by Lynn Harris
Browser history. Lola clicked, deathly afraid she’d find links to naked photos of Alexandria Coltish.
Well. Quentin was apparently a fan of Annabel’s blog. Harrumph. But other than that, she found mostly links to obscure reference sources on military history, rare fauna, and famous shipwrecks—work stuff, must be. Ah, and here was a directory of baby names—surely Zoe would be a handy Z word? Xander could also be of use.
Sucked in, Lola searched one particular baby name site for “Lola,” though she knew the answer already. “Spanish: sorrowful.” Just for once, couldn’t one resource say “Welsh: wildly successful” or at least “Persian: forgivable”?
A name that meant sorrowful indeed seemed an odd choice for the generally cheerful Somerville family. In fact, Lola had been named for her father’s older brother Laszlo, whom Lola remembered only dimly. An avid athlete and healthy eater who had smoked about twice, like, ever, Uncle Laszlo had succumbed far too young to lung cancer, which had really crossed Lola’s mother’s worry wires.
Suddenly sentimental, Lola found her eyes wandering to an ad in the website’s margins that featured a photo of a supercute baby hatching from a giant egg.
Eggspirationdate.com? Lola clicked.
Oh, dear.
“YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!”
The cute baby was gone. Instead, giant red letters flashed against a black screen.
“YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!”
“YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!”
Warily, Lola scrolled down.
“We know you’re busy. Busy focusing on your career, your fun, your desire to live in the moment, your search for a great guy who’s worthy of forever. But do you know what your eggs are doing while you’re so busy? They’re spoiling, if not running out entirely. And do you know where that’s going to leave you when—if!—you finally get around to trying to get pregnant? Busy … being barren.
“Fortunately, we are here to help. Click on the links at right for testimonials by women who wised up just in time; information about invasive, expensive, last-ditch fertility treatments; and our Internet dating partner, Good-Enough.com.”
Lola wiped her brow. Ye gods, was that a bead of sweat?
I am not going to hurry up and breed just out of fear, she resolved. That can’t be good for the baby.
Though now I really am a little scared, she thought. Sorrowful, maybe even. Why? Because that damn site awakened my true—and bereft—maternal instincts? Or because I’m one of the lucky ones who found someone “worthy,” but he and I are not in a very baby place right now? Even though my most recent actions might have led him to believe we’re closer?
Lola squeezed her eyes shut and quit Quentin’s browser altogether.
Focus, Somerville, focus.
Okay. Okay. Think.
What’s left?
Quentin’s e-mail archives.
Lola clicked.
Hell’s bells.
I’m going to need his password.
Lola noodled around Quentin’s internal settings, searching for any sort of clue or perhaps a handy document marked List of Quentin’s Passwords.
Eureka!
I am a genius, thought Lola. She’d dug up the list of passwords stored by his Web browser.
Going back to his e-mail, she tried them one by one.
Not one of them worked.
Goddamn it.
Lola leaned back in her chair, letting out a long breath. There’s only one thing I can do right now, she thought. And it’s really, really bad.
Forty
“Dougie, I need your help.” Lola had the phone propped between her ear and shoulder. “I know you’re busy over there. I’m sorry.”
“Of course, monkey, no problem. I actually have a couple minutes right now. Do you need Help as in ‘I need your input on this life decision’ help, or help as in—”
“Tech support,” said Lola.
“Even better,” said Doug.
“I’m—I’m trying to help Sylvie—you know Sylvie, the editor?—anyway, I’m trying to help her open something she sent to Web mail for safekeeping. Only now she’s forgotten the password, and she needs it. Much as I have learned from you, this is beyond my hacking ability.”
There. She’d done it. The biggest, most specific lie she’d ever told Doug. The second biggest, but more vague—and only other one—had been the night before.
Who am I? How did I let it come to this? Is my future, my career, my ego really so important? Why am I willing to betray Doug’s trust? Why do I feel like I’m cheating on him?
I have crossed a line.
