Chapter 6
The most lavish dinner on earth would hardly be compensation for suffering through a Friday evening with some guy she barely knew asking questions like "What was your major?" or "What kind of music do you like?" and "How do you make those vegetables into those flowers?"
Jennifer looked at her watch. Seven forty-five. Mr. Sam Culpepper was already fifteen minutes late. Maybe she'd be lucky and he wouldn't show.
Jennifer hated dating. Once she'd threatened to copy an 8x10 sheet with answers to the twenty most boring date questions and hand it out at her front door before a man even got his foot across her threshold. Why did a guy need to know her favorite color on a first date? Was he going to buy her a Jag or order new furniture for her living-room? Besides, her color preference changed day to day, and, when she was in a particularly ugly mood, hour to hour.
She sighed and dabbed at her cheek with a brush covered with peach blush as she looked at her face in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was pulled up and pinned in a twist and her bangs bowed becomingly over her forehead. Wispy curls draped the sides of her face.
She tugged at the side of her black, sheath dress. She was losing weight again, and she needed every ounce. Her almost nonexistent curves were disappearing, and she couldn't afford another wardrobe in a smaller size. It happened every time she got caught up in writing a book. She'd forget to eat—and sometimes to sleep—coming abruptly out of her creative stupor to find the clock reading three A.M.
Why had she agreed to go out with this guy, anyway? She had no interest in him whatsoever. She could tell that easily enough from their encounter at the reception. He was brash, presumptuous, and impertinent.
Well, no problem. She'd give him one hellish date, and then she'd never hear from him again. It was easier than letting him become infatuated with his self-created image of her and having to wade through flowers and chocolates and love notes begging her to have his child.
Sorry Jaimie. This one wasn't daddy material. She'd know it when he came along. In her novels she had frequently recounted the unmistakable signs of true love—even with her heroine up to her hips in corpses. In her books, the heroes always knew just what to do, to say, to—
The door bell sounded. She checked her mascara one last time, brushed away a wayward lash, grabbed up her bag and shawl, and rushed to the front door.
She threw it open and there stood… an eight-year-old boy wearing a striped T-shirt and jeans, holding one long-stemmed white rose. "This man… this man, he gave me some money and asked me to, um, he asked me to come up here and ring your bell." His voice rose at the end of the sentence as though asking a question.
"Yes," Jennifer said impatiently.
"This man… this man wanted you to…"
Jennifer swallowed all the words that were trying to crawl out of her mouth. "Exactly where is this man?" she asked as calmly as she could.
"This man… he was downstairs… in his car… in front of our building…"
She snatched the rose from the child's hand and tossed it inside the door. "Thank you," she said through clenched teeth. If Sam Culpepper thought for one minute that she was going to dash down to his car without his even bothering to climb the stairs…
She rummaged in her bag until she unearthed two one-dollar bills. "Here, you take this and you tell 'this man'—"
"You can tell him yourself," Sam said, coming up the hall. "Sorry I'm a few minutes late. No spaces were open in front. Somebody must be having a party. I circled the lot three times, but I still had to park all the way around back. I sent my friend up to let you know I was here, but I'd be a few minutes late. Did he explain?"
Jennifer looked from the boy's grinning face to Sam's and down to the bouquet of white roses he was holding. Was this Sam? He hadn't looked this handsome the day of the wedding. He was taller than she remembered, and his curly dark hair was slicked back with a few sexy stray strands escaping to brush the top of his right eyebrow. And his eyes were a deep, dark blue.
She shook her head. "He was trying to say something, but I wasn't quite sure what."
"Did he give you the rose?"
The rose? Where had she put the damn rose? Oh, that's right, she remembered. "Of course, he did. I laid it inside the door so I could look in my purse for a tip." She scooped it up and held it so Sam wouldn't notice the damaged petal that threatened to fall off.
She turned toward the boy. "Thank you…"
"My name's… my name's… Eddie."
"Thank you, Eddie. You can go home now."
"Whoa. Wait just a minute. I borrowed this young fella from his mother, and she made me promise to see him back downstairs. Are you ready?"
Paternalistic. Nice touch. "Yes," she said, clutching her bag and shawl in her right hand, the rose in her left.
"You might want to put these in water before we take off," he suggested, handing her the bouquet.
There was nothing to do but take it. The injured petal fluttered to the floor as the bouquet joined the single flower. She watched it drift down as though in slow motion.
She looked up and grinned sheepishly. "I'll be right out."
She slipped into the narrow space that served as a kitchen and frantically looked about. No one had given her flowers in a long time. All her vases were boxed up in the closet. She grabbed a ceramic tea pot, filled it under the faucet, and plopped the roses in.
The man brought you flowers, and he looks gorgeous. Don't get distracted. Remember your mission. You're to get rid of this guy. You're a woman with a plan. And Jaimie be quiet. That little display of fatherly concern doesn't mean diddly.
When she returned to the front door, Sam was bending down admiring something the boy was clutching in his hand. It looked suspiciously like the flattened carcass of a frog.
"OK. We're a go," she announced. Now she was sounding like some escapee from flight attendant school.
Sam took her shawl, draped it over her shoulders, and offered her his elbow.
Eddie ran ahead and punched the down button on the elevator. He stood swaying back and forth, waiting for them. "She's… she's pretty," he said, covered his face, threw back his head, and laughed.
"I noticed that, too," Sam agreed.
Jennifer and Sam dined on the veranda, that is, if a French restaurant can have a veranda. But then, she supposed, all outdoor porches in Georgia, French or otherwise, could be termed verandas.
