An Unconventional Murder (21 page)

"No, I was not. I said the two stories are similar. And they are. But let us be clear in our
terminology. I most certainly did not state that Mr. Callahan has stolen your plot."

"Then what are you saying?"

"Let me respond with a question of my own. What was the inspiration for your
plot?"

She tapped the side of her head. "Here. In my brain. I made up that story, every bit of it.
And you don't have to ask where he got the idea," she added, gesturing toward Callahan. "He got
it from me."

"Perhaps," said Fontaine. "And perhaps not. Let me summarize the dramatic elements of
your story as I understand them. A dishonorable Nazi SS captain named Franz imperils Fritz in
order to coerce his sister, Angeline, to surrender herself to Franz's advances. As it turns out, she
is far more clever than her tormentor and manages to thwart his evil scheme. Does that
adequately state the premise of your story?"

"It leaves out a lot of detail, but I guess you've got the gist of it."

"Thank you. Now, if I may be so presumptuous," Fontaine said, "I will provide a
synopsis of
Dark Decisions
by Theia Rand."

Callahan waved, inviting Fontaine to proceed.

"
Dark Decisions
is a weighty epic, spanning three generations and well over
four hundred pages. The tale begins in the mid-1930s, in a bar in Rangoon, Burma. Celia Grigsby
is a beautiful young woman whose father runs a large-scale teak harvesting operation. She is
restless and, at times, dangerously reckless. Hiram McDermott is an adventurer lured by tales of
vast fortunes accumulated by opium smugglers. McDermott worms his way into a cadre of
smugglers. His rival, Zahir Mohammad , learns that McDermott is deeply smitten with Celia. He
orders McDermott kidnapped, ostensibly for a ransom. His game, however, goes much deeper.
He seeks to seduce Celia in McDermott's absence and to turn her entire family against
McDermott."

Fontaine continued, "Here is the critical point in my summary. Zahir makes a desperate
play for Celia. He demands that she submit to him, with all of the dark acts that implies, or he
will have McDermott killed, most unpleasantly. Over the next four chapters, she manages to
derail his scheme. I shall discontinue my narrative at that point, since we have now exposed the
element through which
Dark Passages
by Theia Rand resembles
Inequitable
Conduct
by Thelma Ridgeway. The question is, are those two plots so similar that the one
can only be the outgrowth of the other?"

GP was the first to speak. "I see definite similarities. But I also see significant
differences. Locale, time, context. They just don't have the same flavor to me. And by the way,
Ms. Ridgeway, you've got to change the names of those characters. Angeline is a French name.
What's she doing with a German brother named Fritz?"

"Franz," Ridgeway said. "Fritz is the Colonel."

"And that's another thing," GP said. "Fritz and Franz. The names are too much alike. The
reader will get hopelessly confused over which one is which. You need to pick names that start
with different letters and have different numbers of syllables."

"Oh. I didn't think of that. Thank you."

"You're welcome. But there's something else. There's something familiar about that that
story line. Like an opera, or something. I don't know what it is, but--"

"I do," Brady Cameron blurted. "Not an opera. I can't remember a name or anything else,
but it sounds like something from Shakespeare."

His father's jaw dropped. "When did you starting reading Shakespeare?"

Brady's shrug said it was no big deal. "Off and on." He grinned. "I wasn't always reading
Hustler
."

Thelma Ridgeway was shaking her head stubbornly. "That's not Shakespeare.
MacBeth
,
Hamlet
,
Othello.
I've read them all. Nice try, but you're just
plain wrong."

Brady shrugged. "Sorry. I just thought--"

"Don't be so willing to accept defeat, young man," Fontaine enjoined. "You are
completely correct. The plot is wholly Shakespearean. One of his comedies, of all things."

"No way!" Ridgeway said. "Which play? Name it!"

"
Measure For Measure.
Claudio is the young man from Vienna who is
threatened with death. For fornication, if I recall correctly. Angelo, the Lord Deputy, seeks to
partake of the favors of the young woman."

"You're right," Brady said. "Her name is Isabella."

