Mint Julep Murder (11 page)

Max took his last bite of cantaloupe. “Note from whom?”

“Well, it’s always possible that Hazlitt picked a spectacular way to commit suicide.”

Annie averted her eyes as Max spread apple butter on
a bran muffin. Honestly, didn’t he ever get bored with eating so damn correctly? She propped the newspaper against the orange juice carafe and reached defiantly past the margarine for the butter. After all, Elsie the Cow couldn’t have led generations of Americans down the garden path. Could she?

Annie spread a minute portion of the butter on her toasted English muffin, knowing that she’d been brainwashed by the health police. She plumped a mound of marmalade on top. So okay, maybe it even tasted better than in the days of yore when she’d drenched toast with butter. So okay, she could learn, adapt, relinquish, accept, evolve. Someday maybe she’d even prefer a pale slab of fish to filet mignon, rice cakes to raspberry truffles, fruit gelatin to apple pie. Sure, when cats took up square dancing!

Oblivious to his wife’s internal nutrition soliloquy, Max munched on his muffin. “Suicide? Not likely. If Hazlitt was depressed, it certainly didn’t show. And that was a pretty tough way to die.”

Annie put down her English muffin, smudged marmalade from her fingers. “He must have hurt so much.” Her fingers slipped up to touch her throat, and she scarcely noticed their faint stickiness. “Oh, Max, poison is dreadful.” She reached out for her juice glass, stared at the gently swirling contents. “You have to have food to live. And food means hospitality, people giving to each other. It would be so dreadful to think you are among friends and to drink something—then to feel pain that doesn’t stop, pain that tears at your throat and your chest and your stomach, and, finally, your throat closes and you know you are going to die and you don’t even know who did this to you—and you’ll never know! Max, it’s awful!” She set the glass down. “That’s why Christie used poison so often. It wasn’t simply that she had trained as a pharmacist. It was much more than that; it was her knowledge that the worst kind of betrayal comes when someone you know—perhaps someone you love—wears a false face. That’s the most dreadful
thing that can happen to anyone.” Annie took a deep, shaky breath. “At least he didn’t die at home.”

Max looked puzzled just for an instant, then he nodded.

Annie picked up her juice, absently sipped. “It could have been anyone at the party. Unless the bourbon was poisoned before the party started. Then it could be anyone who had access to the suite. But if the whiskey was poisoned before he came to the hotel, it would have to be someone who could get into his house. Of course, we don’t know when the bottle was bought. Or where. But I imagine the police know that by now.” She lifted the newspaper. “I wonder what they mean about leads discovered at the scene.” She read quietly for a moment. “No mention about my Famous Five. Except it says the party was to honor the Medallion winners. But there’s nothing in here about Hazlitt’s book proposal. Who knows? Maybe he had wall-to-wall enemies at the party. Maybe somebody he’d cheated was there, or a jealous husband or a bookseller who owed Mint Julep Press money and couldn’t pay it. Though certainly a bookstore in that shape would owe lots of publishers, and only Hazlitt got poisoned. So far. Oh, Max, I wonder if he was married—” She flipped over to the page where the story continued. “Let’s see, that’d be at the bottom. It says ‘services are pending’—of course, they have to wait until the autopsy’s done, and that can take several days for all the poison tests to come back.” She lowered the paper, frowning again. “I don’t understand why they think it’s nicotine and the autopsy hasn’t been done.” She shrugged and turned back to the paper. “Oh, here we go. ‘Hazlitt is survived by a son, Michael, and a daughter, Jennifer, Calabasas, California.’ No mention of a wife, so I guess they were divorced. And he’s survived ‘by his brother, William.’ That must be Willie. Actually, they were stepbrothers, but it doesn’t say so. Hmm. So his wife—ex-wife—couldn’t have been at the party. Unless she was in disguise.”

“Disguise?” Max looked bewildered.

“Well, you know,” Annie murmured, “anything’s possible.
Remember
The Mousetrap.
But I’ll bet Henny got everyone’s name as they left. You know Henny. And the police can check and make certain everyone’s who they say they are.” She sprinkled some picante sauce on her omelet. She was, after all, Texas-born and Texas-bred. For good measure, she added a splash to her grits, which Texans enjoy as much as South Carolinians do.

