by Josh Lanyon
She stared at me, eyes very bright, the tattooed teardrop black against her skin. “Yeah, I did. I talked it over with Rachel, and we decided it was the best move.”
“What happened to your book? Hot Sauce?”
“It was published. It had a tiny print run, no promotion, and it sank like a stone.”
“And no one commented on the similarities between your book and Peaches’?”
“Nobody read my book.” She looked at her watch. “Shit, I gotta give a workshop on Writing Through Violence.”
She jumped up and took off across the dining room, causing people to stare after her.
“Something you said?” Rita inquired, refilling my coffee cup.
“She’s late for a workshop.”
“These people ever do any writing, or do they just talk about it?”
I shrugged.
Finishing my coffee, I wandered off to see what I could find out about the possibility of getting back to civilization that day.
The lodge seemed relatively quiet with the majority of people in workshops or talking in small groups. I spotted my breakfast companions in a huddle at a table in the bar.
“How was the workshop?” I asked.
The perky girl said, “Steven Krass never showed up. He blew us off.”
I couldn’t say that surprised me. It sounded like his style.
“Any word about when we might get out of here?”
They all shook their heads. I spotted J.X. coming in the side door and excused myself. The last thing I felt up to was making polite conversation with J.X.
I didn’t have a destination in mind, so I headed down the hall and went into the first open doorway. It seemed to be some kind of reading room or library. There were a number of knotty pine shelves stacked with books—mostly paperbacks—a couple of low rough-hewn tables littered with magazines, and a few comfortable chairs.
In one of the comfortable chairs was Debbie Croft, the daughter of the house. She appeared to be crying over an issue of People magazine.
I couldn’t imagine what drove her to tears. Another wardrobe malfunction? Another substance abuse hospitalization? Another debut album from a celebrity who couldn’t sing to save her life? Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.
And it appeared Debbie didn’t want me to know. She looked up, saw me, and threw the magazine aside. Then she was on her way out of the room with some muffled comment I didn’t catch.
Since I didn’t know what else to do with myself, I sat down, picked up the magazine, and studied the glossy layout. The usual suspects behaving predictably. Then I blinked. Second photo from the top. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson at a Literacy Fundraiser in San Francisco. And in the background stood bestselling crime author J.X. Moriarity and bestselling author and columnist Peaches Sadler. Peaches had her red-taloned hand fastened on J.X.’s sleeve, and she was beaming at him with an expression that was anything but fraternal.
I examined them. If I knew anything about body language—and thanks to Miss Butterwith and the Body of Lies, I did know a fair bit—there was quite a lot of sexual interest on the part of Peaches Sadler. J.X. was harder to read because he was partially turned away, smiling at someone off camera. But his body language conveyed…a certain level of comfort. Relaxation. He certainly didn’t mind her hanging on his arm and gazing soulfully up at him.
It didn’t matter to me, naturally. It was merely a point of interest. Academic interest.
I tossed the magazine aside and walked down to the front desk to see if anyone had any information on when we might escape this hellhole, but once again it was deserted.
Feeling more and more restless, I wandered into the large meeting room with its panoramic view of the vineyards and the mountains wreathed in mist. Tables had been set up everywhere so that people could sit and chat in small groups.
I didn’t see anyone I knew, and I wasn’t in the mood to make new friends. I decided to return to my cabin.
Leaving through the back entrance, I walked across the rain-slick wooden deck, down the stairs, and started through the maze of metal tables and chairs. Preoccupied as I was, I didn’t notice there was someone sitting at a table until I was a few feet away.
I halted. The rain ticked down on the metal tabletops, bouncing away like grain. Two tables from me a man was slumped over. I saw a black jacket and blond hair. His face was hidden in the curve of his arm—as though he were crying. Water sheeted off the table, reinforcing the idea. But he wasn’t crying, although perhaps he should have been—what with that axe crunched in the back of his skull.
Chapter Thirteen
I was all out of dramatic reactions. All out of any reaction at all. Mostly I felt…tired.
Two bodies in two days? Could I be dreaming? Or how about a nice ordinary psychotic break? Wasn’t that a lot more likely than this blood-spattered indication that I was spending the weekend with a serial killer?
I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away. I couldn’t seem to make sense of the big picture; it was all little details: the gold Rolex ticking away on his wrist, the gray roots of his sodden blond hair, the pink tinge to the water pooled on the table.
Steven Krass.
Even though I couldn’t see his face, I recognized the burly set of his shoulders, the expensive watch and signet ring, the thick bull’s neck. The axe was new, but I can’t say it didn’t suit him.
Catching the echo of that thought, I realized that I was probably in shock. Not that I was going to pretend that my antipathy for Krass had changed because he’d found lodging in that cabin in the sky, but I didn’t approve of murder on general principles. Not even of people who seemed to go around begging for it.
My next thought, oddly enough, was of J.X. Irritating bastard he might be, but he at least would know what to do about this. It was nothing personal. I was thinking strictly of his professional expertise and savvy—not the warm strength of his arms or the muscular hardness of his chest. Because I had no intention whatsoever of throwing myself in his arms. None. Even if he had been in range.
