Death on Demand

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “Thanks. We can take care of our job. For now, you’re all free to leave. We’ll be in touch with everyone tomorrow.”

  Everyone started up the central aisle toward the front, but McElroy hung back. “I’d hate to see anybody get off on the wrong foot,” the retired policeman said. “Why, Annie couldn’t possibly have killed anybody.”

  Harriet Edelman stopped and slapped her hands on her hips, and her bracelets clanged gratingly. “So you think little Miss Pretty Face shouldn’t be considered a suspect? I happen to know she and Morgan had a hell of a spat this morning.”

  Saulter wanted to hear all about that, of course.

  “I was going by on my bicycle when she slammed the door on him. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  Annie hadn’t seen Harriet, which wasn’t too surprising. At that point, she had been so furious with Elliot she wouldn’t have noticed an audience of dancing tarantulas.

  Saulter gestured impatiently for them to keep moving toward the door. “Don’t worry. I don’t give a damn about pretty faces, and I’ll be interviewing everybody tomorrow, including Miss Laurance, about their relationships with the deceased.”

  “That’s reassuring.” Emma looked sardonic.

  “Or pots of money, either.”

  Agatha chose that moment to leap up on the Christie section and hiss.

  Janis clutched at her husband.

  Fritz Hemphill laughed.

  “She wants out.” Annie opened the front door, and Agatha shot out into the night. Annie was right behind her. When she looked back, she met Saulter’s eyes. Now she knew how a fox felt when sighted by the hounds.

  For once Max drove at a reasonable speed.

  “I don’t understand why he sent us all home,” Annie mused.

  “What else is he going to do?” Max peered through the night. “The Black Hole of Calcutta can’t hold a candle to a country lane on Broward’s Rock. No pun intended.”

  “No street lights,” she replied absently. The tourists always complained, too.

  “No lights of any kind. Not even moonlight.” The beams from the headlights scarcely pierced the gloom beneath the spreading live oak trees whose branches met over the roadway. The pleasantly cool night air, drifting through the open windows, smelted of marsh water. “Are you sure Hansel and Gretel don’t live down this way?”

  “I guess it’s a little daunting at night.”

  “I’d take Central Park after dark anytime.” He abruptly slammed on the brake, and she jolted forward, restrained by the seat belt.

  “Good God, what’s that?”

  The thick, low-slung creature darted swiftly across the dusty dirt road, clearly illuminated by the headlights. “That, city slicker, is a raccoon.”

  Max eased the car forward.

  “He didn’t even ask any questions.”

  “Like, ‘Miss Laurance, did you do it?’”

  “All right, smartass. Turn to the right, down that lane.”

  Max slowed and swung the Porsche to the right, scowling. “This isn’t a lane. This is a bloody footpath.”

  “Actually, it’s pretty rustic. Now, slow down. I live in that second tree.”

  “The second tree. You did say tree?”

  “It’s a bargain. Some developer got the notion everybody would want to live like Robinson Crusoe, and he built a half dozen houses that are really platforms up in oak trees. Unfortunately for him, they didn’t go over very well.”

  The Porsche’s lights illuminated the tree house now. Wooden steps curved gracefully up from the ground to a circular house built around the main trunk.

  “That is really homey,” Max commented drily. “Just you and the earwigs.”

  “The realty company sprays every month,” she said severely. “I am bug-free.”

  Max braked and clicked off the lights, but Annie was already opening her door. “That’s okay. You don’t have to get out.”

  “I know I don’t, but behavior patterns are ingrained. I do not drop a girl off at her front door, especially when it is up in a tree in the middle of a swamp.”

  “The South Carolina Tourist Association would frown on the term swamp.”

  But he came around to take her arm and gallantly insisted on coming inside and checking every room.

  Annie stood quietly in the center of her circular living room, waiting for Max, who was on his knees at the base of her bed, peering beneath it, to return. “Now, why did you do that, Max?”

  “Because I’ve got the wild suspicion the island air isn’t too healthy right now.” He glanced around at the hexagonal living room. The walls were eleven-foot-tall sheets of glass, which, in daylight, bathed the room in light and warmth. Now, with the blinds up, the night pressed against the glass, threatening, disturbingly inimical.