“The problem won’t be finding out who was there. The problem will be that so many were there,” Max predicted. “Unless the police come up with some good physical evidence, they’re going to have a hard time charging anyone.”

Annie nudged onions and peppers atop the portion of omelet. “Do you suppose anyone’s going to tell them about the infamous book proposal?”

Max refilled their coffee cups. “Physical evidence counts for a lot more than motive. Who’s to say what suffices for a motive? The police will be looking for reasons someone might want Hazlitt dead, but their main focus will be on opportunity and physical evidence.”

Annie nodded. Motives could often be surprising. The morning newspaper also contained a story about a slaying in West Virginia where one neighbor shot another over the volume of the victim’s stereo system. She grinned. “You can bet our Famous Five have their stories down pat by now. They’ve had all night to think about how thrilled they were to be portrayed in Hazlitt’s novel. You have to hand it to Leah Kirby. It’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and I’ll have to say it will certainly make my job easier. Can you imagine how frantic the authors would be if the police started hounding them?” Annie tossed down her napkin and checked her watch. “And speaking of the Gang of Five, I’d better check on them, be sure everything’s in order for their appearances.” Pens, surely they’d all brought pens. Alan Blake’s panel was at ten o’clock. Better call him first.

As Annie pushed back her chair, a brisk knock sounded on their door.

“I’ll bet it’s one of them,” she murmured.

But when she opened the door, Detective Wheeler inclined his head politely. A younger, stocky man in a blue suit stood impassively beside him.

This morning, Wheeler looked like a tired, capable coach. He wore the same tan cotton suit, but today his shirt was white. He said softly, “Good morning, ma’am. I’d like to speak with you for a moment. Along with Sergeant Kennedy here.”

Annie glanced again at her watch. “I need to escort an author in half an hour. But I can talk to you until then.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He followed Annie into the suite and said good morning to Max. Sergeant Kennedy followed. He said nothing.

When they settled at the table, Wheeler courteously declined the offer of coffee. Instead, he rested his hands—broad, sturdy hands with blunt nails—on the table. His cool, unreadable gray eyes fastened on Annie.

Sergeant Kennedy pulled a notebook from his pocket. He had a round, earnest face and wore thick glasses. He held a blue pen in stubby fingers.

Max’s air of sleepy relaxation vanished. He looked from Kennedy to Wheeler.

“Mrs. Darling, are you a gardener?” the detective began.

Kennedy was poised to write. Annie simply stared at Wheeler.

Max leaned forward. “Detective Wheeler, I’d like to know why you are here.”

“For information, Mr. Darling.”

“In regard to?”

“Murder, Mr. Darling. The murder of Kenneth Hazlitt.”

“My wife scarcely knew Mr. Hazlitt, and I can see no reason why you should wish to interview her in any greater depth than the sixty-some-odd people who were also present when Hazlitt died yesterday.”

“Mr. Darling, she can answer questions here or she can come—under arrest as a material witness—to the Sheriff’s Department in Beaufort.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Annie stormed, “what’s going on here? Are you jumping on me because that jerk Jimmy Jay Crabtree says somebody put a death threat in his room? I think—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Darling. The Crabtree matter has no relation—except it seems to be another indication of your very excitable temper. It was your public altercation yesterday with Mr. Hazlitt that led us to you. And led us to obtain information about you from the Broward’s Rock Police Department.”

That had an ominous ring. Though surely Chief Saulter had explained that the murder in her bookstore some years earlier had been solved largely because of her own efforts?

Detective Wheeler pointed at his sergeant.

Sergeant Kennedy, his face bland, flipped back several pages. He began to read in a pleasant tenor. “Statement from Jessie Beal:
‘A really pretty young lady, short blond hair and a nice figure, athletic. She was furious. She threatened to close down his booth, but Kenneth came right back at her. She ended up yelling at him, something about a bash.’
Statement from Laetitia Hess: ‘I
couldn’t make out what they were fighting about, but this young woman was absolutely livid. I think it had something to do with the cocktail party where he dropped dead. No, I don’
know who she was.’
Statement from—”

Max held up his hand. “Lieutenant, there is a simple explanation.”

