Dare to Die Read online

  Max grinned in return and pulled up a straight chair. “One of these days.” The Franklin house would be perfect for kids, lots of rooms, a big backyard….

  “What can I do for you?” Doc picked up the unlit cigar, poked it in the corner of his mouth.

  Max pulled himself back to the present. “Do you know when Iris Tilford’s body will be released for burial?”

  Burford’s face folded into a heavy frown. “Thursday, I imagine.”

  “Does she have any family here, anyone to make funeral arrangements?” Max met Burford’s inquiring gaze. “Annie and I want to help if we can.”

  “I’ll check. I don’t think there’s any family left. I attended her grandmother. Fine woman. Iris broke her heart. Iris ran away not long after Jocelyn Howard drowned. I would have wrung Iris’s neck if I could have found her.” Burford frowned. “Not the best way to phrase it now. There’s no doubt about how Iris died. Strangled. Who knows what she got herself mixed up in. But I’ll give Iris one thing. She was clean when she died. No alcohol, no drugs.” His face folded in sadness. “And no luck. She died too damn young. All of them were too young, Iris and Jocelyn and Sam Howard. The Howard kids were fraternal twins. I like delivering twins. Two for the price of one. Makes me crazy to see them die young.”

  Max understood Doc’s rage. Jocelyn and Sam dead at eighteen, Iris at twenty-eight. “I guess you did the autopsy on Jocelyn Howard and it was clear that she drowned.” Accidental death by drowning had been the verdict and that would have been based on the autopsy.

  Doc Burford was suddenly very still behind his desk, his face inscrutable. Abruptly, Doc stood. “Jocelyn drowned. No evidence of other trauma. I’ll let you know when Iris’s body will be released.” He lumbered past Max, opened the door, and strode away, head down.

  In the hall, Max watched until the burly figure of the doctor turned a corner and was out of sight. Max frowned as he walked out into the hall. Doc didn’t want to talk about the autopsy of Jocelyn Howard. Why?

  ANNIE CARRIED THE EXTRA KEYS TO CABIN SIX IN HER POCKET. It was unlikely anyone would try to filch a key as Emma had but Annie felt better having them with her. She closed the door on Cabin Five and stripped off plastic gloves, welcoming fresh air on sweaty hands. She tossed the gloves in a plastic trash bag on the cleaning cart. As she gripped the bar of the cart, she was uncomfortably aware of Iris’s cabin and the green bicycle on its stand near the front steps. No one had arrived yet to string up police tape and put the cabin off-limits.

  Annie pushed the cart toward the shed. Her cell phone rang. She stuck her hand in her pocket and felt the coolness of the keys to Cabin Six as she grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

  “Annie, Duane here.” The line crackled. “I’m an hour from the ferry dock. Ingrid’s staying until her sister’s well enough to be on her own. I’m coming back to take over at the Courts. You can relax now and get back to the store. I’ll see to everything.”

  His strong voice sounded cheerful and upbeat. Annie took a deep breath and told him of Iris’s murder.

  There was fizz and crackle and silence. “Damn all.” He was gruff. “She’d had a hard time. I knew it when I saw her.”

  Annie recalled Duane’s words Wednesday morning. She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle.

  “I invited her to the picnic.” Annie’s voice broke.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He had an old newsman’s disdain for un-warranted assumptions. “If somebody decided to kill her, another place and time would have served as well. Feel sorry she’s gone. Don’t feel bad for what you did. Feel good about liking her. She needed for somebody to like her.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, thanks for taking up the slack for us. You’re off duty now.” The connection ended as most conversations with Duane ended, abruptly.

  Annie was glad for his call, glad to know Ingrid’s sister was recovering, glad to know Duane was on his way and she could return to her life, glad most of all for his brusque reassurance that her connection to Iris had perhaps yielded some goodness, but, most of all, not caused harm. She put the cell in her pocket, again felt the keys.

  In the pale April sunshine, the semicircle of cabins lay quiet. The only car was Annie’s Volvo parked near Cabin Two. An egret stood near the edge of the marsh. The onshore breeze stirred the tall bird’s elegant trailing white plumes. Head immobile, yellow beak straight, the bird lifted one thin leg, its claws extended, graceful as any ballerina. The only sound was the soft clatter of palmetto fronds. No car neared, announcing its arrival on the oyster-shell drive.