  Annie quickly lowered the slatted, tropical blinds, and leaned down to turn on a Tiffany lamp. With the night closed out, she felt a good deal more secure. The room was familiar again, the comfortable rattan furniture, fortunately so appropriate for a seaside dwelling, and so affordable. Here, too, as at Death On Demand, bright cushions provided splotches of orange, burnt sienna, and Texas red clay. Her latest photographs were pinned haphazardly to a square bulletin board in the center of the bookcases that filled the wall between the living room and bedroom. She was especially proud of the shot she’d taken at dawn near Moccasin Creek of a Little Blue Heron, his feathers slate blue on his body and purplish red on his neck. Her Nikon lay on an end table, next to her trophy for being the winning pitcher for the Island Dolphins. The colorful paperbacks stuffed into every inch of the bookcases added another note of cheer. Her favorite books: all the Agathas, the wonderfully funny Leonidas Witherall books written by Phoebe Atwood Taylor as Alice Tilton, the Constance and Gwenyth Little books. Her room, safe and friendly.

  “Nobody would want to hurt me.”

  “How do we know that?”

  Annie dropped down on the largest wicker couch, and Max settled right beside her. There would have been room left over for several others to sit. She scooted over a few inches. He followed.

  “Look, Elliot was begging for trouble. He was threatening to talk about—well, you heard him—he was going to rattle skeletons. Somebody didn’t want his or her bones disturbed.”

  “What about the lady vet?”

  Annie sighed. “I can’t imagine. Oh, Max, she was such a lovely person. Right after I came here to visit Uncle Ambrose this summer, Boots was hit by a car.”

  She would never forget how Boots had dragged himself to her uncle’s house, his back legs useless, his fur matted and streaked with dirt and blood. The memory still hurt.

  “Anyway, I took Boots to the Island Hills Clinic. I didn’t know Jill then, and Dr. Foster took a look at poor Boots. He was nice enough but disinterested. He told me the only thing to do was to put Boots down, there was no hope. I asked what they would do, and he said they’d give him a shot of succinyl-choline, and he would be out like a light. A girl came in while Foster was talking, but I didn’t pay any attention to her. Foster left, and I was saying goodbye to Boots when a boy came to get him. She spoke up and said, ‘Don’t give him succinyl-choline. Use 5 cc.’s concentrated sodium pentabarbitol.’ Of course, I wanted to know what the heck, and then she told me. Foster was old-fashioned and a lot of vets might use succinyl-choline, but she didn’t advise it. She said the animal suffocated. She said it was cruel.” Tears filled Annie’s eyes. “So you see, it couldn’t be a personal murder with Jill. Maybe it will turn out to be something like a drug robbery, after all.”

  Somehow, Max’s arm was now tightly around her shoulders.

  “I don’t have a glimmer why anybody coshed her, but two murders on an island within twenty-four hours! They’re connected, or I’ll eat that raccoon.”

  “It isn’t our problem,” she objected. She was unbelievably tired. “It’s that unpleasant man’s problem. But I still don’t understand why he sent us all home. He did say nobody was allowed to leave the island, but there
isn’t a ferry until morning anyway. He didn’t even try to find out anything.”

  “I imagine he’s busy doing that right now, my dear. And they have to examine the crime scene. Your old chum was still hanging around as we left.”

  Her old chum. Max meant Capt. Mac. Suddenly, Annie wished fervently that Capt. Mac were in charge of this investigation.

  “Max, did you see the way Saulter looked at me?”

  The floor creaked.

  Annie swam up from the depths of sleep, rolled over, and stifled a scream. She bolted upright, her hair tousled, realized her nightgown was more than drooping low, and hastily yanked a sheet up to her chin.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “You are at risk,” Max intoned sternly.

  Annie yawned and started to rub her eyes, then grabbed again at the sheet. “Let’s start over,” she said patiently. “I am in bed. I am asleep. Perhaps you could tell me what you are doing in my bedroom at the crack of dawn?”

  “Anybody could get in this house. I spent the night in my car—and I’ve got a stiff neck.” He milked a pause for sympathy and tried to rotate his head. “Ouch.”

