Carolyn G. Hart (32 page)

She threw herself into the breach. “Oh, no, we’ve just started. We have to figure out the information to give to the suspects.”

The phone rang at the front desk, but Annie knew Ingrid would answer it.

“Let’s see, we’d better draw up a timetable, then we’ll decide who was where and—”

“Max,” Ingrid’s voice warbled cheerfully. “It’s for you.”

He reached for the extension behind the coffee bar. “Hi, Barbie. Sure, I’m free. I’ll be right back.” He hung up and whistled. “Barbie said this guy’s waiting to see me, and he’s talking a thousand-dollar retainer.”

Annie was tickled. Max actually sounded interested. It wouldn’t be the money, of course, but the chance to have a job. Perhaps he was reforming. Max excited at the prospect of work!

He paused at the front door and called back meaningfully, “I’ll be back in a little while. We’ve got to talk.”

She stood by the coffee bar, her arms folded. Ingrid, her springy gray hair in tight curls from a new permanent, bobbed down the center aisle like a curious but ladylike bird. She had decided opinions on Annie and Max’s disagreement, but she practiced her own brand of tact. After she poured both Annie and herself fresh coffee, she said, “Sounded like you were having fun for a while.”

“Yeah.” She refused to meet Ingrid’s eyes.

Ingrid gently touched her arm and once again backed into her subject. “You know the old saying about pride. Well, pride is a mighty cold bedfellow. And people, if you hurt them too much, you can lose their friendship. And that would be a shame.”

Annie felt a sick ache in her heart. Lose Max? It seemed such a small thing, really, to want to plan the wedding her own way. A simple, small ceremony here on the island, paid for by her. But Max was obstinately insisting on a magnificent, grandiose,
immense
wedding in his hometown, at his expense.

She took a gulp of the hot coffee. “I’d better see if
that delivery’s come,” and she carried her coffee mug past the scattered tables to the storeroom.

“Call me if you need any help,” Ingrid offered, before turning up the central aisle to the cash desk. Annie knew she was offering more than assistance with unloading boxes, and she was torn between affection and irritation. Darn it, did
everybody
think Max was right—except her? She put her coffee on the worktable and attacked the unopened carton of used books, bought from a collector in California. Wrestling the box open, she started pulling out the wads of crumpled newspaper. The top volume, well-wrapped in plastic, was an autographed first-edition copy of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
. It was a wonderful find, but she didn’t enjoy the usual flip-flop of pleasure. Instead, she slapped the cardboard carton shut, retrieved her coffee mug, and wandered back out into the bookstore. She’d not thought in terms of
losing
Max. Why, any fool could see how much fun they had together.

Even the excitement of working on the upcoming Mystery Nights waned as she considered Ingrid’s unsettling but well-meant warning. Restlessly, she paced into the American Cozy area, full of rattan chairs, wicker tables, and tangly ferns in raffia baskets. But the mingled smell of recently watered greenery and both musty and new books lacked its usual charm. Absently she noticed that Agatha had been chewing again on the fern closest to the Christie shelves. On a normal day, she would steal a half hour at least to look at her newest acquisitions, and perhaps succumb to the temptation to forget all duties, pressing or otherwise, and just curl up with one. Only yesterday she’d received a mystery she’d been seeking for years, Sax Rohmer’s
Fire-Tongue
. This was the famous book that he started
without a solution, couldn’t solve himself, and finally had to ask his friend Harry Houdini to solve for him.

But not today.
Fire-Tongue
could wait until she’d completed the Mystery Night scripts—and stopped brooding about Max.

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.…

5

M
ax 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 lever-age.”

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.