Carolyn G. Hart

by Death on Demand/Design for Murder

  Her eyes narrowed, and she no longer looked at her reflection so she didn’t see the transformation. At one instant, the mirrored face was soft and beguiling, almost as beautiful with its classic bones, silver-blonde hair, and Mediterranean blue eyes as on her wedding day at nineteen almost forty years before. Then, as Corinne Prichard Webster thought about her niece, Gail, and the manner in which she was behaving, throwing herself at a totally unsuitable man, the face hardened and looked all of its fifty-nine years, the eyes cold and hard, the mouth thin, determined, and cruel.

  The phone rang.

  Corinne didn’t move to answer it, but she looked across her bedroom, past the silken canopied bed and the Queen Anne dresser to the compass rose desk which sat in an alcove, the blue velvet curtains unopened yet to the morning. The white and gold telephone, a French reproduction, rang again. Corinne waited, certain she knew the caller.

  A gentle knock sounded at her bedroom door, then Marybelle stepped inside.

  “The call is for you, ma’am. Mr. Roscoe Merrill.”

  Corinne nodded. “I will answer it, Marybelle.”

  As the maid softly closed the heavy door, Corinne moved to the telephone. Picking up the receiver, she lifted her chin. If Roscoe Merrill had been in the room, he would have recognized that stance. It was Corinne at her most imperious.

  “Yes, Roscoe.” She listened, then said impatiently, “The private man reveals the public man.” He spoke again, but Corinne was shaking her head. She interrupted sharply, “It won’t do any good for you to take that tone with me. I will do what I feel is right. You should have considered the consequences of your actions. I certainly feel that Jessica has every right to know.” At his angry response, she depressed the cradle. Her face was implacable as she replaced the receiver.

  The green and pink porcelain clock on the mantel delicately chimed the quarter hour. Vexed, Corinne shook her head. She was running late this morning, and there was much she had to do. There was that matter of the clinic and John Sanford’s foolish plan to expand it. That would draw more country people into Chastain, overburdening the hospital with the kind of people who couldn’t pay. John must be made to see that he was out of line. Corinne yanked on the bell pull. She would have time for Marybelle to draw her bath, then she must hurry. So many things to attend to. That silly mystery program, for one. She felt a surge of irritation. Such a cheap idea. For once she agreed with Dora, but it had been obvious that the Board was going to approve Roscoe’s stupid proposal. She’d voted yes, even though she was seething inside. After all, she couldn’t let it appear that the Board was taking such a major step without her approval. At least, as president, she’d retained control of hiring the mystery expert. That was another reason to make Roscoe pay for his actions, which she certainly intended to do. There was a proper way to act and an improper way. That reminded her of Gail. She would talk to Gail without delay. Corinne sighed, overburdened. There were so many demands on her time and energy. Then she straightened and looked toward the dusky mirror, her face again soft and unlined. After all, she was Corinne Prichard Webster. People depended upon her, so many of them. What would they do without her?

  4

  I want all of them. Every last one of them.”

  The penetrating voice grated on Annie Laurence’s ear drum. Her hand tightened on the receiver, but she kept her reply light and cheerful. Think of it this way, she lectured herself, every demand by Mrs. Brawley translated into a cordial hum on the cash register.

  “I don’t believe they’ve all been reprinted yet. But I’ll be glad to order them as they’re scheduled.”

  “Hildegarde Withers is wonderful! It’s a crime they’ve been out of print all these years.” The tone was accusing.

  Annie didn’t quite see it as a capital offense, but she murmured agreement. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Brawley, I’ll order them for you. And, if you like, I can round up all the Stuart Palmer titles second-hand—”

  “I want new books.”

  “Oh, certainly. By all means. Now, I have your number. I’ll let you know as soon as the first title arrives.”

  It took several seconds more to end the conversation. Mrs. Brawley’s singleminded pursuit of a goal ranked high on any all-time list, neck-and-neck with Carrie Nation, Johnny Appleseed, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

  Once free of the phone, Annie returned to a jollier pastime, reading mystery reviews in Publishers Weekly. The latest Robert Barnard sounded marvelous. And there was a new book by Sister Carol Anne O’Marie. She would—

  The front doorbell sang. Annie dropped the magazine on the wicker table, pushed up from her favorite rattan easy chair, the one with the softest red and yellow cushions, brushed by a flourishing Whitmani fern, and stepped into the broad central corridor of Death on Demand. She hurried past the angled gum shelving with the various mystery categories toward the front desk and the rather stunning woman who was surveying the interior of the bookstore as if it were a Peruvian slum.

