Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 Read online

  The dunes were magnificent.

  I stopped for an instant to hold that picture in my mind. I was looking at one of the few pristine beaches left. The only trace of man was the boardwalk. No dune buggies had wreaked their havoc here. No’ heedless walkers had trampled these dune plants underfoot. Delicate bright yellow flowers topped the prickly pear cactus. Sturdy, thick-leaved sandwort, sea rocket, and saltwort thrived. Seaside morning-glory vines spread over the sand like veins in marble. Jessamine, chickasaw plum, wax myrtle, and beach pea flourished, offering subtle and gorgeous touches of rust and rose, tan and gold.

  These were dunes as dunes were meant to be.

  As I hurried along the boardwalk, bent against the increasingly stiff wind, I realized that the roar of the surf was not an accompaniment to the beach; it was a clamor.

  I reached the crest of the dune.

  The surf that rolls in to the South Carolina coast is small beer compared to the waves off Hawaii or Australia. It’s a surf that usually provides a perfect playground for children, little breakers, nothing too forceful. But the waves I saw this afternoon were awesome. Harbingers of greater to come, they hurled themselves ashore, six to seven feet tall, curling and cresting, foaming and churning.

  Haskell buffeted his way out, the surfboard pushed before him.

  I caught my breath. Dear God, that wave …

  A mountain of water curled above Haskell, poised to descend with the rumble of an avalanche, the force of a thousand fire hoses.

  Somehow—was it skill or foolhardiness or blind luck?—Haskell buoyed up, up, up and then his board curved over the spume, teetered for a heart-stopping instant on the edge of a watery green abyss, then triumphantly merged into the curling lip to ride the pounding, thunderous, churning surf toward shore. All I could see in that dangerous explosion of foam was his sleek, dark head, held high, and his fierce, sly smile.

  I try not to engage in envy. It is perhaps the least attractive trait of homo sapiens. Of course, we share it with other mammals, from gorillas to chimpanzees to house cats.

  I’ve never wanted to trade my existence for that of any other soul, from the most brilliant academic to the wisest philosopher to the most gifted athlete. But, just for an instant, I wished that I was young and wild and free, that I could hurtle through time and space daring life and death with such glorious abandon, a part of the wind and waves and water.

  Abruptly, the board upended in the whirling maelstrom of foam and Haskell was gone.

  I ran toward the beach.

  For a long, long moment I searched the water crashing ashore. And then he came, tumbling, rolling, struggling. Another wave flung him down. Again he disappeared. Then his dark head came up and he flailed toward shore, weaker now. Another wave crashed over him.

  I staggered out in the water, wary of the surf, and reached out a hand to help him.

  He tried to get up, fell, swore.

  “Hurry. Another big one …”

  We made it just in time.

  Haskell dropped to the sand. His chest heaved. I sat down beside him, breathless.

  “You’re a damn fool,” I remarked conversationally when I could speak.

  He tried to roll over, muffled a cry of pain. He massaged his right knee. “Banged it.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.” I tried to sound stern.

  His eyes blazed with excitement, though his face was pale. “I’ll tell you something.” He still pulled breath deep into his lungs. “I’ll tell you something—now I can fucking well die happy.”

  I grinned at him. Dammit, I liked him. He was untamed, perhaps untameable. I hoped he didn’t have a murderer’s heart, because I liked him.

  I gave one last look back at the high surf as we walked up the boardwalk together. Those waves and the heavily overcast sky and the snake seeking sanctuary meant that the huge storm south of us was sweeping this way. I would talk to Chase when he and Trevor returned. This was a tiny island that could easily be washed over in a hurricane. We’d better get out while the going was good. No later than tomorrow, and perhaps tonight if the hurricane warnings were already hoisted.

  Haskell and I didn’t talk as we walked back through the gloom of the forest. I waited until we had reached the pool and he’d toweled off and was comfortably sprawled in a deck chair, his mouth still curved into a tiny bemused smile of exaltation.

  “Haskell, who do you think shot at Chase?” I opened the wet-bar refrigerator, lifted out two Heinekens, and handed him one.

