Free The Christie Caper by Carolyn G. Hart

motorcycle and took over from Max the task of collecting the names of those who had been walking leisurely on the boardwalk when the gunfire erupted. Annie dutifully herded her reception attendees back inside Death on Demand and as tactfully as possible obtained names, addresses, and phone numbers. Aside from a few island residents, most were registered at the Palmetto House for The Christie Caper. Laurel offered to help, but Annie felt that Laurel’s death’s-head fountain pen (ivory?) was perhaps not the most tactful means of transcribing the information. However, she smiled appreciatively at her mother-in-law and suggested that she man the coffee bar. “Free, of course.”
    “Certainly,” Laurel murmured, but before turning away, she shook her head commiseratingly. “Dear Annie, I have this sense”—a dramatic placement of hand over heart—“of gloom. And doom.” The husky voice dropped yet another register. “‘While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down!’” The exclamation point was Laurel’s.
    “Nobody died,” Annie replied crisply. She was proud of her cool, restrained answer because, within, she was seething. Somebody was going to pay for this—and she didn’t mean just the broken window. Nobody was going to shoot at her bookstore and get away with it.
    Henny looked up from her study of the shattered window. “Somebody sure as hell could have died.”
    Laurel was on her way to the coffee bar when she saw Edgar beak-down in the glass shards that littered the floor. “Oh, oh, oh.” Before Annie could intervene, Laurel dartedpast her and scooped up the stuffed raven. “Edgar!” she wailed, holding the bird aloft.
    Annie blinked. Oh, good grief! One of the bullets had lodged squarely in the center of Edgar’s feathered head. Annie was irresistibly reminded of Louisa Revell’s
The Men with Three Eyes.
Laughter bubbled up inside her, but the anguish in her mother-in-law’s plaintive cry was genuine, so she stifled a giggle and said hurriedly, “Laurel, after all, it’s just a namesake. I mean, don’t take it to heart. Besides, this will be good for the chief. Now he’ll have a bullet to trace,” and she briskly retrieved the battered bird and placed it on the counter.
    Laurel pressed a graceful hand to her forehead and swept to the back of the bookstore, quoting—and Annie couldn’t help noticing how distinct and far-carrying was her diction—“‘What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore/Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”’”
    Occasionally, as Annie took names and reassured her guests that murderous volleys were far from routine on Broward’s Rock, she heard snatches of “The Raven.” While dispensing coffee, Laurel was performing the whole damn poem! Annie refused to look toward the coffee bar. Lord, grant her patience. Grant her endurance. Grant her some means of deflecting Laurel from this latest obsession. Grant her also an end to this stream of anxious registrants whose names she must record. She chafed to be outside, in the thick of the investigation. What had Saulter discovered? Had he got a description of the gunman from the pudgy conference-goer and the excited boys? Had he settled Bledsoe down?
    Bledsoe’s heroics had surprised her. So often in her experience, bullies turned out to be cowards. Certainly, no one could accuse the critic of cowardice. Not only had he tried his damndest to get to the gunman’s vantage point first, he had protected his companion, pushing her to safety, before going fearlessly after his assailant.
    And where was she now, the elderly woman who looked so much like Miss Marple but had a distinctly American accent? Annie spotted her deep in conversation with Henny, gesturing with a now neatly bandaged hand. Annie hoped that Fleur’s cashmere shawl wasn’t ruined.
    Max popped back inside twice, once to report no luck in the search for the gunman, a second time to assure Annie that the front window