Annie moved in tandem with Max. She intended to stick to him like Nora to Nick, whether Carmen liked it or not.
The small hall was dingy with scuffed black-and-white checkerboard tile. A heavy smell of camphorwood combined with the two mint juleps to make her head feel dangerously unsteady.
“A beer, you guys?”
Annie started to decline, but Max grinned and said, “Sure. Let me help you,” and he trailed Carmen into the kitchen.
Right on his heels, Annie followed. Max was not only a jealous pig and a sore-sport toad, he was now revealing himself to be a lecher of the first order.
Carmen opened three bottles of Dos XX’s, and waved them to seats at the tan Formica-topped kitchen table. No light beer here. And apparently equally little cooking. The kitchen looked like a display in the home section at Sears, and just about as used.
Her body arched seductively toward Max, Carmen said, “What do you want to know?”
“Tell us about yourself.” Max drew his chair closer to Carmen’s. He would soon be on the same side of the table with her.
Annie gripped her bottle forcefully. Otherwise, she might have tossed it in his ingenuous face.
Carmen used both hands to fluff her long, silver hair. “True confessions?” she asked huskily.
Annie was delighted to note that Max looked a tad uncomfortable. He lifted his beer and drank.
“How about where you’re from and how you met Elliot,” Annie suggested tartly, smirking at Max’s discomfort.
“I’m a dancer. I was working at a club down in the Keys, and Elliot came in. He was one big spender. Anyway, he was writing a book.” She squinted reminiscently. “He told me I was like Sadie somebody, and I was wonderful material.” She sipped at her beer and peered coyly and fuzzily at Max. The old bat was too vain to wear glasses.
Annie translated this: Carmen was a stripper in a joint, and Elliot was playing another role, macho novelist à la Hemingway.
“And you got married?” She cringed at the naked astonishment in her voice.
“Yeah. We went on a big party, and it seemed like a good idea.”
Wonder what kind of idea it seemed to Elliot when he sobered up?
Carmen’s mouth tightened. Annie added another five years to her age.
“Have you been divorced long?” Where had Max suddenly acquired his vast reserves of sympathy?
“Six months.”
“Why are you staying here? Why don’t you go back to Florida?”
Carmen swung on Annie furiously. “Why should I? I’ve got as much right to live here as anybody.”
Max finished his beer, smacking his lips in pleasure, then broke the uncomfortable silence. “Did you know about the writers’ meetings on Sunday nights at Death On Demand?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Her eyes flicked over Annie’s face. “You people give me the creeps. Death On Demand. Why don’t you have a nice little shop that sells pretty things? You know, painted sea shells and birds in glasses. That kind of thing?”
“My uncle died and left me the bookstore,” Annie replied in a strangled voice.
Carmen shrugged. “You gotta go with what you got. That’s what I’ve always done.” Consciously or unconsciously she raised her arms and stretched her body sensuously.
Max leaned forward. “Did you know Elliot was going to say a lot of bad things about the other writers the night he was killed?”
“Oh, hell yes. He told me all about it.”
“He did?” Annie shot Max a triumphant glare. “When did you see him?”
“He dropped by Friday afternoon. About five. To bring my alimony check. He was trying to chisel like always, two hundred bucks short. Said he’d lost a bundle on the commodities market, but he’d get the rest to me next week.” She tugged at the cerise tank top, redistributing the wealth. “Hey, how do you suppose I can collect my money?”
While Max enthusiastically explained the law of probate, Annie thought furiously.
“Carmen, what did he tell you about the other writers?”
Elliot’s ex-wife took a dainty sip of beer. “This and that. He loved to snoop around. I mean, he really liked to get the dirt on people.”
“Did he tell you what he was going to say Sunday night?”
“Oh, sort of. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I wanted to talk about the money he owed me. I mean, try living here without a lot of bucks—”
Max leaned across the table and turned on a two-hundred-watt smile. “Try to remember. It could mean a lot.”
“To you?” Carmen inquired huskily.
