Carolyn G. Hart (20 page)

“He’s smart enough to pay attention about the back door. I kept telling Saulter.”

Max’s voice rose in disgust. “How could this ex-wife know enough about your Sunday evening sessions to plant the dart and fix the lights?”

Annie didn’t like being patronized. Who did Max think he was? Colonel Primrose?

“If she was mad enough to murder him, she’d find out. It would be a stroke of genius, wouldn’t it, to kill somebody in front of a bunch of people with hot motives?”

Turning on her heel, she stalked toward the house next door.

The lawn was well kept, the house recently painted and guttered. That would be the work of the Halcyon maintenance company. The house had no touches of individuality, no hanging plants or flower beds.

Annie had just touched the bell when the door opened.

Capt. Mac was right. Carmen Morgan did look like a pistol. Silver-white, shoulder-length hair, a cerise tank top cut to the navel that emphasized a Dolly Parton cleavage and a Southern belle waist, and fingernails that must make thumb and finger precision difficult. Mike Hammer would have loved her—before he blew her away. A smell of camphorwood incense eddied from the dim living room.

She fastened shrewd, baby-blue eyes on Annie.

“I know who you are. Elliot got knocked off in your place.” She smiled thinly. “Wish I’d been there.”

“Were you?” Annie shot back, pleased at her own audacity.

“No such luck. Somebody say I was?” The baby-blue eyes narrowed. “You’ve been talking to that fat ex-cop next door. That jerk can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business.”

“We thought you might have some idea who did kill Elliot,” Max interjected smoothly, coming up silently behind Annie.

Carmen’s face reformed as she looked at Max. Her pale eyes with their dramatic underscoring of lavender mascara widened in appreciation. This is the kind of reaction Magnum gets.

Annie felt her own face stiffen like plaster of paris.

The appraising eyes swept up and down Max’s tall frame. “Why should you care, big boy?”

Big boy
.

Gag.

“The cops have some dumb ideas. We’re trying to set the record straight.”

“You mean they want to pitch it on gumdrop here.”

It took a minute to realize that she was said gumdrop. Annie opened her mouth to explode, but clever Max got there first.

“I’ll bet they haven’t even asked you for your help.” He leaned revoltingly close to Carmen, oozing camaraderie.

“They didn’t even bother to come tell me he was dead.” Her porcelain pretty face turned brittle, and abruptly she looked a decade older. “I mean, I was married to the jerk for four years, three months and eighteen days, and nobody even tells me he’s dead.”

“That’s awful,” Max commiserated. “How’d you find out?”

“I got a friend at the police station.”

Annie suddenly remembered the brawny motorcycle cop. A friend, indeed.

Carmen Morgan swivelled her platinum head to look again at Annie, a searching and not especially comradely look. “That’s how I knew
she
was in a pickle. Bud, my friend, says they’re going to arrest her tomorrow.” She snorted. “Hell, you didn’t kill Elliot. I can tell that by looking at you. You don’t have the stuff.”

While Annie was trying to decide whether to be complimented or offended, Carmen focused on Max.

“You come on in. I’ll tell you what I can about my ex. The louse.”

Annie moved in tandem with Max. She intended to stick to him like Nora to Nick, whether Carmen liked it or not.

The small hall was dingy with scuffed black-and-white checkerboard tile. A heavy smell of camphorwood combined with the two mint juleps to make her head feel dangerously unsteady.

“A beer, you guys?”

Annie started to decline, but Max grinned and said, “Sure. Let me help you,” and he trailed Carmen into the kitchen.

Right on his heels, Annie followed. Max was not only a jealous pig and a sore-sport toad, he was now revealing himself to be a lecher of the first order.

Carmen opened three bottles of Dos XX’s, and waved them to seats at the tan Formica-topped kitchen table. No light beer here. And apparently equally little cooking. The kitchen looked like a display in the home section at Sears, and just about as used.

Her body arched seductively toward Max, Carmen said, “What do you want to know?”

“Tell us about yourself.” Max drew his chair closer to Carmen’s. He would soon be on the same side of the table with her.

Annie gripped her bottle forcefully. Otherwise, she might have tossed it in his ingenuous face.

