Death on Demand (6 page)

The room fell abruptly quiet. Heads swivelled, and Max started weaving his way across the room. The expression on his face, even in the midst of her fury, made Annie step forward to stop him. Dear Max. He looked
murderous
—and everyone else looked shocked.

Her face flushed. How could she have been so stupid? Elliot was an ass, a blowhard, a bully—and she was playing right into his hands by overreacting like this.

Everyone started talking at once, and Max was trying to push past her to Elliot when the string of bells at the door jangled, and a high-pitched voice shrieked: “My God, everyone, have you heard? Isn’t it the most awful? What can we do?”

Harriet Edelman’s wispy blond hair quivered, her light green eyes bulged. Leaning forward, she paused, savoring her moment in the spotlight. One hand was outstretched dramatically, and the large ruby on her hand winked like a cat’s eye at night.

“She’s dead, her head all bashed in. It’s murder. Murder here on Broward’s Rock.”

A vocal melee broke out. It was Capt. Mac’s stentorian bellow which finally brought quiet.

“The facts, Harriet,” he instructed, with a former cop’s authority.

With dreadful curiosity, everyone subsided and listened.

In just such a fashion, Annie thought with a shiver, a Wentworth mystery began. She scanned the faces in the room.

Harriet’s information was meager but grim.

“It’s Jill Kearney.”

There was a gasp from one of the circle, and Annie felt a pang of horror. She knew Jill. She
liked
her. Murdered?

“… at the Island Hills Clink. Her body was found this morning in the dispensary. Bludgeoned to death. Police are seeking information from anyone who saw her last night.”

“Are any drugs missing?” Emma was crisp.

Harriet repeated blankly, “Drugs?”

“From the dispensary,” Emma said, giving her tinted head an impatient shake. “Morphine, codeine, what have you.”

Harriet’s self-importance collapsed. “I don’t know. I just heard about it a few minutes ago. I had on KM 103, and they broke in with a news flash.”

Capt. Mac moved toward the counter. “Annie, may I use the phone?” But he was already dialing.

They waited respectfully, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Capt. Mac got through immediately to Frank Saulter, Broward’s Rock’s aloof police chief. His questions were brisk and concise. But, when he hung up, he stared down for a long moment, and Annie could see the hard ridges in his face. Finally, he turned to face them.

“The body was discovered at 9:05 this morning by a boy who comes in on weekends to feed the animals. Everything seemed normal when he arrived, back door locked, no sign of forced entry. He unlocked the outer door, went in, and started to go directly to the kennels, when he noticed the dispensary door ajar down the hall. Shouldn’t have been open. Walked in, saw Jill lying face down on the floor. Said he knew she was dead, but he touched her anyway, and she was cold. Ran like hell to the phone, called Frank at home.”

He paused and now not only his eyes looked glacial. His face might have been carved out of ice. Dirty ice.

“Was the dispensary rifled?”

Capt. Mac looked at Emma with respect. “No signs of it. They called in Dr. Foster.”

Foster was Jill Kearney’s partner.

“Damn funny place for a drug heist,” Fritz Hemphill objected. “How about strangers? Jimmy Moon clock anybody in?”

The island residents understood the significance of that question. When the skillet-shaped end of the island was developed, the Halcyon Development Company set up a checkpoint past the old main street near Heron’s Point. To reach any of the new condos, the golf courses, the tennis courts, the luxurious homes, the harbor shops, and, of course, the Island Hills Veterinary Clinic, cars traveled the single blacktop road that passed a checkpoint manned by a Broward’s Rock resort employee. Jimmy Moon, an
ex-Marine sergeant, had Saturday night duty. He knew everybody on the island. Strangers were admitted only with a pass from the Realty Company.

Capt. Mac’s voice was uninflected. “Jimmy didn’t admit any strangers Saturday night or Sunday morning.” He didn’t have to underscore it. “Looks like it happened early Sunday. M.E. sets the time of death after ten
P.M.
Saturday and before two
A.M.
Sunday. Her boyfriend, Si Whitney took her home from the Island movies at shortly before ten. On their way, they stopped by the clinic for Jill’s last check, but he said she intended to come back about one
A.M.
, something about a dog that needed to be turned after surgery.”

