The Christie Caper (33 page)

“You still jump?” Laurel asked, her eyes wide.

“Certainly. I haven’t lost my seat. The point, however, is that the American authorities are seriously considering me for the role of chief suspect. The blood on my cape, which should be obvious to a child, is that of Stone. There would be no point to it otherwise. It is apparent to me that someone entered my suite prior to Stone’s murder for the express purpose of obtaining apparel suitable for marking with incriminating bloodstains. That definitely reveals the Stone murder was premeditated. That fat fool seems to believe I sallied forth in my cloak and rather messily dispatched that poor young man.”

Their immediate and indignant outburst included even Henny,

Lady Gwendolyn held up her hand. “Thank you. Thank you. A show of support is always appreciated. However, our current investigation is
not
an effort to clear me. Our sole purpose is to prevent another murder.” She leaned forward and looked soberly at each in turn. “Here is my plan.”

A
rasher of bacon, a Belgian waffle with whipped cream, applesauce, and a big glass of orange juice,” Annie said pugnaciously.

If Max had reservations, he kept them to himself. Picking up the telephone, he punched the button for room service and cheerfully repeated her order.

When he hung up, Annie snapped, “Why didn’t you get something for yourself?”

“Annie, we’ve already had breakfast. But I’ll make some fresh coffee.”

As if a few more cups of coffee would be enough to restore the energy leached by several hours of consultation with Lady Gwendolyn, Laurel, and Henny. Of course, she and Max were lucky the trio had departed, each with a specific objective. But, first things first. “Max, that was
hours
ago.
Nothing
eaten before seven in the morning counts.” She glanced at the clock. Almost ten. And she had
so
much to do. Lady Gwendolyn seemed to have forgotten that Annie was still running a conference. It was Thursday, and this morning was devoted to current, well-known mystery writers, especially Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels and Charlotte MacLeod/Alisa Craig, Even thinking of them put Annie in a better humor. And this afternoon would focus on Tony Hillerman and Aaron Elkins, two of the most likable best-selling authors she’d ever encountered. Oh, her wonderful conference. She felt a pang of guilt. A young man’s murder needed to be solved, and, perhaps, another murder prevented—but it
was
a wonderful conference. And tomorrow
night—Friday night—was the
piece de résistance,
the wonderful, glorious Agatha Christie Come-as-You-Wish-You-Were Ball. It wasn’t wrong to look forward eagerly to that grand moment. And it gave her even more impetus to try and solve the crime as quickly as possible.

So, somehow, between sessions, Annie must discharge the task Lady Gwendolyn had assigned. Although it was flattering to be chosen, she still wondered at the reason why. Lady Gwendolyn’s brisk comment—“Annie, my dear, you won’t be misled by nuances”—mystified her.

What nuances?

Jean Reinhardt’s tight blond curls quivered as she shook her head. “No, I don’t think I know …” She turned the graduation photo of Stone to better catch the light in the foyer outside Meeting Room B. “Wait a minute. Yes, yes, yes … at the publishing course. Oh, Jesus. The guy with the manuscript with all the missing feet.” Her nose wrinkled. “Honest to God, you wouldn’t believe some of the manuscripts we get. No expletives deleted, and the way some writers confuse reality with descriptions of body functions …” A sigh.

“Have you seen this morning’s paper?” Annie asked.

The editor nodded. “Sure.”

“You missed his picture?” Annie asked, surprised.

The editor was surprised in turn. She looked at Stone’s photo again. “In the
Times?”

“Oh, no, the local paper. The
Island Gazette.”
Annie whipped a copy from under her arm. Stone’s murder, of course, had run in the Wednesday paper, but it was still the top story in today’s.

Reinhardt took the paper. “Well, I’ll be damned. So this is the guy who was killed. Small world.”

“What did you think about him?” Annie asked.

A shrug. “Not much. Harder to shake than plaster of Paris. Seemed to think taking the course gave him every right to try and waylay you after work to talk about his book again.”

“Did you know he was here at this conference?” Annie asked.

