A Romantic Way to Die (11 page)

“And then the fight started,” Rhodes guessed.

“No. I should’ve let it go, but Serena smiled a smug little smile, and that made me mad. So I said that I thought Terry Don was too good for her.”

“And that started things,” Rhodes said.

“No. She just kept on smiling. So I said that I thought the book was right about her temper and that maybe she killed Henrietta because Terry Don still loved her. You know. From high school.”

Rhodes waited.

“And that’s when the fight started,” Vernell said. “She said I was a lying witch, except she didn’t say
witch
, and then maybe I slapped her.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, so there’s no maybe. I slapped her. But she shouldn’t have called me that. She slapped me back, and then things got a little out of hand.”

“And that’s the whole story.”

“That’s it. I’m totally embarrassed by the whole thing. I wouldn’t blame anybody who wanted to get a refund and leave the conference. I’m sorry I ever tried to put it on in the first place. I should’ve known something bad would happen if Terry Don came back here. Henrietta never got over him, even if he did sleep with half the romance writers in America.”

“That would be a lot,” Rhodes said.

“Yes, but look at him. Can you blame women for being crazy about him?”

Rhodes just didn’t get it. Maybe it was the hair. Or maybe it was those pecs. Or both.

“So there was nothing more to the fight than that,” he said.

“That’s all. You know what Serena’s temper is like. You read the book.”

“But you’re the one who did the slapping,” Rhodes pointed out.

Vernell was clearly insulted.

“What difference does that make? She’s the one who started things.”

Rhodes thought about it. Vernell had been the one to initiate the conversation. She was the one who hadn’t stopped talking about Henrietta’s book, even when Serena remained calm. She was even the one who’d struck the first blow. But she still seemed to believe that Serena was at fault.

Then Rhodes remembered what Vernell had told him about writers. They were always looking for someone to blame. Maybe that wasn’t true, Rhodes thought. Maybe it was only Vernell who was like that.

“All right,” he told her. “Thanks for your help. You can go on back to the dormitory now.”

“What about Serena?”

“I’m going to talk to her, get her version of the story.”

“What good will that do? She’ll probably lie to you.”

“I’ll just have to take that chance,” Rhodes said.

He waited until Vernell had left, then went back to the kitchen. Chatterton and Serena were sitting at the table, drinking something in tall green iced-tea glasses.

“Diet Dr Pepper,” Chatterton said, holding up his glass. “Can I get you one?”

Rhodes repressed a shudder. It didn’t matter how hard the advertisers worked to convince people that Diet Dr Pepper tasted just like the real thing. He knew better.

“No, thanks,” he said. “Would you mind going into the living room? I’ll just talk to Ms. Thayer in here.”

Chatterton left, taking his Diet Dr Pepper with him, and Rhodes sat at the table. Serena took a sip of her drink and looked at him over the rim of the glass.

“Why the formality?” she said. “You can call me Serena.”

Her eyes seemed even bluer than Rhodes had remembered. Rhodes supposed she hadn’t had to work too hard to seduce Terry Don, if indeed he’d needed seducing, which seemed doubtful.

“In a murder investigation, you need a little formality,” Rhodes said.

Serena smiled and pouted at the same time.

“Well, if that’s the way you want it,” she said. “What did Ms. Lindsey tell you about the fight?”

“I think I’d like to get your story before we discuss hers,” Rhodes said.

“That’s easy enough. Do you want the short version or the long one?”

“Try the short one.”

“Okay. Vernell called me a slut and slapped me in the face. So I slapped her back. That made her crazy, and she tried to punch me. After that, I’m a little vague on the specifics.”

It was short, all right, but it corresponded pretty well to what Vernell had said, except now it was Vernell doing the name-calling. And except for what had been left out.

“You forgot to mention that she accused you of murder,” Rhodes said.

Serena smiled. “I knew she’d tell you that. She said I was jealous. But let me ask you a question, Sheriff. Do I look like a woman who’d be jealous of someone like Henrietta?”

She gave him a dazzling smile and widened those big blue eyes.

Rhodes smiled back, probably a lot less dazzlingly. His eyes weren’t blue, either, so the effect was totally different.

