Wicked, Loving Murder

by Jane Haddam

  Sarah English obviously thought this was the way New York women talked. She was delighted.

  “I’ve read all about both of you in the papers,” she said. “About how Miss McKenna solves murders and Miss Damereaux sells so many books and has such an unusual apartment, and of course pictures of Mr. Carras—he’s so good-looking—and of course I modeled my heroine on you, Miss McKenna—”

  I closed my eyes. It was beginning to occur to me just what I’d been after when I invited Sarah English to New York. It’s not a terrible thing to want admiration, but enough is enough. Sarah’s blind worship was making me uncomfortable.

  “Just McKenna,” I told her. “Not Miss McKenna, just McKenna. Or Pay. It comes of having spent my early life in girls’ schools. Also, it’s getting to be rush hour, and if we intend to get up to my apartment and then down to Bogie’s by seven—”

  Phoebe shot me a look that said she knew exactly what I was thinking and why. She put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and patted her comfortingly.

  “Patience is right,” she said. “If we want to get a cab—”

  “Oh, I want to get a cab,” Sarah English said. “I’ve been dying to ride in a real New York cab.”

  The look Phoebe gave me this time was murderous. Three days with Sarah English might be wonderful or awful, but it was certainly going to be a responsibility. I had an almost irresistible urge to tell the woman that the garbagemen were making forty thousand a year and hankering to strike for more, that the streets hadn’t been cleaned since June, that the mugging rate was down but the burglary rate up—anything to tone down her conviction that Madison Avenue was paved with platinum and fairy dust—not angel dust—grew every Christmas on the tree in Rockefeller Center. I would have had to shut her up first.

  “I just kept sending that manuscript and sending that manuscript,” she was saying. “I sent it to all the publishing houses and all the agents in the Writer’s Market and all the writers I’d ever heard of, mystery writers and romance writers and everyone, and of course I was afraid to send it to Miss McKenna, Miss McKenna is a detective, not just a writer, but in the end there was nothing else to do, and—”

  “There’s a cab stand right out front,” Phoebe said. “We’ll go up to the West Side and then—”

  I never did find out what we were going to do “then.” Sarah English couldn’t stop talking. She talked all the way out to Forty-second Street. She talked while we were getting into the cab. She was still talking thirty odd streets later, when we got out of it. She talked while I was hauling her brown plastic suitcase onto the sidewalk.

  When she went back to give the cabbie a little extra tip, she kissed him on the nose.

  TWO

  KAREN PALMER WAS STANDING in the doorway when we drove up to Bogie’s in Sarah’s second New York cab. She had her hands in her hair and her eyes on the sky, as if looking for rain. New Yorkers do a lot of this. I have never been able to figure out what for.

  She saw me unfolding on the sidewalk (my legs are so long I am required to unfold from all cars except Checker cabs, stretch limousines, and Rolls-Royce Corniches) and came over to help.

  “There you are,” she said. “You can take care of it.”

  “Take care of what?” Sarah was shaking out the wrinkles in her lilac nylon date dress, shifting from one foot to the other on out-of-season lilac plastic sandals. I looked at her dubiously. It was mid-October. Bogie’s is at Twenty-sixth and Eighth, not a bad neighborhood, but not a tourist neighborhood either. Sarah might as well have had a neon sign saying “Out-of-Towner” bolted to her forehead. I half expected a souvenir hustler, radar always on the alert, to beam himself down from Forty-second Street and clobber her over the head with an “I Love New York” bumper sticker. If she hadn’t looked so happy, I would have clobbered her myself.

  Karen Palmer looked worried.

  “Max Brady is at the bar,” she said. “Your friend Verna is in a corner. They can see each other through the archway.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “Max Brady is getting plastered,” Karen Palmer said.

  Sarah English looked at us brightly. The “shit” that would have been an insult from her local newsboy was a mark of sophistication in New York. She stared at Karen Palmer, fascinated. Karen was in an ordinary pair of jeans and doing nothing particularly unusual, but that didn’t stop Sarah. Karen has a Lauren Bacall voice. That might have explained it. I mentally gave the problem of Sarah English to Phoebe and tried to concentrate on something I could understand. Max Brady getting plastered a hundred feet from Verna Train, and the ramifications thereof, I could understand.

