Sugarplum Dead (4 page)

Annie looked after her with amazement. A beau on either arm. Hot damn. But beneath Annie's admiration, worry pulsed. That satisfied look of Laurel's—what did it mean?

Max bent down, kissed the top of Annie's head. “Come on, sweetie, it's vintage Laurel. She's having a blast. Everybody in the room heard that exchange. She's obvi
ously decided to be the village eccentric.” He was half amused, half exasperated. “If there's anyone in town who hasn't heard about her performance in the cemetery, they will know after tonight.”

Annie stared across the floor at Laurel, still circled by admirers. All male, of course. “Why does she want to talk to him?”

Max blinked. “Annie, don't ask questions that can't be answered. Who knows? It can't be anything too serious. They were only married for two years.”

Annie had never sorted out the order of Laurel's spouses. Max's father, of course. And a sculptor. Arturo, the race car driver. A general. And a professor. Maybe Arturo was the most fun.

Max grinned. “Actually, I liked Arturo. Laurel called him Buddy. Man, did he drive fast!”

The band swung into “Tuxedo Junction.” Max grabbed her hand. “Come on, Annie, let's dance.”

Annie felt the old familiar thrill course through her. She loved to dance, but she wasn't sure you could always dance your troubles away. As she and Max swung onto the floor, she couldn't quite dismiss her memory of Laurel's savvy, satisfied look.

Or the face of the man who'd left her and her mother behind so long ago.

 

A pale streak of silver speared into the dusky room, the crescent moon free for a moment from scudding clouds. Annie lay wide awake, Max's body curved next to hers, his arm warm over her waist, his breath soft against her neck. The silvery beam briefly illuminated a white wicker divan and a table with photographs and a small china Christmas tree decorated with sugarplums. When she was little and awoke in the December night, she
imagined sugarplums dancing along the moonbeam. The ever-present Great Plains wind rustling the sycamore trees became Santa's husky laughter as he directed his sleigh over head. The pale moonlight wavered, was gone, prisoner again of the capricious clouds. How many years had it been since she'd pictured plump and luscious sugarplums on an avenue of silver?

How many years…? She moved restlessly.

Max's arm tightened, pulling her nearer. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Christmas memories fluttered like brightly patterned cards slapping into a pile…a heavy snow and the rush of icy air as her sled careened down a hill…her mother's face flushed from the heat of the oven as she lifted out loaves of pumpkin bread meant for gifts, but there was always one for Annie…the procession at the Midnight Service, joyous and triumphant…opening presents on Christmas morning…

“He was never there.” Her voice ached with unshed tears. “I used to think…oh, when I was really little…that someday he would come. I even wrote letters to Santa Claus. Oh well.” Now her voice was dry, removed, cool. “I grew up.”

Max gently turned her to face him and their faces were inches apart on the pillow. “Annie, maybe—”

“It's too late, Max.” But she knew as she spoke that her father's unexpected appearance, this confrontation with a past that she had never even known, had cast her adrift on a sea of memories, expectations, losses—and fears. Was her father's instability a part of her? She'd always made plans, followed them. How much of that tenacity sprang from her early loss? Would she ever walk away from those who cared for her?

“But he's alive.” Max's hand gripped hers. “My dad…well, I guess I always knew he wasn't really there for any of us. I kept thinking some Christmas he would really see us, my sisters and me. But he could scarcely wait for the presents to be unwrapped to leave. He went to the office on Christmas Day.”

At her involuntary movement, he rolled over on his elbow, stared down in the darkness. “I mean it. Christmas Day. There was always something he had to see to. Oh, he came home for dinner, but I don't think he was ever aware of us. It's like we were invisible and he lived in a world bounded by work. If he had lived…But I don't think he would have changed. I swore that I would never be like him. Never.”

Annie felt a rush of tenderness for the little boy whose father never saw him. Maybe that was worse than a father who was never there. At least she hadn't had to deal with a quartet of stepfathers. She reached up, gently touched Max's face.

He turned his mouth, kissed the palm of her hand.

She felt his lips spread in a smile. She looked up and the moonlight flared again and she saw his familiar grin and the gleam in his blue eyes.

“But you can't say the girls and I didn't have fun with Ma.” His voice was light and lively. “And I guess she made us feel good about Dad because she's always had good taste in men—so he must have been fun sometimes.”

Fun. Annie felt a pang. Max had devoted his life to fun. No one pursued pleasure and good times with more élan.

