Death On Demand Part 24

She remembered Harriet's contorted face that day at Death On Demand. Max was wrong. That day, Harriet was mad enough to kill.

Annie spread her hands out. "How can we guess what's reason enough?

Remember what happened to Gideon in Kelly's short story?"

Max waggled his hand for her to be quiet. "That's right," he said into the receiver. "That's the one. What've you got-well, I'll be d.a.m.ned. Sure.

Listen, we appreciate your help. If we can ever give you a hand-"

He hung up, then turned to Annie, his blue eyes gleaming with excitement. "He remembers, all right, and he thinks Kelly is just as nutty as her sister. In fact, he believes Kelly did every bit of it herself."

He scrunched his face in distaste. "She forgot to mention the chicken house. Apparently, she-or Pamela-set fire to the chicken house behind the place where they boarded."

"Ugh."

"Yeah. So maybe Kelly had more to lose than some embarra.s.sing talk about her crazy sister."

"Maybe Pamela's not crazy. Maybe she's a prisoner-a variation on Flowers in the Attic."

He didn't laugh. "Actually, nothing about Kelly would surprise me." He ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Maybe Carmen summed up the party pretty well. Annie, did you have any idea what your Sunday Night Regulars were like?"

She tried to remember back before Sunday. Sunday seemed a thousand years ago.

"I always thought Emma Clyde was a lot smarter than she acted. You know, she looks like the average housewife shopping in the housewares section at Winn-Dixie."

"That's on a par with calling a cobra a house pet."

"I really liked Hal Douglas. He has such an all-American face."

"Just your average neighborhood wife-killer," Max sang.

"And Kelly seemed so vulnerable, like a coed at a bad hangout."

"Very bad, but she's the den mother."

He lightly touched her elbow, and they started back down the central aisle.

"I never did like the Parleys. They give me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

"Another all-American pair." Max walked behind the coffee bar, honing in, on the refrigerator.

As he lifted out another beer, she mused, "n.o.body much liked Fritz.

He's such a cold fish."

Max carefully fitted the church key to the bottle cap. "Then there's Capt.

Wonderful," and he shot a sly look at Annie.

She leaned against the coffee bar. "Why do you hate him so much? He's the only normal one of the bunch."

The cap snapped off, and foam rose over the lip of the bottle. "No cop is normal."

"That's not fair. Besides, he has a piddly motive."

Handing her the first bottle, he uncapped the second. "Keeping a paternity suit quiet doesn't seem worth a poison-tipped dart. But a man who'll cheat on his wife will cheat anybody. I intend to nose around him a little more."

Annie took a delicate sip of beer. She'd better ease up on her quaffing.

She needed a clear head, especially if she were going to show Max up.

He thought he was so smart. Of course, if the murderer's picture were on Harriet's film, neither- She popped straight up. The beer jostled and overflowed as she gestured wildly at the wall clock.

"My G.o.d, Max, it's almost six!"

Eighteen.

The Porsche leapt forward. Annie clung to the red leather rim of the dash. The clock flashed 5:52.

"Don't worry, this girl can fly. We'll make it. Besides, Parotti probably doesn't leave on time."

"Yes, he does," she yelled back over the whip of the wind through the open sunroof. The live oaks pa.s.sed in a blur. "He's a little martinet.

You'd think that d.a.m.ned ferry was the Queen Elizabeth the way he acts about her schedule."

In answer, Max pressed harder on the accelerator.

Annie thumped back against her spine. They had to make it. They had to.

The Porsche zoomed around the last curve and roared toward the checkpoint. He braked hard, received a pa.s.s-through wave from a startled Jimmy Moon, then floorboarded it, and the sports car burst forward like a two-year-old headed for the winner's circle.

Success was theirs! The car screeched onto the dock just as Parotti gave the preliminary toots announcing imminent departure. The ferry horn mingled with the high, abrasive whine of a siren.

Annie twisted in her seat and saw the motorcycle turning off the blacktop.

"Hurry, drive onto the ferry!"

Max twisted to look, too. The Porsche didn't move. "A work farm is not my idea of a pleasant way to spend the rest of October."

As the motorcycle drew alongside, she glared at Max in bitter disappointment.

Once again, the ma.s.sive young policeman loomed beside the car. A waft of spicy cologne tickled Annie's nose. "Eighty-six miles per hour. You people think this island is a G.o.dd.a.m.ned racetrack?"

Annie jounced in the seat. They had to hurry! The ferry always left on time. The clock flashed 5:59. She could see Parotti peering at them from the ferry cabin.

"Officer, I apologize," Max began smoothly, "but we have important business on the mainland."

"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 ident.i.ty was revealed.

Parking the bike 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 salt.w.a.ter 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 cus.h.i.+on 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 t.i.tle. Her favorite? Probably The Black Shrouds. There were the Leslie Ford, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mary Collins, Eric Ambler, and Patricia Wentworth t.i.tles. 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 t.i.tles, contained magnificent denouements where the detective faced the circle of suspects and, voila, through brilliant ratiocination, triumphantly revealed the ident.i.ty of the murderer.

HercuJe 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 h.e.l.lo.

"Has the Revolution begun?"

"Huh?"

"You sound beleaguered. Uptight. Stressed." Max dropped 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. h.e.l.l, 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 a.s.sociation with John Primrose.

She'd show him. Nine o'clock. She reached for 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 Sat.u.r.day night, and what did he have to show for it? One autopsy report that sounded like something out of John d.i.c.kson Carr. G.o.d, now he was beginning to think like those b.l.o.o.d.y writers. But who'd ever heard of killing anybody with succinyl-choline? And why'd medicines have names like Hungarian dancers? d.a.m.n 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.