Murder Most Conventional

by Verena Rose (ed)

  Shawn Reilly Simmons’ “A Gathering of Great Detectives” is a lagniappe, that thirteenth donut when you buy a dozen or other extra tidbits. It’s the perfect ending to this anthology with its depiction of an annual convening of fans in character as their favorite detectives, no deviation permitted from the role for the duration. They’re there to solve a fictitious crime, but reality intrudes. . . .

  Now, pour yourself a favorite libation, sit back, and prepare to be entertained.

  CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, by Marcia Talley

  Agatha Christie dedicated By the Pricking of My Thumbs to the “many readers . . . who write to me asking: ‘What has happened to Tommy and Tuppence? What are they doing now?’” By the time of her last novel, Postern of Fate, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have three children. Their adopted daughter, Betty, is working in Africa, and the twins, Deborah and Derek, are married. At the end of the novel, Deborah makes a brief appearance at the Beresfords with her children. Now, years later, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Beresford grandchildren might be doing today.

  It was after eight, yet the day was still dark, the sky a uniform gray that shrouded the earth like a wet sweatshirt. It wouldn’t be correct to say the rain fell; rather it hurled itself against the plane’s window, beading along the glass in plump droplets. Caroline watched one skitter down the oval pane, swallowing the smaller drops in its path.

  As her eyes gradually refocused further away, she observed the airport routine going on outside her window. It reminded her of a silent movie, and she amused herself by providing dialogue for a workman wearing ear protectors like bulky headphones as he waved the plane forward to the gate with laser wands. Lights reflecting from the terminal building shimmered in an immense puddle then shattered as a luggage train splashed through it. So much for sunny California, Caroline thought. I might as well have left my swimming costume back in London. She tried to remember whether she had packed an umbrella. She’d set a brolly aside in her flat, ready to stuff into her book bag. She recalled putting it in, then taking it out again in order to make room for a last-minute paperback. In her mind’s eye Caroline saw the brolly, still sitting on the hall table right where she left it. “Damn!” she whispered, turning her head deliberately away from the gloom outside the window. “Stephen had better be here to meet me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Her seatmate, a scrawny woman clutching a Marks & Spencer carrier bag on her lap like a precious object, turned dark, serious eyes on Caroline.

  Caroline flushed. “Oh, nothing. I was just hoping my brother wouldn’t be late picking me up. He’s flying in from New York.” She sighed. “You can never tell with Stephen. He might be sitting in a coffee shop reading a book and have forgotten all about me.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure he wouldn’t let his little sister down.” She removed her reading glasses and dropped them into her bag.

  “We’re twins, actually,” Caroline explained. “I’m slightly older, by a few minutes.”

  “Twins?”

  “But we’re not all that much alike.” Caroline fumbled in her purse. “Would you like to see?”

  Her companion made encouraging noises so Caroline opened her wallet and flipped through the plastic sleeves containing her credit cards. She turned to a snapshot of Stephen with his determined chin, squinting into the sun, his rather ordinary face split by an engaging grin. A shock of red hair was combed straight back over his scalp; an errant strand hovered over his left eyebrow. The woman’s eyes moved from the photo to Caroline’s face and back again. “I see what you mean, although there’s a certain resemblance around the mouth.”

  “That was taken eight years ago when Stephen was on holiday in Florida.” Caroline closed the wallet and stuffed it back into her book bag. “Stephen takes after our grandfather Beresford—they used to call him Carrot Top—while I,” Caroline tugged at a ringlet of her own dark brown hair, “am supposed to look like my grandmother.”

  Caroline settled back into her seat and waited for the captain to turn off the seatbelt sign. In spite of the disappointing weather, she was eager to get on with her journey. Anything was better than sitting around in her flat feeling sorry for herself, hoping that something interesting might happen. Six months before, after the accounting firm she worked for had declared her redundant, Caroline had retreated to Swallow’s Nest to be comforted by home cooking and buoyed by her mother’s supportive and upbeat attitude. She’d thought about visiting Rosalie in New Zealand, but a visit to her sister was a nonstarter unless one of the jobs she’d applied for there actually came through.

