Death on Demand (26 page)

“You may have business there. But she don’t,” and he jerked a thumb at Annie.

“Wait a minute—” she began angrily.

Max spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Stop snarling. Let me handle this.”

“She ain’t leavin’ the island.”

“She isn’t under arrest so—”

The squinty-eyed giant smiled. It was as charming as a barracuda doing ballet. “I got a warrant right here.” He thumped his brown khaki chest. “You get on that ferry, I arrest her.”

Parotti yanked the whistle. Final call.

Annie glared at Bud, then leaned forward as if to kiss Max goodbye. At the same time, she pulled open her purse, fished out the roll of film, and jammed it in his hand.

“Go ahead,” she whispered in his ear, then slid across the seat, opened the door, and jumped out.

Max looked from her to Bud and back again.

“Max, go!”

The Porsche jolted forward and rolled onto the ferry. The horn tooted, and the ferry chugged out into the sound.

Annie, arms folded, faced Bud.

His meaty face furrowed. “Hey, what was the big hurry?”

“Wouldn’t you just like to know?”

Annie rented a battered chartreuse bicycle at Henry’s Bikes By the Day or Week, picked up tacos-to-go at Maria’s Cantina, and pedaled furiously back to her tree house, taking the shortcut across the Forest Preserve, cool and dim now as dusk settled over the sea pines. She pumped vigorously, treating the bike path like a Le Mans speedway, to help ease some of her frustration. What a
lousy deal. She deserved to be in at the kill. Or, if not actually the kill, the moment of truth when the murderer’s identity was revealed.

Parking the hike beneath the outside stairway, she ran lightly up the wooden steps, unlocked the front door, and carried the take-out sack to the kitchen. She wiped her face, flushed from exertion. She felt like a piece of saltwater taffy that had been dropped in the sand. It was easy somehow to picture Max lounging comfortably in the Porsche, enjoying the cool sweep of water off the sound—and carrying in his pocket the solution to their mystery.

She plumped two beef tacos in the microwave to warm, ducked into the bathroom to wash her hands and face, retrieved the tacos, liberally doused them with hot sauce, and poured orange Gatorade into a yellow plastic cup. Carrying her meal into the living room, she settled comfortably in the wicker divan with a soft red cushion behind her. As she ate, she imagined Max’s reaction to this feast (utter horror) and studied her ceiling-high shelves filled with her own very favorite mysteries, many of them quite valuable and difficult to find. She had most of the Constance and Gwenyth Little books. All but one contained the word
black
in the title. Her favorite? Probably
The Black Shrouds.
There were the Leslie Ford, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mary Collins, Eric Ambler, and Patricia Wentworth titles. Plus Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Rex Stout, and all the Christies, of course.

She finished the first taco, drank some Gatorade, and was reaching for the second taco, when her hand paused. Almost every one of these books, except the Ambler titles, contained magnificent denouements where the detective faced the circle of suspects and,
voilà
, through brilliant ratiocination, triumphantly revealed the identity of the murderer.

Hercule Poirot in
Towards Zero.
Asey Mayo in
Out of Order
. Nero Wolfe in
The Zero Clue.

Why not Annie Laurance at Death On Demand?

A trap. All she had to do was set a trap for the murderer—

The second taco forgotten, she jumped up and hurried to the telephone. It rang the instant before she reached it.

Bother. She licked hot sauce from her fingers, picked it up, and barked an impatient hello.

“Has the Revolution begun?”

“Huh?”

“You sound beleaguered. Uptight. Stressed.” Max chopped his bantering tone. “Is that cop bothering you?”

“Oh, no. No, no. Listen, I’ve got a great idea!”

“Whatever it is, wait until I get back. I’ll—”

“There isn’t time. I’ve got to trap the killer before Saulter comes after me in the morning. And you can’t get back until tomorrow.”

“I’ll be back at nine tonight.”

“Did you take your water wings? The ferry doesn’t run again until ten tomorrow.”

“Mr. Parotti and I are drinking beer at a tavern down the block from a one-hour photo shop in Savannah. We are in hearty agreement that the rich get richer; the poor get poorer, and the working man gets screwed every time.” George Jones sang “He Stopped Loving Her Today” in the background. “So cool it till I get back.”

She ignored that. “Max, this is
genius.
I’m going to phone everybody and tell them I’ve just found a diary of Uncle Ambrose’s at the shop, and now I know the truth. I’ll act all upset and frantic, then I’ll break the connection.”

