Nerds Who Kill: A Paul Turner Mystery (20 page)

Fenwick asked, “In your butt or your book?”

Marwood blushed. “I suppose it was a little of both.”

Fenwick asked, “Did she pinch everybody in her writing group’s butt?”

Marwood smiled. “We never discussed it. Who would admit that somebody as old as your grandmother was pinching your butt?”

Fenwick said, “Or that any of you would be willing to sell your soul to get noticed, published, pinched, or rich, or famous.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Marwood said.

“What was it like?” Fenwick asked.

“Well, we’d meet and have wine and cheese at her place. We always met at her place. Ours weren’t as nice. You wouldn’t invite the Vanderbilts to visit the plebeians.”

“There were no women in the writing group besides Ms. Devers?” Turner asked.

“Not while I was part of it.”

Fenwick said, “We heard that you were unhappy with Muriam.”

“Who told you that?”

“We’ve talked to a lot of people today,” Fenwick said. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you save yourself and us a lot of time and tell us what the deal was? Were all four of you guys in the writing group young and studly?”

“Well, sort of, yes, I guess.”

“All of you straight?” Fenwick asked.

“I am. I never asked the other guys. They never came on to me. We never discussed it.”

“You never discussed who you were dating? You never mentioned your private lives in a friendly setting?”

“Well, okay. I’m straight. The other three guys aren’t.”

Turner said, “Muriam didn’t mind?”

“She didn’t care. She just wanted an audience to listen to her latest deathless prose. We were there to praise her. If you raised the slightest criticism, you risked being banished. It wasn’t a revolving door being in the group, but you got the idea right away. Her stuff was perfect and could only be more perfect.”

Fenwick asked, “Did you guys ever even get to read your stuff?”

“She might have fifty pages to read. We might bring five or ten.”

Fenwick said, “Nobody noticed the discrepancy?”

“The only one worth noticing was Muriam. If she didn’t notice, you didn’t notice. She seldom made many comments about our stuff. It was more like she wanted to get ours out of the way. She knew she had to give us a little more than the glory of basking in her glow. We didn’t get much more than that.”

“You got careers out of it,” Turner said.

“Some of us did. I hadn’t yet. I’ve been in the group three years. I was still being published by a small press. Three books. No movie deals. No big-time publisher showing the slightest interest.”

“Did she get sex?” Fenwick asked.

“She didn’t actually want anybody to perform sex. At least, she never asked me. The other guys never said anything. Sometimes she liked to dress up. She liked to have an audience. At those times it was an audience of one. She’d sit around in a costume. They were kind of strange. Xena, Cat-woman, and Supergirl were the only ones I saw.”

“So what happened?” Fenwick asked.

“Not much. She would sit or walk around a little bit or serve tea while dressed up. Mostly she and I would chat and gossip, or rather she would declaim and I’d listen. There were probably others before me. If so, I don’t know them. Neither Peter, Larry, nor Gerald ever said they were asked to come over to watch her. They may have been. I don’t know. It wasn’t a lot of fun to watch, but I liked being part of her literary circle. I liked the blurbs she offered to write for me.”

“You sold your soul for your art,” Fenwick said.

“If you want to be famous and rich, you better be ready to.”

“I can’t believe all writers are that way,” Fenwick said.

“Look, it’s a competitive business. Every agent gives you this lecture about how tough the market is. They want to keep your expectations down so they can take their percent if you ever make it, and they have an excuse when they call and report their latest failure, or an excuse when they never call. Yes, the other guys in the group were competitive. We all were. So what? All businesses are competitive.”

“Did it lead to murder?” Fenwick asked.

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Do you think your buddies in the group would?”

“I’d be interested in hearing their answers to your questions.”

He knew no more. He left.

As they added his information to their charts, Fenwick said, “He sure looked strong enough to wield a broadsword. He was snarky enough to be a suspect on my list.”

“I can see the headlines,” Turner responded. “Suspect Snarky. Arrest imminent. Film at ten. Or better yet, we could set up a ‘Fenwick’s Scale of Snarkiness.’” It would be right up there with Maslow’s hierarchy and Piaget’s stages of growth.”

“But could they match my sense of humor?”

