Death at the Door Read online

  On the pad, he sketched three witches dancing around a boiling cauldron and wrote on the pad in his slanting backhand: Evil in a look. I saw it. I’ll deal with it. He added a stark admonition to himself, underlined the words twice, tore the sheet free.

  • • •

  Annie Darling leaned forward and moved one book just a fraction in the front-window display area. That should make the arrangement even, but she’d better take a look from the boardwalk to be sure. Hurrying to the front door of Death on Demand, she stepped outside.

  She pretended she was just a tourist walking by, stopped and looked. Cool, baby, cool, if she said so herself. On either side of a small European village were posters of Vogue covers and brochures featuring Johannesburg, Venice, and Singapore. Travelers needed lots of new books to read. She sold plenty of paperbacks, but now there were links to Death on Demand for e-books as well, so she could enjoy the best of both print and digital publishing. Books with their covers out were lined up beneath the posters. The titles offered fascinating destinations: Assassins of Athens by Jeffrey Siger, Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon, Suddenly at Singapore by Gavin Black, Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, and The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics by Nury Vittachi. A miniature train wound past the village with another raft of books in front of the tracks. She especially liked—

  Ingrid Webb stepped outside, glasses pushed high on her thin nose, and joined Annie to peer through the plate glass. “Nice.” She cleared her throat. “Why the poster?”

  “Ladies who jet around the world love the latest fashions.”

  “Oh.” Ingrid straightened the collar of a plain white cotton blouse. “Actually, I think most readers are a lot more interested in stories than outfits.”

  Annie played devil’s advocate. “How about the books by Dorothy Howell and Ellen Byerrum? The best of both worlds.”

  Ingrid surrendered. “We can’t keep Death on Heels in stock.” Her head swiveled toward the door. “The phone. I’ll catch it.” She whirled to rush inside.

  Annie followed. As she started down the broad central corridor, she took pleasure, as she always did, in the best mystery bookstore north of Murder on the Beach in Delray Beach, Florida. Hundreds and hundreds of books in honey-colored gumwood bookcases, an American Cozy retreat with comfortable old chairs and Whitmani ferns in blue pottery pots, a raffish stuffed raven to remind of Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal verse, a coffee bar featuring mugs inscribed with the names of famous mysteries, welcoming tables and chairs, a fireplace where flames crackled merrily in the winter. And, of course, the regal presence of the bookstore’s gorgeous, imperious feline, Agatha.

  Annie paused at a side table where Agatha stretched on a silk cushion and smoothed silky black fur. “World’s finest cat.”

  A soft purr indicated agreement.

  It would be fun to add a handful of fashion mysteries to the display. Should she gather up the books, return to her task? Hey, all work and no play was not the island way. She turned toward the coffee bar. Ingrid had already brewed a pot of the finest Kona coffee. Annie filled a mug to the brim, noted the book title and author inscribed in red: Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice. Annie decided it was time to reread the book, one of her all-time favorites.

  She paused for a moment in the center of the coffee bar area to admire the watercolors hung above the fireplace. Maybe this month someone other than Henny Brawley or Emma Clyde would be the first to identify each painting by title and author to win a free month of coffee and a new book.

  In the first painting, a slender young woman in a crisp white shirt and black slacks paused on her Segway to survey a side hall of a shopping mall. On one side was a manicure salon, a reptile store, a teen shop, and a sporting goods store. On the other, a little kid stuff-your-own-animal store, a dress boutique, a sunglasses emporium, and a toy store. Reddish-brown hair framed an intelligent, expressive face. She had an air of authority.

  In the second painting, lightning flashed against heavy clouds in the night sky. Mist almost obscured dim light from lampposts at the periphery of a car lot and the woman bending to look closely at the grille of a large black sedan. Her body was tensed, her concentration absolute.

  In the third painting, smoke coiled in the evening sky above a white frame house. Fire trucks blocked access. A lean man in a blue shirt, string tie, and black trousers hurried as fast as he could across the ground, obviously favoring one leg. His face mirrored despair. A big woman, red hair all loose, face smudged with soot, Astros T-shirt grimed by smoke, moved toward him.

