Mint Julep Murder (25 page)

Inert, unmoving.

“Max …” Her lips moved, but no sound came.

Nausea welled in her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

She dropped the gun, yanked at the door.

It opened.

The figure began to topple.

Annie reached out, tried to catch the heavy falling body, staggered backward, unable to bear its weight, unable to stop its slow, dreadful slide.

The interior car light spilled down.

Dark hair.

Dark
hair. Blood.

Annie clutched the car door, clung to it. She stared down at the dead man.

In death, the muscles were slack, but his features had been bold, a sharp, bony nose, a prominent forehead, a pointed chin. His skin was swarthy. Dark eyes stared vacantly into the night. A single bullet wound marked his left temple. Blood trickled down his cheek. There was no exit wound. The bullet was embedded in his brain.

She’d never seen him before.

Slowly, she backed away.

Headlights flashed as a car turned into the lot.

Annie swung to face the lights.

She hesitated. But she had no choice. Whirling around, she began to run.

Behind her, a woman screamed.

Annie’s heart thudded, her lungs ached.

This was dangerous. What if the driver in the car had a gun? What if it was a pickup truck with a gun rack?

She shouldn’t run.

But she must run. God, she must run.

She bent low, swerved behind a hibiscus shrub.

Somewhere at the end of the lot, there was a path to the terrace. She was sure of it.

Almost sure.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Annie ran faster.

Her side ached, her lungs burned.

There was light here. She could see better, but she could also be seen. She crouched low. Just in time, she saw a decorative row of boulders.

Annie jumped, slid on shells, found a gap in the hedges, and turned right. She skidded to a stop, gasping for breath, and listened.

Shouts rose in the parking lot.

“That way. I think she went that way.”

“What’s happened? What’s going on?”

But the sounds grew fainter.

This must be how the fox felt when the hounds followed the wrong scent, loped away.

Annie hurried up the path. She came out on the terrace.

People milled about, talking, laughing. The dance floor was packed. The music blared.

No one on the terrace had heard the shouts in the parking lot. And the gunshot? It was just a pop, a little pop that destroyed a life.

Annie pushed through the crowd, reached the edge of the terrace.

And there, standing by the boardwalk, was Max.

She ran and flung herself in his arms and clung to him, tighter and tighter until she could feel the beating of his heart against her own.

Annie shivered.

Max shoved back his chair so abruptly it toppled behind him. He strode to the door, yanked it open.

A uniformed officer barred the way.

“My wife is suffering from shock. I demand that we be permitted to go up to our suite.”

“Sorry, sir. You can’t leave until Detective Wheeler interviews you.”

“Then get a blanket for my wife. Get it
now,”
Max’s voice thundered.

The patrolman peered past Max.

Annie huddled in her chair, her arms tightly crossed. In the mirrored wall opposite, she could see herself, her hair snarled, her eyes bleary, her face splotched and pale. She couldn’t stop trembling.

It wasn’t simply that she was cold, though she was indeed. This little-used conference room was achingly cold. An air-conditioning vent rattled from the unending flow. She couldn’t stop shaking, and she couldn’t stop the pictures in her mind, disjointed and fragmented but freighted with horror, the dark shape in the passenger seat, the shattering of the lamp globe, the bloodied circle in the murdered man’s temple.

“Yes, sir. I’ll get a blanket. And maybe some coffee.”

The door closed.

Max pulled a chair close, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Annie, it’s okay.”

She managed a wan smile and forced herself to sit straight to reassure Max. But she was grateful when the patrolman returned with a blanket and coffee.

Max tucked the blanket around her. She winced when the harsh wool touched the scratches on her arms and legs.

The coffee helped.

Annie cradled the cup in her hands, welcoming the heat against her palms. She no longer felt sheathed in ice.

But she couldn’t stop shaking, and the shell cuts stung like fury.

She was almost too tired to care when the door opened and—finally!—Detective Wheeler walked in.

Max stood.

Wheeler nodded, strode to the table, and sank into a chair across from Annie. He didn’t look starched tonight.
His cotton suit was wrinkled. Patches of oyster shell dust clung to his jacket. He needed a shave. He gestured for Max to sit.

