April Fool Dead Read online

  The phone rang in the anteroom. Barb turned and hurried through the door.

  “—I’m sure the flyer is all over the island. We have to find out who set us up for this.”

  Annie shoved a hand through her hair. “Emma, did you see the skywriting this morning?”

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Skywriting?”

  Annie explained, concluding, “Somebody anonymously arranged for the skywriting. All we know is that he—or she—left a letter with money in it at the skywriting office.”

  “To draw even more attention to the damn things.” Emma looked thoughtful.

  Barb poked her head in the office. “Annie. For you.”

  Max waved his hand. “Tell any callers that we’re in conference.”

  Annie shook her head, moved to Max’s desk, a rather grand desk that had all the dignity of a refectory table in a monastery, and grabbed the portable phone. Nobody but Ingrid knew she was here and if Ingrid was calling, Annie knew she’d better answer. Annie punched the phone on.

  In the background Barb remonstrated: “Annie, wait a minute. I think it’s—”

  Max said briskly, “We’ll canvass the neighborhood. Somebody must have seen something!”

  Emma nodded approval. “That’s one avenue. But we need to think about the kind of person who would pull a trick like this. Obviously, we have to look for an angry personality, someone in need of attention—jealous, hostile and aggressive. Perhaps the last is most important.”

  Annie strained to hear. “Annie! I simply don’t know what to do.” Annie clutched the receiver, understood Barb’s warning. The breathless, urgent, well-intentioned voice was all too familiar. If Pamela Potts hadn’t invented good works, she’d staked a preeminent claim as the island’s super do-gooder. Church suppers? Pamela cooked. Bereaved families? Pamela led the casserole brigade. Island charities? Nobody made more calls, walked farther, donated more time than Pamela. Hospital auxiliary? A staunch member. Annual bird count? Pamela had spotted more purple gallinules than the next five watchers combined. But now was not the moment. Annie didn’t have time to bake a casserole or do a walkathon or—

  “Annie, you know I always do my best.” There was a quaver in Pamela’s voice. “However, I find myself in a most difficult…”

  Max picked up a legal pad from his desk, began to write.

  Carrying the portable phone, Annie came up beside him and craned to see:

  DISTRIBUTION OF BOGUS FLYERS

  1. Do a door-to-door canvass, seeking a description of the person placing the flyers in the mailboxes.

  2. Find out if any other means was used to distribute the flyers.

  3. Get a story in Island Gazette, making it clear the bogus flyers have no connection to Death on Demand.

  Annie could have hugged his broad shoulders. Bogus flyers, that was the message they had to get out to everyone on the island. She would never have thought the word “bogus” would become a favorite.

  Max continued:

  4. Check on last ferry from the mainland Monday night, first ferry Tuesday morning.

  The ferry? Why the ferry? Oh, sure. Annie shot an admiring glance at Max. The person who left the anonymous payment for the skywriting had to get on and off the island between those times. Pamela’s worried voice droned in Annie’s ear: “…predicament. I am torn between my utmost loyalty to you and, of course, to Death on Demand, the finest mystery bookstore east of Atlanta, but…”

  Emma pulled a chair up to Max’s desk and grabbed a sheet of paper.

  Annie bent to look. Emma printed with a savage swiftness, the letters large and blocky:

  LINKS

  Follow clues, discover identities of suspects.

  Valid accusations or scurrilous defamations?

  Explore backgrounds.

  Determine persons having requisite knowledge of the suspects to create the list of Crimes and Clues.

  Contrast that list with…

  “…I find myself in an untenable position. I want to do everything I can to support Emma’s signing—and isn’t Whodunit a wonderful title, it’s one of my favorites, almost as good as Just Desserts. You know that’s the first in the Mary Daheim series and I wouldn’t tell Emma, but I like those books even better than Emma’s. They’re so funny. Of course, Marigold is amazing and really so different from Emma, not, of course, that Emma isn’t wonderful. However, I don’t think anyone would call her sweet…”

  Annie glanced at Emma’s corrugated-cement face and at the stubby fingers that held the pen in a death grip. Sweet? Not in this lifetime or any possible lifetime Annie could envision. Sweet, no. Smart, tough, capable, and awesome, oh yes. Annie’s eyes returned to point 5:

  5. Contrast that list with the identities of passengers on the Monday-night/Tuesday-morning ferries.

  Annie felt a trifle let down that the importance of the ferry passengers had occurred immediately to both Max and Emma and not to her. But hey, it was Annie who had initiated the investigation of the skywriting.

