Naked Once More (13 page)

Except that, as he continued to point out, he was not her agent for this book. He represented the estate, and Jacqueline was represented by Sarah Saunders, who was about as much use as a soggy dishcloth.

“Either Booton is holding a guilty secret over her head or holding her aged mother hostage in some den of iniquity,” Jacqueline complained. “I get the feeling that she isn’t comfortable about her position, but she won’t talk to me. I’ve tried all sorts of ways of winning her confidence—”

“Including thumbscrews?” Chris asked.

They were on their way to LaGuardia. Jacqueline had insisted on taking him to lunch and driving him to the airport; and as she zipped in and out of traffic, making rude gestures at drivers who got in her way, Chris cowered in the passenger seat and wished he had had the guts to insist on taking a cab. But he had accepted the ride, in part, because of an absurd feeling that there was something he had forgotten to say. Something important.

“I need a stooge in that office,” Jacqueline announced.

“Stooge? What for?”

“I don’t trust Bootsie.”

“You knew when you signed on with him that he was untrustworthy. What are you up to, Jacqueline? Ever since you got back from Pine Grove—”

“Just trying to do my job, dahling. I want someone in Booton’s office who will tell me what is really going on. An honest-to-God agent, dedicated to my interests. I don’t suppose you—”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“I didn’t mean you, dahling. Not for worlds or wealth would I attempt to keep you from Evelyn’s arms. Don’t you know some poor starving young agent who’d go to work for Booton—and me?”

“I don’t know anybody that desperate.”

“How about if I offered him or her my next book?”

“Not only is that somewhat unethical, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“I don’t know about that. If I don’t screw this one up, my next should be worth a cool million. Ten percent of that isn’t so dusty.” Jacqueline pondered. “I might even offer fifteen.”

“Forget it,” Chris said firmly. “You don’t have time to play Mata Hari. Not only will you be fully occupied with publicity, but you’ve only got a month to turn in that outline. What was your lawyer thinking of, to let that clause stand?”

“He was thinking the same thing I was—the sooner I turn it in, the sooner the auction, and the sooner I get some
money.
” She forced her way into the right lane, between an eighteen-wheeler and a bus. Chris let out a muffled scream.

“I’ll try—I’ll see if I can get the English royalties ahead of schedule. Will that help?”

“Thanks. Don’t worry, Chris, I’m as anxious to get to work as you would have me be. If I can’t get that outline done in a month, I’ll never get it done.”

“Feet getting chilly?”

Jacqueline did not smile. “A little. It’s a big responsibility. I’m counting on that mysterious outline of Kathleen’s. I don’t know how long it is, or how detailed, or what the hell is in it. Since I was chosen, my ideas about the sequel must be closer to Kathleen’s than those of the other contenders, but what does that mean? That they missed by a mile and I only missed by nine-tenths of a mile? Booton acts as if that outline were Top Secret. He won’t even trust it to the mail. I will be allowed to see it on Monday morning, when I go to his office for the signing of the contract and the press conference.”

“You can’t blame him, Jacqueline. Judgments of the sort he made with regard to the various outlines are obviously subjective; they can’t be measured in feet and inches. He doesn’t want to give the losers any grounds for complaint.”

“Mmmm. I’m ridiculously nervous about it, Chris. I just wish I knew how much she actually did. It could be anything from a single page of scribbles to a complete chapter-by-chapter outline.” She made a swooping turn, and pulled up in front of the entrance to the Shuttle. “Thanks, Chris. For that and everything else you’ve done.”

Now that the moment was at hand, Chris couldn’t move. What was it he wanted to say? Something plucked at his nerves like a jagged fingernail, and he was unable to identify it. He took her hand in his. “Jacqueline. If anything goes wrong—anything at all—call me. I’ll come.”

Instead of answering she leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth—not the polite social peck of their profession, but a warm, hard, prolonged pressure. “Pass that on to Evelyn,” she said.

Chris got out of the car. “Call me, Jacqueline.”

Jacqueline grinned. “Never fear, sweetie, I’ll keep you au courant. You’re going to miss it at first, you know—the gossip, the scandal, the dirty dealings, and the camaraderie. I’ll be your little dose of Methadone till you can wean yourself off the hard stuff. But don’t worry about having to rush to my rescue. It’s just a quiet little country town. No ghosts, no murderers. Be happy, love.”

