The Christie Caper (28 page)

Annie poked her head inside just long enough to see Laurel grip Natalie’s elbow firmly and sweep her into a carrel.

Annie paused irresolutely. It was none of her business. But what had possessed Laurel to try and improve Natalie’s looks? Annie, too, felt that the right styling and makeup could transform a very ugly duckling. But to what avail? To make her even more attractive to Neil Bledsoe? Annie shook her head in dismay and backed out of the salon. The author wasn’t her problem.

•   •   •

Max skimmed the entry in
Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers:

Max’s eyes dropped to the short list of books, a total of six. All published by Pomeroy Park Press. Max buzzed for his secretary. When Barb came on the intercom, he said briskly, “Barb, drop over to the bookstore. I need a list of senior editors at Pomeroy Park Press. Check
Literary Market Place.”

Annie waited outside Conference Room B as the panel entitled Mysteries in the ’90s—Bigger, Better, or a Bust concluded to a burst of applause. Her practiced eye checked the crowd. Not too many here, mostly booksellers and unpublished authors. She noted the empty chair on the podium and checked her program. Hmm. Derek Davis had been a no-show, but the other two panelists were there, Nathan Hillman and Jane Casey, an editor at Millington Books. She waited until the last straggling questioners drifted out and approached Hillman.

“Mr. Hillman, may I speak to you privately for a moment?”

The chunky editor eyed her unenthusiastically. “About …?”

Annie gambled. Would bitterness win out over caution? “About Pamela Gerrard … and the ugly way Neil Bledsoe treated her.”

“Why?” Distaste flickered on his face.

“I’m going to publish the truth about Bledsoe. I’m going to tell the world what kind of man he is.”

They were alone in the conference room now. The last
stragglers had wandered off, to the bar, to other panels, to the beach. They had the room to themselves.

Hillman shrugged. “What good will it do? It won’t bring Pam back.”

Annie waited.

The editor turned away from Annie and began to pace, head down. “Pam. Oh, Christ, Pam. Maybe if I tell you, tell somebody, maybe it won’t hurt so goddammed much. You’re supposed to break open pockets of infection, let all the nasty, foul-smelling pus seep out, but I’ve never talked to anybody about it Not even Derek. Especially not Derek. He was at school. He didn’t see the way his mother began to break apart. It was like watching silver tarnish. Everything bright and shiny and beautiful and then one day the darkness starts to spot and grow and pretty soon all the shine is gone.” Hillman slumped into a chair on the last row, fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a pipe. But he simply held it in his hand and stared down at the gleaming bowl. “I suppose if I were a ‘real’ man,” his voice put corrosive brackets about it, “the kind Bledsoe talks about, I would have driven out there and grabbed Pam and thrown her in the car, taken her the hell out of there, gotten her away from Bledsoe before it was too late.”

Annie looked away from the soul-deep agony in his eyes.

“But I didn’t realize how bad it was. Then, too, I thought that, hell, she’d made the choice, picked him, not me. You see,” his voice dropped almost to a whisper, and Annie knew it was because he couldn’t trust it not to break, “we were just getting to the point where we both knew that maybe we were going to have something together, something special—then she met Neil.” The hand holding the pipe tightened until the knuckles whitened “I’m a pretty ineffectual bastard, in comparison. Pam and I went to the opera together. We took walks in Central Park; we made love once on a beach in Saint Lucia But I never took her white-water rafting on the Snake River or on a rock climb in the Tetons or elk hunting in Canada.”

He turned his face away and Annie scarcely heard him say, “I just loved her very much.”

“Bledsoe—” Annie didn’t know how to say it, but she
had to try, “Bledsoe has a kind of magic, even when you know he’s everything you despise.”