  Annie itched to get her hands on Emma’s battle plan. What a fascinating insight into the thought processes of America’s queen of cozy mysteries. After all of this was over—and please God they would track down the obnoxious creator of the bogus flyer and Annie’s own brilliant contest would once again afford canny mystery readers an opportunity to shine—Annie intended to get Emma’s handwritten plan. The sheet, especially if Annie persuaded Emma to sign and date it, would be a valuable addition to the store’s display of mystery collectibles.

  “…but Emma always champions fair play and that’s why I’m so puzzled about the contest. I went to the cemetery and, Annie, it’s simply jammed with people. Ben Parotti’s set up a stand and he’s selling fried catfish and clam fritters with candied sweet potatoes on the side. Of course, I never eat fried food and even so my cholesterol count…” A heavy sigh.

  Annie was in no mood to swap cholesterol woes. “Pamela, it is so sweet of you to call—” She leaned forward as Max added to his pad:

  5. Locate grave at cemetery.

  6. Use island map to find residence one half mile east on Least Tern Lane.

  Emma shoved back her chair.

  Annie followed, covering the phone with her hand. “Emma, where are you going? What are you going to do? Wait a minute…”

  “…but I worked my way through the crowds and I was able to get one of the flyers with the new clues and, Annie, I just had to call—”

  Annie’s head jerked up. Her hand tightened on the portable phone. “New clues. New clues?” No parrot ever screeched with more intensity.

  Max pushed back his chair, came to his feet. Emma thudded to a stop, alert as a terrier at a rat hole.

  “Annie”—Pamela spoke with weary patience—“I’ve been trying to tell you. Everybody on the island—well, maybe not everybody, but I had to park a mile from the gate, there were so many cars already here and I’ve never seen this many people at the cemetery, not even on Flag Day. Apparently there was a stack of new flyers at the grave but they were all gone when I got there. I promised the youngest Brewster boy a collection of Pokémon dolls for his flyer and I really think you should be very careful what you say about people. I mean, the Littlefields have so much money and he’s not really very nice even though she’s—”

  “Pamela, don’t go anywhere. Wait there. We’re coming.”

  Four

  MAX LEANED out the car window and peered up the road. “There’s no way. The traffic’s stacked like a Braves game during the World Series.”

  The narrow dirt lane to the cemetery, always dim in the tunnel between live oaks, was bumper-to-bumper with vehicles of all kinds—luxury sedans, SUVs, pickups, vans, rattletraps. Annie spotted their plumber’s pickup, the silver Mercedes of a local decorator, and the rector’s sedate black Taurus. Gray dust roiled in the air.

  Behind them, a horn tooted three times.

  Annie twisted to look. “Emma’s pointing off to the left. She’s backing up. Oh, wow, can she possibly make
that turn?” The rear of Emma’s pink Rolls-Royce veered perilously near the ditch, the wheels churned in the dust, then the big car bucked forward.

  Annie leaned out her window and pointed. “Follow that car!” she shouted to Max. Okay, when else would she ever have an opportunity to call out that immortal line?

  Max laughed but wrenched the steering wheel, and his small, easily maneuverable Ferrari pivoted and zoomed in pursuit.

  Follow that car…Yes, she’d had an instant of fun, but the moment of lightheartedness didn’t ease the hard, cold knot of anger lodged somewhere in her chest, as real and debilitating as a wound. Someone had taken the good name of her store—and her own good name—and trashed them just as surely as a vandal cracking glass or flinging paint. She’d scarcely had time to absorb the reality of the bogus flyer, but she knew Emma was right. Someone had ripped open a wasps’ nest and lots of innocent people were going to suffer, and many of them, so very many, were going to think it was all Annie’s fault. Now there was apparently yet another flyer.

  “Max”—she spoke through clenched teeth—“Max.” She couldn’t say another word. Hot tears burned her eyes.

