The Christie Caper (16 page)

The last of the extra phone lines had just been installed. Normally, of course, it took at least two days for new lines to be activated. Lady Gwendolyn spent ten minutes in private consultation with the telephone company supervisor, who emerged from the session in her thrall, and presto, here came the phones.

The extra tables in his office—workstations for the phones—did crowd the decor. And it was hard to concentrate with Laurel chattering to his right (“so interesting that you’ve known Mrs. Calloway ever since you both were just girls … so exciting to have a window on the life of one of the truly popular authors of our time”) and Henny aggressively pressing her questions to his left (“Someone told me Nathan Hillman has quite a temper … Not your experience? How well …?”). They’d divided up the list—Bledsoe and all who appeared to be involved with him—among the three of them. He rubbed his ear. It seemed to him as though he’d been on the phone for days, not just hours. And he’d never realized just how uncomfortable office straight chairs were. He glanced longingly at his Italian Renaissance desk, fit for a cardinal. Behind it, Lady Gwendolyn looked just a trifle absurd perched on his red leather desk chair, which she, not surprisingly, had punched into the most upright position.

Of course, it did make it easier for her to let fly with the darts. Her plump arm flashed through the air, the dart sped unerringly for the target, and that aristocratic nose twitched with satisfaction.

Uncanny, how close she came each time to bull’s-eye.

Annie’s eyes watered. Cigarette smoke always did it to her. She blinked and peered into the dimness of Blackbeard’s Retreat. Although it wasn’t quite five yet, the hotel bar was full.

And loud.

“So a few of the books aren’t wonderful. Three, maybe four. But she wrote more great mysteries than anyone else ever has—or will.”

“… be fascinating to know the name of the officer who painted the fresco around the top of the walls of the library at Greenway when the house was occupied by the American Navy during World War Two.”

“… wished she hadn’t put Poirot in
The Hollow.
She was right, you know. The book didn’t need him.”

“It gives me the willies—an old lady looking at a fireplace and asking about the child buried behind it!”

“She spent fifteen years writing her autobiography.”

Emma Clyde was at the very back of the bar where it was so dark and jammed with bodies Annie felt claustrophobic. She felt a bond with Christie, who disliked crowds, cigarette smoke, loud voices, and cocktail parties. The shy author would have avoided Blackbeard’s Retreat like the plague.

Annie felt as welcome as the plague when she met Emma’s gaze.

Emma’s chilly gaze.

No smile. Not a flicker of welcome.

Annie ignored the awestruck fans clustered around Emma. Plunking her palms down on the table, sticky from spilled drinks, Annie snapped, “Dammit, you
did
almost run Bledsoe down. Why shouldn’t I think you shot at him, too?”

“I was in absolute control of the car,” Emma pointed out impatiently. “I know too much about guns and how bullets can ricochet to fire them in the presence of innocent people.”

“You say.”

“I do say.” So might Mrs. Boynton have spoken to Lennox’s wife in
Appointment with Death.
There was the same sense of an overpowering personality that would brook no interference.

Annie met the gaze from those icy blue eyes without flinching. “All right, Emma. I’ll accept what you’re telling me—that someone else shot at Bledsoe, someone who isn’t as punctilious about the safety of others. So you should be willing to help the authorities catch that person.”

Emma was the first to look away. She reached down,
plunged her hand into a straw purse that looked large enough to harbor a laptop computer, and pulled out a cigarette case.

Annie’s eyes widened. She’d never seen Emma smoke.

Emma lifted out a menthol-tipped cigarette. “At conferences,” she said brusquely as she lit it

The minty smoke curled up into Annie’s face. Her eyes burned and her nose itched. “Look, Emma, give me a break. I didn’t tell Frank there was bad blood between Fleur Calloway and Neil Bledsoe. But now we have to. He has to know what kind of person Bledsoe is, who might have it in for him.”

Emma blew two perfect smoke rings. As they dissolved, she smiled grimly. “Annie, dear, I don’t have the feintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Annie tugged her cotton blouse over her head, dropped her skirt to the floor. “Can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke. Feel like I’ve spent a week with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Look what cigarettes did to him!”

Max, a sheaf of papers in his hand, lounged against the jamb of the open door to the bathroom, an appreciative audience as bra, half-slip, and panties joined the skirt and blouse.