“To everybody,” Annie interjected in an arctic tone. It would be hard for Carmen to remember. Her attention span was obviously limited solely to matters of importance to her.
But, with Max cheering her on, the woman dredged up some interesting information.
Some of it they knew—about Emma, the Farleys, and Hal. Some of it they didn’t.
“Elliot said Fritz Hemphill was an idiot not to pay his wife alimony. I told him I sure agreed with that. Guys who don’t pay their alimony are real geeks.” For the first time, Annie noted the diamond-studded hoop earring hidden beneath the platinum hair.
“Is that all he had on Fritz?”
Carmen snorted. “Naw. That was why he had stuff on Fritz. Seems like his ex-wife is no chum, and she unloaded a bellyful to Elliot.”
“What?” Max asked.
Carmen smeared the moisture from her beer bottle with a deadly fingernail. “Something about watching your backside with Fritz, not letting him come up behind you with a gun. Something like that.”
A gun. That sounded more like it. Annie remembered Fritz’s squidlike eyes.
“As for that jerk next door,” and Carmen tilted her platinum head delicately toward Capt. Mac’s house, “Elliot said he was a cool bastard all right, one who’d learned to keep his mouth shut.”
It figured that Capt. Mac wouldn’t broadcast information about a paternity suit.
“How about Kelly Rizzoli?” Max prodded.
“Nutty as a fruitcake, he said,” Carmen replied, twirling an index finger by her temple significantly.
“Nutty how?” Annie asked, then thought, Now I’m beginning to sound like her. As if he could read her mind, Max grinned teasingly. She ignored him.
“Something about some tricks she’d played. Nasty ones, like killing somebody’s cat.”
Annie’s skin crawled. Psycho. Hallowe’en 11. Highsmith. Rendell. There were people who did things like that. But could they include Kelly, who had such a sensitive face and such an air of vulnerability?
Annie’s recoil didn’t escape Carmen’s notice. “Yeah, you were sure having a swell party Sunday night. Lots of fun people there.” Her pale eyes glinted maliciously. “Then there’s the scoop on you. Elliot found out all about Santa Fe.” Carmen’s lip curled. “You think I’m just a cheap bitch, but I’d never do anything like that.” She glanced over to Max. “You ought to ask her about Santa Fe sometime.”
Santa Fe. What would Max think about Santa Fe? It had spelled the end for her and Richard. Thank God.
Annie looked directly at Carmen. “Yes, I can tell Max about Santa Fe.”
There was a short, sharp pause, then Max interjected smoothly, “Carmen, did Elliot play the commodities market very often?”
Annie could have hugged him.
The widow grimaced. “Like clockwork. The sap.”
“So maybe he really needed money.”
“He always needed money,” Carmen said seriously. This was obviously a subject close to her heart.
Annie turned to Max. “See, I thought there might be blackmail involved. I don’t care what you say, he was extorting money from Emma Clyde …”
“Wait a minute,” the blonde interrupted. “What makes you think so?”
“As soon as I made it clear I knew what Elliot was going to say, Emma asked me how much money I wanted. That must mean she was already being blackmailed.”
“Not by Elliot.”
Carmen lost interest in Annie’s theory. “No way.”
“Why not? If he needed money, and you said he did, why wouldn’t he take money to keep quiet about something like that?”
“Not Elliot. He was a chiseler, yeah, but he wasn’t a crook. He told me once he thought blackmailers were slime, real slime. No way. You got to understand”—she got up and wriggled to the refrigerator—“he was a rat, but he really hated killers and bad cops and nasty, underhanded people. You know his favorite detective, Josh Hibbert, well, all that stuff was really him. The trouble is, he wanted to shove people’s noses in their little messes. He liked to push people. That’s why I dumped him. Cat and mouse, always a little push here, a shove there. I wouldn’t take it. I told him to stick it.” She squinted into the refrigerator thoughtfully. There were no more Dos XX’s. “I guess he pushed somebody too hard.”
“I think she’s kinda cute,” Max said, gunning the Porsche.
“You and every male in South Carolina.”
“That is a sexist remark.”