  I just didn’t like it.

  “I think it’s under control,” Karen said. “He’s with DeAndrea, and DeAndrea doesn’t drink.”

  “Billy should be able to take care of Max Brady,” I said.

  We both looked toward the door, contemplating Billy with an armlock on Max Brady. Max Brady being Max Brady, Tweety Pie could have got an armlock on him.

  “Billy doesn’t want to take care of Max Brady,” Karen said. “At least, not like that.” She gave Sarah and Phoebe a big smile and said, “Everybody else is already here. They look great.”

  They did look great. As soon as we got to the archway, I spotted them, spread across two tables in the far corner of the dining room and arrayed like peacocks during the mating season. Amelia Samson had come in vintage Worth, every inch of her stout, well-muscled body covered with beaded satin so stiff it could have stood on its own if she’d climbed out of it. Marilou Saunders (hostess of “Wake Up and Shine! America!,” a talk show for people who think dawn is not a four-letter word) was rigged out as a forties tramp, complete with red spangled bolero jacket, red plastic barrette, stiletto heels, and a black satin skirt slit up the side of her thigh to her waist. Verna Train, who wrote “long” (nonline) contemporary romances and looked like the middle-aged John Barrymore in drag, was sporting a two-foot-long ebony and silver cigarette holder. Next to this outpouring of pride in the genus feminine, the publishing women looked almost drab. Dana Morton, my agent and now Sarah’s, was New York thin and New York chic in a plain black wool loaded down with “accessories” (Charivari bullet belt, Hermes red “spring” scarf, silver bangles). Caroline Dooley, Sarah’s editor at AST, was businesslike in a gray flannel suit and tiny gold earrings.

  Max Brady was in blue jeans and a shapeless crew neck he must have had in college. He had his back to the dining room.

  One of the reasons romance writers have little respect for mystery writers is that, in romance writer terms, mystery writers don’t know how to “promote themselves.” Max Brady took that truism a step further. He didn’t know how to match his socks.

  I let Phoebe and Sarah go in without me and climbed onto a stool next to William L. DeAndrea, two-time Edgar winner (an Edgar is like an Oscar, except it’s given by the Mystery Writers of America instead of the Motion Picture Association to a mystery novel instead of a movie) and all around Nice Person. DeAndrea was so optimistic, he didn’t have to bother trying to think well of people. He thought well of people. He thought well of a lot of people who had no right being thought well of.

  “I’ve got a romance title for you,” he said. “Starved for Love, by Anna Rexia.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “How about Plunging Passions, by Dee Fenestrate.”

  “You could do that with mystery novels,” I said. “Death on Vacation, by Maura Torium.”

  “Not bad.”

  Billy Palmer was behind the bar. I signaled for a Perrier to match DeAndrea’s. I’d go to work on the Drambuie after dinner.

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said, making what I hoped was a covert gesture at Max. “That is going to be a problem.”

  “That is already a problem,” DeAndrea said. “That is stewed. In fact, that is soon to be sick.”

  “Oh, fine,” I said. “Under the circumstances—”

  “Under the circumstance
s, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You would if the mess his book is in were the main problem, but it isn’t.”

  “Lisa left him. Again.”

  “Third time this month.”

  “What kind of a mess is his book in?”

  DeAndrea shrugged. “He writes hard-boiled California private eye, his book is in a mess. Nobody reads that stuff anymore. At least nobody reads people like Max. He had a twenty-five-hundred-dollar advance and it’s being remaindered without earning even that back. My Rod Is Hot. That one. AST doesn’t even want to talk to him anymore.”

  “He really wrote a book called My Rod Is Hot?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the table in the corner and Caroline Dooley in her gray flannel suit. “AST,” I said.

  “Yeah,” DeAndrea said. “Not that she didn’t say hello. She was very polite.”

  “Oh, fine,” I said.

  “The problem is, I don’t read that stuff either.”

  I made another gesture in Max’s direction. “Can he hear any of this?”

