Yankee Doodle Dead Read online

  YANKEE DOODLE DEAD

  A DEATH ON DEMAND MYSTERY

  Carolyn Hart

  To my cherished sister-in-law,

  Linda Hart Wood

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Gail Oldham drove too fast. Dust plumed behind the black…

  Chapter 1

  Annie Laurance Darling moved swiftly. Or as swiftly as she…

  Chapter 2

  “Above and beyond the call of duty.” Max sprawled on…

  Chapter 3

  Max waggled his new putter. Hmm. A nice weight. He…

  Chapter 4

  Annie’s cell phone rang.

  Chapter 5

  Annie stood at the edge of the festival ground looking…

  Chapter 6

  “He’s down. The general’s fallen.” An anxious cry.

  Chapter 7

  “I can’t remember everybody I saw.” Ned Fisher’s tone was…

  Chapter 8

  Muscles bulged in Samuel Kinnon’s bare, sweaty back as he…

  Chapter 9

  Max waved good-bye to Annie. As her Volvo sped away,…

  Chapter 10

  Rain turned the windows of the lawyer’s office as milky…

  Chapter 11

  Chief Saulter’s yellow poncho glistened greasily in the rain-shrouded lights…

  Chapter 12

  As Annie came around the last curve, sunlight spilled down…

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Carolyn Hart

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  Miss Dora Brevard’s vivid charcoal sketches of women important to the history of South Carolina are based upon essays in South Carolina Women by Idella Bodie, Sandlapper Publishing Inc., an enchanting tribute to the accomplishments and graces of women who made a difference for the Palmetto State.

  Prologue

  Gail Oldham drove too fast. Dust plumed behind the black Jeep as it bucketed along the rutted gray road. She almost missed the turn. She wrenched the wheel sharply and the car crunched onto the oyster-shell drive, past the mailbox topped by wooden replicas of books spine-out: Max on the larger book, Annie on the smaller.

  Tears blurred Gail’s vision, smearing the lime-green fronds of the weeping willows and the crimson bougainvillea and the orange and yellow and pink hibiscus blooms into splotches of impressionist color. She jolted to a stop in front of the multilevel sand-toned wooden house that shimmered with glass expanses. Gail flung herself out of the car, ran up the wooden steps to push the bell beside the spectacular front door, its red and green and purple art-glass insets sparkling in the bright July sun.

  She was sobbing now and knew it would be hard to speak. But she had to tell someone, had to ask for help. Surely someone would help her.

  Damn Bud. Damn him.

  The sun burned against her. Finally, hiccuping in despair, her hand dropped. Annie wasn’t home.

  Gail stood at a loss. Oh God, what was she going to do?

  “Hello. May I help?” The throaty voice was kind and gentle.

  Gail looked around. Could anyone help her? Would anyone help her?

  The ax head glittered in the hot July sun. Samuel Kinnon swung the shaft high, his smooth dusky skin glistening with sweat. The ax split the log cleanly and he smelled the aromatic sweetness of the cedar. There was always work to be done on an acreage in the summer—old trees to fell, fences to mend, oyster shells to burn to make tabby. He’d always loved making tabby, burning the shells, then adding sand and more oyster shells to create a compound as good as cement. Dad wanted him to fix up a batch to mend some rain damage to the house.

  Samuel’s face was set in a stiff mask. His eyes burned. Sweat dripping down, that was all. Men don’t cry. And he didn’t mind helping out his dad. He would have been glad to make the tabby, slap it into place neat as a plasterer; to chop wood, weed, whatever, on weekends or after work on the long summer days when the sun sank slowly westward and the days stretched out like saltwater taffy. But he should have had his job. He was good with the kids. Why did they take his job away?

  Not they. The general. Damn his sneering white face.

  Samuel lifted the ax, swung it with all the force of misery, and saw the general’s face disintegrate into pieces instead of chips of cedar.