“Lord, no.” She scanned the story at an editor’s whipflash
reading rate. “Funny. I would have classed him as an obtuse jerk. Who would ever have thought he would end up murdered?”

In the dealers’ room, Annie stopped at the Death on Demand booth which Ingrid’s good friend, Duane Webb, was minding. Annie hoped that Duane, a former newspaperman, an ex-drunk, and not a sufferer of fools, was also minding his tongue.

“How’s it going?” She straightened the front row of second-hand paperbacks, all in good condition and priced at three dollars each, noting a few titles:
Dead Letter
by Douglas Clark,
Too Hot for Hawaii
by Thomas B. Dewey,
Bitter Finish
by Linda Barnes, and
Somewhere in the House
by Elizabeth Daly.

“Gangbusters.” There was a note of bravado in Duane’s gravelly voice. “Except … uh …” He smoothed his balding head sheepishly. “Could’ve sold all the Shaw books.” He pointed at the top row of the case to his left. Annie had displayed separately books by conference attendees or those being especially honored. “Told the guy to fuck off.”

Annie waited. She couldn’t read Duane’s eyes behind the thick lens of his glasses.

“The jerk that’s causing all the trouble, threatening to slander Christie,” Duane explained.

“Oh, Duane.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You wonderful S.O.B.”

She was still grinning when Henny pounced on her as she came out the door.

Grabbing Annie’s arm, Henny tugged her behind a pillar. “Annie, you’re not going to believe this!” Outrage warred with amusement in her tone.

Such words could only herald information about a particular circuit solicitor. “Let me guess. Posey’s arrested Fleur Calloway!” Among those known to dislike Bledsoe, Fleur alone had to be considered free of suspicion. She and Annie were standing at the coffee bar in Death on Demand when the shots rang out Saturday night.

“It’s not that bad. But it’s the damndest thing. For starters, Posey’s just back from a law enforcement conference that
stressed multiple lines of inquiry in a homicide investigation.” Henny looked bemused. “His new favorite expression is, ‘In the alternative…’”

“You mean he hasn’t glommed onto one theory to the exclusion of all others?” Annie asked. Actually, such open-mindedness would be a marked improvement for her least favorite circuit solicitor.

“By no means. Okay. Theory Number One: Lady Gwendolyn, a known Christie partisan, is so immersed in Christie lore that she has crossed over the edge of sanity and is committing murder using methods in Christie novels.”

“Lugging an ornamental bronze sugar cutter all the way from England, of course,” Annie said sarcastically. But, if that was Theory One, surely Posey was much closer to reality with Theory Two. “I suppose he’s checking out everybody to see if someone’s trying to hide behind the crazed-Christie image to get at Bledsoe?”

“No such luck. No such sanity. No such sensible alternative inquiry,” Henny sputtered in disgust. “No, Posey’s Theory Number Two: Stone was the victim of a drug war!”

“A drug war?”

“Yes. And guess who’s in on it?”

Annie scarcely knew where to start. With Posey, anything was possible. Laurel. The president of the local PTA The diocesan bishop.

“Bledsoe!” Henny whooped. “Oh, God, is he pissed! Posey’s been grilling Bledsoe all morning. Posey’s alternative theory is that the attempts on Bledsoe’s life and the murder of Stone are the action of a drug ring trying to discipline its members.”

Annie had the same sense of unreality she sometimes experienced in second-rate hard-boiled novels. The words were presented in utter seriousness, and they were absurd.
(The slug caught him just below the shoulder. Threw him back against the wall. He shoved away from the wall, caught the first thug with a karate chop to the neck, kung fu’d the second guy, looked for a way out. In a haze of pain, sweat beading his face, he tumbled through the window onto the fire escape, and started up, two rungs at a time, blood spattering as he went. He ignored the shouts behind him. The second slug creased his leg. On the next floor, a scowl twisting
his face, he kicked in the window. Rose was waiting. Almost like she’d known he’d come. She lifted her hand in a silent plea. He gave her a tired grin. “It’s too late, sister,” he said softly. He pulled the .45. He hated to do it. God, she was pretty. But the prettiness was all on the outside. The gun bucked in his hand as he shot. He watched her die. Just like she’d watched Al die.)

