Sweet, Savage Death

by Jane Haddam

  Nothing left me sitting at Central Booking, explaining to an embarrassed adolescent in a blue uniform that I did not now have any serious communicable diseases, had never had any serious communicable diseases, and never intended to have any serious communicable diseases. He nodded without looking at me and went on to “physical impediments.”

  Nick stood at the phone normally reserved for prisoners making their one call and fed dimes into it while he half shouted and half whispered a very complicated set of instructions to his law partner. He came back about the time the adolescent got to “necessary prescribed medication.”

  “We got it,” Nick said. “Phoebe got her banker out of bed.”

  “You don’t know if I’m going to get bail.”

  Nick glared at the adolescent, who made blushing apologies, grabbed his papers, and hurried away. It was a frail victory, but the only one available.

  “I can’t believe you,” Nick said to me. “Keys. Knives. Wallets. For God’s sake, haven’t you been telling me anything?”

  “You know the penlight?” I asked him. “It’s not a penlight. It’s a magnet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m trying to tell you everything,” I said. “The penlight that fell out of my tote bag isn’t a penlight. It’s a magnet. A very small electric magnet. With batteries.”

  “So what?”

  “So that’s how somebody locked Julie Simms in my apartment.” He looked interested. He looked so interested, I got careless. “I know who killed Myrra,” I told him. “I don’t know how to prove it, but at least—”

  He was already on his feet and walking away from me.

  I slumped in my chair. The arraignment court in Manhattan runs twenty-four hours a day. I could be arraigned for murder, even jailed without bail, at any moment. And Nick wouldn’t listen to me.

  I went over to the desk where the uniformed adolescent was still working on my forms.

  “Do I still get one phone call?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Do I still get one phone call? You know, my lawyer’s here, but he came with me, I didn’t call him. So—”

  “Oh,” the adolescent said. “Yeah. Sure. Go right ahead.”

  I borrowed the dime from a black man with a ruby in his ear and the scent of jasmine in his hair. Then I waited ten minutes behind a prostitute in hip-high leg warmers and a red stocking cap. When I finally got through to Phoebe, she sounded drunk.

  “Everybody’s here,” she shouted over the background din. “Janine, Amelia, Lydia, even Hazel Ganz. Everybody. We’re planning strategy.”

  I knew better than to ask her what that meant. I told her to get on the phone in the bedroom, lock the door, and not let anyone in. It took a little time, but I finally heard her voice coming through silence.

  “Where are you?” she said. “Have they let you out?”

  “I’m at Central Booking. They aren’t going to let me out, at least not tonight. Listen, Phoebe, I don’t have a lot of time. Just tell me what the Fires of Love Advisory Board did.”

  “What?”

  I sighed. “Phoebe, I don’t want to explain things, I just want to know what the Fires of Love Advisory Board did. Give speeches? Go on public relations tours?”

  “Are you crazy?” Phoebe was chirping. It was always a bad sign when Phoebe chirped. “You’re being arrested for murder, for God’s sake. What do you care about the Advisory Board? Are you on drugs? Are they beating you?”

  “Phoebe.”

  “All right.” She paused. I thought I heard the sound of champagne being swallowed. “You’re perfectly serious?”

  “Phoebe, for God’s sake, I’ve only got three minutes on this phone.”

  “Right.” Another pause. More swallowed champagne. I promised myself I’d break a bottle of it over her head the next time I saw her.

  “We made up the tip sheet,” Phoebe said finally, “except that didn’t matter because Janine changed it. We did a lot of interviews, talked to Romantic Times, that kind of thing. We each wrote a book for the line, maybe two, and then there were reader parties and the bookstores drives and—”

  “Back up,” I said. “What’s a bookstore drive?”

  “It was to get the bookstores selling Farret romances again. They didn’t really want to after Romantic Life failed. Readers would talk their bookstores into having a party for one of us, and we’d go out there and hawk books, and then if everything went right, the bookstore started stocking Fires of Love. Sometimes you’d go out to do one and the fans would have a couple more lined up. Omaha. Places like that.”

  I hung on the phone and tried to think. “What happened if you got to Omaha for one bookstore and found you had six?”

  “Well, you always had lots of books,” Phoebe said. “I’ll give that to Marty Caine. I went out to Cleveland, I was met by two thousand copies. Unbelievable. If you had extra bookstores you took the books and these little computer cards, like the cards to register in college, you know? And you wrote all the information about the extra store on the card and the number of books sold, and then Marty got in touch with them.”

  “Hot damn,” I said.

  “What?” Phoebe said.

  “I gotta use that phone,” somebody behind me said.

  There was a sound of splintering wood. I dropped the receiver and spun around.

  If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have tried to hide under the wooden bench next to the phone. I might even have become hysterical.

  Instead, I was as calm as if I was watching that scene in a movie.

  The black man with the ruby in his ear was taking the place apart. He had kicked through the rail between the desk area and reception. He was making hamburger out of some officer’s desk. About fifty police officers were crowded around him, waving handcuffs in the air. More were coming. None of them were looking at me.

  One of them had left the door open.

