Yankee Doodle Dead Page 3

  Annie followed. It seemed to be a day for following. Diverted, she again vowed to find that old assertiveness tape. For an instant, tantalizing possibilities danced in Annie’s thought, examples of Speak Your Mind:

  To Henny, It was such a pleasure to visit with Miss Pettigrew, the new curator of the museum. She reads more than a hundred mysteries a month and she knows more mystery trivia than you do. So there! Nyah, nyah, nyah.

  To Laurel, Max absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, does NOT get more like you every day. Oh, God, what subterranean fear prompted that?

  To Miss Dora, social arbiter for all the society that counted in Chastain, South Carolina, Whatever it is, the answer’s no. I will not be bullied by you today or at any time in the future.

  But tantalizing possibilities they remained.

  Instead, Annie said meekly, “What can I do for you, Miss Dora?”

  Miss Dora carefully eased a large cardboard portfolio onto a table, flipped it open, and peered up at Annie, her wrinkled parchment face expectant.

  Annie stepped around her and looked down at a charcoal drawing: Two young women dressed in men’s clothing sprang from the deep shadows beneath a live oak tree, muskets in hand, to accost a messenger escorted by two British officers.

  “Nighttime. Heard the horses coming, jumped out with their guns.” Miss Dora’s hoarse voice was triumphant. “They got the papers, sent them to Nathanael Greene. A great help to the Colonials.”

  “That’s very nice,” Annie began.

  Miss Dora’s eyes slitted. “South Carolina women always prevail.”

  “I’m sure they do.” Annie didn’t doubt it for a minute. Not even a New York minute.

  Miss Dora’s thin lips spread in an approximation of a smile. It reminded Annie irresistibly of the alligator that lived in the lagoon behind her house. Not a creature that she ever intended to rile.

  “Miss Dora,” she said heartily, “this is quite fascinating—”

  “Grace and Rachel Martin.”

  Annie looked around in bewilderment. She hadn’t heard the door.

  Miss Dora cleared her throat.

  The front of the shop lay quiet. Annie looked back at her guest, met a disdainful gaze.

  Shaggy hair bristling, Miss Dora inclined her head toward the drawing.

  Annie quickly nodded. “Oh, certainly. Of course. Grace and Rachel Martin.”

  Miss Dora began to shake.

  Annie stared at her in concern, then realized the crinkled parchment face was quivering with laughter.

  Miss Dora clapped her hands together gleefully. It made no sound because she wore half-gloves. “When the girls got away with the courier’s papers, they raced home. The officers and the messenger turned back. They stopped at the Martin household, demanded to be put up for the night, said they’d been waylaid by some lads and lost their papers. And they never knew the women who housed them were those very same ‘lads.’ Grace and Rachel.”

  Annie stared at the softly brushed charcoal, which gave a sense of movement to the scene. She could almost hear the ghostly hoofbeats, imagine two young women, their hearts pounding, their hands tight on the guns, willing to risk their lives for the land they loved.

  Miss Dora spread other drawings on the tabletop:

  A stalwart woman moved among rows of injured Confederate soldiers.

  A pretty girl bent over her diary, pen in hand, to write that Confederate money was losing value, with ordinary shoes costing from sixty to one hundred dollars and butter going for seven dollars a pound.

  An elegant artist smoothed clay to create Joan of Arc astride a horse, her sword aloft.

  “Louise Cheves McCord, Floride Clemson Lee, Anna Hyatt Huntington. Among South Carolina’s finest.” There was reverence in Miss Dora’s raspy voice.

  Miss Dora peered up at the paintings on the back wall, then at Annie. “A good half dozen will fit—”

  “No.” Finally, a stern, strong, unyielding declaration. Perhaps she didn’t really need that assertiveness tape.

  Miss Dora pursed her tiny mouth.

  “Although they certainly are lovely.” Annie truly was impressed. “Did you draw them, Miss Dora?” Each sketch was done with a minimum of strokes, but they radiated energy, the figures looking as if at any moment they would move.

  A benign nod. “Southern women always have an understanding of the arts.”

  “Yes. Of course.” This was a facet of Miss Dora Annie had never known. It did not, however, come as a surprise. Nothing Miss Dora did would surprise Annie.

