Читать книгу The Last Cheerleader - Meg O'Brien - Страница 8

When a train comes bearing down on one, there’s always a warning. The tracks shake and noise vibrates through them, like the sound of a thousand poor souls in hell. There’s a heavy smell of oil in the air, and if anyone is on those tracks—if they can’t get off, no matter how hard they try—there is also the dreadful, sickening scent of fear.

That’s the way it was for me with Tony. I’d loved him far too long and should have left him long ago. For three years I was on those tracks, and I heard and smelled all the warnings. I just couldn’t get off. I watched while he flirted with other women and didn’t show up on time, drank my coffee and never even brought me a bean. Tony didn’t spend much, and I always knew why. He held on to money as if it pained his palm to pull it out of his pocket. I tried to tell him that if you hold on to money like that it’ll just stop coming, that it’s like a cat, and if you pay too much attention it sticks its nose in the air and prances the other way. I told him he should be more generous, give some of it away, if only to a poor box at a church. I swore that it would always come back twofold, if not more.

Tony was horrified at that idea. He said he didn’t have “enough” to give away, and I always thought he felt the same way about love. He was terrified that if he gave that to someone, even himself, something terrible would happen. As if he’d wake one morning and find he wasn’t there anymore, that so much had been given away, there would be nothing left.

And what about you? one might well ask. What was wrong with me, that for three years I hoped against hope that one day this fool would wake up in his Brentwood penthouse and find that he couldn’t live another moment without me?

Well, this is what I tell myself, slipping out of my Gucci pumps and slinging my feet up onto my new antique desk: Tony wasn’t someone I could all that easily leave. I’m a literary agent, known as one of the best, and Tony sold more books than all my other clients combined—books that turned, like little miracles, into movies and made millions of dollars. In these days of slow sales in New York, of literary agents dropping by the dozens back there and moving to places like Connecticut and Vermont, working out of their homes to squeeze a dime for all it’s worth, Tony still came up with one blockbuster after another. And Tony was mine. To leave him might have been slaying the goose with the golden egg.

Slaying. An odd word to think of, under the circumstance. I’ve been dwelling more on Tony today because they found him dead last night. Worse—right next to him on the bedroom floor was Arnold Wescott, who for the past ten years had been my ex-husband.

The police called at the crack of dawn to notify, as well as question, me. I drove from my home in Malibu to Tony’s penthouse apartment in Brentwood to identify the bodies, my thoughts a jumbled mess all the way. Tony and Arnold, together? Murdered together? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

It didn’t get better with the terrible wrenching horror of seeing Tony on the floor with his forehead crushed in. As the police detective watched, I turned to Arnold, my heart thumping and questions like wasps still buzzing in my brain. Who could have done this? How did it happen?

I had questions but no answers. This was Tony’s apartment, and in the first place, I couldn’t understand what Arnold was doing here. So far as I knew, they’d never had any real connection to each other. Only once in a while did they cross paths in my office, and the two couldn’t have been less alike. Even in death, while Tony’s beautiful Italian face looked pained, Arnold’s was placid, as if he’d finally found peace.

In fact, Arnold—a Woody Allen look-alike—didn’t appear much different from any other day. All the time I’d been married to him, Arnold Wescott seemed largely comatose. The most energy I ever saw him put out was the time he asked me to wear a metal bra so he could see if it really would deflect bullets.

Arnold was sweet, if morose, and at the time I was still struggling to build my stable of authors from an old thirties-era storefront office in the wrong end of Hollywood. Nights, however, I was into any adventure that came my way. So I stupidly let Arnold put the bra on me, his nervous little fingers shaking as he made sure my breasts were evenly cupped. Then, sweat pouring down his forehead, he stepped back six paces and let fly with the bullets.

Arnold was a toy designer, and how a man who spent thirty-two years in a clinical depression could possibly design a toy that a child would like is beyond me. Well, come to think of it, he never did manage that. After scaring half the world’s children to death with GORP, a seven-headed beast that spewed forth murderous threats when his biceps were flexed, he’d turned to designing adult toys. The little rubber bullets were part of a mock-up for GOTCHA, his latest invention. Designed to be pointed at little models of ex-girlfriends wearing metal bras, he had a male doll, too, wearing a metal jockstrap.

That day, the bullets came zooming toward my chest, and I couldn’t help it—I flinched, bent over, and one bullet went straight for my eye.

Arnold had to get me to the hospital, where an unbelieving intern was sure that my husband had deliberately popped me one. That only made me laugh so hard that tears stung the abrasion on my cornea. Arnold, violent? No way. Arnold was meek and mild, and he never once had deliberately lifted a finger in my direction—or any other appendage, for that matter.

So it was a bit of a shock when the cops called last night and said they’d found Arnold dead. Not only that, but he was found next to another man’s body, in that man’s bedroom. Further, the other man was Tony Price, my best-selling author and long-hungered-after love.

Even more of a shock was that both men lay side by side on the floor, and next to them was what the police were sure was the murder weapon—a rare ivory Chinese dildo, a favorite of the gay crowd in West Hollywood.

As I’ve said, the fact that Tony was dead, too, was something that stunned me for several moments. Once I managed to collect my thoughts, however, I realized that my opportunity to get off those train tracks had come at last. Oh, it might be a while before I got my whole body off, grief being what it is. I might leave behind a leg or a foot at first, but I wouldn’t be trussed to the tracks any longer, and I’d have a chance to roll free.

If that sounds cold, it’s only because I’d learned to restrain my feelings for Tony over a long period of time—a matter of self-preservation, having been given so little encouragement from that side. He loved going to dinner with me, taking walks with me, even traveling with me. He even said often that he loved me. “Just not that way,” he would add. I’d begun to feel like one of those poor women who go on Montel Williams to reveal, at long last, their love for a male friend. Hoping, of course, that he’ll bubble over with passion and cry, “I’ve always loved you, too!” Inevitably, the friend does end up saying that, but adding the same as Tony: “Just not that way.”

Having lived through a brief and sexless marriage with Arnold, and then a “relationship” with Tony, whatever the hell kind that was, I’d begun to feel as if I had more heads than GORP, not to mention biceps in all the wrong places. Or maybe I was a Ms. Potato Head, with my eyes, ears and nose all screwed up, ugly as sin. The fact that my mirror didn’t support any of that paranoia helped—well-cared-for masses of reddish-blond hair like mine being “in” now, as they are. But there were days…

Now, given the scene before me in Tony’s apartment, I had to wonder—and not for the first time—were Tony and Arnold gay? I never was the kind of woman who immediately labeled a man gay if he wasn’t interested in my womanly charms. But why else would the two of them be here in Tony’s penthouse, and what else could the ornately carved Chinese sex toy be about?

The police, of course, wouldn’t tell me a thing except that there would be autopsies, and that forensics could take a few days. A Detective Dan Rucker was in charge. He looked to be thirtysomething and I guessed that by some standards—not mine—he might be considered cute. He had bright blue eyes and sandy hair that curled below his ears, and he wore an Anaheim Angels baseball cap that he kept putting on and taking off. Every time he took it off, he ran his fingers through his hair as if to make sure it was straight, but it never was. He sported at least a two-day growth of beard, and overall the look was a bit too scruffy for me. He smelled nice, though. Like oranges warming under a noonday sun.

If this were a crime novel, of course, I would have been drawn to the good detective immediately, scruffy or not. We’d have fallen into each other’s arms by sunset, and then we’d have gone off on a crime-busting romp together, to avenge the killing of my ex-husband and my…whatever.

This wasn’t a crime novel, though, and Detective Rucker might have smelled like an orange, but he acted like a sour lemon.

“We’ll need you to come down to the station in the morning to answer more questions,” he had said abruptly, not even looking at me as he paced off the room. He didn’t seem overly suspicious of me, even though I was so close to the deceased. The truth was, I got the distinct impression that the police were thinking of this as a “gay murder.” There had been several, beginning this past spring, and then two more since summer had arrived. Most were in West Hollywood, but one or two were in other areas. The sheriff’s department in West Hollywood had waged a campaign to catch the killers, and while they’d found some of the murders to be gay-bashings by gangs, other cases were still open.

I had gone to the police station this morning, as ordered, for further questioning. But afterward I wondered: Would justice be done for Tony and Arnold? What if it wasn’t a gay-oriented crime? What if it was something entirely different? And why had this happened to two men who were close to me?

I was staring out my office windows around ten-thirty and musing upon this when my phone rang, and a few seconds later my intercom buzzed. I’d asked Nia, my assistant, not to disturb me except for something important, so I knew I’d have to take the call, though it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I’d spent over an hour at the police station saying, “Yes, no, yes, no, I don’t know,” and “maybe.” Detective Rucker still hadn’t looked as if he’d had a shower or shaved, and I still wasn’t impressed by his attitude. He was short-tempered with me and talked as if I was taking up his valuable time, whereas he’d been the one to tell me to be there. He seemed to find it hard to sit still, and was up and down, up and down, as we talked. I’d left there on edge, as if I’d taken his ragged energy in and brought it to the office with me. I definitely didn’t feel like talking on the phone now, even though I knew I should, and why.

Paul Whitmore.

After a few minutes Nia stuck her head around the door. Her short black cut looked frazzled, and I knew she’d been running her pencil’s eraser through it in irritation.

“That’s Paul Whitmore on the phone,” she said, confirming my every fear. “You want me to tell him you’re tied up? He’s called a half-dozen times since I came in this morning.”

Nia came in at seven every morning because of the time difference between L.A. and New York. A lot of our business is done when editors are getting geared up back there, around ten o’clock or so. Nia fielded calls and returned ones that were important but didn’t need my personal touch.

“Don’t I wish I were tied up somewhere,” I replied with a sigh. “Like on a warm desert island with a delightful man tickling my naked body with palm leaves. Anything but dealing with an editor right now.”

Returning Nia’s smile, I added, “But no. I’ll talk to him.”

Sliding my feet off the desk and setting them squarely in my shoes, I stiffened my spine, reached for the phone and held the receiver to my ear. At the same time my eyes scanned my beloved, newish office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the high-rises of Century City. My desk was a Louis XV, and facing it were the antique chairs on which my authors sat. On a small cherry-wood desk sign were these simple words engraved in gold: Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent. In a corner, a white and gold floor-to-ceiling cage held two lovebirds that cooed loudly, as if sounding a warning bell at the mere mention of the name Paul Whitmore—the most important editor in New York City.

The lovebirds had been given to me one Christmas by Tony, and of course I foolishly saw them as a “sign” that he loved me after all. Until I found that he’d given the same gift to his assistant, his maid, his typist and several other people, as a thank-you for the good work they’d been doing.

I wondered how long my stylish digs would last, now that Tony, the golden goose, was gone. The rest of my stable of authors, though exemplary in many ways, wasn’t in his best-selling category.

Putting a smile in my voice, I chirped, “Hello, Paul. What can I do for you?”

“For God’s sake, Mary Beth, what do you mean, what can you do for me? We’re in the middle of negotiations with Craig Dinsmore! I’ve been trying to reach you all morning!”

Paul Whitmore worked for Bronson & Bronson, one of the few publishing houses in New York City that, amazingly, still had deep pockets. As such, most agents bowed and kissed Paul’s feet the minute he phoned.

