The Christie Caper (7 page)

The reception lacked the rowdy overtones of others she had hosted (notably one for the cast after the successful opening night of
Arsenic and Old Lace
a couple of years earlier), but Annie could not have been happier: Death on Demand, plenty of books, and wall-to-wall mystery fans.

Lots of islanders were sprinkled among the party-goers: Frank Saulter, the lanky police chief who never missed a Tom Clancy; Vince Ellis, the red-headed publisher of the
Island Gazette,
who had asked for the latest by Linda Grant; and a glum-faced Emma Clyde, who leaned against the horror/science-fiction shelves. Annie tried to ignore the unwavering stare from hostile blue eyes.

They weren’t the only blue eyes Annie was busy ignoring.
Laurel, lovely in a kelly-green silk with a pink rose print, sent occasional reproachful glances from her station near the Poe collection. When, of course, she wasn’t batting those same alpine lake eyes at handsome young men. Howard, Annie thought dryly, better not pursue Poe manuscripts in New York too much longer.

Shortly after eight, Annie took over at the cash register. Ingrid flashed a grateful look and wormed her way toward the back. Annie hoped there were some hors d’oeuvres left. The chiles rellenos and curried shrimp mold had disappeared early, but, when she’d last checked, the oysters wrapped in bacon, spinach balls, and baked clams were in good supply. Max’s secretary, Barb, was overseeing the buffet. (Annie had wanted to provide succulent tidbits appropriate to a tea at Claridge’s. The resulting bleat of dismay from across the Atlantic had threatened to sever Anglo-American relations permanently. “Neow, neow, neow. Nevah. One does not partake of banana scones in the
evening
in a cocktail atmosphere!” Annie had reluctantly relinquished that dream, but a tea worthy of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot was scheduled for Sunday afternoon’s garden fête.)

Occasionally Annie could hear Barb’s loud, cheerful voice as she discovered another Georgette Heyer fan.
“Footsteps in the Dark,”
Max’s secretary confided, “that’s my favorite. I
always
wanted to live in a house like that! Oooooh!”

It was that kind of party, a sustained, cheerful roar, with enough distinguishable comments to make clear the nature of the revelers:

“I’ve never seen a classier deception than in
The ABC Murders.”

“You haven’t read ‘Mr. Eastwood’s Adventure’? Oh, you must. It has the most
delicious
description of writer’s block.”

“Don’t you just love the opening vignettes in
Cat Among the Pigeons?”

“Her villages were based on Torquay and St. Mary Church in her native Devon. I always tell my students that her domestic realism is right on a par with Dickens’s
Bleak House.”

“I’ve read every one of her plays. Even
Akhnaton.
Her husband thought it was her most beautiful and profound play.”

“Don’t you admire her use of color in
Appointment with
Death?
She captures not only geography through shades of rose but the emotions of the family.”

“Poirot may have been a foreigner, but at heart he was the quintessential Edwardian gentleman.”

“Poirot
never
had a twin brother. That was an invention from first to last.”

“She enjoyed books by Elizabeth Daly, Michael Gilbert, Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark.”

At twenty to nine, her first moment of quiet at the cash desk, Annie took a deep breath. She resisted the impulse to punch the computer for a total on the evening’s sales, then looked up into the unsmiling face of Neil Bledsoe.

It was a moment she would long remember, the smoldering violence in his coal-black eyes, the sullen droop of his mouth, the aura of physical strength barely leashed, the emanation of swaggering maleness. His crisp white linen suit underscored the raven black of his hair and the ruddiness of his face. He was freshly shaven, but already black stubble showed on his cheeks. The scratch from the injury in the Palmetto House drive was barely visible. More than ever, he had the saturnine appeal of a buccaneer. He saw and correctly interpreted the flicker in her eyes. He gave her a long, measuring, bold look, an inviting, knowledgeable, sensual look.

It was as insulting and invasive as a too-intimate touch. And, horrid to realize, as titillating.

Annie felt like a captive paraded for an emperor’s pleasure. She met Bledsoe’s gaze squarely—and angrily.

The tall elderly woman a step behind him hesitated, a hand lifted in mute appeal.

Bledsoe grunted. “Make up your mind, sister.”

“I beg your pardon.” Annie’s tone was sheathed in ice. She was proud of her self-control.

“That’s the trouble with girls like you. You want it, then you don’t. Girls who tease can get themselves in a shitload of trouble.”

Annie opened her mouth to attack. The general import of his sentence was infuriating enough, but the denigrating use of
girls
in lieu of
women
was the clincher. And there was such a thing as too much self-control….

“Listen, buddy—” she began.

“Neil—” Miss Marple’s look-alike spoke sharply but, to Annie’s relief, in a distinctly American voice.

Bledsoe ignored her, keeping his blazing eyes on Annie. “You the one running this thing?”

In six short, snarled words, his tone rude, insolent, and patronizing, he propelled Annie from anger to fury.

A suave, Miss Manners rejoinder was not for her. “What’s it to you?” she snarled back, forgetting, as Max had pointed out to her many times, the advantages of inhabiting a morally superior plane.

“You
put me in that goddam room.” His obsidian eyes had the shine of vitreous rock and unsatiated anger.

“Now, Neil, it’s just one of those things. Not intentional, I’m sure.” His companion peered myopically at Annie and once again the resemblance to Miss Marple waned. “I know it’s a sensitive matter. So touchy. But, please, don’t quarrel.” She tugged futilely on his elbow.

Annie stared at Bledsoe blankly.

“The room with that goddam picture,” he raged. “You knew what would happen. You did it to me deliberately. And you’re going to regret it.”

Before Annie could reply, tell him (a) to shove it, (b) that she hadn’t known him from a hole in the ground until the harrowing ride that afternoon with Emma Clyde, and (c) that the hotel management had been responsible for room assignments, he’d turned his back on her.

“Wait a minute,” she snapped, but Bledsoe was striding away, his companion trailing unhappily behind, her face puckered with distress.

Following Bledsoe’s progress down the aisle was like watching blight spread.

Bledsoe did nothing overtly offensive.

If he had, Annie would have been quick to upbraid him, demand that he leave.

In fact, if she’d had to accuse him, she would have been hard put to frame a charge.

He merely walked, arrogantly, down the central aisle, pausing now and then to glance at titles. Or at people. Selected people.

Not a word was exchanged.

Yet blight touched their faces, turned them grim and stony.

Not everyone, of course. Most of the party-goers paid him no heed, continuing their bright, excited chatter.

But Annie easily pinpointed the ones who knew Bledsoe.

There was the chunky mid-thirties man in a tweed jacket, holding an unlit pipe. He had a stiff brush of wiry black hair frosted with gray, horn rim spectacles that had a tendency to slip, and a salt-and-pepper mustache. He wore an orange rosette in the lapel of his light blue seersucker summer suit. Annie was pleased to see an editor who
looked
like an editor. But his mildly studious look, his air of civilized inquiry dissolved, when Bledsoe approached. After an instant of blank surprise, hatred twisted his face. And hatred sat uneasily there. This was a countenance intended for sunrise and summer, an optimistic face creased with laughter lines. The transformation was shocking. The editor put down a just-replenished glass of champagne, untasted, atop the espionage/thriller book section (Annie hoped no one spilled it; the three books on display were pricey indeed: Erskine Childers’s
Riddle of the Sands,
John Buchan’s
The Thirty-nine Steps,
and Martha Albrand’s
Without Orders),
and walked heavily, as if drained of energy and purpose, toward the front door. As he passed, Annie noted his name tag:
NATHAN HILLMAN
, Hillman House, CEO and Executive Editor. She wanted to reach out, stop him. But what could she say?

The blight next touched the face of the sandy-haired young man who had rushed away from Bledsoe’s panic attack that afternoon. She looked at him closely. He, too, still wore the orange rosette in the buttonhole of his blazer, but now, in Bledsoe’s presence, he no longer looked eager and attractive. Without a smile, his snub-nosed face appeared heavy, almost belligerent. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets, hunched his shoulders, and headed for the front door. He strode past Annie as if she were invisible. Whatever he saw, it was not here and now, and it was not pleasant. She noted his name tag:
DEREK DAVIS
, Hillman House, Publicity.

A customer approached her and she lost sight of Bledsoe, but even as she rang up the books
(Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe
by Nan and Ivan Lyons,
Death of a
Fool
by Ngaio Marsh, and
The Gemini Man
by Susan Kelly), she was certain the dark-haired woman hurrying toward the door was another of the critic’s ill-wishers. Her stride was too swift for a casual departure. A green rosette this time, an agent.
MARGO WRIGHT
, Wright Literary Agency, Ltd. Margo Wright was a tall woman with a Junoesque figure. Crow-black hair tumbled to her shoulders in thick curls, emphasizing the dead white of her face. It wasn’t a face that would ever be easily read. At this moment, it was glacial and tormented. As she yanked open the door with one blunt-fingered hand, Annie spotted two new books under her arm.

