The Last Cheerleader

by Meg O'Brien

  “You probably saved my life,” I said, looking up into gorgeous, soft brown eyes.

  He grinned. “Does that mean you’re my responsibility for all time now?”

  “Well, now, that’s a fascinating idea. I guess we could send Christmas cards back and forth each year.”

  The grin became wider, and on him I didn’t mind the white teeth so much. “I was thinking of something more like dinner,” he said.

  “Oh. You mean tonight?”

  “You name it.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. “I…I still have to work out.”

  “You’re kidding. I meant that I’d take you to dinner after the hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The one I’m taking you to, to be checked out. And while you’re getting checked out, I’ll call the police.”

  “No way. No hospital, no police. I’m fine. The last thing I need right now is to sit around an emergency room all night answering endless questions about why I was attacked, who did I know who might have done it, and what am I doing in San Francisco in the first place.”

  He was silent a moment. “All right, then, but I’m calling the house doctor. You could have a concussion. Or worse.”

  I thought about that, and it didn’t seem such an awful thing to lie in my bed with the house doc attending and Mr. Wonderful by my side.

  But I couldn’t actually call him that. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Greg Levine,” he said. “I’m here for a medical convention, but I live in L.A.”

  Oh, thank you, God. He’s geographically datable. “You really live in L.A.?”

  He smiled. “Yes. Why?”

  “Where?”

  “Actually, I have a little place in Beverly Hills.”

  “A little place, huh?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m single. I don’t need much.”

  “Okay, let me get this right. You’re a doctor.”

  He nodded.

  “Then why can’t you just check me out?”

  “I already have,” he said. “But it’s an insurance thing. And a legal one. You need to have it on record that you were attacked here, in case you have complications later on.”

  “But you think I’m okay?”

  “That’s not a good legal question to ask me,” he said.

  “You mean, since you were here when it happened and you’re a doc, you might have to testify that you thought I was okay? And that could—what?”

  “Hurt your case, if you decide to sue,” he said. “The fact is, there should have been some sort of security up here.” He looked at his watch. “But it’s been a good twenty minutes or more, and no one’s even come to see if anything’s wrong.”

  I didn’t think I’d want to sue, and I didn’t think there would be complications. But Doc Wonderful’s eyes were dark and dreamy, and before I risked falling into them, I just went all feminine and let him call the house physician.

  The next morning, having been given a clean bill of health, I flew back to L.A. and went straight to my office. I’d left my cell number with Doc Wonderful, but didn’t expect to hear from him. After a very nice dinner the night before, I’d gone to my room and then to bed. Alone. And in my experience, men you meet out of town never call unless you’ve given them the best sex in the world.

  Unfortunately, men’s opinions on what constitutes the best sex diverge wildly. Some who’ve heard of Tantric sex have been panting like sled dogs for water to try it with someone. Tantric sex, I’m told—though I can’t say from personal experience, I swear—is lovely and warm, touchy and feely. Some say Tantric sex is a spiritual experience, and the lovers become so close they feel they’ve touched God.

  It can take hours, though—and a lot of work—to achieve nirvana with Tantra.

  So that was out from the get-go. And I really wasn’t up to discovering what else Doc Wonderful liked. It might have meant standing on my head, as in the Kama Sutra, with my legs bent in positions it would take me weeks and an orthopedic surgeon to undo. I certainly wasn’t up to that.

  In the end, it was a wise decision. When I got to the office I was glad I’d taken the house doc’s pain pill and had a good night’s sleep.

  The office door was closed and locked, and Nia wasn’t there. She must have had a change of heart and gone on vacation, but I wondered why she hadn’t called me before she left, to tell me where she was going and how to reach her. I didn’t have time to call her at home, though, because the minute I walked into my inner office, everything changed. Someone had been here, and they hadn’t left a calling card.

  My files were strewn all over the room, and most of my stacks of manuscripts had been gone through as well. Pages of one book were mixed in with pages of another, as if someone had been looking for something specific and hadn’t bothered to put things back in order.

  My desk drawers had been rifled through, too, and all the contents had been dumped on the floor.

  One thing I noticed immediately were the cards from my Rolodex file, on which I kept each author’s name and the titles of their books. It was an old-fashioned way to keep track of things, rather than putting that information on the computer. But the cards also had the current status of each book—sold, not sold, being read by such and such editors, etcetera. I liked the easy accessibility to that information when an author called.

  After I got over the shock, I called Dan on his cell phone. When he answered, I told him I was just back from San Francisco and needed him to come over.

  “Right this minute?”

  “If you can. Someone’s broken into my office.”

  “You mean it’s been vandalized?”

  “Not randomly. I think they were looking for something in particular. My file cabinets have been broken into, and the files are all over the floor. The petty cash, though, hasn’t been touched.”

  “You haven’t called 911?”

  “No. I’d rather you came, because I have some ideas about why this might have been done. But if you don’t have time—”

  “No, I’ll be there. Give me twenty minutes.”

