White Elephant Dead (13 page)

Barb clattered into Max’s office, carefully carrying two tall frosted glasses topped with mounds of whipped cream dotted with chocolate and cinnamon. “I left a note. Ingrid wasn’t there.” She put a coaster on his desk, placed the drink. “Maybe Agatha needs counseling.”

Max grinned. “It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to read her mind. Agatha thinks ‘svelte’ is a swear word and she won’t listen to a discourse on the dangers of fat to a small cat liver.”

Barb avoided his gaze. “She was in a better mood when I left.”

Max didn’t need a cat psychiatrist to explain that one either. Soft-hearted Barb, who understood hunger. “Don’t tell Annie,” he warned. He closed the folder on the Campbell family.

Barb picked up the Ellis folder, handed it to him. “More troubles than a man should have.”

Annie waited until Pamela Potts completed her report. “…had only an hour’s sleep.” Red-rimmed eyes blinked bravely. “I’ve compiled a complete report on Kathryn Girard’s activities on the island. And now”—a bravely suppressed yawn—“I’ll go off duty.”

“Very good, Pamela.” Emma patted the folder. “You get some rest.”

Pamela wove her way unsteadily toward the steps, but
she managed to go down them quite easily. Annie suppressed a grin. She didn’t bother to alert Pamela to the message awaiting her, requesting her presence tonight at the hospital. Annie wasn’t worried. Pamela would be there.

Annie opened her purse. “When I emptied Henny’s pockets this morning, I found the pick-up card for Kathryn Girard. Kathryn had marked out the original addresses and substituted others. Max took the card to Chief Garrett, but we made some copies and I brought you one.” She put a sheet on the table in front of Emma.

Emma’s eyes blazed with a cold, eager light. She tapped the sheet with a stubby finger. “I researched handwriting analysis once. For
The Mystery of the Startled Widow
.” Her finger traced the first address in Kathryn Girard’s bold script. “Thickness indicates greed. That loop means care in planning, attention to detail. And this curl simply screams malevolence.” She looked as pleased as Frances and Richard Lockridge’s Jerry North spotting a martini. Emma’s square face exuded satisfaction. And even a hint of admiration? “Good work, Annie. Combined with what I’ve learned, we’re finally on the right track. I have a well-placed source who informed me just a few minutes ago that a large sum of money was found hidden in Kathryn’s apartment. Now, juxtaposed with this list, what does that tell us?”

Annie knew better than to upstage one of the world’s most popular mystery writers. “What does it tell us?” she asked obediently.

“Blackmail!” Emma’s eyes glistened with delight. “And everything reported by Faithful Pamela—”

Was Pamela taking on the guise of Miss Silver’s Faithful Frank?

“—confirms this assumption. Kathryn was extremely active in the Hospital Auxiliary and she was especially eager to stay with the dying. Where can you find out more about any family than at a deathbed? It rather reminds me of one of my best,
The Case of the Chattering Crocodile
.”

Annie resisted the temptation to say, “Coo!” although
she realized she likely was passing up what might be her only opportunity to respond with the enthusiasm of Tuppence and Tommy’s faithful Albert.

“So, our role is clear.”

Annie wondered where Emma kept her crystal ball. “Clear?” At this rate, maybe she should change places with the parrot on the fishing boat.

“We shall attack, all guns firing.” Emma pulled a stack of papers close.

“Attack? But Emma, these people don’t have any idea we know about them. Wouldn’t it be better—”

“Annie, you may have read a great many mysteries.” The patronizing tone made Annie wish she’d stuck Emma’s latest on a bottom shelf down with the W’s. “But I write them. I know how a murderer’s mind works. And”—this was reflective—“I know how a blackmailer thinks.”

Annie didn’t doubt that statement. If she’d had the courage, she would have asked snippily, “Had a little personal experience there?” Instead, she made an Agatha-like growl deep in her throat.

Emma waggled her copy of the sheet. “Blackmailers are bullies. They like to see people squirm. Kathryn couldn’t resist a final poke at the caged animals.”

“Emma”—Annie’s voice was eager—“we don’t want to make people squirm. That would be awful. Let’s keep this quiet. We can try and find out—”

Emma shrugged. “Omelets,” she said briskly.

Annie had a vision of broken eggshells surrounding a sizzling skillet. But these weren’t eggs, these were people.

“Emma—”

A stubby hand was raised. “Annie, do you think Henny is in danger?”

Last night a bullet didn’t miss Annie by more than a few feet. The murderer could have aimed into the air. That would as likely have sent Annie into a dive for cover and afforded the murderer time to escape.

The murderer still had that gun and Henny was remem
bering occasional patches of last night. Even though Henny might never recall the moment when she came up to the van, the murderer had to be frightened. Annie could imagine the scene, the dark road, the misting rain, the lights from Henny’s old car poking through the darkness, the van with the body in the back. The murderer most likely slid out the passenger side of the van, carrying the croquet mallet, and came up behind Henny. But when the mallet was swung, the murderer slipped. Or Henny moved forward. That explained the roundish bruise on Henny’s arm and the fact that Henny wasn’t battered to the ground. Instead, Henny ran away. Where was the gun at that point? If Ruth was the killer, her story of Kathryn taking the gun was a lie. Perhaps Ruth had intended to use the gun but saw the mallet in the back of the van and grabbed it to strike Kathryn. She must have left the gun at home, but taken it later that night when biking to Kathryn’s store. But if Ruth was innocent, the gun was in the back of the van and the murderer saw it when dumping Kathryn’s body on the floor, saw the gun and left it, but retrieved it after Henny fled.

