Sweet, Savage Death

by Jane Haddam

  I put my hands in the tote bag again. I found the prong. I got my fingers around the metal.

  Myrra’s ruby key ring winked and glittered in the light of the soft-white bulbs that surrounded the vanity mirror.

  Myrra’s ruby key ring. The one with the keys to my apartment, the one she was carrying the night she died. What would Martinez think of that?

  The keys to her apartment were sterling silver, custom-made at Tiffany’s. The keys to my apartment were tin and red.

  They lay against my hand like blood.

  CHAPTER 27

  I DIDN’T TELL NICK about the keys. I let him escort me downstairs, looking stiff and nervous in his dinner jacket, and sent him for champagne as soon as we got into the Starlit Room. I wanted to be rid of him. I needed to talk to Phoebe.

  I should have known better. The Starlit Room was lit by thousands and thousands of candles screwed into chandeliers, carefully positioned to shed the least possible light while presenting the greatest possible danger to the red-and-white crepe paper streamers hung from every wall, window, and table. In the center of the room a red-and-white iced cake, made in the shape of a heart and the size of a dining room table, stood ready for the Queen of Court and her Prince Charming to pop out of. Prince Charming was a low-level mafioso with a weak chin and sunglasses. The Queen of Court, chosen by lottery, was a comfortably padded woman from Lansing, Michigan, with a passion for Barbara Cartland.

  What it was supposed to be was a Grand Ball. What it was was a Senior Prom without boys. Even the oldest women wore ruffled, pastel chiffons. Several wore very pale pink makeup favored by mothers for their sweet sixteen daughters. The band played the “Theme from Mondo Cane.” Over and over again.

  A woman in bright pink hair and a lime green dress came by carrying a cardboard box covered with pink tissue paper.

  “Miss McKenna,” she said. “May I have your pink voting card, please.”

  I rummaged in my bag, disturbing Camille’s nap, and found a pink envelope with a heart and arrow printed in one corner, BALLOT, it read. QUEEN OF HEARTS. The Queen of Hearts is what the American Writers of Romance call their president. I passed over Lydia and Amelia and wrote in Phoebe’s name.

  “There,” I said, stuffing it into the ballot box.

  The woman sniffed. She turned on her heel and walked off, calling for pink voting cards.

  I wandered away. It was impossible to see anything clearly. It was impossible to know who was speaking or where they were.

  “I told my agent I would not take less than seven thousand for the new book,” someone said, “and this time I want ninety—”

  “The tip sheet makes it sound as if the line’s going to be one long sex scene with props, but she’s got to be a virgin until the very last page, practically, so how—”

  Somebody grabbed my arm and spun me around.

  “Unions,” Hazel Ganz barked at me, her breath sweet and hot with the smell of champagne. “What about unions?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You have to know,” Hazel Ganz said. “Longshoremen could form a union. Musicians could form a union. Even actors could form a union. Thirty years from now, when we’re eating cabbage and cat food in welfare hotels, we’ll be able to congratulate ourselves on having been perfect little ladies.”

  She whirled away into the darkness.

  “There you are,” Janine said. “Phoebe’s got a dog. We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  She drew me into a little group consisting of Phoebe with Esmeralda in her arms, Marty Caine already drunk, and Amelia and Lydia, each with cardboard campaign posters. Amelia’s had her sitting at a Chippendale desk, making a poor attempt at quiet dignity. Lydia’s showed her borne aloft on the shoulders of a million Japanese.

  “The Far Eastern tour,” Lydia said, waving her overpainted nails in the air. “Do you know I’m the second bestselling author in Japan?”

  “I’m sure,” Amelia said, “it has something to do with the fact that they can’t read English.”

  “I was there for all of September,” Lydia said. “I signed so many books, my right hand had to be put in a cast.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Janine said. “You’re left-handed.”

  Lydia glared. Amelia took a great breath and shouted, “It is my considered opinion that the results of this election will determine the course of romance writing for this century.”

