Design for Murder Read online

  Come on, Annie, she instructed herself sternly, don’t be a gothic wimp. Everything would be all right with Max. She felt a flood of good cheer, with just a faint undercurrent of apprehension. Okay, she’d get back to work on her very own murder. Humming “Happy Days Are Here Again,” she returned to the coffee bar, put down her mug, and reached for the notebook. Now, what would cast members need to know about their characters to portray them successfully? She leaned against the bar and stared upward, and her eyes paused on the watercolors pinned to the back wall. By golly, these were a triumph.

  In the first watercolor, a large, slope-shouldered man in a gray suit knelt beside a long, thin body in a black overcoat. The kneeling figure, with the face of a blond Satan, gripped a flaming cigarette lighter in his left hand. The flame flickered close to an open, immobile eye. His empty bloodstained right hand was raised. A football-shaped parcel wrapped in brown paper lay beside the body.

  In the second picture, the strong-jawed, brown-eyed private detective in a wet trenchcoat clutched his dripping hat in one hand and looked impassively at the young, slim, naked woman sitting stiffly, in the pose of an Egyptian goddess, in a highbacked teakwood chair. Her eyes were opened wide in a witless stare. Her mouth was agape, her small, pointed white teeth as shiny as porcelain. Long jade earrings dangled from her delicate ears. A corpse lay face up on the floor near a tripod camera. He wore Chinese slippers, black satin pajama pants, and his embroidered Chinese coat seeped blood from three wounds. Strips of Chinese embroidery and Chinese and Japanese prints in wood-grained frames decorated the brown plaster walls of the low-beamed room.

  Annie’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Maybe they were too easy.

  In the third sketch, a body lay sprawled on the floor of a cabana overlooking surging ocean waters, a single crimson bullet wound in the head. A husky, dark-haired man with a scraped and bruised face and weary gray-blue eyes looked questioningly at his friend in the doorway and the .32 target pistol in his hand.

  In the fourth painting, a yellow jeep with a front-end blade accelerated directly at the big, aging jock standing by an open pit in a subtropical pasture. Visible in the pit was the glossy, red-brown body of a dead horse. The driver of the jeep was shirtless, a mat of black hair on his tanned, muscular chest. He wore a white canvas cap and oval aviator’s sunglasses. His quarry, crouched by the pit, ready to spring out of the jeep’s charge, had light eyes and dark hair. He wore boat pants, sandals, and a faded white shirt. A vulture hovered overhead in the yellowish sky.

  In the final painting, an athletic, savvy-looking man stood poised in the archway of the living room of an old apartment, a gun in his hand. Velveteen hangings covered the walls. Skulls flanked an altar. A naked girl, her body painted with cabalistic and astrological signs, was tied to a cross, which hung from the ceiling. The cult’s almost naked priest, wearing only a hood, stood near the cross, brandishing a stubby stick.

  The old-familiar thrills coursed through her. Mysteries, the stuff of life. She bent over the bar and began to write, as fast as her hand could fly. By golly, this was going to be a wonderful mystery. And all her own. She whistled cheerfully as she worked. The Mystery Nights would be a smash and everything, of course, would ultimately come right between her and Max. He would see reason and agree to her plan for the wedding.

  As Annie would later say, had she but known….

  MAX HELD A FRESHLY sharpened No. 2 pencil between his index fingers, but he didn’t write a word. The yellow legal pad lying in solitary splendor on his leather blotter was blank. Nor did he offer refreshments to his prospective client, though he knew good, strong coffee pilfered from Death on Demand steamed in his stainless steel Krups coffee thermos. Max felt neither receptive, sociable, nor agreeable. Max didn’t like Harley Edward Jenkins III.

  Harley Edward Jenkins III sat in the red leather chair as if he owned it, Max, and the island. Only the latter was partially true, since he did control forty percent of the stock in Halcyon Development Inc., the real estate investment holding company which had created the luxury homes and condominiums on Broward’s Rock.

  “So get on it today.” Jenkins started to rise, which wasn’t especially easy for someone of his bulk. He bulged, despite the deceptive embrace of an artfully tailored navy blue Oxford suit.

  Max held up his hand. “Just a minute.”