Most. Not me.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” I said softly with fake remorse. “Your last offer…it didn’t really sit well with my author. And when you didn’t call back yesterday afternoon, I assumed our negotiations were over.”

Whitmore’s voice, though still irritable, responded to my tone. “Of course they weren’t over,” he said more reasonably. “My dear, you know I love Craig Dinsmore’s book. Everyone in-house loves his writing. We just have to come to terms, Mary Beth.”

“But I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said, choosing not to take offense at the patronizing “my dear.”

“What do you mean, not possible? Anything is possible!”

“Not if you don’t come up with more money, Paul. Craig is firm on that.”

I tapped lightly on my chin with my favorite gold pen, studied my luxuriously sheer stockings and six-hundred-dollar shoes and took a deep breath. The truth was, Craig Dinsmore was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Paul had offered a high six figures for Lost Legacy, Craig’s true-crime book about a fallen mafia don. If the deal went through, it could save his neck. But the more desperate my authors became during negotiations, the more relaxed I had to be. And I wanted a solid seven figures. That was the one thing that would make Hollywood perk up its ears and clamor to make a movie out of Craig’s book.

Because the truth is, it doesn’t always matter how good or bad a book is. Once a seven-figure offer has been made and accepted, the news makes its way into Publishers Weekly and assorted media mags, and that’s the kind of money that talks here in Hollywood.

“Dammit, Mary Beth, did you hang up on me?” Paul Whitmore roared through the phone.

I gathered my wits and tried to mimic my cooing lovebirds again. “Of course not, Paul. I was just thinking.”

“I hope you’re thinking that we’ve made a very good offer, and that Craig Dinsmore should be happy for what he can get. Rumors have it he’s on the skids.”

“Oh, really?” I said in my best “ridiculous!” tone. “Where on earth did you ever hear something like that? Craig is doing extremely well, Paul. He’s just purchased a new home near Laguna Beach, you know. Not too far from the one Dean Koontz built a few years ago.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, why would I lie?” I sure couldn’t tell him that Craig was holed up in a cheap motel over by the airport, writing his brains out in a push to survive. Or that I hadn’t yet told Craig about Paul’s six-figure offer. I knew he’d want to grab it and not try for more.

“Listen, Paul, I have calls coming in by the dozens. I’ll have to get back to you.”

“Wait.”

“I really have to—”

“Tell Craig Dinsmore we’ll come up by ten thousand. That’ll put him over the seven-figure mark, which I’m sure is what you’re angling for. I’ll also go from eight percent to ten percent on the paperback royalties. That’s the best we can do, Mary Beth, and it’s damn good.”

Screw you, I thought. If you’re willing to go another ten, another twenty won’t hurt a bit.

“I’ll pass the word along, Paul,” I said lightly. “That’s if I can rouse Craig. You know, he’s working round the clock to finish his next book, and he’s not always answering his phone.”

“Then send a messenger, Mary Beth! This is my final offer, and I need to know by five p.m. my time. The offer’s only good till then.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Paul. Ta.”

I hung up softly and sat thinking. Five his time meant two here, and since it was nearly eleven now, that gave me only three hours. Damn! My stomach was churning, and I realized I’d bitten off a nail during the call. I’d have to phone Craig and ask him if he wanted me to hold Paul Whitmore’s feet to the fire or accept what he said was his final offer. I personally didn’t believe it was final. Still, I couldn’t play fast and loose with Craig’s income without his consent, now that the offer was over seven figures.

I called out to Nia on the intercom and asked her to find Craig for me as quickly as possible.

“I’m already on it,” she said. “He still isn’t answering his phone, and his machine’s turned off. I’m trying all the bars around that area now.”

“You think he’s started drinking again?” I asked worriedly.

“Not necessarily. I just don’t know where else to start. And you know how he likes to hang out in bars and talk.”

Craig became a near hermit last year when he began to attend AA meetings. Then, in the fall, he told me he wasn’t going to the meetings anymore. He felt that saying “I am an alcoholic” only imprinted it on his mind—thus making it a fact that could never be erased, leaving no hope for a “cure.”

“I’m going it alone now,” he’d said. “I’m doing yoga, meditation, vitamins and herbs. My yoga teacher says that while I may have a problem with alcohol right now, it’s not right to label myself an alcoholic, or anything else, for life. That not doing so leaves the door wide-open for releasing the problem. Or, as he calls it, the challenge.”

That kind of approach made me a bit nervous. It was hanging out in bars and entertaining the other hangers-on with tales of past exploits and publishing successes that had started Craig on that downward slide. All too often talking becomes the highlight of the day, taking over an author’s life and keeping him from applying his butt to a chair and his fingers to the keys.

Nia knocked softly and opened my door. “No luck so far with the bars. You want me to go look for him?”

Her hair was even more disheveled now, and I knew she’d been tugging at it while on the phone. There were shadows under her eyes, too, as if she hadn’t slept well.

“No, I’ll go,” I said. “You’ve done enough today, fielding all those calls.”

She came over and sat tiredly in one of the chairs across from me. “Here are the messages.” She handed a monument-size stack of them across the desk.

“There must be a hundred here,” I said, groaning.

“Fifty or so, anyway.”

“Anything urgent?”

She shook her head. “Mostly the usual, authors calling to see if you got their manuscripts and if you’ve got them a deal yet. Editors returning your calls from yesterday. Most of the editors called early, while you were at the police station this morning. How did that go?”

I stared out the window, questions starting to whirl through my brain again. “I don’t think I was much help. They wanted me to tell them anything I knew about the private lives of Tony and Arnold. I haven’t known much about Arnold’s life, though, since we were divorced ten years ago. I told them I never asked for alimony, so there wasn’t much reason for us to stay in touch. We ran into each other now and then in restaurants, and once in a while he came by here to talk about that toy-creations book I sold for him years ago. As for Tony…” I shrugged.

“How are you feeling about Tony?” she asked pointedly.

“Oh, I don’t know. Confused, I suppose.” I looked at her. “Did you ever hear any rumors about either of them being gay?”

“Gay!” she said, her eyes widening. “Never!”

I remembered that she didn’t know about the Chinese dildo or the police suspicions about the murders being a gay crime. The cops had asked me not to divulge any information at all about the crime scene. Detective Rucker, the scruffy one, had told me that they wanted to keep certain information out of the papers, the better to catch the killer.

Even so, I was tempted to tell Nia about it, as I knew how well she could keep a secret. It was only my word to the detective that held me back.

“Do you think they were gay?” Nia asked.

I shook my head. “Just wondering. Since they were together in Tony’s apartment, you know? And other things.”

“Other things like the fact that they were both basically unattainable?” she asked, raising a dark eyebrow. “Mary Beth, we’ve talked about that. As long as I’ve known you, which is now about three and three-quarter years, you’ve never even looked at men who were available. When you get interested in a man, they’re always either married, engaged or gay. It’s that Conahan Wall. In this case, though, just because Tony and Arnold were both more or less unattainable, that doesn’t mean they were gay.”

“I know that,” I said a bit snappily, then took my tone back with a smile. A long time ago, I’d had to admit that Nia was right about me and the kind of men I chose to go for. I’ve even thanked her for pointing it out—not that I’ve changed any, just because I know about it.

“I wish you’d tell me what happened to you,” she said. “What’s that wall about, anyway?”

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out my purse, then reapplied powder and lipstick. My hand shook from exhaustion, and despite the expensive black suit and Gucci heels I looked like hell. But since I wasn’t going anywhere except to Craig’s motel—which he’d told me was a run-down hole-inthe-wall—it didn’t much matter.

“Let’s talk another time,” I said, closing my compact with a loud snap. “I just can’t get into all of that now.”

“It’s not just now. You never want to get into it.”

I ignored that and stood. “You’ll hold down the fort till you go home at three?”

“Of course. And I’ll keep calling around for Craig, in case you don’t find him. Will you be back in time to talk to Paul Whitmore, one way or the other?”

“I’ll have my cell phone with me, and if I know anything by two, I’ll call him from wherever I am.”

“What if you don’t find Craig, and Whitmore calls here? What do you want me to tell him?”

I thought for a moment. “Tell him Craig flew to Maui yesterday to gather inspiration from his beach house there.”

She grinned. “So he’s supposed to be rich, confident and simply unreachable.”

I grinned back. “Tell Paul I’ve tried and tried, but according to his housekeeper, he’s incommunicado.”

I held out the packet of messages. “Anyone else in this stack…if they call again, tell them I’m sorry I missed their calls and I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

“Right,” Nia said, smiling. “And would ye be wantin’ me to stand on me head as well?”

“Gee, a black woman from Dublin with an Irish brogue,” I said on my way out the door. “What a sight. Almost wipes away that scene at Tony’s last night.”

Traffic was heavy from Century City to El Segundo, which entailed going past LAX. I had time to think about Craig, Paul Whitmore, and what I was going to do to get Craig even more money—provided he wanted me to try.

Negotiating was a lesson I’d learned long ago, though more to survive in L.A. than anything. I’d worked in L.A. for a television station after finishing high school in San Francisco—just on the writing staff, but hoping to be on camera eventually. I’d even gone out to crime scenes on breaking news stories, both as an observer and to show that I had initiative and wanted to learn. I did learn, and as a result I knew more now about the law and crime than most people who aren’t actually in the field. In fact, when I decided to become a literary agent, it was largely because someone at work had shown me his book, a true-crime novel, and asked me to read it, to see if I thought it was any good. Arnold and I were on the edge of divorce and I had time on my hands, so I went for it.

The book was great, and after I’d fixed a few minor things for my co-worker, I encouraged him to send it to an agent. He asked me if I would act as his agent, and when I found out that all you really needed to represent a writer was a telephone and some letterhead, I went for it. I started making calls, telling editors I was “Mary Beth Conahan of the agency by the same name,” and leaving my home phone and fax number. Within two months I’d sold the guy’s book to a major publishing house, and negotiated a good contract for him, to boot.

I was twenty-two at the time, and it was the first I’d ever even thought of becoming an agent. I was also kind of naive, and had no idea what it took to set up my own business. So I just stumbled into it, willy-nilly, and set my sails toward becoming Mary Beth Conahan, Literary Agent, for real. The first few years were more difficult than I’d ever imagined they would be, and I have to admit I often drank too much at the end of the day. I even messed around with drugs a bit. But then something happened, and for the last seven years I’ve been clean of drugs and only drink wine now and then. I’ve also worked my ass off to succeed.

I started out with new, untried authors whose first books were exciting enough to interest publishers but needed editing before they were decent enough to go out. I edited their books free, feeling it was unethical to charge. Because of that, I’ve built a loyal clientele over the past seven years, and at the age of thirty-three I now have a stable of wonderful authors. I fly to New York and Europe at regular intervals, dine with editors, schmooze with them at all the important cocktail parties, and I’ve gained their loyalty by not sending them books I know are unacceptable—not even to please an anxious-to-get-going author.

One exception to that was Tony Price. I knew his first novel, which was dark and made a case for the death penalty, would be highly controversial, at a time when a sizable portion of the population was marching against the death penalty. I’d pushed it out there, though, and after nine publishers had turned the book down, one accepted it—and the rest is history. Since then, his work had grown increasingly lighter, which made it easier to sell, though it always did have an edge, a bite to it.

