A Romantic Way to Die

by Bill Crider

  “About some radio contest?”

  “That’s right. A date with Terry Don Coslin.” Mildred laughed. “Be my luck, I’d win. With this foot, I couldn’t go anyway. I can walk on it, but it’s not easy, and I have to use a cane.”

  Rhodes saw that there was a wooden cane hooked to the arm of the lawn chair.

  “About that phone call,” he said.

  “I knew it was a joke right off,” Mildred said. “Imagine Henrietta trying to fool me like that.”

  “She called several other people,” Rhodes said. “And none of them recognized her voice.”

  “Well, I did. I’ve been in her writing group for so long that I’ve heard her read all kinds of things. I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  Rhodes heard barking back in the barn and looked in that direction.

  “Princess is probably up on a couple of hay bales where Hank can’t get at her,” Mildred said. “Like I said, you don’t have to worry about her.”

  “I was worried about Hank,” Rhodes said.

  Mildred laughed. “He’ll be all right. When he gets himself all barked out, he’ll come and lie down in the shade till he recovers.”

  “So you’re sure it was Henrietta who called,” Rhodes said, getting back to the purpose of his visit.

  “I’m sure, all right. As soon as I caught on, I said, ‘Henrietta, you ought to know better than to try to fool an old woman like me.’”

  “Did she say why she was doing it?”

  “No. She just hung up. But it was her, all right. I remember when she was reading from Love’s Wild Deception, she used a voice like that.”

  “That’s a book?” Rhodes asked.

  “Yes. One of her better ones, too, even if it hasn’t ever been published. Or maybe it has. Some people think Vernell stole the plot from it for her own book.”

  “What do you think?”

  Mildred took another drink of lemonade, set the glass back down, and leaned slightly forward in her chair.

  “Do you read romance novels, Sheriff?”

  “I read Vernell’s.”

  “Is that the only one?”

  Rhodes admitted that it was.

  “Well, then you don’t know. But the truth is that they’re a lot alike. I don’t mean there’s a formula or anything like that. But I’m working on one myself, and it’s a whole lot the same. In quite a few romance novels, you have the same situation. There’s a woman who’s got some kind of problem, and she meets this man that really irritates her, or seems to. The readers all know that the two of them were meant to be together, but things keep getting in the way. There’s usually another man, and we all know he’s definitely the wrong one, but it looks like he’s going to get her by fair means or foul, and the troubles just keep piling up. I’d say that Vernell’s book is like that. So was Henrietta’s. But then so are a few hundred more.”

  Rhodes asked why Mildred wasn’t at the conference. She pointed to her foot.

  “If it weren’t for that ankle, I’d be right there. I’d love to meet that Jeanne Arnot. She’s sold more books than anybody in New York.”

  Rhodes said he was sorry about the ankle and about Mildred’s having to miss the conference. Mildred didn’t seem the type to write romance novels, but apparently there wasn’t a type. He should have known that.

  Rhodes had another stop to make before he went out and visited Billy Quentin’s woods. He wanted to have a look at Henrietta Bayam’s house. She had lived only about six blocks from downtown Clearview, and Rhodes drove through town to get there.

  He noticed that the rubble from some recently-collapsed buildings had been cleared away sometime within the last few days, but the sight of the vacant lot on what had been one of the busiest corners in the town didn’t do much to cheer him up about Clearview’s prospects for the future.

  He turned left at the corner and drove past two more blocks of what had once been called “the business district.” There wasn’t much business being conducted there now. There was still a fairly prosperous bank on one corner, but most of the rest of the buildings in the block were vacant.

  On the other side of the street there was one store, a vacant building, and a parking lot. The building where one of the town’s biggest grocery stores had once been was empty now, the store having moved into larger quarters out on the highway near the Wal-Mart. Rhodes figured that in another year or two there wouldn’t be a business left in the business district, with the possible exception of the bank. He wondered if anyone would come up with a new name for it then.