“Last ferry off the island leaves at ten,” Fritz said, twisting a paper napkin.

They considered this in silence. Of course, someone could have come or left by boat, but it was a good twenty-minute boat ride to the mainland. Broward’s Rock was a self-contained community. Casual marauders were unlikely. No, it had to be a resident or a visitor familiar with the clinic. Moreover, unless Jimmy Moon was mistaken, Jill’s murderer had to be a member of the resort community because no stranger had passed the checkpoint.

“Why would anybody murder Jill?”

Capt. Mac shook his head. “It doesn’t look drug-related. Foster checked the cabinets. All the morphine and codeine are accounted for.”

“Was anything disturbed?” Emma Clyde’s almost square face creased in thought.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Was she assaulted?” Emma asked immediately, and Annie could almost see her mind tearing along, throwing up one scenario, then another.

“No. Nothing like that. Just the one blow to the head.”

He jerked out the next words. “Damn shame. M.E. said the girl had an unusually thin skull. Anybody else might have been knocked out and suffered nothing worse than a headache. Jill hemorrhaged. Damn shame.”

“Some kind of maniac is loose on the island,” Harriet hissed. “Nothing else makes sense.”

“Something will make sense,” Emma Clyde mused. “This doesn’t have the hallmark of a senseless killing. Mark
my words, when we know everything, there will be a motive.”

“Any fingerprints?” Fritz inquired.

Kelly spoke at the same time. “What is known about Jill Kearney? What kind of person was she?”

Like sharks at feeding time, their intellects fed on Jill’s death. Annie held up her hand.

“Hey, everybody, this is awful. I didn’t know Jill well, but she was kind and—” Annie thought about Boots and what Jill had done. Oh, God. “Let’s not talk about her like she’s a lab report.” With a pang, she realized that Jill was now just that. “Anyway, let’s call it off for tonight. We can get together next week.”

Harriet squealed. “Oh, I can’t possibly go home now. I’ll dream about it all night. Besides, maybe we can pool all of our brains.” Her bony face was alight with greedy curiosity. “Don’t you think we can solve it, if we try? Why, there can’t be a better set of criminal minds—”

“For once Harriet’s put her finger on it,” Elliot interrupted.

He stood and moved toward the coffee bar.
“Criminal Minds
, that will be a wonderful title for my new book. Perfect.” He bowed mockingly toward Harriet, who flushed an ugly crimson. “I have to thank you, Harriet. I wasn’t pleased with any of the titles I’d come up with.
Criminal Minds.
Perfect.”

He was leaning against the coffee bar, at ease, cigarette in his mouth, the noxious odor hanging heavily in the air.

“Come on, everyone, let’s respect our little Annie’s sensibilities. She doesn’t want to talk about Jill’s murder. Besides, I imagine we’ve exhausted all the information our police friend has, so why not take your seats? I promise to entertain you. In fact, I think each and every one of you will find my talk absolutely riveting, as they say in cover copy.”

“Shall I boot him out on his ass?” Max hissed in Annie’s ear.

She hesitated, but, with the harsh reality of Jill’s murder, Elliot’s swaggering suddenly seemed terribly unimportant—and so was her scheme to call for a vote on whether to hear him. Anything had to be better than sitting around talking about Jill.

“Oh, let him go on. It will fill up the time, then we can
send them all home—and I don’t ever want to see them again. This is my last Sunday Night Special.”

Comfortably propped against the coffee bar, a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, Elliot filled his
Puzzle of the Silver Persian
mug with steaming coffee.

Reluctantly, with muted murmurs, the Regulars took their places.

Thoroughly enjoying himself, Elliot smiled maliciously.