  “Oh God,” Phoebe said. “They’ve been doing this for hours. Now Lydia will say—”

  “There’s an entirely new thrust in the romance genre.” Lydia’s eyes glittered. Her hand came out of her bag waving a brown plastic pill bottle. She popped two yellow jackets and washed them down with champagne.

  “The entire point of romance,” Amelia said, throwing back her arms and hitting me in the side, “is that love is more than the satiation of instincts most accurately described as base.”

  “Savage Breath of Love,” Lydia said. “Two million copies sold.”

  “The Whispered Promise,” Amelia said. “Three and a half million copies sold.”

  “The Holy Bible,” Phoebe waved her champagne glass in the air. “Fifty million copies sold.” They stared at her, and she shrugged. “Maybe a hundred. Who’s counting?”

  She put her glass under Esmeralda’s nose and let the dog drink. Esmeralda sneezed. Phoebe took the glass, downed the contents, and grabbed another from a passing tray. It occurred to me that I had only once seen her with a drink in her hand, and that had been mostly water. I had certainly never seen her drunk. I wondered what it would be like, carrying a half-crocked Phoebe to her room while she extolled the marketability of the Holy Bible.

  I didn’t have time to think about it. First, Janine, thrown off balance by the press of the crowd, pitched into me, hitting my tote bag broadside. Then the cat started screeching and tearing. I cut myself on something trying to get her out, and just as I was putting her in the pocket of my shirt, the candles went out.

  I don’t know how they went out, but they did, all at once. The only light in the room came from the dais, from what looked like a gigantic beach ball covered with Fourth of July sparklers. On closer inspection, the ball became a heart, very fatty and in danger of breaking. Nick was standing directly under it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” someone said. I supposed it was Miriam Schaff, the present Queen of Hearts, who wrote Regencies under the name Emalaya Marchband. “Welcome to the Third Annual Conference of the American Writers of Romance.”

  The crowd applauded, and someone shouted, “Next year on Valentine’s Day!”

  That got more applause. I started pushing through, heading for Nick.

  “We open this conference at the end of the most successful year in the history of romance publishing,” Miriam Schaff said. “A year of great gains in variety, creativity, and respect. A year when we have proved, once and for all, that romance writing and romance writers are the mainstream of fiction in this country.”

  The applause was wild, loud, frightening. I stumbled over someone’s foot and fell into Nick.

  “My God,” Nick said as he caught me. “What’s going on here? Is everybody crazy?”

  “Have you ever seen Phoebe drink before?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Drink.” I waved vaguely at the crowd. “She keeps swallowing whole glasses of champagne. She feeds them to the dog.”

  Nick turned a little green. “Oh, no,” he said.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. I pushed away from him into the crowd, thinking I should have stopped and told him about the keys. I should have told him before, because now there wasn’t time. I had to find Phoebe and get her away from the champagne before there was a disaster.

  “The Queen of Hearts,” Miriam Schaff said, “is the most important position in this organization. She is the most important woman among us. She is the recipient of our highest honor. For the past year, I have had the great good fortune to occupy that position among
you.”

  I found a piece of wall and leaned against it. The crowd was pressing forward, waiting, eager. It would be impossible to break through them.

  It was better to sit back and wait for the results of the election, then catch Phoebe when the lights went on.

  “On the ballot tonight,” Miriam Schaff said, “are two women whose contributions to the romance genre have been inestimable. Amelia Samson’s novels have brought comfort and hope to millions of women in America, Europe, and Asia. Lydia Wentward has changed the very face of our landscape, opening new and exciting areas for exploration.”

  “And new and exciting ways of exploring them, too,” someone behind me said.

  “But you have seen fit to choose neither of these fine women as your Queen.” The crowd settled down. “In an unprecedented move, you have chosen a third, a woman whose name is not on the ballot, a woman who has been among us a shorter time than most, but whose work has brought great honor to our profession. She did not ask for this honor, but I am sure she will accept it with all the graciousness of her most gracious nature.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present your new Queen of Hearts, the woman who symbolizes for this organization and for all the world the high professional standards and the deeply felt moral commitment of the American Writers of Romance.