I know that in my thoughts I’d been hard on Tony this morning, but I think that’s only a wall I’d put up at the sight of him, dead, so that I wouldn’t be too gob-smacked by it. The good side of Tony Price was that he was intelligent, funny, supportive…about some things, anyway, like my work…and I loved hanging out with him. We had more fun together than I’ve ever had with anyone I’ve known.

The downside was that I kept wanting to jump his bones, and I could just see how that would turn out—with him pushing me away and assuming that “just friends” attitude that I never could seem to break through. So I’d never even dared to try.

Good thing, I supposed, now that it seems he was gay. Over the years of working in Hollywood, I’d adopted some pretty good radar for detecting whether a man was either married or gay. With Tony, however, I had to admit that I never suspected. If anything, I thought he was probably just nonsexual and put all his energies into his books.

It would have been so much easier if I’d just known up front. But like Rock Hudson, he looked, sounded, walked and behaved like the typical macho man. He was the first man, I do believe, to ever fool me that way.

The traffic finally moved and I came to Imperial Avenue, turning right and looking for the Lazy Sands Motel that Craig had told me about. He’d said it was one of the few still there from fifty years ago, and except for a rat, which he’d made into a companion, and the fact that it was filthy when he first moved into it last year, he liked his little hideout. He said it helped him to stay focused. And sober. In the early mornings, before most people were up and while there was little traffic along Imperial and Vista Del Mar, he would run down to the beach and do his yoga there.

He’d made his stay in El Segundo sound like an adventure, and it didn’t seem too bad a deal, I thought. Until I saw the Lazy Sands. It was several blocks up from the beach, on a lot that looked like a junkyard. Rusted-out, abandoned cars were everywhere, and there was even a junkyard dog—a mix that looked like part Lab and part wolf. I parked as close to the lobby as I could get, but Wolf still managed to get between me and the door, his fangs bared and a warning growl deep in his throat.

I use the word lobby loosely, because the windows were covered in graffiti and dirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed off since the seventies. The room had the shape of a lobby, and the usual kind of entrance to one, but I couldn’t even see through those windows enough to tell if there was anyone in there.

I don’t have a dog, but I love watching shows about them. So I smiled at Wolf and spoke in a high, soft voice, just like Uncle Mattie, the dog trainer to the stars, had said to do on PBS.

“Good boy, good boy!” I said cautiously, moving a foot forward. But Wolf came toward me and bared his fangs as if he really meant business this time.

It was then, fortunately, that the lobby door opened. An old man with gray stubble stood there, looking at me. “Tinkerbell!” he cried.

“Uh, no…it’s not Tinkerbell,” I said, bemused. “Just me. Mary Beth Conahan.”

“Damn you, Tinkerbell!” he yelled. “Get away from the lady!”

Wolf—or Tinkerbell, as I now realized—backed off. She didn’t go far, though, standing her ground about ten feet away. I calculated whether I’d be able to make a run for the inside before she could reach me.

“Don’t worry, she’s harmless,” the old man said. “She just likes to let people know she’s on the job. As long as you don’t look her in the eye, she won’t hurt you. If you look her in the eye she’ll see it as a challenge.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, God knows what she’ll do,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s not mine, she’s just been here forever. Some bum left her behind one day.”

I carefully kept my gaze on the man. “I’m looking for a friend,” I said. “Craig Dinsmore. Can you tell me what room he’s in?”

“You mean that writer fella? Crazy as a loon, he is. In there all hours of the day and night, typing away. Have to charge him extra for lights if he stays here much longer.” He peered at me. “You say he’s a friend of yours?”

“Yes. I’m just checking up, making sure he’s all right.”

The old man didn’t look impressed.

“He asked me to,” I added.

“Well…it’s no skin off my back. Paid his room through the next week, after all. Number twenty-six.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Can I get there without Tinkerbell here biting my leg off?”

“Like I said…” The man replied with a shrug.

“Yeah. Don’t look her in the eye.”

Relieved to get back in my car, I drove to Craig’s room, parking in the space in front of it. Stepping out, I looked for Tinkerbell but didn’t see her anywhere. As I stepped out of the car, though, I heard a growl. Startled, I looked around and saw that she was right behind my car, and had probably followed me from the office.

With more fear than I wanted to admit, I looked away and crossed over to Craig’s room. I love dogs in general, but I don’t like being around big dogs who take eye-to-eye contact as a challenge to ravage my neck.

I knocked several times on the green, peeling door of number twenty-six, and when Craig didn’t answer I went to the window. It had six square-foot panes, and one of them was broken. It had been covered from inside with see-through plastic wrap, something I hadn’t noticed when I’d parked. Curtains were closed across the entire window.

I wondered if the place had a repairman, then realized that repairs were probably done by the old man. He’d looked besieged by arthritis and possibly osteoporosis, as his back was badly stooped. Add to that the dirty lobby windows, and I doubted that he kept up with anything here. He probably got free rent for acting as “manager” for a slum landlord who never came around and didn’t care. That would leave the tenants to make their own repairs. A sort of DIY motel.

Craig no longer owned a car, so the fact that his old BMW wasn’t here didn’t tell me anything. I finally decided that he must run to the beach in the afternoons as well as the mornings, since he wasn’t hunkered down at his computer—as he’d sworn he was doing 24/7.

Unless he’s hitting the bars again.

I took out my cell phone and called Nia. “He’s not here,” I said. “Have you had any luck?”

“No, I’m sorry. I gave his description to the bartenders at all the bars around there, from Playa del Rey to El Segundo, then to Manhattan Beach and LAX. Even the bars that are probably too expensive for his budget. No one’s seen him for a couple of days.”

“Does that mean he has been in some of those bars recently?” I asked.

“Two of them,” Nia said. “I wondered if he’d been drinking, and I asked if they’d had any trouble with him. Both bartenders said that the times they’d seen him he was drinking only coffee. They said he drank a lot of that. Also—you’ll like hearing this—he always had paper and pencil with him, and spent a lot of time there writing. That’s when he wasn’t talking to customers or the bartender about writing, of course. He did a lot of that, too.”

I relaxed a bit. “I’ll go down to the beach and look for him,” I said. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was one-fifteen. Less than an hour left now to present him with Paul Whitmore’s “final” offer.

“Tell you what, Nia. How about if you call Whit-more right now and tell him the story about Maui. It’ll sound better if we get back to him before his so-called deadline, and that could give me more leeway. I’m willing to bet that if he thinks Craig is in a beach house in Hawaii, pounding away at his computer, he’ll give me more time.”

“He does seem to want Craig real bad. Funny, don’t you think?”

“Funny how?”

“Well, word gets around real fast in the writing community, especially here in L.A., and especially if it’s news about a writer going downhill. Wouldn’t you think Whitmore and Bronson & Bronson Publishing would have heard about it by now?”

“As a matter of fact, I have thought of that,” I said, “which is why I’ve been doing damage control with Whitmore. But he really likes this book of Craig’s, and he doesn’t seem too concerned about a long-term contract. Which, in itself, makes me wonder. The book I sent him doesn’t, in my opinion, call for that kind of money or commitment. It’s almost as if something’s going on that I don’t know anything about.”

“You know,” Nia said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Craig’s always been a good writer, but this mafia book isn’t anything new, is it? Just the same old, same old?”

“I found it gripping when I read it,” I said. “But I’ll admit to being a bit stunned that Whitmore offered six figures for it, let alone seven. Listen, I’ve got to run. So call Whitmore and tell him the Maui story, but tread easy…oh, hell, you know what to do. You’ve got great diplomatic bones.”

“Thanks,” Nia said, chuckling. “Are you still going down to the beach, then?”

“Yes. I’ll let you know how it goes with Craig.”

I closed my cell phone and looked back at number twenty-six one more time. It was then I thought I saw a flicker of movement at the curtain inside Craig’s window.

I was tired and hot and responded accordingly. That bastard! Was he just not answering the door? How does he expect me to help him, for God’s sake?

Then, calming down, I realized that Craig couldn’t know I had good news for him about Lost Legacy. He’d probably spotted me out here and thought I’d come to nag him about the three-thousand-dollar advance I’d loaned him against his next potential check from Bronson & Bronson.

Or he was just being typically hermit-like. Some writers develop agoraphobia while writing a book and never even go out to the store for food. They’d starve rather than leave the house and the book for even a moment. Many never answer their telephones or collect their mail for weeks, unless they think a check will be in the box.

Craig Dinsmore hadn’t been like that in recent months, however. He was more the kind who needed to gab about his work, and as Nia had confirmed, he’d been out this week to the bars, doing just that. So if he was inside now, writing, and just didn’t want to answer the door, I should feel relieved. That meant he was working hard on the next book, a follow-up to Lost Legacy, and if that was the case, his money troubles were over. And so, thankfully, were mine.

Still, where writers are concerned, I’d learned never to take anything for granted. No deal is a deal until it’s signed.

I went back up onto the rickety little porch and banged on the window. “Craig, I know you’re in there! Open up! I’ve had a new offer from Whit-more, and it’s big. We need to talk!”

I listened intently and heard a sound like a bump inside.

“Craig, this is your life we’re talking about!”

I shook the door handle, hoping it might be unlocked. It wasn’t.

Resolutely, I trudged back to the lobby and pretended that Tinkerbell wasn’t there, poised on her haunches to spring. The inside of the lobby was dusty and smelled of mold, making me sneeze.

“I need the key to number twenty-six,” I said, dabbing at my nose with a Kleenex. “My friend isn’t answering, and I’m afraid he’s had another heart attack.”

“He’s got a bad heart?” the old man said nervously.

“Yes,” I lied. “And if he dies here, the cops will be milling about forever. They’ll want to go through your room, too—your office, your books, everything.”

I had guessed right that this would not be a good thing. The old man’s toughened hand quickly scrabbled along a board with hooks and came up with a key that had “26” on it.

Back at Craig’s room, I slid the key into the lock and pushed in fast, before he could know what I was doing and push me right back out.

“Listen, Craig! I’ve been negotiating my ass off to get you a good deal—”

I stopped in my tracks. He wasn’t here. There was only the one room, with a door to what must be a bathroom in back. Was he in the bathroom, then?

I walked closer to the door and called out, “Craig? It’s Mary Beth. Are you in there?”

No answer.

Then who had moved that curtain? Was it just the wind, coming through that plastic-covered window?

But there hadn’t been any wind that I had noticed. Not enough to have caused even a ripple.

On a round table in front of the window was a laptop computer that seemed fairly new. I wondered if Craig had bought it with money from the sale of his car. To the left were several used foam cups with dregs that must have been coffee, as well as the last crumbs of some sort of pastry. There was also an inexpensive, drugstore-variety answering machine that held nineteen unanswered calls, according to the blinking green light. A small portable printer was attached to the laptop and next to it were sheets of manuscript paper, about an inch high. An El Segundo library card was propped up against a lamp, and on the floor around the table were odd crumpled sheets that Craig had obviously tossed away as not right.

So he had been working. That was good. I started to turn back to the front door, but couldn’t resist a peek first at the finished sheets of manuscript. They were upside down, so I turned the entire stack over and saw the title: Under Covers.

Odd. Did he mean Undercover? A spy novel? That didn’t sound like Craig. He was more into investigative nonfiction like Lost Legacy, where real-life mafia slugs were found under upturned rocks.

