The Christie Caper (6 page)

That triumphant smirk held more menace than open anger.

Then the moment was past. Bledsoe and his timid companion stepped into an elevator; Emma leaned on the desk.

Annie stared at the closing elevator door, then swung to peer toward Emma. Annie felt an enormous foreboding. What was going to happen to her conference into which she’d poured months of effort and mountains of devotion? She couldn’t let Emma bring it all down, like a willful child striking a carefully balanced pyramid of blocks.

Annie skidded to a stop beside the desk. She was just in time to hear the clerk say, “Mrs. Calloway is not registered yet. May I take a message?”

Emma drummed her blunt fingers on the desk. “Yes. Ask her to call Emma Clyde as soon as she arrives. It is very important,” and she gave her home telephone number.

Annie knew it well. She always called Emma when the latest Sarah Caudwell arrived. She exclaimed, “Emma, listen, you can’t do this to me.”

Emma paid no heed. Thanking the clerk, she turned and headed directly for the bank of telephones.

Annie continued her dogged pursuit. “Emma, wait a minute. This is rash. This is stupid. After all, Fleur Calloway’s a grown woman. She’s promised to appear.”

Emma was rummaging for her telephone calling card through a purse that looked like a portable landfill. “Bug off, Annie.”

Annie started to speak, but an icy glare made it clear that nothing would dissuade Emma.

Annie stood uncertainly for a moment, then hurried back to the desk and left an urgent message for Mrs. Calloway to get in touch with the conference registration desk immediately upon arrival.

For the first time, she realized why Victorian heroines often stood in perplexity, wringing their hands. She’d never before in her life felt like wringing her hands and was horrified to find that was exactly what she was doing. Jamming the offending members into the pockets of her cotton skirt, she tried to map out a plan of action.

What in the
hell
was she going to do?

Get to Fleur Calloway first. That was the ticket.

Annie looked back at the bank of phones. Emma was gone. Dashing across the floor, barely avoiding collision with a pair of chattering conference attendees who sported I
AGATHA buttons, she grabbed a phone, scrabbled for a quarter in the bottom of her purse where her change always migrated, and dialed home.

“Hello.”

Thank God he was home. Never had she been so glad to hear that relaxed, amiable, unflappable, wonderful masculine voice.

“Max!”

She hadn’t intended to wail.

“Hey, Annie, what’s wrong!”

“Oh, Max, Emma’s going to
ruin
the conference!” She got it all out finally, overrode Max’s attempts to soothe, and declared, “Look, here’s what we’ve got to do….”

She hung up feeling better, if not completely confident. Now for the next step.

She hurried toward the south wing, passing occasional clumps of conferees, huddled in tight circles and talking at the tops of their voices:

“… the thrillers aren’t her best books, I’ll grant you that. But I’ve
always
adored
The Man in the Brown Suit.” (Aggressively.)

“The false face. That’s the key to understanding the entire body of Christie’s work. Always be on the lookout for the false face.”
(Insightfully.)

“Read Mary Westmacott if you
really
want to know Christie.”
(Didactically.)

“It was cheating. I don’t care what anybody says. It was
cheating.” (Pettishly.)

Annie was almost grinning when she reached the south wing. Her eavesdropping reassured her. The conference was going to be a smash. That made her even more determined to deflect the forces so firmly intent upon derailing it.

Although the week-long conference didn’t officially begin until Sunday afternoon with the Grand Garden Fête, the registration desk was open for the convenience of the early arrivals. It was situated in the south wing foyer, convenient
to both the elevators and stairs. This afternoon the desk was staffed by Henny Brawley, Annie’s very best customer and a world-class authority on Christie. She was, Annie thought gratefully, also a world-class authority at this point on the Palmetto House, so great had been her involvement in putting the conference together. Annie didn’t know how she could have managed without Henny’s assistance, encouragement, and stalwart support. As Annie approached, Henny was energetically stuffing some small object into each of the book bags stacked on a nearby table while talking animatedly to a sandy-haired young man with hazel eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across an attractively snub nose. He wore an orange rosette in the lapel of his blazer. Surely he was too young to be an editor! Not a day older than she, Annie was certain.

The black book bags, provided by Death on Demand, flaunted a silver dagger, the store name, and the motto, also in silver: the
BEST
mystery bookstore.

It wasn’t until she was within a foot of the table that Annie identified the objects being added to the book bags: two-inch statuettes patterned after the Edgar Allan Poe awards presented for the best in mystery fiction every spring by the Mystery Writers of America.

Laurel had struck again.

But that would have to wait. She had a crisis at hand.

“Henny!”

Henny’s fox-sharp face, flushed with pleasure, turned toward Annie. Her welcoming smile slipped away.

“Annie, what’s—”

The scream exploded behind them.

Annie, Henny, and the young man turned startled faces toward the stairs.

Annie recognized the white suit, still smudged with dirt and a few spots of blood, but the sound issuing from that heavy face, the lips stretched back in terror, the eyes sightless from horror, curdled her blood. An elephant’s trumpet, the whistle of a steam engine, a peacock’s screech, the shrill cry in Christie’s “The Mystery of the Blue Jar,” Neil Bledsoe’s scream incorporated them all.

Startled exclamations broke from the onlookers in the foyer.

