Dare to Die Read online

  Dare to Die

  A Death on Demand Mystery

  Carolyn Hart

  To PDH, Jr.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Iris Tilford held tight to the Exercycle hand grips, pumped…

  Chapter 2

  That cat’s done it again.” Ingrid’s shout from the front…

  Chapter 3

  Annie pushed inside Cabin Six. A crumpled figure lay near…

  Chapter 4

  Emma’s eyes blinked open. She looked vague, then her gaze,…

  Chapter 5

  The water was perfect, not too warm, not too cold.

  Chapter 6

  The police car shot past them, stopped near the path…

  Chapter 7

  The small office was cramped. An unlit cigar rested in…

  Chapter 8

  Billy Cameron tapped a quart-size plastic bag that held the…

  Chapter 9

  At the coffee hour after the early service, Cara Wilkes…

  Chapter 10

  The pumper truck headlights illuminated the cabin as the roof…

  Chapter 11

  Annie loved the view from Henny’s deck. The incoming tide…

  Chapter 12

  Billy Cameron dropped a tool with a thin oblong blade…

  Chapter 13

  As she came out of the Gazette office, Annie glanced…

  Chapter 14

  Annie pushed through the heavy wooden door of Parotti’s. She…

  Chapter 15

  The front door to Confidential Commissions was locked, which indicated…

  Chapter 16

  Annie drew her sweater close. She felt drained. The caw…

  Chapter 17

  Annie stepped inside Yesterday’s Treasures.

  Chapter 18

  Annie pushed the small mahogany table a little to the…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Carolyn Hart

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Iris Tilford held tight to the Exercycle hand grips, pumped the pedals. She was the last one working out tonight in the mission gym. A cool April breeze eddied through open windows in the ramshackle building. Red, green, and purple flashed in her eyes from the pulsating neon sign above the bar across the street. She tried to block out thrumming guitars and a nasal twang singing of love gone wrong. Iris didn’t like country music, but she’d closed down a lot of bars.

  Her throat felt suddenly parched. A beer…

  No. Never.

  One day at a time. That’s what she had to hold to, one day at a time. She pushed away memories of stuporous nights and drug-induced fantasies. One day at a time…

  She pumped harder. That’s what Kirk told her. When the demons come, push and pound and sweat. You’ve got seventy-three days. Keep it up, one day at a time….

  The gym in its former life had been Murray’s Garage with an oil-stained floor, thin wooden walls, and a tin roof. Now the building housed partitioned sleeping areas for men and women, a kitchen and dining area, and a ragtag collection of exercise equipment. Iris wished the mission wasn’t across from the bar and the neon flashes that pulled at her, but space was cheap in this seedy Savannah neighborhood where bar signs flickered and music wailed or thumped all through the night.

  “Good going, Iris.” Kirk’s voice was surprisingly soft for such a big man. “Brought you some Gatorade.” Kirk’s face had the texture of beaten silver, but his brown eyes, eyes that had seen too much, were kind.

  Iris felt a moment’s pride. Beaten silver. She remembered that from an art class she’d taken…. She drooped inside. She didn’t know when or where she’d been in an art class. There were so many things she didn’t remember.

  He held out a plastic cup in his left hand. His right arm was a stub that poked from a floppy T-shirt sleeve.

  Iris realized she was breathing in short, quick gasps. She felt dizzy. Time to stop. But when she stopped, she felt the pull of the neon. She took the cup, drank greedily.

  “You’re doing great.” His deep voice reminded her of a bear’s growl, a sunny Disney bear, not a fearsome north woods bear.

  She stared at him, mournful and frightened. “I got to make it better.”

  “Can’t remake the world in a hurry.” He spoke slowly, as if there were hours and days and years enough for everything. “One day at a time.”

  She finished the sweet orange drink, handed him the cup. “I’ll ride a little longer. That helps.” Iris wiped sweat from her face, pushed back a tendril of damp hair, bent again to the handlebars. As the pedals whirred, she made her decision. Part of getting well was making things right. She couldn’t change what had happened at the picnic. But she could go back to the island. Nana was dead. No one there cared about her. That made it easier to return. She couldn’t have endured seeing Nana’s face lined with grief. She’d broken Nana’s heart. At the time, the decision had seemed simple. Leave the island, leave behind her questions and fears and doubts. Instead, she’d carried misery with her, a burden that grew heavier with the passage of time.

