by M. D. Archer
“How’s work going?” Myra asked.
“Oh, fine, you know.” Sophie opened the fridge and retrieved a packet of organic chicken drumsticks, a packet of cos lettuce, a tomato and the second half of the avocado she’d saved from last night’s dinner. She’d cook the whole packet of chicken thighs now and eat the leftovers later. “We’ve got a potential case, a small one, but it’s something. How about you? Got the results of your exams yet?” Sophie continued, eyeing the selection of herbs and spices and wondering how to best prepare the chicken for cooking.
Myra shook her head. “Soon, I think.”
“And the rest of your summer break going well?”
Myra nodded but didn’t volunteer any further information. She’d gone back to India to visit her family for a good portion of her summer holiday and had only returned last week. She’d volunteered only the barest details of her trip, murmuring that it had been ‘good’ with a slightly uncertain smile.
“How’s Victoria been?” Myra said. Sophie and Myra didn’t often engage in long conversations, but they chatted in passing, and sometimes bonded over Victoria and her annoying ways.
“She’s still asking me about work,” Sophie shrugged, “so who knows what’s going on there.”
They both laughed.
“Is Leo still working for you?” Myra said shyly as she dropped her gaze and fiddled with her hands.
Sophie suppressed a smile. Myra had met Leo for the first time before Christmas when he’d popped by for a Christmas drink, and Sophie suspected that Myra had been rather taken with him. She could tell because Myra had retreated even farther into the recesses of the living room, clutching her offered glass of champagne while never taking her eyes off Leo as he cheerfully and obliviously chatted to Sophie.
“Yes, although I haven’t seen him for a few days.”
As Sophie fussed about with a medley of herbs—she didn’t bother to closely inspect which she was sprinkling over the drumsticks because they would go on the barbeque and it wouldn’t make much difference in the end—she wondered again about Leo. She hoped he was okay.
“Are you barbequing those? Is it alright if I cook some eggplant while you’ve got it going?” Myra asked, coming over to the kitchen. “Is there enough room on the grill?”
“Sure,” Sophie said, her mind returning to the Leo-Myra dynamic. Was it worth trying to set them up, she wondered? While Leo seemed to be only vaguely aware of Myra’s presence, maybe it was worth making subtle enquires.
But did she really want her friend and colleague dating her flatmate?
Sophie mentally shelved the idea and went back to sprinkling random herbs and spices onto the drumsticks. As she was about to take them out to the barbeque, her phone beeped with a text from Wade.
Hey, Soph, how’s your day going?
She eyed the display with a pulse of uncertainty. Things had become a little strained last night. Sophie, her head full of Roman, had told Wade she had an awful headache and hadn’t lingered in his car when he dropped her at home. She could tell he was a bit put out by the abrupt end to their date, but she simply wasn’t capable of anything else. And the headache hadn’t been a lie, she just couldn’t tell him the reason.
Another text came through.
How about next time we do dinner, just the two of us.
Sophie smiled. He was pushing through the uncertainty and it was a nice feeling to have someone make an effort to make things work.
Yes, she wrote back.
She owed it to him and to herself, to give it a go.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Paige and Sophie went straight to the conference room. While Sophie made the coffee, Paige skipped over to the corner and wheeled out the whiteboard.
“We need a suspect list. We should start with the people at her house on that Sunday when she thinks it happened.”
“If Leo can get us a window of time for the deletion, we can ask for alibis.”
“You know what?” Paige said, eyeing the blank whiteboard.
“Are you asking me or the whiteboard?”
“We need to look at this in two separate parts,” Paige continued, ignoring Sophie’s sarcastic tone. “First, we have the locked-room mystery—the question of how they, whomever it was, gained access to not only her office, but her laptop and hard drive. Second, we have the question of who did it.” Paige wrote How?: Locked Room Mystery on one side of the board and Who Did It?: Suspects on the other. Using the whiteboard marker, she tapped the word Suspects. “Since we need to go back to her house and inspect the room more closely before we can make progress on the How, let’s focus on the Why. Let’s examine the people who were at the house that Sunday and look at motives.” Paige started writing on the board. “We’ve got her husband Martin, neighbour Gillian, editor Sally, rival Peyton, and the writing group Annie, Juniper, Geoff, and Tammy. Let’s start with Peyton because Cecilia thinks he did it.”
“Yes, plus what we overheard.”
Paige continued to write on the board, adding the headings of Means, Motive, and Opportunity at the top.
Next to Peyton’s name, she wrote Money Issues under Motive.
“I found out about the Amazon royalties situation,” Sophie said. “Amazon pays them monthly, but not until sixty days after you earn them, and only when you reach a certain threshold of sales. With a bestseller there’d be no issue of reaching that, but even so it would be at least two months before Peyton saw any money.”
“So he can’t be expecting to pay back that advance from Sally from the royalties. He said a week.”
“There’s no way.”
Paige snapped her fingers. “Unless he’s made some sort of deal. Maybe he was approached as soon as it was released, and he got a book deal under that pen name. Or he sold the movie rights and is getting an advance or something?”