A look at the next few pages revealed that the title was a play on words, and the book seemed to be a fictional account of the Hollywood scene “between the sheets.” He’d written about old Hollywood in the 1940s, accounts of wild exploits of high-level directors with young female stars, sexual harassment, and the fact that actors were forced to cover up their homosexuality to make them more of a heartthrob to female viewers. Names of stars, though, had been changed to protect the noninnocent.

I’d had no idea Craig was writing a book like this, and I couldn’t see Paul Whitmore paying the same thing for this book as he was offering for Lost Legacy. While its mafia-don story had been told before, Craig had added a psychological edge to it that had made Whitmore take notice. This book, though it seemed well written, was as stale as yesterday’s news. The casting-couch angle had been done before, over and over. In fact, some of it seemed familiar, as if I’d read it somewhere before.

What the hell was going on?

I’d taken a speed-reading course years before, so it didn’t take me long to read the first few chapters. Confused and concerned, though, I stopped reading at page thirty-four. Setting the page down, I did something I’d never done before. Pushing the “on” button on Craig’s computer, I sat on his chair and tried to bring up the Under Covers document. I was pretty good with computers, but there was something odd about this one: there were no documents on the hard drive. None at all. No letters, no memos, no books. If anything had ever been on the hard drive, it had obviously been wiped clean. Puzzled, I opened the CD-Rom drive and the floppy disk drive, but both were empty.

Before I had time to think it through, I heard a slight noise that seemed to be coming from behind the motel. A thud? Someone hitting the wall back there? Images of O.J. and Kato Kaelin came to mind—someone running into an air conditioner with blood on his hands.

Then I realized the sound must have come from the bathroom. Without thinking, I strode over there and threw the bathroom door open, determined to confront Craig about why he hadn’t been answering his calls and why the hell he was hiding from me. It was his own fault, I thought, if I caught him on the john.

But Craig wasn’t hiding at all. He was right there on the floor, blood all over his forehead that was slowly seeping onto the old, grubby tiles.

In shock, I could barely move. I looked at the window, which was open. Cheap plastic curtains in a gaudy flower pattern were blowing in a light salty breeze that came off the ocean from this side of the motel. There were marks on the sill that seemed to be blood, marks that might have come from a killer, possibly escaping that way.

I knelt down beside Craig, feeling for a pulse. I couldn’t find one anywhere. I touched his cheek. Still warm. He hadn’t been dead long.

Stroking his forehead, I couldn’t hold back tears. The poor guy never got the chance to get out of the hole he’d dug himself into. And we were so close to getting what he wanted.

Then, as if in a nightmare, I saw that the blood had originated at a large gash on Craig’s forehead, and that lying by his side was a bloody Chinese dildo—made of ivory, and intricately carved to please, I supposed, in all the right places. It looked very much like the one in Tony’s apartment the night before.

I knelt there for a long moment, so staggered I wasn’t able to stand. I guess I noticed the draft, finally, that slammed the front door shut. Grasping the bathroom sink, I pulled myself up slowly and realized there was blood on my skirt and my knees.

I was still standing over Craig’s body, blood all over me, when the police banged on the front door and piled in. “Don’t move!” they ordered, guns pointed directly at me.

I didn’t even breathe.

El Segundo is a smallish town along the coast, south of Santa Monica and north of Redondo Beach. It’s a nice town, growing perhaps too quickly, but the cops, I’d heard, were generally pretty friendly.

My experience, however, was a bit strained because I’d been found at a crime scene, with blood all over me.

Inside the El Segundo police station, I’d been allowed to wash most of the blood off me. A female officer stood outside the bathroom door, “just in case I needed help.”

Yeah, right.

After I’d done the best I could, I was escorted to an interview room where a Lieutenant Davies sat across from me at a table. He didn’t tell me much, but I knew by now that he was wondering if I’d also killed Tony and Arnold. Although the ESPD and the LAPD were entirely separate entities, surely they shared information when something as important as murder was involved.

The one thing that probably kept me out of jail, at least for the moment, was the open bathroom window and the blood on the sill. I could have set that up, they thought at first, to make it look as if someone else had killed Craig Dinsmore and then escaped out that window. But when my prints didn’t turn up on the murder weapon and there was a third, unidentified person’s blood type on that sill, they couldn’t charge me.

Which did not, however, exonerate me entirely. I could have been an accomplice, the lieutenant said, and just didn’t make it to the window before the police broke in.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” I said. “How did you know to show up when you did?”

He hesitated again, but shrugged. “We had an anonymous phone call saying a murder had been committed in that room.”

“Do you mind telling me when that call came in?”

He hesitated, but said, “One-forty or thereabouts.”

“So, whoever it was, they called you while I was in Craig’s room.”

He didn’t answer that, and for good reason, I thought. If I were an accomplice to the crime, why would the other killer call the cops at a time when I’d be caught there?

I spent the next couple of hours in the interview room dealing with questions I had no answers to. In between questions I had time to think, and I figured that whoever had killed Craig did it while I was pounding on the door the first time. When I came back with a key, the killer was just getting ready to go out the window, but he hesitated when he heard me come in. The noise I’d heard while I was looking at Craig’s manuscript must have been the killer climbing, finally, through that window. I’d been so quiet, he probably thought I’d gone.

Or maybe he was afraid that I might decide I needed to pee.

“Ms. Conahan,” the lieutenant said at last in a hard voice, “I don’t believe in coincidence. There were two murders last night in Brentwood, and the LAPD says that both men were closely connected to you. Now there’s this third murder. I would think you might be getting nervous about that.”

“Well, I’m not nervous,” I said calmly. “I’m sad. I’ve lost two very good authors and an ex-husband who didn’t deserve to die. But I didn’t do anything, so there’s nothing for me to be nervous about.”

Lieutenant Davies fell silent, and I suspected he was using that psychological technique of not speaking, which usually forces the other person to break the silence by saying something.

He’d probably never had an agent as a suspect, and didn’t know that we were well-versed in those kinds of tricks, from constant negotiations. Though, come to think of it, the odds that no agent had ever committed murder upon an author were probably worse than an old, broken-down nag winning at the Hollywood Park racetrack.

I reached for my purse on the table and stood. “Unless you intend to arrest me,” I said firmly, “I’m leaving. I have work to do.”

It was a bluff, but a safe one. If he’d had enough evidence to hold me, I’d be booked and behind bars by now.

The lieutenant smiled, but it was a tight smile, not quite making it to his eyes. I noticed that his teeth were very white against his tanned skin, and that there was an odd little scar on his left cheek. Overall he might be considered quite handsome, but the eyes took away from that. They were all business, not giving anything up.

“I have to ask you not to leave town,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I answered.

He nodded and stood. “I’ll walk you out.”

I stopped by the office before heading home, and found Nia still there. She hadn’t left at three after all, but was in my workout room, which connected to the office. She was sweating away on the exercise bike, a cordless phone from the office on the floor. The door from the workout room to the reception room was open, which meant that she’d been listening for anyone who might walk in.

“Hi,” I said, dropping my purse on a chair and stepping behind the Chinese screen that served as a changing room. Pulling off my suit and tugging on workout clothes, I did my usual stretching exercises, then climbed on the treadmill next to Nia and started it up.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“I talked to Paul Whitmore after your last call about Craig, and it was weird. After how hot he seemed for Craig’s new book, he didn’t sound all that upset to hear he was dead.”

“Really? How did he sound?”

“Quiet. Didn’t say much, just to tell you he was sorry to hear it. Hung up rather quickly.”

“Hmm. He was probably signing another author already. Whatever it takes to keep the coffers filled.”

Not that I was anyone to talk. I’d been worrying a bit about my own coffers.

“And a Detective Rucker came by,” Nia said. “Yum!”

“Yum?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, don’t tell me you didn’t notice. That curly hair, and those gorgeous white teeth.”

I studied my teeth in the wall of mirrors in front of us. “You know something? Everybody has white teeth these days. Ever since all those actors started having their teeth whitened, everybody you meet hassuper-white teeth. If they all got together in a room and smiled, they’d blind each other.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t laugh, okay? I’m thinking of getting mine done, too.”

“You’re kidding. Your teeth are already white enough. You’re beautiful, Nia. Don’t you know that?”

“Not in the teeth,” she said. “They’re more a sort of off-white. How can I ever compete in the date market with off-white teeth?”

“True,” I said in a hopeless tone. “I can see it all now. You as an old maid, living a joyless, loveless life with only your cat and your off-white teeth.”

She groaned. “That so possible, it isn’t even funny.”

I slowed down my pace. “So you think Dan Rucker’s hot?”

“Well, I didn’t say he’s hot. I just think he looks like he could be, under that untidy disguise. What do you think?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t like his attitude.”

“Figures. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and I doubt he’s gay. Why would you like him?”

“Oh, shut up.”

We worked out silently for a while, until Nia said, “Why do I feel like I’m riding a horse? This seat hurts like hell.”

“You want me to get a recumbent?”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“Anything for you, my treasure trove.”

Nia was so good at her work, I had been thinking of making her a partner. I thought that I’d better wait though, to see how things went with Craig’s book and my income from it. Would Whitmore withdraw his offer now, or still publish it?

My guess was that since the book was finished, he’d go ahead and publish it. But could I still legally represent Craig in the sale? I’d never had a situation like this before, but I knew my contract with Craig gave me the right to sign for him if for some reason he wasn’t able to. For instance, if he’d just been impossible to reach and I had a great offer like the one from Whitmore, I could have signed for Craig rather than risk his losing the contract.

But what about when he was dead?

Damn. I wished now that I’d accepted the seven-figure offer from Whitmore that morning.

“By the way,” Nia said, breaking into my thoughts, “he’s coming back.”

“Who?”

“Detective Rucker. He called a little while ago and said he’d be coming back.”

“To see me?”

“What else? He’s already seen me, and I don’t recall any rings or bended knees.”

“What does he want?” I asked, frowning.

“I don’t know. He just said he had a few questions.”

“But how did he know I’d be here, when I didn’t know it myself until I left El Segundo?”

She grinned. “Maybe you’re star-crossed lovers, meant to be together from the beginning of time. Like, he just knew.”

“Oh, right. More likely he was following me. Or having me followed. I’ll bet he called you from the cell phone in his car, not twenty feet behind me.”

“Wow. He must really want to see you again, if that’s the case,” Nia said, laughing.

I couldn’t help laughing, too. “Hardly. The El Segundo police are ready to arrest me, now that I’ve got bodies falling on the ground all around me. Detective Rucker probably wants to be the first to arrive with handcuffs.”

“Handcuffs, eh? Now there’s a picture worth taking.”

“Oh, stop it!” I took the towel off my shoulder and wiped my face and neck with it. Bending over, I reached for my water bottle on the floor. I was standing with my back to the door, my butt in the air, when I heard from behind me, “No cuffs this time. If that’s what you like, though, I’ll make a note of it.”

I whirled around and saw Detective Dan Rucker with his arms folded and the first smile I’d seen on his face. He hadn’t shaved, but he was dressed in clean jeans and a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. I almost thought I saw what Nia meant when she’d said yum.

“Whoa, Nelly!” she said now, slipping off the exercise bike. Looking at me pointedly, she said, “I’ll betcha I have some work to do in the other room.”

She disappeared into the outer office, pulling the door shut behind her and leaving me red-faced and with no sharp dialogue as backup.

