Mint Julep Murder (13 page)

There was nothing spacey about Miss Dora’s raisin-dark eyes. They glistened with a sharp, cold intelligence. Right now her parchment-colored, wizened face was scrunched in thought. Occasionally, she lifted her cane and made a thrust and parry.

Henny wore a crisp seersucker suit and looked like a director on many boards. As she was.

Max and Henny spoke together.

“Why don’t you three—”

“The people at the party—”

Each stopped. Max nodded politely.

“The party,” Henny said again. “I made a copy of the list of names before I gave it to the police.”

Her cohorts smiled in approval.

Max thumped his hand with his fist. “Great! Here’s what I suggest—”

They listened, making various sounds of agreement, then departed, stepping briskly.

Max watched them go down the hall. There were only three of them. So why did he keep thinking of a Roman phalanx?

But they would now be well occupied, and surely they would be safe. This legwork needed to be done. But how long would it take for them to contact everyone who had attended the fatal party and try to chart each person’s movements within the Hazlitt suite? It would take mounds of graph paper. Actually, a three-dimensional approach might be required.

And the possibility that this task would also provide the wannabe authors with a reason to chat with the many book publishers among the party attendees—well, Max dismissed that from his mind as unworthy.

His smile slipped away. He closed the door, crossed to the telephone, and punched the number of his office on Broward’s Rock.

Annie wiped beads of sweat from her face. She longed to crack the door to the telephone booth, but even with the door closed, she could barely hear above the country music twanging from the nearby stage.

A rush of static blitzed the phone.

Annie held the receiver away from her ear until the crackling stopped.

“What did you say, Chief?”

“… damn mobile phones are more trouble than they’re worth.” Frank Saulter, police chief of Broward’s
Rock, had been a close friend of Annie’s late uncle, Ambrose, the original owner of the Death on Demand bookstore. Now Saulter was a staunch friend of both Annie and Max. “I said what the heck have you gotten mixed up in?”

“Murder,” she replied drearily. And she quickly brought him up to date, including the infamous glass.

“So that’s”—crackle, crackle—“your prints—”

Annie had no trouble filling in the missing words.

“Yes. Listen, Chief, the detective in charge of the investigation thinks I might have done it! Have you talked to anybody in the Sheriff’s Department about this case?”

“Just got off the phone. They won’t know for sure until the autopsy reports are in, but they found a small bottle with nicotine in it—you know, the kind you buy at garden stores—on the floor of the suite. And there were traces of nicotine in the glass.”

That explained why the police believed nicotine to be the poison, but the presence of the little bottle meant even more to her. Relief lifted her voice. “Well, I know my fingerprints weren’t on
that
container!”

Then she fought a swift, sharp fear. It would be in the realm of nightmares if somehow, some way, her fingerprints appeared there. But, obviously they hadn’t. If they had, she’d be languishing right that moment in the Beaufort County jail.

Static.

“… wiped clean. Not a print on it.”

So, she might be in a mess, but it didn’t yet have the dimensions of a nightmare.

“How about the whiskey bottle?”

“The victim’s prints, plus his brother’s, plus some as yet unidentified.”

But not hers. Annie felt another surge of relief, but she didn’t harbor a hope that the murderer had conveniently forgotten to wipe the whiskey bottle, thereby leaving his or her incriminating fingerprints behind.

But why polish the nicotine bottle and
not
the whiskey bottle?

She propped open her purse, fumbled for her pen.

“Have you heard anything about the direction of the investigation?” She added the query about bottles and prints to her list of questions, checking off Numbers 1-3.

The line was suddenly clear, but Saulter didn’t say a word. The silence was ominous.

“Chief, who do they suspect?”

Saulter’s tone was weary. “Young lady, how the
hell
do you manage to get into so much trouble?”

She was too hot and worried to take exception. She ignored the implied criticism of Max (Chief Saulter expected husbands to keep their wives occupied with more salutary matters than homicide) and the sexist judgment (only a damn fool woman would search through someone else’s suite even if the door
was
open). Because she also heard the unmistakable uneasiness in his voice.

And that was really scary.

Annie didn’t try to defend herself. Chief Saulter wouldn’t understand how concern for the authors assigned to her put her in this pickle.

Instead she wiped her face, wriggled against her sticky blouse, and said quietly, “Chief, I promise. I’ll never—” She paused. Ransack somebody’s hotel room? That was a peculiar promise to make. And maybe it begged the question. She started over. “Chief, you know I wouldn’t kill anybody.”

“Not with poison.” His voice was quiet and grave.

His utter certainty made her feel like a million dollars. She blinked back a tear. Maybe sometimes it was almost worth panic and fear to discover how someone close to you saw you. “Thank you, Frank.” She took a deep breath. “Chief, I need your help …”

In the hotel business center, Max signed for the fax pages, then used the copy machine. He made three sets. He left one at the front desk for Annie and one in the suite. The third he took with him.

The silky sea breeze ruffled the candy-striped awnings. The plaza was jammed with festival-goers this morning. Annie struggled through the holiday crowds.

“… Waldron’s such an insightful writer. She …”

“… don’t want to miss the panel on Southern food.”

“Arthur Flowers is one of my favorite …”

“… from Yoknapatawpha County to …”

“Did you attend Madison Smartt Bell’s panel?”

Damn, damn, damn. She was missing everything! And she only had an hour before she needed to escort Leah Kirby to her panel. By then, Annie had to figure out a way to break through Kirby’s defenses. She’d tried the old Everything-Is-Known-Flee-At-Once ploy with Alan Blake, and it had failed. Miserably. As far as she was concerned, Jimmy Jay Crabtree and Alan Blake were now in a dead heat for her least favorite author.

She reached the Mint Julep Press booth.

