Death Walked In Page 9

  Tonight he stared into the fire as if seeking answers. “Why didn’t Robert say where he was when his mother was shot? I keep coming back to that.”

  Annie remembered being a teenager. “He was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Or something that embarrassed him. Or he promised someone he wouldn’t say he’d been someplace. Or maybe he was selling pot to somebody on a back road. If so, his timing’s lousy.”

  “Handler said Harrison got up and walked to a chalkboard and fixed a grid with the time in half hours. She asked Robert to fill it in and he wrote down ‘driving around’ from ten to eleven. Handler wants me to try and pinpoint where he was this morning.”

  Annie’s heart gave a glad leap. Max hadn’t made a big deal out of signing on to help clear Robert. But it was a big deal. He wasn’t backing away from involvement anymore. He was putting last summer behind him. If he was able to trace Robert’s meanderings, show that he was at a specific place when Gwen was shot, it could make all the difference. The time…Annie concentrated. Gwen Jamison called Confidential Commissions around twenty minutes after ten. Annie found her dying less than half an hour later.

  Annie let go of Max’s hand, stroked Dorothy L.’s back. “It doesn’t take more than twelve minutes to drive from one end of the island to the other. If Robert was on the back roads on the north end, he could cover every one of them in an hour. But why would he? He must struggle to put gas in his car. Max, I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”

  “I don’t, either.” Max sounded grim. “Yet I’d swear he didn’t know his mother was dead. Maybe Handler can get him to open up. Tomorrow I’m going to canvass the north end of the island. He had to be somewhere.”

  The phone rang.

  Annie picked up the portable receiver. She glanced at caller ID. It was not a number she knew. “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Darling?” The voice was a low whisper. It could be either a man or woman.

  Annie was wary. “This is Annie Darling.”

  “Gwen told me what happened Monday night.” The whisper was faint, hard to hear.

  Annie sat bolt upright. She frantically waggled her left hand, then tapped the phone and pointed toward the kitchen and the extension.

  Max was on his feet and moving swiftly.

  As he picked up the extension, Annie spoke loudly, hoping to mask the click. “Who are you?” It wasn’t polite, but neither were whispers.

  The husky voice—a man, a woman?—was quick. “If you want to know what Gwen saw, come to the end of Fish Haul pier. Come now. Come alone. No flashlight.” The connection ended.

  “Wait.” There was no answer. She looked at Max. “Can we trace that call?”

  “Hold on. I’ve got the number.” He hurried to the den, turned on the computer, clicked several times. “It’s the pay phone on the ferry landing.”

  As Annie came up behind him, she pictured the pay phone, one of three left on the island. A streetlamp stood about ten feet away. “Whoever it was didn’t want to stand there very long and take a chance on being seen and remembered. I’ll have to go and find out.”

  He looked up at her, his face pulled into a frown. “To the end of the pier? Alone? Without any light? No way.”

  She brushed the top of his head with a kiss. “Chill, Max. Nobody’s threatening me. Whoever called is desperate not to be seen and identified. Here’s what we’ll do…”

  Chapter 7

  The ferry office was dark, the Miss Jolene at her berth. Occasional lights on the boat docks glimmered through the mist. Past the docks, near the end of the harbor’s curve, Fish Haul pier jutted five hundred feet into the sound. The pier was open to the public and a favorite place to fish for king mackerel and black drum in the summer. There was always a crowd during the day, but plenty of nighttime anglers enjoyed it, too. On a bleak February night, the pier was deserted and shrouded in darkness.

  Annie walked slowly onto the wooden pier. The sound of her shoes seemed loud. She squinted, trying to make out the end of the pier, uncertain whether a faraway dark shape was a pile or possibly a bench.

  The wood was slick beneath her feet from the mist. She felt cold despite the warmth of a navy peacoat, pullover sweater, and wool slacks. One hundred feet. Two hundred. Soon she felt far from shore and Max standing in the shadows of a gnarled live oak near the boardwalk. Three hundred feet. Four hundred. In one hand she held her cell phone, open and connected to Max’s cell. He’d be listening. She hoped the greenish glow of the phone wasn’t visible if her caller watched. She wondered if the caller could hear the clap of her shoes and the slap of water against the pilings.

