DEATH ON DEMAND.

by Carolyn G Hart.

One.

Alone, each item was insignificant. Some were easily found. A few were stolen from friends or acquaintances, but their value was so slight that the losses occasioned mild puzzlement and nothing more.

A pair of doctor's rubber gloves.

A spool of black extra-strong b.u.t.ton-and-carpet thread.

A handful of a.s.sorted keys.

Clear fingernail polish.

Polish remover.

One dart.

There was just one more item, the most important one of all.

Two.

The big collie barked first, then the c.o.c.kers chimed in shrilly, shifting nervously in their pens. The deep-throated woof of the German shepherd boomed against the plastered walls.

In the hallway, the figure bending near the keyhole of the third door stiffened.

G.o.ddam those G.o.ddam dogs.

Sweat slid between skin and the tight sheath of the rubber gloves, making it hard to work the keys.

All the dogs barked now, even the sleepy, ancient dachshund.

The fourth key worked. The lock clicked and the door swung open. Once inside, the figure shut the door, then switched on the flashlight. The bright beam danced over the immaculate linoleum floor, bounced up to the work-table, then to the rows of wooden cabinets. These, too, were locked.

It took patience. The dogs continued to bark, and the frantic yelps rebounded from the walls and tore at the senses. When the fifth cabinet door was open, a gloved hand reached up to pull out the third drawer.

There were two small plastic vials in that drawer. The labels read Succostrin.

Jill Kearney always drove too fast, with the windows down. She loved the feel of the cool October night air against her face. She'd always liked nighttime. Nothing looked quite the same after dark, not even this road, a road she knew so well she could drive it automatically. She hummed softly. What a wonderful job she had, even if everyone thought she was crazy to love it. Usually, she didn't have to go back to the hospital after her ten o'clock check, but that big Doberman had to be turned every three hours after his surgery to prevent pneumonia.

The road dipped just before her turnoff. The lights from the Honda skimmed across an automobile parked deep in the shadow of a live oak.

Odd place to park. Must have had car trouble. The Honda picked up speed, and she leaned into the curve. Because the road curved so sharply, the Honda's lights flashed up into the sky, and the moving beam of light in the third window on the east side of the clinic was sharply distinct.

As the Honda squealed to a stop, Jill flicked off the motor and the headlights, staring at the now dark row of windows.

Something had disturbed the dogs. Even out here in the parking lot, the sound of their frantic barking rose and fell.

A light had moved behind one of the windows. She was sure of it.

She looked around the graveled parking lot. It was empty, of course. No one had any business at the Island Hills Veterinary Clinic at one o'clock in the morning. No one but she.

Perhaps she had imagined the light, but she wasn't imagining the barking. She'd better check the rooms on the east side. Just to be sure.

She picked up her ring of keys and slipped out of the car.

Opening the back door, she flipped on the hall lights. Except for the almost deafening rumble of barks, accented by the high-pitched yapping of the c.o.c.kers, everything seemed just as usual: the hall floors glistened from their final swab of the day, the air smelled of disinfectant and dogs.

Jill hesitated, then pivoted and walked up the hallway, unlocking doors as she went.

She unlocked the third door, the door that led into the dispensary, pushed it open, and reached out to turn on the light.

Her hand never touched the switch. The side of her head exploded in an agony of pain.

Three.

Annie Laurance stared first at the telephone, then at the list she held in her hand.

Should she call all of them? Tell them it was canceled? What could she say? That she had smallpox? She took a deep breath and glared at the telephone. It was her shop, her Sunday evenings. If she wanted to call it off she...

Beneath her hand the phone rang. Annie and her black cat, Agatha, both jumped.

"Agatha, love, it's all right," she called, but Agatha was already streaking toward her usual hiding place.

The phone shrilled again.

Annie yanked it up, remembering at the last moment to insert a modic.u.m of cheer in her voice.

"Death On Demand."

There was an instant's pause, then a familiar voice, an upsettingly familiar voice, inquired mildly, "Do you provide a choice?

Defenestration, evisceration, a.s.sa.s.sination?"

"Max!"

She winced at the enthusiasm of her greeting. Determined to put that right, she repeated crisply, "Max," the inflection pleasingly even.

"I liked the first Max better," he said in that lazy, good-humored, oh-so-Max-satisfied voice.

