Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 Read online

  I would check with everyone, of course. But only Chase used the hot tub first thing in the morning. So anyone could have crept out late at night after everyone else was in bed, plugged in the hair dryer, and felt confident Chase would be the victim.

  But if everything was in place on Thursday night, why had the murderer waited until Friday night to plug in the hair dryer?

  Why instead had the murderer tried to shoot Chase on Friday morning?

  Why, why, why?

  “The gunshots.” I said it aloud, my voice vexed.

  Burton’s body tensed.

  I knew as clearly as if it had been branded on his forehead that Burton knew something about the shooting.

  “Okay, Burton, what did you see?” If it was not the voice of judgment, it was close enough.

  He gripped the edge of the open briefcase. “I told you. I already told you. I wrote it all down, and I told you. Why are you always riding me?”

  I got up, walked to the desk, put my palms on it, and leaned toward him. “Burton, if you saw who shot at Chase, you’d better tell me before the killer comes after you.”

  Burton yanked with all his strength, the briefcase closed, and he faced me with a defiant smirk. An amused smirk. “You think you’re so smart.” He didn’t try to hide the soul-deep hostility in his voice. “You know the answer to everything. Well, you’re not as smart as you think you are. I’ve already told you—I didn’t see anybody shoot at Chase.” He grabbed the two briefcases and hurried around the desk. He opened the door. I had one last glimpse of his taunting eyes.

  They reminded me of the eyes of a little boy on a schoolground, sticking out his tongue at the hated teacher.

  However, I know the truth when I hear it. Burton had not seen the gunman.

  But he knew more than he was telling about that attack on Chase.

  If he hadn’t seen the person shooting at Chase, what could it have been? A sound? A smell?

  I would have to check my notes, but, as I recalled, he was one of the first to arrive on the scene.

  What did he know?

  And how could I—

  The lights went out.

  The study was plunged into a somber dimness. The storm howled. I thought for a moment that it had worsened, then I realized that for the first time I was merely hearing it without the masking background hum of the air-conditioning.

  I walked across the room, pulled aside the heavy velvet drapes.

  The rain undulated against the windowpane, making it as cloudy as an inches-thick sheet of plastic. I pressed my face against the cool glass and looked and looked. It was like viewing the world through thick-lensed glasses, nothing quite in focus, but I could make out enough to know that the minutes were running out. The gardens were gone. No trace remained. Where there had been roses and azaleas and vine-laden arbors, now there was only an oily gray swirling mass of water puckered by the frenzied, wind-driven rain. Italian cypress, uprooted by the wash of waves, bobbed in the water, along with deck chairs and jagged chunks of wood from the splintered buildings that had stood on the lower-lying land behind the main house.

  The roar of the wind sounded like lost souls crying for sanctuary.

  • • • •

  A square, lantern-style flashlight rested on the piano, spreading a cone of light over Valerie. The actress stared at the ivory keys. Her fingers delicately touched them and the notes were a tiny ghostly melody scarcely audible over the storm, more imagined than heard. Brahms Lullaby. I wondered what untroubled memories it evoked, what solace it provided. In the dim illumination her elegant bone structure and unblemished skin looked young. I caught for an instant a glimpse of how lovely she’d once been.

  I glanced around the music room. Enrique hunched by a boarded-up window, his head cocked, listening, listening. Rosalia and Betty sat against the wall in the corner nearest that window. Rosalia held a rosary in her hands. Her eyes were closed; her lips moved soundlessly. Betty’s arms and head rested on her bent knees. But where were the others, Roger and Trevor and Lyle and Burton and Miranda? Certainly it was time and past time for everyone to seek refuge here.

  “Damn!”

  I swung around.

  Lyle Stedman swore again. “Damn it to hell!” He grappled awkwardly, halfway through the door, with a sheeted mattress. One end of the mattress caught a bronze stand. The stand toppled over. A Chinese dragon vase crashed noisily to the floor.

  Valerie’s fingers never faltered on the keyboard. Rosalia jumped to her feet. Betty lifted her head to watch, but Enrique, his head bent, continued to listen.