  I decided I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

  CHAPTER 32

  IT WASN’T THE MOST ingenious escape in the history of New York City crime. I didn’t hide in heating ducts, disguise myself as a bar of soap, or run through the sewer tunnels. I did what any good New Yorker—especially a resident of Manhattan—would do. I walked out the front of the building and caught a cab.

  I was more careful when I got to the Cathay-Pierce. I didn’t want Myrra Agenworth’s murderer to see me. I went in a side entrance and up the service elevator.

  I knew who had done it, why it had been done, and what I needed to prove it. All I needed was to get my hands on two pieces of paper. I already had one of them.

  Phoebe was asleep on the couch when I got up to the suite. I tiptoed past her into the bedroom, exchanged evening pajamas for jeans and sweater, and tiptoed out again. She took one look at me and screamed.

  “For God’s sake,” she said. “Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  The phone rang. I put my hand over hers.

  “I’m not here. No matter who it is, no matter what they want, I’m not here.”

  She gave me a suspicious look, picked up the phone, and winced. I didn’t blame her. They could have heard Nick in New Jersey.

  He wasn’t asking for information, he was giving it.

  “I will remain that woman’s counsel,” he shouted, “just as long as it takes me to catch up with her and strangle her. Do you hear me, Weiss? Strangle her.”

  Phoebe kneaded her forehead. I lit a cigarette. Nick said something about being on the way over and hung up.

  “You broke out of jail,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t break out of jail,” I said. “I walked out. The door was wide open.” I took a deep drag. “Nick won’t help me,” I said. “You’ve got to. I know who did it, I know why, and I think I can prove it. Only we’ve got to get hold of this stuff now.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I told her the whole story. I told her everything I ha
d figured out in the cab, and threw in a few suppositions to make it sound better. When I got to the part about how the scam worked, I went very, very carefully.

  “It was those bookstore parties,” I told her. “That’s what confused Myrra. You all went out on those bookstore parties. You all had access to those computer cards. Any one of you could have been making out five or six extra cards every trip, saying you sold hundreds of extra books—”

  “But someone would catch it,” Phoebe said. “Someone would notice no money was coming in, or no extra books going out—”

  “Of course they would,” I said. “In about a year. When an overall accounting was done. Maybe. In the meantime, when do you think was the last time the comptroller of Farret talked to one of the editors?”

  Phoebe grimaced. “They’re not even in the same building.”

  “Any one of you could have hyped Fires of Love figures for any book you wanted to. Any one of you could have had a reason. The writers might want to make their sales look better or make more money from royalties. Same with Julie—the better a writer’s sales, the better the advance on the next book, the better the percentage Julie picks up. Janine and Marty had a stake in the overall success of the line—”

  “But you’re talking about a huge hype,” Phoebe said.

  “I know.” I lit another cigarette. It was getting late. We had to hurry, but I couldn’t tell this any faster and make sense.

  “Everybody kept telling us,” I said. “Everybody kept repeating it over and over and over again. We should have known all along. Myrra knew from the beginning.”

  “That Fires of Love wasn’t having a hundred-million-dollar year.”

  “Not even close,” I said. “I think she knew who was doing it by June at the latest. I don’t know why she kept the blackmail files on all of you going—leverage, I guess, in case she couldn’t prove what she needed to. Then in October the reports came. Myrra got a royalty report and a general report on the line. You probably got one yourself. They were probably sent to all the Advisory Board members. I’ve seen a couple of them floating around here this weekend.”

  “Inflated reports,” Phoebe said.

  “No,” I said. “Perfectly honest reports. That’s how Myrra knew who was doing it. Our murderer didn’t need to lie to the general public, you see. Our murderer needed to lie only to a very select group of people, two or three at the most.”

  “And Myrra wasn’t one of them.” Phoebe’s face was pinched.

  “Our murderer didn’t think so. Only the people who had to got those inflated reports. Everybody else got a perfectly honest accounting. Only two people were in a position to pull that off. Only one of them had to.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” The skin under Phoebe’s eyes was pulled taut. Shock warred with anger—anger against our murderer. Some of my own tension began to dissolve. If Phoebe was angry this way, she would be on my side.

  Still, she needed to be convinced.

  “Do you realize what you’re talking about?” she asked me. “Three murders. You’re trying to tell me that a perfectly sane human being committed three murders—”

  “It had to be done,” I said gently. “It could have been just Myrra if it wasn’t for the conference, for the line award. If Farret was going to win the line award, more people were going to have to be taken into the lie—”

  “You don’t know any of this for true,” she said.

  “All we have to do is go down there and check,” I said.

  Outside, it was very dark and very clear and very wet. In the fifth floor hall, it was just deserted. There is something about the hallways of hotels at night. Doors open just as you turn your back. Creatures follow you, their steps swallowed by thick carpets. The executioner is just over your shoulder. He will disappear if you look.

  Phoebe padded along, oblivious. When she looked over her shoulder, it was to frown at me.

  “You have to hurry.”

