Part 24 (2/2)
”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 ident.i.ty 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 salt.w.a.ter 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 cus.h.i.+on 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 t.i.tle. Her favorite? Probably The Black Shrouds. There were the Leslie Ford, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mary Collins, Eric Ambler, and Patricia Wentworth t.i.tles. 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 t.i.tles, contained magnificent denouements where the detective faced the circle of suspects and, voila, through brilliant ratiocination, triumphantly revealed the ident.i.ty of the murderer.
HercuJe Poirot in Towards Zero. Asey Mayo in Out of Order. Nero Wolfe in The Zero Clue.
Why not Annie Laurance at Death On Demand?
A trap. All she had to do was set a trap for the murderer- The second taco forgotten, she jumped up and hurried to the telephone.
It rang the instant before she reached it.
Bother. She licked hot sauce from her fingers, picked it up, and barked an impatient h.e.l.lo.
”Has the Revolution begun?”
”Huh?”
”You sound beleaguered. Uptight. Stressed.” Max dropped his bantering tone. ”Is that cop bothering you?”
”Oh, no. No, no. Listen, I've got a great idea!”
”Whatever it is, wait until I get back. I'll-”
”There isn't time. I've got to trap the killer before Saulter comes after me in the morning. And you can't get back until tomorrow.”
”I'll be back at nine tonight.”
”Did you take your water wings? The ferry doesn't run again until ten tomorrow.”
”Mr. Parotti and I are drinking beer at a tavern down the block from a one-hour photo shop in Savannah. We are in hearty agreement that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the working man gets screwed every time.” George Jones sang ”He Stopped Loving Her Today” in the background. ”So cool it till I get back.”
She ignored that. ”Max, this is genius. I'm going to phone everybody and tell them I've just found a diary of Uncle Ambrose's at the shop, and now I know the truth. I'll act all upset and frantic, then I'll break the connection.”
George Jones's wail carried clearly over Max's thundering silence.
She practically danced with eagerness. ”It's perfect. The murderer will have to come after me. I'll call Saulter and have him watching.”
”You think somebody as smart as our killer is going to fall for the oldest trick in the book and come running with a marlin spike?”
”Sure. Yes. h.e.l.l, yes. It always works for Nero Wolfe.”
”Annie, it's all well and good to read those books, but you can't take them so seriously.” You'd have to be deaf to miss the patronizing tone of his voice. ”Flee, all is discovered. Lordy.” He chuckled. ”Okay, you have fun, and I'll be back about nine with the goods. I've got to go buy Parotti another beer.”
She replaced the receiver very gently. She was in control. Otherwise, she would have thrown the entire instrument into the marsh. She glowered at the phone and wondered how Grace Latham had resisted bloodshed through her years of a.s.sociation with John Primrose.
She'd show him. Nine o'clock. She reached for the receiver, then paused. Maybe he did have a point about the flee-all-is-discovered ploy.
She nibbled thoughtfully on her thumb. Oh. She turned an idea over in her mind and smiled. Sure. That would work. She would entice everybody back to the Scene of the Crime, then, just like Miss Marple who drew on her experiences in St. Mary Mead, she would cull from the recesses of her mind the appropriate parallel to a fictional murder, and the answer would be clear. Annie reached for the phone.
Saulter's lip curled as he picked up the mug of hot milk. Dammit, his stomach felt like somebody'd dropped in a handful of live coals. This case was becoming a coast-to-coast sensation. Three murders since Sat.u.r.day night, and what did he have to show for it? One autopsy report that sounded like something out of John d.i.c.kson Carr. G.o.d, now he was beginning to think like those b.l.o.o.d.y writers. But who'd ever heard of killing anybody with succinyl-choline? And why'd medicines have names like Hungarian dancers? d.a.m.n crazy thing. Well, he wasn't going to be fooled. This was a setup, from first to last, trying to make it look like a nutty writer'd done it. Murder, when you got down to it, was always simple.
This time it was murder for money. That little sun-streaked blonde didn't want to lose the shop she'd murdered to get. She didn't have a penny until Ambrose drowned, and she inherited from him. She'd plowed every cent of his estate into the store, and she wasn't about to lose it.
Saulter gulped some milk and winced.
He'd made it pretty clear he was going to arrest her tomorrow, and now all he had to do was sit back and wait for her to do something foolish.
Too bad Bud stopped her from taking the ferry. If she'd made a run for it, he'd have had all the proof he needed.
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