The sleek black cat atop the bookcases devoted to Agatha Christie lifted her elegant head to stare with unblinking amber eyes at Annie. (Was it simply coincidence that the cat considered these particular shelves to be her own or were there matters involved here beyond ordinary human understanding?)
"And what's so confidential he can't even tell his own wife?"
Annie heard the hurt in her own voice. And what was so urgent, so important that Max had called to say he wouldn't be home for dinner—and not to wait up for him tonight. She glanced toward the front windows. She'd just put up the CLOSED sign and was tallying the day's receipts while waiting for Max to walk down the boardwalk from Confidential Commissions, one of the more unusual businesses on the South Carolina resort island of Broward's Rock. Annie always thought of Confidential Commissions as a modern-day equivalent to the good offices performed by Agatha Christie's detective of the heart, Mr. Parker Pyne. Max rather liked that analogy, but he was also quick to point out that he was neither a private detective nor a practicing lawyer, but merely a consultant available to those with problems outside the ken of the licensed professionals.
It had become a happy ritual, the two of them coming together at the close of the business day, each with much to tell. At least, she always had much to tell. But this week Max had said even less than usual. In retrospect, she realized he'd been quite closemouthed, merely observing that things were picking up at the office. Of course, Annie'd swept right on with her reports, how Henny Brawley, her best customer, had sent a postcard from England to report on her tour of Shrewsbury Abbey, the home of Ellis Peters's incomparable Brother
Cadfael ("Annie, I actually saw the small altar to St. Winefride!"), and how busy it had been in Death on Demand—"Would you believe a busload of clubwomen from Charleston?"—since Ingrid Smith, her chief assistant, was bedridden with a spring flu.
Annie felt deflated, a suddenly empty evening ahead. Max hadn't even said where he was going. Dusk was falling, and soon the air would cool sharply. Nights could be shivery in the spring despite the reassuring harbingers of the new season: the call of the chuck-will's-widow, the rachet of swamp frogs.
"I wonder if he has his sweater with him?" Her voice seemed to echo in the empty store.
Agatha yawned, a nice equivalent to a human shrug, then rose, stretched, and dropped to the floor to pad lightly down the central corridor toward the back of the bookstore.
Annie followed, pausing to alphabetize several titles in the Romantic Suspense section: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, Danger in the Dark by Mignon Eberhart, Widows' Plight by Ruth Fenisong, Alive and Dead by E. X. Ferrars, and The Clue of the Judas Tree by Leslie Ford.
"Max was so abrupt, Agatha. And abstracted." She put the latest title by Elaine Raco Chase face out. "Like he was talking to a stranger."
Agatha waited imperiously atop the coffee bar, which offered customers a different blend every day (Annie's favorite, of course, was Kona) served in mugs bearing the names of famous mysteries and their authors. Annie offered Agatha a fresh serving of dry food, received an unequivocal feline glare in response, and quickly reached for a can. Agatha did not tolerate frustration well. It was wise, Annie had decided after applying Mercurochrome to numerous scratches, to satisfy Agatha's needs, wants, and desires promptly. And, if she thought hard about Agatha, she wouldn't mull over that odd, unsatisfactory call from Max.
As she emptied half the can into Agatha's bowl, she remarked conversationally, "I have to hand it to you, Agatha, you're one of a kind."
And so, she thought with admiration, were the tales of tangled lives and thwarted passions created by the authors
featured in this month's watercolors. As Agatha contentedly ate, Annie concentrated on the pictures on the back wall over the fireplace, the better to avoid other thoughts.
In the first painting, a slender young woman in a nightgown and housecoat stood midway between the living room of the playhouse, where flames flickered in the fireplace, and the indoor swimming pool. She stared in horror at the body lying next to the pool, so close, indeed, that one arm dangled over the side. The dead woman was middle-aged and expensively dressed. Her heavy blond hair, usually worn in a coronet braid, spread loose on the tiles.
In the second painting, the gully was choked with vegetation, honeysuckle and wild grape, dogwood and redbud, flowering shrubs and looping vines. A small area, down one side of the gully, showed the effects of many trampling feet, the grasses bent, vines torn away. An attractive middle-aged woman watched in dismay as a younger woman reached toward a blood-spattered clump of Spanish dagger to pick up a black satin ribbon with an old-fashioned Victorian gold locket. The locket's front decoration was a spray of lilies of the valley, the stems and leaves made up of tiny encrusted emeralds, the bells of pearls. A bowknot of rubies tied the spray of flowers.
In the third painting, a young woman, terror on her face, stared at a fog-wreathed, grim, gray Victorian house. A bloody kitchen knife was impaled in the front door. Six old-fashioned oval portraits circled the house. Each was named. The portrait at the top, labeled Pauline, was of a middle-aged woman with old ivory skin, black eyes, black hair in bangs, and a cold and unfriendly gaze. Clockwise were Sophie, plump, overrouged cheeks and blond hair piled high with too many curls; Anne, short curly black hair with distinctive wings of white at the temples and a warm smile; Elise, elegant and lovely with haunted eyes; Marthe, pleasant looking with a good-humored grin; and Rose, young and vulnerable with blue eyes and shiny brown hair.
In the fourth painting, the skyward gleam of the Bentley's headlights pierced the inky darkness of the night, cruelly illuminating the fatal embrace of the Bentley and the Mercedes as they arced over the side of the cliff to plummet down into the rocks and the sea below. Two men and a woman watched, transfixed. In a hollow nearby, the little boy wrapped in a man's coat didn't stir from his unnatural sleep, despite the noise of the crash and the frenzied licking of his face by a large mongrel dog.
In the fifth painting, there was a strange tableau in the exquisitely appointed museum room with its array of gorgeously restored Egyptian antiquities. A young woman with dark eyes, olive skin, and a heart-shaped face framed by masses of thick black curls raised a mace as the handsome older man approached. Coming up behind the man was a figure clothed all in black with a gun held firmly in one hand.
Generations of readers loved these gothic adventures. Perhaps she should pick out one of her old favorites and take it home to while away the empty evening hours while her husband pursued the work ethic. (Max?) Not, of course, that she had to have dinner with Max every night to be happy, but...
Annie glanced up at the rows of cheerful mugs with the titles and authors inscribed in bright-red flowing script. She needed a mug that would brighten her empty evening. Perhaps Margaret Scherf's first Martin Buell mystery, Always Murder a Friend. Or Annie's favorite by Constance and Gwenyth Little, The Great Black Kanba. How about the zany humor in Lion in the Cellar by Pamela Branch? Or would her spirits improve if she spent an hour with Ellie and Ben in Mum's the Word by Dorothy Cannell?
"Perhaps," wafted the husky voice, "I am somehow lacking."
Annie damn near jumped out of her skin. Jerking around, she gazed into limpid dark-blue eyes. "Where the he—Laurel, where did you come from? I didn't hear the door." Annie tried not to sound too startled and accusing, but, honestly, if Laurel didn't stop materializing without warning . . .