Honeymoon With Murder (16 page)

He paused beside a sweet-scented hibiscus in the almost empty parking lot to study the dark and silent environs of the harbor shops. The two waterfront restaurants shut their doors at eleven, and the Sans Souci and Lilly Mae’s, on opposite sides of the island, were both discreet watering holes in secluded locations that closed at midnight. So only a late night stroller or perhaps young lovers might be expected to break the post-midnight stillness.

But a man can walk his dog at any hour.

Casually, Max strolled from the cover of the hibiscus and started toward the dark alley that ran between the shops, pausing occasionally to whistle for Fido, but keeping, however, as far as possible from the lampposts and their yellow pools of light. He was having a helluva time.

Annie jammed the bike behind the Dumpster and slunk through the deep shadows to the back door of Death on Demand. As she tried to insert the key into the bookstore’s lock by feel (it was darker than Edgar’s sleek black feathers in this damn alley; next meeting of the Broward’s Rock Merchants Association, she was going to
insist
on better lighting), she heard the
whee-whee-whee-whee-whee-whee-whi
of someone whistling for a dog. Frantically, she probed and, finally, as the whistler neared her, made contact with the keyhole, turned it, pulled open the door and slipped inside.

She rested against the closed door, waiting for her heart to stop thumping. Of course, she had every right to be in
her own store, but this was not the time for interruptions. And she needed to hurry.

She reached up and grabbed the flashlight hanging from a nail on the south wall. Flicking it on, she hurried through the storeroom, intent upon reaching the front cash desk.

An odd, most unexpected and, frankly, unpleasant odor assailed her. What in the world could it be? Her steps slowed. She turned toward the coffee bar, circled behind it, and aimed the light down.

No doubt about it. The smell rose from Agatha’s dish.

A click of nails on the coffee bar announced the cat’s approach. Agatha would, of course, be interested in this peculiarly timed arrival. Annie reached up and stroked her sleek cat, then bent to survey the bowl and its contents more closely.

Herrings.

Smoked herrings.

Or rather, the scraps of that meal, and not many of those.

Agatha dropped to the floor and began to twine against Annie’s leg, purring loudly.

Agatha had not during the day learned how to open a tin of smoked herrings. No, the only answer had to be Laurel and Ophelia.

Annie turned the light on her pet.

Agatha’s eyes narrowed.

“Are you all right?”

The purr was almost disgustingly vigorous.

Annie picked up the bowl and dumped the remains into the sink, then reached for a spoon to push the mess into the garbage disposal.

Agatha, moving with her customary agility, landed beside the sink, and before Annie could maneuver with her spoon, the black cat snagged a piece of redolent fish with one paw, clamped it in her mouth and fled.

“Agatha! Agatha, come back here!”

One of the least effective vocal exercises known to mankind is to yell an order at a cat.

Annie closed her eyes briefly. What if Agatha nestled her morsel next to one of the expensive collectibles, such as Hesketh Prichard’s
November Joe, the Detective of the Woods
($150) or S. S. Van Dine’s
The Casino Murder Case
($75) or E. Phillips Oppenheim’s
Chronicles of Melhampton
($125)? Agatha was very fond of nudging her way onto the shelf with the most treasured books. How she knew they were special, Annie didn’t presume to understand.

Opening her eyes, Annie steeled herself, and, very slowly, swung the light toward the classic collection. No Agatha. So be it. She didn’t have time now to look for her furry friend. Maybe the little glutton was crouched beneath a fern completing her odd feast. She made a mental note to stock up on collectibles. The shelf looked sparser than she recalled.

Smoked herrings for a cat. God, what else might Laurel and Ophelia have done?

Annie scanned the shelves. Private Investigator-Police Procedural, Horror-Science Fiction, Romantic Suspense, Psychological Suspense. So far, so good. She moved up the center aisle, past Caper-Comedy and Espionage-Thrillers, and finally to True Crime and the Agatha Christies.

A book lay open atop the True Crime section. Annie picked it up. Oh, yes, Allen Churchill’s
They Never Came Back
, an accounting of famous disappearances. The book opened on the section about Judge Crater. She felt a prickle down her spine. Judge Crater walked up a New York street and was never seen again. Ingrid Jones telephoned from her cabin one September Saturday night …

Annie shook her head, snapped the book shut, and reshelved it.