  The sound of surging water was louder at pier’s end. The dark sweep of the sound seemed immense. Annie reached the cross railing. No one waited for her. She was alone on Fish Haul pier.

  She was lifting the cell phone to talk to Max when a voice called out, “Walk to the ladder.” The call was muffled, yet magnified.

  Annie looked back and forth. She was alone at the end of the pier. She walked to the ladder, gripped the railing, looked down.

  “Climb over. Come halfway down,” the husky voice called from the impenetrable shadow beneath the pier.

  Annie hesitated. If the hidden speaker hadn’t harmed Gwen Jamison, Annie shouldn’t be in danger. Still, and it came to her with a blinding clarity, she knew one fact that might be of compelling interest to the murderer. Annie had heard Gwen’s dying effort: “…gri…ff.”

  “I want to be sure you don’t have a flashlight.” The voice was louder, impatient. “Hurry, girl. I’ve got to get home.” A woman spoke. Her voice was tense and nervous, but without any hint of threat. There was a thunk as an oar hit a piling, no doubt keeping a boat steady beneath the pier.

  Annie tucked the cell phone in her coat pocket. Max wouldn’t be pleased but she felt reassured. The woman who’d made such an effort to see her was much more nervous than Annie. Clearly Annie couldn’t hold a flashlight and cling to the ladder, which indicated careful thought and intelligence in planning this rendezvous.

  Annie climbed cautiously over the railing, uneasily aware of the deep water beneath her. She wasn’t dressed for swimming. She wished she’d worn gloves because the wood was damp and slick. She moved down the ladder until she could see beneath the pier. The darkness there was inky. She didn’t have any idea where the boat might be.

  “Thank you, girl.” There was no longer an attempt to whisper though the voice was low and hurried. “I got to tell somebody, but I got to tell you now that I won’t go to the police. I talked to Gwen Tuesday morning. A fox got into her henhouse Monday night. When she ran out to see, she heard the clang of the gate to their old cemetery. She was worried it might be kids going to mess things up. When she got there, she saw someone burying something behind her grandpa Wilson’s grave. She had a clear view because there was a flashlight propped up. She saw who it was, clear as day. She said she was scared, but she waited until the person left and then she dug up a small package wrapped in a plastic trash bag. She took it in the house and opened it. She found the coins inside. She knew what it was. She’d worked for the Grants for years.”

  Annie strained to see but the shadow was too dark. “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “Oh, girl.” The voice sounded weary. “Who would believe she’d seen someone from the Grant house coming in the middle of the night to hide a fortune in her cemetery?”

  “Someone from the Grant house?” Annie held tight to the ladder. “She said the thief was someone from the Grant house?” Not Robert. Not a wayward teenager. If the thief came from the house, then the robbery had been staged to make it appear someone had broken in. The thief had known very well indeed which coins to pick.

  “It’s gospel, girl. ‘One of the family.’ That’s what Gwen told me. She didn’t know what to do. She said she couldn’t call the police, give them the coins without telling them who she’d seen. She was afraid the police wouldn’t believe her, that they’d think she had taken the coins, or t
hat Robert had. She hated to do it anyway. The Grants have been good to her. She didn’t want to hurt the family. She said she walked the floor all night, trying to decide. She said she was so tired her head pounded and her bones ached, but she knew she had to get the package away from her property. As soon as it was light, she went to the Franklin house. She told me, ‘I put the coins in a safe place and I wrote down exactly what I saw and who and when.’ After she got home, she kept figuring and decided the best thing to do was get the thief to take the coins back and return them and then no one would be in trouble.”

  “Why did she care if the thief got caught?” This would be the sticking point for the police. Why would Gwen Jamison take a chance of being involved in a major theft, perhaps accused of committing it, to protect a family she worked for? The Grants had been nice to her, but was that reason enough to shield a thief?