  I hurried. The door, when we got to it, was like any other door. The numbers were carved in the wood at what was supposed to be eye level. Eye level for a midget, I thought, rattling the knob.

  “Someone might already be here,” I said.

  “Then they’ll be caught in the act,” Phoebe said. “That much better.”

  “You wouldn’t be so calm if you believed me.”

  When she didn’t answer, I rattled the knob again. Then I borrowed one of her hairpins and leaned down beside the keyhole, cursing the passion for verisimilitude that prevented the Cathay-Pierce from installing the kind of locks that could be opened with credit cards.

  I felt something give and followed it around as far as I could. It was only the first minor success, but at least it was progress. I tried to think of something to do in case I couldn’t get into that room, or if what we wanted wasn’t there. Copies. Who had which copies? Whose copies mattered?

  The Line Committee had to have been given the falsified copies. These were the copies I needed to find. I was assuming they had been returned to Farret and therefore to this suite. I could be wrong. Phoebe and I both could be proceeding out of nothing that even resembled a fact.

  I might even be wrong about everything.

  I tugged at the lock, jiggled the hairpin, tugged again. I spent five minutes going backward. I was sure I had locked something I had unlocked, then unlocked it again.

  “For God’s sake,” Phoebe said. “They have to have guards in this hotel. Nick is probably already here.”

  She pushed me aside, stuck another hairpin in the door, and shook it twice. The doorknob jiggled under her hand. I stared at it in a stupor.

  You were not supposed to be able to open doors with hairpins. You certainly weren’t supposed to do it on the first try.

  “Come on,” Phoebe said. “We’re going to get caught.”

  I followed her in and shut the door behind us. My hand went automatically to the light switch and then stopped. I looked at the night lights of Manhattan from the window of the street.

  “We can’t turn anything on,” I said. “Somebody might see the lights from the hall.”

  “I can’t see my hand in front of my face,” Phoebe said.

  “Shhh.” I tried to listen, sure I had heard a sound from somewhere else in the suite. I heard nothing. I grabbed Phoebe by the wrist and pulled her along. What we were looking for wouldn’t be in the main room, I told myself. There wouldn’t be anything here but book displays and tip sheets.

  I bumped into a table, fell, and let go of Phoebe’s wrist. Somewhere in the darkness, I heard the door of the bedroom sliding open.

  “Who is it?” I said. “Where are you?” I tried to get up, but the pain in my knee was unbearable. I started dragging myself along the carpet, trying to get out of the way, against the wall and in the darkness. I heard door hinges creak. I heard bare feet rubbing against carpet.

  “Phoebe?” I said. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have moved. I should have sat still where I was and tried not to breathe. I couldn’t do it. I felt as if I was in the middle of a ghost story, complete with wailing spirits and rattling chains.

  I kept thinking about doors in hallways. No one was watching the hallways. Creatures were escaping from the doors, parading down the stairs into the ballrooms.

  If class is grace under pressure, I have little of it. I crouched, frozen, against my small section of wall, listening to footsteps on the carpet and feeling my mind disintegrate. People were walking around in the center of the room, looking for me, watching for me, and I couldn’t tell where they were. Phoebe and someone else. I couldn’t concentrate.

  I wanted nothing more than to scream.

  There was a brush of air and a low moaning sound almost like laughter. I said, “Phoebe,” without thinking. Someone said, “No.”

  No. I heard it and didn’t comprehend it. I had gone stiller than a rabbit stopped in a road by the headlights of a car. Above my head, the blade of a knife glinted in the lights from the street
lamps.

  So did something else, round and brass-gold.

  At which point Phoebe smashed the base of a four-foot-high china table lamp over Janine Williams’s head.

  EPILOGUE

  ON THE EVENING OF the day Sotheby Parke Bernet took delivery of Myrra’s furniture, Daniel called. He called my old apartment and was directed to Myrra’s. When the phone rang, I was standing in the kitchen, barren without its refectory table, trying to determine one level tablespoon of sugar by the light of a bayberry candle. Phoebe was right. I should have made them leave at least one lamp.

  “Listen,” Daniel said. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  I gave up trying to measure. I dumped sugar into milk with a liberal hand. Chocolate fondue is supposed to be sweet.

  “We ought to get together,” Daniel said. “We haven’t had a night out in a long time.”

  “Ten days,” I said. “Ever since Julie Simms was murdered in my apartment.”

  Daniel coughed. I could hear Phoebe and Nick in the living room. It sounded like they were popping balloons with candles. Considering what those balloons cost me (you have to replace furniture with something), I was going to kill them.

  “You know,” Daniel said. “The tree’s lit in Rockefeller Center. You always said—”

  “How did the partnership work out? Did you get it?”

  “Now Patience,” Daniel said. “After three years—”

  I hung up.

  Phoebe and Nick were stretched out on the floor of what looked, without furniture, like the Grand Ballroom of the old Waldorf. Phoebe had made a circle on the carpet with hemming chalk, and they were pitching pennies.

  I considered what I knew about Nick: He was taller than I was. He was good to his mother. He kept his socks in the refrigerator.

  I put the chocolate fondue on the floor on a potholder.