Mint Julep Murder (26 page)

“Answer my question, please.” The detective was crisp.

“I was working the switchboard.” Garrett glanced uneasily at Max. “You asked me to give Mrs. Darling a message to meet you as soon as possible at her car.”

“No.” Max shook his head.

Garrett said doggedly, “The call was placed from your suite.”

“I didn’t place it.” Max spoke firmly, pleasantly.

“Okay, okay.” Annie slapped her hand on the table. “Don’t you see what that means?”

The detective cocked his head. “Why don’t you tell us what that means, Mrs. Darling?”

“Someone—and it had to be a man”—she paused—“Jeff, did it really sound like Max?”

The assistant manager glanced warily at Max. “I don’t know. Yeah. Kind of. But, maybe not.”

“Could it have been a woman?”

“I don’t think so. But the call definitely came from your room.”

“Yes, I’m sure it did.” Annie’s face was composed.

Wheeler looked surprised.

“Because,” she continued quietly, “my keys were upstairs. So, someone got into our suite, picked up my keys, called down to the desk.”

“Why?” Wheeler crossed his arms across his chest.

Max’s gaze was challenging. “That should be obvious. Here we are. Here
you
are, focusing on Annie. The murderer must be very pleased.”

But Annie wasn’t looking at Wheeler. Instead, she stared gravely at the assistant manager. “Jeff, how long have you known that Judy Fleet’s keys are missing?”

Jeff Garrett gripped the back of a chair. “Oh, Christ—”

“They are, aren’t they?” Annie pressed.

“I thought”—he swallowed—“I thought maybe they got lost. Between here and the hospital. They should have been on a ring on her belt. They could be lost.” His hands tightened on the chair. “We have extra sets. I got one late yesterday for the maid who took over the floor. But I figured we’d get the keys back from the hospital. I didn’t have any idea they might have been taken.”

“Were they?” Wheeler demanded.

Garrett lifted his hands in surrender. “I don’t know. I went by the hospital tonight. Before all this stuff happened. The hospital didn’t have them. I talked to Judy just for a minute. She says they were on her belt the last she remembers. And when I got back here, all hell was breaking loose.”

“Turn a little more to your right, please.” The technician’s voice was perfunctory.

Annie obeyed, squinting against the harsh brilliance of the lights. A half-dozen spotlights mounted on tripods turned this portion of the parking lot into an oasis of sharp, white light.

“Now hold up your arms. Yeah, that’s right.”

A close-up of the scratches on her arms.

The camera lens zoomed down.

And her legs.

Wheeler was thorough, very thorough.

The bright light hurt her eyes. Through slitted lids, Annie looked toward her car, the car she’d had so long, shabby and safe. She knew she would never drive it again.

The passenger door was still open, but the body was gone.

Abruptly, the light in her eyes flicked off.

Annie blinked.

“All right, Mrs. Darling. Now, if you’ll describe what you did, step by step.”

As she went through it, Wheeler dropped to one knee
a few feet from the Volvo. He played a flashlight carefully over the shells. The light stopped on a narrow scuff that ran for about three inches next to the back door of the driver’s side.

He motioned to a stocky officer. “Crenshaw. Photograph that, then bag up those shells.”

Annie nodded. Yes, yes, yes. That was where the runner had kicked the shells, sending a cloud of dust beneath the car to make certain she couldn’t see his feet. With the wonders of a microscope, something might be found. A trace of oil. A shred of leather or cloth or rubber from a shoe.

Some of the coldness began to seep away from Annie. Wheeler was looking, really looking. He might suspect her, but he was willing to look.

It was long past midnight when they reached their suite. When the door closed behind them, Annie moved into Max’s arms. There was a way to expunge the dreadful memory of the fear that had shaken her when she saw that inert body in her car.

A wonderful way.

Her lips sought his, found them, and there was no other world.

Annie touched Max’s arm, relaxed and warm as he slept.

But he hadn’t been in danger.

She held to that thought. No. The murderer had never intended to threaten Max.

The murderer wanted to involve her in an investigation.

More than involve her, of course. From the murderer’s point of view, the best of all possible worlds would be one in which Annie was accused of the crime.

Misdirection.

Thoughts and images flickered in her mind with the rapidity of a fast-forward film.

Carefully, Annie eased out of the bed.

She slipped into her robe and slippers. She closed the bedroom door behind her and turned on the lights in the living room.

She’d never felt more determined.

She made a small pot of coffee, poured a brimful mug, turned out the lights, and stepped onto the balcony.

Clouds scudded across the sky. She couldn’t see the water, but she heard it, the continuing, unending thunder of the surf. A wind stirred the tops of the pines, a high, fine, delicate rustle. Magnolia leaves clattered. Cicadas buzzed. A chuck-will’s-widow called loudly. A sharp whine revealed a mosquito. Annie flapped her hand and stood by the railing and sipped coffee.

Max wasn’t at risk.

Anger flickered deep inside.

Because for a devastating, hideous, dreadful moment, she’d thought the magic in her life was over.

She was going to make someone pay for that pain.

The night was full of sound, yet terribly stilt.

It was quiet, as it had been quiet when she walked into the parking lot that evening to discover a silent, secretive, calculated murder.

Two murders.

Two sharply different murders.

Two wildly opposed scenes.

An exuberant, noisy, rollicking party ended with Kenneth Hazlitt’s agonizing death.

