The Christie Caper (5 page)

Annie clung to the door handle. “But what has he done that’s so awful?”

“What
hasn’t
he done?”

As Annie started to speak, Emma held up a hand. Sunlight sparked off the enormous ruby ring she wore. “All right. But I don’t know if you’ll understand. It all has to do with vulnerability.” Another appraising glance from those probing blue eyes. “You don’t strike me as being particularly vulnerable. You are—”

Emma paused as she signaled right to turn onto a blacktop road lying in the deep shade of an avenue of live oaks. Ghostly fingers of Spanish moss dangled in silvery-gray splendor. The Jaguar curved smoothly onto the road.

“—a fighter, Annie. Scrappy. You’d tell a bully to stick it.” Again, that cool appraisal. “You don’t have enough imagination to let anyone play tricks with your mind.”

Ordinarily, Annie wouldn’t have let that snide comment slide. But she didn’t want to distract Emma.

“You see,” and the Jaguar zoomed to sixty, “you aren’t an author. If somebody told you Death on Demand was stupidly arranged, poorly advertised, and sloppily run, what would you do?”

Thinking of her computerized inventory, her quick turnaround of stock, her thousand-plus mailing list, Annie snapped, “Laugh all the way to the bank.”

“Right.” Emma’s lips almost twitched into a smile. “You’d go on the offensive. If the slam came from a competitor, you’d take out an ad, put in a color graph of your profit margin, list your assets, tout your customer list.”

Annie’s head bobbed in agreement.

“That’s you. But you’re a bookseller, not a writer. Just for a moment, pretend you’re a writer, a successful one. Very. You write the light, charming kind of mystery that provides a golden circle of peace—just for the duration of the book—to readers who seek respite, readers who are in pain. And there are so many of them, Annie. Pretend you are Fleur Calloway. What would you do if a powerful critic whose column is read by everyone in the mystery world sneered at your books, called them romantic twaddle, dismissed them as silly and juvenile. Described them as arch. That one’s a killer. It’s better to be boring than arch. Oh, Neil did a superb hatchet job. Used that favorite phrase, ‘the author’s characters are paper thin.’ Said the plots were hackneyed, second-rate Christie, the writing
uneven.
Accused you of making light of murder.”

Emma braked briefly as a mother white-tail deer followed by two nearly grown fawns bounded across the road.

Annie pondered.

The sports car picked up speed again. Over the sticky air pumping through the windows and the sun roof, Emma answered for her. “You’d bellow. Tell him to go to hell. But all that would get you is a tag for whining. Americans don’t like whiners. If you complained that the critic was a louse and a liar and deliberately trying to hurt you—well, then the cry of sour grapes would go up.” Emma’s voice was weary.

Annie was puzzled. “Emma, whoever this Neil Bledsoe is, he couldn’t really hurt Fleur Calloway. All she had to do was ignore him. Readers adore her books. He
didn’t
hurt her! Her books still sell.” Annie frowned. “Wait a minute.” She knew full well that the Calloway books still sold. Daily. But there were no new Calloway books. There hadn’t been a new book in twelve years. “Emma, surely she didn’t stop writing just because this guy wrote a snide review?”

“No,” Emma said shortly. “It’s uglier than that. A lot uglier than that.”

Mossy stone pillars marked the entrance to the grounds of the Palmetto House. Not unexpectedly, the small palms, the state tree of South Carolina, lined either side of the road.

Annie loved the Palmetto House, even though she’d endured
too many lyrical paeans to its delights from her mother-in-law, who waxed nostalgic about the shutter doors and ceiling fans. But the hotel
was
charming, and Annie was eager for the conference attendees to see and enjoy one of the grand old resorts of the Sea Islands. The three-story cream-colored stucco hotel with its red tile roof and shaded verandas, drenched in late-afternoon sunlight, looked as inviting as a palm-shaded cotton-weave hammock and a banana daiquiri. A turnaround drive swept under the stuccoed portico in front.

Emma didn’t slow the sports car as it neared the turnoff for the main entrance. Annie knew she was heading for the parking lot discreetly tucked behind a double row of elegant loblolly pines. The drive through the portico was primarily for arriving guests. There were several cars there now and a bustle of unloading.

“What did Bledsoe do?” Annie asked again, impatiently. She was watching Emma’s race, so she saw the transformation, the narrowing of her eyes, the hardening of her jawline.