"Where are you?"

"Dear Annie. Always straight to the point."

"Look, Max, I'm busy, and I've-"

"No time for old friends? Dear friends?"

She could picture him, leaning casually against something, a newel post perhaps, as if it were a play. Or he might have a cellular phone in his Porsche. Max always liked to have the latest in everything. His blond hair would be rumpled, his mouth quirked in an expressive grin, and his blue eyes, those d.a.m.nably vivid blue eyes, alight with laughter.

"I've had the devil's own time finding you, love. You could at least ask me how I did it."

She waited. Max never needed encouragement to display his cleverness.

".They were very friendly to me at your old alma mater, via long distance, of course. I spent enough to keep Sprint solvent for another quarter."

"You called SMU?' She heard the bleat in her voice and winced again.

"Did you think I didn't listen to your tales of college days?"

"You have a brain like a sponge."

"I will take that as a compliment. When I explained to the drama secretary that I was casting director of a new off-Broadway play, and that we'd lost your number... Well, it worked like magic."

Annie objected, "They don't know where I am."

"But they knew the name of your best chum, one Miss Margaret Melinda Howard, who now lives in Lubbock, which sounds like a cross between a hillock and a sick sailor. I chatted long enough with Ms.

Howard to finance a major promotional campaign by Sprint. She was thrilled to tell me that you, her most favorite orphan friend, had inherited the not-quite-beneficent estate of your crusty uncle Ambrose and were now living on an island off the coast of South Carolina, which I brilliantly located on a large-scale map."

Annie almost corrected him. She wasn't really an orphan. Her parents had divorced when she was three, so she didn't remember her father, and the fact that he was apparently alive and well in California wasn't important. Margaret knew of her mother's death, of course. Annie realized she was twiddling her mind with every extraneous detail possible to avoid responding to Max's magnetism. It was to no avail. She felt the same old weak-kneed dizziness that swept over her every time he used to come around her tiny Greenwich Village apartment. But she had settled with that, done with it once and for all, and she wasn't going to stand here and let it all start up again. Besides-she glanced at the antique clock above the mantel-she was running out of time.

"Look, Max, it's great to hear from you. But I've got to make some phone calls, something I have to attend to."

Unintentionally, the worry throbbing deep inside spilled over into her voice. She knew he heard it just as clearly as she did.

"What's wrong, Annie?" The light tone was gone.

"Nothing big," she said lightly. "Just some stuff with the shop."

"You're upset."

She took a deep breath. Upset was putting it mildly, and if she didn't get busy on the phone right this minute...

"Max, it isn't your problem."

"Come on, my love. What's upset you?"

She forced a laugh. "Nothing. I just need to cancel a party for tonight."

"Where's the party?"

She was so obsessed with her problem that she'd forgotten everybody didn't know. "It's here at the bookstore."

"Bookstore? Oh, hey, I like that-Death On Demand."

She glanced at the clock. "Look, Max, it's swell to talk to you." It wasn't swell. She steadied her voice-good, straight, crisp inflection. Good girl, Annie. Always knew there was a superb actress in you. "But I've got to get off the phone and cancel that party."

"Don't cancel it, Annie. You know I love a good party."

She stiffened. "Look, Max, you are in New York, aren't you?"

He chuckled. "Not by a long d.a.m.n shot. See you at the party."

The line went dead. Annie glared at the humming receiver.

He couldn't be in South Carolina.

Mai here. She looked out the front windows of the shop at the green water surging against the rock wall of the harbor. He couldn't actually be here.

Before she could a.s.similate the thought and order her emotions, her heart-that untrustworthy, undisciplined, irritating member-gave a happy leap.

Annie banged down the receiver. All right. Let him come. If he'd ferreted out her new home, followed her down here, just let him come. She'd never change her mind, no matter how much he piled on his careless charm.

They were poles apart, and apart they should stay.

She'was poor.

Max was rich.

She'd grown up in a shabby frame house in a Texas prairie town.

Max had lived in lots of houses: a white stone mansion high above a Connecticut river, a rambling, weathered summer home with its own tennis court on Long Island, a penthouse high above Fifth Avenue, a medieval castle near a Scottish loch.

She'd scrimped through school on a drama scholarship.

Max lounged languidly through Princeton.

She1 liked life to be foursquare, aboveboard, and predictable.