“Sure, but that’s too fancy for Saulter. Besides, how much dirt could Elliot possibly have on these people? If they’d done something criminal, how could Elliot know about it and not the authorities? No, I’m telling you, Max, Saulter sees this as an open-and-shut equation: Annie fought with Elliot, Annie was mad, it’s Annie’s store. Who did it? Annie. All he’s doing now is looking for proof.”
Max felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach.
But Capt. Mac wasn’t through. He gripped the cigar so hard it dented. “And there’s something you don’t know, son. Something bad. Saulter’s got another damn fool idea—”
One of Annie’s first purchases for Death On Demand was an Apple computer to keep track of inventory and sales. It was a wonderful, almost miraculous timesaver which could balance her books, churn out a mailing list, keep an appointment book, and check her spelling.
What it couldn’t do was read the disk Elliot Morgan had mailed to her.
Okay. She understood that. Elliot used a different computer. She remembered one evening when the writers had discussed their machines. Elliot had an Epson. Some of the machines were compatible if you had the right software, but she didn’t have the right software or the right machine.
Elliot knew that. So he mailed this disk to her with a snide note:
Dear Annie—I figure you are the only one of the Sunday Night Regulars who can be trusted not to destroy this on receipt, so be a good scout and keep this for me for a few days. Your wearisome honesty must be a result of your provincial upbringing. Don’t you see how the wages of sin are infinitely more rewarding? I have the goods on everyone on this disk. I’ll share it Sunday evening. Yours in sleuthing, E.M.
Of course, he’d been far too arrogant to expect that he was going to be murdered. Obviously, however, he was uneasy. Why else would he send her a copy of the disk? Had he intended to safeguard himself by telling someone that another copy of the information existed? What was on that disk?
She set to work unloading the used books she’d bought from the Texas estate sale and tried to ignore the sounds of shuffling feet and whispers outside the storeroom. She briefly considered going out to help Ingrid, then furiously decided to deny those sensation-seeking eyes their afternoon treat. She lifted out the seventh Phoebe Atwood Taylor novel, a first edition. What should she do with the damn disk?
This would drive Max crazy. He had pestered her for information on the Sunday Night Regulars. With any luck, the disk contained whatever dirt Elliot had managed to scrape up on all of them.
But someone had killed Elliot to prevent him from revealing what he knew. That information absolutely had to go to the police.
Still, she argued, she didn’t know for a fact that one of the writers had murdered Elliot. Sure, it was a reasonable assumption, but the back door to Death On Demand was open last night. It would be unspeakably cruel to throw everybody on that disk to Saulter. At least, not until she knew what was on it. Max wouldn’t hesitate: he was dying to investigate the whole mess anyway. Personally, she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But she did have that damn disk.
Did anyone else on the island have an Epson?
She ran through them in her mind. Writers are inordinately proud of their word processors, each convinced his own is best. No, the only Epson belonged to Elliot.
The only way to read the disk, then, was to use Elliot’s machine. Which brought up an interesting question: Was Elliot’s house being watched?
She frowned. Probably not. After all, Saulter only had two men on his force. The house would be locked up, but Elliot lived in a tree house, too, and Max had already demonstrated how easy they were to enter. On the island, no one worried about security. At least, no one had until now.
The storeroom door began to open. Annie’s heart lifted. It was almost lunchtime. Lunch with Max. Despite everything, she began to smile. Max. Why did he have to be such a bum at heart? If only …
“Miss Laurance.”
Annie’s smile vanished. Not Max.
There wasn’t a vestige of warmth on Chief Saulter’s face. He stood only a foot or so from her worktable, a bigger man than she’d realized. Last night she’d wondered about the look in Saulter’s eyes. Now there was no question about it: he was clearly hostile. He had a bony, worn face with faded brown eyes, sallow skin, and a tight, thin mouth. She was excruciatingly aware of the revolver that rode in a shiny black leather holster high on his hip, emphasizing the power behind the tan uniform shirt and pants.