Without waiting for a reply she drove off, leaving Chris standing on the curb with his single suitcase. He took out his handkerchief and passed it over his mouth. It came away stained with the odd bronzy-red of Jacqueline’s lipstick. That had been quite a kiss. Why had she done it? Not to embarrass him with Evelyn; Jacqueline’s sense of humor wasn’t that rude. Besides, she must have known he would remove the evidence.

He had never had the slightest inclination to become intimate with her. Not only would it have been unprofessional, but going to bed with Jacqueline would be rather like cuddling up with… He couldn’t think off-hand of an appropriate zoological comparison. A tiger? No; rather, a tiger-sized domestic cat. They were delightful animals, but unpredictable.

What the hell had she meant by kissing him as if she never expected to see him again?

“Oh, God,” Chris exclaimed. Another prospective passenger looked at him sympathetically. “Get sloshed,” he advised. “I always do.”

Chris decided the advice had merit. It was not fear of flying that had provoked his appeal to higher powers; it was a sudden flash of premonition. Ghosts and murderers… A Freudian slip? Despite his efforts to remain detached from and unconcerned with his clients’ extracurricular activities, it had been impossible for him to remain ignorant of Jacqueline’s recurrent encounters with crime. The most recent of these events, featuring her former agent, had received lavish media coverage, including references to earlier cases. What was she up to now? Surely she didn’t believe… Ghosts and murderers. The ghost could only be that of Kathleen Darcy. The murderer…

Unconscious of the stares of passersby, he raised his face to the sullen heavens. “I’m wrong,” he assured them. “I’m often wrong. Let me be wrong this time!”

A drop of rain hit him in the eye. He went into the terminal.

Chris would have been even more perturbed if he had overheard the conversation that transpired that evening between Jacqueline and a friend of hers.

O’Brien wasn’t thinking conversation, he was thinking monologue. So far he hadn’t been able to get a word in. He sipped his coffee (he was working nights that week, hence his preference for caffeine over alcohol) and watched Jacqueline race up and down the room, arms in fluid motion, mouth never closing. Watching Jacqueline was a pleasure even when she was in one of her manic moods. She moved like a dancer, her tall body relaxed and graceful. She wore clothes that suited her, too. O’Brien noticed things like that. He was sensitive to color; his ties, socks and natty pocket handkerchiefs were always carefully coordinated. He wasn’t sure how to describe the color of the long robe that flowed with Jacqueline’s movements. Metallic. Brown and gold and covered with things that sparkled.

She dropped down onto the floor in a swirl of shimmering light. “Well? What do you think, Patrick?”

Bronze, O’Brien thought. The same color as her abundant hair. “Is this a professional consultation?” he asked.

“Of course not. It’s way out of your jurisdiction. I’m asking as a friend.”

O’Brien supposed that was what they were—friends. Their affair had ended several months earlier, by mutual consent. At least he had believed it was by mutual consent, until the hypnotic effect of Jacqueline’s voice had worn off. He still couldn’t figure how she had done it. All that trite crap about beautiful memories and not allowing something so perfect to degenerate into tedium.… And, damn it, they were friends. He dropped in from time to time, to talk and listen to music. Occasionally she called him to suggest one of her lunatic outings—to Coney Island or the Museum of Mechanical Toys.

She sat there, elbows on her knees, chin on her hands, giving him The Look. Her eyes were the clear, translucent green of seawater. They never blinked.

“You’ve got murder on the brain, Kirby,” he said.

The sea-green eyes darkened ominously. “You said that the last time, O’Brien. Was I right or was I right?”

“You were right. That time. But this is so amorphous.… You read part of a letter, see the word ‘poisoned,’ and dive off the deep end. Fortman died a few years back—are you sure you don’t want to investigate that case? I mean, the guy was only ninety-two.”

“You are not cute when you try to be sarcastic,” Jacqueline informed him.

“I wasn’t trying to be cute. I give you points for one thing: you had enough common sense to double-check. With the acumen of any good ex-librarian, you figured Fortman might have left his papers to some institution. You discovered that indeed he had. So you went to Harvard and had a look at his collected letters. And when you read the original of Kathleen Darcy’s letter, you discovered she was referring to food poisoning. She ate some rotten tuna fish.”