He said, “No, you don’t. But then you don’t look like a woman who’d go crazy if a hotel maid left the chocolate off her pillow, either.”

Serena slammed her glass down on the table and stood up, her body rigid.

“That’s a lie! You read that in that manuscript, didn’t you!”

“Yes,” Rhodes said. “Did you?”

Serena’s face fell, and she sat limply back down.

“You tricked me,” she said.

Rhodes resisted the urge to say it had been easy.

“When did you read it?” he asked.

“I don’t remember. Terry Don showed it to me.”

“Terry Don had a copy?”

“Of course. You may not know it, but Henrietta still loved him. She started writing him when he became famous. He told me all about her, the woman who’d never gotten over her high-school crush. When she sent him the manuscript, he let me read it.”

“What did he think about it?”

“He thought it was funny.”

“He didn’t come off too well in it,” Rhodes said.

“Why? Because he was supposedly sleeping with all those writers and agents? There were already stories going around about that, and they just enhanced his reputation. Probably got him a few more covers, if that’s possible.”

“According to the book he wanted to be on the cover of every historical romance novel that was published.”

“That was Henrietta’s idea. Terry Don would have settled for just a few more covers and a little more money. Not that he’d have objected to a lot more money.”

Rhodes returned to his original question.

“And you weren’t jealous of him?”

“No. Henrietta’s book was a combination of gossip and her own imagination. That part was just her imagination.”

“So naturally you didn’t kill her.”

“Of course not. I have too much to live for. I’m going to be the next Sandra Brown.”

Rhodes actually knew who Sandra Brown was, mainly because she was from Texas. In fact, he remembered her from the time she’d done the weather on some Dallas TV station. He’d even seen her a couple of times. But she hadn’t stuck with the weather. She’d turned her hand to romance novels and become a huge success. These days she was writing book after book that wound up on the best-seller lists.

“And Terry Don couldn’t help you become the next Sandra Brown?” Rhodes said.

“Nobody can help you do something like that. You have to be good, which I am, and you have to have a little luck. I’ve always been lucky. You watch. I’ll be on the best-seller lists before you know it.”

Rhodes looked in those blue eyes and almost believed her.

15

R
HODES SAT IN THE KITCHEN AFTER SERENA HAD LEFT AND thought things over. Serena and Jeanne Arnot had sort of alibied one another in Henrietta’s murder, but only sort of. He’d have to look into that. And while Serena didn’t look like a killer, at least not like any killer Rhodes had ever seen, she certainly had a terrible temper, a fact that Rhodes supposed was ironic, considering her name. Serena was far from serene, at least some of the time, and it seemed to Rhodes that Henrietta’s death could have resulted from sudden anger and a push at the wrong time. Or the right time. But Serena wasn’t the only one with a temper. Vernell could hardly be described as mild-mannered.

Rhodes also wondered about Jeanne Arnot. Earlier he’d thought it unlikely that she’d read Henrietta’s manuscript, but if Serena had, maybe Jeanne had as well. He’d ask her later. If she had, she might have thought that her reputation would be ruined if the book were published. That would be a motive for murder right there if the stories about how much money Jeanne was making were true.

Rhodes wondered if someone from New York might ever be taken with the idea to stroll naked through the Texas countryside at night. Jeanne Arnot looked to him as if she’d be more at home using her police whistle to hail a taxi in Manhattan than she would out under the stars in Obert, Texas, but someone had been roaming around out there in the buff when Henrietta was killed unless the Applebys had been lying, and they had no reason to do that. Billy Quentin had heard someone, too, though he was convinced it wasn’t a naked woman.

And then there was Terry Don Coslin. Where was he? Maybe that was what Rhodes needed to find out first. He got up and went into the living room. He was just about to open the door when it burst in on him and Chatterton came through.

“I can’t find him anywhere!” Chatterton said.

“Who?” Rhodes asked.

“Coslin. I walked Vernell—Ms. Lindsey—back to the dormitory, and while I was there I looked around for him. He wasn’t there. Nobody knows where he is. Nobody’s seen him since dinner.”

