Carolyn G. Hart by Death on Demand/Design for Murder Page B

“Totally black?”
    There was an enthusiastic chorus of assent.
    “Then how the hell did the killer get Morgan with the dart?”
    “That was easy, Chief,” Emma offered, her cornflower-blue eyes disdainful of official slow-wittedness. “Elliot was a chain smoker. All your killer had to do was grab the dart and throw it at the lighted tip of his cigarette.”
    “Jesus,” Saulter snorted. “That’s the craziest goddam thing I ever heard of.”
    “It worked,” Capt. Mac said drily.
    “Yeah.” Saulter sourly surveyed the survivors standing around the coffee area, as if he wished them all dead, too. “Okay. I want to know where everyone was. Exactly. Take the places you had when the lights went out.”
    Harriet shuddered and pointed a skinny, beringed finger toward the lifeless bundle that had once been Elliot Morgan.“Are you just going to leave that there? This seems exceedingly distasteful to me.”
    “It won’t hurt him,” Saulter answered laconically.
    Reluctantly, they drifted back toward the tables where they had been sitting when the lights went out. Ingrid Jones came along with Annie and Max to the farthest of the tables. Max spoke softly to Ingrid and Annie watched her hand him her tablet. He remained standing, his pencil flying over the page. Peering around his shoulder, she saw the bookstore take form on the tablet page.
    As Annie watched, Billy Cameron, one of Saulter’s assistants, began taking photographs of the murder scene. The second assistant, Bud Jurgens, dusted the circuit box and, Annie was glad to see, the back door, with fingerprint powder. Cameron and Jurgens constituted Chief Saulter’s entire force. Annie thought of the well-trained men of the 87th Precinct and felt distinctly unimpressed.
    Kelly Rizzoli and Hal Douglas sat at the far right table. Kelly’s delicate face looked surprisingly untroubled, and her eyes were bright with curiosity. Hal picked up his coffee mug and swished the liquid around as if hoping it would still be hot.
    Fritz Hemphill and Emma Clyde had the center table. Fritz looked frankly bored. Annie wondered if that were not perhaps the ugliest response of all. Emma, as usual, appeared confident and capable. Her stubby hands lay open and relaxed on the table in front of her.
    Janis and Jeff Farley were at the next table. She huddled miserably in her chair. Jeff continued to be oblivious to his wife’s discomfort. Angry patches of red stained his cheeks.
    Capt. Mac and Harriet silently took their places at the table nearest the back wall. The retired policeman surveyed the coffee area thoughtfully. Harriet, of course, was enjoying herself, however much she might protest their proximity to the corpse.
    Saulter shuffled from one table to the next, sighting toward Morgan’s body, obviously figuring a possible trajectory for the dart. It looked to Annie as though the dart had caught Elliot almost dead center.
    “The murderer could have moved the minute the lights went out,” she pointed out. “In fact, there was a sound of movement.”

    Capt. Mac nodded. “She’s right. There was definitely a feeling of movement. I sensed it, too.”
    Saulter scowled, but walked over to stand beside Annie’s chair. It was, she realized with a sinking feeling, almost directly in line with the body.
    His artistic assistant trained his Polaroid on all of them in turn, then Saulter ordered fingerprints taken, a messy and subtly dispiriting chore. No one objected, not even Emma Clyde. Somehow, Annie didn’t think Emma Clyde relished ink on her fingers, but even she kept her mouth shut.
    When the fingerprints were made, Saulter brusquely gave everyone permission to leave as soon as Billy Cameron wrote down their names and addresses. They stood in line by the coffee bar, uncomfortably close to the now sheet-shrouded form.
    “Hey, Chief!” It was Capt. Mac, and his voice vibrated with intensity. Annie thought of the high, keen baying of a bloodhound.
    “By God.” The stocky