Death at the Door Read online

  Parotti came up to the booth, spiffy in a Tommy Bahama shirt and tan slacks, and pointed a gnarled finger at the newspaper. “They got him in a cell. Have to say I never thought a stranger wandered in and bashed her, but I don’t see an artist as a wife killer.” His gravelly voice was just this side of dismissive. “Course, I hear they only found his fingerprints on the hammer. Mallet, they call it. Fancy name for a tool, seems to me. Claims he doesn’t remember the last time he saw the hammer. Said he quit working on the marble a week or so ago. And he never locked his studio. But still, you’d have to know the layout over there to even know there was a studio. Not exactly a thoroughfare.” He leaned forward. “Any truth to the rumor he had a girlfriend?”

  Annie pictured fish swarming in a bowl, there for everyone to see. She wasn’t sure why she felt sad. She and Max knew Jane Corley as they knew so many on the island. They were friendly, but not close. But they knew her and had welcomed her new husband into the fabric of the island social scene, exchanging greetings at civic events, attending open houses at Wyler Art Gallery, nodding across the dining room at the country club. Was sadness caused by remembering a lighthearted, laughing Frankie Ford at a picnic last summer? Or was it the horror of trying to fit sensitive Tom Edmonds with his long artistic hands into the image of a man bringing down a mallet on his wife’s skull?

  • • •

  Annie took an extra moment on the boardwalk to look over the marina. It was a perfect October morning. Fluffy white clouds dotted a pale blue sky above placid water. A big yacht from Maine had pulled in last week, stopping over for the owner and guests to play a few rounds of golf before continuing a leisurely cruise to the Bahamas. At least that was the gossip Annie had heard from Ingrid, whose husband, Duane, had gone out deep-sea fishing with a friend whose boat was in the next slip. Annie studied the three-deck, 121-foot yacht, Come On Along, with interest, but not envy. She loved imagining how the lives of others played out, a musician in a symphony orchestra, a master carpenter, a wildlife photographer, a translator fluent in Arabic. For each she might have an inkling of their daily lives but she simply couldn’t envision the lives of those who wandered the world in incredible splendor. Of course, with the miracle of satellites they could have e-books . . .

  She laughed aloud. Life without books to her would be no life at all, but who knew how these travelers whiled away their days. In fact on a yacht that size, there would be room for a paneled library with deep easy chairs. She was still pondering endless days at sea and stacks of books to read when she pushed inside Death on Demand and flicked the switches to turn on the lights. Her silky black feline, Agatha, raced up the aisle, leaped to the counter of the cash desk, and crouched.

  Annie knew the drill. She walked to the cash desk, pulled a sheet from a white notepad, skillfully avoiding a swat from one black paw. She crumpled the sheet into a ball and threw the enticing wad down the center aisle.

  Agatha launched herself, landed lightly, and raced after the paper. Soon she was knocking the paper ball down the aisle and into the coffee area.

  Annie took a deep breath of books and gave a thumbs-up to the molty raven perched atop the entrance to the children’s retreat. She was ready to begin the day, placing orders, making calls, unpacking books.

  A knock sounded behind her. It was fifteen minutes until opening time, but hey, the lights were on. If a deprived reader needed books, the welcome mat was always out. She opened the door with a smile.

  Lucy Ransome looked apologetic. Her curly white hair looked unaccustomedly shaggy, as if she’d only managed a hurried swipe or two with her brush. Her white cotton shirt was misbuttoned. “I know you aren’t open yet, but Max said he was sure you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Come right in.” Annie sensed a burning intensity that Lucy was trying to keep leashed. This was obviously not a casual visit.

  Lucy brushed back a tangle of curls. “Thank you. I have to tell someone. And you’re always so capable . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  Annie hoped she could help. But if it was something to do with Paul’s estate, Max would be a better choice. She gave Lucy a quick smile. “I’ll do my best. Let’s have some coffee.”

  Lucy followed her down the center aisle, murmuring, “I don’t really know what to do. I didn’t even take time for breakfast.”

  “I have some great cake doughnuts. Max’s secretary, Barb, loves to make them. I’ll pop a couple in the microwave to go with coffee.”