“Have a seat, Detective,” I said, taking refuge behind the Chinese screen. “I need to change.”

Nia’s teasing rang in my ears, along with the idea she’d put in my head—that Dan Rucker might be interested in me as something other than a suspect. I felt awkward, and my hands shook as I pulled off my workout clothes and wriggled back into my suit. Getting stockings on wasn’t even an issue. I left them on the chair, rolled into a small bundle. Slipping into my heels, I was aware that Rucker could hear every movement I was making, and I felt like a little girl in fourth grade. That little boy behind her? He’d just sent her a note saying, I like you—do you like me? Was he looking at her braids, and were they straight or messed up? Was her dress buttoned at the neck in back? What did he really think of her?

The fact that I cared surprised me, and I wanted to disappear. What on earth was I thinking? There was nothing for it but to go out there with my chin up and confidence streaming from my pores.

“Now, then. What can I do for you?” I asked briskly, leading Rucker into my office. I took a seat at my desk and put my best negotiating face on. Detective Rucker didn’t sit in the chair across from me as expected, however. Instead, he came around beside me and plunked his butt onto the edge of my brand-new-to-me antique desk. He was so close I could smell the oranges again, and I gritted my teeth and resisted the impulse to grab my letter opener and stick him in the thigh with it.

“Nice office,” he said, folding his arms and looking around, taking in the view. “You must be doing well.”

“I do okay. And I worked for it. No one handed it to me.”

He nodded. “You don’t have to be defensive about it. I know.”

“You know?”

“Sure. I’ve been checking up on you. I know how you started out and that you just moved here to the high-rent district a couple of years ago. I know you bought a home in Malibu, too, at about the same time. Pretty nice digs.”

I tried not to show how flustered I was. Standing, I moved away from him and crossed to the other side of the room, where I had a sofa and coffee table. I sat on the sofa, crossing my legs and folding my arms—an automatic defensive posture, I realized suddenly. I never would have done this in front of an editor, as it would have weakened my position.

Carefully, I unfolded my assorted limbs, leaning back against the cushions and forcing my spine to relax.

“I do all right,” I said coolly. “Is there some purpose to this, Detective? Is it going somewhere?”

“I’m just kind of curious about your relationship with Tony Price. It seems you and he went out a lot. You even went on trips together.”

“And?”

“And Price’s murder looks as if it might have been a crime of passion.”

I laughed. “You think I killed Tony in a moment of passion?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Well, you’re wrong. If anything, Tony’s death will hurt me, especially in terms of financial loss. The best thing for me would have been if he’d lived to be a hundred.”

“And kept writing till then, of course.”

“All right, what are you getting at?” I snapped. Reaching for the cordless phone on the coffee table, I said calmly, “And is this supposed to be a formal interview? Do I need my lawyer here?”

“Nah, relax. This is off the record. I’ll let you know when you need a lawyer.”

He came over and stood above me, hands in his pockets. “The thing is, if Tony Price wasn’t writing well, if he hit a wall and couldn’t get going again, or if he’d decided to drop you as his agent—”

“Sorry to burst your bubble,” I said, putting the phone down. “None of that is true.”

I stood again and walked over to the windows, giving him my back while studying the traffic below. It was a negotiating technique, one I often used to gain time and balance. I noted that the freeways were jammed with commuters winding their way from one end of the city to the other. It was late June, and I knew it was hot out there. I could picture the drivers without air-conditioning loosening their ties and belts, or the buttons on their blouses. Almost everyone would be swilling down bottled water so they wouldn’t dehydrate on their three-hour commutes home to where the rents were reasonable.

I’d probably end up as one of them, now that Craig was gone, too. Even if Lost Legacy got published and I received my fifteen percent commission on it, that wouldn’t last long after taxes and my current expenses. And Craig wouldn’t be around to finish Under Covers.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said finally, turning back to Rucker. “I’ve lost two valuable authors and an ex-husband I actually still liked. This hasn’t been a red-letter day for me. If you’re arresting me, just say so. I’ll call my lawyer. If you’re not arresting me, this is over. Now.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a pretty tough cookie, aren’t you?”

“I can handle myself,” I said.

I went back into the workout room, picked up my purse and took out my keys. “Especially with men like you.”

Damn, Mary Beth. I bit my lip. Had that sounded like the tough message I’d meant to send—or a challenge?

When I turned back he was standing only a few feet behind me. “I have no doubt of that,” he said.

I thought a minute, then made a rapid decision.

“Look,” I said, glancing at my watch, “I have to eat dinner. Would you like to join me?”

The eyes widened. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Absolutely not.” I gave my laugh the tiniest bit of a scornful edge. “Get hold of yourself. I just thought that if you insist on pummeling me with questions, it might be better if we do it where I don’t feel like I’m going to be thrown in a cell at a moment’s notice. Tony and Arnold were important to me. So was Craig. I’d like to help find their killer.”

“Uh…okay,” he said, his tone sounding suspicious. “Where would you like to go?”

“My house,” I said, handing him my personal card with the address and cell-phone number on it. Which, come to think of it, he probably already had, since he knew so much about me.

“Wow,” he said, “gold-plated lettering for a gold-plated address. Malibu, California…home of the stars.”

I sighed irritably. “Are you going to hold that against me?”

“Not at all. The view should be great.”

“Eight o’clock, then,” I said, sailing out the door. “Don’t be late.”

Better to be on your own turf and in power, I’d decided. The last thing I needed was to be summoned by the police again, just to sit and repeat, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Besides, I had plans for the good detective. Before this night was over, Detective Dan Rucker was going to tell me everything he knew about all three murders.

At home I changed into jeans and a T-shirt and took a cup of coffee down to the beach. Gulls came and settled near me, hoping I had food. They soon left, though, and went back to dipping up and down over the waves.

It was seven o’clock and the sun had begun its downward slide toward the sea. The sky was blood-red from all the smog that had been blown west from what had, over the past few hours, become an unseasonable Santa Ana wind—hot, heavy and dangerous, blowing trees into houses and causing all kinds of havoc, according to the drive-time news.

Here at the beach, though, it made the evening air balmy and gave us some of our best sunsets. The smog blows westward from inland when pushed by the Santa Anas—Devil Winds, as they’ve been called for years—and the setting sun filtered through the smog is incredibly beautiful.

Too much of the Santa Anas, however, can make a person crazy in the head. When they go on for days I become irritable and off my feed. Some days I want to kill everything in sight—even my authors.

Fortunately, that’s only a temporary aberration. I’d never really wished for any of my authors, including those three men, to be murdered. And now that they had been, where did that leave me? Grieving aside, that is.

And I did grieve. Now that I had time to be alone, I grieved for Arnold and Tony, both of whom I had loved so unsuccessfully, and for Craig, who deserved better and almost got it. He had worked hard to sober up and stay that way, and from the manuscript I’d seen on his desk in the motel, he was doing good work. Unexpectedly good work, even though the topic had been done before.

Why on earth would anyone want to kill him? Craig had been divorced for several years, and his ex, Julia, owned a successful antiques shop in New York City. Craig had told me Julia had never needed or asked for alimony.

Was it the new book, then? If I’d had time to do more than scan the pages, would I have found that he had tremendously damaging information against someone important? Information that was only lightly fictionalized?

But then the killer would surely have taken the manuscript with him.

Unless Craig had been clever enough to put a floppy disk or CD-Rom in a safe-deposit box, or some other secret place.

I sighed, drawing my knees up and leaning my chin on them, watching the neighbors walk by with their dogs or make their last run of the night. I usually made time each evening to run, but I hadn’t been able to lately. I did work out three times a week, and sometimes more. Working out gave me an endorphin high, and I felt afterward as if I could take on the world.

Today, though, was different. Today I wanted to just sit in a funk and think about the state of my life.

As Rucker had said, I’d been living here at Malibu for about two years—the same amount of time I’d been at my office in Century City. My house was tiny and a fixer-upper, but it still took more money to get into it than my father had made in his lifetime. My pop had been a streetcar conductor in San Francisco, and a good man. He supported my mom and me the best he could, and even though times were often tough, we never really went without. When I graduated from high school I left home, like most kids, for freedom from parental control—but also because I wanted to get a good job and give the poor guy a break. He died a year later, almost as if it was a relief to leave, once I was out of the house and settled on my own. Sometimes I feel guilty about taking away his motivation to go on. Other times, I must admit I’m proud to have done so much for myself, as young as I was.

Not that I’ve always been thrilled with my career choice. The life of an agent, a manager, or any kind of broker, is unlike any other life I’ve known or even heard of. We spend our days walking a tightrope between editors and authors, trying to keep both of them happy with each other. Not always an easy task. A good agent, some believe, is the kind that’s feared by New York editors. Most editors, on the other hand, will tell you that they prefer agents who are “easy to work with.” Which sometimes means that those agents don’t get the best deals, because they haven’t got it in them to act like a shark with a friend.

Those of us who are “sometime sharks” believe that the only way to win is to make a difficult editor so intimidated that she or he will give the author a good deal, with either money or extra perks. We do whatever it takes to come to an agreeable conclusion. And though bullying is not a good habit to get into, it becomes one sometimes, before we even know it. As natural as breathing.

So yes, I’ve learned to negotiate, and I’ve been successful at it. When threatened, I always look at whatever skills I have to defend myself, and that’s what I did this afternoon. Detective Rucker had accepted my invitation even more quickly than I’d expected him to. He would come here for dinner thinking he could get something out of me, because surely I was the main suspect in all three deaths so far. He’d play his game. But more importantly, I’d play mine.

If I didn’t want to end up arrested, I needed something to go on—information of some kind that would help me find out who the real killer was.

“Nice place,” Dan Rucker said, whistling softly. The sun had gone below the horizon, but the sky was still streaked with bright red, and my white sofa, carpet and walls were all tinted pink. The gulls were now wheeling over the beach in droves, probably scoping out dead fish.

“Look at that sunset,” Rucker said.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

He nodded, standing at the window with his back to me. “Mind if I go out on the deck?”

“Be my guest, Detective. I’ll bring the wine out there.”

I watched as he went onto the deck and sat at a patio table with four chairs. Putting his feet up on one chair, he seemed comfortable about making himself at home.

Well, good. A couple of glasses of wine and he’d be even more ready to tell me what he knew.

I took a cold bottle of Chardonnay out, along with appetizers I’d defrosted and nuked.

“Any trouble getting here, with the traffic?” I asked.

It seems like that’s the first question people ask when a guest walks in and they don’t know what else to say.

“A little,” my guest answered, “but it’s thinned out pretty well by now.” He took a bite of a small cheese-and-ham tart and sighed. “Delicious. You’re a good cook.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve always been pretty handy with piecrust.”

He looked at me intently and I had to look away.

“Okay,” I said, flushing. “I got them at the store. You think I really had time to cook?”

He smiled. “But you heated them up so well.”

“I did, didn’t I? It’s a talent I have…heating things up.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” he said, grinning.

“Why, Detective, are you flirting with me?”

“You’re the one who made the comment,” he countered. “What else did you have in mind?”

“I, uh…nothing, really. And by the way, you’re moving awfully fast.”

“I don’t mean to. I’d just like to get the sex stuff out of the way so we can get down to business.”

I felt my face grow hot. “Sex stuff? Detective Rucker, wherever is your mind? And what do you mean by business?”

