Carolyn G. Hart (25 page)

“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.

ANNIE’S ALIBI CHART

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 we’ll 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?”

She 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!”

T
he 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. We’ll make it. Besides, Parotti probably doesn’t leave on time.”

“Yes, he does,” she yelled back over the whip of the wind through the open sunroof. The live oaks passed in a blur. “He’s a little martinet. You’d think that damned ferry was the
Queen Elizabeth
the way he acts about her schedule.”

In answer, Max pressed harder on the accelerator.

Annie thumped back against her spine. They had to make it. They had to.

The Porsche zoomed around the last curve and roared toward the checkpoint. He braked hard, received a pass-through wave from a startled Jimmy Moon, then floorboarded it, and the sports car burst forward like a two-year-old headed for the winner’s circle.

Success was theirs! The car screeched onto the dock just as Parotti gave the preliminary toots announcing imminent departure. The ferry horn mingled with the high, abrasive whine of a siren.

Annie twisted in her seat and saw the motorcycle turning off the blacktop.

“Hurry, drive onto the ferry!”

Max twisted to look, too. The Porsche didn’t move. “A work farm is not my idea of a pleasant way to spend the rest of October.”

As the motorcycle drew alongside, she glared at Max in bitter disappointment.

Once again, the massive young policeman loomed beside
the car. A waft of spicy cologne tickled Annie’s nose. “Eighty-six miles per hour. You people think this island is a goddamned racetrack?”

Annie jounced in the seat. They had to hurry! The ferry always left on time. The clock flashed 5:59. She could see Parotti peering at them from the ferry cabin.

“Officer, I apologize,” Max began smoothly, “but we have important business on the mainland.”

“You may have business there. But she don’t,” and he jerked a thumb at Annie.

“Wait a minute—” she began angrily.

Max spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Stop snarling. Let me handle this.”

“She ain’t leavin’ the island.”

“She isn’t under arrest so—”

The squinty-eyed giant smiled. It was as charming as a barracuda doing ballet. “I got a warrant right here.” He thumped his brown khaki chest. “You get on that ferry, I arrest her.”

Parotti yanked the whistle. Final call.

Annie glared at Bud, then leaned forward as if to kiss Max goodbye. At the same time, she pulled open her purse, fished out the roll of film, and jammed it in his hand.

“Go ahead,” she whispered in his ear, then slid across the seat, opened the door, and jumped out.

Max looked from her to Bud and back again.

“Max, go!”

The Porsche jolted forward and rolled onto the ferry. The horn tooted, and the ferry chugged out into the sound.

Annie, arms folded, faced Bud.

His meaty face furrowed. “Hey, what was the big hurry?”

“Wouldn’t you just like to know?”

Annie rented a battered chartreuse bicycle at Henry’s Bikes By the Day or Week, picked up tacos-to-go at Maria’s Cantina, and pedaled furiously back to her tree house, taking the shortcut across the Forest Preserve, cool and dim now as dusk settled over the sea pines. She pumped vigorously, treating the bike path like a Le Mans speedway, to help ease some of her frustration. What a
lousy deal. She
deserved
to be in at the kill. Or, if not actually the kill, the moment of truth when the murderer’s identity was revealed.

Parking the bike beneath the outside stairway, she ran lightly up the wooden steps, unlocked the front door, and carried the take-out sack to the kitchen. She wiped her face, flushed from exertion. She felt like a piece of saltwater taffy that had been dropped in the sand. It was easy somehow to picture Max lounging comfortably in the Porsche, enjoying the cool sweep of water off the sound—and carrying in his pocket the solution to their mystery.

She plumped two beef tacos in the microwave to warm, ducked into the bathroom to wash her hands and face, retrieved the tacos, liberally doused them with hot sauce, and poured orange Gatorade into a yellow plastic cup. Carrying her meal into the living room, she settled comfortably in the wicker divan with a soft red cushion behind her. As she ate, she imagined Max’s reaction to this feast (utter horror) and studied her ceiling-high shelves filled with her own very favorite mysteries, many of them quite valuable and difficult to find. She had most of the Constance and Gwenyth Little books. All but one contained the word
black
in the title. Her favorite? Probably
The Black Shrouds
. There were the Leslie Ford, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mary Collins, Eric Ambler, and Patricia Wentworth titles. Plus Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Rex Stout, and all the Christies, of course.

She finished the first taco, drank some Gatorade, and was reaching for the second taco, when her hand paused. Almost every one of these books, except the Ambler titles, contained magnificent denouements where the detective faced the circle of suspects and,
voilà
, through brilliant ratiocination, triumphantly revealed the identity of the murderer.

Hercule Poirot in
Towards Zero
. Asey Mayo in
Out of Order
. Nero Wolfe in
The Zero Clue
.