The quiet, isolated parking lot provided very private surroundings for the swift death of an unknown man.

A man, Annie felt sure, who had not expected to die on a warm spring evening.

She sipped at the coffee. No, the man so soon to die had walked to the car with a companion. That companion was faceless in Annie’s thoughts, but she imagined two figures strolling over the crushed oyster shells, a hand unlocking her car, pressing the button to open the doors. The faceless figure slid into the driver’s seat—her seat, her car—and the man so soon to die ducked into the passenger seat.

The doors closed.

The driver’s hand—right hand?—moved swiftly, and the little gun quietly exploded. The unknown man slumped to his right. The gunman got out of the car and walked rapidly away. It would have been quick, final, and
not as noisy as the rattle of a falling palm frond or the crunch of a footstep.

That was when the murderer returned upstairs to Annie and Max’s suite, reentered with the maid’s master key, and placed the call directing Annie to come to her car.

Yes, that made sense.

Perhaps she’d never be able to prove it, but Annie felt certain this was what had happened.

The murderer had to shoot his quarry, be certain it was done, before the message was left for Annie.

But it would take only a few minutes to leave the corpse, go upstairs, call down the message, and return to the lot to find a shadowy place to watch and wait.

If Annie didn’t come within twenty minutes, perhaps thirty, the murderer would simply walk away. It wouldn’t be perfect, but she would still face suspicion from the police because the dead man would be found in her car.

But, thanks to the hotel’s efficient staff, Annie got the message and came.

The rest had been easy.

Yes, a brilliant plan brilliantly achieved.

But the murderer, caught up in cleverness and cruelty, made a huge mistake.

Stealing her car keys, enticing the victim to her car, announced without doubt and without question that the murderer not only knew Annie but knew her car.

Annie swung around, hurried back inside. She flicked on the light.

The door to the bedroom opened. “Annie, what’s wrong?”

“My car. Max, my car!”

He blinked, shook his head. “Your car?”

“Max, how did they know it was
my
car?”

Max padded to the wet bar, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a carton of juice. He yawned. “The key chain—”

“No. My keys are on a chain attached to a sand-dollar shell.” They’d found the shells the summer before, dead and empty, taken them home, and put them in a mixture of
bleach and water, then set them out to dry. His-and-her keyrings, courtesy of the ocean. “There’s nothing to indicate which car.”

Annie grabbed a legal pad from the coffee table. They settled on the couch, Annie scribbling furiously as she and Max worked it out. Annie’s eyes glinted with satisfaction when they finished.

“Okay, Max, we’re getting somewhere. Obviously, the person who lured that man to my car
knew
it was my car.”

It wasn’t elegant phraseology, but Max understood. “It was deliberate, Annie. I’ve never doubted that. But why your car?”

Annie frowned in thought. “Because the police already suspected me in the death of Kenneth Hazlitt?”

Max grabbed the pad, took the pencil. “All right, who knew that?”

This list was just a little different.

Annie took the pen and paper and made a third list.

Annie chewed on the pencil.

“Okay, Max, we can strike Willie Hazlitt as a suspect in the second murder.”

Max looked mulish. “Why?” His jaw jutted aggressively.

“He never rode in my car, never saw my car.”

“Maybe he asked somebody.”

“We’ll check it.” But she had lost interest in Willie. She put down the pad and shook her head. “Max, we’re not looking at the big picture. Okay, so it’s important who knew the Volvo was mine. Very important. But much more important is the link with Kenneth’s murder. That’s what counts. So we have to find out
how
this man who was shot in my car threatened Kenneth’s murderer. Did he—let’s call him X—did X see something Friday that would link someone to the poisoned bottle of whiskey?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the poisoning that X saw,” Max suggested. “Maybe Kenneth said something to X about one of the authors. Or maybe X was in the fifth-floor hall when someone went into the Hazlitt suite. Or maybe X saw someone talk to Kenneth at the party.”

“The party.” Annie looked eagerly at Max. “Do you suppose X was at the cocktail party? If we could only—” She clapped her hands. “The
party!
Laurel and Henny and Miss Dora contacted everyone who was on the list of those who were there when Kenneth died. Maybe one of them even talked to X!”

Laurel picked up the telephone on the third ring, emerging reluctantly from a most charming dream. The handsomest young man, gazing at her with such adoration … She murmured a throaty, distant greeting and opened one eye. Opened it wider. Yes, indeed, the clock said five
A.M.

“Annie, my sweet, always such a pleasure to hear your dulcet tone.”

Laurel listened, nodded. “Of course, my dear. You can count on me.”

Miss Dora watched the arc of lights from a passing car sweep across the room. Would it be offensive to include some tactful directions for outlanders in her cookbook? Although it was galling indeed to think a cook might have the temerity to attempt cornbread and greens without the proper equipment. Surely it would not be unseemly to point out—firmly—that these foods must be cooked
only
in a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet on a gas stove. Of course, it should go without saying. However, it had, most unfortunately, often been her experience that when one assumed a matter could go without saying—

The phone rang.

Miss Dora’s obsidian eyes noted the time.

“Good morning.” She listened without comment. “Certainly. I shall be there directly.”

Henny Brawley woke in an instant, alert and poised for action. She picked up the receiver.

“Annie.” She nodded several times. “Good thinking. I’ll be right there.”