  Jonathan Wentworth sat for a moment after turning off the motor. Emily was already home. Sometimes her bridge group played into the dinner hour. He was accustomed to fixing a snack, settling in front of the television. Sad that he now preferred that. He grabbed his flight helmet, wished he could recapture the exhilaration of the afternoon. But it was gone, the ineffable sense of peace he always had when flying. He slammed the car door, strode briskly up the wooden steps, donned his practiced smile.

  In the front hall, he called out. “Emily? You home?” The mirror reflected short white hair, a lean face with farseeing eyes and firm mouth, a wrinkled tan flight suit. And the wooden smile.

  “Jonathan, what a day!” Emily moved briskly out of the kitchen, the martini shaker in her hand, the rolled-up afternoon newspaper in the other. “Did you have a good flight? I’ll come with you next time. That will be fun. When we live in Scottsdale, you can fly all the time. Oh, some good news about the house. The real estate agent brought two couples by today. She left a note, said they’re both interested.” She didn’t wait for his response, chattered on. “All part of an A-one, first-class, lucky day! Jonathan, you won’t believe it! I had a grand slam, doubled and redoubled, vulnerable!” She talked fast, recounting the afternoon’s battles, how she’d trumped this ace, finessed that jack. She was pouring the drinks, her green eyes glittering with triumph. Her once golden hair was now a shining white in smooth waves and her beautifully made-up face was smooth, as if time had never touched her.

  Emily always moved at top speed, her mind intent upon victory: on the golf course, investing in the stock market, playing bridge. She crammed movement and effort into every waking moment. He’d been afraid she might resist selling the house, moving. But she loved paying golf in Scottsdale. She’d not resisted at all.

  Jonathan understood why her mind and body moved at such a frenetic pace. His heart still ached for Emily. And for himself. But her answer to pain was to immerse herself so completely in life that there was never a moment for thought or reflection—or suffering. Golf and bridge consumed her.

  As she turned at the end of the room, a shaft of sunlight touched her and he saw the Emily of long ago. It was a trick of the light and his memory that, just for a moment, he saw his golden girl, before she donned an armor of nonstop chatter and movement.

  Then she strode to the sofa and the illusion fled. She was still talking, of course. She had to keep going. It was habit now, a habit she would never break. He’d stopped trying to pierce the shell she’d created. They were still Jonathan and Emily, they could talk and dance and fly, make love, but there was no real connection. Something had died in Emily, the softness and willingness to give, to be open to love. Because then you could be hurt, hurt so terribly.

  He sat beside her on the sofa. The newspaper rustled as she skimmed through it. He drank his martini and didn’t listen. The time was close now. She would become ever more frenetic. It was always the time that worried him. But Sharon would help. And soon, they’d be moving.

  Emily gasped, surged to her feet. Her martini spilled and the drink was cold and sticky as it splashed over him. She lowered the paper, pointed to a page, her hand shaking.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was deep and hoarse and frightening. The veneer was gone. Her face twisted with unutterable pain.

  Bud Hatch swipe
d the towel across his flat abdomen. He stood in the at-ease stance, shoulders back, feet apart. It was his habitual posture. He was as trim and muscular at sixty-three as he’d been at sixteen. A man then, a man now. By God, he could still wear his first Dress Blue uniform.

  Slack, that’s what most people were. He had no use for them, cowardly second-raters without any guts. Nobody could ever say Bud Hatch was a second-rater. Or cowardly. He saw his duty and he did it. He wasn’t going to put up with any of this political-correctness bullshit from anybody, including the director of the library—the present director—and his supporters.

  As for the festival, it was a good thing he’d realized the mess it was in and taken steps. Women were all right in their place but, by God, they’d forgotten what that place was. Women…Necessary, but a damn lot of trouble.

  He dressed quickly, navy polo shirt, chino slacks, tasseled loafers. He had a lot to take care of today.

  He’d start at the library.

  Chapter 1

  Annie Laurance Darling moved swiftly. Or as swiftly as she could propel her body through air thicker than congealing Jell-O. Her hair curled in tendrils. Her skin felt as moist as pond scum. If it got any more humid, Calcutta would be a resort in comparison. She thought longingly of cool air. Maybe she would read The Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart. It was always cool in Maine. Rinehart’s heroine shivered. And lit fires.