Fun—wasn't that why her father had left her mother? She and her mother had never talked about her father, about who he was or why he left or what he had done with his life, but she remembered standing outside the
living room one afternoon when she was fourteen and listening to her mother and Uncle Ambrose and hearing her mother's quiet, bitter comment, “All he wanted was to have a good time.” Annie had known they were talking about her father. That was all she heard, whirling around and hurrying down the hall to her own room, flinging her schoolbooks on the bed and thinking: So that's why he left, so that's why!

“Hey, Annie, let it go.” Max's arms slipped around her; his lips brushed her cheek, slipped softly toward her mouth. “It's okay. We're okay.”

Were they? Her absent father, his distant father, his ditzy (surely it was no more than that!) mother, how much did they matter for Annie and Max? Just for an instant she lay still, and then her lips opened and fear was lost in passion.

A
NNIE GLANCED IN
her rearview mirror. That blue Ford had been behind her red Volvo on Saturday when she went to the store. She'd spotted it on Sunday afternoon when she and Max went to the club for brunch. Now it was behind her this morning, obviously having waited for her to pass one of the side roads that opened onto Sand Dollar Road. It didn't take the perspicacity of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown to guess the identity of the driver.

Annie picked up speed. It didn't matter. Her too-late father could trail her around the island from now until next summer and she wouldn't change her mind. She had too much to do, including shopping for Max and thinking about the future—a future that did not include the driver of the blue Ford. She slammed out of her car, ignoring the Ford as it parked in the lane behind her. Whistling “Jingle Bells,” she hurried toward the boardwalk.

Red and green Christmas garlands were wrapped around the light poles and strung along the seawall. The sun sparkled on jade-green water and boats ranging from sailfish to yachts. Annie took a deep breath and looked beyond the harbor to a pod of porpoises playfully diving. It was already in the fifties and would reach the low six
ties, a December day that made winter seem far away. A happy day, and a day she was determined to keep that way, despite the blue Ford. And Laurel.

Annie heard footsteps behind her.

She walked faster, reached Death on Demand, unlocked the door and hurried inside. She moved purposefully down the center aisle, accompanied by Agatha, who nipped at her ankle in between emitting sharp yowls.

“I am not late,” Annie protested. “And you have dry food; delicious, nutritious dry food.” Annie picked up speed and was glad for evasion skills perfected in long-ago soccer games. She reached the coffee bar unscathed, shook down fresh food, opened a can of dietary soft food.

Agatha glared, then crouched over her bowl.

Gradually, Annie relaxed. The front door hadn't opened. Okay, should she string the Christmas lights around the mugs shelved behind the coffee bar? Or unpack some of the boxes of books that had arrived Saturday? She moved briskly to the storeroom and picked up the box marked
COFFEE BAR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
.

As Annie deposited the box on the coffee bar, the phone rang. She reached out.

“Death on Demand, the finest mystery bookstore east of Atlanta.” She loved the phrase, which rolled over her tongue as easily as a Godiva chocolate.

“And south of Pittsburgh,” came a cheerful voice.

“Henny!” Henrietta Brawley was Death on Demand's best customer, a club woman of enormous skill and dedication, a gifted actress, a former schoolteacher, a onetime Peace Corps volunteer and she was, most of all, one of Annie's best friends. Annie felt only a small pang as she realized that Henny, vacationing in Pittsburgh, had probably done a lot of her book shopping at Mystery Lovers Bookshop in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont.
But this wasn't the season to be piggy. “Say hello to Mary Alice for me.” Annie had met Mary Alice Gorman, the ebullient owner, at a mystery conference.

“Will do. Annie, I've actually seen the hospital where Mary Roberts Rinehart went to nursing school!” Sheer delight lifted her voice. “I tried to figure out the wing where she and the others were quarantined with that smallpox outbreak over Christmas of 1895.”

Annie lifted the lid of the box, pulled out a strand and began to untangle it. Why had she put the lights away snarled like a ball of yarn attacked by Agatha?

A black nose poked over the edge of the box.

Oh. Right. Agatha had no doubt helped with the dismantling last Christmas, which might have encouraged a dump-it-in-fast mentality. A black paw patted the end of the strand. Annie reached for another strand. Maybe she could work with this one while Agatha investigated the first.

“Gosh, Henny, the actual building?” Mary Roberts Rinehart, once the grande dame of American mystery writers, had entered nursing school in late August of 1893 at the tender age of sixteen. It was there that she met a handsome young surgeon, Dr. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, who tutored her in German (an excuse to meet) and later would become her husband.

