Death on Demand

by Carolyn G. Hart

“Something here on Broward’s Rock,” she said thoughtfully.

  Max closed the scrapbook. “You said he had a passion for justice. Right?”

  Annie nodded emphatically.

  “If he spent his life putting the baddies in jail, he’d find it hard to ignore it if he ran into something criminal on Broward’s Rock.” Max’s shoulders hunched forward. He looked like an All-American tackle ready to spring.

  She was concentrating on her uncle’s life, trying to think, but she did take pleasure, purely aesthetic, of course, in the animal grace so close to her.

  “Don’t you see,” he continued earnestly, “if Elliot could come up with stuff serious enough to get himself murdered, what’re the odds your uncle had picked up on the same information?”

  Annie clapped her hands to her head. “My God, true crime. That’s it. That has to be it! Uncle Ambrose’s book.”

  “He wrote books, too?”

  “Not like the others. He’d been collecting material for years for a different kind of true-crime book. He was fascinated by the ones who got away, always on the lookout for accidents or suicides that might really have been murders.”

  “A shove down those attic stairs for dear old Grannie Whipple? Or over the cliff with Cousin Alice?”

  “Or the side of a boat. Like Emma’s husband—and, oh, Max, Uncle Ambrose himself!”

  “Better wait until after dark,” Max urged.

  Annie disagreed. “I can’t see in the dark. Besides, there are snakes and things. No, I’ll pretend I’m out getting some exercise. I can see if anyone’s lurking around. I’m going to go now.”

  “I’ll come with you.” He did look wonderfully like an anxious Mountie, stalwart and true.

  “We don’t have time. You do as we’ve planned. I can take care of this by myself.”

  “Dammit, I don’t like it.”

  He continued to frown reprovingly as she rolled her bike out of the shed. She dropped the neatly folded towel in the white vinyl basket, then turned to beam at Max.

  She maintained the smile until she was out of sight, a matter of riding six feet, then dipping down into an aquamarine world. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees in a green and gold haze. The three-foot-wide bicycle path wound through luxuriant swamp growth. Live oak trees, pines, palmetto palms, and flowering shrubs vied for life in the spongy, wet ground. Thick vines hung from trees, wrapped around trunks, snaked along the ground. As she pumped the old-fashioned bike, twigs skittered from beneath the wheels, and her approach disturbed the seen and unseen inhabitants of this peculiarly private domain. A flock of blue-green tree swallows circled noisily, looking for their last insect snacks before dusk. Three sunning turtles slipped into dark green water. An alligator raised his head.

  Annie pedalled harder. It was eerily silent on the bicycle path. In the summer, families wobbled through the damp heat, and daredevil ten-year-olds rode fast enough to imperil anything in their way. But now, late on an October afternoon, the sunlight already waning, it was pleasantly warm but isolated.

  She was pleased she had decided not to turn the disk over to Saulter. There was no reason on earth to put the innocent writers at risk. But Capt. Mac had made it clear to Max that Saulter wasn’t impressed by Elliot’s threat to reveal some nasty truths about his fellow writers. For the chief, that was entirely too fancy a motive for Elliot’s murder. Instead, Saulter saw her as a killer driven by purely financial fear. That was an understandable motive. Money mattered. Saulter knew it, and Annie knew it. Still, she thought, reputations mattered, too, especially to the Sunday Night Regulars.

  The disk. Annie’s only hope was to load it, read the information it contained, and, armed with this knowledge, face down each suspect. If she were lucky, it might shed some light on what had happened to Uncle Ambrose.

  She and Max would discover the murderer before Chief Saulter came to arrest her. Max was on the phone right now, seeking information about the Sunday Night Regulars, seeking some lever to help them break through a false face of innocence. Emma Clyde, Janis and Jeff Farley, Harriet Edelman, Capt. Mac, Fritz Hemphill, Hal Douglas, Kelly Rizzoli. One of them had a secret that must be kept—whatever the cost.

  Annie braked and let the bike coast to a stop. Here the path curved, crossed over a short wooden span, then melded into the dusty gray road that led to Elliot’s tree house. She dragged the bike down the short incline, keeping an eye out forsnakes, and put the bike beneath the wooden bridge. Carrying the folded white towel, she climbed back to the path, and peered over the railing. Good. The bike wasn’t visible.