  Why had she ever come to this island where the summer air was heavier than mercury? She had a sudden, unsettling, cold sensation. She knew why she’d come to the land of no-see-ums, swamps and fragrant magnolias. She’d come to Broward’s Rock a few years earlier because she was running away from a close encounter with one Maxwell Darling. How weird! What if Max hadn’t, in his own imperturbable, incredibly determined way, followed her? What if now she wasn’t Annie Laurance Darling, but just Annie Laurance? It would be a cold world indeed. She felt like flinging out her arms and embracing the humid, spongy air. What did a little heat matter?

  Annie stopped at the door of her store and grinned. What could be better than a nice hot day in her own very happy corner of the world? Dear Max. And her wonderful store. She studied the name with pleasure—DEATH ON DEMAND—in tasteful gold letters. Without doubt it was the finest name for the finest mystery bookstore east of Atlanta. Smaller letters, also in gold, announced: “Annie Laurance Darling, Prop.” She felt warm all over, a nice, comfortable, happy inner warmth that had nothing to do with humidity. Max. Her store. Her books. Hers to enjoy. It would, in fact, be an utterly lovely day—except for the library board. She had tried to ignore a niggling sense of uneasiness all day. But her nerves quivered like snapping flags heralding a coming storm. The solution was obvious. Easy. No. She knew how to say no. That was all that was required to stay free of the controversy swirling around the library.

  Determinedly, she stared at the Death on Demand window. She didn’t really need to look at the window. After all, she’d put in the new display only last week. But it was clever, if she said so herself: a cherry-and-green-striped parasol open behind a mound of golden sand, a tipped-over beach bucket with a shower of brightly colored paperbacks spilling out—Miss Zukas and the Library Murders by Jo Dereske, Something’s Cooking by Joanne Pence, Murder on a Girls’ Night Out by Anne George, Memory Can Be Murder by Elizabeth Daniels Squire, and Blooming Murder by Jean Hager.

  Good mysteries. Fun mysteries. And that’s what summer was all about: snow cones and walking fast on hot sand to plunge into cool water and mounds of mysteries; buckets of clams and kissing in the moonlight and piles of paperbacks with smoking guns or blood-dripping daggers on front covers, yellow, red and blue crime scenes on back covers.

  Of course, those colorful covers were déclassé today. But paperback mysteries published in the forties and fifties, oh, what great back covers they had—drawings of the manor house, sketches of the library where X marked the spot, maps of the village showing the rectory and the church, the graveyard and the shops along the high street. And, even more fun, the reader often found inside an equally colorful description of the book’s contents, such as:

  WHAT THIS MYSTERY’S ABOUT—

  A bloodstained handkerchief.

  The reason the cat meowed at midnight.

  A dog named Petunia.

  The contents of the rosewood box.

  A woman with one husband, two lovers, and an angry sister.

  A gun, a dagger, and a missing rhinoceros.

  Golly, those were the great days of the mystery. And she always remembered Uncle Ambrose when she thought about old, great mysteries. Death on Demand had been his store originally, a smaller, much more masculine retreat. He’d welcomed his sister’s daughter there every summer through her childhood and carefully chosen books for her: The Ivory Dagger by Patricia Wentworth, The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey, The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes, offering them with a gruff “Think you’ll like these.” Like them! She’d loved every sentence, every paragraph, every page. And especially the wonderful mysteries with maps on the back cover…For a moment, Annie forgot all about the heat and the boxes of books to be unpacked and the mouse heads that Dorothy L. kept depositing on the kitchen steps at home and the increasing bitterness of the schism on the library board. She stood with a finger to her lip, wondering if anyone had a complete collection of all the Dell mysteries with crime maps on the back. Now that would be—

  “Annie.”

