A Dangerous Fiction (13 page)

A horrible thought crept into my mind. “Do you think there's a connection, Tommy? Is that why you're here?”

“We do think that, yes.”

“No, how could there be? Why would you say that?”

Tommy deferred to Suarez, who said, “There were words on the wall, written in the victim's blood.”

I didn't want to know. Or maybe I already knew.

“What words?” I asked.

“‘Can you hear me now?'”

K
eyshawn saw me home, and I called Molly. She came with her bottomless Mary Poppins carpet bag, just as she had when Hugo died and I came back to New York alone. We sat up till dawn, drinking and swapping Rowena stories. Over the course of her career, we had optioned the film rights to nearly all her books, half a dozen of which were actually made. From the start, her film contracts contained one ironclad condition: that she have a cameo role in each film. In this Rowena wasn't emulating Hitchcock, but rather was ensuring her access to the set, where she met all her directors, leading men, and leading ladies. Rowena was a convivial soul and shy of no one, for she was as much a star in her world as they in theirs. There were friendships and affairs, and later the fun of dining out on tales of horse riding with Harrison Ford, sailing with George Clooney, and lunching with Nicole Kidman.

We talked until the sun rose over Central Park. Molly's was the greater grief, for she and Rowena had been friends for twenty years, but the guilt was all mine. “It's the stalker,” I said. “The same freak who sent the phony e-mails and press release. He killed her, and then he signed his work.”

“You can't know that. And even if it's true, it's not your fault.”

“Then why do I feel like it is?”

“It's called survivor's guilt. Anyway, we don't know who did it. My money's on a literary critic.”

“Never happen,” I said, laughing through my tears. “Throw Rowena in the ring with a critic, you
know
who's coming out alive.”

•   •   •

Molly stayed with me for five days. I could not have managed without her help. Beyond grieving for Rowena, we had to act on her behalf. Molly had been Rowena's designated literary executor until her illness forced a change and that responsibility passed to me. Rowena had more than forty publishers around the world, not counting the pirates, and all of them had concerns that needed addressing. On my desk in the office was the first draft of her next novel . . . her last novel. I needed to read that and figure out what to do with it. There were countless calls from journalists with questions, clients and colleagues with consolations. Because the police withheld the detail of the writing on the wall, no one made the connection between my stalker and Rowena's murder; only Molly and Max knew. We also had to run interference between Rowena's family, who wanted to bury her back home in Kansas, and the police, who weren't ready to release her body and wouldn't even give us a date. There was no telling when the funeral would be, but Molly and I, along with Rowena's publisher, began planning a memorial service in New York.

All of this on top of my usual full-time load meant that instead of staying home chugging scotch in my pajamas all day (as I'd no doubt have done if left to my own devices), I was forced by necessity and by Molly to go into the office and work hard every day.

Scattered among these days were interviews with the police—so many that they began to blur into one long repetitive marathon against changing backdrops. The police had determined that Rowena died sometime between eight and ten Wednesday night, and everyone in the office was asked for alibis. I'd been home reading that evening, alone except for Mingus, who couldn't testify. The doorman could confirm that I'd neither entered nor exited the lobby all night, but that didn't preclude my having snuck out the basement door, to which all the tenants had keys.

After the detectives left, my staff gathered in my office, and we compared notes. Their alibis were as feeble as mine. Harriet, who had gone to the movies, complained bitterly about the detectives' attitude. “Who the bloody hell saves ticket stubs? If I were a copper and someone handed me a stub, I'd arrest him on the spot!” Lorna had been home alone in her little studio in Bensonhurst, with no doorman to back her up. Jean-Paul had gone running in Central Park, also alone, and Chloe had been food shopping.

