Death on Demand (20 page)

“But it did. You see, he sent me a copy of what he was going to say, and he was right—people had plenty to hide.”

Capt. Mac put down his julep on a side table and reached for a cashew. “Oh, he did?”

She plunged into her narrative. “Emma Clyde pushed her second husband overboard. Hal buried his wife. Jeff Farley is a wife-beater. Fritz Hemphill …” Annie paused, then created, “… was a crooked cop. And Kelly Rizzoli attacked a woman once.”

Capt. Mac ate another cashew. “Maybe those things are true. Maybe not. Even if they are, could they be proved? Obviously most of them can’t be proved in a court of law,
or some of those people would be in jail right now. That’s something a policeman learns early on. It takes a hell of a lot in evidence to bring a charge and to make it stick. Most of what Elliot had was stuff that could embarrass somebody, make it a little awkward at the Club if the word got around, but he didn’t seriously threaten anyone. It’s like what he had on me.” Capt. Mac lifted the pitcher to replenish their glasses. “I imagine you don’t think as well of me since you read that. And I wouldn’t like to have it talked about.” He shot Annie an uneasy glance, then averted his eyes from her. “Damned embarrassing. Of course, what can I say?” He shrugged his powerful shoulders “Nobody likes to be hit with a paternity suit. It ruined my marriage. I’m still paying for it—and I’ll be damned if I think the boy
is
mine.”

The three of them sipped their drinks, and no one said anything for a long moment.

For the first time, Capt. Mac looked angry, his face flushed and his mouth compressed. “I suppose it would have given him some kind of thrill to spill it in front of everybody.” He ducked his head awkwardly toward Annie. “He knew I wanted you to think well of me. But I’ll tell you for sure, I wouldn’t have snuffed him to keep it quiet. I wouldn’t have minded wiping that grin off his face with my fists. But I didn’t get a chance to do that.”

His flush faded, and he frowned. “I’ll tell you, I don’t see Elliot’s big expose as the crux of anything. So he insinuates that Emma gave her husband a push. So what? Who can prove it? And that’s what you have to remember, accusations without proof are bullshit.” He nodded toward Annie. “Pardon me, my dear. But that’s how I feel about it. Elliot was a pain, all right, but that’s as far as it went. Now maybe he could have queered things for the Farleys. I know they’re up for the National Book Award. But for the rest of them, I don’t take it too seriously. The only thing Elliot’s performance proves is that he was a heel. When you think about that, it occurs to me that maybe you should take a look at his ex-wife.”

Max and Annie stared at him blankly.

“But somebody at Death On Demand killed Elliot,” Annie said.

“Did they?” Capt. Mac shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.
The back door was open.” He paused. “His ex-wife is my next-door neighbor, Carmen Morgan. And is she a pistol.”

They stood beside the Porsche.

“Look, Max, it’s right next door. And Capt. Mac’s pretty perceptive. He was a cop for a long time, and his instincts are good.”

“He probably tried to put the make on her, and she turned him down.”

“Max!”

“No kidding. We’ve got a platterful of solid suspects, and now he comes up with somebody who wasn’t even there.”

“He’s smart enough to pay attention about the back door. I kept telling Saulter.”

Max’s voice rose in disgust. “How could this ex-wife know enough about your Sunday evening sessions to plant the dart and fix the lights?”

Annie didn’t like being patronized. Who did Max think he was? Colonel Primrose?

“If she was mad enough to murder him, she’d find out. It would be a stroke of genius, wouldn’t it, to kill somebody in front of a bunch of people with hot motives?”

Turning on her heel, she stalked toward the house next door.

The lawn was well kept, the house recently painted and guttered. That would be the work of the Halcyon maintenance company. The house had no touches of individuality, no hanging plants or flower beds.

Annie had just touched the bell when the door opened.

Capt. Mac was right. Carmen Morgan did look like a pistol. Silver-white, shoulder-length hair, a cerise tank top cut to the navel that emphasized a Dolly Parton cleavage and a Southern belle waist, and fingernails that must make thumb and finger precision difficult. Mike Hammer would have loved her—before he blew her away. A smell of camphorwood incense eddied from the dim living room.

She fastened shrewd, baby-blue eyes on Annie.

“I know who you are. Elliot got knocked off in your place.” She smiled thinly. “Wish I’d been there.”

“Were you?” Annie shot back, pleased at her own audacity.

“No such luck. Somebody say I was?” The baby-blue eyes narrowed. “You’ve been talking to that fat ex-cop next door. That jerk can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business.”

“We thought you might have some idea who did kill Elliot,” Max interjected smoothly, coming up silently behind Annie.

Carmen’s face reformed as she looked at Max. Her pale eyes with their dramatic underscoring of lavender mascara widened in appreciation. This is the kind of reaction Magnum gets.

Annie felt her own face stiffen like plaster of paris.

The appraising eyes swept up and down Max’s tall frame. “Why should you care, big boy?”

Big boy.

Gag.

“The cops have some dumb ideas. We’re trying to set the record straight.”

“You mean they want to pitch it on gumdrop here.”

It took a minute to realize that she was said gumdrop. Annie opened her mouth to explode, but clever Max got there first.

“I’ll bet they haven’t even asked you for your help.” He leaned revoltingly close to Carmen, oozing camaraderie.

“They didn’t even bother to come tell me he was dead.” Her porcelain pretty face turned brittle, and abruptly she looked a decade older. “I mean, I was married to the jerk for four years, three months and eighteen days, and nobody even tells me he’s dead.”

“That’s awful,” Max commiserated. “How’d you find out?”

“I got a friend at the police station.”

Annie suddenly remembered the brawny motorcycle cop. A friend, indeed.

Carmen Morgan swivelled her platinum head to look again at Annie, a searching and not especially comradely look. “That’s how I knew
she
was in a pickle. Bud, my friend, says they’re going to arrest her tomorrow.” She snorted. “Hell, you didn’t kill Elliot. I can tell that by looking at you. You don’t have the stuff.”

While Annie was trying to decide whether to be complimented or offended, Carmen focused on Max.

“You come on in. I’ll tell you what I can about my ex. The louse.”

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 …”