Annie recognized the young giant as the second of the Broward’s Rock force, the one who’d dusted for fingerprints in Death On Demand after Elliot was killed. Now he placed ham-sized hands on the doorsill and ignored Max to fix her with a gimletlike stare out of his beady eyes. She started to bristle even before he spoke.
“Just a word to the wise, Miss Laurance.” He radiated a thick scent of spicy cologne.
Was there ever a phrase better designed to incite rebellion?
“You’d better stay put. The chief told me to keep an eye on you.”
Before Max could pull on his barrister’s wig, Annie attacked. “Do they pay you extra to be officious?” she demanded, gray eyes glittering dangerously.
Max held up a hand, clearly a warning to cease and desist.
“Sure, I’m official,” the cop retorted.
“Officious,” she repeated loudly. “As in rude, overbearing, and gratuitously self-important. Just like Inspector Slack.”
The young giant’s face turned a dull plum color. “You can talk just as fancy as you like, lady. But you better watch your step, or you’re going to jail.” With that, he swung on his heel, remounted his motorcycle, and roared off in the direction of the village.
Annie slammed the front door to Death On Demand so hard the front window quivered and a display copy of Break In tumbled down. “I’m mad.”
“Cool down, Tiger.” Max moved down the central aisle, carrying the sack from their side excursion to Parotti’s tavern.
Flicking on the lights, she followed, too infuriated to take time to pet Agatha, who registered her contempt with a resentful yellow glare.
Max put two six-packs of Bud Light on the coffee bar, then opened the refrigerator.
“Want a beer?”
“I’d rather have that cop’s head on a platter.”
“Annie, Annie,” he said mournfully. “What are we going to do with your temper?” He lifted the beers from their cardboard cartons and put all but two away. “I’m doing my best to keep you out of jail, and that famous Laurance temper’s going to get you tossed in the can before nightfall. Honey, didn’t you ever learn it’s easier to sweet-talk your way out of trouble?”
She banged a stack of Sugartowns into a neat pile. Some of the flush began to die out of her cheeks, and she could almost smile. “Okay. So I’ve got a short fuse.”
“That’s not all bad—depending upon what you’re triggering.” His dark blue eyes glinted meaningfully.
She reached up and ruffled his hair. “Stow it, lecher.”
“Seriously, sweetie, you’re going to have to button your lip. The chief isn’t like that director you reamed out when they were casting ‘Sailors Ashore.’”
“That sorry clown took his feebleminded script too seriously.” She put her hands on her hips, ready to do battle. “At least Saulter hasn’t made a pass at me.” Her brows drew together. “I wonder why the hell not?”
Max laughed uproariously. “My God, you can’t have it both ways.”
“Well, just let him try,” she said in a steely voice.
He opened two beers and handed one to her. “Come on, chum, cool off. You waste too much energy being mad.”
She tilted up the brown bottle, then set it down without tasting its contents. “You know something, we are incompatible.”
“Just because I believe in avoiding trouble?”
“That’s one reason. But it typifies …”
He grinned and reached across the coffee bar to touch a finger lightly to her lips. “Typify’s the kind of word Kelly Rizzoli likes. She could undoubtedly draw up a list of incontrovertible reasons why you and I should avoid interpersonal relationships.” His hand traced the line of her cheek. “But she’d be wrong.”
She should firmly push his hand away, but another kind of short fuse was ticking.
“Everyone says it’s foolish to pursue relationships that will deadend—” She didn’t finish. Max’s lips got in the way. The coffee bar was an obstacle, but neither paid any attention to it. Who moved first? Who cared? Their lips met, and Annie stopped analyzing, analogizing, and pontificating.
The phone rang.
Annie didn’t quite have her breathing under control when she answered.
Max looked savagely at the phone.
“Yes, Chief?” she said icily.
“Understand you and that pet lawyer of yours are out bothering people.”
“It’s a free country. Or so I thought.”
“You have no call to go around interviewing people. Mrs. Morgan resents it.”
