Booked for Murder (18 page)

“I just can't believe Guy was involved with her seedy, scummy little scheme.”

“When sex walks into a relationship, sense walks out,” Lindsay said, squatting down by Stella's car with her Swiss Army knife in hand. She uncapped the valve on the nearest tire and opened it up with the tip of the blade, taking childish satisfaction in the hiss of escaping air. Methodically she worked round the wheels, letting the air out of each tire while Helen paced the car park, ranting.

“Let's go,” Lindsay said when she'd finished. “I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted.”

“It's worse than when we started. At least then I didn't know what her dark secret was. Now I'm implicated.”

“I let you down.”

Helen shook her head. “No. It's my fault. I underestimated the bitch. Now I'm completely boxed into a corner. I want out and I want revenge, but what can I do?”

“Yeah, well, it's not over till the fat lady sings,” Lindsay said grimly. “There's got to be a way to screw them like they've screwed you. And I'm the very person to find it.”

Chapter 13

L
indsay drove back in silence, replaying the confrontation like a tape loop. Somehow, there had to be a way for Helen to get what she wanted out of the mess Lindsay had helped create. She was operating on automatic pilot, her eyes focused on the tail lights of Helen's car in front. At junctions where the car had to come to a halt, her mind seemed to go into free fall, the street and the traffic dissolving into the vile and vivid images she'd absorbed from Stella and Guy's videos. They had only seen short bursts, but it seemed to have saturated her visual cortex, becoming the wallpaper on which everything else was superimposed. Take away the outside world and all that was left were the writhing bodies and her impotent anger.

She was reunited with Helen on the doorstep. “A stiff gin and a bath, that's what I need,” Helen said wearily as she fumbled her key into the lock.

“A Scotch and a shower for me,” Lindsay said, following her indoors. “At least you've got a shoulder to cry on.”

The living room appeared to be empty, though Lindsay wasn't prepared to commit herself. As far as she could tell, there might be a tribe of pygmies living among the detritus. Tonight, though, she was too tired to care. They went through to the kitchen in search of drink and found Kirsten and Meredith either side of a bottle of red wine on the kitchen table. Kirsten looked up expectantly, but seeing their faces contented herself with a quiet, “Oh dear.”

“ ‘Oh dear' doesn't even scratch the surface,” Helen said wearily. She walked round the table so she could see Meredith. “We haven't met, have we?”

“This is Meredith,” Kirsten and Lindsay said in ragged chorus.

Meredith smiled. It looked tentative as a first rehearsal. “You must be Helen,” she said. “I'm sorry to invade your personal space like this, but I really needed to talk with Lindsay and I didn't want to wait till she checked in tomorrow morning. This has been kind of a difficult week, I guess you know.”

Impulsively, Helen stepped forward and hugged Meredith. “You're all right here,” she said. “It must be a complete bastard, what you're going through.” She stood back. “You're welcome here any time, whether Lindsay's here or not. You need a bit of company, just get yourself round here. Okay?”

Looking slightly stunned, Meredith nodded. “I thought you English were supposed to be reserved and standoffish?” she asked with a more relaxed smile.

“She's not English, she's from Liverpool,” Kirsten remarked drily.

“A far-off country of which we know little,” Lindsay added.

“Very funny. Come on, K, let's leave Lindsay and Meredith to talk down here. I need the biggest gin in the Home Counties and someone to wash my back while I slag off that scheming cow Stella and gutless Guy the porn king.”

“Porn king?” Kirsten said faintly.

“I'll tell you all about it,” Helen promised, sliding a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan towards Lindsay and half-filling a tumbler with gin. She tossed in a couple of lumps of ice, a slice of lemon and a token splash of tonic, then shooed Kirsten out of the door.

“That is one helluva woman,” Meredith said.