  “Let’s try to get the damn thing on its side.” Roger’s flushed face appeared in the doorway.

  The men shoved and heaved and the mattress quivered and slid, then flopped heavily onto the parquet flooring, knocking a magazine stand over.

  Lyle moved quickly, shoving a chair and a side table out of the way. “Come on, Roger, let’s start a stack here.”

  Roger bent and picked up his end. Lyle grabbed the front, and the two men maneuvered the mattress up against the wall.

  Lyle grunted, “Okay. Come on,” and headed back out into the hall.

  “Lyle, what are you doing?” I called after him.

  He paused in the doorway. “Whistling ‘Dixie,’ Mrs. Collins.” His rawboned face looked gaunt but composed. “I’ve heard the damn things float. So what the hell, why not?”

  Betty pressed her hands against her lips and stared in mute misery at the mattress.

  So Lyle and Roger hadn’t given up. Well, neither had I. “Enrique, we need to round everyone up. Find Trevor and Burton, tell them to come here.” I picked up a flashlight from the several collected on the coffee table. “I’ll go down for Mrs. Prescott.”

  Enrique looked toward me. His face had a greenish sweaty look.

  The wind screamed and roared and thundered now, louder than a thousand freight trains, a sky full of bombers, a killer avalanche.

  “No.” It was all Enrique said. He turned back to the window, reached up, held tight to the two-by-fours buttressing the sheet of plywood.

  I didn’t have time to deal with him. I knew he could not be bullied, not like Burton. Both were hostile to women but in such different ways. Enrique was dangerous. If I had a weapon—I felt a jolt as the realization struck me. Oh, Christ, a weapon! How could I have forgotten?

  Betty struggled to her feet. “Ill go, ma’am.”

  But I was already running. I didn’t even bother to answer.

  I was midway down the main staircase when the house shuddered, a slow, wrenching, grinding reverberation.

  I could feel it in the soles of my feet. The stair treads trembled. The wall to my left canted away from me. The now useless chandelier that hung over the main entryway swung, back and forth, back and forth. The oblong crystals struck one another over and over, a cascade of sound, windchimes gone mad.

  “Miranda?” I stood midway down the staircase, clutching the leaning banister, and shouted.

  Where was she? God, she was so young. And this morning she’d been so distraught. This was wrong. Dead wrong. She should long ago have been upstairs in the secured area. Miranda and the weapon I’d stupidly forgotten.

  I switched on the flashlight and hurried down the leaning staircase, frantic with worry. Why hadn’t I thought of her sooner? Chase would have wanted her protected. Oh, God, let Miranda he all right.

  I held the light out in front of me, chest high. Its thin beam scarcely penetrated the gloom. I collided with a knee-high jardiniere that had slid to the middle of the foyer. I winced and turned to my right, sweeping the cone of light along the floor. God, it was dark. I wished I’d asked Roger or Lyle to come with me. But I couldn’t take the time to go back now.

  I refused to think about time, and how little time might be left.

  I plunged down the hallway, calling her name. “Miranda! Miranda!” My foreboding grew. Why didn’t she answer? But perhaps she didn’t hear me. The wail of the storm was an assault on the
mind and heart, an unending, almost unendurable, gut-deep howl.

  I half-limped, half-ran down the hall.

  The door to Chase and Miranda’s suite was closed.

  I twisted the doorknob.

  It turned. Thank God, it turned.

  I pushed the door open.

  “Miranda!”

  Not a sound or a movement except for the tumult of the storm.

  I darted the flashlight’s beam swiftly around the room.

  Miranda lay on her back in bed. Her head, the black hair curling sweetly, rested against the white satin pillow. Her eyes were closed. She looked like a child, vulnerable and appealing, deep in sleep.

  It took all my strength to approach that bed and grasp a limp hand. Such a small and dainty hand. I uncurled the fingers, lifted up a small brown plastic vial.

  Valium.

  I tucked the bottle in the pocket of my slacks, then held her wrist and searched for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  I pressed a finger against the carotid artery beneath her right ear.