Annie stepped into the enormous peach bathtub and, honestly, honeymoon suite or no, this was beyond expectation. Water plunged with the explosiveness of the Victoria Falls Christie described with such delight in
The Man in the Brown Suit.
Moreover, there was room enough for—

She looked up in surprise. Then pleasure.

Oh yes, indeed, there was room enough.

A
nnie snapped off the dryer and gave a final swipe to her still damp hair. “So Emma’s not going to be any help at all.” She checked her reflection in the wall mirror. As always, she was surprised at how little outward appearances can reveal. She looked cool and summery in her lemon crew neck sweater and red-and-blue patched Madras shorts. Perhaps the only hint of recent passion was the softness in her eyes.

Max, cool, crisp, and, as always, Joe Hardy handsome in white shorts and a navy crew neck, rustled his sheaf of papers, some of them newly water-spotted, and said, “Emma must know that the trouble between Calloway and Bledsoe isn’t common knowledge. I didn’t pick up anything about it We can check with Laurel, see what she’s found out about Fleur in her calls.”

Annie checked the water she’d put on to boil. “How’s everything going at the office?”

“At last count, Lady Gwendolyn’s dart score was eighteen thousand and climbing.”

“Isn’t she doing any work?” Annie dropped a quart-size bag into the pitcher.

Max leaned against the counter and watched as Annie poured the hot water over the tea bag. “Periodically, she drops her directives on our desks, enough interviewing ideas to keep us busy well into the twenty-first century. I can see why she has seventy-five books to her credit.” He rubbed his ear. “Do you think it’s getting a cauliflower look?”

Annie inspected it, almost added a kiss, decided Max
might be too easily distracted from serious pursuits, and murmured, “Looks healthy.” She found sliced limes and fresh mint in the refrigerator. Someone at the Palmetto House was definitely into sensory delights.

She put their huge glasses of iced tea on the table beside the wicker sofa, plopped down, and patted the cushion beside her.

Max settled down comfortably, perhaps only a little too close, and handed her the sheaf of papers.

Just to keep things on a businesslike plane, she pushed his thigh away from hers. Sipping her tea, she began to read.

“Oh, God,” Annie murmured.

Max slipped his arm around her shoulders.

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “No wonder,” she said simply. “Oh, Max, how can people be so dreadful?”

“Violence always has a long history,” he said soberly.

Annie laid the sheaf down. “I thought if we found out enough about him, we might find a way to reach him. But he’s been angry for a long, long time.” A twisted, scarred man. Was that why he was so intent on destroying the reverence so many millions feel for Christie? Or was it simply a matter of money?
… a lot of money …

The living and the dead. What mattered? Who mattered?

Neil Bledsoe, alive with all the possibilities and glories that life could offer.

Agatha Christie, dead and gone, but living still in the minds and hearts of her readers.

Annie picked up the sheets and determinedly began to read:

Annie reached over, edged the pen out of Max’s pocket, and circled
deadline.

But it seemed so futile. She almost put the papers down. What was the point in knowing more about Bledsoe? No appeal to his better nature or to his commitment as a critic to truth in publishing would have any effect. Not with this man.

But the sheets held the same riveting fascination as a James Ellroy novel. How dark could a life be?

She found her place:

Annie’s hackles rose at that. As if there were only one kind of mystery. Realism? Private detectives as knights errant, tilting courageously against an evil and corrupt society? Ah, the male fantasy novel, full of swashbuckling blood and guts with liberal splashes of female bashing and bedding. (Translate
barefoot and pregnant
to
backhanded and screwed.)

“Max, can you believe this!” and she pointed at the offending line. “About as close to real life as a Rambo movie. Do you want reality?” she demanded.

Max nodded obediently. He’d heard this diatribe before.

“Read Christie! There’s reality. Her characters are people everyone knows. Respectable people driven by lust and hatred and greed and dishonesty. That’s reality.” The fire in her eye was replaced abruptly by amusement. “I love it, the way some hard-boiled writers swagger around, as if
they
were the only true mystery writers. But ask any bookseller. Who sells? What sells? Christie sells. One
billion
books. They won’t sell a billion Hammett books in a thousand years!”

Her good humor restored, she resumed her reading: