The Christie Caper (12 page)

That was as close to the tea table as she was to come for quite a while. The last fan greeted, Lady Gwendolyn bounced briskly to her side. “Duty done. Is it cricket for me to play the games?”

It took Annie a moment to understand the request, then she burbled, “By all means, Lady Gwendolyn.”

For the next hour, Annie felt like a tail to a spirited kite as she followed Lady Gwendolyn from one entertainment to the next.

Lady Gwendolyn won three Kewpie dolls at hoopla, flinging the plate-size wooden hoops at the stakes with uncanny accuracy. She was unbeatable at skittles, whirling the ball attached by string to a center pole in a wicked circle to knock down the wooden pins. Her finest moment came, however, at the coconut shy. With the precision of Christie skewing social pretensions in
The Secret of Chimneys,
Lady Gwendolyn hurled the soft rubber ball, knocking over a coconut with each toss. By this time, Annie was carrying, in addition to the three Kewpie dolls, a red fire engine, a blue bead necklace, a Victorian dollhouse, a wooden hoop, and a sack full of pear drops.

Lady Gwendolyn adored the Bob-in-Water. She took an especial fancy to the packages wrapped in silver that bobbed in the water of the barrel, hauling out three in a row.

It was with a distinct sensation of relief that Annie held open the flap of the fortune teller’s tent for her feisty official hostess.

Carefully stowing her chief guest’s booty in Max’s care under a live oak, Annie escaped to the tea tent. She rejoined him with a full plate and a happy smile.

Max looked
delicious
in a blue cord suit and a white boater. She resisted the temptation to tell him how handsome he was. She was sure Laurel had already done the honors.

Max didn’t quite raise an eyebrow at her generous array of edibles.

“Hungry,” she retorted to the unspoken comment, then she concentrated on pure piggish pleasure. When her plate was empty, she looked at her husband.

“More?” he inquired dutifully.

She wouldn’t cavil at his tone. It wasn’t
quite
accusatory. “Especially the caviar puffs,” she called after him.

As she awaited replenishment, she realized that she was surveying the crowd warily. When she spotted Emma Clyde, she remembered why, although Emma appeared quite genial. In honor of the occasion, Emma had abandoned her customary caftan for a truly awesome flowered print (cabbage roses among a plethora of ferns), a pink picture hat, and white gloves. Emma watched with an amused smile as Fleur Calloway, lovely in a pale lilac silk and a matching straw hat, bought a raffle ticket for a set of Lady Gwendolyn’s novels.

Emma.

Oh, God, what if Emma was telling the truth? What if she
hadn’t
shot at Neil Bledsoe last night?

Of course, she would deny it. Emma’s protestations of innocence surely could not be accepted without question.

But if she hadn’t—

Anxiously, Annie looked around for the other participants in last night’s drama.

Derek Davis’s good-humored face was flushed from heat and exertion. The young publicist wasn’t having any luck at the coconut shy. He bought three more balls and tried again, finally toppling one coconut at the end, which made his fair face crimson with pleasure. His prize was what looked at a distance like a crocheted doily for an armchair. He offered it laughingly to his companion, Natalie Marlow, the frumpy young author who’d introduced herself to Annie last night
at the bookstore. Although Natalie obviously had gone all out for the fête, her choice of attire—a droopy purplish silk with tangerine stripes—made it clear it was a good thing she concentrated on emotions, not fashion, in her fiction.

But, Annie realized with surprise, Derek was oblivious to the author’s dowdiness. Annie wondered if the young publicist had any inkling of how revealing his expression was. He was offering not only a silly prize, but much, much more—his eyes looked at Natalie with an emotion akin to adoration.

Natalie didn’t see that look because she was overcome with awkwardness. She flushed, twisted her hands, and looked away.

But none of it was lost on Neil Bledsoe.

He sauntered up to the coconut shy, his dark face amused. But not nicely amused.

Annie stiffened.

Kathryn Honeycutt paused beside the fortune-telling tent and looked a fit advertisement, her porcelain-pink face troubled.

