Annie made a mental note about Thursday.
She compiled a list of Miss Constance’s visitors at Helping Hands the past week.
The visitors were all-to the volunteers-familiar names, familiar troubles, familiar sorrows.
Except on Thursday.
Portia Finley said energetically, “We did have someone new late that afternoon. A young man. Very thin. He looked ill. A Yankee. Wouldn’t tell me what his trouble was, said he had to talk to Miss Constance personally. He wrote out a note and asked me to take it in to her. She read it and said she’d see him immediately. They were still in her office talking when I went home.”
It took all of Annie’s tact, but she finally persuaded Portia Finley to admit she’d read that short note on lined notepad paper. “I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a threatening note. Or obscene.”
“Oh, by all means,” Annie said encouragingly.
“It didn’t amount to much. Just said he was a friend of Peter’s and Peter had told him to come and see her.”
Friday’s volunteer, Cindy Axton, reluctantly had nothing out of the ordinary to report.
But Saturday’s volunteer, Emma Louise Rammert, had a sharp nose, inquisitive steel-gray eyes, and a suspicious mind.
“Don’t believe it was suicide. They could show me a video of it and I still wouldn’t believe it. Oh, yes, I know she was sick. But she never spoke of it. Certainly that wouldn’t be motive enough. Not for Constance. But something upset her that morning and I think it was the paper. The Clarion. She was fine when she came in. Oh, serious enough. Looked somber. But not nervy. She went into her office. I came in just a moment later with the mail and she was staring down at the front page of the Clarion like it had bitten her. Besides, it seems a mighty odd coincidence that on the afternoon she was to die, she’d send me off early on what turned out to be a wild goose chase. Supposed to be a woman with a sick child at the Happy Vale trailer court and there wasn’t anybody of that name. So I think Constance sent me off so she could talk to somebody without me hearing. Otherwise, I’d of been there at four o’clock, just closing up.”
Was the volunteer’s absence engineered to make way for suicide-or for an appointment? Constance Bolton, had she planned to die, easily could have waited until the volunteer left for the day. But if she wanted to talk to someone without being overheard, what better place than her office at closing time?
Annie picked up a copy of the Saturday morning Clarion and took it to the Sip and Sup Coffee Shop on Main Street.
The lead story was about Arafat and another PLO peace offer. The Town Council had met to consider banning beer from the beach. Property owners attacked the newest beach nourishment tax proposals. Island merchants reported excellent holiday sales.
A story in the bottom right column was headed:
AUTOPSY REVEALS
CAR OCCUPANT
MURDER VICTIM
Beaufort County authorities announced today that a young man found in a burning car Thursday night, originally thought to have died in a one-car accident on a county road, was a victim of foul play.
Despite extensive burns, the autopsy revealed, the young man had died as a result of strangulation. The victim was approximately five feet seven inches tall, weighed 130 pounds, was Caucasian, and suffered from AIDS.
The car was found by a passing motorist late Thursday evening on Culowee Road two miles south of the intersection with Jasper Road.
The car was rented at the Savannah airport on Thursday by a Richard Davis of New York City.
Authorities are seeking information about Davis’s activities in Chastain. Anyone with any information about him is urged to contact Sheriff Chadwick Porter.
Annie called Miss Dora. “Tell me about Peter.”
“Constance’s grandnephew. His father, Morgan, was the son of Everett, her older brother. Everett died about twenty years ago, not long after Morgan was killed in Vietnam. Peter inherited the plantations, but he never worked them. James did that. The other brother. But they went to Peter. The oldest son of the oldest son inherits in the Bolton family. Peter inherited from his mother, too. She was one of the Cinnamon Hill Morleys. Grieved herself into the grave when Morgan was killed in Vietnam. So Constance raised the boy and James ran the plantations. When he was grown, Peter went to New York. A photographer. Didn’t come back much, Then he was killed last winter. A car wreck.”
One car wreck had masked murder.
Had another?
Annie wished for Max as she made one phone call after another, but she knew how to do it. When it became clear that Peter Bolton didn’t die in a car wreck-despite that information in his obituary, which had been supplied by his great-uncle James-she redoubled her efforts. She found Peter’s address, his telephone number, and the small magazine where his last photograph had been published and talked to the managing editor.
But Peter wasn’t murdered.
Peter died in a New York hospital of AIDS.
And Richard Davis had been dying of AIDS before he was strangled and left in a burning car in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
Richard’s note to Constance Bolton claimed he was a friend of Peter’s. More than a friend?
Maggie Sutton had the apartment above Richard’s in an old Brooklyn brownstone.
Her voice on the telephone was clipped and unfriendly. “You want to know anything about Richard Davis, you ask-”
Before she could hang up, destroy Annie’s link to Richard and through him to Peter, Annie interrupted quickly. “Richard’s dead. Murdered. Please talk to me. I want to find his murderer.”
It took a lot of explaining, then Maggie Sutton said simply, “My God. Poor Richie.”
“Did you know Richard was coming to South Carolina?”
“Yes. He was sick-”
“I know.”
“-and they fired him. They aren’t supposed to, but they do it anyway. Before most people with AIDS can appeal, file a lawsuit, they’re dead. Richie was almost out of money. His insurance was gone. They only want to insure healthy people, you know. Nobody with real health problems can get insurance. Richie and Peter lived downstairs from me. Nice guys.” She paused, repeated forcefully. “Nice guys.” A sigh. “God, it’s all so grim. Richie took care of Peter. He died last winter. Last week, Richie told me he was going on a trip and he asked me to feed their cat, Big Boy, while he was gone. Richie said Peter had written a will before he died, leaving everything to Richie, but he didn’t do anything about it then. I mean, he didn’t want Peter’s money. But now he was desperate. And he thought, maybe if he went down there, showed the will to the family…” Her voice trailed off.
The family.
The last surviving member of the family stood with his head bowed, his freshly shaved face impassive, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, as mourners dispersed at the conclusion of the graveside service on Tuesday afternoon. A dark-suited employee of the funeral home held a black umbrella to shield James Caldwell Bolton from the rain.
The day and James Bolton were a study in grays, the metallic gray of Constance Bolton’s casket, resting over the dark pit of her grave, the steel gray of Bolton’s pinstripe suit, the soft gray of weathered stones, the misty gray of the weeping sky, the silver gray of Miss Dora’s rain cape, the flinty gray of the stubby palmettos’ bark, the ash-gray of the rector’s grizzled hair.
Annie huddled beneath the outspread limbs of a live oak, a thick wool scarf knotted at her throat, her raincoat collar upturned. Rain splashed softly against gravestones as mourners came forth to shake Bolton’s hand and murmur condolences.
Annie stared at the man who had inherited the Bolton and Morley family plantations.
James Bolton didn’t look like a murderer.