George Jones’s wail carried clearly over Max’s thundering silence.

She practically danced with eagerness. “It’s perfect. The murderer will have to come after me. I’ll call Saulter and have him watching.”

“You think somebody as smart as our killer is going to fall for the oldest trick in the book and come running with a marlin spike?”

“Sure. Yes. Hell, yes. It
always
works for Nero Wolfe.”

“Annie, it’s all well and good to read those books, but you can’t take them so seriously.” You’d have to be deaf to miss the patronizing tone of his voice. “Flee, all is discovered. Lordy.” He chuckled. “Okay, you have fun, and I’ll be back about nine with the goods. I’ve got to go buy Parotti another beer.”

She replaced the receiver very gently. She was in control. Otherwise, she would have thrown the entire
instrument into the marsh. She glowered at the phone and wondered how Grace Latham had resisted bloodshed through her years of association with John Primrose.

She’d show him. Nine o’clock. She reached far the receiver, then paused. Maybe he did have a point about the flee-all-is-discovered ploy. She nibbled thoughtfully on her thumb. Oh. She turned an idea over in her mind and smiled. Sure. That would work. She would entice everybody back to the Scene of the Crime, then, just like Miss Marple who drew on her experiences in St. Mary Mead, she would cull from the recesses of her mind the appropriate parallel to a fictional murder, and the answer would be clear. Annie reached for the phone.

Saulter’s lip curled as he picked up the mug of hot milk. Dammit, his stomach felt like somebody’d dropped in a handful of live coals. This case was becoming a coast-to-coast sensation. Three murders since Saturday night, and what did he have to show for it? One autopsy report that sounded like something out of John Dickson Carr. God, now he was beginning to think like those bloody writers. But who’d ever heard of killing anybody with succinyl-choline? And why’d medicines have names like Hungarian dancers? Damn crazy thing. Well, he wasn’t going to be fooled. This was a setup, from first to last, trying to make it look like a nutty writer’d done it. Murder, when you got down to it, was always simple.

This time it was murder for money. That little sun-streaked blonde didn’t want to lose the shop she’d murdered to get. She didn’t have a penny until Ambrose drowned, and she inherited from him. She’d plowed every cent of his estate into the store, and she wasn’t about to lose it.

Saulter gulped some milk and winced.

He’d made it pretty clear he was going to arrest her tomorrow, and now all he had to do was sit back and wait for her to do something foolish. Too bad Bud stopped her from taking the ferry. If she’d made a run for it, he’d have had all the proof he needed.

The problem was, he didn’t have any evidence.

Just give him one tangible piece of evidence to tie her to the crime scene. Of course, her fingerprints were all
over the circuit breaker box at the store, but her smartassed lawyer would make mincemeat of that. And so far there wasn’t anything at the vet’s or the Edelman murder.

Evidence. Something to put the nail in Annie Laurence’s coffin. Or anything else that would tie her to Morgan. He glared at the last two boxes of papers from Morgan’s house. He was sick and tired of reading this guy’s stuff. But a careful cop keeps looking.

The phone rang, his hand jerked, and hot milk sloshed over his fingers. God, if it was another of those reporters … He lifted the receiver.

“Saulter here.”

“Chief, you’ve got to get over to Death On Demand. I’ve called a meeting of all the suspects there in half an hour. We’ll catch the murderer tonight!”

The pain in his stomach flared. He’d get this wise-guy little murderess if it was the last thing he did on Broward’s Rock. “Ms. Laurance, if I come over there, I’ll have a warrant for your arrest in my pocket,” and he slammed down the phone.

That little dingo. As if he didn’t have enough troubles without her horning in on his investigation.

Annie took a two-and-a-half-minute shower, dried off quicker than pelican diving for mullet, and dressed in a flurry—white linen slacks, a yellow cotton pullover, and yellow flats. She glanced at the clock as she raced out the front door. Everyone was due at Death On Demand in fifteen minutes. She needed to make coffee and organize her thoughts. It took a minute to start the Volvo. She had hardly driven it since Max arrived. Her golf dubs rattled in the back seat as she drove up the rutted road toward the blacktop. Not even a sliver of moonlight pierced the thick canopy of the swamp. When she reached the main road, she picked up speed until she turned into the oyster-shell lot behind the harborfront shops.

