“A fracture boot? Isn’t that overkill?” Debby asked.
“It’s a very serious sprain,” Carol sniffed.
“Will someone finally let me know what’s going on?” Lia asked.
“We need your help,” Sarah said.
Ruh roh. This sounds worse than getting stiffed for a 16-foot gun.
“We’d better start at the beginning,” Alice said. “You know how we talked to you about doing covers for Leroy’s books?”
“Yes,” Lia said carefully.
“Hold on,” Cecilie said. “Did she promise?”
“I haven’t promised anything. What am I supposed to promise?” Lia asked.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Cecilie said.
Lia felt herself slipping down a rabbit hole. What are they talking about? Tell them what?
“You can’t repeat anything we say here,” Alice explained.
“And that includes your boyfriend, the detective,” Cecilie said.
“Wait a minute,” Lia said, holding up both hands, palms outward. “Is this something that would concern the police? I don’t like keeping secrets from Peter.”
“Technically, it’s out of this jurisdiction. It wouldn’t be his case,” Alice said.
Lia frowned.
“Nobody knows a crime has been committed except us, and that may be a moot point,” Carol said.
Sarah shook her head, sighing. “Look, can you just promise? Otherwise, we’ll never get anywhere. We haven’t committed a crime.”
“You might get a different story if you talk to some of Leroy’s reviewers on Amazon,” Debby said. “Look, we know something that we probably should share with the authorities in a jurisdiction far, far away. But if we do that, we’re going to be in worse trouble than being arrested.”
“It’ll cost millions,” Carol moaned.
“Hush, Carol. She hasn’t promised yet,” Cecilie said.
Lia stood up. Two cats took her place on the sofa. She pulled Chewy’s leash out of her pocket. “I think this is my cue to leave.”
“Please don’t go,” Sarah said. “Will you hear us out?”
“What don’t the Austin police know about Leroy’s disappearance?” Lia asked. Chewy danced at her feet, ready to go.
“I told you she was sharp,” Sarah said. “Will you promise?”
Lia sighed. “Am I going to regret this?”
“Probably. But please do it anyway. You’re the only one we can trust to help us.”
Lia worked the leash in her hands as she looked longingly at the door. Friendship came with responsibility. Besides, she’d come with Sarah. If she left, she and Chewy would have to walk home. The others could jump in any of three cars and mow her down before she got to the end of the block. That’s if she could get out the door ahead of them. She could wind up at the bottom of a scrimmage before she got to the foyer. Then she’d be in worse condition than Carol. Chewy would escape and wind up in an animal testing lab.
She pushed the cats aside and sat down. They dropped in front of Chewy, hissing. He whined and curled behind Lia’s legs. “I promise. On the condition that I won’t become party to a crime.”
“I can live with that,” Cecilie said.
“I repeat: what are you keeping from the Austin police?”
The five women looked at each other, trying to decide what to say next. Lia waited, watching the mesmerizing flow of cats in the middle of the room. One-eyed Pete leapt off a cat tree and sent the rest scattering like fish in a pond.
Cecilie broke the silence. “We know where he went.”
Lia was astounded. “You let the police send out national alerts, spend thousands looking for him, and you knew where he was the whole time?” Lia exploded. She glared at Debby. “You cried in front of God and network news cameras?” She pinned the women with her eyes. “You manipulated millions of people? For what?” She popped up again, followed by Chewy.
“It wasn’t like that,” Alice said quietly. “We just found out. Can we start over?”
“How far back are we going to go?” Sarah asked.
“It was fun in the beginning,” Cecilie said. She took a brush out of a pocket on the arm of the sofa and began grooming a marmalade tom.
“What was fun?” Lia asked, taking her seat again. Chewy sighed and lay back down.
“We’ve had the knitting club at the Northside Library ever since Sarah was appointed Head Librarian,” Cecilie said. “It’s mostly gossip. We’re the only ones who show up, except for the odd drop-in. Alice tells the most outrageous stories about her family and neighbors … .” She noticed Alice giving her the evil eye. “You do, too, and that’s what started it all.” She turned back to Lia. “It was the bunny slippers.”
