Voices in the Wardrobe (6 page)

“I'll make it a mystery and go to those conventions around the country to promote it.”

“And there you will meet thousands of I-published writers instead of book-buying fans—all trying to do what you are doing.” But she made a mental note to hunt up a poor unemployed editor of merit to work with him.

Charlie opted out of the party continuation back at the hotel and went up to her room to face the music. She had messages on her cell and the phone light blinked on her room phone. She slipped into her night shirt (a man's V-neck undershirt) and the hotel terrycloth robe, not as luxurious as the one at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, and washed her face. Munching a chocolate mint the maid left on her pillow, she took the cell out to the deck that overlooked a row of sailboats dipping and nodding at their moorings below and moonlight showering down from above. The sound of the bay lapping at the marina's docks reminded her of the eddy pool of cucumber, seaweed, and murder fame.

It felt so good being alone and on her own, having her life back. But she listened to Luella Ridgeway's message. “Charlie, Maggie's relatively stable but call me when you can. I snuck my cellular into the room. This is a weird place and I live with weird every day, but—”

Libby Abigail Greene—“Mom, do you know how to make a cat, who smeared the kitchen with poop and Science Diet, take a pill?”

Richard Morse of Congdon and Morse, Inc. who employed both Luella and Charlie. “What the fuck's going on down there? I just saw the score on Judy Judd's murder on TV. Luella's not answering my calls. I'm getting royally pissed, babe. Why hasn't anybody filled me in on all this? Heads are going to roll around here, I'm warning you.”

Charlie rubbed the back of her neck. She was going to need a massage pretty soon. Luella was in the room with Maggie so not as free to speak as they both would have liked.

“I like the VanZants but the help is creepy and there's hardly anybody here but the aforementioned and a cop now and then.”

Charlie could hear muted voices in the background. “Has she opened the wardrobe doors?”

“No, just listens. It is kind of interesting though. I don't pay any attention to the commercials when I'm watching TV unless one of the agency's clients are involved, but did you realize half the commercials are prescription drugs and the other half car dealers?”

“Yeah, it used to be ask your doctor, now it's tell your doctor. Kinda scary. Richard the Lionhearted is trying to get hold of you.”

“I know. He's going to expect me to solve Judy's murder while I'm here. That's your department.”

“No Luella, my department is writers. Judy was your client.”

“And Maggie Stutzman is your friend.”

Libby actually picked up her cell but she wasn't home with Tuxedo the terrible tomcat unless all of Wilson High was over for a party. “Where are you? This is your mother answering your distress signal, dammit.”

“Hi Mom, I'm at the Smelly Socks concert. It rocks. Can you hear?”

What Charlie could hear was the slight slur in her daughter's consonants. “What about the cat barf and shit all over the kitchen? Did you clean it up?”

“Itch your kitchen.”

“And it's your cat. Did you figure out what to do with the pill?”

“Yeah, Doug shtuck it in a piece of cheese. I left before I found out if the cheese stayed down.”

“You clean that mess up before I get home, toots.”

“Gotta go now, bye.”

Charlie went back in the room and closed the balcony door on the peaceful night. Her stomach started the familiar burn. She looked at the light blinking on the room phone and considered ignoring it, turned on the television in the wardrobe, and muted the familiar Aviatrix commercial, then listened to the message on the hotel voice mail. It was Kenny Cowper, a.k.a. Kenneth Cooper, and another of Charlie's clients. He was staying in the hotel. Kenny was a book author. What the hell was he doing at this conference? He was also stud city and the last complication she could handle now.

She jotted down his room number though. He was better than a massage—but no.

Charlie unmuted the TV for the eleven o'clock news. Might as well, she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight anyway. Dr. Judith Judd had not died of drowning in the eddy pool at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol. She'd been strangled first and then either fell in or was deposited there.

Eight

Charlie woke up groggy from having slept so hard, surprised she'd slept at all. She ordered room service, showered, shampooed, dried and tamed her hair as best she could. She'd had it cut shorter than usual which made the curls go ballistic, so she tied it back with a navy blue scarf to match a severe tuxedo suit she'd don when she finished eating and offset it with a naughty, blazing-white, frilled peek-a-boo blouse.

