Death on Demand (5 page)

Annie yanked the magazine aside, opened one eye, and squinted. “I just ran three miles on the beach. How did you know it was me?”

“As has been said in perhaps another context, I would know that body anywhere.”

She opened both eyes and laughed. He looked wonderful, of course. All six foot two inches of him. And she would know
his
body anywhere, every lean, muscular inch of it. To distract herself, she waved him down beside her.

Max flipped out a blue-and-white striped Ralph Lauren towel and dropped down, spattering sand.

“What took you three months?”

He shoved a hand through his thick, tangly blond hair, and rolled over on his elbow to stare down with ink-blue
eyes. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was rude to ask direct questions?”

She struggled to a sitting position and fished a sand-filmed bottle of Hawaiian Tropic from her beach bag. Studiously ignoring both Max’s body and his eyes, she began slapping the coconut-scented oil on her legs, overlooking his appreciative “m-mm.”

“Why three months?” she repeated brusquely.

“You didn’t call to tell me where you were.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Annie looked up at him, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. “Dammit, Max, I was afraid you’d persuade me to come back to New York.”

“Would that be so bad?”

This side of Broward’s Rock faced out into the Atlantic. A clear, softly blue sky arched overhead. The air carried the pungent scents of salt water, tar, seaweed, and Annie’s coconut-scented suntan oil. The water stretched endlessly to the east, as richly green as pea soup; a gentle surf strummed a seven-mile length of oyster-gray sand. There was a sprinkling of sunbathers and swimmers scattered up and down the beach, enjoying the eighty-degree day, but no one was near them. This stretch of beach was all their own.

“Max, it won’t work. You don’t work. Life is just a joke to you—a compendium of one-liners.”

“So you’d like me better if I were earnest.” He frowned, then the corners of his mouth twitched. “Let’s see. What sufficiently important career could I pursue?” He leaned back on his elbows, staring pensively at the horizon.

Annie fought down a disquieting desire to touch the mat of hair on his chest, glistening a light gold in the sunlight.

Sitting bolt upright, he slapped his palm down and sand sprayed against her oiled legs. “I know. Annie, would you love me if I were a priest?”

“Max!”

He grinned. “Anglican, of course.”

“Max.” She used both hands to shove him backward, but he caught her as he fell, and they rolled together in the sand.

Max, who had helped brew the coffee, sniffed with theatrical appreciation when Annie poured him a mug. Lifting it to drink, he paused to look at the inscription in red cursive letters against the white background. “The Listening House. Do houses listen?”

“That’s a title. If you looked on the bottom, you’d find the author’s name.”

Obediently, he raised the mug high enough to see the bottom. “Mabel Seeley.”

Annie waved her hand abstractedly toward the rows of mugs shelved behind the coffee bar as she filled the cream pitcher. “Each mug has the title of a book which is considered important in the history of mystery novels.” She put the cream pitcher beside the sugar bowl and reached for the corkscrew to open the bottles of sauvignon blanc.

Max moved behind the coffee bar and called out an occasional name that attracted him.
“The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Rasp, The Tragedy of Y, The Cape God Mystery, Rebecca, Home Sweet Homicide”
He turned to look at her. “Where did you find these?”

“Oh, I did them.”

“In your little home kiln?”

She laughed. “No, silly. I didn’t
make
them. I painted the titles.”

“Annie, I learn something new about you all the time. It never occurred to me that you could paint as well as act.”

“I’m not exactly a threat to Van Gogh,” she pointed out crisply.

He started to count the mugs stacked on the shelves behind the coffee bar but his attention soon strayed. “You haven’t read all those books, have you?”

“Nope. But lots of them.”

“A misspent youth, obviously.”

“I suppose you were busy with Saint Augustine’s
Confessions?”

“Oh, in a manner of speaking. I suspect old Auggie would have been a
Playboy
man himself.”

“The point is, he changed his ways.”

“But not altogether for the better.”

