Nerds Who Kill: A Paul Turner Mystery (18 page)

“He could have all kinds of different reasons,” Fenwick said.

“He could be changing disguises even as we speak,” Turner said. “We’ve got to get the timing down on this. At the least I’d say this certainly looks like a very angry killer.”

Fenwick said, “He wouldn’t be able to swing a broadsword around anymore. Anybody sees someone with one of those, it’d be confiscated.”

Turner said, “The killer doesn’t have to stick with doing people in with a broadsword.”

“Awfully clumsy way to kill someone,” Fenwick said.

“If he did all this planting of clues before the killing, then it’s obvious that it was all well thought out. Was the killer taking a chance by doing this running around while the convention was in full swing? How would he know all these people were not in their rooms? He could find the ones who were giving talks or on panels but not the majority of people.”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Fenwick said. “Maybe he knocked on a few doors or called the rooms ahead of time. If he was staying at the hotel, he’d have access to a phone in his room. He could call randomly from there.”

“We still don’t know how the killer got into all these rooms.”

“Unless the people knew the killer and let him in.”

For now they had lots of questions and not a lot of answers. They called for the next person to be interrogated.

15

Agnes Demint, Devers’ agent, was next to be interviewed. She was dressed in an elegant pantsuit of pink velvet. Turner guessed she was in her forties. Her makeup looked like it had been applied with a trowel. From the amount of blush, it looked as if she might have simply plunged her face into a vat of the stuff. She shook their hands.

“This is awful,” she murmured. She had a low, throaty voice.

Turner said, “We appreciate everyone’s willingness to talk to us at such an awful time.”

“I’ll do anything I can to help find out who did this.”

“We’ve heard different accounts of how Muriam got along with people.”

“Fans loved her. She loved them. She wasn’t faking it. She genuinely loved being with them. She always had patience with them.”

Fenwick said, “We heard it was a different story with some of the people she worked with.”

“I suppose there are always malcontents. Most of the people she worked with loved her. I did. She was a dream.”

“How did you become her agent?” Fenwick asked.

“I worked with her at one of the larger agencies for about ten years. Then one day she came to me with an offer. I could probably have made a living on just her account, but I’m not stupid. You can’t let your whole career rest on keeping one account. This business is too changeable for that. But I took her on as my first client. Many people followed in her wake. I’m eternally grateful to her.”

“Who was her agent before?” Fenwick asked.

“Devers started with our agency.”

“Why’d she want to leave?” Fenwick asked. “And why’d she pick you?”

“I’m not sure about the leaving part,” Demint said. “She said she picked me because I was one of the few people who made comments about her books that made sense.”

“She needed praise?” Fenwick asked.

“I praised and I panned as the situation warranted. She liked having someone be honest with her about her work.”

Fenwick asked, “What exactly was your role in her career?”

“Agents do any number of things. I read her manuscripts or movie scripts. Sometimes I sent them back with suggestions. Not that often in the beginning, even more rarely in the last few years.”

“Did she make changes willingly?” Fenwick asked.

“I rarely asked for an out-and-out change. Mostly I made suggestions. She could follow them or not. I wasn’t her editor.”

“What else did you do?” Fenwick asked.

“Mostly I negotiated. The negotiations for Muriam were fairly simple. Muriam never got involved. She had everyone talk to me. That’s what I’m here for. People could be angry with me, not her. When there was bidding in Hollywood for her books, I’d get all the bids. I opened them. I informed all the others of the highest bid. It was like a high-class auction, very civilized. They were offering tons of money. Movie deals. Those kinds of things.”

“How much money are we talking about?” Turner asked.

“Millions.”

“Enough to kill for,” Turner said.

Demint said, “Muriam would never hurt anyone.”

“Wasn’t the agency hurt when she left them?” Fenwick asked.

“It is still a huge agency. They have tons of successful clients.”

“What was the advantage of having you, on your own?” Fenwick asked.

“I believe she felt more in control. That it was more of a personal touch with just me.”

Fenwick said, “If I had a client doing million-dollar deals and I was an agency, I’d give her all kinds of control.”