Max leaned forward, his palms on the table. “My wife has been through a harrowing experience. To help the police, she’s willing to describe what happened. Then, Detective, I’m going to take her upstairs. Any further discussion will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“A man’s been shot, Mr. Darling. In your wife’s car. And we found the gun she’s admitted dropping—”

Annie looked directly at Wheeler. “I didn’t shoot anyone with it.”

“But you admit dropping it by your car?”

“Yes. I’ll—”

Wheeler held up his hand. “We’ll get to it, Mrs. Darling. But first, Mr. Darling, I understand your concerns. I can see that your wife is upset. But I’m not going to put any limits on my investigation. I will keep in mind your wife’s condition.” His voice wasn’t unpleasant. But it was frigidly impersonal.

“I will insist upon it.” Max sat down next to Annie, his face grim.

Annie looked at Detective Wheeler, who regarded her without expression.

What else, Annie thought, could she expect? She put down her cup, sat up straight, hugged the blanket a little tighter. “Who is he, Detective Wheeler?” She had to know the answer to that. She had to know.

His gun-metal eyes probed her face. “You don’t know him?”

“I have never,” she replied steadily, “seen that man before. Never.”

“You didn’t go out to your car with him?”

“No.”

“Did he assault you? Did he climb into your car and did you shoot him in self-defense?”

“Detective Wheeler, I didn’t shoot anyone. Not for any reason. Here’s what happened …”

He listened without interrupting. When she had finished,
he pressed his fingertips together, looked at her over their arc. “Why did you run away?”

“I didn’t know if Max was all right. I didn’t know. I had to find him.” She met the policeman’s gaze squarely. “Nothing else mattered.”

Wheeler’s face remained stolid. “To run was a very unwise act on your part, Mrs. Darling.”

Annie shook her head. “Detective Wheeler, it isn’t always possible to love—and be wise.”

For an instant, Annie felt she saw a flash of understanding in the detective’s eyes. Then his gaze was once again cold and bleak.

“Mr. Darling, did you leave a message at the front desk asking your wife to meet you at her car?”

“No. I was expecting to meet her at the boardwalk at eleven.”

Wheeler nodded. He pushed back his chair, walked to the door, stepped out into the hall. In a moment he returned.

He eyed Annie. “You didn’t question the message?”

“Why should I? Jeff—Jeff Garrett—said my husband called the desk and left a message for me. I went by the house phones and dialed our room—I thought I might catch him, ask why—but there wasn’t any answer.”

Max leaned forward. “I didn’t return to the suite at any time after Annie and I went downstairs to the terrace.”

The questions came thick and fast.

“Are you sure you’ve never seen this man before?” Wheeler opened a folder, pulled out a Polaroid photo, and placed it on the table.

Annie carefully studied the dead face. Lank black hair, overlong for her taste. Bushy eyebrows. The stubble of a beard. Not especially attractive, but memorable, with strong, sharp features. Somber, of course, in death. She tried to imagine him smiling, laughing. But there was nothing about that face that stirred in her memory. “Detective Wheeler, that man is a complete stranger to me.”

Max picked up the photograph. “What’s his name? Where’s he from?”

“We’re working on that.”

Max’s gaze sharpened. “Do you mean you don’t have
any
ID?”

“Not yet.”

“Was his billfold gone?” Annie demanded.

The detective nodded.

“There’s no identification on him at all?”

“Not that we’ve found yet,” Wheeler admitted. “At the morgue, they’ll be thorough. And I’ve got men looking over the parking lot, the trash barrels, the hotel.”

Annie took the picture from Max. “Who he is must be important. That or where he came from. It must be very important.” She placed the photo on the table in front of her.

“We’ll find out.” Wheeler was confident. “Sooner or later, we’ll find out. Now, Mrs. Darling, did you see anyone in the lot?”

“Not in the lot itself. Some women passed me on the path going toward the hotel.”

“In the lot, what did you see?”

“Cars. Just cars. I walked up behind my car. I saw someone sitting in it. I thought it was Max.” Her hands clutched the blanket. “It all happened so fast. There was a pop and the sound of glass breaking and suddenly it was much darker. I looked up and the nearest lamp was broken. There was another pop. Someone was shooting at me! I ran around the back of my car and dropped down on the ground and crawled underneath the car”—her voice quavered—“then I knew that was stupid. I could hear someone running—”

“A man? A woman?”

