Nerds Who Kill: A Paul Turner Mystery (15 page)

“Kind of heavy to be dashing around carrying a collection of broadswords. Somebody’s got to notice these kinds of costumes.”

Turner said, “I don’t see Melvin Slate, our nut, having the wherewithal to plan this carefully. Unless he’s a far better actor than I think he has the ability to be.”

Molton showed up. “What the hell is going on?”

They told him.

“Can we seal off all the floors?” Fenwick asked. “And stop the elevators?”

“You’ve already got people on every floor. We’ll get all these stairwell doors open. We’ve got to solve this as quickly as possible. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in this hotel are innocent. Yes, I know, we’re going to inconvenience them. We don’t want one of them to become the next victim.”

Turner said, “Do we need to evacuate the hotel?”

“This complex is huge,” Molton said. “We’ve got thousands of people milling about in the public areas of the hotel. They’re spilling into the street and the convention rooms are full. The restaurants in the area are jammed.”

“They would be for a convention of this size anyway,” Fenwick said.

Molton considered for a few moments. “We’ve got all the floors and the lobby covered. Our killer hasn’t struck people in groups, yet. Nobody’s getting up or down the elevators without an escort. We can’t make people leave their rooms. We’ll have the cops on each floor knock on every door, explain what’s happened and suggest that they leave. Or at the very least, that they don’t open their doors to strangers.”

“Good enough?” Fenwick said.

“It’ll have to be,” Molton said.

“There’s another complication,” Turner said. He told him about Brian’s problem.

After he finished, all Molton said was, “Let’s solve this.” He left.

11

“Who’s next?” Fenwick asked. By now the people from their various lists were waiting to be interviewed in suites comped to the convention. Three beat cops were keeping watch over them.

Fenwick looked at his list. He said, “Sandra Berenking?”

A woman in her late fifties or early sixties in a deep blue evening gown was brought into the interrogation room. As she entered, she said, “Is there a serial killer loose in the convention? Each rumor we hear is worse than the last. Are Muriam and Dennis really dead?”

After they sat down, Fenwick said, “I’m afraid so. A Chicago police officer has been attacked as well.”

“A police officer. How awful. The poor man and poor, poor Dennis. He was the sweetest, kindest man. We’ve e-mailed back and forth for years. He went out of his way to try and help people. He reviewed every single one of the books that I was the agent for. He was good to my authors. His reviews were fair. Often my writers needed publicity. He was willing to give space in his web magazine to new writers or those that didn’t have million-dollar publicity campaigns behind them. He looked out for the little guy. Not a lot of folks would do that. He was a good man. He’ll be missed.”

“Did he have any enemies?” Turner asked.

“None that I know of.”

Turner asked, “How well did you know Muriam Devers?”

“I was her first publicist at Galactic Books.”

Fenwick said, “We talked to a publicist, Pam Granata.”

“I was the company publicist. We’re assigned numerous authors. Pam was a personal publicist. They are able to give as much time to a single author as they wish. Pam was as much of a rat as Muriam. I did have other authors, that’s true. But I put in a lot of hours of overtime on Muriam’s first book. I fought hard to get the best publicity for Muriam Devers when she was a nobody who was just having her first book published. I got her an interview in
Publishers Weekly,
and a spot on a national network morning news show. I believed in that book, much good it did me.”

“How do you mean?” Turner asked.

“After the first book turned into gold, she turned into a harridan.”

Turner said, “We’ve been told she was a saint.”

“She always was to your face. And she was to her fans. She was genuinely sweet to them. She genuinely wanted to make them feel good. People who worked with her were another matter. She’d never, ever confront you to your face. You’d never find out if she was unhappy with you from her. You’d think everything was fine. But then the next day when I’d hear back from higher-ups, that is not what she would have reported. Later I’d find out that my decision or my agreement with Muriam was completely changed. While I worked at Galactic Books, I learned to keep my mouth shut. She was the star. I had some status for being in charge of the publicity for that first campaign. She had status because she was making the company very, very rich. Before she came along, Galactic Books was little more than a second-rate SF reprint house. Sure they’d print an occasional hardcover, but the owner went nuts with the cash from her work. The company became so profitable, he sold it for a quarter billion ten years ago. Now it’s worth far more.”