  “Are you going to MysteryCon?” the woman asked.

  “Hmmm?” Caroline glanced up.

  The woman pointed. “I couldn’t help noticing your bag.”

  “Oh.” Caroline guessed her book bag was, so to speak, a dead giveaway. Against the black silhouette of a revolver, last year’s MysteryCon logo was printed in stark white letters. She smiled. “Yes, I am, actually. My brother and I are presenting the Blenkinsop Partners in Crime Award.” Noticing the woman’s puzzled expression she quickly explained, “It goes to the best crime novel featuring a detecting duo.”

  “You mean like Holmes and Watson? Or Cagney and Lacey?”

  Caroline nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I never read mysteries myself,” her seatmate stated. “But I watch that Jessica Fletcher on TV.” She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. “Blenkinsop. What a funny name for an award.”

  Caroline smiled. “Isn’t it? It’s related to a practical joke my grandmother once pulled on my grandfather. My uncle Derek established the award in their honor.”

  Caroline heard the ding of the seatbelt signal and the clicking of hundreds of buckles as passengers leaped up and scrambled for their bags in the overhead compartments. Caroline waited for her seatmate to step out, then snaked down the aisle behind her, through the business and first-class sections, past the flight crew muttering their buh-byes, and along the passageway to baggage claim. She watched a bag of golf clubs go three times around on the carousel before her own flowered suitcase eventually appeared. She set it on its wheels, jerked out the handle, and dragged it and herself into the gloom of the San Diego morning.

  As she had feared, Stephen was nowhere in sight. Caroline loitered for ten minutes at the passenger pick-up area shifting from foot to foot, searching up and down the busy transportation plaza for the red Toyota Yaris Stephen had told her he’d rented. After a call to his cell phone went straight to voice mail, she gave up and followed the signs to the Shuttle for Hire island.

  * * * *

  Caroline’s usually cheerful face was still set in a scowl when the blue and yellow SuperShuttle deposited her in front of the Puesta del Sol on Mission Bay. She made her way to the reception desk and checked in. “Are there any messages for me?”

  The desk clerk tapped at his keyboard, studied the screen for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Sorry, Ms. Greene.”

  Caroline shouldered her book bag and leaned once more against the counter. “Has Stephen Greene checked in yet?”

  The clerk executed a few additional keystrokes, then, obviously happy to please her at last, exclaimed, “Oh yes.” He pointed toward the restaurant. “You can use the house phone over there to call his room, or if you prefer, I could take a message for you.”

  “No, thanks,” Caroline grumbled. In the past hour she had dredged up hundreds of four-letter words with which to blister Stephen’s ears, but this relentlessly perky fellow seemed only a decade on this side of Sesame Street. Certain words beginning with the letter F might not be in his vocabulary yet.

  Caroline headed toward the elevators, weaving through the lobby crowded with name-tagged conventioneers who sat on every chair and sprawled on every sofa, purses, briefcases, and book bags heaped at their feet. Caroline noticed that the lobby was decorated with dozens of Halloween pumpkins, their elaborately carved fa
ces leering at her from the planters that divided the lobby into more intimate conversational areas. She smiled in spite of herself, feeling immensely cheered. As she passed the last alcove, one pumpkin head stood up.

  “Stephen!” Caroline dropped her book bag, controlling the urge to clobber him with it. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “Waiting for you, ducks.”

  “You were supposed to meet me at the airport, you dunce.”

  “I thought we agreed to meet at the hotel.”

  “Airport, Stephen. We said the airport. Honestly, you do try my patience.” She pushed her suitcase toward him. Stephen grabbed the handle, then kissed his sister on the cheek. “Sorry for the confusion, love, but all’s well that ends well. Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Nothing to speak of, except for the pretzels they gave me on the plane.”

  The elevator arrived and carried them to the tenth floor. “I’ll make it up to you,” Stephen promised. “Freshen up and meet me in the lobby and I’ll feed you a proper meal.” He checked his watch. “In thirty minutes.”