The stars twinkled in the black of the night. The breeze was unusually warm for so early in spring. The food—well, the food was adequate. What could she say? Dining out is a mixed blessing for a caterer, especially one who worked for a cook as exacting as Dee Dee.
But the wine—the wine was yummy. And deceptive. One glass was normally Jennifer's limit, and she'd had two. If Sam had looked gorgeous before, he was looking downright heavenly about now.
"So you're a caterer and you write books on the side. What'd you major in at college that you wound up doing something like that?"
Jennifer almost choked on the sip of wine she was savoring. She coughed and cleared her throat. "Psychology."
"Psychology?"
"Yeah. I like to think of it as one of those freedom majors."
"What do you mean—a freedom major?"
"You can't do anything with it, so you're free to do whatever you want."
"Yeah. I got one of those, too. English."
She raised her wine glass in a mock toast.
Sam leaned closer. "I want to ask you something else."
"Blue," she said. "At the moment, it's a deep, dark blue." She stared into his eyes. "But this afternoon it was more of a mauve, and yesterday—"
"What are you talking about?" he asked, taking the wine glass from her hand and setting it next to his, well out of her reach.
She blinked and shook her head. "Ask away."
"When you're catering an event, I suppose you hear a lot of what's going on. How do people react to you?"
"Like furniture. I like to think of
myself as a nice, mahogany sideboard—eighteenth century American."
"Elegant, classic. I can see how…" He shook his head. "My God, I'm beginning to understand you."
She smiled. The wine was definitely giving her a warm fuzzy glow. "They either treat me like furniture or they hit on me. But mostly it's furniture. One time at a bar mitzvah some joker was telling his wife about sleeping with her best friend. He'd gotten her off in a corner, and I swung by with a salver. I heard the whole sorry story while she cried, and I cried, and she stuffed her mouth with cheese straws. The three of us—we could have been in their den at home—with me as the TV tray."
Sam nodded. "Good. When Steve Moore calls you for a catering job, I want you to take it."
She pinched off a piece of warm, crusty bread and popped it into her mouth. The conversation was taking a decidedly unpleasant turn. Jennifer screwed up her face. She sensed some of the aggressiveness she had found so irritating in Sam at the wedding breaking through his perfect-man veneer.
She swallowed. "I don't like him. He's yucky."
"Of course you don't like him, but I'm asking you do it anyway. Don't worry. I'll be there with you."
"You? Not without a TB test, you won't." She shook the fog she had encouraged from her mind. The flow of the conversation was finally falling into place. Mr. White Roses Sam was attempting to seduce her into her catering outfit, not out of her intimate apparel. How dare he use her like that?
"What'd he do? Kill somebody?"
"He didn't exactly do anything. He wrote a book that could well become a bestseller."
She rolled her eyes. "So who, other than me, hasn't?"
"Do you remember when Kyle Browning committed suicide last fall?"
"Sure. I always liked him when he was on national TV. Then he got mixed up in that scandal when all those news people died in that hurricane in the Carolinas, and he got banished from New York to Macon. And then he jumped off the Channel 14 building like that…. It didn't make any sense. The skyscrapers are a lot higher in New York."
"Some of us don't think Browning's death was a suicide, and—"
"And you think Moore knows something. So why don't you just ask him?"
"I did. He's not talking—at least not to me."
"If you think Moore is saving his secrets for his book, then you'll have no story once the book is out. You'll look like one of those tabloid reporters who's out to scoop something Moore is ready to tell anyway." She really should have a clearer mind if she were going to discuss anything more complicated than her list of dreaded date questions. Those she could answer while plotting an entire twenty-page short story.
"But I don't think Moore's book addresses Browning except from the aspect of his so-called suicide. Moore will capitalize on the publicity surrounding Browning's death, but he won't dare speculate on murder."
"Why are you so sure Moore knows something?"
"He has to. They were friends for years, and when Browning came to Macon, Moore worked with the man every day. He may not even realize what he knows."
They sat in silence for several seconds as Sam studied Jennifer's face. "So, what do you say? Will you help?"
Jennifer plucked off another piece of bread, swirled it in the sauce on her plate, and ate it. "Now why in the world would I do that?"
Sam shrugged. "I want to write a book exposing Browning's murder, but there's no way I can collect this information on my own. I need someone undercover, someone not connected with the news media, someone Moore likes. Someone like you. I'll pay you—just not right now. Part of the advance and part of the royalties. Once I get a contract—"
Jennifer's head suddenly cleared. "I want my name on the cover—first. I may not have any hard news experience, but I'm lousy with book smarts. I've got eight full-length novels finished, all with a beginning, an end, and no sagging middles—at least, not too saggy—which is more than you've got. If I even breathe on pages that actually go into production, I want credit."
"We'll have to hash out that name thing. I personally think it'd be more fair if we did it alphabetically."
"I just bet you do, Mr. Culpepper."
"We can work out the details later, but for now, have we got ourselves a deal?" Sam offered her his hand across the table.
Jennifer took it and shook it. "I want it in writing."
Sam's book had about as much chance of happening as a snowstorm hitting Macon—and that was only if it turned out that Browning had actually been murdered. Still, Jennifer couldn't resist any opportunity that might put her name on a book cover. She'd go ahead with her plan to kill Penney Richmond, but she'd help Sam, too. She'd consider it multiple submissions, as eggs in different baskets. One way or another, she was going to break into print.
Dying to Get Published Page 6