The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [28]
Saulter looked at Laurel politely.
Laurel swirled the ice cubes in her Scotch and soda. “Those heartfelt, wrenching words capture the throbbing essence of my tumultuous, inmost feelings when the moment of crisis occurred tonight at Death on Demand.”
“Well, uh, Mrs. Roethke, sure sorry you were upset. Pretty unpleasant, I know.”
Laurel sipped at her Scotch. “Dear Edgar captured a like feeling so well in that treasured classic of the ages, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” Annie supplied irritably.
“So you take this shooting seriously?” Saulter asked Laurel.
No voice ever seemed more prophetic of doom than Laurel’s husky whisper. Her words fell softly like stones slipping quietly into deep water. “‘And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of velvet.’”
Annie recognized it, of course. From Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” But even so, the words sent a chill through her, and the back of her neck prickled with horror. Which perhaps explained her overreaction.
“Oh, come on, Laurel. Somebody potting wildly with a twenty-two isn’t quite of the same realm as the bubonic plague. There’s such a thing as reading too much Poe, you know.” Annie swung toward the chief, managing a tight smile. “Laurel’s really into Poe, as the saying goes. I think we’re all taking this too seriously.” She glanced at her watch. “Look, it’s almost one o’clock and I’ve got a big day tomorrow …” The biggest day of her career. Why, oh, why did Laurel have to maunder on about Poe and why did that machismo jerk Bledsoe sign up for her conference and how was Annie going to close this investigation down? “… and everything will look better in the morning,” she ended hopefully.
Saulter merely settled deeper in his chair. “Annie, what were you and Bledsoe crossways about at the reception tonight?”
Annie jammed a hand through her sandy hair. “The guy charges in like Rambo and blames me for his room assignment.” Crisply, she described Bledsoe’s phobia and the resulting panic attack. “I thought he was having a heart attack, but Henny figured it out. Anyway, he shows up at the reception and starts in on me about the room assignments. As if I knew or cared who he was, or what kind of phobias he might have. Actually, if he doesn’t stop acting like such an asshole, I may slip a friendly alligator into his suite. Serve him right.”
Saulter tapped his pen on his notebook. “The hotel made the room assignments? Not any of your staff?”
Annie glared at him. “Absolutely. We had nothing to do with it.” She flapped her hands indignantly. “Frank, surely you don’t think the room assignment was a deliberate attempt by one of us to freak the guy!”
“I have to consider it, Annie.” There was no hint of apology in his Low Country drawl. “Because somebody sure as hell shot at him tonight We found four shells in the pittosporum.” (He pronounced it like a true South Carolinian: piss-poe-rum.) “No footprints to speak of. Too many leaves and drifted palm fronds. No trace of the gun.”
Max leaned forward. “I thought the kids heard a splash.”
“And they saw the guy, too, didn’t they?” Annie demanded. She still smarted from the slight to the staff of her bookstore. “And we were all inside Death on Demand,” she concluded triumphantly.
Saulter cocked his head Did he think he was Colonel John Primrose? “Was everyone?” he drawled. As Annie spluttered, the chief pointed at her. “Okay, Annie. You’re out of it. I saw you. I was watching you because of your set-to with Bledsoe. And you’re going to tell me more about that before we finish—and how that woman in the used-book section figures in, too. Anyway, I can account for you. And Max. But it was crowded in there. Somebody could have slipped out the back door, run down the alley, done the shooting, and easily slipped back inside during the panic and confusion right after the shots.” He tapped his notebook. “And that includes, among many, Ingrid, Henny, and you, Mrs. Roethke.”
Annie’s mouth opened in a soundless O. So the names and addresses of those at the