Unforced Error

by Michael Bowen

  “Perhaps not,” Melissa said. “Why did Quinlan’s letter infuriate you so much? Most authors would be thrilled to get an offer like that.”

  “I’m wondering why I should tell you anything more. I give you a hand with that sniveling little weasel and you say thanks by intruding on an intimate evening. Remember, I’m a romance novelist. This isn’t just meaningless, empty sex, it’s literary research.”

  “The police haven’t questioned me yet,” Melissa said. “I haven’t had to decide what version of the Quinlan encounter to give them.”

  “Tell them what you like, honey. Their preliminary guess is that Quinlan was killed between ten-thirty p.m. and two-thirty a.m. My Marine had to be back by reveille, but I have an ironclad alibi from ten at night to at least four-thirty in the morning.”

  “You’re not talking to a blushing maiden,” Melissa said. “Your ironclad alibi brought a saber with him, and after two bouts of passion he had to be snoring away more than enough time for you to kill Tommy Quinlan and get back to bed.”

  “You can’t really believe I did anything like that.”

  “I’ll decide what I believe after you tell me why his letter got to you.”

  Tuttle sighed, shrugged, walked over to her bedside table, and poured clear liquid from a crystal decanter into something that looked several cuts above the Hilltop Motel’s basic room glass.

  “Gin,” she said, with a cheers gesture toward Melissa. “Any for you?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Okay. Jackrabbit Press has no business publishing Inescapable Courtesy. Tommy knew it. JP can’t get the book reviewed by people who review novels like that and its distribution is all wrong for that kind of story.”

  “Then why did you offer it to JP?” Melissa asked.

  “A formality. JP had a standard option on my next novel. But all it could accomplish by exercising that option on Inescapable Courtesy instead of just carrying it over to my seventeenth romance novel was lose a lot of money.”

  “Apparently Quinlan didn’t see it that way.”

  “He knew exactly what would happen. He picked up the option anyway because he was terrified I was going to blow the franchise. Find a mainstream publisher for Inescapable Courtesy, put the book out, and have it bomb.”

  “Why would that be any skin off his nose?”

  “My goodness,” Tuttle said. “You may not be a blushing maiden, but you’re a naïf to the fourth power about the real world of fiction publishing.”

  “Educate me.”

  “If Inescapable Courtesy crashes and burns, then the beady-eyed little drones at Borders and Barnes and Noble will have permanently embedded in their hard drives that they only sold six-hundred-thirty-two copies of Chelsea Tuttle’s last novel. So when my seventeenth romance comes out, they won’t buy any. They won’t look to see that the last novel was an ambitious, critically acclaimed, hard-cover experiment in surrealist meta-fiction. All they’ll know is that Chelsea Tuttle doesn’t sell any more. Those two retailers are a huge chunk of the book business, so JP’s cash cow would have dried up.”

  “Along with your career.”

  “A risk I was willing to take for the chance to put my name on a piece of serious literature. Escape from the genre ghetto. Win respect as a writer, instead of just a storyteller. Quinlan wasn’t.”

  “But how would having the novel published by Jackrabbit Press instead of a mainstream house solve that problem?” Melissa asked.

  “Tommy was going to force me to use a pseudonym. That stuff in his letter about ‘just the right marketing approach’ was code for that. Inescapable Courtesy by an unknown would go nowhere, Jackrabbit Press would take its little bath, and I’d go back to writing about the sentimental education of art history majors. As far as the retailers were concerned, Chelsea Tuttle would still be money in the bank at the paperback rack.”

  Melissa paused for a moment. Her dogmatic theology was a bit haphazard so she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she might be about to commit a mortal sin. She braced herself accordingly.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’ll take you up on that gin after all.”

  Tuttle shrugged and decanted gin into a second glass—one much more like motel standard issue. Melissa stayed within arm’s length of Tuttle after accepting the drink, for the last datum she sought required proximity.

  “I can understand why you’re so passionate about Inescapable Courtesy,” she said. “Linda showed me a copy of the manuscript in the office last night, and I read a couple of chapters.”