“Miss!” Annie yelped, “Miss—you at the door—can I help you with those books?”

The agent jolted to a stop and looked blankly down at the books,
Full Cleveland
by Les Roberts and
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy O
by Sharyn McCrumb. “Sorry.” Her New York accent was crisp. “Didn’t intend …” She shook her head, slapped the books onto the counter top, and hurried out the door.

That was the crowning blow, a lost sale! Annie glared around the room, looking for the cause. Where was the jerk?

It wasn’t hard to spot Bledsoe. He was bigger than almost anyone else. He had returned up the central aisle and was only a few feet away, his back to her, studying the contents of the true-crime section. She didn’t see his companion.

True crime wasn’t Annie’s favorite section, although lately it had done a brisk business. Most of her really weird customers gravitated there. The ones who loved real murder cases, wallowed in their graphic evocation of gore and insanity. No crime was too brutal, too vicious, or too degrading for their pleasure.

The jerk had found his niche.

But even as she sneered, she had to admit to herself—deep in the recesses of her mind—that he might be a jerk, he might be a bully, and he might be altogether disgusting, but the damn man radiated sex appeal in the way he stood, the slope of his shoulders. Annie willed her eyes to move past him.

A small woman knelt in the used-book section, gently lifting out one book after another, glancing at the title page, then replacing them. She arranged the books just so, all the
spines even. Her fingers lingered on the last volume. There was more than care here. Her touch was almost reverent, as if these books were holy. Annie studied her profile. She was not a young woman. Deep lines etched her gaunt face. The smooth hair drawn back in a plain chignon was so gray it gave no hint of its youthful color.

Bledsoe’s deep voice bayed gleefully. “Well, if it isn’t Victoria. Long time no see.”

A book slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers, tumbled to the floor. The tiny woman gasped and reached for it.

But Bledsoe’s huge hand scooped it up, away from her reach. His black eyes flicked over the title, faded black on a brown cover, and he gave a huge whoop of laughter.
“The Clue of the Chattering Parrot.
Oh, sweet Jesus, can you believe they ever sold even one of these! My God, what tripe!”

“Stop it, Neil. Stop it.” The woman struggled up from the floor and snatched for the book.

Bledsoe merely held up his arm, and the book was far beyond her reach. “Finders keepers,” he crowed. “I think I’ll buy this. Be a pleasure to throw it away. Maybe I’ll start a new crusade. Buy a lousy book a day and throw it away. That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it. Rid the world of all these simpering, lily-livered cozies.”

Annie had had enough. She charged out from behind the cash desk.

“The book,” she demanded crisply, her hand outstretched.

Bledsoe shed his joviality faster than Vidocq changing a disguise. His tone changed from jeering to snide. “This
is
a bookstore? You do
sell
these books?”

“Not to you, buddy. Hand it over and get the hell out of here.”

It hung in the balance for a long moment. Annie could see in his darkening face the desire to keep after it, to badger and harangue, but Frank Saulter was turning toward Bledsoe. The police chief wasn’t nearly the size of the critic, but there was an unmistakable air of authority to Saulter and a grim set to his jaw.

Bledsoe gave an exaggerated shrug. “Sure, boss lady. Stupid to buy this kind of tripe anyway.” He tossed the volume
toward the cash desk. It struck the rim and tumbled, yellowed pages shaking loose, to the floor.

The older woman, tears sliding silently down her cheeks, scrambled forward. She swiftly gathered the loose pages and the battered book and rose. “Please,” she said to Annie timidly, “I’ll buy this.”

Annie surprised herself. She was never especially demonstrative (except with Max and that was another, private matter entirely). In fact, she had found it hard to master the casual embrace and brush of lips so fashionable among women she knew when greeting friends. But she was touched by the tragedy she saw in that wan face and in the trembling hands that offered the book. Impulsively, she slipped her arm around those too-thin shoulders. “That’s Bryan Shaw’s last novel, isn’t it? I liked it so much. His misdirection is brilliant. Of course, that’s no surprise. He was a wonderful writer, and it’s going to be such a pleasure to talk about his books at the conference and discuss the contributions he made to the mystery.”