Whatever had happened, Annie was certain that the gun was in dangerous, deadly hands and, yes, that Henny was at risk. But was making the murderer nervous a wise thing to do?

Annie came around the card table, knelt beside Emma. “Listen, Emma, last night…” Once started, Annie not only described that terrifying moment in front of Kathryn’s store, she spilled out her confrontation with Ruth Yates.

Emma wasn’t interested at this moment in the provenance of the gun. She gripped Annie’s arm. “Think, Annie! You must have some sense of who shot at you. A man? A woman? How tall was the person? Bulky? Thin? Old? Young?”

“A coat. A cap. Dark. Black. An arm sweeping up. Folders. That’s all I saw,” Annie said miserably. “Then—”

Emma gave her arm a squeeze. “Good thing you dived.” Her piercing gaze studied Annie with interest. “So you and
Max opted not to call the cops. Maybe the less said about that episode the better.” Her cornflower-blue eyes were busy calculating why they hadn’t called Garrett. “Has it occurred to you that the murderer might add you to the shut-’em-up list?” Then she shook her head and her bronze ringlets quivered like sea oats in an onshore breeze. “No, no,” she answered herself brusquely. “Obviously, you aren’t going to finger anyone or you would already have done so. The murderer’s not worried about you. Just like,” she muttered, “
The Case of the Half-Hearted Heiress
.”

Annie wished Emma would refrain from drawing corollaries with her own books. Annie didn’t want to take offense but she remembered that particular title and a rather vapid ingenue who never quite understood what was going on. Emma’s sleuth, Marigold Rembrandt, understood everything of course.

But this was no time for personal feelings. Annie pushed to her feet. “Emma, I think we should move quietly—”

Emma held up a stubby hand. “The cat’s out of the bag. My source told me Garrett’s already on his way to check out those addresses, talk to the people who live there. That will be the beginning of pressure. We’ll figure out how to increase the stress. But first, let’s go get the van. I got the extra set of keys out of the office this morning.”

She was on her feet and leading the way. This morning her caftan was a swirl of black and red and she somewhat resembled a mobile checkerboard. “Who knows what we may learn from it. After all, as Marigold often points out, ‘A woman’s eye sees more.’” Emma laughed deep in her throat. “Of course, I never explain more of what. But my readers don’t seem to care. It rather reminds me of
The Puzzle of the Purloined Pillow
. Marigold deduced the presence of a missing python from a bulge in the clothes hamper.”

Max studied an array of color printouts on his desk:

Vince Ellis, freckled face almost as red as his curly hair, legs pumping, crossed the finish line in the annual Save the
Turtles Marathon. He looked stronger than most middle-aged athletes, a shade over six feet tall with a broad chest and muscular legs.

Vince and his wife Arlene danced at the country club’s New Year’s Eve ball, Vince dapper in a tuxedo, though his black tie was askew and confetti spattered his red hair, Arlene ethereal in an ice-blue gown, her golden hair in coronet braids, a gold necklace emphasizing the slender column of her neck.

Tennis player Vince accepted the silver trophy for men’s singles, ages forty to fifty. His red hair was a sweaty mop and his nose peeling from sunburn, but he had a grin big enough to make an alligator jealous.

Vince and Arlene walking slowly, a little girl between them clutching their hands as they entered the church.

An ashen-faced Vince climbing into a Coast Guard search helicopter.

Max opened the folder:

Max scanned a very brief dossier:

Max picked up the iced cappuccino. But not even the coffee-rich drink lifted his spirits. Vince couldn’t have made it clearer that he—and the
Gazette
—wouldn’t be investigating Kathryn Girard’s death. His name was on Kathryn’s list.

Vince, a blackmail victim?

Max couldn’t believe it. Or even if he had to believe it, he couldn’t believe that Vince Ellis, a man he’d known and liked for years, a man who’d wept at the memorial for his wife, a man who’d walked the beaches, gaunt and thin, staring out to sea, could possibly have arranged her death.

But what else could he believe?

Max shoved the folder aside, picked up the next.

Annie followed Emma and Mavis Cameron around the end of the police station. The parking lot was screened from the street by a line of pines. Annie lagged a little behind. Honestly, she didn’t see why she had to be the one to drive the van back to the Women’s Club. But Emma, that stubby hand firm on Annie’s elbow, had marched her directly to the pink Rolls-Royce. On any other errand, Annie might have enjoyed riding in Emma’s car, which breasted the roadways like a stately liner encountering swells. On the short jaunt, Emma had discoursed with pleasure about
The Adventure of The Curious Coon Cat
. Annie was, to put it exceedingly politely, suffering from a surfeit of Marigold Rembrandt.
Did Emma ever talk about anyone else’s mysteries? Annie tried a diversion. “Don’t you think Jean Hager’s Mitch Bushyhead is terrific?” Emma’s cornflower-blue eyes blinked, but she kept right on talking about Marigold.