  Iris’s memory was spotty. For years she’d blocked away a picture of that night, Jocelyn hurrying into the fog, a figure slipping after her. Maybe she’d dreamed that moment. There had been so many dreams. Jocelyn’s death might have had nothing to do with Iris. Iris wished she could remember the timing. Once she saw one person walk into the fog with Jocelyn. Another time she remembered a different person. Which person came last? And why, this was the terrible aching inescapable question, why hadn’t anyone admitted going into the woods with Jocelyn?

  Iris wouldn’t know until she asked. If her fears were the product of dreams, she would finally rid herself of the deep dark emptiness that accused her. If she didn’t go to the island and discover the truth, she would succumb to the insatiable lust for oblivion.

  She had to be brave.

  One day at a time…

  BUCK CARLISLE WALKED AT A DELIBERATE PACE TO THE FRONT hall. He was never eager in the morning to leave for his office. He moved quickly and felt young and alive only during those shining moments in his workshop. Last night he’d almost finished a white pine table with a mosaic inlay. His workshop was as near heaven as he ever expected to come, the smell of wood as he planed, the feel of tools that seemed to fit into his hand as if specially made. Often he shared those moments with Terry. His daughter was the light of his life, her ebony dark hair cut in bangs above a round expressive little girl’s face with brown eyes that brimmed with love for her daddy. He and Fran had been closer ever since Terry came, watching in wonder as a toddler became a little girl, so cheerful and kind and caring. Fran was much too restless to spend time in the workshop though she always admired what he made.

  He paused in the hallway, reached out for his briefcase. The briefcase was a deep, rich tan, made of finest English leather with his initials in gold. Fran had given it to him for his birthday. As he gripped the handles, he saw himself in the elegant rococo Chippendale mirror. Nothing in Fran’s house was anything less than perfect.

  Except for him. He stared into puzzled brown eyes. He hadn’t changed much since high school. Ten years later and his hair was still a thick, curly brown, his face squarish with a blunt chin, his expression befuddled. In a few minutes, his father would glare at him. “I expected the Addison brief on my desk this morning. For God’s sake, Buck, most of the time I think you’re half addled.”

  Somehow he’d get through the day, one more day as the buffoon lawyer in his father’s office. The brief was due tomorrow.

  Ten years…He pushed away memories. If Jocelyn hadn’t died, if she’d made good on her threat, his father would have kicked him out. He’d hav
e had to get a job, maybe ended up a finish carpenter, holding wood in his hands, shaping it, loving it. Instead, Jocelyn died and he went to college and on to law school. If he hadn’t gone to college, he wouldn’t be a lawyer. Fran wouldn’t have married him if he’d been a carpenter. He knew that. But if he hadn’t gone to college and on to law school and married Fran, he wouldn’t have Terry.

  He reached for the doorknob. He couldn’t delay any longer or his father would be furious.

  FRAN CARLISLE’S EBONY HAIR GLEAMED IN A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT through her office window. She wasn’t beautiful. Her features were irregular, her chin too pointed, her shoulders bony, her movements too restless and jerky, but everything about her was tasteful. Taste mattered to her. On the near wall hung a Richmond Burton oil on canvas with elliptical spheres in gold, blue, and white. A pebbly red-and-orange Ettore Spalletti sculpture sat on a teak stand behind her English oak desk.

  She made a final entry on the spreadsheet. Fran was punctilious about recording income and expenses. For the fourth straight year, she’d made more than seventy thousand dollars. Today marked the sixth anniversary of Yesterday’s Treasures. Even her snooty mother-in-law with her pale eyes and thin mouth observed that the store was exceptionally tasteful.

  Fran picked up a creamy envelope, pulled out an engraved invitation. Here it was, a genteel request for her presence at the next meeting of the Palmetto Club. Since its inception in 1878, the club had maintained the privacy of its membership rolls, but those who belonged knew and their membership set them apart. To belong was the height of social success on Broward’s Rock.