  I didn’t know where he was, but one thing I did know was that to locals, everything in L.A. is twenty minutes from everywhere else. It would probably take Dan a half hour to get here if he wasn’t in the vicinity. An hour, if he was out in the Valley.

  Meanwhile, I couldn’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs. I tried to reach Nia, to see if she’d been in the office at all since I’d last talked to her. I knew she couldn’t have seen this mess, because she surely would have called me, not to mention the police.

  But she didn’t answer at home, and I was starting to get worried. Dan arrived sooner than I’d expected him, though, and I didn’t have a chance to think about Nia again till later.

  “What a mess,” he said, coming through the door and shaking his head. He studied the room a few moments. “It looks like a couple of piles didn’t get touched.”

  He walked over to two neat stacks of manuscripts and nudged one with his toe.

  “Those are manuscripts I’ve been saving to read,” I said, “or eventually to send back to whoever sent them to me.”

  “All these?” Each pile was over three feet high.

  “All these and more. People often mail them to me without asking first, and I don’t usually accept those. Plus, I figure if they came from professional writers, they’d have a SASE attached.”

  He sent me a questioning look.

  “A self-addressed, stamped envelope,” I said. “Or box. Agents can’t be expected to absorb the expense of mailing back hundreds of manuscripts a week.”

  “That makes sense. But the first thing that comes to my mind is whether the writers of these manuscripts ever get resentful about not hearing back from you?”

  “Absolutely. That’s why I’ve been going through them. I’ve been writing down the author’s name from each one, and then I’ll look at my files for letters or phone messages, to see if anyone sounds ang
ry enough to do this.”

  “So, basically, you’ve been messing with the crime scene,” Dan said.

  “Not to worry. I haven’t touched anything else yet. These stacks were off to the side, not all over the floor. I doubt whoever did this looked through them.”

  “I’ll call the crime scene investigators,” he said. “They can take prints and so on.”

  “You know, I’d really rather not make a big thing of this. I just wanted to talk to you about some ideas I have.”

  “You don’t want to report the break-in?”

  “No. I’m afraid word would get out and it would only make my authors nervous. They’d wonder if someone had broken in to steal their work.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. Writers are a paranoid lot. Especially mystery writers. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to write a decent book.”

  He shook his head again. “What a business.”

  “Besides, I think I know—in a way—who did this.”

  “In a way?”

  “Well, I don’t think it was a disgruntled writer.”

  “And how exactly did you come to that conclusion, Ms. Marple?”

  My knees were shaking, and I suddenly realized how tired I still was. I sat behind my desk and leaned my elbows on it. “Well, look at it this way. Tony and Craig were both authors of mine, and I once sold a book for Arnold. Since I know I didn’t kill any of them, I wondered at first if someone was trying to set me up. But then someone broke into my house, and now into my office. So it looks like the real killer is after me, too.”

  I told him about being attacked in the gym of the hotel in San Francisco.

  “Dammit, I warned you not to go there! Are you all right? Did you see who it was?”

  “Yes, I’m all right, and no, I didn’t see who it was. The lights were turned off. I thought it must have been Roger, though, because I’d seen him that day at his house. He didn’t exactly extend a warm welcome.”

  “Which is precisely what I tried to tell you would happen.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I waved that off with a hand. “But why would Roger break into my office? The house, I can see, because Lindy was there. But this?”

  I waved my hand around the scattered heaps of papers on the floor.

  “Okay, so what do you think happened?” Dan asked.

  “I’m not ready to say yet, because I could be all wrong. I just wanted to tell you that I think there could be two murderers on the loose, not one.”

  “Two.” He looked disbelieving.

  “Yes, and if I’m right, the El Segundo PD and the LAPD are barking up all the wrong trees.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me anything more,” he said irritably. “I drove all the way over here, and you’re not going to give me a name. Or names.”

  “I just need to do some research first. And if I’m right, you’ll be the first to hear.”

  Glaring at me, he said, “If you know something, if you’re withholding evidence—”

  “I’m not. It’s all in my head so far.”

  He sighed, but came around the desk and put a hand behind my head, drawing me to him and planting a kiss on my lips. “It’s such a pretty little head, too. Except for the bump, anyway.”

  By the next day, the coroner had released the bodies, and the only thing he told me was that his final report would hinge on toxicology and other lab tests. I had all three bodies removed to the “Addams Family” funeral home, where they were prepared for burial and laid in the caskets I’d ordered. There was no service, but those who cared gathered at the grave site to pay their respects.

  I was surprised at how many people—and who—showed up. There was the usual cast of cops lurking around the outer edges of the plot, hoping the murderer would be there. But how could they tell? They were all watching me.

  Amazingly, Paul Whitmore had flown in from New York. Craig had written four books for Bronson & Bronson, so I guess he felt he had to come. We had a brief talk before the service, during which he told me he was definitely still interested in Craig’s book. I told him we could talk, and that I’d call him in a few days. He seemed jittery, looking around as if to see if anyone had overheard us. So far as I could tell, no one else was within fifty feet.

  When we finished talking, I felt as if a weight had been lifted. It looked as though I might still get my fifteen percent on that seven-figure book. Still, I just couldn’t figure out why Paul was so anxious to pay that much for a book I considered good but definitely midlist. This called for some looking-into.