“I guess that’s possible.”
Without warning, the door to the conference room opened.
“Hey,” Paige cried as a young woman entered the room.
“I’m Zelda Cho,” she said, stepping farther inside as if she’d been invited.
“You can’t just walk in here,” Paige said.
“Can’t I?” Zelda shrugged as if she genuinely didn’t understand. “Don’t you want clients to come in?”
“You’re not a client.” Paige regarded her warily, then hopefully. “Are you?”
“Actually, no.” Zelda handed a small white business card to Sophie, who read it, then slid it over to Paige.
ZELDA CHO, TRUE CRIME SPECIALIST.
Paige read the card, then looked up. “Why are you here?”
Zelda rolled her eyes. “To interview you, of course.”
SOPHIE HAD SPENT THE last fifteen minutes trying not to laugh as the very Paige-like Zelda tried to get them to agree to an in-depth, exclusive interview about the Radsworth case while the increasingly irritated Paige, refused.
It was even harder not to laugh when, once she’d gone, temporarily defeated but promising she “wasn’t giving up that easily”, Paige turned to Sophie with a cross expression. “Wow, she’s annoying.”
Sophie pressed her lips together for a moment to compose herself, then said, “Maybe we should have let her interview us.”
“We can’t let people think we give away information about our clients and cases. They won’t trust us.”
Sophie conceded a nod. “I guess.”
Paige stood up. “Come on, we’re supposed to interview Sally in half an hour.”
“She knows the truth about why we’ve been hired, right?”
“Yep. But I gave a cover to Peyton. We’re interviewing him later.”
“Who does he think we are?”
“Aspiring writers.”
“Okay.”
“And he only agreed to talk to us once I reminded him of who you were. He saw you at Cecilia’s party and was rather taken with you, so watch out.”
“Watch out?”
“I may have given him the suggestion you like older
men.”
“Paige!”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Wade is exactly my age.”
“He’s not who I’m talking about it and you know it.”
LEO PERCHED ON THE edge of Jane’s bed.
He felt presumptuous, as if he was invading her personal space, even though she was the one who’d told him to sit down there. He hadn’t seen her yesterday in the end, she’d needed to rest, but today she’d rung him and asked him to come over.
“I just wanted to say thank you, Leo. I don’t know what I would have done without you over these last few days. Everything is awful and scary, except you.”
He swallowed and looked down at his hands. He couldn’t pretend that he was just being a good Samaritan. He liked her. Liked, liked her. But did she feel the same or was she just relying on him to help her figure out whatever was going on? Not only did she have memory loss, but there was whatever had caused those awful cuts on her arms, and—as Leo had recently learned—her legs as well.
“I just hope I can help you.”
Jane smiled. “You already are.” She stood up. “And thanks for coming with me to my appointment. I’m a little nervous.”
“Fair enough.”
“Shall we go?”
As they walked past reception Leo glanced at the glistening water of the pool, cursing that he’d once again forgotten it was here and hadn’t brought togs with him. But Jane didn’t seem to have any interest in the pool, so maybe it would be a bit weird for him to bring togs and take a swim by himself. He had more important things to worry about than having a swim, he mentally scolded himself.
At the hospital, Leo was left to wait for a little over an hour while Jane met with the doctor. When she emerged from the consulting room, she gave Leo a small smile and Leo felt relief flooding through his body. They obviously hadn’t told her she had irreversible brain damage or something.
“They said overall I seem okay, but they’ve booked me in to see a neurologist, just to make sure. I’ll have to come back for a follow-up appointment.”
“A neurologist? That sounds... serious.”
“It’s just a precaution.”
They walked out to the carpark. “Where now?” Leo asked hopefully. “Are you hungry?”
“Actually, I am. I was going to suggest we eat.”
“Do you like Asian food?”
“I guess I’ll find out?” She gave him a small smile.
“Dominion Road isn’t far from here and it’s on the way back to the motel. What about dumplings? Barilla or Sha Xian Snack are both good.”
“I’m up for it.”
Leo pulled his car into the supermarket carpark. “If we’re less than ninety minutes we can park here. These places are usually pretty fast.”
As they strolled down Dominion Road, Leo pointed out where he used to work. “It’s gone now but it used to be a DVD rental store.”
“Retro,” Jane said.
“Yeah.”
“I just realised I don’t know what you do. For a job?”
“Oh, uh—”
“Wait.” Jane stopped abruptly. “This place. It’s familiar.”
They were next to an organic shop. “Here?” Leo asked. Jane nodded. They were just about to move closer when a woman wearing an apron came hurrying out. “Oh, thank god, you’re okay,” she said to Jane. “I was worried.”
Jane clutched at her arm. “Do you know me?”
“No, I just... you came in last week really upset. You were crying.”
Jane raised her hand to her mouth. “I was? Was I alone?”
“That’s the thing. I couldn’t tell. There was a man nearby and he seemed to be... I don’t know... interested in what was going on? I tried to ask you if you were okay, but you just ran off.”