  Fran’s smile was sunny. The Palmetto Club. Life couldn’t be better.

  Except for the party Friday night.

  For an instant, her face was empty of all expression. Annie and Max Darling had no idea the picnic pavilion held meaning for some of their guests. Those who were there the night Jocelyn died avoided coming together this time of year.

  Jocelyn…Fran steeled herself, refused to remember.

  The Darling party had been scheduled to welcome friends to the Franklin house, the antebellum mansion they were restoring. When water damage delayed their occupancy, they rented the harbor pavilion for their event, styling it as a celebration of hospitality to come.

  Fran enjoyed the close-knit social circles on the island, but that very closeness made it impossible to decline a party unless ill or off island. Her fingers ached. She drew in a breath, realized she’d crushed her Palmetto Club invitation.

  CARA WILKES HELD THE DOOR WIDE. SHE KEPT HER PERKY smile intact, a requisite for real estate agents selling to the superrich. She knew she was perfect for her part, sandy hair in a gamine style, dangling earrings framing a narrow face, loose silk blouse, white silk slacks, a multichain necklace with bright topaz beads, peony-pink leather sandals. She was stylish enough to enhance the clients’ experience, yet clearly subservient.

  She appraised her quarry, a willowy brunette with wide-spaced blue eyes and a chunky balding man twenty years older. Good. Papa Bear would be eager to flex his financial muscles. Cara slipped into her patter. “You’ll note the terrazzo floor in the entryway and the Bohemian glass chandelier in the entry hall. The spirit of the house”—a sardonic inner voice murmured: conspicuous consumption on a Lalique level—“is explicit in the magnificence of the main living area. Sixty-five feet in length, fifteen feet high with the dome reaching a center peak of twenty-five feet.” She took two quick steps and pirouetted to gesture at the white room framed by marble pillars ridged like the trunks of coconut palms and topped by feathery bronze fronds. White marble walls were as cool as a crypt. Not an image she would share, but one that afforded her pleasure, a crypt and imaginary biers holding a willowy trophy wife and her pig-eyed husband. Light filtered through Chinese window tiles circling the central dome, providing a soft luster for the Chinese and Philippine rattan furniture.

  “Harry,” the thin woman’s voice was breathy. “It’s gorgeous. Just gorgeous.”

  “One of a kind,” Cara chirped. “Nine bedrooms, nine baths. Ten thousand square feet. A king master suite with a Carrara marble hot tub. One of two master suites, of course. The other adjoins the Olympic-size pool. There are three living areas in addition to this grand space.” Another wave of her hand. She noted a chipped nail. Not appropriate for a servitor of the upper crust. Did she care? “The theater and gaming rooms open to the back terrace that overlooks the ocean.”

  Harry was balding and fiftyish, his Tommy Bahama shirt open at the neck to reveal a mat of dark chest hair. His right arm was tattooed from shoulder to wrist in a blaze of purple and black. He wouldn’t fit in with the Astors, but he’d moored a four-million-dollar yacht at the marina. Today’s new superrich had more marbles than almost any in history and many exulted in vulgarity.

  He jingled coins in his pocket. “It’s got possibilities. We’ll look it over. You can wait here for us.”

  “I’ll be happy to show you—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t worry, babe. We won’t rip off any of the fancy john seats.” With that he strode toward the hallway, his bellow of laughter echoing from the marble walls. The brunette trotted to catch up.

  Cara shrugged. She strolled past nineteenth-century Ottoman glass lamps, a dhurrie rug, a nineteenth-century settee covered in green-blue silk and stepped onto the piazza. The ocean was placid today.

  Passionate longing swept her. If she could be a kid again and run to the water and dive beneath a wave and come up wet and sleek and happy, sure of sunny days, unaware of the heartbreak and failure that lay ahead. How long had it been since she’d been happy? She’d thought her burdened heart would mend if she came home, came back to the island where she’d once been carefree, eager, confident that every day would be wonderful. Coming home hadn’t helped. She still ached inside. The days, no matter how sunny, seemed framed in gray. Now there was the Darlings’ party at the pavilion.