  A frown creased Jenkins’s porcine face, and he pursed his fat lips impatiently.

  “I want to be certain I understand you.”

  Jenkins jerked his head in acknowledgment and balanced on the edge of the chair. Max thought he resembled a rhino in a hurry to get out on the savannah and gore some fresh meat.

  “You’re in a business deal,” Max summed up. “You want to buy some land cheap. The guy who owns it is running around on his wife. You want me to follow him, get some choice pictures, and hand them over to you. Right?”

  Jenkins wet his thick lips. “I don’t quite like the way you put that, Darling. Let’s say I merely wish to improve my position in negotiations, gain some leverage.”

  Max slapped the pencil crisply on his desk and leaned forward. “I’ve got some advice for you, Jenkins.”

  The businessman’s red-veined face turned a mottled purple.

  “Why don’t you go after money the old-fashioned way, Jenkins? Why don’t you earn it?”

  He was grinning as the door to his office quivered on its hinges as Jenkins, livid with fury, slammed it shut.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Annie about this encounter, even if he did owe a little to Smith Barney for his bon mot. He wished he’d had a camera to capture the shock on that sorry bastard’s face.

  Then he sighed. Dammit, he hadn’t had a job for three weeks. Not that it mattered financially, of course. It’s not as if he’d ever have trouble paying the rent. But Annie did like for him to be busy. That girl must have been frightened by a Puritan spirit in her cradle.

  Actually, he felt that his office was an artistic creation able to stand on its own merit without any need for utilitarian justification. He looked around in satisfaction. The room was large. An elegant rose-and-cream Persian rug stretched in front of the Italian Renaissance desk. Annie’s tart observation had been that the desk deserved at least a cardinal’s red robe for its owner. Glass-covered bookcases, filled with statute books and annotated treatises, lined one wall, though he made it very clear to clients that he was not practicing law. In fact, clients were usually more than a little puzzled as to his exact role, which suited him fine, since he had decided upon reflection that he didn’t care to be bothered to take either the South Carolina bar or to obtain a private investigator’s license. In his view, it was cruel and unusual punishment to require anyone to take more than one bar exam. He had manfully (if that weren’t sexist) passed the New York bar. As for a private investigator’s license, the sovereign state of South Carolina required either two years of work in an existing licensed agency or two years as a law enforcement officer before one could be obtained. Hence, his office window bore the legend, CONFIDENTIAL COMMISSIONS.

  As he had earnestly explained to a skeptical Annie, it was his aim to help his fellow man (or woman), and to that end he was willing to undertake any mission which was both legal and challenging. After all, he didn’t have to be either a lawyer or a private detective to ask questions and solve problems. A discreet but inviting ad ran in the Personals Column of both the Island Herald and the Chastain Courier:

  “Troubled, puzzled, curious? Whatever your problem, contact CONFIDENTIAL COMMISSIONS, 321-1321, 11 Seaview, Broward’s Rock.”

  At this very moment, however, he was glumly debating why he ever thought this was going to be fun. And the one thing he was absolutely, positively, without question convinced of was that anything in which he engaged be first and foremost fun.

  That did not include skulking about with a camera in hopes of obtaining blackmail material. Still, he wished it had been a legitimate case.

  He reached out and picked up a silver
photograph frame from the corner of his massive desk. He held it up to the light, and Annie smiled at him.

  Wonderful, marvelous Annie with her short blonde hair streaked with gold, her serious, steady gray eyes, and her gentle, kissable mouth—the most exasperating, mule-headed, aggravating female he’d ever encountered. By God, didn’t every woman want her wedding to be special? And wasn’t that what he was offering? Hadn’t his mother been at her most charming and least flamboyant when he and Annie visited her in Connecticut at Christmas? And Mother, with three superbly married daughters, had buckets of experience in planning weddings and would be delighted to help.

  The trouble with Annie—one of the troubles with Annie, he corrected himself sourly—was her stiff-necked pride which confused money with independence. What he needed to do was to make it clear to her that money, when you had it, must never be master. The best way to keep money in line was to treat it as disposable and spend it. This theorem was Darling’s Law of Finance, quite on a par and in happy contrast (at least in intent) to Veblen’s Principle of Conspicuous Consumption. Veblen had no sense of humor. He took money very seriously indeed. As did Annie.