  “I’m devastated that you were able to put it down, but at least you got past the first page.”

  “The concept is very strong. I was just wondering if you were planning on dedicating it to Barbara Kingsolver. That way you might be able to pass it off as an homage instead of simple copy work.”

  A half-glass of gin instantly splashed Melissa’s face. Even with stinging eyes and sopping eyelids, Melissa saw Tuttle’s slap coming in ample time to avoid it. Instead of ducking, though, she let Tuttle’s open hand smack her right cheek, felt the skin burn as a fiery blush rose to her ear.

  “Not bad,” Melissa said appraisingly. “But it didn’t rattle my teeth the way mom’s used to. You’re going to have to put more wrist into it if you want to impress someone who grew up in the lower Midwest. All the same, I’m glad you didn’t have a knife handy.”

  “You can tell me my story stinks out loud if you want to,” Tuttle said, gasping with rage, “but every word in it is mine and mine alone. It means everything in the world to me. Now get out!”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Melissa said. “I was lying when I said I’d read part of it. I’m sorry for that, and for accusing you of plagiarism. I was trying to provoke you because I wanted to know how violent you could get on sheer impulse. Now I do.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Tuttle said, her tone dismissive but her voice shaky.

  “It wouldn’t have made sense for you to leave a lurid note for Quinlan and then assault him in front of a witness if you were planning on killing him. But say he ended up reaching you on your cell phone and talking you into a little improvisational chat in the small hours after all. If he said something that pushed the wrong button when you had a blade within reach, you might have lashed out at him without thinking about it at all.”

  “I see. And how did I get his body to the privies?”

  “With some help from your alibi, maybe. Or maybe you went to the privies for the chat in the first place.”

  Tuttle turned three-quarters away from Melissa, shrugging her shoulders in a combination of resignation and contempt.

  “I don’t apologize for the slap,” she said in a bored voice. “You had it coming. I do regret sloshing you, because that was a waste of perfectly good gin. Now clear out.”

  Melissa cleared out. Her cheek still smarted as she swung the Taurus through a gravel-spitting turn out of the hotel parking lot. Instead of rubbing the sting away she clung to the pain, for it cemented her conviction that Chelsea Tuttle could have killed Quinlan. The theory had some loose ends, but so did every other theory except Peter-did-it. Tuttle’s alibi was worthless. And don’t tell me a woman wouldn’t kill that way, she warned an imaginary challenger. Remember Marat during the French Revolution? He didn’t die in his bath from old age, did he?

  That’s when a chill that had been creeping unnoticed through her gut began to surface. Not, at first, an appalled shock. More like the slowly dawning anxiety you feel when you begin to wonder whether you left your wallet at the restaurant two exits back.

  No, she told herself scoffingly. It couldn’t —

  But instead of going away the dread inside her grew until it exploded like a rupturing appendix.

  NO! she screamed mentally, squeezing the wheel in a white-knuckled spasm. Shrugging off the shrill denial, though, her brain kept pitilessly spitting out questions that pained her far more than Chelsea Tuttle’s slap.r />
  Speaking of alibis, where was Linda between, say, one and three a.m.?

  NO!

  She said she was looking for Peter, but aside from Nichols on Broadway how many all-night places could there be in Kansas City?

  NO! her heart raged.

  That would be the Linda who’d said, “If it turns out I’m carrying the baby of that scum-under-a-rock editor I’m going to be ready to kill someone.”

  NO! Linda is kind, gentle, smart, and idealistic!

  Right, her brain muttered coldly. And so was Charlotte Corday.

  Chapter 18

  Security officer Lafayette Wyatt appeared, as promised, half-an-hour before his shift. Rep guessed his age at twenty-five or so. Short-cropped black hair bristling above his dark brown skin seemed to emphasize his youth. His shoes weren’t just shined but polished to a high gloss, and his equipment belt gleamed. From a gold chain around his neck dangled a plain gold cross and a red numeral one—whether in tribute to Jesus or the First Infantry Division Rep wasn’t sure.

