The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [49]
“You say.”
“I do say.” So might Mrs. Boynton have spoken to Lennox’s wife in Appointment with Death. There was the same sense of an overpowering personality that would brook no interference.
Annie met the gaze from those icy blue eyes without flinching. “All right, Emma. I’ll accept what you’re telling me—that someone else shot at Bledsoe, someone who isn’t as punctilious about the safety of others. So you should be willing to help the authorities catch that person.”
Emma was the first to look away. She reached down, plunged her hand into a straw purse that looked large enough to harbor a laptop computer, and pulled out a cigarette case.
Annie’s eyes widened. She’d never seen Emma smoke.
Emma lifted out a menthol-tipped cigarette. “At conferences,” she said brusquely as she lit it
The minty smoke curled up into Annie’s face. Her eyes burned and her nose itched. “Look, Emma, give me a break. I didn’t tell Frank there was bad blood between Fleur Calloway and Neil Bledsoe. But now we have to. He has to know what kind of person Bledsoe is, who might have it in for him.”
Emma blew two perfect smoke rings. As they dissolved, she smiled grimly. “Annie, dear, I don’t have the feintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Annie tugged her cotton blouse over her head, dropped her skirt to the floor. “Can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke. Feel like I’ve spent a week with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Look what cigarettes did to him!”
Max, a sheaf of papers in his hand, lounged against the jamb of the open door to the bathroom, an appreciative audience as bra, half-slip, and panties joined the skirt and blouse.
Annie stepped into the enormous peach bathtub and, honestly, honeymoon suite or no, this was beyond expectation. Water plunged with the explosiveness of the Victoria Falls Christie described with such delight in The Man in the Brown Suit. Moreover, there was room enough for—
She looked up in surprise. Then pleasure.
Oh yes, indeed, there was room enough.
AGATHA CHRISTIE TITLE CLUE
Miss Lemon makes a mistake!
Hercule Poirot does a double take.
Annie snapped off the dryer and gave a final swipe to her still damp hair. “So Emma’s not going to be any help at all.” She checked her reflection in the wall mirror. As always, she was surprised at how little outward appearances can reveal. She looked cool and summery in her lemon crew neck sweater and red-and-blue patched Madras shorts. Perhaps the only hint of recent passion was the softness in her eyes.
Max, cool, crisp, and, as always, Joe Hardy handsome in white shorts and a navy crew neck, rustled his sheaf of papers, some of them newly water-spotted, and said, “Emma must know that the trouble between Calloway and Bledsoe isn’t common knowledge. I didn’t pick up anything about it We can check with Laurel, see what she’s found out about Fleur in her calls.”
Annie checked the water she’d put on to boil. “How’s everything going at the office?”
“At last count, Lady Gwendolyn’s dart score was eighteen thousand and climbing.”
“Isn’t she doing any work?” Annie dropped a quart-size bag into the pitcher.
Max leaned against the counter and watched as Annie poured the hot water over the tea bag. “Periodically, she drops her directives on our desks, enough interviewing ideas to keep us busy well into the twenty-first century. I can see why she has seventy-five books to her credit.” He rubbed his ear. “Do you think it’s getting a cauliflower look?”
Annie inspected it, almost added a kiss, decided Max might be too easily distracted from serious pursuits, and murmured, “Looks healthy.” She found sliced limes and fresh mint in the refrigerator. Someone at the Palmetto House was definitely into sensory delights.
She put their huge glasses of iced tea on the table beside the wicker sofa, plopped down, and patted the cushion beside her.
Max settled down comfortably, perhaps only a little too close, and handed her the sheaf of papers.
Just to keep things on a businesslike plane, she pushed his thigh away from hers. Sipping her tea, she began to read.
NEIL CAMERON