by Carolyn Hart
The bell jangled at the front door.
Annie paused at the front window of Death on Demand. Should she change the display? Instead of new releases, the books on view were collectibles that caught the essence of past days as memorably as long-ago photographs by Arthur Telfer or Charles J. Belden or Chansonetta Emmons. The books lay face up, some scuffed and faded, but treasures still: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Suicide Excepted by Cyril Hare, and Blue Fire by Phyllis A. Whitney. Oh hey, she loved these books; let them enjoy another moment in the sun. The baroness’s famous book was published in 1905. It was fun to wonder whether a book published in 2005 by Janet Evanovich or Faye Kellerman might grace a bookstore window in 2105.
Besides, she didn’t have time to think about a new display. Not this week or next. She opened the door and plunged inside. She didn’t stop to admire her domain as was her usual custom: the table featuring New Arrivals; Edgar, the stuffed black raven on his pedestal; bookshelves slanting away from the central corridor; hundreds of wonderful titles by authors ranging from Susan Wittig Albert to Margaret Yorke; and the sofas and armchairs waiting to cosset readers. Agatha, the elegant black cat who ruled the store, curled atop a red cushion. She languidly lifted her head, watched Annie with somnolent golden eyes. Hmm, Ingrid must have fed her a succulent lunch.
Annie detoured a few steps, stroked a sleepy Agatha, then bolted to the central cash desk, flung out her hands. “Ingrid, any word on the jazz band?”
Ingrid’s iron gray hair frizzed even without humidity. Bright blue ink smudged her green smock near the bookstore logo, a silver dagger with a red tip. She gestured with her pen. “It’s a no-go. The band’s van crashed into a seawall down in the Keys and they can’t get here, not even by Saturday a week. Leader said probably they wouldn’t get out of the Keys until some Saturday next year. He said they’ll be playing in Key West until they are old men with long beards. But”—she spoke above Annie’s wail—“not to worry. I’ve already talked to Ben”—Ben Parotti, owner of Parotti’s Bar and Grill as well as the ferry and a good deal of island real estate—“and he said his wife’s nephew who’s a deejay in Savannah had a cancellation by the Jaycees for that Saturday and he’s got a thousand—well, maybe a hundred—CDs with songs from the twenties and he’ll handle everything.”
Annie leaned against the counter in relief. “Oh, golly, Ingrid, that’s great. I mean, I’d rather have a band. They had bands in the twenties, not CDs, but with only twelve days to go I guess I’d better settle for—”
The telephone rang. Ingrid scooped up the receiver. “Death on Demand, the finest mystery bookstore north of—Oh, hi, Laurel. Annie?” Ingrid shot a questioning look at her boss.
Annie hesitated. But Max’s mother had antennae that rivaled a praying mantis’s, and she probably knew—Annie determinedly refused to ponder her mother-in-law’s uncanny gift for ascertaining Annie’s thoughts, whereabouts, and attitudes—that Annie was standing within a foot of the phone. Annie took the receiver. “Laurel, hi.” Her tone was so effusive Laurel would know she’d debated not answering. Oh, well…
“My dear, I felt compelled to call.” The husky voice gamboled. Those who doubt that voices gambol have never listened to Laurel Darling Roethke. Laurel delivered every utterance with such élan that a listener could not be blamed for expecting, at the very least, a pronouncement of cosmic importance.
“Yes?” Annie said expectantly, then she shook her head, her sandy hair—newly cut in an old-fashioned bob—quivering, chagrined that she’d once again bought into Laurel’s effervescence. When would she learn? The truth was, Laurel could dazzle with a grocery list. Annie’s glance moved to the shelf with classic mysteries and Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Out of Order, in which Cape Cod sleuth Asey Mayo struggles with Aunt Eugenia’s grocery order. Order…Oh Lord, had she ordered enough white wine? Wine wasn’t on the menu at Parotti’s.
Laurel’s throaty murmur rivaled Bacall’s. “I am agog with delight…”
Annie considered the state of being agog. Agogment? Agogged?
“…and I know you will agree. Here is the question: What Ohio newspaper publisher became president on his fifty-fifthth birthday?”
Annie was not agogged. “President of what?”