“The ex-Mrs. Morgan knew all about the Sunday night session—and she was pretty annoyed that Elliot wasn’t forking over her alimony on schedule,” Annie said furiously.
A voice broke in. “Hey, you people better leave Carmen alone.” She pictured a meaty face with beady brown eyes.
“Butt out, Bud.”
So that was Inspector Slack’s name.
“Ms. Laurance, I’m calling to give you another chance. You keep your face out of my investigation. I’ve got enough trouble on this island without you and your boyfriend playing detective. Bud was just giving you some friendly advice.”
“I have some friendly advice for Bud,” she retorted. “His pal, Carmen, is a real pistol, and she wanted money—”
“Hey, lady, you watch your mouth about Carmen. What d’you mean, she’s a pistol?”
“And, furthermore, Chief, have you found out who inherits Elliot’s money?”
“Of course.”
“Who?”
“That’s no business of yours.”
“If you’re going to slap me in chains tomorrow, you can bet my lawyer will make it his business.”
Finally, Saulter spoke, and there was just a hint of consideration in his voice. “He hadn’t changed his will.”
“So Carmen inherits?”
“Yes.”
Bud was still fuming. “Hey, wait a minute. Nobody’s going to hang a rap on Carmen. Me and her were on the beach Sunday night.”
Not Inspector Slack, Annie decided. Mike Hammer on a vacation.
“Bud, get off the line.” After an instant, there was a click. “Okay, Ms. Laurance, you and your boyfriend have your fun—but I’ll be over to talk to you in the morning. And you better have some good answers.” He hung up.
She replaced the receiver. “The tumbril’s going to roll first thing in the morning.” Her voice was light, but she glanced up at the clock. “Oh Lord, we’ve got to get cracking. It’s ten after five. Come on, Max, let’s split up the work. You summarize what we learned from everybody, and I’ll call around and see if I can find out where everybody was when Harriet was killed.”
Max spread out his notes from the day on the table nearest the coffee bar. He draped himself comfortably in a chair, took off his brown cordovan loafers, wiggled his toes, and drank some more beer.
She called Emma first.
“Yes?” The mistress of mysteries was not cordial.
“Emma, where were you between five and six P.M. Monday?”
There was a chilly pause. “I understand Harriet died about then,” she said finally. “Is that what prompts this call?” She laughed softly. “You are indefatigable, aren’t you? I was here, my dear. In my office. Working.”
“I thought you wrote in the mornings.”
“That’s right. And in the evenings, too, when I’m close to the finish.”
“How about 9:45 Sunday morning?”
“Now that’s something new.” Her tone was assured and amused. “Is there a corpse no one’s told me about?”
“No. That’s when the murderer hid the dart in Death On Demand.”
“Oh my, you and Mr. Darling do seem to be clever at discovering things. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. I was working. The next time I get involved in a murder, I’ll be sure to order my time better.”
Emma sounded quite good-humored now. She certainly didn’t feel threatened by their investigation so far.
“Is there any semblance of reason behind that question?”
“Somebody pushed Uncle Ambrose off his boat.”
“Interesting that you know the exact time.”
Annie would have given a hot reply, but Emma swept on.
“Sorry, dear, I don’t keep a diary—and I wasn’t skulking around the harbor that night.” The line went dead.
It didn’t take long to ring up her list.
Hal Douglas didn’t seem affronted by her question. “Yeah, I was jogging about the time Harriet was killed, but I took a path through the bird refuge. I didn’t see a soul,” he said cheerfully. “As for Sunday morning, I was asleep. And I don’t have any idea about last July.” His voice dropped. “Do you really think somebody murdered your uncle?”
Annie was relieved when Janis Farley answered rather than Jeff. She replied to the questions in a low, uneasy voice. She and Jeff, she insisted, were at breakfast together Sunday morning and were playing Scrabble Monday evening. Annie could imagine her looking over her shoulder as she spoke.
Fritz Hemphill listened, then said distinctly, “Go to hell.”