  Annie didn’t turn at the swift, sharp clatter of shoes on the boardwalk. She recognized the voice despite its unaccustomed ferocity. Annie knew the fury wasn’t directed at her. Nonetheless, she thought plaintively, this wasn’t what summer was all about. But, as she took a deep breath and practiced saying no in her mind, this is what mysteries were all about—anger, power, and fractured relationships. Annie wanted to contain misery between the bright covers of books where everything came out right in the end.

  Henny Brawley, Annie’s best customer, a retired teacher, and a mainstay of the Broward’s Rock library board, didn’t bother with a salutation. Her angular face sharp-edged as a red-tailed hawk diving for a rat, Henny yanked open the door to Death on Demand and stalked inside.

  Annie followed, welcoming the initially icy waft of air-conditioning that almost instantly seemed tepid, proof indeed of the summer heat, into the nineties and climbing.

  “Henny, your blood pressure,” she warned. She waved hello to Ingrid at the cash desk and blinked at her own reflection in a wavery antique mirror. The humidity had frizzed her blond hair. Her face was flushed with the heat. Only her gray eyes looked cool. And worried. She felt trouble coming on like a fortune-teller with a broken crystal ball. She followed Henny’s clattering footsteps to the back of the store and the coffee bar.

  Agatha, resident bookstore cat and imperial mistress of Annie, lifted her head languidly, her golden eyes flicking from Annie to Henny, then into the distance, quite as if she observed some infinitely fascinating, obscurely subtle scene, nirvana beyond earthly comprehension.

  Annie reached out, petted the sleek black head, through long practice adroitly avoided the whip of shiny white fangs, and resisted the impulse to say vulgarly, “Come off it, Agatha.” She’d found Agatha as a stray in the alley behind the bookstore a few months after she’d inherited the store from her Uncle Ambrose. But Agatha had no memory of abandonment and instead obviously considered herself to the manor born and Annie a quite fortunate serf.

  Annie slipped behind the coffee bar. “Iced mocha, Henny?” Agatha watched intently.

  “Iced caffè latte. Please.” Henny slid on a barstool, pointed to the tall silver-rimmed glasses. “I’ll take that one.”

  White mugs with the names of famous mysteries in red script sat on shelves behind the coffee bar. Recently, Annie had added glasses for cool drinks. The glasses carried book names in silver script. Without comment, Annie lifted down If the Coffin Fits by Day Keene. In a moment, she handed the cool, foam-topped drink to Henny.

  “I could
kill that man.” Henny’s voice was as thin-edged as a razor.

  Annie didn’t have to ask the name of the intended victim. “Henny, I just got in Wendy Hornsby’s latest Maggie MacGowen and it’s absolutely fab——”

  “Maybe with a hunting knife.” Delight lifted Henny’s voice.

  “Not terribly original,” Annie mused.

  “At a skating rink?” Henny arched an eyebrow.

  “Killed on Ice. William L. DeAndrea,” Annie said automatically.

  Henny nodded in appreciation. “Let’s be more subtle. Caffeine poisoning.” Her eyes glinting, she watched Annie as intently as Agatha.

  Annie murmured, “Caffeine poisoning…”

  “The Corpse at the Quill Club. Amelia Reynolds.” Henny’s voice was mellowing. “Or death by whirlpool.” She shot a condescending glance at Annie, waited long enough to make Annie’s lack of response painfully apparent, then said casually, “Strike Three, You’re Dead. R. D. Rosen.”

  Annie was accustomed to thumb-wrestling Henny for supremacy when it came to mystery knowledge. “Very obscure,” she said stiffly.

  “Actually, I think The Murder of Bud Hatch calls for something scintillatingly creative.” Henny stirred her iced caffè latte and ice cubes rattled. “Piranhas in his swimming pool. Now that’s a thought.” Her momentary good humor evaporated faster than a sardine in Agatha’s bowl. “Do you know what our most odious new resident is doing now?” Henny didn’t wait for an answer. “He’s gone behind my back. Contacted all the veterans’ groups and called a meeting to enlist volunteers for what he’s calling Points of Patriotism.”