Hillman looked at Annie with reddened eyes. “Yeah. I give him that. But I should have seen it, understood it for what it was. Almost a sickness. I shouldn’t have given up on Pam.” He jammed the pipe back into his jacket. “I didn’t know what was going on. Not for a long time. I’d turned her over to another editor. Saved myself pain, that’s how I looked at it. But Judi saw what was happening. She went up to Stamford, to their place, for a conference about the next book, and when she came back she came in to see me … and said Pam was a mess, fat and no makeup and drunk the whole weekend and Judi sure understood why, the way that jerk rode Pamela, one nasty, vicious jibe after another. I called Pam and she was sober, I swear it. I laid it on the line. I told her I loved her, that she was the loveliest woman in the world, the best writer I’d ever known, that I knew she was sick and I was going to come and get her and bring her home with me.” His face broke into angles of sorrow. “Jesus, Little Mr. Do-good, announcing his arrival. Why the shit didn’t I just get in the car and go get her? Why did I call?”

Annie watched with dawning horror.

“She was dead when I got there. She fell down the goddammed stairs. Drunk, they said. That’s what they said.” He buried his face in his hands.

Max held the telephone receiver away from his ear. The voice, deep and angry and violent, spilled into his office. “Aren’t you fuckers satisfied? Spence is dead. Isn’t that goddam well enough?”

Max interrupted sharply, “I couldn’t agree more. But times are different now. Maybe if the truth about Burke Spence came out, what happened and why, maybe it could cause Bledsoe trouble. Have you ever thought about that?”

Annie checked all the late-afternoon panels: Die Laughing—Peters, MacLeod, Hess, and Cannell; The Butler Didn’t Do It—Millar, Du Maurier, Hintze, and Muller; and Those
Brits—Moyes, Cody, Porter, and Caudwell. She looked in the bar. She walked a half mile in either direction on the beach. She inquired at the car and bicycle rental offices. Finally, the obvious occurred. Derek Davis was probably in his room. Dashing down the corridor to the now deserted conference registration table, she checked the master list of attendees and their room assignments, then scooped up the phone.

As the elevator door began to open, Annie saw the housekeeping cart sweep past. She was halfway down the opposite hall before the import of the scene registered. Whirling around, she broke into a run.

The cart was parked outside suite 315.

The door was closed.

Maids—genuine maids—left doors open when cleaning rooms. Didn’t they?

Grimly, Annie punched the buzzer.

When the door opened, Annie glowered.

Henny had established a new dress standard for maids with her smartly-fitting gray chambray uniform accented by a dainty white apron.

“Costume from
The Importance of Being Earnest?”
Annie snarled.

Henny’s eyes glinted with irritation. “Shh. Come on in,” and she yanked Annie over the threshold and closed the door. Annie reached for the knob. “Oh no, I’m not going to be found breaking into—”

“So who broke in? You rang, the maid answered. Cool it, Annie. Listen, I can’t find a trace of any information in this suite that pertains to Agatha Christie, except some of those flyers. What do you think of that?”

“I think whatever work Bledsoe’s done is at home in his computer terminal.” Annie grabbed a bony elbow. “Come on, Henny, let’s get out of here.”

Henny resisted. Her bright eyes roamed restlessly around the suite.

Annie looked, too. Jean Hager’s Chief Mitch Bushyhead could tell a lot from the contents of a room. But this was a hotel room, lovelier than many, but still carrying little impress
of its occupants’ personalities. The bedroom doors were closed. The foyer was identical to that in Annie and Max’s suite. An ornate black iron grillwork separated the entryway from the living area. Vivid pillows emphasized the crisp white of the wicker furniture. A canvas carryall on the coffee table gaped, revealing a jumble of paperbacks. A neat stack of paperbacks sat atop the small breakfast table. Even at the distance of fifteen feet, Annie recognized the top cover, one of the rare Green Door mysteries. As she recalled, most of the Mr. Moto books had appeared in those editions. Kathryn Honeycutt’s purchases from the bookroom, no doubt. Too effete a selection for Bledsoe. His taste would run to Jim Thompson and Jonathan Valin.
The New York Times
was tossed carelessly on the floor beside the divan. A damp black-and-orange beach towel hung from the back of a breakfast room chair.

