Death on Demand

by Carolyn G. Hart

  She moved as fast as she dared through the inky darkness. Reaching the door to the storeroom, she was surprised to find it ajar. Pushing it, she stepped inside the storeroom, and saw a pale oblong of deep blue light. The back door was open. She stared at it in surprise, then moved diagonally, sure of her course now, and reached up. Her fingers brushed against the rough cedar of the unfinished wall. The flashlight was hanging from a nail just about here…

  She touched the wall, the nail.

  The flashlight wasn’t there.

  It had to be there. She hadn’t moved it. She’d seen it there, noticed it, at least peripherally, that morning when Mrs. Brawley was there.

  At least she knew where she was now. The circuit box was just a couple of feet to her left. Unless it was an island-wide brownout, she should be able to turn the power back on. She couldn’t imagine why the breakers should have flipped. Maybe the fault was in her wiring. She groaned. The cost of an electrician…

  Her fingers found the circuit box—and its open door.

  For the first time Annie felt cold.

  She pulled the panel all the way open. The breakers were flipped to the right, all four of them, which would indicate some kind of massive overload.

  One by one, she clicked them back to the left.

  As the second breaker moved, the lights in the coffee area came on, and light spilled through the storeroom door.

  Someone screamed again, but this time the scream began high and held and held.

  Annie jerked around and ran across the storeroom to the doorway, then stopped short and clung to the frame.

  There wasn’t much blood, just a trickle. It was almost obscured by the dark, spreading pool of coffee.

  Then Capt. Mac’s stocky bulk came between her and Elliot Morgan’s body, but she would always remember just the way Elliot looked as he lay lifeless, crumpled at the foot of the coffee bar. A smear of unbelievably crimson blood oozed around the shaft of the dart that protruded from the fleshy softness of his throat. The Puzzle of the Silver Persian mug lay empty beside him.

  Annie started to shake. How many bodies had she viewed in her mind over the years, from Ruby Keene in Colonel Bantry’s library to the blackened, unidentifiable lumps in Ice Station Zebra? But none of her reading had prepared her for this. She hadn’t liked Elliot Morgan. She had even feared what he could do to the shop that she loved, but none of this mattered now. Elliot was dead. It was clearly, unmistakably murder. Not illness as with her mother. Not accident as with Uncle Ambrose.

  But how could a dart kill someone? This was madness.

  First, they hear of the murder of a pretty young veterinarian. Then the lights go out, and a man falls dead from a dart in his throat.

  Darts can’t kill anybody.

  Annie said it out loud.

  “Darts can’t kill anybody.” She looked up to find Max at her side. His face was pale beneath its tan.

  “I know, my love. But we just saw it happen.”

  “We didn’t see it.”

  “Don’t be so literal.”

  Capt. Mac, his face grimmer than ever, brusquely ordered everyone into a line at the far side of the coffee area.

  “Don’t touch anything.”

  “Why not?” Kelly Rizzoli asked politely. There were dark stains on her white linen skirt. She must have spilled her coffee when the lights went out, Annie thought automatically.

  “This is the scene of a crime,” the former policeman replied curtly. “Do as you’re told, Ms. Rizzoli.”

  Fritz Hemphill grudgingly took his place in the line. “Look, McElroy, remember you’re retired.”

  Capt. Mac ignored him and was already on the phone.

  “I don’t care where Saulter is. Find him, and tell him to get over to Death On Demand pronto. We’ve got another murder.”

  It was a tense wait.

  Once Annie almost suggested they move away from the coffee area to the cane chairs grouped near the north wall, but there wouldn’t be enough seats. Then she dismissed the thought. Clearly, she was no longer a hostess with guests. She was a hostess with murder suspects.

  Annie looked at them in turn.

  Emma Clyde stood a little to one side, as if disassociating herself. Her intelligent blue eyes moved from face to face, and Annie would have loved to know her thoughts. Then those vivid eyes locked with Annie’s, and she was no longer certain she cared to know. Emma looked shrewd, tough, and frighteningly self-possessed.

  Ingrid Jones’s narrow little body seemed to have shrunk.