After a week of constant intrusions, my staff was looking frazzled. What the detectives seemed to want was everything we could tell them about Rowena: her past, her professional life, her finances, and her love life. I didn't know much about her love life. Rowena had enjoyed the company of younger men, but whether she slept with them or just displayed them I had never cared to ask. About her finances I was able to be more helpful, since nearly all her income came though the agency. Advances, royalties, film and TV options and residuals, translation, and all other subsidiary rights were subject to our commission, so our records were detailed and up-to-date. With a new hardcover each year and her backlist constantly in print, Rowena was making north of three million a year, some years considerably north.

“Which means,” said the police forensic accountant who was sitting in my office, poring over our books, “that your agency made at least $450,000 a year in commissions.”

“Well, yes, less the subagents' share,” I said, taken aback; I had not yet begun to think what Rowena's death meant for the agency.

“Who gets her royalties now?”

“I don't know, her family, I suppose. She had a will.”

“How will her death affect her earnings?”

“She'll enjoy them a lot less,” I snapped.

He sat back, blinking mildly behind his glasses. “I'm sorry, did I—”

“No,
I'm
sorry. It's just . . .” I took a deep breath and started again, trying to match his dispassionate tone. “I expect there'll be an immediate spike in sales because of all the publicity, and because some of her publishers are putting out new editions. Then there's one more book in the pipeline. After that, without new books to bolster the old and Rowena to promote them, her sales will start to decline.”

He made a note. “That's very clear; thank you, Ms. Donovan. And how will this affect your agency's earnings?”

“In direct proportion,” I said bleakly. It occurred to me that if the killer's motive was to hurt me or destroy my business, he could hardly have taken better aim. There was nothing random about this. No stranger could hate me this much. No stranger could know so much.

I looked past the auditor at the closed door of my office. Just beyond it, my faithful staff manned the phones and sheltered me from everything they could. Outside them was a concentric circle of friends, people like Molly and Max and Gordon, who had involved themselves deeply in my troubles, who talked to and counseled and helped me every day. And beyond them was a wider circle still, dozens of clients and colleagues who did not burden me with daily demands for updates but stayed in touch with e-mails and handwritten notes urging me to bear up, assuring me of their love and support. (And if some of my clients could not resist appending apologetic little requests that I read their latest pages or look at jacket copy or run interference with their publishers, that only warmed my heart the more; for writers can't help being writers.) Without the concern and support of all these people, I would surely have flown apart, for the truth is, I lack a center of gravity. If Hugo was an oak, I was a vine twined around greatness; and this was as true of my working life as it was of my marriage. As an agent, my one talent lies in recognizing talent in others and nurturing it. Whatever I'd given to them was coming back to me tenfold. No one could have been more grateful than I for the friends who had closed ranks around me . . . and yet I couldn't help wondering if Rowena's murderer was sheltering among them.

This constant grain of suspicion was so irritating that it would have been almost a relief to learn that Charlie Malvino was the culprit, which seemed less far-fetched than any other explanation. He was, after all, the only person I knew who hated me, and he had the savvy to carry out well-aimed attacks. Rowena knew him too, and wouldn't have hesitated to open the door to him. But one of the few things I'd been told about the investigation (by Tommy, in confidence) was that Charlie had an alibi for the time of Rowena's murder. “Do you have any suspects?” I'd asked, and gotten no reply, which was typical. With the police, I was discovering, information flowed one way only.

I'd given the homicide detectives everything they asked for. I'd opened my books and files, let them trawl through my computers, given permission for phone taps and e-mail surveillance in case the stalker tried to contact me again. I'd gone further than I should have in surrendering my privacy and that of my clients, but I didn't care; there was nothing I wouldn't do to help catch Rowena's murderer.

By way of return they fed me vague talk of promising leads and a methodical investigation, but never any specifics. Maybe Max could have gotten more out of them, but he, for the happiest of reasons, was unable to come to New York. His baby had been born, two weeks early, and he had flown home to be with Barry when they brought the baby home. It was a little girl whom they were naming Molly, to the tearful delight of my Molly. This event was a great consolation to us both, and we spent a couple of therapeutic evenings shopping for the new arrival. In the midst of death, we are in life. Or in our case, Bloomingdale's.