  “I’d noticed the lady hanging around outside for a good half-hour before Mr. Damon came back down,” he said after Klimchock had gotten him into the topic. “And that’s not your everyday thing, o’ course, a lady like that by herself after midnight on the sidewalk in downtown Kansas City. I mean, at first I was thinkin’—well, you know what I was thinkin’—but a coupla guys passed her by, and she didn’t make a move.”

  “What did she look like?” Rep asked.

  “Well,” Wyatt said earnestly, “she looked like a girl from a shampoo commercial, is what she looked like. She had this blond hair, not like hair you usually see on women just walking around, sorta live and swingy, and the one time she smiled she had, like, this flash that really grabbed you. And she seemed kind of underweight, but with real big, you know, and like these long, tan legs, and fu—uh, that is, real sassy kinda shoes.”

  “So then Mr. Damon came down,” Klimchock prompted.

  “Right. And he signed out and we said good night, and I could tell he noticed the lady. Kinda glanced over at her and did a double-take, you know? Then he walked on out. Now it was hot and sticky, so I had the outside sliding window on the guard cubicle about halfway open and I could hear what she said to him as soon as he hit the sidewalk. She didn’t waste any time at all.”

  “And what did she say to him?” Klimchock asked, giving precisely equal emphasis to each syllable.

  “Oh, she was all, ‘I’m visiting from outta town and I met some friends for dinner and drinks and then we all started to take a walk and they peeled off one by one and all of a sudden I was by myself and I realized I’d gotten lost like the ditz I am’—she shook her hair when she said that part, an’ I’ll tell you, one look at that girl an’ I could tell she’d never walked more’n three blocks before at one time in her life. Anyway, could Mr. Damon get her back to her hotel? And he says yes, and they walked off to where he’d parked his car on the street.”

  Melissa and Linda exchanged glances. There was only one male over fourteen that either of them knew who could possibly have fallen for that story.

  “Thank you very much, Laf,” Klimchock said.

  “Glad to help out.”

  “Well,” Linda said to Melissa, Rep, and Klimchock as Wyatt headed for the break room, “it must have been an excruciatingly long day for you three, and I don’t think we can accomplish anything else until tomorrow morning. Should we call it a night, get me back home in case Peter calls or comes by?”

  “I most certainly do not think we should call it a night,” Klimchock said. “There is work to be done yet, leads to track down, loose ends to tie up. I should say we have miles to go before we sleep.”

  Melissa had to hide a scowl, for what she’d wanted most since she’d hit the freeway ninety minutes ago was time alone with Linda.

  “Well,” she said dubiously as the quartet began moving toward the elevator, “we have the medals to finish up, and General Rawlins, but they shouldn’t take long.”

  “Don’t forget Anita Lay, or whoever she really is,” Linda said.

  “Anita Lay?” Rep asked.

  “That was the name on the registration card at the Palm Gardens Hometel,” Melissa explained with the hint of a sigh. “I can’t fit her in with Jedidiah Trevelyan or Red Pendleton or anything else we’ve learned, but after the story we just heard I guess we can’t ignore her.”

  “If it’s a phony name, though,” Klimchock said, “how can we find anything out about her tonight? Whom do we know who could fill us in on what I’m guessing is a very shady call girl from out of town?”

  Without turning her head, Melissa shifted her eyes toward Rep. He met the stealthy gaze. They were thinking the same thing: Mom.

  “Actually,” Rep said, clearing his throat in an unsuccessful attempt to sound casual, “if you can show me to a land-line telephone where I can make and receive long-distance calls, I might be able to take a stab at it.”

  “Aces!” Klimchock said. “You can use the phone in the acquisition head’s office. Computer too. She’s over budget anyway, so it won’t matter.”

  Microfilm readers, vertical files, and heavily laden shelves crowded the third floor, but Klimchock navigated its dark expanse with serene confidence. She led Melissa and Rep into a small office, knew the password necessary to boot up the computer, and punched a complex billing code into the phone.