  “Right now he couldn’t hear Big Ben if it went off under his earlobe.”

  On the far stool, Max Brady suddenly sat up and said, in a very sober, clear, and portentous voice: “Raymond Chandler is the only serious writer to emerge from Depression America.”

  Billy Palmer gave him a worried look. You are allowed to get only so drunk and no drunker in New York State. Max might very well have crossed the line. It was hard to tell. Max Brady was the kind of drunk who looked and sounded sober until he fell to the floor and passed out.

  I slid off my stool, stretched, and patted DeAndrea on the arm. “Get him out of here,” I said. “If he starts another fight with Verna, she’s going to break a chair over his head.”

  “If he starts another fight with Verna, I’m going to break a chair over his head,” DeAndrea said. “Then again, maybe I’ll let Verna do it. She can afford it better than I can.”

  At the table in the corner, Sarah was high, Verna was cool, Phoebe was gracious. The rest of them were a little stiff, as if they weren’t sure how they felt about each other. They parodied themselves. Dana made noises about sub rights and paperback deals. Marilou giggled lewdly. Amelia harrumphed. Caroline Dooley held a molded crystal paperweight in the air, explaining to no one in particular that it was really her initials and the most marvelous present anyone had ever given her. Sarah was launched on her fifteenth retelling of the Story of the Miracle.

  “I sent that novel to everybody,” she said. “I even sent it to all of you.”

  Verna Train looked down her nose and her cigarette holder, making her eyes cross. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Sarah English,” Sarah said. She blinked, but she wasn’t annoyed. She didn’t expect anyone really famous, like Verna Train, to remember her name.

  “Never heard of you,” Verna Train said.

  “I sent it care of your publishing company,” Sarah said.

  I took the seat beside her and patted her on the shoulder, in almost conscious imitation of Phoebe.

  “Ninety percent of the people you sent that thing to never got it,” I said. “Ninety percent of the people who got it didn’t read it. I didn’t read it.”

  Sarah English looked shocked. “But you helped me get it published,” she said. She flushed, eying Caroline Dooley. “Accepted for publication,” she corrected herself. “How could you help me if you didn’t read it?”

  “I sent it along to Dana,” I said. “Dana read it. If Dana hated it, I’d have read it to see if I wanted to work on it, but Dana loved it, and Caroline loved it, and here you are.”

  “It’s so complicated,” Sarah said.

  Actually, it wasn’t complicated at all. It’s both easier and harder to get published than most people think. Easier, because writing commercial fiction is a game with rules written down in a number of places, and because the vaunted “slush piles” mostly contain manuscripts so excruciatingly terrible they don’t even constitute competition. Harder, because a new writer without friends or contacts is like odd man out at a square dance. She has to find a way to join the circle. There are ways, but finding them isn’t easy.

  Caroline Dooley wiped Bloody Mary off her upper lip and said, “Some of it’s luck. We were looking hard for good romantic suspense. You gave us good romantic suspense. We could have been looking hard for stories about cats.”

  “Maybe I’ll write a romantic suspense about cats,” Verna said. “I have cats.”

  “All romance writers have cats,” Phoebe said.

  At the far side of the table, Amelia sighed. “Romantic suspense, romantic suspense,” she said. “Blood and guts and people tied up in basements. Who wants all that stuff?”

  “You’re writing a whole romantic suspense line,” Verna said.

  Amelia sniffed. “Money’s money,” she said. “I still don’t know who wants all that stuff.”

  “Everybody wants that stuff,” Verna Train said. “Maybe you and Phoebe can do anything you want to, but the rest of us have to pay attention to the market.”

  “I always pay attention to the market,” Amelia said.

  “But you don’t have to,” Verna said. “You don’t have to do things you—” She stopped and looked into her drink. The rest of us, suddenly quiet, looked into her drink with her.

  In the corner, Marilou Saunders rustled her clothes and giggled. “I wrote a romantic suspense,” she said. She giggled again and waved her drink in the air, something that looked like straight Scotch. The rest of us turned away from her. Marilou was a pill and cocaine addict—at least we thought she was—and when she was high, she was impossible. When we insisted, she left her paraphernalia at home, but she always stoked up before walking out the door. We couldn’t do anything about her and we’d given up trying.