“I hope not.”

19

Gerald Granville was the next one from the writing group. Granville wore tight blue jeans and a black muscle T-shirt. Turner thought he might be in his early thirties.

He kept a carefully sculpted two-day growth of beard on his handsome face. He could be the action adventure star of any number of muscle-drenched Hollywood films.

Fenwick asked, “We understand you were in Muriam Devers’ writing group.”

“I can’t believe she’s dead. We’ve been friends since I was in my teens. She judged an SF writing competition in my school district. I won. She came to my school and presented me the award. I got published in a science fiction journal during my senior year in high school because of her. I got fame and started making money with my writing very early.”

“We heard she liked to pinch butts,” Fenwick said.

“I didn’t care if she pinched mine. She had access to it any time she wanted.”

“You sound more like a slut than a friend,” Fenwick said.

“Who cares? She pinched my butt once when I was twenty-three in a large convention hall in New Orleans. She was having a good time. So was I. So were a lot of people. The pinch didn’t harm me or her or anyone else. Who cares?”

“We’ve been told that the members of her writing group were a kind of mafia for her.”

“Envious people will say all kinds of things. They were jealous of our relationship with Muriam. They wanted what we had, and they couldn’t have it. They didn’t have talent.”

“Do you have talent,” Fenwick asked, “or a good connection who happened to think you were a stud?”

“I won that story contest fair and square. I didn’t meet her until the day I got the award. She encouraged me. We corresponded. We began meeting again at conventions after I graduated from college.”

“How did the members of the writing group get along?” Fenwick asked.

“I saw Ralph Marwood leaving to be questioned by the police. I know he tried to tell you I’m gay. He’d try and implicate me in anything. I’d been in the writing group longest. He was the newest member. He was the most insecure.”

“How would telling us you are gay implicate you in anything?” Turner asked.

Granville looked confused.

“Why was he the most insecure?” Fenwick asked.

“His writing wasn’t that good. Several times Muriam had to call him on it. It was as if he wasn’t paying attention to the most obvious details.”

Fenwick said, “We heard there was a fairly inequitable distribution of time at your writing group.”

“Some of us needed more help than others. Muriam got the lion’s share of the attention. It was her group. She formed it. She invited people to join. We were her inner circle. She could trust us. Because we were loyal to her and to each other didn’t mean we were some kind of mafia. People become friends. They support each other. Those aren’t crimes. We were close and helped each other. Publishing can be a cutthroat world. Some conventions give out awards and people vote for them. Sometimes we campaigned for her. There’s no rule that says you can’t.”

“Did Ms. Devers have any enemies?”

“I’ll say. She didn’t trust her publishers. She thought they were all money grubbers who would desert her ship if sales ever started to taper off.”

Fenwick said, “Everybody connected with her publisher that we interviewed said she was a saint.”

“She
was
a saint, to their faces. That’s how you have to be in this business. Nobody in their right mind mouths off to an editor. She thought the Hollywood movie people were slime.”

Fenwick said, “I thought she invited at least some of them to her place in Colorado every winter.”

“She invited those who she thought could be of use to her. She knew every line of every contract she ever signed. She got a percent of the gross on her latest movies. That pissed Hollywood off.”

“Anyone in particular?” Fenwick asked.

“It would take me awhile to make a list.”

“We spoke with Samuel Chadwick, Arnold Rackwill, Lorenzo Cavali, and Louis Eitel.”

“Samuel and his paid-for boyfriend? Ha! Those two always claimed to be best friends with Muriam. Muriam used them to get what she wanted. She laughed at them behind their backs. Chadwick wasn’t very good at his job. Rackwill was actually the most competent one, and he has to be very careful that Chadwick doesn’t notice how bright he is. Chadwick is not interested in being shown up by some paid-for semi-protégé.”

“How well did you know Mr. Rackwill?” Turner asked.

“Not well at all.” He spoke with a snap and a hint of a snarl that reawakened Turner’s suspicion of Rackwill having some connection with the writing group.

Turner took a gamble. “Was it a one-night stand, a brief affair, or a relationship?”

Granville glared at him, finally lowered his eyes. “One night at a convention.”

