Mint Julep Murder (10 page)

Those hypnotic eyes briefly moved toward Annie, then back to Leah. “Don’t you? Oh, I think you do. But there are none so blind as those who choose not to see.”

“Janet. To her sister. In
Playing the Fool.”

“Very, very good, my dear. So you did your homework. One of my best books.” Another sly, amused smile. “Ciao.”

And she slipped away.

Annie realized she hadn’t invited Missy to join them for dinner. Annie took one step after the author, then stopped. She wasn’t at all sure she cared to spend an entire evening with Melissa Sinclair.

Max murmured, “Don’t turn your back on Ms. Sinclair.”

“Don’t worry.” But Annie said it absently. Her eyes were on Alan Blake. He stood half in, half out of the room on a nearby balcony. His scowl made him look older and ill-tempered. Annie could only see the back of Blake’s companion. Long, curly dark hair. Broad shoulders in a short-sleeve, campesino-style white cotton shirt. Blake looked over his companion’s shoulder. The author’s eyes darted nervously around the room.

His gaze caught hers.

Blake stared at Annie blankly for a moment, still scowling, then abruptly, he forced a smile, nodded.

Annie lifted her hand in acknowledgment.

Well, if she gave out dinner invitations, she’d better wait until Mr. Blake was in a bit better frame of mind.

She knew one invitation she definitely wouldn’t extend.

Jimmy Jay Crabtree’s petulant rasp rose behind her. “… should of grabbed me some bourbon. This wine shit’s enough to make me puke. Listen, I told it like it is at my press conference. Dirty commie liberals are out to crucify me. The bleeding hearts don’t like it when you talk about Medicare fraud. And all this whining about people without insurance. Hell, let ’em get jobs and earn some insurance. And if they can’t get a job with insurance or keep it, why should the rest of us have to bail ’em out? We don’t have a health-care crisis in this country, we have a whiny baby crisis. How about some old-fashioned work ethic? That’s why they’re threatening to blow me up, and the latest thing is a death threat. Yeah. Sure as hell …”

Max glanced over Annie’s shoulder. “Going strong.”

“Dandy little fellow, isn’t he?”

“I believe I’ll kill him in my next book.” Emma Clyde’s voice was meditative. “Hi, Annie. Max.”

Annie turned and grinned at the imposing author. It wasn’t actually that Emma was tall. But she
seemed
tall.

And her cornflower-blue eyes were shrewdly calculating.

Annie felt quite sure Emma was indeed, at that moment,
considering methods of disposing of Jimmy Jay Crabtree.

“How?” Annie asked.

“A cobra in his suitcase would be rather fun.”

“Wouldn’t the cobra smother?”

“All right. A gift box with some strategic holes. Have it delivered to his hotel room late enough that he’d be too drunk to notice.” Emma’s square face was grimly amused. “Opening the package would frighten the cobra, and I picture the cobra as already being highly irritated. Yes, I like it.”

Perhaps Annie was too literal ever to try her hand at writing. She frowned. “Emma, where would you get a cobra?”

The detective novelist waved her hand airily. “Snake house at a zoo. Most zoos wouldn’t have enough money for an alarm system. Or one of those places that milk vipers for their venom to make antivenom.” Her eyes narrowed. “Have to find out if they milk cobras. Be rather a challenge to cop one, wouldn’t it?”

Those detached blue eyes swung toward the front door and their host. Thoughtfully.

Annie felt a chill.

Surely Emma wasn’t seriously considering a true-life cobra-in-a-box?

No, of course not.

Emma’s broad mouth quivered with amusement. She was simply enjoying the idea. Which was harmless enough.

Kenneth Hazlitt mopped his face with a sodden handkerchief and downed the rest of his drink. He looked at the empty glass and turned toward the wet bar.

Halfway there, he ran into a roadblock made up of three determined authors.

Annie foresaw the contest. “Be interesting to see what prevails, Kenneth’s thirst or our trio’s sales pitch.”

Max smiled fondly. “The old girls are giving it a real try, aren’t they?”

Miss Dora scarcely came to Hazlitt’s elbow. She was holding up a plate.

Annie licked her lips. She hoped there was some Divinity left. It was simply divine. She had a sudden picture of cookbook editors across the land. Were they all roly-poly? Did authors share samples of their best recipes? Mysteries with recipes sold at an incredible pace. Diane Mott Davidson, whose sleuth was caterer Goldy Bear, always came to signings with morsels to die for. And a Sisters in Crime potluck in Anchorage, Alaska, once featured the chili from Nancy Pickard’s
The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders
mystery. Hey, how about a party at Death on Demand, with readers each bringing a dish from their favorite culinary mystery? Annie made a mental note. Oh, it could be great. There were the dishes Spenser fixed, and how about the best from Nero Wolfe’s kitchen?