Bunny Slippers?
“Alice came in one day and told us about her daughter’s rabbit, Bugs. He’d been eyeing Alice’s bunny slippers with what she later realized was lascivious intent—”
“You have to understand,” Alice said. “These are not cute, fluffy bunny slippers. These are Monty Python killer rabbit slippers with gaping jaws in all their fanged glory.”
“—So Alice was minding her own business, petting the cat. Suddenly Bugs jumps on one of her slippers. Remember, she was wearing them at the time. Bugs begins humping,” Cecilie said.
“Oh, no,” Lia breathed.
“Do you know what bunny spunk looks like?” Cecilie asked.
Lia shook her head, aghast.
“Alice does. Those slippers went right into the washer. When they came out, they went right back in. The next time Bugs sidled up to the bunny slippers with a come hither twitch of his nose, she tore them off and chased him down, waving the slippers and making so much racket, he never came near them again. We were laughing so hard we couldn’t speak and finally Debby says, ‘This is just like Mitford, but with hippies and drive-bys.’”
“Mitford?” Lia asked.
“A series of books about small town eccentrics. Alice started writing her stories down and bringing them to knitting club. We all chimed in with ideas. She couldn’t publish them because she’d get run out of Northside. Debby suggested changing the names and publishing under a pseudonym as an ebook, just for fun.”
“We didn’t expect to make any money,” Alice said. “But that was during the Indie boom, when the only books you could get for your Kindle were over-priced best sellers and 99 cent books by nobody you ever heard of.”
“I hear 99 cent books made a number of writers wealthy,” Lia said.
“We weren’t Amanda Hocking, but we were making hundreds of dollars every month. We put it all into SCOOP,” Alice said. “Then Carol read Russell Blake’s interview in the Wall Street Journal, and everything changed.”
Lia gave her a puzzled look.
“Russell Blake made two million dollars with his ebooks in less than three years,” Carol explained. “He was very open about how he made that money, which was through a grueling schedule of writing and publishing eight to ten books a year.”
Lia’s eyes went round at the thought of that much work.
“I looked into it,” Carol continued. “Most writers making big money publish at least six times a year. I said it was superhuman for one person to write eight books a year, but five people could put out ten books a year.”
“It was a joke,” Sarah said. “We decided that to make that much money, we couldn’t collaborate on funky books about neighborhood weirdos, we’d have to write in one of the high dollar genres. That meant either romance or thrillers.”
“We knew we couldn’t stomach writing romance,” Alice said, shuddering, “even though the market for romance is voracious, and twice as big as the next largest market. Crime fiction was next in line.”
“We pretended to be Russell Blake wannabes,” Sarah said. “We invented a hot, female super-spy named Koi and patterned her after Russell Blake’s Jet series, but with significant differences. We made up outrageous stories, takeoffs on all the best sellers.”
“All
while you were knitting?” Lia asked, fascinated. She scratched the head of one of the deposed tabbies, who’d decided to share Lia’s seat with her.
“It was easy. We’re all readers, and we have two librarians. We know our stuff,” Cecilie said. “We decided to make up a pen name based on popular protagonists in that market, and came up with—“
“Lucas Cross,” Lia said.
“Then one day, Sarah says, ‘you know, we could do this, only we need a guy who will let us use his photo for the author page. Nobody will think anything of it not being his real name. Russell Blake isn’t a real name. ’”
Lia stated the obvious. “They aren’t Leroy’s books.”
“We needed a macho man to sell the series. No one would buy thrillers written by a group of middle-aged knitters. Leroy is the face of our brand,” Alice said.
Lia took a moment to process this. “He has nothing to do with the books?”
“He didn’t even know about them until Lucas Cross was invited to do a signing at Joseph Beth. Leroy hasn’t opened a novel since they taught To Kill a Mockingbird in tenth grade, and I doubt he ever read more than two pages of it. But we needed a good-looking guy who knew how to BS. He fit the bill, and paying him a percentage got him out of my sister Dorothy’s house. Saved her marriage, too, though that’s taken a big hit since Leroy vanished.” Debby said.