“And the man?”
Her mouth twisted as she nodded. “I didn’t see for sure, but yes. I think he followed you.”
9
Sally Cookson was on the phone when Paige and Sophie arrived at her office in Newmarket.
Her assistant ushered them inside and indicated they should sit down, even though Sally had not yet hung up. Paige nudged Sophie and nodded at Sally’s desk. On the edge sat a half-empty packet of cheese slices with several discarded wrappers nearby.
“Cheese fiend,” Paige whispered.
Sophie suppressed a laugh.
The assistant poked her head around the door. “Tea or coffee? Or water?”
“Coffee, please,” they both replied.
Sally was still on the phone when their coffees were delivered, and she remained on the call even as they drained their cups. She only ended the call when Paige, finally stretched past the limits of her patience, leaned forward and rapped her knuckles loudly on the desk.
“Hello?”
Sally gave her a tight smile. “Roger, sorry, I have to go. Another meeting. Yes. See you then.” She hung up.
“Thanks for making time to see us,” Sophie said, trying to smooth things over, even though Sally seemed untroubled by Paige’s behaviour.
“No problem. Not only am I Cecilia’s agent, but I’m her friend. She’s rather upset about this mess and I want to help.”
Sophie suspected that Sally making time in her clearly busy schedule for this interview was perhaps less about their friendship and more about how much money she, as Cecilia’s agent, was missing out on.
“And she wants credit for her best work to date,” Sally added.
“Her best work?” Paige said. “Her words or yours?”
“Mine.”
“So you must have read the manuscript.”
“Oh, yes. At least, I read a draft. Unfortunately, for both of us, my word as a witness isn’t much use. We’ve looked into our legal position and it’s extremely weak. Non-existent, in fact. Without any actual evidence she ever had a book that closely resembles the one that has been published...” She spread her hands. “Amazon isn’t interested without proof and they won’t tell us anything about who uploaded it. Why would they? As far as they know we could be the ones who are lying.”
“In what form did you see the draft and when?”
“At the end of November; she printed out a copy for me and I marked up that version. I returned it to her in the first week of December. She made my suggested changes, or at least some of them—she doesn’t always take the feedback I give her. Because she knows best.” Sally rolled her eyes. “After that she put it aside to let it percolate, as she says, and to focus on the short story collection.”
“And she threw away the edited hard copy.”
Sally’s cell phone, sitting on her desk, rang. “I believe so, but you’d have to ask her.” Her eyes slid to her phone.
“As her editor,” Paige said quickly, “you don’t advise her to upload to the cloud or similar?”
Sally lifted her hands. “When she tried it once something went wrong and she lost the most recent version of a manuscript. She was livid. That was the end of that approach.”
Sophie nodded with understanding. During her PhD she’d had a similar incident, losing some important changes she made to her thesis. The experience of trying to remember those changes was so unpleasant that she implemented a laborious triple back up system.
The phone rang again. Sally’s eyes once again went to the phone.
“What is Cecilia like as a client?” Sophie asked.
Sally’s face twisted. “Mostly, she’s great. She can take criticism and receives my feedback well. But she can be demanding, and she does have a tendency to blame other people. And she says she doesn’t care about awards, she says her fans and her sales are the only validation she needs, but you should have heard the fuss she made when I missed the deadline applying for an award that she was convinced she could win.” Sally waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not even part of my job, not really. No, no, I’m the editor. Can’t forget that,” she muttered.
“You never wanted to be a writer yourself?”
&nbs
p; Sally blinked. “I suppose I did. Once. A long time ago, but I never had the flair. And I do love editing. Sometimes I feel as if I can make a really good contribution to the novel, you know? Take a story from good to great. And that’s very rewarding.” She smiled. Her phone rang again. Her hand twitched.
“They can leave a message,” Paige said.
“Only a few more questions,” Sophie added.
“Cecilia thinks it was stolen on Sunday the 10th of December and that—”
“Peyton stole it?” Sally regarded them down the length of her nose. “They’ve never gotten on, you know.”
“Do you think it’s possible he did?” Paige said.
“I can’t imagine him doing it.”
“Why not?”
“His pride.”
“Did he have financial issues?” Paige said abruptly.
A pink blush bloomed on Sally’s face. “You’d have to ask Peyton about that.” She sniffed.
“We overhead you and Peyton talking, and—”
“I really can’t comment on a client’s personal affairs,” she said firmly.
“That Sunday,” Sophie said, not wanting Paige to push the issue until they were forcibly ejected from the office. “You brought Peyton to her house for a Christmas drink.”
“I do my best to keep them on amicable terms.”
“How did it go?”
“Rather smoothly,” Sally tilted her head. “Until Peyton insulted Cecilia’s work as he always ends up doing. Or vice versa. We left shortly after.”
“Can you take us through the evening?” Sophie said.
Sally pursed her lips. “Let’s see. When we arrived Cecilia’s writing group was leaving; it must have been just on five o’clock.”