Pouring herself a good two fingers of the golden liquid, Lindsay nodded. “Sophie's ex. You see what I have to live up to? Ebullient. Irrepressible. Generous to a fault. And right now, possessed of a rage that would make the Eumenides look a teeny bit cross.” She took a bottle of still mineral water from the fridge and carefully added about the same again to her glass. Then she swirled the liquid round, watching the sobs of spirit subside down the glass. “How have you been?” she asked, settling down at the table, taking in Meredith's
improved appearance. She looked as if she'd had a decent night's sleep, and her hair was washed and pulled back in a loose pigtail.

Meredith shrugged. “Up and down. I can go for whole chunks of time on automatic pilot, getting through the day. Then it comes at me out of left field, no warning. It's like I hear her voice, or I half see her out of the corner of my eye. I get a whiff of her perfume. Or some memory ambushes me. I went to the local bakery today to buy some bread, and the baker was coming through with a tray of freshly baked cinnamon Danish and I just burst into tears. Penny loved his Danish, she'd send me down there every morning to pick some up for breakfast whenever we were in London together. I felt so stupid. I mean, how can you get emotional about a tray of Danish?” Even the recollection was enough to make Meredith's voice tremble and her eyes grow damp.

Lindsay swished a mouthful of Scotch round her mouth, making her taste-buds snap into wakefulness and her gums tingle. She swallowed and said, “The last thing Frances ever gave me was a jar of quails' eggs. I still have them, lurking at the back of the fridge. The oldest quails' eggs in the world. It's not rational, but if Sophie ever threw them away I'd probably take a kitchen knife to her, and she knows it. We're a good pair, you and me. I have a sentimental attachment to quails' eggs and you cry at Danish pastries. We'd better not have a day out in Harrods food hall, eh?”

“I guess.” Meredith gave a watery smile. “Did I tell you, my employers have shown a novel way of expressing their sympathies?”

“No. What have they done?”

“They fired me. Apparently, I no longer meet their criteria on security. They seem more concerned that I'm a lesbian than they are about me being a suspect in a homicide inquiry.”

“That's terrible,” Lindsay protested. “They know your partner's been murdered and they phone you up to sack you?”

“Fax, actually. I don't even get to go in and empty my desk and say goodbye to my team.” Meredith sighed. “I suppose I should look on the bright side. I mean, it kind of ruins my so-called motive for murder, doesn't it? If I'm supposed to have killed her to preserve my in-the-closet status, you'd think I'd have had the sense to realize that I'd be outed by the investigation.”

“It's outrageous,” Lindsay said. “Can't you sue them?”

Meredith shrugged. “I don't think so. And why would I want to prolong my connection with them by one single minute? A week ago, it would have been the end of the world to lose my job. Now? It's no big deal. I can get another job. I can't get another Penny.” For a moment, they both sat silent, reflecting. Then Meredith straightened up in her chair. “Enough moping. How's your investigation going? Have you made any progress?”

“Not as much as I'd have liked,” Lindsay admitted. “I found out a few interesting things. First, and this is probably the most significant thing from your point of view, there's no closed circle of knowledge about the murder method. Penny and Baz had an animated discussion about it on the editorial floor, overheard by everybody who was close by at the time. Every one of them probably told at least one other person, and chances are it was all over the publishing world by teatime. Second, whoever killed her probably hadn't been a regular visitor to the flat because he or she didn't know the procedures for locking up. Third, did you know about the film and TV deal that Catriona's been working on?”

Meredith frowned. “A TV deal? With Penny?” She sounded as thunderstruck as Lindsay had felt when she'd heard Helen's news.

“Straight up. Galaxy Pictures in a co-production with the BBC via an independent UK production company. Three Darkliners books in nine episodes planned initially, with more if they get the audience figures. I'm told the deal's near completion.”

Meredith shook her head. “Somebody's feeding you a line. You know what Penny thought about adaptations. She said it was like hiring cannibals as baby-sitters. They might promise to be good, but you couldn't be sure what they'd get up to as soon as your back was turned.”

“You know that, I know that. But the industry gossip says different. I guess we have to work on the premise that Catriona Polson still hadn't told Penny what was on offer.”