“If he doesn’t read books, how did he pull off signings?” Lia asked, fascinated.
Carol yelped as a cat clawed at her boot, using it for a scratching post. Debby pushed it away.
“He’d tell them he just got back from some exotic place and make up a story about the bars and a street brawl, then he’d read a page out of the book, Debby said. “He comes by his ability to lie naturally. We had to coach him on reading out loud. He knows how to charm women, and anytime anyone asked him anything touchy, he just told them he was under a non-disclosure agreement and changed the subject. We’re self-published. I don’t know why none of those dumb bunnies ever asked him how you can be under a non-disclosure agreement with yourself.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there,” Sarah said. “It worked fine until George Weir invited Leroy to be on a panel discussion at AustinCon.
“Who?” Lia asked.
“Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that some of us”— Debby glared at Alice and Sarah—“Felt it was important to accept. Some of us wouldn’t listen to those of us who knew Leroy all his life, and some of us thought they could tutor him, and he’d be able to pull it off.”
“What really happened in Austin?” Lia asked, suddenly realizing the women had lulled her into a dangerous complacency.
“Alice, you do the honors. I’m still too upset to talk about it,” Debby said.
“Have you been following the papers?” Alice asked.
“I’ve picked up headlines on the internet.” Lia said.
“A quick recap: Leroy disappeared during AustinCon, and it looked like he snuck down to the basement to meet with someone. There was evidence of a fight. There was no sign of him after that. We think he was smuggled out in a blue van, but there was no proof.”
“All that was in the news,” Lia said.
“That was a week ago,” Alice continued.
“An endless, miserable week being questioned by the police, hiding from reporters and listening to Dorothy blame me at the top of her lungs,” Debby said.
“Three days ago, he called me,” Alice said.
Lia blinked. “Why would he call you instead of his mother or Debby?” Lia asked.
“Probably because he knew there was no way we could have a rational conversation, with what he had to say,” Debby said.
“It was a hoax,” Sarah said. “He thought disappearing from AustinCon would give the new books a boost and get him off the hook for the panel.”
“He acted like he did us a favor. He expected us to think he was smart,” Alice said.
“Don’t forget the part about laying on the beach in Belize.” Cecilie said.
“He didn’t think about how he was going to make his reappearance.” Debby leaned forward. The cat in her lap yowled and jumped down. “Can you say ‘fraud’? How about ‘creating a panic’? I’ve never seen anyone put so much effort into doing something so stupid. He didn’t put out that much effort in thirteen years of public education.”
“So, he’s in Belize?” Lia asked.
“We thought so, but we have reason to believe he’s not there, if he ever was.”
“And nobody knows outside this room?” Lia asked.
“Not even his mother,” Debby said. “Better she continue to think he was kidnapped by pirates than he ran off on purpose without caring about her feelings.”
“What did you tell him?” Lia asked.
“I didn’t,” Alice said. “I was asleep when he called. Good thing, too. I would have blown out all the cell towers between here and Central America giving him a piece of my mind.”
“You mentioned money earlier,” Lia said. “Where does that fit in?”
“Leroy’s shenanigans are not only illegal, they could expose us and ruin our brand,” Carol said. “And hiring an attorney to defend him could cost us everything we’ve made so far. If we’re implicated in this mess, you can multiply the legal fees by six.”
“Carol’s our accountant, can you tell?” Cecilie said.
“You don’t want to go to the police?” Lia asked.
“Not yet,” Sarah said.
“What are they going to do, besides blow the whole thing wide open?” Carol asked. “Extradition with Belize is a murky area. They can’t drag him home. If he’s even there.”
“But it’s more serious than money now. Carol believes Leroy attacked her last night.” Alice said.
“You never did like him,” Debby accused.
Carol drew herself up. Lia swore she saw the top of her poof of red hair raise up like the hackles on a dog. “I only said he might not be reliable. He’s not here now, which means I was right.”