Fontaine regarded him appreciatively. "So it is. Isabella." He spread his hands, palms up.
"There it is. Whether
Dark Decisions
bears similarities to
Inequitable Conduct
is inconsequential. Both works are derived from
Measure For Measure
by William
Shakespeare. Assuming that Shakespeare did, indeed, actually write his own plays. That is a
question which remains--"

"That doesn't mean diddly!" Thelma Ridgeway insisted. "If he stole my book, then he
stole my book."

"Perhaps," Royce agreed. "But if--inadvertently or by deliberation--he used a plot that is
hundreds of years old, then his conduct was not improper. Anyone can use materials that have
fallen into the public domain."

Randy added, "And I didn't judge the first round of that damn contest. Just in case
anyone in this room has any doubt about it, I'm telling you right now: I'll never judge one of them
again."

Upton decided it was time to bring the matter to an end. He had more pressing matters to
attend to.

Like murder.

"Ms. Ridgeway," he said, "I'm afraid I have to agree with Mr. Fontaine. All I see is one
incident in Randy's book which is similar to a major element in your book. Randy didn't judge
the first round of last year's contest. I don't know how he could possibly have gotten access to
your manuscript."

"He's right about that part," GP tossed in. "He couldn't have seen your submission. I
know that for a fact."

"Come to think of it, there's something else," Randy added, slapping himself on the
forehead. "I don't know why I didn't think of this before. It took nearly a year between the time I
submitted
Dark Passages
to my agent and the time it finally came out in print. And
before that, the completed manuscript sat on his desk for two months. I wrote that book long
before you ever submitted your book to that damn contest."

"Who was your agent?" she demanded, jumping to her feet. "I'll bet it was that Zachary
Tuck. That's why he didn't meet with me this afternoon."

Upton had run out of patience. "Ms. Ridgeway, do you want to know the reason Tuck
stood you up this afternoon?"

He didn't bother to wait for her response. "He was busy being murdered!"

She stepped back shakily, nearly overturning her chair. "I heard people talking about
someone getting killed, but I thought it was that man they found this morning."

"No," said Cameron, "it was Zachary Tuck."

"Oh. " She turned to him. "Who are you?"

"Detective Cameron, Lakewood Police Department." He reached into his pocket and
produced his leather badge case. "I'm investigating the murder. And I have a question for
you."

"Oh?"

"You've said several times tonight that you never met Mr. Tuck."

"That's right. He never showed up for his appointment."

"Then tell me, Ms. Ridgeway, why was a copy of your manuscript sitting on the dresser
in his hotel room?"

Thelma Ridgeway's jaw worked up and down. "What would my manuscript be doing in
his room?"

"That's what I want to know," Cameron said. "I saw it myself.
Inequitable
Conduct
by Thelma Ridgeway."

"That's impossible. I never met the man. I swear it!"

"Then how do you explain the presence of your manuscript?"

Upton leaned back in the captain's chair, admiring Cameron's style. The timing had been
perfect. It had caught the woman completely off guard. There was an interested glint in Brady
Cameron's eyes. Evidently he had never seen his father at work.

Walk a mile in my shoes, Upton thought. These two men know absolutely nothing about
each other.

Thelma Ridgeway snapped her fingers. "He had it! He had my manuscript!" She
fumbled to pick up the white folder that had fallen on the floor in front of her. "I sent a query
letter and three chapters to a whole slew of agents. It was more than a year ago, about the same
time I entered your contest. I was just starting to get serious about marketing my stuff, and I
wasn't too organized about it."

Her fingers trembled as she frantically thumbed through the pages. "Somewhere, I had a
list, but I didn't always get everyone written down. I must have sent him a copy. Maybe he
brought it to the convention with him."

"Why would he do that?" Cameron said.

"Maybe he wanted to buy it," she answered, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Maybe
he was going to tell me when we met."

"Agents don't buy manuscripts," Rena said in a kindly tone. "They agree to represent
you. And if he really liked your manuscript, he wouldn't wait to meet up with you at a
convention."

Thelma Ridgeway shrugged. "I don't know, then. Maybe he was going to reject it."

