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?”
ELEVEN
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.”
The cheerful clink of glasses sealed their bargain.
Annie’s hip throbbed from her fall, but she ignored the nagging discomfort as she peered intently at the circular loops in the braided rug.
She ignored, also—or tried to—the husky humming that drifted from Ingrid’s bedroom. All she needed now was to have to deal with Laurel! It was like trying to do brain surgery with a leprechaun tap-dancing beside the surgical instrument tray.
“Annie, love, could you come?” Laurel’s throaty murmur rose confidently.
Taking a tight grip both on her flashlight and her temper, Annie bounced to her feet and hurried to the bedroom door. “Shh,” she implored her mother-in-law. “If anyone hears us and calls the cops, we’re in terrific trouble.”
Laurel’s hyacinth-blue eyes widened. “My dear, you sound so apprehensive! But there is a simple remedy—oxygen, that most life-giving of forces. Please, please, Annie, take a deep breath. One. Two. Three.” The pencil flash waved in concert with the words.
Annie was infuriated to realize she was indeed breathing deeply “Laurel, stop it! We don’t have time to fool around. I need to—”
“Time is not our master, Annie dear. We can conquer time. As I have learned from dear Ophelia, the world can be ours through meditation.” The ingenuous eyes brightened. “Just think about that, Annie, my sweet, and you will feel a sense of relaxation, even of exultation.”
Maddened almost beyond endurance, Annie opened her mouth to explode, but Laurel deftly headed her off.
“Now, I called you in here because you, dear, of all people, can help the most to rescue our dear Ingrid. You see, I might make the wrong choice,” and she pointed toward the clothing visible through the open door to Ingrid’s closet.
Annie’s mouth closed. She struggled for composure.
“Annie, I want you to think. Press your fingertips lightly to your temples, close your eyes, remember Ingrid in her favorite clothes.”
Annie’s mouth opened again, then closed. It might be quicker—and, God knew, simpler—if she did whatever damfool thing Laurel wanted. Then she could return to the living room.
Laurel stepped into the closet.
Annie squeezed her eyes shut. What was Ingrid’s favorite outfit? Almost as she formed the question, a picture flashed into her mind: Ingrid cheerfully working at the cake booth during the hospital bazaar, clad in a white cotton sweater decorated with an imposing black cat among red geraniums and a cotton-and-linen skirt in a textured check of black and grey.
Her eyes snapped open and she hurriedly described the outfit to Laurel. “She gets so many compliments on that sweater. It’s one of her favorites. She calls it her ‘Agatha’ sweater.”
“So she is fond of Agatha,” Laurel said brightly, nodding in satisfaction as she rummaged through the clothes. “That’s what we thought—though the results were so disappointing.”
Annie was aware of fleeting time—and the disaster that would occur should anyone notice will-o’-the-wisp lights moving about Ingrid’s cabin—but one thing she had to know.
“Laurel?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Laurel, I can understand fish. But why smoked herring?”
“Oh, here it is, the very sweater. Oh, how marvelous.” Laurel backed out of the closet and turned to face Annie, clutching the sweater tightly. “Oh, the herring. Yes, of course. I would like to make it clear, but reincarnation is so complex. I do fear that for once dear Ophelia was misguided. She had the most distinct impression that Agatha had once been a scullery maid in London in the 1890s—and that her young man had been seriously injured in an accident with a hansom cab.”
Annie wondered if walking on quicksand might result in the same sense of disorientation she was experiencing.
Laurel took a quick step toward Annie. “My dear, don’t you feel well?”
“Oh, I’m fine, fine. Of course, it all makes perfectly good sense. Smoked herring, of course. By all means.” She began to back out of the bedroom.
Laurel gave a tiny shrug. “But Agatha was just—I hate to say it—just piggy—and when she’d finished her herring, she sank into the deepest sleep. Ophelia thought once it might be a trance, but her spirit was inert and no good at all to Ophelia.”
Annie translated this to mean that Agatha experienced a blood-sugar lag and, having gorged herself, refused to be aroused.
“So,” Laurel concluded, “our afternoon was wasted. But this”—and she held the sweater aloft—“should make all the difference. And it’s all because of you. Now, dear, you can go back to your search.” Her nod was magnanimous.
The clear implication was that Annie’s endeavors, childish though they were, should be indulged. Annie stalked back to the living room. Oh, Lordy Already one-thirty. She had barely begun.
Dropping to her knees, she returned to her inch-by-inch scrutiny of the rug. Her search was rewarded as she neared the blood-crusted area where Jesse Penrick’s body had lain. She gave a whoop of triumph—pine needles embedded in the cotton.