“Why wouldn’t she confront you directly?”

“She’d claim she didn’t want to make me angry. She didn’t want to upset me. That was bull. She wanted whatever she wanted when she wanted it. If she could use her little-girl, simpering smile, then she’d use that. If she had to be a back-stabbing bitch, she’d do that. She didn’t care who she trampled on. She didn’t care what she’d agreed to. If something came along that was more favorable to her, then she wanted that. She wanted everything that was favorable to her. She was totally unprincipled. She knew to a penny how much her books made. She was intimately involved in every aspect of every decision that would affect her income.”

Turner said, “But wouldn’t any sensible author want to know all that and show the same concerns?”

“She could afford an army of agents and lawyers to do it for her. That she did it wasn’t bad. How she did it may not have been criminal, but it was low, vicious, and meanspirited.”

“What happened to you?”

“I got fired. I found out much later Muriam was behind it. I got the treacly crap to my face all during that time. She told others that I wasn’t doing enough for her. I was ‘holding back her sales’ because of my ineptness. That I didn’t understand the genre. Ha! She acted like she was owed the publicity we did for her.”

Fenwick asked, “If she was such a jerk, how’d she get the saintly reputation?”

“Hard work on her part and a blizzard of blather from the publicity department. Getting me fired wasn’t enough for her. I left and started my own agency. That bitch tried to ruin that as well.”

Turner wanted to say, “Don’t stop now.” Instead he murmured, “What happened?”

“I started in this business as a low-level publicist. After Galactic, I worked for a few companies. Muriam wrecked that. A phone call here. Whispered words there. Jobs dried up. I opened my own office in New York. Me and an answering machine. I’d always wanted to run my own company and work with authors, be an agent who worked for authors, who was prompt and returned their calls. I worked hard on building my reputation. Muriam Devers would try and sabotage me. She would try and keep authors from signing with me. She would try and keep people from reviewing my authors’ books. Every chance she got, she would disparage my company. For a long time, I took the nobodies other people wouldn’t touch. I have a more than respectable list now, some of the top-quality SF and fantasy writers in the business. What skin was it off her nose that these poor struggling authors had an outlet? It wasn’t as if people purchasing books by my authors were taking food out of her mouth. What really made her angry is that I was a success. In the past few years several of my authors had cracked the
New York Times
bestseller list. It took me thirty years of hard work to get that far. I’m never going to be able to rival the big agencies, but I’d made a success out of a business that I started from nothing.”

Turner said, “I don’t get that. She was still angry after thirty years? Why did she care?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I tried to ask her about it once. She denied everything. I knew from people I trusted what she was doing. I knew she was lying. There was nothing I could do about it.”

“Who else did she have fights with?” Turner asked.

“I’d hate to implicate other people.”

“We have a partial list,” Fenwick said. “We’ve got a number of people who did not like her.”

“Well, probably not all of the people who disliked her are at the convention.”

“It’s a start,” Fenwick said.

“Look carefully at that writing group she had. They were a prize bunch.”

“How so?” Fenwick asked.

“They were a bunch of back-biting hacks who lived on her fame.”

“What difference would that make to anyone besides her?” Fenwick asked.

“This is a gossipy world, a jealous world. Many people are envious of other people’s success. They’ll do anything to rip and tear. Muriam did. So did her little coterie of evil henchmen, and they were always men. Studly young men.”

“Did she have sex with them?” Fenwick asked.

“That was certainly the rumor, but I tend to doubt it. Muriam was a prig in a lot of ways. She’d want the public image without the private commitment. She enjoyed pinching their butts. Everybody would laugh and giggle. I didn’t think it was funny. It’s been a long time since junior high. Devers loved underage humor. I don’t know if her writing group enjoyed the same type of humor or were being paid to enjoy it. If a man did what she did, it would be sexual harassment. I’ve never heard anybody complain. It’s kind of pathetic for anyone to be doing that, much less someone in her eighth decade.”