As day followed day with no arrest, the detectives seemed to focus more intensely on Rowena's ties to the agency and to me. On Monday, the last day of Molly's stay, I was asked to come into police headquarters for another interview. By “asked” I mean that two patrolmen were sent to fetch me from the office. Lorna tried and failed to keep them out. “Am I being arrested?” I asked, only half joking, for the feeling that I was responsible for Rowena's death still lay heavy upon me.

“No, ma'am,” the taller patrolman said, while his partner looked around with the sort of frank nosiness only cops and small children display. “We're just here to escort you.”

“That's his job,” I said, nodding at Mingus, who had positioned himself between me and the cops. “He's my bodyguard.”

“I can see he's a good one. But there's no dogs allowed at headquarters, except police and assistance dogs.”

“He was a police dog, and he assists me in staying alive.”

But in the end I went peaceably, and Mingus stayed behind.

•   •   •

I was shown into a small room with a mirror at one end, a solid oak table, and upholstered chairs. Three people rose as I entered the room: Tommy Cullen, Detective Suarez, and a tall black woman of fifty or so, whom Tommy introduced as Lieutenant Boniface. It could have been a meeting in any large publishing house, except that the detectives were better dressed. There was a faint whiff of acrimony in the air, as if I'd interrupted an argument; but the men greeted me politely, while the lieutenant, who had warm brown eyes and a ready smile, shook my hand enthusiastically. “Thank you so much for coming, Ms. Donovan, and for all your cooperation. You've been a great help.” She gestured toward the chair beside hers, which put Tommy on my left and Suarez across the table. I felt surrounded.

Boniface swiveled her chair toward me and leaned forward, as if what she had to say was just between us girls. “We've asked you to come in today because as this case has developed, we've grown concerned for your safety. The writing on the wall of the crime scene keeps bringing us back to you and your mysterious stalker.”

There was something in the way she said “mysterious stalker” that made it sound like “imaginary friend.” I felt immediately defensive, though I'd no idea why I should, and took refuge in silence.

“One theory of this case is that Rowena's murder was in some way aimed at you. We've already looked very carefully at Rowena's life. Now we need to look closer at yours.”

“It's an open book,” I said. “Just Google me; you'll get everything you could possibly want to know and more.”

“I've done that. You've led quite a life for someone so young. But what I want is the stuff that's not public.”

“Like what?”

“Let's start with the message on the wall, the same message you previously received in an e-mail. ‘Can you hear me now?' I'm sure you've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Do the words remind you of anything? Have you ever heard them before?”

“Only as a catchphrase from an old Verizon commercial. I've tried to remember, but nothing else comes to me.”

“‘Can you hear me now?' suggests that at some point you could not or would not hear this person. Did you ever tell someone ‘I can't hear you'?”

A vague recollection stirred, nothing I could pin down. “On the phone, maybe. A bad connection?”

“Is there anyone in your life now or in your past who might feel that way about you, that you don't hear them?”

“Harriet often thinks that. She feels that because she's been in the business longer, I should be guided by her. But I promise you that Harriet is quite incapable of shooting anyone, let alone Rowena. It has to be the stalker. People whose work we reject often think that we're deaf to their unique voices. Sam Spade was one of those.”

“We're searching for him,” she said with a reassuring nod. “We're looking at everyone your agency rejected over the past year. But the person who did this knows a lot about your agency and your industry. And you yourself told Detective Suarez that Rowena wouldn't have opened her door to a stranger. I think we're looking for someone closer to you, someone you know, even tangentially.”

“I understand,” I said. “But there's no one I know of who bears that kind of grudge, except maybe Charlie Malvino, and you know about him.”

“Tell me about your family. Are you close?”

“Don't have any,” I said, unsettled by this abrupt change of subject.

“What happened to them?”

“Parents died in an accident when I was an infant. My grandmother raised me. She's dead too.”

“Boyfriends? Lovers?”

“No.”

“Not just current. I'm talking about prior relationships as well.”