“That’s what she thought at the time. She corresponded with Fortman for a year, O’Brien. They became friends, though they never met. Pen pals. He was a lonely old man; he told her about his arthritis, and how sometimes he’d sneak a drink in spite of the doctor’s warnings. She replied in kind, as any warm-hearted person would. And in the fourteen letters she wrote him, there are three references to ‘accidents’ that could have killed or seriously injured her. The so-called food poisoning—which nobody else in the house got; the broken ladder; that stone that fell from the wall of the house and missed her by six inches. How many others might there have been that she didn’t mention?”

“I don’t know and neither do you.” O’Brien finished his coffee, considered asking for another cup, and decided against it. Too much caffeine made him jittery. “Okay, Kirby, you asked for it, so I’ll tell you. I remember the Darcy case very well. I took a particular interest in it, not only because I admired the book, but because I had just been transferred to Homicide. As a gung-ho, smug big-city cop I figured the local fuzz would screw up. Maybe they did; but I doubt it. So far as I could tell from the published reports, they covered everything. The car wasn’t found for some time and the weather had been fierce; a platoon of homicidal gorillas could have rampaged through that clearing and their tracks would have been obliterated by rain and sleet. There was no evidence that anyone had been with her in the car; no convenient monogrammed clues on the scene. If I had been in their shoes, I’d have come up with the same conclusion they did, namely and to wit, that there were only two theories that fit the facts. The first, suicide. She drove there intending to kill herself, took an overdose of something, then got cold feet. She was too groggy to think clearly; she got out of the car, wandered off looking for help, collapsed, and died.”

“She decided to look for help and got out of the car?” Jacqueline inquired gently. “Miles from a house?”

“She wasn’t thinking clearly. Or—second possibility—she went for a drive, ended up in the clearing; while she was sitting there, thinking the profound thoughts writers think, somebody found her. A bum, a tramp, whatever term you prefer. He attacked her, and ended up killing her, possibly without intending to; panicked; hid the body; fled.”

“Leaving the car, with the keys in the ignition, and her purse on the seat?”

The sarcasm in her voice stung like a wasp. O’Brien flapped his hands. “So maybe the first alternative is more likely. If she had been injured and lost her memory, she would have turned up sooner or later; any driver who picked up a woman wandering and confused would have reported it. She’s dead, Jacqueline—one way or the other. The only strange thing to me is that it took the courts so long to confirm the fact legally. It needn’t take seven years. A strong presumption is enough.”

“That is an interesting point,” Jacqueline agreed. “Why didn’t St. John demand the courts take action earlier?”

“Oh, he’s your murderer, is he?”

“It had to have been someone close to her. Those seeming accidents—”

“You want to know about those accidents? I’ll tell you about them.”

Jacqueline took a heavy paperweight from the table and hefted it. “If you say ‘death wish,’ I’ll throw this at you.”

And she’d probably hit him, too, O’Brien thought. “The phrase I was about to use was ‘accident-prone.’ I’ve read the psychology texts and so have you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“The theory, or that Kathleen Darcy had a…” O’Brien stopped himself in the nick of time.

“Both. Neither.” Jacqueline brooded, chin on her hands. “It’s not just the accidents, Patrick, it’s an accumulation of odd little facts. If she cared enough about the sequel to set up this competition, why didn’t she stick around and write it herself? Surely that weakens the assumption of suicide. If she met some peripatetic, anonymous killer, by sheer chance, how do you explain her premonition of approaching death? She made that will only a few weeks before she disappeared. I don’t believe in premonitions.”

“They aren’t admissible in court. But—”

“The copy of the verse from Dunbar’s poem, which was found among the papers in her purse, is another suggestive clue,” Jacqueline went on. “The papers were a miscellaneous lot, the kind of mixture that tends to accumulate in women’s handbags—”

“You ought to know,” O’Brien murmured.

Jacqueline was used to rude innuendoes about the clutter in her purse. She continued without countering the accusation. “Charge slips, coupons, receipts, shopping lists.… But that quotation was the only literary reference among them. Did it have a special significance? Several people suggested it was meant as a suicide note. ‘Timor mortis conturbat me—’ ”