She felt her hackles rise, but she managed a pleasant “Good morning, Chief Saulter.”
He didn’t bother with pleasantries, but pulled a small spiral notebook from his pocket, flipped it open, then looked at Annie, his eyes as lifeless as agates.
“I’m interviewing the people who were present last night.” He looked around. “Could we bring a couple of chairs in here?”
He did help move the chairs from the coffee area to the storeroom. The customers ostensibly in search of horror reading shifted their attention from the chalked outline on the floor and watched them with avaricious delight. As Saulter closed the storeroom door, Annie heard a woman say, “I’ve heard there’s going to be an early arrest. Do—”
Those cold eyes bored into hers, but he spoke in a monotone. “I’m advising you, Ms. Laurance, that you are a murder suspect. I am also advising you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent. You have a right to have counsel present when you are questioned. You may waive these rights. Do you wish to remain silent or will you consent to be interviewed?”
The Miranda warning. For her.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” she said hotly.
“I’m advising you further that at any time you may refuse to answer my questions or you may request counsel.”
“Yes, I understand.” Her tone was combative. Did that surprise him a little? Well, he wasn’t going to find her easy to push around.
“All right, Miss Laurance. Tell me about yourself.”
The apparently innocuous question surprised Annie. It seemed irrelevant, but Saulter’s tone of voice was deadly earnest—and cold.
“What do you mean?”
“Where you’re from. Your parents. Where you went to school. Why you came here last summer.”
Once started, it was fairly easy. After all, she’d put together so many resumes these last few years.
“I was born in Amarillo. My mother was Claudia Bailey Laurance. She divorced my father when I was three. I don’t remember him. She died of cancer when I was a freshman in college. I went to SMU, received a bachelor of fine arts degree in acting.”
Saulter stolidly took notes.
“After college, I went to New York and tried to get work as an actress.”
“You didn’t succeed.” It wasn’t a question.
“I did all right.”
“You came here because you were down on your luck. ” Saulter’s bony face jutted forward.
“No. I came to visit my uncle, just as I had every summer since he retired and moved here twelve years ago from Fort Worth.”
“You didn’t have any money.”
Okay, her bank balance was $35.21 when she arrived on Broward’s Rock. “I had enough.”
“You could stay for free at your uncle’s.”
“He didn’t charge rent,” she agreed sarcastically.
“He was your mother’s only brother.”
“You seem to know all about my family. Why are you asking me?”
Saulter studied her as if she were a particularly repugnant piece of flotsam.
“Suppose you tell me how you killed your uncle, Ms. Laurance.”
Annie felt her shoulders press back against the hard ridges of the straight chair. There was a funny roaring in her ears, but she heard distinctly every word Saulter said.
“Ambrose Bailey was a good man.” Saulter’s voice changed. The chief had truly liked her uncle. But then who hadn’t? Ambrose Bailey was a good man, a devot
ed friend, an implacable enemy, determined always to see justice done. That had been his reputation as a man and as a prosecuting attorney in Fort Worth. “A fine man. And you came down here and shoved him into the harbor so you could inherit his store. That’s what happened, didn’t it? Elliot Morgan found out and threatened you—and we see what happens when anyone threatens your security. Morgan died. And you cleverly did it in a way to throw suspicion on all the people who came to your bookstore. But no one else there had a quarrel with Elliot Morgan. Only you.”
“Uncle Ambrose—it was an accident.”
“Is that what you claim? Is that what you’re going to tell the jury? Did you see him fall, Ms. Laurance?”
“How dare you!” she exploded. She was on her feet, glaring furiously at Saulter. “He went out about nine. He was by himself. I guess he went to check on his boat since he was leaving town the next day.” Poor Uncle Ambrose. He’d been looking forward to his trip, a combination of research and fun. He’d been so pleased that she’d come to visit and could look after the store. She’d watched the Johnny Carson show. It was almost midnight before she began to worry. “When he didn’t come in—”
“You dialed McElroy. I guess you thought that would be a good way to have the body discovered.”