“He cheated on Chadwick with you.”

“I’d hardly call it cheating. It was over in less than fifteen minutes. We never saw each other again. I was trying to sleep with him to help get a book sold to the movies. It didn’t get sold. He didn’t get any more sex. Are you saying Chadwick or Rackwill would kill Devers and Foublin to get back at me?”

“Just asking questions,” Turner said.

“Did she have problems with Cavali and Eitel?” Fenwick asked.

“It was more like she was oblivious to problems.”

“We heard she had specific problems with Lorenzo Cavali.”

“He had a problem with her. I’m talking more interpersonal stuff. Chadwick used to go to her parties in Aspen every winter. He’d stay at least a week. She may have laughed at him behind his back; but, at the same time, he and his crowd were roaring with laughter behind her back. She thought of herself as this benevolent eccentric, pleasing her fans and producing great art. Hell, it was genre art. So is mine. Chadwick never got snooty to her face. Sometimes they’d all gather down at the local bars and make fun of her pretensions and all that incessant cheerfulness. I was there a few times.”

“You were in her writing group,” Fenwick said, “and you were part of the group making fun of her.”

“Because she was a friend doesn’t mean I didn’t see her failings.”

Turner said, “Recognizing someone’s failings and being part of running her down sound like two different things to me.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help you guys. Why are you getting all huffy with me?”

Turner said, “We just need to understand the dynamics of all these people.”

“Well, I guess.”

“Do you know anything about Ms. Devers wearing a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit?” Turner asked.

“A what?” He looked genuinely astonished.

“Did she have such a costume?” Fenwick asked.

“I have no idea.”

“She was found dead in it,” Turner said.

Granville gaped. “That’s unbelievable. Wasn’t she a little old for that kind of thing?”

Fenwick said, “You never saw or heard her speak of dressing up or wanting to put on a show?”

“Never.”

“We have the impression from people we’ve talked to that she liked to model costumes for her writing group.”

“She never did for me. She never remotely hinted at it. Sexual liaisons were not Muriam’s problem. She pinched a few butts. That’s all the contact I ever had with her. More would have been kind of sick.”

“Who were her other enemies?”

“Melissa Bentworth, her first editor at Galactic Books? She was a piece of work. She absolutely bullied, mistreated, or ignored her authors. She is a lazy-ass thing.”

“They had fights?”

“Muriam never fought. She worked behind the scenes to make sure her version of the truth won in the end. She was always willing to put herself out for the little guy. She helped me make my first sale and get published.”

“Who’s your publisher?” Fenwick asked.

“Intergalactic Express, they’re a new imprint. They publish experimental SF and fantasy. They’ve got some of the best young authors working today.”

“Would she fear competition from a new press?”

“No. She didn’t need to fear anyone. Nobody could write like her.”

Turner said, “We heard David Hutter got tossed out of the writing group.”

“Hutter? He was stupid. He didn’t have a brain.”

Fenwick asked, “Did Ms. Devers promise to get him a reading from her agent?”

“Muriam didn’t need to promise anything. She never did that kind of thing. Your work had to stand on its own merit.”

“Unless she pinched your butt,” Fenwick said.

“You guys are making too much out of the butt pinching. It was just a joke. Harmless.”

Turner said, “Agnes Demint didn’t think you guys in the writing group were harmless.”

“Agnes is a certifiable bitch. She thought she was a big deal. She certainly acted like she was a big deal. Muriam mostly laughed at her behind her back.”

“Then why keep her as an agent?” Turner asked.

“She had her uses. She did as she was told. She didn’t get in Muriam’s way.”

“Anybody else who would be on a list of enemies and would be at the convention?”

“I don’t know who is at the convention. We got a little booklet in our packets, but I never looked at it.”

Fenwick asked, “Where were you from ten to eleven today?”

“I didn’t kill her. I’ve got an alibi. From nine to noon I was giving a seminar on writing experimental science fiction. I saw Muriam after breakfast. After her nine o’clock signing, she was going to her room. We were with several other people who saw her go.” He gave them the names. “When I got out of the seminar, I joined the gathering throngs exchanging rumors. Then I was called up here. I didn’t do it.”