  “You rented a condo. Why don’t you stay in it?”

  “Because there is a double killer somewhere on this island …”

  “Not in my bedroom,” Annie objected.

  “He could be.”

  “Or she.”

  “Annie, listen to me. This house is as full of holes as Swiss cheese. Do you know how I got in?”

  Annie was stubbornly silent.

  “I picked up a stick at the foot of the steps, tiptoed up, and pried open a window in the kitchen.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “You sleep like an elephant, my lovely. The point is, this place isn’t secure. So I’m going to get my stuff—

  “No.

  “There’s plenty of room. I can curl up on the couch.”

  “You won’t have a stiff neck, you’ll have a rigid spine. No, Max. I appreciate it, but I’m a big girl, and I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

  They squabbled about it all the way through breakfast.

  Annie poured each of them a second cup of coffee and watched with fascination as Max wolfed down his fifth sugar-covered doughnut. They sat on the airy porch outside the kitchen. The soft air was fragrant with pine, marsh, and tar; sunlight slanted through the tall sea pines. A blacktopped path disappeared into a dense clump of palmettos, southern red cedars, yuccas, and bayberry shrubs. The beach was only a ten-minute bicycle ride away. For a fleeting moment Annie wished that today could be a holiday for her and Max, that they could go walk down a dune with an October splash of flowering herbs, violet, magenta, yellow and cream, to the long spread of gray sand with nothing more to think of than sun and water and play.

  “I guess I’ll open the store as usual.”

  Max nodded, his mouth full, then said indistinctly, “That’s the best thing to do. Act completely normal.” He swallowed and said clearly, “Besides, I bet a buck they’ll all come by, one by one, to see if you know anything.”

  “Who’ll come by?”

  “Our suspects.”

  “God, I hope not.”

  “Hey, Annie, don’t be silly. This will be our chance to pump them.”

  “I don’t want to pump them. Why should I?”

  “Saulter is a dummy. Anybody can see that. We can solve it.”

  “Oh, no. Count me out. I don’t want any part of it.”

  Max licked a trickle of sugar from the corner of his mouth, and rattled the empty doughnut bag. “We need to do some grocery shopping. Don’t you ever eat at home?”

  Uncertain which argument to pursue first, Annie opted for anti-detection.

  “Max, listen carefully, because I am only going to say this once. I am not a detective. I am not even a mystery writer. I just happen to run a bookstore where a man got murdered. I intend to scrub that floor and rearrange the coffee area and forget it ever happened. Mysteries are a business for me, not a vacation. This is not a game. There is no way I am going to get involved in this investigation—and I mean it, absolutely, positively, and without any shadow of doubt. Period.”

  Max grinned.

  The argument continued on the stairs of the tree house.

  “I’m going to work just as usual. I do not want to talk about murder.”

  “Murders.”

  “It has to be a coincidence,” she said mulishly. “Jill and Elliot didn’t even know each other. He didn’t have any pets.”

  “How do you know?” Max barred her way down the steps.

  Since she didn’t want to go into that, she ducked under his arm. “Look, I’ve got to hurry, or I’m going to be late.” She’d already informed him in no uncertain terms that he was not coming to the store with her. To divert him, she offered, “I’ll have lunch with you. Come to the shop about one, and we’ll go have a mango sundae.”

  Max took a childish delight in new tastes, and Annie was pleased at her skill in deflecting him. This was not the time to admit that she’d dated Elliot a couple of times and had once been invited to dinner at his house. That evening was enough to frost any interest on her part. Elliot collected West Indian art and artifacts, including voodoo dolls from Haiti. Her appetite had been seriously damaged by his long-winded and ghoulish description of the walking dead.

  Ugh.

  Annie ran on down the steps, then realized her car was still in the crushed oyster-shell lot near the plaza, the closest parking place to her store. Of course, Max had brought her home last night.

  Since he drove this morning in the old mode, fast and hard, there was no time for conversation.