  It was so hard to tell, with the roaring noise that surrounded me, pressed against me, and the shifting, quivering moan of the walls.

  I thought I felt a tiny, almost imperceptible quiver.

  I swung around, reached across to the dresser, and grabbed up an ornate silver-backed mirror. I held it close to Miranda’s lips.

  Faintly, ever so faintly, the mirror clouded.

  I dropped the heavy mirror, slewed around, and ran, the beam of the flashlight swinging madly in front of me.

  “Roger! Lyle! Roger! Help! Help, help!”

  “Henrie O? Mrs. Collins?” Lyle was midway down the stairs.

  “Hurry!” I screamed. “Miranda’s ill. I need your help.”

  Lyle thudded down the stairs, Roger on his heels. They slowed enough to let me lead the way with the flashlight.

  In the bedroom I swung the light toward the bed. Lyle took one look and grabbed the slight form up in his arms.

  “Bring a pillow and some covers,” I told Roger. As they moved, I swiftly searched the warm-up suit Chase had discarded early that morning when he decided to swim, searched it and found nothing. I looked frantically around. The blue blazer Chase had worn the day before … I ran to it., No gun in the pocket. I danced the light over the chests, the tables. No gun. No gun.

  “Come on,” Lyle shouted raggedly. “Come on!”

  Time to search had run out. Was the gun in that room? Or had someone taken it after Chase died?

  But I could look no longer. I took the lead, shining my flashlight up the shadowy hallway. We were almost back at the central hallway, almost there, when the front door sagged inward.

  There was no especial noise, or perhaps it simply couldn’t be heard above the hurricane-force winds.

  One moment we were hurrying forward, only a few feet away from safety; the next a waist-high wall of water rushed inside with greedy sucking noises, sweeping us off our feet, slamming us against the walls.

  I went under.

  The water was cold. My shoulder struck something hard. A hot, quick pain shot down my left arm. I lost my grip on the flashlight. I struggled to regain my footing, swallowed water, came up choking.

  A strong hand grabbed my shirt and lifted me up.

  “Hold on to the stairs,” Roger sputtered.

  I grabbed a baluster, and he turned away and went splashing off into the darkness.

  “Oh, Christ, help me,” Lyle called, “I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her.”

  I saw an eerie glow deep in the water.

  I took a deep breath and ducked down. My fingers closed around the flashlight just as another big surge of water swept in, lifting it and me. When I broke the surface, sputtering, I paddled a few feet and was back to the stairs.

  I swung the light swiftly around the entryway.

  Vases, picture frames, and satin sofa cushions bobbed in the water, A straight chair, almost upright, floated close enough to touch. I jerked out of the way as a grandfather clock loomed out of the darkness to crash into the stairs, easily snapping that portion of the banister.

  Lyle and Roger fended off furniture as they dove down and down, frantically searching for Miranda.

  I pointed the beam at the water. There, toward the back of the hall, a glimmer of white …

  I held the flash steady. “Lyle, Roger, there she is!”

  They both went down and came up together, supporting her between them.

  Miranda moaned. She was still alive!

  I pulled myself up and over the banister and flopped onto the steps. I was halfway up the steps, but they were already awash.

  Holding Miranda and trying to reach the stairs, Lyle fought the deadly current. Roger swam alongside, fending off the bigger pieces of flotsam. The noise was all around us.

  I kept the light steady.

  At last they reached the stairway. His chest heaving, Lyle came up out of the water, still cradling Miranda in his arms. He clambered up the steps. Roger, breathing heavily, an angry scratch on his face, was close behind them.

  We were almost to the top when the entire staircase shuddered beneath us. With a rending crack the bottom two-thirds of the stairs crumbled away from the wall.

  Where we had been there was nothing but swirling water and jagged, jabbing pieces of wood.

  Betty stood waiting for us on the landing. Whimpering, she stared past us at the sucking, hissing, foaming water.

  “Betty.” I was so glad to see someone who would help. “We’ve got to hurry. Mrs. Prescott is very ill. We need to get her warm. Could you get some towels and a couple of blankets?”