Emma jerked the wheel hard right. The Jaguar cut swiftly into the drive to the hotel entrance.

Caught unaware, Annie jerked leftward, kept from falling only by the restraining seat belt.

She didn’t even have time to scream, it all happened so quickly.

Wind swept through the windows as the sports car snarled forward, faster, faster.

Ahead of them, a man in a tropical white suit bent to open the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car. As the roar of the car rose higher and higher, he whirled around and lifted his arms, as if to stop the metal juggernaut. His mouth opened. The Jaguar and the wind made so much noise Annie never knew if he yelled.

Annie flung out her palms to brace against the dash.

The car slammed to a stop, quivering—inches from the back of the Lincoln. Dust boiled where the tires bit into the drive.

To Annie’s right, the man in the no-longer-white suit scrambled to his feet. He’d flung himself sideways into the freshly planted bed of marigolds, flattening a swath of brilliant flowers, and rolled onto a path of crushed oyster shells.
One of the jagged shells had punctured his cheek, and a bright spot of blood glistened on his jaw. In the backseat of the Lincoln, an elderly, white-haired woman twisted to stare at the Jaguar, her face slack with shock.

“Sorry, Annie,” Emma said calmly. She turned off the motor and sat with her hands loose on the wheel, as self-possessed as Annie had ever seen her.

In the startling quiet after the rush of wind and tires and powerful engine, Annie could hear her own breath. Her hands were trembling so hard she couldn’t undo her seat belt. “Emma, my God, what happened? Did the accelerator stick?”

Emma ignored her. She was watching the man she’d almost run down.

His chest heaving, his eyes blazing, he glared at the sports car. He was a big man, barrel-chested and thick-legged, with a massive head that sat almost squarely on huge shoulders. Heavy black brows met above dark angry eyes and a fleshy nose. His reddish acne-scarred skin had a sickly gray undertone from shock. He lowered his head like a bull charging, came around the back of the car, and turned toward Emma’s open window, yelling as he came. “Bitch. Fool. What the hell do you think—”

His lips snapped shut. The dot of blood on his cheek trickled toward his chin. His ebony eyes were suddenly opaque.

Both hands—big, brutal hands with spatulate thumbs and hairy knuckles—closed on the window rim by Emma.

Annie was instantly as aware of him as she’d ever been of any man in her life. Not in a nice way. She knew immediately, viscerally, that here was a man who lived his life to suit his own lusts, with no thought or care for those he used. It was apparent in the sensuous droop of his mouth, the jaded disdain of his eyes, the powerful grip of those large hands. She could see it, feel it, and she was horrified to realize he attracted her. A modern Captain Blackbeard, he would attract most women, she knew. He had about him an air of compelling, unbridled, overweening maleness.

Emma tilted her head to look up. “Sorry ’bout that, Neil,” she drawled. Her voice held no hint of tension or apology.

His black eyes glittered. “You always live on the edge,
don’t you, Emma? One of these days you’ll go over—and you know what happened to Humpty Dumpty.”

“What a tellingly literate allusion, my dear,” she replied bitingly. “Just like your reviews.”

A muscle flickered once in his jaw. But it was the tightening of his hands on the window rim that revealed just how deep the barb stung.

His lips drew back, exposing blunt tobacco-yellowed teeth, in a savage smile.

“I reviewed a book in the last issue that reminded me of you, Emma. A serial killer, a killer of shrews and bitches. He liked to cut them into little pieces while they were still alive. He even recorded their screams. But the most fun—”

The car jolted to life.

Neil Bledsoe leapt back just in time as the Jaguar squealed into reverse.

Annie was flung forward then back against the seat, as Emma shifted to low. As the car bolted past the Lincoln, Annie caught a single glimpse of the woman in the backseat. White hair, frightened blue eyes, a wrinkled hand pressed to her lips. The powerful sports car leapt past the parked cars, erupted out of the turnaround, and thundered into the parking lot, white dust boiling in its wake. The Jaguar bucked to a stop behind a loblolly pine.

In the silence after Emma turned off the motor, Annie said grimly, “Next time you plan Death by Car you might inform your passenger.” She tried to still her trembling hands.

Emma ignored Annie. With her usual economy of movement, despite her bulk, she unclipped her seat belt, slammed out of the car, and headed briskly for the hotel.

Annie fumbled with her belt, then the latch, flung herself out of the car, and broke into a trot By the time she caught up with Emma, she felt like a caramel on August asphalt.