  Henrietta had lived in an old brick house with a neatly trimmed yard. The house had belonged to her parents, who had died about ten years previously when Henrietta was barely out of high school, her father in a car accident and her mother of cancer. As far as Rhodes knew, she didn’t have any other relatives. She was the last of the Bayams. She’d been married once, just after her graduation from college, but the marriage hadn’t lasted very long. Rhodes didn’t know why. After that, she had moved back to Clearview and started working as a secretary to the town’s only optometrist. She’d been there ever since.

  Rhodes pulled the county car into the driveway and got out. He stood for a minute and looked the place over. There was a walled concrete porch on the front, with short brick pillars on either side of the steps. The windows were all covered with screens painted black, and there was a black screen door in front.

  Rhodes went up on the porch, opened the screen, and tried the front door. It wasn’t locked. Most people in Clearview still trusted their neighbors and didn’t bother to lock either their houses or their cars, though more and more of them were beginning to do so.

  Rhodes went inside. The front room was chilly. It smelled musty and looked like something out of a nineteenth-century novel. There were a couple of old chairs and an overstuffed couch with lace doilies on the arms. To the right was another room that connected to the living room by what Rhodes thought were called French doors for some reason he’d forgotten, if he’d ever known.

  Henrietta had been using the room as an office. Bookshelves overflowed with paperback romance novels, fat ones, thin ones, and medium-sized ones. A computer desk stood against one wall and held a monitor, keyboard, and printer. The computer box was on the floor underneath. It seemed that every house Rhodes looked into in the course of an investigation had a computer these days, convincing proof to Rhodes that the computer revolution had touched everyone in the world.

  Rhodes opened the French doors and went into the room. There was a cardboard box beside the printer, and Rhodes opened it up to have a look. What he saw was the title page of a manuscript. Rhodes picked it up to read it, then put it back down. If he left it in the box, he could just about read it without having to put on his glasses.

  The title page said:

  A ROMANTIC WAY TO DIE

  A Mystery Novel

  BY

  Henrietta Bayam

  Ivy must have been right, Rhodes thought. Everyone who wasn’t writing a romance novel was writing a mystery, and Henrietta was writing both.

  He got his reading glasses out of his pocket and took out a few pages of the manuscript to read. The very first sentence grabbed his attention.

  Bernell Kidsey was a bitch, it said.

  Uh-oh, Rhodes thought. Then he read the next two sentences:

  She was also a thief. That’s why I had to kill her.

  Rhodes forgot about going to the woods to look for clues. He took the manuscript into the other room, turned on a light, and sat on the couch, which was a lot more comfortable than it looked.

  Then he started to read.

  10

  AFTER READING AS FAST AS HE COULD FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS, Rhodes put the manuscript aside. It had become clear to him after only a few pages that the book was based mostly on people in and around Clearview, and a few from out of town, with the character of Bernell Kidsey being only the first of many examples.

  The plot was simple: an aspiring romance novelist w
rites a book that all her friends tell her is a cinch to be published just as soon as the manuscript is polished and ready, but an envious friend steals the plot idea and pitches a much inferior version of the book to a sleazy agent named “Jane Arnold,” who isn’t above sleeping with editors (either men or women; Jane wasn’t particular) to increase her sales records.

  The book’s narrator, the practically saintly (except for her murderous tendencies) was “Loretta Seaham,” and she managed to kill the treacherous Bernell and get the crime blamed on Arnold, who conveniently committed suicide, thus convincing the slightly stupid redneck county sheriff (“Don Street”) of her guilt and allowing Loretta to get on with her life and her interrupted writing career with no one the wiser.

  Rhodes folded his glasses and put them back in his pocket. His only consolation was that Henrietta had made him somewhat younger, trimmer, and better-looking than he actually was. Well, younger anyway. Ivy had been keeping him pretty much on a healthy diet since their marriage, and he’d shed a few pounds. Maybe he’d gotten more handsome, too, though that seemed a bit more doubtful. But he was sure he hadn’t gotten any younger. In fact, after reading Henrietta’s manuscript, he felt about ten years older.

