Death Comes Silently (3 page)

As if on cue, she heard a distant throaty rumble and recognized the roar of Max’s Maserati. They usually drove separately to the marina shops, she to her mystery bookstore and he to Confidential Commissions, his rather unusual office where he offered counsel to people in trouble. Max was quick to insist he wasn’t a private detective, which required particular qualifications in the sovereign state of South Carolina. He was comfortable in his job description. He provided advice. If discovering information was essential to serving his clients, that certainly didn’t make him a private eye.

The Maserati’s engine cut off.

Annie pictured the man in her life swinging out of his red sports car. Max loved his Maserati, but he didn’t drive the powerful and swift car because it was expensive. He savored the power and elegance of the ultimate driving machine. Annie was willing to spot everyone an indulgence. The Maserati was Max’s. Hers? She possessed an original perfect first-edition—complete with color plate illustrations—of
The Man in Lower Ten
by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Certainly the Maserati was hugely more expensive than the book, but for both of them, the joy was in the object and never in the price.

Annie’s smile was wry. Her husband often suggested she was a captive of Calvinistic attitudes, not, he airily continued, a difficulty he’d ever faced. Yes, they were different. Max grew up rich. She and her single mom worried about paying the bills. Annie’s home had been in wind-swept Amarillo; Max’s in an affluent Connecticut suburb. Annie couldn’t imagine life without work; Max firmly believed life was made for pleasure. But one unforgettable night, their eyes had met at a crowded after-theater party in Greenwich Village. She’d thought them too different ever to be together and she’d run away to the little South Carolina sea island of Broward’s Rock. Max had followed. Perhaps they weren’t suited in some ways, but there was never any doubt that they could not live without each other. What was love? Passion, yes, always, but love meant trust and faith and laughter. To know that Max was in a room with her made that place a haven. They’d known happy days and tough days, but it was always the two of them together.

She crossed her fingers. On both hands. Not, of course, that she was superstitious. But she and Max had come near the unraveling of their lives, and she never ceased to be thankful for their escape. Underneath their cheerful banter, they possessed a sober realization of life’s uncertainties.

She turned to look across the boardwalk at the shops that curved in a semicircle facing the marina. Death on Demand, her wonderful mystery bookstore, beckoned her, though she was braced for a frazzling day. She shivered, drew her cheerful peacock blue wool jacket close.

Her cell phone rang.

Annie slipped the cell from the pocket of her wool slacks, glanced at the caller ID, raised an eyebrow. “Hello.”

“Don’t think she hasn’t spotted you.” Ingrid spoke in a whisper.

The connection ended. Her clerk was giving her a heads-up. Another day, another encounter with Annie’s always unpredictable mother-in-law, Laurel Darling Roethke. Where Max was handsome, Laurel was gorgeous. Silver blond hair framed a fine bone structure. Yet there was more than beauty; there was a hint of rollicking adventure and enthusiasm and eagerness for life. When Laurel walked into a room, everyone suddenly felt touched by magic. Laurel’s Nordic blue eyes might sometimes be slightly spacey, but they could also be incredibly perceptive.

Annie moved toward the steps to the shops. Annie had survived Laurel’s flirtation with cosmic karma, her delight in saints, most especially the remarkable Teresa of Ávila, and most recently her determination to decorate the bookstore with photographs of exotic cats. Cat photos now hung on the walls among book posters—Harlan Coben’s new thriller, Mary Saums’s clever new
Thistle and Twigg
—and were adored by customers. Annie enjoyed looking at them as well. As she well knew, cats ruled, especially Agatha, Death on Demand’s sleek black resident feline.

Annie reached the front door, thoughts whirling. Laurel was no stranger to the store, but today was challenging, a Beaufort book club arriving for a talk by Emma Clyde and a light lunch. Had the chicken salad been delivered? Emma, the island’s famous crime writer, would sign copies of her new Marigold Rembrandt mystery,
The Case of the Convivial Cat
. Woe betide Annie if they ran out of books. Woe betide Annie if she’d ordered too many, making the author feel the signing was a flop.