Her footsteps crunched loudly across the broken shells. It was a soft Carolina night, the air as silky as Agatha’s fur. She unlocked the front door of Death On Demand, flicked on the lights, and hurried toward the back. Agatha peered inquisitively after her, then jumped lightly to the floor and
padded toward the coffee bar. Annie poured a twelve-cup measure of Kona beans into the grinder, then turned it on. Good hostess prepares to receive murderous guests. She grinned and took a deep breath, delighting in the heady mixture of freshly ground coffee and old, musty books.

She glanced around the coffee area. Oh, good grief. She must clear out Max’s papers. No point in letting the suspects know just how much they had on them. She gathered up the sheets and paused to read Max’s list of questions.

1. Whose goose would have been charbroiled if Elliot had finished his talk Sunday night?
   

2. Why did the murderer show up Johnny-on-the-spot when Annie was in Elliot’s tree house?
   

3. Was Elliot blackmailing Emma? Annie says yes; Carmen, no. Carmen should know.
   (Thank, Max.)
   

4. Were Carmen and the dumb cop really on the beach when Morgan was killed? Pretty convenient timing.
   

5. Did Harriet score twice with her camera? What if she didn’t?
   

The coffee finished dripping into the pot. Annie found her favorite mug,
The Yellow Room
(Rinehart, not Leroux), poured a cup, and leaned against the coffee bar to think.

Her guests began arriving promptly at eight.

Annie greeted them cheerfully, but her perspective had indeed changed since Sunday evening.

Emma Clyde’s cornflower blue eyes scanned the coffee area with the same shrewd intensity. Her dress, a swirling mixture of orange and magenta, contrasted as sharply with her stiff bronze curls. But Annie would never again see her as a clever housewife. She didn’t carry chips and dip tonight.

“So you’ve called a meeting of the island residents who are most knowledgeable about crime,” Emma observed. “I feel so flattered to have been included.” Her tone was tart.

Kelly Rizzoli and Hal Douglas came in together, spookily reminiscent of their arrival Sunday. Then she had seen them as incipient lovebirds. Now it was difficult not to see Grace Poole and Bluebeard.

Capt. Mac came down the central aisle, his tanned face grim. He looked at Annie questioningly. The Farleys stood at the edge of the coffee area. Janis tried to keep her
bruised face in the shadows, but Annie saw Emma’s eyes widen.

Fritz Hemphill arrived last. He gave no greeting to anyone, and his dark eyes sparkled angrily in a set face.

“Grab a cup of coffee,” she offered. “Then if you’ll take your places—where you sat Sunday night—we’ll get started.”

They moved around the coffee bar, but there was no repartee as they took their cups to the tables.

“Now that we’re all here—”

“Not quite.” Hemphill’s voice rasped like a rusty gate. “Where’s the boyfriend? And your twittery clerk, Ingrid?”

“Nobody could possibly think Max and Ingrid had anything to do with Elliot’s murder. Max never met him until that night, and Ingrid wasn’t on Elliot’s list.”

Hemphill wasn’t deflected. “So Ingrid’s not in the party. Okay, I buy it. But where’s the boyfriend? Searching our places while we sit here?”

“Of course not,” she objected hotly. “He’s not even on the island.”

“That’s true. I saw him take the ferry at six,” Hal agreed. “But what happened on the dock with you and the cop, Annie?”

Annie stood with her back to the coffee bar and felt control slipping away.

“No big deal,” she responded quickly. “Max had some errands to run in Savannah, and I didn’t go with him.”

“So how come you got left at the dock?” Hal pressed.

“Because that charming cop was going to arrest me if I left the island.” Her voice wasn’t so good-humored now.

Emma attacked. “So you want us to figure out the crime and save your skin.”

“Everybody will breathe easier if we solve the crime. I see no reason why anyone should oppose that—except the murderer.”

No one said a word. Seven pairs of eyes watched Annie stonily.

It was time.
En garde.
Annie pointed at the nearest table. Color blazed in Jeff Farley’s pale cheeks above his sleek blond beard. His thick horn-rimmed glasses glittered in the overhead light. His chest moved beneath his caramel-colored sweater as his breathing quickened. Janis, her shoulders hunched, pressed her knuckles against her mouth.
Her thick, pancake brown makeup was designed to hide the ugly bruise on her cheek. Instead, it emphasized the alabaster fairness of her neck.