Read Online April Fool Dead by Carolyn Hart - Free Book Online Page A

briskly. Henny had a new hairdo, her dark hair with its glitter of silver shingling in layers. “Come on over, we’re going to get the news out to everyone that Annie’s flyer has nothing to do with that trash somebody put out. See, we have poster boards.” She held up a poster with the message printed in huge bright red letters:
    Â 
    BEWARE OF FAKES
    Here’s the one-and-only real WHODUNIT contest flyer.
    Â 
    There was a large white space and another sentence at the bottom of the poster:
    Â 
    Death on Demand is offering a reward for information about the source of the fake flyers.
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    Henny pointed at a poster with her red marker. “You can paste one of Annie’s flyers beneath the message. We’ll go all over the island and put up the posters.”
    Annie was pleased with her brilliant solution. Not only would the posters make it absolutely clear that Death on Demand had no connection to the obnoxious flyers, the posters would also publicize Emma’s signing. Talk about win-win. And it wouldn’t take long to get a bunch of posters done with Henny and Barb and Pamela helping, especially Henny. Annie smiled fondly at her old friend. Nobody on Broward’s Rock could work better or faster than Henny, a retired schoolteacher, two-time Peace Corps volunteer and a veteran of the Women’s Army Air Corps in World War II, who had flown a vintage airplane for many years.
    Annie began to feel relaxed. Everything was going to work out.
    Pamela hurried across the room to take her place at the end of the table. She picked up a flyer and began to paste it painstakingly exactly in the center of the white space, then paused. “But why not say the reward is getting to drive Emma’s Rolls-Royce for a week?”
    Annie carefully began to print on a poster board.
    In the odd silence that followed Pamela’s question, Henny chuckled. “Annie, did you clear that with Emma?”
    Annie’s red marker skidded, messing up the W in WHODUNIT. She tossed that poster aside, picked up a fresh sheet, stared grimly down at it.
    â€œOh my. Oh my, oh my.” Henny began to print letters on her poster board. “As Charlie Chan once observed, ‘The deer should not play with the tiger.’”
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    Annie clattered down the back steps of Confidential Commissions. All of the shops on the harbor had rear entrances to a dusty, quiet alley, frequented primarily by delivery trucks. Her red Volvo was parked in the slot behind Death on Demand. Annie felt almost jaunty as she hurried toward the car. It always helped to take action. Her loud announcement at the cemetery was the first step in battling an unseen enemy. Now Max and Henny and Barb and Pamela were spreading out over the island to put up posters in heavily frequented areas and, along the way, ask if anyone had spotted the elusive distributor of the fake flyer. And she, despite Max’s concerns, was going to deliver posters to the places she felt they were most needed.
    Clutching her stack of posters, she darted around the front of her car, then stopped and stared at the window. Somebody had tossed a brick through the driver’s window of her Volvo. A bright green sheet of paper was wrapped around the brick. She didn’t have to unfold the flyer to recognize another of the fakes. Fragments of thought raced through her mind: The nearest glass shop was in Bluffton, a ferry ride away. Who was mad at her? One of those accused in the fake flyers whohadn’t heard—or didn’t believe—that Annie had nothing to do with the scurrilous attacks? Or a disappointed contestant, furious that the thousand-dollar prize wasn’t to be had? Or was this the work of the scheming, cruel mind that had created the spurious contest, angry at Annie’s denunciation?
    Annie was surprised at her sense of outrage that mingled with hurt. How ugly, ugly, ugly…But wasn’t that to be expected as a result of whatever