  “The front window—”

  “No.” A ringing declaration.

  Miss Dora’s eyes slitted. “Where then?”

  Annie’s mouth opened. Closed.

  “That Yankee refuses to permit them in the library.” The dark eyes glittered with disgust.

  Annie didn’t have to inquire which Yankee.

  Miss Dora stroked the musket held by either Grace or Rachel. “When he first came to town, he volunteered to be in charge of library displays. Henny welcomed him. Then.” The single word crackled with import. “She’s come to rue the day. I could have told her. Never put a Yankee in charge. He’s been doing the display for several months and he says my drawings are too restricted in content.” An affronted sniff. “Just another way of a man saying women’s work and women’s lives don’t count.”

  Annie’s eyes widened. To hear Miss Dora make the equivalent of a feminist pronouncement was so mind-boggling that Annie volunteered immediately, “I’ll put up some of the drawings, Miss Dora. I think they’re wonderful.”

  Miss Dora’s nodded in satisfaction, her shaggy hair swinging. She filled Annie’s arms with rolled-up drawings.

  “But if I were you, I’d keep after them at the library,” Annie said desperately. Certainly the library had more space than she did. It was always a crush to find room for new books and posters and her used-book section was expanding at an awesome rate. She now had a complete collection of E. Phillips Oppenheim.

  “Good. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow. I knew I could count on you.” Miss Dora pattered up the aisle, paused long enough to look back and say with a smile—it was a smile and not a grimace, wasn’t it?—“After all, you are now a South Carolina woman.”

  Feeling rather as though she’d been knighted, Annie clutched the rolls and listened to the brisk thump of Miss Dora’s cane.

  It wasn’t that she was a pushover. But she couldn’t be rude to the doyenne of the Low Country. Could she?

  Not, apparently, in this lifetime.

  She counted. Five drawings to display. And, in addition, now she definitely had to go to that board meeting. But the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow morning.

  Like another famous Southern heroine, she’d think about that tomorrow. And she would under no circumstances spend one more minute worrying about Brig. Gen. (ret.) Charlton (Bud) Hatch.

  In a far reach of the universe, the gods of malice hooted in delight.

  Annie rolled the grocery cart down the candy aisle. After all, it was the quickest way to get to produce. She needed to bring some snacks for tonight’s meeting of the festival program committee. Being named chair of that committee still rankled. Just because she’d missed the library board meeting in April didn’t mean Henny had the right simply to name Annie as chair of the program committee and to announce the appointment publicly at the next board meeting just after designating Annie’s store as the provider of books for the festival. Annie felt a quiver of panic. She must, absolutely must, get the books packed that she intended to display in her booth Friday.

  Annie picked up two sacks of candy. And she’d snag a pre-packaged mixture of carrots, cauliflower and broccoli and some kind of light dip. Something for everybody. If some people wanted to pretend they were rabbits, it was a free country.

  She was debating whether to open one of the candy sacks, so she took her attention away from the cart just for an instant.

  Whang!

  Annie fe
lt jolted to her toes.

  “Annie, I’m so sorry.” Sharon Gibson owned the gift shop three doors down from Death on Demand. “Are you okay? Did I break anything?”

  “No harm done. How are you, Sharon?” The Speak Your Mind was tempting: Training for the Roller Derby?

  “Oh, I’m fine.” She pulled her cart back, began to go around Annie. Sharon didn’t look fine. A tall, slender blonde with alabaster skin, she was pale and drawn, and her eyes had the dull, blank look of someone whose thoughts are far away and not pleasant.

  “Are you ready for the holiday?” Annie asked.

  Sharon’s cart stopped. “The holiday. Oh, yes, the holiday. Yes, we’re all stocked.” For an instant, her eyes lighted. “We’ve got the cutest wooden cutouts of the Statue of Liberty. Your mother-in-law made them.” Momentarily, she looked puzzled. “Each one has a different quotation on it. From Shakespeare. They’re just darling.” Sharon laughed. “That’s good, isn’t it? Although I know her name isn’t Darling now.”

  And hadn’t been, Annie thought to herself, for at least two or three husbands. No, four, to be accurate.

