Voices in the Wardrobe (15 page)

This one had the unfortunate name of Mary Keene and her novel was
Murder in the Midlands
. Charlie expected it to be a first novel and self-published but was astonished to find it the author's third in a series published by Simon and Shooter. Might as well have been titled
Murder on the Midlist
if she had to resort to this. Charlie looked up from a bloodstained piece of clothing and what might be an eyeball attached to something hidden in a ball of dirt on the book jacket to see Kenny alone in the hall with Mary Keene.

“Hey, Charlie, glad you could make it out from behind your tree, but you looked real colorful back there,” Kenny said when she joined them.

Charlie glanced at the elevator doors to discover they showed her hidey hole plainly from here. Made sense if she could see here plainly from there. “I was trying to avoid Solomon. Did he see me? What did he want?”

“He was looking for Maggie. Told him she was meeting her lawyer. Did you know Mary here has my old agent?”

Charlie wondered if big deal agent Jeth Larue ever worked up the courage to attend any of his authors' signings, watch the baleful show of their attempts to swim upstream.

Both she and Kenny bought a book, at cover price—most likely the only two Mary Keene would sell this day.

Nineteen

I have published thirteen books in the last ten years, three of them bestsellers and written four prize-winning screenplays, plus I spend three months a year conducting workshops that provide concise and easy ways to break into markets of all kinds for beginning writers and how to break through the high income ceiling for publishing writers stuck in the midlist doldrums. One-day, ten-hour intense workshop with an editor and representative on hand to look at your material. All for $170 (lunch not included). Bestselling author Harry Wicks can show you how IN JUST TEN HOURS!

Harry's e-mail address and phone and fax numbers followed so that potential attendees could find out when he was speaking in their area. There was a picture included on the flyer of this amazing person in blue jeans and T-shirt who appeared to be a likeable everyday Joe with a friendly grin and short-cropped hair.

Other than the photo, the flyer was in colorful oranges and greens and they had been on every chair in the conference room this morning. The students arrived before a conference staff understandably in disarray with the murder of their leader. Belated attempts to gather up these advertisements for someone else's sucker scheme had been unsuccessful and many stuck out of the back pockets of denim jeans or front shirt pockets now. Kenny showed Charlie his. More grist for his exposé.

She sat at the back of the room with him as Keegan Monroe talked about techniques of writing film scripts and made fun of his own success while writing in prison—somehow that experience tended to focus him. Kenny leaned over and whispered, “Scuttlebutt has it Howard was forcibly drowned in his tub.”

“He's got a bathtub? All we have are showers.”

“He has a complimentary suite because he brings the Institute workshop here and it has a Jacuzzi. But should anyone want to connect your friend Maggie to another murder—there does seem to be a pattern here. I think Luella Ridgeway may have had a point in insisting we get her out of your room.”

“But who is connected with both the conference and the Sea Spa?”

“You, me, Maggie, Luella, Jerry Parks, and Mitch Hilsten, to name a few. Did we ever determine how Grant Howard knew the VanZants? I forget.”

But it was time for Charlie to take the podium. The sharks had the afternoon shift. The last faculty member, Sarah Newman the story editor, was probably busy consoling her suddenly widowed sister.

Come to find out, Mary Keene was not only Jethro Larue's client, she was also Brodie Caulfield's mother. Charlie discovered this when she and Kenny had lunch with the two at the hotel's Baja Café just across the hall and through the bar from the conference room. They had saved a place for Keegan, who was surrounded by attendees with questions. Box lunches came with the registration for conferees so this seemed like a safe enough haven for now. Charlie didn't want to get too far away from Maggie who she hoped was busy planning strategies with her lawyer and Luella Ridgeway about now.

“So, do you want to see more?” Brodie asked Charlie and poured himself some margarita from the pitcher in the middle of the table.

“Excuse me?” She took a sip of the house merlot and tried to come down off the cliff of godwhat'llhappennext.

“You asked for a treatment, I gave you one yesterday. What do you think?”

“Brodie, I'm going to be honest with you. I haven't read it yet.”