“You bet it is.” Annie gently massaged her temples. “Wow, beer on top of two mint juleps. But it’s a good thing we talked to her. She did know Elliot was going to speak Sunday night, and she knew why. She could easily have hidden the dart and tampered with the lights.”
“Oh, Annie. Admit it. You just don’t like the girl.”
Girl. That was a laugh.
“She’s about as girlish as a female anaconda.”
“But to the right male anaconda …”
“I wonder how Elliot left his money?”
Max slowed the Porsche to swing back onto the main road. Massive yellow pines crowded the road, and through the open sunroof came the scent of sunbaked pitch. The scaly orange trunks rose ruler-straight.
“According to Carmen, he’d commoditied out of money.”
“Sure, that would be her story. But wouldn’t you think nice about that sweet girl if it turned out she inherited?”
Reluctantly, Max nodded. “That’s an oversight, all right. We need to find out who gets his money—if there is any to get. That could make a difference.”
“You know the motives for murder. Hate, revenge, fear, and greed.”
“Or a combination thereof. Where do you suppose Kelly Rizzoli fits in?”
On the surface, their interchange was just as usual—light, flippant, and fun. Annie sensed an undertone, though, whether or not Max did.
She reached out and touched his arm. “Before we see Kelly, I want to tell you about Santa Fe.”
“I’ve never been into true confession,” he said drily. “What counts is now. Today.” His dark blue eyes met hers directly.
Dear Max.
“I want to tell you. I know I don’t have to.” She couldn’t quite resist reaching out to touch his cheek. “Let’s go over to Indigo Beach.”
She directed him to a rutted sandy lane.
Low hanging vines scraped the top of the Porsche as Max eased it around a fallen palmetto. He cringed for the paint job. “They could use a little machete work down this way.”
Resurrection ferns laced the branches of a spreading live oak, and cinnamon ferns flourished beside a pond to the left. The undergrowth suddenly erupted with a flurry of movement, and a dusky gray white-tail deer plunged fleetingly across the narrow track to disappear into a thicket of bayberry.
A fallen southern red cedar blocked the track twenty yards short of the beach. They left the car and walked over the hummocky, sandy ground to a narrow boardwalk, half-covered by drifting sand.
Head-high sea oats, October brown, rippled in the onshore breeze. Nutgrass and sandspur rustled knee-high. As they stood at the top of the dune and looked over the littoral at the gentle surf, a ragged line of cormorants passed overhead. They walked down the dune to the flat-packed gray sand along the water’s edge.
Annie reached down and touched an eddy of warm water.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Max insisted. “I know everything I need to know about you.”
“I want to tell you.” She frowned, picking her words. “Elliot must have talked to Richard.”
Max was silent.
“I’ve never told you about Richard. It was right after I got out of school. I was living in Dallas and working as a model.” She turned and began to walk up the beach, and Max paced with her. “Richard is a banker.” She laughed. “That’s not fair, really. I know there are all kinds of bankers, but Richard is like all of their worst qualities rolled into one. He is extremely cautious, extremely careful. He believes there are rules for every situation. We were engaged.” She shook her head in self-surprise. “Actually, I can’t believe now that I ever considered marrying him. Richard is extremely nice, extremely handsome, extremely … dull.”
“Dull,” Max repeated. “At least, you’ve never called me dull.”
“Never. Anyway, Richard and I were engaged. Then a very old friend called me. She was in real trouble. She asked me to come to Santa Fe with her and not to tell anyone. So I told Richard that I had to leave town immediately, and that I would be back in a week.
“He wanted to know why. I told him I couldn’t say.” Annie winced at the recollection of the acrimonious dispute that followed. “Richard wasn’t pleased. But I lost my temper, told him off, and went. A week later, when I got back, I wouldn’t tell him why I’d gone, or what I’d done.
“Three days after that, he showed up at my apartment, and he was livid. He had a report from a private detective. It said that Anne McKinley Laurance entered a private nursing home on Sunday evening, gave birth to a son that night, and was discharged the following Wednesday.”
“Your friend used your name.”
