April Fool Dead Read Online Free PDF

maybe her pride was over weening, but who would not admire her brilliance and guile? If Emma didn’t appreciate the thought and effort behind the flyers, she was an ungrateful, rude—
    The front door of Death on Demand banged open. Heavy steps pounded down the central aisle.
    Annie came to her feet.
    Emma’s spiky orange hair and purple-and-pink caftan were no match for the icy brightness of her blue eyes and the vivid red splotches on her pale white cheeks. She marched up to the table, flung down a crumpled pink flyer. Emma’s voice, deep and rough as a rumbling river, always commanded attention. Now the words crashed into the waiting silence with the force and power of icebergs slamming into a ship. “Have you lost your mind?”

Three
    A NNIE LIFTED her chin, glared at Emma. “Wait a minute, Emma. I’ve done my best to—”
    Emma’s rock-crusher voice drowned out Annie’s words. “I am appalled. I have lived on this island in peace with my neighbors for almost twenty years. If this is some kind of April-fool joke, I’m definitely not amused.”
    Knuckles rapped smartly on the tabletop. Ingrid flapped the pink flyer in the air. “Emma, don’t be an idiot.”
    Emma’s head jerked back, her orange spikes quivered, her ice-blue eyes blazed.
    Ingrid thrust the sheet at Annie, “Annie, take a look. This isn’t your contest!” Ingrid threw up her hands. “Emma, how could you possibly believe Annie would do this?”
    Annie heard Ingrid’s voice, high and sharp as a mockingbird’s complaint, and Emma’s deep rumble, the tone as stentorian as a Fourth of July tuba, but the words slid past her as she stared at the heavy Gothic printing on the sheet:
    Â 
    WHODUNIT?
    Â 
    The Crimes:
    Hit-and-run
    Adultery
    False imprisonment
    Murder 1
    Murder 2
    The Clues:
    Seventeen graves south of the Portwood Mausoleum.
    One-half mile east on Least Tern Lane.
    Front page, The Island Gazette, September 13, 1990.
    Marigold’s Pleasure. Ask Emma.
    Leisure Moment. Ask Capt. Joe.
    WHODUNIT?
FOLLOW THE CLUES TO $1000
    Annie’s gaze stuck on one startling line: Marigold’s Pleasure . Ask Emma. Oh, God, were those whispers still around? Some years earlier, Emma’s second husband, Ricky (her much younger and philandering second husband), fell to his death from her yacht, Marigold’s Pleasure. The death was adjudged accidental. Annie avoided looking at Emma. Instead, her face flaming, Annie cried, “I can’t believe this. Who did this?” She rattled the sheet. “It’s outrageous. Somebody’s taken my contest and turned it into something hateful. This isn’t a joke. This is awful. And why a thousand dollars?”
    Emma clapped her arms across her chest, stood motionless for an instant.
    Annie stared into brilliant-blue eyes that changed abruptly from blistering anger to thoughtful appraisal to chagrin. Annie blinked. Emma chagrined? That was less likely than James Bond in drag.
    Emma cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Annie. I apologize. I should have known you’d never stoop to this.” Her square face was rueful for an instant, then once again hardened into a glower. “But somebody cooked this up. Now who the hell was it?”
    Annie wasn’t offended. She understood. Emma’s book was being used to stir up trouble. And, perhaps even worse, the whispers about her second husband’s death would begin again. But Annie was angry, too. The idea for the Whodunit contest—the contest of which she’d been so proud—had been hers. It was Annie who had scattered Whodunit flyers across the island, flyers that on the surface looked so much like the one she held in her hand.
    â€œDammit, somebody’s put these things out”—Annie held up the pink flyer—“and they are obviously patterned after my flyers. People are going to think I did this. Oh, Emma, this