  In the fourth painting, a woman grasping a flashlight splashed through a foot of water toward a woman tightly bound to an overturned chair and desperately struggling to keep her head above rising water in an unlighted room.

  In the fifth painting, a slender blonde behind the wheel of a sporty Mazda stared in shock at the bruised and battered face of a fortyish man wearing a Stetson and sunglasses as he slid into the passenger seat.

  Annie nodded approval and returned up the central aisle. At the traditional mystery section, she carefully placed the mug atop the bookcase and gathered titles by Laura Bradley, Dixie Cash, and Nancy J. Cohen as well as Dorothy Howell and Ellen Byerrum. The colorful covers would make a great addition to the display.

  She plucked Shear Murder from the shelf—

  “Annie.” Ingrid’s voice held sadness.

  Annie turned to look toward the cash desk.

  Ingrid held up the phone. “Henny couldn’t get you on your cell.”

  The cell was in her purse in the storeroom.

  “Terrible news. Paul Martin’s dead.” Ingrid’s eyes were wide with shock. “Annie, they think he shot himself.”

  • • •

  Annie waited in the alley behind Death on Demand. She wasn’t dressed to go to a house of mourning. This morning she’d chosen a pale blue blouse with an embroidered flower hem, beige linen slacks, and sandals, comfortable and perfect for a fall afternoon among books, happy clothes for a happy day. Instead, the day was somber, framed by darkness.

  You never knew what a day would bring. Some days were pleasant, memorable only in that her life was good and she often smiled. Some days were blessed by a quick elusive thrill of sheer happiness, the beauty of water shimmering in sunlight, the sound of her husband’s voice, the ineffable grace of a hummingbird. Some days were hard, the rough reality of death disrupting the daily spin of ordinary life. When everyday tasks no longer mattered, the precious nature and fragility of the commonplace became apparent.

  Lucy Ransome, a widow, had arrived on the island three years earlier to help her brother Paul take care of his dying wife. Annie had worked on church rummage sales with Lucy. She was much older, nearing seventy, but she added a spark to any group, good-humored, outgoing, kind. She’d been a statistician for diabetes research. She had a careful, quick mind and spoke precisely. She and Henny Brawley, Death on Demand’s most enthusiastic customer, loved to talk about mysteries as they ironed linens for the Altar Guild.

  Annie heard a familiar rumble as Henny’s old black Dodge turned into the alley. Henny kept the car in good repair. The motor was loud but steady. Annie hurried down the steps from the loading dock and climbed into the passenger seat.

  Henny, too, was in fall casual wear, a white-and-blue cotton pullover and navy slacks. “I was at the church, putting fresh candles in the chapel. Father Jim told me.” Henny’s narrow face was grave, her dark eyes somber.

  Annie took a quick breath. “Suicide?” Her tone was doubtful.

  The Dodge chugged out of the alley. “That’s what Billy thinks.” Henny sounded weary.

  Annie’s forlorn hope that Henny’s source was wrong wilted. Island Police Chief Billy Cameron gathered evidence before he spoke. Billy knew his island and the people on it. He was a native of Broward’s Rock and it was very likely he’d been a patient of Paul Martin’s. Paul’s practice drew most o
f the old island families.

  Annie sighed. “I can’t imagine Paul doing something like that.”

  Henny drove for a moment in silence. She turned onto Sand Dollar Road. They drove beneath a canopy of intertwined live oak branches. Finally, she spoke. “We don’t know what is going on in someone’s life.”

  “He was a wonderful doctor.” Annie spoke with a catch in her voice. She looked at the magnificent pines that bordered the road. Sunlight slanted through the canopy above, dappling the road. Paul Martin would have driven this way many times. He liked to fish and had kept a boat in the marina overlooked by the shops. Annie had waved to him just last week. He’d looked like what he was, an island man, used to boats and water, billed cap, cotton shirt rolled to his elbows, faded khakis, scuffed Docksides. He’d looked happy and carefree and had given her a thumbs-up before he started down the ramp.