“Do you know, that never occurred to Richard? He demanded to know how I’d hidden my pregnancy, since he knew damn well he hadn’t gotten me pregnant, and who the hell was I sneaking around with?”
Max raised one blond eyebrow. “Is his bank on the FDIC worry list?”
“No, Richard is very bright about numbers.”
“But, thank God, not very bright about people.”
“That’s what Elliot found out. The baby was immediately given up for adoption.”
“Why did it have to be so secret?” he asked.
“You are perceptive, aren’t you?” She bit her lip.
“You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“No, I want to tell you because I know what I did was illegal. You see, Emily was married. That wasn’t the problem at all. She had hidden the fact she was pregnant from her husband. You have to understand, her husband was the oldest son of one of Texas’s most powerful families—and a kind of crazy mean family, too. She didn’t know it until she married Quentin, but his father controlled all of them, and I mean that literally. Everyone in the family kowtowed to that horrible, domineering old monster. It was just like Mrs. Boynton in Appointment With Death. Quentin and his sister both used cocaine. Their mother was an alcoholic. It was just an awful way to live—and all Emily could think about was getting her baby—the only grandchild—into a safe, normal family. So we went to Santa Fe, and she went into a clinic using my name, and three days later I signed the adoption papers to a wonderful couple who had wanted and prayed for a baby for years.”
She half-turned and looked out over the surging green water. “I’ve always been so glad I did it. Emily and Quentin were killed in a plane crash a year later, and that little baby would have been swallowed alive by Quentin’s father.”
“Good for you,” Max said warmly. At her look of surprise, he said almost roughly, “Richard may have been a damn fool, but I’m not, Annie.”
“You don’t care that I was a party to—I don’t know what to call it. Fraud? Conspiracy?”
“I think you’re wonderful. I’ve always thought so. I’ll always think so.” He couldn’t quite resist adding, “Even if I don’t have a serious job—like a banker.”
They stopped at Death On Demand en route to Kelly Rizzoli’s. Max insisted
there was plenty of time before the ferry left to organize what they’d learned and then interview Kelly. He reached out to pat the glossy black head of the stuffed raven in the entryway.
“What’s his name?”
“Edgar, of course.”
Ingrid greeted them wearily. “Everything’s okay. I think the rush is over. But I sold $689 worth. And you’re out of Christianna Brands.” She patted the stack of receipts proudly. Her eyes darted solicitously from Max to Annie before she added reluctantly, “Chief Saulter’s been by twice, looking for you, and Mrs. Brawley phoned three times.”
Bad news and good news. Annie stepped close to give Ingrid a hug. “Let’s close up for now. And don’t worry, Ingrid, Max and I are working on it.”
Ingrid’s face brightened. “Like Pam and Jerry North.”
Not quite, but Annie wouldn’t have minded a martini. Although that might be the final blow, after the mint juleps and beer.
Ingrid put up the Closed sign and locked the front door as she left. “I’ll open up in the morning.”
Did she think Annie would be in jail?
Max made himself comfortable in the largest wicker chair with the softest pillows.
“It’s time to organize what we have.” He propped a yellow legal pad on his knee.
Annie wandered restlessly around the store: the coffee area, the exhibit of watercolors, the central corridor with the soft gum bookcases angling away, the cash desk, Edgar with his glossy feathers and sightless eyes.
Sanctuary. That’s what Death On Demand had been for her in the days following Uncle Ambrose’s death. Shed always been so happy here, felt so safe. Had Saulter come by to arrest her? Carmen Morgan had thought the arrest would come tomorrow. How much time did she have left? The clock in the tall Queen Anne walnut case next to Edgar read 3:07. Time, time, she was running out of time.
She whirled around and started down the central corridor, then paused abruptly, her eyes on a level with the top shelf of the True Crime section, which held all the works of Uncle Ambrose’s favorite author, Clark Howard. Howard, a 1980 Edgar winner for his short story “Horn Man,” wrote everything well—short stories, novels, television and movie scripts, and nonfiction crime books.
Death on Demand Page 15