“Leroy was your mugger?” Lia asked.
“I caught a whiff of Dunhill cologne right before I fell. It’s his favorite. It costs $250 a bottle. You won’t find many muggers wearing it.” Carol glared at Debby. She batted another cat away and slipped two fingers under her support boot, rubbing her leg in a way that suggested she wanted a vigorous scratch, but was too ladylike to do it in public.
“We don’t know for sure that it was him, but we have to consider that possibility,” Alice said.
“Maybe it was someone trying to make you think it was Leroy,” Lia said.
“We thought of that,” Alice said. “But who would spend that much money on the off chance Carol would recognize the scent while he was mugging her?”
“Why would Leroy attack Carol?” Lia asked.
“I had a practice session with Leroy before we left for Austin,” Carol said. “He kept arguing with the way we wanted him to approach the panel topic. It came out that he felt he deserved a bigger piece of the pie and creative input. Said it was his face, and if he represented the books, he ought to have a voice in them. I told him it would never happen.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Sarah said. “We could have listened to his ideas. It wouldn’t have hurt anything. We listen to everyone’s ideas. If they don’t work, we don’t use them.”
“Like you don’t use my ideas,” Carol muttered.
“Water? Bridge?” Debby said.
“Why tell me? I don’t see what I can do about your situation,” Lia said.
Four pairs of eyes turned to look at Sarah. Lia followed their gaze.
“That was my idea,” Sarah admitted. “When Alma told me about you, she also mentioned some of your, uh, adventures.”
Lia groaned.
“She’s very proud of you,” Sarah said. “I had the sense from things she didn’t say, that you have … resources you might be able to tap in our cause. We need to know what happened to Leroy. We need to find him and figure
out a way to resolve his disappearance without exposing Lucas Cross as a fraud.”
“We need to know if he’s behind Carol’s attack,” Alice said, “and if he meant to kill her.”
“And I told you,” Debby said, “stop drinking your own damn Kool-Aid. Leroy isn’t smart enough to pull this off.”
“It happened in Koi number seven, ‘Death Happens Twice.’ He did a lot of signings for that one. He had to pick up the plot, even if by osmosis,” Alice said. “And who says he didn’t have help. Maybe he’s smart enough to find someone who could pull it together.”
“But why? What reason would he have to kill Carol? That’s what you all think, isn’t it, that someone tried to kill Carol by shoving her down those stairs?” Lia asked.
“The way our bylaws read,” Carol said, “if anything happens to one of our members, the partnership is dissolved and has to be reformed. That means everything is up for negotiation.”
“But that’s killing the goose that laid the golden egg!” Debby insisted. “Without all of us, there are no books.”
“And how often does that happen in real life?” Cecilie pointed out. “Maybe he wants to create a vacancy in our little cabal. Maybe he sees himself stepping in. Maybe he told Alice he was in Belize to throw us off track.”
“There’s another thing,” Debby said. “In every plot I ever read where someone is behind their own disappearance, they fall off a boat and are presumed dead so nobody will look for them. That’s not what happened here.”
Cecilie looked at Debby levelly. “You tell me with a straight face that boy has the enterprising spirit to swim a quarter mile to shore in the dark.”
“You do have a point.”
“He barely has the initiative to pull the tab on his beer,” Cecilie elaborated.
“You don’t have to grind it in,” Debby said.
“What do you want me to do?” Lia asked.
“We may be off track,” Alice said, “but Sarah thought you might have an alternative means to track Lucas. If you do, we’re begging you to help us find him.”
Damn Peter! He must have said something to Alma. That’s the only way Sarah could know about Trees. Lia sighed. The hacker would do anything for Bailey, but this was different. She thought about the month she’d spent building the float instead of working on her own paintings. Now these women wanted more from her. The internal struggle lasted for a few, tense seconds before falling to social pressure. How much time can it take to ask Bailey to pass this along to Trees?
Muddy Mouth: A Dog Park Mystery Page 4