Chasing Venus (6 page)

“Why did you move to
Bodega Bay?”

“Well, I’d been living
in LA with my husband and—”

Higuchi spoke for the
first time.
 
He was standing with
his back to the bricked-in fireplace and like Simpson was consulting a
notebook.
 
“Lippincott is his name?”

“Philip Lippincott,
yes.
 
He’s an internist.”

“Go on,” Simpson said.

“Well, after the
divorce I wanted to come back to the Bay Area.
 
I grew up in Berkeley but needed a less
expensive location.
 
And I liked the
idea of a smaller town, somewhere I could focus on my writing and not get, I
don’t know, distracted by all the big-city things.”

Simpson was watching
her closely.
 
“Is it fair to say,
Ms. Rowell, that it’s difficult to make a living as an author?”

Odd question.
 
“It’s fair to say.
 
Most of us have to economize.”

Higuchi spoke up.
 
“Yet even with money tight, you chose
not to seek another position as a legal secretary.”

She was surprised they
knew that detail about her.
 
“I
wanted to write full-time.”

“It didn’t seem risky
to you?” Simpson asked.
 
“To rely
solely on your writing income so soon after your divorce?”

It was risky but her
life had fallen apart as it was.
 
Why not go one step further and quit an occupation she’d never liked
anyway?
 
But all she said was, “I
thought it was a risk worth taking.
 
And if it didn’t work out, I could always take a regular job later.”

Simpson turned a page
in his notebook.
 
“
Devil’s Cradle
is your most recent book,
is that correct?”

“Yes.”
 
She stopped.
 
Somehow it felt like boasting to mention
that it had landed her on the
Times
list.

But Simpson already
knew that, too.
 
“I understand that
book will get you on the bestsellers’ list for the first time.
 
So congratulations are in order.”

“Thank you.”

“Now you’re in that
elite group of bestsellers.
 
Like
the late Seamus O’Neill.
 
As you
know, he was killed at the mystery-writers conference in February in LA.
 
You attended that conference?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say that the
other writers were jealous of O’Neill?
 
He was a huge bestseller, at the top of the lists for years.”

“I’m not sure it was
due to jealousy but I can tell you that Seamus wasn’t popular.”

“Why is that?”

“He was a crusty old
bastard.
 
He carried a gun around
and showed it off all the time, like the protagonist in his books.
 
He was very opinionated and liked to
pick fights.”

Simpson eyed her.
 
“Speaking of which, I gather the two of
you got into an altercation at that conference.”

Annie stilled at the
word
altercation
.
 
Surely it was her imagination running away
with her, because suddenly she was getting the distinct impression that Simpson
was questioning her as a suspect.
 
On what possible basis could he think that?

She began to choose her
words even more carefully.
 
“He and
I were on a panel together.
 
I don’t
even know why he was on it because the topic was women mystery writers.
 
But he sat there and said women had no
business writing mysteries, that they were ruining the genre with their female
sleuths.
 
He claimed that advances
were going down because of us.”
 
Annie watched Higuchi scribble in his notebook.
 
“Afterward a number of people thanked me
for standing up to him,” she added.

“You stayed for the
awards ceremony Saturday night?” Simpson asked.

“Yes.
 
I flew home late Sunday.”

“By which point O’Neill
was dead,” he murmured.

Annie said
nothing.
 
She remembered going down
to the hotel lobby to check out and finding her fellow writers huddled in
groups wearing shocked expressions.
 
Because one of their own had been shot to death in his luxury suite.

She glanced at her
watch.
 
It was past four and now she
had the idea that her unexpected visitors would be staying for some time.

“Are you on deadline,
Ms. Rowell?”
 
That question came
from Higuchi.

“No, my next manuscript
isn’t due for two months.”
 
She
rose, her stomach growling so loudly she was sure all four men could hear
it.
 
“I’d like to eat something if
you don’t mind.”
 
What she really
wanted was time alone to think.
 
“I
missed lunch.
 
May I offer anybody
anything?
 
Coffee?
 
A soda?”

From the sofa
Pincus
raised his head.
 
“I’ll take coffee.
 
Cream and sugar, please.”

It felt like an escape
going into the kitchen.
 
She took
her time brewing the coffee and making a ham and
swiss
sandwich, then decided to grill her late lunch just so she’d have another minute
or two alone.

She put the sandwich in
the toaster oven and watched the radiant bars heat to an incandescent
orange.
 
What could Simpson possibly
think he had on her?
 
There was
nothing
to
have.

By the time she trotted
back into the living room, tray in hand, she’d assured herself that this was a
fishing expedition and nothing more.
 
She’d be cautious in how she answered Simpson’s questions and that would
be the end of it.

She gave
Pincus
his coffee and returned to her chair, eating her
sandwich while Higuchi wrapped up a cell phone call and Simpson reviewed his
notes.

Finally Simpson looked
up from his notebook.
 
“Let’s move
on to Elizabeth Wimble.”

Annie set her plate
aside.
 
“I never met her but I heard
her speak at a conference several years ago.
 
She received a Lifetime Achievement
Award and I recall people saying that it was a rare appearance for her, that
she was getting quite frail and almost never left her home anymore.
 
How old was she when she died?”

“82,” Higuchi
answered.
 
“What did you think of
her?”

“I really admired
her.
 
She wrote what are called
‘cozy’ mysteries and I loved them.
 
So did lots of people.
 
She
had legions of fans.
 
I think Maggie
Boswell wanted to be the
grande
dame
of the mystery writers but
Elizabeth Wimble actually was.
 