  Sharon’s smile fled. “Actually, Annie, I was going to call you. I can’t make that meeting tonight.” Her face drew down in a tight frown. “In fact, I won’t be taking part in the festival.” Her voice was weary.

  “Sharon, what’s wrong?”

  “Too much to do. That’s all.” She swung her cart out to pass Annie, then came to a sudden halt, staring up the aisle, her face taut. For an instant, Sharon stood as if frozen, then she jerked her cart around and rushed off in the opposite direction.

  Annie looked up the aisle.

  The well-built man striding toward her lifted his arm. So might a trainer gesture to a dog. Was it his arrival that sent Sharon scurrying away? He lifted his arm again imperiously. Stand, Spot.

  Annie looked to see if he could be gesturing toward someone else, but they were now alone in the aisle. Nope. She had to be the lucky one. But she wasn’t a dog. Quite deliberately, Annie ignored him and grabbed the handle of her basket.

  “Annie. Yo, Annie.”

  Another tantalizing Speak Your Mind phrase came unbidden:

  To Brig. Gen. (ret.) Charlton (Bud) Hatch, Yo, Butthead.

  Instead, she waited with a polite smile. Miss Manners would have been proud of such a triumph of civility.

  “So here you are, little lady. Your clerk said you would be shopping. Always a pleasure for ladies, I know.” Bud Hatch’s navy polo fit him snugly, revealing a muscular chest with no vagrant fat cells. The crease in his chinos would have pleased a master tailor. He stared down at Annie, his rough-hewn features in command mold.

  Annie stared back icily. Little lady indeed! “Is it more a pleasure for women than for men?”

  “Beg pardon?” He looked puzzled.

  “To shop!” Annie snapped.

  He gave a perfunctory laugh.

  Once again, Annie was tantalized with a possible Speak Your Mind:

  To Brig. Gen. (ret.) Charlton (Bud) Hatch: You are welcome to take laugh lessons from my cat. When she coughs up fur balls, it sounds just like Santa’s ho-ho-ho. When you laugh, you sound like a cat coughing up fur balls.

  That it remained only a possibility was either a tribute to her upbringing, a result of acculturation as a female, or several years spent as a shopkeeper.

  “Well, little lady, I won’t keep you from your shopping. I know you have a husband to take care of. But I’m expecting your support at the board meeting tomorrow. I’ve gotten the word out to the merchants’ association about the importance of having an all-American Fourth and how we need to focus on what made America great.” He clapped Annie’s shoulder. “I’ll see you then.”

  His stride was still equal to the parade ground. He was ten feet away before Annie managed to call out, “Bud.” She choked a little at using his first name, but she’d be damned if she’d call him General or Mr.

  Hatch looked back impatiently. He’d told the little lady. What more was needed?

  “All the board members I’ve spoken to”—and he didn’t have to know that number was comprised of herself and Henny—“are thrilled that the festival is featuring South Carolina women. At the board meeting, we plan to pass a motion commending Henny Brawley for her terrific job as festival director.” Annie felt sheer joy as she shed restraining influences: to heck with upbringing, she was a new-century woman, and good old Bud wasn’t a customer.

  Hatch looked at her sharply. His eyes were cold.

  But Annie wasn’t finished. “And what did you do to Sharon Gibson?” The words were out before she thought and she regretted them mightily. Sharon obviously was greatly distressed. It wouldn’t help matters for Annie to reveal that to old slab face.

  But Hatch merely frowned impatiently. “Sharon Gibson? Who’s she?”

  Now Annie was caught by surprise. She couldn’t be wrong. The only person in the entire length of the grocery aisle when Sharon turned and ran, her face twisted with anger, was Brig. Gen. (ret.) Charlton (Bud) Hatch.

  And Hatch didn’t even know Sharon? Or was he pretending?

  Whatever the truth, Annie was puzzled.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, little lady.” Hatch gave her a grim smile. “You’d better count your votes.”

  Chapter 2

  “Above and beyond the call of duty.” Max sprawled on the floor, the phone and a list of numbers beside him.