"No way," Ashley told her. "If they don't want your submission, there are two
possibilities. If you've included a return envelope, they'll return your materials. Otherwise, you
never hear from them. Believe me, I know all about that. I've got a whole drawer at home, stuffed
full of rejection letters."

GP said, "We're talking about Zachary Tuck, remember? It would be just like him to
bring a submission with him so he could reject it in person. He was a big enough jerk to do
something like that."

Upton had his own thought. "What if Ms. Ridgway was lying and she had actually met
with Tuck that afternoon--and for God knows what reason went berserk and stabbed him to
death? "Why don't you keep looking for your list?" he suggested. "Meanwhile, "we need to
decide what we're going to do about Zachary Tuck. And Robert Johnson."

GP raised a brow. "Why do we need to do anything? Especially about Tuck?"

Fontaine stared at her with a disapproving frown. "It doesn't disturb you that the man
was stabbed to death?"

"Why should it? A literary agent gets murdered at a writer's convention? It wouldn't even
make an interesting incident in a novel. Especially a romance novel. It's too much of a
cliché. Nobody would ever believe it."

Rena put in, "Actually, I think Isaac Asimov did something like it in--"

"What about the first murder?" Randy interrupted. "I can see a few real possibilities with
that one. Of course, you'd have to dress him up in something more creative than other people's
clothes, but if you could generate enough of a mystique about the victim, you might come up
with a pretty good yarn."

Excitedly, GP bit her lower lip. "You know, Randy, you may be right. Maybe we ought
to collaborate on this. Maybe it's time both of us broke out of the romance genre."

"What about a thriller?" Brady Cameron joined in. "Maybe the dead guy was a spy. Or a
terrorist."

"Good idea," Ashley Wade said. "While Suzanne and Randy write a romance story,
maybe you and I could write a thriller about it. We could--"

"Here it is!" Thelma Ridgeway shrilled. "My list." She held up a rumpled sheet of
notebook paper. "He's on it, too. The fourth item on the list. Zachary Tuck, on West 34th Street
in New York."

"That's probably the address of the garage where he parked his car," GP commented. "I
always figured he couldn't actually afford an office."

Ashley jumped to his feet. "Ha, ha, ha! You think everything's a big joke, don't you,
Suzanne? You're a member of the Published Writers Guild. You get all of your books published.
What do you care about the rest of us?" He pounded a fist against his chest. "Zachary Tuck was
going to get me into the big leagues. And now that's never going to happen because someone
murdered him!"

"Take it easy, Ash. There will be other chances."

"And other agents," Rena added. "Agents who won't throw you to the wolves."

Brady Cameron stood up. "I need to use the head. I mean, the men's room." He left the
room, as Ashley sat back down.

"Okay," Callahan said, stifling a yawn, "going back to Art's question, what do we need
to do about the two murders?"

"I don't know," Upton said. "But I notice that one person has remained notably silent
throughout this entire discussion." He turned his attention to Cameron. "What say you about all
of this?"

Cameron shrugged. "Nothing. I've gathered all of the evidence I can find. Tomorrow or
whenever, the regular crew will come out and search for the dozens of items I've undoubtedly
overlooked. The Crime Lab will analyze the evidence and we'll see what we have. Odds are, the
killer's DNA is on the garrotte. Or one of the victims."

"Meanwhile, all of the suspects will have dispersed," Upton pointed out. "They'll have
had time to dispose of evidence and remove any incriminating traces from their own
persons."

"So what do you want me to do?" Cameron demanded.

"I don't know," Upton admitted. "I just feel like we ought to be doing something."

"It's a needle in a haystack," Ashley observed. "There are hundreds of people in the
hotel. There's no way we can even pare the list down to anything manageable."

Randy leaned back in his chair. "I'm afraid Ash is right. Maybe we ought to get some
sleep and take a good look at things in the morning. Something incredible would have to happen
for us to figure this out tonight."

"Amen to that," Rena agreed.

At that moment, Brady Cameron, looking perplexed, rejoined the group.

"Did somebody lose this?"

In his right hand was a leather wallet.

"Let me see that," Cameron said. Touching only the edges, he took the wallet and let it
flip open.

"Is that a driver's license?" Upton asked, peering over Cameron's shoulder.