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks. Great.” His dark hair was plastered in ringlets close to his skull. He looked very young and, as always, sensually attractive with his olive skin, long-lashed brown eyes, and full lips.

  I thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  He shrugged. “Ouch.” He rubbed his left shoulder. “I kind of ache all over.” It wasn’t a complaint. He gave a more restrained shrug. “Who the hell knows? Maybe a little green man from Mars. Shit, I don’t know.”

  “Or care?” I tipped up the cool, water-beaded bottle and welcomed the sharp taste.

  For once he looked at me without mockery. “Naw. I don’t …” He frowned, shook his head. “I don’t like anybody to die. I hate that. Death.” He gulped more beer. “They made me go to the funeral home. For my mom. She was … nothing. Just flat and white and … dead.” His hand tightened on the bottle.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Slowly his vise-tight grip on the bottle relaxed. He gave me a crooked grin. “You’re okay, really. I mean, you sound tough, but you feel things, don’t you?”

  “More than I want to,” I admitted. I looked at the pool and saw that the wind was high enough to ripple the clean blue water.

  “Yeah.” His face crinkled in a perplexed frown. “It doesn’t do any good to pretend you don’t care, ’cause underneath it just hurts more. But when I go fast, then I don’t think about anything, I just feel good. Faster and faster and faster. God, it was great on that wave. It was great.”

  I could have told Haskell that no matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t outstrip his feelings. But it’s kinder to let each generation climb that mountain unknowing. If we knew at twenty what we know at sixty, it would make the climb that much harder and more harrowing.

  “Okay, so you don’t want Chase dead, even if it means the fastest powerboat money can buy.” I watched him carefully. I’d swear that just for an instant he thought about a boat and what it could mean and how much he would love it, but almost immediately he pushed the thought away, dismissed it. Inside, I felt a moment of joy, but I kept my voice matter-of-fact. “Help me out, Haskell. You’re smart. You notice things. Who’s tried twice to kill him?”

  He finished his beer and struggled up, still favoring his knee and shoulder, to get another from the wet bar. He took his time, uncapped the bottle, then cautiously resettled in his chair. “I don’t get it. No way do I get it. Look who’s here—Valerie? Well, I mean, how crazy can you get? She might break a damn fingernail.”

  I laughed. It was difficult to picture Valerie slinking through the pinewoods, lethal pistol in hand. I would have thought she’d be too afraid of snakes even to step into the woods.

  “As for Miranda, Jesus, she worships him.” There was an odd note in Haskell’s voice, not quite jealousy, not quite disdain.

  My smile slipped away. Once again I balanced it in my mind. Adoration or obsession, which was it?

  Haskell tipped the bottle to his mouth and swallowed greedily, then continued ruminatively, almost as if talking to himself. “Take old Lyle. He’s a true-blue shit. But murder? I mean, he’s got the inside track, he’s the fair-haired boy. Is he in that big a hurry? Not if he’s as smart as everybody says he is. And Roger, he may thump his chest because Chase sneers at his bleeding-heart sob stuff, but he’s really fond of his dad. Last Christmas Roger sent off to Africa—to Kenya—for this carved cheetah for Chase’s wooden-animal collection. Have you ever seen Chase’s collection? He’s got it in his office in Atlanta.
It’s super-fantastic. Rhinos, elephants, zebras, lions, antelope … Anyway, there was this particular cheetah. It was a hell of a lot of trouble, took months. Roger was so excited he almost threw up when the damn thing arrived. Came by air. Scratch Roger, I don’t care what anybody thinks. And who does that leave?”

  “Trevor. Burton. Enrique, Rosalia, and Betty.” I finished my beer and waited. I knew Trevor had an alibi that definitely wasn’t faked, but I wanted Haskell’s opinion of him.

  “I don’t like Trevor.” Haskell put the beer bottle on the flagstone. “So damn charming.” He made it sound like a disease. “Like a politician. He’s got that kind of smile, all shiny white teeth. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. But why blow away this rich guy who thinks he’s the greatest lawyer in the country? That would be stupid. Right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, old buddy Trevor may not be Abe Lincoln, but he’s not dumb. Oh, I guess Roger would probably keep him on, at least for a while, because Trevor knows everything about the business. But Trevor would just be trading one boss for another. What’s the benefit?”

