The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [1]
FLEUR CALLOWAY
Why did she stop writing? She won’t even look at Neil Bledsoe.
JAMES BENTLEY
A conference attendee. He sees the marksman outside Death on Demand, but he can’t give a good description.
BILLY CAMERON
Chief Saulter’s assistant. The conference gives him a colossal headache.
LADY GWENDOLYN TOMPKINS
Co-sponsor of the conference, England’s reigning Crime Queen. Sprightly, perspicacious, indomitable.
ED MERRITT
The hotel manager. He wants all this murder nonsense to stop!
BRICE WILLARD POSEY
The pompous circuit solicitor. He and Lady Gwendolyn do not have a meeting of the minds.
JEAN REINHARDT
She remembers Stone’s manuscript—“all those missing feet!”
DUANE WEBB
Ingrid’s good friend. He tells Bledsoe to bug off.
TERRY ABBOTT
Says Stone had only one problem: no talent.
The Agatha Christie Title Clues at the beginning of each chapter are part of the Agatha Christie Treasure Hunt in Chapter 15.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
TITLE CLUE
Beware the false face;
Can’t trust someone in this place.
Great minds have great ideas. Neil Bledsoe enjoyed a very good opinion of himself, but the inspiration which had struck so abruptly was brilliant, peerless—and the answer to all his problems.
Where the hell was that brochure? Impatiently, he dumped the wastebasket, ignoring the cigar ashes and crumpled balls of printer paper. He found it finally and spread open the wrinkled flyer. Quality printing, quality paper. No expense spared.
The first panel told the story:
THE CHRISTIE CAPER
A Centennial Celebration of
the birth of
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The greatest detective-story writer of all time
September 9–September 15
The Palmetto House
Broward’s Rock Island, South Carolina
Co-sponsored by England’s Present-Day Crime
Queen
Lady Gwendolyn Tompkins
and DEATH ON DEMAND Bookstore
Proprietor Annie Laurance Darling
They’d all be there, all those bloody women writers and editors and agents and the damn pansy men who wrote whodunits instead of real blood-and-guts mysteries.
Neil leaned forward, selected a cigar from his humidor. When it was lit, he rolled the oily smoke over his tongue, savoring the pungent, masculine odor that enveloped him. Women hated cigars. So he smoked them everywhere. Especially in elevators. Inevitably, some skinny bitch complained, stabbed a red-nailed finger at the No Smoking sign. Neil took great pleasure in telling her where she could stick it. No-smoking laws were a joke. Was some asshole going to make a citizen’s arrest? Of him? He shifted his two-hundred-pound bulk until he could see his dark visage in that prissy damn mirror that Pamela’d put up. All that was left of Pamela.
A face to reckon with. Heavy, black brows drawn in a menacing frown. Florid, acne-scarred skin, tougher than leather. Nobody’d ever mistake him for one of those pansy writers.
And they hated him.
Hated him and feared him.
By God, he’d crash their party. He flipped through the brochure. A garden party, author panels, English dinners, a classic-car display, a Christie Treasure Hunt, a Christie Trivia Quiz, the Agatha Christie Come-as-You-Wish-You-Were Ball. He scanned the list of authors scheduled to attend. Bubbles of laughter stirred in his chest. Holy shit, it couldn’t be better. A conference filled wall-to-wall with his enemies. And if they weren’t enemies when he got there, he’d make damn sure they were before he left.
The registration form and hotel reservation slip were on the last panel of the brochure. Despite the cigar clamped in his teeth, his mouth split in a ferocious grin as he wrote his name in bold, black strokes.
Oh, Christ, was he going to raise hell.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
TITLE CLUE
Lucky, lovely, rich Linnet.
Luckiest girl in the world—or is she?
Victoria Shaw stood in front of the rural mailbox, the envelope in her hand. Her heart thudded. She’d walked up the lane too fast. Janice kept urging her to have a check-up. But what did it matter, really, how many heartbeats remained? She hadn’t cared, not since—
No, no, no. She wouldn’t think