"Oh, yeah, excuse me. A business engagement back by the mausoleum with the broken palm tree. I believe that's what you said." Narrowed eyes now. "Mighty peculiar place to conduct business, Mr. Darling."
"I suppose there was something Ms. Kimball wanted to show me at the Tarrant plot." Max tried to keep his voice level, his temper intact. "She was scared. She called me and she was scared as hell. The call broke off. I don't know why or how."
The policeman rubbed his nose. "No phone booths at the cemetery. If she was scared, needed 'help,' why didn't she tell you to come where she was? Why the cemetery?"
"I don't know." Max spaced out the words. "But she did. I came as fast as I could, but when I got there, all I found was her purse, flung down on the path. Now, what does that look like to you?"
"Looks like the lady lost her purse," the sergeant said mildly. He held up a broad palm at Max's fierce frown. "Okay, okay, we'll check into it. We'll be in touch, Mr. Darling."
Max almost erupted, but what good would it do? With a final glare at the uncooperative lawman, Max turned away. He banged out of the station house and slammed into his sports car. He hunched over the wheel. What the hell should he do now? Obviously, it was up to him. Would it do any good to check Courtney Kimball's apartment? Max didn't feel hopeful.
But it was better than nothing.
That took time, too. He had Courtney Kimball's address, but he didn't know Chastain. He didn't find any help at the nearest convenience store or at the video express, but an elderly woman walking two elegant Afghan hounds finally came to his assistance.
"Oh, you're very close. That's still in the historic district. The half number probably means a garage apartment. Turn left here on Carmine, go two blocks, turn right on Merridew, young man. It should be in that block."
It was.
A street lamp shone on a bright-white sign: THE ST. GEORGEINN. A lime-green dragon lounged upright against the crimson letter S, his tail draped saucily over a front paw.
Max hurried down a flagstoned path past a shadowy pond to the back of the property and an apartment upstairs over the garage. No outside light shone, but lights blazed inside and there was a murmur of sound. Voices?
Max took the outside stairs two at a time, relief washing through him. Maybe it was going to be all right. Maybe it was a lost purse, just like the cop suggested. After all, Max had been late—though not that late—but Courtney Kimball was a driven woman. Certainly in the brief contact they'd had, Max had recognized a strong will. There was, in Courtney's single-minded concentration on the Tarrant family, a chilling sense of implacability. Just so did the narrator seek to find the secrets of the House of Usher.
At the top of the stairs, he realized two disturbing facts at the same time.
The door was ajar.
The voices, impervious to interruption, flowed from a television set.
Max knocked sharply. The door swung wide.
The voices—amusing light chatter from an old movie—continued unabated, as unreal as a paper moon, masking the absolute quiet of the unguarded apartment.
Max stepped inside. "Courtney? Courtney, are you—" Disarray.
A hasty search had begun. Cushions littered the floor. Desk drawers jutted open. Papers spewed from a briefcase tipped over on a coffee table. But across the room sat a Chippendale desk, its drawers closed, and through an open door, Max glimpsed a colonial bedroom, the four-poster canopied bed neatly made, the oxbow chest undisturbed.
A search begun. A search interrupted?
He called out again.
The flippant voices from the television rose and fell. If Courtney Kimball was here, she couldn't answer.
Chapter 7.
Annie recognized him at once and knew his arrival meant trouble.
Chastain Police Chief Harry Wells wasn't a forgettable man, not from his slablike face to his ponderous black boots, now solidly planted on her front porch.
Wells hadn't changed a whit since she'd last seen him. His wrinkled black jacket, white shirt, and tan trousers were just as she remembered. The crown of his white cowboy hat was as smooth and undented as a river-washed stone, and his rheumy, red-veined eyes surveyed her like a hangman measuring rope.
Annie didn't hesitate. "What do you want?" she demanded.
Dislike flickered in his eyes. Dislike and a flash of malicious pleasure.
Annie braced herself.
"I'm investigating a disappearance in Chastain, Miz Darling." Wells's words had the lilting cadence of South Carolina, but even that glorious accent couldn't mask the threat in histone. "Your husband's involved. I want to know about this woman he was meeting." His eyes clung to her face, greedy for her response.
The blows were so rapid, Annie felt stunned and sick. Woman.
Chastain.
Disappearance.
Max.
Only the adrenaline flowing from the shock of Wells's unexpected appearance kept her on her feet.
That and hot, swift, unreasoning fear.
"Max! Where is he?" She gripped the door for support.
"He's safe enough." Wells's voice scraped like a rusty cemetery gate. "Right now he's in the county jail. Under arrest as a material witness. Who was she, Miz Darling?"
When she didn't answer immediately, the burly police chief leaned forward. It was, she remembered, a favorite trick of his, using his commanding height to intimidate. His sour breath swept over her. "So you didn't know about her. Well, that doesn't surprise me, Miz Darling. I understand she's good-lookin'. A mighty cute blonde. The kind a man would go a far piece to keep his wife from finding out about. Thing is, those kind of women get insistent, say they're going to tell the man's wife—"
Later, Annie was proud of her quickness because she understood in a flash: Wells was going to accuse Max of an affair and blame the disappearance of this woman—what woman, oh Max, what woman?—on Max's determination to keep the truth from her. But despite the shock, there was an immediate, elemental response too deep for words. Annie couldn't know the truth of anything—except Max would never injure a living soul.
Not Max.
Never Max.
She clapped her hands to her hips and thrust out her chin. "Get real, Wells." Her voice dripped disgust. "Max had a business engagement this evening. If some client's in trouble, if something's happened to her, it's because of the problem she
brought to him. And no, I don't know what that is. Or who she is. Or care. I run a bookstore, Chief, and I don't try to work two jobs. Max takes care of his own business. But I'll tell you this, you're wasting your time talking to me. Did you say she's disappeared? Then you'd better get back to Chastain and start looking for her—and listen real hard to what Max has to tell you." With that she turned and marched back into the house.
Wells started to follow.
Annie yanked her coat out of the front closet and scooped up her purse from the hall table. "Nobody asked you in," she snapped, facing him in the doorway like an outraged terrier staring down a mastiff, "and I'm leaving."
"Now wait a minute, Miz Darling." He backed out onto the porch, his face turning a choleric purple. "If you won't cooperate with lawful—"
"You don't run a damn thing on Broward's Rock." She slammed the door. "If you try and detain me, I'll file the biggest lawsuit for illegal restraint you've ever seen." She marched down the steps, heading for her Volvo. "See you in Chastain, Chief."
By the time a sleepy magistrate agreed to release Max on his own recognizance, there were no more ferries to the island. They found a motel, The Pink Flamingo, on the outskirts of Chastain. As the door shut behind them, Annie glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Almost three A.M.
"The sorry bastard."
Annie knew who Max meant. The brief drive from the jail had consisted of one furious diatribe by Max.
Max gave her an exhausted, despairing look. "God, Annie, this is a mess."
"We'll handle it." She reached out to take his hand.