  Max reached out, gripped her hand. “Come on, honey. We’ll see it through. We’ll tell the world it wasn’t you. We’ll find out who did this and we’ll make sure everyone knows.”

  Annie clung to his hand, blinked away the tears. There was no time to cry. Now was the time to fight. If only she knew who the enemy was…Her cell phone rang. She took a deep breath, punched it on and managed to sound almost like herself. “Yes?”

  “Follow me.” With that brusque command, Emma clicked off.

  Annie pointed at the Rolls-Royce. “Our leader has spoken.” She was irritated, but, dammit, if she had to be in a foxhole, it was good to have a real soldier in there with her. Even a brusque soldier. Annie managed a smile. “Do you suppose it’s too late for Emma to take charm lessons? But what amazes me, Marigold Rembrandt sheds charm faster than Ariadne Oliver scatters apple cores.” Annie was a great fan of the charming detective-story author purported to be the good-humored self-portrait of Agatha Christie.

  “They say all the characters in a book reflect some facet of the author’s personality.” Max didn’t speak with conviction.

  “Emma must be the exception to that rule.” Annie leaned forward. “Look, she’s turning.”

  Max slowed. “God, that way?”

  The gap between bayberry bushes was almost invisible.

  Annie understood. Max hand-waxed his Ferrari and this was a man who limited physical exertion to tennis and golf. And sex, of course.

  Max gripped the wheel, turned into the rough road. “I hope she knows where she’s going.” He winced, his handsome face twisting in misery as the front tires jolted in the uneven ruts.

  The live oaks squeezed so close that Spanish moss trailed over the windshield like wisps of fog. A low-hanging branch scraped the roof. Max made a noise between pain and agony.

  “Just think”—Annie believed in looking on the bright side—“Emma’s car is much bigger and it’s going through just fine.”

  Max hunched over the wheel. “My God, the track’s getting narrower. And the cemetery’s in the other direction. Where does she think she’s taking us? Hey, wait, where did she go?”

  One minute the massive pink Rolls-Royce was dimly visible through the cloud of dust; the next it was gone.

  Max picked up speed, slowed immediately. “Annie, did you see that?” He pointed into the dim tangle of shrubs beneath a grove of pines.

  Annie hung from her side of the car, looking ahead. “I think Emma turned right. It looks like there’s a”—she didn’t want to say path or trail or Max might simply back his beloved Ferrari all the way to the cemetery road, which by now had no doubt assumed almost mythical status as a well-traveled byway—“a turnoff. Let’s try it.”

  Max was still peering into the dimness of the forest. “Annie, I saw a cougar. I swear I did.”

  Annie swiftly rolled up her window. She knew the island was reputed to have several of the big tawny wildcats. That was fine, a nice addition to the tourist literature. She preferred dolphins every time. “Let’s catch up with Emma. Try that way.”

  Max pulled up to the entrance to the track and stopped.

  Annie cleared her throat. “If her oversize, lumbering Rolls-Royce can manage to drive that way—”

  Max signaled, turned to the right. This tunnel was so dark, they needed the headlights, but after a short stretch, maybe twenty feet, the trail widened into a small clearing with a weathered wooden house on stilts, two sheds and a dingy green tractor. The pink Rolls-Royce was parked by the nearest shed.

  Max smiled. “Hey, there’s room to turn around.” His delight matched Stanley sighting Livingstone.

  Emma was striding across the sandy clearing, the sun glinting on her spiky orange hair.

  “Come on, Max. Let’s see what Emma’s up to.” Annie hoped Emma remembered that Pamela Potts was awaiting their arrival at the cemetery and that Pamela claimed to have a second sheet of clues.

  As their car doors slammed, a white-haired man in worn, dirt-stained coveralls came out on the porch of the old house, a shotgun cradled in his muscular arm.

  Annie called out, “Emma, wait. He’s got a shotgun.”

  Emma kept right on going, a careless wave of her hand the only acknowledgment of Annie’s warning.

  The old man, his wizened face the color of mahogany, looked past Emma at Annie and Max, frowned, gestured with the shotgun. “Private prop’ty.”