Annie pressed fingers against her temples, struggling to remember the sound. Wearily, she shook her head. “I don’t know. It was just a crunch, crunch. Fast.” She knotted her fingers together. “It was so dark. I was trying to get out on the other side of the car, then the person was there and he—she—kicked dust under the car and I was choking. Something hard hit me. Whoever it was ran away. I felt around, and that’s when I found the gun.”

They went over that. And over it.

“All of a sudden”—Annie shuddered—“I panicked. Because I believed it was Max inside the car. I believed it was Max.” Her voice was a thin reed of sound.

Max took her hands in his. She gave him a grateful glance.

Wheeler rubbed his bristly jaw. “And then, Mrs. Darling?”

Annie squeezed Max’s hands, released them, and drew the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “I scrambled out from beneath the car and pulled open the door—”

Wheeler’s expression changed. “The door opened immediately?”

“Oh, yes, it opened.” Annie’s tone was thoughtful. “I locked the car when I left it there. How did they get it open?”

“They, Mrs. Darling?”

“The man who was killed and whoever was with him.”

“Why do you think someone was with him?”

She waved her hand impatiently. The blanket slipped from her shoulders. “Because he didn’t shoot himself. Not if the gun that was thrown under the car is the one that killed him. Do you know that yet?”

“No. We won’t be certain until the autopsy is done. But the coroner thought the entry wound looked like it was made by a small-caliber gun, and the gun you dropped was a .22.”

A gun’s caliber, measured in hundredths of an inch, was determined by the diameter of the barrel. So, a bullet shot from a .22 would leave a much smaller wound than a shot from a .45. Annie wondered how many wounds a coroner must have seen to be able to make a judgment from sight.

It was good to think in general terms, to distance herself from that dreadful moment when a heavy body slid from her desperate grasp.

“Okay. Okay.” Color seeped back into Annie’s face. “Let’s figure it out, Mr. Wheeler. To begin with, that’s the only gun at the scene, so far as we know. Right?”

Wheeler nodded.

“So, not a suicide. Now, the murdered man was sitting in the passenger seat. Can the pathologist figure out if the wound would be consistent with someone sitting beside the victim having shot him?”

“I imagine he can. Mrs. Darling, I—”

Annie swept on. “But the most important question is, how did they get into my car? And why
my
car?”

“Exactly, Mrs. Darling.” His dispassionate eyes bored into hers.

Annie folded her arms. “Not
with
me. Or
by
me, Detective Wheeler. I left my car locked. What’s more, I left the keys upstairs in our suite.”

Max nodded emphatically. “I can swear to that. Annie dropped her keys on top of the television set. I saw them there before we went downstairs.”

“You and Mrs. Darling weren’t together for the entire evening. She could easily have returned to the room and picked up the keys.”

“Let’s be sure we know what we’re talking about,” Max said briskly. “I can go upstairs and—”

A knock sounded on the door. The uniformed officer stepped inside. “Mr. Garrett is here, sir.”

“Thank you, Travis.”

Jeff Garrett no longer looked merely weary. He was haggard. He gave Annie and Max a brief nod, then demanded, “Detective Wheeler, how long is the parking lot going to be blocked? I’ve got some furious people who want to get to their cars.”

“The lot will be open when we’ve finished that portion of our investigation, Mr. Garrett. I apologize if it causes any inconvenience.”

“But people can’t get out, and they’re mad.”

Wheeler gave a small shrug.

Garrett shook his head wearily, then sighed. “All right. You wanted me?”

“Yes, Mr. Garrett. I understand you took a message from Mr. Darling for—”

Max broke in swiftly. “Detective Wheeler, that’s
known as leading the witness, and it’s just as unfair here as it would be in court.”

A wintry smile touched the detective’s lips. “All right, Mr. Darling. Let me rephrase it. Mr. Garrett, please tell us about the message you received for Mrs. Darling tonight.”

Garrett’s eyes widened as he looked at Annie. “Is that
your
car? Did that guy get killed in
your
car?”