Since she wasn’t winning this exchange, she concentrated on completing the ham, salami, and cheese tray. Agatha twined expectantly around her ankle. Annie held down a
piece of cheddar for her. “Cats aren’t supposed to eat cheese, silly.”

Agatha demanded more, and, like a well-trained owner, Annie obliged.

“How many do you expect?” Max asked.

Among their other activities that afternoon, she’d told Max all about the Sunday evening sessions and Elliot Morgan. After all, it was something else to talk about besides Max’s disinclination to toil and her determination to treat life in the serious manner it deserved.

She added them up, one finger after another.

“Elliot himself, of course. Then there’s Emma Clyde. You know who
she
is. And the Farleys, Janis and Jeff. They write children’s mysteries. Their latest is
The Secret of the Red Dragon.
Harriet Edelman does those clever Harrison Macintosh books. Fritz Hemphill wrote
Death in an Alley.
His heroes are always sleazy and very, very tough. You know, the guy busts open the villain’s head with a tire tool, then gets beaned himself, slugs down some scotch, runs up a fire escape, and has sex on the tenth landing with a blonde he just met.”

“That’s six.” Max paused teasingly. “Hey, maybe I could be an accountant.”

Annie was dreading the coming session, but, somehow, that awareness couldn’t dampen the bubbly sense of fun she’d felt ever since Max dropped down onto the sand beside her. Now he stood looking at her ingenuously, his thick blond hair carefully combed and dampened, his face fresh from a shower, his white broadcloth shirt crisp, and she thought he looked wonderful standing by the coffee bar at Death On Demand.

Sternly, she forced her mind back to her guest list.

“Okay, six. Oh yes, there’s Hal Douglas. He writes caper novels like S. S. Van Dine but not as good. And Kelly Rizzoli. She goes in for psychological fiction à la Ruth Rendell. And Ingrid Jones, the woman who helps me out part-time, usually comes. That’s every … oh no, I’m forgetting Capt. Mac. I told you about him.”

“The somber sleuth.”

Annie considered it. “No, not somber. I mean, he’s extremely serious about everything, but he’s really a nice
man. He was wonderful when Uncle Ambrose died. Oh, Max, that night was so
awful
—”

“Annie, don’t dwell on it. You can’t undo the past.”

“He must have taken ill, felt faint. Why, he spent more time in that boat than he did on land. He couldn’t just have
fallen
off. If only I’d gone with him—” She stared down into her mug, face strained. “We found him floating only a few feet from the boat, right here in the harbor.”

“You and Capt. Mac?”

“Yes, I phoned him when Uncle Ambrose didn’t come home that night. I think I knew right from the start that something awful had happened, though Capt. Mac tried to persuade me I was being silly. He couldn’t have been more wonderful when we found—Uncle Ambrose. He called the police and stayed with me the whole night.”

“That was helpful.” Max sounded faintly strangled.

She looked at him in surprise.

“How old is this noble Galahad?”

“Mmm. Fiftyish, I guess.”

“The James Garner type?”

Max was jealous.

“Oh, I’d say more the James Bond type.” Her voice fell seductively. “Absolutely irresistible to women of all ages.”

Max’s chin jutted out alarmingly.

“Actually, Max, he’s built like a sumo wrestler, and his eyes look positively glacial, gritty and gray. But he is a very nice man, and he’s invited me out for lunch a couple …”

The front door bell jangled. Agatha streaked past, en route to her special hiding place deep in the shadow of the largest fern.

The Sunday Night Special was about to begin.

The first arrival was Capt. Mac. He was, in a sumo way, attractive, his short black hair nicely frosted with white, his blunt, intelligent face softening as he looked down at his hostess. She glanced at Max and enjoyed his struggle between manners and immediate hostility.

“Max Darling,” he said crisply as he thrust out his hand.

“John McElroy, but call me Capt. Mac. All these kids do.”

Max’s smile looked a little strained.

Emma Clyde and the Farleys came in next. Emma was carrying a covered bowl and two large bags of chips.

“I remember how these wolves devoured your food last time, Annie, and I thought I would pitch in. Shall I just put these things on the table?”