“No papers here at all,” Henny muttered, “except for the subscriptions sold for his newsletter. Boy, he really cleaned up. Forty-eight hundred dollars’ worth.”

Forty-eight hundred dollars earned by promising to trash Christie. Annie jiggled impatiently from one foot to another. Henny was off on the wrong track. Nosing around Bledsoe’s suite wouldn’t get either of them anywhere in their quest. She yanked open the door. “If you’ve got any brains,” she warned inelegantly, “you’ll blow this pool hall right now. See you later.”

If Derek Davis’s hand hadn’t clung to the doorjamb, he would have slid right down to the floor.

Drunk.

Very drunk.

He stared at her with red-rimmed, muzzy eyes and with no flicker of recognition. The publicist’s uncombed hair flared in tangled clumps. He hadn’t shaved. He was wearing a soiled, wrinkled shirt, trousers that had been slept in. He was barefoot. The sour odor of whiskey clung to him.

“Yeah.”

“Derek, I need to talk to you.”

Derek blinked, wavered, clung to the door.

“Yeah.”

“About Neil Bledsoe and—”

Derek’s face twisted. Tears brimmed in his eyes. He turned away, stumbled, careened into a chair, then dropped heavily onto the couch. He hunched awkwardly over the couch arm, his shoulders heaving.

Annie slowly followed. She stood by the couch, looked down, and a rivulet of anger snaked through her mind. How much heartbreak and agony could one man cause?

“Derek!” came a low cry from behind Annie.

She turned.

Fleur Calloway stood in the door that Annie had left ajar. She looked past Annie at Derek’s beaten figure. “My daughter,” Fleur said brokenly, “Pamela’s son, and that young author, Natalie Marlow.” Her lovely face hardened. “It must stop.” And her face no longer looked lovely. It was as stern and cold and merciless as that of an avenging angel.

A
s she and Max slipped out of the hotel surreptitiously, Annie thought fleetingly of Selwyn Jepson’s Commodore Rupert Gill and his penchant for “imported” brandy. Yes, the illicit definitely had its charms. Annie knew she should be at the hotel, on call, for any or all emergencies, but she needed a respite. She
had
to be up for the Agatha Christie Trivia Quiz at eight o’clock. God, she said simply, only knew what some people might do.

It should have been a wonderfully relaxing evening. Conference-goers were free to explore the island’s restaurants before retarning to the hotel for the evening’s entertainment, the Trivia Quiz, in the main ballroom.

Truth to tell, Annie was delighted to be away from the hotel and even from her beloved conference for a while, and there wasn’t a single conference attendee in evidence at the Island Hills Golf and Country Club. She and Max sat on the terrace, and a gentle breeze swept over them with the heavy scent of honeysuckle as they studied their menus. Among the Wednesday-night specials was beef Wellington, Annie’s favorite entree. So pastry and beef were heavy on cholesterol. So who cared? Annie refused to be intimidated by the health police.

But she couldn’t leave her worries behind.

She poked at her beef Wellington and even the luscious gravy trickling down the sides of the pastry didn’t help.

“Max, what do you think’s going on? Did somebody kill John Border Stone because he was on the roof at the wrong time? But why was he registered as James Bentley? And every
time I think how he was killed—with the murder weapon actually used in that novel, though not on Bentley—it gives me cold chills. Did it make somebody mad that he was registered as that particular Christie character? And why in God’s name
did
he register as that particular character?”

“Maybe he particularly identified with Bentley,” Max suggested. “Liked him and—”

“Honey, even James Bentley didn’t like James Bentley.” She shook her head impatiently and absently chewed, then said indistinctly, “I keep thinking it will all make sense.” She drank a sip of chablis. “A sugar cutter! Max, that’s crazy. And Lady Gwendolyn’s cape—that’s even crazier!”