When her breakfast came she took it and the newspaper out onto the balcony, dressed again in the hotel robe. Fog rolled sluggishly off the bay as if it too needed coffee. She wasn't due to go on until ten.

Vegetarian eggs hollandaise, a pot of coffee, luscious thick toast. A yacht pulled out from the next pier over. An article about the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol, with a picture of Dr. Judy alive, began on the front page of the
San Diego Union-Tribune
. Apparently she'd choked on a plastic water bottle. Police were not convinced that the plastic bottle was “self-administered.”

Judy's ties to the Spa were curious. She owned a portion of it, had lent the VanZants money to pay expenses and taxes more than once and in return was allowed to tape many of her medical-showbiz stunts free in its odd studio/auditorium and had the Spa's paying customers as an on-set audience. She hired film crews piecemeal from the out-of-work, disenchanted, and nonunion scabs adrift in Sou Cal. Where do reporters come up with such odd bits of information? This by-line was none other than Jerry Parks', the guy who'd chased her around the spa.

Charlie and Luella better get a fragile Maggie away from the place. But what would they do with her? She couldn't be on her own. Funny, Charlie and Maggie used to worry about what they would do with Betty Beesom, their aging neighbor, when she could no longer be left alone.

Charlie, Dr. Judy is Luella's problem. Maggie is yours. You're in this all by yourself, sweetie.

“Maybe she's got relatives I don't know about,” Charlie told the patronizing voice in her head. Maggie had a brother and a sister. The sister in Michigan got stuck with the care for their ailing mother for so many years she no longer spoke to her siblings. The brother ran dive boats for tourists in Hawaii. Maggie's last communication with either of them had been at their mother's funeral. It was not cordial. “Maybe her friends at work will help out some more.”

A featured article on Mitch Hilsten graced the
Union-Tribune
as well, rife with “filmspeak” that some reporter had picked up on TV or at a conference like this one. Moira Moriarty, dusky, smooth, and perfect, oval face, oval eyes, looked so tiny standing between Mitch Hilsten and Samuel Houston who would play the gutsy CIA agent. He was in the process of growing one of those short beards that encircle the mouth. Mitch was not very tall—five ten, eleven at the most. Moira was very small and her leading man could appear very leading in contrast.

Moira would certainly look the part of a beautiful Bedouin princess—did Bedouins even have princesses? Didn't matter. The real problem was that Moira was, in real life, an Irish Jew from the Bronx and though coaches had trained most of the accent out of her speech, traces lingered. Charlie had visions of movie theaters blowing up all around the globe.

Jane of the Jungle was the CIA agent's fond term for her and already her real name was being linked romantically with both Sam Houston and Mitch Hilsten. Made good press. There was also a smaller picture of Charlie and Mitch squinting in the exhaust of the metallic blue Dodge Ram as the valet roared off outside Le Crustacione de la Mer night before last. “
But the famous actor-turned-director continues to dine with his previous girlfriend, Charlie Greene, a Hollywood agent, at C & M on Wilshire.
”

On this morning's panel were Charlie, the two sharks, Sarah Newman—a story editor from Troll Productions—and Dr. Howard moderating. Attendees packed the sizable room and stood against the walls in back and some sat in the aisles. Keegan Monroe sat front row center. On one side of him sat Jerry Parks, the reporter who'd chased Charlie through the halls and pebbled paths of the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol yesterday and written the article on Judith Judd in this morning's paper.

On the other side of Keegan, Kenny Cowper/Kenneth Cooper smirked up at her. All she needed now was for Mitch Hilsten to walk into the room and she'd wet her tuxedo.

The assembled consisted mostly of males, probably eighty percent or more. The moderator's questions centered almost exclusively on how to circumvent the security at agencies and studios to get material inside to be considered. The sharks proudly announced the lack of security at their offices. They worked solo with an office assistant for scheduling, did their own reading, and were not tied down by agency-like procedures. They agreed on most everything, but treated each other with loathing and disdain.