“Emma, wait a minute. You can’t try to run a man down—oh, all right, you didn’t intend to kill him—but you can’t race a Jaguar at someone in an obvious attempt to scare the pants off him and not even give any explanation. What are you doing? What are you going to do? Emma, what the hell are you up to?”

“Don’t be tiresome, Annie.” Emma yanked open one of the side doors of the hotel, and they plunged into the dim hall. “I got Neil’s attention—and I enjoyed it. God, I didn’t want to brake. I didn’t
want
to.”

It was cool in the shadowy hall, but not cool enough for the chill that spread over Annie. Emma almost hadn’t braked the Jaguar, Annie felt certain of it.

If she hadn’t—Annie fought away a wave of nausea.

She reached out, grabbed the older woman’s arm. “Emma, for God’s sake, you’ve got to get control of yourself.”

Emma didn’t even break stride. She shrugged away Annie’s grasp. “It may not be too late to stop Fleur.”

“Stop her!” Annie picked up speed, her summer flats slapping against the pink-speckled marble floor.

“If she hasn’t arrived,” Emma said crisply, “maybe there’ll still be time to call and tell her not to come.” She sailed ahead of Annie into the wide, palm-potted lobby, heading for the registration desk.

Annie had had enough. She put on a burst of speed and caught the author midway across the marble floor. This time she grabbed and held on to a plump but decidedly muscular arm. “Wait a minute. What are you trying to do, sabotage my conference? She’s the American star! She’s the main speaker at the closing banquet. People are traveling all the way from the West Coast, just to see her.”

“Not if I can help it,” Emma said grimly. “Take your hands off me, Annie. I’m sorry about your conference. Fleur is more important than any conference. She mustn’t come here. She mustn’t see Neil.” Emma stalked on toward the desk.

Annie realized, as Emma broke away, that their entrance and sharp exchange had attracted attention.

Despite its age (built nearly a century before as a health spa for winter-jaded northerners), the heavily marbled, ornately decorated hotel had a three-story open lobby at its center. On the west side, the sea side, heavily molded archways opened onto a wide screened veranda that in turn led to an open courtyard. The hotel had removed its huge, dragon-decorated Japanese vases. In their place, in honor of the conference, were Victorian urns with lacy ferns and broad-leafed palms, recalling the innumerable palm courts
in the English hotels of the twenties and thirties and the cheerful tea dances.

The main axis of the Palmetto House ran north and south and contained the entrance, the central lobby, the registration desk, the concierge’s desk, the restaurants, the bar, and conference and meeting areas. East-west wings stretched from either end of the main hall.

Rattan furniture gleamed brightly white among the potted palms. Much of it was occupied, Annie realized, by conference goers. Her conference goers. They were as easily identified with their brightly beribboned identification tags, a red rosette for authors, blue for booksellers, orange for editors, green for agents, pink for readers, as the island’s beautiful laughing gulls, with their distinctive sleek black heads.

And almost every eye in the lobby, some boldly, many surreptitiously, was focused on Annie.

She struggled to look pleasant, amiable, and purposeful, the latter so no one would pounce on her. A woman with a curly mop of bright red hair, an anxious expression, and a blue rosette was struggling to her feet.

Annie plunged toward the desk.

A uniformed bellboy pushed a luggage cart toward the elevator. Behind him, Neil Bledsoe followed. The scratch on his cheek was blood-free now but a noticeably angry red. His glance locked with Annie’s. She felt her cheeks flush—and saw the flicker of amusement and satisfaction in his eyes. The bastard. He realized his power to attract women, realized and relished it. She determinedly looked away, toward his companion—and stopped flatfooted and stared. Miss Marple? Oh, no, no, it couldn’t be! But damned if the woman wasn’t exactly the image Annie had carried in her mind all these years, tall and thin, fluffy white hair, soft shell-pink skin—but the eyes were wrong. Fuzzy, myopic, straining eyes. Miss Marple’s blue eyes were sharp and quick, even without her binoculars—for birdwatching, of course. As if mesmerized, Annie turned to watch their progress to the elevator.

Emma walked past the critic and the elderly woman as if they didn’t exist.

The woman’s eyes blinked nervously. But it was Bledsoe’s
reaction that unnerved Annie. His ruddy face, the grayness gone, twisted, and his sensuous lips drew back in a smirk.