Demint said, “She wanted me.”

“And nobody got angry at the negotiations?” Fenwick asked. “She didn’t try double-dealing beyond anyone’s back?”

“Really! Muriam was not like that.”

Fenwick said, “We heard she got the director on her first film fired.”

“I don’t know about that. Nobody said anything to me. I know the directors changed. I heard it was the studio’s decision. Nobody ever told me anything different.”

“Did she get along with her editors?”

“She never said a bad word about them to me.”

Fenwick said, “One or two of them seemed less than enthralled.”

“She was good to me. I made a lot of money from her.”

“Do you have any accounts that bring in more money?” Fenwick asked.

“No. A few are beginning to come close, but you’ve got to remember, Muriam was unique. She was in the stratosphere compared to most writers. She was among the elite in terms of income. I believe she was closing in on Oprah last year.”

Fenwick asked, “Did she have enemies of any kind? Anyone you can think of who might have a grudge?”

“Absolutely not.”

Fenwick asked, “Can you tell us about Ms. Devers and those feathers?”

“Why on Earth would you be interested in that?”

“It might be important,” Fenwick replied.

“Well, it was just this cute thing. Such a great idea. We were going to launch a red feather line of perfume next spring. Are you saying this is a clue? What is going on?”

“We’re trying to find out,” Fenwick said.

Turner asked, “Did you know the members of her writing group?”

“Writing? Ha! Buffoons. I heard the rumors of why she hung around with them. I tried to ask her about it once. She just laughed and said she enjoyed having a writing group. I don’t know if she was using them for sex. I suppose a lot of people would have. She managed to pick some of the hottest young men.”

“Did you have a sexual relationship with any of them?”

“I think they’re cute. I prefer real men, not gym bunnies full of themselves. Muriam would promise to have her agent read their stuff. I’m her agent, and she never gave me any of their stuff.”

“How do you know she promised them?”

“One of them made the mistake of asking me if I’d got around to reading his manuscript. He told me that Muriam had promised to send it to me with her recommendation.”

“Who was that?”

“David Hutter.”

“What happened to him?”

“I mentioned what he said to Muriam. He was out of the writing group pretty damn fast.”

“Muriam lied to these people?”

“I think some people took what she said and made more of it than there was to be made of it.”

Fenwick said, “Hutter misunderstood Ms. Devers’ intentions?”

“To put it mildly. Muriam had no need to make such promises. As far as I know, she never did. She never passed anything along to me.”

“Could she have passed manuscripts along to other people without your knowledge?” Fenwick asked.

“Certainly, but why would she?”

Could be all kinds of reasons, Turner thought. “Is Mr. Hutter at the convention?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen him.”

Turner asked, “Did you know Dennis Foublin?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t. There are so many things to take care of on a much greater scale than one reviewer on the Internet. Those Internet people certainly think they have a lot of influence, but they certainly don’t. Muriam Devers didn’t make a penny less on a movie deal if some idiot on the Internet didn’t like her books.”

“Did she have any problems with anyone at the convention?”

“Well, there was the loon.”

“Who was that?”

“The loon. There’s always at least one at these things. He was terribly thin with tufts of blond hair. He wore these raggedy, ill-fitting clothes. I don’t know his name.”

Sounded like Melvin Slate to Turner. “What happened?” Turner asked.

“I had to get in between them. He came up to her just before the signing this morning. I’m always on the alert when I’m with her. All too often, fans don’t have a sense of proportion, although Muriam was always sweet with them. She was actually talking with him. He kept getting into her personal space, and she kept backing away. It happened twice, and I stepped in. It wasn’t a major deal. It was the only negative thing I can think of.”

Turner said, “We found her in a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit.”

“A what? I find that hard to believe. Muriam was not a costume person. I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true,” Fenwick said.

“Well, perhaps I didn’t know her as well as I thought.”

She and her lack of knowledge left.

16

A beat cop, Ann Hesketh, walked up to them in the corridor. “You better see this,” she said.

“Now what?” Fenwick said.