It was at the front of the store, by the cash desk, that she found further evidence of Laurel and Ophelia’s activities. On a square of posterboard, the public was invited:

An arrow pointed toward the reading area, the cane chair and wicker table enclave along the south wall.

Annie didn’t attribute her immediate visceral feeling of panic to ESP. It was merely the conditioned response of a mind familiar with the possibilities in a world inhabited by Laurel.

She found the velvet-swathed box on the first wicker table. (Where had they found the velvet?) Yanking the cloth loose, she opened the lid, turned the light onto the enclosed books and groaned.

Melville Davisson Post,
The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason
, the authors first book of detective short stories, $250.

Mark Twain,
Tom Sawyer: Detective
, $95.

Arthur Upfield,
The Barakee Mystery
, review copy, $1500.

Robert H. Van Gulik,
The Chinese Maze Murders
, $310.

Edgar Wallace,
Four-Square Jane
, $150.

John Dickson Carr,
The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey
, $150.

Trust Laurel to show such exquisite taste. If she wanted to play mind games with Annie’s customers, for God’s sakes, couldn’t she use reading copies?

Annie grabbed the books from the box, then stood, at a loss. Where should she put them? In the storeroom? Up in the attic? Behind the coffee counter?

A few minutes later, she surveyed an unbroken line of Sherlockiana on a shelf. All right. Let Laurel and Ophelia find them now! To make the retrieval of her treasures even less obvious, Annie darted from shelf to shelf, picking up books to put in the box.

These were perfectly good collectible mysteries that any reader would enjoy. The difference between these books and the others was price, and price, of course, was determined by a book’s condition, rarity, and importance in the field. The six copies she was now placing in the box cost an average of $7.50. She nodded in satisfaction at the titles,
Academic Murder
by Donald Fiske,
As Empty as Hate
by Kyle Hunt (another of John Creasey’s pen names),
Always a Body to Trade
by K. C. Constantine,
Not Exactly a
Brahmin by Susan Dunlap,
The Dead Seed
by William C. Gault, and
A Death for Adonis
by E. X. Giroux.

She reswathed the velvet and was turning back toward the front of the store when she glimpsed an unexpected flash of red. Picking up the flashlight from the table, she directed the beam deeper into the reading area.

All of the cushions had been removed from the wicker chairs and placed on the floor in a kind of thronelike pile except for one red cushion. It was positioned directly in front of the pile.

Annie crossed the well-waxed wooden floor and studied this peculiar arrangement.

There were black cat hairs on the red cushion. The pile of cushions was deeply indented.

Agatha pressed gently against her leg.

Annie looked down at her cat, and was not reassured by the unblinking gaze. “Agatha, what in the
hell
has been going on here?”

Agatha flowed delicately to the red cushion and jumped onto it. She turned three times, then settled into a contented ball. One amber eye peered up at Annie.

Perhaps, Annie thought, it was as well Agatha couldn’t talk.

“All right,” she said briskly. “But I will find out. And that’s your last smoked herring.” It was time, past time, for Annie to retrieve Ingrid’s extra set of keys from the bottom drawer of the cash desk and race back across the island.

Max studied the trapdoor in the light of his flash. It wasn’t bolted. It was only a couple of weeks ago that the Halcyon Development, Inc., heating and air technician made his annual fall visit to check the unit on the roof atop Confidential Commissions. Similar units, accessed by similar trapdoors, existed atop each of the harborfront stores. Now, it would be clear sailing, if the trapdoor above Halcyon Development, Inc., was similarly unbolted.

Humming “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here,” Max wriggled his broad shoulders through the square space, pulled himself up, and landed lightly on the gritty tarred roof.

*   *   *

Ingrid’s keys jingled in the pocket of Annie’s white skirt as she pumped past the Gas ’N Go. She slowed, keeping to the shadows. When the soft glow from the Tent City lights glistened through the trees, she swung off the bike. Almost there. She heaved a quiet sigh of relief and satisfaction as she shoved the bike back into its spot beneath Ingrid’s carport. It should be clear sailing from here.

