by E. C. Bell
“She said she’d be here,” James muttered, pulling a small ring of something that didn’t quite look like keys from his pocket. He played around with the lock on her door. After a very short time, it clicked open.
“I think we should make sure she’s all right,” he said.
I stared at the door, and then at him. “How did you do that?”
“Just something I picked up,” he muttered, having the good grace to look embarrassed.
“You picked her lock.”
“Yes,” he said. “Can we just go in, please? Make sure she’s really not here?”
“I’m impressed.” I gave him a soft punch on the arm. “You got skills.”
“Thanks,” he said, and looked around the empty hallway as though afraid the police would dive out and arrest us. Again. “Now, get in.”
I stepped inside and James followed, gently shutting the door.
We skittered down the short hallway into the apartment proper. It was a tiny affair, not much bigger than my apartment was before it burned down. The kitchen was nothing more than a short line of appliances set against the far wall, with a sink and teeny cupboards. Dirty dishes mouldered in the sink. The rest of the kitchen looked clean enough, though a small TV took up most of the counter space.
A small table and two chairs sat a few feet away from the line of cupboards. The table was piled high with old mail. A few feet past that was the living area, no couch or arm chairs. Just a motley collection of bookshelves piled high with books and paper. Another television sat in front of them, and in front of it was a desk. On the desk were pens and pencils and stacks of paper. I glanced at the top sheet. It was a pencil sketch of a man’s face.
“Hmm,” I said. “This looks like you.”
James glanced at it and shrugged. “Could be.”
I pointed at two doors in the far wall. “Shall we check?”
“Yeah.” He walked up to the first one, swung it open, and took a quick glance inside. “Bathroom,” he said. “Empty.”
Beyond the other door was a small neat bedroom. On the bureau sat another television. Honoria was not in this room, either.
“Okay, so she’s officially not here,” I said. “What do we do now?”
“I think we should look around,” James replied, walking up to the kitchen table. He began going through the pile of mail. examining every unopened envelope before turning to the next.
“We came in here to snoop on her, didn’t we?” I asked. “You were counting on her not being here, weren’t you?”
“Let’s just say an opportunity presented itself,” James replied. “Shouldn’t let one of those go by.”
“Why?” I turned over a couple more of the sketches on the desk and looked at them. Both were of James, and they were pretty good. I held one up. “I think she has a crush on you.”
James pointedly ignored the sketch. He walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out a pile of paper bound with a large elastic band. “We need to know more about her, don’t we?”
“I guess.” I turned over a couple more sketches. More buildings. Or, to be more exact, one building. A two-story house, looked like it was in one of the older rundown areas of Edmonton. The windows looked boarded-up. “But I don’t know why we just didn’t wait until—”
“Until what? She tells us everything? Do you really think she’s going to do that?”
I stopped looking at the pictures and looked at him instead. “You don’t trust her?”
“No.” He shook his head, still going through the papers. Looked like bank statements. “I really don’t. Saying she dreams the murder. I mean, that’s just too strange.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I set down the sketches. I didn’t feel like digging around in her life anymore. “I don’t feel very good about going through her stuff like this—”
“Why?” he asked. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I replied, feeling trapped. He was right. I’d gone through my old boss’s office—and from the information I’d gathered, James and I had been able to prove that my boss was truly a bad man and deserved to go to jail.
But this didn’t feel the same. Honoria was—different.
“So what’s the difference?” he asked, and I jumped like he’d read my mind.
“Nothing, I guess. However, she is our client.”
“That decision hasn’t been made yet.”
“Oh come on!” I cried. “We already said yes, mostly! And Noreen said Eddie didn’t know her—”
“And like you said, Eddie might not have told Noreen,” he said. “I still have no reason to trust her.”
“Oh, so you have to trust someone before you take their case for real?” I asked, walking over to a bookshelf as far from him as I could get. I pulled out a book and glanced at it. Some kind of horror thing. Wouldn’t be my cup of tea, if I read. A sheaf of papers that had been tucked in beside it slithered off the shelf in a papery waterfall.
“Crap!” I bent down and tried to pick them up in order.
“I don’t need to trust them,” he replied. “But I have to be able to get a read on them. I can’t with her. There’s something about her that’s—off.”
“Yeah, well, there is the fact that she’s been hospitalized and drugged most of her life,” I said.
I’d managed to get everything that I’d knocked to the floor more or less back in order, and looked at the top page. It had the same title as the book. The only difference was, on the typed pages, Honoria’s name appeared below the title. On the book—a different name.
“There is that,” James replied. “I don’t know if I can trust someone who’s certifiable.”
I glared at him. “You know, there is a possibility she actually has visions or whatever.”
“I doubt that,” James replied, putting back the bank statements and pulling out another pile of papers. “I think her ‘visions’ are a scam.”
“Fine. Whatever.” I looked back down at the sheets and read the first few lines, then looked inside the book. Exactly the same lines.