Shiny brown, prickly, two-inch-long pine needles.
She was careful now, very careful, not to touch or disturb them.
But she could scarcely contain her excitement. This must be the same heady flush of cerebral delight enjoyed by Nero Wolfe when the answers clicked in place. She had taken that one tidbit of information from the feature writer, the revelation that Jesse Penrick had suffered a contusion on the back of his head, and built a theory.
The pine needles were the first tangible proof that she might be right.
Pine needles there, but no pine needles around the periphery. She jumped up and moved her flash slowly across the living room floor. No pine needles. She hurried to the kitchen, turned the beam down. No pine needles. Swinging around, she paced back to stare down at the braided rug. “They were stuck to his clothes!”
She said it aloud and looked up.
Unblinking blue eyes regarded her thoughtfully. Laurel was perched gracefully on the chintz sofa, Ingrid’s white cotton “Agatha” sweater in her lap. She clapped her hands excitedly. “My dear, your search has been successful!”
“It didn’t happen the way they think,” Annie said eagerly. “He wasn’t stabbed during an argument.”
“Of course not,” Laurel agreed approvingly. “He departed this life unknowingly.”
Annie stared at her for a long moment. “That’s right.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “How did you know?”
“Ophelia says it is a matter of emanations. When a spirit has been violently extinguished—and there would certainly be a flood of emotion when facing death—anguished reverberations come down through time. It is this power which often accounts for poltergeist events.”
“So?”
A graceful hand indicated the living area. “No emanations.” She tapped a finger to her cheek. “It is a subtle distinction, because he was done to death in this room. The autopsy report would have indicated movement of the body after death, had it occurred. Yet, there are no emanations. So, the solution is clear.”
Annie wondered what kind of emanations would result if Laurel were violently removed from the premises. But, she reminded herself firmly, this was her mother-in-law. Until death did them part. Except, of course, Laurel would smilingly negate that last possibility. For a moment, the idea of an eternity spent with Laurel was almost more than Annie could envision without nervous collapse.
One day at a time, she reminded herself. Never had that sensible injunction seemed quite so imperative.
She even managed a smile. “Oh, of course, I understand. No emanations. Does Ophelia have any idea where Jesse was knocked unconscious?”
Laurel’s headshake was pitying—and infuriating. “Annie, my sweet, it doesn’t work like that.” Pressing Ingrid’s sweater to her oatmeal-colored robe, Laurel was earnest. “Ophelia is merely a receptacle. She receives emanations from her surroundings. Like this room. Or from objects.” She held up the sweater. “Ophelia opens her mind and heart to vibrations from both past and present, the residue of which are retained in material objects. Because of her own purity of spirit, she can brush through that curtain which separates us from infinity and receive inspiration and gui
dance.”
Heartily tempted to shout “Bullshit,” as Texans are wont to do when provoked, Annie restrained the impulse and concentrated fiercely on what mattered.
Those pine needles didn’t walk into Ingrid’s living room and neatly dispose themselves where Jesse Penrick had been dumped.
And that was exactly what had happened.
He had been knocked unconscious elsewhere. Her eyes once again swept the room. There was nothing where he had fallen that could have caused a contusion on the back of his head.
This changed entirely the picture of Jesse facing his murderer at midnight in Ingrid’s cabin.
Jesse had met his murderer somewhere else. He’d been knocked unconscious. He had lain on a carpet of pine needles until he was carried to this cabin.
Posey saw this crime all wrong. This was no murder of passion.
This was a carefully thought out, premeditated murder, and the cold-blooded plan had included killing Jesse with a weapon from Ingrid’s home.
Posey’s likely ridicule rang in her ears: Isn’t this a rather cumbersome theory, Ms. Laurance? Designed to fit circumstances you have merely imagined? Based on a scattering of pine needles?
Annie’s mouth firmed. But it fitted! It fitted with the contusion on the back of Jesse’s head. It fitted with the pine needles where the corpse had been found.
If there were pine needles in his clothing—By God, that’s all she needed.
“I’m getting there,” she cried excitedly. She paced across the room, skirting the rug, of course. “Laurel, listen, it all makes sense. Somebody decided to kill Jesse and frame Ingrid for the murder. It was planned from the start. Don’t you see? Because there was no reason for Jesse to come to Ingrid’s house at midnight. That’s crazy. No, it’s a frame.” She pointed dramatically at the rug. “Those pine needles prove it!”
Laurel nodded. “That’s very well thought out.” She carefully folded Ingrid’s sweater, then rose and glided across the room to brush her lips approvingly against Annie’s cheek. “I’m afraid, however, dear, that there is one major obstacle.”
Honeymoon With Murder Page 13