The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [14]
“Not if I can help it,” Emma said grimly. “Take your hands off me, Annie. I’m sorry about your conference. Fleur is more important than any conference. She mustn’t come here. She mustn’t see Neil.” Emma stalked on toward the desk.
Annie realized, as Emma broke away, that their entrance and sharp exchange had attracted attention.
Despite its age (built nearly a century before as a health spa for winter-jaded northerners), the heavily marbled, ornately decorated hotel had a three-story open lobby at its center. On the west side, the sea side, heavily molded archways opened onto a wide screened veranda that in turn led to an open courtyard. The hotel had removed its huge, dragon-decorated Japanese vases. In their place, in honor of the conference, were Victorian urns with lacy ferns and broad-leafed palms, recalling the innumerable palm courts in the English hotels of the twenties and thirties and the cheerful tea dances.
The main axis of the Palmetto House ran north and south and contained the entrance, the central lobby, the registration desk, the concierge’s desk, the restaurants, the bar, and conference and meeting areas. East-west wings stretched from either end of the main hall.
Rattan furniture gleamed brightly white among the potted palms. Much of it was occupied, Annie realized, by conference goers. Her conference goers. They were as easily identified with their brightly beribboned identification tags, a red rosette for authors, blue for booksellers, orange for editors, green for agents, pink for readers, as the island’s beautiful laughing gulls, with their distinctive sleek black heads.
And almost every eye in the lobby, some boldly, many surreptitiously, was focused on Annie.
She struggled to look pleasant, amiable, and purposeful, the latter so no one would pounce on her. A woman with a curly mop of bright red hair, an anxious expression, and a blue rosette was struggling to her feet.
Annie plunged toward the desk.
A uniformed bellboy pushed a luggage cart toward the elevator. Behind him, Neil Bledsoe followed. The scratch on his cheek was blood-free now but a noticeably angry red. His glance locked with Annie’s. She felt her cheeks flush—and saw the flicker of amusement and satisfaction in his eyes. The bastard. He realized his power to attract women, realized and relished it. She determinedly looked away, toward his companion—and stopped flatfooted and stared. Miss Marple? Oh, no, no, it couldn’t be! But damned if the woman wasn’t exactly the image Annie had carried in her mind all these years, tall and thin, fluffy white hair, soft shell-pink skin—but the eyes were wrong. Fuzzy, myopic, straining eyes. Miss Marple’s blue eyes were sharp and quick, even without her binoculars—for birdwatching, of course. As if mesmerized, Annie turned to watch their progress to the elevator.
Emma walked past the critic and the elderly woman as if they didn’t exist.
The woman’s eyes blinked nervously. But it was Bledsoe’s reaction that unnerved Annie. His ruddy face, the grayness gone, twisted, and his sensuous lips drew back in a smirk.
That triumphant smirk held more menace than open anger.
Then the moment was past. Bledsoe and his timid companion stepped into an elevator; Emma leaned on the desk.
Annie stared at the closing elevator door, then swung to peer toward Emma. Annie felt an enormous foreboding. What was going to happen to her conference into which she’d poured months of effort and mountains of devotion? She couldn’t let Emma bring it all down, like a willful child striking a carefully balanced pyramid of blocks.
Annie skidded to a stop beside the desk. She was just in time to hear the clerk say, “Mrs. Calloway is not registered yet. May I take a message?”
Emma drummed