I glanced around, just in case, and was astonished to see that there was someone in range, though not J.X. In fact, it appeared to be Little Red Riding Hood—further confirming my suspicion that I was enjoying a particularly vivid nervous breakdown. But after a few seconds the costume resolved itself into a red raincoat, and the face and body reconciled themselves with Rachel’s stricken features.
We stared at each other and neither of us said anything, which seemed, on reflection, unusual.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked at last.
She shook her head.
“It must have happened in the night. The blood has mostly washed away.”
She put a hand out and hung onto the side of the building, as though feeling faint. A feeling I sympathized with.
“We have to get someone,” I said. “Do you want me to go, or do you want to go?”
The problem was abruptly taken out of our hands when someone began to scream from the deck above. I turned, and a girl dressed in pink was having hysterics. She kept pointing at me—or perhaps Krass—and shrieking, but I couldn’t make out a word of it. Not that I needed to; I got the gist. And so did everyone in earshot. In a matter of seconds the deck was crowded with people all expressing horror and shock in various tones and pitches, and J.X. was pushing his way through the pink mob and coming swiftly down the steps.
I was relieved to see him. He didn’t seem to share my pleasure.
“What the hell happened?” His face was unusually pale, all sharps and angles as he got to me. He reached for Krass’s leather-clad arm, feeling for a pulse apparently, which I thought indicated a nice optimistic streak.
“I don’t know. I found him like this,” I said.
He straightened, pinning me with a look. His eyes seemed almost black. “What were you doing out here?”
“I was walking back to my cabin.”
“Why would you come this way?”
I stared at him
. “I don’t know. I guess because I was standing by the back entrance when I got the idea.” I began to get angry. “You can’t seriously think I had something to do with this?”
He hesitated.
I said hotly, “In case it’s escaped your attention, Dick Tracy, he’s been dead for hours.”
He had to have seen that—even I had noticed that much—but he continued to scrutinize me with that fierce consternation. The rain ran down our faces as we glared at each other. I looked past him at Rachel.
She was gone.
Now that was weird.
“Two bodies in two days?” J.X.’s voice was hard. “I know, given the stuff you write, that probably seems perfectly reasonable, but in real life it’s a little hard to swallow.”
I opened my mouth to let him have it, but I was forestalled by the arrival of Edgar Croft.
“Good God Almighty,” he said, staring down at the grisly table arrangement. “What in hell is going on around here?”
“You’ve got a homicidal maniac on the loose,” I replied, although the question was probably rhetorical. I sneered to J.X. “And no, I’m not laying the groundwork for my insanity plea.”
“What’s that?” Edgar asked.
“Nothing,” J.X. said. “Kit’s kind of shaken up.”
A sudden gust of wind tipped a line of patio chairs clattering over like a row of dominos and sent a couple of tables scraping back a few feet. J.X. and Edgar looked at each other, and I knew what they were thinking. No police helicopter was touching down here anytime soon.
“Christ,” J.X. muttered, raking the wet hair out of his face. “We’ve got to secure this crime scene somehow.” He turned to me. “Go inside and ask Rita to have everyone go to their rooms or cabins. You wait in the bar for me.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Given the grimness of his expression, he wasn’t kidding.
“You honest to God think you’re going to be able to confine this crowd to their rooms? And then what? Send the murderer to bed without supper?”
He continued to try and bend me to his will with the sole power of his Magnetic Gaze.
I said, “You’re going to question them one by one?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have a drawing room to gather the sus—”
“Oh, go to hell.” I turned and went up the stairs to the deck, and after a hesitation, the crowd which had fallen uneasily silent made room for me. “We’re supposed to go inside and leave it to the professionals,” I announced irritably.
To my surprise, they actually did begin filing back inside. To the questions thrown my way, I kept shaking my head and saying, “You know as much as I do. I just walked outside and found him.”
I got a fair bit of sympathy for that, but I also got some skeptical looks. I wasn’t clear if the skepticism was due to my high rate of dead-body discovery or the suspicion I knew more than I was telling.
It took a few minutes, but I found Rita standing at the giant misty picture windows in the main meeting room, gazing down on the gruesome scene below. I explained what J.X. wanted, and she raised her eyebrows.
“How does he think I’m supposed to enforce that?”
I shook my head. “All you can do is tell them he’s acting in absentia of the sheriff’s department.”
Shaking her head, she bustled off to send everyone to their rooms. I could hear the protests from down the hall. I couldn’t blame them. It was probably the first genuinely interesting thing to happen on site since the conference began. I continued to gaze out the window, watching J.X. and Edgar conversing. It looked to me like they were going to be a while.
I left the meeting room. The halls and rooms were empty with the exception of the dining room where staff was still clearing away the breakfast debris and setting up for lunch. Upstairs it sounded more like a beehive than ever, voices buzzing behind every door.
Every door but one. I knocked, and Rachel called, “Come.”
I opened the door. She was at the window again, smoking. “What’s going on?” I asked.
She raised pencil-thin eyebrows and blew out a long, perfect series of smoke rings. No dragon lady ever did it better.
“What were you doing out there? Why did you disappear like that?”
