All three descriptions certainly could apply to Simon.
Maybe it was time to talk to Rebecca, to get everything out in the open. After all, she had a lot at stake here—her reputation and the reputation of the agency, the money that might have been paid to the wrong man, the future of her biggest client, which would, of course, affect the agency and everyone who worked there. She had a right to know what was going on… even if, most likely, she wouldn’t believe a word of it.
So how should Teryl approach her? Straightforward? Go in and say, “Rebecca, this man who’s staying with me says that he’s Simon Tremont, and he knows enough about Tremont and about Resurrection that he’s made me wonder”? Rebecca would probably wonder, too—not only about John’s sanity but also about Teryl’s.
Perhaps it would be better if she spoke in hypotheticals. What if’s. She could feel out her boss, see if she was at all open to such possibilities. She could get a better idea of how to handle it when the time came for specifics.
Her gaze settled on one of the manuscripts sitting on the corner of her desk. Her favorite books were mysteries and romances; this one, a romantic suspense, combined the best of both genres. The author was unpublished, but, if the remainder of the book lived up to the promise of the chapters Teryl had already read, she wouldn’t remain that way long. Her story involved a classic case of mistaken identity, her romance writer heroine stalked by killers because she had the same name as and fitted the general description of the woman who was their real target. The writing was stylish and polished, the story twisted enough to hold a reader’s interest.
It would be a perfect icebreaker.
Leaving her desk, she went to the kitchen, pouring a cup of almond-flavored coffee for Rebecca and a mug of the regular brew for herself. Coming to a stop in Rebecca’s open doorway, she interrupted her boss at work. “I thought you might like a fresh cup,” she suggested, lifting the delicate china in offering.
Looking up, Rebecca smiled and removed her reading glasses. “Your timing is perfect. I just finished the last one. Come on in and sit down.”
Teryl delivered the coffee to her, then took a seat as instructed. After taking a sip from her own coffee, she wrapped her hands around the pottery mug. She wasn’t really thirsty; she simply needed a prop to keep her hands occupied.
“What have you been doing this afternoon?”
“Reading,” she lied. It sounded so much better than “Sitting at my desk, gazing off into space, and brooding over whether the man we know as Simon Tremont is, indeed, one of the most talented authors in the country or a devious, warped lunatic who’s fooled us all.”
“Anything interesting?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. A romantic suspense.”
“Promising?”
“So far, but I’ve only read the first three chapters.”
“Which often outshine the rest of the book.”
Teryl nodded in acknowledgment. Unpublished writers in the habit of entering contests or submitting partials—three chapters and an outline—to editors or agents had a tendency to write and rewrite those first three chapters, polishing them until they gleamed. Without the same attention and work, the remainder of the manuscript often suffered in comparison. “I don’t think that will be the case with this one. She’s very good. Her story is about mistaken identity, and her heroine’s a writer.” Wetting her lips, she took a shallow breath, then continued. “It’s interesting. With all the millions of people in the country, so many people have exactly the same names. Even with Social Security numbers, it can be so easy for one person to get mistaken for another. Like Simon.”
Rebecca’s laughter was soft and amused. “I doubt there are too many Simon Tremonts running around out there.”
“But you’re forgetting: his real name is John Smith. There must be thousands of John Smiths.”
“Yes, but how many of them can write like a dream—or a nightmare, depending on your outlook?”
Maybe one more than she expected, Teryl thought. She hadn’t seen any proof yet that John could write, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he could. He was bright. He had a strong vocabulary and a nice way with words. Sometimes on the trip from New Orleans to Richmond, when he’d talked about his brother and sister or his home in Colorado or other things important to him, his language had been purely lyrical—not just words, but imagery, emotion, sensation. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he could translate that power from the spoken word to paper.
In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already done it. She had seen the legal pad on the kitchen table at lunch, had seen all those much-handled pages. She had wanted so badly to look at it, to reach across the table and pick it up and read what he had written. But he had seen her looking, and he hadn’t offered to let her see it, so she hadn’t asked. Soon she would. She wanted to read the pages. She needed to.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting,” she began slowly, watching the coffee in her cup vibrate from the unsteadiness in her hands, “if the John Smith who came into the office, the one who did the interview in New Orleans, wasn’t the same John Smith who created Simon Tremont?”
Her boss apparently decided to humor her. “If he discovered that he and Tremont shared the same name and he decided to pass himself off as Tremont? If he thought that he’d discovered the easy way to fame and fortune?” She shook her head. “How could he hope to pull it off?”
“No one had ever met Tremont. No one knew what he looked like, how old he was, how he sounded. He’d cultivated such an air of mystery that the world knew only one thing about him: he could write the most incredible books.”
“And what could such an impostor hope to gain from this?”