“I mean the real reason you invited me here,” he said.

“You suspect me of having a secret agenda?”

“I suspect you of just about everything right now, Mary Beth Conahan.”

He said it easily, as if he were merely commenting on the weather.

“The key word is suspect,” I replied. “You have absolutely no evidence that I had anything to do with any of those murders. You can’t possibly have, because I didn’t commit them.”

He shrugged and took a long swallow of the wine. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I just figured if I came here tonight you might feel more comfortable about telling the truth.”

“Then you’ve wasted your time,” I said, “because I already have.” I took a sip of the Chardonnay. “I honestly don’t know who killed Tony and Arnold. Or Craig.”

“But you know something you aren’t saying. I’d bet my badge on it.”

“Then I hope your badge doesn’t mean too much to you.”

“It means everything. I wouldn’t bet it if I weren’t sure.”

“I think dinner’s just about ready,” I said, looking at my watch and changing the subject. “I don’t cook much, so I hope you like Poor Man’s Lasagna.”

He smiled. “Poor Man’s Lasagna? What’s that?”

“You cook some pasta, then layer it in a casserole dish with tomato sauce, garlic, sour cream, cream cheese and Monterey Jack. Takes about twenty minutes to pull it all together.”

“Sounds absolutely wonderful. A sure way to harden the arteries.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“Not at all. It’s my favorite kind of food.”

A man after my own heart—if only he weren’t here to tear it out and roast it on a spit. I’d have to tread carefully with Detective Dan Rucker.

We were having after-dinner coffee, on the deck with Bailey’s Irish Cream, my excuse for an easy dessert. It had grown dark, and I’d plugged in the little fairy lights around the railing. The night air was warm, even balmy, and the ocean waves were soft and muted. Thanks to the Santa Ana winds, the sky was clear now, and the moon illuminated the shoreline all the way down to Palos Verdes.

“There was a small piece on the evening news about Craig Dinsmore,” Dan said, leaning back lazily in his chair, his feet on the middle railing. “They said he’d once been on the track to stardom, but he’d fallen off track along the way. A ‘friend’ they interviewed said it was alcoholism, but that Dinsmore had recently cleaned up and was fighting his way back. The anchor ended up by saying in somber tones, ‘…only to end up dead in a seedy motel room.”’

“They’d make the most of that, of course. It’s a great story for the media.”

“Is any of it true?” he asked.

“Most of it, more or less. He did clean up and I’ve been negotiating a good contract for his current book. I’m not so sure about the next one. I saw a manuscript at Craig’s motel room, just before the El Segundo police came crashing in. It wasn’t the kind of book he told me he was writing.”

“What kind was it?”

“One of those Hollywood tell-alls,” I said. “Nothing especially new or original.” I remembered that the manuscript had seemed familiar to me, and suddenly I thought I knew why. Not for certain, but I had my suspicions. I’d have to go online and see if I was right.

“What about Tony Price?” Dan asked. “He was a best-seller, right?”

“Not if you want to be grammatical. A best-seller is a book. An author is a ‘best-selling author.’ Or to be even more grammatical, a ‘writer of best-selling books.”’

“I stand corrected,” he said, smiling. “Does it make a real difference?”

“Not unless you’ve got a tiny little editor sitting on your shoulder and you get bugged by those things.”

He shook his head. “Living with you must be a challenge.”

“Well, no one’s ever had to come up to that challenge,” I said, smiling sweetly, “so no problem.” Then, sobering, I added, “Except, of course, poor Arnold.”

Rucker was silent a moment. Then he said, “To get back to Tony Price, I would imagine that losing him will put a dent in your income.”

“Eventually,” I said casually, with more bravado than honesty. “There are still royalties to come in on his last book, and option money if a movie is made from it.” I took a sip of my coffee and shrugged.

“And Craig Dinsmore?” he asked. “He wasn’t making any money for you at all?”

I shook my head. “Not much lately. A few royalties from his older best-selling books. Some from foreign sales. The book that’s at the publisher’s should do quite well, though. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.”

“Okay. But while you’re wondering about that, enlighten me, please, about the Chinese dildos.”

He seemed surprised. “You recognized them as that?”

“Sure. I have a couple of gay authors and they’re a hot item in West Hollywood right now. Word goes around at parties, so yes, I’ve heard about them. Ancient Chinese sex artifacts, quite expensive. They were the murder weapons, right?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he answered, looking away.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“You may take it as that, but like I said—”

“You’re not at liberty to say. But you know, I’ve been thinking. It’d take a lot of strength to bash someone in the forehead with one of those. Hard enough to kill them, anyway. And here we’ve got three someones. It would almost have to be a man.”

“Or a very strong woman,” he said, looking at me. “Someone who works out a lot, for instance.”

“Ah…so you are here on a fishing expedition. You think I killed them.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re not saying much of anything. So what can you tell me? This little ête-à-tête has to be mutual, or I’m clamming up.”

“You’ve already clammed up,” he said. “You haven’t told me a thing I can use to find the killer.”

“Well, that shouldn’t bother you too much, since you half suspect that I’m it.”

“You think it’s only half?” he asked, looking me intently in the eye. It was hard to break away because my breath caught and my hands were beginning to shake.

“Are you married?” I asked, setting my coffee cup down carefully.

“Nope. Never have been.”

“Engaged?”

“Nope.”

“Gay?”

“Not so far as I can tell.” He grinned.

“Wait a minute. Are you saying you’re attainable?”

He laughed softly. “I’d like to think I am.”

“Hmm. So then, about that sex stuff. Can we get down to it now?”

The grin widened. “I thought you’d never ask.”

For my part, I’d ventured into this with one thing in mind—well, almost one thing—to get information out of Dan Rucker. But we didn’t talk at all, aside from some rather wild and passionate utterances that would have embarrassed me if I’d had neighbors on the other side of the wall.

He was a pretty good lover, quite skilled in the ways of pleasing a woman. But he still wasn’t my type. And his beard scratched. He turned out to be cleaner, though, than I’d expected—and he still smelled like oranges warming in a noonday sun.

I never did get any information out of him, but never in my life had I felt anything like the way I’d felt with him. It seemed we matched in all ways physical, as if we’d rehearsed a thousand years ago for this moment—corny as that sounds.

When it was over, we both leaned back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling. He was the first to speak. “That was really…different,” he said.

I was lying in a pool of sweat, and only half of it was from the hot Santa Ana winds. I cringed. “Different good? Or different bad?”

He leaned on an elbow and kissed my lips, rubbing his lightly back and forth over mine, and ending at the tip of my nose. “Different like…well, like your Poor Man’s Lasagna.”

I struggled to remember what he’d said about that. Thick? Fatty? Greasy?

No. Absolutely wonderful was what he’d said. I smiled.

“Do you have any orange juice?” he asked.

“Second shelf. Fridge.” I turned on my side and snuggled under the down comforter.

“Well, don’t get up,” he said pointedly. “Let me get it.”

“You’re a prince,” I murmured, yawning.

He swatted me on the ass.

While he rummaged in the kitchen, I thought about what had just happened. Truthfully, waking up in my bed beside Dan Rucker at five after midnight made me feel like the Whore of Babylon. I hadn’t had sex in four years, and the lack of it hadn’t bothered me much. Most of the men I’d been with didn’t know an orgasm from a mild spasm, so the minute I’d get excited they’d let go and then quit on me. Eventually I found my work more thrilling, and it lasted longer, so I focused on that.

Except, of course, for my fixation on Tony. I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d ever made love and it hadn’t turned out well. With no more fantasies in that department, I might have had to settle down in a rocking chair and knit afghans.

The good detective came back with juice for both of us, so I sat up, pulled the sheets up to my neck with one hand and took the drink with the other. He stretched out beside me, leaning back against the headboard. For a few minutes we sipped our juice without talking. It felt really weird, this man in my bed, a man I hardly knew and yet had shared something rather spectacular with.

Staring out at the now-dark ocean—anywhere but into those dreamy liquid eyes that were so much like Paul Newman’s—I sipped my juice and said, “It’s cooling off out there.”

“The Santa Anas are still blowing, though,” he said. “They make me crazy. Always have.”

“Me, too. In fact, I wonder if that’s what happened with Tony, Arnold and Craig. Some random killer crazed by the winds.”

“Who just happens to hit people you’re close to?” he said skeptically.

I sighed. “No, I guess not. But, look, you don’t really think I killed them, do you?”

“You mean, have I changed my mind because we had sex?”

“No, I mean because you wouldn’t have slept with me if you thought I was a killer.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, how the hell do I know!” I said irritably, grabbing my robe and getting out of bed. I crossed over to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror over the sink.

God, I looked awful. Between circles under my eyes from lack of sleep and the matted hair, I looked like an escapee from a Colombian prison.

I started to brush my teeth. “Let’s forget about you for a minute,” I said, spitting. “Does anyone in the LAPD think they could be gay crimes?”

“I’m not sure. Were all three of them gay?”

“Actually, none were, that I knew of. But those dildos…”

“I’m no expert,” he said, coming up behind me and pulling the collar of my robe aside to plant a kiss on my bare shoulder, “but I’ve been told that women use ‘help’ of that sort as much as men. In fact, more.”

I knew that, but hadn’t thought about it in this case. “I just wondered…I guess because I’ve heard that the gay crowd in West Hollywood is into those and Tony used to hang out a lot in West Hollywood. But Arnold? And Craig?” I shook my head. “You must have talked to a few people by now. Neighbors in Tony’s building, friends, maybe even enemies. Are there any you suspect?”

He looked at me in the mirror and raised his eyebrows.

“Other than me,” I said.

He stood beside me and studied his beard, combing it with his fingers. “As for Craig Dinsmore, the LAPD doesn’t have jurisdiction in El Segundo. We may know more about a connection between them when we get the DNA tests and evidence back from Price’s apartment. If there is a connection, we may also be asked to assist with the El Segundo PD’s investigation.”

“There is evidence, then? Something you may be able to arrest someone with?”

He grinned and went back into the bedroom, pulling on his pants and shirt. “I think I’ve said enough. And with very little payoff.”

“Sex with me wasn’t a good payoff?” I called out.

He laughed. “I was actually hoping for more information from you about the three murder victims. But since you ask…” He turned at the door. “I didn’t see sex with you as a payoff. I thought it was more like fun.”

I smiled and pondered that after he left, slipping into a pair of flannel pajama trousers and a sleeveless tee. Then I lay on my bed and listened to the waves crash for a while, until I fell asleep.

It was not to be an easy night, however, and there was more than sweetness and light to come.

I was dreaming about Craig and Arnold and crushed foreheads, Tony and my lost income, when my doorbell rang. I woke with a start and looked at my bedside clock: 1:25 a.m. Not very many people knew where I lived, and none of them would come here at this hour without calling first.

Had the scruffy detective come back for more? Or had he come to arrest me this time?

I drew my silk Chinese robe around me and walked to the front door, turning on a couple of lights along the way. Looking through the peephole I saw a woman blinking in the bright glare of the motion-sensitive light above my front door.

She seemed disheveled and badly dressed, like women I’ve seen on the streets, sleeping in cardboard boxes. I shivered in the cold dampness that blew in from the ocean through a crack I’d left open in a window. I couldn’t imagine what this woman wanted with me, but was doubly cautious because I’d heard from a neighbor that someone had broken into her house recently, and she thought it was “one of the homeless.”