“Does J.X. want us milling around?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No I don’t.” She met my perplexed gaze coolly.
I tried to look at it from her POV, but I don’t do omniscient very well. She had been standing where no one from the house or deck could see her, so unless I mentioned it, it was unlikely anyone would know she had been there—stumbling upon the body around the same time as me. But while I could understand her reluctance to place herself at the scene of the crime, was there a valid reason not to? I was coming under special scrutiny for having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wasn’t it only fair for Rachel to fess up to the same ill fortune?
Slowly, I asked, “Are you expecting me to keep the fact that you were out there a secret?”
She lifted a shoulder. “If no one knows I was out there, they can’t ask me about you.”
“About me? What about me?”
She gave another one of those maddening shrugs.
“For your information, he was probably killed in the middle of the night—” I broke off, remembering my own nocturnal adventures which had conveniently escaped me until now. I remembered the strange sounds and the uncanny feeling that had gripped me as I walked down the path to the back of the house. If I had rounded the corner to the patio, would I have found Krass’s body—would I have found Krass’s murderer waiting for me axe in hand?
My knees suddenly gave out, and I had to sit on the edge of Rachel’s bed and take a few deep breaths as I recalled those muffled footsteps following me to the arbor—the shadowy figure that had waited there, listening.
“What’s the matter with you?” Rachel demanded. “Are you having a heart attack?”
She probably didn’t intend it to sound like an accusation. And just what I needed, a reminder that I had now reached the age when everyone assumed signs of distress indicated impending coronary. I shook my head.
“It’s probably reaction. Put your head between your knees.”
Like at my age my spine had that much give and play left? Did she think I was a yogi? Gumby?
As I sat there huffing and puffing, I noticed that Rachel’s nightwear was one of those sleep-shirt things emblazoned with the figure of Sailor Moon. Somehow I’d have guessed something in traditional silk brocade with a mandarin collar and a hem stained with the blood of rejected authors and other peasants. Not that I—God strike me mercifully blind—had been dwelling on the image of what Rachel did or did not wear in the sack. It was the incongruity of it. It seemed so…un-Rachel. This half-formulated idea distracted me enough that I quit hyperventilating over my narrow escape and sat up.
“Espie told me how Peaches Sadler plagiarized her novel to get her first big break.”
“Plagiarism!” Rachel gave a harsh laugh. “Plagiarism doesn’t cover it. She duplicated the entire damn novel. She merely changed the names.”
“I can’t believe no one caught it.”
“Nobody read Espie’s novel. As for Gardener and Britain, they invested a lot of money in launching Peaches. And the book hit the New York Times Bestseller List within a couple of weeks. From their perspective there was no advantage in revealing the truth.”
“No advantage? What about the advantage to Espie—the person who actually wrote the bestselling novel?”
“Christopher.” She looked at me with a kind of pity. “They did try to make it up to Espie. They contracted two more of her books. The books didn’t do anything. And it wasn’t anything to do with Peaches or Krass because they’d both moved to Wheaton & Woodhouse by then.”
“How can that be? How could Espie’s book—her skill—be bestseller-worthy when it was written by Peaches but not when it was written by Espie?”
&n
bsp; “Because,” she barked. “As I keep striving to bear upon that blond head of yours, it’s not merely the writing. It’s the whole fucking package. It’s the look, it’s the platform, it’s the overall marketability. It’s how you interact with fans. Christ on a crutch. I had to use a crowbar to get you to leave your bleeding house. And, yes, I’m sorry about the—the breakup, sorry that David was such a bastard, but anyone with half a brain would have seen him for the lecherous lout he was long before he ran off with that twink you called a personal assistant.”
I blinked at her while she continued to yap at me like a Pekingese after too many generations of inbreeding. When she finally wound down, I said, “Leaving my package out of it for the moment, I do not believe that the hook is much more important than the writing. And neither do you. And secondly, it sounds to me like both you and Espie have a pretty good motive for wanting to whack both Peaches and Satan Krass.”
Her eyes bulged—which is really not that easy with Asian eyes. “Me? What possible motive could I have?”
“For one thing, after he dissed you last night you were saying what a pity it was no one had brained him. And you were behaving in a most sinister fashion asking whether I thought it was true that Krass knew something about Peaches’ murder.”
She opened her mouth, but I kept going. “Also, it’s very obvious that you had an…um…complicated relationship with Peaches. She’d betrayed your trust over stealing Espie’s manuscript—oh, and while we’re on the subject of bad taste in lovers, hello?”
Rachel had the grace to look sheepish.
“You were overheard arguing with Peaches the night before she died, and then you’re discovered skulking around the scene of Krass’s murder. If this was a movie, believe me, you would be the killer.”
“Are you accusing me?” she screeched.
“I don’t care if you killed him or not. You’re my agent. And a great agent at that. That bloodthirsty streak is part of what I pay you for. Just tell me so I don’t put my foot in it when J.X. whips out his rubber hose.” I paused. “Uh…I mean…” I coughed. “Oh, and also please don’t try to kill me because I know your guilty secret. Because that is really going to put a strain on our professional relationship.”