“You said yourself it would be the easy way to fame and fortune. It’s not so unusual, Rebecca. One of the daytime talk shows did an entire show some time back about people who routinely claim to be someone they’re not. They even made a movie about one of them. People were thrilled to meet Simon Tremont. You should have seen the way everyone at the hotel and the TV station treated him, as if he were visiting royalty. All he had to do was lift one finger, and they jumped to fulfill his every wish. And fortune? He’s received only one check since coming out of hiding, but we both know that every check Tremont gets is a fortune in itself.”
“And where is the real Simon Tremont during all this?”
“The same place he’s been for the last eleven years: at home in Colorado, hiding in his mountains, and absolutely unaware that anything unusual is happening.”
Rebecca considered the scenario, and for a moment, Teryl thought, plausibility was evenly balanced with skepticism. The moment passed, though, and skepticism won out. “But sooner or later the impostor has to get caught. He meets someone who knows who he really is, or someone who knows the person he’s posing as. In this case, sooner or later the fake Simon would have to write another book. His fans haven’t even yet seen Resurrection, and they’re already drooling over the prospect of the next Tremont novel.”
“But, realistically, no one expects another book for at least a year or two or even longer,” Teryl pointed out. “He can bask in an awful lot of celebrity—and spend an awful lot of the real Simon’s money—in two years.”
“Speaking of books, that shoots down your theory right there. The man who came to the office, who did the interview in New Orleans, wrote the most incredible of those incredible books. He wrote Resurrection. Only the real Simon Tremont could have done that.” Replacing her glasses, Rebecca shuffled through the contracts in front of her. Before she turned all of her attention to them, though, she gave Teryl an affectionate smile. “This new author certainly fired your imagination. I like that in a book. Go back and finish reading it, then let me know what you think.”
Even though she had clearly been dismissed, Teryl remained where she was for a moment. Then, with a faint sigh, she left, returning to the privacy of her own office, sinking once more into the leather chair, gazing off into space, and brooding
once more.
All right, so she had broached the subject with Rebecca, who had, at least, listened and hadn’t laughed her from the room. But she hadn’t been particularly open to the possibilities, either. She’d never gotten beyond the interesting-idea-but-could-never-happen-in-reality stage. How much less open would she be when Teryl tried again, not with hypotheticals but with details, with facts, with John’s claims and her own doubts? If Rebecca didn’t believe such a scheme could work in a talking-about-books-and-make-believe scenario, how much more skeptical would she be when Teryl tried to present it as reality?
She would probably be convinced that John was crazy and would have serious doubts about Teryl. She wouldn’t for more than a moment consider the possibility that John’s claims had any basis in reality. Like any good business-person, she would go on the defensive, would take whatever steps were necessary to protect the agency, herself, and her most important client, including firing a disloyal employee who had violated the confidentiality of that client’s records. John wouldn’t prove a thing, and she would be out of a job.
All things considered, she thought glumly as she reached for the manuscript on the corner, for the time being, at least, she would rather not say another word.
* * *
The computer screen glowed royal blue in the dimly lit office, the cursor an annoying blink of white. Type, it seemed to command with its agitated flutter. Type something, anything, but, damn it, type! But Simon, seated in his high-tech, top-dollar, designed-for-your-spine chair, had nothing to say. He’d had nothing to say for days.
He leaned back in the chair, anchoring his feet on the floor, and twisted slowly from side to side. Every day he came in here, and every night, too. He turned on the computer, and he faced this empty screen, and he tried to write. At first, his goal had been a new book, one that would top Resurrection, one that would convince the world that he was, indeed, the greatest writer that lived. Soon that had become a desire to write a chapter, just one chapter, twenty-five or thirty pages. He’d written that and far more in a day, especially there toward the end of Resurrection.
Today his goal had been to write one well-crafted sentence that could lead to another. Here it was, the middle of the afternoon, and he hadn’t yet succeeded.
Maybe it was still too soon. After those last frantic weeks of obsessing over the last book, maybe he hadn’t given his creative self time to recharge. Maybe he needed more rest… more public appearances… more adulation. Maybe he was feeling the pressure of having to follow up his masterpiece with something at least as good, preferably better. Or maybe he just needed to tie up a few loose ends in his life. Loose ends tended to get messy. They could trip a man up if he wasn’t careful.
Still turning from side to side, he reached out and, with the caps lock feature turned on, typed the name of one of his loose ends. TERYL. She was back in town, back in the office at last, and rumor was that she’d brought her lover with her. Just how good could the guy be, to merit an invitation to come home to Virginia with her and move into her house?
IS. He pressed the spacebar, then slumped down and propped his feet on the low stool underneath his desk. His posture at the computer had always been awful, resulting in backaches, stiff fingers, and an occasional nagging worry about carpal tunnel syndrome. Was there an author in the world who didn’t worry? Of course, it didn’t matter to him now. If sitting at the desk got to be a strain, he would simply hire a secretary. He would make himself comfortable, dictate his books, and let her ruin her back and wrists.
Picking out the letters, he finished his first full sentence of the day. A SLUT.