It seemed almost to occur in slow motion, Bledsoe’s uncontrolled ricochet down the stairs, running, slipping, caroming from wall to railing and back again, that agonized wail rising and falling.

Neil Bledsoe fell the last few feet and landed in the lobby facedown, but with almost inhuman agility he rolled onto his hands and knees, his big head swiveling back and forth. Spittle flecked his lips. He gasped for air, struggled to breathe.

Henny was the first to move. Annie followed close behind.

As she hurried forward, Annie realized, with an instant’s sharp disappointment, that the young man had whirled and was running away. He’d had a nice face. She wouldn’t have expected him to be that kind of person.

It was Henny who understood what was happening.

“Don’t be frightened.” Her voice was soothing. She gently touched Bledsoe’s shoulder.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” The tall woman—Miss Marpie’s sister, for God’s sake—darted down the stairs and joined them. “Neil, it isn’t real. It isn’t
real.”

The dark eyes stared at her without comprehension. Bledsoe’s face was ashen with a horror Annie had never glimpsed before.

“The crocodile—”

“Alligator,” Henny murmured.

“—it’s just a painting, Neil. It just looks real.” The woman turned toward Henny and Annie, her shell-pink face puckered with distress. “Poor Neil. He just can’t bear snakes and—”

The big man, still on his hands and knees, shuddered. Annie felt a pang of sympathy for him. Surely no one deserved to suffer so. Whatever had terrified Neil Bledsoe must have been dreadful indeed.

“A phobia,” Henny said calmly. She straightened, then reached down to tug at his arm. “Come now, we’ll see you to a different room. It will be all right.” Over her shoulder she directed Annie crisply, “Get a bellboy to pick up the bags from Suite 313—” she nodded at Bledsoe and the tall woman “—and move them next door. I’m in 315. The mural there won’t upset him. The surf and dolphins. Very restful.”
Annie stared after the trio until the elevator door closed, then hurried to do Henny’s bidding.

Darn.

If only there’d been some way to forestall Henny from her thoughtful, saving gesture. The hotel was sold out for the weekend. There were no free rooms. What a wonderful way it would have been to rid her conference of Neil Bledsoe.

But she couldn’t be too worried about him after that episode. That attack should be enough to take the starch out of him, no matter how hateful the man was reputed to be. She felt a quiver of shame. Certainly she didn’t take comfort in any human creature’s bondage to irrational fear, but Bledsoe’s phobia surely cut him down to size.

Neil Bledsoe was just a paper tiger, after all. She could relax now and look forward to the wonderful, welcoming champagne party at Death on Demand, the unofficial opening of The Christie Caper, a centennial celebration of the birth of the world’s greatest writer of detective fiction, Agatha Christie.

H
enny’s cheeks were perhaps a bit flushed from the champagne, but as always her superb diction carried clearly despite the hubbub.

“Brava, Annie!” she called. “Brava!” She raised her glass in a toast.

Annie grinned at her best customer. Henny looked marvelous in an off-white georgette blouse with a double accordion-pleated collar and cuffs piped in black and an ankle-length black taffeta skirt. Her softly waved hair sported a new silver tone. On anyone else it would have looked grandmotherly, but on Henny, with her observant brown eyes and fox-sharp nose, the result was an aura of sleek intelligence.

Annie lifted her glass in a return toast and permitted herself a warm glow of pride. The champagne reception at Death on Demand was a rousing success. The bookstore had never looked more wonderful, the heart-pine floors gleaming, the gum bookcases filled to the bursting (she had ordered hundreds of extra books, and Ingrid was ringing up sales faster than Annie could replenish the stock from the storeroom; they’d already sold out of the latest Jonathan Gash), the American cozy area enticing (especially to Agatha, who soon retired to her favorite hiding spot among the ferns), the coffee bar appealing. (Despite the appearance there of a model of a tomb from deep in the bowels of the House of Usher. With a furtive glance about, Annie had grabbed the gritty papier-mâché monstrosity and placed it beneath the sink behind the coffee bar. In the interest of familial harmony, however, she had left untouched the jaunty
pink scarf gracing the feathered throat of the stuffed raven on his pedestal just inside the front door.)

The evening’s only drawback was Max’s absence. Annie kept a sharp eye on the opening door, but her tanned and handsome husband didn’t appear. (Lightly tanned, of course. Max was a firm believer in the evils of too much sunshine, the efficacy of oat bran despite the jibes of disbelievers, the importance of being relaxed, and the dangers of LDL cholesterol. Max espoused moderation in all things. Well, almost all things. Sex, after all, was natural, wholesome, and essential to achieving the most elevated state of relaxation.)

Annie was regretful. Not only because it was always more fun with Max at her side, but also because he had looked forward to the reception with as much enthusiasm as she. But he had been quick to agree that it was essential to reach Fleur Calloway before Emma did. Annie had no idea how far afield that assignment may have taken him, so she continued to glance hopefully every time the front door opened.

She met several first-time authors who approached her shyly, so nervous they were scarcely able to murmur the names of their titles. They didn’t realize that most booksellers look forward to meeting new authors. She was especially pleased to meet Natalie Marlow, whose macabre
Down These Steps
had been one of the most exciting debut novels of the year. It didn’t especially surprise Annie to find the author of that polished, icy prose to be gawky, almost incoherent with shyness, and tattily dressed. Not even interviews on the
Today
show could lure some authors out of polyester.