“Bourbon over Divinity,” Annie wagered, eyes still on Hazlitt.

The publisher moved doggedly forward. But the importuning authors, if not attached to his coattails, were hanging in, like tails to a comet. Kenneth reached the wet bar; the wannabes were in close pursuit.

Annie reached out and snagged a piece of candy.

Miss Dora didn’t even notice. The old lady’s dark eyes were riveted on the publisher’s ruddy face. “It’s time for a cookbook with collard greens and grits. And
real
key lime pie.” Her tiny nose wrinkled. “Not green!” Miss Dora stood on tiptoe to raise the plate close to Hazlitt’s face.

Hazlitt reached out and took two pieces of Divinity. Miss Dora beamed.

Henny moved in as smoothly as Frances and Richard Lockridge’s Jerry North mixing a martini. “Mr. Hazlitt,
everyone
wants it.”

Hazlitt popped the candies in his mouth. “Ma’am?” he mumbled. He edged toward the wet bar.

Henny matched him step for step. “Quick fixes. Think
Life’s Little Instruction Book.
Think
Everything I Know I
Learned from My Cat.
Publishing history. And I’ve got the next sure bestseller,
The Quotable Sleuth.
‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’ “

Hazlitt slid around the corner of the bar. “Holmes.” He grinned at Henny. His hands were hidden by the bar, but from the happy look on his face, Annie felt certain he was pouring bourbon into his empty glass.

“To the heart of the matter.” Laurel’s husky voice rose in admiration. “Mr. Hazlitt—may I call you Kenneth?—I am so impressed by your perspicacity, your unerring instinct, your knowledge, all the qualities so essential to successful publishing. I feel confident you are the man.”

Hazlitt’s eyes widened in delight.

Of course, Annie thought. Why not? Laurel was her usual gorgeous self. No man under eighty could resist her. It was not so much a wonder that Max’s mother had been married five times, but that she hadn’t been married ten. And now the full force of those deep blue eyes were turned on the publisher.

“Betcha he buys her book,” Max murmured, his voice brimming with pride.

Annie privately thought Hazlitt might be a little disappointed when he realized he was only being offered a publishing opportunity, but she decided it wouldn’t be tactful to share this insight with her husband.

Laurel lifted her slender hands, clasped them together. “Fly Like a Dove.”

Like a moth to the flame, Hazlitt leaned on the bar. “Ma’am, that’s music to my ears.”

Annie couldn’t resist the impulse to mutter, “Beam me up, Scotty, before I gag.”

Hazlitt raised his glass in a toast to Laurel, then upended the tumbler.

It happened so swiftly.

The big man wavered. His face contorted until every feature was transformed. A bubbling, anguished cry of agony hung in the air. His whiskey tumbler bounced on top of the bar. Hazlitt clawed at his throat. That terrible
keen of pain wavered, then ceased. His chest heaved. A glottal rasp signaled the desperate, final struggle for breath. His body arched, his arms flailed. He crashed into the shelving behind the bar. Glasses scattered; the mirror shattered. Hazlitt caromed against the bar, then dropped to the floor only a few feet from where Annie and Max were standing.

Willie Hazlitt pushed past a clot of abruptly silenced partygoers and dropped to his knees beside the thrashing, heaving body. “Ken, Ken! Oh, Christ, help me, someone. Help me!”

Emma Clyde pushed past Annie to join Willie.

Henny’s voice rang out. “I’ve called 911 for medics and the emergency squad. Please, ladies and gentlemen, let’s clear the area in an orderly fashion. As you pass through the front door, sign the tally sheet—”

Annie’s head jerked toward Henny.

“—and list your hotel and room number. The authorities will wish a record of everyone who was here, but there is no reason to detain you.”

Annie stared at Henny. Why the list? For heaven’s sake, this was—what was it?

A seizure? An accident?

Henny’s face was stern and grim.

A hideously public suicide?

Attempted murder?

Annie grabbed Max’s arm. Henny was simply taking the thousands of mysteries she’d devoured too much to heart.

But Annie found herself and Max moving in the orderly line toward the door, where Henny waited.

One by one those filing out signed as Henny directed.

As the hushed partygoers inched slowly toward the door, they could still hear the hideous sounds behind them. Annie clung tighter to Max. It seemed so wrong to leave, but they could do nothing to help. If there was anything that could be done, Emma would know. Funny to remember that Emma had once been a nurse. Once a nurse, always
a nurse? Annie concentrated on what she knew about Emma, a nurse in World War II in North Africa.