The pause was brief. Then a kindly sigh. “I see. Well, perhaps I shall continue in my quest although one would think that Warren Harding might immediately come to mind.”
Annie was silent.
“But then again, perhaps not.” Laurel’s tone was forgiving. “We do want our partygoers to feel clever, don’t we?” Laurel was brisk. “Ah well, I shall persevere. You may count on me, my dear. I will have a question prepared for each table and midway through the evening, we shall ask the guests to canvass their table, agree on an answer and”—a trill of delight—“a spokesperson from each table shall come to the microphone and announce the answer and then we shall vote on the best question and answer and the prize”—her voice rang clear as a Sunday morning bell—“will be a drive with Max in the Stutz Bearcat. I’ve announced it on the Web site.”
“Web site?” Annie experienced a sudden sense of strangling, a not unfamiliar sensation when dealing with her always unpredictable, madcap mother-in-law. “What Web site?”
A burst of cheery laughter. “The party Web site. Of course, everyone is sworn not to reveal its existence to Max. We want his surprise party to be a surprise, don’t we? Ta-ta.”
The connection ended as Annie gaped at the phone.
Ingrid’s lips quivered. “I gather she’s been busy.”
“Web site. Stuzt Bearcat. Oh, good grief!” Annie leaned across the counter and fumbled for a folder. She spilled out the contents and picked up a computer-generated invitation. Around the border of the thick white cardboard, a tiny couple in twenties garb danced the Charleston. Foil bright blue letters announced:
MAX DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE
COME ALL FRIENDS TRUE BLUE
CELEBRATE HIS BIRTHDAY
AND DANCE THE CHARLESTON, TOO!
PAROTTI’S BAR & GRILL 7 P.M. UNTIL???? SATURDAY, AUGUST 28
DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY IN A REPRISE OF THE ROARING ’20s
PRIZES FOR BEST COSTUME, BEST DANCERS
Annie flipped the invitation over. On the back was a magnificent picture of Max in, admittedly, a bright yellow Stutz Bearcat. “Ingrid”—Annie’s tone was desperate—“what am I going to do? That car doesn’t exist.” She’d taken a picture of Max in his new red Jag and transposed him via the magic of a computer into a photograph of a vintage car. “If Laurel’s promised the grand winner a ride with Max in a Stutz Bearcat, what am I going to do? I don’t have time to deal with this.”
Ingrid was kindly but firm. “If she’s promised a Stutz Bearcat on the party Web site…”
“Okay, okay, but Stutz Bearcats don’t grow on trees. I’ll try to find one, but first”—Annie waggled the invitation—“I need to see about the table prizes and make sure everything’s all set. Let’s see”—she reached for a notebook, flipped it open—“the deep-sea fishing trip is a go. Edith Cummings will give a private class at the library in how to search the Web.” Annie grinned. The island’s canny research librarian was quite capable of teaching even a rank beginner how to find out obscure facts, such as the best wildlife viewing season in the Bering Sea (summer), urgent advice to a snakebite victim (remain still), and the four presidents who won the electoral college but not the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush’s first term). “I’ve ordered a signed Sammy Sosa baseball card from a store in Savannah. It should arrive tomorrow. There are a few things I haven’t pinned down.” She glanced down the list. Still to be gathered up were a bushel of Vidalia onions and a certificate from the photography studio. Emma Clyde had promised an outing on her yacht. Other confirmed prizes included a spa day, a lawn design consultation, a Gullah dictionary, a basket-weaving lesson,
a ghost walk in Charleston, a hot-air balloon ride, a New Year’s Day oyster roast for twenty-five, and an autographed copy of South Carolina: A History by Dr. Walter Edgar, the Palmetto State’s premier historian.
The bell jangled at the front door. The door opened to a chattering horde of middle-aged women. Annie slid her papers back into the folder. Customers took precedence. “I’ll man the coffee bar.”
Max studied two snapshots lying next to his legal pad. Both were beach scenes. A tanned, muscular young man in baggy blue swim trunks, face twisting in effort, butted a volleyball in the first photo. His shock of short blond hair was bleached almost white from the sun. A tattoo of an anchor bulged on his right bicep. Sand streaked his stocky legs. In the second photo he stood with one hand resting atop a boogie board. His other hand shaded his eyes from the sun. He stared into the distance. The second photo included a portion of a weathered sign:…EARD BEACH. A beach towel was draped over a piece of driftwood.