“Christ, she went from the Bahia straight to a murder scene. Get a heart, man,” Kenny came to her defense.

“You haven't lost it?”

“I know right where your treatment is and first chance I get, I promise to let you know.” It damn well better be in Kenny's closet.

Brodie's mother peered over her little glasses. They were rectangles on their sides and gray-tinted. “I know you now. You're Mitch Hilsten's agent.”

“No, I handle writers. He's just a friend and with a different agency altogether.”

“Anyway, Ma, you should have heard her take out this self-important smartass in there this morning. The jerk started challenging every last thing she said.”

“There's one in every crowd, I frankly thought it was going to be you, Brodie, until this guy showed up.”

“So what did she do?” Mary Keene shared some facial expressions with her son but otherwise there was little similarity.

“She just stood up there with her mouth shut, for five of the longest minutes. We were all embarrassed for her and the dork who made it all possible. Finally she says, ‘We just wasted five minutes and more when you consider this gentleman's intrusions. My time is worth more to me than that, it's frankly worth more to me away from here. His time must be worth more to you than mine. Yours is apparently unlimited.'”

“You'll have to admit, Charlie, yours is a very unpopular message,” Kenny said when the tacos arrived. “Anyway, Institute staff reluctantly escorted the offender out of the room. I think they agreed with him more than Charlie. I can't believe you didn't see it when they shoved him out the door, Mary.”

“The Institute staff had already convinced hotel security to shut me down too.”

“Contract up for renewal?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, and the numbers aren't there. It's tough. I've done everything but mug Oprah. Takes a lot of energy and money. Nothing seems to work anyway.”

“God, I can't believe it. I'd kill to be published by Simon and Shooter.” Kenny put one of his tacos on a side plate for Charlie who'd ordered only a dinner salad after her heavy breakfast. “At least I used to think so.”

“Numbers are numbers no matter where you go. Brodie keeps telling me I need a gimmick. I know lots of writers with great gimmicks and they're not getting anywhere either.”

“From what I've understood from an admittedly quick review of the jacket copy, this seems to be a series aimed at older women, which is wise since they make up a large proportion of readers, but the market therefore is inundated with that kind of story. You'll notice younger males making up the majority of hopefuls at this conference—perhaps not the target audience for you.” Charlie took a bite of the taco and realized it had the same filling with different spicing as her omelet this morning. This was a shellfish taco and simply wonderful, with a shredded cabbage topping.

“I know, but it gave me some quality time with my son so not all was lost, an excuse to come out here to be with him.” Mary lived in Illinois, her son in L.A. and it was obvious he'd never move back to the Midwest.

Charlie wondered if she'd ever look at Libby with that kind of wistful acceptance. Nah. With Libby it was all scary dread. “You have other children?”

“He has two sisters. They moved to the East Coast.”

Keegan arrived at last and Kenny poured him a margarita without being asked. “I wish I'd listened to you, Charlie, about not taking this thing on. Why didn't I?”

“Because you enjoy your success and being adored.”

“Well, I'm all over the lust for adoration, let me tell you. God, do you think they'll call off the banquet? Surely they'll have to. I want out of here.”

Charlie left the Baja Café through the marina-side exit planning to call Luella, but grabbed a moment to enjoy being alone, surrounded by quiet, sun, a cool breeze off the bay messing with her hair. Hard to believe Solomon and crew weren't after her by now. Maybe they'd rounded up Maggie and saw no need to bother with Charlie. But Maggie had never been near Grant Howard. Even though it was another drowning of sorts there was no reason to link her to this last murder just because she was in the building. The VanZants could have driven down and murdered the Institute's leader, or their son or any of the Sea Spa staff.

She walked around a sand patio with deck chairs—closest thing to a beach on a marina the size of this one—and turned up the walk on the other side of the Islandia that led eventually to the parking lot, but first to the area beneath her balcony and Kenny's. One message from Luella, they were at the Islandia Restaurant, a separate building across the courtyard from the café and bar in the building hosting the convention and Charlie's room, with Nancy Trujillo, the lawyer. Another from Mitch. He'd heard about Howard's death. Did she need help? Another from Libby threatening to take off for San Lucas in her car and never return if her mother didn't get back to Long Beach and take care of Betty Beesom. Jacob Forney had left for his mystery convention and she was there alone. “I am not a nurse and I don't intend to ever be one. Grandma's pissed too because you haven't called her yet.”