Bledsoe ignored Derek. He gave a half bow to Natalie. It was almost a burlesque, but not quite. “Miss Marlow, I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I read
Down These Steps.
You have a great future ahead of you.”

If the crocheted doily had unnerved Natalie, this fulsome praise from an undeniably imposing man undid her. She swallowed jerkily and stared up at him wordlessly.

Bledsoe smiled with the easy, satisfied grace of a panther with its quarry in sight. “I haven’t had the pleasure of a lovely woman’s company at a country fair in many years. Perhaps you’ll allow me the pleasure of competing for your favor, just as a knight of long ago.”

Max arrived then and handed Annie a full plate topped by three caviar puffs.

Annie took it and groaned, “Oh, puke.”

At Max’s startled look, she glanced at the plate. “Oh, no, love, not this. The jerk—at the coconut shy.”

Natalie watched wide-eyed as Bledsoe, with the ease and confidence of a superior athlete, unleashed the soft rubber ball and the entire row of coconuts bobbled and wobbled and thudded to the springy ground. He gestured at the attendant.
“That bear—the big one with the pink ears—for the lady here.”

When Natalie held the huge prize, Bledsoe took her elbow with a proprietary air. “You must come with me and be my luck. Let’s try the hoopla.”

Natalie did look uncertainly over her shoulder at Derek, but he just stood there, the doily crushed in his hand, his snub-nosed face empty of expression, and then she walked on, with Bledsoe.

“Shit.” Annie grabbed a caviar puff and stuffed it in her mouth.

Max squinted in the sunlight. “As you’ve often told our elegant bookstore feline, don’t eat and growl.”

“But, Max,” the little pastry was so flaky and good it almost melted in her mouth, which should have helped but didn’t, “how can she be so dumb?”

“So what kind of guy gives up like that?” Max jerked his head at Derek’s receding back. “You go after a girl if she belongs to you.”

“Women do not
belong
to men,” Annie remonstrated.

“Mmmmh,” Max replied noncommittally.

But Annie was looking from face to disconsolate face.

Nathan Hillman, the chunky editor of Hillman House, stood beside the tea tent. He gazed after Derek, shaking his head.

Margo Wright, the statuesque agent, was strikingly attractive in an all-white dress with a layered lace skirt. She broke off an animated conversation in midphrase as Bledsoe swaggered past, one hand firm on Natalie’s elbow.

Victoria Shaw, the author’s widow, put down her plate with trembling hands, turned, and walked blindly toward the thick and tangled Wildlife Preserve that bounded the lawn on the south.

But it was the transformation of Fleur Calloway that shocked Annie the most. Fleur’s face blanched and she looked as though she might faint. Emma reached out to take her arm.

“I say, a problem?” The query sounded at Annie’s elbow.

Annie looked down, into alert, discerning blue eyes.

Annie didn’t know how to respond. She certainly didn’t want to worry her famous co-hostess. Besides, it was too
complicated to try and explain: Bledsoe and those who disliked him, the flurry of shots, the uncertainty of what was intended, mischief or murder.

Then, the hair prickled on the back of Annie’s neck, and was that from the sudden increase in the onshore breeze and a sharply cool edge to the air or from the brisk summation by the official hostess? “They are so easy to pick out, aren’t they?” Lady Gwendolyn’s voice was sympathetic and not the least judgmental. “It’s as if they were linked by an invisible cord. They are, of course. Quite strong emotion. Hatred, I’d say.”

Annie stared at Lady Gwendolyn in astonishment.

The old lady nodded toward the fortune-telling tent. “I heard all about your spot of bother last night. It’s always shocking when violence erupts in what
seems
to be a civilized milieu. But as Dame Agatha made so very clear, there is so much evil under the sun.” Lady Gwendolyn gripped Annie’s arm, her pudgy fingers surprisingly strong. “It’s a mistake to think it can’t happen here.”