I looked back at the typewritten sheets and read a bit more. Then back at the book. Same words.
“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe she’s not crazy. Maybe she’s just a writer.”
“You find something?”
“Looks like she wrote a book.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Really, book boy,” I scoffed. “You ever heard of this one? Maybe she’s somebody.”
I held up the book, and his eyebrows raised.
“She wrote that?” He walked over and took it from me. “That was on the New York Times bestseller list three years ago.”
“You remember stuff like that?” I asked, and laughed. “Man, you gotta get a life.”
He didn’t answer, because he was looking at the shelf where I’d pulled out the book and the sheaf of paper. There was a line of books, with sheafs of paper tucked in beside each of them.
He pulled out another book, with a different writer’s name on the cover, and frowned. “This guy died last year.”
He looked at the typewritten pages, then opened the book and looked at the date it was published.
“She wrote a date on the front—it was three months before this book came out.”
“Huh,” I said. “She writes fast.”
“No,” he replied. “Something’s not right. This guy has written twenty-three books. And he’s dead.”
He pulled out another and then another, and his frown grew. “What is going on here?” he finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“All these different authors—and the dates on the manuscripts all read a few months to a year before the books were published.”
I found a DVD tucked in behind the line of books and manuscripts. It had its own sheaf of paper, and when I opened it, I could see it was a screenplay. I recognized the name of the movie—had actually gone to see it. I looked at the date scrawled across the top of the manuscript, th
en at the release date. Four months separated them.
“So, what? She’s copying these things word for word?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” he replied. “But why would she do that? And what’s with the date?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Weird.”
“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”
As I squawked and jumped about a foot and a half straight up, I was almost happy to see James do the same thing. Then we whirled around and faced an absolutely furious Honoria Lowe.
Her arms were full of plastic bags of fast food, which she tossed on the kitchen counter by the television. I watched the huge plastic Slurpee cup tip over and disgorge its contents onto the counter, and then onto the floor. But I didn’t say a word. Like I said, she was furious.
“Tell me! What are you doing in my place?”
My mind was absolutely frozen. I could not think of one thing to say that would not at the very best get us kicked out after being fired, and at the very worst get us both jailed, this time for a long time.
I glanced at James, hoping to see inspiration on his face. I was disappointed. I saw only shock. But luckily, it thawed.
He put down the manuscript he was holding and took a tentative step toward her.
“Sorry, Ms. Lowe,” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “We became concerned when you didn’t answer your door.”
“How did you get in the building?” Honoria asked. Then she sighed. “Joey let you in, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” This was James again. I was still feeling fairly frozen.
She shook her head. “He always does that. I wish they’d fix the intercom.”
“Oh.” James frowned. “That’s fairly inconvenient.”
“Yeah.” Honoria almost smiled, then remembered that she’d caught us in her apartment going through her stuff, and frowned again, ferociously. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing in here?”
“Like I said,” James said, taking another hesitant step in her direction. “We were concerned for your safety.”
“My safety?”
“We called your cell and heard it ringing in your apartment,” James said. “That’s the reason I let us in. We thought—”
“Oh.” Honoria patted her pockets. “I was sure—” She looked at the kitchen table and saw the cell phone sitting amongst the unopened mail. “Oh. Well, shit.”
She shook her head. “I’m always forgetting that stupid thing. You were late—I figured you weren’t going to show up, so I went to get myself something to eat.”
I finally felt like I could say something. “Your Slurpee,” I said, pointing.
She followed my finger, saw the tipped cup, and hissed, jumping for it and holding it up, staring at the little bit left in the bottom dejectedly. “Crap.”
She tossed the cup into the sink with the dirty dishes and took some halfhearted swipes at the soda dripping from the counter to the floor, before throwing the sopping cloth in the sink with the rest of the mess.
“Whatever. I didn’t need it.” She turned back to us and frowned again. “What are you doing with those?” she asked, pointing at the manuscripts we were holding.
James and I both looked down, and then back at her, but before either of us could come up with anything, she shook her head.
“I don’t care what you were doing. Just put them back.”
James and I glanced at each other, and I did my best to signal that I would be more than happy to put everything away if he’d just go and make up with our furious almost-client. He seemed to catch my frantic thoughts and handed me the pile of paper he was holding, then turned back to Honoria.
“Like I said, we were afraid that something happened to you,” he said. “We were just looking for—”
“Clues!” I called from the bookshelf, as I stuffed the manuscripts back as quickly and tidily as I could.
“Yeah.” James sighed. “Clues.”
“Clues?” Honoria asked, looking skeptical. I didn’t blame her. As soon as the word was out of my mouth I thought it sounded pretty stupid.
“We were worried,” James said hastily. “We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have touched your—”
“Writing,” Honoria said. “It’s my writing.”
“Those books—Did you write them?”
