Delia's bedside drawer. And in it, Courtney found a letter—a letter that made it clear that her father was Ross Tarrant." "And her mother?" Annie asked.
"No hint. At all."
That was all he knew.
The lawyer gave them a copy of that letter and Max added it to the file. But, when they stood to go, Max had one more question.
"Just for the record," he said quietly, "where were you, sir, from approximately four yesterday afternoon to, say, ten o'clock last night?"
Smithson stiffened. Bright patches of color stained his pale cheeks above his beard. Then, abruptly, he nodded. "Fair enough, Darling. I was in conference with a client from shortly after four until almost six. I had a quick dinner at the cafeteria across the street because I'm on the city council and I had to be there for a meeting at seven. The meeting didn't end until eleven-thirty." A dry smile. "Zoning generates enormous excitement." He reached for a pad from his desk, scribbled names and numbers on it. "You can check these." The angry patches faded away. He reached out, gripped Max's hand. "I'm very fond of Courtney. You'll find her, won't you?"
Max pushed open the gate to the St. George Inn, holding it for Annie. In the street behind them, a car door slammed. Running footsteps thudded on the sidewalk.
"You! Hey, you!"
They paused and turned.
Annie felt a swift thrill of fear, because this was a man out of control. He was young—probably her own age—the kind of person who normally would be immediately accepted, well dressed in a pale-green, crisp summer cotton suit, well groomed with short auburn hair, unobtrusively attractive with open, frank features. But his necktie was bunched at his throat, his suit jacket swung unbuttoned, a red gash on his chin from a shaving cut still dimpled with blood, his brown
eyes flared wide and wild, and his chest heaved as he struggled for breath.
"You—you're Max Darling?" He was at the gate now, and no one existed in the world for him at that moment but himself and Max.
Max nodded and his accoster grabbed his jacket with a shaking hand. "Goddammit, where's Courtney? I'll kill you if you've hurt her, I swear to God I will!"
His eyes full of pity, Max stood unresisting in the young man's grasp. "I'm looking for Courtney, too. My wife and I both are."
Annie chimed in and that got his attention. "Listen, my husband had nothing to do with Courtney's disappearance. She hired him to find out about her family, and we're doing everything we can to find her. Don't waste our time. And don't waste your time! Do you know who's trying to hang her disappearance on my husband? The police chief! He wants to keep everything quiet for the Tarrants. Courtney hired Max to find out what actually happened the day her real father died. We're still trying. If you want to find Courtney, the best thing you can do is make sure the Chastain police do their work."
Finally, he calmed down enough to listen. They took him to their suite and, while Max made coffee, they heard his story. His name was Harris Walker, and he was a young lawyer in Beaufort (Ogilvy, Walker & Crane).
He paced up and down in their suite. "I've known Courtney all my life. She lived next door." The shadow of a smile. "Irritating little kid, always hanging around the big guys, wanting to do whatever we did. I always called her Skinny. Drove her crazy." He looked at Annie with eyes that held a thousand memories, and Annie winced at his pain.
"Bullheaded when she was a little kid. Bullheaded now." His chin quivered. "I told her that. I told her to burn that goddam letter. What difference did it make who her dad was? It was a long time ago. It was other people's lives. It didn't have anything to do with us. But she was set on coming over here. So she hired you." He looked at Max. "Now she's gone,nobody knows where. What the hell are you doing about it?" He was combative again.
When Max finished an account of the past twenty-four hours, Harris scowled. "Jesus, you haven't accomplished anything, have you?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He took a gulp of coffee and banged his cup down on its saucer. "Listen, I'm going back down to the river. And I'm going to round people up. Start a real search. Goddammit, it doesn't do any good to talk to people. We have to look."
After Walker slammed out of their suite, Max reached for the phone. "Going to call Barb," he said briefly to Annie.
Annie dropped into a needlepoint chair and picked up the family tree of the recent generations of the Tarrants, but she listened to Max's conversation.
"We're in a race against time, Barb, and we need more help. I've heard about a pretty good private detective in Savannah, Louis Porter. Hire him." Crisply, Max described Harris Walker. "Yeah, that's right. Harris Walker. I want everything possible about him—and I want to know where he was from four o'clock on last night."
Annie shivered. Surely not.
". . . and get Porter busy on the people who were in Tarrant House on May ninth, 1970. You'll find the list in the Kimball file. Okay. Anything from your end?" Max leaned back against the bolster on the four-poster mahogany bed, then immediately sat up straight. "I'll be damned. Now, that's interesting. Annie and I went by her house this morning. Okay, Barb, we're on our way."
Annie put down the sketch of the family trees.
"Come on, Annie. Miss Dora has sent a royal summons."
"About time you got here." The tiny figure in the long black bombazine dress and high-topped black leather shoes was the Dora Brevard Annie recalled, without pleasure, from previous meetings. The reptilian black eyes with their flicker of intelligence and disdain gazed commandingly at them. Shaggy sil‑
ver hair streamed from the sharp-boned, wrinkled face. Half-gloved, clawlike hands grasped the familiar silver-headed ebony cane.
The old lady turned and led the way with surprising speed across the age-smoothed heart pine hall into a drawing room where time had stood still for a century. Bois-de-rose silk hangings decorated the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two baluster-stemmed Georgian candlesticks rested on either side of a Queen Anne gaming table. For how many generations, Annie wondered, had the table stood on that same spot? And had the golden-cream candles been there for years and years, too? A Georgian settee was to the left of the fireplace, two Georgian chairs to the right, with a soft rose Aubusson rug between. The elegant Georgian mantel shone as white as an egret's wing. It was a beautiful room.
Miss Dora sped to the nearest chair, inclined her head briefly toward the settee, and waited until they sat opposite her, for all the world, Annie thought resentfully, like children called to account by a strict headmistress.
"Well?" The sturdy cane thumped sharply on the floor.
"You wanted to see us, Miss Dora," Max prompted.
Her glittering eyes settled coldly on his face for a long moment, then she reached into a capacious pocket and, with a rustle, pulled out a square of neatly clipped newsprint and a thick-lensed pince-nez. She perched the delicate gold-rim glasses on her nose, held the clipping close, and began to read in her sandpapery voice:
but that Miss Kimball never arrived.
Miss Kimball's car, a 1992 cream-colored BMW, was found by police late last night at Lookout Point. Bloodstains were found on the front seat.
Chief Wells said Darling was held for questioning when police discovered him at Miss Kimball's apartment Wednesday night shortly after he had reported her missing to police. The apartment showed signs of a search.
Annie couldn't take any more. She jumped to her feet. "That louse. That rat. That slimebag—"
"That will do, Annie," Miss Dora snapped. "It won't help to have a hissy fit at Harry Wells. The damage is done. Your young man is in a pack of trouble, and you both might as well get ready to face it." There was more than a hint of satisfaction in her thin voice.
Annie opened her mouth, looked into Miss Dora's penetrating, raisin-dark eyes, and abruptly sat down.