The life-size poster of Kenneth Hazlitt still stood, panama hat buoyantly tilted, grin ebullient enough for Fat Tuesday, the merry blue eyes cocky and unseeing.

Willie Hazlitt wasn’t there.

The phone in his suite hadn’t been answered. The doors to the White Ibis Room were locked. God, what if Willie’d loaded up and gone back to Atlanta? But, no: The booth was still here, though the somber-faced woman slumped forlornly in a metal chair didn’t look like she could sell the original manuscript of
Sanctuary
with Faulkner’s handwritten corrections.

A roar of laughter rolled up from a Festival session on the beach. A trombone wailed and a trumpet soared as a Dixieland jazz band snaked by the booths.

Annie leaned across the counter. “Willie!” she shouted. “Do you know where he is?”

The woman in the metal chair pushed gold-rimmed glasses higher on a narrow nose. She had a white rabbit face and weak blue eyes that avoided Annie’s gaze. She pointed toward the beach. “Mr. Hazlitt’s gone for a walk. May I help you?” The offer was made without enthusiasm.

“Thanks, but I need to see him. Do you know when he will be back?”

Bony shoulders rose and fell.

Annie looked at her watch, then plunged into the swirling mass of festival-goers.

Sand gritted beneath her sandals as she quickly crossed the boardwalk over the dunes to the beach.

A cool breeze fluttered her skirt. Whitecaps glittered on the choppy green water. She breathed deeply, relishing the salty tang, and looked up and down the beach.

Umbrellas rustled in the wind. Only a few were up, and beachgoers nestled in blankets and towels. It would warm to the low seventies by afternoon, but right now, with the breeze off the water, it was chilly.

Right or left?

Either way, a brisk walk would lead to almost empty beaches within a hundred yards.

A wedge formation of brown pelicans skimmed the wave tops heading south.

It was as good an omen as any.

Annie turned right. She walked on the firm sand still damp from the outgoing tide. Shading her eyes, she checked every blanket, every chair, and then she was past the beachgoers clumped near the boardwalk.

Million-dollar homes with two and three levels of balconies and shining expanses of glass rose behind the dunes.

Two joggers loped past, a family on bikes wheeled by, a woman walked an Irish setter.

Annie squinted. Fifty yards ahead, a man in blue sweats leaned against a half-buried bone-white log long ago tossed up on the beach by a storm.

Annie picked up speed.

Willie Hazlitt stared somberly at the horizon, his arms folded across his chest. The wind tousled his dark hair, but Annie thought that perhaps for the first time in his life, Willie Hazlitt wasn’t even aware of his appearance. His eyes were red-rimmed; his mouth set in a grim line.

Overhead a laughing gull rode a wind current, and its strange, cackling call hung in the air. The unceasing curl
and crash of breaking waves boomed like a faraway cannon. The breeze rustled the sea oats on the dunes like ghostly fingers plucking the strings of a mandolin.

Annie stepped closer.

“Willie, I’m so sorry.”

He tried to smile, but it came out lopsided. “I never thought I’d see a beautiful girl on a beach—and not even care.” His eyes were dark with pain. “I’ve never felt so lost in my whole life. Not even when my mom died. Ken was there. He’s always been there. Ever since I was five and my mom married his dad. The big guy. My big bud. And now—” He swiped a hand roughly across his face. “And now I don’t know what the hell to do about everything. About anything. I called Mike and Jenny. God, that was awful. And it’s all up in the air. When the funeral will be. And where. Then I tried to decide about the stuff here. I mean, what the hell does it matter now? But it mattered to Ken. What do you think? Should I pack it all up? Forget about the Festival? But Ken was hoping for big orders. Maybe I should have the open house just like he’d planned.”

Annie knew something about grief. It was better to be busy. Much better. Firmly, she said, “I’d carry on. Have the open house. Get the orders.” She hesitated, then made the plunge. “But first, Willie, I want to ask for your help.” She didn’t feel her request was totally self-serving. Surely it would begin to ease Willie’s pain to try and discover his brother’s murderer. She started with the easy question first. “Is there anyone who can tell me more about the novel Kenneth was going to write?”

“That book?” He shot her an odd, almost angry look. “What difference does it make now?”

“It may make all the difference—in finding out who poisoned him.”

Willie’s eyes searched her face. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You really think one of those authors did it?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He pushed off the log, stood stiff and straight, his hands clenched into fists. He was too
angry, too absorbed in her suggestion to wonder, even so, why she should care.

Maybe that thought wouldn’t occur to him until long after today. Maybe never.

Obviously, Willie didn’t know about her fingerprints on the fatal glass. Which proved Detective Wheeler was closemouthed. That was good. But Willie’s shock at her suggestion also proved Detective Wheeler hadn’t mentioned the famous authors as possible suspects. That was not so good.

“That stupid book? Who’d kill somebody over stuff in a book?”

“It depends upon what kind of stuff it was going to be, Willie. I know the authors he said he was going to put in it were upset and scared. And these are people who live and die because of words. I tried to tell your brother, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Some of the tension eased out of his body. Now the smile was stronger, genuine. “Ken was on a roll. He was having a hell of a time.”

Annie remembered Kenneth Hazlitt’s booming voice, his undisguised elation. A man who loved parties. A man who had planned one party too many where the fun was at someone else’s expense.

“The authors weren’t,” she said grimly.

Willie rubbed his chin. “But that’s silly, you know, to think somebody’d kill him over a book. Though …” He looked puzzled.

Annie pounced. “What, Willie?”

“The box for the open house is gone. I noticed it this morning. It had some stuff about the book. Kenneth was going to put these announcements about the book right at the back of the open house. He said people would be curious as hell and that would move them through the whole Mint Julep display.”

The missing box.

Taken by a young blond woman who looked so like her.