  She clutched her notebook, which she brought every Sunday evening, and stared determinedly at the horror section. The better, Annie guessed, to pretend she wasn’t there at all.

  Fritz Hemphill looked as comfortable as if he were waiting to tee off. He flicked an occasional impassive glance at the corpse, then picked up The Bourne Supremacy and began to read.

  Capt. Mac made occasional forays around the coffee area; once he poked his head into the storeroom, then returned to the coffee bar and made notations on a napkin, his face creased in concentration.

  An old firehorse, that’s what Capt. Mac was. Annie felt reassured. Like Inspector Maigret or Steve Carella, he represented order.

  Janis Farley clung to Jeff’s arm. Her ivory complexion was tinged with green. Jeff stood stiffly, as if he were alone. For heaven’s sake, his wife looked like she was about to faint. Why didn’t the bloody idiot do something?

  “Capt. Mac. Please. Let’s get a chair for Janis.”

  He looked up, then nodded.

  There was a little flurry: Ingrid Jones poured a glass of water, then brought some wine while Max dragged over one of the cane chairs and Annie helped Janis into it. She was shocked when she touched Janis’s arm and found it bony and sharp like an underfed cat’s spine.

  Harriet’s face was splotchy with excitement and terror, and her eyes shifted nervously between Elliot’s motionless body and the others.

  Hal spoke up suddenly. “My God. Murders in the Rue Morgue. The Mystery of the “Yellow Room. He Wouldn’t Kill Patience. Death in a Top Hat.”

  Harriet enthusiastically moved from the general to the particular. “A classic locked-room situation. He’s standing in front of a room facing—” she counted “—eleven people, the lights go out, presto, he’s dead. The murderer has to be one of the eleven.”

  Emma Clyde’s forehead puckered. “Death in the Air.”

  Jeff Farley swung toward Harriet, high spots of anger burning in the gaunt cheeks above his beard. “Be careful what you say. Nobody’s going to call me a murderer.”

  “I’m not calling you a murd—”

  “She’s just saying you have to look at the obvious,” Hal explained earnestly.

  Kelly Rizzoli’s dark red hair swung in gentle negation.

  “Nothing is ever obvious. Certainly, this will not be.”

  “The back door was open.”

  Annie’s quiet declaration created immense interest, and Hal was starting for the storeroom to investigate when Capt. Mac summoned him back.

  Emma Clyde spoke authoritatively. “That answers the question, then. There’s no question of a locked-room murder—if the back door is open.”

  The murder maven was looking at Annie with approbation. Then, as clearly as though she’d actually said it, Annie realized Emma believed she’d opened the door herself!

  A siren sounded in the distance.

  “Nutty,” Frank Saulter muttered in disgust.

  Capt. Mac rubbed his jaw. “It would take a damn writer, wouldn’t it?”

  Saulter ignored him. “Wonder if he had a weak heart? We’ll have to call on the county for help. The boat picked up the Kearney corpse two hours ago. Now they’ll have to come get this one.” He took a deep breath. “I guess we’d better get started.”

  He turned to study the assembled writers.

  Dislike was instantaneous on both sides.

  Saulter was humorless, dogmatic, religiously read Sports Illustrated in the b
arber shop, and liked Broward’s Bock better before all those people came and moved into the elegant beach houses. The summer tourists were the worst, but he didn’t much hold with the year-rounders either if they talked funny and drove those expensive cars. He especially didn’t like ex-cops who’d made money and thought they were too goddam good for plain people anymore, like Hemphill with his fancy-dan golf clothes and McElroy with a saltwater swimming pool. When had they ever dropped by the station to visit? Now McElroy was acting like he was the only cop in the room. Saulter’s ulcer burned like melting tar in August. It hadn’t helped when he got the call on that vet, though the way she drove her car, he’d always expected to find her dead someday anyway. But not with her head bashed in. By God, he could handle it. And he didn’t appreciate any off-island cops—or former cops—telling him how to run things.

  Saulter pursed his mouth into a miserly line. “It’s pretty clear what happened.”

  They’d all been standing on one foot then another for almost an hour. This pronouncement got everyone’s attention.

  “One of you people killed him.”