Carmen used both hands to fluff her long, silver hair. “True confessions?” she asked huskily.

Annie was delighted to note that Max looked a tad uncomfortable. He lifted his beer and drank.

“How about where you’re from and how you met Elliot,” Annie suggested tartly, smirking at Max’s discomfort.

“I’m a dancer. I was working at a club down in the Keys, and Elliot came in. He was one big spender. Anyway, he was writing a book.” She squinted reminiscently. “He told me I was like Sadie somebody, and I was wonderful material.” She sipped at her beer and peered coyly and fuzzily at Max. The old bat was too vain to wear glasses.

Annie translated this: Carmen was a stripper in a joint,
and Elliot was playing another role, macho novelist à la Hemingway.

“And you got married?” She cringed at the naked astonishment in her voice.

“Yeah. We went on a big party, and it seemed like a good idea.”

Wonder what kind of idea it seemed to Elliot when he sobered up?

Carmen’s mouth tightened. Annie added another five years to her age.

“Have you been divorced long?” Where had Max suddenly acquired his vast reserves of sympathy?

“Six months.”

“Why are you staying here? Why don’t you go back to Florida?”

Carmen swung on Annie furiously. “Why should I? I’ve got as much right to live here as anybody.”

Max finished his beer, smacking his lips in pleasure, then broke the uncomfortable silence. “Did you know about the writers’ meetings on Sunday nights at Death On Demand?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Her eyes flicked over Annie’s face. “You people give me the creeps. Death On Demand. Why don’t you have a nice little shop that sells pretty things? You know, painted sea shells and birds in glasses. That kind of thing?”

“My uncle died and left me the bookstore,” Annie replied in a strangled voice.

Carmen shrugged. “You gotta go with what you got. That’s what I’ve always done.” Consciously or unconsciously, she raised her arms and stretched her body sensuously.

Max leaned forward. “Did you know Elliot was going to say a lot of bad things about the other writers the night he was killed?”

“Oh, hell yes. He told me all about it.”

“He did?” Annie shot Max a triumphant glare. “When did you see him?”

“He dropped by Friday afternoon. About five. To bring my alimony check. He was trying to chisel like always, two hundred bucks short. Said he’d lost a bundle on the commodities market, but he’d get the rest to me next week.” She tugged at the cerise tank top, redistributing
the wealth. “Hey, how do you suppose I can collect my money?”

While Max enthusiastically explained the law of probate, Annie thought furiously.

“Carmen, what did he tell you about the other writers?”

Elliot’s ex-wife took a dainty sip of beer. “This and that. He loved to snoop around. I mean, he really liked to get the dirt on people.”

“Did he tell you what he was going to say Sunday night?”

“Oh, sort of. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I wanted to talk about the money he owed me. I mean, try living here without a lot of bucks—”

Max leaned across the table and turned on a two-hundred-watt smile. “Try to remember. It could mean a lot.”

“To you?” Carmen inquired huskily.

“To everybody,” Annie interjected in an arctic tone. It would be hard for Carmen to remember. Her attention span was obviously limited solely to matters of importance to her.

But, with Max cheering her on, the woman dredged up some interesting information.

Some of it they knew—about Emma, the Farleys, and Hal. Some of it they didn’t.

“Elliot said Fritz Hemphill was an idiot not to pay his wife alimony. I told him I sure agreed with that. Guys who don’t pay their alimony are real geeks.” For the first time, Annie noted the diamond-studded hoop earring hidden beneath the platinum hair.

“Is that all he had on Fritz?”

Carmen snorted. “Naw. That was why he had stuff on Fritz. Seems like his ex-wife is no chum, and she unloaded a bellyful to Elliot.”

“What?” Max asked.

Carmen smeared the moisture from her beer bottle with a deadly fingernail. “Something about watching your backside with Fritz, not letting him come up behind you with a gun. Something like that.”

A gun. That sounded more like it. Annie remembered Fritz’s squidlike eyes.

“As for that jerk next door,” and Carmen tilted her
platinum head delicately toward Capt. Mac’s house, “Elliot said he was a cool bastard all right, one who’d learned to keep his mouth shut.”