  Verna had given up listening. “I don’t even like romantic suspense,” she was saying. “I mean, I wrote one—”

  “You wrote a wonderful one,” Caroline Dooley said. “I heard from Sheila over at Gallard Rowson. She’s very impressed.”

  “Yeah,” Verna said. She tapped her nails against her glass, inexplicably at a loss. “Well,” she started up again, “I’m a professional. A professional should be able to do what she’s asked to do. I just don’t like the stuff, that’s all. I don’t want to spend the next twenty years embroiling my heroines in smuggling plots. I want to concentrate on love.”

  “We want you to concentrate on love, too,” Caroline said. “For God’s sake, Verna, this is a fad. Give it a year or two. Less.”

  “In the meantime, I either go bankrupt or crazy.”

  “I just like to imagine myself having adventures,” Sarah said. “That’s what I did with my book, Shadows in the Light.”

  “Shadows in the Light?” Verna said. “That’s the name of your book?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a good title?” Sarah said. “I thought it was a wonderful title, but—”

  “I’m not criticizing your title,” Verna said.

  This time, when Sarah flushed, there was a little anger in it. Verna was being rude. I was glad to see Sarah getting just tiddly enough on gin and tonics and just accustomed enough to this table to think she didn’t have to put up with Verna’s rudeness forever. Of course, since Verna was invariably rude, I didn’t see what good it was going to do Sarah to take offense at it.

  “I just like to imagine what it would be like to lead an interesting life,” Sarah said, her voice steady and surprisingly strong. “I live in this small town. People who live in New York just can’t realize. I go to work in an office every day and sometimes I go to a movie with women friends, and once a year I go on a package tour for vacation, if I can afford it. Mostly, I can’t afford it. People in New York just don’t realize how much people in places like Holbrook want to escape from that.”

  Caroline Dooley came as close as I’d ever heard her to laughing out loud. “Oh yes we do,” she said. “That’s why Miss Samson over there has
enough money to buy New Jersey.”

  “Nobody in their right mind,” Amelia said, “wants to buy New Jersey.”

  “If I had enough money to buy New Jersey, I’d wait out the market until people were buying what I want to write,” Verna said. She waved her cigarette holder in the air. “Two years ago I got a divorce—from a psychiatrist, yet—and I turned down the alimony, I turned down the property settlement, I walked away with my nose in the air. I’m a romance writer, right? Now look at me.”

  “You’re hardly starving,” Dana said.

  Sarah English was frowning in concentration. “Men are all right,” she said, “but they just aren’t enough. I mean, there are men in Holbrook. And what would be the use of marrying the world’s handsomest and richest man if you were just going to live like every other housewife in Holbrook?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Verna said. “The point about housewives in Holbrook is they don’t have any money.”

  “The point about housewives in Holbrook,” Marilou Saunders said, “is they don’t have any sex.”

  “The point about housewives in Holbrook is that they’re housewives,” Sarah said. Her voice positively rang. This she was sure of. “I used to read about Miss McKenna in the papers,” she gave me an adoring look. I wondered how long it was going to take to talk her out of that “Miss.” “I used to think what an exciting life she had, mixed up in murders, and helping the police, and writing books, and living in New York, and having a lover—”

  I nearly choked on my Perrier. Sarah had found out Nick was my lover from the newspapers? My mother, charity queen of Fairfield County, was going to kill me.

  “I wanted to have a life just like that,” Sarah was saying, “as different from Holbrook as possible and nothing like a housewife. I mean, you have to admit, housewives don’t get to do anything. Even if they like being housewives, it has to get boring.”

  “I was a housewife once,” Amelia said. “I wouldn’t say it was boring.”

  “You couldn’t say it was pleasant, either,” I reminded her.

  “You should see the book I’m working on now,” Sarah said. “My heroine’s pulling off a diamond heist and she’s got a good reason for it and it’s exciting. It’s something different. Of course, there’s sex in it, they make you put sex in it, but I think most people are like me and skip those parts. I mean, nobody believes that stuff.”