She
seemed very gracious …”
 
Annie’s
voice trailed off.
 
“I was horrified
when I heard what happened to her.”

It was
unspeakable.
 
A crochet hook plunged
into the old woman’s throat while she dozed in an easy chair in her Connecticut
home.
 
No sign of forced entry; nary
a fingerprint.
 
Her housekeeper
found her on a Monday morning, when the beloved author had been dead for two
and a half days.

Simpson spoke.
 
“And how did you hear of the murder, Ms.
Rowell?”

“I read it in the
newspaper.”

“Were you in California
at the time?”

“No.
 
I was in Manhattan.
 
At the wedding of one of my college
roommates.”
 
Silence fell.
 
Annie spoke again into the void.
 
“When it comes to Maggie Boswell, I
don’t know what more I can tell you than I told the police over the phone.”

Higuchi chose that
moment to sit down, claiming an ottoman he’d moved away from the wing
chair.
 
“And why was it that you
spoke to investigators over the phone and not in person?”

“Because I left the
party before Maggie was killed.
 
I
only heard about it the next morning on TV.
 
Then a detective called me that
afternoon.”

Higuchi and Simpson
glanced at one another, then Simpson spoke.
 
“Can you explain, Ms. Rowell, how your
fingerprints came to be on the blowgun that was found at the crime scene?”

“My fingerprints were
on the blowgun?”
 
For a moment she
was puzzled.
 
Then her synapses
began to fire and her heart picked up its pace, as if she were running uphill.
 
The
blowgun we were looking at was the same one used to kill Maggie.
 
It was the murder weapon
.
 
This is what Simpson thought he had on
her.
 
“I’d forgotten all about
that,” she said, thinking fast.
 
“I
mean, I knew she was poisoned by a dart fired by a blowgun but I never put two
and two together.”

Simpson frowned.
 
“What do you mean?”

“Well, before this it
never occurred to me that it was the blowgun we were all looking at.
 
Though now that I think about it, it’s
so obvious.”

She rose to stare out
the window.
 
Her eyes focused on the
white clapboard house across the street, the resident cocker spaniel leashed to
the oak tree in the front yard as it was every sunny afternoon.
 
In her mind she saw not the dog, but the
scene at the signing party.

“Maggie Boswell has
what you might call a prop room off the study in her home.
 
It’s like a library with bookshelves and
glass cases filled with items she’s collected over the years as she’s
researched her books.
 
She wrote
historical mysteries so there was a lot of interesting stuff.
 
People were filing through there all
night.”

She spun around, faced
them.
 
Four pairs of eyes were on
her.
 
Pincus
set down his mug.

“The cases were open
and people were taking things out and looking at them.
 
At the time I was surprised because I
figured some of those items had to be fairly valuable.
 
But people were having drinks and hors
d’oeuvres and handling them.
 
And
one of the items was a blowgun.
 
I’d
never seen one before.
 
It was a
long hollow tube made of some kind of metal.
 
Michael and I were looking at it.”

“Michael?” Higuchi
prompted.

“Michael
Ellsworth.
 
You must know the name.”

Higuchi nodded.

“In one of Maggie’s
novels, a character was murdered with a dart dipped in poison.
 
Delivered by a blowgun.”
 
Annie shivered as if a winter draft were
blowing through the old Victorian in late April.
 
She met Simpson’s stare.
 
“Was it curare that killed Maggie?
 
It had to have been.”

He didn’t blink.
 
“Why do you say that?”

“Because it was used in
the novel.
 
Plus, few other poisons
work so fast.”

“How do you know so
much about curare?”

“We all do.
 
You can’t be a mystery writer for long
and not know about poisons.
 
I’ve
used them myself.
 
Strychnine in my
case, in my third book.”
 
She
returned to her chair, aware how strange that sounded but how typical it was
for authors who wrote crime fiction.
 
“And from what people described who were there and saw what happened,
it’s pretty obvious it was curare.
 
How Maggie froze in place, she couldn’t breathe, she turned blue …”

Not that there were
many good ways, but that was a horrendous way to die.
 
Within seconds of injection, the muscles
begin to paralyze.
 
The pulse drops;
the diaphragm and lungs seize.
 
And
most appalling, the victim is completely conscious throughout.
 
They’re excruciatingly aware they’re
about to suffocate but can do nothing to avoid their fate.
 
They cannot call out; they cannot
gesture.
 
Death is the only gruesome
relief.

For a time no one
spoke, as if they were giving Maggie Boswell a moment of silence for the
petrifying ordeal she had endured.
 
Then a new thought wormed its way into Annie’s brain.
 
“No one took my fingerprints.”
 
She looked at Simpson.
 
“How do you know they’re on the
blowgun?”

Higuchi spoke.
 
“Your prints are on file.”

“You’ve been arrested,
Ms. Rowell.”
 
Simpson didn’t need to
consult his notebook to rattle off the details.
 
“Three times in the state of
California.”

“That’s right.”
 
She returned to her chair.
 
She had forgotten.

The incidents were so
long ago, it was almost as if they were from another life.
 
Other parents might be upset that their
child had an arrest record, but given the nature of the transgressions, Annie’s
wore it like a badge of honor.
 
One
arrest was for a Berkeley sit-in; another for lying down in front of bulldozers
to protect an historic Santa Cruz building.
 
She couldn’t remember why she got hauled
in the third time.
 
She wondered how
many arrests her parents had on their records.
 
Probably a few dozen between them.