The way she’d said the word homeless was so disparaging, though, I had tended to discount her story and wondered if she’d simply heard a dog in her trash that night. In her circle, a homeless person probably just made for a better story.

“What do you want?” I asked through the closed door.

“I just really need a place to sleep,” the woman said. “Can I come in?”

There was something oddly familiar about her voice, but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any extra room,” I said. It was all I could think of. “Have you tried the missions?”

“Please, Mary Beth. Let me at least talk to you.”

It startled me that she’d called me by name. “Who is it?” I called out. “Who are you?”

The woman started to cry. “Mary Beth, it’s me, Lindy. Lindy Lou.”

Lindy Lou? Lindy Lou Trent, from high school? Was it possible?

I opened the door a crack but didn’t take off the chain. “Stand over here where I can see you,” I said.

She did, and I had to admit there was a slight resemblance, maybe in the nose and eyes, but that’s where it ended. Lindy Louise Trent had been my best friend in high school—and at the same time my arch-rival. Lindy had the looks, the money, the personality, and all the boys. While I slaved away on the school paper, she became the most popular cheerleader, the homecoming queen, and the one who got the homecoming king—someone I’d had eyes for but was too shy to go after. Lindy just had to toss her long blond hair, stick out her chest, and boys would follow her anywhere.

“Is that really you?” I asked now, though I could see with every passing moment that it was indeed her. I just couldn’t believe the change that had taken place. Several inches of the roots of her hair were dark, and the blond that was still left was dry and frizzled. Her eyes were wide and staring.

My look must have spoken volumes.

“Please let me come in and sit down, Mary Beth. I’ll tell you everything, but I really just need to sit down.”

She started to sway back and forth alarmingly. I opened the door the rest of the way and reached for her. Putting an arm around her waist, I drew her into the living room and helped her to sit on the couch. She was light as a feather, and shaking so much I had to hold on tight for fear of dropping her.

“Oh, God, that feels so good,” she said, groaning. “Just to sit. You can’t know, Mary Beth. I’ve been walking for miles.”

She wore low-heeled, pointed-toe shoes from a good designer, but when she slipped them off I could see that she wore no stockings, and two of her toes were bleeding.

“For God’s sake, Lindy, let me clean that up for you,” I said. I went to the kitchen and spoke to her from across the breakfast bar as I ran water to get it warm. “Where did you walk from?”

“Downtown L.A.,” she said, her voice shaking. “I mean, I started out there, but then I got a ride to Hollywood. I walked down Sunset Boulevard till I got to the ocean, and then I turned on Pacific Coast Highway and came here.”

I added soap to the bowl of warm water, and a soft dishcloth. “I don’t understand. How did you know where I live?”

“I read a piece about you in the Sunday Los Angeles Times. They said you lived in Malibu, and then I ran into someone who knew you. He gave me your address.”

Warning bells went off. Lindy shows up after all these years—fifteen, to be exact, since high school—and tells me that someone who knows me gave her my address? Who would do that?

For that matter, what were the odds of her “running into someone” who even knew my address? I protect my personal information from almost everyone, as I don’t want agitated authors showing up at my door in the middle of the night. That had happened frequently when I had my office in front of the little adobe house in Hollywood. I didn’t want it to happen here.

“Who was this person?” I asked.

Lindy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I met him at a bar in Hollywood and we got to talking. I told him I’d been wanting to get in touch with you, especially after I read that piece in the paper. Just to tell you how happy I am for your success, you know.”

I’ll bet, I thought suspiciously. Lindy had obviously met with bad times. How much was she here to hit me up for?

I knelt down and began to wash her feet with the soapy water, then dried them carefully. “Leave the shoes off,” I said. “I’ll get a Band-Aid, and I’ve got a pair of socks and some tennies you can have.”

“Thank you, Mary Beth.” Lindy looked around and added with an edge in her voice, “You’re doing very well now, aren’t you?”

I looked up at her and she flushed. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. It’s just that everything’s turned around for both of us. You were poor and now you’re not. I was…well, I guess you heard that I married Roger Van Court.”

I looked back at her feet and then stood, taking the bowl back to the kitchen. “Yes, I think I must have heard that,” I said vaguely. “It’s been a while. Ten years or so, right? Since you were married?”

“Since right after college,” she said, nodding. “I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Roger Van Court. In fact, my pulse was racing and my hands had begun to shake at the sound of his name. I took a Band-Aid out of a drawer and tried to bring my focus back to Lindy and her plight.

“What’s happened, Lindy Lou?” I asked softly. I applied the Band-Aid, then sat beside her on the couch, my legs crossed in tailor-fashion. It was the way we used to sit when we were teenagers, chatting till all hours of the night. A familiar scene—yet not familiar at all. Now that I could see Lindy more closely, I realized that though we were the same age, thirty-three, she looked closer to fifty. Her face was lined, and I could see now the gray in her dark roots.

My heart broke a little. In high school, Lindy’s long blond hair had always looked sexy and a bit out of control, as if she’d just stepped out of a beauty salon into a warm spring breeze. With her high cheekbones and perfectly proportioned body, she could have been a high-fashion model. I’m sure she would have been hugely successful.

Instead, she’d married Roger Van Court.

There was a time when I might have jealously wished Lindy would end up down and out, but that was only because I never believed, in my wildest dreams, that she would. Though I hadn’t seen her in many years, in my mind she had always been the same Lindy Lou—vivacious, laughing, flirting easily yet harmlessly with the boys—someone I longed to be like but never was.

Suddenly, a part of me evaporated as the real Lindy Lou sat beside me. I had wanted to be like her, but even Lindy wasn’t Lindy anymore. A strange thought flew through my mind. Where did that leave me?

Lindy covered her eyes and began to sob. “Roger threw me out,” she said between loud hiccupping sounds. “Three weeks ago. He changed…he changed the locks…and I couldn’t get back in. To get my things, you know? He closed my bank accounts, too, Mary Beth, and cut off all my credit cards. I didn’t have a thing, and I couldn’t bear to tell any of our friends or ask to borrow money. We live in Pacific Heights now, and people there can be so damn hoitytoity.”

I almost smiled at her use of the old-fashioned phrase. Instead, I just shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Well, it’s one of the priciest areas in San Francisco, and none of our neighbors would understand in a million years. They’d have it all over town that I was out on the street.”

“Lindy, I don’t get it. What on earth possessed Roger? I thought the two of you must be happy.”

Which wasn’t at all the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that now.

“I thought we were happy at first,” she said, rubbing her eyes. I reached over to an end table for Kleenex and handed her a couple. She dabbed at her eyes and cheeks, then turned her gaze on me. “Mary Beth, I’m so…damn…tired.” She broke down then, gulping back huge, loud sobs.

I took her in my arms and patted her on the back. There but for the grace of God go I? That was something my mother had always said when reminding herself of how blessed she was, just to have food on the table and a light to read by. My mother had worked long hours as a waitress to support herself after my father died, and there wasn’t much to go around. When she died shortly after Pop, her loss left a hole in my heart that no one else has ever been able to fill.

Taking the Kleenex, I dabbed at Lindy’s eyes and held her back from me a foot or so. “Why don’t you take a nice relaxing bath while I put some food on,” I said.

“You don’t have to go to that trouble.”

“Don’t be silly. I haven’t been shopping this week, but I’ll make us some grilled-cheese sandwiches. How’s that? Just like old times.”

Her eyes said it all: This is not like old times.

She came with me to my bedroom, though, and took off her clothes while I drew a warm bath, putting a scented bubble gel in it. When the water was ready, I went back into the bedroom, where I’d left a terry-cloth robe for her to change into.

Lindy was sound asleep sideways on my bed, the turquoise satin spread wrapped around her like a cocoon. The robe I’d left for her was on the floor. A light breeze lifted the sheer white curtains at the French doors leading out to the deck.

I sighed and drained the bathwater, then got a sheet and blanket from the hall closet and stretched out on the couch in the living room.

I didn’t sleep well. Scenes that I’d long ago stuffed back into the far recesses of my mind, hoping never to see them again, kept flitting across my closed eyes.

Roger Van Court.

The bastard.

But how much could I—or should I—tell Lindy?

Lindy had knocked on my door at about one-thirty, and it was just after three, according to the clock over my mantel, when I woke, thinking I’d heard a sound on the deck. I sat up carefully and walked to the double French doors, which were similar to the ones in the bedroom. There was no moon, and it was hard to see if anyone was out there. Even harder to hear, over the ocean’s roar.

I cussed myself out for having left everything but the front door unlocked. I’d turned off the lights in the living room, though, and I figured that was good. A long time ago, I’d learned in a self-defense class that it’s better to be in the dark in your house when an intruder is there. The intruder doesn’t know your house, but you do, which means you can navigate around it better than he.

On the other hand, flashlights can be useful.

Crouching close to the floor, I made it to the kitchen and was just reaching for my one flashlight in the utility drawer when I heard the doors leading from the deck to the bedroom slam open against the inside wall. Lindy screamed.

I grabbed the flashlight and ran to the bedroom, shouting, “Get out! Get out of my house!”—also a technique I’d learned in a class. Take the intruder by surprise and get him off balance. Stupidly, however, I hadn’t remembered to stand to the side of the doorway, in case whoever was in there had a gun.

That thought blew through my mind only an instant before bullets whistled by my ear. There was no loud pop, but more of a quiet thud, which told me the intruder must have a silencer on his gun. I dropped to the floor and set the flashlight as far away as my arm could reach. Then I flicked it on and pointed it in the direction of a large, dark figure by the bed. The figure was big enough to be a man, but he wore a ski mask and was dressed all in black. In the perimeter of the light, I saw that Lindy was leaning back against the headboard with my sheets pulled up to her neck, her eyes wide open and horrified.

As another bullet zinged into the floor next to my flashlight, I wiggled around about eighty degrees and reached for the baseball bat I kept by my closet. The intruder’s eyes must have adjusted to the dark by now, however, because he was on me before I had a chance to grab it. An arm came around my neck, cutting off my breath, while a knee in my back kept my lower body from moving. I couldn’t kick, couldn’t fight back in any way. I started to see pinpoints in my eyes, little flashes of light that told me I’d soon be left in eternal darkness.

Just when I thought I was checking out for good, though, the crushing weight of my attacker slumped on top of me. A few seconds later he hoisted himself to his feet. Cursing in guttural tones, he ran past me into the living room, kicking the flashlight aside.

“Mary Beth!” Lindy yelled. “Are you all right?”

I rose quickly and saw that she was holding the bat, and that was what had made the intruder fall. Little Lindy Lou had smacked the bastard with it.

I held two fingers to my mouth. “Shh. I think he’s still out there.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Do you know who it is? Is it Roger?”

I gave her a sharp glance in the dim light. “I didn’t see his face. Why do you think it was Roger?”

She didn’t answer. At the sound of a loud crash in the living room, I said, “Never mind!”

I grabbed her hand and the robe she’d never put on and pulled her, naked, out onto the deck and down the wooden steps to the beach.

“Mary Beth, wait! Where are we going? I need my clothes!”

I ignored her cries and pulled her along the sand—away from the usual floodlights that people who live here shine on the waves—and into the shadows.