  Annie’s home was on the fringes of the developed part of the resort area. The tree houses had been a builder’s short-lived fancy. She loved living in a remote area, and delighted in the daily surprises of marsh life. Her tree house overlooked the high marsh, and from her sun porch she could watch the never-ending play of light and wind on the thick cordgrass. Salt myrtle, marsh elder, and southern bayberry flourished. A single narrow road snaked inland through palmetto palms and sea pines toward the populated area. Spanish moss shrouded the glossily green live oak trees. Alligators sunned on the banks of shallow green ponds, and turtles, frogs, and snakes slipped silently through the water. The soft air shimmered a paler shade of green beneath the tree limbs.

  When Max’s red Porsche plunged out onto the blacktop that circled the island and ran past the luxuriant green of a sleekly mowed golf course, he commented, “From the boondocks to the country club.”

  “Part of the charm.”

  The blacktop served the access roads to the islands mansions, which overlooked the fairways of the Island Hills Golf Club. The three-story Tudor-style Club House glistened in the morning sunlight. Ornate, twelve-foot-tall bronze gates were already open to admit early morning foursomes.

  She pointed toward an imposing home on a gentle rise near the fourteenth green. “That’s Emma’s house.”

  Max grinned. “Her little place in the country.”

  Annie nodded. “Right. I saw a feature on it in American Country Homes. That little cottage is valued at just under two million.”

  “Crime does pay.”

  “For her.”

  Max squinted against the sunlight and upped his speed to sixty.

  They flashed by more magnificent homes, some barely glimpsed through the spreading live oak trees.

  Max decreased his speed almost immediately because they were already upon the harbor area. Red-tiled roofs marked the beginning of the condos, Swallows’ Retreat. The stores and cafes bordering the basin gleamed a soft gray, the natural wood exteriors weathered by the sun. Max pulled into the crushed-shell parking area.

  “She could have done it.”

  Looking ahead to Death On Demand, Annie didn’t make the connection.

  “Who could have done what?”

  “Emma could have murdered Elliot. She’s smart
enough.”

  “Max.”

  “Somebody did it,” he said virtuously.

  “Somebody did,” she agreed. “And that charming Chief Saulter can figure it out.”

  To Annie’s surprise, Max didn’t even attempt to come into the shop with her. In fact, he dropped her off at the edge of the plaza, promised to meet her for lunch, and waved goodbye with an annoyingly cherubic smile.

  Curving around the natural harbor that served as the marina, the plaza was the social hub of Broward’s Rock. Since it was well past the summer season, some of the sailboats were battened down for winter, but most were moored by the wooden docks, ready for island owners to enjoy on idyllic October days. On the far side of the harbor were yacht slips. There were only three big yachts left now, and one of these was Emma Clyde’s, Marigolds Pleasure.

  Annie loved the little harbor. It was as elegant as a Fabergé egg. From her front windows, she could watch sailboats scud into the sound and sea gulls swoop and hover near pier’s end in hopes of free fish. All of the shops built on the curve of the plaza were open, but now that the tourist season was over, the atmosphere relaxed perceptibly. The occasional shoppers were more likely to be year-rounders. It was a good time of the year to inventory, to decide on new stocks for next summer, to savor the relaxed hush.

  As she crossed the plaza, she was thoughtful. Why was Max so easily dissuaded from accompanying her? And what was happening in the investigation into Elliot’s death? A dart? That still seemed impossible—and contrived. The more she thought about it, the crazier it seemed.

  She walked up on the verandah that fronted the shops and stopped at her own storefront. Death On Demand marched in square gilt letters in the center of the south window. The north window carried the information painted in bold scarlet: Mysteries, Suspense, Horror, Adventure, New and Old.

  She looked appraisingly at the display behind the north window. The Murder Ink mystery companions took pride of place. Hard to imagine a true mystery aficionado without them. Her latest and most prized old books, first editions all, lay enticingly in front of the trade paperbacks: Dog in the Manger by Ursula Curtiss, the eight volumes of complete Sherlock Holmes published by Collier, and a rare $110 copy of Elizabeth Lemarchand’s first book, Death of an Old Girl. New hardcovers, with splashily bright covers, filled the south window. Annie nodded approvingly. It was always a plus when she could offer a new Martha Grimes or Ken Follett. Readers flocked. All right. She couldn’t stand there forever and put off going inside. No matter what had happened last night, she was determined to erase the memory of Elliot’s murder. She had work to do.