Lola felt a caving in her chest, like one of those sinkholes on Third Avenue that could swallow a bus. Only she also felt something else around the edges: a dim buzzing, a fuzzy rush.
Am I actually getting a thrill out of this?
See you in hell, serial killer.
“Stay and help you I will,” said Doug.
Now or never, Somerville. Rather: now, or later, when he’ll be much further past the point of understanding.
Lola took a breath. “Find your friend, hmmm?” she said, trying to match Doug’s best Yoda.
“I love you. Love you I. Whatever,” said Doug.
He talked Lola into the right screen and they hunkered down. “
Her? Lola thought. Oh, right. I’m lying.
Lola typed, and clicked, and typed some more, giving herself a chance every moment to stop and admit her transgression. And, every moment, not taking it.
“Okay, now Return,” said Doug.
Click.
She was in.
“Doug, you rule.”
“Strong is Vader. Mind what you have learned.”
Lola grinned. “You are the biggest geek in the world.”
“No,” said Doug. “There is another.”
Lola howled with laughter. “I’ll see you later.”
Assuming I can look you in the eye.
Lola scrolled through Quentin’s e-mail, noting, with some sadness, that of course it all dated back to when Mimi was alive. Lola found several exchanges with her, naturally, but she could tell by glancing at them that they were just banter, plan-making, silly forwards. A handful were work-related, crossword stuff. There was also a receipt from Eddie Bauer, a notice from eBay that Quentin had been outbid for a 1948 Joe DiMaggio card, #1, PSA 8 NM/MT, whatever that meant, for which the higher bid was $6,702.50. Whoa. Guess that’s the kind of thing you save up for. Like Doug and his Buck Rogers disintegrator gun, with holster, or his Batman handcuffs that had become extremely expensive collectors’ items when they were recalled after it turned out, hazardously enough, that they actually worked. Doug was so proud of his Batcuffs that he’d never opened them; “mint on card” condition, they called it.
Anyway.
Fuck.
Lola leaned her head back and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling just hard enough to make it start to hurt.
Whole lotta nothing.
I lied to Doug for a whole lotta nothing.
Lola swung her head forward and banged Command-Q. Quit.
Now what? Now what the hell do I do?
As Lola raised her head, something in Quentin’s Documents folder caught her eye.
A subfolder marked Other. But I looked at that, right?
Lola scanned down. No. I looked at Misc.
Why would you have a Misc. and an Other? Lola wondered, annoyed by this apparent organizational excess. She clicked on Other for the hell of it, with half a mind to merge the two files, just for her own compulsive benefit.
Hmm. Why would this one be password-protected?
She tried the password they’d just hacked from Quentin’s e-mail account.
wasabi
Nothing.
Crap.
Lola tried the first password from Quentin’s browser list.
proustmadeleine
/> No comment.
No time for comment, even. She was in.
Lola quickly scanned the document titles.
Wait.
Did I just see what I think I saw?
Lola opened one document, then another, to be sure.
Oh. My. God.
This, I’m guessing, is what you call a “break in the case.”
Forty-one
Lola had found four large documents in Quentin’s Other file. Three were entitled, respectively, Gay Best Friend; So Many Men, So Little Taste; and Eenie Meenie Minie Man.
Mimi’s book, Daphne’s book, Honey’s book.
With Quentin’s contact information on the title page, under each of the dead women’s names.
Turns out crossword puzzles aren’t all Quentin writes.
Lola skimmed each book. There were some differences here and there—where Quentin had written “red lipstick,” the published versions said “Cover Girl Scarlettastic”—but it was clear that what Lola was looking at was not a final draft. And—yes—there, indeed, on Quentin’s computer, was the scene with the mouse.
My God.
No wonder Quentin can afford to bid on a 1948 Joe DiMaggio whatever. He’s a goddamn ghostwriter.
And, given that Quentin was so far the only clear, specific link among the three authors, a possible murderer.
And, given the fact that I set him up with Mimi, I am a possible accessory, but I’m not even going to think about that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Major question.
If Quentin is the killer, why would he ask me to find … the killer?