  They settled at a table near the coffee bar with fresh Colombian and a doughnut apiece. Annie drew in a scent of cinnamon and hot doughnut, took a bite. Barb should be a pastry cook, not a secretary.

  Lucy’s expression held a note of defiance. “The police won’t listen to me. I have to do something.” The last words came in a rush and her face squeezed in determination. Anger tinged her tone.

  Annie was startled by the intensity of Lucy’s taut words. This was something far different than grief. “What’s wrong?”

  Lucy’s blue eyes held a look of hope. “Maybe you can tell me what I can do. You and Henny saved Jeremiah Young when there was that dreadful crime at Better Tomorrow.” Police had sought Jeremiah, the handyman at the island thrift shop, when a volunteer was murdered. “And now poor Tom Edmonds. The police have arrested him. I know he wasn’t there.”

  Annie was puzzled. How could Lucy possibly know where Tom Edmonds had been when his wife was murdered?

  Lucy brushed a hand through her silvered hair. “You are looking at me just like that police chief did. He thinks I’m unbalanced. I suppose I didn’t sound rational to him, talking about Paul’s desk and the party and saying I don’t believe there was a gun.”

  Annie schooled her face, trying to appear receptive though her thoughts whirled. Jane hadn’t been shot. What did Paul’s desk have to do with Tom Edmonds and a sculptor’s mallet? What party?

  Lucy lifted her purse from the floor and drew out a folded sheet of thick, cream-colored paper. She closed her eyes briefly, opened them. “Early this morning”—she had difficulty forcing the words—“I started clearing out Paul’s desk. I needed to find some papers for the kids, but mostly I wanted to start packing away his things. Some of them I can donate. Some I’ll send to the children . . . But that doesn’t matter. I’d scarcely been in the room since I found him there.”

  Lucy stared past Annie, her eyes full of pain. “Everything had been cleaned up, but it was terribly hard. Like I told the police when they asked about the gun, I never had any occasion to look in his desk. I didn’t know anything about a gun. Paul never spoke of owning a gun.” Her lips compressed for a moment. “Once he said there were too many guns, that it was sick to have a country where anybody could get a gun if they wanted it. He said people found them stored away in attics, kept them, gave them away, that some gun shows and shops didn’t worry about checking anybody. They sold old guns without asking any questions. He was angry. There’d been one of those awful shootings. They seem to happen now more than ever. Now I don’t think”—her voice was firm—“he ever had a gun in his desk.”

  “But, Lucy, there was a gun.” That’s what Lucy had told them, Paul slumped in death on his desk, the gun lying on the floor by his dangling dead hand.

  “Oh yes.” Her voice trembled. “There was a gun and that gun killed Paul. But I don’t believe there was ever a gun in Paul’s desk. There weren’t any rags or stuff to clean a gun. My husband had a gun. He kept it in his desk along with an oil spray and some silicone cloths and brushes and picks. I looked in the drawer that was pulled out, where they found the half-empty box of cartridges. I didn’t look closely that morning. Then I just saw that the drawer was open and there were cartridges. But today I looked carefully. The police took away the gun and the box with bullets. I asked them this morning and they said that was all they took. So, why wasn’t there any cleaning material? And there were other things in the drawer, nothing to do with a gun. The
re were some folders on the bottom and that’s all. Life insurance. Bank slips. I think someone came with a gun and shot him. What if someone came that night and walked around the desk, maybe saying ‘I want to show you something,’ and then, real quick, put the gun to his temple? When Paul”—her voice wavered—“fell forward, why couldn’t someone have taken his hand and placed the fingers around the stock and on the trigger? That policeman said they did a test and found gunshot residue on Paul’s hand. He said Paul’s fingerprints, from both hands, were on the cartridge box. I don’t care. Maybe the murderer wiped the hand that held the gun on Paul’s hand to leave traces of gunsmoke residue. Someone could have picked up his hands and touched all over the box.” Her glare was defiant, her small chin resolute.