Max recognized the scene. Blackbeard Beach was the busiest beach on the island. He pointed at the photos. “It doesn’t look as though he was aware he was being photographed.”
His client—prospective client—gave him a startled look. “I hadn’t thought of that. It was such a shock to get the pictures. Danny’s been missing for over a year.” She edged forward on her chair. Her dark hair was glossy and hung long and soft onto her shoulders. She was attractive—perhaps some might consider her beautiful—but to Max’s taste her makeup was too vivid and her sidelong glances too inviting. He had the sense that she saw every man as a possible lover. “When I got the pictures”—she fumbled in her purse, lifted out a long white envelope—“I saw the postmark and that’s why I’m here. There’s a note….” She lifted out a sheet, handed it to Max. Her fingers brushed against his.
Max was aware of her touch, knew it was deliberate. He didn’t meet her gaze. He glanced at the address in Savannah—Miss Bridget Walker—then quickly read the two short sentences:
Want to find him? Check out Dooley’s Mine most evenings.
Dooley’s Mine was a beer joint on a winding lane at the north tip of the island. Max had heard about it on a rowdy fishing trip for groomsmen at a wedding last summer. It was not a place he would take Annie. His frown was quick. “He’s officially a missing person, right?”
She brushed back a glossy curl. “I told you. He walked out of his apartment in Atlanta over a year ago, on July 18. Nobody’s seen him since.” She nodded toward the pictures. “Until now. The police hunted. We put up posters, contacted all of his friends. Nothing.”
Max leaned back in his chair. “Miss Walker, you don’t need me. Take the pictures to the police. Chief Cameron will find him for you. The station’s up at the harbor, a half block from the ferry.”
She twined a length of hair around one finger. “I can’t.” Abruptly, her face was shadowed. She pressed her lips together. “I’m afraid…”
There was a sense of darkness, distinct as a cloud enveloping the sun. One moment she had been flirtatious. Now her features sharpened, her eyes were wide and strained.
Max glanced at the pictures. If ever there was a scene of summer fun…“Afraid of what?”
She gripped the handles of her straw bag. “Danny may have run away because he was involved in…” She glanced around Max’s office as if there might be listeners, then scooted forward in her chair, her voice faint but rapid. “What I tell you is confidential, isn’t it? That’s what your sign says, Confidential Commissions. I have to be careful.”
Max was wary. “I’m not a lawyer”—he had a law degree but he didn’t practice law—“or a private detective. If you have knowledge of criminal activity, you should inform the police.”
“I don’t know that Danny’s done anything wrong. He got in with a bad crowd and then he disappeared. He’s a good guy. The best brother in the world. We’ve been crazy with fear for more than a year. Now somebody sends me these pictures.” Her voice wobbled. “I don’t want to go to the police. What if they went out and found him and maybe some guys were trying to be sure who he was and if the police went up to him and called out his name, maybe they’d shoot him.”
Max didn’t have any difficulty sorting out the tangled pronouns, though he doubted such a horrific outcome. But the world was a dangerous place and crossing drug traffickers didn’t lead to longevity. His glance at the pictures was regretful. The young man looked healthy and exuberant and ordinary, a far remove from shady dealings and packets of cocaine.
“Look”—she scooted to the edge of the chair—“all I’m asking is for you to come with me. We’ll act like we’re on a date.” She glanced at his hand. “Maybe you could take off your wedding ring. Anyway, we’ll be together and nobody’ll know I’m looking for him. I can watch for him and if he’s there, I’ll point him out to you. Then you can find out where he lives and…”
The last member of the mystery book club from Beaufort straggled out the door in search of their bus. Slow thumps marked Ingrid’s weary progress down the central aisle. She climbed onto one of the coffee bar stools, and propped her elbows on the counter. “Can I help it if publishers don’t keep the early books of a series in print?”
Annie flicked levers, watched as the espresso machine whirred and bubbled. She poured dollops of the dark brew into small cups, placed one in front of Ingrid, added enough whipped cream in her cup to drop the temperature, downed it in a swallow. She took a deep breath. “They say the customer is always right.”