No no, that one’s easy, Lola thought. The crossword thing: it’s part of his pathology. He dares people to solve his puzzles.
Lola reached for the phone. Doug is not gonna believe—Shit.
I could call Doug, Lola reasoned. Tell him I just happened to be noodling around on Quentin’s hard drive?
Right after the phone call about the password? The big fat lie phone call about the e-mail password, which, given that what I found was in a folder protected by a password I found myself, turned out to be an absolute waste of a betrayal of trust in the first place?
Better not, Lola sighed.
Not like I can call Annabel either.
She went to the kitchen, sliced open a grapefruit, and, feeling very alone, tried to sort this all out.
Let’s see. It’s common for famous people to have ghostwriters for their memoirs and inspirational/self-help books—but that’s because they’re not writers. It’s also common for companies called book packagers to come up with a concept for, say, a teen novel, and then outsource the writing—but that’s not necessarily ghostwriting, even if the author uses a pseudonym, because they’re only writing Dear Mom, Ran off With a Boy Band, Love, Shelley to pay the rent until they break into the New Yorker.
But an actual writer with a secret ghostwriter?
Strange, but not outlandish, Lola mused. She poured some leftover coffee into a glass and plopped in some ice. You could have a concept, a voice, even a hook, but somehow lack the follow-through for a whole book. Hey, it made sense. You get a call from an agent or publisher, if you’re one of those people who just gets a call from an agent or publisher. “We think your column/blog/letter would be a great concept for a book,” they say. “But if you’re not sure writing an entire book is really your speed, we can help you out.”
Enter the fixer: Quentin Frye.
But wouldn’t Quentin’s various publishers know about each other? Lola wondered. Wouldn’t they have noticed the three murdered authors’ books on his ghostwriting résumé and called the cops?
Not necessarily. A guy writing popular chick lit? I’d call that a secret you avoid putting in writing. I’d call Quentin someone who gets work purely on the word of his agent.
Okay, but wouldn’t his agent notice the coincidence? Every author he ghostwrites for winds up, much like a ghost, dead?
Not, Lola thought cynically, if sales are that good.
Just for the heck of it, Lola woke up the kitchen computer and entered Quentin’s name into the WhoRepresents.com agent/client database, snickering as always at the fact that the Web address also spelled WhorePresents.com.
Nothing.
I don’t even want to think about the possibility that he gets all this work without an agent. If he is, he’s clearly not spending the 15 percent commission he’s saving on his wardrobe.
Lola poured sugar syrup into her coffee from a wee pitcher in the fridge—an iced-coffee trick Doug, adorable Doug, had learned from his postcollege espresso-slinging days in Madison. Lola’s chest tightened again, but she wrenched her thoughts away from her husband. Her awesome, skilled, thoughtful husband who made sure her iced coffee was always sweet. Her supersmart, devoted husband whose innocence and trust she was currently—
Lola wrenched her thoughts away from her husband on the second try.
Now, about the killer part. Quentin?
I mean, Quentin?
It didn’t make sense, but right now, what else could?
Write the books, kill the authors, drive up sales, laugh all the way to the royalty bank.
Quentin. My God, Quentin.
Wait, another question. Do ghostwriters get royalties, or just one lump payment? Shoot. I think just lump payments! Then how would this work?
I don’t know.
Eye on her prize, Lola determined to forget about the small hole that the royalties question had poked in her theory. She ticked through the murders in her head. She had seen Quentin leaving the party just before Mimi was killed. He’d been released from the cops before Daphne’s body was discovered. And he—unlike Wilma, or Reading Guy, who was looking at this point like a pretty shabby stalker—could easily blend in at Bergdorf’s. Lola could see the New York Day story now.
“Acquaintances were shocked by the news of Frye’s deadly double life. ‘Quentin always seemed like such a gentle guy. Guess that’s exactly how he had us fooled,’ said stunned—and stunning—redhead writer Lola Somerville, who, due to her pivotal role in exposing the killer, was awarded a lucrative contract for a book based on the murders.”