  Any minute a police cruiser would arrive. A final search would be made of Cabin Six. Yesterday Annie had looked through Iris’s belongings and found nothing, no hint of past or present. Iris hadn’t carried a purse last night. A purse likely held no clue to her murder, but the contents might provide a link to her recent past. Once Annie could have hoped Billy would share information that wasn’t a part of an investigation. Not now.

  If she wanted to find out anything about Iris’s life off island, now was her chance. How could she do an adequate tribute if she knew nothing about Iris from the time she left the island until her return? Last week and the week before and the weeks and years before then, Iris had been somewhere. Someone knew her and could tell Annie whether she had a job, if she liked to go to movies, if she read or played games, what made her laugh.

  What harm would it do to try to find a name or address?

  Annie gave the clearing a final searching glance. She was alone with only the egret to observe her. Quickly, she pushed the cart into the shed, grabbed a new pair of plastic gloves, pulled them on. Her heart thudded as she walked swiftly to Iris’s cabin. She pulled out a key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She breathed shallowly, feeling nervous and uneasy. She’d better hurry. She mustn’t be found here by Billy or one of his officers.

  She moved across the room to the sliding door to the deck. She opened it and saw a towel and swimsuit draped over the railing. Annie felt a physical wrench. This time yesterday Iris had been alive.

  Annie forced herself to continue. She turned back into the cabin, leaving the sliding door ajar. She found Iris’s purse in the top drawer of the dresser. The soft beige crocheted bag had been casually dropped on top of the nightgown. Annie carefully lifted it, unhooked a clasp, and spilled out the contents on top of the dresser. She was struck by what it didn’t contain: no cell phone, no sunglasses, no compact, no paper, no billfold, no credit cards, no driver’s license.

  No wonder the purse had been so light. It held only a clear plastic change purse, lip gloss, an eyeliner, a small packet of Kleenex, a red tin of Altoids, a neatly folded Savannah bus schedule, a once-crisp square of green cardboard with the Serenity Prayer. Annie snapped open the change purse: a Social Security card and two twenties, three fives, six ones, eighty-six cents. Tucked between two twenties was a small square card for the Mission of Hope, founded by Brother Kirk Doyle.

  Outside a door slammed.

  Annie committed the name and address of the mission to memory, returned the handful of possessions to the purse, and dropped the bag in the drawer. She hurried across the room and out on the deck.

  Behind her, she heard the rattle of a key. “This one works, Hyla.” Lou Pirelli’s drawl was satisfied. “We don’t need to find Annie. If you’ll get the tape, I’ll look things over.”

  On the deck, Annie pressed against the rough wood siding of the cabin and eased to her left. She risked a quick look around the corner. Sgt. Harrison was opening the back of the crime van. Lou would be entering the cabin. With a quick breath, Annie swung over the side of the deck railing, dropped to the sandy ground, and darted to the next cabin.

  She reached the office unseen by Lou or Hyla, and the tightness eased from her shoulders. She found a pad, wrote down Brother Kirk Doyle, the mission name and address, and the last line of the legend: ALL ARE WELCOME HERE.

  MAX TRACED THE LETTER A THAT HE’D CARVED SEVERAL years ago in the top
of the wooden table. Next came the ampersand, then M. He’d left the indelible marks at Ben Parotti’s invitation. Only regulars were invited to decorate the wooden tables in the booths. Parotti’s Bar and Grill was a constant in his life and Annie’s, always welcoming, sometimes a refuge. He watched Annie, listened to her halting words, wished as so many have often wished that events could be changed, the past reversed…. Nor all your Tears wash out a word of it.

  Max listened to memories of Maria Elena and Amarillo and the Day of the Dead.

  “I’m going to honor Iris.” Annie took a gulp of the grill’s bracing tea. “I know how to find out more about her.” She held up a hand to forestall his protest. “I’m not going to do anything that will bother Billy. Although”—her eyes dropped—“I did sneak into the cabin before Lou and Hyla got there.”

  Max frowned and sighed. He wished he had a nice big cage and could put Annie inside with a stack of her favorite mysteries, the latest by Archer Mayor or Elaine Viets or Laura Lippman.