“A drug war,” Annie repeated. “What led our stalwart officer of the law to that creative conclusion?”

“The autopsy. Posey got the results this morning,” Henny explained. “Stone had traces of cocaine in his blood.”

“So?” Illegal, stupid, and dangerous, but not surprising in his age group and certainly not evidence of criminal conspiracy.

Henny grinned cynically. “They had a huge cocaine bust on Hilton Head a year or so ago. I imagine Posey’s hungering for the kind of publicity that engendered.”

Annie remembered the bust, of course. It was the largest haul ever in South Carolina, one hundred million dollars’ worth of pure cocaine. A story with some piquant angles. Such as the lawyers found digging in the backyard of one of the defendants. This unusual display of manual labor by members of the bar encouraged digging by the authorities. The result: buried lawn bags stuffed with cash.
Beaucoup
cash.

“I see,” Annie mused. “Are Stone and Bledsoe supposed to be smugglers who’ve fallen out with the Colombian cartel, or independent jobbers in a turf war?”

“Posey hasn’t let anybody in on the fine points of his investigation yet,” Henny said sardonically. “Of course, he’s hacked that Bledsoe’s the only person in the hotel officially alibied for Stone’s death. Saulter had Billy Cameron on duty Tuesday night, just down the hall from Bledsoe’s suite. Billy saw Bledsoe go in his room, even said good night to him. He didn’t come out all night.”

“Sounds to me like Posey’s busy proving he was born without any little gray cells.” But Annie was thinking about Billy Cameron’s night duty. “So Saulter has Billy watching Bledsoe.” It was odd how relieved she felt. She might despise the man, but she certainly didn’t want to see him murdered.

“Yes. Posey approves, of course. He told Bledsoe someone
would be watching him from now on—so they can break the drug ring when somebody tries again to kill him.”

Annie laughed out loud.

But Henny didn’t smile. “The problem is, Annie, Posey’s told the chief to concentrate on the hotel and question all the employees about possible smuggling activities.”

“That will drive the manager bananas.”

Henny brushed that aside. “It also means any investigation of the key suspects has come to a screeching halt.”

“So?”

“So that leaves it squarely up to us.” Henny gave a Bulldog Drummond salute and swung toward the door.

Annie glimpsed the other investigators—Lady Gwendolyn, Henny, Laurel, and, of course, Max—at odd moments during the day. Each was assigned one or two suspects. Their task was simple: To contact their suspects and confidentially, oh, so very confidentially, but with pointed looks suggesting the information might be very important to the listener, report it had been learned that the police knew the murderer’s identity and an arrest was imminent.

As the early morning meeting in their suite had ended, Annie couldn’t resist twitting Lady Gwendolyn—after all, this was one of the hoariest ploys in the history of fiction
(Flee, All Is Discovered).
“Do you really think anyone will fall for that?” Lady Gwendolyn had grinned impishly. “The point, my dear, is that the guilty flee even where no man pursueth. Of course, no one will quite believe it, but can anyone quite dare to disbelieve it? I don’t expect a sudden, guilt-revealing exodus from the hotel. But I do think it might—just might—discourage the murderer from acting again.”

Annie found Terry Abbott, the other editor who liad been on the staff when Stone attended the publishing course, coming out of the bar shortly before lunch. He glanced casually at Stone’s photographs. “Oh, the guy who got killed.” So he, at least, had read the
Gazette.
“I remember him; The kid really hounded us editors. He was sure he was the next
Ludlum and he couldn’t wait to tell you about it. Only one problem: He had no talent”

Neil Bledsoe lounged at his ease in the Palmetto Court, at a table situated precisely where the vase had landed.

Annie held out the photographs of Stone.

His dark brows drew down in a frown. “Yeah. I know that face.”

In a now familiar gesture, Annie handed him that day’s
Island Gazette.