  I couldn’t see one either. And there was no perceptible rift between Chase and his favorite lawyer.

  “As for Burton, pardon me while I puke. He wouldn’t have the guts to think about a murder. He’s a drip.” Haskell spoke with the intolerance of the young and strong for the weak and hapless.

  “Our murderer keeps a very low profile,” I reminded him. “Hiding poison in candy and shooting from behind a tree don’t argue lots of guts.”

  He grunted. “More than Burton’s got.”

  “I’d say Enrique has a full complement.” I drained the last few drops from the bottle, considered another, decided against it.

  “That’s a dangerous dude.” The words might be those of someone young, but his tone wasn’t. He spoke with utter conviction.

  You don’t have that kind of conviction without knowledge.

  I put my bottle down on the side table. “Come on, Haskell, let’s hear it.”

  He shot me a troubled look, then shrugged. “Hell, what can it hurt? I was a little kid. Nine, maybe. We were on a cruise down in the Caribbean. Me and Mom and Chase. You know it can get tough down there—drug runners decide they need a new boat, what the hell, stop some rich guy’s yacht, bump everybody off, sail on their way. It happens. It almost happened to us. It was Christmas Eve.”

  I could tell that it still hurt him.

  “Christmas Eve. I woke up to hear somebody shouting. It was a couple of guys—I saw them in the lights from the saloon. Like anybody down on the beach. Tanned. Blond. Beards. Khaki shorts. The kind of guys who might be on the boat next to yours at the marina. They both had thirty-eights pointed at Chase. The bigger one ordered him and Mom to walk toward the stern. Anyway, all of a sudden, pow, pow, and these guys doubled up, like in slow motion. They had holes in their chests.” He shifted in his seat, winced, and reached down to massage his knee. “Enrique stepped out of the shadows. He looked at Chase and they moved together and picked the guys up, one at a time, and tossed them overboard. Like they were garbage. There was blood everywhere. So Enrique hosed down the deck.”

  No, I hadn’t overestimated Enrique.

  Haskell put it in perspective. “Yeah, Enrique’s a tough dude, but why kill Chase? Chase told me one time he pays Enrique fifty thou a year because he’ll do anything Chase wants him to do.”

  “And Rosalia does everything Enrique tells her to do?”

  “Oh, yeah. He knocks her around, I’m pretty sure. I told Chase once. He told me to mind my own business.”

  I’d wanted facts. There was a fact.

  A harsh and ugly one.

  I wanted to protest, to say that Chase wouldn’t have said that, wouldn’t have ignored that kind of abuse in his own home. But I knew in my heart that it was more important to Chase to have Enrique as a fiercely loyal employee than to protect Enrique’s wife.

  But I wasn’t as young as Haskell, and Chase would have to respond to me.

  Haskell lifted his head, listening, then stood and shaded his eyes to gaze out across the sound. “Here comes the Miranda B.”

  The sky was an angry red to the south. Splashes of crimson streaked the gunmetal-gray clouds.

  “… sailor take warning.”

  Haskell grabbed his towel and got up.

  I stood, too. I knew I had only seconds left and one more question, an important one, to ask.

  “Didn’t I see you out back last night, Haskell? Late last night?”

  He looked at me blankly. “Out back? Out back where?”

  “Near the servants’ quarters. You and perhaps Betty?”

  He didn’t even have to speak; his face made his answer so plain: astonishment was followed by a look of pure outrage. “Hey, what do you think I am? Do you mean…” He shook his head in sheer disgust. “Look, I don’t have to get sex like that. No way. I’ve got plenty of girls. Plenty of them.” And he strode away.

  I might as well not have bothered making up a welcoming committee of one out on the pier.

  Chase stalked by me, his face purple with fury. He did manage a curt “I’ll talk to you later, Henrie O.”

  I stood by the boathouse, my hands on my hips, and I suppose my irritation was evident.

  Trevor Dunnaway, his blond hair awry from the wind, his face red from too much sun, dropped onto the boards and ambled wearily toward me. He threw out his hands. “I’m in the doghouse. You got a job for an ex-corporate counsel?”