  There was a long silence, then a sigh. “Mr. Grant put up bail for Robert. Gwen felt beholden.” There was anguish in the woman’s voice. “I told her she should have rung up the police right that minute. Or leave the coins somewhere, call Crime Stoppers. But Gwen was afraid the same thing would happen all over again and that wouldn’t be right. If it did, she’d know who was responsible and nothing would be solved, and if she didn’t do anything to stop it, she was making a crime possible. Instead, she decided to ask the thief to return the coins and everything would be back the way it should be. She said she was going to leave a note and set up a meeting at her house Wednesday morning. She was going to write it so it would be clear she’d never tell anyone. She planned to get the coins from the Franklin house but I hear the locks were changed and she wasn’t able to get hold of them when the time came for her to meet the thief.”

  When the time came…

  The mist seemed heavier or possibly it was the memory of life running down which made Annie feel stiff and cold. “Did she say where she put them in the Franklin house?”

  “She said they were safe as in a vault.”

  Annie pictured the freshly repainted, empty rooms, the pristine basement, the clean attic. Somewhere in that unfurnished house a fortune in coins was hidden along with a damning description of the thief.

  Even if the coins were never found, this information was enough to save Robert. Annie spoke fast. “You’ve got to come with me. We can go to the police—”

  “No, girl.” The voice rose high. “Gwen saw too much. She’s dead. I don’t want to die.”

  Abruptly Annie understood why this meeting was so carefully arranged. The woman in the boat was terrified that she might become known and the murderer would come to kill her.

  Annie spoke before she thought. “Gwen told you who she saw.”

  Oars splashed on water. A scrape on the opposite side of the pier signaled the boat’s hasty departure out into the sound.

  Annie cried out, “Wait. Please!”

  No voice responded.

  Annie climbed up the ladder, pulled herself over the railing. She ran to the end of the pier, looked out to see a faint glimmer of gray white in the darkness as the boat moved steadily away.

  Officer Harrison sat ramrod stiff, her thin face empty of expression, her arms folded. An untouched legal pad lay on the desk before her. Her small windowless office scarcely afforded room for an old walnut desk that faced two metal straight chairs. The overhead light was starkly bright. Max’s knees jammed against the desk. Annie felt cramped and hot and terribly afraid her words tumbled into an abyss of indifference. “It’s clear Robert is innocent. The thief came from the Grant house. We wanted you to know in time to alert the DA and keep Robert from being arraigned tomorrow.”

  Officer Harrison balanced a pen between her index fingers. She glanced toward the clock, a reminder that it was nearly ten o’clock and she’d returned to the police station after-hours to meet them. A strand of red hair drooped across her forehead. Her uniform was wrinkled. She spoke politely. “Citizen cooperation is always appreciated. I will inform the circuit solicitor of the circumstances of your meeting with an informant and the content of that meeting.”

  The legs of Max’s chair scraped on the cement floor as he leaned forward. “This information clears Robert.”

  Harrison’s eyes glinted. “I think not. What Mrs. Darling offers is hearsay, what she claims was said to her by someone who claims”—the emphasis was distinct on the verbs—“to have spoken with Mrs. Jamison. There is no proof. We don’t have this witness’s name or—”

  Annie broke in. “She was afraid. The thief killed Gwen Jamison. The woman who met me was terrified.”

  “Her actions suggest fear.” An understanding nod. “They could also be the actions of a person who wishes to direct the focus of the investigation away from Robert Jamison and pretends fear as an excuse for remaining unidentified.” Harrison placed the pencil squarely in the center of the unmarked pad. “Who is this woman? How credible is she? What proof do we have she knew Gwen Jamison?”

  Annie kept her voice level. “If you had heard her, you would have believed her.”

  Harrison tapped the pad with her pen. “Obviously, you had an unnerving experience, going out in the darkness on the pier, hearing a disembodied voice. But”—and now she was crisp—“clearly the meeting was contrived to produce precisely the effect it did.” Implicit was the suggestion that Annie was both naïve and credulous and possibly frightened of the dark. “You rushed here with accusations against the Grant family. Have you thought how interesting it is that the unknown informer claims the thief came from the Grant house?”

  “Interesting?” Annie frowned.