Before he could hang up, she threw out, “Do you still have the rifle you used to shoot Mike Gonzalez?”
“Funny thing, Annie. Dead men don’t talk.” His voice continued, cold and uninflected. “Neither do dead women. Sure, I got that gun. I still hunt with it.”
Capt. Mac was encouraging. “Have you found out anything?”
“A lot. Some of it, you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’d believe it. I was a cop for a long time.”
It wasn’t hard to ask him. “Where were you when Harriet died?”
“In and out. No alibi, unfortunately. I’m transplanting some crape myrtle, so I was around the patio most of the time. You know, the privacy on Broward’s Rock is great, but sometimes I wish I had a nosy neighbor.”
“There’s Carmen Morgan,” she offered.
He chuckled. “The lady doesn’t spend a lot of time in her garden.”
The bedroom was her more likely habitat, but neither of them said it.
“Have you talked to Saulter about Harriet?” she asked.
“Yeah, but there isn’t much to report. Place was wiped clean of fingerprints. Saulter thought that was interesting. I did, too. It might indicate the killer was caught by surprise. Otherwise, you’d think he would be wearing gloves.”
Capt. Mac said he was probably in the shower Sunday morning. He remembered that he’d spent the evening working on his car the night Ambrose drowned.
Annie rang Carmen Morgan.
“Monday afternoon? Geez, I don’t know. I don’t keep track of my time like a shop girl.”
“That was just yesterday,” Annie reminded her in a long-suffering tone which caused Max to look up and grin.
“Sure. Yeah. Well, probably I was watching a game show. That’s what I was doing.”
Sure.
“What’re you going to do with the money Elliot left you?”
“Money? What money?”
“You know. He never changed his will. You’ll inherit. Just like a widow.”
“Gee, I didn’t know that! Gee, that’s great.” Her effort to sound surprised was as fake as her spiky eyelashes. Annie was glad she didn’t have to act for a living. She claimed to be asleep Sunday morning and probably was playing bingo on a Wednesday night in July.
Kelly Rizzoli sounded dreamy. “Around six? I don’t know, really. I sometimes walk down by the rock garden. It’s peaceful as dusk comes.”
Just Kelly and the earthworms, Annie thought.
Max was exhibiting, for him, great industry, shuffling papers and occasionally writing in spurts, so Annie, despite her meager results, stubbornly drew up a chart.
She carried her work to his table and plopped the chart on top of his papers. “Can you believe this?”
He studied it.
She ran her hands distractedly through her snarled hair. “These jerks would never make it in a Freeman Wills Croft book.” She thumped the table in disgust. “Look at that. Not a single one has an alibi. How can that many people be invisible every time a murder takes place?”
“Everybody says writers are loners. Maybe it’s so.”
“Not only loners, weirdos,” she muttered. “Every time I talk to Kelly Rizzoli, I feel like I’m in a deserted cemetery at midnight, consorting with a vampire.”
“You can’t expect charts to solve anything,” Max continued with irritating placidity. “Life doesn’t imitate art. Old mysteries can’t help us solve this.”
“Sure they can. Why, I’ll bet I figure it out before you do. I know a lot more about murders than you ever thought about.”
He gave her a smile that could only qualify as patronizing in the extreme, pushed her chart aside to pick up his top paper, and waggled his paper, filled with his dark, sloping scrawl. “Here’s what we have to find out.”
She ignored the proffered sheet. He quirked an eyebrow, still looking superior and amused, then swung his feet to the floor and stood.
He held his papers high as he moved up the central aisle. “When I get the answers to these questions, we’ll know everything that matters.” He picked up the phone at the cash desk.
Annie paced back and forth in the coffee area, pausing occasionally to look up at the watercolors. Of course she knew more about murders than Max! He had the usual male conceit, so certain he knew more than she did. By golly, she would show him. The little gray cells, that was the ticket. In all of this mishmash of information, there had to be a key to the villain. No alibi. That indicated a great deal of confidence on the murderer’s part, didn’t it? Confidence—Okay, she had confidence, too.