“Where were you between ten and eleven?” Turner asked.

“I had breakfast with several of my authors, then I was giving a seminar on how to write a hook for the opening of a science fiction book.”

Turner said, “Do you know anything about the red ostrich feathers connected with Ms. Devers?”

“We made the feathers a cornerstone of the first ad campaign. It helped the whole thing take off. I never got a word of thanks.”

Turner said, “She was in a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit when we found her.”

Berenking stared at them a moment and then burst into a spate of giggles. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Really?” she asked.

The detectives nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just so hard to picture. Muriam didn’t do costumes. Not that I ever heard of. To do that kind would just be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

“Could it have been something sexual?” Fenwick asked.

“Muriam and sex were something else. Her books all had oblique references to sex. In the first one the heroine had lovers several years younger than herself. This notion progressed to the point that in her last book the women’s lovers were decades younger.”

“Did she take younger lovers in real life?” Fenwick asked.

“Not that I know of. She never brought one around as a date. Not back when I thought of her as a friend. I met her husband. She was still married at the time. He was a perfectly ordinary man. Taught high school.”

Fenwick asked, “Could she and Mr. Foublin have been having an affair?”

Berenking considered for a moment then said, “I doubt it. Muriam may have been interested in younger men, but then, by this point, most men were younger than she was.”

Zing one in for you, Turner thought.

Fenwick said, “But you still read her books.”

“I try to read every fantasy or science fiction book that gets published. Some people think it’s an odd habit, but it’s better than being a heroin addict. Hers were a requirement. When I gave seminars on writing fantasy, I’d use hers as examples of good and bad things to put in.”

As she got up to leave, she asked, “Are we going to be able to go to our rooms soon?”

“We hope so,” Turner said.

12

Macer walked in as Berenking walked out. He said, “We’ve got bloody clothes in a room on one of the top floors.”

“No corpse?” Fenwick asked.

“Not yet.”

Fenwick said, “I hate it when they take the corpse and leave the bloody clothes. You think they’d have sense enough to take both.”

Turner said, “Hell of a hard time carrying around a corpse, the clothes, and the murder weapon.”

“A hand cart,” Fenwick said. “A wheelbarrow? One of those golf carts, kind of zooming up and down the halls?”

“Is that cop humor?” Macer asked.

“Only in one man’s opinion,” Turner said.

Out in the hall, Macer used a special key to summon one of the elevators.

They entered a suite on the top floor. Macer said, “The guest says he came back and found this stuff.” In a closet in a bedroom they found a heap of clothes covered in blood. There was a brown Speedo swimsuit, a butt flap, and a cape. Brian hadn’t worn a cape. And he still had his butt flap and Speedo. Turner doubted if his son had the income or the inclination to buy duplicates of his outfits. Upon seeing the clothes, he was more relieved than anything. There would be less hassle from those who did not know his son about accusing his son. Or accusing the father of trying to cover up for a killer.

There was a broken red ostrich feather on top of the clothes.

“We’re sure it’s blood?” Fenwick asked.

Turner leaned close and looked carefully. He breathed deeply. It sure smelled like blood. “If it’s not, somebody’s going to a lot of trouble to make it look like it. And if it’s not, we’ve still got the red feather problem, a heap of stuff where it doesn’t belong, or a coincidence beyond all odds.”

There was a stir in the hall. Two uniforms brought in a red-faced man at least a hundred pounds overweight. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Who are you?” Fenwick asked.

“I’m director Samuel Chadwick. Why am I being kept back? This is my room. I found that awful mess. What are those clothes doing in my closet?” He was about five foot eight with a white beard. He wore a black tuxedo, a rainbow bow tie, and a snowy white shirt.

He pointed toward the closet.

“Those weren’t there when we left earlier.”

“What time did you leave?” Fenwick asked.