Annie drew a deep breath. Chicken salad… the new books… Leave a couple of boxes in the storeroom? She didn’t have time for Laurel this morning. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the charm of Laurel’s most recent preoccupation, but she insisted—nicely—upon audience participation. Annie wasn’t sure why she objected so
strenuously, but she’d always refused to wear silly hats, watch Charlie Chaplin, or draw undue attention to herself.

She stopped with her hand on the knob. Good grief, was she a pompous ass?

What harm would it do to play along? Get in the spirit?

Annie gave a decided head shake. Responding quickly to a question before she had time to think was too much like a public Rorschach test. She took a deep breath, opened the door, activating the new
Inner Sanctum
door recording that Ingrid’s husband, Duane, had installed before Halloween. The satisfying creak of hinges foretold chills and thrills, exactly what readers would find in the finest mystery bookstore north of Florida’s Murder on the Beach.

Annie stepped inside, drew another happy breath, this time of books and bindings and coffee.

Slender and intense, her graying hair in a new short cut, Ingrid worked at the front counter, smiling, chatting, and ringing up sales with practiced efficiency. A long line of customers snaked toward the coffee bar. Annie didn’t spot her mother-in-law. She smiled in relief. No doubt Laurel was sharing her new vision with one of the ladies from Beaufort. Wonderful. Annie had plenty on her plate. She needed to make sure there was enough chicken salad and help Henny Brawley take orders at the coffee bar. Emma’s crusty tone—oh, dear, was she being combative with a reader?—was commandingly audible over the twitter of the club ladies who had arrived way too early and—

“Annie dear!” Her mother-in-law popped from behind the beaded curtain that screened the alcove to the children’s mystery section. “Think of the sun!” Laurel beamed. Was it accidental that she was positioned precisely in the glow of a ceiling spotlight? Whatever, her silver gold hair gleamed and her patrician face with deep-set blue eyes, fine bridged nose, and dimpled chin was strikingly lovely.

Annie stared. On anyone else, Laurel’s costume would have looked absurd, a pink straw farmer’s hat, a red-and-white plaid shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, navy denim overalls accented by gold buttons at the straps and pockets, and a pink leather version of farm boots. On Laurel, the result was fetching. The farmer’s hat boasted, of course, a sunflower tucked beneath the cerise hat band.

Laurel plucked a two-foot sunflower from a capacious pocket, held the blossom out to Annie with a winning smile. “Sunflower time,” she caroled, the pink boots giving a quick Cossack tattoo. “Quick now—five seconds to answer—picture a Sunflower and sweet potatoes. First thought?”

Involuntarily, an obedient mouse in Laurel’s mental laboratory,
home
popped into Annie’s mind, a memory of a sunflower spoon handle as her mother lifted steaming sugar-streaked candied sweet potatoes to her plate. Annie’s lips parted, clamped shut.

“Time’s up.” Laurel’s tone was kind, not chiding. Her manners were exquisite. The five-second limit served two purposes. A quick response was certain to reflect innermost thoughts, but the deadline also afforded an unobtrusive escape hatch for those unwilling to participate. Laurel’s smile was approving, whether she received an answer or not. She continued with no hint of irritation, “I’m sure the magic of Sunflowers will be with you now, adding warmth and happiness to your day. Here is a Sunflower just for you.” When she spoke, the flower’s name was clearly capitalized.

As the days had shortened and the onshore breeze freshened, Laurel had received a bouquet of sunflowers from a new beau. Always seeking the inner meaning of events large and small, she discovered that sunflowers were considered happy flowers, their faces reminiscent of the life-giving warmth of the sun. Ergo, she devised her Sunflower
Game, the better, she assured Annie, to encourage happy thoughts that everyone needed, especially in winter.

Annie took the bristly stalk, looked at the flower, noted two opposite spirals, which indicated this was a disk sunflower… With an effort, she yanked her mind back toward the work harness. She had learned more about sunflowers in the last few weeks than she’d
ever
wanted to know, and today she didn’t have time for extraneous sunflower thoughts.