  Annie had felt instinctively that Paul Martin wouldn’t have killed himself. But the evidence seemed clear despite Lucy’s misgivings now. “You said yourself”—her voice was gentle—“that he was upset that week.” She heard her own words, knew they meant she’d come to terms with his death. His self-inflicted death.

  Lucy nodded in vigorous agreement. “He was worried. Now I know why.” She unfolded the heavy sheet of creamy paper and carefully laid it on the table. “This is what I found in his desk. See, there’s a date. He always put a date on a sketch. There it is: 10/8.”

  Annie looked. Lucy seemed to see great significance in the date. October 8 was the night before Paul was shot. Annie glanced from the date to the pencil sketch, stone walls on either side of pillars with shrubs beyond, a rearing horse to the right of the pillars. Annie knew the source of the drawing, a ten-foot-tall bronze statue that stood outside the entrance to the sprawling acres of Jane Corley’s estate.

  There was one stark difference between the sketch and the statue. The upflung head of the statue depicted a horse pleased at its display of power, commanding, imperious. In the drawing, the horse’s teeth were bared in fury, signaling danger.

  Below the sketch of the pillars and horse was another drawing, this one more attenuated but readily deciphered, Shakespeare’s three witches dancing around a boiling cauldron.

  Annie felt a chill as she read words written in a slanting backhand: An open house, a hard heart. Evil in a look. I saw it. I’ll deal with it at the party.

  Lucy tapped the sheet emphatically. “That’s Paul’s handwriting, and look there.”

  A final sentence was underlined twice: Protect Jane.

  Lucy’s words tumbled, fast as a plunging mountain stream. “He drew this Tuesday night. Wednesday night we went to David Corley’s house. Madeleine had a party for his birthday. Don’t you see?”

  Annie tried to sort out the meanings but there was too much, Paul’s preoccupation, his sketch with its bald statement, Protect Jane, the snarling horse, gunsmoke residue on Paul’s hand, Lucy claiming there never had been a gun, Paul planning to confront evil at a party. David Corley’s birthday party? Jane would have been there.

  Lucy leaned forward. “I told everyone Paul was upset, but I supposed he was worried about a patient. I never believed he was depressed or thinking about shooting himself and, the more I think about it, I don’t think there ever was a gun in his desk—”

  Annie held to a central fact. On the sketch Paul underlined his determination to protect Jane. But Paul died. Then Jane was murdered.

  “—and now that I’ve seen the sketch, I’m sure Paul saw something at the art gallery open house, the Sunday night before we went to the birthday party. Paul says he saw evil in a look. It was after the open house that he was preoccupied and worried. Now I know why. He saw something at the open house that told him Jane Corley was in danger. Paul’s drawing indicates he intended to deal with that at a party. He had to be talking about David Corley’s birthday party because we came home from David’s party and that’s the night he was shot. He talked to someone, told them nothing better happen to Jane. That’s why he was relaxed when we got home. If only I’d noticed which guests he talked to. But I loved sitting there watching the young people have fun. Some of David’s old fraternity brothers came from Atlanta. I talked about quilt patterns with Kate Murray. I spoke to Frankie Ford but she didn’t have much to say and I thought it was sad that she seemed so alone at the party. I wasn’t watching Paul. All I know for certain is that when we were driving home, he wasn’t upset any longer. It’s not”—the negative was as emphatic as a clenched fist—“because he’d decided to shoot himself.”

  Lucy’s hypothesis was as flimsy as a house made of paper until Annie looked at the sketch and the double-underlined words: Protect Jane. If Jane Corley were alive, the sketch didn’t matter, but Jane had been battered to death in her home on the Monday after Paul was shot.

  “They’ve arrested Tom. And that’s wrong.” Lucy sounded indignant and despairing all at the same time.

  Annie’s face creased in thought. Why was Tom’s arrest wrong? Maybe Paul saw danger in Tom Edmonds’s face. Maybe Paul talked to Tom at David’s party. Like Henny said, there was a reason police looked at a spouse first. Unbidden came an image of Tom Edmonds with his sensitive artist face and cute but no longer perky Frankie Ford.