Ingrid wrinkled her nose, sniffed the espresso. “They”—she invested the pronoun with loathing—“forgot to explain to the customer that the retailer is not responsible for the vagaries of publishing.”
After a moment of quiet and consumption of espresso, Ingrid returned to the cash desk. She sounded more cheerful when she called back, “We just sold two hundred and forty-six dollars’ worth of books.”
“Super.” But Annie’s thoughts were already on Max’s party and all the details to be planned. She settled at a table near the coffee bar with her list and the portable phone. Forty-five minutes and fourteen calls later, she was on hold. It would not be ladylike to voice her hatred of voice mail. She took refuge, the phone cradled at her neck, in looking at the watercolors hanging on the back wall. Every month she put up a new selection. The first customer to identify the paintings by title and author received free coffee for a month and a new mystery. She’d especially enjoyed picking out these titles.
In the first painting, a glass-walled verandah room was filled with books and museum display cases. Two men stared at each other. Standing was a roughly dressed man who had the appearance of a tramp, though his browned face was civilized and intelligent. A benevolent-appearing old gentleman seated at a kneehole desk looked up at his visitor, his gray eyes intent.
In the second painting, a squat, flat-bottomed boat rode a swift current in the muddy brown water. The engine and boiler were amidships. A stumpy funnel rose just higher than the tattered awning that roofed six feet of stern. Wisps of steam leaked from the engine. A lean-cheeked, wiry man with a cigarette dangling from his lips shoved wood into the furnace. At the stern, a sunburned woman in a soiled, tattered frock shifted the tiller and looked ahead to white water boiling over and around jagged black rocks.
In the third painting, steam curled above a copper teakettle on a stove made of mud bricks. Rumpled bedding covered a raised platform near the stove’s flue. A crude wooden dresser and a wooden cupboard completed the furnishings of the single room. The walls were of mud bricks, the floor of tamped earth. The tall Caucasian man in flying gear and the reddish-blond woman in a coat and flying helmet looked alien in that barren room. They stared at each other, each holding a torn half of a sheet of paper.
In the fourth painting, a stocky dark-haired man dressed in black stood at the edge of a precipice. He held a Luger aimed at an unarmed man perhaps twenty feet away. Behind the gunman, a slim young woman, her face twisting in desperation, used every ounce of strength
to fling a heavy stone at him.
In the fifth painting, a gray four-door Lincoln Continental was parked between two cars in a chain-link-fenced parking area near a taxi stand. The driver’s door and both back doors were open. A paunchy middle-aged blondish man in a crumpled suit was slipping behind the wheel, his face desperate and panicked. A man with a crew cut turned a screwdriver on the interior panel of the right back door.
Annie nodded in satisfaction. Wonderful books, each and every one.
The phone clicked. There was a buzz.
“Damn.” Annie slammed one hand on the table. “I got cut off. I wonder,” she called out to Ingrid, “if anyone’s ever done a study of how many hours everybody in this country spends on hold!” She punched the number again. This time she got through. “Mr. Frasier?”
“Can you speak a little louder.” The shout was almost overwhelmed by the high whine of machinery. “I’m in my garage.”
Annie’s hand tightened on the receiver. So far as she’d been able to determine, Mr. Frasier was the only person within a three-state radius who owned a Stutz Bearcat. “I understand you have a Stutz Bearcat—”
“What’s…” A clack drowned out the words. “Can’t hear you.”
Annie shouted. “Your Stutz Bearcat—can I rent it for the weekend of the twenty-eighth?”
“Don’t have to yell at me, lady.” The negotiations, all but overwhelmed by noise, were finally resolved.
“…and you’ll bring it over on the ferry that Saturday?” When she clicked off the phone, Annie downed another espresso. So she was going to be wired. Some days required a little extra zing. All right. The car was arranged for. And one Laurel Darling Roethke was damn well going to meet Mr. Frasier at the ferry landing on Saturday, August 28, and get the damn car.
She glanced at the clock. Oh hey, she needed to shove all the party stuff back into the storeroom. Max would be here in a minute and they’d go home and she and Max would have a wonderful dinner and it would take all of her control not to tell him what a grand party she was planning—