T
he weather had on its most beguiling face Monday morning, which was not always true in September on a barrier island. There was that memorably dreadful Labor Day weekend when it had rained and rained and rained and rained. Eight inches in one day. The golf courses shimmered with lakes, the streets ran ankle-deep, and snakes fled the saturated ground, seeking refuge on porches, in dumpsters, and inside garages. Of course, September always held the possibility of hurricanes. That specter had haunted Annie throughout the months of planning, but Monday dawned with a robin’s-egg-blue sky, the silkiest of onshore breezes, and a balmy temperature that only hinted of afternoon heat.

The surroundings sparkled. Their suite was on the third floor in the central block of the hotel. Wings extended from either end of that block. All of the rooms on this, the sea side, had spacious balconies with tile tables and canvas-backed directors chairs. Fiery red geraniums flourished in the twin royal blue vases at the corners of each balcony. The ornately carved columns supporting the balconies added a Moorish flavor. The red-flowered blue vases, positioned at regular intervals along the balconies on every floor and along the roof wall, created vivid pointillist splotches of color against the cream-colored stucco facade.

Their view was magnificent: the red-tiled central courtyard, accented again with royal blue by the fountains on either side, the stuccoed walls that afforded privacy to ground-floor rooms, the crystal clear water of the pool, the creamy gold of the dunes, the age-browned boardwalk, the
shiny gray of the strand, and, finally, the glistening green waters of the Atlantic. Seaside flowers and grasses on the protective dunes added delicate nuances of color: the red of winged sumac, the gold of sea oats, the yellow of goldenrod and camphor weed, and the lilac of sea lavender. Overhead a flock of glossy black cormorants, long, stiff tails erect, flapped by, their arrival from the north the only hint of winter to come.

Annie felt a surge of absolute delight. She was blessed not only with a beautiful day and gorgeous surroundings, but with the best of companions. Annie eschewed sentimentalism, of course, just like Tommy and Tuppence in
Partners in Crime,
that delightful collection of short stories in which Christie parodied then-fashionable fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Reggie Fortune, and even her own Poirot. Annie leaned an elbow on the breakfast table, cupped her chin in hand, and admired her husband, or what she could see of him over the newspaper. Actually, Max and Tommy had a good deal in common, despite their transatlantic differences: good looks but not
too
handsome, good humor but with plenty of steel beneath, good intentions but
never
sappy.

She beamed at the newspaper. A hell of a guy.

Annie almost told him so. But Max was so accustomed to admiration (honestly, Laurel treated him like a crown prince, which got to be a little old) that she broke off in midsentence.

“Max, you’re—”

He lowered the newspaper and looked at her inquiringly.

She regrouped and asked briskly, “What are your plans this morning?”

He folded the paper, stretched, and reached for the coffee. “Whatever,” he said agreeably. “Do you want me to help Ingrid at the registration table? Or should I make sure our official hostess feels properly pampered? Or shall I mingle and be friendly?”

Annie lifted her cup for a refill, then checked her watch. Just past eight. Although she loved leisurely breakfasts with Max, there was much to do this morning. “Lady Gwendolyn, by all means. I’m sure she’s used to lots of attention.”

“I like her. Sprightly old gal.”

“You
haven’t spent the last ten months on the telephone with her, trying to field a half-dozen brilliant suggestions at once.” Honesty forced Annie to continue. “Not that they weren’t all wonderful ideas—but I don’t have the manpower to produce a Christie play, track down people who knew Christie personally and tape their reminiscences, coordinate a thirties fashion show, and direct the conference all at the same time.”

“Full of vim and vigor,” Max said admiringly. “She had a hell of a time yesterday. Cleaned the coconut shy out of Kewpie dolls. What will she
do
with the damned things?”

Annie didn’t respond to his lighthearted query. Instead, she said soberly, “She looks almost like a Kewpie doll herself, all softness and curves, and she sounds so genial. But, Max, there’s an underlying toughness—or maybe it’s strength of character. I have a feeling that when she looks, she really sees. Yet her good humor is real—not because she sees life as sweet and light but
in spite
of the fact that she knows full well how dreadful the world can be.”