  He wondered how many other people in Clearview had read the manuscript, or had heard Henrietta read it at one time or another. He wondered why Mildred Cramer hadn’t mentioned it.

  He didn’t think that the manuscript could ever be published, but he wasn’t absolutely certain. It had held his interest, all right, but would it interest a publisher in New York, someone who didn’t know the characters involved? Rhodes wasn’t sure.

  And was there a motive for a real-life murder in the book? Rhodes wasn’t sure about that, either, but if Vernell had read it, there certainly might be. The character of Bernell Kidsey, revealed in numerous flashbacks, was entirely reprehensible, without a single redeeming feature. She was a low, scheming liar, who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy lifelong friends if doing so would help her get a book published.

  And then there was Jeanne Arnot. Rhodes was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the manuscript, but someone might have told her about it. The agent in the book, Jane Arnold, was even worse than Bernell, if that was possible. She used writers and editors like puppets and cut their strings when she was through with them, either that or left them to dangle helplessly without their puppet master to manipulate them. And she was having a passionate secret affair with Jerry Dan Gosling, a famous male cover model who was using her in his attempt to become the cover boy for every historical romance that was published.

  There were several other people who didn’t come off so well, too, including a well-known writer named Corrinna Bayer, who bore a powerful physical resemblance to Serena Thayer, though Rhodes hoped her personal qualities were different. She had quite a temper in the book, and she was sleeping with Jerry Dan Gosling in the hope that he would insist on doing her covers to the exclusion of all others.

  Jerry Dan’s motives were no better. He was sleeping with every writer and agent he could, his motive being a not-so-secret desire to appear on the cover of every historical romance novel published, a desire that didn’t sit too well with Corrinna Bayer.

  Another character, a fiery redhead named Lorraine Denbow, came off somewhat better. She was pursued by men, but she always fended them off until they married her. She’d been married quite often.

  There were some pretty sexy passages, and the book reminded Rhodes vaguely of something he’d read many years ago by someone named Harold Robbins. Lots of intrigue, plenty of sex. Maybe that’s what people wanted in mystery novels these days.

  Rhodes went back into the office and put the manuscript back in the box. He wondered what Ruth Grady would make of it. He decided to give it to her and let her read it later that day.

  But first he was going back to Obert and have a look in those trees. He was going to let Billy Quentin know he was there, though. He didn’t want to take a chance with that shotgun.

  Rhodes stopped for lunch on the way to Obert. There was a Pizza Hut on the road out of town, and Rhodes hadn’t had a pizza in a long time, not unless he counted the vegetarian pizzas that Ivy made with no-fat cheese and no-fat pizza sauce. And Rhodes definitely didn’t count those at all. He was in the mood for some stringy mozzarella and some pepperoni that wasn’t made out of tofu.

  But, telling himself that he was doing the virtuous thing, he didn’t order a large pizza, or even a medium. He got the personal-size pan pizza, which he was certain had only a minimal number of calories and fat grams.

  He had a Dr Pepper, too, but that didn’t really count because it was served over ice in a paper cup. It didn’t taste so much like a Dr Pepper as it did a glass of fizzy brown water that had been soaking in cardboard for weeks. Rhodes wouldn’t have ordered one at all if he’d thought he could get a Dr Pepper in a plastic bottle, or even a can, but the Pizza Hut didn’t work that way.

  After he’d eaten, which didn’t take long, Rhodes drove to Obert. He went past the college campus and straight down the hill to Billy Quentin’s house. Quentin wasn’t at home, so Rhodes left a note on his front door while lovable furry old Grover barked and barked.

  Rhodes had no idea what he was looking for, but he stayed in the woods for more than two hours, poring over the ground and hoping to find something that might prove to be a tie-in to the murder, or at least something that might help him identify the woman that Mrs. Appleby and Claude had seen.