  Annie’s smile tightened. You don’t have to like customers, she reminded herself, although, as a general rule, she did. Mystery readers, as a class, were bright, well-informed, and articulate. This well-preserved blonde was a stranger to her. Maybe she’d just moved to Broward’s Rock. She certainly looked prosperous enough to afford the island’s casual but expensive lifestyle. Annie swiftly appraised the elegant cream suede suit, the crimson silk tie, the brown alligator pumps and handbag, and a wedding ring that glittered like the Waldorf chandelier.

  “Good morning. May I help you?”

  Deeply blue eyes flicked disdainfully from Edgar’s sleek feathers to a splashily bright poster affixed to the True Crime section, which advertised the latest book on the luckless headmistress with the unfortunate love life. Carnelian lips thinned in disgust.

  Annie could feel a rush of heat to the back of her neck. Steady, she thought, foreseeing lurid headlines. MYSTERY SHOP OWNER BLUDGEONS OBNOXIOUS CUSTOMER.

  “I’m looking for a Miss Annie Laurance.” The tone indicated the same eagerness that might be experienced upon searching for a boa constrictor.

  “I’m Annie Laurance.” And to hell with you, lady.

  “Oh.” Frosty eyes scanned her. The artfully darkened blonde brows drew down in a delicate frown. “You’re very young.”

  Tempted to respond with a combative, “So?,” Annie evinced exemplary restraint, and merely said again, a little more insistently, “May I help you?”

  “I’m Corinne Prichard Webster.”

  Annie waited.

  “From Chastain.”

  “Chastain. That’s not far from Beaufort. I understand it’s a lovely old town.”

  “You’ve never been to Chastain?” Incredulity lifted the well-modulated voice.

  “Not yet,” Annie admitted, her smile now unforced.

  “Oh, well. I don’t know what to say.”

  Annie was beginning to feel trapped in a surrealistic conversation. It was time to hack her way out of this encounter. Maybe this expensive blonde was a nut. “Are you looking for a particular book?”

  “A book. A mystery? Oh, heavens, no. I don’t read them.” Her moral superiority was clearly established.

  “This is a mystery bookstore.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m here on behalf of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society. One of our Board members, Roscoe Merrill, recommended you.”

  Merrill. Merrill. Then she remembered him, a stocky lawyer with a shiny bald head and humorless brown eyes. But he liked Rumpole, so there had to be a spark of humanity beneath that pinstriped exterior. What on earth, she wondered, had Merrill recommended her for?

  Mrs. Webster didn’t seem cheered by the recommendation. “Are you familiar with the annual house-and-garden tours in Chastain?” She looked at Annie doubtfully.

  Recalling the chaste gray and pink poster she’d seen in the hallway of the Broward’s Rock Public Library, Annie nodded.

  “It has been suggested—” The smooth voice thinned just a trifle, and Annie de
tected a ripple of irritation. “The Board decided that we could enhance the success of our annual house-and-garden tours if we offered a further enticement.” She enunciated each word as if she were sucking a lemon.

  The Board of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society must be hard up for support if it’d sent an emissary all the way to an off-lying island. Annie was looking forward to an unctuous refusal to harbor promotional material, something on the lines of, “This is a mystery bookstore, and we only offer information of interest to mystery readers,” when the magic words “some kind of mystery program” registered.

  “Mystery program?”

  “Yes. Now, of course, if you don’t feel that you can handle an assignment of this nature, it would be understandable. After all, you certainly are very young, and there isn’t much time to develop it. We would need to have the scripts, if that’s how it’s done, by next Thursday. If you feel the time is insufficient, I will explain to the Board and perhaps another year—”

  “Mystery program?” A happy surge of adrenaline tingled from her ears to her toes. “You mean, figure out the plot and create the clues and run the whole thing? Oh, God, I’d kill to do it!”