Meredith shook her head in amazement. “No wonder she wanted to get me out of the way in a police cell,” she said. “I mean, I know that as literary executor, she can do pretty much what she wants in terms of deal-making, but I'm not going to sit on my hands and let her
push this through. Even if it's a
fait accompli
, I can still make sure the world knows that Catriona Polson is taking the grossest advantage of Penny's death.”

Lindsay rolled her glass between her hands and gazed into the amber glow. “Do you think it's a motive for murder, though?”

Meredith stopped short and stared. “You think she might have killed Penny?”

Lindsay shrugged. “She's a strong possibility. A lot depends on her personal and corporate financial situation, which I know absolutely nothing about. But if she's strapped for cash, or if she's just looking to get rich quick, then she's got motive. And she's big enough to have overcome Penny if there had been any struggle.”

Meredith dropped her face into her hands and rubbed the skin round her eyes. “I suppose so,” she said, her voice muffled. She looked up. “You know, I can imagine how the passion between lovers leads to killing in the heat of the moment. And I can imagine the casual violence between strangers erupting into murder, because the person you're fighting is a stranger, not a real person with emotions and dreams and a family and a life. What I cannot grasp is what drives a person to kill someone who is a friend or a business associate. It's not a relationship that should contain the kind of passion that leads to murder. But at the same time, it's a killing that means you're involved in the aftermath. I really do not understand it.”

“Me neither, but it happens.” Lindsay swallowed another rich mouthful of whisky and continued. “Catriona's definitely a contender. She's the only person so far with a known motive.”

“Apart, supposedly, from me,” Meredith said bitterly.

Lindsay ignored the comment and carried on. “We shouldn't lose sight of Baz, though.”

“Baz, her editor?” Meredith said, looking startled.

“There's another one?”

“No, no, I was just a little surprised, that's all. I hadn't really considered her. I mean, thinking about what you were saying about Catriona, surely Baz is a little on the small side to struggle successfully with Penny?”

“Maybe there wasn't a struggle. Hey, what are you doing?” she demanded, outraged, while Meredith took a cigarette out of a packet on the table that Lindsay had assumed belonged to Kirsten.

“I'm smoking,” Meredith said out of the side of her mouth as she lit up. “I know, I know. But I need it right now. I can stop again when all of this is behind me. Don't make me feel any worse than I already do, Lindsay,” she pleaded with a crooked smile.

“I'd probably be doing the same thing in your shoes,” Lindsay said sadly. “Anyway, as I was saying, if I could only pin down a motive, Baz would be my favorite suspect rather than Catriona.”

“Why so?” Meredith asked, her voice sharp.

“Something happened between her and Penny that changed their relationship. I don't know what it was yet, but it was obviously something pretty important. They went from being easy together, enjoying each other's company, to being stiff and formal on this last trip. There's no evidence of any similar rift with Catriona. Plus Baz is really uncomfortable talking about Penny.”

“Of course she is,” Meredith protested. “She's in shock. She's grieving. They'd known each other a long time. They were friends.”

“Not any more they weren't. When Penny died, they were awkward and distant with each other. They had a row in the middle of the editorial floor about the very murder method that Penny used in the book.”

“What do you mean, a row?” Meredith demanded.

“Baz said it was a ridiculous, impractical way of killing someone, but Penny was adamant that it should stay in.”

“And you think Penny invited Baz round to give her a demonstration of how well it would work?” Meredith asked sarcastically. “Use some logic here, Lindsay. That argument says to me that if Baz was going to kill Penny, this is the one method she absolutely wouldn't use because she believed it wouldn't work.”

“Unless it was a double bluff,” Lindsay countered. “Because she backed down, Baz did, and she never backed down with her authors. Maybe she was thinking ahead and already setting up a defense for herself.”

“She's not like that,” Meredith protested angrily. “I know this woman. If she was going to kill anyone, that's not the way she'd behave.”

There was a sudden silence. Lindsay looked at Meredith, a strange suspicion growing as she stared at her friend sullenly smoking. She could almost hear crackling inside her head as connections slipped into place. “It was Baz,” she said slowly. “Your fling. It was with Baz.”