But she did prick up her ears to hear his half of the conversation. Fair was fair. After all, she’d let him see her alibi chart.
He was as slick as the hide of a greased pig.
“… calling from Beaufort County, South Carolina. We have a homicide here, actually a triple homicide, and we need some information on a Miss Kelly Rizzoli. You’ve got her down for a couple of misdemeanors, around ’78, ’79. If you can pull it up on your computer, we’d appreciate the help. Sure, I’d be glad to hold.”
“So if you get some stuff on Kelly, then well know about everybody,” Annie kibitzed.
He covered the receiver. “Except for Harriet. And that’s moot.”
“I know that one. Elliot accused her of lifting a plot from somebody.”
Max gave a small shrug. “We know she wasn’t the killer. But that would hardly be reason enough.”
She remembered Harriet’s contorted face that day at Death On Demand. Max was wrong. That day, Harriet was mad enough to kill.
Annie spread her hands out. “How can we guess what’s reason enough? Remember what happened to Gideon in Kelly’s short story?”
Max waggled his hand for her to be quiet. “That’s right,” he said into the receiver. “That’s the one. What’ve you got—well, I’ll be damned. Sure. Listen, we appreciate your help. If we can ever give you a hand—”
He hung up, then turned to Annie, his blue eyes gleaming with excitement. “He remembers, all right, and he thinks Kelly is just as nutty as her sister. In fact, he believes Kelly did every bit of it herself.” He scrunched his face in distaste. “She forgot to mention the chicken house. Apparently, she—or Pamela—set fire to the chicken house behind the place where they boarded.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah. So maybe Kelly had more to lose than some embarrassing talk about her crazy sister.”
“Maybe Pamela’s not crazy. Maybe she’s a prisoner—a variation on Flowers in the Attic.”
He didn’t laugh. “Actually, nothing about Kelly would surprise me.” He ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “Maybe Carmen summed up the party pretty well. Annie, did you have any idea what your Sunday Night Regulars were like?”
Sh
e tried to remember back before Sunday. Sunday seemed a thousand years ago.
“I always thought Emma Clyde was a lot smarter than she acted. You know, she looks like the average housewife shopping in the housewares section at Winn-Dixie.”
“That’s on a par with calling a cobra a house pet.”
“I really liked Hal Douglas. He has such an all-American face.”
“Just your average neighborhood wife-killer,” Max sang.
“And Kelly seemed so vulnerable, like a coed at a bad hangout.”
“Very bad, but she’s the den mother.”
He lightly touched her elbow, and they started back down the central aisle.
“I never did like the Farleys. They give me the willies.”
“Another all-American pair.” Max walked behind the coffee bar, honing in on the refrigerator.
As he lifted out another beer, she mused, “Nobody much liked Fritz. He’s such a cold fish.”
Max carefully fitted the church key to the bottle cap. “Then there’s Capt. Wonderful,” and he shot a sly look at Annie.
She leaned against the coffee bar. “Why do you hate him so much? He’s the only normal one of the bunch.”
The cap snapped off, and foam rose over the lip of the bottle. “No cop is normal.”
“That’s not fair. Besides, he has a piddly motive.”
Handing her the first bottle, he uncapped the second. “Keeping a paternity suit quiet doesn’t seem worth a poison-tipped dart. But a man who’ll cheat on his wife will cheat anybody. I intend to nose around him a little more.”
Annie took a delicate sip of beer. She’d better ease up on her quaffing. She needed a clear head, especially if she were going to show Max up. He thought he was so smart. Of course, if the murderer’s picture were on Harriet’s film, neither—
She popped straight up. The beer jostled and overflowed as she gestured wildly at the wall clock.
“My God, Max, it’s almost six!”
The Porsche leapt forward. Annie clung to the red leather rim of the dash. The clock flashed 5:52.
“Don’t worry, this girl can fly. Well make it. Besides, Parotti probably doesn’t leave on time.”
Death on Demand Page 18