  She stopped in the shadows of a towering pine and stood there for at least five minutes, listening to the occasional honk of a frog, the slither of a woodland animal, the sibilant rustle as leaves slipped down through the green and gold air to land on the road and among the underbrush. It was so beautiful and peaceful on the island. It seemed impossible to believe two people had been murdered there. Three, if the chief were right about her uncle.

  Even though Elliot hadn’t been dead twenty-four hours, his tree house had already acquired a deserted air. The blinds were closed. There was a dusting of sand on the steps. Leaves bunched along the walk, already carpeted with pine needles. On Broward’s Rock, the swamp didn’t take long to reclaim its own.

  Satisfied that she had his tree house to herself, she stepped briskly onto the road and walked swiftly, the gray dirt scuffing up beneath her tennis shoes. She stopped once and looked sharply around, nagged by an uneasy sense of being watched, but no one moved on the rutted, uneven road, so she hurried the last few yards to the steps and ran lightly up them, the towel in her hand. She tried the front door. Locked. She moved around the porch. She stopped at the kitchen window and pushed. It moved grudgingly, caught, then, after a hearty shove, screeched sharply and rocketed up.

  Annie’s heart thumped. She looked frantically around, but nothing disturbed the silence.

  Knowing Tessa Crichton had never hesitated in search of clues, she balanced awkwardly on the sill, stepped into the sink, then jumped to the floor.

  In Elliot Morgan’s living room, a microphone taped to the underside of a chair picked up the sound of the opening window and Annie’s arrival, recorded them, magnified them, and carried them to a receiver in another living room on Broward’s Rock.

  The occupant of that room was lifting a glass to drink, but the sounds halted the movement of the hand. So someone had come. That bastard Morgan must have been telling the truth: he had given a copy of that damned disk to someone.

  Too much curiosity killed cats—and people.

  Harriet Edelman wore baby blue jogging pants and a yellow t-shirt. She hadn’t been jogging, but she was comfortably dressed for a long vigil on her widow’s walk. She’d waited most of the day, eating her lunch here, carefully staying in the shadows, but always keeping her field glasses trained on Elliot’s tree house. She’d been certain someone would come. It was too much of a coincidence for Elliot to be killed on the night he was going to reveal all the garbage he’d gathered about all of them. Somebody was bound to come searching for what Elliot knew.

  Her thin mouth twisted. Served him right. Such a know-it-all, such a busybody. She smiled grimly. Not a busybody now. The smile turned to a grimace. To claim she’d stolen the plot to Deadly Diamonds. She hadn’t even read the manuscript that idiot woman had sent her to critique. She’d mailed it back without looking at a single page. It was coincidence, that was all. Coincidence.

  And let anybody try to prove differently.

  But it could have been awkward, Elliot having an affidavit from that woman and threatening to send it to her publisher. Publishers were so antsy, scared of their shadows.

  Shadows … My God, look who was here, creeping around the side of Elliot’s porch, breaking in. If that wasn’t the damnedest thing. She’d never expected it to be Annie. Not pretty-faced Annie Laurance, of all people. Why, she wasn’t even a writer. What could Elliot possibly have known about her?
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br />   Harriet picked up her Minolta, removed the lens cover, and focused it. She snapped two pictures as Annie climbed in the kitchen window. That ought to be enough proof the girl was up to no good.

  She could just envision the newspaper headlines: Mystery Writer Solves Crime. That ought to jack up her sales. Grimly, she trained the camera again on Elliot’s tree house, took two more pictures, then lowered the camera and snatched up her binoculars to watch another familiar figure walk up the steps.

  A dull flush suffused her face.

  She was the one who had watched all day. By God, she was going to get the credit. Dropping the binoculars and the Minolta on the wooden seat, she hurried to the ladder. It would only take her a minute by bike path to get to Elliot’s house.

  The phone rang. Annie jumped three feet, her heart thudding. The phone rang and rang and rang.

  Frozen in the doorway to the living room, Annie thought, Lord, this room gives me the creeps! The last shafts of sunlight glittered on Elliot’s collection of steel drums. One entire pane of glass in the hexagonal room was covered by carnival masks—several shaped like bats, one of the Devil with horns, a tail and spear, another of a red-haired Viking. A massive painting of an old black man, his face fierce and threatening, rested against an easel. Papa Bois, the spirit of the forest. He protected animals, Elliot had told her. Any animal in his right mind would take one look at Papa Bois and head for the city. The furniture, blood-red leather chairs and ebony black tables, contributed to the aura of unhealthy darkness.

