude until the day he died. I thought Marguerite was going to die, too. Oh, I had such a hard time with her. Happy came and helped. That was when Happy's first marriage failed. But Happy knew Marguerite needed her. And Happy was fickle, I'm afraid. Always looking for a great romance. But she was nice and sweet to everyone. That's why I knew something was wrong when she didn't answer my knock. Happy would never ignore anyone. Not like Mar
guerite. If Marguerite doesn't want to be bothered, she'll look right through you. That's why I opened the door. I shouldn't have. It isn't right to open someone's door without an invitation.” Her tone was prim. “But I opened it.” Her eyes closed. She gave a little moan. “Oh, Happy. I remember when I first met her.” Tears edged from beneath those tightly closed lashes. “She was fourteen and she'd stay close to me when Marguerite was too busy for her. She was like a little sister to me.” There was a lifetime of love in her voice.

Her eyes snapped open, wide and strained. “I opened the door. Oh God, so much blood.”

Annie drew her breath in sharply, seeing in her mind the bright crimson splash of blood.

Alice pressed her hands against her cheeks. “I don't know how long I stood there. It seemed hours and hours. The sun was spilling in through the windows, pouring over Happy. She was slumped on the sofa, beaten down on the sofa, her poor head all broken and bloody. Blood everywhere, on her head and face and arms and dress, on the cushions, on the floor. Everywhere.” Alice shuddered. “I closed the door and I went to find Wayne. I asked him to call the police.” Just for an instant, her face thinned. “He had to look for himself, of course. Men are such fools. As if I didn't know what I had seen. But it didn't matter. I knew he would get the police when he saw. I went to Rachel's room. She has a funny little nook on the third floor.” She lifted anguished eyes to Annie. “I tried to keep her there.”