  “Miss Phoebe Damereaux.”

  The lights went on. Phoebe, caught in the exact center of the room in midgulp, sputtered. Amelia and Lydia looked shellshocked. Leslie Ashe looked happy. Janine handed Phoebe a fresh drink. Phoebe drank it.

  “Wonderful,” somebody beside me said. “I just voted for her because I like her books.”

  “What else were you supposed to do?” somebody else said. “With those two battleaxes going after each other tooth and claw, it was embarrassing.”

  Phoebe bobbed into the air on the shoulders of Amelia Samson and four of the wrens. She reached into her pockets, came out with a fist of halvah, and threw it into the crowd. Somebody handed her another drink, and she drank it. Somebody else, closer to the dais, handed her yet another, and she drank that, too. Amelia and the wrens put her on the stage. Someone came by with a third pink champagne. I began pushing through the crowd.

  “Oh,” Phoebe said into the microphone. “Oh, this is wonderful. I never expected this.” She wobbled. “Thank you,” she said. “And especially thank Myrra, even if she couldn’t be here. And I’ll try to live up to it. And all that. Where’s Pay?”

  “I’m here,” I called.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so wonderful,” she said. “I want to thank everyone who’s ever done anything for me, but it would take too long. Isn’t it funny? I write these two-hundred-thousand-word books and now I can’t think of anything to say. Pay? Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” I called again. I had to step on Hazel Ganz’s foot to get to the dais. I did it gladly.

  “Well,” Phoebe said, “I would like to reaffirm the motto of this organization. I, too, am dedicated to the proposition that love conquers all.”

  That was the kicker. I got to her half a second before she passed out.

  CHAPTER 28

  MARY ALLARD WAS THE closest to us. I pushed Phoebe into her arms.

  “Bathroom,” I said. “Now.”

  She nodded, all editorial efficiency, the kind that makes you wonder why these people always lose your manuscripts, misplace the galley approval clause in your contracts, and forget to mail your checks. She took the arms, I took the feet, and we got Phoebe through the crowd and into the hall with a minimum of interference and a maximum of good-natured (I hoped) ridicule. It was hard to tell what was going on. Newsweek had two reporters in that room. CBS had a videotape machine.

  We made it into the ladies’ room, across the red-carpeted lounge, and halfway through the stall area without incident. Phoebe woke up almost as soon as she hit the tile floor.

  “Patience?” she said. “Do I have food poisoning?”

  “You have two and a half bottles of champagne,” I said.

  “And tomorrow I’ll have a hangover,” she said solemnly.

  She got to her feet, stood over the bowl, and closed the door in my face. I went back to the lounge to join Mary Allard, who was stretched out on a violently purple couch smoking a cigarette.

  “She all right?”

  “As well as can be expected,” I said. I reached into my tote bag, searching for cigarettes. I felt the nick, pulled back, and went hunting again. That time I felt the blade.

  I took my hand out of the bag and started stroking Camille in my pocket. Not papers this time, I thought. Not photographs. Not another set of practically perfect blackmail material. Camille was biting my fingers. I must have had the smell of the thing all over my hand.

  I had decided to take it out of my tote bag, Mary or no Mary, when the door slammed open and Amelia walked in, followed by a flock of wrens in pastel blue chiffon.

  “Where is she?” Amelia demanded.

  Mary and I both pointed lazily toward the inner room.

  Amelia clumped and the wrens tittered past us. A moment later I heard Amelia say, “Miss Damereaux. You are ignoring your responsibilities as Queen of Hearts.”

  “Where is she?” Lydia tottered in with a joint between her teeth. “They have the crown all ready and rose petals—”

  “Forgot the water vials,” Janine said, piling in. “I told them to put water vials on the stems and now—”

  “People are rioting,” Hazel Ganz said, looking frumpy and exasperated. “Man waiting outside. Looks furious.”