“I can’t provide a real-life crime—except, you know, maybe I can. No body, of course. That would be too difficult. But I can rattle a skeleton or two. My agent thinks I’m onto something hot, really hot. We writers spend a lot of time talking about motivation. Wouldn’t it be fun to know what kind of crimes a few well-known mystery writers have been personally involved in?” He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the first, dumping the discarded butt in the tepid coffee in the
Unexpected Night
mug someone had left on the coffee bar. “We’re talking big sales, maybe a fifty thousand first printing and six figures for paperback rights. This book has it all, blood and guts and some particularly nasty—”

The lights went out.

Dusk comes early in October. It was already dark when the first arrivals came. Now it was solidly black outside, and heavy clouds masked the moon. No light penetrated the stygian darkness in the back of the shop.

There was a squeal. Harriet. Then a flurry of movement. Someone bumped against Annie in the dark.

Capt. Mac called out reassuringly. “Annie, must be the power station. Where do you keep a flashlight?”

She was already resolutely groping her way toward the storeroom. A flashlight hung from a nail in the east corner. It was absolutely black, the only pinpoint of light the red dot of Elliot’s Turkish cigarette.

Suddenly, there came a succession of sounds, a fluttering, a solid thump, a grunt, the noise of something heavy crashing to the floor.

A woman screamed.

C
apt. Mac yelled for quiet.

“Sit down! Shut up! Stay where you are.”

“What’s wrong?” Harriet shrilled. “What was that noise? Somebody turn on—”

“Shut up, Harriet.”

Hurrying, Annie smacked into a chair and yelped in pain.

“Who’s that?” Emma asked sharply.

“Just me. I’m trying to get a flashlight.”

“Annie’s going to find a light.” Capt. Mac’s voice was reassuring, though Annie thought she could detect a faint undercurrent of stress. “Check the circuit breakers first,” he instructed.

“Yes. Hold on, everybody. It will just take a second.”

She moved as fast as she dared through the inky darkness. Reaching the door to the storeroom, she was surprised to find it ajar. Pushing it, she stepped inside the storeroom, and saw a pale oblong of deep blue light. The back door was open. She stared at it in surprise, then moved diagonally, sure of her course now, and reached up. Her fingers brushed against the rough cedar of the unfinished wall. The flashlight was hanging from a nail just about
here
…

She touched the wall, the nail.

The flashlight wasn’t there.

It had to be there. She hadn’t moved it. She’d seen it there, noticed it, at least peripherally, that morning when Mrs. Brawley was there.

At least she knew where she was now. The circuit box was just a couple of feet to her left. Unless it was an
island-wide brownout, she should be able to turn the power back on. She couldn’t imagine why the breakers should have flipped. Maybe the fault was in her wiring. She groaned. The cost of an electrician…

Her fingers found the circuit box—and its open door.

For the first time Annie felt cold.

She pulled the panel all the way open. The breakers were flipped to the right, all four of them, which would indicate some kind of massive overload.

One by one, she clicked them back to the left.

As the second breaker moved, the lights in the coffee area came on, and light spilled through the storeroom door.

Someone screamed again, but this time the scream began high and held and held.

Annie jerked around and ran across the storeroom to the doorway, then stopped short and clung to the frame.

There wasn’t much blood, just a trickle. It was almost obscured by the dark, spreading pool of coffee.

Then Capt. Mac’s stocky bulk came between her and Elliot Morgan’s body, but she would always remember just the way Elliot looked as he lay lifeless, crumpled at the foot of the coffee bar. A smear of unbelievably crimson blood oozed around the shaft of the dart that protruded from the fleshy softness of his throat.
The Puzzle of the Silver Persian
mug lay empty beside him.

Annie started to shake. How many bodies had she viewed in her mind over the years, from Ruby Keene in Colonel Bantry’s library to the blackened, unidentifiable lumps in
Ice Station Zebra?
But none of her reading had prepared her for this. She hadn’t liked Elliot Morgan. She had even feared what he could do to the shop that she loved, but none of this mattered now. Elliot was dead. It was clearly, unmistakably murder. Not illness as with her mother. Not accident as with Uncle Ambrose.