  The elevator doors closed, leaving Caroline alone in the hallway a good two hundred feet from the door with her room number on it.

  Once inside her room, she pressed a hot washcloth over her face, then leaned close to the mirror and examined her gray eyes for puffiness. Satisfied to see little sign of jet lag, she fluffed up her flattened hair with her fingers, applied some lipstick, and returned to the lobby. Having ten minutes to kill before Stephen was scheduled to appear, she registered for the conference, pinned her name tag on her jacket, found a vacant table near the lobby coffee shop, and ordered some hot tea.

  “Hello. Mind if I sit down?”

  Caroline glanced up from the MysteryCon program booklet she was reading and shifted her chair a few inches to the right. “I’m saving a seat for my brother, but the others aren’t taken.” The man standing before her wore chinos and a striped shirt under a denim jacket. His lank, yellowish hair was caught back into a ponytail, and he carried a backpack. Caroline stole a peek at his name tag—Larry Townsend: Alexandria, VA.

  Mr. Townsend settled himself into the chair and studied Caroline over the top of his round, steel-framed glasses. “You an author?”

  Caroline smiled. “Not exactly. I’m one of the presenters.”

  Townsend patted his backpack, which now rested at his feet. “I’m here to meet my editor.”

  Caroline noticed no author ribbon attached to Townsend’s name tag. “Really? Have I read anything you’ve written?” She smiled brightly.

  Townsend gazed at her shyly from beneath long, pale lashes. “I’m not exactly published yet, but I hope to be soon.” He leaned over and rummaged in his backpack. “This book, do you know it?”

  Caroline groaned inwardly, recognizing a popular self-help book widely advertised on a home shopping channel by its author, the flamboyant king of infomercials, Jeremiah P. Jackson. Write It! Sell It! screamed at her in raised, red letters from a cover otherwise unadorned except for a head-to-toe shot of the author wearing an Armani suit, holding a copy of that same book and smiling toothily.

  “I’ve read the reviews,” she admitted at last.

  “It’s my bible.” Townsend unzipped the breast pocket of his jacket and extracted a small, square notebook. He showed Caroline page after page of neat columns containing notations in infinitesimal print, the columns dotted with checkmarks. Caroline sipped her tea and nodded mechanically while Townsend rattled on about how he hoped to get published by following the author’s advice. He’d attended conferences. Check. Networked with authors. Check. Schmoozed with publishers. Check again. Caroline found herself growing sleepy. If Stephen didn’t appear within the next five minutes, she decided, she was going to ditch this bore and eat alone.

  “I’ve written a mystery based on my experiences in Kandahar,” Townsend told her.

  “Hmmm.” Caroline returned to studying her conference program, hoping, vainly, that he’d take the hint.

  “Started writing in a foxhole in the desert. Wrote much of the rest on the Metro riding to my job at the Pentagon. But then I said, what the hey. Decided to take a leave of absence to finish up. Been living off my savings.”

  Caroline regarded Townsend with a sudden spark of interest. “Must have been hard on the wife and kids.”

  “Ex-wife,” he said. “No kids.” His face grew serious. “I have it all planned out.” He turned the notebook in Caroline’s direction. “See, here’s where I’ve checked off all the steps in getting an agent.”

  “I hear it’s hard to get an agent.”

  “Not really. Just followed what the man says in here.” He fanned the pages of Write It! Sell It! with an ink-stained thumb, stopping about halfway through. “He suggests reading the acknowledgments in books written by authors you admire. They usually thank their agents. Then you come to conferences like this and contrive to meet them.” Townsend’s eyes swept the lobby. “There are lots of agents here right now.”

  “Clever,” Caroline said.

  Townsend shrugged. “It’s all in the book. Got my agent at MysteryCon last year, and he sent my manuscript out to several editors. This particular editor’s had my book for three months.”

  Caroline was searching for an appropriate reply when she saw, with relief, Stephen’s tall figure approaching. She stood. “Well, good luck . . .” She looked pointedly at Townsend’s name tag. “Larry.”

  Townsend smiled up at her. “Thanks, Caroline. But I have a feeling this one’s practically a done deal.”