It figured that Capt. Mac wouldn’t broadcast information about a paternity suit.

“How about Kelly Rizzoli?” Max prodded.

“Nutty as a fruitcake, he said,” Carmen replied, twirling an index finger by her temple significantly.

“Nutty how?” Annie asked, then thought,
Now I’m beginning to sound like her
. As if he could read her mind, Max grinned teasingly. She ignored him.

“Something about some tricks she’d played. Nasty ones, like killing somebody’s cat.”

Annie’s skin crawled.
Psycho. Hallowe’en II
. Highsmith. Rendell. There were people who did things like that. But could they include Kelly, who had such a sensitive face and such an air of vulnerability?

Annie’s recoil didn’t escape Carmen’s notice. “Yeah, you were sure having a swell party Sunday night. Lots of fun people there.” Her pale eyes glinted maliciously. “Then there’s the scoop on you. Elliot found out all about Santa Fe.” Carmen’s lip curled. “You think I’m just a cheap bitch, but I’d never do anything like that.” She glanced over to Max. “You ought to ask her about Santa Fe sometime.”

Santa Fe. What would Max think about Santa Fe? It had spelled the end for her and Richard. Thank God.

Annie looked directly at Carmen. “Yes, I can tell Max about Santa Fe.”

There was a short, sharp pause, then Max interjected smoothly, “Carmen, did Elliot play the commodities market very often?”

Annie could have hugged him.

The widow grimaced. “Like clockwork. The sap.”

“So maybe he really needed money.”

“He
always
needed money,” Carmen said seriously. This was obviously a subject close to her heart.

Annie turned to Max. “See, I thought there might be blackmail involved. I don’t care what you say, he was extorting money from Emma Clyde …”

“Wait a minute,” the blonde interrupted. “What makes you think so?”

“As soon as I made it clear I knew what Elliot was going to say, Emma asked me how much money I wanted. That must mean she was already being blackmailed.”

“Not by Elliot.” Carmen lost interest in Annie’s theory. “No way.”

“Why not? If he needed money, and you said he did, why wouldn’t he take money to keep quiet about something like that?”

“Not Elliot. He was a chiseler, yeah, but he wasn’t a crook. He told me once he thought blackmailers were slime, real slime. No way. You got to understand”—she got up and wriggled to the refrigerator—“he was a rat, but he really hated killers and bad cops and nasty, underhanded people. You know his favorite detective, Josh Hibbert, well, all that stuff was really him. The trouble is, he wanted to shove people’s noses in their little messes. He liked to push people. That’s why I dumped him. Cat and mouse, always a little push here, a shove there. I wouldn’t take it. I told him to stick it.” She squinted into the refrigerator thoughtfully. There were no more Dos XX’s. “I guess he pushed somebody too hard.”

“I think she’s kinda cute,” Max said, gunning the Porsche.

“You and every male in South Carolina.”

“That is a sexist remark.”

“You bet it is.” Annie gently massaged her temples. “Wow, beer on top of two mint juleps. But it’s a good thing we talked to her. She did know Elliot was going to speak Sunday night, and she knew why. She could easily have hidden the dart and tampered with the lights.”

“Oh, Annie. Admit it. You just don’t like the girl.”

Girl. That was a laugh.

“She’s about as girlish as a female anaconda.”

“But to the right male anaconda …”

“I wonder how Elliot left his money?”

Max slowed the Porsche to swing back onto the main road. Massive yellow pines crowded the road, and through the open sunroof came the scent of sunbaked pitch. The scaly orange trunks rose ruler-straight.

“According to Carmen, he’d commoditied out of money.”

“Sure, that would be her story. But wouldn’t you think
ice
about that sweet girl if it turned out she inherited?”

Reluctantly, Max nodded. “That’s an oversight, all right. We need to find out who gets his money—if there is any to get. That could make a difference.”

“You know the motives for murder. Hate, revenge, fear, and greed.”

“Or a combination thereof. Where do you suppose Kelly Rizzoli fits in?”

On the surface, their interchange was just as usual—light, flippant, and fun. Annie sensed an undertone, though, whether or not Max did.

She reached out and touched his arm. “Before we see Kelly, I want to tell you about Santa Fe.”