“Put this on,” I said. “Hurry!”

While she shrugged into the dark blue robe, I kept tugging at her, wanting only to get as far away from the house as I could. I’ll admit I was panicked. Never in my life had I been shot at, nor had I ever had a break-in. I didn’t know where I was going, and was running on instinct, just trying to put distance between us and my house.

Then it hit me—Patrick. Patrick Llewellen, who used to be one of my authors, lived only five houses down from mine. I dragged the half-clothed Lindy up along the sand toward the modern three-story house. She kept stumbling, and I just hoped she could make it up the stairs.

Still pulling her, I raced up the stairs to Patrick’s deck, with its potted palms that were set off by colorful Malibu lights.

Damn. I’d forgotten that he kept these lights on all night, every night, without fail. We should have gone around to the front.

But I hadn’t had time to think clearly, and this would have to do. I began to pound on one of Patrick’s three sliding glass doors, then the other and the other, hoping I could rouse him from his sleep. He didn’t answer, though.

God, what if he’d stayed overnight somewhere? What if we couldn’t get in?

“Mary Beth, look!”

I looked back to where Lindy pointed, and saw a dark figure running toward us on the beach. It was less than three houses away. I ran over to another door and pounded on it. “Patrick!” I yelled. “If you’re there, let me in! It’s Mary Beth!”

The wait seemed endless, but finally a light came on inside. A drape was pulled back. “For God’s sake, Mary Beth, what are you doing here!” Patrick said as he slid open the door.

“Just let us in. Hurry!”

I didn’t waste time on the niceties, pushing by him with Lindy in tow. Once inside, I pulled the door closed and locked it, yanking the drapes shut.

“Someone broke into my house,” I said, struggling to catch my breath. “They shot at us. He’s right out there, Patrick! I need to call the sheriff.”

Patrick wasn’t in pajamas, and didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping. He wore a forest-green silk robe over his trousers and an open-collared white shirt, looking for all the world like a screen idol—except for his nose, which was a bit on the large side. I liked that about him; it kept him from looking too pretty.

His jaw, however, had dropped in shock. “I can’t believe it! Who on earth would do that?”

He glanced at Lindy.

“She’s a friend,” I said, still gasping. “Could you—look, it’s too bright in here.” The light was coming from a Tiffany lamp next to a leather armchair. I leaned over and turned it off. There was only a dim glow left from the kitchen, on the other side of his dining room.

“Patrick, I’m truly sorry. I know this is an imposition. But I need to call the sheriff. While I’m doing that, could you fix Lindy some tea? Anything, really. I think she’s in shock.”

“I’ll put a shot of bourbon in it,” he said, nodding. “And the phone’s over here. Next to the light you just turned off.” He shook his head. “You always were the type to take over.”

“Sorry. But before you go, are your doors all locked?”

“Yes. And, Mary Beth, I’m sorry it took me so long to get to the door. I was downstairs in the cave, working.”

Patrick’s “cave,” I’d learned years ago, was a dark enclosed room in the basement—the only place he could write in this house, as the magnificent views from every other room distracted him.

I picked up the phone and punched in 911. My breath had slowed a bit, but my side hurt, and Lindy sat huddled in a chair, her head down, twisting her hands. She was breathing heavily, and I remembered that she’d had a long walk earlier to get to my place. The poor thing must be totaled.

When the dispatcher answered, I told her what had happened, and asked that a car come around and check the house out before my friend and I went back there. She said they’d send someone right away, and we should wait where we were until the sheriff’s deputy came to tell us it was safe to go back.

Hanging up, I walked to the sliding glass door and pulled back the heavy brocade drapes a crack, to see if anyone was out there. The outside lights would have revealed anyone on the deck, and a quick glance showed that it was empty. I couldn’t tell about the beach.

I carefully put the drape back in place and turned on the lamp again, looking now at Lindy. I’d just heard a teakettle whistle, and knew Patrick would be back with tea soon. Before he returned, I wanted to find out a few things from my old friend Lindy Lou.

“Why did you think that might be Roger?” I demanded, standing over her with my arms crossed, in no mood to be gentle about this.

“I don’t know,” she said, shivering, her teeth chattering. “I guess I’ve been so afraid of him for so long, that’s the first thing that came to my mind.”

“Why have you been afraid of Roger?” I asked.

“Mary Beth, I told you what he did! He threw me out on the street with absolutely nothing. Why wouldn’t I be afraid of what he might do next?”

I didn’t say anything, but when she’d used the words afraid for so long, I’d gotten the distinct impression she might have been abused by Roger over the course of their marriage. I had good cause to wonder about that.

I reached for a faux-fur throw cover on Patrick’s sofa and put it over Lindy. “Here, this should warm you up.”

Patrick came in with our tea then, and there was no more time to talk confidentially. Besides the tea tray, he carried a cashmere sweater, and after setting the tray down he placed it around my shoulders, tying the sleeves under my neck.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling a bit awkwardly. It seemed so strange to be taken care of.

I watched as he took a cup of tea over to Lindy. She smiled, said, “Thank you,” in a small voice like a little girl’s, and sipped the tea. There was a large stone fireplace on one wall, and Patrick went over to it and clicked a switch. The gas fire blazed up around fake logs. I imagined I could already feel the heat from it.

Patrick brushed both hands together as if he’d just stirred the logs with a poker. Coming back, he sat in a chair across from me and sighed. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?”

He put his feet up on an ottoman, and I saw that he wasn’t wearing shoes, just argyle socks, which made me smile. I’d forgotten about Patrick’s love for argyle socks.

Glancing over at Lindy, I saw that she’d set her teacup on the table beside her and seemed fast asleep. Good. She must really need to rest.

Leaning back in the chair with my cup, I said, “I can’t thank you enough for letting us in, Patrick. You know, I haven’t been sure you’d still want to talk to me.”

One essential facet of being a literary agent—at least, for me—is cheering on my authors, helping them to believe they can succeed. A lot of good writers go down the drain after one or two rejection letters, and never write again. They need to learn to let the rejections roll off their backs and just keep going.

In Patrick’s case, however, it was I who had rejected his latest book several months ago, not an editor. It was a dark book with serial rapes in it—too dark for me. I’d reached a financial point where I could turn down manuscripts that bothered me personally, and though I hated to let Patrick go, he had insisted on writing In Peril. We had clearly reached an impasse, and I finally had to let him go.

Patrick had been bitter at first, but then I’d heard that he was with another agent and his book was being picked up for almost seven figures. He’d been seen around town, dining in all the best restaurants with a smile on his face.

Now that I’d lost Tony and Craig, I almost wished I had gotten Patrick that deal. But oh well. Water under the bridge.

“Don’t be silly, Mary Beth,” he said now. “Of course I still want to talk to you. I’ll admit I was pretty upset at first, but that’s just because I felt set adrift without a canoe. And now things are going really great. Did you hear that I’m with Nolan-Frey?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. They’re quite a big agency, on a level now with CAA. And I heard that they got you a great deal.”

“Yes, well, it’s…Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s still in the negotiation phase, nothing certain. It’s going well, though.”

Agencies like Nolan-Frey took on someone on the basis of liking their work, then helped them to polish and even rewrite it if they thought that was necessary. Like a book doctor, except that they didn’t charge until after the book was sold, hopefully with a movie option. Usually they got significant options, with big money and stars attached, while the ordinary writer going through an agent who wasn’t as top-flight might get only two thousand five hundred for the option, and the movie would never be made. The paybacks are often better, then, with the big agencies like CAA and Nolan-Frey, but they’re harder for an author to get into. I was guessing they had taken on Patrick partly for his talent, and partly because I was his former agent.

Not that Patrick’s books didn’t pull in good numbers. But at the time he left me, he was more or less starting out fresh again after three years with no book out, which meant that in his genre, which was mysteries, Nolan-Frey might have had a hard time selling him again to a publisher.

“I heard they got you a high six figures,” I said. “I’m so happy for you, Patrick. I really am. And I’m sorry things turned out for us the way they did.”

He made a doleful face. “Me, too. I miss you, Mary Beth. But I understood about the book. When you liked my work, you were the best agent in the world for me, and if you just couldn’t handle that last one, well…” He shrugged. “I guess it was for the best that we both moved on.”

“I’m sure you’re right. And as I said, I’m happy that you’re with someone who’s doing well for you.”

“So if my book is made into a billion-dollar movie, you won’t be sorry for missing out?” he asked with a grin.

“Sorry as all get out!” I laughed. “But I’ll be here with bells on at your celebration party.” Raising an eyebrow, I added, “You will invite me, won’t you?”

“Mary Beth, you will be first on my list. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. In fact—I’ve been wondering. Would you like to go to dinner sometime?”

At my obvious surprise, he grinned. “It could be like old times. Old, old times. Before business got in the way. And then there was Tony…I mean, you and he seemed to have something going.”

“Not really,” I said. “Tony and I were friends. You’ve heard what happened?”

“It was on the evening news yesterday. About Arnold, too. What a shock.”

“I didn’t get a chance to catch the news. Was there anything about Craig?”

“Craig Dinsmore? No.” His eyes widened. “Has something happened to him?”

“I found him dead in his motel room today. Well, yesterday, now. In the afternoon.”

“My God, Mary Beth! It sounds like Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of—except in this case it’s your, well, you know…authors.” He frowned. “Do I need to hire a bodyguard?”

“I doubt it,” I said dryly. “Since you’re no longer with me, I’d say you’re safe. You might want to hear what the sheriff thinks, though.”

He was silent and seemed to be pondering the possible threat to his own life. The truth was, until he said it, I hadn’t really looked at it that way yet—that someone was killing off my authors. After all, Arnold had been murdered as well, and he was just my ex.

Then I remembered that I’d negotiated a deal for Arnold years ago, for one of his toy-creations books. That qualified me as his agent, as well.

But the idea was preposterous. Who would be out to get my authors? Or me? No, there was something else going on. I was sure of it.

Lindy, who had been dozing in her chair, the tea and bourbon growing cold on the table beside her, stirred. Sitting up like a shot, she gazed wildly around her. “What? Where—where am I?”

The faux-mink throw slipped to the floor, and I went over to her and put it back in her lap. “Here, cover up. We’re at the house of a friend of mine, remember? Patrick Llewellen. He used to be one of my authors, and we’re waiting for the sheriff to come and tell us it’s safe to go back to my house.”

Lindy looked toward the sliding glass door we’d come through. “What if—what if whoever chased us down the beach is out there right now? What if he’s just waiting for us to come out?”

“I saw a reflection of flashing red lights going by in front,” I said. “I’m sure the sheriff’s deputies are already there, and they’ll check out the beach, too. In fact, I’ll ask one of the officers to escort us back to my house.”

When she didn’t seem at all mollified, I said, “Would you like me to warm your tea? There’s bourbon in it. It’ll take off the edge.”

“I noticed,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Thank you, Mary Beth. I don’t know what I’ve had done without you tonight.”

Again, her words seemed fraught with another meaning, but I let it pass for the moment.

I left her with Patrick and went to the kitchen, while he sat on an ottoman in front of her, talking in low, soothing tones. I’d almost forgotten that about Patrick—how comforting he could be in a pinch. It was one of the things I’d lost when we split. That, and the sex—which, come to think of it, hadn’t been nearly as bad as I’d tried to remember it.