Annie jumped right in. “I’ll say there is.” In a few swift sentences, she described Hazlitt’s intention to write a roman à clef based on the Famous Five. She was glad to note that Sergeant Kennedy diligently took down everything she said. She concluded triumphantly, “So, the problem was between Hazlitt and the authors. I was trying to protect the authors. I’m their liaison with the Festival. I had no reason whatsoever to wish Hazlitt dead.” The combativeness seeped out of her face. “God, it was awful. Actually, he was kind of likable. He was causing a lot of trouble but, you know, he didn’t seem like a mean person.
Maybe he just didn’t understand how upsetting the idea of his book was to the authors.”

Detective Wheeler’s face remained impassive. Politely, he asked her to explain what a roman à clef was.

“So, Hazlitt was talking about doing a book based on their lives?”

“That’s it exactly.” Annie felt like she’d reached the top of a mountain. Finally.

“But he was just talking about a book. Right?” Detective Wheeler was polite, but his tone was dismissive.

Annie bristled. Wheeler didn’t understand. “He had a big New York publisher interested. And he was going to let everyone know about the novel at the Mint Julep open house today.”

“Those folks he was going to write about, they all came to his party?”

“Yes. They did. Don’t you see—”

“Yes, ma’am. You’ve raised some interesting points. But right now, I’d like to talk about what you did yesterday. Right from the start.”

It went easily until she got to the hotel for the first time.

Detective Wheeler really straightened up—shoulders back, chest out—hey, he had to be a former Marine—when she described going upstairs to the Hazlitt suite. His colorless eyes never left her face. He took her through a laborious step-by-step description of that visit.

Max looked like John J. Malone waiting for his client to be arrested.

Annie felt hot and uncomfortable.

So, when she came to the part about her second visit upstairs, she compressed it. “After I got back from Savannah, I went up looking for Kenneth Hazlitt, but nobody answered the door.” Which was, literally, true. She didn’t want to be grilled about every step she’d taken during that second, face it, surreptitious exploration of Hazlitt’s suite. “On my way out,” she continued smoothly, “I talked to Willie—his brother—his stepbrother, I mean—downstairs
in the White Ibis Room, and then I went to the airport …”

Wheeler nodded. Kennedy scribbled.

When she stopped, she glanced at her watch. It had only been ten minutes, but it felt like an hour. “Detective Wheeler, I have to meet Alan Blake before his panel.”

“I’d like to accommodate you, Mrs. Darling, but there are a few more points to cover.”

Abruptly, Annie felt like Eliza on her ice floe, colder than hell and scared.

“There’s nothing in what you’ve said this morning that explains one fact, Mrs. Darling.”

Annie looked into his cold, suspicious eyes. In the instant before he spoke, she knew that she was in trouble. Big time.

But she never expected the words that came, measured, inexorable, devastating.

“How did your fingerprints get on the glass containing the poison that killed Kenneth Hazlitt?”

“My fingerprints!
My
fingerprints?”

It honestly took her a pulsing, difficult, seemingly interminable interval, when those probing eyes never wavered from her face, to make the connection, the connection that had to be the answer. “You mean
that
glass was the one he was drinking from?
That
glass?”

“What glass, Mrs. Darling?”

“Annie.” Max shoved back his chair. “I believe we’ll call for legal counsel.”

“No, no. There’s nothing to it. Let me explain.” But, as she spoke, Wheeler watching her with the avidity of a cougar stalking a deer, the words came haltingly, the open door, the empty suite, the impulse to look for a manuscript, the glass lifted from behind the wet bar and balanced on the upended wastebasket.

“That,” she said firmly, “is the only glass I touched. When I finished looking, I put the glass back behind the wet bar.”

Annie knew that if she were a deer and the officer a cougar, she would be dead meat.

“You didn’t say anything about picking up a glass when you described that visit.”

Annie deliberately didn’t look toward Max, but she could feel his reproachful glance. So, okay, she’d condensed her first version a little. Was that a crime?

“I didn’t see a soul. So I didn’t think it mattered.”

There were no Hamilton Burger antics. Detective Wheeler didn’t stand and yell and point an accusatory finger, but in a quiet, steely way the effect was the same. “Mrs. Darling: You didn’t think it mattered that you had access to that suite, uninterrupted, unobserved access, to do whatever you wanted to do?”

Annie could hear the ice crackling. She wondered if Eliza had endured the same sinking feeling. Annie took a deep breath, but Max spoke first.