“Nobody killed my uncle.”
Saulter’s thin face flushed, and he rose to loom over her. “Oh, yes, Miss Laurance, somebody killed Ambrose Bailey. I should have known it at the time. Last night, I rechecked that autopsy report. There was a small contusion behind his right ear. Maybe it happened in a fall, but now that two other people are dead, I don’t believe it.”
Annie watched him with sheer fury in her eyes and in her heart—but the words rang terrifyingly true. Uncle Ambrose knew boats, and he had been well that night, that last night.
“My God.”
Saulter’s mouth twisted. “A big surprise to you. Is that how you’re going to play it? Maybe you should have stayed an actress, Miss Laurance. Well, you damn well can’t do that over Doc Kearney. It’s pretty clear why you had to get rid of her.”
It was like standing in the shadow of an erupting volcano and watching tons of burning debris and roiling mud sweep down toward you.
“You didn’t play that one too good. You told too many people how swell the doc was, how she didn’t use succinyl-choline to kill your cat. Too damn cruel. Wasn’t it pretty cruel to watch Elliot Morgan suffocate?”
“A dart killed him,” Annie said stubbornly.
“Sure thing. A dart with a wad of cotton that’d been dipped in Succostrin. That, little lady, is the trade name for succinyl-choline. And who on this goddamn island ever heard of the stuff until you went around blabbing about it?”
Annie felt a surge of adrenaline. Her body recognized danger. In a flash, she remembered the boarder in Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. If it hadn’t been for Poirot, the boarder would have been hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. Circumstantial evidence could kill you. But she wasn’t like that boarder. Saulter had a fighter on his hands this time.
“Maybe if you told me all about it, you would feel better. Why don’t we start with your uncle’s murder? Tell me how you did it, Miss Laurance.”
Anybody with sense would keep her mouth shut. She knew it. But she absolutely throbbed with anger. This big-mouthed galoot wasn’t going to sit there accusing her of murdering her uncle. By God, she was going to tell him in no uncertain terms exactly what—
“My client has nothing further to say.”
Both she and the chief jerked around. Max stood in the open door of the storeroom.
Annie’s mouth closed.
“Your client?” Saulter demanded.
Max nodded, and his eyes warned Annie to keep on keeping quiet. “She is entitled to the advice of counsel, and my advice is to say nothing more.”
“She can talk, Mr. Darling, or she can come to the station.”
Max didn’t yield. “Ms. Laurance isn’t going anywhere. Do you have a warrant for her arrest?”
Max loved Annie’s eyes. Usually. He could get lost in her eyes, dark gray eyes with golden flecks. Sometimes they were as sensuous as a Rubens painting, and sometimes as laughter-filled as a picnic afternoon. But, right now, they glinted with fury and reminded him of bright flashes from target pistols.
“Cool it, sweetie. Never lose your temper. That’s always an advantage to your opponent.”
“I’m too mad to be careful.”
“Honey, when you are dangling from a hair-thin lifeline over the side of a precipice, it’s time to be careful.” It worried him to see Annie so visibly angry. At all costs, she had to avoid provoking Saulter. He pushed down his own impulse to pound something hard with his fists, preferably the doltish face of a certain police chief. Dear Annie, his stubborn golden girl, with her sun-streaked hair, freckle-spattered cheeks, and prickly, independent, explosive nature.
“He’s not going to get away with it.” Then she jammed her hand through her hair. “My God, Max, somebody did kill Uncle Ambrose.” Her face compressed into a stern frown. “And Saulter’s pitched on me. That means we have to find out what really happened.”
“Sure. We’ll do it. But, Annie, don’t hassle with Saulter.”
“That man is not going to bully me.”
“Of course not, but you keep your lips buttoned, Laurance. Okay?”