  Emma Clyde drew herself up and managed to look imposing, despite her five-foot-three stature and the flowing, outrageously colored caftan.

  “My dear man, that is an unwarranted assumption.”

  “You people were sitting in this room. Eleven of you.

  The lights go out, and somebody tosses a dart. So who else could have done it?”

  Annie stepped forward. “When I went to check the circuit box, the back door was open.” All eyes scrutinized her, some avidly, others skeptically. “Someone must have come in that way because no one left the tables, so none of us could have turned off the lights.”

  “How do you know nobody left the tables?” Saulter demanded. “You left—and nobody saw you, did they?”

  “I went to see about the breakers.”

  “So you moved,” Saulter said icily.

  Max stepped closer. “Somebody else could have moved, too.”

  Saulter took one look at Max and decided to ignore him. He concentrated on Annie. “You went to put the lights on. How did you know you could do it by flipping the breakers?”

  “I didn’t know it,” Annie said reasonably.

  Saulter’s eyes were accusing.

  She straightened and met his gaze directly. “I knew that was the first thing to try. I figured there’d been a power failure, so I was going to get the flashlight. But it was gone.”

  “Where did you keep the flashlight?”

  “On a nail in the storeroom.”

  “So when the lights went out, you were the only person here who knew where the circuit box was and where to find a flashlight. Right?”

  “I suppose so—”

  Capt. Mac interjected, “I found the flashlight, Chief. It was on the floor by the storeroom table.”

  The back of Saulter’s neck reddened. “Did you touch it?” he snapped.

  “Of course not.”

  Saulter didn’t pursue it. Instead, he swung again at Annie. “Pretty convenient that the flashlight was in the wrong place. It had to be if you were to have some extra time—”

  Max interrupted sharply, “That’s an unwarranted assumption, Chief. If the murderer rigged the lights to go out, he could easily have moved the flashlight, and anybody here could have gone back to the storeroom earlier in the evening when everyone was talking and milling around here.”

  “But what made the lights go off?” Saulter’s narrowed eyes were still on Annie.

  For Pete’s sake, did he think she had a device rigged to cause the blackout?

  “Let’s go look.–” Max began, but Saulter and Capt. Mac waved him back and moved toward the circuit box.

  Everyone waited tensely, leaning toward the storeroom in order to unabashedly eavesdrop.

  “Look, Chief, there’s thread tied to the breakers,” they heard Capt. Mac say.

  “Don’t touch it,” Saulter growled.

  “Wouldn’t matter. You can’t lift prints from a surface that narrow. At least you can print the box. Somebody tied that thread to the breakers.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what to fingerprint.” Saulter’s voice bristled.

  The two men moved back into the coffee area, eyes scanning the floor. “Probably ran the thread in here somewhere and left it on the floor,” Capt. Mac theorized. “To cut the lights, the murderer gave a yank. That pulled the breakers, and it was absolutely dark.”

  Saulter looked skeptical. “Totally black?”

  There was an enthusiastic chorus of assent.

  “Then how the hell did the killer get Morgan with the dart?”

  “That was easy, Chief,” Emma offered, her cornflower-blue eyes disdainful of official slow-wittedness. “Elliot was a chain smoker. All your killer had to do was grab the dart and throw it at the lighted tip of his cigarette.”

  “Jesus,” Saulter snorted. “That’s the craziest goddam thing I ever heard of.”

  “It worked,” Capt. Mac said drily.

  “Yeah.” Saulter sourly surveyed the survivors standing around the coffee area, as if he wished them all dead, too. “Okay. I want to know where everyone was. Exactly. Take the places you had when the lights went out.”

  Harriet shuddered and pointed a skinny, beringed finger toward the lifeless bundle that had once been Elliot Morgan. “Are you just going to leave that there? This seems exceedingly distasteful to me.”

  “It won’t hurt him,” Saulter answered laconically.

  Reluctantly, they drifted back toward the tables where they had been sitting when the lights west out. Ingrid Jones came along with Annie and Max to the farthest of the tables. Max spoke softly to Ingrid and Annie watched her hand him her tablet. He remained standing, his pencil flying over the page. Peering around his shoulder, she saw the bookstore take form on the tablet page.