  Annie’s smile was beguiling. “As my mom used to say, don’t let your face freeze or you’ll look like a gargoyle forever.”

  Despite his irritation, he laughed. He could never resist Annie’s smile. Still, he shook his head. “Don’t you ever think before you act? What if you’d been caught?”

  “What’s she done? Besides host a murder.” Marian Kenyon, dark hair frowsy, knocked on the end of the booth. “Anybody home? Got room for a starving waif?” Without waiting, she slid in beside Annie, twisted to scan the room. “Yo, Ben.”

  Ben turned toward them, resplendent in a pink blazer, blue Oxford cloth shirt, and navy slacks. His sartorially suspect days before he married Miss Jolene, who had upscaled her new husband as well as the bar and grill, were a distant memory.

  Marian pointed at Annie, yelled, “Whatever she’s getting, double it, plus a side of cheese grits with jalapeño and a choc raspberry malted with a shot of sweet tea as a chaser.” Marian slumped against the wooden back. Her stare was glassy. “You ever write eighty inches in an hour? Cruel and unusual. What did I come up with? Eighty inches of not much. I interviewed Billy, I got out the back files, I traced the family, I got pix. Billy’s close-mouthed on this one. I couldn’t get him to link last night with Jocelyn Howard’s drowning, but readers can put two and two together. I mean, how likely is it that Iris Tilford comes back to the island and gets killed at a picnic in the pavilion, the same place Jocelyn Howard was last seen? There’s always been a lot of spec about the Howard death. I got all the facts in and I beat the deadline.” She shot a look of loathing at the wall clock. “Actually, I still have twenty minutes, but I don’t have anything else to write about the Tilford kill. I want some pathos. I want some heart. I want some soul.”

  “Marian.” Annie looked at her with eyes full of misery.

  Marian’s face twisted. “Iris was my baby sister’s best friend. I watched Iris grow up. I watched her life unravel. I used every skill I had trying to trace her when she ran away. No luck. Nada. She comes home and…” Marian pounded a small fist on the table top. “Does anybody care? Do her old friends have a kind word to say? Either no comment or vague blather about a former classmate. There’s a lot more than six degrees of separation, make it a continent.”

  Ben arrived with a tray and unloaded a tumbler for Marian. He looked at her. “Billy getting anywhere?” Ben was well aware the Gazette’s star reporter knew all the news, including news that would never be printed.

  Marian shook her head. “As far as the cop shop can find out, nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. No physical traces. Weapon of opportunity. Unless the killer confesses, this will be the unsolved crime of modern time.”

  Ben rubbed his leathery cheek. “Poor damn kid. She worked for us for a couple of years when she was in junior high. Sweet as pie. It was in high school that she got fuzzy. Moved in slow motion. Didn’t show up. Dropped things. I had to let her go when she spilled chili on the mayor. Damn hot chili.” Ben didn’t sound grieved. Mayor Cosgrove hustled for the island but lacked personal charm. “I’d already warned her a couple of times. I tried to get her to go for help, but she claimed she wasn’t on drugs. I knew better. Where’s she been the last few years?”

  Marian’s face screwed into a ferocious frown. “I’d say Iris didn’t know where she’d been most of the time. Savannah mostly. I talked to her last night. She didn’t say much, but I connected the dots. Vague as mist. I’d bet she’d been on the street for a long time. She said she was living with friends. As far as I could find out this morning, she might have dropped in from Mars. If anybody knows her address, they’re not telling.”

  Max saw Annie’s lips part and kicked her under the table. She picked up her tea, drank deeply.

  Ben nodded. “I saw her on the ferry, but I don’t know where she came from. I’ll get the malted.” He turned away.

  Marian’s head swivelled toward Annie. “Speaking of dropping in, how come she was at your party? Billy said she was a guest.”

  Max pushed the bread basket with jalapeño cornbread toward Marian. “Hot and good. The butter’s fresh. The invitation to the picnic was a last-minute thing. There’s no story there. We’re staying at Nightingale Courts until the Franklin house is ready. Iris was in Cabin Six. Annie and Iris got to talking and Annie asked her if she’d like to come to the picnic.”