“It’s gorgeous, Laurel.” And, of course, it was, the petals as softly gold as summer sunshine. “Thank you.” Clutching the stalk, she edged down the congested center aisle, heading for the coffee bar area where the ladies would lunch and, at one side, Emma Clyde would regally hold forth as the Queen of Crime.

Despite her sunflower-be-damned mood, she couldn’t help overhearing Laurel confide to a cherubic elderly lady listening with a slightly bemused expression, “Sunflower disk flowers are both male and female and are fertile. Isn’t that a happy thought on a cold winter day?”

Fertile. If anyone ever knew about… Annie wrenched her mind away from any consideration of her oft-married mother-in-law’s romantic proclivities as well as sunflower trivia. There was much to be done…

The next hour passed in a frantic blur, food served, spilled iced tea mopped up, a controversy as to seating settled, cell phones hopefully turned off, and finally spiky-haired Emma Clyde in a caftan that looked like a cross between a ship’s billowing sail and a flannel nightgown rose majestically to her feet. Stalwart, sturdy, stern-visaged, self-absorbed, and a sponge for attention, Emma looked benignly at her audience. “Marigold Rembrandt and I”—she might have been describing royalty—“have perhaps enjoyed our finest moment—”

Annie watched with a cool gaze. Was Emma grandiose or what?

Emma’s knife-sharp blue eyes paused in their sweep of the room.

Annie promptly rearranged her face in what she devoutly hoped would pass as an entranced expression.

“—in
The Case of the Convivial Cat
. Marigold once again takes Inspector Houlihan to task as she insightfully, really quite brilliantly—”

Annie maintained her pleasant expression. Implicit was the premise that Marigold was simply a reflection of the incredible sagacity of author Emma Clyde.

“—follows the cunningly inserted clues—”

Annie’s cell phone rang. She’d been thrilled when Duane Webb had downloaded the Inner Sanctum creak to serve as her ringtone, mirroring the sounds when Death on Demand’s front door opened, but the piercing squeal blared in the hushed quiet of the bookstore.

Emma came to a full stop. Her icy blue eyes slitted. She folded her sturdy arms across her chest and gazed at Annie with a stony expression.

Annie fumbled in her pocket.
Creeaaak
… She’d gone from table to table and pled with charm for all cell phones to be turned off. How could she have forgotten her own?

Phone in hand, she flipped it open, whispered, “I can’t talk now…”

Emma waited, the Empress Dowager contemplating a lower life form.

Some of the ladies turned to stare. A few made disapproving murmurs.

Annie heard a familiar semihysterical voice. “Annie, you have to come… Such a fright always… I don’t think I can stay here with that big hulking brute… and”—her voice puffed with self-importance—“I
have to decide what to do about that index card that I found…”

Annie took a deep breath. Gretchen Burkholt lived in a world of extreme stress, a gentle rain heralded a nor’easter, any stray cat was surely rabid, the potato salad at the picnic might harbor salmonella… Annie and Gretchen were among volunteers at Better Tomorrow, the island charity shop, which offered groceries, clothing, job tips, firewood, help with bills, and encouragement to those in a financial bind. Better Tomorrow’s client base had swelled during the recent bad times. Gretchen had switched volunteer slots today so Annie could host the luncheon and book event. Therefore, Annie was in no position to be abrupt.

Emma cleared her throat. Emphatically.

Annie heard snatches of Gretchen’s increasing frenzied patter. “…I always check the clothing, especially when someone’s recently deceased… family members can be too distraught… and everyone was so puzzled that he was out there…”

Annie broke in, hating to be rude, but she had to end the distraction before Emma rose and departed with the grace of an offended rhinoceros. “Gretchen, sorry. Have to go. Call back. Leave me a message. As soon as the signing’s over”—anything to be free—“I’ll do whatever you want.” She ended the call, clicked off the phone, dropped it in her pocket.

“I’m very sorry. Unexpected call. I forgot to turn my phone off.” This last in a mumble. “Now I know Emma will forgive me and share with you the wonderful”—great emphasis—“scene where Marigold Rembrandt”—Annie always did her duty and had read the new book even though she loathed the supercilious redheaded sleuth—“realizes in the nick of time that the inverted coffee cup means that Professor Willingham is not what he seems to be.”