  What to do about Annie?

  Max folded himself comfortably into his well-padded, high-backed swivel chair, which could be tilted almost horizontal and contained a vibrator and heating element. He flipped two switches and relaxed as the chair lowered and began to purr. Propping his Cordovan loafers on the gleaming desk top, he regarded the portrait. Time for an end-around run. When opposition held the middle ground, the smart general foxed his way to an unprotected flank in the manner of Leonidas Witherall, the erudite sleuth created by Phoebe Atwood Taylor writing as Alice Tilton. He shook himself. There he went again. Obviously, he was beyond help. Annie’s approach to life had infiltrated his mind.

  Max thought cheerfully for a moment about unprotected flanks, then concentrated.

  If he couldn’t persuade Annie of the merits of a grand wedding, which were undeniable, then he must beguile her. How best to do that?

  She could not be bribed, heaven forfend, but perhaps she could be inveigled. What could he do that would persuade Annie that he, Max, was the world’s most wonderful man, and should, of course and as a matter of justice, be deferred to? He spent several delightful seconds imagining Annie in a posture of deference.

  She loved surprises.

  His eyes narrowed, his face furrowed in thought. Surprises—the shop—Agatha—

  Raising the picture high, he let out a whoop. Of course! Why hadn’t it occurred to him sooner? He flipped the chair’s switch. Upright, he plopped the picture next to the phone, yanked up the receiver, and punched a button. “Barbie, dial international information, then get Sotheby’s on the line.”

  The object of this deliberation was at that moment braking as she coasted onto the ferry. Hers was the first car aboard. Stumpy Ben Parotti waved to her from the cabin. As the ferry lurched away from the dock, Annie pulled on her cherry-red cable-knit cardigan and got out of her aging blue Volvo to stand next to the railing. The cool April air was perfumed with fish, saltwater, and tar. She breathed deeply. Broward’s Rock was the best place in the world to live, an unspoiled island with civilization’s amenities. Pity those poor deprived millions who called someplace else home. Leaning on the metal railing, she shaded her eyes from the noon sun and looked across the softly green waters of Port Royal Sound at the mainland, then fished a thin book from her pocket. The guidebook, which had been published by the Chastain Historical Preservation Society, contained a succinct but detailed history of Chastain, its most famous houses and people.

  She smiled a little at the history’s opening sentence:

  Chastain was never the center of commerce and art that was Charleston or even the shipping haven that was Beaufort.

  The writer apparently harbored a sense of inferiority. Had no one ever suggested accentuating the positive?

  She continued reading:

  Nor can Chastain rival Charleston (founded in 1670 at its earliest site) or Beaufort (founded in 1710) in age, but Chastain, first settled in 1730, proudly claims its place in the sun as the favorite coastal hideaway of South Carolina’s lowland plantation owners, who sought its healthful breezes during the deadly fever months of May through October, and in so doing built and maintained some of the loveliest antebellum mansions extant. Chastainians then and now feel themselves blessed above all others in the gentility, beauty, and grace of their city, secure on its bluffs above the Broad River.

  Chastain was first settled by Reginald Cantey Chastain, who received a grant from King George the year after the Province was returned to the King by the Lord Proprietors, Carolina’s first rulers. Chastain’s prosperity was great in these early years as she offered a safe port, stable government, and only occasional harassment from the Indians. During the Revolutionary War, when Charleston and the surrounding countryside suffered greatly, Chastain was little touched. What seemed great misfortune when the city fell to the British early in the war turned out to be her greatest fortune, as she was spared fighting and destruction. Indeed, Chastain was apparently favored by Heaven. During the War Between the States, she was early occupied by Federal troops, and therefore escaped the horror of Sherman’s torch, although her loyal sons and daughters found it painful to endure the sequestering of their enemies within their homes. However, this indignity was ultimately to preserve for the glory of the present the grandeur of yesterday. Some of the oldest homes in South Carolina survive in Chastain, including the famed Prichard, Chastain, McIlwain and Benton houses.

  The horn alongside the cabin gave three toots, Parotti’s signal that landfall neared.