  I wished I knew what more to do. Should we try to induce vomiting? But she was unconscious, and there would be a danger of choking. What was needed—if it wasn’t already too late—was a stomach pump and possibly a blood-cleansing apparatus. All we could safely do now was keep her warm.

  We carried her into the music room. Trevor was sprawled on a long sofa. He lurched to his feet. “My God, what now?” He smelled like whiskey, but his voice wasn’t as slurred as it had been earlier and his movements were assured.

  “An overdose.” I shooed the wet and bedraggled men over to a corner. Trevor poured mugs of broth for them. I wondered if I’d ever have a chance to tell Rosalia what a good job she’d done in bringing up supplies.

  When Betty came in, carrying a good half-dozen towels, Valerie and I stripped off Miranda’s sodden nightgown and gently dried her off.

  “We’ve got to wrap her in something warm.” I started for the hall.

  “Don’t go out there,” Roger cried. “The whole wing may go anytime.”

  “I’ll hurry.” I threw it over my shoulder. I dashed through the upper central hall and ran down the corridor—the sloping corridor—-to my room. I grabbed a cotton robe for Miranda and some dry clothing for me. Back in the music room we slipped my robe around Miranda and tucked her into a blanket on one of the mattresses Lyle and Roger had brought.

  It was nice to have a task to cling to, something to think about besides the pounding of the rain and the slam of the winds against the house and the gun that I should have found. With each surge of water the central part of the house shuddered.

  How much more could this wounded structure withstand?

  It wasn’t until we had Miranda as comfortable as possible and I had ducked into a dark corner to dry myself off and re-dress that I paid any attention to the room and its occupants.

  Rosalia knelt at the foot of Miranda’s mattress, her hands gently smoothing the blanket. Valerie sat beside the mattress, holding one of Miranda’s limp hands in hers. Enrique remained hunched by the window. His eyes were closed, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Trevor leaned against the piano, but his head was up and he was listening. I could feel his fear all the way across the room. Roger and Lyle huddled under blankets. Each held a mug in his hands.

  God, yes. Something hot to drink, to fight the chill that bit deep into my bones. I wa
s halfway across the room to the table with its array of thermoses when I suddenly stopped.

  “Burton. Where’s Burton?” I looked at Betty.

  “I hunted for him, Mrs. Collins. Just like you told me to. I went to his room”—she pointed toward the other wing—“and I checked Mr. Prescott’s study, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I called for him and then I was going to go downstairs. I didn’t know where he could be, but I wanted to find him and ask him to come here like you told me to and I got to the top of the stairs. That’s when you were bringing Mrs. Prescott up the steps. If I hadn’t waited for you to come up the stairs, I would have gone down and I would be in the water.”

  Damn Burton. He wouldn’t be any help, but this was by far the safest place to be.

  “I can’t see any reason why he would have gone downstairs,” I said briskly. “So he’s up here somewhere. We’ve just missed him. I’ll go to his room. Why don’t you take another look in the study? Did you have a flashlight with you?”

  Betty shook her head.

  I gave her a flashlight.

  It only took a minute to cross the hall—at a greater slant now—and check the secretary’s room. When I opened the door, I knew immediately that he wasn’t there. A window had blown in, shattering glass across the bed. Waves of rain swept inside, drenching the spread and the carpet.

  My flashlight beam danced from the bed to the dresser to the desk. I walked that way and saw the briefcases he’d stuffed with folders sitting open on the desk. They, too, were wet, the luxuriant leather sodden.

  As I watched, a black snake curled over the lip of one briefcase. The reptile lifted its head, looked toward me.

  I stumbled backward. The light flickered from the desk to the windowsill. A cottonmouth oozed over the sill. I aimed the flash down between the bed and the window. A tangle of snakes quivered, a dark shivery mass on the floor. A water moccasin, with that identifiable pit-viper mouth, slithered from beneath the bed.

  I whirled around, ran toward the door.

  The snakes were fleeing from the flood, seeking sanctuary wherever they could.

  I could imagine them crawling over the house, under the eaves, onto the roof.

  I hurried out the door, slammed it behind me.