It was dark enough on the back side of Ingrid’s cabin to satisfy Jack the Ripper. Annie slithered up the back steps, unlocked the kitchen door, and stepped inside, closing it behind her.

A faint aroma of rose potpourri hung in the still air. The blinds were closed. Not a vestige of light seeped into the oblong room. Annie frowned in concentration, remembering the layout of Ingrid’s kitchen—sink on the back wall, overlooking the sound, stove and refrigerator against the wall to her right, small wooden kitchen table with two chairs directly in front of her, door to the living room centered in the opposite wall. She mustn’t walk into the table. A clatter might arouse one of the sleepers in the Tent City.

Stretching one hand out in front, Annie began to tiptoe. She had reached the door, obviously open, as her hand patted only air, when a rustling, scrabbling noise—a sound unmistakably near—blocked the air in her throat and made her heart race with triphammer rapidity.

She wasn’t alone in Ingrid’s cabin.

The flashlight lying on the desk amply illuminated the filing cabinets. Max riffled through thick manila folders behind the divider tabbed
NIGHTINGALE COURTS
. Construction. Maintenance. Rental Applications. Repairs. He lifted out a slender green file, Rental Applications, and flipped it open. He began to smile. Oh, yeah. Hey, hey, hey. This was paydirt, all right. Annie would be—

“Max Darling,” a voice drawled behind him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

*   *   *

A footstep.

The click of a drawer closing.

Annie breathed shallowly and gripped the doorjamb.

Should she call the police? Oh God, the police consisted of just Billy Cameron. How long would it take Billy to come? Would he come? And if he did, wouldn’t he arrest Annie for entering a proscribed crime scene? Wouldn’t he do anything and everything to protect Mavis? Annie’s mind raced. Maybe Billy Cameron was in the bedroom right now, a murderer returned to plant evidence to incriminate Ingrid. Or it could be anyone! Duane Webb, or that dreadful Prescott woman, or that pale-eyed Smith man.

Annie gripped her flashlight like a billy club. (They were made of rosewood around the turn of the century. Annie had one that had been carried by a captain in New York’s Finest and was now mounted beside the mug collection in Death on Demand.) She crept forward.

She was acutely aware that almost any one of the suspects outweighed her. She didn’t have the heft of either Penny Wanawake or Carlotta Carlyle. She would have to rely on speed and determination. And she’d never hit anyone over the head in her entire life. But the ready biff was certainly part of a good detective’s arsenal. And she
had
to know who the intruder was. Perhaps it really was the murderer. She could solve the case and find Ingrid!

Adrenaline pumped through her. She lifted her flashlight-armed hand, turned the knob, flung open the door of the bedroom and charged.

It was in mid-flight, her weapon descending toward the crouched figure dimly illuminated by a pencil flash, that Annie breathed the unmistakable, distinctive scent of mountain-fresh lilac. In a flailing, desperate effort to avoid contact, Annie lurched sideways, tripped, and ended up flat on her back, breathless and aching. And furious.

“Annie, my dear,” Laurel chided gently, “I know you are
always
in a hurry, but really, my sweet, is it wise to
launch
yourself so precipitously in the dark?”

Late Sunday night

“Makes copies back and front, in five colors, and collates.” Henny closed the paper holder and punched three buttons.

Max studied the open liquor cabinet by the light of his flash. He took no interest in mechanical details. The information at hand, he was quite willing to let Henny take charge of reproducing it. “Harley does himself proud.” He held up one bottle. “My God, does anybody actually drink creme de menthe?”

“Sounds like Harley. Any scotch?” Serenely, she placed the second rental application onto the machine to be copied.

“Sure. Dewar’s and Johnnie Walker Black.”

“I’ll take Dewar’s.”

Max’s voice was muffled as he bent to open the refrigerator. “Ice maker, too. All the comforts of your home bar.” He found glasses, poured their drinks, handed one to Henny.

She raised her glass in salute. “So you had ‘further sources to draw on’ in compiling information on our suspects?”

He smiled blandly. “How about a gentleman’s agreement, Henny? You don’t reveal my sources—and I won’t reveal yours.”