And one from her secretary/assistant Larry Mann who had also heard of Grant Howard's untimely death and wanted details on that and on troublesome matters on the MacArthur contract. “I gotta tell the lawyers something and can't deal with this office alone, boss, because I have no clout and because Richard the Lionhearted has taken up roaring again.”

Charlie stood on the walk, toeing at the roots of the waxy-leaved bush she'd noticed grounds keepers investigating earlier and deciding on the triage method. She'd return Luella's call first, but her scattered thoughts brought up something totally out of context with that even before a voice on a balcony seven floors above her said, “Here you are again, Ms. Greene.”

Was there a similarity between the scam going on at the Spa and/or the pharmaceutical industry's persuasive advertising campaign and the Film Institute's misleading advertising of the odds for screenwriting success simply for purposes of profit? Was it so different from the promises of riches in the stock market, or vibrant health throughout increasing longevity in medicine? This is how a goodly proportion of people make a living—selling impossible dreams, Hollywood foremost among them. Is it necessarily evil? Excluding greedy CEOs, mass murderers, and sexual child abusers in powerful and respected positions, are dream merchants actually a necessary part of society? And wasn't Charlie actually a member of this group?

“What?” she asked the man without eyebrows leaning over her balcony rail.

“What is it you're looking for?”

“A little sanity would be nice about now.”

“You won't find it in this.” He held a tube or vial between thumb and forefinger, could have been a short pipe. It looked a lot like the ones under the bushes near to her foot. “I want you to stay right there, Ms. Greene, until I can join you. Deputy Saucier up here will watch to see that you do.”

The clipboard deputy came to stand beside him, her expression both weary and wary. She took a revolver or whatever it was from the holster at her belt and leaned over the balcony rail.

Charlie didn't run off, merely punched Luella's number and knelt to look under the bush. There were several plastic medicine bottles there, all bearing the prescription label for one Margaret Mildred Stutzman. Just before Gordy Solomon arrived to show her that the one in his hand did too and that it was found next to Grant Howard's body, Luella informed her with a tone of panic Charlie had never heard in all the years they'd worked together, that Maggie had disappeared. She and Attorney Trujillo were in the midst of a frantic search.

Twenty

“I'd like to speak with Margaret Mildred Stutzman,” Solomon said patiently, reading the name off the prescription label on the vial in his hand. The contents of which, barring evidence to the contrary from toxicology, he suspected was dumped into a glass of scotch, which was then imbibed in Dr. Grant Howard's Jacuzzi tub early this morning.

“He was pretty well sloshed the last time I saw him late yesterday afternoon in the bar at the Bahia. If he kept drinking into the night he could have died from alcohol poisoning or fell in the tub and hit his head and drowned,” Charlie diagnosed through her hat.

“We also have reason to believe that when he was helpless for one reason or another, someone held him under the water until he drowned. We also happen to know there was a female in the room with him.”

“Look, Maggie didn't even know who he was and there were all kinds of females in this hotel last night. Plus which she and I spent the night in the same room.”

“We have reason to believe—”

“Will you stop that? Jesus, you sound like a corny TV mystery.”

“We're fairly confident that you spent the night with a gentleman. A Mr. Kenneth Cooper who I believe you introduced to me at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol where there have been two recent suspected murders by drowning also.”

“Maggie and I spent the night in his room and he in ours because … a mutual friend suggested it.” Charlie would have continued but realized she was digging herself a hole here. None of this made sense, so Solomon et al needed to connect dots any way they could. Housekeeping might never look in the closet but you can bet the police had. Someone obviously put that medicine bottle in Howard's room to implicate Maggie and connect the murder here to those at the Spa. Sort of ruled out the random theory. “Besides, Maggie is suddenly missing.”