  There was one person at the funeral whose presence surprised me: Julia Dinsmore, Craig’s ex-wife. I thought I had heard that there was no love lost between them. Julia stood beside Patrick, his arm around her shoulders, and I remembered that Craig, Julia and Patrick had been old friends before Julia moved to New York. I wondered what their relationship was now.

  A few people had brought flowers, and although there wasn’t a full service, I had asked a local minister to say a few prayers for the deceased. He did a nice job, and then talked with the “mourners” to make them feel better. Truthfully, though, it didn’t look as if anyone really mourned Craig except Julia. And me.

  When it came right down to it, I had three people here to mourn, and I still hadn’t been able to really cry. Other than the tears I’d shed over Craig’s body, it seemed as if my emotions had been locked up since the night Tony and Arnold were murdered. For the time being, I preferred to keep it that way, rather than break down in a bawling mess the way Julia was doing now.

  I wondered if the divorce hadn’t been her decision. Maybe Craig had left her, instead of the other way around, and she’d never stopped loving him. Who knew what really went on between married couples?

  The only other people at the grave site were two acquaintances of Tony’s, whom I had met at a party at Tony’s house. They were a gay couple, and of course that brought to mind again the question of whether Tony and Arnold had been gay. I still found that hard to believe. But given that Tony had been so nonsexual around me and even other women, it was always possible. Then, too, there were the ornamental dildos to consider, and the fact that they’d been widely used by homosexuals since thousands of years ago in China.

  It would be interesting to know if the one in Tony’s apartment just happened to be there, or if the killer had intentionally brought it with him.

  When the burial was over, I said goodbye to everyone and went over to Julia. She was in such bad shape, she could hardly walk, and Patrick had disappeared. I felt sorry for her, and asked if she’d like to come back to my office with me. “I have some wine there,” I said. “And something stronger, if you need it.”

  She clung to my arm as I led her to my car. “Did you drive here?” I asked, wondering what time the cemetery closed, and if we’d have to come back for her car.

  “No, I’ve been taking taxis,” she said. “I’ve just been in my hotel since I got here. I was hoping someone would give me a ride wherever I had to go.”

  “Your business must be going well,” I said conversationally on the way to Century City. “Taking cabs around L.A. costs a fortune.”

  “Well, I got used to taxis in New York, and I think I’ve even lost the knack, a little, for driving since I’ve been there. These freeways, for instance. They scare me to death.”

  “I know what you mean. Every time I go on a trip and come back, I feel like a country kid just getting her first taste of the big city.”

  “The pace gets faster and faster every time I come here,” Julia agreed. “And the way they tailgate—” She shuddered.

  “I wonder where Patrick went,” I said.

  “He told me he had to talk to some people.”

  The gay couple, I thought. He must know them from parties at Tony’s, too.

  She laughed slightly. “I thought I could count on Patrick to look after me. But then, he’s a man. One minute here, the next not.”

  “He’s usuall
y quite gallant, though,” I said, smiling. “A bit old-fashioned that way, but nice to have around.”

  Except when he sticks you with a hundred-and-forty-dollar restaurant bill.

  Julia smiled, too. “Doesn’t he remind you a bit of Errol Flynn in his good days?”

  “Errol Flynn? Hmm. I don’t know, I’ve always seen Patrick more as a young Clark Gable. Except for the nose.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “Certainly not Cary Grant, though. Cary Grant was dapper and handsome as all get out, but I never saw him as being an action hero.”

  I laughed. “Don’t tell me you see Patrick as an action hero.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He does seem to have hidden depths, don’t you think?”

  “I guess I’ve never even considered Patrick Llewellen that way, before, so I’ll have to give the idea some thought.”

  The cleaning crew I’d hired had straightened up the office, and as I walked in and glanced around, it looked as if nothing had happened. I still hadn’t heard from Nia, and I was so worried, I’d asked Dan if there was anything he could do to find her.

  “It’s not right that she didn’t leave a note,” I said. “Nia would never have gone off without doing that. What if whoever trashed my office took her with him? What if she’s been kidnapped?”

  Dan had agreed to look into it, but lacking a ransom note, he seemed to think it was more likely that Nia had left on vacation after all. I hoped he was right, but couldn’t help worrying about her.

  Leading Julia over to the camel-colored chenille sofa, I told her I’d get the wine. My arm was around her waist, and she seemed thin and breakable. I could actually feel her shaking.

  “Bring the bottle, will you?” she asked. “Better yet, have you got any vodka?”

  “I think so. Would you like anything with it?”

  She shook her head. “Straight.”

  The small mahogany bar and fridge had been built into the office before I moved in. Now and then it came in handy. I poured out a hefty couple of inches, and Julia lit a cigarette. I was about to ask her to put it out, but couldn’t bring myself to do that to someone who was grieving. I turned up the air-conditioning instead and brought a saucer over to the coffee table as an ashtray. Handing her the vodka, I watched her gulp it down as if it were water.