  She steadied her heartbeat and tiptoed across the uncarpeted living room floor. From the evening she had dinner with Elliot, she remembered that his office was in the second bedroom. She was, obviously, alone. That phone call would have roused anyone. Moving with more confidence, she opened the door into the second bedroom. She didn’t turn on the lights, though. No point in advertising her presence.

  Elliot had worked on a table in front of the window. Again, the blinds were closed. Annie left them closed. The CPU, monitor and keyboard were neatly covered with a clear plastic hood. Annie removed the hood and sat down. She studied the set-up and found the on-off switch on the right side of the CPU toward the back. She turned it on. Red lights flashed on the keyboard, then green letters centered against the black screen: Insert Diskette.

  Her hands were sweaty. “What do you expect,” she scolded herself wryly, “for a first-time housebreaker?” She unfolded the towel and lifted out the disk. Slipping it out of its white jacket, she put it into the right-hand disk drive and pushed it in. The operating software was already in place in the left-hand drive.

  The cursor flashed in the upper left corner, then green letters centered on the black screen: Initial system checks satisfactory. Please wait for system to load.

  A clock ticked somewhere across the room. Outside, a sea gull shrilled. A dripping noise obtruded. Just a slow leak in the bathroom.

  An odd, uneven creaking sounded behind her.

  Annie jerked around.

  A faint bar of sunlight edged into the bedroom.

  Must be from the kitchen. Those window curtains were open. Dust motes swirled.

  God, she was jumpy. There was no one here. She had an oppressive feeling of danger. But that was easy enough to understand. After all, she had broken into a dead man’s house. If Saulter found her here, he’d carry her off to jail for sure. The sooner she looked at the disk and got out, the better.

  The terminal hummed with on-screen commands: Fonts loaded. Loading Valdocs system. Loading interrupt and background support modules.

  It was taking forever.

  Finally, the message flashed: Press any typing key to enter editor.

  Almost there. Only seconds away now.

  As the document window appeared, Annie studied the keyboard. She pressed the index key.

  The index listed all the files stored on the disk. This was pay dirt, all right.

  There were eight files.

  1.EMMA CLYDE 10/8:03

  2.J/J FARLEY 10/8:01

  3.HARRIET EDELMAN 10/9:02

  4.FRITZ HEMPHILL 10/9:01

  5.HAL DOUGLAS 10/9:02

  6.CAPT. JOHN MCELROY 10/10.03

  7.ANNIE LAURANCE 10/10:02

  8.KELLY RIZZOLI 10/10:01

  She studied the dates. Elliot was killed on Sunday the thirteenth, so he’d finished working on the files on Thursday. That figured. He must have dropped the disk into the mail to her on Friday for arrival Monday.

  Should she take the files in order, beginning with Emma Clyde?

  She pushed back a curl from her forehead. The tiny house was incredibly stuffy. She looked longingly at the air conditioner in the rear window. It wouldn’t do any harm to turn it on. She reached over, switched it on, then turned back to the screen and punched the command to retrieve a file. The cursor blinked by Emma Clyde’s name. Annie almost pushed return, then, remembering Elliot’s taunt about all the information he had on Max, tapped the down arrow until the cursor blinked by her name. It would only take a second to see what Elliot had put in her file. She punched return.

  Within seconds, the sentences began to form, fluorescent green against black.

  Good grief, how did he know about that week in Santa Fe? He must have talked to Richard.

  He had the goods, all right. When Elliot claimed that he could ferret out information, he wasn’t kidding. Yes, here was the stuff on Max.

  Her eyes widened. Well, for God’s sake. Max had never told her…

  The blow caught her completely unaware. A streak of fire flared on the side of her head, then nothing more.

  Max groaned and massaged the back of his neck. He’d never before appreciated the fatigue associated with constant phoning. Somewhere in all of this jumble there had to be the one fact they needed. Figuring out which fact mattered, that was the rub.

  Absently, he picked up his glass, finished the last of the Bud Light, and ignored its faint warmth. Time to organize.

  He rolled paper expertly into Annie’s portable Olivetti. He’d mastered a fast hunt-and-peck when he worked as a reporter one year. He typed quickly, and, when he was finished, he reread the compact bios, ignoring typos.

