Holmes & Moriarty 02 - All She Wrote (MM) (4 page)

I called down, “I know how far back you and Anna go, Rudolph, but what about you, Sara?”

She fastened her cool gaze on me. “I’ve worked for Anna for five years.” She turned back to Rudolph.

And clearly had a ball every minute. Jesus. Maybe Anna found her a jewel beyond price, but I thought she was a whey-faced bitch. As Miss Butterwith would have said.

Well, okay, Miss Butterwith wouldn’t have said that, but it was my opinion and I was sticking to it.

“I met Anna this year.” That chirpy voice belonged to the youngest member of the enclave. I’d managed to remember Nella House’s name because of a not-very-kind name association. She was a big girl. A very, very big girl. One of those very big girls who you fear won’t live to see forty if they don’t take action now. She was perhaps in her early twenties, bright blue eyes, glossy brown hair and rosy cheeks.

“How did you meet her?”

“When I found out she actually lived
here
, in Nitchfield, I drove out to tell her how much I loved her, and we…” She pressed her fists together which I guess was supposed to signify what we grownups call rapprochement. Or maybe it was a gang sign. The Crips. The Bloods. The Quills.

Of course they’d hit it off. What’s not to love about unconditional admiration? Nella’s baby blues were sparkling even now with the remembered thrill of that first meeting with her idol. The shock and the joy of discovering Anna breathed the same air that Nella did.

For which I really had to hand it to Anna. I can’t say I’d have been as gracious, let alone taken under my wing an admiring aspirant. Not that aspirants ever showed up at my front door to admire me. Frankly, no one showed up at my front door with the exception of the mailman, UPS

and the pool guy. No, come to think of it, the pool guy used the side gate.

“How long have you been writing?” Perhaps I don’t always do the right thing, but I do generally know what the right thing is.

“Since I was fourteen. I wrote my first novel when I was sixteen.”

I swallowed the lump of prime rib that seemed to have wedged in my throat. “Are you published?”

“I’ve had sixty-three poems published. No novels yet.”

“Your novel will be published,” Rowland told her. He nodded at her with an assurance I’d have thought only Rudolph Dunst was in a position to offer. Nella blushed.

“You were both in the writing group last year?”

“Yes,” Rowland said. “Me, Nella and Arthur.”

Arthur Gohring was the other male student. Arthur struck me as more of a biker type than a writer type. Not that he couldn’t be both, of course. He reminded me of Ving Rhames: brawny, bald and black. He looked like he’d have interesting things to write about—after he finished stabbing his pen through your neck.

“How long have you been writing, Arthur?”

It’s my experience that aspiring writers and the newly published aren’t nearly as tired of such questions as veterans of the writing wars. Arthur, however, said in his deep, deep voice, “A long time. How did you get an agent, Chris?”

Chris
. No one calls me Chris. It’s Christopher or Mr. Holmes. I don’t even let my parents call me Chris—though they did draw the line at Mr. Holmes. True, J.X. called me
Kit
, but that was J.X. He got special dispensation for being…J.X.

“I got mine from the pound,” I said. “I always think it’s nice if you can rescue one of the older agents. They’re usually housebroken and—”

“No, really,” Poppy Seed cut in, no nonsense.

Hadn’t I explained this to Rowland? Was this how the writing seminar was going to go too? Was I trapped in some annoying version of
Groundhog Day
101?

I said, “I’d completed the first Miss Butterwith manuscript so I mailed it to several—”

Poppy Seed gaped. “
Mailed
it?”

“Right.”

“Through the post office?”

“Yeah.”

“You couldn’t just email it?”

“No. This was back in the day when some of us still used paper and typewriters. Electric typewriters, of course, and later on word processors, but still antediluvian, I agree.”

Nella, boldly reaching for seconds of those buttery whipped potatoes, asked, “But how did that work? The agents would receive a package in the mail and then what? Did they mail you a letter to tell you they were accepting your work?”

“Usually it was to tell you they weren’t accepting your work, but yes. Or they’d call.”

“How long ago
was
this?”