  “The last time I saw him, he looked great. Maybe a little tired.” He wasn’t young. Midsixties. “He was happy.”

  “That was then,” Henny said quietly.

  Annie struggled with the concept. One week a man heads out to fish in the Sound, the next week . . . “How did it happen?”

  “Muzzle to the temple, pulled the trigger.”

  Annie blocked the image that came to mind. She wanted to remember Paul Martin as he started down the ramp to his boat, his lean, somewhat ascetic face relaxed, lines of care and worry smoothed out, moving with the ease of a man who knew his way around a dock, a little slump-shouldered from years at a desk but still lithe, agile. Alive.

  “He loved being a doctor.” They drove in silence. It wasn’t far now to the residential area near downtown. They passed antebellum homes, an occasional modern brick ranch, wooden cabins, the variety that was part of the charm of the older streets. A few more blocks and they’d leave sunlight behind, step into a stricken house. Dead.

  By his own hand . . .

  Annie clenched her hands. “It must be true if Billy thinks so, but—” She twisted in her seat to look at Henny. “Do you remember when Gail Barnett took that overdose?” Annie didn’t wait for an answer. Of course Henny remembered. Gail had been in her fifties and her husband dumped her for his secretary and cleaned out their bank account, leaving her in debt and facing treatment for leukemia. “Pamela Potts was at the hospital that night. She said Paul wouldn’t give up. He worked and worked and all the while he kept saying, ‘Dammit, don’t throw away life because of a jerk. Life’s precious. Come on, Gail. Live, dammit, live!’” Gail lived. Several years later she met a retired accountant and they married and the last they’d heard they were somewhere in the Caribbean on a sloop. “Henny, he wouldn’t.”

  Henny gave her a look full of sorrow and sadness as they drove past the gates, said again, “We don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life. For now, we need to be there for Lucy.”

  She made another turn and they pulled into Calhoun Street, a shaded curving street that should have been quiet on an October afternoon. Halfway up the block, Henny stopped behind a row of cars. A woman carrying a casserole dish was entering a two-story white frame house that was a living monument to the Lowcountry’s past, when island roads were unpaved, summer meant wide-open windows to catch the prevailing southwesterly breezes, and houses sat high on tabby foundations, the better to survive storm surges. Built in the early 1800s, double verandahs gave the house a jaunty air. A half-dozen cars filled a narrow front drive. Several more were parked in the street.

  Annie recognized the rector’s modest beige Toyota. Priests came in times of joy and in times of mourning. Father Jim was balding, plump, affable, and a rock for his parishioners.

  Henny moved briskly, Anne hurrying to keep up. They didn’t knock or push the bell. Times such as these didn’t require formality. Henny opened the door, heard the sound of muted voices.

  Pamela Potts, always a stalwart figure in times of crisis, greeted them softly, blue eyes lighting when she saw them. Blond hair drawn back into a chignon, she was a sturdy figure of calm in a white ruffled blouse and scallop-hemmed violet skirt. “Lucy’s in the living room.”

  Henny and Annie stepped through an archway into a living room with easy chairs, a well-worn sofa, and mahogany end tables dotted with frames holding family pictures, photos through the years of Paul and his wife, Valerie, and their kids, Ellen and Pete. The kids—long grown now—would be coming. Ellen taught biology in Grand Rapids. Her husband, Jay, had an insurance agency. They had three children. Pete was a surgeon in Philadelphia, a huge Phillies fan, and he and his wife, Sue Lee, had seven boys who all played baseball.

  The room was homey and comforting with turquoise drapes and pale gray walls. The drapes were open for sunlight to spill inside. A French Empire clock and matching Dresden figures sat on the Adam mantel above the fireplace. Traces of water glistened on the potted ferns that sat on either side of the hearth. Pamela Potts would have seen to everything, including watering the plants.

  They nodded at familiar faces and walked across the room to the couch where Lucy sat, a small figure slumped in sadness. Lucy managed a smile as Henny reached down and gave her a hug. Annie touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Lucy.”