Rhodes wondered briefly if Terry Don might be wandering around on the hill, but he decided that wasn’t the case since he hadn’t heard any shotgun blasts.

“Could he still be in the main building?” Rhodes asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know what he’d be doing over there, but I’ll go and have a look.”

“I’ll go with you,” Rhodes said.

Although the caterers had finished cleaning up and left, the old building wasn’t completely dark. There was a weak lightbulb glowing on the porch. A few moths fluttered around it, making fragmentary shadows on the wall. There was dim light somewhere inside.

The door was open, and Chatterton went right on through. He flipped a switch on the wall, and the whole bottom floor lit up.

“Should we call him?” he asked.

“Why not?” Rhodes said, and they did.

They got no response, and Chatterton said, “I guess he’s not here, either.”

“What about the second floor?” Rhodes asked.

He had been on the second floor before, and also on the third floor, which was where he’d found the body of Simon Graham, the book dealer who’d had the idea of restoring the college in the first place.

“There’s nothing upstairs,” Chatterton said. “There’d been a little work done up there when I took the place over, but nothing much had been accomplished. I took care of the missing windowpanes, and I might have something more done later, but right now this floor gives me all the space I need. So there wouldn’t be any reason for anyone to go upstairs.”

Just as Chatterton finished speaking, Rhodes heard a noise. Chatterton heard it, too.

“That came from upstairs,” Rhodes pointed out.

“Probably just a mouse,” Chatterton said. “But don’t tell that to any of the writers.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t want them to think this place was infested with vermin. Besides, it might not have been a mouse or anything else alive. These old buildings make funny noises sometimes.”

Rhodes remembered having seen a mouse or two in the upstairs on one of his previous visits. And, mouse or no mouse, he thought it would be a good idea to have a look.

“The top floors aren’t wired for electricity,” Chatterton told him.

“I’ll get a flashlight from my car,” Rhodes said. “You can wait here until I get back.”

It didn’t take long for him to go to his car and come back with the flashlight, but by the time he returned, Chatterton was gone.

Rhodes found the stairway and noticed one bit of remodeling that had been done. There was new floor covering on the stairs, replacing the worn and dusty green carpet that had been there the last time Rhodes had climbed them. Rhodes went on up to the top, and found Chatterton standing there in the semidarkness.

“I thought I told you to wait,” Rhodes said.

“I couldn’t,” Chatterton said. “I had to come up here and see if there was anyone around.”

“You couldn’t see much without a light.”

There was a twilight kind of glow around them, coming from the lighting on the first floor, but Rhodes couldn’t see far into the dusty darkness.

“I tried calling again,” Chatterton said. “I didn’t get an answer.”

Rhodes shined the light into the big open space and moved it around. There wasn’t much to see other than a few boards lying on the floor and the dust motes that floated through the flashlight’s beam. No mice, no sign of Coslin.

“Let’s go on up to the third floor,” he said.

The light from the first floor didn’t help much at all as they climbed upward, so Rhodes led the way with his flashlight. When he arrived at the top of the stairs, he called Terry Don’s name.

The top floor had once housed the college’s chapel in one big room, which was now entirely empty. Rhodes’s voice echoed off the bare walls and uncovered windows. Nobody answered him, and the light didn’t reveal anything except more emptiness, a dilapidated stepladder, and a few old paint cans. A brush lay on top of one of them, its bristles stiffened by a thick coat of white paint.

Rhodes was about to turn and go back down the stairs when he noticed something. He shined his light across the room again, and it lit up a broken window.

“I thought you’d replaced the missing panes,” Rhodes said. “What happened over there?”

Chatterton said he didn’t know.

“I thought everything was in pretty good shape,” he said. “That window couldn’t have been broken long or there’d be birds roosting in here.”

Rhodes shined the light up at the open rafters, thinking that maybe a bird had made the noise he’d heard, though he was pretty sure now that it had been nothing but the creaking of the building as the old wood and stones shifted slightly. As if to confirm Rhodes’s thought, there was another noise from up in the rafters, sort of a creaky sigh.

Rhodes pointed the flashlight beam upward. A bit of dust drifted down, but the light showed no sign that any birds had been roosting there, not for a long time at any rate.