  Slipping behind the wheel, she dropped the guidebook on the seat. Sea gulls moved in a rush of wings from their pilings as the ferry thumped against the buffering rubber tires, and Parotti lowered the ramp. First on was first off, so she quickly put the Volvo in gear and bumped onto the dock, then negotiated the ruts in the lane for a half mile and turned right onto the blacktop. A weathered sign announced: Chastain 13 miles.

  She drove with the window down, enjoying the clear, fresh air with its underlying sourness of marsh and bay water leavened by fragrant Carolina jessamine and pine resin. The greening marsh grass announced the coming of spring. Pale green duckweed scummed the roadside waters, and fiddler crabs swarmed over the mudbanks. Tall sea pines crowded the shoulders of the road. Pine pollen coated the road and the shoulders and everything else in the lowlands with a fine lemony dusting from the yellow-purple spring flowers. As she neared Chastain, a stand of enormous live oaks screened a plantation home from view. Only glimpses of tall red-brick chimneys revealed its presence. Delicate swaths of Spanish moss hung from the low, spreading limbs.

  Her first view of Chastain was unprepossessing, a fast-food hamburger joint, three derelict wooden houses, a jumble of trailer homes. She judged these with a jaundiced West Texas eye—one good wind would level them flatter than squashed pop cans. By the second Kentucky Fried Chicken, she spotted a plaque announcing the Chastain Historical Area, with an arrow to the right. Stuck behind a smoke-belching chicken truck, she chafed at the slowness of the traffic and kept a wary eye peeled for the eccentric driving common to small towns (mid-block stops, unheralded turns, and blithe disregard for stop signs).

  She turned on Mead Drive, followed it to Montgomery, found another plaque and finally reached Ephraim Street, which ran along the high bluff. A half dozen lovely old homes sat on large lots to her left. The river, sparkling like beaten Mexican silver, slipped seaward to her right.

  She drove to the end of Ephraim Street and parked in a neat graveled lot on the point, appropriately named Lookout Point. She locked the car, being sure to scoop up the guidebook with its map of the historic homes, her camera, and an extra roll of film. She paused to admire a flock of stately brown pelicans diving toward the river and a luncheon snack of mullet, then turned to survey the street. Just opposite rose a squat, buff-colored, square building which ho
used the Chastain Historical Preservation Society. From her guidebook, Annie knew the building was originally a tabby fort built in 1790 when the country raged to join with the French against England and other European powers as the French battled to protect their Revolution. However, Jacobism languished when the French Revolution banished Lafayette. She imagined for a moment the bustle and effort that had resulted in the fort, the grounds churned by wagon wheels, and the smell of lime and crushed, burned oyster shell hanging in the air. Now a smooth carpet of grass lapped against flowing banks of brilliantly red and yellow azaleas. A brick wall separated the Society grounds from Swamp Fox Inn, which boasted that Lafayette had slept there during his triumphal tour of the South in 1825, an old man remembering the glories of his youth, still tall, lame in one foot, but with electric, crackling black eyes and a gentleman’s charm of manner. The three-story frame Inn was an amalgamation of additions. Its center had been built in 1789.

  She studied it with interest. Mrs. Webster had explained that the Inn was providing a room for the mystery expert in return for promotional mention in the House and Garden Week brochures. Annie had called that morning to reserve an adjoining room for Max, her helper, as she explained to the innkeeper. She sighed as she noted the paint peeling from the second and third story pillars, the untrimmed live oak trees, which threatened to poke holes in the weathered exterior, and the unkempt stretch of lawn visible through the sagging wooden fence.

  Although nice surprises certainly could arrive in plain packages, it was her experience that poorly maintained motels, hotels, and inns featured hard beds, lousy food, and were either too hot or too cold. And she knew how fastidious Max could be. He was every bit as particular as Koko, the kingly Siamese in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. Her heart sank. Oh well, it would be good for Max to traffic with hoi polloi. She pictured him arising from a lumpy bed and stepping into a lukewarm shower. Grinning, she crossed the street, her goal the famous Prichard House which would be the site of the Murder Nights entertainment. She was ready to survey the setting and figure out the practical elements. Where should the corpse be found? Where would the suspects be placed? And the Investigation Center? What clues should she strew at the Scene of the Crime?