  Marian’s eyes narrowed. She gave Max a short stare, fastened again on Annie. “You and Max are staying at Nightingale Courts. I got that. An unknown woman checks into Cabin Six. You say hello. That I can buy. You like people. But then you asked her to your party? Come on now, Annie. Spit it out. How did that happen?”

  “It was no big deal. Like I told Russell when I saw him out at the house today.” Max kept his voice pleasant though he felt grim. Marian was the nearest thing to a human vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything in her path with an uncanny talent for uncovering anything hidden. “Annie and Iris took a dip in the pool and Annie thought she might like to come to the party.”

  If Marian had been a bird dog, she’d have gone on point. “Jeez, Max, you would have thought I asked you a question. I asked Annie. Last I knew Annie was a big girl, able to talk and walk and chew gum all at the same time. Let me try again.” She faced Annie and her eyes glistened. “Annie,” Marian enunciated loudly, “why did you invite Iris?”

  Annie’s eyes warned Max.

  He understood. The more Annie didn’t answer, the harder Marian would pry. He gave an infinitesimal nod.

  Annie was casual. “I decided to take a swim before the party. Iris was standing on her cabin deck. She looked lonely so I asked her if she’d like to swim. We had a good time. I didn’t want to rush off to a party and leave her there so I invited her. Like Max said, it was no big deal.”

  “What did she look like?” Marian slipped a notebook from her purse, began to write.

  “Thin.” Annie’s voice was soft. “Pretty. Dark eyes and dark hair and a sweet smile. She was a good listener. I told her about last summer when Max and I were in trouble. And then—”

  Max felt uneasy but if he interrupted, Marian would be like a terrier after a bone. Better to let Annie talk. Surely there was nothing that could bring harm to her.

  “—she said she hadn’t realized people like me had troubles. I asked her if she had troubles. She said things were better, that she belonged to AA and NA. I told her that she was brave. She said she was trying to make up for things in the past and that’s why she came home. She said—”

  “Maybe we’d better leave it at that.” Max gave Annie a hard stare. He was firm with Marian. “You’ve got enough for a story.”

  Marian hesitated, shot an anguished look at the clock. “Eight minutes. Yeah. I got to go. Keep my food for me. I’ll be back.” She slid out of the booth, headed for the door in a dead run, shouted over her shoulder. “Thanks, Annie. Iris deserves something bright, something besides diagrams of the woods and police handouts.”

  ANNIE WALKED SWIFTLY ON THE BOARDWAL
K, BREATHING deeply of the slightly fishy ocean smell, welcoming the bustle and charm of the marina with boats ranging from modest sailfish to multimillion-dollar yachts. She always felt she was coming home when she entered Death on Demand. Dispossessed from their old house, barred from their antebellum home-to-be, this was her world with its glorious new book–old book smell, shining heart-pine floors, rich scent of brewed Colombian, a memory of Uncle Ambrose’s pipe smoke, and glorious Agatha, queen of cats and dictator of her domain.

  Annie felt the usual lift when she saw the small gold letters at the lower right of the front window: PROP. ANNIE DARLING. She looked through the plate glass and blinked in surprise. She’d taken great pleasure in her display, putting a trowel and dirt-stained canvas gloves next to two potted azaleas, one pink, one white, and gardening mysteries that evoked the rich smell of freshly turned dark earth: Death in the Orchid Garden by Ann Ripley, The Blue Rose by Anthony Eglin, Trouble in Spades by Heather Webber, Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara, and Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman.

  Instead, toy soldiers now marched in formation. A Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes hung from flagpoles behind a battered canvas-covered canteen and a miniature troop train. A poster of Allies Day, May 1917 by Childe Hassam rested on an easel. Annie nodded approval when she saw the books with their roots in World War I: The Murder Stone by Charles Todd, Angels in the Gloom by Anne Perry, Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Win-spear, The Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda, and Twenty-Three and a Half Hour’s Leave by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

  They were all wonderful books, but it seemed a little presumptuous that her gardening display had been preempted.

  A neatly printed card taped to the easel announced:

  The Lucy Kinkaid Memorial Library will host free lectures by Henrietta Brawley every Thursday evening in May offering a perspective on The Great War through fact and fiction.