“About sixteen years ago.”

“Oh. So there weren’t so many writers back then.” She smiled knowingly.

I started to object, but in a way she was correct. Technology had changed publishing, and was continuing to change it in ways we’d never dreamed back when I was carving out shelf space in my comfortable niche. But it’s not like hard work and, hopefully, some talent hadn’t played a role in my success. At least, I wanted—needed—to believe so.

“How convenient. For the agents.” Poppy’s plate was now cleared of any prime rib. Had she already eaten it or had she cut it into such infinitesimal pieces it was no longer visible to the naked eye?

“Well, yeah. Basically they hold the keys to the citadel. At least in those days. And these days too if you still want a contract with mainstream publishing.”

“Mainstream publishing,” scoffed Arthur.

“That’s where the money is.”

“Money.”

I gave that up for a lost cause. I happen to like money, so sue me—but not for all my money, please.

“I’d like a mainstream contract,” Nella put in. I smiled benignly at her. I like common sense in a beginner.

Arthur said, “Mainstream publishing is obsolete. There’s nothing mainstream publishing can do for you that you can’t do yourself.”

Nella said, “There’s more prestige.”

“Prestige.”

I’d already noticed that Arthur and Nella seemed to disagree with each other every time the other opened his—or her—trap. They were both violently opinionated in the way only aspiring writers can be.

“I read in
Publisher’s Weekly
—”

“That’s not what I read in
Writer’s Digest
—”

“Have you been with the same agent your whole career?” Rowland spoke loudly over their raised voices. He seemed preoccupied with my agented status, but that’s not unusual when you’re standing outside the hallowed gates of first-time publication.

I nodded in answer. By then I’d have had to shout to be heard over Arthur and Nella.

“Mainstream publishing is
dead
. Put a fork in it!”

“Only egomaniacs would consider publishing their own work!”

The others, including Sara and Rudolph, politely ignored the exchange.

Ever the ambassador of goodwill, I said, “Were you all staying at the house when Anna had her accident?”

You’d have thought I stood up and sloshed a bucket of ice water over them. The silence that followed my words could only be described as
ringing
.

I’d been looking at Rowland, and he was the first to break that pregnant pause.

“No. I only arrived yesterday.”

“I was here,” Nella said. “I spend the weekend lots of times.”

The others all said they hadn’t been present at the time of Anna’s fall. They answered so conscientiously, one by one, so that I felt like I was channeling Professor Plum in the Dining Room with the Candlestick.

“Why?” Sara asked in her cool way at last.

“Merely making conversation,” I replied.

There was another funny lull and then Victoria mentioned finishing Caleb Carr’s
The
Alienist
and everything seemed to snap back to normal. A lively discussion began as to whether the book was a mystery, a historical, or—in Arthur’s view—a total rip-off.

My attention wandered. Only Rudolph, Sara and Nella had been staying at the house when Anna took her tumble down the stairs, which surely limited the cast of suspects.

No, it didn’t.

Nothing said a member of the estate staff couldn’t hold some grudge against Anna. She could be pretty hard to please as I well recalled.

Still, if Anna had any disgruntled employees, they could simply leave her service. It’s not like these days anyone was trapped in indentured servitude. Well, unless you believed everything you read in
Mother Jones
magazine.

The idea of Rudolph, Sara or Nella wanting to injure Anna seemed pretty unlikely. Maybe Anna
was
stringing together a coincidental series of close calls and coming up with a murder plot where none existed.

One thing I had noticed during the earlier introductions—though I didn’t see how it could be significant—was that every member of this year’s AC was local. The year I’d taken part, there had been writers from all over the country. There had even been a girl from Peru, an exchange student from one of Anna’s college classes. My understanding was Anna chose each year’s participants based on workshops and seminars she held all across the States—as well as recommendations from her publisher. This year’s gathering seemed much less formal; it had a certain homegrown feel to it. If these students were all locally based, it was possible that one of them could have arranged for a fall in the garden—maybe even tampered with the brake fluid in Anna’s car.