  Lucy clapped her hands together. “You look just like Billy Cameron, patient and nice and thinking I don’t understand about Tom and Frankie and anyway who had a better motive? I don’t know who had any kind of motive, but I know Paul didn’t kill himself. That means someone came to Paul’s study that night. I told you that Paul seemed more himself after David Corley’s party. He talked to someone there. That’s why I know Tom Edmonds is innocent. Tom missed the party. He wasn’t on the island that night. He was in Atlanta.”

  3

  “Maybe there’s a unicorn over the next sand dune.” Billy Cameron’s voice was genial, which softened the words, but his blue eyes clearly held a skeptical gleam. His desk was neat, three closed folders. His computer screen showed Outlook Express. Blue skies and placid waters were postcard perfect through the window that overlooked the bay. There were no clouds on the police chief’s horizon today.

  Annie knew her concern had been tipped overboard like a too-small fish tossed back into the water. “Lucy brought you the sketch.”

  Billy leaned back in his chair, comfortable, at ease. “Yep.” His broad face was sympathetic. “Look, Annie, you got a heart as big as Texas, but this time you don’t have a dog in the hunt. Paul’s scribbles are just that. Nobody followed him home from a birthday party with all the stuff that was needed to make his death look like a suicide. His sister admits he’d been upset. FYI, we didn’t release it to reporters because you can’t prove something from nothing, there was a blank sheet of paper on the desk and a pen next to it. Looked like he was going to write a note, didn’t, got on with it.”

  Annie perched on the edge of the hard wooden straight chair in front of his desk.

  “Lucy said you agreed somebody could have smeared gunshot residue on Paul’s hand.”

  “Like I said, nobody can prove there aren’t unicorns, even though nobody’s ever seen one. Sure, some clever devil could have held a gun with a hand sheathed in a plastic glove, caught Paul right on the temple, shot him, stayed calm enough to strip off the glove, use the glove to swipe Paul’s right thumb, palm, and part of his fingers. Of course”—now Billy leaned back and folded his arms—“that also presupposes somebody showed up ready to kill him with a gun that couldn’t be traced and a half-full box of cartridges. Lots of requisites there. Not only did somebody come in the den planning to kill him, but, once he was dead, the dude was smart enough to use both of Paul’s hands to put fingerprints on the cartridge box, then smeared residue on his right hand. No residue on the cartridge box. Got to keep it in order. The box had to be touched up before the residue was transferred to his right hand. Lots of planning there. Plus, we have that blank sheet of paper. Lucy probably never saw it because he fell forward and it was pretty much covered with blood. Sorry. I don’t think so.”

  Ann
ie ignored Billy’s dismissive tone. “He could have had the paper out for another reason.” Her words sounded empty to her. She hurried on. “The paper doesn’t count. If he was going to write a suicide note, he would have. Anyway, maybe somebody plans real carefully. Paul was afraid for Jane. There’s no way you can dismiss that. He knew someone planned to harm her. Billy, she’s dead.”

  Billy shrugged. “The dog barks and you stub your toe on a rock. Cause and effect? I don’t think so. Face it, Annie, she had a two-timing husband whose fingerprints are all over the hammer that killed her.” Billy’s face creased in exasperation. “No matter how much Lucy Ransome wants to change what happened, Paul Martin shot himself. There’s no proof anyone came to his door, no proof the gun didn’t belong to him, no proof anyone other than Tom Edmonds murdered his wife. I’m sorry Paul shot himself. He was a great guy. A good doctor. I don’t know what the hell was wrong in his life. But that sketch could mean a lot of things. When people doodle, their thoughts may be scattered all over the place. Maybe Paul was thinking of a horse who needed a good dentist. Maybe Jane Corley needed to take better care of herself. Maybe he drew the witches because he was thinking about Macbeth and that’s the evil in a glance. Maybe a lot of things. But I don’t believe anyone followed Paul home from a birthday party and blew his brains out and had the balls to set up a suicide scene.”

  Annie looked at Billy’s square, strong, confident face. He obviously hadn’t picked up a crime vibe from Paul’s death. Billy never hesitated to follow a hunch. This time he didn’t have a hunch and he had a man in jail whose hammer had been used to kill his wife. What happened after David Corley’s birthday party had no relevance for him.