“Yes. I even walked down the halls. But I don't know where the smallpox ward was. In Christmas 1895 when she was quarantined with a rowdy group of patients, she and Stanley sang Christmas carols to quiet them down. You know, they both had excellent singing voices. Oh, Annie”—a sigh of pure happiness—“I am having so much fun. Except—”

Annie pushed the stepstool behind the coffee bar, climbed, and carefully clipped the strand to the edge of the mug shelves.

“—I'm snowed in. Eight inches and it's still falling. So I decided to make a few calls.”

Annie reached the end of one strand, leaned perilously sideways to snag another from the box. Agatha crouched to jump for the dangling end. Annie slipped loose a bracelet of bells and tossed it over Agatha's head. The cat turned in midjump. Annie was applauding her own quick-wittedness and missed most of Henny's sentence. “…wondered if you'd spoken with her.”

“Henny, you're the first person I've talked to this morning. Except for Max.” The second strand clipped into place nicely. Annie reached for the third strand.

“I hope Max isn't too worried,” Henny said quietly. “I'm afraid Laurel truly needs psychiatric help.”

The strand slithered from Annie's hands, caromed off the counter, clattered to the floor, one end landing in Agatha's water bowl.

“You talked to Laurel?” Annie sat down on the ladder.

“Well, you know how it is to talk to Laurel.” Henny sighed. “Annie, she is trying to communicate with that race car driver. You know, her third husband. Or maybe he was her second. And he's dead. When I asked why, she would only say, ‘I must. I must,' and then she skittered off, oh, you know how she does, and she chattered about crystals and gamma rays and auras—”

“Henny, you remember that woman—I don't recall her name, Ophelia something or other, and she lived at Nightingale Courts—”

“Of course I remember,” Henny interrupted crisply. “That's when Ingrid disappeared. Right after your wedding.”

That frightening disappearance had been solved with the help of Henny and Laurel. “You remember how Laurel wandered around murmuring about the boundaries of
the mind and how we should open ourselves up to cosmic fields—”

“This time it's different.” Henny spoke with finality, and Henny was not an alarmist. She was smart, empathetic, clever, a world-class mystery reader, and Laurel's good friend. “I'm sorry, Annie. I'll bet Max won't admit there's a problem”—Henny knew both of them very well indeed—“and I know it's Christmas and you're busy as you can be, but Laurel needs help.” There was a pause, then she added, her tone puzzled, “I tried Miss Dora first. She stays in touch with Laurel. But, Annie, it was the oddest thing. Miss Dora was evasive.”

Annie stared at the phone. This pronouncement was almost more shocking than Henny's concern for Laurel. Miss Dora Brevard, the doyenne of Chastain, South Carolina, was direct, to the point and never minced words.

“Anyway, I could probably get to Nome before I could get home. The airports are closed, but I have a huge stack—Oh well, Annie, have a great Christmas—but see about Laurel.”

Annie didn't even try to retrieve the felled light strand from Agatha, who was pulling it toward the front of the store. Instead, she walked slowly up the central aisle. By the time she reached the cash desk, she had the beginnings of a plan. It took six calls to find Pamela Potts.

“Oh hi, Annie.” Pamela took opportunities as they came. “You are so good to call. I'm sure we can count on you for two casseroles, can't we? I'm at the church now and we need to restock the freezer.”

Annie would have promised anything short of Max on a platter. “Listen Pamela, what time of day did you see Laurel at the cemetery?” Annie glanced toward the clock. A quarter to eleven.

“The church bell was striking, Annie. It was straight-up noon.”

“Thanks, Pamela.”

 

Max kept his expression pleasant but noncommittal as he shook hands with his visitor. But he felt stunned. Annie's dad. Max glanced at the picture on his desk, dear Annie with her steady gray eyes and sandy hair and grave smile, then looked at an older, masculine version of that treasured face.

Pudge Laurance stared at Annie's picture for a measurable moment, too, before he spoke. “You're Annie's husband?”

Max stood a little straighter, felt the intensity of another pair of gray eyes. He was absurdly pleased when Pudge Laurance smiled, a smile uncannily like Annie's, and said softly, “You love her?”

“I do.” Max said it as firmly as he had spoken on the memorable day of his and Annie's wedding.

Pudge grabbed Max's hand, pumped it again. “I'm Pudge Laurance and I need your help.”