  EMMA CLYDE—Doyenne of American mystery writers, author of 76 classic mysteries. Born Jan. 18, 1922, Billings, Mont. Graduated from Cincinnati Heights School of Nursing, 1942, U.S. Army Nurses Corps, 1942–45, discharged as 1st lieutenant 1945. First mystery, Murder in Casablanca (1946). Married same year to Harold Caston, owner of several Memphis boat stores. They met on a troop transport returning to the U.S. from N. Africa. Surgical nurse, St. Jude’s Hospital, Memphis, Tenn., 1945–1950. Five more mysteries published. Divorced from Caston, Aug. 13, 1950. No children. Moved to NYC as full-time writer. Active in Mystery Writers of America, serving three times as Chairman of Book Awards, recipient of two Edgars for Best Mystery of the Year, winner of Grand Master Award. Married June 8, 1982, to Enrique Morales, prop. Horizon Villas in Boca Raton, Fla. Purchased resort home on Broward’s Rock, July 15, 1982. Morales drowned in boating accident fifteen months later. Morales and Emma returned after midnight that evening by motorboat to her yacht, Marigold’s Pleasure. Morales decided to smoke a cigar by the stern. Emma went to bed. She discovered him missing the next morning, alerted authorities, and search began. Body was found floating 50 yards from the yacht. Coast Guard theory is that Morales became dizzy, lost his balance, fell overboard, and drowned because his heavy sweater became waterlogged and he was a poor swimmer. Marigold’s Pleasure was anchored far out in the bay to avoid public notice, as Emma was often besieged by fans.

  Emma Clyde. It might be fascinating to take a peek at the police report on Morales’s death. Max rubbed his nose. Funny. She was apparently never known as Mrs. Morales. The bare bones suggested that Morales stopped running his resort (motel? vacation apartments?) as soon as he married and took up a cushy residence on Broward’s Rock. Of course, his drowning might have nothing to do with the murders now. Emma’s secret could go back as far
as her days as a surgical nurse.

  HAL DOUGLAS. Harold Clifton Douglas, born March 18, 1955, in Wiesbaden, W. Germany, son of career Army officer. Crew up on Army posts in Europe and the United States. BA from Washington University at St. Louis. Married to Lenora Harris 1978; writer with Hallmark Cards, Kansas City, 1976–79; publicist, Sierra Leone Films, Hollywood, Ca., 1980–82. First novel, The San Bernardino Heist, a 1983 best-seller. Bought home, Robber’s Nest, on Broward’s Rock, March 12, 1983.

  Max frowned and reread the paragraph on Douglas. Annie had mentioned Douglas and Kelly Rizzoli as a twosome. So where was Lenora Harris Douglas?

  HARRIET EDELMAN. Born July 5, 1948, Carlisle, Pa. BA from Penn State, 1969. Lived in Nice, France, 1969–75. Immediate success with Macintosh series, the first two, Ride a Wave and Gentleman’s Smile, set in Nice. Ride a Wave Edgar winner for Best First Mystery. Contributor to Armchair Detective. Purchased a home on Broward’s Rock in 1976.

  Zero on weaselly-faced Harriet. The net hadn’t fished up anything useful. But Annie’d mentioned that Harriet’d been mad as hell at Elliot, because he was hinting she’d cribbed somebody else’s book.

  JEFF and JANIS FARLEY—Jefferson Allen Farley, born Feb. 3, 1953, St. Louis, Mo. Foster child. Married Janis Corey 1970, BA in journalism University of Missouri, 1974. Collaborated on their first book, Danny’s Delight, in 1975, Jeff (dotting and writing, Janis drawing the pen-and-ink illustrations. Jeff employed as a crime reporter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1974–1984. Purchased island home Sept. 22, 1984.

  Janis Corey Farley, born April 11, 1955. Foster child. Married Jeff Farley 1970. Illustrator.

  Jeff and Janis Farley. Could be volumes there. Both of them foster children and marriage at a sadly young age for Janis. It helped explain her utter dependence on that stiff. No schooling for her, but lots of talent with pen and paper.

  FRITZ HEMPHILL—Born April 16, 1945, in Long Beach, Ca. Graduated from Long Beach City (Jr.) College, 1964; U.S. Army, pfc., 1964–66, Ft. Ord, Saigon, V.N.; BA, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, Ca., 1968; LAPD, 1968–60, patrolman, sergeant, detective; married Doreen Norris 1968, divorced 1980. One child, Alice, now sixteen. First police procedural, The Agony Chain, published 1972. Third novel, Kerrigan’s Heart, runaway best-seller, sixteen weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. Purchased Broward’s Rock harbor condo Sept. 1, 1980.