It seemed awfully quiet after Laurel was gone.
Annie, of course, had had plenty of time to call out and say Max wasn't coming home for dinner tonight and she and Laurel could drop by the Club.
It wasn't, of course, that she didn't want to tell anybody (and especially not Laurel?) not only that Max wasn't coming home, but Annie didn't have any idea where he was.
Or with whom.
The South Carolina Low Country has many charms—a seductive subtropical climate with a glorious profusion of plant life including flower-laden shrubs, lush carpets of wildflowers, and seventy-five-foot loblolly pines, abundant wildlife ranging from deer to alligators, and an easy-paced life-style characterized by graciousness and the loveliest accent in all of America —but the coastal road system, once off the interstates, is not one of them. The narrow two-lane blacktops curve treacherously through pine groves and skirt swamps, affording few chances to pass.
Max leaned out the window of his Maserati, straining in vain to peer around the empty horse trailer bouncing behind an old Ford pickup. Every so often he glanced at the clock in the dash. Events had conspired against him. The ferry was late leaving Broward's Rock. He'd chafed at the delay; then, once on the mainland, he'd realized he'd better stop for gas. Laurel was in the habit of borrowing his car and this time she'd returned it with the gas gauge damn near a dead soldier. The little country gas station, perhaps not a good choice, had been jammed. He wondered if the attendants were selling drugs on the side or maybe the crowd had something to do with the cerise cabin festooned with streamers advertising "Tanning Booths." So much for bucolic innocence.
Every minute lost made Max more frantic, even though he was sure the deaths Courtney Kimball had asked him to investigate were exactly what they appeared to be, just as he'd told her in the report he made yesterday. When he'd concluded, she'd asked sharply, "You didn't find anything out of order? Anything at all?" He'd spent several hours in dusty records atthe county courthouse, studying files from the coroner's office. They confirmed the information he'd found in old news stories. That's what he told Courtney. She looked at him, her eyes dark with unhappiness. "There has to be a way—" She broke off, seemed to acquiesce, paid his fee. He'd thought that was the end of it.
Until the call this evening, the shocking, incomplete call. Words tumbled over each other, frantic and incomplete: "Help . . . got to have help . . . the cemetery . . . Ross's grave . . . oh, hurr—" And the line went dead.
He'd dialed her number.
No answer.
Ring after ring.
And now, this damn truck—impatiently, he swung out the nose of the sports car, then yanked hard right on the wheel.
A Mercedes blazed past in the facing lane, horn blaring.
Fuming and chafing, his eyes watering from the pickup's bilious exhaust, Max finally found clearance to pass. The speedometer needle raced to the right. That broken cry, ". . . oh, hurr—" Help? What kind of help? The fear in her voice spelled danger. The Maserati plunged forward, born to race.
Annie's hands gripped the telephone like a vise, but she had her voice under control. Just barely. "No, Cynthia, none of Max's sisters are in town."
Cynthia waited for amplification.
Annie smiled grimly and uttered not another word.
"Oh, well." A sniff. "I just thought it had to be one of Max's sisters when I saw him at that wonderful little restaurant in Chastain Monday. You know, the new one with the Paris chef. Especially since the girl was blond and gorgeous."
Blond and gorgeous.
"And I was so surprised not to see you there." A saccharine laugh.
"A business lunch is a business lunch," Annie said lightly, all the while envisioning excruciating and extensive torture suitable for the middle-aged owner of the gift shop around the
corner whom Max had rebuffed at the annual merchants' Christmas party. Cynthia had been snide ever since. "Besides, I've been tied to the store since Ingrid's been sick."
"Oh, that awful spring flu . . ."
Annie doodled on the telephone pad—Cynthia's pudgy, beringed hand took shape. With a flourish Annie added an upward swirl of flame from matches jammed beneath the fingertips.
It was fully dark by the time the Maserati screeched to a stop beside the church. Max grabbed the flashlight from the car pocket, then flung himself out of the car. He thudded toward the massive bronze gates of the cemetery. As he shoved them open, the car lights switched off behind him.
The golden nimbus of light from the nearest street lamp offered scant illumination, succeeding only in emphasizing the shifting mass of darkness beneath the immense, low-limbed live oaks with their dangling veils of Spanish moss. The narrow cone from the flashlight wasn't much help. Beyond its focus, the crumbling headstones, many awkwardly tilted by roots or undermined by fall torrents, were dimly seen patches of grayness. Leaves crunched underfoot. A twig snapped sharply. Max stopped and listened.
"Courtney? Courtney?" he called softly. "Miss Kimball?"
Palmetto fronds clicked in the freshening breeze.
A bush rustled, and the thick sweet smell of wisteria enveloped him. The lights of a passing car swept briefly across the graveyard.
A raccoon scampered atop a marble burial vault.
An owl in a live oak turned glowing eyes toward him.
He looked down and took a reluctant step forward. A silky strand of Spanish moss brushed his cheek, as gauzy and insubstantial as a half-forgotten memory.
The swinging arc from the flashlight illuminated a cloth purse, half open, lying on the leaf-strewn path next to the Tarrant family plot. The beam steadied. It was an unusual purse with pink and beige and blue geometric patterns. The day he'd first met Courtney Kimball, she'd placed it on the bar when she opened it to reach inside for her checkbook.
The policeman's head swiveled around at the muted roar from the television set flickering in the corner of the station house, then swung back to face Max. "Home run." His stolid voice was surly.
Max was damned if he was going to apologize for interrupting a man obviously more interested in Braves baseball than a missing woman.
"Look." Max didn't try to keep the urgency out of his voice. God, how much time had passed? He'd called out for Courtney Kimball, searched as well as he could in a dark landscape that swallowed up the fragile beam of his flashlight, then, grabbing up the purse, he'd run to the nearest house and asked the nervous woman shielded behind a chained, partially open door for directions to the police station. It had taken another six minutes to get here. And now, this dolt wanted to watch a damn ball game. "We need to get men out there to—"
"Cemetery at St. Michael's, right?"
Finally, finally. "Right."
The policeman—his name tag read SGT. G. T. MATTHEWS-fastened faded blue eyes on Max. "Let's see your driver's license, mister."
"Oh my God, this is a waste of time. We've got to—" "License, mister." Matthews stuck out a broad, stubby hand, palm up.
Time, time. Everything took time.
Max clenched his fists in frustration as Matthews laboriously wrote down the information from the license.
When the sergeant finally looked up, his gaze was still skeptical. "Okay, Mr. Darling. Let's see if I got you right. You had a date with this woman—this Courtney Kimball—in a graveyard."
"Not a date. A business engagement." Even as he spoke, Max knew how odd that sounded.