  Janine tried casting her eyes to heaven and found only Mary Allard. Her mouth twisted into a sucking-lemons scowl. “Booksellers,” she said venomously.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” Leslie Ashe said, stumbling in. She marched to the inner room, and the rest of them trailed behind her. Amelia exhorted Phoebe to put aside self-indulgent childishness and rise to the dignity of her position. Lydia offered to give everyone “a little snort,” and Leslie took her up on it.

  I waited until I was sure they were all thoroughly occupied. Then I picked up my tote bag and carried it across the lounge to the couch where Mary had been lying. No one standing in the inner room could see me. No one coming into the lounge from outside could fail to give me ample warning.

  It was just as well.

  What was in the bottom of my bag was an ivory and ebony-handled, stainless steel-bladed machete, completely covered in dried and crusted blood.

  “She wants you,” Amelia said.

  I jumped. The knife was in my hand, lying flat against the seat of the couch, hidden from Amelia by the stretch of my legs. I let it fall out of my fingers.

  “Come on,” Amelia said. “She wants you.”

  The outside door slammed open and Marty Caine appeared, his eyes wide, his hair a boiling mass of wires.

  “Where is she?” he said. “They’re livid out there. That dog’s running amok and it’s eating the daisy chain.”

  “If Miss McKenna wouldn’t mind sparing us a moment of her time, we’d be all ready,” Amelia said.

  I got up. The knife was lodged in a gap between the couch cushions. I didn’t think either Hazel or Amelia had seen it.

  I walked across the lounge to the tiled inner room, forcing myself through the crowd to the stall where I’d left Phoebe. I caught Mary Allard’s eye and shook my head.

  “Phoebe?” I knocked on the closed door. “It’s me, Pay.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Just a minute.”

  I looked around the room, shrugging in embarrassment. Everyone looked back. Then Lydia leaned over, finished the line of cocaine she had laid out on the stainless steel shelf beneath the mirrors, took a deep breath and announced, “All right now. Let’s get ourselves together and get out.”

  They trooped out like a flock of baby lambs—and installed themselves in the outer lounge.

  Phoebe pushed the door open and peered out.

  “I’ve been an idiot,�
� she said.

  “You’ve been fine.” I leaned over to help her from the floor. “Let’s get fixed up, now. They’re all waiting to see you crowned.”

  She got to her feet. “I think I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t even feel a little bit drunk.”

  “You shouldn’t. There isn’t an ounce of alcohol in your body. Or anything else, for that matter.”

  She wrinkled her nose at me. Then she went to the mirror, washed the makeup off her face, and calmly and systematically put it all back on.

  “Are you all right?” She squinted at my image in the mirror. “You look—strange.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You probably think everything is strange. Just now. If you see what I mean.”

  “I don’t think so,” Phoebe said. “All I have to worry about is Amelia killing me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Amelia said from the other room. “Not as long as you hurry up.”

  Everyone laughed. Phoebe straightened her back, held the sides of her caftan as if she were holding a train, and marched into the outer room.

  “If I’d known I was going to be elected,” she said. “I would not have chosen this occasion for my first experiment with alcohol.”

  “My God,” Mary Allard groaned. “Half an hour and she’s talking like Amelia already.”

  “Half an hour more and she’ll be talking like Lydia,” Janine said. “Let’s get out there. Are you coming, Pay?”

  “Just a minute.” I leaned over the couch, picked up my bag, and ran my hand through the crack between the cushions. I extracted a Bic pen—not mine—from Camille’s clutches. I made a thorough search of my tote bag. There were a number of unfamiliar-feeling objects in there, victims of Camille’s escalating kleptomania, but none of them was an ivory and ebony-handled, stainless steel-bladed machete.

  That seemed to have disappeared.

  CHAPTER 29

  I WOULD HAVE PANICKED sooner if it hadn’t been for the daisy chain. The daisy chain was actually two forty-pound cylinders of daisies, one for each side of the aisle Phoebe had to march up to be crowned Queen of Hearts. The chains were held up by sixteen girls in virgin-white, sweet sixteen gowns. Esmeralda had attached herself to one of these young women. Nick had attached himself to Esmeralda. The young woman was torn between near panic at the impending ruin of her dress and the effort required for nonstop eyelash batting.