  Annie looked down at her husband and wished abruptly that she didn’t have to go to the meeting of the festival publicity committee. Maxwell Darling was Joe Hardy all grown up and sexy as hell: a thick brush of blond hair, a merry face with eminently kissable lips, and a wonderful muscular body. He was almost perfect, though Annie wished he had a bit more—well, it wasn’t fair to say he had no ambition. But, actually, “ambition” was not a word in Max’s job description. Fun, fun, fun came closer to describing his interests. She was always a little surprised at how well suited they were. Because she was, face it, a worker to her fingertips. And Max—well, Max put a good face on it. He had an office. But did he ever do anything besides practice his putting on that little green rug she’d bought him for an anniversary present?

  He eyed her quizzically. “Has my hair turned purple?”

  “No, I was just thinking…” But her assay of his character was lost in his nearness. She leaned down and kissed him.

  Max’s blue eyes gleamed. With unmistakable sexual interest. He reached for her. With alacrity and enthusiasm.

  “No. I mean, not now.” Annie slipped away.

  He came after her, and suddenly she was in his arms.

  “Max.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “That’s scary.”

  “Scary?” He tilted his head, looked down with a puzzled but still eager face.

  “You were reading my mind. That’s like an old married couple.”

  “We”—and his lips brushed her cheek—“are not an old married couple.” In a minute, he continued, “But I understand that sex just gets better and better and—”

  It was her turn to look puzzled. “How could it be any better?”

  Annie was twenty minutes late in leaving for her meeting, and Max was very cheerful as he began calling the members of the library board.

  The Lucy Kinkaid Memorial Library, forty thousand volumes in the main building and a computer center in a recently constructed adjunct building, was in a rather obscure part of the island, thanks to the fact that empty pockets don’t dictate location. The original library had been in a shabby strip shopping center near the ferry stop. Ten years previously, Lucy Banister Kinkaid had died, bequeathing her ancestral home to the library with the proviso that the library be housed in the home and that the adjoining grounds be used for community purposes. The town fathers were delighted to accept and the small library moved, hired a director, began building an especially fine collection of Southern history, and was renamed in honor of its benefactress.

  The three-story Greek-r
evival building sat in solitary majesty at the end of a winding dusty gray road that twisted around dense pockets of wax myrtle, curved by a cattail-rimmed lagoon, and plunged darkly up an avenue of live oaks. Made of tabby, that indigenous island building material, the big house was painted a jaunty coral pink. The four majestic columns were, of course, white as a ghost’s nightdress. Four huge cobalt-blue vases sat atop the roofed portico. Annie wondered where the vases came from. They looked vaguely Chinese. Had some sailing ship anchored in the sound long ago with crates from far away for the plantation owner?

  The roofed portico featured rocking chairs and was a shady retreat in deep summer. Double stairways led down to the ground. The library had enclosed some of the storage space beneath the elevated house for closed research areas. The first floor, reached from the portico, contained the public reading rooms, periodicals, the computerized catalogs, and staff offices. The second floor held meeting rooms, rest rooms, and the director’s office. The open-stack collection was housed in what had been a third-floor ballroom which still flaunted its original stuccowork cornice and a white marble Adam mantel. The coved ceiling was a soft cream with magnificent plaster medallions, the walls pale blue.

  Annie loved all of it. She delighted in the dusty, gray winding road and could imagine a Southern belle sidesaddle on a horse pausing to pick a magnolia blossom for her hair. This was the kind of road that beckoned, promising adventure around every curve. An old family cemetery could be glimpsed just before the avenue of live oaks. Tradition held that a daughter of the house, grieving for her sweetheart lost at the Battle of Secessionville, had hurried up the road at the sound of hoofbeats in the moonlight and was said to have seen him. Realists insisted, however, that her glimpse of movement in the late-night shadows had been nothing more than a cougar in search of prey.

  The tunnel beneath the live oaks was dim and shadowy. Annie drove too fast, knowing she was late. She scarcely spared a glance at the magnificent facade of the library and the paved turnaround with reserved parking slots for board members. Instead, she curved to the west and the public and staff parking area screened by saw palmettos. Gray dust billowed as she swung into the lot, then jammed on her brakes, stopping just short of a stocky young man leaning against the fender of a very old blue-black sedan that brought to mind a motorcade during FDR’s first term.