Book. Murders. Hang on. Lola chugged the last sips of her iced coffee—ever since the Great Keyboard Root Beer Flood of 2004, open beverages were prohibited from her desk—dropped the glass in the sink, and raced back to her office computer.
The fourth book on Quentin’s hard drive. How could it have slipped my mind? If Quentin’s actually the killer, I’ve got to warn the author that she’s likely his next victim.
The document’s title was Left Behind. Its author—author?—was Nina Sambuca.
Lola rolled her eyes. Did it have to be Nina?
Nina Sambuca had undergone more than one transformation that seemed suspiciously to match market demand. She’d first made a name for herself as the bad-girl author (if she’d even written it!) of the bestselling pharma-memoir Xanax Planet. Then, post-rehab, a reformed Sambuca shocked readers with—and sold a kabillion copies of—Like a Virgin:The New Chastity, a footnoted screed whose cover featured the leggy author wearing a corset and that garnered rave reviews from the likes of Alexandria Coltish and Camille Paglia. (“This crazy bitch doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” read Paglia’s blurb. “Then again, the sexual daemonism of chthonian nature is an apotropaion, a fecund signifier of the omophagy of a world seeking cathexis. I couldn’t put it down!”)
Then Nina found God. According to Amazon.com, which Lola had quickly searched, Left Behind—dubbed “church lit”—was the story of a lonely Christian single whose friends are all married. It had just been published.
Lola looked up Nina’s number, which she’d had since the time they’d spoken together on a Women Writers panel at the Y. During the panel, Lola had said, “I have a question for the moderator: how come the Y never has panels called Male Writers?” After the panel, she and Nina had said “Let’s definitely have lunch.” She and Nina had definitely never had lu
nch, and Lola had definitely never been invited back to speak at the Y.
As unlikely as it is that Nina will believe me, and as little as I would actually miss her, I’m going to have to alert her to the danger she’s in. The world’s least threatening-looking killer is on the loose—and she could be next.
Warn her, then figure out how to nab him.
Lola reached for the phone just as it rang.
Ooh, maybe it’s Annabel.
“Lola? It’s Quentin.”
Forty-two
Play it cool, Somerville.
“Hey, Quentin. How ya holding up?”
And by “holding up,” Lola added in her mind, I mean “holding up under the guilt of having killed your own girlfriend, and others, for your own profit.”
“As well as can be expected, thanks. Thanks for everything, actually—that’s why I called.”
Thanks for having gotten so far off the trail that I got in another murder?
“Quentin, I really—”
“No, seriously. I know you must have had something to do with their catching Wilma, and wow, am I sleeping better now.”
I’ll bet.
“Hey look, we just want this all to be over,” Lola said. Play dumb. Reveal nothing. He’ll never guess you’ve got his number.
“Hey listen, are you going to Nina Sambuca’s reading tonight?”
“Thinking about it,” Lola replied quickly. Whoa. Didn’t even know she had one. “Are you?”
“Yeah, I feel like it’s time to, you know, get back out there,” said Quentin. “Not to date—I mean, leave my apartment.”
Mmhmm. Smooth. “Sounds like a plan,” said Lola. “Remind me where the reading is?”
“Well, it’s at Theo’s.” Natch. The hip downtown church-slash-bar. “But first I’m taking my sister Penny out for drinks. That’s what I’m really calling about. I mean, I know readings aren’t your favorite.”
True.
“So would you like to join us?”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Hmmm, you’ll find out when you get there,” Quentin said coyly.
I am completely grossed out by all this nice-guy, good-brother posing.
“Sure,” said Lola. Couldn’t hurt. Maybe he’ll loosen up over a lager and say something incriminating. “Where and when?”
Lola took a plum from the fridge and ate it over the sink, ignoring the juices that ran down her wrist and into the crook of her elbow. Then, grabbing her garden scissors, she headed outside. The air was humid and sticky, the sky the color of a nickel. Lola hunkered down with her giant potted nasturtium, whose orange-flecked afro needed some serious trimming.