  “He’s fired you?” The wind whipped my clothes against me.

  “Oh, no. Not quite. He probably will tomorrow,” Trevor said gloomily, jamming his hands in the pockets of his madras shorts. “As you may or may not know about Chase, he doesn’t like for the hired help to disagree after he’s given what he considers the final word.”

  I fell into step with him. “I gather you lodged a dissent.”

  “A couple of them.” He heaved a sigh. “Like the unwisdom in keeping recalcitrant houseguests in captivity. I can just see the lawsuit Val will file next week. I pointed that out. Didn’t make me popular. And I told him I intended to fill you in on a certain insurance policy. Chase and I absolutely disagree about how it could figure in all this. Made him furious. And to cap it off”—another heavy sigh—“I insisted we keep the radio on, get the weather reports. Now he’s evenly divided between being royally pissed off at me and at God. There’s a hell of a storm coming out of the Caribbean. Hurricane watch issued at noon. Hurricane Derek. Winds in excess of eighty-two mph and building. Already knocked the stuffing out of Cuba. Widespread flooding. Landfall could come as early as tomorrow evening. Somewhere between Miami and Savannah.”

  Savannah wasn’t that far.

  So we would get heavy rains, at the very least. And by tomorrow night the surf striking the island could wash right over those beautiful, unspoiled dunes. But that was tomorrow night.

  I was more concerned with tonight. “Let’s go a little faster, Trevor.”

  He groaned but kept pace.

  I didn’t want to let Chase out of sight. We were even with the pool when Chase yanked open the French door to his quarters. He looked back and yelled, “You’re off duty, Dunnaway. My wife’s here.” And slammed the door behind him.

  The lawyer sighed. “Yeah, Dunnaway, your goose is cooked.” He reached up to touch his face tenderly. “Literally and figuratively. Christ.” He looked wearily around, then pointed to some chairs beneath an awning. “I don’t need another dandy solar ray. Come on, if you’ll get me something cold to drink and murmur soothing reassurances about the future of my gilt-edged career with Prescott Communications, I’ll tell you all about Chase’s will, damn him, and a particular insurance policy.”

  At his direction I fixed him a scotch and soda, heavy on the scotch. I handed him his drink.

  He grabbed it, drank half. “You will put in a good word for me, won’t you?” His voice was forlorn. He wasn’t kidding.

 
“Sure. I’ll remind Chase that you know more about his financial affairs than anyone except him and his accountants. He’d keep a spraying skunk on his staff if it were to his advantage.” I dropped into a chair, also in the shade. I’d had enough solar rays myself.

  Trevor winced. “There’s something about that analogy I don’t like. However, to business, then I can crawl off ignominiously to my room and hunt for something to put on my face. It feels like raw meat.”

  “Looks like it, too.” He was going to be lucky if he didn’t have some blisters.

  He turned sun-reddened eyes toward me. “All right. You want to know about the will. It’s pretty straightforward. The entire estate is valued at eight hundred million. Chase and Miranda have a prenuptial agreement. She receives approximately twenty-five million. Roger receives all the rest except for some minor bequests: fifty thousand dollars each for Enrique, Rosalia, and Betty, and five hundred thousand for an old friend—”

  I was afraid I knew what was coming. I could feel the muscles in my face tightening.

  “—Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins.”

  Fury swept me. Chase couldn’t do this to me. I would not permit it. I see.

  There was a long and fairly awkward silence. Trevor obviously hesitated to speak. And I didn’t intend to discuss this development.

  “All right, Trevor, I’ll take care of that bequest as soon as I see Chase. But tell me the rest. What about Haskell?” My words were clipped.

  Trevor was grateful to find neutral ground. “He comes into control of his mother’s money. It’s enough that he can tell Chase to take the office and shove it.”

  So the motives continued to pile up. A young woman with twenty-five million could look forward to a lifetime of attention and pleasure. Roger would control the editorial output of a media empire. Haskell could have his pick of the world’s fastest—and finest—speedboats. And though small in comparison, the bequests to Enrique, Rosalia, and Betty could seem immense indeed to them.

  “And then there’s the insurance policy.”