  When the door finally closed behind Corinne Webster’s trim figure, Annie unclenched her hands and felt the tightness ease from her neck and shoulders. What a poisonous creature! A Gila monster would have a certain charm in comparison. But the chance to run her very own mystery nights program was too exciting to lose, so she’d ignored the Board president’s clear distaste for the entire idea. Something funny there. Obviously, the little tyrant had been maneuvered into approving the Mystery Nights. Be interesting to meet the other Board members. Well, she’d have her chance on Thursday when she presented them with her wonderful Mystery Nights program. And she could thank Roscoe Merrill for suggesting her for the job. Annie felt utterly confident that she would indeed create a super-duper mystery. How could she miss? She’d read every mystery from Les Miserables to Death From a Top Hat. Her mind teemed with ideas—a mannequin which turns into a body, babies switched at birth, letters hidden in the attic. Grinning, she reached for the phone and called Ingrid to see if she could work full-time for the next few weeks. Then, she hurried down the aisle to make a fresh pot of Kona coffee. The better to think with.

  Ingrid arrived before the brew was finished. Annie filled mugs for both of them, and Ingrid settled in behind the front desk, emitting enthusiastic coos as Annie described her new project.

  “The House-and-Garden tours start Monday, April 7. I’m going to put on a mystery program the first four nights, and end up with a Denouement Ball on Friday night. And they’re going to pay me $1,000!”

  Ingrid applauded.

  Delighted with herself and the prospect, Annie freshened her mug and wandered happily among the shelves. There were so many interesting ways to commit murder. Douglas Clark used castor-oil beans in Premedicated Murder. V. C. Clinton-Baddeley took honors for originality when he created a poison of ant’s brew in Death’s Bright Dart. H. F. Heard opted for a swarm of deadly bees in A Taste of Honey, and Elspeth Huxley aimed a poison-tipped stick in The African Poison Murders.

  And think of the fascinating variety among victims: a charming, likable woman with good intentions in Dorothy Simpson’s Last Seen Alive, the narcissistic coed in Jane Langton’s Emily Dickinson Is Dead, an arrogant braggart who made the fatal mistake of collecting killers in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table, a woman who married too many times in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, and the socially impeccable Cogswells in Virginia Rich’s The Baked Bean Supper Murders.

  Where to begin? With victim or detective? Margaret Truman recommends starting with the victim, and Robert B. Parker insists the point of mystery fiction is the detective, not detection.

  Should her mystery take advantage of its setting in one of South Carolina’s oldest coastal towns, as Leslie Ford milked the atmosphere for every last drop of Spanish moss in Murder with Southern Hospitality? Or should she appeal to the mystery addict’s interest in faraway places, as Mary Stewart did in My Brother Michael and James McClure in The Steam Pig?

  She bent to straighten the row of Ruth Rendell titles. Now those kinds of stories wouldn’t do at all for this genteel group. No, better something more on the order of Mary Roberts Rinehart or Louisa Revell. Or perhaps—The bell above the door rang. She stepped into the central aisle, looked toward the front, and saw Max peering at her determinedly from the doorway. Ingrid beamed at Max, then shot her a shamefaced glance. Ingrid was the most wonderful employee in this or any other bookstore, but she was clearly on his side now.

  The newcomer grinned at Ingrid, but his eyes were on Annie.

  She waved her hand at him. “Come on in. The floor isn’t mined.” He was obviously girding for battle, still confident that he would prevail. Dammit, she loved him, the silly ass, but she wasn’t going to be swayed.

  He still stood, half in and half out of Death on Demand, and she thought about Calvin Gates’s first encounter with Mr. Moto in Mr. Moto Is So Sorry, the two at cross purposes, Calvin tenaciously pursuing his destiny, and Mr. Moto intent upon his own ends. Even the enormous stuffed raven beside the door seemed to be looking at Max sympathetically. Was everybody, dead birds included, on Max’s side? And Agatha, of course, was moving languidly toward him. Where was her sense of loyalty? Didn’t she know who her mistress was? But the small, silky-furred black cat was already twined gracefully around his leg. Absently, he reached down to pet her, then cleared his throat decisively.

  She hurried to forestall him. She wasn’t up to another discussion today. Besides, even though they were at odds, Max would be delighted at her good fortune.

  “Guess what? I get to plan my own murders. For money! And I can’t decide between cyanide or electrocution or maybe defenestration. But don’t you think cyanide in champagne has a lovely ring?”