The sounds stopped.

In the stark silence, a woman’s voice carried clearly, “But he just took a drink, then he died? My God, why?”

Emma Clyde speared a succulent shrimp and dipped it in the thick red cocktail sauce. Every face at the table was turned toward the self-possessed mystery writer.

The setting sun splashed through the windows overlooking Calibogue Sound. The rosy light emphasized the dark hollows beneath Leah Kirby’s eyes.

Carl Kirby’s glance flickered from his wife to Emma and back again.

Alan Blake’s cheeks were freshly shaven, but his determinedly charming smile appeared frozen in place. He no longer looked angry. His eyes were thoughtful.

Jimmy Jay Crabtree poked another caviar-laden cracker into his already bulging cheek. He was not freshly shaven.

Missy Sinclair smiled her satisfied, sly, frightening smile.

Emma bit the shrimp in half. “… poison, of course, something that caused respiratory arrest …”

Annie’s fingers closed on a packet of crackers, crushed
them. “Emma, couldn’t it have been some kind of seizure?”

Cornflower-blue eyes flicked toward her. “Annie, that was not a natural death. Trust me.”

Annie determinedly refused to remember those desperate, labored, whistling efforts to breathe. She pushed back her bowl of seafood gumbo. How could anyone eat?

Emma munched the rest of the shrimp with every evidence of enjoyment. “The laboratory tests will determine what kind of poison. Since the onset came immediately after he drank the bourbon, the whiskey probably contained the poison. If it did, the first question has to be, ‘When was the bourbon poisoned?’ “

“The first question?” Leah smoothed back a strand of titian hair. Her green eyes narrowed. “Surely the first question is, ‘Who put the poison in the bottle? Kenneth? Or someone else?’ ”

Carl Kirby nodded in agreement.

Annie shook her head. Absently, she pulled the bowl of soup closer. Questions of time she understood—and they weren’t disturbing to consider. “I see what Emma means. It makes all the difference as to who could have done it. Time could mean everything, if this were indeed murder. Think of the time element in
Have His Carcase
, one of Dorothy L. Sayers’s finer efforts.”

Missy Sinclair sipped her Chardonnay. “Honey, you put your finger on it. If that bottle was poisoned before it got to the hotel room”—her sleepy eyes moved from face to face—“why, it lets all of us out, sure enough.” Her soft, throaty voice was as complacent as a cat’s purr.

Alan Blake looked at her sharply. “Wait a minute, Missy. Why should any of us be suspected?”

Jimmy Jay Crabtree snickered.

Annie gritted her teeth. Okay, he’d come upon their group in the lobby and simply assumed he was invited to join them for dinner. What could she do?

Jimmy Jay’s thin little mouth twisted in derision. “Alan baby, even your choirboy looks can’t carry that off.”

Leah frowned. “Jimmy Jay, don’t be a fool,” she said
sharply. “If you’re by any chance talking about Kenneth’s wonderful book proposal, why, I know all of us felt so
honored
that he wanted to include us, to talk about our books and what makes them great.”

There was an instant of quiet.

Jimmy Jay opened his mouth. Then he closed it without saying a word.

Annie knew he was tempted. It was a moment ready-made for an abrasive, gouging comment.

But she had to hand it to Jimmy Jay. He might be a butt, but nobody could call him stupid. He nodded slowly, his usually sneering face thoughtful, his pale eyes absorbed. He lifted his drink, brought it to his mouth, paused, looked down into the glass, and put it down again.

Missy Sinclair watched as the tumbler clicked decisively against the table. She shook with silent laughter.

The faintest suggestion of sorrow touched Leah’s lovely, porcelain-smooth, weary face. “It’s such a shame that Kenneth’s wonderful book will never see light of day.”

Annie’s omelet was untouched. She poured a second cup of coffee. Max had brought Kona from home and brewed it. She never took her eyes off the morning newspaper clutched in her hand. “… and it says Hazlitt is believed to have died from nicotine poisoning.” She frowned. “Max, why does it say ‘believed’? I mean, wouldn’t the laboratory results be definite? Oh, but wait a minute. Here it says ‘an autopsy is scheduled today.’ Hmm. Anyway, the Sheriff’s Department is ‘pursuing leads discovered at the death scene.’” She lowered the newspaper. “Hey, is that double-talk or did they really find something there? I don’t know what it could have been. It’s just a hotel room. Unless it was some kind of note.”