“Kind of.”
James frowned. “Kind of?”
“Well, I did write them.” Honoria said. “I just wasn’t the only one.”
“I don’t understand,” James said. Honoria ignored him and pushed the pile of mail on the kitchen table to the floor.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “You want some?”
Without waiting for us to answer, she pulled the various boxes from the plastic bag and set them on the table.
“Sure,” I said, and sat down across from her. James didn’t answer, but eventually took the last chair.
She ate silently, offering us something every time she opened another box, merely shrugging and digging in when we shook our heads. Finally, when she was finished, she pushed all the empty boxes into the bag and tossed the whole mess in the garbage can in the corner.
“So, you want to know about me, do you?” she asked. “About the writing, and all the rest?”
“Yes,” James said.
“It’s all part of the deal,” Honoria said.
She laughed shortly and pulled out a cigarette. She shook her head when James offered her a light and tucked it behind her ear.
“I quit,” she said. “Just feels good to hold the thing for a second.”
“The writing?” James prompted.
Honoria sighed. “I channel—things. Like that guy who died. Brown Eddie. I channeled his death. It comes to me in pictures.”
“But that doesn’t explain the writing,” James said. “All those manuscripts. And the books.”
Honoria snorted soft laughter. “It’s a little side benefit. Sometimes I don’t channel murder victims. Sometimes, I channel writers.”
She walked over to the shelf and pulled out the manuscript closest to her. “This is the first one. I’d never written a thing before.”
She laughed, but it sounded like a sob. “I honestly thought this was me, this time. I finished the thing in weeks, and gave it to a buddy to read. He got real excited. Said I should try to get it published. So I did. Picked a publisher out of a hat, basically, and sent it in. Thought I’d lose my mind when I heard from them, a couple of weeks later.” She shook her head.
“I guess my manuscript was word-for-word the same as a book that they’d just sent to press. Their lawyers talked about plagiarism being a crime, among other things. I guess I really shook them up.”
She picked up the hardcover book. “This came out two months later. Then I wrote fourteen more of the things. Knew enough not to let anyone see them. Just started looking for the novels a few months after I’d finished. And I found them all.” She pointed. “Almost all of them are New York Times bestsellers. A couple won awards.”
“Holy crap,” James whispered. He looked shocked.
“Yeah,” Honoria replied. “I’m glad it finally stopped.”
James frowned and looked at the fifteen novels on the shelf. “You mean to tell me you wrote—”
“That’s right, big guy,” Honoria replied. “I wrote fifteen novels in three years. Like I said, would’ve been nice if any of it had been my own, but whatever. Now I’m back to my ‘artwork.’”
She carefully replaced the novel with the others and then went through the pile of sketches on her desk. She found one near the bottom and held it out so we could see it. “Ain’t it grand?”
I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. I did not like this. Not at all.
It wasn’t because it was bad. Honoria obviously had some real talent. She was able to put detail, emotion, and intensity into just a few strokes of the pen, or pencil, or whatever, it seemed, she had in her hand when the visions struck.
It was he
r choice of topic. Not that choice had a thing to do with it, if she was telling the truth. The sketch showed Brown Eddie being beaten and then being hung in a tree.
“Crucifixion,” she said. “I thought that had gone out of vogue.”
“What’s the deal with the ducks?” James asked.
“Ducks?” I asked. Eddie had talked about ducks. “What ducks?”
“These.” He pointed, and I finally saw the duck. Not a real duck. Donald Duck, the Disney character. And, Donald Duck was killing Brown Eddie.
Holy crap. Eddie had been telling me the truth.
I glanced over at Honoria, but her face was blank.
“I just draws ’em like I sees ’em,” she finally said. “I’ll leave the detective work up to you. If you’re going to take my case.”
She looked at James, her eyes bright and sharp. Not missing a thing.
“So, what about it? You going to? Even though you think I’m either bug shit crazy or the biggest conman alive?”
“I didn’t—I never—I—” James stammered, then, finally, his words stopped. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Fair enough,” she said. “At least you’re honest. You’ll save me a few bucks, anyhow.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to take the case,” James said. “I just have to give it a bit more thought.”
“Whatever,” she said. “You can get back to me, when you finally decide. Call, though, okay? Don’t just break in.”
“Okay.” James pointed at the sketches. “Can we take some of these?”
“Sure,” she said. “Hope you can decipher them. I can’t. Just understand, I’m not going to be a scapegoat for the cops. And I’m done with going to the nuthouse. They might not let me out if I’m committed again. So, decide quick, all right? Because, if you’re not going to help me, I have to find someone else.”
“I will,” James said. “I promise.”
He reached over and shook her hand, then headed for the door. I grabbed his sleeve and stopped him.
“I have one more question, Honoria,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“Why so many TVs?”
She snorted soft laughter. “I use them to drown out the visions. So I can sleep.”
“Does it work?”