Max found his visitor was instantly likable, his face genial, his tone affable. There was charm here and an appealing plaintiveness. But Max stepped back, folded his arms. “Annie doesn't want to see you. She said”—Max cleared his throat—“that you were twenty-five years too late.”

Pudge's eyes were deep pools of sadness. Lines etched a suddenly anguished face. His mouth drooped beneath his mustache. “Please.” He pointed at the chair in front of Max's desk. “Will you hear me out?”

Sandy hair, gray eyes, a face with lines that told of laughter and good humor. Max looked again at Annie's picture. She was so determined. And so hurt. Maybe there
weren't any words that could undo the silence of twenty-five years.

What harm could it do to listen?

Max waved toward the chair.

Pudge's grin was both insouciant and sad, ingratiating and abashed. It caught at Max's heart.

 

Dust curled from beneath the Volvo's wheels. In the thin light of the December sun, the long avenue beneath the live oaks had the murky quality of a grainy black and white photograph. Swaths of Spanish moss hung straight and still. The springlike warmth of the day didn't pierce the glossy green leaves. Annie shivered and rolled up her windows. It didn't take much imagination to hear the clip-clop of black hearses pulling a funeral hearse. A local legend held that on nights of the full moon, a tall woman in a long black cloak walked restlessly up and down the lane, seeking her husband who had been lost at sea in 1793.

Annie abruptly braked as a raccoon darted across the road. There were always explanations for sightings of that sort—a raccoon, for example, partially glimpsed, or an odd play of shadow in the lights of a car (but not in the 1800s), or simply a projection from the viewer's mind.

Whatever, Annie picked up speed. The sooner she got out of this dim tunnel, the happier she would be. Probably Laurel wouldn't come to the cemetery today. But the only way for Annie to judge Laurel's mental state would be to see for herself. She was more worried by Henny's call than she wanted to admit. Max, of course, continued to refuse to entertain any thought that Laurel's actions might be a cause for concern.

The road curved to the right and came out of the live oak tunnel on a bluff above the Sound. The water glistened like polished jade. Stone walls marked the bound
ary of the cemetery. An iron gate marked the entrance. The gate was open.

Laurel's latest car, a bright blue restored Morris Minor, was parked near a line of pittosporum shrubs to one side of the small whitewashed chapel which every year came closer to extinction. When first raised, the little chapel must have been far distant from the bluffs facing the Sound. Erosion at the pace of three feet a year from the force of tidal currents and storm surf had brought the crumbling shoreline within a stone's throw. Henny Brawley was chair of a committee raising funds to move the chapel. The cemetery, laid out to the south, was as yet in no danger.

Annie parked behind the shiny Morris. The slam of the Volvo door startled a deer in a nearby shrub. The deer bolted, its fluffy white tail readily visible in contrast to its dusky gray winter coat.

The onshore breeze rustled the shrubs as Annie stepped through the gate. Graves with tumbling, weathered headstones seemed to be tucked at random among the graceful slash pines, glossy-leaved magnolias and, of course, the ever-present live oaks. Annie was not a graveyard habitué. She looked around and felt as out of place as a redneck in a tearoom. She had no business here in this serene enclave of peace and farewell.

She would have turned back, but she heard a faraway murmur, the sound of a voice she knew well. Annie took a deep breath and walked swiftly, following the dusty gray path as it wound past family lots and occasional lone graves. Some of these bore fresh Christmas wreaths. She stopped to look down at one grave:

 

W
ALTER
W
ALLACE

A
PRIL
12, 1840–J
UNE
16, 1863

 

It didn't take a history book to know that war had claimed a short life. The wreath was so fresh that when Annie leaned down to straighten the bow, she could smell the fresh pine. Pamela Potts had come this way.

The husky voice murmured on the other side of a clump of pines.

Annie ducked through the pines, slipping a little on slick golden needles. She pushed aside a limb.

Laurel had obviously given some thought to her appearance. Annie wondered what it revealed of her mother-in-law's psyche that she had selected (quite a nice foil for her blond beauty) a navy wool gabardine jacket with gold-cord-trimmed sleeves, peaked lapels, six gold-tone crest buttons and flap pockets with a gold-and-white-striped blouse and white wool slacks. The gold cord on the jacket matched the gold-trim chain on her navy kidskin flats. Laurel looked equally ready to man a flotilla or tap-dance in
The Pirates of Penzance.

A half dozen graves ranged on ground sloping down from a ridge. Laurel stood with one hand on the marble steering wheel that jutted from the largest gravestone.