  As Annie watched, Billy Cameron, one of Saulter’s assistants, began taking photographs of the murder scene. The second assistant, Bud Jurgens, dusted the circuit box and, Annie was glad to see, the back door, with fingerprint powder. Cameron and Jurgens constituted Chief Saulter’s entire force. Annie thought of the well-trained men of the 87th Precinct and felt distinctly unimpressed.

  Kelly Rizzoli and Hal Douglas sat at the for right table. Kelly’s delicate face looked surprisingly untroubled, and her eyes were bright with curiosity. Hal picked up his coffee mug and swished the liquid around as if hoping it would still be hot.

  Fritz Hemphill and Emma Clyde had the center table. Fritz looked frankly bored. Annie wondered if that were not perhaps the ugliest response of all. Emma, as usual, appeared confident and capable. Her stubby hands lay open and relaxed on the table in front of her.

  Janis and Jeff Farley were at the next table. She huddled miserably in her chair. Jeff continued to be oblivious to his wife’s discomfort. Angry patches of red stained his cheeks.

  Capt. Mac and Harriet silently took their places at the table nearest the back wall. The retired policeman surveyed the coffee area thoughtfully. Harriet, of course, was enjoying herself, however much she might protest their proximity to the corpse.

  Saulter shuffled from one table to the next, sighting toward Morgan’s body, obviously figuring a possible trajectory for the dart. It looked to Annie as though the dart had caught Elliot almost dead center.

  “The murderer could have moved the minute the lights went out,” she pointed out. “In fact, there was a sound of movement.”

  Capt. Mac nodded. “She’s right. There was definitely a feeling of movement. I sensed it, too.”

  Saulter scowled, but walked over to stand beside Annie’s chair. It was, she realized with a sinking feeling, almost directly in line with the body.

  His artistic assistant trained his Polaroid on all of them in turn, then Saulter ordered fingerprints taken, a messy and subtly dispiriting chore. No one objected, not even Emma Clyde. Somehow, Annie didn’t think Emma Clyde relished ink on her fingers, but even she k
ept her mouth shut.

  When the fingerprints were made, Saulter brusquely gave everyone permission to leave as soon as Billy Cameron wrote down their names and addresses. They stood in line by the coffee bar, uncomfortably close to the now sheet-shrouded form.

  “Hey, Chief!” It was Capt. Mac, and his voice vibrated with intensity. Annie thought of the high, keen baying of a bloodhound.

  “By God.” The stocky policeman crouched beside the wicker wastebasket by the far end of the coffee bar. “This answers some questions, all right.”

  Everyone surged toward him, but Saulter barred the way. “Stand back.” Then he hurried to McElroy.

  Once again, they all bent forward to listen.

  “I don’t see—” Saulter began.

  “Smell it, man.”

  Saulter, too, hunkered down beside the wastebasket.

  Capt. Mac pulled a couple of quarters from his trouser pocket and used them as pincers to lift out a sodden ball of white cotton.

  Saulter sniffed. “Fingernail polish remover.” He stared blankly at Capt. Mac.

  “I’ve only run across it once before,” the former policeman explained, “but I’ll bet my pension on it. The murderer covered the tips of his fingers with clear fingernail polish to keep from putting prints on the dart. I can see it now.” He pointed toward the coffee area and the tables. “The lights go out, the murderer has the dart hidden nearby. Probably on the floor by the wall. The murderer grabs the dart and throws it. While Annie’s going to see about the lights, there’s time to use the cotton drenched in polish remover to wipe off the polish, then drop the cotton into the wastebasket. Saulter, there won’t be a damn print on that dart. By God, that’s clever.”

  The two men stared at each other, then slowly rose to face the watching suspects.

  “Fingernail polish remover,” Saulter repeated. He looked at the women in the room one by one, then his gaze locked on Annie.

  Perhaps she should have kept quiet, but she was getting tired of his not so subtle suspicion.

  “We all paint our fingernails, Chief.”

  “But nobody knows this room as well as you do,” he retorted.

  “We’ve all spent a lot of time here,” Capt. Mac said quickly. He cleared his throat. “Chief, I’d be glad to lend a hand with your investigation.”