Emma wore a Hawaiian print caftan and looked like a wildly painted tugboat. Her hair sprouted in stiff bronze curls, and Annie was positive she’d paid a long visit to Island Beauty Inc. on Saturday. Emma neither looked nor sounded like a millionaire author, but Annie noticed her intensely blue eyes sweep the room. Was she looking for Elliot? But it was Max she fastened onto.

“A friend of Annies! That’s so nice. I’m delighted to meet you.”

The Farleys stood at the edge of the coffee area. As usual, they gave Annie the creeps, which immediately made her inject extra warmth into her greeting.

“Jeff. Janis. I’m
so
glad you could come.”

They looked at her unsmilingly. Jeff wore light blue slacks and a white crewneck sweater. He looked like an overage cheerleader despite his sleek blond beard and horn-rimmed glasses. Janis, slim and pale, stayed a pace behind him. Her large green eyes flickered nervously from Annie to Jeff and back to Annie. Janis had a quality of seeming more her husband’s appendage than a person in her own right, a posture Annie found exceedingly irritating.

“Some coffee?” Annie urged. “Or would you prefer wine?”

Janis looked to her husband for guidance.

Even as the door bell jangled again, Annie had time to notice Max gravitating to Janis, who certainly did have a soft magnolia appearance. Trust Max. Jeff watched them, too.

Fritz Hemphill nodded a brusque hello. Ingrid Jones slipped in behind him, and in her self-effacing way began to help serve the wine and coffee. Her thin face flushed with pleasure at Max’s friendliness. Ingrid was one of life’s nicer surprises, a retired librarian who knew everything about books and genuinely liked to help. Moreover, she was content with part-time work at the minimum wage, which was all Annie could eke out of a slender budget. If
the store ever made enough money to pay off the money she owed for improvements, an increase in Ingrid’s salary was first on Annie’s list.

Hal Douglas and Kelly Rizzoli came next, heads close together, which didn’t surprise Annie. Instinct told her a romance was in the offing, if not yet in full bloom. Hal and Kelly were really the most normal of all the writers. They made an attractive young couple, Hal cheerfully chubby, Kelly slight, with dark red hair and an appealing air of vulnerability. There was almost always a genial smile on Hal’s open, honest face. Annie liked Kelly but wondered a little at the force of her imagination. Her books focused on the dark and torturous impulses that drive decent people to evil. They were not good late-night solitary reading. Her most recent book uncomfortably reminded Annie of Margaret Millar’s powerful
Beast in View.

The room hummed with sound, the quick, insightful chatter of people who knew each other well. As she made sure everyone met Max, Annie felt grateful to him. His presence was helping. Maybe she had exaggerated the possibilities of disaster. Everyone seemed quite cheerful and animated, except, of course, for the Parleys, but Max’s good-humored teasing was bringing a flush of excitement to even Janis’s pallid cheeks. Jeff looked on darkly. It would be good for him, Annie decided virtuously, refusing to acknowledge any murky stirrings in her own psyche.

She began to enjoy her own party. Maybe Elliot wouldn’t even show up.

“I told you there would be a good turnout.”

He had come up behind her. At the sound of his voice, she managed not to jump. She turned slowly.

“Oh, Elliot, I’d like for you to meet Max Darling.”

“Sure. I’d like to meet him. I know a lot about him.”

The ever-present cigarette dangled from Elliot’s mouth.

“Think I’d left you out of my research, darlin’?”

He might as well have thrown a red flag into a bull’s face or dropped a match in gunpowder. Knowing her own proclivity for explosions, Annie normally kept a scrupulous rein on her temper, but too much had happened: Elliot’s threats that morning, Max’s unexpected arrival and all it might imply, the frightening, long moments when she’d thought someone was in the empty store.

Her control shattered like glass hitting concrete.

“That’s the last straw. I’ve had enough of you and your insulting, obnoxious behavior, Elliot, and I’m warning you, I’m not going to let you ruin my Sunday Night Specials.”