Something Wicked by Carolyn G. Hart

and Annie. Thank God she’d
never
liked passion-fruit champagne punch. At least, Chief Saulter believed the onslaught of illness could be traced to the punch.
    Of course, she couldn’t help wondering whether there was a connection between the sabotage at the theater and the illness at the Petrees’ party. She’d persuaded Max to see what he could find out, not because she gave a damn about the Petrees, but she still cared about
Arsenic and Old Lace.
She really couldn’t take the time to nose around too much because these were the very best bookselling days, and it was unfair to expect Ingrid to handle the flood of tourists alone. Moreover, there were so many unsettled issues in the planning of the wedding. She flicked a hunted look at the telephone. Still, she itched to be involved.
    But she had work to do, and fun work it was, choosing the books to be displayed in the north window. She’d already prepared the background poster:
Died Laughing, or Fifty Years of Funny Mysteries.
The window space lent itself beautifully to a semicircle of five novels. More than that seemed cluttered. Of course, she must include
A Blunt Instrument
by Georgette Heyer. Her mouth curved as she remembered P. C. Glass and his Biblical injunctions. Then she realized she was smiling at the unresponsive form of Edgar, the stuffed raven perched by the front door. Edgar was a wonderful symbol to mystery lovers since his namesake, Edgar Allan Poe, is credited with creating the mystery, but she suspected the somber bird’s personal taste in crime fiction might run more to the terrifying, such as Stanley Ellin’s
The Dark Fantastic
or Jim Thompson’s
The Killer Inside Me.
She gave Edgar’s sleek feathers a swift pat. “I’ll do your kind of book next month.” Eager to fill her display, she hurried down the central aisle and paused to study the caper/comedy shelves.
A Blunt Instrument.
Oh, and of course she would pick
Murder’s Little Sister
by Pamela Branch. Or should sheselect Branch’s
The Wooden Overcoat,
with its many moveable corpses? But
Murder’s Little Sister
was so wry, so sardonic, so absolutely marvelous. Annie slipped both titles off the shelf and tucked them under her arm. She spent several long minutes surveying the Constance and Gwenyth Little books. Which one?
The Black Shrouds?
Or maybe
Black Corridors?
Oh, well, she’d come back in a minute. She reached the T’s and nodded decisively. A Leonidas Witherall mystery was a must. Annie adored the erudite sleuth, who could compare the final rousting of a murderer to Cannae, a famous battle in 216 B.C . in which Hannibal defeated a superior Roman force. Witherall looked like Shakespeare and was the delightful creation of Phoebe Atwood Taylor writing as Alice Tilton. After considerable thought, she settled on
File For Record.
Her eyes moved up. Oh, yes. A Craig Rice. She retrieved
Home Sweet Homicide,
or the kiddie brigade to the rescue. Her hand darted out unerringly for
God Save the Mark,
Donald E. Westlake’s hilarious recounting of the saga of Fred Fitch, the quintessential sucker. Or should she choose
Dancing Aztecs?
Maybe she could cheat, put one behind the other and count it as a single entry. Oh, dear, she knew this would happen. She couldn’t leave out Joyce Porter and her gluttonous Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover. And how about those fresh funny voices belonging to Joan Hess, Bill Crider, and Frank McConnell? She picked out more titles and carried her treasures to the front desk. She had the best of intentions to winnow, but, before she knew it, in between ringing up purchases, she was deep in the adventures of Leonidas Witherall, aka Bill Shakespeare, as he struggled to compose a letter about a lost-and-found department, French bread, and laundry hampers to his friend, Ross Haymaker.
    The phone rang, and she reached out absently to answer.
    “Death on Demand.”
    “Oooh,” the golden voice cried. “Such a
grim
name, when the world needs Love on Demand. Oh, no, no,