  He hadn’t found anything of interest and was about to give up when something caught his eye. He walked over to a clump of leaves and stooped down to pick up what appeared to be a piece of cloth, which is exactly what it was. But it was more than that, too. It was a black crew sock.

  Rhodes got a stick off the ground and picked up the sock with it. Then he tried to figure out what it meant.

  A naked woman in black crew socks? Rhodes didn’t think so. Besides, how could the sock have come off her foot?

  And did black crew socks go with red bikini panties? Rhodes didn’t have much fashion sense, but crew socks and bikini panties seemed an odd combination.

  The sock hadn’t been there long, however. It had been right on top of the ground, and it was fairly clean, with only a leaf clinging to it.

  Rhodes looked around for signs that someone had been there, and he found them: crushed leaves, a broken twig. But no clearly defined footprints, and no other clues.

  Rhodes had brought a couple of paper bags in his back pocket. He got one out and dropped the sock in it. He didn’t know what value it might have, but he was pretty sure it was somehow connected to everything that had happened. He’d take it back to the jail and put it in the evidence locker until he figured it out.

  If he ever did.

  Billy Quentin still wasn’t at home, so Rhodes couldn’t ask him if he’d lost any socks. Claude and Clyde were at work, but Mrs. Appleby was sitting in her living room watching Sally Jessie Raphael’s audience taunt a young man who had apparently been sleeping with his much older stepmother.

  “The world is full of trash,” Mrs. Applebly observed, shaking her head.

  Rhodes didn’t comment. He just asked if either Claude or Clyde might be missing a sock.

  “A sock?”

  “A black one,” Rhodes said. “Thick cotton.”

  “They don’t like thick socks,” Mrs. Appleby said. “They like those thin ones that have a lot of elastic in them and stay up good. They don’t even own any thick ones. Why?”

  “Somebody lost one back in the trees,” Rhodes said.

  “You think it was that naked woman?”

  Rhodes said that he doubted it.

  Mrs. Appleby did, too. “She wasn’t wearing any socks that I could see. Just those panties.”

  Rhodes thanked her for her help and left.

  There was a session in progress when Rhodes stopped at the college, so he sat out on the porch of the main building and talked to Chatterton.

  “What are they talking
about?” Rhodes asked.

  “How to write a synopsis,” Chatterton said. “It’s very important to be able to write a good synopsis, they tell me. They even have contests to see who can write the best one. They charge a fee to enter and get some writer to be the judge. That’s how they help pay for conferences like this one.”

  Rhodes didn’t quite understand why anyone would want to write a synopsis.

  “Why not just write the whole book?” he asked.

  Chatterton explained that professionals never wrote a book unless they were certain that it would sell. Only beginners wrote the whole book.

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” Rhodes said. “Why aren’t you attending any of the sessions?”

  “Because I don’t want to write a book. I might be the only person here who doesn’t, though.”

  “What about Terry Don Coslin?”

  “Oh, he’s going to all the sessions. I believe he has a contract to write a historical romance. It’s supposed to be a very lucrative deal.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh, no. It was in all the papers. ‘Model Turns Author.’ That sort of thing.”

  “He’s actually going to write a book?”

  Chatterton laughed. “Of course not. You don’t really believe that celebrities write their own books, do you?”

  Rhodes said that he’d never thought about it.

  “Well, they don’t. Or maybe some of them do, but most of them don’t. They don’t have time. They’re too busy being celebrities. So someone else writes the book, and the celebrity’s name goes on the cover. It’s supposed to help sales. And some celebrities like to keep up the illusion that they’re the real authors. Mr. Coslin’s doing that by attending the sessions.”

  “Does the big name on the cover help sales?”

  “I have no idea. And in this case, it should be especially interesting. Women who read romance novels don’t generally buy books written by men.”