  “In a glass or bottle?” he inquired mildly. He finally came all the way inside. Ingrid patted his arm as he passed her and was rewarded with his sexy grin. Annie struggled to concentrate on her immediate task, but she felt the old familiar thrill, the unmistakable tingly delight at his presence. He looked freshly scrubbed, as if he’d just stepped from a shower and into his crisp white shirt and gray poplin slacks. Was there a hint of dampness in his thick blond hair? For a moment, she thought about Max in his shower, the water slapping against his tanned, muscled chest, then she firmly brought her mind to heel.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Cyanide in a bottle, if mixed in a punch, could fell hundreds. Are you and Ingrid planning a reception for the store?”

  “I prefer to entertain my customers, not kill them,” she retorted. She glanced around. Actually, the increase in customers at Death on Demand this spring had been phenomenal—and she didn’t believe it had anything to do with her notoriety as half of the team which solved the first murders in modern times on Broward’s Rock. At least not much. They came because they wanted to see the shop. Some wanted books. After all, she carried the best selection of mystery and suspense novels this side of Atlanta. Some were readers who relished matching the painted scenes on the back wall to favorite books. Local artists vied for the right to paint new scenes every month, and the contest successfully lured patrons in month after month. And, of course, all the area mystery writers liked to come, too, though they’d been a little slow to return after last fall’s excitement. Hopefully, everyone was starting to forget about the murder in the shop.

  “I guess I’d better put the cyanide in a glass.”

  He moved so close she had trouble concentrating on her topic.

  Casually, she stepped back a pace, then realized she was wedged between Max and the romantic suspense section.

  “Whose? Anybody I know? I thought I was the only person you were mad at right now.” He managed to look both injured and appealing. Dammit, why did he have to remind her of a Brittany spaniel? What was there about Max that she found so irresistible? Well, she was
going to avoid any further discussion of their dilemma, no matter how pathetic he managed to look. It was a pose, of course. He was a bullheaded, insensitive, money-flaunting brute.

  “Come on and have some coffee,” she said brusquely, wriggling past him into the aisle and leading the way to the back of the shop. Behind the coffee bar, several hundred white mugs sat on shelving. Each mug carried the name of a book which had earned recognition as an all-time great in mystery fiction. She poured Max a fresh cup and refilled hers. Max lifted his mug and sniffed it suspiciously.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Just making sure the cyanide hasn’t popped from the champagne to the coffee.”

  She laughed. “I’m not that mad at you. I’m thinking about cyanide for the Chastain Mystery Nights.” She described Mrs. Webster’s visit. “Although it’s going to be a royal pain to work with Her Highness.”

  Max took time to see which famous mystery title was written in red script on his white mug (The Lone Wolf). He raised an eyebrow quizzically.

  She hastened to reassure him. “Nothing profound is intended. My mugs are not fortune cookies.” And she waggled her own, which carried the legend, The Beast Must Die.

  He lounged comfortably against the bar, drank some coffee, and sighed.

  It was wonderful the way good coffee could improve his disposition. She must remember that for future mornings together—if those mornings ever materialized. The prospect didn’t look so good at the moment.

  “So you’re being unleashed to develop a murder program. Do they have any realization they may have uncapped a bloodthirsty genie from a bottle?”

  She felt a surge of relief. She had successfully deflected him from the purpose of his visit. With luck, she could keep the conversation on cyanide and murder and away from the dangerous topic of September.

  She put her mug on the yellow formica top of the coffee bar and smiled at him rapturously. “It’s going to be so much fun. Max, do you want to help?” she asked eagerly. “No kidding. We can do it together.” She ignored the quick gleam in his eye. “I mean, like Frances and Richard Lockridge. Or the Gordons. Or Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall.” She bent over the bar, fished out a notebook and flipped it open, then scrounged vainly in the pocket of her white slacks for a pen. Max obligingly handed her one. “Look, what do you think? Should we do a locked-room mystery like John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man or Clayton Rawson’s The Footprints On the Ceiling? Maybe we should consider psychological suspense like Helen McCloy’s The Slayer and the Slain or Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief. Or an academic murder, like Amanda Cross’s Death in a Tenured Position or Gwendolyn Butler’s Coffin in Oxford. And there’re always sporting murders. Let’s see, it was archery in Death at St. Asprey’s School by Leo Bruce, bullfighting in Puzzle for Pilgrims by Patrick Quentin, running in Dead Heat by Linda Barnes, basketball in The Giant Kill by Kin Platt, golf in—”