Sarah explained she had an assistant and accepted only agented material. Charlie explained hers was a small agency where she was the lone literary agent and others handled actors, speakers, minor athletes, commercial artists, even some ministers and circus performers. She had an assistant and two outside readers and they were all months behind. The readers culled most of the material, sent the rest to Charlie's assistant who culled most of the rest, and she saw maybe two percent of the original submissions. Out of that she might take none or perhaps find a home for one.

“You must understand the supply far outweighs the demand, and that most of the writing in Hollywood is assigned. I spend much of my time handling the latter, like Keegan here. The chances against my selling your screenplay are astronomical. But every now and then I can sell
you
on the basis of what you send me. I can rarely, but sometimes help you become one of those assigned to write or help to write a screenplay. And sometimes I'll send the writer's work on to a small independent film maker who might not make anybody any money but who might gain the writer some credits upon which to build a career.”

“That's why you want an independent agent. With me your dreams are safer,” said one of the sharks.

“With me, your checkbook is safer. Remember the showbiz cliché, don't give up your day job. Writing is showbiz, not art. A very few manage to make showbiz art as Keegan did with
Open and Shut
. It took many years of hard work and a lot of luck, even for him.”

“You sure know how to put a damper on enthusiasm,” Kenny Cowper, a.k.a. Kenneth Cooper, said as he caught up with her in the hallway after she'd finally escaped the auditorium and handed out the business cards of the outside readers—only their PO boxes printed on them, hoping they didn't up and quit on her. “I mean, why did you come if you weren't looking for writers?”

“Only for Keegan. Most of my writers are freelance advertising types, if truth be known.”

“They work for ad agencies.”

“The good ones have their own agent to see they don't get screwed.”

“You are such a negative person. How can you represent anybody?”

“It's called survival, Cowper.” She may have been depressing but she'd turned down too many lunch invitations to count, requests for home and office phone numbers, or for her assistant's at second best. During the question and answer sessions she and Sarah had been barraged with the issue of why weren't they worried that they'd miss the script of a lifetime—worded in many different ways.

Sarah had summed it up nicely. “I'm more worried I'll be crushed under the weight of all the submissions I get from agents. Most of my successes come from acquiring film rights to books and letting others hire the screenwriters.”

The moderator and the sharks snuffled, rolled their eyes. But it was Sarah and Charlie who took the longest to make it to the back of the room to the hallway and they met again in the ladies. “I had to come because of Keegan, but who talked you into this?”

“My sister married Grant Howard, the leader of this show,” the story editor answered from the stall next door. “I've wormed my way out of it for five years, but got caught this time. Did you notice not a word was mentioned that my office is in NYC? Not on the West Coast? I thought you'd blow the whistle on me.”

“What kind of doctor is Grant Howard?”

“Nobody ever says and if you ask you get that look and don't try again.”

Out at the sink and paper towel dispensers, Charlie asked, “Did you get any feeling for
The Rites of Winter?
”

“You know, I just read it when I saw you were on the program. It's not for us, but you might try Uranus. They're planning a cable series for the older folks—forty, fifty somethings. It might be a fit.”

Now Charlie walked along beside her towering author from Iowa, bemused at the fact that someone at one production company would suggest another for something the first rejected. Could Sarah be moving? Was she being fired/downsized?

Charlie walked. Kenny sort of minced to keep down with her. He had to be six four if he was an inch—and that boy had some inches.

Charlie!

Well? “So what are you doing at this conference? Are you going into screenwriting now?”

“Why should I tell you? You haven't sold the Myrtle book yet.”

Actually, you know I think I might have. “There's some interest, Kenny. Have you continued with it? I mean past the proposal stage?”

“I've finished it, Charlie.”

Their first mistake was to stop in the middle of the hall and turn toward each other. She, looking way up, trying to stop the satisfied smile breaking her face just as a professional stole a still shot that would complicate her life for a long time to come.