  “They’re with me, Daniel.” Emma pointed toward a path that angled into the forest. “We need to get to the cemetery and the road’s jammed with traffic.”

  A flush mounted in his face, turning his skin a rusty orange. “People got no right. They’re trespassers. Walkin’ across the graves like it was picnic land. You hear that?” He nodded his head to his left. There was a dull sound, similar to a faraway roar of a football crowd or the rumble of surf. “I’ve half a mind to go shoot my gun, tell ’em to leave, but the police…”

  A siren squalled in the distance.

  “…told me they’d take care of it. I told the police they got to find out who’s causing this trouble. Why, they’s people so deep around the Tower grave, I couldn’t get past on my tractor, and I got to dig a new grave just past there for tomorrow.”

  “The Tower grave.” Max squinted against the sun. “Bob Tower? Insurance agent? Had his own company?”

  The old man leaned the shotgun against the porch railing. The stairs squeaked beneath his weight. “Robert Payne Tower as was buried two years ago this spring.”

  “That’s Bob. He and I used to play tennis. A good guy.” Max jammed his hands in his pockets. “Hey, Annie, you remember Bob.”

  “Oh yes.” She remembered Bob Tower’s easy grin and the shock of learning he’d been hit by a car and left to die.

  Emma was crisp. “They never found out who did it.”

  The flyer had listed a hit-and-run among the purported crimes. But Annie hadn’t realized the victim was someone she’d known. Bob Tower, tall and lanky with curly brown hair and kind brown eyes.

  Emma slipped on purple sunglasses with pink rims. “Seventeen graves south of the Portwood Mausoleum?”

  “Yep.” Daniel rubbed a grizzled cheek. “His wife comes once a week and sometimes the kids are with her. They bring wildflowers—daylilies and coral bean and swamp rose and verbena.”

  “Did you know Bob?” Max asked.

  Daniel hooked his thumbs behind the straps to his coveralls. “Not till he got here. But I know all my people and I don’t like what’s goin’on now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cemetery.

  The siren was louder. It cut off in mid-squall. Over the indistinguishable roar sounded the slam of car doors, an occasional shout, the nervous chitter of birds.

  “Neither do we, Daniel. That’s why we’re here. Oh, Daniel, I want you to meet Annie and Max Darling.”
Emma nodded at them. “Daniel Parker. He helped me with background when I was writing The Case of the Gravedigger’s Gloves.”

  Daniel rocked back on his heels. “Yes’m.” He looked at Annie and Max. “She didn’t know graves from nothing. But I set her straight. Listen, Emma, can you figure out what’s going on over there?”

  “I intend to do just that.” She sounded crisp and self-assured. “Tell us what’s happened.”

  He plunged one grimy hand into a side pocket and pulled out a crumpled flyer. This one was mint-green, with oversize black letters. Very legible.

  Annie and Emma both reached for it.

  Daniel handed the wrinkled sheet to Emma. “They’s everywhere. At least they was until all those people come. I don’t know if they’s any left by now. All those damn fool people stomping around. I’m going to have to get me some helpers to clean the cemetery. There’s a burial tomorrow.”

  Annie craned around Emma’s broad shoulder to read the flyer.

  WHODUNIT?

  Clever of you to get this far. Follow these clues:

  What happened to the Littlefields’ red Jeep?

  Who drives a Range Rover?

  Where did the evidence come from?

  When did Emma find out about the girlfriend?

  Have wedding bells rung?

  Having Fun?

  Keep an eye on the personals in The Island Gazette.

  WHODUNIT?

  “I don’t like this.” Emma spit out the words like Rosie the Riveter welding a bomber. “It’s like trying to catch handfuls of smoke. You grab and there’s nothing there.” She tapped the crumpled green sheet. “What is the point?”

  Annie remembered that Emma had been a battlefield nurse in World War II. She was tough, a survivor, and right now, she was fighting mad. Annie couldn’t imagine why the bogus flyers had been created, but if anyone could figure it out, it was Emma. She’d survived the toughest years of the last century and she handled supercomplicated plots with ease. “Okay, Emma, we’ve got to find out what these new clues mean. We need to split up. You and Max and I can each check out a different—”