Arranging a bout of food poisoning would be trickier, but there was always the chance that the food poisoning really
had
been an accident and was unconnected to these other events.

Frankly, there was a chance—more than a chance—that all of these events were unconnected and Anna was imagining things.

All the same, that had been a very odd silence when I asked about who had been staying in the house. Almost as though I’d brought up something that was on everyone’s mind, but that no one wanted to mention.

After dinner the others adjourned to the large, fully equipped home theater to watch
The
Birds
.

Though Anna was no relation to
The
Hitchcock, in the early years of her career she had coyly implied a connection. I don’t know if it had helped her career or not, but one of the traditions of the Asquith Circle weekends was viewing classic Hitchcock films each evening.

I wasn’t sure if I was expected to sit in for Anna and play Siskel to Sara’s Ebert, but I was short on sleep and I had a stack of manuscripts to read through—not to mention the fact that
The
Birds
has always creeped me out.

Leaving my fellow scribes to enjoy an evening watching human Barbie Tippi Hedren trying to keep her fine feathered friends from permanently rearranging her hair and makeup, I retreated to my quarters.

I’d no sooner settled—cautiously—on the tomb-sized bed with an unnervingly tall stack of manuscripts then I heard a soft tapping at the door.

I took my reading glasses off, climbed down from the bed and went to answer the summons. Sara stood in the elegantly wide hallway.

“Anna was hoping she could see you for a few minutes before you turn in for the evening.”

“Sure.”

I followed her down the hallway. I was thinking how really awkward it felt to try and talk to her when she said abruptly, “Are you settled in all right?”

“Yes. Fine, thanks.”

“Good.”

It occurred to me that what I was interpreting as icy reserve might in fact be something more like awkwardness. Because Sara was eerily efficient didn’t mean that she wasn’t shy. I sometimes forgot that even though I too was on the introverted side.

Okay, a lot on the introverted side.

Feeling my gaze, Sara gave me a polite, cool smile.

Or maybe she was a cold, unfriendly android in woman’s clothing. But I suspected that she was a shy person who had learned to compensate with a cool, all-but-uncrackable professional demeanor.

“Do you enjoy these writing weekends?” I asked.

“Of course.” Was it my imagination or did she sound defensive?

“They must make a change from your usual duties.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the one who does all the running around and organizing everything?”

She hesitated. “Anna and I have it pretty much down to a science now.”

No doubt, but one thing I remembered about Anna. She was never the one saddled with doing the dogsbody work. Even when she had been teaching full-time way back at good old UCI, she had plenty of TAs to do the grunt work.

“Do you write as well?”

She said dryly, “Doesn’t everyone?”

These days it did seem that way.

We reached Anna’s suite. Sara tapped on the door, pushed it open and stood aside.

I walked past her and Sara closed the door after me.

“Christopher.” Anna held her hand out to me. “It occurred to me a short while ago that I never even thanked you for rushing to my rescue.”

I walked around the bed, took her hand. “That’s okay. My pleasure.”

“Liar.”

“Nah. When duty calls…”

She was still holding my hand. It was a little uncomfortable. Not that I minded holding hands with her, but it wasn’t our usual style.

“It means so goddamned much. It really does. That you would drop everything for me.

Especially after all these years.”

She appeared to be quite serious. I said awkwardly, “I don’t mind. I was glad to. I know I don’t keep in touch, but I haven’t forgotten how encouraging you were to me when I started out.

How kind you were. I’m glad to do something in return.”

“It’s…” She stopped. Her expression twisted and she said, “It’s just that for the first time in a long, long while things are going
right
for me.”

Now that was a shocker. “Things haven’t been going right for you?” Anna was one of those people who always seemed to land on her feet. Everything went right for her. At least that’s how it always seemed to me.

She shook her head, and her eyes filled with uncharacteristic tears. She let go of my hand to wipe them away. “The last couple of years have been rough. I haven’t been writing. When Todd and I separated…oh, I can’t explain it without sounding fucking pathetic, but something went out of me. I stopped caring. About anything. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to teach. I didn’t want to see people or go anywhere.”