  Stephen hustled Caroline away from the coffee shop and into the restaurant. “Why were you talking to that kook?”

  “He wasn’t a kook. Just some guy desperately trying to sell his book.”

  “I don’t know about that, Caroline. He looked rather shady to me. While I was waiting for you earlier, I overheard him talking to someone on the telephone. All very hush-hush and Tom Clancyish. ‘Meet me in the terrace bar. I’ll be wearing glasses and carrying a backpack’ kind of stuff.” Stephen studied the menu while they waited for the hostess to locate a table for two. “Wonder whatever happened to the good old days when you wore a red carnation in your lapel and carried a copy of The New York Times folded under one arm?”

  Stephen carried on with his spy-among-the-fans-and-authors theory. Caroline half-listened until she felt the soft jab of his elbow in her ribs. “Hot-cha!” Stephen croaked. A certain well-endowed writer of American mystery cozies, clad in a low-cut blouse and a tea towel passing for a skirt, squeezed between them. She held a wine glass by the stem between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Ha!” Caroline chided. “I’m surprised you notice anything going on around you.”

  “I’m a man of many talents, my dear. Why just now I’ve noticed that our wait for a table is over. Mavis!” Stephen grabbed Caroline’s hand and dragged her through the crowded restaurant to a table near the window, already occupied by a pair of diners. Caroline observed with pleasure that the table overlooked the bay. Outside the clouds had broken up and bright sunlight was transforming the flowering sage, lilac, and bougainvillea that bordered the patio into a Kodacolor postcard.

  A middle-aged woman, attractive in spite of a thatch of too-black hair, beamed up at Stephen as he bent over the table and kissed the air next to her cheek. “Mavis! Good to see you. George. How are you doing, old bean? I’d like you both to meet my sister, Caroline. Caroline, George writes those true crime novels our brother Andrew is so fond of reading. Mavis is his editor.” Stephen snatched two vacant chairs from an adjoining table and Caroline soon found herself sandwiched between Stephen’s friends. She hoped the waitress had noticed their arrival because the sight of the Belgian waffle sitting on the plate in front of George, decorated with fresh strawberries and dollops of whipped cream, was making her stomach rumble noisily.

  “How’s tricks, Mavis?�
� Stephen inquired while waving a hand in the direction of a passing waitress. Mavis slapped her forehead, a look of mock panic on her face. “Overworked, as per usual. Spending most of my time dealing with the merger and my conglomerate bottom-line bosses. Publishing’s a crazy business now, not like the old days.” She tapped the contents of a pink packet into her coffee, stirred, and tasted it. “Thank God I’ve got a capable assistant.”

  George raised his water glass and said, “To the indispensable Tiffany Carswell.”

  Mavis plucked a pair of reading glasses from where they rested on top of her head, settled them on her nose, and peered at her watch. “Can’t imagine what’s keeping her. She was almost dressed when I left the room.” She scowled. “The bean counters strike again, Stephen. Never thought I’d be bunking with my assistant.” Mavis relaxed into her chair, enjoying the last of her coffee. “But the girl’s a jewel. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “Knows better than to call in sick every Monday like the last editorial assistant you had?” Stephen teased.

  Mavis closed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t remind me.”

  A waitress had finally appeared to take their order when Mavis stood and laid her napkin on the table. “Well, it’s been fun, folks, but I gotta go. My panel starts at noon.” She patted her chest. “Left my damn name tag on the bedside table, but I don’t suppose they’ll turn me away at the door. Coming, George, or do you leave me to face the unpublished masses alone?” She departed in a cloud of White Diamonds with the faithful George trotting at her heels.

  Stephen picked up the copy of USA Today that George had left behind and began reading aloud from the Money section. Caroline, who was used to having the news interpreted for her by her brother, munched happily on a piece of dry toast. She was halfway through her California fruit cup, considering which of the panels she’d attend, when a large black object hurtled past the window behind Stephen’s head, glanced off the flowering shrubbery, and crashed to the terra-cotta paving. “My God!” a waitress screamed. “Somebody’s fallen!”