  “There you are,” she said to Rep as a dial tone sounded over the receiver she handed to him. “Nine-one-area code and off you go.” Then, taking Linda literally in hand, Klimchock headed toward her own office.

  Rep had long since stopped blushing at the recorded message on his mother’s answering machine—if you’ve been naughty…if you require an attitude adjustment…leave a number….—but he still waited with visible impatience for the phrases to end and the beep to sound.

  “This is Spoiled Sibling,” he said, using a pseudonym she’d suggested, in case she didn’t recognize his voice. “I’m interested in someone who might use the name Anita Lay, blond, mid-twenties, California Girl look, recently out of town. You can call me back at this number for the next ninety minutes.”

  “Well,” Melissa said as she mouse-clicked two feet away, “that’s done.”

  “What are you working on?” he asked.

  “General Rawlins,” she said. “While it’s printing I’ll pop Peter’s disk in and you can look over my shoulder and see if you can make anything out of the battlefield maps.”

  Rep gazed dutifully at the screen while Melissa clicked through the images. He frowned in concentration and bafflement.

  “Spottsylvania…Cold Harbor…Petersburg…Jubal Early’s Valley campaign…Fisher’s Hill…Cedar Creek,” Rep murmured thoughtfully. “Kind of a mixed bag. Well known battles that were bloody but indecisive, and then a couple I can barely remember at all.”

  “Do you see any kind of pattern?”

  “They were all fought in 1864, fairly close to Washington. Maybe I’ll be able to make something out of this after I sleep on it. What did you find about General Rawlins?”

  “Hi,” said Linda, who picked that moment to appear in the doorway with a handful of paper. “Diane told me to bring these down to you. They’re print-outs of the medals that looked like they might match Rep’s description. Now Rep can look at them and see if one of them does.”

  “Didn’t you get the picture of the medal that I sent to you?” Rep asked Melissa as he accepted the sheets.

  “What I got, actually,” Melissa said, “was a picture of what looked like a junior accountant at Enron being taken on a perp walk. I couldn’t help wondering why you’d passed it on.”

  “Nuts,” Rep said. “And I was so proud of myself. I was thinking of ordering my next martini shaken and not stirred. He’s not a junior accountant at Enron, by the way, but he was being taken on a perp walk.”

  “Who was he?” Melissa asked.

  “A member
of the French Resistance executed by the Nazis,” Rep said. “What did Lawrence say his name was? Give me a second. Brassilach, that’s it. Robert Brassilach.”

  “What?” Melissa yelped.

  “Robert Brassilach,” Rep repeated. “Lawrence said he was an outstanding poet, novelist, and critic.”

  “He was right,” Melissa said.

  “And that he was shot by a firing squad in France during World War II.”

  “Also true,” Melissa said.

  “He said he was shot essentially for editing a newspaper.”

  “Right again,” Melissa said. “Except he wasn’t shot by the Nazis. He was executed by the French. The newspaper he edited was a collaborationist sheet called Je Suis Partout—I Am Everywhere. One of the more charming things he wrote was, ‘ We have to separate ourselves from the Jews as a whole, and not keep the little ones.’ At his trial he said he just wanted mothers and children to stay together.”

  “The French shot him for that?” Rep asked. “Didn’t think they had it in them. But how do you happen to know about it?”

  “Among literary academics the Brassilach case is a famous study in the conflict between freedom of expression and the moral responsibility of intellectuals for what they write. Alice Kaplan described his trial in a book called The Collaborator. You can get a pretty good argument at your average academic conference that, no matter how reprehensible his words were, Brassilach shouldn’t have been executed for publishing them, even in wartime.”

  “‘ Should I shoot the poor boy who deserts the colors, and leave unmolested the editor whose words caused him to run away?’ ” Rep said.

  “Who said that, DeGaulle?”

  “Abraham Lincoln, concerning the arrest of a copperhead newspaper editor during the Civil War.”

  “You’re showing off again,” Melissa said.

  “It must be contagious.”

  “Linda,” Melissa said, “forget about those medal pictures you have. Dig the book out again and see if it has any entries for Vichy.”