  She wouldn’t go.

  Buck would be there.

  So would Fran.

  RUSSELL MONTGOMERY CHECKED THE CALLER ID ON HIS CELL. Liz, of course. Calling to see how the meeting at the bank went. Or to ask whether he’d like coconut cake or crème brûlée for dessert. The more she did for him, the worse he felt. Liz had nursed a squirrel with a broken paw back to health. She took soup to the sick, called on shut-ins, volunteered for most island charities, enjoyed running her own antique store downtown. Yet, there was another Liz. He blocked away the memory of the fury he’d once glimpsed in her eyes, fury because she felt she was losing him.

  He stood by the white pickup, red-faced beneath a grimy oversize Panama hat. Sweat stained his blue polo shirt. Mud splashes streaked his baggy khaki shorts. Wet clumps of gray dirt clung to his work boots. At the last ring, tension eased out of his body. He hadn’t trusted himself to talk to her now. The misery that stained his soul was too near to the surface today.

  Damn the Darlings.

  His face ridged in resentment, but he tamped down the feeling as he’d tamped down feelings for so many years. He tried to focus on the here and now, gazing at the scaffolding at the side of the church. The persistent day-after-day rain had finally stopped though thunder was due this afternoon. The men were making progress with the painting. If they didn’t get done by June, a thousand-dollar-per-day penalty would begin to run. He shouldn’t have agreed to that clause, but he needed the job and now he was behind because of the rains. The crew was three men short…. That last shipment of two-by-fours was warped…. The flashing around the chimney needed to be replaced….

  Beneath the swirl of worries, he wished he’d told Liz to turn down the Darlings’ invitation. Liz would have looked at him with concern, but she would have done as he asked. Now it was too late. Besides, it wouldn’t be smart to offend Max Darling. He’d paid handsomely for the work on the Franklin house and he was being remarkably patient about the plumbing mess. The subcontractor hadn’t shown up or returned Russell’s calls for two days. Maybe it was time to ask B
uck to send a demand letter.

  Russell gripped the cell phone. What if he called Liz now and told her the truth? He’d never been sure how much Liz knew. Liz had always been crazy about him. After he and Jocelyn broke up, he’d started dating Liz. Several times she’d tried to talk about Jocelyn. One night he told her to leave the past alone. She never asked again.

  How would Liz feel if he told her the truth? Would she look at him with loathing? He’d kept quiet all these years, but the ugliness festered inside. If he told her, maybe it would be like lancing a boil and letting the poison stream free.

  He was too late, years too late.

  Russell shoved the cell into his pocket, moved toward the construction trailer.

  LIZ MONTGOMERY PUSHED WITH HER FOOT TO JAM STEEL claws into the ground. She pulled on the shaft and gouged out the weed. She swung the tool over a plastic barrel to dump the weed with its dangling roots and fragments of sandy earth. A half-dozen members of the Sea Side Garden Club, all in dusty pink, wide-brimmed hats and pink-and-green-striped smocks, worked on the grounds of the Pickett house, the antebellum home maintained by the island historical society. Guided tours were available three times weekly and high tea was served every Thursday afternoon.

  Liz braced the weeder against the trash bin and knelt to use a hand tool plucked from her smock. She loved the smell of freshly turned earth, the feel of dirt on her hands. She had gardening gloves, but she rarely wore them. Her verbenas were the envy of the garden club. She loved all the varieties of lavender plants. Tall spiky lavender plants grew in profusion on either side of their drive. The scent was heavenly from spring through early fall. She enjoyed making lavender potpourri and sachets, which she sold in her shop. Her beautiful flowers…They brought peace and joy even when she wasn’t physically in her garden. She paused to rest for a moment even though the April morning was cool. In her peripheral vision, she glimpsed Fish Haul pier stretching into the Sound. She stiffened. She never saw the pier or the nearby picnic pavilion without a sense of dread. She would not think about the pier…if only they didn’t have to go to the Darlings’ party…Russell hadn’t said anything…oh, Russell, do you still love her…