They took the service elevator to a deserted corridor on the sixth floor. Hesketh said, “This floor is mostly for private meetings for hotel staff or sometimes VIPs. According to security, no one was scheduled to be meeting on this floor at this time. There are no private rooms on this floor. The room next to this was used by somebody named Louis Eitel. It was a meeting of some Hollywood types.”

Eitel was the name they’d gotten from Cavali as the director who’d been fired from Muriam’s first movie.

The head of security, Brandon Macer, met them outside a service room. Bins of dirty sheets crammed most of the room from wall to wall. Next to a window someone had written on the wall in three-inch-high letters using blood or red paint, “I’m not done yet.”

Fenwick said to Macer, “Would you find all the hotel personnel who had access to this area?”

Macer said, “I’m on it already.”

He and Hesketh left. Turner and Fenwick examined each bit of writing. Turner said, “I don’t see a fingerprint anywhere on this. It doesn’t look like brush strokes. It might have been done with gloves or any rag or piece of cloth.”

“We’ve seen lots of evidence of excellent planning.” Fenwick peered closely at the writing. “Can we now say that the handwriting is …”

“Stop,” Turner said. “You may not know this but there is a quota of ghastly humor and stupid puns. You have reached your limit. If you exceed your limit, the sky will fall and aliens will invade the Earth.”

“I have that kind of power?” Fenwick asked.

“You could try it and see what happens.”

“Let me get back to you on that.” Fenwick asked, “Do aliens commit more or less crimes than earthlings? More important, if both those things happen will I still be able to get chocolate?”

“One more pun and I will cut off your supply of chocolate permanently.”

“That’s cruel. That’s real horror. That’s torture. I will do my best to give it a rest.”

“No dopey rhymes, either.” Turner sighed. “Your humor is crap, but that’s not the major thing. I’m really tensed up about Brian’s connection with this. I know it’s a peripheral connection, but I’m worried.”

“Any father would be,” Fenwick said. “He’s not a killer.”

“I know,” Turner said. “He’d be bawling his eyes out if he did anything remotely like this. It’s just a familial complication I am not happy to have. If I have to, I’ll stay all night to get this settled.”

“I shall suspend attempts at humor for the duration.”

Turner smiled. “I appreciate the effort.”

They examined the rest of the service area. If there were telltale fingerprints, they were not readily visible. Nor were there any other smears of blood.

“No feather,” Fenwick said.

Turner moved the last bin of clothes away from the service elevator door. “Yeah,” he said softly. “It’s here.” The broken feather was on the floor directly in front of the elevator doors.

Fenwick joined him. He looked from the writing to the feather. He said, “How come it’s this far away?”

Turner shrugged. “It’s a feather. Maybe it moved in the wind. Or maybe it’s some kind of message in a symbolic language that exists only in the killer’s mind.” Turner spoke into his communicator, “Would you find out if Commander Molton is in the building? If he is, ask him to come to the sixth floor. If he’s not here, ask him to come back to the hotel.” He also requested the Crime Lab people to work on this room as soon as they were done with the last.

They retreated to the hall.

“What’s up?” Macer asked.

“He could be disguised as anything,” Turner said. “He could be a dangerous alien or a Chicago cop. If that last is true, he’s got more nerve than most killers I’ve ever seen.”

Fenwick said, “However he looks, he’s dicking us around. We’re running awfully fast, but not getting anywhere. Alice would be proud.”

Macer said, “Maybe he wrote this before he began the killing.”

“The time sequence is going to be tricky,” Turner said. “Some of these he could have prepared beforehand, others later. He certainly wants us confused.”

Macer said, “Maybe he’s trying to scare someone. Maybe he’s trying to get even with someone. Maybe he hasn’t hit his real target yet.”

“Who’s the target?” Fenwick asked. “Why expend your energy on the two who are dead if they weren’t the ones you wanted dead? The two deaths have to be connected. There can’t be two random murders with broadswords going on at the same time, and then two killers spending the time toting blood from place to place. Nothing has odds that long against it happening and not being connected. A copycat would have to be copying awful fast.”