  “Thank you for coming.” She gestured toward several Chippendale straight chairs. “Come and join us. Pamela brought in some chairs from the dining room. I was telling everyone what happened . . .” Her voice was steady, but her blue eyes held enormous sorrow and shock.

  As Lucy talked, Annie and Henny slipped into two of the chairs. Annie knew that no matter how painful it was for Lucy to describe Paul’s last evening, the telling helped. When loved ones face final, irrevocable separation, words that speak of the end are the beginnings of a path to acceptance. What is, is.

  “. . . something was bothering him this week. He went to his office every night after dinner instead of relaxing in the den. Last night when we got home from a party, I was very tired. He said he’d be up in a little while. That was the last time I saw him. But I thought as we drove home from the party”—her voice was plaintive—“that he seemed better than he’d been for a while, more at peace.”

  Janet Bristow nodded decidedly. Tall, broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, she was a decided kind of woman, president of a half-dozen clubs, blunt, offering opinions whether welcome or not. “Mark my words, he’d made up his mind. Nothing you could do, Lucy. It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d stayed downstairs.” Her pugnacious expression dared anyone to disagree.

  “I didn’t know he had a gun.” Lucy’s gaze moved toward the hall. “Of course, I’d never looked in his desk drawers. But the bottom right-hand drawer was pulled out and there was a half-full box of cartridges. The police said the gun couldn’t be traced. It was old, some kind of Army .38 Special. I suppose he’d had it since he was in the service.”

  She massaged one temple. “Anyway, I went upstairs and took a shower. Maybe that’s when . . . I don’t know. I went to bed and fell asleep. I didn’t hear anything. This morning I went down and fixed breakfast but when I didn’t hear Paul stirring around, I went back upstairs and his bed hadn’t been slept in. That’s when I started to look. I couldn’t imagine where he could be. His study door was closed and he always left it open when he wasn’t using it. I found him. He had fallen face-forward on his desk. There was blood . . . I came around the desk and the gun was lying on the floor by his hand.”

  • • •

  The church was filled to overflowing, folding chairs set up in the narthex. Annie and Max sat on the Epistle side midway to the front. They knelt, heads bowed as Father Jim read from the burial service: “‘The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth for evermore . . .’”

  She felt a sting of tears. There was always sadness at funerals, even those where family and friends celebrated completion of lives fully and well lived. She had
a feeling that those gathered now were bewildered, some of them resentful, and among the family there could only be emptiness, despair that they had not seen or understood or helped.

  Paul Martin had left them of his own volition. Not in the goodness of time.

  Paul, why?

  2

  Annie retrieved the newspaper from a perilous perch on a granite bench near the goldfish pond in the front yard. The delivery woman seemed to have unerring aim, but Annie was always amazed the Gazette wasn’t frolicking with goldfish. She was late getting home—a book club from Beaufort came for the afternoon—so she trotted around to the back porch and hurried up the broad steps. Lights shone in the kitchen. She opened the door and was greeted by a delectable scent. She paused. “Mmm, something smells wonderful.”

  “Flank steak simmering with onion and bay leaf, soon to be Cuban shredded beef seasoned with sauterne and Burgundy.” Max emptied the contents of a bowl into the skillet, adjusted the flame.

  “Wonderful.” Every bite would be delicious. She dropped her purse on the wooden table by the door. “Sorry I’m late. You wouldn’t believe how many books the Beaufort ladies bought.” Book clubs were a bookstore’s best friend. “Ran out of copies of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s new suspense novel.”

  Max looked over his shoulder. “The rice should almost be done.”

  To her continued delight, Max was, in her estimation, not only the best-looking dude on the island, tall, blond, blue-eyed, broad shouldered, and muscular, he was a wonderful chef. Moreover, she admired his willingness, despite an inherent predilection toward play rather than work, to create a truly unusual business. Confidential Commissions definitely was not a private detective agency, but Max was always willing to help people solve problems, whether it was a search for a long-missing uncle, a Civil War photograph in an archive, or the best present for a stymied husband to give the wife who had everything. The last request had resulted in a bushel of quahogs direct from Cape Cod for the client’s New England–born wife.