Read Online Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_04 by Death in Paradise - Free Book Online

hand shaking, she took the sheet over to Miz Ericcson.”
    â€œWho was there?”
    â€œMiz Ericcson’s husband, Mr. Scanlon. He’d just come in the front door. He was carrying a big white cake box. Miss Gretchen was sitting on a bench by one of the windows, reading a book. Miss Megan was out on the terrace in a hammock. Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Anders were playing checkers. Mr. Joss was picking out a tune on the piano. He can play real well, but he was just doing one note at a time.” Her eyes squeezed in remembrance, and now her voice was cold. “That Mackey, he was bringing in suitcases.”
    â€œAnd Stan Dugan?”
    â€œMiss CeeCee’s young man?” Maria shook her head. “No, ma’am. He wasn’t there.”
    I made a note of that. It surprised me a little.
    Maria Rodriguez shivered. “When it got quiet, everybody looked at Miz Ericcson. She’d been so happy. And she still had that armload of presents. She looked at the paper and her face got old right in front of our eyes, old and pinched. She looked at each one in turn and her voice was as cold as a blue norther. She said, ‘This isn’t funny. This isn’t funny at all.’ Then she looked around, like it would all be all right. ‘Where is CeeCee? Where is she?’”
    But CeeCee was nowhere to be found.
    The note was quite simple:
    Â 
    I F YOU WANT C EE C EE BACK ALIVE ,
    DO PRECISELY AS INSTRUCTED .
    C ALL THE POLICE AND SHE DIES .
    F OLLOW INSTRUCTIONS .
    Â 
    So Belle refused to call the police. Or to reveal the instructions on a folded sheet of paper.
    That came later.
    â€œMiz Ericcson made each one of us promise not to say a word to anyone. But she asked me to go get Johnnie to help Mackey and the kids search around the place. They’d pieced it together by then that Miss CeeCee had come to the lake the night before, on Friday. Mackey told them about finding her car. I run home to get Johnnie. When I told him what had happened, he shook his head back and forth real puzzled. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand. Listen, you wait here a minute. I got to see about something.’ He jumped in the pickup and went off. He come back in about ten minutes and his face was like the ashes in the fireplace. ‘Mama, I got to go over to the Ericcson place.’ I asked him what was wrong, but he said he couldn’t tell me nothing now.
    â€œHe didn’t come home till late that night and then all he’d say was that they hadn’t found no trace of Miss CeeCee and they all was wanting Miz Ericcson to call the police but she wouldn’t and she was going to do what the letter said to do and she wouldn’t tell anybody what it said. And she got on the phone and called some man to come and help her. And that made Mr. Scanlon mad.”
    Yes, Belle had called Richard and he’d gone to National to catch the next flight to Dallas.
    â€œDid you ask Johnnie where he drove in the pickup after you came home to get him? Before he went to the Ericcson place?”
    â€œNo’m.” She made no explanation, no defense. But the limp and sagging skin of her face was a study in fear.
    Denial takes many forms. One is a refusal to ask questions that need to be asked.
    I worried at her pallor. But I couldn’t let her rest. Not yet. “When the deputy called, was that when Johnnie asked youto say he’d been home on Friday night between six and seven?”
    She nodded wearily. “But the truth is he didn’t come in until right after seven o’clock. I fed him then. But he did work most of the evening on the soldier.”
    Funny how you can pick up a little nuance. “Most of the evening?”
    â€œJohnnie liked to walk out after dark. Sometimes late at night. He liked to find a place and stand real quiet and watch the raccoons. Sometimes a cougar’d pass by.”
    I waited.
    She picked up the last toy soldier her son had made,