Funny how things could change. In New Orleans and following his return home, he had found himself all too often thinking about sex with Teryl. There was something terribly appealing about slutty sex with someone as sweet, innocent, and pure as she had seemed to be. But the key word there was seemed. She might still be sweet, but apparently she was neither innocent nor pure. Being bad with a good girl was a tremendously erotic prospect. Being bad with a bad girl was merely boring.
He would be a liar if he said he wasn’t disappointed. Claiming her as his own, he had thought, would be one of his greater achievements. Now he would still claim her, at least for a night or maybe—if she was very, very good—for a weekend, but it would be no great achievement. Apparently, if her affair with this stranger was anything to judge by, just about any man in the world could have her. She was theirs for the taking… when, damn her, she was supposed to be his.
But maybe the affair wasn’t anything to judge by. Maybe there was more to it than met the eye. Maybe the guy hadn’t been a stranger but someone she’d once known. Maybe his coming to Richmond with her had been nothing more than coincidence. Maybe he had ties to the area, and she had simply been the impetus he’d needed to bring him home.
Maybe she’d had her fling, and there was nothing between them now but friendship. It could happen. He’d known women who could turn it on and off like that, who could have a steamy hot relationship with a man today and be just pals tomorrow. Maybe she’d been using the guy so she could stay longer in her precious New Orleans and was returning the favor by bringing him back here for a while. Maybe the fact that he had come home with her meant nothing.
And maybe hell had frozen over.
The truth was, most likely, very simple: Teryl really was a slut.
Damn her for that.
Returning the cursor to the beginning of the line, he pressed the delete key and watched as the letters disappeared from the screen. It was so easy to make the words disappear and, lately, so damned hard to make them appear. So damned hard to craft them in a logical order, to infuse them with life, with feeling, with power. So damned hard to string them into sentences, to build sentences into paragraphs, to turn paragraphs into chapters.
He could do it. He had tremendous talent and incomparable skill. If anyone could do it, he could. But not today, he thought as he leaned forward and pressed the button that shut off the computer.
Not today.
When John had made the decision eleven years earlier to move into the mountains, he’d had several reasons. Many of his happiest memories involved the California mountains where his family had spent much of their free time hiking, camping, and skiing. He had hoped to recapture some of those good feelings, even though he’d known it would be all but impossible, because his worst memories involved those same mountains—a family camp-out, an argument with his father, a narrow, winding road, and a car out of control.
He had also hoped to find peace in the Rockies, and he must have succeeded in some small measure because he’d finally stopped trying to kill himself. At the same time, he had in a very real sense been punishing himself. He had banished himself from society. He’d done such harm to the people he cared about that he’d believed the only fair thing was to have no contact with anyone. All alone on top of his mountain, he couldn’t hurt anyone. He couldn’t destroy someone’s life, someone’s future or dreams.
But all alone was no way to live. Even if it was the only way he could live.
Sometimes—usually after trips into Denver, where life was rushed and the city crowded—he’d thought he had been alone so long that he couldn’t adapt to living with someone else. He had thought that the mere presence of another person in the house would make him uneasy, that the loss of total privacy would grate on his nerves. He knew now, of course, that it depended on who the other person was. He wouldn’t mind feeling Teryl’s presence more often. He would have no objection at all to giving up more of his privacy to her, even if it was only temporary.
Maybe what he felt was a false sense of ease, since they weren’t intimate, but they made good roommates. She was a little on the sloppy side, but that was all right, because he liked neatness and order and he honestly didn’t mind being the one to restore it when she’d finished scattering the sections of the newspaper around the living room or when he found her damp towels in a heap on the bathroom floor. They
liked the same TV shows, had similar tastes in music, and shared a fondness for the same old movies. They both liked to read, and she seemed as fond of quiet times at home as he was. They got along well.
Platonically well. He wished he knew how to change that, but this sunny Monday afternoon, there were no easy answers to tough questions just waiting around to be discovered.
He’d spent most of the afternoon seated here at the kitchen table, adding to Liane’s story—in addition to thinking about Teryl—but he had reached the point where he needed to stop writing and start thinking about the plot. He had no routine for the way he put his books together. Sometimes, like now, he started with a character and came up with a story to fit. Sometimes the story came first, and he had to develop characters to go with it. On rare occasions he’d been blessed with the gift of a fully developed book, characters and plot, that seemed to write itself. On other occasions—Resurrection came to mind—the creative process was a torturous one. Liane’s story, although not yet plotted, was going to be one of the easier ones.
He had Teryl to thank for that. Because she wanted this story. Because he felt a tremendous desire to give her exactly what she wanted. Because, maybe if he did give her what she wanted, she might feel generous enough to fulfill a few of his desires.
After their brief conversation that had followed the sheriff’s phone call at lunch, she had gone back to work, leaving him with no clue as to what she thought or how she felt. Cassidy believed someone was trying to kill him, and that was reason enough for her to believe, also. But that didn’t mean she believed it was Tremont. It didn’t mean she believed he was Tremont. It just meant that she was willing to accept that someone out there didn’t like him enough to want him dead.
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