  Harrison’s tone was patient. “Robert Jamison’s family obviously understands an explanation must be produced for the presence of the murder weapon in Robert’s car. So, presto, we have a dramatic rendezvous tonight in which a disembodied voice assures you Gwen Jamison recognized the thief as someone from the Grant house. That diverts suspicion from Robert and it suggests the murder weapon could have been placed in the trunk of Robert’s car when he went by the Grant house late this morning.”

  Max’s response was quick. “It could have happened exactly that way.”

  Harrison leaned back in her chair. “Why would members of the Grant household know Robert’s car?”

  Annie could imagine a half-dozen ways that might be true. “Perhaps the murderer saw Robert arrive.”

  Impatience edged the officer’s voice. “You are making quite a few assumptions. However, I will give this information to the circuit solicitor.” Harrison pushed back her chair and stood, the interview at an end.

  Max came to his feet, his face somber. “You saw Robert when he learned his mother was dead. Couldn’t you tell that he didn’t know? He was a kid hurt about as bad as a kid can be hurt.” Max’s voice was gruff. “Didn’t you look at him?”

  A dull flush reddened Harrison’s sallow cheeks. “I looked at him. I saw a punk, a good-for-nothing, weasel-faced punk who’d kill his mother or anybody else as quick as he’d step on a palmetto bug. I know about punks. A punk shot down my partner on his last patrol before he retired. You know why? The punk stole some copper plumbing from an apartment building. We saw a light there and got out to check. The lawyers dressed the punk in a blue blazer and white shirt and khakis for his trial and he got eight years. A first offense. Not premeditated. Eight years and less with good time. The punk’s going to live a long time. George is dead and buried and he never got to go fishing like he’d planned. Don’t tell me about punks.”

  Annie paced back and forth, her steps clipping against the stone floor of the kitchen. “What good did that do? Harrison isn’t going to investigate. She didn’t even ask me what the woman looked like.” Annie stopped, hands on her hips. “All right. If that’s the way she wants it, I’ll stir things up for her.” She glanced at the clock, made a quick decision, and grabbed the portable phone.

  She punched a familiar number. She was relieved when an obviously wide-awake Marian Kenyon answered. Marian sounded as frisky as a t
errier with a cornered rat. “Yo, Annie. What’s up?”

  “Quid pro quo, Marian.” Annie crossed to the counter, turned on the speaker phone, replaced the receiver. She found a pad and pen. “How would you like an exclusive interview with me about an unknown informant with shocking revelations about the theft of the Grant Double Eagles and the Jamison murder?”

  “Who’s the informant?” Marian always got right to the point.

  “Anonymous friend of Gwen Jamison’s. Gwen told her the thief came from the Grant house and was a member of the family. I’ll give you a blow-by-blow, my rendezvous in the dark at the end of Fish Haul pier, a disembodied voice, a rowboat disappearing into the night.”

  “Woo-hoo.” Marian’s raspy shout filled the kitchen. “This’ll frost the networks. Let me grab some paper.”

  Annie turned a thumbs-up to Max who was stirring hot chocolate. “Okay, Marian, your turn first. Who was in the house when the theft occurred?”

  A satisfied chortle. “You pushed the right button, sweetie. I do news the old-fashioned way. No handouts for this old broad. I got the police report. In the house that night were—”

  Annie wrote down the names.

  “—Geoffrey Grant, fifty-three, home owner; Rhoda Grant, forty-four, wife; sons, Ben Travis-Grant, twenty-five, and Justin Foster-Grant, twenty-eight; daughters Barb Travis-Grant, twenty-five, and Kerry Foster-Grant, twenty-four. Geoff Grant adopted the kids when he married their mothers. One at a time, of course. Ben and Barb are fraternal twins. Also in the house was Justin’s fiancée, Margaret Brown. Present in a cottage on the grounds was Denise Cramer, former sister-in-law.”

  Annie was perplexed. “Do they all live there?”

  “Only Geoff and Rhoda plus the ex–sis-in-law in the cottage. The brood shows up every year for a house party to celebrate Geoff’s birthday.”

  Annie nodded toward Max. He had predicted that when they knew why the coins were stolen during the winter doldrums, they’d know everything. They didn’t know everything, but now there seemed to be a very good reason for the timing of the theft.