Diverted for a moment from the object of her ire, she said briskly, “Listen, it was great of you to try and help me. But I wouldn’t suggest pretending to be a lawyer. You’ll end up in jail.”
“It would take Saulter a hell of a long time to do a fifty-state check to see whether I’ve passed the bar.”
“But one phone call to the American Bar Association would take five minutes. Max, this isn’t a laughing matter. Although, I’d bet he’s a lot more interested in putting me in jail than in running checks on you.”
“Right.”
Anger glinted in her eyes.
Max could have kicked himself. If she got mad again—
“Look, our job now is to figure out what the hell’s been going on before either of us ends up in jail. We need to check up on your uncle. Why would anybody murder him?”
The catamaran tilted a little, and Max adjusted the tiller.
Annie steadied herself. There was something nice about the delicately cut white swimsuit that emphasized the tawny richness of her skin.
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Max wanted to …
“Uncle Ambrose murdered—It’s absurd!”
The catamaran lifted on the port hull. Spume rose over them like a gauzy curtain. They hung between sea and air, slamming the water like a hungry pelican, until Max moved the tiller, and the sail eased down.
Beads of water clung to Annie like seed pearls. Max knew just how it would feel to slide his hand gently over her soft skin.
“If somebody killed Uncle Ambrose, that same person killed Jill and Elliot—and Saulter’s convinced I did all of it. So we’ve got to solve it ourselves.” In her excitement, she scrambled up on her knees.
He shoved the tiller out of the way. The cat jerked, whipped, then started to tip.
Max reached out for Annie as they began to fall, and he felt her long, warm length against him. It was, he discovered, quite possible to choke on salt water and smile at the same time.
“How old were you here?” His finger rested on the black-and-white picture of a scrawny, pigtailed girl standing in front of a palmetto.
“Eleven. That was my first summer on Broward’s Rock. See, here’s Uncle Ambrose.”
Oh, and she remembered that magical summer so well, the way the hot sand felt on her bare feet, how it smelted sitting on the end of a dock with her first pole in her hands, not expecting a thing to happen, the excitement when something yanked on her line, and her delight when Uncle Ambrose helped her haul out a toadfish.
The photograph of Annie and her toadfish was on the next page. It had curled a little with time, but it clearly showed the slimy brown, large-mouthed
fish and Annie, grinning through a filigree of braces.
“Mouthwise, you and that fish were neck and neck.”
But she was looking at the pictures of Uncle Ambrose. His hair was still a chestnut brown then, only lightly touched with white. Uncle Ambrose, who taught her so much more than how to cast a line or dig for clams. Because she never knew her father, she felt shy and uncomfortable around men until this gruff old curmudgeon given to long silences took the time to spend his summer days tramping the beaches with his niece and summer evenings pointing out the constellations that glittered in the southern sky like diamonds against black velvet.
“He made all the difference in my life,” she said simply. “When mother died, he helped me with school, and he always made it clear I had a home with him.”
She flipped to the last page of the album, then reached out and gently touched the photograph of a distinguished-looking elderly man standing on the deck of a sailboat, the Sleuth. The aquiline face looked amused, skeptical, fiercely intelligent.
“A hell of a guy, huh? So why would anybody kill him?”
“He was a hell of a guy—to me, to his friends. But there were people who would have feared him at one time. Remember, he was a prosecuting attorney for years in Fort Worth, and he hated crooks. He had a passion to catch lawbreakers. He called them renegades, and he had no pity for them. He said pity should be for victims, not abusers.”
“So somebody out of his past, somebody with a grudge, comes to Broward’s Rock twelve years after the guy retires here and shoves him off of his sailboat?”
“I know, I know.” Annie thumped a pillow in frustration. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But people can hold grudges. Think about The Count of Monte Cristo.”
“But he was the guy who’d been screwed. You’re talking about a crook wanting revenge for going to jail.”
“High Noon.”
“That wasn’t twelve years later. No, it has to be something immediate, something urgent.”
Death on Demand Page 8
